Keeper of the Keys (15 page)

“It’s not like you did anything to hurt Leigh.”

He saw the cassette on the table.

“I have another tape, Mom. I went back to Stokes Avenue. Remember? Third grade. Or was it fourth grade? The molding? In your old bedroom?”

She gave a little shriek. “Do you realize what you’re doing? Ray, I—I’m beginning to think you have lost your mind! You’re breaking the law! Now you listen to me, Ray. You already have the police interested in you. You’ve got to stop this!”

“Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on, except that you’re ruining your life! Please tell me you aren’t going to do that again, go use those old keys and invade people’s houses. Especially now. Please, honey.”

Understanding she would never explain, fighting down another wave of fatigue, he gave her what she wanted. He told her that he wouldn’t do it again.

But before he fell into uneasy dreams, he put on his headphones and listened to the remainder of the tape fragment.

“The phone number was easy,”
said the now familiar male voice.

“Oh, God. Stop. Please stop!”

“I’ll stop when you stop hurting me, punishing me.”

“This can’t go on.”

“You think you can do whatever you want,”
the voice said.
“I will find you. I’ll always find you. I will never give up.”

“Bastard!”
Ray’s young mother cried.

11

A
fter work on Wednesday, a day that started dull but ended in an exhilarating courtroom scene between warring business partners in commercial real estate who kissed and made up, Kat met Zak Greenfield at the boardwalk in Venice. He handed her a bouquet of lilies, such fine perfume, but so useless, given that she had only two hands. She walked back to her car, slightly miffed at the delay, stuffed them into the back seat, and hoped they had enough water in the little tubes to survive what she hoped would be a tough, sexy night. Then met him as the sun was nodding off into the ocean like a tired baby.

He rented Rollerblades for them both, and she went along with it, though she had a bad ankle and a worse attitude about cruising clumsily up and down the crowded beach walk on unstable tiny wheels. Lashing the laces, she cast glances at him. He looked happy and even knew how to thread the laces without consulting directions.

“Hold my hand,” he advised.

As if she had an alternative plan.

She grabbed hold, teetering, twisting, thoroughly annoyed at herself for pretending enthusiasm, and took off.

They glided south.

On the right, on the beach, foreign tourists who didn’t know any better threw sand at each other, the ocean roaring in the background. On the left, raucous summer renters tossed down tequila in their deck chairs. The twinkling lights of the outdoor cafe they were passing came on.

“You’re doing great,” said Zak.

Yessir, Kat thought, yessir, Mr. Zak Greenfield, sneaking another good look at him. He had not shaved today, which put him into the category of the sexually suggestive, in spite of his clothing, which was a little too Dockers for her taste. Still, she tingled a bit at the thought of rubbing her own cheeks against his prickly beard.

Something about him.

Jacki talked about chemistry between people, how she saw Raoul and wanted him right then and there. But Kat knew all about the wonders of men, their skin, the way they smelled, what they aroused in her. When Jacki tried to explain this chemistry was bigger than Kat’s definition, Kat got as lost as she had when she was forced to contemplate reduction-oxidation equations for a brief moment in her past, not-so-successful college career.

However, the tingling always boded well, that she knew.

“Faster,” Zak said a few minutes later.

They flew down the boardwalk, hands wetly locked, the surf white in the distance, all traditional imagery in place. When she wavered, he held her steadily. When she became exhausted, not too far into their journey, he insisted they stop and sit on a concrete bench to take in the waning light. They sat down and got playful, commenting on their fellow Rollerbladers, the muscle-beach guys with their rippling abs, the girls in their cropped tops and wet T-shirts. Zak made fun but displayed a forgiving and gentle wit, not mean.

Kat disliked mean people but loved this kind of activity. Los Angeles was so made to be lampooned. “Don’t look at him!” she commanded, averting her eyes and turning Zak with a hand to gaze at the ocean, as a shirtless, particularly overdeveloped creature loped by on the boardwalk. “He craves attention. It’ll irritate him, wondering why we didn’t look!”

Zak obliged, examining the sunset, laughing.

While they watched the final purple, peach, orange melting display of a clear Southern California sunset, she asked him about his life, and Zak told her that the main thing she needed to know about him was that he loved his work. He wouldn’t quit until they fired him and if they did that, he’d find another job in his field.

Kat tried to think of a man in her past who had a job he liked. She failed. A little voice said, “He has a steady income and a happy nature. Plus, Jacki approves.” Before Kat could make a further independent assessment of this information, she thought of Leigh. Had she married Ray out of some misguided sense that he would give her the stability Tom never could? Perhaps Leigh had not been misguided at all, but correct. After all, Tom showed his weakness, his lack of steadiness, in the end, didn’t he? He had self-destructed.

They arrived back at the rental place as darkness fell, collected their shoes, and walked to the parking lot. He took her hand in his again, and asked, “What are you thinking?”

Startled, she asked, “What?”

He repeated his question.

She thought about telling him the truth, but how could she? It was too soon to load him up with Tom, her grief, her missing friend. That wasn’t in the rules of the game at all. Automatically, trained in the art of dating, she lied. “I was wondering if you might like to come home with me.”

“Really?”

“Uh-oh. You sound doubtful.”

“No. Really, is that what you were thinking?”

She couldn’t recall any time in the recent past when a man had asked her that when the quick lie didn’t suffice, particularly that one, which was intended to distract. And so, as they walked into the encroaching darkness, and the waves receded, completely uncharacteristically, she told him about Tom, Leigh, Ray, Jacki’s fears for her, the whole shebang.

He listened as they walked.

She realized at some point while she had been so intently unburdening her heart, he hadn’t said a word for at least three blocks. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. Talk about wrecking a good time.”

“This is good, too,” he said, “learning more about you.” Then: “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Touched by the concern in his voice, she said, “You already have.”

They arrived at the Echo. “Cool car,” he said, running a finger through the dust on the hood.

“Yes, cool’s the word, in more ways than you might think. The a/c went out on it, and today I tried it and it had healed itself. I bet Boxsters don’t know how to do that.”

He turned her toward him, placing her hands around his waist. “Did you mean that, about me coming over? It’s late for a work night.”

“I meant it, but, Zak, I totally forgot I have to be somewhere ridiculously early tomorrow morning.”

The fact that it was true didn’t take the sting out of his good-bye kisses, which whispered and promised and left her aching for more.

12

W
ell before she would ordinarily leave for work on Thursday morning, at six-thirty, Kat hit the road, leaving her dreams behind her and wondering about her reluctance to invite Zak over after all. True, it would have made a short night, but he was smart, funny, handsome, and in general exceeded her usual requirements by a mile. But after their conversation, she had found herself unaccountably—vulnerable, even shy, at the thought.

She called her office, and Gowecki, the only one ever in at such an ungodly hour, unfortunately answered. She explained that she needed to reassess a house in Pico Rivera, that she’d lost some paperwork, which was why she was driving there so very, very early.

Then she apologized a few more times for goofing up, then she drove to Whittier instead.

As Ray Jackson had said, the Hubbels still lived on Franklin Street in their white mansion with the red tile roof and the palm trees. Their home looked as wonderful as it had in her childhood. Across the street, her old house looked about the same, a ramshackle two-story with white wood siding.

The friendly old wooden fence that had sat at the top of the driveway of her old home had been replaced by a mean-looking chain-link. A Rhodesian ridgeback’s nose poked past the metal as he watched her nervously, although silently. There had been a couple of owners since their mother, and the place today would be worth maybe fifty times what her grandfather had paid. He had owned the place before leaving it to Ma. He had paid twenty grand. Too bad Ma had sold it and burned through the profits far too fast at a nursing home.

Kat climbed the steps to the oversized plank door of Leigh’s childhood home and saw the wrought-iron peephole where Leigh’s mother always checked first. Now, an educated adult, she recognized that this house had been built in the thirties. They had paid it off long ago, no doubt. She thought that today it would be worth maybe a million five, more if they had ever put a pool into the backyard, but she hadn’t looked at comps for the area, so she could be off. And of course, some depended on whether they had upgraded the kitchen and bathrooms.

“Why, Kat!” Rebecca Hubbel appeared surprised and delighted to see her.

“Hi. I was in the neighborhood.” She was pulled in, kicking off her sandals at the threshold. The Hubbels had been watching the Nature Channel from behind TV trays full of eggs and steaming mugs. Rebecca Hubbel wore a sleeveless blouse and walking shorts. There were a lot of veins in her legs Kat didn’t remember, but otherwise she looked just the same, glasses, untidy hair, sweet face.

Leigh’s father, James Hubbel, sat back down in his red leather chair. The TV was a plasma screen hung above the massive fireplace, which Kat had never seen producing a fire. Lit by windows flooding with morning sun that showed the sheen of the polished wood floor and its silk area rugs, the double-height room with its formal staircase had lost none of its beauty. Leigh’s father muted the sound but let the sharks on the screen roam free. He had gotten very paunchy in the six years since Tom’s funeral, but he still had the long arms and barrel chest she remembered.

Kat was invited to sit down in a Queen Anne recliner covered in soft green chenille upholstery with curved legs and a doily protecting the headrest. She remembered the chair. What was it like, living with the same chair—partner—for so many years you finished each other’s sentences and corrected each other without getting mad?

Surprised at her sudden reappearance in their lives after so many years of silence, the Hubbels traded a few cautious pleasantries. Rebecca Hubbel said she was still feeling weak after a bout of diverticulitis. The people who lived in the Tinsleys’ old house were Hurricane Katrina survivors who had given up on New Orleans. Kat told them about Jacki’s marriage and pregnancy. They offered her coffee. When she refused it, a cold Snapple appeared in her hand.

“I’m looking for Leigh,” Kat said.

They deflated like bad inner tubes. “Then you don’t know where she is, either?” said James. “I guess when we saw you, we thought maybe…”

“I went to her home and her husband told me she’s taking some time away. But it’s been days since anyone saw her—”

“Six days!” Rebecca interjected.

“—and she hasn’t been in touch at her office either.”

“Or with us.” They spoke together.

Leigh’s father said, “I put some LAPD buddies on it—they’ve got a missing persons unit—but to tell you the truth, Topanga’s not their jurisdiction; it’s the sheriff’s. They have more limited resources. With an adult, they have to be convinced something’s wrong: she’s disabled, in danger, sick, a crime victim, impaired…We can’t prove anything. The sheriff says not to panic. Wait a few more days, a week at the outside. If we don’t hear from her by then, everybody gets involved.”

“You think that her husband—”

“What can we think? You don’t go off like that, take an overnight bag, leaving everything without a damn good reason, and she didn’t have any reason. If she had a fight with Ray she knew she had her room upstairs, and we could have kept Ray away if she wanted. Why not come home to the room she left years ago, that we’ve kept for her, or for her children—”

“How often would you talk before she, uh, went away?”

“Every day, almost,” said Rebecca. “I just don’t understand. Ray seems like such a good young man. We were so happy when they decided to get married. And he encouraged her to do exactly what she always wanted to do. Helped her set up a business. She’s very successful, you know.”