Authors: Gregg Hurwitz
She said, "Are you with the press? Every few years someone comes knocking. A retrospective or whatever they call it. Last year I got contacted by someone doing a psychology study about grief."
"No," I said, "I'm not a reporter."
But that didn't seem to deter her. She didn't even bother to ask who I was with. She led me back in through a narrow hall to a living room. The house was clean, but every surface was cluttered. A side table crowded with antique Limoges boxes. Porcelain cats on a doily. Plants everywhere, sprouting from decorative watering cans and hanging from crocheted slings, lending the air a musty quality. Framed pictures rising like feathers from the lid and key cover of a small upright piano. Lydia at the altar, Jane in the maid-of-honor spot, though she couldn't have been more than thirteen. It was impossible not to recognize Jane Everett's lips. Lydia's husband, a kindly-looking
Hispanic man, appeared to be at least a decade older than his bride. He aged with dignity across the piano. The last shot, a close-up of him in a yellow sweater holding a tennis racket, was years old, bleached like the others from the facing window. He reclined at a club table, sipping iced tea, and his hair was silver, his teeth pronounced against a nice retirement tan.
I sat on a plastic-slipcovered couch. The seat was slightly warm, and beside me was a crossword
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puzzle book, folded back to a pencil-indented page. I'd taken Lydia's spot, though she'd been too polite to say anything. Across, on a flat-screen that looked anachronistic contrasted with the other furnishings, two soap stars were mashing their faces against each other in a way that looked distinctly uncomfortable.
When I realized that Lydia was watching me, some prudish impulse made me turn my gaze away. The unplayed piano was too depressing, so I looked out the window beside it. A short, square garden met its end five feet out at the neighbor's aggressively tall slat fence.
Lydia followed my stare and said, "The young couple added that fence when they moved in. It's at the property line, so there was nothing we could do."
"Bad zoning laws."
She slid sideways into an armchair, a graceful, feminine movement. "Their house isn't even close. It sits a half acre back, but they wanted that fence
there. They took it right up to code. My husband was furious. I lost him three years ago May. Ernesto. Heart attack."
She said his name with a slight accent. A WASP woman marrying an Hispanic man wasn't so common back when they wed. I thought of those Hispanic males who'd reportedly dumped Jane's body, how neatly Bilton's team had taken advantage of people's prejudices. I felt like an intruder here in Lydia's cluttered little house, my eye to the peephole of a private life.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I find myself thinking about Janie more. With him gone."
I realized that Lydia didn't care if I was with The L.A. Times or the CIA or Brownie Troop 9882. She just wanted to talk.
"It's a hard thing to forget."
She firmed her mouth, looked up at the corner of the room. "It was a long time ago."
"Yes," I said. "It was."
Her eyes lingered on the ceiling for a while. Then she angled her head and spoke from the side of her mouth though we were across the room from each other. Confiding in me. "I loved Ernesto dearly, as you can imagine. Thirty-eight years of marriage. And there are still mornings where I. . . where I . . ." Her voice trailed off. "But the violence of Janie's death. It doesn't sit. It never sat."
"No," I said. "There's nowhere to put it."
"They talk about closure all the time. Putting it behind you. Coming to grips."
"Who does?"
"The TV. 'Closure.' Like it's a thing. An actual thing that you can achieve. That you can hold in the palm of your hand."
Her fingers fussed in her lap, taking up a fold of fabric. Her candor caught me off guard. Her loneliness. How deeply the loss still touched her.
"You never get there," I said. "I guess you just keep trying."
"But these things damage you-- I'm sorry, what'd you say your name was?"
"Nick."
"They damage you, Nick. My niece ..." Her fingers trembled, and then she fished a tissue out of a sleeve and held it in a fist. "Ernesto and I never had children. I took care of Janie growing up. Eleven years older. That's a lot. So I suppose I wanted ... I don't know. Ernesto and I enjoyed our time so much. Janie was like my daughter. My niece would have been like . . . like another daughter, you see? Janie liked 'Grace,' but I was the one who started calling her 'Grade.' That part was . . . that part was mine. And after they died . . ."
"I understand."
"Do you?" Her tone wasn't accusatory. It was deeply, intensely curious. Needy, even.
"Yes. I think I do."
"You give something up, maybe. Like a penance.
A part of your life. To honor what was lost. To not replace it."
"I understand that, too."
We sat in silence, not looking at each other. Another picture on the piano caught Jane in close
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up, working some campaign event, election ticker tape and confetti frozen in a red and white blur in the background.
"What was she like?" I asked.
"She was sweet" She shook her head slowly with the last word. "You know how some people just have that heart? And quiet. Had a laugh that'd catch you by surprise. She made some choices that, well ..." The tissue rose halfway to her face, but then her knuckles whitened and she lowered it. She would not cry. "She didn't know how long the future can be. How long it can be."
I said, carefully, "The father--"
Her lips tensed. "I never knew who the father was." She shook her head, quickly this time, as if fighting off a bad taste. "She never breathed a word. Not even to me." But her face couldn't hide the truth. I knew she was lying, and she knew I knew.
The soap actors had pulled apart, the woman resisting in that no-means-yes way, and then, like a horrible joke, there was Bilton. His sweater-and
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khakis spot, the business-casual commander in chief surrounded by his progeny on the spotless Oval Office rug. Mr. Morals, a sharp contrast to his twice-married challenger.
Lydia dug in her armrest pouch for the remote. I watched Bilton's well-shaven face. "Senator Caruthers says he doesn't 'understand family values.' Do you really want someone in the White House who's proud to make that claim?" Dignified cursive across the screen announced, Paid for by Andrew Bilton for President.
Lydia finally fought the remote free and shut off the TV. We sat in the awkward silence for a moment, and then she said, bitterly, "Janie deserved more from this life. And Gracie. She would have been loved. She was a person, too, and she would have had a family." Lydia stared at the dark TV with disgust. Her eyes finally lifted to me. "You said you were with the press?"
My throat was husky with emotion. I said, "Yeah, I'm with the press."
She rose and smoothed her dress in the back with a practiced sweep of her flat hand. "Please write about her kindly. There was some innuendo around her when she died."
I said, "I'm going to do everything I can for
her."
Chapter
43
One more name on the rumpled piece of paper. Tris Landreth, the witness to the dumping of the bodies. The most recent address Steve had found under her name, from a cell-phone account, belonged to a run-down house in Van Nuys. The bell was broken, so I knocked, and a moment later a heavyset woman in a plush bathrobe tugged the screen open.
I said, "Tris Landreth?"
She scowled, waved a hand at me dismissively. "I look like some Tris to you, son?"
"I'm sorry. I'm just--"
"She cleared out the guesthouse six months back in the middla the night. Give us no notice. And it ain't like she paid no security deposit we could cash in on neither."
"Six months ago."
"Yeah. And now everything 'Tris Tris Tris' again alia sudden. She a quiet lady. Why all these folks be up in here after her?"
My pulse quickened. "Other people were asking for her?"
"The Five-0 is who, son. Shit, worse. The secret-handshake guys. You know the ones."
"When?"
"Last week. Dunno. Wednesday, Thursday. Shit, I ain't no calendar."
I struggled to keep my head clear. "Did she pack up her stuff? When she left?"
"What little she had, yeah. She was here almost a year, but she never really moved in, know what I'm sayin'? Had a suitcase for a dresser. Like she was just waitin' to pick up and go again." A gruff voice called out from the back of the house, and
she yelled back, "I be there in a minute, baby," and trudged off.
I stood at the door a few minutes before realizing she wasn't coming back.
I crossed the dead lawn and sat on the curb for a while, watching the kids play soccer in the street and the low-riders cruise by, vibrating with bass. Whatever Tris Landreth knew, I needed to know, too. Just waitin' to pick up and go. She'd been living a life I was all too familiar with. I thought about how isolated I'd felt up in Ketchikan, that soul-numbing loneliness that came from being cut off from those I loved, the semiannual cards I used to send through the remailing service to Callie, the freezing sleepless nights I spent waiting to hear if those cards had bounced back, if my mom had moved or gotten sick or died. I wondered, given that Tris Landreth had been too nervous to unpack her bags for a year, what had been keeping her in the area.
The liquor store at the corner had a pay phone in the back. I called the cell I'd given Induma, and it rang and rang before she picked up. I'd left early this morning to avoid awkwardness, and with her voice came a pang of embarrassment. And something heavier. Longing.
I said, "Sorry about last night."
"You've got nothing to apologize for."
"Then I can impose on you for another favor?"
"That's what friends are for."
"Rub it in."
She laughed.
I said, "Tris Landreth. The witness? She split."
"And you want me to use the databases to locate her."
"Steve already checked the databases. I need you to find out if she has any sick kids or elderly parents in the area."
When we got off, I bought a Coke, went outside, and sat on the curb for another while. A young Hispanic couple was leaning against a truck in the parking lot and making out. Dark bands of eye shadow stood out on her closed lids, and his hands were at her face. Effortless. I thought about how cold those floorboards had felt beneath my bare feet last night when Induma had told me that life doesn't wait.
The pay phone inside rang.
The shopkeeper gave me an odd look as I jogged back.
Induma said, "No sick kids and no elderly parents, but looks like Landreth was raised by an aunt who's not doing too hot. The aunt lives in Northridge."
I had a pen at the ready. "You got an address?"
I entered the well-kept complex and knocked on the appropriate door. After a lengthy wait and prolonged shuffling, an ancient woman answered. The apartment smelled of talcum powder and cats.
"Hi," I said. "I'm looking for Harriet Landreth. It's about her niece, Tris."
"Tris," she repeated, with impressive derision. She was severely hunched and had to crane her head to look up at me.
"Are you Harriet?"
"No, I'm Glenda, her older sister. I'm taking care of her."
"Has Tris visited lately?"
"Tris? Visited lately?"
I might as well have asked if Peter O'Toole had swung by for a gimlet.
She regarded me warily. "What is this?"
"I'm trying to find her. It's really important."
"Well, Tris hasn't bothered coming around here. Harriet raised that girl like a daughter. When no one else wanted to, I might add. And now my sister's sick, and do you think Tris bothers to come around? Not in months. And barely once a year before that."
"Maybe there's an explanation for why she can't come."
"If there is, Tris'11 have it ready. It's always something. Always someone after her. Bill collector. Some ex."
"You never know people's reasons for doing stuff, I guess," I said. "Maybe she's scared of something." I didn't know why I felt so vehement about defending her, and then of course I did.
"It doesn't matter," Glenda was saying.
"Everyone's got reasons for everything. She left us. She left us holding the bag. I'm not interested in how she'll justify it this time around."
I pictured Callie's face, hard with resentment: You haven't shown up for a damn thing in seventeen years. "You're right," I said. "It must feel pretty crappy from your end."
Glenda's face seemed to draw into itself, the wrinkles moving but not really moving at all.
"Maybe I could talk to Harriet?" I asked. "Just for a minute?"
"I'll see how she's feeling."
The door closed in my face.
A moment later the door opened again. Glenda was already shuffling back in. America s Funniest Home Videos played softly on the TV. A cat was leaping around a ball of yarn, accompanied by wacky circus music. The apartment smelled worse inside, something lingering under all that talcum powder. She headed down a shag-carpeted hall, calling over her shoulder, "I just gave her artificial tears, so she should be okay to look at you."