Skies of Ash (20 page)

“Why not?”

“Cuz shit gon’ get twisted and that hobbit motherfucka will get to twist shit some more and Juliet ain’t here to defend—”

“That’s my job, Addy,” I said, touching her wrist. “
I
will speak for her and for the kids.
I
will keep shit from twisting as much as I can. But
you
need to tell me shit straight. So who did she see?”

“Jules wouldn’t tell me their real names,” she admitted.

“Why not?”

Adeline shrugged. “Guess she enjoyed keeping some stuff to herself, this… secret life she led.” She stared at the Snapple label as she thought. “Jules was unhappy. She was depressed, and she was ashamed that she’d gone outside her marriage. And she stayed that way, ashamed, even though she tried to hide it. But I saw it. We went to lunch last week, and I saw it. She thought she could hide it behind eye shadow and diamond earrings, but she had that cocaine confidence, ’cept it was wine and not blow.” Adeline shrugged. “I saw just how…
messed up
she was. I didn’t like it.”

“Was Juliet…? Did she ever attempt suicide again? Or even
talk
about being tired and just ending it? I ask because we found a strange letter that could be taken as a suicide note.”

Adeline wedged the bottle between her knees.

“Was Juliet Chatman—?”

“I heard your question,” she snapped, fire in her eyes.

“She was?”

Adeline shook her head.

“She wasn’t?”

She shook her head again.

“So she marries Christopher,” I said, pissed that I drove all the way to effin’ Corona to be cock-blocked by a chick wearing a fake flower in her hair. “Were they happy for the most part?”

“At first,” Adeline said, “but the last nine years she was always stressed about somethin’. The kids, the house, him. She found out… He was… This is all just…” Her jaw tightened, and the vein in her forehead bulged.
Boom!
A sob broke from her chest, and then another sob followed, and soon she was fully weeping into her hands.

My mind whirled as she bawled—
Juliet was stressed about
what
? She found out
what
? He was
what
? This is all just
what
?

Juliet was a suicidal type. Juliet was an adulteress type. And
this
coming from her best friend, who was now whispering, “I’m so sorry,” and, “Thought I was through crying,” as she dabbed at her eyes with napkins until another wave of anguish knocked her down.

Five minutes later, and all cried out, Adeline took a deep breath and released it through pursed lips. She squared her shoulders, then said, “Okay. Okay. What…?”

“We were discussing their marriage,” I said. “And there’s no need to rush.”

“I just miss her so much,” she whispered. “And I’m angry and I’m sad.” She blew her nose into a napkin. “Jules tried to get over a lot of things she didn’t like. Except for that damned house. Both of them drove each other crazy over that house.”

She plucked the neglected cigarette from the ashtray and took a long drag, holding in the smoke as long as she could. Nicotine relaxed the tight muscles in her face, and she released the smoke into the air with a sigh. “Stress was startin’ to change her, you know? She was losin’ weight, always in pain.” Fighting anxiety, Adeline hugged herself and started rocking on the couch. “She was throwin’ up and crampin’. I forced her to get checked out.”

“When did you talk to her last?”

“Friday.” She twisted her mouth, then forced the Parliament between her lips.

“Did she ever talk about getting a divorce?” I asked.

She killed that cigarette in the ashtray and grabbed another from the gold case. “Uh-huh, but she wouldn’t get one.”

“Why not?”

“Raised Catholic. No divorce. I told her that she’d get paid—they’d been together for, what? Twenty years?
And
she’d get child support. That’s one thing he had goin’ for him: he worked his little hobbit ass off.”

“So: he adored her.” I held up one finger and then held up another. “He provided for her and the kids. He worked hard. Why was she so unhappy?”

The woman stared at the burning end of the long brown cigarette.

“Was she was in love with someone else?” I asked.

St. Lawrence didn’t speak.

“Did Christopher abuse her?” I asked, my stomach twisting.

“Physically? No.”

“He abused her psychologically?”

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

“He have something on her?”

She didn’t nod, nor did she shake her head.

“What is it, Addy?” I pled. “If I know, then I’ll be able to figure out what happened in that house, and then arrest whoever is responsible. Juliet and Cody and Chloe: they need you to speak for them. No one else can do that right now. No one.”

The cigarette shook between her fingers. “One of the last things Jules said to me on Friday…” She squeezed shut her eyes. “She said, ‘I chose wrong, Addy. I chose wrong.’ ”

Sadness gripped my heart and swept through my body like damp fog.

Adeline covered her mouth with her hand and forced her breathing to slow.

I leaned forward and whispered, “What if I told you that we found suitcases in the trunk of her SUV? Suitcases filled with clothes for her and the kids. But no suitcase for him.”

Adeline kept rocking, kept smoking, kept fighting tears.

“What if I told you,” I said, leaning forward so much that I was almost on my knees, “that we also found a gun in Juliet’s hand? A gun that she’d just purchased for protection?”

Smoke wafted from Adeline’s mouth.

“You have nothing to say?” I asked.

She tapped the cigarette against the ashtray. “Is Christopher Chatman still alive?”

“Yes, he is.”

She drew on the cig, then let smoke curl from her nostrils. “If Christopher Chatman is still alive, then somethin’ happened before Juliet could blow his fuckin’ brains out.”

WAS JULIET CHATMAN PLANNING TO KILL HER HUSBAND?

As we stood on the front porch of her house, Adeline St. Lawrence had hinted at the possibility—blow his fuckin’ brains out, quote, unquote—but had ended our interview without answering my very direct question. “Take me to court, then,” she had sassed, hand on her hip. “It look like I give a fuck?”

“It does not look like you give a fuck.”

She crossed her arms.

“Addy,” I said, “please. Was she planning to kill him? If you don’t care, why should anyone else?”

She glared at me, but that hard look softened. “Yes, she was planning… what you said.”

Back behind the wheel of the car, I took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. I smelled like an AA meeting. Away from nicotine-laced air for only a minute, I was shaky from withdrawal. With a trembling hand, I pulled my phone from my bag and checked for messages.

While I had been nibbling stale Lorna Doones with Adeline St. Lawrence, Dixie Shipman (Adeline’s sista from another mista) had left me a voice mail.
Once you get back from Narnia or Wherever-the-Hell you are, gimme a call. I’ve been diggin’ around some, and all I can say is, ‘Mr. Chatman, Mr. Chatman, Lawd have mercy, Mr. Chatman.’ I’ll be at TCK for a mani-pedi. My treat, if you come down.

I considered my fingernails. Working the Chatman case with all its soot and ashes made my hands look like I, too, had been digging around—in bogs and lumberyards for splinters and grubs. And since I had the cuticles of a hobo, I decided to take Dixie’s offer for free nail help as well as her offer to share information about the case. Of course.

An overturned tomato truck on the 10 freeway west and the subsequent single available lane meant that it took almost two hours to drive back to Los Angeles. Five minutes before three o’clock, I found myself at the spa, melting into a massage chair with my slacks rolled up, one hand soaking in soapy water and one foot being massaged by Jun.

Dixie sat at the next booth with one foot hidden in a tub of bubbles and the other foot propped on a stool before Patsy, her regular aesthetician. “You cut ’em down too low last time,” she shouted to Patsy over the Luther Vandross song blasting from the spa’s speakers. “Don’t do that or I’m a get somebody else.” The ex-cop turned back to me. “Like I said, his people weren’t the Gettys. Far from.”

“So how did the Chatmans get their money?” I asked.

“So Virginia Oliver is tellin’ me this, okay? And
she
says Ava and Henry Chatman were stingy as hell,
that’s
how. They were born right before the Depression began.”

“Chatman had old-people parents,” I said.

“Yep. She was forty-three when she had him. Anyway, she and Henry grew up squeezin’ pennies ’til they bled. They left Cleveland in fifty-two, came to California and bought the house on Don Mateo in fifty-three. They didn’t open a bank account until sixty-three.”

“When Christopher was born,” I noted. “Guess the sunshine and oranges helped Henry’s little swimmers.”

“Guess so,” Dixie said. “Henry Chatman put his paychecks into some tiny savings and loan. They bought the house on Don Mateo and installed a wall safe in the master bedroom. I don’t know how much they stashed in there at first, but Mrs. Oliver said it was several thousand.”

“Okay. Nothing sounds wacky yet, Dix.”

Dixie switched feet to let Patsy scrub calluses on the other heel. “Be patient, damn. In ninety-eight, Momma Chatman started speakin’ in tongues, started callin’ Christopher ‘Jimmy,’ and couldn’t remember which channel showed
Oprah
. So, after gettin’ lost in the mall, and vacuumin’ the house in the middle of the night, and not remembering her birth date, Ava was diagnosed with dementia and put into Ocean Breeze Estates in Camarillo by her beloved son, Jimmy aka Christopher.”

“Sad.” Then, I told Jun to paint my toenails a sassy toreador red. A wasteful act since I’d be slipping on boots again. Like dressing Naomi Campbell in a burqa.

“Ava goes bye-bye,” Dixie continued, “and the next month, Henry slips on the porch and breaks his hip. He comes down with pneumonia and dies three days after Memorial Day. When he died, they had $237,000 cash in the bank. They also had pensions, a couple of savings bonds, and three insurance policies with MG Standard.”

“So how much money is that?”

“A little over two mil,” Dixie said, eyebrow cocked.

I admired my manicured hand with its smooth, buffed nails. “Lucky boy. All that money
and
the house is empty.”

“Not for long, though,” Dixie said. “Christopher and Juliet move in with baby Cody in 2001 and life’s swell. Since Ava is still alive, they go up and visit her sometimes. But in 2002, during one of those visits, Ava died.”

I shrugged.

Dixie smirked. “When the staff at the convalescent home asked Christopher what had happened, he told them, ‘All of a sudden, she stopped breathing.’ What did he mean, ‘she stopped breathing’? And ‘all of a sudden’? Ava hadn’t been sick, not beyond the regular symptoms that come with dementia. So everybody at the home was kinda surprised. And they couldn’t revive her cuz she had a DNR in place—and nobody remembers when she got
that
.”

“Was there an autopsy?”

“Nope.”

“Did someone see Christopher or Juliet do anything inappropriate that afternoon?”

“No.”

“Feh.”

“Girl, you trippin’.”

“Ava Chatman was in her nineties, Dixie. She had dementia. She was old as hell. Eventually, she was supposed to stop breathing.”

Dixie rolled her eyes. “C’mon now, Detective Elouise Norton. Christopher Chatman inherited almost three million dollars that afternoon.”

“Interesting,” I said. “That’s all I got.”

Two dead parents. Three million dollars.

Yeah. Very interesting.

FOUR O’CLOCK, AND I SAUNTERED INTO THE SQUAD ROOM, WHERE THE LIVING
was easy. I had avoided the station all day, and not much had changed. One person had killed another person. A dick had made an arrest. The alleged murderer, dull-eyed, high, blood crusted beneath his fingernails, protested. Dick rolled his eyes, wrote his report, produced a pair of steel bracelets. Another name written in red on the board. Another case to solve.

Colin sat at his desk with the Chatman murder book before him. His eyes darted back and forth between two pages. He didn’t look up when I plopped into my seat.

“Miss me?” I asked, hanging my jacket on the back of the chair.

“Like I miss crabs and cold sores,” he said, his attention still directed to the book.

I logged on to my computer. “Are they ever gone long enough for you to miss them?”

He flicked me a look. “Didn’t think I’d see you today.”

“Been busy, my friend. The Princess was in another castle.” And I caught him up on my conversation with Adeline St. Lawrence and Dixie Shipman.

“Juliet Chatman was no vestal virgin, was she?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

I shrugged. “And what are you working on, sir?”

“The warrants came in, so Luke’s working on the phones, and I’m pulling pictures off the cameras.”

I sang, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”

“You’re in a mood.”

“Driving way the hell out to the Inland Empire on a Thursday will do that.”

My iPhone rang, and a picture of python stilettos lit up the display.

I squinted at the phone, then answered. “Hey, Lena.”

“Look,” she said. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know.”

“This is a weird time in my life, no excuses, but… Sorry, okay?”

“It’s cool,” I said, then told her about breakfast with my mother and the memorial service for Tori. “Could you arrange the catering?”

“Of course,” she trilled. “Ooh! The chef over at Budino’s owes me a favor.” And then she went on and on about crostini, truffles, and Viognier from Sonoma.

I thanked her, and we told each other, “I love you.”

Colin dabbed at fake tears. “Wind beneath my wings.”

I rolled my eyes. “What were we discussing?”

“Pictures from the Chatmans’ camera.” He rolled his chair to my desk with a stack of shots.

Chatmans at Disneyland… Chloe in a pink soccer uniform… Cody and Christopher in Dodgers caps at a game… Family picture in front of a church… No one smiling… Smile but forced… Monkey face… Photo bomb…