Grave Endings (2 page)

“Molly—”

“I won't make a scene. I want to tell him what she was like, Andy. I want him to
know.
” My fists were clenched again. Hate for Roland “Randy” Creeley twisted in my stomach.

Connors put a hand on my shoulder. “Creeley was dead when we found him, Molly. He overdosed last night.”

“Gee, how sad.”

“Yeah.”

My grandmother, Bubbie G, says that anger is like a thorn in the heart. I felt a surge of satisfaction that disappeared by the time I shut the door. With Creeley dead, I'd never achieve the closure I'd been seeking all these years.

The thorn was still there.

I imagined Aggie's parents would feel the same when Connors told them.

two

Monday, February 16. 9:12 A.M. Intersection of De
Longpre Avenue and Ivar Avenue. Angry that a man
spit on her vehicle, a woman chased the man on
foot on the parkway and tried to hit him with a set
of jumper cables. The suspect, turned victim, told police he turned his head to avoid being struck by the
cables. The woman attacker was described as a 35-year-old, standing five feet four inches and weighing
135 pounds.
(Hollywood)

VINCE PORTER NARROWED HIS BLUE EYES FOR EFFECT and scowled at me across a desk cluttered with stacks of blue binders and folders and six bottles of water lined up like bowling pins.

“What do you mean, why did Creeley have the locket?” he demanded. “Because he took it when he killed your friend, that's why. Probably wanted to make it harder for us to identify the body.”

Porter is in his mid-thirties, six feet plus with the kind of muscular physique that says he works out daily, and not just to meet the LAPD fitness requirements. Add the baby blues and wavy blond hair and substitute a Speedo for the tapered olive green shirt and beige slacks that showed off his flat abs and tight butt, and he could step into an episode of
Baywatch.
He knows it, too, which is why, Zack aside, if it were just Porter and Connors, I'd pick Connors with his receding hairline and bald spot any day.

Porter is one of the Wilshire Division detectives I've been nagging about Aggie's murder. As you can imagine, that hasn't endeared me to him, but our relationship warmed up to tepid several months ago when I proved helpful in an investigation that he and Enrico Hernandez were running. I would have preferred talking to Hernandez, who has more class and less attitude, but he was on vacation. And tepid is better than frigid, which is how I'd characterize my relationship with Wayne Berman, who handled Aggie's murder and has since retired and who never returned any of my calls even before he did.

“But why didn't Creeley
sell
the locket?” I'd been brooding about the locket and Creeley all weekend. “Or pawn it? He could have used the cash to feed his drug habit.”

Porter kneaded his forehead in exaggerated concentration. “Connors says the locket's inscribed to your friend, right? I'm going out on a limb here, but could it be that he didn't want to get nailed for the murder?”

I ignored his sarcasm. “Then why didn't he dump it? Why would he be interested in a locket with an image of Rachel's Tomb?”

“You must have been a joy in school with all those
whys.
” Porter's expression was dour. “Maybe he thought it was his lucky charm. You're the one who said the red thread's supposed to protect people.”

“That's a mystical
Jewish
belief,” I reminded him. “Was Creeley Jewish?”

“No.”

“Then it wouldn't mean anything to him.”

Porter's answer was a shrug.

“By the way, where did they find Creeley?” I asked. “Connors didn't say.”

“What's the difference?”

“Just curious.” I wasn't about to tell Porter about the alternating images that had been running in my head since Connors's visit. Creeley lying in the gutter of a narrow, litter-strewn alley, jerking in the final throes of a drug-induced death. Creeley writhing in his roach-infested apartment. I wasn't sure which one I liked better.

“He was on his bedroom floor,” Porter said. “Does that do it for you? Can I go back to playing detective and earn my salary?”

Obviously, any points I'd earned months ago with Porter had expired. “What was Creeley like?”

“Dead.” Not a hint of a smile.

“Connors told me he was a career criminal.”

“Right.”

“Can I see his jacket?”

“Connors's?”

I had to admit Porter did deadpan well. I dug my nails into my palms. “Creeley's.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you want to see it, anyway?”

We'd graduated from monosyllables to sentences. I supposed that was progress, but Porter's crankiness was beginning to grate. “I'd like to know something about the man who killed Aggie. Is that so hard to understand?”

Porter sighed. “No, it isn't. You wait all these years for us to find the guy who killed your best friend, and then he shows up dead. I'm sorry. I really am.”

His unexpected compassion made my eyes well. I decided I preferred his sarcasm. “I want to know why he did it. Why Aggie.”

“Sometimes there is no big answer. Creeley was a bad guy when he was alive, now he's a
dead
bad guy. That won't bring your friend back, but at least the streets of L.A. are safer. Who knows how many other people he's killed, or would have killed?”

I'd been focused on Aggie and hadn't considered that possibility. “He's a suspect in other murders?”

“Not what I said.”

I leaned forward. “C'mon, Detective Porter. Why can't I see his jacket? He's dead.”

“For one thing, my showing it to you would be a misdemeanor. And like I said, there's nothing in it that will give you the answers you're looking for.”

“Maybe it'll give me some closure.”

“Closure isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It's just a fancy word shrinks use, and ex-girlfriends who like to talk a thing to death.”

I wasn't in the mood for Psychology 101 à la Porter, who probably has a host of exes and is no Dr. Phil. I wished Hernandez were here. Picking up my purse, I stood. “Thanks for your time. If you change your mind—”

“So what exactly do you want to know about Creeley?”

The change of heart surprised me. Either Porter was taking pity on me, or he figured I'd be back to nag him. Probably the latter. I sat down again. “Anything you can tell me. What he looked like, his background.”

Porter opened a manila folder that he removed from the bottom of a stack and held it up so that I couldn't take a peek. “White male, five-eleven, one hundred eighty-two pounds. Brown eyes, blond hair—with a little help from Miss Clairol, is my guess.” He flipped a page. “High school education. No steady job except for a few years, unless you count his street activity.”

“Was he working around the time Aggie was murdered?”

“Yeah.”

“Doing what?” I prodded when Porter didn't say.

“Nothing that would get him into
Forbes.
He wasn't making his mark on society, Blume. He was making
society
his mark.”

I smiled to show I appreciated the witticism. “Can I see his mug shot?”

Porter shook his head. “He was good-looking, if that's what you want to know.
Too
good-looking, according to his daddy. That was Randy's downfall—that plus his dream of becoming the next Brad Pitt.”

“That's in the rap sheet?”

“That's what Roland Creeley senior said when we told him the good news.”

“What about the mother?”

Porter raised his hand and waved good-bye. “Walked out when Randy was nine. Left hubby to take care of Randy and his sister. The sister wasn't even two when Mom skipped. Different lyrics, same old sad refrain. ‘My momma done left meee.' ”

Porter has probably earned the right to be cynical, but I felt a flicker of unwelcome sympathy for the boy whose mother had abandoned him and his family. That's the danger in finding out a person's history.

“Young Randy started early,” Porter said. “Petty theft when he was thirteen. He got probation for that. He was in and out of the system for years. Vandalism, truancy, DUI. Not an impressive report card. Then our hero graduated to felonies.”

“He was convicted?”

“Twice. He did a home robbery at sixteen and spent a year in a juvenile facility.”

“And the second time?”

Porter glanced at the sheet. “Eleven years ago. He did four years at Chino—double what he would've served if he didn't have that first strike.”

So Randy had been released seven years ago, less than a year before Aggie was killed. “Nothing since then?”

“That we know of—until he murdered your friend.” Porter shut the folder. “He probably improved his skills. He had to, if he didn't want to spend the rest of his life as a guest of the state.”

I nodded. California's three-strikes law mandates twenty-five years to life in prison for a third felony conviction. “What was the second strike?”

“A street mugging.”

“Just like with Aggie,” I said, and was treated to another one of Porter's shrugs. “Did he use a knife?”

He'd used a knife on Aggie. The weapon was never found, but my imagination, which has forced details on me that detectives had withheld and that I hadn't really wanted to know (how many times she was stabbed, the location and nature of the wounds, the ultimate cause of death), shows me a long, slender blade and a wood handle, both darkened with her blood.

“He was unarmed,” Porter said. “Otherwise, the judge probably would've tacked on another five years.”

In my dreams, which have resumed in frequency and intensity since Connors's visit, I see Aggie as she looked on that warm July night almost six years ago. I see her wistful smile, the urgency in her deep brown eyes,
Come
with me, Molly,
a few rebellious dark curls that escaped her crocheted navy scrunchy, the silver locket gleaming against the navy of her three-quarter-sleeved cotton sweater. I hear her purposeful tread as she hurries from her car in the darkening night toward a synagogue hall she will never reach where hundreds of women have joined to recite psalms for a young mother stricken with cancer.

In my dreams a man follows her. He is a hulking figure, his face masked in shadows, and there is menace in the stealth of his gait, in the set of his granitelike shoulders. I scream Aggie's name, to warn her, but the sound dies in my throat, and I watch, helpless, bound by shackles of sleep, as he accosts her and drags her into an alley. I see the glint of steel as the blade slices the air, again and again, but even in my dream my subconscious takes pity on me and I see nothing else.

Porter glanced at his watch. “Is that it? Are we done playing twenty questions?”

“I guess.”

I would never be done. I now had a name for that shadowy figure, but still no face. I had questions whose answers had died with Creeley:

Did Aggie hurry when she heard his footsteps, or was she suddenly aware of him looming above her? Did she sense peril, or did he put her off guard by asking for the time or spare change before he attacked? Did he clamp his hand on her mouth to stifle the screams I hear in my head?

“You okay?” Porter asked. “You look a little green.” He sounded uncomfortable, probably trying to figure out what to do if I fainted—or worse, started crying.

“I'm fine,” I said, though my upper lip was beaded with sweat. My legs felt shaky when I stood.

“I know this is rough, Blume, but at least you can put it behind you.”

I could hear in his voice that he was impatient for me to be gone—away from his desk, from the station, out of his life. I also heard, again, what sounded like genuine solicitude, which brought me this close to crying, something I refused to do in front of Porter.

I bit the inside of my lip until the quivering stopped. “By the way, how old was Randy when he died?”

“Thirty.”

Zack's age, and in two months, mine. And Aggie's, if Creeley hadn't killed her. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help thinking about Randy Creeley and the road not taken.

three

I WAS TEMPTED TO GO HOME AND HAVE A GOOD CRY, but I normally collect data for my
Crime Sheet
column on Mondays and Tuesdays, and keeping busy would be therapeutic. After copying material from the Wilshire board, I did my rounds at several other police stations, then picked up Zack from his shul office at a little after two and drove to my brother Judah's Judaica store in a nearby Beverly Boulevard strip mall to select Zack's
kittel.
It's a ceremonial white cotton robe that, like the white of the bride's gown, symbolizes purity. A married male wears a
kittel
on Yom Kippur and at the Pesach (Passover) seder and is buried in it (after a long, happy life, one hopes). Zack would wear his for the first time on our wedding day, a private Yom Kippur that would erase all our sins.

“Another plus for matrimony,” I'd commented last Monday night to my three sisters at our weekly mah-jongg game, earning smiles from Edie and Mindy and a frown from Liora, who was subbing for my sister-in-law, Gitty. Liora is twenty, the youngest of us Blume women. Since her return last June from a year's study at a girls' seminary in Israel much like the one I attended, she's also become the most earnest and pious.

“Don't joke,” she'd warned.

The truth is, I was only half joking. I can't speak for Zack, but I'd amassed a fair number of transgressions over the past few years (many of them in the thou-shalt-not-gossip category) and I welcomed a clean slate.

Judah wasn't in—he teaches two classes at one of the local Jewish high schools—but he had set aside a selection of
kittel
s for Zack, who tried them all on before choosing one with vertical pleats and embroidery at the collar. Sarah, the middle-aged saleswoman Judah had recently hired, was doting on Zack and enjoying the fashion show. So were two other women, one of them a young blonde, who were pretending not to stare. My rabbi, in case I haven't mentioned it, is a hunk. Six feet tall, black hair, a smile that makes my knees weak, gray-blue eyes that see into my soul. I had a fluttery feeling watching him, picturing him standing next to me under the chuppa. Only sixteen more days . . .

“My mom wants to know if you've decided on candlesticks,” Zack said after I had paid for the
kittel.

According to a tradition that Judah says goes all the way back to Adam and Eve, the bride's family provides the
kittel
and the
tallit
(prayer shawl). The groom's family presents the bride with Shabbat candlesticks.

“Not yet. I haven't had a chance to really look.”

I'd planned to look on Sunday, but Connors's revelation had dampened my mood. And if you want to know the truth, I hadn't figured out what to do with the pair my ex in-laws had given me four years ago and that I've been using every Friday, even after Ron moved out. Returning them would be hurtful and rude, but I didn't want to bring them into my new life with Zack. I was considering donating them to an organization that helps needy brides.

The lingering filaments of divorce, I thought as Sarah placed pair after pair of sterling silver candlesticks on the counter in front of me. I looked at more than twenty until I finally found a set I loved with simple, clean square lines, as different as possible from the ornate, filigreed towers sitting in my china closet.

From the Judaica store we drove to a dairy restaurant in another strip mall just a block away. Yes, it's embarrassing, and right out of
L.A. Story,
if you remember the Steve Martin film that skewered us Angelinos, but I wasn't about to leave my Acura in the lot across the street and risk having it towed by the owner of one of the other stores.

We ate our late lunch at an outdoor table. It was a perfect February day—crisp and sunny, with the temperature in the mid-sixties and a mild breeze that pinked my cheeks and justified my large cup of steaming hot chocolate. Not that anything chocolate needs justification, in my opinion.

Most of the other tables were filled—no surprise, since the place is popular with the Orthodox community, especially for those of us who live or work in the Miracle Mile area. The draw is not the ambience: The mall consists of an L-shaped arrangement of ordinary stores that face an always crowded parking lot. You may get an occasional whiff of tantalizing aromas—tomato, cheese, and sausage from the (nonkosher) pizza shop at the far left; fresh bread and pastries from the corner bakery; sautéed onions and grilled steak from the kosher meat restaurant behind you. But the predominant perfume is car exhaust, and the only music you'll hear is the blaring of horns and the rumble of engines accompanied by the angry shouts of people vying for a parking spot. Still, the food is tasty, if not haute cuisine, and it's kosher. And chances are you'll see someone you know, which is part of the fun.

It was a major part of the fun for Aggie and me. Whenever we would come here, which was often, we'd have a contest to see who could identify more people and invent the most outrageous stories about those we didn't know. (The loser paid the tip.) I found myself scanning the people at the other tables. Five I knew by name. Three more looked familiar, but Aggie wouldn't have given me points for those.

I felt a familiar lump in my chest and waited until I was in control before I turned back to Zack.

“Thinking about Aggie?” he said.

My eyes were like leaky faucets. “Everything reminds me of her. I don't mean to be a downer, Zack.”

“You're going through the trauma of her death again, Molly. I'd be worried if you
weren't
grieving.” Leaning across the table, he blotted my eyes with a tissue, a gesture that, given the Orthodox rules, was as close to a caress as he could offer. “I wish I could make things easier for you.”

Last night in my apartment he'd listened to me talk about Aggie for hours. I would have loved to lean against his shoulder, to take comfort in his arms. Solace, not sex. Sometimes the rules are hard to follow.

I took the tissue and blew my nose. “I spent half an hour with Porter and learned almost nothing. I still don't know what Creeley looked like. It probably doesn't make sense, but I need to know.”

Zack wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. “When my friend was murdered on the Jerusalem bus, I checked the papers every day to see the face of the suicide bomber who did it. I wanted to focus my anger on the person responsible for the horror.”

Zack had almost been on that bus. From his somber voice and the distant look in his eyes I knew he was pondering the what-if, reliving the tragedy that had turned his life around and set him on the path to becoming a rabbi.

“Did you ever see the bomber's face?” I asked.

Zack nodded. “He was average-looking, not someone you would've picked out from a crowd and said, ‘That guy's going to blow himself up.' He was twenty-three, my age at the time.”

Another road not taken. “Did seeing it help?”

“A little. Not enough.” He took a sip of coffee. “Doesn't the detective have a mug shot of Creeley?”

“Porter wouldn't let me see it, or Creeley's rap sheet. He
did
toss me a few crumbs.” I repeated what the detective had told me. “I understand why Creeley was afraid to sell the locket. But he's not Jewish. Don't you think it's odd that he held on to it?”

“It's odd,” Zack agreed. “Unless he studied Kabbalah and learned about the significance of the red thread.”

“Oh, please.” I picked at my tuna salad.

“A lot of people are studying Kabbalah, Molly. Jews and non-Jews. It's been getting a lot of press because of celebrities like Madonna and Guy Ritchie.”

“And Roseanne and Sandra Bernhard and Demi Moore. I read
People.
But Creeley was a petty thief and drug addict. How would he end up at a Kabbalah center?”

“Maybe he was looking for spirituality, for something other than drugs to fill a void. What did Porter say?”

“He didn't. He shrugged. He shrugs a lot. I think he enjoys showing off his pecs.” I exaggerated the detective's shoulder movement, and we both laughed, something I hadn't done in days, so it felt especially good.

I worked on my tuna, which I alternated with sips of hot chocolate, and reviewed my conversation with Porter. I was still thinking about it when Zack finished his sandwich and took a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.

“I'm leaning toward ‘Adon Olam' for me,” he said.

My mind was still on Porter. “ ‘Adon Olam'?”

“For the procession? We were going to decide on the songs today, remember? We have to tell the band no later than Wednesday.”

I remembered. “ ‘Adon Olam' is great. I love it.”

“If you're not up to deciding now, I can come to your place tonight, after mah-jongg. Or we can do it tomorrow.”

“No, let's get it over with.”

He raised a brow. “ ‘Let's get it over with'?”

I blushed. “I meant we should decide so we can tell Neil.” The bandleader. “I care about the music, Zack. I was thinking about Creeley. I really
do
love ‘Adon Olam.' ”

“Why don't we hum a few bars,” he said, but a smile played around his lips. “So what's bothering you?”

“For one thing, Creeley had a job around the time Aggie was killed. So why did he mug her?”

“Last I heard, drug habits are expensive, Molly. It's not as if he was a CEO making big money.”

“But Creeley was never violent before. He was unarmed the first time he mugged someone. Why didn't he grab Aggie's wallet and run? She would have given him whatever he wanted. She didn't care about material things.”

“People don't always react rationally when they're frightened.” He gazed at me with interest. “Are you saying Creeley
didn't
kill Aggie?”

“Maybe.” The possibility had blossomed in my head sometime after I left Porter's office.

“Then how did he end up with her locket?”

“He could have been looking in the Dumpster where the killer put her body and found the locket. Or someone could have planted it on him.”

“Molly—”

“Something's off. It's not just Creeley. It was Porter's attitude when I asked basic questions he shouldn't have minded answering. He was defensive. I think he's sitting on something, Zack. I owe it to Aggie to find out what happened. I don't want to let her down again.”

“Aggie's murder isn't your fault, Molly,” Zack said, but I was rummaging in my purse for my cell phone. He took out a pen and scribbled something on his list. I couldn't tell if he was annoyed.

Porter was, when he came on the line. “What now?” he said, his tone a close imitation of a seal's bark.

“Just a few more questions, Detective?” I said with enough sugar to reverse insulin shock. “Aggie wasn't the kind of person to put up a fight. So why would Creeley kill her for her wallet and locket if he never killed before?”

“Like I
said,
we don't know that he didn't kill before. Just that he wasn't caught.”

“But you told me he was unarmed when he committed the last burglary. And he had a job. And he stayed out of trouble for the past seven years. That says something.”

“It says I shouldn't have told you a damn thing, Blume. Believe me, it won't happen again.”

“Seriously, Detective. Doesn't all this
bother
you?”

“
You
bother me.” Porter's voice was rising. I held the cell phone an inch away from my assaulted ear. “I told you Creeley had two strikes. If Aggie Lasher ID'd him, he could've been sentenced to life. He couldn't take the risk.”

Porter had a point, but I wasn't convinced. “Still, the violence doesn't fit his profile.”

“When did you graduate from Quantico, Blume? It's over. Case closed.”

“What if Creeley was framed, Detective Porter? What if Aggie was deliberately targeted by someone else?”

“What if cows were ducks? You want to know what I think, Blume?”

“I'm sure you're dying to tell me.”

“You
want
it to be someone else, something bigger,” he said, not unkindly. “If you'd been with her that night, maybe Creeley would've mugged someone else. But if she was specifically targeted—well, even if you'd been with her, she would've been killed some other night. So you're off the hook.”

My face burned with anger. I wanted to yell at Porter and tell him he was wrong. But I didn't, because on some level, he wasn't.

“Connors tells me you're getting married in two weeks,” Porter said. “Why don't you leave the police business to us and concentrate on your fiancé? I ought to send him a condolence card. The poor guy probably has no clue what he's getting into.”

“You don't care if Creeley
didn't
kill Aggie, do you?” I said before my mind could put the brakes on my mouth. “You want to close a cold case and up your solve ratio.”

Porter hung up. The sound reverberated in my ear.

I flipped my phone shut and dropped it into my purse. “Well,
that
was productive.” I managed a tight smile.

Zack was frowning. “Do you really believe that the police are just interested in closing the case?”

“Not really. Although Andy Connors is always telling me that the big brass are upset with the number of unsolved cases.” I tapped my fork against my plate. “Porter annoyed me. I wanted to annoy him back.”

“What did he say?”

“He felt sorry for you 'cause you're getting stuck with me.” I made a face. “He said I should leave the police business to him and focus on you.”

“I like the last part.” Zack smiled. “The focusing on me.”

“You think I'm obsessing, don't you?” I tend to be like a dog with a bone. It's a flaw or a virtue, depending on whom you talk to, or if you're the bone.