Killer Commute Read online

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  “Okay.” The gay hunk set dinner plates and silverware in front of four shaken females and parceled out spaghetti pasta, garlic bread, and Caesar salad. He set the remaining marinara and Parmesan in the center of the table, poured Libby some milk and Betty some water, and uncorked a bottle of Chianti for the rest of them, pulling Jeremy’s chair in from the dining room to sit on the end. “Now what is this about Jeremy saying something?”

  “We all heard it—it even scared the cat,” Betty said, wide-eyed and breathless.

  “But what exactly did he say?”

  “Said to watch out for Hairy.” She tried to get her mouth around a loaded fork and all the spaghetti decided to straighten out and slip off back to her plate slinging blood-colored droplets, one of which ended up on her bifocals.

  “Hairy the cat?”

  “Yes.” Betty Beesom practically buried her face in her dinner. Her palsy, or whatever made her quiver, was especially evident tonight.

  Charlie, Libby, and Maggie sat with their food suspended somewhere between their plates and their faces. Libby mouthed, “Hairy?”

  That’s not what Charlie’d heard, either. She thought she’d heard, “Watch out for the 405.”

  “I thought he’d said ‘Watch out for Rory Torkelsen,’” Libby got up the nerve to confess.

  “Who is Rory Torkelsen?” her mother asked.

  “Oh, some jerk at school who came over one day when you were gone. Jeremy didn’t like him—made him leave. It was nothing. What did you hear, Maggie?”

  Maggie shook her head and crunched Romaine lettuce into minute molecules, finally flushed it down with a gulp of Chianti, and began the crunching ceremony all over with toasted garlic bread.

  “He said, ‘Watch out for Mel,’ didn’t he?” Charlie dared, and was answered with an ominous silence from her best friend.

  “So if you all heard something different it must have been an internal message, special for each of you.” Larry caught Charlie rolling her eyes and sent her a warning look.

  “Wonder what he told Tuxedo,” Libby said. “Poor kitty looked like somebody stuck his tail in a hot socket. Maybe Tux saw who murdered him and Jeremy sent him a message to point out that person.”

  Mrs. Beesom, old and quivery or not, could put away a lot of food fast. She lay down her fork and wiped marinara sauce off her glasses and chin and the front of her blouse with a napkin dipped in her drinking water. “Mr. Mann, you going to keep watch tonight?” she asked Larry without quite looking at him. “I know you must be sleepy but I’d feel better if you did.”

  “I’ll take a cat nap while Charlie and Maggie keep first watch and then relieve them. You, lady, can sleep the night through in peace.”

  When they’d all finished eating, Maggie made coffee and they tried again, Larry encouraging them not to call Jeremy from the dead but to simply say the first thing about him that came to mind.

  There were lots of unexpected responses, but Libby came up with one they’d all forgotten but reacted to now. “His limping. Was it a bum knee or what?”

  “Sports injury,” Maggie said. “Was it jogging or working out at the gym?”

  “The gym,” Charlie reminded her, “never heard of him.” That’s another positive thing Charlie could do—go down to Judy & Gym’s Age Buster and look around, ask questions, if she could hear the answers by then. “And remember, the limp came and went.”

  “Like your ears, Mom,” Libby said kindly.

  “Sports injuries will do that,” Maggie offered. “Not most hearing problems.”

  “And his hair,” Libby said.

  “Did Jeremy color his hair?” Maggie asked, surprised. “I hadn’t noticed. At one time I thought he might have had a lift.”

  “Facelift?” Now it was Charlie’s turn to be surprised. “When?”

  “I don’t think so,” Betty Beesom took a sip of the insipid decaf instant everyone kept on hand in case she dropped in, which everyone knew she would do at a moment’s notice. “Jeremy was not a shallow man like that.”

  “Mrs. Beesom, would you like a Snickers bar for dessert?” Libby asked, totally out of context.

  “Oh honey, I’d love one,” the older lady said, getting weepy. “Young people don’t eat dessert anymore. They drink wine and strong coffee instead.”

  Libby was back in a minute with a candy bar for Betty and one for herself to feed her zits and monthly cycle. Charlie figured Betty was feeding her extended stomach. But life was short, especially at eighty-three. Let her enjoy.

  “You are so lucky to have her, Charlie,” Betty said, “And your mother is so lucky to have you. You are blessed, you know.” Betty on a Snickers was like everybody else Charlie knew on a martini or three.

  “Okay, ladies,” Larry said, “we have a limp and bad hair days. What else?”

  “Sometimes Jeremy liked Tuxedo and sometimes he didn’t,” Libby offered, “and shut up, Mom, you never liked Tux.”

  “Yeah? Who paid for all the frigging shots? Not Jeremy Fiedler,” Charlie protested. “This is getting us nowhere. Let’s—what’s that noise?”

  It sounded like a helicopter.

  CHAPTER 25

  CHARLIE AND MAGGIE kept the first watch in the ruined courtyard. Larry and Betty were, they hoped, sleeping. Libby had just roared off in the Jeep Wrangler to spend the night in the Esterhazie mansion, no one willing to risk the kid to the jollies of a crazy bomber at night. Libby pointed out that the first bomb went off about noon, but didn’t fuss too much. Maybe there was hope for droopy Doug.

  Tuxedo prowled the courtyard, sniffing at everything as if this weren’t his home, probably just waiting for Hairy Granger to come over so he could clean the old boy’s clock.

  The Wrangler roared back into the compound and Libby got out, her arms full of Hairy. “He keeps doing this. I don’t even know he’s in there until I’m two blocks away. Here, hold on to him until I can get out of here.”

  It had been a news helicopter flying over them, chasing other news this time probably. They could still hear it somewhere, but it wasn’t close.

  “Larry thinks I should get a lawyer. What do you think?” Charlie kicked at Tuxedo, who was slinking up on her and the cat on her lap.

  “Charlie.”

  “You obviously never had a cat climb your head. I’ve still got that scratch on my cheek from Hairy.”

  “You haven’t been charged with anything. Calling a lawyer makes you seem guilty. Look what happened to the Ramseys in Boulder when they got preemptive.”

  “Yeah, but look what really happened to them.”

  “Jeremy wasn’t your kid. It’s different.”

  “Was it ‘watch out for Mel’ you heard tonight?”

  “You never liked Mel, did you?”

  “Neither did Jeremy. You know, if we all heard different things we were probably doing it to ourselves and I think we know now why Hairy here was in Jeremy’s car. He likes to go for rides. Tuxedo hates the car.”

  “But why did Tuxedo leap off the refrigerator like that if we were all doing that to ourselves? And Mrs. Beesom was lying about what she heard to watch out for. You can tell when she lies, bless her heart. She’s so bad at it. Does Edwina really have a boyfriend?”

  “That’s what she told Larry on the phone. She was mad because I hadn’t answered her e-mail. Hell, I left the damn computer at work. Even my cellular. I thought I was going to have a vacation.”

  The night was very still and very dark. Fog fingers crept into the compound as if hesitant to get involved. Charlie didn’t blame them. Traffic noises, the helicopter thumping, a distant ship’s horn, Tuxedo’s low moan. “Put a sock in it, dufus. Hairy can sit here as long as he wants.”

  Charlie took in the smell of her lemon tree and Jeremy’s burn-soaked house. “I don’t hate Mel, I just worry about you.”

  “Not all of us have a Mitch Hilsten drop by now and then to relieve the hornies. Not all of us have a Libby to take care of us when we’re as old as Be
tty Beesom. Don’t you judge me, Charlie.”

  “I won’t. You’re right and I’m sorry.”

  “I worry about you, too.”

  “That’s because we’re buds.”

  A long silence as two best friends worked on forgiving because they needed each other.

  “Your mother has every right to have a boyfriend if she wants to.”

  “Maggie, I said I was sorry.”

  Another longer silence. “I’m sorry, too. With your hearing problem and lack of an alibi and all, I don’t have to pick on you now.”

  “Why is it so dark?” Charlie sat up, Tuxedo sprang, Hairy flew, and the chase was on. “The sky has the city-light glow, the fog is still patchy, the light’s on over my door and yours and Betty’s—”

  “We don’t have the lights on the parking lattices or the ones on the gates or the muted ones on the side walls anymore, Charlie. We haven’t since Jeremy’s house burned inside.”

  “He controlled all that, too?”

  “When you think about it, we let him control an awful lot around here.”

  “Because it made us feel safe.”

  “Right. You ever notice his hair changing color?”

  “He was vain enough to work out and get that body, why wouldn’t he color his hair? But no, I didn’t notice it. Why do you suppose he felt he had to disappear?”

  “Somebody was after him? He was in trouble with the law? An ex-wife was after his money? He wanted to avoid taxes? He wanted to come back as somebody else—reinvent himself? He—”

  “Where do you get that stuff?”

  “Charlie, I’m an attorney.”

  “Not that kind of attorney.”

  “Wait a minute. I have all these clients trying to get out of paying almost all they own to inheritance tax or nursing homes instead of leaving their wealth to their children and grandchildren.”

  “There’s nursing-home insurance now.”

  “It doesn’t begin to pay expenses for long-term care—your heirs get screwed by taxes and long-term care insurance, too. You can live twenty years with Alzheimer’s and not even know you’ve got heirs—or toenails, for that matter. And the costs per week are humongous for changing diapers on an adult.”

  “Jeremy never mentioned a family to me. But he wouldn’t if he was trying to disappear. That would be a way to trace a past he intended to cancel.”

  “I kind of felt we were his family. I miss him, Charlie.”

  “Kind of awful to realize you don’t realize you need someone till they’re dead. Almost like being widowed. And I’ve never been married.”

  “Yeah. And whatever he was running from, I liked my world better when he controlled it. And I don’t even like to hear myself saying it, independent female that I am.”

  “What are we going to do with Mrs. Beesom, now that Jeremy’s gone?” Why couldn’t life leave Charlie alone to enjoy her kid, her work?

  “I don’t know. We really were like a family here in a way, weren’t we? And he was the sacrificial daughter. And you and I could work and Betty could snoop. But Betty’s talking about rebuilding Jeremy’s house and renting it to a nice young man ‘like Jeremy.’”

  “She told Larry and me that, too. She’s even feeding Jeremy’s pet seagull.”

  “Why would he leave his house to her, and how could she not know it? It doesn’t play, Charlie.”

  “Since there was no loan involved, there would be no bank involved and no title deed or something, according to Ed. But I still can’t believe she didn’t know, either. Tell me some of the stuff you and Jeremy talked about over morning coffee besides his travels and workout and your job.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Charlie, have you checked in with your special sense? Now don’t get mad but I believe in it more than you do, and if you really are my friend you’ll tell me what it’s saying.”

  “You sound like Dalrymple. But this afternoon coming back on the 405, it told me I already had the answer to Jeremy’s murder and that I’d gotten it while talking to Dalrymple at the Celebrity Pit. All I got there was Tom Hanks for a waitperson and a marvelous lunch and a totally strange woman who accused me of being Mitch Hilsten’s fake girlfriend. Maggie, what if I go to prison and can’t hear someone sneaking up behind me?”

  Hairy Granger stopped running and turned on Tuxedo Greene not far from where Jeremy Fiedler’s blood had straggled downhill toward the drain as Charlie’s inner voice or intuition or whatever kicked in again with.

  That’s it, we’ve got it all now. The answer to Jeremy’s death and this whole thing. It all came together today.

  Swell, so what’s the answer?

  The cats were dark humps with glowing eyes trading threatening moans that grew in graduations of fanatic urgency and decibels.

  I don’t know, I just sense it—it’s so tantalizingly close to the tip of my—

  Oh, knock it off.

  “Who, me or the cats?” They were sitting on the picnic table with their feet resting on chairs, much like Charlie and Ed Esrerhazie had the night before last, and Maggie leaned over to bump Charlie’s shoulder with hers. The gesture said, I know you talk to yourself and it embarrasses you but I think it’s endearing.

  But in real life Maggie said, “I have something to say, and I want you to be patient and hear me out, okay? I know you don’t like to talk about it.”

  “After that wonderful lead-in, how could I refuse? I don’t like to talk about what?”

  “About your intermittent hearing problem.”

  “What, you consulted Kate Gonzales, the cleaning-lady doctor? We’re supposed to be keeping watch, right?”

  It seems that Maggie Stutzman had consulted the Harvard Women’s Health Watch, a monthly publication she subscribed to. “And it had a section on hearing loss recently. Charlie, your problem doesn’t exist.”

  “That means it’ll go away, right? I can live with that.”

  “No, it means that what you are experiencing is impossible—apparently.”

  “Like my ulcer that apparently doesn’t respond to antibiotics. Can I get a second opinion from the cleaning lady?”

  “Hearing doesn’t return. Your exceptional hearing going from nothing to normal and back again because of trauma doesn’t play.”

  “And if the Long Beach PD gets a hold of that information, they’ll interpret it as just another example of how my veracity cannot be trusted. Maggie, how do you know when Betty Beesom is lying? You said she was so obvious.”

  Like her common sense, Charlie was beginning to feel tantalizingly close to something, too. But like life itself, there was always a distraction that wiped out the sense of the progression of things or reality.

  “Now don’t change the subject. As I understand it, we hear because of little hairs way deep in our ears, and the hair cells are often gradually destroyed with aging and hearing diminishes in stages. But traumas like auto accidents and explosions that cause complete hearing loss suddenly mean that the trauma has destroyed those hair cells. The only time you lose hearing completely and it returns is with ear infections. Your type of hearing loss doesn’t exist.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, tell that to Art Granger’s brother. He fell off a tractor and hit his head, and heard on and off for a week.”

  “Then what?”

  “Never heard another thing again.”

  CHAPTER 26

  JEREMY FIEDLER’S MEMORIAL service was a real bust. But it wasn’t because Larry Mann didn’t perform. He even used Mrs. Beesom’s Bible, mostly as a stage prop, but since he couldn’t wear robes—“Feareth not, for I am the only chance you got, sayeth the Lord. Isaiah—words and numbers.”

  Wherever possible these days, an ocean beach protected by a breakwater, natural or manmade, or a sea wall to shelter it from the surf, sports a paved walking, running, biking, skating, baby-stroller, dog-walking path. Long Beach was no exception.

  The memorial ceremony could not have been more differ
ent from the one in Charlie’s dream. There was no cliff, no torrey pine, no rock for Mrs. Beesom to sit on (she’d brought a small, webbed aluminum lawn chair), no Jeremy Fiedler looking on approvingly. There were lots of seagulls and enough wind to tatter the fog remnants and send sand runnels across the paved beach path. There were mothers running behind high-tech strollers, a lean gray-haired gentleman loping along with a cellular to his ear, the inevitable dog walkers with pooch-poop bags in the hand not holding the leash, and the golden-years couples—holding hands, walking briskly, he looking somewhat shell-shocked, she doing all the talking.

  Spandex, sweats, jackets—no swimsuits this afternoon.

  The scent of sea sort of welled up—salty, fishy, decaying. The lingering fog wisps carried the scent, too, but with a cooling freshness.

  Larry and Charlie had somehow ended up on one side of the beach walk and Jeremy’s few mourners on the other. Everybody else out today passed between them, looking a bit uneasy about the ceremony.

  This location had been a mistake, Charlie knew immediately, and wondered if it was the dream that had formed her decision. There were too many people here. Who could tell if any of them knew Jeremy? Officer Mary Maggie had dressed in a long dress, sandals with white socks, and a stretched-out sweater with a matching knit hat. She certainly didn’t look like a cop.

  Charlie and Maggie Stutzman had spent half of Larry’s watch last night making up his eulogy or whatever, which Larry wasn’t following at all. Libby and Doug Esterhazie and Lori had taken off from school to attend—any excuse welcome there. Art and Wilma Granger came to stand by Betty’s chair. Even good-time Mel had accompanied Charlie’s best friend. And just when she thought that was it, Ed Esterhazie sauntered into view, and not long after that so did David Dalrymple and Detective J. S. Amuller. Charlie didn’t know if they were all together, but they all had dressed in spandex and jackets and running shoes to blend in.

  They stuck out like rollerskaters in a buffalo herd.