Grave Endings

by Rochelle Krich

  I accessed the screen and scrolled down to the last number. That was the call from Max, the NA sponsor. At least I didn’t have to identify the caller. I jotted down Max’s name and the time of the call.

  I shut off Randy’s cell and dialed his number on my phone. I felt eerie listening to his message, but when he was finished, I pressed the pound button, then the new password, then 1.

  “You have two unheard messages,” a recorded voice informed me. “First message, sent on Wednesday, three twenty-two P.M.”

  “Randy, I’m asking you to reconsider before you do something you’ll be sorry for later. Call me.”

  “End of message.”

  Alice Creeley. That was a surprise.

  “To erase this message, press seven. To save the message, press nine.”

  I pressed 9.

  “Next message, sent on Thursday, 12:41 A.M.”

  “Randy, why aren’t you answering? Randy? Do they know?”

  “End of message. To erase this message—”

  I pressed 9. I would have liked to play the message again, to listen to the woman caller’s voice, but I didn’t want to erase any more phone numbers. Even without hearing it again, I was fairly certain the caller was my redhead.

  thirty

  “YOU DIDN’T CALL BACK, BUT I FIGURED YOU’D HAVE TO talk to me today or tomorrow,” Connors said when I was sitting next to his desk. “Give me a minute, and I’ll get you the DO sheets.”

  Connors is one of the detectives who make my life easier by giving me sanitized photocopies of the Daily Occurrence sheets for my column. At many police stations, including Wilshire, I have to copy the data.

  “Thanks, but that’s not the only reason I’m here.” I took the cell phone from my purse and placed it on his desk.

  “A little early for my birthday,” he said. “Plus I have my own, thanks.”

  “That’s Randy’s. His sister took it from the apartment the night he died. She gave it to me. I figured you might want to know who Randy talked to before he died.”

  Connors leaned way back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. “And why would I be interested in that?”

  I told him about Trina’s trashed apartment and the threatening calls from Jim. “I kept pushing her to contact you, but Jim warned her not to. She’s convinced that someone killed Randy—maybe Jim. She says the police don’t believe her, and that they don’t care about Randy because he was an ex-con, or about her. I tried to tell her otherwise, but she wasn’t buying it.”

  Connors had listened with interest. His hands came down. “My guess? The package is drugs, Molly. Randy was dealing, Jim was his supplier. Now that Randy’s dead, Jim wants his stuff back. That doesn’t mean Jim killed him. Just the opposite.”

  “Randy was in NA.”

  Connors shrugged. “He got sucked back in. Doesn’t take long. He didn’t have money to buy the stuff. His pal Jim says, Why don’t you sell, you’ll have money.”

  I had to admit that that sounded plausible. “So you’re not interested in knowing who Randy talked to?”

  “Doesn’t hurt to find out. I assume you already know?” Connors said wryly.

  “Trina and I checked out the calls yesterday. It wasn’t evidence, Andy,” I said before Connors could object. “Just a phone belonging to a dead man who overdosed.”

  Connors turned on the phone and accessed the screens of incoming and sent calls. “Can I assume you know who these unidentified numbers belong to, Miss Marple?”

  I handed him a copy of the revised list I’d made.

  CALLS RANDY MADE:

  Wednesday, 9:01 A.M.—Horton Enterprises

  Wednesday, 9:29 A.M.—San Diego Brian (last name?)

  Wednesday, 9:43 A.M.—626 call (?)

  Wednesday, 10:08 A.M.—Max

  Wednesday, 12:03 P.M.—Rachel’s Tent

  Wednesday, 12:19 P.M.— Dad

  Wednesday, 1:17 P.M.—Rachel’s Tent

  Wednesday, 5:33 P.M.—Trina

  Wednesday, 6:42 P.M.—Domino’s Pizza

  CALLS RANDY RECEIVED:

  Wednesday, 8:12 A.M.—Max

  Wednesday, 9:17 A.M.—619 call (?)

  Wednesday, 2:33 P.M.— Jerry Luna, Randy’s agent

  Wednesday, 3:14 P.M.—Rachel’s Tent

  Wednesday, 4:42 P.M.—626 (?), same as sent

  9:43 A.M.

  Wednesday, 5:17 P.M.—Dad

  Wednesday, 5:44 P.M.—Trina

  Wednesday, 9:16 P.M.—Doreen

  Thursday, 12:14 A.M.—Doreen

  Thursday, 12:38 A.M.—619 same as 9:17 above (un-

  known)

  Connors studied the list. “What’s Randy’s connection with Horton Enterprises?”

  “They fund Rachel’s Tent. Anthony Horton is the founder.” I repeated the business mogul’s story. “I met with him and his son this morning. Randy phoned Horton the morning he died, but Horton wasn’t able to take the call. Now he feels bad.”

  “Does Horton have any idea why Creeley wanted to talk to him?”

  “He didn’t, but I did.”

  Connors gave me a crooked smile. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “According to Trina, Randy was making amends to people he’d wronged over the years. He was writing them letters. I know he asked forgiveness from his father and stepmother.”

  “Like the letter he was writing the Lashers.” Connors nodded. “But why would he ask forgiveness from Horton?”

  “Horton got him the job at Rachel’s Tent. Maybe Randy wanted to thank him again, and apologize for not living up to Horton’s expectations. Horton said Randy disappointed him.” I didn’t feel right telling Connors about Randy’s drug dealing. That had happened a year ago, and I’d promised Horton to keep it off the record.

  Connors glanced at my list. “Ditto for the calls to Rachel’s Tent, huh? Who’s Brian in San Diego?”

  “I don’t know. At the funeral I saw a redheaded woman who I thought might be Doreen. I followed her.” I ignored Connors’s sigh and told him what had happened, watched his interest darken to annoyance, then anger.

  “I should lock you up for your own good,” he said when I was done. “Do you have a death wish or something?”

  “I got caught up in the thing, Andy. I had no idea she’d pull a gun.” The memory of the cold steel was still vivid. I suppressed a shudder. “She thought people sent me to follow her.”

  “Which people?”

  “She didn’t identify them. She said, ‘The ones who killed Aggie, the ones who killed me.’ ”

  Connors grunted. “Sounds like she was stoned or missing a few screws.”

  “I don’t know. I do know she was terrified. And she knew who Aggie was—she identified her in a picture she found in my wallet—and that I’d given Aggie the locket.”

  “Things Randy’s girlfriend might know,” Connors said. “I don’t get this redhead’s connection to the 619 Brian.”

  “I tried reaching her on her cell phone and got a voice message: ‘Hi, this is Brian.’ Then, when I tried the 619 call on Randy’s cell, the guy who answered said he was Brian. Same voice, same guy. He didn’t know a Doreen.”

  “How did you get her cell number?” Connors asked.

  I told him about the Russian limo driver.

  “Very enterprising,” he said. “The driver, I mean.”

  I figured he was too annoyed to give me points. “I don’t understand how this woman got Brian’s cell phone, Andy. Unless she stole it. She probably lives in the San Diego area, because someone made two calls from the 619 area to Randy, and she had Brian’s phone.”

  “If she stole his phone, she didn’t necessarily do it when she was in San Diego. And anybody could have made the 619 calls. For all we know, Randy had business dealings with someone in San Diego, and with Brian. Or Brian could be a friend. Did you ask him if he knew Randy?”

  I shook my head. Dumb of me. “I was focused on finding out about Doreen.”

  Connors drummed his fingers
on his desk. “So Randy made calls. To his dad, his sister, a pizza shop, his agent, his girlfriend. Nothing unusual. You’re probably right about the calls to Rachel’s Tent and Horton. He wanted to make amends. And the calls verify what the girlfriend said, that Randy didn’t show for their date and she got worried. Thanks anyway, Molly. I’ll hold on to the phone and get it back to Randy’s sister.”

  I could leave now, I thought. If Connors was interested, he could obtain a list of all the calls Randy had made and received. . . .

  “Something else?” Connors asked.

  “I accidentally eliminated a call Randy made to the Lashers,” I said, the color and heat rising in my face like one of my mother’s hot flashes. “I didn’t include it on the list I gave you. Randy phoned the Lashers the Tuesday night before he died, but I don’t have the exact time.”

  Connors was quiet for half a minute or so, swiveling back and forth in his chair. “Were you considering not telling me?” he asked when the chair had come to a stop.

  “I did tell you, didn’t I?” Not really an answer. “I spoke to Dr. Lasher last night, Andy.” I repeated what Aggie’s father had told me. “He thought Randy might talk more openly to him than to the police, but Thursday morning he phoned Wilshire anyway. Porter wasn’t in. And then you showed up at their house with the locket.”

  “I have to talk to him, Molly.” Connors looked unhappy. “You know that. I wish he’d told me right away.”

  “He didn’t see the point. You told him Randy had overdosed.”

  Connors sat up straight and leaned toward me. “The point is, Molly, and you know it as well as I do or you wouldn’t have had second thoughts about telling me about the call, the point is that Lasher had two conversations with the man who killed his daughter, and he had the last one a few hours before the man died.”

  “Of a self-inflicted overdose,” I said. “It’s what you keep telling me.”

  Connors gave me a hard look, I think to see if I was mocking him, which I wasn’t. Then he sighed.

  “I know it wasn’t easy for you to come here with this, Molly. I think you know you did the right thing.”

  I hoped so. “I told Dr. Lasher I had to tell you about the phone call. He didn’t try to talk me out of it.”

  Connors nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t impressed, or focused. His mind was elsewhere, probably on Dr. Lasher.

  “I have a few questions, Andy, and a favor to ask.”

  He grunted. “So the phone is gonna cost me, huh?”

  “And the list,” I said. “You have to admit it’ll save you some time.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Randy killed Aggie somewhere between Alcott, where she parked her car, and the synagogue hall, which is on Pico off Livonia. Why did he move her body to a Dumpster behind a restaurant a mile away? And don’t tell me to ask Porter. He won’t give me a straight answer.”

  “You and I are friends, Molly, not partners.”

  “What difference does it make if you tell me? Aggie’s dead. Creeley’s dead.”

  Connors swiveled again in his chair. “I’ll talk to Porter and see what he says. That’s the best I can do. What else?”

  “I want to know who made the 619 calls to Randy.”

  Connors shook his head.

  “I’m not asking for the address. Just a name.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “What about Brian? Can you find out if his cell phone was stolen?”

  “Let me think about it. If I can, I’ll let you know.”

  “One more thing? Randy has two voice mails and—”

  “And you want me to tell you what they are?” Connors sighed. “Again, I can’t do it, Molly.”

  “Actually, I heard them. One is from his stepmother, Alice,” I said before Connors could make a snippy comment. “The other one is from my redhead.”

  That perked Connors’s interest. “How’d you get the password? Scratch that,” he said. “I don’t want to know, or I might have to arrest you.” His eyes said he was only half joking. “You’re sure it’s the redhead?”

  “Pretty sure. I wanted to compare her voice with Doreen’s, but I didn’t want to eliminate any more calls on Randy’s phone.”

  “Very considerate,” he said dryly. He picked up Randy’s phone, glanced at my list, and accessed the screen for received calls. He selected DOREEN and pressed SEND.

  “Leave your number, I’ll call you back.”

  Using his desk phone, which he placed on speaker, he dialed Randy’s cell, waited for the prompt, and pressed the pound button. “What’s the password?” he asked me.

  I told him.

  He punched in the four numbers, waited for a prompt, and pressed 1. We listened to Alice Creeley. Connors saved the message. A moment later we heard the woman’s voice.

  “Randy, why aren’t you answering? Randy? Do they know?”

  Connors played it again and looked at me.

  “It’s not Doreen,” I said.

  He nodded.

  thirty-one

  MAX PALEY LOOKED JUST THE WAY HE’D DESCRIBED himself over the phone—tall, brown hair with a severe crew cut, a goatee, tortoiseshell glasses. He was wearing jeans and a blue shirt over a black T-shirt, and it took me a moment to realize that I’d seen him at the funeral.

  It was five to seven. I had been waiting ten minutes and had just about decided that he wasn’t planning to show when he entered the kosher deli on Pico near Robertson, which I’d chosen because it was close to where he worked.

  I had found Max’s name and phone number among the entries on the pages Trina had left. A good thing, because otherwise I would have been tempted to use Randy’s phone to reach the NA sponsor, which would have erased another call and necessitated another apology to Connors.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said after the waitress left with our orders. A steak sandwich with fries (a nod to my dressmaker) and a Diet Coke for me, a pastrami burger and a Dr Pepper for Max. Mushroom barley soup for both of us. My treat, I told him.

  “I almost didn’t,” he said. “I’m still not sure I should be here. The relationship between a person and his sponsor is totally private. That’s what makes the program work.”

  He’d been suspicious after I’d identified myself, not happy that I’d found him, even after I told him it was through Randy’s sister.

  “I wouldn’t have asked you to meet with me if it wasn’t vital, Max. As I said, the police know you phoned Randy the morning before he died. So you’ll probably have to talk to them. You weren’t Randy’s lawyer or minister.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to talk to you.”

  I nodded. “True. But I’m hoping you will. I’m trying to find out who killed him.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I took a sip of water.

  Max pulled on his goatee. “You really think someone killed Randy?”

  “The police are looking into the possibility.” Connors planned to talk to Dr. Lasher, so it was true. “The evidence points to Randy overdosing, but his sister doesn’t believe it. Neither does his father. Do you know if Randy was clean?”

  “What day?”

  That startled me. “Wednesday, the day he died.”

  “Do you know anything about addiction, Miss Blume?”

  “Molly.”

  “Molly. Do you?”

  “I know it’s hard to beat. Are you saying Randy was doing drugs on and off?”

  The waitress brought our soups.

  “You don’t beat an addiction, Molly,” Max said when she left. “It’s with you every day for the rest of your life. Whether it’s smoking or gambling or drinking alcohol or spending or overeating. Or using drugs. You have a day where you abstained, that doesn’t mean you’re going to abstain the next day. You have a month of abstaining, or five months, or five years, the next morning you get up and thank God for helping you. You acknowledge that you still have an addiction, that you’re powerless to control it, that you need help. Randy w
as beginning to understand that. So if you ask, Did Randy shoot up Wednesday night? I have to say I don’t know. He could have.”

  “Was he clean on Tuesday?”

  “Yeah, but it was a struggle.” Max took a spoonful of soup. “He had a lot on his mind.”

  “Trina said he was writing letters, asking forgiveness. She didn’t know specifics.” Or she wouldn’t tell me. Instinct told me Trina had been holding back about a few things.

  “He was working the program way too fast. It’s not something you rush. But it was like he had a premonition that he wouldn’t be around, and he had to do as much as he could in the time he had left.”

  “Did he ever mention someone named Aggie Lasher?”

  Max shook his head. “He didn’t talk about people by name. Why?”

  “The police think he killed her around six years ago. You don’t look surprised,” I added.

  Max ate more soup. I think he was stalling, trying to figure out how much to tell me. My own bowl of soup was steaming my face, but I hadn’t touched it.

  “Randy asked me how a person would go about making amends to someone who died,” Max said. “Be of service to other people, I told him. Work the program. Then he asked, What if that person was responsible for the other person’s death? Hypothetically, he said.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That deep inside he knew what he had to do, that he didn’t need me to tell him. About a week before he died, he told me he had a huge dilemma. In making amends, he’d be involving people who would be facing legal and financial repercussions. Did he have a right to do that? To be honest, that was too big for me. Aren’t you eating your soup? It’s good.”

  I took a spoonful, but barely tasted it. I wondered if Randy had told his supplier—Jim?—that he was no longer willing to deal drugs. Worse—that he was planning to turn himself in to the police. Was that why he’d been in such a rush to make amends to all the people he’d wronged—because he knew he could be in prison for life?

  “Do you think Randy was dealing drugs?” I asked Max.

  “No way.”

  His anger made me flinch. “What if he couldn’t get a supply any other way?”

  “I talked to Randy every day, usually more than once. I would have known. Now his girlfriend . . .” Max sniffed. “They met in NA, but she was definitely using, at least the last time she came to a meeting, a month ago. I don’t know where she got the money. Randy said she wasn’t working.”