What Never Happened, page 19
“Is that a yes?” I ask. “Will you be my date tonight?”
She nods and her eyes sparkle.
“Let’s get dressed.” I help her stand. “Let’s plan to leave at . . . five o’clock.”
“You ain’t got to tell me twice.” She sashays to her bedroom.
I pop back down the stairs, open my laptop, then launch my favorite nineties R & B playlist. First song: Destiny’s Child and “Bills, Bills, Bills.” I paw through my clothes as nineties divas sing. Sexy black tonight. These pants and this halter top. It’s fifty degrees out and misty, but that’s what jackets—
Upstairs, glass breaks.
Gwen yelps.
Is she pregaming with another martini—
A thud.
I freeze in place as Coko from SWV sings about rain.
“Auntie,” I shout, “you drop something?”
No response.
I pause SWV and listen.
Nothing.
I pull up the halter top and slip on my flip-flops. I shout, “I’m coming,” then hurry up the stairs, heart in my chest, hoping that thud wasn’t my aunt collapsing.
Gwen stands in the doorway of her bedroom, her eyes shiny with fear.
“What happened?” I ask.
Her mouth moves but she can’t speak. She hands me the fireplace poker.
It’s like that?
I grip the heavy iron weapon, trembling like I’ve guzzled too many cups of coffee. My heart flutters from that same caffeine-high except that I’ve had no caffeine today.
I creep closer to the kitchen. Closer . . . closer . . .
Glass shards sparkle against the linoleum. Cold air blows in through a newly opened window square above the plywood still standing in for the broken bottom pane. My eyes peck over the sharp debris in search of the heavy object that thudded . . .
That. The forty-ounce Mickey’s beer bottle beneath the dishwasher. A piece of paper sticks from the bottle’s mouth.
What the hell?
After taking pictures of the broken glass and the beer bottle beneath the dishwasher, I grab a pair of latex dishwashing gloves and carefully retrieve the bottle with two fingers, one at the top and one at the bottom.
This is evidence.
I ease the note from the bottle’s mouth and grimace as the stink of old beer fills my nose. I use the same care to carefully open the note, and I gasp at the green-inked handwriting there.
THIS HOUSE IS OURS!!!
21.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
“Who threw that?” Gwen clutches the bedpost as though it’s keeping her from drowning.
I push the hair away from my face. “Don’t know, Auntie.”
“Why’d they throw it?” she asks, her eyes manic. “What did you do now?”
I don’t answer her questions because I’ve answered three times already, and my responses will never change.
I don’t know why they threw it.
I haven’t done anything.
“Answer me,” she shouts.
My heart leaps into my throat, and I shout back, “I haven’t done anything.”
“Bull,” she spits. “You come here—just like you all came here before—and everything goes to shit. You’re gonna get me killed just like . . .” She clamps her lips, swallowing her accusation.
She doesn’t have to complete that sentence, because I already know what she’s thinking. You’re gonna get me killed just like Reggie, Al, and Langston.
She plops on the bed. “Who they think they are? This house is my house.”
No, Gwen. This house is my house, no matter how many times she says this, no matter how many copies of titles and deeds she steals from my boxes, no matter how many times she breaks a window or throws a bottle, no matter—
“When are the deputies getting here?” she asks.
Light-headed, I lean against the doorframe. “The dispatcher said they’ll get here as soon as they can.”
She glares at me, accusing me of . . . what? Not protecting her? Of surviving twenty years ago? A small part of me remains upright, remembering Gwen’s inauthentic umbrage back in the day, the huffing and puffing even though she’d been a creator of chaos. And now, it’s possible that she paid someone to throw the bottle through the glass pane just to scare me, just to hold something over me, just to take back the house that doesn’t belong to her.
To make me return to Los Angeles.
Just like twenty years ago, she wants me back in LA.
She’s always kept the good stuff for herself, this island included. She found Catalina Island and never wanted to share it with my father and, now, me. This has always been Gwen’s way, sneaking in through the cracks and stealing all the shiny things, hoarding trinkets and talismans like dragons hoard runes and gold, then handing the junk off to her partners in crime. I’d bet my life that her BFF’s bedroom is bursting with emerald brooches, expensive silk robes, and ornate letter openers.
As we wait for the deputies to arrive, I take more pictures of the broken glass on the kitchen floor, the violated back door, and the Mickey’s beer bottle. I retrieve my laptop and bring it to the living room.
THIS HOUSE IS OURS!!!
Who is “ours”?
The people who killed my family?
I search the few digital files I have on my family’s case. That night and days afterward, the forensic investigators collected cell phones and charging cords. One fired .40-caliber casing. Keys, bloodstained clothes, different forms of identification, blood . . . no knife.
I search the PDFs of court transcripts.
No knife mentioned being found in those exhibits.
Who found that knife, and where had it been all that time?
Aunt Gwen shuffles to the kitchen, considers the mess on the floor, then shuffles back to her bedroom.
I toggle over to the archives for the Avalon Breeze and search the sheriff’s log from late June 2001 to the first week of July, since the murders occurred on June 23 . . . except there are no sheriff’s logs in those issues. There are no mentions of the murders in any issue, and it’s like my family came and went like every other family on vacation. The only proof that the Webers lived briefly on this island? The deed to this house.
More information lives in the boxes stacked inside my parents’ bedroom.
I stand at that closed door, but I won’t reach for the doorknob. I don’t wanna step into that space. Right now, my tank is empty.
An hour passes without a deputy standing in my kitchen. From the living room television, a woman’s voice reports on the doom sweeping the globe; but right now, I care about only the doom sweeping this island.
Someone knocks on the front door.
A deputy with a smooth olive face and a crew cut, wearing khaki green pants and a long-sleeved khaki shirt, stands on the porch. The name beneath his gold star says P. SANTOS. He looks at the steno pad in his hands, then looks back at me. “Are you Colette Weber?” A sheriff’s department Jeep sits in the middle of Beacon Street.
I offer a grateful smile. “Yes. Thank you for coming.”
A minute later, he’s standing in the kitchen, surveying the vandalism.
Gwen shuffles in to join us. “You see what they done, Petey?”
“I see it, Miss Gwen.” He offers her a hug. “You okay?” There’s true concern in his eyes.
“No, I’m not okay.” She shoots me a glare. “I’ve just been unsettled lately.”
“We’re all feeling that, Miss Gwen.” Santos turns to me. “Did you see who threw it?”
I shake my head. “I was downstairs getting ready for dinner.”
“I was in my room,” Gwen adds. “Not expecting none of this.”
Santos scribbles into his pad. “Any reason someone would do this? Gwen, I’m asking you more than Colette here.”
He knows her, too.
“I don’t know nothing, Petey,” she says, adopting the little-old-lady stoop. “I’m not out in them streets like I used to be.” A teardrop rolls down her cheek, and she swipes it away.
Deputy Santos stares at her a second more, then grunts.
“There’s a note.” I point at the bottle. “The asshole kinda says it.” I offer Deputy Santos a pair of dishwashing gloves.
He slips on his own pair of latex gloves, then lifts the bottle as carefully as I did. He eases the note from the bottle’s mouth.
THIS HOUSE IS OURS!!!
The deputy’s jaw works this way and that. “Do you know who ‘ours’ could be?”
I shake my head.
He looks to Gwen. She’s staring out the kitchen window above the sink.
His shoulder radio crackles and buzzes as he takes pictures of the broken windowpane, the glass on the floor, and the beer bottle.
Blood fizzes in my veins and makes my skin hurt. I close my eyes and try to will the crackles and buzzes and blurps and beeps to stop.
“You okay?” Santos’s voice pulls me back to the kitchen.
“Someone followed me home Monday night,” I say. “Crept around outside. I thought I was imagining it but . . .” I wave a hand at the glass. “Guess not.”
Santos squints at me. “Did you see this person?”
How is he intending “this” to sound? Cuz right now, “this” sounds like he doesn’t believe that someone exists.
“Tall,” I say. “Thin build. Wore a dark hoodie.”
He’s not writing any of this down in his little pad. Why isn’t he writing this down?
“Could it be someone you know?” he asks. “Like an old boyfriend or . . . ?”
Like Micah? “I don’t know, Deputy Santos. Like I said, he wore—”
“A hoodie, got it.” He scribbles into his pad, then pushes out a breath.
Has Gwen told him that I’ve lost my mind before and that I’ve destroyed someone’s property and broken his nose with a coffee mug? How could I be anyone’s victim?
Eventually, Deputy Santos pops down the porch steps and hops into his Jeep. He has the beer bottle and note in a paper evidence bag. “You can come in tomorrow to pick up a copy of the report. Add any details you may be forgetting right now.” He tosses a wave and rolls back down Beacon Street.
And that’s that.
In the kitchen, I sweep and vacuum the kitchen floor to suck up any remaining shards of glass.
Gwen watches me from the doorway, her hand twisting around the neck of her sweater.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “The handyman is gonna replace the door.”
Gwen waggles her head. “He’s just coming to do what he needs to do.”
“Who is coming to do . . . ?”
“Harper.”
I snort and wrap the vacuum cleaner cord around its handle. “What does he have to do with anything? What does he have to do with this house?”
Gwen purses her lips. “He told me, right before they took him to jail, that he was gonna get me back for all that we did to him. He said that he’d take everything that I loved just like we’d taken everything that he loved—and he knew that I loved this house more than anything.”
I shake my head. “Would he risk going to jail after just getting out of jail? And the note says, ‘This house is ours’? This house was never his. He didn’t own the house before we bought it. No, Auntie—this has nothing to do with Harper.”
But one can never be sure about some things. Like . . . the whereabouts of a recently freed man who’d been wrongly convicted for three murders.
Alessandra Verascio, “Avalon’s #1 Realtor” and the woman whose business card I found in both Paula Paulsen’s house and Felicity Amador’s cottage, hasn’t called me back. After I order delivery from Mrs. T’s Chinese Kitchen, I search the property records for Consuela Barraza’s two-story home at 30671 Eucalyptus Avenue. The other dead old woman’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom “stunner” was listed by Alessandra Verascio earlier this week.
The dead old woman found in the tent—Vera Johansen. Her classic Catalina cottage was listed by Alessandra last week.
I toggle over to a new tab and search on Alessandra Verascio.
Six pages of results. The images offer a shot of the woman on the business card. But then, there’s also an image of a willowy brunette striking a folded-arms pose—the caption reads, “#1 Realtor Helen Nilsen.” Flynn’s mother. A few quick searches tell me that before joining Verascio’s company fifteen years ago, Helen Nilsen ran her own real estate company—Helen of Avalon.
But who is Alessandra Verascio?
More search results offer an image of a redhead using big scissors to cut a red ribbon at a hospital opening. There’s another image of a brunette holding a Maltese puppy.
Which woman is Alessandra?
I image search the business card photo.
A single page of results.
First hit: Smiling Latina woman—BUSINESS.
That’s the tag associated with this . . . stock photograph.
For $500, I can purchase a large image of this smiling Latina with her arms crossed, or an image of her pointing at something on a computer screen, or an image of her standing at a conference room table. This physical representation of Alessandra Verascio doesn’t exist as a real-woman real estate agent living on Catalina Island.
Who’s the real Alessandra—and why isn’t her picture on this business card?
More than that . . .
How is it that she’s listing all the houses of Avalon’s most recent dead?
The Obituary of Felicity Socorro Villeda Amador
July 26, 1932—March 11, 2020
Felicity Socorro Amador (née Villeda) never met a deviled egg she didn’t like.
She owned two chickens, Cuco and Lucy, and a rooster named Cluckle to source her own eggs because grocery store eggs tasted like slick snot. After a fox snuck into her henhouse and killed Cuco and Lucy, Felicity ordered fresh eggs by mail. She believed in Miracle Whip and Gulden’s mustard. Kosher salt was the secret to life. So was nutmeg, but not too much. She wore a smock embroidered with the title, “La Reina del Huevo Relleno.”
Yes: Felicity was the Queen of Deviled Eggs.
Born in Mexico City, Felicity married Esteban Amador in 1948. Together, they came to America and settled in Avalon, California, in 1950. A skilled builder, Esteban (called a “lovely idiot” by his beloved bride) could build a chicken coop without a plan, and he built the house on Clemente Street with leftover lumber and supplies from the island’s construction companies. Together, Esteban and Felicity had one daughter, Socorro, previously deceased. Her beloved niece, Linda, and great-nephew, Mateo, looked after Felicity once Esteban died in 1993.
Felicity loved Tito Puente and Vicente Fernández, Lloyd’s caramel apples, and the Haypress Pond. On Sundays after Mass, she’d often ride a private shuttle to the pond to enjoy fruit plates and chicharrones. She’d sit on that red bench with her little portable boom box and listen to Tito and Vicente. After Esteban’s death, she bedded many men with Tito’s thick silver hair or Vicente’s exquisite mustache. Alas, she never made those great men swoon and fall under her spell—and this was her only lamentation in life.
Even after being diagnosed with lung cancer, Felicity continued to teach LA-style salsa at the VFW. She was teaching “On 1” on the Saturday morning before she passed.
Visitation will be held at Saint Catherine of Alexandria at a later date to be announced.
22.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Even though fear bucked through me, sleep did come for me tonight. Earlier, before collapsing across the mattress, I took a shower, helped Gwen with her nighttime medications, then grabbed the second fireplace poker and slipped it beside my mattress.
Ted Archer called back. “I don’t have the bandwidth to keep track of a free man, Colette, and since he didn’t do it, he has no probation officer to report to.”
Gwen claimed that Harper vowed to destroy what she loved the most—and Gwen loved this house more than she loved anyone, especially me.
Which meant . . . the vandal could be Harper Hemphill.
Great.
I crumpled to the mattress, then, and started snoring almost immediately. But . . .
WHIR WHIR WHIR!
A car alarm.
And now, my eyes are open. I look at the clock on my phone: 1:37 a.m.
The soft globe of streetlamp light shines behind the sheet curtain. There are no creaks, no rumbles, no rustling. Just . . .
WHIR WHIR WHIR!
I crawl over to the window. Was that alarm on our neighbor’s Nissan Pathfinder—
Chirp chirp.
Silence.
But what is that? That sound?
A roar like . . . an airplane but not that big . . . wheels, skrrr . . . a skateboard.
Who would be skating at this time of—
Mateo!
I can’t see anyone from this window. I just hear wheels on the sidewalk, the patter of feet, the thump of a wooden board . . . Why is he here? Does he know that I followed him? That I think he may be responsible for Felicity?
Back and forth, he goes. Up the sidewalk. Down the sidewalk . . . skrr . . . up . . . down . . . thump . . . skrr . . . then . . . silence.
I look to my phone.
It’s 1:50 a.m.
I creep up to the living room to peek out the window.
Can’t see anyone.
I tiptoe back down to peek out the sitting room window.
Can’t see anyone.
I return to my bedroom window.
Finally: silence.
I light a lavender candle, crawl back to the mattress, and settle back under the comforter. My eyelids grow heavy again, and I’m thankful that my brain is still determined to—
WHIR WHIR WHIR!
All night, whir chirp whir chirp until the Sunday sky turns pink with new sunlight.
Deputy Santos hasn’t spoken yet.
“I tried to print it online,” I explain, “but every link is broken.” I hand him another police report. “This one’s on the phone call from Wednesday afternoon. Does no one follow up on crime reports around here?”
“People just chalk it up to kids being kids,” he says. “Joking around. Harmless fun.”
