“There she is!” I called to Suzanne, but she had picked up a discarded Styrofoam container and disappeared back into the workroom of the funeral home. She was an odd duck, I thought, but then again, maybe that came with the job of mortician. As the door at the base of the driveway closed on its pneumatic hinges, I hurried toward the car.
Lisette drove erratically, crisscrossing between the aisles. Given how late she was, I guessed she was trying to get as close to the door as she could. I couldn’t dodge between cars as fast as she was driving, so I finally stopped, flapping my arms over my head like an air traffic controller. She whipped around a parked Jeep and suddenly caught sight of me. Her jaw dropped and she slammed on the brakes, the tires skidding slightly on the pavement as she jerked to a stop next to a white van marked with a Vista Ridge Funeral Home decal. She pressed a button in the car and the driver’s-side window slid down. “Jesus Christ, Ivy. You scared me.”
“I was looking for you,” I said, considering her. Her voice was off and her eyes looked glazed, as if she’d been drinking. “The service is about to start.”
She gave a short nod, rolled the window back up, and turned off the ignition. A moment later, she was out of the car, her feet tangling under her as she walked, despite the flats she wore. She lost her balance and her knees buckled. I grabbed her elbow, holding her upright. “Are you okay?” I asked, relieved that she’d managed to make it here in one piece. Now that I was next to her, I could smell the alcohol on her breath. She clearly should not have been driving.
“I hate this place,” she said, her words slurring. “But David said I had to get Mama from here. That I had to get her and then it would be okay.” She looked at me, tears pooling in her eyes. “I don’t ever wanna to come back here.”
I guided her toward the door, glancing surreptitiously at my watch. We were just barely going to make it on time. “You don’t have to come back. You’ll all have your mom’s ashes. You don’t have to come back here,” I said, thinking of all the time I’d spent at my mother’s graveside in the months following her death. Marisol had had her father’s ashes, but the memorial garden had been the place that had given her comfort. For Lisette, this place was going to be a sad reminder, not a place of serenity. Sprinkling her mother’s ashes in the vastness of the Pacific meant that the beach, the boardwalk, or whatever part of the sea she associated with her mother would be her source of comfort.
Lisette didn’t respond. She just plowed ahead, reaching for the door handle as we approached. It opened before she made contact with it, though, and she jumped back, startled. Miguel appeared, opening it for us as if he’d seen us coming. The smile of thanks I started to offer froze on my face when I saw his expression. His face was grim, his eyes dark with worry, but he spoke to Lisette as he took her arm and escorted her to the reception room. “Just in time.”
I noticed Johnny sitting in the back row by himself. So he’d decided to come. Was that what had Miguel so tense? Johnny’s spine was straight, his feet planted firmly on the ground. He didn’t have a tissue, and from my vantage point it didn’t look like he’d shed any tears, but he was here. If he had killed his ex-wife, that was twisted and sadistic. If he hadn’t, it was the right thing to do for his children.
Miguel shot me a look that made me stop at the door instead of following him in. Something was definitely wrong.
I watched from the threshold as he led Lisette down the aisle to her seat next to Ruben in the front row. Sergio was already at the podium, welcoming the mourners. Benjamin Alcott stood in the back corner of the room, very still, hands clasped in front of him. Up and down each row, people clutched wads of tissues, sniffled, and sat stoically still.
Miguel walked back up the aisle toward me, turning briefly to catch Olaya’s eye. They acknowledged each other and she nodded in a way that indicated she had everything under control. The service itself would consist of various mourners telling anecdotes and offering reflections about Marisol in a celebration of her life. The question of who had stripped that life from her would be left unspoken, like an elephant in the room.
Miguel rejoined me in the hallway, gently closing the door to the reception room behind him before taking my hand and leading me into the room across the way. The casket room. “Uh-uh, not here,” I said. There was something disconcerting about being surrounded by caskets. It made my chest tighten and my breath grow shallow. Death was inevitable. I knew that. But being overtly surrounded by it, as we were in this room, left me feeling uncomfortable.
This time I led the way, leaving the caskets behind and following the hallway to the right, past the door to the stairwell leading both up and down, and through yet another nondescript door. This one, however, had a placard on the wall next to it that read MEMORIAL GARDEN.
We exited the building to find ourselves in a courtyard. A trickling fountain sat up against the wall about seven feet from the door we’d entered through. A brick pathway wound through the space, which was interspersed with planted areas filled with blooming flowers, benches, trees, and two additional fountains. Along the back of the brick wall that enclosed the garden, placards were engraved with the names of the deceased who’d been scattered here. The memorial garden was bigger than I’d expected, and from what Suzanne had said, it would be even more so when they were done with their remodel.
The second we sat down, a decorative tree creating a canopy above us, Miguel turned to me, his arm draped across the back of the bench. “David’s dead.”
I just stared at him, trying to absorb those two little words. David’s dead. David’s dead? We’d just seen him last night. He’d looked worse for wear, but I hadn’t sensed a level of distress that would lead to, what, to suicide? Had he been so unable to cope with losing Marisol that he’d taken his own life? “Dead?” I said at last, not comprehending.
“Emmaline tried calling you, but you didn’t pick up. She called me—”
“When?”
“When we were looking for Lisette,” he said. “Check your phone.”
I reached for it in my back pocket, only to realize that I’d changed into my dress. “I must have put it in the bag with my other clothes.”
“He’s dead,” Miguel repeated, and then, after a moment’s pause, he added, “Murdered.”
My heart thudded in my chest. Instantly, an unbidden image of Lisette jumped into my mind. She’d been so upset about the will. Had she learned that there were stipulations in it about her and her brothers inheriting Marisol’s house? Had it pushed her over the edge? “When?” I asked.
“Sometime between this morning, when my mom saw him at the restaurant, and about one o’clock today when his body was discovered. The coroner will know more after an autopsy.”
I thought back to David’s phone call to me the night before, to the letter he’d brought to The Library, and to his sudden departure when Johnny came out of the back room.
Miguel was still talking. “Apparently David called the station sometime this morning. He told the deputy who answered that he had information about his wife’s death and that he wanted to come down and talk to whoever was in charge. But he never showed up. Emmaline sent a car to David’s house. That’s where they found him.”
I raised my eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“Suffocated,” he said, closing his eyes for a beat. “Apparently he fought. Claw marks on his face from his own fingernails, most likely.”
“He had to have realized something last night with the letter, right?”
“Right,” he agreed.
Something Johnny said floated to the front of my thoughts. She always did hang on to old letters and journals. Rough for David to find it. “Could he have found another letter? Or a journal?”
“If he did, and he had it in his possession, whoever killed him would have taken it.”
True. “So what do we do now? How do we figure out what he knew?”
Miguel leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Whatever it was, he was k
illed because of it. Someone is getting desperate.”
Someone, I thought. David left the bar last night as soon as Johnny showed up. Marisol went to meet her ex-husband the day she died. I looked at Miguel. “I hate to even think it, but—”
“Johnny,” he finished.
“Johnny,” I agreed.
Chapter 19
Miguel’s phone rang—a call from the restaurant. He took it, walking to the far side of the memorial garden so he could deal with whatever crisis had arisen in his absence. I stayed put on the bench, letting the temperate air in the courtyard fill my lungs. Flowers filled every available bit of the planter beds. It was easy to forget the reason for this space, and to see it just as a lovely garden, but through the flora, I caught sight of little mounds of ash, light against the dark soil and bark. This reminder—that this place was for remembrance and memorialization of loved ones—made me antsy for some reason.
Finally, I couldn’t sit still anymore. I stood and started pacing up and back on the brick path. Had Marisol known she was in danger? And if so, had she known just how far someone was willing to go in order to stop her? My mind stayed focused on Johnny. She’d reached out to him, so she clearly wasn’t fearful of him. Had she misjudged her ex-husband, or was I barking up the wrong tree? She and Johnny had been high school sweethearts. They’d been married for years and years before ending things. She knew him, so much so that they’d gone through, in the words of Gwyneth Paltrow, a conscious uncoupling. As much as it made sense that Marisol had discovered Johnny’s extreme debt, there wasn’t a clear path for Johnny to get money from Marisol. Inheritance of the house, were it to have gone to their kids, was not a quick payoff. Given the fact that it went to David for ten years meant there was no way he could get anything from it. If he’d known about her change to the will, then his motive to kill her evaporated into thin air.
Aside from Johnny, who had a motive to kill Marisol? And, as collateral damage, David?
Sergio, Ruben, and Lisette were obvious suspects. Any one of them could have killed for the house, not knowing about the change in the will, or out of anger because they’d found out about the change and couldn’t forgive their mother’s cutting them out. Any one of them knew enough about their mother and her routine to track her down, or to find her at the beach. The one puzzle piece that didn’t fit was that they’d have known about Marisol’s swimsuit and her superstition about color.
For that matter, so would Johnny.
Thinking about Lisette brought a different thought to the surface. The arguments for and against her killing her mother were the same as they were for her brothers, but Lisette was filled with anger in a way Sergio and Ruben weren’t. From what I’d observed, she seemed to have the propensity to act out of passion. She’d been angry at her mother for marrying David. She claimed not to have known about the change in the will, but what if she was lying about that? What if she’d known, had confronted her mother, and ended up killing her in a moment of passion?
Lisette’s disdain for David made the idea of her killing him seem possible. Even plausible. She blamed him. In her mind, it might have been easy to get rid of him, too. I thought of her demeanor just a few minutes ago. She’d driven erratically in the parking lot and had been scattered when I walked with her into the funeral home. I’d smelled the liquor on her breath, but could she have turned to drink to bolster her courage for the murder she’d been about to commit, or did she drink to calm herself down after the fact?
The letter David found didn’t fit, though. Was it related to her death, or was it connected to something else entirely? Why had he left The Library so suddenly the night before, and what had he wanted to share with Emmaline? Something about the letter?
Once again, everything circled back to Johnny. He’d betrayed Marisol. They’d known each other since they were kids. But what did any of Johnny’s problems have to do with Marisol’s father? Something didn’t fit; I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
I sank back onto the bench just as Miguel hung up and slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Everything okay?” I asked.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “The staff just heard about David.”
“Oh God. I didn’t think about that.” They’d both been long-standing employees at Baptista’s Cantina and Grill, and now they’d both been murdered. I couldn’t imagine what Miguel’s employees had to be feeling. “Do you need to go? Olaya and I can handle things here.”
“Maybe a little early, but not yet,” he said.
The door to the memorial garden jerked, as if someone was trying to open it, but nothing happened. The knob turned and then it did open with a sudden whoosh and Laura poked her head through. “There you are,” she said when she saw us. “The service is almost over.”
Which meant the mourners would be making their way to the buffet tables. Miguel and I both stood. I ran my hands down my sides, straightening my dress, and then started for the door. Miguel put his hand on my lower back, walking close beside me. It was going to be a long afternoon.
* * *
Grieving did not stop people from eating . . . or from gossiping. Olaya, Miguel, and I manned the buffet tables as the mourners filled and refilled their plates. We reorganized the displays, filling in the gaps with extras from the trays we had placed on one of the tables behind us, nodding sympathetically at the people who wore their raw emotions on their sleeves, and observing and listening—just in case.
News of David’s death had spread, but it seemed that the details—suffocation and presumed murder—hadn’t been released. “Poor soul, died of a broken heart,” was a sentiment I heard over and over. It was true, in a way. He’d been distraught and had sought to understand what had happened. His broken heart had led him to some truth that someone had killed to protect.
I looked around for Lisette, hoping the alcohol she’d consumed earlier had worn off. There was no sign of her anywhere.
After an hour and a half, the mourners had decreased by half, our food offerings by more than that. I took stock. Only a few crumbs were left where the mini tostadas and quesadillas had been. A dollop of fig preserves and a bit of puff pastry were left on the plate that had featured the baked brie en croûte with spicy fig compote. It wasn’t enough to keep on display, so I removed the serving tray. The rest I consolidated, removing trays and combining things to fewer tables.
I put away the boxes I’d used to create height on the table and folded up the burlap and tablecloths. Miguel flipped the first table to its side, collapsing the legs and folding them into place before leaning the table against the wall and moving on to the next.
“I’ll take them back up,” he said.
Benjamin Alcott had circulated in the room, quietly talking to mourners the entire time. He played his part well and I knew he’d be here until the bitter end. “I’m sure Mr. Alcott can do it,” I said. Being understaffed had meant we’d had to step up in the beginning, but they would be able to clean up once we’d all gone.
“I’ll do it,” Miguel said, then added, “Laura can help me.”
The subtext was clear. Returning the tables to the attic provided Miguel the perfect opportunity to show his sister their father’s suit and try to clarify why it was there. He carried the tables to the hallway before crooking his finger at her. A moment later, they disappeared into the hallway.
Olaya had started to take empty trays back to the van, so I was left manning the buffet tables on my own. I kept myself busy, cleaning up as much as I could. I didn’t want it to appear as if we were trying to subliminally push people out.
Five minutes passed. I’d stacked up another three bakery trays for Olaya to take to the van, but when she returned, she looked spooked. Once she was back behind the tables, I placed my hands on her arms. “Are you okay?”
“Go,” she ordered.
I drew back. “What? Go where?”
She pointed a finger to the ceiling. “To Miguel.”
“Why?” My voice rose. “Ol
aya, what’s going on?”
“Laura, she is in the hallway. Crying. Something has happened. Go, mija.”
My heart hammered in my chest. Without another word, I hurried out of the reception room. I glanced up and down the hallway, spotting Laura heading out the door to the back parking lot. There was no sign of Miguel. Was he still upstairs in the attic? I started toward the stairwell door, but stopped at the last minute, changing directions. Between the two of them, my gut told me to check on Laura.
I pushed through the door, letting it slam behind me. She was quick, despite the high wedge heels she wore. My hesitation had given her a good head start. By the time I got to the asphalt of the parking lot, she was already to the brick wall past the driveway leading to the depths of the funeral home. I called to her. “Laura, wait.”
She slowed when she heard me, stopping at the wall and turning. Even from where I was, a good hundred feet from her, I could see the red rims around her eyes and the sadness radiating from her. She didn’t respond but waited where she was.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I caught up with her.
From the expression on her face, she didn’t know how to answer. She threw up her hands helplessly. “I don’t know.”
I led her to an unfinished section of the brick wall, heaving up an unopened bag of mortar mix that sat on it and dropping it to the ground to make room for us to sit. “It’s your dad’s suit,” I said—a statement, not a question. The drawings in the pocket proved that.
She nodded. “You never get over it, do you?”
I knew she was referring to losing someone close to you, especially a parent. “Never,” I said. “But you adjust and find a new normal.”
“Right, but then you see or hear something and you’re right back to where you were, like it just happened. Seeing my dad’s suit took me back to church on Sundays—and my wedding. It all just flashed in my mind and now I can’t shake it.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “Those are good memories. You want to keep them.”
Flour in the Attic Page 17