High Fall (31 page)

As she drove back toward Conroy, she realized that she’d suspected that all along and hadn’t wanted to face it.

No good-bye slice.
That had been a joke in medical school during the pathology rotation: the good-bye slice they’d laughed about and promised each other, as they held their breaths against the unavoidable smells of rot and Clorox and began the Y-shaped incision.

The rule had never been called “No Good-bye Slice,” but pathologists did not do postmortems on friends. Pathologists were notorious for being “not normal.” They themselves admitted they didn’t handle feelings well. But they weren’t so totally without emotion that they could cut into the body of a friend and see nothing but bones and flesh, organs and fluids, and when they looked through a microscope not find it clouded by a tear.

But the water rolling down her own face was sweat, surely. She could handle seeing Greg Gaige’s body. It was probably years too late to find more than bones and the metal rod in his leg. Still, if the coffin were lead-lined; if the drainage were a whole lot better than it looked down at the bottom of the cemetery, then maybe there would be something left of the nares of the nose, the throat, the esophagus, the lungs. Maybe she would be able to tell if his lung had been seared by steam or smoke, or if Greg Gaige had stopped breathing before the fire.

But how to get those remains exhumed? She could still quote from memory the California code on that, number 7500: “No remains of any deceased person shall be removed from any cemetery, except upon written order of the health department having jurisdiction, or of the superior court of the county in which the cemetery is situated.” Practically speaking, the only reasons for exhumation were suspicion of murder and contagion. Here there was no question of contagion, and the suspicion of murder existed only in her mind. The lab report on the soil could take weeks. And even if it were positive, it would implicate Pacific Breeze Computers—it wouldn’t
prove
Greg was murdered.

Ten minutes later, she was sitting across the mortician’s mahogany desk from Edmund Halsey, saying, “Greg was a man who lived to be at the top. He talked about climbing a crane higher than your flagpole and feeling the wind in his face up there. I can’t leave here knowing Greg’s body is down at the very bottom of the hill.” She’d meant it as an act, but as she said the words, she realized they were true and that the cold hollow in the pit of her stomach had never filled. “Don’t you have a free plot at the top, near the pole, where I could feel like his spirit was climbing?”

“Well, yes,” he said slowly, “but it’s one of our more desirable locations—”

“Money isn’t a problem.” She expected him to eye her dusty, rumpled slacks and shirt and allow a subtle look of suspicion to cross his face. But apparently Edmund Halsey had seen the poor and disheveled pony up for burials often enough to believe her.

“The remains have been in place for a decade. Our caskets are quality resting places, but—”

“I’d like him to have a new casket. A suitable casket.”

Halsey nodded approvingly. “Very well then, we can schedule the relocation for early next week.”

“No!” she said letting her frustration come out as distress. “I can’t leave until I see him moved. And I have to be in L.A. tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, but I’m sure you’ll understand that our men have other jobs and commitments.” Halsey looked truly sorry. Thousands of dollars sorry.

“I’ll pay them double time. They can do the work after they get off from their other jobs.”

“Well—”

“And you, Mr. Halsey, I know I’ll be taking time you’ve allotted elsewhere. I’ll just leave it up to you what is fair recompense. Whatever, it will be worth it to me.”

“Well, I guess—”

“I’ll be back at six
P.M.”

“You’re going to watch?” Halsey’s eyes opened wide, and he stared at her. It was the first time she had seen his professional composure fail.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Halsey. I missed Greg’s funeral. This is what I have to do. But please make sure this procedure is very low key. I don’t want gawkers.”

“Of course.”

Restraining a great sigh of relief, silently giving thanks to
Always start as a relative,
she pulled out her checkbook.

“It’s a formality,” Halsey said, “but I will need to see proof of your relation to the deceased.”

Damn! She didn’t have a backup plan. She
always
had a backup plan.

Halsey was within his rights, legally. Remains can be exhumed only on orders of the coroner, the county health director, or the next of kin. She allowed herself a sigh. “Mr. Halsey, Greg was my cousin, my mother’s sister’s son. Our names are entirely different. You don’t carry proof of that kind of relation in your purse. I’d think the commitment I’m making to his well-being—”

“I understand, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, and I’m sorry to have to bring up this problem at a time like this, but I’m afraid it is necessary.” He leaned forward, and his strained face said
I feel every bit as bad about this as you do.
“You could contact the closest surviving relative and get a notarized statement.”

“Which relative approved his burial?” With an effort she kept her voice soft, merely questioning.

“That was before my time. Let me check. Oh, hm. I see this was authorized by the brother of the deceased, Jason Pedora.”

“No problem,” she said, smiling to cover the lie worth a decade in purgatory. “We’ll be here tomorrow.”

J
ASON
P
EDORA LOOKED OLDER
and thinner than he had the night before. His matted clothes smelled of sweat; his face was lined with weariness and frustration. And there was a feverishness to his eyes. As he walked out onto the sidewalk, he stared at pedestrians in the same way he might have, had his incarceration been ten years instead of overnight.

“What about my car?” he demanded for the fourth time as he climbed into Kiernan’s Jeep.

“You can deal with that later. Now you can thank me for bailing you out.”

“Thank you! You’re the one who got me thrown in jail to begin with.”

“I’m the one who forced you to sideswipe a car? Grow up, Pedora.”

“I wouldn’t have had to go so fast if you hadn’t been after me.”

“I didn’t force you to follow me from LA.”

“If you’d—”

“Enough! Blame whoever you want! Spend the rest of your life blaming everyone else, I don’t care. But right now we need to deal with Greg.” She hesitated. Pedora was on the edge. In a more perfect world he would be under professional care and living in a safe and stress-free place. Instead, he was in the land of slippery truths, sliding on his own new scripts of his old events. She had to find a story line that fit with his. If she didn’t, she’d be the villain in his piece.

Pedora sat, his back to the door, ankle resting on knee, seat belt dangling loosely on his lap. He glanced at it and back at her, daring her to remind him that unbeltedness was illegal in California.

She started the engine and headed west toward the beach, driving in silence until he asked, “What about Greg?”

“It’s probably not worth it,” she said, hoping to sound offhand.

“Worth what?”

“The funeral director has a spot vacant where Greg could have the kind of monument he deserves. He could be on the top of the hill, where he should be.” Watching out of the corner of her eye, she could see his mouth tighten. Quickly, she added, “On top, where you put him when he was alive.”

Pedora’s mouth relaxed, but he didn’t comment.

“You’re his older brother, right?”

“By five years.”

“So you were always there for him, making things easy for him, right? I had an older sister. She used to give me tips on how to deal with our parents, how to handle teachers in school, how to act cool.”

Pedora still didn’t reply. They were at the top of Soledad Mountain Road. Ahead were the tree-muted lights of La Jolla, and beyond the black of the Pacific. Her fingers were squeezed tight on the steering wheel. This was the part of being a private investigator she hated the most—this coaxing, ingratiating, this bedside manner stuff. If only she could be done with Pedora and get back to the cemetery.

She swallowed and said, “But you’ve done so much more. You’ve taken care of Greg when he was an adult. People don’t realize the sacrifices that helpers make. I’ll bet even Greg didn’t.”

“Even
Greg?!” he shrieked. With an obvious effort at control he went on. “Especially Greg! Like he was doing me a favor allowing me to be his business manager!”

His business manager!
Kiernan tensed her face to keep from reacting.

“Like it was a blast for me to go to the bank, and run the house, and go to the dry cleaner. And talk to reporters when he couldn’t be bothered. And make sure no one disturbed his sacred practice schedule.”

“Practice schedule?”

“Christ, even as a child nothing came before that. I had to work my way through junior college so there was money for him to have gymnastic lessons. I got a scholarship to college, but I still had to work every day because Greg needed money to travel to gymnastic meets. And when I got him his first job out here—”

“You were here first?”

“Oh, yeah. I was a screenwriter.”

Was that true, or was it an olive tree of dreams built on a shriveled seed of fact? “And you helped Greg?”

“Got him his first job, helped him set up his practice schedule and his house and—hell, his life. He had no idea how to live. Had never cooked, never washed clothes. He didn’t even learn to drive until he got out here! Everything had been done for him, everything in the family was arranged so Greg wouldn’t have to interrupt his almighty practice schedule!”

“And your screenwriting?” she prodded.

“How did I have time for it, you’re asking? I didn’t, that’s how. You can’t write when you’ve got to stop and run to the laundry, stop and take Greg’s calls, stop and race up to the location because Greg forgot something, stop for weeks because someone has to fly back east and put Mom in a nursing home.”

“But Greg—didn’t he care?” she found herself asking more earnestly than she’d intended.

“Care? He didn’t even notice. His whole mind was on his schedule, his work, his Move.”

“You sacrificed your life for him, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And he didn’t even notice, right?”

“Never!”

“Year after year after year!”

“Yeah!”

“And you got so mad you could have killed him, right?”

“Damned right!”

Softly, she said, “And then the chance came on that set, in the fire house, right?”

He started to reply, then seemed to mentally slam on the brakes. “Hey, what’s the matter with you? I didn’t kill Greg.”

“You okayed the shoddiest of burials for him.”

“I didn’t have any choice about that,” he insisted.

“They held a gun to your head?”

“They might as well have.
I
didn’t have money for a funeral. His insurance wouldn’t come through for weeks. And anyway, he’d always said that money was to go to support Mom.”

“The last big gift from her son, the star?” She felt her shoulders tighten at the need to go back into the act.

“Right,” he said with some hesitancy.

“And he didn’t even think about you, about what
you’d
live on then.”

“No.”

“And you hadn’t worked as a screenwriter for years.”

“Hmm.”

The lukewarm response stopped her. “What did you do after the funeral, Jason?”

“Went back to screenwriting,” he said to the side window.

“At Summit-Arts?”

“As a consultant.” The words were so low, she could barely hear them.

“As a consultant at Summit-Arts. Suddenly, after you haven’t written in years, Summit-Arts offers you a job. Just at the time they want to bury your brother post-haste.” She pulled the car over to the curb and looked directly at Pedora. He was hunched against the door, arms folded defensively, chin pulled back into his chest. “Why, Jason, would they do that? Why were they so anxious to get Greg buried? You must have asked yourself that. What were they hiding?”

He let his arms drop and stared at her, his head shaking with bewilderment. “The Mexican horses, and the drugs.”

“Okay! And they’re hiding the evidence with Greg’s body. Let’s get that evidence, okay?”

“Well ...”

“We can get it when we have Greg’s body moved. You just need to sign the release. We can get it notarized right here.” She indicated the house in front of them.

She waited until she had the signed form in hand, before saying to Pedora, “Maybe Summit-Arts didn’t kill Greg, but their failure to get the town firemen on-site allowed that fire to burn out of control. How could you agree to go to work for them?”

He stared at her, as if she were the crazy one. “Because they said they’d do my screenplay.”

She shook her head. “Still—”

“No, listen,” he insisted, and for the first time he looked and sounded totally clear. “I worked my entire life in the background. Finally someone offers me my one chance, the thing I’ve always wanted, and you think I should be too noble to take it? Mom’s walls are covered with Greg’s pictures. You don’t think I’d like to see my face up there in just one?”

Before she could reply, Pedora turned to her. His whole body gave a quick shiver, as if dislodging a sharp stick that had penetrated too deep, and he said, “What about my car?”

Next to the cost of exhumation and the new headstone, Kiernan thought, getting Pedora’s car out of impound would be a small price to pay.

A
T SIX P.M.
F
RIDAY
night the crew of workers and observers were assembled with a copy of Jason Pedora’s notarized order, the burial contract, and a cemetery map. They walked along the path by the stone wall. A new grave marker sparkled in the last searingly bright light of day, belying the lifelessness beneath it. Ahead was parked a sturdy pickup truck that looked as if it had just been through the car wash. Painted yellow and with the proper insignia it could have been an AAA road service vehicle.