Now That She's Gone (25 page)

“Who was it?”

“Alyssa Woodley. She'd moved into Katy's bedroom. Said she was there to help Naomi and Brit, but I think she might have had other motives.”

“Like what? What are you getting at?”

“I'm not sure. Really, I'm not. Part of me thought that Katy had run away from her mother because she couldn't stand her. The other part of me thought that Alyssa had something to do with it. She was just too involved. Always there, listening, checking in on the investigation. A regular junior detective, that one.”

“Too helpful?”

He folded his arms. “Like the firebug who befriends the firemen in his neighborhood and is always there when the sirens sound.”

“I know the type,” she said.

“I didn't like that girl. Not one bit. But when she caught me and Brit making out I was a little relieved. I knew I'd crossed the line and that I'd compromised the investigation. I gave notice two days later.”

“I remember your departure seemed sudden. I thought you'd taken a job in Post Falls that was more to your liking. A better fit.”

Nick's face was grim, but his eyes were full of repentance.

“This was my better fit, Kendall,” he said. “I'm parking cars and staying away from law enforcement.” His voice trailed off to a whisper as Carla came with the check. “There's no forgiving the cop who screws the missing girl's mother.”

He reached for the check.

“I'll get this,” he said. “I have an employee discount.”

“You know that I'll have to report what you told me,” Kendall said. “The affair will probably wind its way into the papers. Nothing I can do about it.”

He nodded. “I know. I've got nothing to lose anyway. Lost everything that was important to me with I went to bed with Brit Frazier. I just didn't know it at the time.”

 

 

Kendall waited for the attendant to bring her car into the covered entrance to the hotel. She noticed that she'd received a call from Birdy and dialed her back.

“How did it go with Mayberry?” Birdy asked right away.

“Just got done,” she said, stepping away from a young couple in the valet queue. “Said he was having an affair with Brit Frazier. Said his judgment was clouded by alcohol. Said that Alyssa is a puppet master. Did you know she moved in with the Fraziers?”

Birdy didn't. “I guess your trip to Spokane has been fruitful.”

“I guess so. It feels a little sad, a little after the fact. Brad is going to have to earn his paycheck when it gets out that one of our own was bagging the mother of a potential murder victim.”

“We don't know that she's dead, Kendall.”

“I know. But I think she is. And I think that Alyssa knows more than she's saying.”

“I know you want to get back here, but I have an address you might want to check out.”

“Whose?”

Birdy didn't say. “Texting it to you now,” she said.

A beat later, Kendall looked down as the text message appeared on the small screen of her phone.

“No shit? She's here? You're right. This might be fun.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-FOUR

S
pokane's South Hill is rightly known for its stately homes and beautiful parks, the highlight of which is Manito Park, a sprawling oasis of trees, trails, and play spaces for children. Kendall parked in front of an olive green Craftsman-style home sandwiched between a Tudor and a Victorian. The low-slung front porch was painted white and looked clean enough to dress a baby on. Kendall knocked on the door and watched through the window as a woman approached, the cherry-tip glow of a cigarette dangling from her lips.

The woman yanked the door open. “Who the hell are you?” she asked, before giving Kendall a chance to introduce herself.

It was a startling way of greeting a visitor.

“I'm Kendall Stark, investigator for the Kitsap County Sheriff's Department,” Kendall answered, half watching for the cigarette to fall from the homeowner's crinkled lips.

“So?” she said. “What do you want?”

Kendall had been greeted with more friendliness from a meth dealer in Seabeck than from this lady.

“Is Pandora your daughter?”

“Pandora. Hmm . . .” The woman smiled and shook her head a little. “I guess you could call her that.”

“Good,” Kendall said, although she had let it cross her mind that it might not have been altogether bad if she'd been at the wrong address. “I'm investigating a case,” she said, keeping her tone even and as warm as she could. Given the circumstances and the older woman's attitude, that wasn't easy. “It's related to your daughter.”

The woman sucked on her cigarette again and blew smoke out her nostrils. She looked like a dragon.

“Is the little bitch dead?” she asked.

“No,” Kendall said, taking a slight step backward. “She's not. She's fine.”

The woman removed her cigarette and let the ash fall to the floor, where it smoldered. “Too bad. She done me so dirty I don't have much feeling for her.”

“Mrs. Kirkowski, may I come in and talk to you?”

“Kirkowski was like . . .” the woman said, pretending to count in her head. “Like four marriages ago. I still use it. But there is no Mr. Kirkowski.”

Kendall persisted. “Can we talk?”

Rose Kirkowski—or whatever last name she preferred—looked at the interloper on her doorstep with a wary eye.

“You sure you're not with the
Globe
or something?” she asked. “My no-good daughter said that if I talk to you guys she'll, you know, you know.”

Kendall didn't know, but she didn't ask. “No, as I said, I'm with the sheriff's department.”

Rose Kirkowski swung the door open. The smell of smoke and cat urine nearly knocked Kendall to the gleaming wood of the pristine white porch. It was repugnant and shocking at the same time. Everything outside the shell of Rose Kirkowski's life was perfection. Inside the house, inside her life, was another matter altogether.

“You want a Bud?”

Kendall shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said.

“I'm having one. It's hot today.”

Kendall stood in the cluttered and smelly foyer while Pandora's mother went into the kitchen and took the top off a beer bottle.

“Come in here,” Rose called from the hall to the kitchen. “If you see my Siamese, La Choy, please grab the little bastard. He's a terror and I can't catch him. I think he has worms.”

Kendall was not about to catch that cat. She made her way to the sofa while Rose bent over to scoot aside a stack of
Spokesman Review
newspapers.

Rose was wearing a curious outfit. She had an aqua-colored terry bathrobe over a pair of jeans and house slippers. Her hair was the same length and color as her daughter's.

“Yes, we look alike,” she said, catching Kendall's gaze.

Kendall started to say something, but Rose cut her off.

“I'm not psychic,” she said “I just get that now and then since my daughter became such a famous bitch.”

“You don't like your daughter,” Kendall said.

“That's an understatement. If you're here to get the goods on her for something she did, I say it's about time and I'd like to help you.”

Kendall tried not to gag as her eyes caught a pile of cat feces in the corner next to a deader-than-a-doornail mother-in-law's-tongue plant in a cracked white chamber pot. Kendall knew the plant with its green and yellow blades. In another moment, she'd allow herself to be drawn back to her family home in Port Orchard, reliving a happy memory of a household in which there was boundless love for everyone within its walls.

That clearly wasn't Rose Kirkowski's home.

“I'm just doing some background,” Kendall said.

Rose wiped the condensation off the long neck of her beer bottle “She's got a lot of background,” she said. “Lots she wouldn't like anyone to know about. Not now. Now that she's all that.”

Kendall glanced around the room. A layer of dust covered most of the furniture on its perimeter. A TV in a cherry entertainment center looked as if it was the center of all attention—a worn trail in the carpet suggested plenty of trips back and forth. Kendall wondered if Rose couldn't find her remote control. There were no personal photos out. The only art on the wall was a Navajo-style blanket and a mirror with a cracked frame. In the farthest corner from the sofa, in the window that looked out at the street, was a cat gymnasium. Three cats sat on top, though none were Siamese or the long-lost, worm-infested La Choy.

“I like cats better than people,” Rose said, catching Kendall's gaze on her collection of felines. “I like them better than my daughter, but before I tell you anything about her, you'll need to tell me why you're here.”

“Just some background on a case, that's all.”

Rose tightened her smoker's lips. “That's crap,” she said. “And you know it.”

Kendall wanted to say, no, that's crap in the corner. But she didn't.

“She was in Port Orchard recently,” Kendall answered. “That's where I live in Kitsap County. She was doing her show and she told us some things we didn't know about one of our old cases.”

Rose put her bottle down on a nest of water rings on the table in front of her.

“What she say?” she asked, not looking up. “Say someone else was the killer? Someone else did the kidnapping or something?”

Kendall nodded. “Yes, something along those lines.”

Rose looked at Kendall, leaned back, and laughed. It was a hard, loud laugh; so much so that Kendall was surprised the chronic smoker had enough lung capacity for such an annoyingly sustained outburst.

“She says that on every one of those stupid shows she's on. Every single time. I don't know who's a bigger idiot, those who watch the show or the producers who put up with that ridiculous crap. Don't you watch?”

Kendall shook her head. “Not really. I have seen part of an episode.”

“Look, my daughter's a liar,” Rose said, seemingly enjoying the opportunity to toss her under the bus. “She's a bitch. She's my kid. I know her. I know that she's full of crap. She's always thought she was better than . . .” she said, hesitating a beat.

“. . . than everybody.”

“I see,” Kendall said.

Rose stared hard at the investigator. She stayed quiet a moment, like she had when she was assessing how many marriages ago she'd been hitched to Mr. Kirkowski. “Do you?” she finally asked, “I mean, you're here in godforsaken Spokane and you're asking me about that bitch of a daughter of mine, I'm thinking, oh no, here's another one of those nitwits who think Carol is some kind of high priestess of truth. She's one step above a carny, if you ask me.”

Whatever Pandora's mother had to say was going to be good. Good as in an interesting story to tell, but possibly nothing to help advance the investigation into what happened back in Kitsap County.

“So, Mrs. Kirkowski, humor me—”

“Rose, please. Didn't like Kirkowski that much. Not my favorite husband.”

“Fine, Rose then. Are you telling me that you know for sure she's a fraud?”

Rose nodded. “I need another beer. And then I'll do better than tell you. I'll show you.”

Pandora's mother got up and went toward the kitchen, leaving Kendall in the squalor of the living room amid the feces and the trio of cats, who now had apparently thought that it might be more fun for them to cuddle up on the lap of the visitor. Kendall was all but certain that one of them was going to spray on her. She used the tip of her toe to push away an aggressive tabby as he backed up toward her. She was intrigued by Rose and her venom-soaked discourse on her daughter, but in reality—at that moment—an interview with an inmate in the worst prison she could think of would be more pleasant than sitting in that pretty-on-the-outside-but-rotten-on-the-inside-residence on Spokane's famed South Hill.

“Sure you don't want a cold one?” Rose called over her shoulder as she fished around the back of the fridge for some beers.

“No, I'm good,” Kendall said, pushing another cat away.

“Out of coffee,” Rose called out.

Another cat, another gentle toe-kick. “That's all right. I'm fine.”

Finally, Rose returned with two beers.

“Brought me a second,” she said. “I call it my standby.”

Actually
, Kendall thought,
that's your third . . . at least that I know of.

“You said you could show me,” Kendall said.

Rose drank. “Show you?”

“Yes. Show me something that proves she's a phony.”

Rose nodded and set down her beer. “That's right. I did. Hang on, whatever your name is.”

“Kendall Stark,” she said.

“Right. Kendall.” Rose was on the other side of the room, pulling a box of papers and some photo albums from under a pile of unlaundered, cat-hair-drenched clothes. She took a seat next to Kendall and opened the first album.

Kendall looked down at a photo of what appeared to be a magician and his assistant. The woman in the photograph was blond and slender. Her eyes glimmered in the black-and-white image. She stood next to a big box and a man in a black tuxedo, smiling broadly, who was motioning her to get inside. An enormous handsaw was in his grasp.

“Is that you?”

Again, the overly long and strange laugh.

“Hell, no,” she said, when she finally came up for air. “It's my bitch of a mother. She never cared two cents for me and my sister, Alice. She was all about being a goddamn star!”

Kendall leaned closer to get a better look, the smoky air clinging to Rose's terry robe like a smelly, brittle shell. She pulled away.

“She was a magician's assistant,” she said.

Rose tapped the page with her nicotine-stained finger and then turned the page.

“Among other things,” she said, her tone softening a little. “Yeah, she was.” She pointed to the next photograph. It showed her mother on what looked like a Western TV show.

“
Gunsmoke
,” she said. “She was a part-time actress and a full-time whore on the set there. At least that's what one of my dads told me about her years ago. She was always trying to make it. I wouldn't live that life for nothing. I just wanted to get away from show business. As far away as possible. That's why I'm here in Spokane. Can you think of a less glamorous place than this hellhole?”

“It's not so bad,” Kendall said, almost feeling sorry for the woman. “You live in a lovely neighborhood.”

She couldn't say anything about the house, but she bet the Tudor and the Victorian residents had some choice words to say about the house that separated the two of them.

“Whatever,” Rose said. “I was stupid to think I could run away from my past. I literally thought that by living here I could raise my little girl to be, you know, something normal. But my mother wouldn't allow that. No. Not at all.”

She turned the page.

On it was a picture of an old woman crouched over a crystal ball. On the wall behind her was the name Pandora.

“Is that your mother?” Kendall asked.

Rose nodded.

“Yeah,” Rose said, her voice a little softer than it had been. “She had a little career going for a time. Some TV. That stupid magic act in Reno. Nothing huge. She was always leaving and telling me and Alice that her big break was about to happen and she'd be a big star. Bigger than Marilyn Monroe, if you can believe that. Well, stupid us, we believed her at first. Forgave her for missed birthdays, Christmas, and all that other crap that she insisted wasn't really as important as being a star. To her. That was what she wanted. We hated her. Alice, believe it or not, more than me. Mom was such a liar.”

She paused and regarded her beer, took a sip, and then pointed back to the photo of the fortune-teller.

“That's what she ended up doing. She was playing to an audience of one in a hole-in-the-wall in Hollywood as Madame Pandora, the Soothsayer to the Stars. I hated my mother so much for that. I hated her even more when she filled Carol's head with the idea that she too could be a famous star, this time on TV, that she could be psychic.”

Kendall didn't know what to say. It was a pathetic story and Rose was living proof that her mother's neglect was generational, born from experiences foisted upon her.

“I'm sorry,” she finally said.

Rose closed the book.

“You don't need to be sorry,” she said, though not convincingly. “I'm not. I'm glad the little bitch is gone from here. I don't have to watch her implode, like my mother did. I don't have to listen to someone say crappy things about her at the hair salon. If they do, I just try to shrug it off.”