Chapter 53
Roy was convicted of Marie’s murder, as well as Deb’s murder. He was found not guilty in Veronica’s death due to a lack of evidence. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
That was a year ago.
Me, I’ve started my own catering business. Jo & Do’s Petits Fours. The Do is for Dolores, with whom I have become friends. Even saying it brings me a flush of pleasure. Dolores and I are friends. I have a friend, and her name is Dolores, and she makes the best cupcakes.
If only my sister were here to see it.
Dolores didn’t want a partnership, she just wanted to be an employee, but like I said to her, “Life’s too short for that, Dolores. You’ve been an employee your whole life. You’re a great cook, and so am I, so we’re equal. And that’s all there is to it.”
And here we are! We rent a store in downtown LA where we make and sell cakes and sandwiches and macarons, and crèmes caramel and chocolate chip cookies. And of course, rosewater, pistachio, and white chocolate cupcakes, our bestseller.
And then, on the side, we cater for functions like weddings and birthdays. We are enormously popular. Our current waiting list for catering is two and a half months.
Dolores is so different now. For one thing, she’s gained weight, so she looks like a normal human being.
She looks happy and bouncy, and she is as funny as she was that very first time we cooked together, so that if you walked into our kitchen, you’d hear us cackle ourselves to the point where I’d be crying, catching my breath.
And I never cry. I never laughed either, until now.
I never knew how to tell a joke, let alone recognize one, until now.
And all I think is, if only Debs were here too.
Mikey attends an excellent school, and he loves it. He doesn’t let the fact that he can’t hear stop him. That boy can do anything. Mikey and I have never spoken of what happened in court that day. Why bother? It’s in the past, and Roy is in jail forever, as it should be.
I bought a little house in West Adams and decorated it just the way I like it.
The wallpaper has little garlands of roses running through it, and the drapes are light pink with butterflies.
The towels in the linen cupboard are all exactly the same size and soft like clouds.
And in the bathroom, by the vanity, is a little gold and white ceramic dish in the shape of a shell, with tiny starfish-shaped soaps that exude fig and grapefruit and peppermint scents.
I am taking out a custard cake with blueberries that I’d made for Mikey. He’ll be here later to do his homework while Dolores is at her dance class, and this cake is one of his favorites.
I am setting the cake down on the rack when my doorbell rings. I go to open the door, wiping my hands down my apron.
“You’re early,” I sign, but it’s not Mikey. It’s Detective Bates.
“Detective!” I say, genuinely pleased to see him. “Come in! Come in. It’s so nice to see you!”
The last time I saw Detective Bates was on the last day of Roy’s trial. He took me to a sports bar for a kind of celebratory drink. I’d never been to a sports bar, and I was impressed by the enormous TVs. I resolved to go to sports bars more often.
“I just wanted to tell you how proud your sister would be,” he’d said into his beer that day. I felt a strange sting up my nose.
“You really think so?” I said softly.
“I’m sure of it.”
I clinked my white wine with his glass, and then we talked of other things. He only had another year or so before retirement, and he didn’t know what he was going to do with himself.
We shook hands outside the bar under a thin, barely-there rain, and then he put his hand on my shoulder. “Have a good life, Jodie. You deserve it.”
For a moment, in the sharp light of the bar frontage, I told myself that Detective Bates was my real dad, and the other one had been a pretender, and I was going to reconnect with my real dad, and I would tell him how shit my life had been without him, and he would say, “We can’t change the past, Jodie, but we can make sure the future is good. ”
Anyway, I never saw him after that until now.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask, indicating an armchair.
“I…” He runs his fingers through his thinning hair. Then I notice the plain brown envelope under his arm.
“Please sit down, Detective, you’re making me nervous!” I’d meant to make a joke, now that I’ve become so much better at it, but he doesn’t laugh so I don’t know if I’ve missed the mark, as usual.
He sits on the edge of the chair.
“I made some custard cake, with blueberries. Would you like some?”
“No, thank you. This won’t take too long.”
I perch myself on the edge of the chair opposite, my hands on my knees.
He takes a heavy breath. “I’m retiring. It’s my last day next Friday.”
“Congratulations,” I say.
“I was cleaning up some files, you know, tying loose ends, leaving a clean slate for my successor.”
“Okay…” The back of my neck prickles.
He looks at me right in the eye. “The man who died the night you and your boyfriend, Beau, were driving back from the party… You knew him. You’d met him before the accident.”
I freeze for a split second, then I laugh, throwing my head back. “Of course I didn’t know him! Why would you say that?”
“There was a police report, long before your car hit him.”
“What police report?”
“There was a complaint filed by your sister.”
I sit there, twisting my mouth, my arms crossed over my chest. “That’s a lie. She withdrew the complaint.”
She had to. After that horrible, evil ex-boyfriend tried to rape her at the slaughterhouse where he worked, she went to the police and accused him of assault.
But my mother would have none of it. She screamed at Deb, told her it was her fault, she was a right slut so what did she expect?
And how dare she bring shame on our family like that?
As if it were remotely possible to bring shame on our family.
So, my sister went back and said she’d changed her mind.
“You want me to believe it was a coincidence that you happened to kill your sister’s ex-boyfriend?” Bates asks.
I raise a hand. “Slow down, Detective. A. I wasn’t driving that night, Beau was, and B. How would you know about it since she withdrew it?”
“I found a handwritten note in his file,” he says wearily.
“Why were you looking at his file?”
He runs a hand over his face. “We have systems, Jodie. Your conviction wasn’t relevant to Roy’s case, but it was brought up. I had to link everything up in the system. I requested the file and…I found the connection.”
I breathe slowly, deeply, just the way Deb taught me.
“I didn’t know,” I say finally. “Who he was, I mean. And I wasn’t the one driving, Detective, I swear. After I realized who he was—and I only knew because my sister told me later—I decided not to bring it up. What would have been the point?”
He nods throughout, his mouth pressed thinly, his eyebrows raised in a sorrowful shape. I shrug my shoulders up to my ears. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“You told me that it wasn’t you driving that day, the day of the accident.”
“It wasn’t. It was Beau. He made me say—”
“Jodie. Stop.”
He lifts the flap of the envelope and pulls out a single, large, grainy black-and-white photograph.
“I told you. Someone’s always watching.” He hands me the photograph.
I reach for it, and my vision blurs, just for a second, as I stare at a much younger version of me. Next to me is Beau. We are in Beau’s car. The photo was taken from a downward angle, and our eyes are red from the flash.
And I’m the one driving.
“Where did you get this?”
He rubs his hands down his face. “After I realized you knew the victim, I went searching. You would have gone through the Border Patrol checkpoint on I-8, so I checked with them. It was a long shot, but it paid off. You guys didn’t stop.”
I can hear myself breathe hard. Beau was paranoid because he’d had some weed with him. He asked me to play it cool, but I wanted to impress him. I wanted to be like Bonnie and Clyde. So when the agent signaled for us to stop, I accelerated through. To be fair, we both thought it was funny.
“Normally, they’d wipe the photo after a few weeks, but in your case, there was an incident report.”
There’s blood pulsing in my ears. I don’t say anything.
“You ran that man over on purpose, Jodie.”
It had been years since the assault, years since my sister had gone out with him.
He and I had no connection whatsoever. We didn’t go to the same schools or live in the same neighborhood.
By then, Deb had long moved on from the whole sorry episode and so had he.
The whole thing had been so short-lived that nobody, other than me, even knew his name.
And nobody made the connection before.
But when I saw him that night, it all came rushing back. How he’d tried to rape her, stalked her, and terrorized her for weeks.
He was walking on the side of the road, and as we drew near, he turned around, jerked his thumb to hitch a ride. I immediately recognized his ugly face, his crooked nose, and that scar under his right cheekbone. I didn’t even think about it. I jammed my foot on the pedal and swerved.
I think of my sister coming to the police station that night, her eyes red from crying, her features awash with misery. You shouldn’t have done it, Jo. I won’t be able to help you this time. I thought I’d be fine. I was going to serve Beau on a plate. There. Take him. He did it.
It wasn’t fine, but it was still worth it.
“For the record, he was a horrible man. A criminal,” I say.
“I know.”
“What’s going to happen now? Am I going to be tried again?”
He studies my face for a moment. “No. That would violate the prohibition on double jeopardy. You’ve been tried for the crime. You can’t be tried again.”
I let out a breath. “Well, then,” I say, smoothing down my apron. “That’s that, then.”
I stand and extend my hand. “Thank you for stopping by, Detective.”
“I would be remiss if I didn’t tell my superiors.”
I sit back down. “What would they do?”
“I have no idea. It won’t be up to me.”
I sit there, staring at him, trying to think of the implications. Will they look at Roy’s testimony differently once they realize what I did to Deb’s ex-boyfriend? Will they look closer at the CCTV footage of Roy driving his car to and from Erin’s place the night she died?
I shudder.
“Did he hurt other women?” I ask.
“He was charged with rape and assault, yes. Several times.”
“After he stalked my sister?”
“Yes.”
I nod. “So he would have done it again.”
“Most likely.”
“I did the world a favor. You know that.”
He looks at me sharply. “You killed someone, Jodie. We live in a civilized society. We don’t take matters into our own hands.”
God. Now he tells me.
“So everyone will know?”
He shrugs. “It’s possible.”
And all I can think is, Dolores and Mikey. They’re the only friends I’ve ever had. No, they’re more than that. They’re my family. They love me. I’m a normal person to them. What will they think of me now?
“Have you told anyone?” I ask.
“Not yet.”
I slap my hands on my thighs. “I need some cake,” I say. “Will you have some cake with me?”
“I don’t want any cake,” he says, although not unkindly.
“Please, Detective. Have some cake with me. I need to explain some things.”
“It won’t change anything.”
“Please. It’s important to me. And it’s a really good cake.”
He nods wearily.
I go into the kitchen, cut two slices of cake and put them on two plates. Then I reach into the cupboard above the sink and retrieve a champagne flute. It’s the thinnest, most fragile glass I have.
I wrap it twice inside a tea towel and smash it against the sink. Then I retrieve the sharpest shards and push them inside his slice.
No.
Deb is trying to say something. I ignore her. I just push in more shards.
Don’t, Jo.
I want to put my hands over my ears, but I know it won’t make any difference. I must remain focused. I push in a few more shards, to be on the safe side.
Don’t do it.
I stare at the cake to make sure it looks innocent enough. I stare at it for so long, the world goes blurry. Then, before I know it, I’ve flipped the trash can open and shoved the cake into it.
I can’t do it.
I let out a sigh. What will be will be, I guess. I brush my hands together, smooth down my apron and walk back into the living room. “The custard curdled. It’s never happened bef—what are you doing?”
Detective Bates is standing, his chin jutting forward, his jaw tight. His big hands are tearing up a sheet of paper into shreds.
It takes me a moment to understand that it’s the photograph.
He balls the pieces together and throws them into the fireplace.
“You’re right,” he says. “He was a terrible person. You did the world a favor.” He pulls out a lighter and lights up the scraps, then looks at me over his shoulder.
“You sure you don’t have any more cake?”