K is for Killer (34 page)

“It's the truth. I know you think somehow I had something to do with Lorna's death. . . .”

“How could I think that? You told me you were out of town.”

“That's right. And she was, too. I was set to go fishing with my brother-in-law, and at the last minute she decided to go up to Santa Maria with me while I picked him up. Said she'd rather hang out with her sister than stay here by herself.”

“Why are you repeating all this stuff? I don't get it.”

“Because you act like you don't believe us.”

“Gosh, J.D., how could I fail to believe you when you provide such nice alibis for each other?”

“It's not an alibi. Now, goddamn it. How can it be an alibi when all I'm doing is telling you where we were?”

“Whose vehicle did you take to go to Lake Nacimiento?”

He hesitated. “My brother-in-law has a truck. We took that.”

“Santa Maria's an hour away. How do you know Leda didn't drive back in your car?”

“I don't for sure, but you could ask her sister. She'd tell you.”

“Right.”

“No, she would.”

“Oh, come on. If you'd lie for Leda, why wouldn't her sister lie, too?”

“Somebody else must have seen her on Saturday. I think she said they had a makeup party that morning. You know, where some cosmetic saleslady comes and does facials on everyone so they'll buy Mary Jane products or whatever it is. You don't have to get mad.”

“Mary Kay. But you're right. I shouldn't get mad. I told
Leda I'd verify all of this. I haven't had a chance to do it, so it's my fault, not yours.”

“Now see? I don't know how you do that. Even when you apologize, you make it sound like you don't mean it. Why are you being so cranky with me?”

“J.D., I'm cranky because I'm in a hurry and I don't understand what you're up to.”

“I'm not up to anything. I just came to get the tape. I thought while I was here, I'd . . . you know, discuss it. Anyway, you're the one that asked me. I didn't volunteer. Now it seems like I made it worse.”

“Okay. I accept that. Let's let it go at that. Otherwise we'll be standing around all night explaining ourselves to one another.”

“Okay. As long as you're not mad.”

“Not a bit.”

“And you believe me.”

“I never said that. I said I accept it.”

“Oh. Well, okay, then. I guess that's okay.”

I could feel my eyes begin to cross.

 

I
t was twenty after eleven when I pushed my way through the crowd at Neptune's Palace. The illusion of the ocean depths was profound that night. Watery blue lights shaded down to black. A pattern of light played across the dance floor like the shimmer at the bottom of a pool. I raised my gaze to the ceiling, where a storm at sea was being projected. Lightning forked in a faux sky, and an unseen wind whipped across the ocean's surface. I could hear the cracking of the ship's timbers as the rain lashed the mast, the screams of drowning men set against
a rock-and-roll backdrop. Dancers swayed back and forth, their arms undulating in the smoke-heavy air. The music was so loud, it was almost like no sound, like silence, in the same way that black is every color intensified into nothing.

I found a perch at the bar and bought myself a beer while I scanned the crowd. The boys wore mascara and black lipstick while the girls sported punk haircuts and elaborate tattoos. I kept my gaze carefully averted. The music stopped abruptly, and the dance floor began to clear. I caught a glimpse of a familiar blond head I could have sworn was Berlyn's. She disappeared from view. I eased off the bar stool and circled to the right, peering over the roiling mob to the point where I thought I'd seen her. She was nowhere in sight, but I didn't think I was mistaken.

I lingered near a massive saltwater tank where a flat eel with vicious teeth was devouring a hapless fish. Suddenly I spotted her, sitting at a table with a beefy guy in a tank top, fatigue pants, and heavy army boots. His head had been shaved bald, but his shoulders and forearms were still thick with fur. Any body part not covered with hair seemed to be adorned with some kind of tattoo, dragons and snakes. I could see the ridges in his skull and rolls of flesh along his neck. I've often thought of fat backs as the portion of the human body that aliens would most prefer to eat.

Berlyn sat in profile. She'd shrugged off her leather jacket, which was now hanging over the back of her chair, anchored by her shoulder bag. She was wearing the earrings, two diamond-encrusted hoops dangling down on either side. Her skirt was green satin and, like her black one, short and tight. While she talked, she made frequent reference to the earrings, touching first one and then the
other, reassuring herself that both were still in place. She seemed self-conscious, perhaps unaccustomed to wearing such ornate jewelry. The light from the candle in the middle of her table caught the myriad facets of the stones.

Booming music broke the air, and the two got up to dance again. Berlyn wore the same high, spiky heels, perhaps in hopes of lending grace to ankles that were otherwise as shapeless as porch posts. She had a butt on her like a loaded backpack tied around her waist. The table next to theirs had emptied, and I slid onto the chair next to hers.

Trinny suddenly appeared to my right. I'd have avoided the contact, but I knew she'd already spotted me.

“Hi, Trinny. How're you? I didn't know you came here.”

“Everybody comes here. This is hot.” She was glancing around as she spoke, snapping her fingers while she did some kind of chin thrust in time to the music. I wondered if this was mating behavior.

“You here by yourself?”

“Nuh-uhn, I came with Berl. She has a boyfriend she meets here because Daddy dudn't like him.”

“Really, Berlyn's here, too? Where'd she go?”

“Right out on the dance floor. She was sitting right here.”

She pointed in the general direction of the dance floor, and I peered dutifully. Berlyn was doing a bump-and-grind number with the beefy boyfriend. I could see his shaved head towering above the other heads bobbing on the dance floor.

“That's the guy your dad dudn't like? I can't imagine.”

Trinny shrugged. “It's his hair, I think. Daddy's kind of conservative. He doesn't think guys should shave their heads.”

“Yeah, but what difference could it make when he's got so much hair everywhere else?” I said.

Trinny made a face. “I don't like guys with hairy backs.”

“Nice earrings Berlyn's wearing. Where'd she get 'em? I wouldn't mind a pair of those myself.”

“They're just rhinestones.”

“Rhinestones? That's cool. They look like real diamonds from here, don't you think?”

“Oh, right. Like she's really going to wear diamonds.”

“Maybe she got 'em at one of those stores that sells look-alike jewels. You know, emeralds and rubies and like that. I look at that stuff and I can't tell the difference.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

I looked up. A fellow doing chin thrusts and a lot of finger popping was standing near Trinny's chair. She got up and started bumping and grinding on the spot. I waved at the air, trying to watch the dance floor around their flailing arms. “Do you mind?”

The two of them began to bebop in the direction of the dance floor. I found Berlyn again with her beau. I kept my eyes pinned on their heads bobbing on the dance floor. I leaned over as if to tie my shoe and slid my hand down into her purse. I felt her wallet, cosmetic bag, hairbrush. I sat up again and then simply extracted the handbag from the back of the chair where she'd hung it, leaving mine in its place. I hefted the strap across one shoulder and moved off to the ladies' room.

There were five or six women at the basins, makeup paraphernalia scattered across the shelving provided. All were engaged in a frenzy of hair ratting, blusher brushes, and lip pencils, not even looking up as I went into a stall and slid the bolt across. I hung the bag over a hook that had been thoughtfully provided by the management and began to search in earnest.

Berlyn's wallet was not that educational: driver's license,
a couple of credit cards, a few folded credit card receipts shoved down among the currency. Her checkbook showed a series of deposits at weekly intervals, which I assumed represented paychecks from Kepler Plumbing, Inc. Chick was seriously underpaid. Scanning back over the last several months, I spotted an occasional deposit of twenty-five hundred dollars, usually followed by checks made out to Holiday Travel. That was interesting. I found the small velvet jeweler's box in which the earrings were probably kept.

I tried the interior zippered compartment, sorting through old grocery lists, Thrifty drugstore receipts, deposit slips. I pulled out passbooks for two different savings accounts. The first had been opened with a nine-thousand-dollar deposit about a month after Lorna's death. I could see intermittent withdrawals of twenty-five hundred dollars, bringing the current balance down to fifteen hundred. The second account held another six thousand dollars. There was probably a third account somewhere else. Berlyn had tucked the carbons of her deposit and withdrawal slips in the back of one passbook—information she didn't dare leave at home. If Janice had discovered her cache of hidden funds, sticky questions would arise. I lifted a carboned slip from each passbook.

Someone knocked on the stall. “Are you dead in there?”

“Just a minute,” I called.

I depressed the toilet handle, letting the toilet flush noisily while I shoved everything back in the handbag. I emerged from the stall with the bag over my shoulder. A black girl with a seventies Afro moved into the stall I'd vacated. I found an empty basin and gave my hands a vigorous scrub, feeling like they needed it. I left the restroom and returned to the table in haste just as the dance music
came to a blasting finale. There was tumultuous applause from the dance floor, complete with piercing whistles and foot stompings. I slid onto my chair, snagged my bag from Berlyn's chair, and slipped hers into place.

Berlyn was approaching, the big guy right in her wake. Her chair tilted perilously. I grabbed for it, but not quickly enough to prevent her bag and leather jacket from tumbling on the floor in a heap.

I
'd caught a glimpse of Berlyn's mouth, which opened with annoyance when she realized the chair had toppled over. She was looking sweaty and cross, her perpetual state, I suspected. I turned my back abruptly so I was facing the bar. I drank my beer, heart thumping. I heard her exclamation of surprise. “Look at this. Gaaaad . . .” She dragged the profanity out into three musical notes as she scooped up her belongings, apparently pausing to check the contents of her purse. “Somebody's been
in
here.”

“In your bag?” the guy said.

“Yes, Gary, in my bag,” she said, voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Anything missing?” He seemed concerned, but not freaked out. Maybe he was used to her tone of voice.

She said, “Hey.”

I could tell she was speaking in my direction.

She poked me in the shoulder. “I'm talking to you.”

I turned, feigning innocence. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, my God. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well, hi, Berlyn. I thought it might be you,” I said. “I
saw Trinny a minute ago and she said you were around someplace. What's the problem?”

She gave the bag a shake as if it were a naughty pup. “Don't give me that bullshit. Have you been in here?”

I put a hand on my chest and looked around with puzzlement. “I've been in the ladies' room. I just sat down,” I said.

“Ha ha. Very funny.”

I looked up at the guy with her. “Is she on drugs?”

He rolled his eyes. “Come on now, Berl, settle down, okay? She wasn't bothering you. Give the chick a break.”

“Shut up.” Her blond hair looked nearly white in the flickering light from above. Her eyes were darkly lined, mascara separating her lashes into tiny rows of spikes. She fixed me with a look of singular intensity, swelling the way a cat does when it senses a threat.

I let my gaze roam across her face, resting on the diamond hoop earrings, which fairly quivered at her ears. I kept my smile pleasant. “Do you have something to hide, perchance?”

She leaned forward aggressively, and for a moment I thought she might snatch me up by the front of my turtleneck. She put her face so close to mine that I could smell her beery breath, which was not that big a treat. “What did you say?”

I spoke clearly, enunciating. “I said, your earrings are nice. I wonder where you got them.”

Her face went blank. “I don't have to talk to you.”

I shot a look at the guy just to see how he was taking this. He didn't seem all that interested. Already I found I liked him better than her. “How about this? You want to tell me how you acquired so much money in your savings accounts?”

The beefy guy looked from me to her and back, apparently confused. “You talkin' to me or her?”

“Actually, to her. I'm a private investigator, working on a job,” I said. “I don't think you want to get in the middle of this, Gary. Right now we're fine, but it's going to get ugly in a minute.”

He held up his hands. “Hey, you two have a beef, you can settle it without me. See you 'round, Berl. I'm outta here.”

I said, “Bye-bye,” to him and then to Berlyn, “My car's outside. You want to talk?”

 

W
e sat in my car. The parking lot outside Neptune's Palace seemed to have as much going on as the interior. Two beat cops were having a solemn chat with a kid who seemed to have trouble standing upright. In the aisle ahead of us and two cars over, a young girl was clinging to someone's fender while she emptied the contents of her stomach. The temperature was dropping, and the sky above us seemed clear as glass. Berlyn wasn't looking at me.