If Lillian had just waited to die for one year. One fucking year. Or if she had keeled over during a routine surgery or a car accident. No, she had to die on the damn beach at Malibu, after making a series of ridiculous calls, and right after making a fool of me and our marriage. She had to die, which freaked out the organization and prompted this move, which just might sink everything.
My phone dings and I groan and pick it up. It’s a text and I want to throw the device in the garbage disposal as soon as I read it.
Have you started the transfer yet? Ticktock.
I’ve stalled long enough. I need to just bite the bullet and do it. I push away from the desk and go to the pantry, the faux pumpkin can right up front, the key to the liquor cabinet popped out and in my hand in a second.
Lillian always thought I locked up our liquor because of Jacob, but I could give a damn if he steals a few sips. There’re not many bottles of value there, and only one worth more than a few bills. I reach up and fit the key into the fireproof locker and open the case. I reach in for the twentieth-anniversary box of Benromach, but it isn’t there. I sweep a hand over the inside of the cabinet, my panic mounting as I look for the distinct wooden box, the box that is always there, the box that has been in this case for nine years, the box that contains a slip of paper, tucked underneath the velvet lining, with the sixty-four-digit Bitcoin encryption key written on it. The encryption key that I need to access Colorado.
The box isn’t there.
CHAPTER 55
LENNY
Detective Gersh agrees to meet and suggests some preppy breakfast joint, way up in Hollywood. There’s no parking within five blocks, and I’m sweating and pissed by the time I shoulder past four hipsters and into the cramped front entryway. The interior is cool, and I squint, finding a uniform sitting in one of the booths halfway back, a damn mimosa in front of him. I pause beside him and nod, indicating for him to switch seats.
“What?” He looks up at me.
“Let me have that seat.”
“Shut the fuck up. Take that one.”
“I don’t like my back to the door.” I move to the side to give him room to get out.
“Yeah, neither do I.” The man stays in place, and if he is intimidated by my six-foot-four build and massive beer gut, he doesn’t show it.
“Fine. Scoot over.” I grip the table and begin to slide in next to him, using my ample ass to push him toward the wall.
Gersh moves just enough to accommodate, then gives me a look that could peel plaster. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“That’s what they say.” I push his mimosa toward him with a finger that’s still grubby from digging out graves.
“Aw, screw this.” He shoves at my arm. “I’ll move to the other side. You have shoulders like a damn bison.”
I oblige, and within a minute everything is as it should be and I grunt with contentment and pick up the menu. There is chocolate chip cookie–crusted french toast, which sounds interesting, and I order that, along with a cup of black coffee.
I nod to his mimosa flute. “Drinking on the job?”
“I just got off the night shift. I’d take an Irish coffee, but I plan on hitting the bed as soon as we finish up here.”
An Irish coffee. I try not to stare at the drink card that is stuck in between the salt and pepper shakers. I’d kill for some Jameson right now. Or better yet, a Bloody Mary with an extra shot. I grimace at a pain that rips through my stomach. “Well, I won’t keep you long.”
A woman walks by in shorts that expose half her butt cheeks and legs that go up to her ears. I try not to look and fail. Gersh grins at me, and I scowl back. So this is the new generation of cops. Champagne-drinking preppies. The man has clean fingernails, for shit’s sake. Probably enjoys the paperwork.
“What?” Gersh leaned forward. “What are you thinking?”
“I had a guy like you in my academy. Name was Loresner.”
“Loresner . . .” This guy tilts his head, trying to place the name.
“He’s not there anymore. Had a nervous breakdown the first time he shot his weapon in the line of duty. Now he sells lawn mowers at Sears.” I grab the mug from the waitress and bring it to my lips.
“Nice.” The kid adjusts his belt. “So Rancin says that you knew Lillian Smith.”
“I did.”
“How well?”
This is show-and-tell time, which I don’t mind, as long as he does his part. “I’ve known her six years. She visits me at work. We shoot the shit. She did the obituary for my daughter.”
Gersh nods, and if he already knew about Marcella, he doesn’t mention or show it. I’m glad. I’ve had enough apologies to fill a Greyhound bus. “When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Ten, eleven days ago. She brought me lunch. We ate. She left.”
“How’d she seem?”
I sit on the response as the waiter sets a mountain of potato skins, ham, eggs, and hollandaise sauce in front of Gersh. Okay, so maybe this place isn’t so bad.
My plate is as large as his, and is a recipe for clogged arteries and diabetes. I nod at Gersh with approval, but he is already tucking a napkin into the collar of his shirt and picking up a fork and knife.
“So?” he prods. “How’d she seem?”
“Fine. She actually seemed better than she had in the past. Healthier. She normally has this sort of dark gloom about her—it’s just her personality. She’s a quirky, weird type, like—”
“Yeah, I met her,” Gersh interrupts. “Questioned her about the Axe sister investigation. She’d been a bit obsessive with that family.”
That’s interesting news, though I’m not entirely surprised. Lillian had an addictive personality. During the early days after Marcella, before I left the force, before I started working at the cemetery, Lillian used to come by my house with a handle of whiskey, or vodka, or gin. We’d lie in Marcella’s bed and pass the bottle between us, and she wouldn’t say anything; she’d just lie there and give me liquor and company if I needed to tell a story, or be an asshole, or bend over the toilet and vomit. We became alcoholics together, though I suspected that Lillian had already been pretty far down that path. She was better at hiding it, and may have gotten a handle on it. I hadn’t seen her drunk in a few years.
“You ever met the husband?” Gersh pierces a stack of potato and ham.
“Yeah, once. He showed up to pick up Lillian. We were high—she had bought a roach from someone, and we were in a shitty apartment that I moved into after my house was repossessed. She was on the couch and I was on my bed, and we were laughing about something about giraffes, and he walked in the front door. Didn’t knock or anything. He just walked in, told her to stand up, and he pointed to the door, the way you’d do to a dog. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘Out.’”
I shrug. “And she just stood up and stumbled out. Didn’t look at me, didn’t say shit to me. And I didn’t see her again for two or three weeks.”
“Really?” He sets down his fork and gives me his full attention. “Did you get the sense that she was abused by him?”
I consider the idea. “No. If I had, I would have stepped in. I mean, I would have tried, given the state I was in.” I struggle for a way to describe what that dynamic had been like. “I viewed it more like she was a kid—and he was a parent. Controlling, yes. But it was with care and love. At least, that’s how I saw it. You have to realize, I only met him that one time. She rarely mentioned him after that.” I straighten, irritated with myself for just now remembering the last time Lillian had mentioned her husband. “She thought he was having an affair. Was worried about it.”