4 A Dead Mother

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “I know you work for him. That gives him excuses to spend time with you at places I couldn’t afford to go even if I somehow got invited. One of the women at work reads those entertainment magazines, like Bernadette. She showed me a photo of the two of you at some museum or gallery fundraiser. What surprised me more than that picture of the two of you together, was how natural you appeared standing next to him done up in diamonds and couture. I’d never seen you like that before. You seemed genuinely happy, too.”

  “That picture was taken months ago. I barely knew Paul at the time. The event was being held in Hank’s honor, and I was deliriously happy—for my father. Paul helped make that happen for Dad, and I appreciated him doing it.”

  “I want you to be happy. You deserve that. It’s too bad I’m not the one who can make you feel that way. Geez, what am I doing? This isn’t the place or the time to talk about this, is it? Not over the phone.”

  “It’s always the time and place to talk about our relationship, especially if I do something that upsets you. To be honest, Paul isn’t just my boss. As I said, he’s a friend. There have to be boundaries on that friendship as long as I’m working for him,” I paused, realizing I was talking to myself too.

  “Good. I’d prefer to hear that you put boundaries on your relationship with him for personal rather than professional reasons. I don’t have any right to expect you to do that because of me. I’ll drop it. What if we do something fun that’s just about us and not about murder or mayhem or the other men in your life?”

  “I would love that. What do you have in mind?”

  “If you’re going to be in LA for another day or two, I could drive in and we could go for a long walk on the beach. Maybe have dinner somewhere with a view. I could use your advice about a birthday present for Frankie. He’s going to be a teenager, and I’d like to buy him something that marks that occasion in a meaningful way. I’m going to have a pool party for him, with Mom and Dad’s help, but ideas about how to make that extra special would be welcome, too. I don’t want Evie to feel left out either. We won’t spend the whole time talking about the kids, though, I promise.”

  “I can’t imagine anything more pleasant than talking about Frankie’s birthday party. Although, hearing more about how his dad’s life is going would be great, too. We’d better make our date soon though. Mom just dropped the news on me that she’s going to be transferred to Betty Ford. Probably on Sunday.”

  “That gives us Saturday. Will that work if I can get there early afternoon? We can bum around on the beach, wander through the galleries in Laguna or on Balboa Island. Then, we’ll go to dinner and take in the sunset.” Frank and I shared a love of the outdoors. When we could arrange it around his kids and our jobs, and if the weather permitted, we enjoyed hiking in the desert. A walk on the beach would be lovely.

  “That will be perfect. I can feel myself relaxing already.” I shouldn’t be surprised, but the prospect of spending that time with Frank was part of the reason I felt myself settling down. Just hearing his voice was reassuring, even though he could rile me up at times.

  The man has his feet on the ground and a heart of gold, I thought.

  “Me, too,” Frank said. “I’m glad you’re not more mixed up in this mess Jim’s gotten himself into than you are. Jim has an excellent lawyer. If anyone can get him out of the trouble he’s in, your friend Paul can do it.”

  “That’s true. Once I’m back in the desert, the media ought to leave me alone. For once, I don’t feel the slightest pressure to hunt down the bad guys, and I certainly don’t intend to spend any more time with Jim, or his fair-haired bridezilla, unless the court orders me to testify in person. You can share that with Evie, if you don’t mind.”

  “I will, but if you come to Frankie’s birthday party, you can tell her.”

  “Tell me when it is and I’ll put it on my calendar.”

  “Your wish is my command,” Frank said, and I heard a ping as the text reached my phone.

  “Got it! I already have an idea or two about how to keep Evie entertained while Frankie and his friends are celebrating his new status as a teen. I’m well-versed in girly stuff, as you know. I spent many years apprenticed to Mom when her hostess-with-the-mostess mojo was in top form. If Evelyn can turn the party over to you and your dad at some point, we’ll go off and give ourselves facials and paint our toenails.”

  “Mom and Evie would both enjoy that. As long as you’re all back and presentable when it’s time to serve the cake, I’m sure Dad and I can keep the party going on our own, so Mom can take a break, too!”

  “We’ll be more than presentable once I’ve bestowed Alexis’ beauty secrets upon us. I’ll have us all buffed and shiny with a just a touch of glamour, too.” Frank laughed enthusiastically. My heart beat faster at the sound.

  “Now I have more to look forward to than a house full of rowdy teenagers. I can’t wait. Thanks!”

  “Thanks back at you for reassuring me that you’re not in too deep with this French Connection operation. You’ll keep it that way, won’t you?” I asked.

  “That’s my plan! I’m not any more interested than you are in another murder in LA, Perris, or in the desert for that matter. We’ve got enough to worry about already, don’t we?”

  “True,” I agreed as I said goodbye. Still, tiramisu had me plenty worried as I ended the call. I couldn’t blot out the image of Frank on the other end of the phone with the sincere expression that must have been on his face and in those big brown, puppy-dog eyes of his. In person, his gaze would have been fixed on me as if nothing else in the world mattered to him. The little smile on his luscious lips would have drawn me close as he wrapped me in his arms and murmured more reassurances in my ear.

  This is ridiculous, I thought, recalling how I had been practically drooling over lemon meringue pie earlier in the day. For a second, I imagined myself in a tug of war, with each of them holding onto a hand—pulling me first one way and then the other. Was that really such a bad thing? I wondered.

  “Stop!” I said. Loud enough, apparently, that the guy across from me was no longer dozing. “Sorry,” I said as I stood and rushed back into Mom’s room.

  6 She’s Dead!

  It was Tuesday, almost two weeks after that awful courtroom drama. I was in my office on El Paseo in Palm Desert and should have been working. Instead, I was daydreaming about one of the men in my life, seemingly unable to fight the fact that I had gone man-crazy in my mid-thirties. Tiramisu was back on the menu as dessert du jour.

  My last weekend in LA had ended on a good note. Frank and I’d had a delightful time on Saturday without any trouble between us or with the paparazzi. Maybe we’d gotten along so well because we weren’t engaged in any face-offs about my sleuthing. After we’d spent a few minutes talking about Jim’s bizarre situation, I’d reiterated my gratitude that I didn’t have to roll around in the muck and mire of his life that now included a murder investigation.

  In a reflective mood, Frank had been more open than he’d been in a long time. Not just about his relief that I was staying clear of Jim’s situation. I’d learned more about him, his hopes for his kids, and the changes in his life since he and Mary had divorced five years before. The break-up of his marriage had taken more of a toll than I realized even though we often spoke about it casually. He might not have shared how shattering it had been that weekend either, except that he’d dropped a rosary on the ground when he pulled his cell phone out of a jacket pocket.

  “Is that a rosary?”

  “It is. I picked one up for myself when I bought one for Evie’s friend who just had her first communion a few weeks ago.”

  “I knew you went to Mass with your kids and your parents, but I wasn’t sure how important it was to you anymore.”

  “To be honest, when I found out that Mary had been cheating on me and wanted a divorce, I gave up on religion. I was so angry. Embarrassed, too, since she was leaving me for another woman and a coworker.”

  “I fel
t embarrassed, too, and wondered who knew what Jim was up to before I did. At least, I didn’t have to work with any of them.”

  “It was hard to look people in the eye. They were uncomfortable too. Probably because some of them did know about the affair before I did. Others because the gay issue’s not an easy one to deal with either. A real double whammy.” He stuffed that rosary back into his pocket. Then, put an arm around my shoulder as we continued to walk along the shore.

  “I went through the motions as a Catholic for the kids’ sake, since so much was already unraveling around them. You don’t know it, I’m sure, but you changed all that.” I stopped walking.

  “Me? How?”

  “By sharing your efforts to understand why bad things happen to people. That got me thinking about it too. Not just what Father Martin has told you, but some of what you’ve said about what you’re reading. When we were in high school together at St. Theresa’s, I used to get consolation from believing that even the stuff that hurts like hell might happen for a reason. When you’re a cop, sometimes it’s almost impossible to see the good when you deal with heartless, malicious people every day.”

  “I understand. The past year really knocked me off kilter. You’ve been out there fighting bad guys longer than I have. That has to be difficult.”

  “Well, you have your faith in justice to fall back on. I’m not so sure I believe in that much anymore either.”

  “Faith in my black AMEX card and all that money can buy was more like it, I’m afraid. At least until that didn’t seem to work so well anymore.”

  “Hey, I get it. Don’t forget I’ve seen you in action.” A smile lit his face for a moment as he faced me. Then he turned to face the ocean. “Somewhere along the way, I lost my focus. Nothing seemed easy to understand anymore or even worth the effort to determine what was good about a person or a situation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s my job to get the lowlifes off the street, so I wasn’t shirking. It just felt like I was fighting a losing battle, locking up one jerk after another who hit his wife, shot a fellow gang member, or punched grandma for a few bucks to buy drugs. Kelly was a shock to me, too. Another betrayal by a family member—more so for Tommy and his parents than me, but still hurtful. How do you have hope or compassion for people like that?”

  “Compassion is harder to come by when the hurt is so deeply personal. That had to be awful, dealing with feelings of betrayal in your personal life while facing lost souls on the job every day. Make that vicious, lost souls—soul-killers,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm. “Betsy says social workers experience ‘compassion fatigue’ trying to help people save themselves—from themselves many times.” My mother’s face passed through my mind, confident and closed off one minute, tearful and broken the next. I shuddered with worry for her and for Frank.

  “Too often, we don’t arrive on the scene until it’s too late to save someone. The bottom line: you’ve given me a reason to believe in the search for goodness again. I’ve been using the rosary and it seems to help.”

  “Thanks for the kind words about my soul-searching. I’m sorry you’re struggling, but I’m grateful to have a friend along for the quest.”

  “Let’s hope we both find what we’re looking for,” Frank said as we began walking again. Regardless of what he’d said, I doubted he could quit caring about goodness or justice if he tried with all his might. I’d hooked my arm around his as we walked on in silence bathed in the glow of the setting sun. The waves pounded in a steady, soothing counterpoint to our mortal fears.

  I’m not sure what had me thinking about that weekend this morning. Something nagged at me about a call from Frank last night when we’d chatted briefly about Frankie’s upcoming party. He seemed okay, but there were moments when he was distant, preoccupied perhaps. Frankie’s party was on Friday, so I’d get to see him, face-to-face, and get a better gauge of the man.

  I heaved a sigh as I stared at the stack of files in front of me. Even though life had settled down, Frank wasn’t my only concern. Bernadette and I were going to visit Mom tonight. She’d moved on the Sunday after the day Frank and I had spent together in LA. The trip from one hospital to another had gone well. While she was being oriented to Betty Ford’s recovery program, I had spent that first Monday back, digging my way out from under voice mail messages, written correspondence, and emails. By noon, I’d plowed through them, but I was still playing catch up more than a week later.

  Today it was well past noon and I was still working my way from one client folder to another. I’d stopped for coffee and had eaten a quick lunch at my desk, as I reviewed documents, drafted two wills, rewrote a couple of contracts, and produced several memos and letters.

  “Ah, the glitz and glamor of lawyering,” I muttered as I finished the last task after making my way to the bottom of the stack on my desk. That’s when the phone rang. Not my office phone, but my cell phone. I’d hardly said hello when the caller spoke.

  “She’s dead! Mom’s dead! What do I do?” Windsor was frantic, her voice rising in pitch as she fired questions. She was sobbing, too.

  The blue skies and swaying palms dancing outside my window with their promise that life’s a breeze mocked the dread I felt hearing those awful words. Leslie and her mother Beverly weren’t just clients. They’d become friends in the few months I’d worked as their attorney. Something told me, even before I responded to Leslie’s frantic cry for help, that this was no simple matter of a daughter’s distress at the passing of her mother, quietly, of natural causes.

  7 Unnatural Causes?

  “How can that be? I just spoke to Beverly yesterday. She seemed fine.” My heart skipped a beat. I took a deep breath and leaned back in the leather desk chair. I didn’t want to jump to the assumption that was wailing at me—that Beverly Windsor’s sudden death had not been by natural causes. That turn of phrase had always struck me as troubling. When is the loss of a loved one ever natural, no matter the cause? Unnatural causes were worse, though, weren’t they? “I don’t understand it.”

  While I was away in LA, Beverly Windsor had left a message saying she wanted to set up a meeting—“nothing urgent,” she claimed. I’d taken her at her word, had returned her message, but had waited for her to call me again. That hadn’t happened until yesterday, though, when we’d scheduled an appointment for later this week.

  “I don’t get it, either. Mom was working today as a docent at Desert Park Preserve. They said she seemed perfectly fine. When she didn’t come back after her break, they went looking for her. Her car was in the parking lot, so they figured she hadn’t left. It wasn’t until a guest found Mom’s cell phone on the ground not too far from the park exit that they called the police.”

  Leslie hiccupped and sobbed quietly for a moment before going on. “The police found her body in a ditch on the side of the road outside Desert Park Preserve. They think she fell and hit her head. How could that have happened? In the parking lot maybe, but out on the road like that? Her keys were in her pocket.”

  Boom! There it was. Leslie’s mother, my friend and client, found dead in a wholly unnatural way. Questions began roiling around in my head at a dizzying speed. I struggled to focus as my anger and anxiety mounted.

  What I wanted to do was run from news of another tragedy, letting my inner ten-year-old take over. Just as I’d done when I overheard my parents talking about divorce for the first time. I had run out of the house, flat out as fast as I could across the golf course. Golfers had yelled at me as I flew into the path of their play.

  No matter. I had kept running and hadn't stopped until I’d reached the spa at the Mission Hills Country Club where Mom and I had been frequent visitors. A spa attendant had recognized me and smiled, but her concern had been obvious.

  “I want an aromatherapy massage as soon as possible, please,” I’d said.

  Out of breath, sweating, and with angry tears streaming down my face, I could remember standing on tiptoe, clinging to the cool granite of the reception counter.
The attendant had done as I’d asked and set up a massage. She’d also called my mother. I tried but couldn’t pull myself back from the safety and escape of that moment at the spa. Even now, the comfort of aromatic balms, facials, massages promised escape from bad news.

  False hope, and a short-lived respite from reality, I thought, remembering the happiness that had sprung into my heart when I’d found both my parents waiting in the lounge area after that massage. It wasn’t much longer before Dad moved out. While I was in junior high, he and Alexis had made the separation permanent by filing for divorce. I sighed and shook off those old memories, forcing myself to confront the ugly truth taking shape before me.

  “It obviously wasn’t a carjacking if the car was still in the lot. Could she have been robbed or mugged?”

  “I asked about that right away. Mom's wallet was still on her. The little soft nylon one she uses when she’s volunteering at the park. I made the police let me look at it. Her driver’s license, an ATM card, a credit card, and a twenty-dollar bill were all there. Wouldn’t the thief have taken the wallet or what was in it if it was a robbery?”

  “Yes, I think so. Maybe Beverly refused to give it up, and struggled with the thief who hit her and knocked her down. That doesn’t sound like your mom, though, does it?”

  “No. Mom would have given up that wallet instantly, along with the passcodes for the ATM card and credit cards. She was no fool,” she sucked in a gulp of air. “Money and stuff never meant that much to her. You know that.”