Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Margot has news. Elsie can see it in her as soon as she steps through the doorway, joining them in Beverley’s house.
“What is it?” Elsie asks, closing the door behind her friend—although she knows it’s likely gossip about some actor she’s never heard of disgracing himself at a party.
They make their way to the living room. The children are watching a Flintstones repeat; Wilma and Betty are performing lawn maintenance while Fred and Barney recline against a rock, smoking Winston cigarettes.
Margot raises her eyebrows at Bev and tilts her head toward the backyard.
“Kids, go and play outside,” Bev responds. Then she calls after them, “Stay by the door!”
“Elsie”—Margot points firmly at her—“get something to drink. We’re going to need it.”
Reluctantly, Elsie goes to the kitchen. She casts her eyes around the space, worthy of the pages of a magazine.
The refrigerator is mint green, as are the laminate countertops, the percolator and the toaster.
There’s a bowl of lemons arranged neatly on the breakfast bar.
She’s not quite sure why anyone would need that many lemons, but they look pleasing, she supposes.
Mustard-colored geometric tiles climb the walls behind the stove, and a chrome Sunbeam Mixmaster has been positioned near the sink.
Elsie is almost certain that Bev has never used it, just like she’s never used the hostess trolley tucked into a corner of the room. Bev is a horrible cook.
Elsie moves to the refrigerator. The blare of the television being flicked over to the news winds its way into the kitchen.
There are photos stuck to the fridge door with magnets: Beverley and her children; Benjamin and Audrey playing with the garden sprinkler; the kids with their grandmother, Alice; Elsie, Beverley and Margot at the beach.
She raises a hand, tilts her head. The bottom of a photograph is peeking out from behind the rest. She grasps it and starts to pull it out, catching a glimpse of a wedding dress, the middle buttons of a man’s best suit.
“Hello? We’re dying of thirst in here!”
Elsie rolls her eyes, opens the refrigerator and takes out a jug of iced tea. Margot will complain, but it’s far too early for cocktails.
In the living room, Bev has kicked off her shoes, leaving them abandoned on the tufted turquoise carpet. Margot is fanning herself dramatically with the TV Guide.
“So, what the hell’s going on, Margot?” Bev asks as Elsie sets the jug down.
Margot bites her lip, widens her eyes, always one to drag out the drama. “I think we might have another victim,” she says, eyes ricocheting between them.
“What?”
“It could be another murder!”
“Oh God.”
“I was at a party last night.” Margot’s words streak along. “Someone told me a model had gone missing from Golden Point. Diane Howard Murray—that’s her name.”
Elsie reaches for her notebook, pulls a pen from the ring binding at the top. “A model? Did you get any other details? How old?”
“Well, the girl who told me wasn’t really sure,” says Margot, “but she thinks early twenties. So she could fit, right? With the other two women, Cheryl Herrera and this Emily Roswell you told us about, Bev.”
“Hmm.” Bev ponders. “If we don’t know any details about the crime, or if there even has been a crime, it’s hard. Where’s Golden Point?” She reaches behind her for something and eventually pulls open a map, then spreads it across her knees.
“Golden Point…Golden Point,” she murmurs, before locating it with a finger. “It’s quite far away from the other crime scenes.”
“Apparently she worked in Calabasas a lot,” Margot offers.
Beverley’s finger hovers above the map. Elsie can see she has already ringed the locations of the two other murders in red ink. Eventually Beverley taps it.
“Calabasas. That would make more sense. Look.” She turns the map, holds it up and indicates three different spots. “That would be three locations, each less than an hour from Berryview, each accessed”—she runs a finger horizontally—“via the interstate, here.”
“And where are we? Where’s Berryview?” Elsie asks.
Beverley leans across the map and taps a central point.
“Right there, in the middle of it all.”
“Bingo!” Margot yelps. “That’s three bodies in, what—just over three and a half weeks?” She is enjoying this a bit too much for Elsie’s liking.
They often butted heads, Margot and Elsie—not because Elsie disagreed with Margot about what she wore, or about the men she slept with, or about the way she was so comfortable with her body that it scared Elsie a little, but because Elsie thought Margot was dramatic and Margot thought Elsie was uptight.
If anyone asked Margot about her husband—and they did; his case had been in the papers for months when everything happened—she batted it away with a joke.
Now, why would I want to talk about a sad little guy like that?
But people couldn’t get enough of the story, a killer politician shopped to the police by his young, glamorous wife.
Margot took up a lot of the news coverage.
Pictures of her in tight skirts and claret lipstick splashed across the front pages.
While Elsie was used to a quiet existence—James Joyce and drab roast beef sandwiches in Saran Wrap on a Monday—Margot lived her life like a comet.
She was a woman who knew important people at Warner Brothers, who had been hit on by Elvis.
The newspapers called Margot a “free spirit” when they reported on Stephen’s crimes—their way of saying a woman who likes a drink, Elsie supposes.
And it was as if Margot saw people’s perceptions of her as a challenge, a reason to jut out her chin and dig in her heels.
Elsie knows that, underneath it all, Margot is as damaged by what her husband did as she and Beverley are by the acts of theirs.
She knows that Margot sleeps around because she won’t allow herself to forge any sort of deeper connection with anyone, will never trust another man.
But the fact that Margot won’t accept that, won’t let it show, even for just a second, seems to Elsie like betrayal.
“That’s three girls, all very beautiful. Bit of a cliché, but whatever,” Margot says. “Cheryl Herrera was a track athlete. Emily Roswell, pulled from the lake, was a cheerleader. And this Diane is a model. All killed by some freak who leaves weird calling cards on his victims?”
“ ‘Calling cards’?” Elsie asks, confused. As far as she knows, Albert didn’t leave anything at his crime scenes except bodies.
“The arrow, the tattooed knuckles. This can’t be some guy going crazy with a knife or a rope. It’s too intentional. He’s doing these things as a taunt, a way of saying something. What if this next murder—”
“We don’t know that yet, Margot,” Beverley interjects, always ready to add a layer of calmness. “We don’t know there’s been another murder. Diane might have just skipped town.”
Elsie nods. They are getting carried away. They need to be careful. She knows what desperation does, how it twists the brain into locating causalities.
“Do you really believe that?” Margot asks Bev. “You think she’s just on vacation?”
Beverley’s reply is cut off by the sound of the six o’clock news on the television. Their heads turn in unison as the mustachioed figure of Tom Cornwell, grasping the sides of a lectern emblazoned with the LAPD logo, fills the screen.
“I’d like to thank the press for cooperating with us in our investigation into the murder of Cheryl Herrera.” He doesn’t smile, his eyes fixed firmly on his notes.
“Well, look who it is,” Margot drawls. “Mr. Charisma.”
“We’d like to talk to anyone from the Mexican community who might know anything about Cheryl or who might have links to prolific street gang the Kings.”
“Oh, he’s really going for it?” Margot cries. “Straight in on the Kings?”
“It’s not the Kings.” Elsie sighs, Patti’s words in her head.
“Aren’t the Kings Puerto Rican?” Margot asks, head swiveling between Elsie and Beverley, who holds her face in her hands. “We’re just lumping people all together, are we? Mexicans, Puerto Ricans…Three cheers for police prejudice.”
“They’re not going to mention Emily Roswell.” Bev tuts as the conference comes to a close. “It’s irresponsible.” She rises from the couch and clicks off the television.
“They’re making such a mess of it,” Elsie grumbles, then lifts her head suddenly, eyes determined.
“We’ve really got to do it now.” She sees Bev frown but is undeterred.
“We’ll keep looking at these three cases, see if we can find a link.
” She has the detail of Cheryl Herrera’s bracelet now, and the logo on the van at the vigil.
“So, what?” Bev says drily. “Just ignore the police and do our own investigation?”
Elsie nods. She is quite happy to ignore the police.
She does not trust the police. She knows the LAPD chief, Tom Cornwell, is as bent as a right angle.
He’s been discussed at the Signal before, many times, but there’s been little they could write about his dubious professionalism.
The man is untouchable. She doesn’t trust any of his officers to carry out their duties effectively or honestly, either, not with a boss like that.
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the past few weeks anyway? Why not make it official? Think about it,” she levels. “The girls—Henry’s victims, Stephen’s victims, Albert’s—if you could go back in time and stop them being harmed, wouldn’t you do it?”
Bev’s jaw flinches. “Well, of course. But this isn’t—”
“I’m not suggesting that we can change what happened,” she quickly corrects. Elsie knows they would all do that if they could. “My point is, if we can see that there might be a link, and if we might be able to help, in some small way, to find out who might be doing this, shouldn’t we do it?”
“That’s a lot of mights,” Margot quips, but Elsie can see that she’s intrigued.