Cut to the Quick (8 page)

“I don’t.” She felt her cheeks color with the lie. She tried not to smile, but he was looking at her in that crazy way that he knew always made her crack up. Her lips parted, revealing her overbite. She pressed her tongue against the gap between her front teeth, which she did when she was nervous. That was precisely where he was looking. Men. Simpleminded bastards.

“I never get to see your legs anymore.”

She raised her index finger, warning him, her nails on her utilitarian hand short and unvarnished.

He grabbed her finger. When she tried to pull away, he held tight, that silly grin still on his long face. She jerked again and he let go.

“Two glasses of red wine. Went straight to your head. You’re a cheap date.”

He nudged her melted margarita toward her. “You’ve hardly touched your drink.”

“Can’t let my guard down with you. You’re trouble.”

“Some people live for that kind of trouble.” He sidled closer on the barstool until his knees were touching hers. “I remember you getting loose, Nan. Sometimes those memories warm my cold nights.”

“Why do we have to go there? Seems like lately we can’t have a drink together without going to that place.”

“What place is that, Nan?”

“Now you’re annoying me.”

He sat straight, her comment having had the effect of
a slap. “I don’t want to
annoy
you. I thought we were having fun. Guess I forgot who I was with.”

Ouch
. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to come off so strong. It’s just—”

“We have to work together. I know. What we had was in the past. You want to ignore this thing, even though it’s like an elephant in the room.

“Nan, we’ve both been given second chances in life. Before I was injured, I thought I understood what you had gone through. But until you see your own blood spilling out of you at the hand of some asshole … you can’t really comprehend. And what I went through was small compared to what happened to you. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but life is short.”

“So what are you saying? We should hop into bed because tomorrow we might die?”

He laughed joylessly. “Gotta hand it to ya, Vining. You can be one tough broad.”

He slid off the stool and set enough money on the bar to pay for both of them. “I’m happy to buy your dinner. Don’t worry. No obligation. See you tomorrow.”

She didn’t go after him. She didn’t run after men. That included when her ex-husband had walked out on her and two-year-old Emily.

She waited until he had had time to retrieve his car before she left.

SEVEN

T
raffic on
the curvy old Pasadena Freeway was light. Vining exited at Avenue 43, five miles northeast of downtown L.A. and eight from the Pasadena police station. She turned north at the Taco Fiesta stand, closed for the night, and headed into Mt. Washington, the hilly Los Angeles neighborhood known as the poor man’s Bel Air.

The dwellings changed as she went up and up, traveling winding, aging streets. Social class was displayed as clearly as strata in a wind- and water-eroded canyon. The homes in the flatlands, closest to the freeway, were modest bungalows, many with iron bars over the windows. Fences protected tiny yards strewn with toys and bicycles. Icicle Christmas lights were draped from roof eaves year-round. Many homes were painted turquoise and salmon, colors inspired by the residents’ Mexican and Central American palette.

Climbing higher, woodsy, funky cottages attested to the area’s history as an artist’s haven. Farther still, homes grew larger as the view became more expansive. On the flatlands at the top of the mountain were grand old mansions. Mt. Washington was the first home of Los Angeles’s nascent movie industry. Charlie Chaplin was a frequent guest of the Mt. Washington Hotel, built upon a sprawling property at the crest. The mission-style buildings
are now home to the international headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship.

When Vining was recovering from her injuries, she’d take long walks around Mt. Washington, mostly because her grandmother said she should. She resumed her tough workouts at the gym as soon as she was able, but Granny advocated open, if not necessarily fresh, air to elevate her spirits. Her grandmother saw something she didn’t—her rage had gotten the better of her. Vining kept her appointments with the department-appointed shrink and she walked.

She did enjoy hiking to a lookout point that had a sweeping view of the hindquarters of L.A., above the noise, the hustle and bustle, the bad guys, the victims. It gave her clarity to step away for a few moments and let the quiet seep beneath her skin, beneath her scars. But rather than mitigate her rage, it sucked out the moisture and weakness, crystallizing it into something pure and powerful. It lodged beneath her skin, like a bullet too close to a vital artery to risk removal. There it resided, waiting until her system pushed it closer to the surface or dangerously closer to the artery.

Vining turned right onto Stella Place, her street near the middle of the mountain. It was one of the few remaining intact specimens of a 1960’s development of multilevel homes clinging to the hillside on cantilevers. She and Wes had stretched to buy the house when they were first married. He had since moved onward and upward with a younger wife, newer kids, and a happening McMansion in unapologetically white-bread Calabasas, thirty miles away in the hills east of Malibu.

Vining watched the garage door open. After driving inside, she watched it close, making sure no one slipped in behind her. Unlocking and opening the door into the
house set off the prealarm. She punched the codes to reset it.

The house seemed unusually quiet without Emily. She was a quiet child anyway, her hobbies tending toward the bookish, her domain the former rumpus room downstairs, but still Vining felt the absence of her energy. She let her mind wander to a time in the not-so-distant future when Emily would leave for college and Vining would then have nothing in her life but her job. And that bullet of rage.

The house was stifling. Tossing her jacket over the back of a dinette chair, she walked through the kitchen and family room. In the living room, she clicked on the central air. It hummed to life, sending out refreshing coolness. She yanked the drapes back, removed the steel pin that secured the sliding glass doors, slid the doors open, and walked onto the balcony. The daytime heat had ceded to the cool of night. That morning, Vining had French-braided her long, dark hair and pinned it into a coil at the back of her head. She unfastened the top two buttons of her shirt, spread the collar open to the cool air, and ran her fingers over her damp neck, brushing the indentation of her scar.

The crickets loved the late-summer heat. Their songs rose in a great chorus from her sloping, ragged backyard and the dried brush and chaparral beyond the chain-link fence. The heat made the city lights shimmer in spite of the smog. Vining had a bird’s-eye view of the unglamorous side of downtown L.A. and points southwest: functional government facilities, working-class and poor neighborhoods, and the Pasadena Freeway. It wasn’t a multimillion-dollar view, as from Mulholland Drive, with a blanket of lights stretching to the ocean, but it was pretty at night nonetheless. She liked being above it all and able to see.

As she turned to go inside, she ran her hand across wind chimes that were hanging from a steel arm attached to the wall beside the glass door. The arm had once supported a hanging plant, one of many potted plants around the house that she and Wes had nurtured. Vining had had lots of time then to fuss with things like houseplants. Now anything green that survived did so through blind life force.

The wind chimes had been a Christmas gift from Wes and his wife Kaitlyn a few years back. A description on the box said they were hand-tuned and had a diagram of the musical notes they played. They looked expensive and were totally useless, much like Vining’s view of Kaitlyn, who had likely selected the gift. Keeping on top of gifts and celebrations seemed part of stay-at-home mom Kaitlyn’s job. The chimes did make nice music when the wind blew, Vining had to admit. However, over the past three months, they’d taken on a life of their own, sounding when there was no wind at all.

Emily had a theory. “It’s Frankie, Mom.” She was referring to the female LAPD vice officer whose battered body had been dumped by the Colorado Street Bridge last June. While working the case, Vining had developed an uncanny relationship with the dead officer, one that suggested a paranormal connection. It was unsettling for Vining and unwelcome. She didn’t want to believe in ghosts.

As the last musical notes faded into the air, and the background noise of crickets’ songs again became prominent, Vining thought of Frankie. She again headed inside. Before she stepped over the threshold, she heard a clear, high “ding” produced by two of the smaller steel tubes. She looked back to see the two tubes swaying, ringing once more before slowing to a stop.

Vining stared at the chimes.

Do it again
.

They never did, of course. Never on demand. Their silence seemed almost willful.

Inside the house, the answering machine on the kitchen counter showed two messages. Vining began going through her nightly routine of putting her weapons to bed.

She took the Glock .40 from the holster attached to her belt and ejected the magazine, which she stashed in a kitchen drawer behind tea towels. The gun went inside an empty box of Count Chocula cereal in a cabinet. The .32-caliber Walther PPK that she wore in an ankle holster would go beneath her bed pillow, loaded. The rest of her arsenal—Winchester Model 70 Featherweight, Mossberg 500, and Smith and Wesson .38—was locked inside a gun safe. Every month, she and Em took all the weapons for a workout at the PPD gun range in Eaton Canyon. Afterward, they’d grab a bite and spend the rest of the day in the garage, cleaning and oiling the guns and talking until late. It was their tradition.

She grabbed a new box of Count Chocula, pulled apart the inner liner, and ate a handful as she leaned against the sink listening to her phone messages. She doubted that either was from Emily, who had already checked in.

The first message was from her grandmother, wondering how she was doing without Emily and in light of the big double homicide that was all over the news. Vining was Nanette Brown’s namesake and proud to carry the flag. She smiled, appreciating the call, wistful as she listened to the tremor of age in Granny’s voice, which sounded more pronounced in the recording than in person.

The first syllables of the second message, “Hi, Cutie, haven’t heard from you in a while,” made Vining shove her hand angrily into the box. Chocolate morsels spilled from her fingers as she crammed cereal into her mouth.
Her mother, Patsy Brightly, never called unless she wanted something, even if that something was to assuage her own anxiety. This time, Patsy, a serial bride with four marriages under her belt, wanted something more tangible: Vining on a double date with her latest flame, Harvey, and his newly single son. Vining’s younger sister ducked such requests from their mother. Stephanie’s husband and children gave her a built-in excuse.

“Wouldn’t that be adorable?” Patsy gushed. “Mother and daughter marry father and son? I told you about Harvey Torma. He’s a regional manager for a company that makes polystyrene foam packaging.”

Vining made a face at the chemically imbued description. “Like you have a clue, Mom.”

Patsy was fifty-one but could pass for thirty-nine in the right light. She invested hard work in keeping her figure. Her voice on the answering machine had that life-of-the-party lilt she poured on in the presence of men or others she wanted to impress. She had never learned that she didn’t have to work so hard for the men. They’d come around anyway, at least until they got what they wanted.

Vining immediately felt guilty for having such mean thoughts about her mother.

“Patsy’s just being Patsy,” she said aloud. “She doesn’t really think you’re a slave that she bought and paid for by giving birth to you.”

Patsy went on. “Things are getting serious between Harvey and me. I’m even taking golf lessons. Me, a golfer. Can you imagine?”

Vining deleted the message before she’d heard it all. She put the cereal away and dusted her palms. She gave Granny a quick call to let her know she was okay. She’d call her mother tomorrow. She could delay no more than
twenty-four hours before Patsy would call again and then keep calling.

In her bathroom, she hooked the hanger with her suit jacket on a towel rack, where the steam from her morning shower would freshen it. She threw her blouse in the hamper and examined her slacks to see if she could wear them once more before a trip to the dry cleaners. Using her fingernail to scratch something off the fabric, she decided she could and hung them beside the jacket.

Sitting on the bed, she unclasped her ankle holster and put the Walther PPK to bed, literally, beneath her pillow. She had once resisted being one of those paranoid cops who kept arsenals in their homes, loaded weapons at the ready. T. B. Mann had changed that. She’d grown accustomed to the slight, reassuring hardness of the Walther beneath her pillow. The princess and the pea. Only this princess would blow T. B. Mann’s head off if she had the chance.

She’d said as much, promised herself as much, dangled sweet vengeance in front of herself like chocolate cake in front of a diabetic—the very thing that would fulfill her would likely kill her. Yet over the past few months, she’d put her rage on ice. She’d let her incipient private investigation into other possible victims of T. B. Mann go dormant. She hadn’t even sufficiently followed the one promising lead she’d turned up: Johnna Alwin, a Tucson police detective murdered a few years ago under circumstances that were jarringly like Vining’s ambush.

Peeling off her panty hose, finally free of that cloying second skin, soaked with perspiration after the hot day, she carried them into the bathroom and shoved them into a net bag that already held several other pairs. She seriously had to do her laundry. She took off her bra and grabbed her light summer bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door.