I sipped at the beer, thinking about how Kate could’ve been connected to Costilla. It became a pointless exercise because I realized I probably didn’t really know Kate anymore. The girl I remembered was gone the second I left Catalina Island, and she had vanished somewhere along the way in the years since I had last seen her.
“Some things never change,” a voice said from behind me.
“I don’t think I ever gave you a key, Liz,” I said, without turning around.
Detective Liz Santangelo came around and sat on the patio wall, her back to the sun and sea. “You didn’t. Door was open.”
“I’m so careless.”
“Might want to change that,” she said, folding her arms across her black blouse and crossing her legs, the white cotton of the capri pants wrinkling at the knees.
I looked past her down to the shoreline. The waves were small and slow, and I knew I wasn’t missing anything out there, as the stragglers gave up and looked back at the water, shaking their heads, wishing for better things from the ocean.
“Yesterday,” I said finally. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she replied.
I knew that Liz took enough grief from her colleagues about being a woman in a man’s job. I didn’t need to make it tougher for her. I’d been pissed off and out of line.
“So I’m sorry,” I said. “Really.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
The ocean hitting the shore filled the silence between us. I thought maybe she was surprised at my apology, but I wasn’t sure.
“Were you down at the border earlier today?” she asked.
I drank some more of the beer and squinted at her. “Not that I recall.”
She tilted her head to the left, her eyes narrowing a bit. “Little shoot-out down there this afternoon. Alejandro Costilla and a few of his friends were seen fleeing. One guy dead. Two other guys were seen leaving the outlets.”
“I’ve never cared for outlet shopping. Seems like cheating. Dangerous, too, apparently.”
“Witness says they left in a convertible. A big, God-awful-looking convertible.”
I shook my head. “Convertibles are tough on my hair, Liz. And you know how vain I can be.”
She watched me for a moment. I stared back. I was actually staring over her shoulder, watching two seagulls battle for a hot dog bun in midair, but I didn’t tell her that.
“What the fuck are you doing messing around with Alejandro Costilla?” she finally asked.
“I would have to be an idiot to be messing around with Alejandro Costilla,” I said. “Detective.”
She nodded in agreement. “Yeah. You would have to be an idiot. And most of the time you are.”
I finished the beer and pointed the empty bottle at her. “That was rude. After I apologized and everything. I think you should leave now.”
She stood and sighed deeply, her annoyance with me evident. It was a sigh I’d gotten used to hearing when we’d been together.
“This is bigger than you, Noah,” she said, her voice softening. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” I said. “What’s bigger than me? Tell me what I don’t know.”
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head.
“Then if you can’t trust me, why would I trust you?”
“Because I’m telling you to.”
The fact that she wouldn’t tell me what she knew bothered me more than her attitude. Our relationship had always been rocky, personally and professionally, but we’d always been straight with one another. Our paths had crossed professionally over the last couple of years, and while we weren’t best friends, she’d never asked me to get out of the way.
“That’s not enough, Liz, and you know it,” I said. “You knew it before you said it.”
She looked at me for a moment, and I thought maybe she was going to tell me what I was missing. But it passed quickly, replaced by an expression that said she knew better than I did.
“Noah, whatever you’re doing,” she told me, walking by me toward the house, “don’t. Because as good as you think you are, Costilla is better at being bad. Much better.”
I heard the front door close. One of the seagulls gave up the fight for the bun, flew toward me, and landed on the wall, his beady eyes bearing down on me.
No one was on my side.
18
Kate’s service wasn’t that different from other funerals that I’d been to. All Hallows Catholic Church sits atop Mount Soledad, overlooking the La Jolla shoreline, but even the view couldn’t change why we were there. Lots of flowers and crying, and everyone wishing they were someplace else.
The one exception was that her husband threatened to rip my head off.
The service had ended, and Carter and I were out in the courtyard next to the church, watching the Criers receive condolences from friends and family. I hadn’t wanted to come. Not that anyone ever wants to attend a funeral, but Kate’s death felt too close. I wasn’t ready to bury her. But I realized that if I was going to figure out what had happened to her, I was going to have to get used to doing things I wasn’t ready to do.
“They look wrecked,” Carter said, watching Marilyn and Ken nod and shake hands.
“Yeah.”
“You gonna talk to them?”
I shook my head. “Not here. They’ve got enough to deal with today.”
Carter nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I don’t think Marilyn would care to see me anyway.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Was the last time you saw her…”
“Yep.”
“The whole I-jump-farther-”
“-if-I’m-naked episode,” Carter confirmed.
The week before Kate and I broke up, Kate’s older sister, Emily, was home from UCLA with some friends having a party. The UCLA coeds had immediately taken to Carter, and he’d responded in kind. They’d dared him to jump off the roof of the Criers’ house into the pool. He’d claimed he could only do it naked because he jumped farther without any clothes on.
Unfortunately, Marilyn Crier had walked out onto the patio just in time to see Carter soar over her into her pool. Naked.
“An unforgettable performance,” I said.
“Legendary,” he said. Then he tilted his head. “Hey. Didn’t you and Emily-”
“Shut up,” I said, cutting him off.
Almost as if she’d heard us, Emily Crier emerged from a group of people near her parents and came toward us.
“Noah,” she said, a tired smile forcing its way onto her face. “It’s good to see you.”
We hugged briefly, and I was surprised by how little she’d changed. Slightly taller than Kate, she was still model thin. Her blond hair looked yellow in the sunlight, cut slightly above her shoulders. Soft brown eyes. She wore a black sundress with expensive-looking black heels. Put a bikini on her and she could’ve been back cheering for Carter in the pool that night.
She put a hand on Carter’s arm. “You are still…huge.”
Normally, he would have had at least fourteen responses to that statement, most of them obnoxious and funny. But maybe the most startling thing about Carter could be his sense of civility.
He nodded. “Good to see you, Em.”
She returned the nod, and an awkward pause engulfed the three of us like a bubble.
“I’m sorry, Emily,” I said finally. “I really am.”
