I followed the hall where it curved around the main chapel. Doors wide as garage bays opened onto the sanctuary, which was the size of a soccer stadium. Maintenance workers vacuuming between the pews were projected to heroic size on the JumboTron behind the altar.
Another hundred feet and two left turns later, I passed through a connecting hall and entered the north wing. This building lacked the regal opulence of the main chapel. Plush maroon carpet gave way to beige linoleum. The ridiculously tall doors and walls shrank to human proportions. Commercial fluorescent tubing replaced the gigantic smoked-glass lighting fixtures.
At the end of the hall I found the Samson Room, deserted and quiet. I peeked through the open door and saw a typical exercise studio—stereo at the front, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a rack with multicolored hand weights, and stacks of platforms for step aerobics. A poster on the back mirror had the face of a cartoon Jesus with a headband (instead of a crown of thorns). The caption under the smiling Savior was: WWJD? WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? EXERCISE, SWEAT, PUT AWAY HIS STEPS AND WEIGHTS.
I heard the clatter of metal lockers behind me. I turned around. A placard on the wall indicated the entrance to the women's shower and changing room. Female voices came from around the corner of the entrance.
I could romp inside. I was curious to see what shape these devout Christian women kept themselves in. Wouldn't want the Lord to get a hernia snatching them heavenward during the Rapture, after all.
Two women came out of the changing room, carrying gym bags and smelling clean as wet soap. They walked side by side and chatted into their cell phones.
Was one of them Lara? I asked if they knew where I could find her.
The brunette pulled the cell phone from her ear. "The instructor?"
"I guess." How many Lara Phillips were here?
She shrugged. "Dunno." She elbowed her friend. "Lara. The instructor. Where is she?"
Her blonde companion stopped in midsentence and looked at me. "Try the terrazzo." She motioned out the door and cocked her thumb to the right. The two of them resumed their cell phone conversations and walked around me.
I went out the door and followed the walkway to the back side of the main chapel building. The heat from the mirrored glass turned the space into a convection oven. The sun's rays bore upon me from every direction.
Rectangles of roses and boxwood shrubs broke up the monotony of the perfect lawn. Sycamore trees surrounded an oblong shape of terrazzo that spilled from the back entrance of the building like a tongue. Patio chairs and tables were spread about the terrazzo. An older teenage boy in an apron tended a juice cart under a large umbrella.
A petite brunette busied herself at the closest table. She moved within the circular shadow cast by the table's umbrella. She wore a long, pastel green sundress with spaghetti straps over a yellow T-shirt. Glossy shoulder-length hair spilled from under a ball cap. She peeled clementines and arranged the sections on a plate next to cookies. A metal pitcher on the table sweated droplets. Red punch and ice filled two glass tumblers. A writing pad, spreadsheets, pens, and a Palm Pilot sat beside the tumblers.
I stepped close, the table remaining between us. The brow of her ball cap was embroidered with Eternally Fit for the Lord. Her scent was of moist hair, lilac shampoo, and "Ocean Breeze" sunblock.
"Excuse me," I said.
The woman looked up, startled. Square mirrored sunglasses reflected the glass and greenery.
She had Roxy's dimples and chin but her nose was shorter and her lips narrower and more full. Maybe she wasn't Roxy's sister.
I said, "I'm looking for Lara Phillips."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"YES? MAY I help you?"
What I knew about Lara was a big question mark. I introduced myself and advanced with a calm face, my hands open and the palms facing her. "If you are Lara Phillips, I wanted to ask you a few questions."
"About what?"
"I'm a private investigator. Katz Meow hired me to find out what happened to your sister."
Even with her face darkened in shadow, I could see her blanch. She retreated a step and bumped against an adjacent table. The woman's expression became hard, like clay baking in this heat. "What about my sister?"
Then she was Lara Phillips.
The kid at the juice cart looked at us, averted his eyes, and pretended to act busy.
I said, "I'm looking into the circumstances of her murder and—"
"Why? She's dead." A rising anger stiffened Lara's voice.
She whisked the sunglasses from her face. The color rushed back into her complexion. She squared her shoulders, all five feet of her standing ramrod straight. The motion tightened the dress across her small breasts.
Her blue eyes—Roxy's were brown—stared as if she were about to hypnotize me. "I'm asking again, what about my sister?" Her voice was as toxic as lye.
"Like I said, I want to help."
"Help? It's too late for that," Lara replied. "You should've been here while she was still alive."
"Lara?" a deep masculine voice asked from behind. A tall man walked between the row of chairs and tables and circled around me. Sunglasses rode atop the mass of his well-groomed silver hair. The craggy lines of his ruddy face extended to a prominent jaw and a dimpled chin. He wore a loose short-sleeved shirt in a red tartan pattern and khaki trousers.
The question mark hovering above Lara got even bigger. I recognized this man from photos and his television show. He was Reverend Dale Journey.
The two of them exchanged looks that implied more than a casual working relationship. Her eyes cut back to me while his gaze lingered on her.
Journey stepped beside her and faced me, hands gripping the back of a chair. He wore a wedding ring. During his sermons, Journey often mentioned he was a widower and the gold band reminded him of promises kept to his now departed wife and to God.
"Your name, sir?" he asked in a measured soothing tone.
"Gomez," I replied, moving around the table and extending my hand. "Felix Gomez."
Journey and Lara stared at my fingers as if the digits were soiled from wiping my ass. Neither moved other than to raise their faces toward mine.
I could zap them both right now. I reached to remove my sunglasses. Then what? Juice boy watched us. Things could get complicated. I lowered my hand.
Lara whispered, "He asked about Freya."
Journey frowned. "What is your business here?"
"He's a private detective," Lara said. "A friend of Freya's—Roxy Bronze—hired him."
I hadn't said that Katz Meow was a friend of Roxy's.
"Roxy," Journey muttered. He motioned toward Lara. "Mrs. Phillips—Lara—is a friend. If you're asking about her sister, then you are aware of the trauma Lara has gone through. She's had to overcome an ordeal of shame that only compounded the immense tragedy of losing a sibling."
Journey waved his hand, and juice boy turned as if dismissed, hustling toward the chapel.
Lara's eyes misted. One side of her face twitched. She wiped an eye and put her sunglasses back on. "Mr. Gomez, you came here looking for the truth? I'll give it to you. What do you know about my sister? Can you comprehend the disgrace she brought to my family? To me? She had everything. She could do anything. I was the family goat compared to big sister."
Lara's face twitched again. Her voice cracked. "She had straight As; I was the C student. She had Olympic scouts sending her flowers; I got ribbons for good attendance in gym class. They handed my sister scholarships to medical school. And still she acted as if the rest of us owed her. She had the keys to the universe. What did she do with them?"
Lara clenched her fists. "My sister gave everything up for pornography and died a whore."
"Her death left behind a lot of questions," I said.
"I've had it with people picking at Freya's bones." Lara took a half step forward.
Journey pulled her back and gave her shoulder a light squeeze, as if to say: Let it out; you'll be okay.
Lara
picked up a napkin and dabbed her eyes. "She's gone. That part is finished. Let my sister rot in peace as Roxy Bronze."
Definitely the most spiteful bon voyage I'd ever heard.
"Roxy, I mean Freya, led a complicated, tragic life," I said.
Journey raised his hand to interrupt. "Complicated. Tragic. And we'd be remiss not to add disreputable. It'd be easy to bury all the bad with Freya, but we can't. We can only ask Him"—Journey pointed to the sky—"for forgiveness and continue with our lives in His grace."
I expected Journey to end that with an amen.
An LAPD police officer and a security guard in a green uniform with gray pocket flaps marched toward us across the terrazzo. Juice boy followed so close he almost tripped over their heels. The cop went straight to Journey and Lara, and the guard came around my side. The kid stood against his juice cart.
I was outflanked. Both the cop and the guard carried pistols and wore sunglasses.
The cop halted beside Journey. He looked at me even though he spoke to the reverend. "Pastor Dale, there a problem?"
Pastor Dale? How familiar. That meant he attended Journey's church.
The guard took a ready stance, left foot forward, and hooked thumb into a strap close to a can of pepper spray. I'd been doused with that before, and it was as painful to a vampire as it was to a human.
With this heat, in my black clothes I felt like a stick of melting licorice. If it could, my kundalini noir would pant like a dog to keep cool. This wasn't the time for a fight. I needed answers, not trouble.
I raised my hands like a meek little citizen. "No problem, officer. I was only here to ask questions."
Juice boy gave a smart-ass grin.
Her voice ice cold, Lara said, "Mr. Gomez was leaving."
His arms crossed he-man style, the cop gave me that pissed-off, big-city lawman glare.
I backed away. "Some other time."
"Worship service is Sundays at nine and eleven A.M.," Journey replied, more of a taunt than an invitation. "Wednesdays at seven in the evening. You're welcome anytime then, Mr. Gomez."
The guard pointed to the back entrance of the chapel. I started that way, the guard and the cop stepping close enough to grab me if they wanted to. They stayed with me until I reached the parking lot. I got into my car, not so much humiliated as suspicious.
Lara Phillips, formerly Lara Krieger, threw a good tantrum of self-pity over the life and death of her sister. I had no reason to doubt her sincerity.
But Lara never asked who Katz Meow was, and she told Journey that a friend of Roxy's hired me. I had never said the friend was Katz Meow—Lara made that conclusion on her own. Which meant Lara knew Katz Meow.
Plus Lara said Roxy brought disgrace to her family. What family? There was only Lara and Roxy; their parents were dead, and they had no other siblings. Or did she mean the family name? I caught the emphasis when Lara said, "to me."
That stink-o-meter of mine was back at full tilt.
I drove off and found a café that offered a decent selection of shade-grown coffee. In my car, I mixed Peruvian dark roast with type B-negative I'd brought in a plastic bottle. I thumbed through the day's issue of the Los Angeles Times to look busy while thinking about what happened at the church.
I didn't need the nose of a retriever to smell the chemistry between Lara and Journey. He wore a ring to advertise his grief as a widower. How long ago had his wife died? Seven, eight years?
I flipped from the front page to the sports section.
How familiar were the reverend and Lara? Why hide the attraction? Perhaps to prevent the gossip that sprouts when a man—especially a minister—dates a woman less than half his age.
Maybe Lara and Journey were figuring an angle on how to present their relationship. He was widowed, she divorced. Evangelical churches were big on starting over. I didn't see any reason why they couldn't go public about their arrangement and not hide the fact they bumped uglies.
But the love life of these two wasn't my concern except as how it might relate to Roxy's murder.
I turned from sports back to metro.
Lara Phillips taught exercise classes in Reverend Journey's church, a man she might or might not be porking. Dr. Mordecai Niphe sneaked here in the middle of the night. Journey bought the land for his church at a distressed price from Lucky Rosario in a deal facilitated by Councilwoman Petale Venin.
Lucky Rosario hobnobs with Cragnow Vissoom, porn king and former boss of Roxy Bronze. Did Journey ever meet with Cragnow?
There were a lot of slippery threads here but nothing tied to Roxy's murder.
Who would gain the most from her death? Was Roxy killed out of revenge? Or to shut her up? If that was the case, what did she know?
I set the newspaper aside when I caught a name in the obituary. I read the notice, and the surprise made me cough up coffee and blood.
Fred Daniels, Roxy Bronze's punk of an ex-husband, was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I READ THE obituary twice to make sure this was the same Fred Daniels I visited last week. The right age. Resident of Rosemead.
How did I miss his death? What happened to his sorry ass? Car accident? Was he murdered? The obituary wouldn't say. My mistake for not keeping up with local news. Considering all the deaths in L.A., unless it was a celebrity, blink and you'd miss the mention.
The funeral was today at the Eden Memorial Cemetery in Mission Hills. Someone there could tell me when and how Daniels became worm food.
The cemetery occupied the apex of land where the San Diego and Golden State Freeways merged. Hearses and limousines clogged the lanes leading into the cemetery. Never figured on a traffic jam getting into the afterlife.
The parking lot was full, and I left my car down the block. The hot sun bore upon me like an electric iron. Once in the cemetery I paused in the shadow cast by a statue of the Virgin Mary atop a crypt. I removed my sunglasses and contacts. The uncomfortably bright sunlight made me squint as I scanned auras. No orange, only red. A few undulated in grief, most shimmered in boredom, and a couple burned with nervous, distracted thoughts.
I put my contacts and sunglasses back on. I approached a groundskeeper and asked if he knew which of the funerals was Daniels's.
He shrugged. "Dunno."
I asked again in Spanish.
"Aya," he replied. "Con la chichona." Over there. Where you'll find the lady with the big ta-tas.
I thanked him and followed the direction of his finger toward a knot of people dressed in black. They faced a cheap casket covered with imitation wood paneling. I couldn't see if an unusually busty woman was among them. When I got close I heard a balding man in white ministerial vestments—embroidered with sunbursts, dolphins, and marijuana leaves—mention Fred Daniels.
The "minister" babbled in New Age argle-bargle about loss and the deceased moving on to a better place. I stood in the back and scoped out the mourners. Everyone wore the same dutiful somber expression. Mostly women, mid-to-late twenties. Lots of tattoos and piercings. Fellow porn stars, coke heads, or both?
After mumbling his final words, the minister nodded to a pair of men in well-worn suits on opposite sides of the casket. They tripped the lowering device and the casket sank into the grave. Counting me, there were two dozen present and not one sob or moist eye. I surmised the mourners were here to bank karma points so when it was their turn for the big sleep, they wouldn't get a lonely send-off.
A paunchy, bearded man wearing a ball cap and frayed necktie stood at the head of the grave. Mourners filed past. The minister handed out pamphlets and invited everyone to his "sanctuary." No doubt the church of the burning doobie.
From within the small crowd, a short blonde so top heavy she looked like an inverted bowling pin came forward. She took a pamphlet from the minister and shook hands with the other man. She attracted the gaze of every male, as if her enormous chest had the gravitational pull of two Jupiters. The woman walked on tiptoes to keep the sharp heels of her sandals from
plunging into the sod. She wore sunglasses big as snorkeling goggles and carried a leather purse on a strap looped over her shoulder.
Though I was sure I had never met the woman, she seemed familiar. I followed her into the cool shade of a maple tree. She raised the sunglasses and unmasked her face.
It was JJ Jizmee, retired porn star, famous for her all-natural size 42J bust. I was fifteen and coming to grips, so to speak, with my sexuality, when a high school buddy loaned me a videotape featuring JJ. Since then, those humongous boobs of hers had hovered over my bedtime fantasies like a pair of zeppelins from the planet Sex.
JJ fanned herself with the pamphlet. Moist strands of brassy hair clung to the sides of her face. She wore a black blazer over a matching skirt that fell to her knee. Her gray blouse was open and showed enough cleavage to swallow a man's head.
Removing my sunglasses, I approached, smiling, which was easy. But it took a Herculean effort to look above her neck. I fixed on her blue-gray eyes and waited for the opportunity to remove my contacts. "I'm Felix Gomez."
She raised an eyebrow, furrowing one half of her forehead.
Her expression indicated, go on. Crow's feet wrinkled the corners of her eyes, and an uneven tan showed through her makeup. A softening jawline and neck, as well as a thick middle, completed her matronly appearance.
I offered a business card and told her I was a private detective investigating the death of Roxy Bronze.
JJ clasped the card between long ultramarine-blue fingernails. She read the card and pointed toward the grave. "If you've come to interview Fred Daniels, you're a little late."
"Maybe you can help me, JJ."
Her carmine red lips curved into that same smile she used to give to the camera before helping herself to a stiff cock. "JJ? I haven't been called that in years. So you're a fan?" She dropped my card into her purse and held out her hand. Heavy gold jewelry decorated her thumb, fingers, and wrist. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gomez." Her grip was dry and firm.
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