An Unexpected Grace (7 page)

A
s Lila typed with only the fingers on her right hand, her wrist stiffened. Her left hand's fingers itched to jump in and help Google Yuri Makov, but they sat on the desk chair's armrest weighed down by her cast. As she hunted and pecked, she blamed Yuri for another limitation—until 347 citations for him popped up on Greg's computer screen and a current of excitement ran through her.

As Lila scrolled down, however, she saw that the citations were for the newspaper articles that had flurried like a blizzard after Yuri had gone postal. They mentioned “rampage” and “carnage” and the same facts she already knew, such as Yuri's occupation and Russian origin. Occasional articles questioned why he might have gone on a rampage, but the newspaper reporters provided no answers. The dead ends frustrated her as much as her typing limitations, and she exhaled a discouraged breath.

Then a different citation leapt out at her. Yuri had posted a message on NICOclub.com, a site for Nissan car owners. Lila clicked on the link and found his forum name: Goodlife. It suggested that he must have longed for one, but so did everyone else on the planet.

In a small window at the left of the screen was information he had registered for the site. He lived in San Francisco—no surprise. His age was thirty-seven, and his e-mail address was [email protected], probably meaning he was a Russian man born in 1975. Lila ached to e-mail him and demand,
Why did you do it?

Under interests, Yuri listed music and art—but didn't say what kind—and boxing.
Boxing?
Did he watch or pound fighters in rings? To Lila, the interests conflicted and indicated a dissonance inside him. Out of the soil of his soul, the flowers of music and art had grown along with a testosterone-driven, down-and-dirty, thorny cactus of destruction. How had he reconciled the opposites? Maybe he
hadn't
. Maybe that was the problem, and boxing had been one step away from shooting. For half an hour, Lila stared out the window at nothing and wondered.

The English he'd posted was as garbled as the English he'd spoken. “Own 1994 Nissan Maxima. How get catalitic cheap converter? Must okay in California. I highly thank anything of this subject information.”

So for his Nissan Maxima, Yuri wanted to find an inexpensive catalytic converter that measured up to California standards. A reasonable request. It contained no hint of a motive for murder.

Since cars people drove were supposed to reveal their identities and values, Lila looked up images for 1994 Nissan Maxi-mas. But the car seemed plain and ordinary—a fender here, a bumper there. Headlights. Doors. A windshield. The best the car could say was,
I'll get you there.

Only one person on NICOclub.com had replied to Yuri's message: “Unfortunately, I don't think there's such a thing as a cheap Cali-spec converter.” Lila stared at the person's forum name until her eyes blurred: the Minister of Doom.

An irony like Goodlife vs. Doom had to contain a cosmic message. Was the universe tugging at Lila's sleeve to underscore opposites, such as art and boxing? Or was it pointing out a linear progression in Yuri's life—from happy boy to tortured killer? Or was the message about her
own
life, changed by a bullet from a tolerable and healthy struggle like everybody else's to a painful string of challenges? Whatever the meaning, one thing was sure, and Cristina and Lila had discussed it many times: The universe could sprinkle tantalizing signs around you. You had to be on the lookout for them and try to understand.

 

Side by side on the living room sofa across from Lila, Rich and Joe looked like a pair of buzzards until Rich set his elbows on his knees and gave Lila one of his eager Boy Scout looks. Joe leaned against the pillows, jingled the coins in his pockets, and hooded his eyes at her as if he didn't feel like opening them wide on what he didn't like. The week before, he'd seemed to want more from Lila than she could give, and flowing out of him had been an undercurrent of disapproval. It kept Lila off balance, though maybe that had been Joe's aim.

He glanced at Grace lying in the corner on her side so he couldn't miss her protruding ribs. He gave Lila an accusatory look. “Where'd that pathetic dog come from?”

She couldn't tell him that Grace was stolen. “She came with my house-sitting job.”

“She needs some decent food,” Joe said, seeming to suggest that Grace's scrawny body was Lila's fault.

“I tried to get her to eat this morning. She wasn't interested.”

“Change her diet.”

“I'm supposed to feed her what my friend left her,” Lila said politely. She sat back farther in her chair, recrossed her legs.

Grace seemed to know she was being discussed, and she wanted to wring more sympathy from Joe. She hobbled to the kitchen and, with a wrenching sigh, plopped down on the oriental rug under the table where he could see her.

Joe shook his head and muttered, “Damned shame.”

Rich flashed Lila a smile like sunshine. “Forget the dog. We want to talk to you about the case.”

“Fine,” Lila lied as Grace slumped into the position of a roosting chicken, rested her chin on her paws, and groaned like she had crippling arthritis Lila also needed to attend to.

Rich said, “We've talked to your colleagues. It sounds like something personal was bugging Makov.”

“That could be,” Lila agreed.

“Since he sent you a valentine and you knew him so well, we thought you could tell us . . . was he mad at anybody at work?” Rich asked.

“I told you last time—I didn't know him well.”
Why wouldn't this simple fact sink into the policemen's brains?

“Was he mad at anybody?” Joe pushed Lila back to the question.

“Not that I know of.”

“Could he have been mad at you?” Rich asked.

Lila swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “I don't see how. I was always polite to him.”

With his eyes, Rich pinned her wings to cotton. “Is there anything you haven't told us, Lila?”

She didn't like the familiar way he'd used her name—or the implication she was holding something back. But, then, maybe she was. Since Rich and Joe's last visit, she'd been thinking about something she should have told them – not that it made any difference, but she needed to be open and honest.

Lila sat up straighter, took a breath. “Yuri Makov called and asked me out once. I turned him down. We talked for two minutes, and that was the end of it. He never called again.”

Rich cleared his throat. Joe widened his eyes as if Lila had just confirmed his suspicions. On the sofa he leaned toward her so he looked like he was about to lunge. She backed farther into her chair.

“Did he call before or after the valentine?” Joe demanded.

“After.”

“So the relationship was getting to be a bigger deal to him,” he said. “Why didn't you tell us this a week ago?”

“The call meant nothing. It was as unimportant as the valentine.”

“Makov obviously liked you.”

“If he did, it was all one-sided. I hardly ever talked with him.”

Joe's caterpillar eyebrows arched. He thrummed his pudgy fingers on the sofa's arm. “One of your colleagues claimed Makov hung around outside your office. She thought he was waiting for you.”

Lila felt sullied that anyone would suggest that. “I didn't see him hanging around.”

“Never?” Joe demanded.

“Well, maybe once in a while. I didn't think anything of it. He was cleaning the hall,” Lila said. “What colleague told you that?”

“She asked us not to use her name,” Rich said.

“Because she's wrong. Yuri Makov would only have been there to vacuum.”
Surely that's true. But what if it isn't?

Like Joe, Rich moved forward so he was barely sitting on the sofa cushion. The sun in his smile had set. “We're gonna ask you straight out . . . Were you and Makov having an affair?”

“No! Honestly!” Saliva gathered on Lila's tongue. Her mouth tasted like tin. “How can you
ask
me that?”

“It's a logical question,” Rich said.

“It makes my skin crawl.” She pressed her unhurt arm against her stomach.

“An affair's no crime. Admit it. We need to wrap up this case,” Joe said.

“I'm sure there's some other explanation for what he did. It can't have anything to do with me. I've told you I hardly knew him.” How many times did she have to say that to make them believe her?

“You're sure you never went out with him?” Joe asked.

“Positive.”

“Ever meet him away from the office?” Joe asked.

“Never.”

“Ever flirt with him?” Rich asked.

“Of
course
not.” The points of thumbtacks protruded from Lila's words.

The men's questions made her writhe as if she were guilty of something, when she insisted to herself that she'd done nothing wrong. Yet she couldn't shake the excruciating questions: What if she'd played an unintended role in Yuri's shooting everybody? Could that be possible?

As these questions lingered in Lila's mind, she wished she'd never asked them. And she was angry at Joe and Rich for even suggesting she might be responsible for what Yuri Makov had done. As she told herself she wasn't to blame, she squeezed the club chair's arm. Her face flushed, and a bead of sweat trickled down her spine.

Rich and Joe watched her with hard-set faces. For a long, silent moment, they let her hang in the wind.

“Okay,” Rich finally said, looking as dark and mistrustful as Joe. “There's no point wasting more time here, but we want you to do some serious thinking about what was going on between you and Makov.”

“I told you, there was nothing. And if there was, it would have been in his head.” Lila wanted the men to leave. Desperate for a cool, clean breath of air, she gripped the chair's arm tighter and said politely, “I'm sorry I can't help you more.”

“You could if you wanted.” Joe's eyes were hooded with suspicion again.

“I'm sure this case is hard for you.”

“You could put it that way,” Rich said. He and Joe got up and headed toward the door. “We may be back.”

I hope not.
“Fine.”

Lila locked the deadbolt behind them. Usually a healthy eater, she hurried to the kitchen for some reassuring chocolate chip cookies that Cristina had left in the freezer. As Lila took a bite, Grace lay under the table and turned her face toward the wall to avoid eye contact. Lila could have offered her one of Adam's biscuits, but she was tired of trying so hard to be nice to everybody.

 

As much as Lila wanted to learn about Yuri Makov, she'd had enough of him for one day. Instead of returning to the computer, she went to the deck and, exhausted, flopped down on the white canvas chaise lounge.

Clouds had blown in and covered the sun. In a bay tree by the street, blue jays were squawking the way they do when the weather is about to change. Wind swayed the redwoods and unsettled them to their roots. Nothing seemed soothing.

As Lila rested her head against the pillow and festered over Rich and Joe's questions, she felt a stirring of the members of her mental family, the facets of herself who lived, like relatives, inside her head. Sometimes they presented themselves as characters in her imagination, and the first one to appear on that distressing afternoon was her Crazy Aunt, whom Lila rarely let out of her mental attic because she was angry and out of control, as most women were taught not to be.

She roared into Lila's thoughts in her bashed Ford Explorer and bared her tobacco-stained teeth. Her bleached hair was cut in a Mohawk, a safety pin pierced her earlobe, and the head of a fourpenny nail stuck out from the middle of her forehead.

Those cops are fools. You don't have to take their garbage,
she bellowed.
Your life is a screwed-up mess because of Yuri Makov, and they're trying to make you take the rap. That's ridiculous! It's time for you to rip out their hearts!
Lila's Crazy Aunt snarled like a dog gone mad, and her safety pin quivered.

Her brief, furious outburst in Lila's mind was a clue to how tired she was of being civil when she didn't
feel
civil. She wanted to fight back against the men who had caused her grief—Yuri, those policemen, Reed, and even Adam Spencer for saddling her with Grace.

Admitting her anger forced Lila to take an unflinching look at another mental-family member, diametrically opposed to her Crazy Aunt and instilled in her by her mother, who had valued graciousness. That mental-family member was the Pleaser, the part of Lila who pranced around in a pink jumpsuit and lavender tennies, blowing bubbles and handing out roses on street corners. Eager for no one's feathers to be ruffled and awkward situations to be smoothed, she controlled social interactions by lubricating others' rusty feelings and ensuring that everyone was happy. She had taken Grace without protest and been polite to Rich and Joe. She soothed and cosseted people so they felt comfortable and liked her—a way to dodge conflict and keep relations on an even keel.

Maybe she had soothed and cosseted Yuri Makov. Shrinking back, Lila told herself that couldn't be.
But maybe it could.

 

Lila retreated to the bedroom, where Grace was hiding under the bed. If she decided to wriggle out and bite Lila, she could run into the bathroom and lock the door.

Grace's leg was sticking out from under the bed skirt like an errant drumstick that had fallen from the ceiling. Her foot was bent back at an odd angle, and her paws' pads resembled a fedora hat's gray felt. Her nails curled down like commas written with a black, felt-tip pen; wisps of gold fur stuck out between her toes. If Lila had found Grace's leg on display in an art gallery, it would have interested, not threatened her.