These Toxic Things, page 11
“He’s always pissed at Riley. If you haven’t noticed, she’s . . .”
“Bossy? Abrasive? A know-it-all?”
“So you’ve noticed.”
“I’m thinking of finding his number and calling him.” I hold up a hand. “About Nadia’s memory bank. Maybe he can share some memories of her with me. I’m sure he has stories.”
She winks. “He’ll be by later. When he’s in LA, he always stops in and lets me cook for him. And now that Nadia’s gone . . .” She frowns, busies herself with cleaning the cutting board. “What were he and Riley arguing about?”
I squeeze the bottle of ketchup to cover my french fries. “You did not hear this from me—but Riley had Nadia cremated without first telling Dexter.”
Anna gasps, then touches her heart-spot. “No, she didn’t. That girl came over here, asking if I can cook for the repast, but she ain’t said one word . . . I didn’t think . . . Oh my goodness. That wasn’t her right. She ain’t Nadia’s child.”
“According to Riley,” I continue, “Nadia requested cremation in her note, and the detectives now have the note.”
Anna says, “Hmph,” then narrows her eyes. “Mr. Kim, the locksmith across the way?”
“I haven’t met him yet.” His is a cramped shop with flecked, red-painted letters and security bars. In the few days I’ve been here, I’ve seen him shuffle to Anna’s around two o’clock every day for coffee and a doughnut.
“Mr. Kim didn’t like Nadia,” Anna says. “Not that he wanted her dead, but they weren’t each other’s cups of tea. Anyway, he told me that those detectives questioned Peter Weller.”
Shock makes my spine straighten. “They think that Weller . . . Why?”
“Cuz one of Weller’s guys jumped the owner of the club that used to be on the corner.”
Link’s Lounge, just twenty steps from the diner’s front door, is now boarded up.
“They put Link in the hospital,” Anna says, “and that’s when the lounge closed. He was basically forced to sell. Link still stops by for breakfast sometimes, but he can’t eat much since he can’t really taste his food. They broke his nose. He ain’t been the same since.”
Mob shit. Yikes.
“But they . . .” I begin. “You found Nadia with a bag over her . . . She left a note.”
Anna leans close to me. “Before he went over to yell at Riley this morning, Dexter stopped here. He told me that the detectives let him see that note. Dexter says that the writing ain’t Nadia’s.”
“What?” I gape at Anna.
She lifts my dropped jaw to close my mouth. “Chew your food, baby.”
I do as I’m told, then say, “Not her writing? Is he sure?”
She wipes down the vinyl-covered menus in the nearest holder. “He would know his mama’s writing, wouldn’t he?”
“But she was probably distressed,” I offer. “She was about to kill herself. Her hands had to be shaking and . . . What if she forgot that she wanted to die? What if her disease screwed everything—her thinking—screwed it all up?”
Anna taps her earring. “You may be right, but Dexter’s talking about filing a wrongful-death suit against Weller. He thinks—and he’s right—that Weller either forced Nadia to kill herself by harassing her until she broke or he had that white man that was eating here this morning kill her and make it look like a suicide.”
“All so he could . . . ?”
“Take the store and the land beneath it.”
Something craters in my belly. This version of Weller does not track with the version presented by Uncle Bryan, that of a benevolent businessman wishing to build high-priced condos, high-end restaurants, and a SoulCycle.
Anna eyes me. “You don’t think so?”
“No idea. It’s a lot to believe.”
“Anyway, Weller’s got to deal with Dexter now.” She pours herself a cup of coffee. “Poor Nadia. Ran away from an abusive marriage to become a successful store owner, and now . . . That woman just wanted to sell antiques and take care of her son.”
Abusive marriage? No wonder she stopped to help women in distress. She was a woman in distress. As I head back to Beautiful Things, I’m determined to see that suicide note. Since I’m now immersed in Nadia’s world, reading pages filled with her skinny, slanted writing, I want to compare that script against her farewell to this world. I want a glimpse into the mind of the woman I met two days ago, a woman who seemed enthusiastic about capturing her most precious memories before her mind collapsed.
Back in the office, I shake my head as I stand over the project table filled with her collection. Because it doesn’t seem right that this same woman wanted to die. Maybe months from now, but over four hours?
Maybe Anna and Dexter are right.
Maybe Nadia Denham was murdered.
Maybe Peter Weller, greedy land baron, killed her.
14.
I grab my belongings and turn off the office lights.
Riley sits behind the cash register. Her face is ashen, her lips a twisted line.
“I’m gonna head out now,” I tell her, “unless you need me to stay.”
She grunts. “No.”
“See you tomorrow, then.”
She doesn’t nod or say goodbye as I leave the shop. She just sits on the stool and stares at her phone.
I’m glad this day is done.
Storm clouds build in the sky. The air is thick and smells of salt from the Pacific Ocean. Since Anna’s Place is closed, there’s no competition against the aromas of burger grease and cake batter. Over on King Boulevard, a car’s stereo booms out a song. I don’t know the title or any of the lyrics, but that slow, slinky bass line is Proustian. Oh yeah, Tiger stripped to this beat last weekend. I’d been sipping the nastiest dirty martini. Sasha had stolen my only olive.
The sound of scraping metal pulls me back to the Santa Barbara Plaza. It’s the locksmith pulling a security gate across his small storefront.
I say, “Good evening. We haven’t met yet. I’m Mickie Lambert.”
A tall whip of an old man, he nods, and the fishhooks stuck through his cotton fishing hat tinkle. “I am Jae Kim. Hello.” His skin is thin and liver spotted. His calloused hands tug at the shiny padlock until he knows it will hold fast. “Goodbye.”
“Wait. Anna told me—”
He waves a hand at me. “I am not involved.”
“Right. I—”
“You need keys, you come to me. Gossip? I am not involved.” He peers at me through his wire-rimmed glasses, waiting for me to understand.
A smile builds on my lips like pushed-back sand. “Have a lovely evening, Mr. Kim.”
He hurries off without another word.
In the parking lot, my car sits alone beneath a sodium light closer to the lot’s perimeter. A man stands beneath a bright-white light closer to the stores. I know him—not because I know him—but because he’s one of the detectives investigating Nadia’s death.
With his rich ebony skin and hooded eyes, he resembles an African totem wearing a lead-colored suit and black wing tips. He flashes his badge and kinda smiles at me with teeth as bright as his detective’s shield. “Hi there. Detective Keith Winchester.”
As I move closer to him, I walk into a stench so full and rich that I gag.
“The RVs,” the detective calls out. “Someone’s crapper crapped out.”
My eyes water. I stop in my step even though it isn’t my policy to talk to strange men in strange parking lots. But he is a cop, which means . . . nothing. I love my uncle, but cops can be worse than the monsters who attack young women in parking lots like this. I have protection, the can of Mace in my glove box, but that will do as much for me right now as a flux capacitor.
“And you are . . . ?” he asks.
“Michaela Lambert.”
He offers his hand. “Nice meeting you, Miss Lambert.”
The detective’s hands are supple. He believes in lotion and exfoliation.
“How can you stand this?” My face twists, and I take in air through clenched teeth.
“I’m used to bullshit, Miss Lambert. Folks shovel it in my direction all the time.”
“Guess we’re all warriors in our own way.”
“You knew Nadia?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Just met her on Thursday. I’m doing—was doing, still doing—a project for her.”
“Uh-huh.” He pulls a little notepad from his jacket pocket. “What kind of project?”
I give him the elevator speech that Chris drills into every employee. What is the Memory Bank? Why is a memory bank so special? How can a memory bank change your life and honor the lives of those you’ve lost?
Detective Winchester simply writes in his pad. “Did Nadia seem distressed or . . . uneven during your time together?”
I think back to Thursday morning. The old woman’s eyes had sparkled as she talked about the travel journal, about the Japanese map, about the collector’s edition of Anna Karenina. She was chatty and lively as we toured the shop, and she cracked jokes as we stood in the basement with its white powder and yellowing plastic.
“She was chipper,” I tell the detective. “Sad that she was losing her memory but excited that I’d be working with her to preserve some special experiences.”
Interest sparks in his eyes. “Special experiences . . . got it. Back on Thursday, what time did you arrive to the store?”
“Around eleven that morning.”
“And you left . . . ?”
“That first time, I left a little before noon. She told me to come back at five that evening. She’d planned to close the shop and help me get started.” I tell him about going home for an hour or so, then seeing a movie at the theater across the street and shopping in the mall. “After shopping, I walked to my car—”
“When?”
“After four o’clock. I came out of the mall and saw all the emergency vehicles here.”
“Do you have a movie ticket stub or receipt from shopping?”
I blink at him, and my heart beats one strong boom, and then it dies. “Am I a suspect?”
“Movie ticket stub or receipt.”
My face numbs as I thrust my hand into my bag. “Umm . . . I . . .” My fingers slip around my wallet, a hairbrush, my digital recorder, a tampon . . . “They’re in here somewhere . . .”
He watches my hand move around in my bag. “If you can’t find it now, find it tonight and send me a picture.” He points his pen across the street. “You said that theater, correct?”
“Yes.” My hand continues to scour the depths of my bag. That stub has to be here. “Am I . . . ? Did I . . . ? But didn’t she . . . suicide?”
“It appears that way,” he says.
“Even though she pushed the button on her medic-alert bracelet?”
“Who told you that she pushed the button on her medic-alert bracelet?”
I freeze. “I . . . can’t remember. I barely know anyone’s names here.”
“I smell bullshit.” Detective Winchester’s eyes peck at my face, my shoulders, my hand still lost in my bag. “Ms. Denham is dead. Why are you still here?”
“She paid for the bank, and it isn’t cheap. I’m told that her family still wants it.” I try to swallow, but a ball of fear lodges in my throat. My voice is quivering. I’m terrified, and yet I haven’t done anything wrong.
“Her family,” he says. “Meaning . . .”
“Her son. I think his name is Dexter.” A lie—I know his name is Dexter.
“And what do you know about Dexter?”
“Not much. Anna, the woman who owns the diner? She told me that he’s a photographer. Riley says that he’s not around much. He was here today, though. Right now, it seems that he’s angry at Riley for something, I guess. Other than that . . .”
“If I were to go into the store,” the detective says, “and find out that some things are missing, I wouldn’t find those missing things in your car, would I?”
I shake my head so fast that its motion tilts the earth’s axis by an inch. “Why would I . . . ? And really, there’s nothing valuable in there. At least, not valuable enough to kill someone for.”
He eyes me. “The land on which it sits is worth millions, though. A lot of people would kill to have it.”
“I wouldn’t—I’m not into commercial property.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Maybe not property, but I bet you’re into money. And someone interested in this land could’ve paid you to do a job.”
“A job? You mean a hit? You think I’m a—” My laugh sounds like the clang of pots in a church sanctuary, as jarring to me as it is to the cop. “Just so you know, my uncle is Bryan Lambert. He runs the Missing Persons Unit over at Pacific Station. And my grandfather—Bryan’s and my father’s father—was a sergeant at Southwest.”
“My bad.” He grins, but malice rests in his eyes. “I didn’t know that people with law-enforcement families couldn’t break the law.”
My skin hurts. His words swarm like horseflies. “That’s . . . that’s not what I mean.”
“I know your uncle. I still need you to find that movie stub, though.”
“Okay.”
“And if you notice anything strange—”
“Have you actually seen the inside of Beautiful Things?”
He holds out a business card. “Strangers, any interesting conversations, I’d like to know.”
My hands shake as I take that card.
“Anything else?”
I blurt, “Nadia was jumped back in October.”
He gazes at me, waits for more.
“No one was arrested, I believe.”
“Anything else?”
“There was someone here earlier. A white guy—he’s not a normal fixture around here,” I say. Then I describe the man who ate breakfast at Anna’s Place, the one she thought to be Weller’s spy.
Detective Winchester flips back a page in his steno pad. “According to my notes, you’ve been working here all of . . . three days, since Thursday. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“So how do you know he’s not a normal fixture?”
My tongue feels fat and stupid in my mouth, but my mind has finally shaken off its fear. “Then why did you ask me to tell you to report anything or anyone strange if three days is not enough time for me to make that determination?”
He grins, and this time, the lights in his eyes dance. “Good night, Miss Lambert. Give Lieutenant Lambert my regards. Oh, may I have your number in case I have any other questions?” He chuckles. “In case. No, I have lots of questions.”
My voice quavers as I recite my cell-phone number.
“I’ll be in touch.”
I offer him a “good night” and shuffle to my car, the stink of human waste blossoming with each step.
“You parked far,” he shouts at my back.
“I’m a crappy driver,” I shout over my shoulder. “This way, no one gets hurt.”
A minute later, I’m behind the steering wheel of my car. But the weight of . . . him still cramps me in my own space. Wrung out, that’s how I feel right now.
Detective Winchester hasn’t moved from his spot beneath the light. He isn’t watching me. He’s watching the store. Watching the store as though some secret is buried somewhere between the busted jukebox and the cracked-cover journals of mezzo-sopranos.
As I turn left onto King Boulevard, my phone buzzes with a text—Detective Winchester.
What if I were to tell you . . .
Tell me what?
I watch ellipses bubble . . .
. . . that someone says . . .
Says what?
Ohmigod. I’m shaking so much that I pull into a 7-Eleven parking lot . . .
. . . they saw the man you described leave the store right before Nadia’s body was discovered?
15.
Detective Winchester doesn’t suspect me of killing Nadia.
Thank you, God!
Because I am many things.
Smart.
Curious.
Scattered at times, even.
But I am a dolphin—dolphins don’t kill.
The man in the diner, though . . .
Was I that close to a possible murderer? What if he returns?
Who saw him that night?
I tap the detective’s phone number as the world brightens around me.
His line rings . . . rings . . .
“You can’t text me shit like that and not answer!” I shout into the void.
Finally, the line quits ringing and his voice mail message plays. His calm, recorded voice tells me to leave a message.
At the beep, word vomit pours from my mouth: who said that, danger, am I in danger, description, police artist, surveillance, protection, please call me.
Does Anna know? What do I do now?
Drizzle covers my windshield. It’s the kind of rain that I hate, the not-enough kind of rain that makes the roads slippery, the slip-and-slide kind of rain that abetted my father’s car slamming into the ass of that trash truck. And now, my stomach clenches. I’m already panicking, and I tell myself to loosen my grip around the steering wheel.
I can’t, though.
Car headlights creep behind me as I leave the 7-Eleven parking lot. Because of Winchester’s text and my frantic voice mail, I’ve been distracted, and now, I can’t see the driver of this car. Whoever it is drives so close to me that the reflection in the rearview mirror is a glare of light. Whoever it is must see my hands, white-knuckled and squeezing the steering wheel.
I veer left and turn onto Coliseum Road.
The car behind me also turns left onto Coliseum Road.
Together, we head into the grove of densely packed apartment buildings.
At the light, King Boulevard again, I turn into the grocery store parking lot.
The car behind me also turns into the grocery store parking lot and leaves the lot just as I have to drive north on La Brea Avenue.
I’m being followed.
I snake from the right lane to the left. At the last minute, I gun the engine and race through the yellow signal at La Brea and Jefferson. The Benz’s ass fishtails, but the tires snatch back their grip to keep me from hydroplaning.
The car behind me lurches through the intersection and runs the red light.
