What Remains of Me Page 21

  A uniform stood beside Braddock—a tiny young girl who looked far too happy, given the situation. He half-expected her to start jumping up and down.

  Louise said, “Get anything?”

  He hoped the uniform hadn’t smiled like this around Mary Marshall. “Not really.” He gestured at the much-too-young officer, that face she was making—like somebody had just given her backstage passes to a One Direction concert. “Looks like she does, though.”

  “This is officer Nutley. She’s on the team that’s been going through everything in Sterling Marshall’s office.” Louise handed Barry a pair of evidence-handling gloves. “She did indeed get something.”

  The smile erupted, taking over the kid’s entire face. Nutley going nuts, as it were. She held out a burner phone.

  Barry put the evidence gloves on and took it from her—a basic flip phone. Didn’t even have a display screen. It was still on, battery charged.

  “It was at the bottom of the trash can,” Nutley said proudly.

  Barry stared at it. He flipped it open.

  “It’s on,” she said. “It was on when I found it.”

  “You always jump to conclusions, Barry,” Louise said.

  Barry looked at her.

  “With this case, you were all ready to tie Kelly Lund to the crime, relying on your intuition like you always do. And you remember what I told you yesterday morning?”

  “Innocent until proven guilty.”

  “That’s right. And of course I still hold by it. But, Barry . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “That intuition of yours. It isn’t always wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hit redial.”

  Barry put the phone on speaker, pressed the redial button on Sterling Marshall’s burner, and connected with the dead man’s most recent call—very recent, considering that the phone had been on when it was found and still held a charge.

  It went straight to voice mail. Kelly Lund’s voice mail.

  BELLAMY MARSHALL LIVED CLOSER THAN KELLY MIGHT HAVE IMAGINED—in Irvine of all places. Sebastian Todd had explained to Kelly that Bellamy had done an artist-in-residence year at the college several years ago and had liked the town so much she’d stayed on, long after the one class she’d taught had graduated and moved away.

  But knowing this did nothing to ease Kelly’s shock when she saw Rancho Escondido, which was the name of the sprawling, sterile-looking condo complex where Bellamy now lived. When they were kids, Bellamy used to call them “space fillers,” complexes like this, every house exactly the same, manicured lawns, carefully trimmed topiaries doled out equitably, two to each lot, shining Spanish tile roofs and faux adobe, each house exactly the same as the next, the whole lot looking as though it had gone up overnight. There were hundreds of these in Southern California, particularly the more recently developed areas in Orange County. But never once in thirty years had Kelly expected ultrahip, march-to-her-own-beat Bellamy to live in one.

  Bellamy’s street was called Vista Verde. Kelly had to look carefully for the address; even her GPS had trouble discerning which of the houses was hers—but then she saw it in one of the driveways: a deep green Jeep Cherokee. She pulled up behind it and saw the license plate, Shane’s license plate, the Hollywood Photo Archives bumper sticker—a marketing idea of his from three years ago, as though seeing a sticker in traffic would lead anyone to make a decision regarding vintage movie photos. It got Kelly choked up—the simple sight of her husband’s car. It made her wonder if maybe this was a bad idea, coming to Bellamy’s house now, with her feelings still so raw.

  Of course, she didn’t have the luxury of waiting, not the way things were going, with her prints all over Sterling Marshall’s study and the press already connecting the dots.

  Kelly got out of her car and headed up the path to the front door. A single sprinkler halfheartedly spritzed Bellamy’s square of a lawn, a FOR SALE sign positioned up front, the two regulation topiaries flanking it like backup dancers. Okay, so she doesn’t love it here after all. Kelly reached the front door and pushed the bell without taking a breath, giving herself no time to think about reconsidering.

  No answer. She pushed it again. Pressed her ear to the door, but heard no movement. She tried the big, faux-antique knocker, then balled her hand into a fist and pummeled the door with the side of it.

  Still nothing. Were they both still asleep? Gone to comfort their mother? Passed out indefinitely? Or were they hiding?

  Kelly walked around the side of the house, rapped on one of the windows. “Shane,” she said. “Shane? Bellamy?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Kelly turned to see a tiny, white-haired woman of about eighty. She wore a velour tracksuit, JUICY COUTURE spelled out across her chest in tiny pink rhinestones. “Hello,” Kelly tried.

  The woman said, “Are you the Realtor?”

  Kelly looked at the dark house, then at the woman. Instinct took over. She nodded slowly.

  “I’m Connie, the next door neighbor.”

  Kelly swallowed. “I . . . I was supposed to meet Miss Marshall,” she said.

  Connie smiled. “I know,” she said. “She had to leave, though. I’m sure she told you . . .”

  “Yes,” Kelly said, her voice growing stronger, her back straighter as the lie sunk in. “Such a terrible thing.”

  Connie shook her head slowly, clicking her tongue. “Her father was one of my favorites,” she said.

  “Mine too.”

  “Anyway, she asked me to give you the key. No sense in your coming all the way here for nothing.” She reached into her hoodie pocket, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to her. “Hope you get a bite.”

  Kelly forced a smile. “Thank you,” she said. “Her brother left with her?”

  “Huh?” she said. “Oh, you mean the young man? She never introduced me.” Connie leaned in, gave her a wink. “Tell you the truth, she and I don’t talk much. We move in different circles, I guess.”

  “Yep,” Kelly said. “She and I do too.”

  Weird thing for a Realtor to say, but luckily Connie didn’t seem to notice. She went around the front of the house, opened the door on a living room—hardwood floors, flat-screen TV, overstuffed leather couch, piled with Navaho print pillows. All of it tasteful, more elegant than the house’s exterior—save for the cigarette stink hanging in the air and Kelly’s own, seventeen-year-old face staring down at her from the opposite wall: Mona Lisa, in all its glory.

  “Haven’t you done anything since 1992?” she said to the empty room. “Don’t you have anything else you can be proud of?”

  Kelly noticed something holstered onto the right side of the big wooden frame. When she moved closer, she saw that it was a remote. She yanked it away, pressed the button, heard her own voice, young and sad and pathetically hopeful. “I miss you. Why won’t you visit?”

  Kelly gritted her teeth. She winged the remote across the room. It smashed into a framed, black-and-white photo of Bellamy, breaking the glass.

  Great, she thought. Great.

  What was she doing here? What exactly did Kelly hope to accomplish now that Shane was off with his sister, now that his father was dead and covered in her fingerprints? How did she ever expect him to listen to her words without them being warped into something ugly by the living, breathing fun house mirror that was Bellamy Marshall, artist?

  Kelly noticed a jacket hanging on the coatrack by the door—Shane’s denim jacket. Same one he’d put on before leaving the house yesterday morning. You’ll come to the funeral, right? You’ll hold my hand. Kelly went to it. She held it up against her face and breathed in the clean smell of it, her eyes starting to tear up, her teenage voice still echoing out of the speakers. “I miss you . . .”

  Shane and his squirreled-away bottles of pills, the conversations he would have with his father. Sunday nights, in his separate bedroom, his voice hushed so Kelly wouldn’t hear. Shane, who slept apart from Kelly on her insistence, who n
ever saw his own family except on Skype. Shane who had recently searched for Rocky Three on his computer . . .

  It wasn’t all Bellamy’s fault that Shane had left Kelly. Maybe none of it was.

  “I miss you. Why won’t you visit?”

  Kelly put the jacket down. She pressed the button on the remote until the room was quiet again. On the big, mission-style coffee table was a stack of cream-colored stationery sheets. She searched her bag for a pen but couldn’t find one, so she opened the drawer of the coffee table and found a disarray of Post-its and pastels and discarded sketch pads. After all these years, Bellamy still couldn’t keep her drawers straight . . .

  Kelly found a pen and took a piece of stationery and wrote a letter to her husband. She told him the truth.

  When she was finished, she folded up the letter into fourths and placed it in the inside pocket of Shane’s jacket, same place he kept his extra lenses. He would find it there because he always checked that pocket—she knew that much about him, at least.

  She got up, rehung Bellamy’s photograph and tried her best to clean up the broken glass, dumping it all in the trash can under the kitchen sink, working quickly. After all, the real Realtor would be arriving any minute, showing up at the neighbors to pick up that key.

  Last, she grabbed the remote and moved to replace it. She avoided Mona Lisa as best she could—her huge, pixilated, glitter and feather-festooned face—focusing only on the leather holster at the side of the frame, watching it so intently that when she started to slip the remote back in, she noticed something at the very bottom of the pouch. It glittered.

  She pulled it out and stared at it—the golden heart at the end of the delicate chain. The two tiny diamonds, one slightly bigger than the other. For a long moment, she held the necklace in front of her eyes, unable to think, to move, to breathe.

  CHAPTER 21

  APRIL 16, 1980

  Maybe it fell off,” Bellamy said over the phone.

  “How could it have just fallen off?” Kelly said. “Clasps don’t just come undone. Do they?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t take it off at the party? We were pretty out of it.”

  “No,” Kelly said. “I didn’t take it off. I would never take it off.”

  “Hey, relax. It’s just a necklace.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. I’m just . . .” She exhaled, breath shaky. “It was my sister’s.”

  “Oh, Kelly, I’m sorry.”

  “She asked me to keep it. Right before she . . . I feel like I let her down.”

  “You didn’t, okay? You were a great sister.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Kelly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You are a great sister. No matter what stupid jewelry you’re wearing.”

  She swallowed hard. “Thank you.”

  “Listen. It’ll probably turn up. And if not, I’ll buy you a new one . . . Flora, keep your shirt on! I’m coming! Kelly, I’ve got to go to school, okay? The housekeeper’s totally screaming at me. I’ll call you when I get home.”

  Kelly hung up. She was standing in Jimmy’s empty room. She stared at her reflection in the mirror—her tired eyes, the streak that Bellamy had put in her hair a week ago, now just a remnant, the platinum now just a slightly lighter shade of sand. Kelly touched the base of her throat, the spot where the diamonds used to be. “You’re gone,” she whispered. “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

  Bellamy was wrong. She had to find the necklace.

  Retracing her steps was hard to do without a car or any money, but there was a jar of quarters on Jimmy’s nightstand. Kelly poured a bunch of them into her hand, ran out of the house, caught the bus to Sunset and Gower, and ran the five blocks to Vee’s apartment building. The whole trip, she kept tapping her fingers against her bare neck, as though if she did that enough she might magically be able to bring them back, the two little diamonds. Catherine and me.

  THE FRONT DOOR TO VEE’S CASTLE WAS LOCKED. KELLY HAD FORGOTTEN to call and tell him she was coming back and so she pounded on it, again and again with the side of her fist, hoping someone would hear. Finally, a little old lady came to the door. “You are a friend of the young actor’s,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Kelly. “How did you know?”

  “I opened the door for you last night.” She gave her a look—half amused/half disgusted. “You’re wearing the same outfit.”

  “Oh. Um . . . Well . . . I uh . . . forgot something at the party . . .”

  “That doesn’t change facts. Or, for that matter, your clothes.”

  “Huh?” Kelly gave up. She headed up the stairs, fast as she could, rounding five, six, seven, eight flights. She knocked on the door. “Vee!” she called out. “I think I left something here!” Did it again, harder. “Vee!”

  The door opened halfway. It took Kelly a few seconds to register that it wasn’t Vee standing there—hair mussed, oxford shirt buttoned wrong, half his chest exposed. It was Vee’s father. “Didn’t I just give you a ride home?”

  “Um . . .” She tried not to look at his chest, the thick patch of hair at the center.

  “Let me guess. You’re looking for Vincent.”

  “Yeah.” She forced herself to smile. “I think I might have left something.”

  “You ran up one flight too many.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine, but Vincent’s not at his place anyway. He had a breakfast meeting with some TV people.” He smiled. “I know because I arranged it.”

  Kelly closed her eyes, opened them again, breathing through her nose, that panicky feeling returning. “Mr. McFadden?”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t happen to find my necklace, did you? Last night or this morning? I . . . I think it might have fallen off at the party.”

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  His blue eyes narrowed. “Tell me what it looks like so Vincent and I can keep our eyes out for it.”

  She blinked at him. “It was the one I was wearing last night.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were staring at it the whole time I was talking to you.”

  His smile dropped away. “What are you talking about?”

  She cringed. Had she really said that out loud? “Sorry.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m just . . . I really liked that necklace. It was very special to me . . .”

  “Obviously,” he said.

  “I guess . . . When we were talking . . . It seemed like you noticed it.”

  “Any reason why you aren’t in school today?”

  “I . . . uh . . . I’m on my way.”

  His jaw tightened. His eyes went hard, and for a second, his face looked familiar in a way she couldn’t place. “Are you on drugs, Kelly?”

  “No, sir.” Her gaze dropped. On his neck, she saw a long scratch—angry and red. She heard movement in the apartment behind him. Light footsteps. A female sigh. “The . . . the necklace was gold,” she said quickly. “A heart, with two little diamonds on it.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I just thought you might have . . .”

  “I’ll let Vincent know you were here.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Bye.”

  Kelly tore back down the stairs, face burning, footsteps landing hard. How could she have spoken to Vee’s father like that? What was wrong with her? It’s just a necklace. It isn’t Catherine. Catherine’s dead and she always will be, whether you find it or not.

  Kelly made it down the final flight and through the lobby, apologizing in her head to John McFadden. As she pushed open the door, she tried not to think about the way he had looked at her, the coldness in his eyes. She thought of the fingernail scratch on his neck and the mov
ement in his apartment and realized that on top of everything else, she’d interrupted him and a woman—probably that model, Cynthia Jones.

  Great going.

  She pushed open the front door and stepped out into the bright day and fished around in her pocket for more quarters. At least she had bus fare home.

  What a dumb idea, coming here. She ventured one last look up at John McFadden’s apartment. Again she saw the female figure behind the sheer draperies, the arms stretching up like a dancer . . . Kelly kept watching. She pulled the draperies open, gazed out at the street below, and for a few seconds, Kelly got a clear look at her—John McFadden’s apartment guest. Her stomach dropped. She squeezed her eyes shut, as though they’d stopped working properly, and when she opened them again, she hoped and half-expected to see someone else. But there she was, peering out the window, then letting the drapes fall closed. Had she seen Kelly watching her?

  It hadn’t been Cynthia Jones standing in John McFadden’s window, wearing a big T-shirt, nothing else. It had been the startle-eyed girl from the Mounds commercial. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old.

  BACK AT HOME, KELLY CALLED VEE THREE TIMES BUT HUNG UP BEFORE the phone started ringing. She couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t talk to Bellamy either. She didn’t know what to say. Maybe she’d seen the girl wrong. Maybe it had been some kind of optical illusion created by reflections and the angle of the sun at that hour of day and her own panicky thoughts and it hadn’t been the Mounds girl at all in John McFadden’s window—just some skinny red-haired model who looked young but was actually grown up.

  Maybe.

  That had to be it. It would be too weird otherwise, and Kelly’s life was so very weird already. She thought of the promise Mom had asked her to make. “I don’t want you spending time with that girl,” she had said.

  Would that have been such a bad thing? Without Bellamy she’d be friendless, yes. But she wouldn’t have an arrest record, wouldn’t have gotten suspended. She wouldn’t have ever done cocaine or pot or mushrooms or speed or downers or acid. She wouldn’t have learned how to shoot a gun and she wouldn’t be flunking out of school, she’d still be getting Cs. She wouldn’t have ever met Vee—perfect Vee, who had been weeping in her arms last night, Kelly couldn’t remember the reason, though she did know it had made her profoundly, immeasurably sad . . .