Looks to Die For (21 page)

I called everyone in for dinner, and the stage set seemed to work. “Looks nice, Mom,” Ashley said, her first pleasant comment in weeks. Grant turned on the sound track from
High Fidelity
— one CD all of us could bear. The mood was right, and in between the spring rolls and the kung pao chicken, Ashley and Grant started singing along to the Kinks’“Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy.” If only. Jimmy got into the spirit by showing that he could eat lo mein one strand at a time with his fingers. And I didn’t even look at Dan when John Wesley Harding sang “I’m Wrong About Everything.”

I brought out dessert and Jimmy grabbed a tangerine and energetically dug into it, sending the peels flying all over. Dan went for a fortune cookie and snapped it open, putting the little paper aside as he bit into the hard dough.

“Anybody want to hear my fortune?” Dan asked with a smile. “My
good
fortune.”

Well, that got our attention.

Ashley put down her chopsticks and paused in midchew.

Jimmy, sensing an important moment, squeezed tangerine juice all over his bare foot.

“My future is looking very bright,” Dan said, playing with the slip from the fortune cookie. “That’s what it says. Or what it should say.”

Ashley gave a little gasp — a quick intake of breath — and the expectation etched on her face was easy to read:
It’s over. Daddy’s going to tell us this horror is finally over
.

On the CD, Bob Dylan was crooning about his head being on straight and being strong enough not to hate.

I tried to swallow, but could hardly breathe, waiting for Dan’s next words. One sentence and our lives would return to normal. Someone else had been arrested. The police had issued an apology. Tasha Barlow wasn’t even dead.

“Tell us,” I said, my voice shaking and small. “Tell us.”

“Good news is good news,” Dan said.

We waited.

Dan looked around at us proudly, enjoying his moment. Then he spoke. “Some important people saw my article on facial reconstruction and want me to write a textbook. It’ll be the definitive one in the field. For Harvard University Press, no less.”

Ashley uttered a loud wheeze of disappointment, and I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Bob Dylan was pretty pissed off himself.

I don’t cheat on myself, I don’t run and hide,

Hide from the feelings that are buried inside

he wailed from the CD in protest.

Ashley stood up abruptly, kicking the kilim pillow so hard that it flew into a half-eaten bowl of prawns foo yung. The shellfish slammed onto the stone table and the thick sauce oozed onto the carpet, dripping down like blood.

“We don’t care about your stupid book!” Ashley yelled, her bitterness bursting back. “Who do you think will read it when you’re on death row?”

She stormed out of the room, and the chain reaction that followed went pretty much as would have been expected. Jimmy burst into heaving sobs, Grant muttered an apology and excused himself, and Dan said nothing but set his lips into a firm line and started to clean up the prawns. I stood open-mouthed, unable to move. As usual, the whole disaster had been my fault. I never should have served fortune cookies.

I called Nora first thing Sunday morning.

“You talked to Roy,” I said, trying not to sound accusing. “I thought you weren’t planning to see him.”

“Yeah, well, he called. He wanted his stuff back, but I’d already given it to you. And he told me you’re not his girlfriend.” She said it triumphantly, as if we’d been fighting for him, and she’d won. She could have him.

“Have you heard from Johnny DeVito?” I asked.

“No.” She sniffled. “But I really need to talk to him. I left him a couple of messages, but now he changed his phone number. I found a card he sent Tasha. It probably was a long time ago because I found it with some dried flowers. I remember he’d sent her roses for her birthday. Anyway, it had a return address and I was thinking of checking it out. Seeing if I could find him. But my car’s in the shop.”

“Want me to drive?” I asked. Whoa. Where had that offer come from? But it was too late for me to take it back, because without hesitating, Nora said, “Sure.”

An hour later, I pulled up and waved to Nora, who was waiting outside, sprawled across the top step of the apartment building. She got up slowly and ambled over to the car, wearing pale blue nylon sweatpants that stuck to her thighs and a matching jacket that hung down loosely and still managed to reveal a roll of fat at her waist. Grief hadn’t made her lose her appetite.

We exchanged brief hellos, and she pulled the door closed on the Lexus, then reached for the seat belt.

“So where are we going?” I asked, ready to take off. I put the car into
DRIVE
and checked the rearview mirror. Nobody had followed me here. Though, come to think of it, who would?

Nora held out a slip of greasy paper and read me the address, mentioning a town I’d never heard of before.

“Is it near here?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Dunno.”

I didn’t ask how she’d planned to get there. Instead, I typed the address into the Direction Finder GPS on the dashboard and waited for a map to appear. I studied it for a minute. The town was in a valley on the other side of the hills and in territory I didn’t know. “It’ll be a long drive,” I said, but neither of us was changing her mind, so I took off.

We didn’t say anything as we drove, just listened for the synthetic voice on the GPS to call out directions every couple of minutes. We followed it onto a freeway. During a weekday rush hour, the eight lanes would have been packed, but this Sunday morning the road could pass for the track at Le Mans — a smattering of cars, all of them roaring at eighty-five miles per hour. I stayed in the right lane and didn’t go much above sixty — okay, sixty-five — but Nora clutched the edge of her seat and looked like she might start screaming any minute.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I hate freeways,” she said. “We don’t have these at home.”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I said, veering around a Honda that thought the speed limit sign meant something.

“I’m not from Kansas, I’m from Idaho,” she said. Either she didn’t like my joke, or she hailed from the one town in the world where
The Wizard of Oz
hadn’t opened yet.

We exited the freeway, following the electronic voice into a nouveau riche suburb of oversized McMansions crammed onto tiny lots. They looked cheaply built, but screamed with flamboyant flourishes like Corinthian columns, Doric arches, bulging balustrades, and Victorian finishes. Often all on one house.

“Ooohhh,” said Nora, nose pressed against the window like she was on the Swingin’ Safari Ride at Disneyland, “look at these. Aren’t they fancy?”

More folly than fancy, but why argue? Bad taste could be purchased at any price. We turned another corner onto Hillman Drive, and I slowed down in front of number 17, the numerals visible on a small mailbox in front. The house itself sat far back on the lot, high up a steeply pitched incline. I might have loosely labeled it American Colonial (crossed with English Tudor) if not for the terraces with swirled white railings. A nice touch — if the house were perched on the edge of the Meditteranean.

“Have you ever seen anything more fabulous?” asked Nora, her hot breath making little circles of condensation on the window.

“Never seen anything like it at all,” I said truthfully, pulling up next to the curb and turning off the car. Decorative brass fencing circumnavigated the house, but the driveway and the main walk-way remained open. Still, no way would I try to navigate my Lexus up the steep driveway.

“Can’t you get closer?” Nora asked.

“We can walk from here,” I said, getting out.

She glared at me — maybe they didn’t walk in Twin Falls, either — but then marched ahead. I hung back slightly as she trudged up a steep staircase, panting and puffing. Finally, on the front porch, Nora rang the bell. After a long wait while nobody answered, she rang again. And again.

“You coming up?” she asked, looking down the staircase at me. Her face was red from the exertion.

“I’ll wait here. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s home.”

“We came all this way. Someone
has
to be home!” She took a few steps back to get a view of the upper levels of the house. In an old episode of
Murder, She Wrote
, a curtain on the second floor would part just about now and then drop down again. But CBS hadn’t approved this script and nothing happened. The house was quiet.

“You watch too many detective shows,” I said with a wry smile. In real life, people didn’t come to the door just because you showed up.

I started back down the driveway, but Nora kept her eyes on the house.

“Helloooo,” Nora called out. “Hellloooo. I’m looking for Johnny. I have to talk to Johnny. I know he’s there!”

Silence, silence, silence. Not even a leaf moved.

But now Nora began acting like a complete fool. “Helloooo, Johnny!” Yodeling, she leaned back to give her words more volume. “It’s me, Nora! I have to talk to you! Tasha loved you! I have something important to discuss!”

I crossed my arms, waiting for her to give up. But instead I saw the front door open a crack. I caught only the vaguest glimpse of the person who answered. He stood six inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier than the man in Grant’s picture. Even if Johnny DeVito had done some jail time, he couldn’t have emerged that changed.

And then suddenly the door was closed again and Nora wasn’t on the landing anymore.

Shocked, I started moving back toward the house, feeling as if someone had pushed a button for slo-mo replay. But in fact someone inside had pushed a different button — because as I approached the driveway, the decorative fencing groaned to life and a heavy metal gate started to close. With the two sides of the brass gate sliding together faster and faster, the passageway narrowed by the second. Once it sealed, there would be no exit.

Where did I want to be standing when the gate slammed shut?

I waited just a moment too long to make my decision — or maybe my subconscious had an opinion, because I stayed bolted to the ground. Bad choice! A second before the gate locked into place, I changed my mind and tried to dash through. But the space was so narrow even Kate Moss wouldn’t fit.

“Nora?” I called out as the gate slammed shut. “Nora? Everything okay?” But my trembling voice wouldn’t scare the squirrel scampering on the front yard, never mind scare up Nora.

Futiley, I pounded against the hard metal bars, then paced behind them as if planning a prison break. Only I wanted to break into the jail, not out of it. What to do? I didn’t have Nora’s cell phone number, so calling her was out. No way to contact the occupants of the house, either. I didn’t know who lived there, and unless it was a police emergency, Pacific Bell wouldn’t give a listing by address. Police emergency. Now there was an interesting option. And what exactly would I say to the police?
We came to this house and rang the bell — and now that my friend’s inside, I think something must be wrong
. That would make a lot of sense.

I began walking around the perimeter of the property, my Miu Miu mules snagging on the muddy grass. The tall fence, sturdy and impenetrable, was definitely too high to climb. Not that I could anyway. High-jump over? No, I’d never quite perfected the Fosbury Flop. I glanced from the fence top to the property next door, wondering if I should venture over and attempt to talk to a neighbor. I tried to peer across the yard — but, not paying attention to where I was walking, I tripped over a tree root. My left sandal flew off my foot, I stumbled hard — and then fell, sprawling headfirst across the wet ground.

“Ouch!”

I lay still for a minute, hearing my own cry echoing, then slowly pulled myself up, trying to assess the damage. A bloody knee, mud everywhere, throbbing ankle. I rubbed it anxiously and decided it was twisted, not broken. Tentatively, I stood. Sore, but I’d live. I hobbled back to the Lexus and slid into the front seat.

And sat there. I didn’t really want to abandon Nora, but how long should I stay, hoping she’d come out? In college, as I remembered, you waited fifteen minutes for the professor to show up for class, then picked up your backpack and left. In a bar on Sunset, you hung out twenty minutes expecting the blind date before bolting. Chewing through breadsticks at a fancy restaurant, you’d bide your time for half an hour before a business associate was toast. But what would the new etiquette books say about this one?
Wait forty minutes for the roommate of a murder victim to emerge from a mysterious house. If she doesn’t, you’re free to go home to the husband and kids!

My swollen ankle throbbed and I wanted to get out of there. I stared out my slightly streaked driver’s side window, memorizing every detail I could about the house where Nora had disappeared. Maybe I should write a note and limp over to slip it through the gate, so Nora could call me when she got out. If she got out. I shuddered. Something didn’t feel right.

The passenger door opened and someone slipped into the seat next to me. I spun around, relieved to have Nora back.

“Where were you…” I started to ask, but the words died on my lips.

The person sitting in my car wasn’t heavy, wasn’t a woman, wasn’t Nora. A thin, tallish man in worn blue jeans and a white shirt faced forward, not looking at me. He had an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead and his shirt collar was tugged up high. As I stared at him, he turned slightly toward me, but I couldn’t really see his face — just my own, reflected back in his hugely oversized mirrored sunglasses.

“Drive,” he said quietly.

“Who are you?” I wasn’t sure whether to be confused or scared.

For an answer, he flipped something in his left hand, and immediately a silver knife blade flashed in the sunshine. I gasped, but I had my answer. Scared.

But not too scared to know I had to get out of the car. One swift yank of the door, a roll to my left, and I’d be on the ground. Kick off my shoes, jump up, and run away. Fast thinking. Ready to go. One, two — kick, yank, roll…