Grave Endings (10 page)

I told her I agreed.

“I was gonna call you,” she said. “The other day you asked me about Randy's ladies? There was this woman.”

My heart lurched, though I don't know why.

“I wouldn't of seen her, but I was waitin' up for Shirrel to come back with Jerome. She was worried 'cause he was runnin' a high fever and cryin' something fierce, so she took him to the emergency? Anyway, one in the morning it was still hot as hell, I didn't have air-conditioning then, so I was sittin' on the stoop to get me some air, and up walks Randy with this woman. He didn't look happy to see me, unh-unh, whisked her inside before I could say how are you. She must've left after a few hours 'cause I didn't see her leave the next morning.”

Not Aggie, I told myself. Someone else, another one of Randy's many girlfriends.

“I asked him about her the next day,” Gloria said. “ ‘Is your lady friend married that you have to sneak around with her?' He gave me a hard look that said mind your own business, but an hour later he knocks on my door, asks me to promise I won't tell no one about the woman 'cause it would put her in a heap of trouble and Randy, too. ‘Who's gonna ask, her husband?' I said, but Randy said, just promise. So I did. The next few days and for a long time he was in a bad state, all tucked into himself, so I guess she decided to end it, or
he
did.”

My tongue seemed to be stuck to my palate. “This woman,” I said. “What did she look like?”

It couldn't be Aggie, because Gloria hadn't recognized her when I'd showed her the photo; because Aggie told me everything, good or bad, the same way I told her; because that's what best friends do, they have no secrets.

“She had her head down, so I didn't get a good look at her face,” Gloria said.

Aggie would never have gone to Randy Creeley's apartment. Aggie had planned to marry an Orthodox Jewish young man and cover her hair and live the life that I had temporarily thrown away.

“She had dark hair, I remember that,” Gloria said. “Long and curly. Like your friend's, the one whose picture you showed me? And she had this locket. I didn't see a locket in that picture, but that's who you think it is, don't you, honey? Your friend, the one the police think Randy killed. That's why you look like someone just stepped on your grave.” The woman clucked. “Poor thing.”

I don't know whether she was referring to Aggie or me.

sixteen

GLORIA PATTED MY ARM AND SAID SOMETHING COMFORTING, but I couldn't tell you what, because the room was intensely noisy and cloying, so many people talking at once, the overpowering scent of the flowers making me queasy and aggravating the dull pain that had started at my right temple and was gripping my skull in a vise. I found the restroom and used cold water from the faucet to splash my face and chase two Advil tablets.

When I returned to the foyer everyone had gone, probably headed for the burial site. I walked outside and was leaning against the cool granite of the building's exterior, inhaling fresh air to calm the turmoil in my head and stomach, when the redhead exited the foyer and walked by me. She must have been in a stall in the ladies' room when I was there, because I hadn't seen her in the foyer.

She headed for the parking lot. I followed her. My mind was a tangle of thoughts—Aggie and Randy, Trina's locket, B. Lasher. I couldn't sort it out now, but I could try to find out if this was Doreen and, if so, why she was wearing a wig.

She was walking at a rapid pace that I had difficulty matching in my Manolo Blahnik heels. I considered calling out “Doreen,” to see if she'd turn around, but she disappeared behind a steel gray minivan.

Almost tripping as one skinny heel caught in the asphalt, I sped up, determined to reach her before she got into her car and drove off, but a second later she reappeared and continued walking in that steady pace. I figured she'd mistaken this car for hers—there were a number of gray minivans in the horseshoe-shaped lot.

Then she did it again—walked around a car and came back a couple of seconds later, first behind a beige minivan, then a black sport-utility vehicle, then a blue Suburban.

What on earth was she doing? No one could be that disoriented, and her purposeful gait said she wasn't drunk or stoned. I doubted that she was planning to steal a car and trying to see if a forgetful owner had left his or her key in the ignition.

Now she was at the bottom of the horseshoe. I was still following her, but I'd dropped back. With one eye watching her, I pretended to rummage in my purse as she walked around another black SUV and reemerged from behind another minivan several cars farther ahead.

That was when I figured it out: She'd been taking cover behind large vehicles that would prevent her from being seen.

By whom? And why?

I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one else in the parking lot.

My Acura was two cars up. Twenty seconds later I was inside, seat belt buckled, ignition on, my eyes glued to the rearview mirror so that I'd be able to watch her as she made her trek across the lot until she arrived at her car.

Ten seconds went by, then twenty. A minute. There was no sign of the redhead, but she couldn't have left the lot.

I kept my eye on the mirror. Another half minute passed. A black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows pulled into the lot and glided to a velvet stop on the other side of the horseshoe, in front of a dark blue SUV.

In a fluid movement that would have done Jackie Joyner-Kersee proud, the redhead sprinted from behind the SUV to the Town Car, yanked the door open, and slid into the limo, which rumbled past me seconds later on its stately way out of the lot and afforded me a fleeting glance at a mustached driver with a swarthy complexion.

Backing out of my spot, I sped after the car, turned left when it did, and kept several lengths behind as the driver entered the Pomona Freeway heading west. Minutes later we merged onto the 10 toward Santa Monica.

I've never followed anyone in my life. The tension, and maybe the adrenaline, added to my headache, which was boring through my skull. With my right hand I found my pillbox, flicked it open, and downed another Advil with water from the bottle I always carry with me.

The Town Car was keeping pace with the traffic. I did the same. At one point it made a sudden lane change. I stayed in my lane but was able to track its progress, and five minutes later I changed lanes, too, though I allowed two cars to separate us.

It was a long forty minutes, which felt longer because I didn't know our destination and was unfamiliar with the area. At the National off-ramp the Town Car exited and so did I. We drove to Robertson, took that to Olympic, and turned left. My headache was subsiding, in part because I was more relaxed as we passed through familiar streets.

We were in Century City when the Town Car cut a diagonal to the right lane and made a sharp turn onto Avenue of the Stars. Muttering a curse, I did the same, eliciting several angry honks in the process, and found myself behind four black Town Cars. Two were in the lane to my left, two in front of me.

I'd memorized the license plate of the redhead's car and was able to eliminate the car in front of me and the one alongside me. Pulling forward until I was inches from the bumper of the car ahead, I read the license plate of the lead Town Car on my left.

That was the one. I allowed myself a satisfied smile that disappeared moments later when both Town Cars on my left turned into the drive of the Century Plaza Hotel while I had no choice but to continue to the intersection.

I made a right turn, and three more that brought me back to Avenue of the Stars and the hotel's semicircular driveway.

My Town Cars had spawned a fleet. A parking attendant dressed in a red-and-gold-trimmed Beefeater uniform complete with cap opened my car door.

“Okay if I leave my car here for a few minutes?”

His frown said my smile wouldn't do, so I handed him a five, which didn't bowl him over, but he pocketed it.

The redhead's Town Car was three cars up. I knocked on the driver's door.

He lowered his window. “Where you want go?” he asked in a thick Russian accent. He had unnaturally black hair and bushy eyebrows and a trim mustache below a nose with prominent capillaries that said he probably drank too much. I hoped he didn't indulge while he drove.

“I wanted to ask you about the woman you just drove here from the cemetery in Downey.”

“Lady, you want driver, okay. I'm not lawyer. I don't make money talking.”

I pulled a ten from my wallet and showed it to him. He rolled his eyes in disgust. I took out another ten.

He stretched his hand out the window and snatched both bills.

“Where did you pick her up?” I asked.

“Here.” He pointed toward the hotel. “She wants go to Downey, wants I should wait, but not in lot. She will phone when she is ready to leave. I am thinking, this is crazy lady, but she says she will pay me two hundred dollars, so okay.” He shrugged.

“What's her name?”

“Who gives name to limo driver? You?” He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe my stupidity.

“Anything else?”

“She brings big black bag and leaves it in car.”

I peered into the back of the Town Car.

He followed my eyes. “In
Downey,
” he said, impatient. “Not now. Now she takes bag and goes back into hotel. Crazy lady.”

I thanked the driver and took a few steps, then walked right back. I knocked on the window again and waited until he turned down his radio.

“You said she phoned you,” I told the Russian. “So you have her phone number. Can you tell me what it is?”

“Why you are looking for this lady?” A crafty expression had narrowed his brown eyes.

“I want to ask her a few questions.”

“Maybe she is not wanting to talk to you. When she is in car, she is nervous, turning head to look out back window.”

“Do you have the number?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“Twenty.”

“Fifty.”

He was literally in the driver's seat. I opened my wallet and pulled out three tens. “That's all I have. Unless you take MasterCard or Visa.”

He grunted. “Funny lady. You should go on
Leno.
” He stuffed the bills into his pocket, then punched a few buttons on his cell phone. “You have paper?”

“I hope so, 'cause I'm sure that's gonna cost extra.” He gave me a dark look and rattled off ten digits. Between the speed and the accent, I had to ask him to repeat the numbers twice before I got them all down in sequence.

The prefix was 619. That was in the San Diego area.

I tucked the slip of paper with the phone number into my wallet. This time I didn't thank the driver. I don't think he was crushed.

I headed to the lobby, avoiding eye contact with my valet. I was out of cash and goodwill. Inside the elegant plant-filled room with a soaring ceiling, a guy at a black baby grand (his jeans said he was a hotel guest, not an employee) was playing the hell out of
The Phantom of
the Opera
for a handful of people sitting on sofas who couldn't have cared less.

I've been there. I've done signings at chain stores where most of the customers look at me as though I'm wallpaper, or ask me for other writers' books or directions to the restroom. At a Valencia library where only one woman showed up for my reading, a man interrupted me to ask where he could find a book on Marco Polo and gave me a baleful look when I said I didn't know. The woman bought a copy of
Out of the Ashes.
“I probably won't read it,” she told me. “But I felt bad for you, honey, you came all this way and had such a bad turnout.”

My redhead, of course, was nowhere in sight. I've attended weddings at the Century P but have never stayed here, so it took me a minute to find Registration, where I improvised my spiel for the brunette behind the desk:

A woman had come in five minutes ago, tall and thin with medium-length red hair, carrying a large black bag. Her first name was Doreen, I didn't know her last name, we'd just met at a prewedding brunch and the bride had asked me to give Doreen a ride to the Century, which I did and was about to drive off when I noticed she'd taken my day planner and left hers in my car. Her name wasn't in her planner, so I hoped the clerk knew who she was. Oh, and she was from somewhere near San Diego. I remembered that.

The clerk had listened patiently while I talked. “You could ask the bride for the woman's name,” she suggested.

I nodded. “I would, but she's with her fiancé, doing a final inspection of the house they bought. It's in Hancock Park, and you can't get cell reception there, unless you have Nextel, which she doesn't.”

“Well, then, you can leave the planner, and when you talk to the bride and find out this woman's name, I'd be happy to return the planner to her.”

“Right. But in the meantime, she's probably frantic, thinking she lost it. And I
really
need mine,” I added, hoping the anxiety in my voice would sway her. “Could you check to see if you have a guest named Doreen?”

The woman's smile was less friendly but still polite. “I'm sorry. I'd like to help, but I couldn't give out any information about any of our guests. I'm sure you understand.”

It had been worth a try. On my way out of the hotel, I detoured to the restroom to use the facilities and get the most for my five dollars. Fifty-five, if you counted what I'd paid the limo driver.

I was looking in the mirror as I freshened my lipstick when a woman emerged from a bathroom stall.

It was my redhead.

I recognized her coppery eyes. She'd chucked the wig and the glasses, which had left reddened indentations on either side of her thin, delicate nose. Short black hair peeked out from under a floppy gray fleece hat that sat low over her forehead. She'd changed into jeans and a sheepskin jacket and a pink pair of the sheepskin Ugg boots that stores can't keep in stock. She'd probably stashed her funeral attire in the black tote she'd slung over her shoulder, the tote she'd left in the Town Car during Randy's service.

I shut off my cell phone and counted to ten. When I returned to the lobby, Piano Man was playing music from
Cats
and she was walking out past the large glass doors.

She turned left. My valet was busy and didn't notice me as I followed her down the wide boulevard. I stayed back while she waited for the traffic signal to turn green, and I stepped into the intersection after she reached the other side, when the Don't Walk sign started flashing red. She turned left again and slipped into the middle of a small group of pedestrians, but I was able to keep her gray hat in sight until she entered the Century City mall underground parking lot.

It's a huge, multilevel structure. If I didn't hurry, I was sure to lose her. If I did hurry, she'd hear my footsteps, louder in this echo chamber, and would confront me: What the hell was I doing, following her? The truth is, I didn't know. There was no reason for me not to walk up to her and ask her why she'd disguised herself, who she was hiding from. Unless she'd come here to meet someone. If that was so, I wanted to know who.

When I caught up with her, she was several hundred feet ahead of me and was leaving the parking area through a door that would take her to the escalator that, from my many visits to the mall, I knew was there.

Scurrying past rows of cars, I ran up the escalator in my damn heels, eliciting stares from people who moved aside to let me pass. I ran up the second escalator and was out of breath when I stepped off and found myself in the outdoor mall. I looked all around me.

She was gone.

She could have entered any of the stores surrounding me—Macy's, Pottery Barn, Talbots—or others farther down. If she had, I'd never find her. I was about to step onto the down escalator when I glanced to my left and saw her, several hundred feet up ahead.

I no longer cared whether she spotted me. I hurried to catch up, turned left when she did, and followed her to an escalator near Bloomingdale's, but by the time I reached it, she had descended and disappeared. At the bottom of the escalator were two exits to the parking structure.

Right and left.

I turned left and entered the structure. I didn't see her. I walked for a minute or so, searching in all directions for the gray hat. I had given up and was on my way back, intending to check the other side of the parking lot, when I felt something hard and cold against the back of my head.