Pacific Gardens was an easy find in West LA, off the Ten, on well-traveled Bundy Drive between Pico and Venice boulevards. The handsome two-story building, partially concealed by a boxwood hedge and crowned with graceful clusters of queen palms, was dark red brick, a classy contrast to the surrounding mixed-use buildings with the stucco cladding pervasive throughout the city. Google Earth had shown a facility that took up an impressive amount of real estate with its shaded paths and gardens, and Kate now saw that it boasted a driveway leading down to free underground parking. An aged, white-haired attendant seated in a camp chair, a newspaper spread in his lap, waved her into one of many open slots.
She rode a tiny wood-paneled elevator to the main floor, its doors opening to a stylish bronze table bearing a lavish arrangement of leafy succulents overflowing a bright blue ceramic bowl. A polished blond wood bench lined the wall adjacent to the elevator; a reception area with a boomerang-shaped granite counter, crowded with brochures and flyers, occupied the opposite side of the room. At the counter a tiny middle-aged Asian woman looked up at her from behind a bulky desk computer.
“I’d like to see Marietta Hall,” Kate said, searching the cluttered counter for a visitors’ sign-in book.
“How nice. Such a treasure to the people here, a real favorite,” the woman gushed. “Go into the main room,” she said, gesturing, “take the hallway to your right and her unit’s straight down, one-twenty-four. You’ll need to knock,” she added, and Kate deduced that unlocked rooms were the norm.
The place wasn’t a prison, she reminded herself after thanking the woman, nor did it need the safeguards of a hospice. It was a well-located, upscale assisted-living facility without a memory ward, so no lockdown. Aside from screening for intruders, why would they care who visited?
The lobby opened into a carpeted central area dominated by a railed-off section holding several dozen tables of varying sizes, padded chairs around them, bright red menus propped up by an assortment of condiments. Kate paused, gazing around with interest. A dozen elderly men and women were talking and laughing as they played cards at an oblong table in an alcove partitioned off by vertical shafts of pale wood. A similar alcove, furnished with armchairs, was lined with bookcases, its two white-haired occupants bent over their books. There were no food aromas nor was there any hint of the medicinal and disinfectant odors pervasive at Silverlake Haven.
Along the carpeted hallway toward Marietta Hall’s unit, Kate slowed to inspect a bulletin board comprised of a large monthly calendar listing times for excursions to museums, films and theater productions; get-togethers on the premises, social functions and lifestyle lectures. Lining the corridor were paintings and photographs of redwood forests, pine trees, fields of sunflowers, bowls of daisies. All the units Kate passed bore nameplates identifying the occupants, and one-twenty-four’s read Dr. Marietta Hall.
Kate’s brief light knock was answered by a husky call of “I’m coming…” But it was some moments before the door swung open.
Eager for information yet all too aware of the memories that would be dredged up by this visit, Kate had been dreading it. But the sight of Marietta Hall, her imposing height scarcely compromised by the walker on which she leaned with both hands, drew an involuntary grin. The wild frizzy dark hair of yesteryear was now wild frizzy white hair. The lines in her round face had considerably deepened, her lips reduced to a thin line framed by wrinkles. But the lake-blue eyes, bright, lively with awareness, were unchanged. As Kate took in the floor-length housecoat decorated with tiny silhouettes of Mickey and Minnie Mouse against an iridescent yellow background, her grin widened. The attire evoked the radically unconventional therapy office on San Vicente that she had visited more than two decades ago, its walls as dazzlingly yellow as Marietta Hall’s housecoat.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” came the same low, Garboesque tones Kate remembered. “Of all people I never imagined I’d ever see again…Detective Kate Delafield. Come in, come in.”
“Detective no more, I’m retired,” she informed her, entering a room that resembled a hothouse. Potted plants, some flowering, many of them ferns, a half dozen tree-like and ceiling-high, all but overwhelmed the warm room and produced a rich, humid, fecund smell. Adding to the jungle-like atmosphere were wall hangings of birds of spectacular plumage. She stood relishing this re-creation of the psychotherapy office she well remembered and how discomfited partner Ed Taylor had been when they had come there to interview this woman. “It’s good to see some things haven’t changed,” she said, shaking her head in wonder.
“Well, it appears that a lot of life has happened to you,” Marietta Hall remarked, having finished her own inspection of Kate.
“I feel a mere hundred years older,” Kate joked, taking in the large window, shaded by a metallic awning, that looked out onto a path winding its way through an expanse of grass. Beside the window an electronic chair stood starkly vertical, its seat slanted to the floor, having delivered Marietta Hall to her feet to answer the door. A wheelchair was within reach of the electronic chair, an armchair at conversational distance. The single side table held an assortment of prescription bottles, a glass of water, a disorderly stack of paperbacks, a pair of glasses, a few tissues, a cupholder of pens sitting on a pad of paper. On the coffee table were miniature glass and ceramic sculptures of birds and animals lined up in neat rows according to species. There was a wall unit with a TV, its other shelves stacked with books and magazines. An archway led, presumably, to a bedroom and bath. In an enclave beside the door a miniscule kitchenette contained two cupboards over a sink, a small refrigerator, hot plate and tiny microwave. All she would need, Kate thought, with meals being served to the residents.
“Dr. Hall, it’s a very nice place,” Kate said. “You look to be really comfortable here.”
“Marietta, call me Marietta and I’ll call you Kate. It’s good here. I did one truly sensible thing in my life—took out a top-notch long-term care policy. I’ll never be a burden to anyone but the people here, and they’re well compensated for looking after me. Have a seat, Kate. Coffee’s freshly made. Take anything besides black?”
“Black’s fine.” Seeing that Marietta could not manage two coffees plus her walker, Kate followed her to the kitchenette.
Finally seated in the armchair, she watched Marietta’s electronic chair slowly lower her into a comfortable sitting position, her legs elevated on its footrest. “Rheumatoid arthritis,” she told Kate, gnarled fingers clutching her mug. “I get around this little place of mine and watering these plants gets me on my feet, a good thing. But any distance, it’s the walker. The wheelchair—well, I need some assistance with…this and that.”
Kate nodded, assuming “this and that” to be going to meals, showering, and dressing. Sipping good strong coffee out of a mug adorned with penguins, she guessed that Marietta was well into her seventies if not beyond; she had looked to be in her fifties when they first met. “I’m getting a bit creaky myself,” she offered in commiseration.
Actually, aside from her hovering hooded figure of death and considering her years of smoking, eating crap food on the job, drinking whatever and whenever, and with no physical activity outside her daily routine, she was in better physical shape than she deserved. Reading glasses were now a necessity, her knees sometimes hinted at lesser days to come, and her left shoulder was a constant nuisance, stiffening overnight and aching well beyond the reach of Advil on rainy days. There was also that view in the bathroom mirror each morning, tired blue eyes looking back at her in a face baked by the years like clay in the sun, framed by ever unruly hair that was now a pale gray. Her body thinner because of not much of an appetite, a good result for a bad reason. But, more than anything else these days, the vista she now looked out on was the metaphoric landscape in her rearview mirror. Generating nostalgia, wistfulness, occasional joy; more often regret, sorrow, grief. No way could the woman seated across from her, who was contemplating her with a shrewd, inquisitive gaze, know that the case they’d shared all those years ago had been a watershed in her emotional life. The murder of Dory Quillin had drawn her out of her closeted isolation after Anne’s death and into a lesbian community of chosen family.
“So how have you been, Kate?”
“I’ve had my ups and downs,” Kate replied with a wry smile. “And you?”
Marietta chuckled, a rich, deep, chocolatey sound. “Ups and downs are known in my trade as living a human life. Granted, more intense for you than most of us, given your line of work.”
Kate nodded, noting that Marietta had not answered her question. Revealing anything personal during the therapeutic process was proscribed by her former profession and the directive had evidently followed her into retirement. Continuing to sip her coffee, procrastinating over her reason for being here, an inexplicable reluctance, she confessed in deflection, “Retirement was hard at the time. But a good thing…I came to see how the job was hacking more and more out of me. From what the woman at the front desk said about you, I take it you’re still in the therapy business.”
Marietta raised a hand. “I seem to have turned into a combination of Dr. Phil and Ann Landers. If I didn’t lock my door, they’d be flocking in here at all hours.”
Kate was chuckling and nodding. In view of where she was, she elected not to bring up any of her own experiences with the dying at Silverlake Haven and instead offered, “I’ve had people ask if I can help get their driver’s licenses restored. To do something about barking dogs, rude teenagers. A woman in my own condo asked me to talk her kid into going into rehab.”
“I hope you did that last one.”
“Yes, actually. Easy enough to come up with a version of scared straight after all the drunks and druggies I’ve seen being zipped into body bags.”
“I can only imagine. Out of curiosity, Kate…how did you find me? I’ve been here several years now; I seldom have visitors.”
Kate heard this sadly, thinking of the people she had visited at Silverlake Haven, abandoned by family and friends wearied by the constant reality of death and dying. She answered, “Through a colleague of yours, Calla Dearborn. I’ve been seeing her for years.”
“Ah, yes, Calla, one of our best,” she said with a vigorous nod and added meaningfully, “One friend who never let me down when times got tough. You couldn’t do better, she’s splendid.” Wincing, stirring uncomfortably, she adjusted the chair’s footrest to a lower position. “I’m assuming the case we have in common is what brings you here, something about the murder at the Nightwood Bar.” She added so softly, as if to herself: “I think of Dory to this very day.”
Kate suddenly found herself more than willing to meet Marietta Hall on this common ground. “She haunts me,” she uttered, the three words tumbling out of her.
“I deeply understand that, Kate. You viewed her in death. Worse for us who knew her in life. I’ll never forget her. She was a special spirit on this earth. Mercurial, pugnacious, charming, smart, a rebel to her very core…”
“I did know that. It came across from everyone who knew her,” Kate said. “I interviewed a woman Dory was with for about a year, Neely Malone. She was trying to tell me what Dory meant to her and she quoted a phrase from Shakespeare, that Dory was life’s bright fire.”
“How perfect,” Marietta said mournfully. “I just wish I could have done something, anything…”
“I know. But that interview I did with you all those years ago, your sessions with her, how you pursued her all over the place trying to get her to tell you the truth of what happened to her. How elusive she was—”
“Quicksilver.”
“You knew, you absolutely knew what happened with her father when no one else did, even though you couldn’t get her to tell you.”
“The signs were classic. But, Kate, I’m sure all she could see was that revealing it would destroy her family.”
“In this case, if only it had. You did all you could. You have nothing to regret.”
Marietta grimaced. “Wishful thinking is not the same as regret.”
And guilt is quite different from regret, Kate reflected, thinking of Ellie and April Shuster and her dereliction of duty.
The forking lines around Marietta’s lips smoothed with her faint smile. “I remember the partner you had at our interview.”
“Ed Taylor.”
“Yes. A misogynist and homophobe, as I recall—”
“Add racist to the list.”
“Even though I’m heterosexual, he’s the kind of male that makes me wish for a world of only women.”
“I’ve often wished for that too, and for the same reason. Marietta, it’s not Dory that brings me here,” Kate finally began, and took a deep breath. “I need to know about a high school student who was sent to you about twenty years ago. April Shuster.”
Marietta flung her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Oh Goddess,” she uttered, “that one.” Then she jerked forward to stare at Kate. “But she wasn’t your case. I followed all the newspaper reports, I’d hoped she was yours when I first heard about the murder.”
“Actually, she was my case. And wasn’t.” She took a breath and expelled the truth: “I deferred to my inexperienced partner to be lead detective. To this day no one knows the real reason I did that. It was because of Dory. I couldn’t…” she fumbled, “I…so close after Dory…I couldn’t…just couldn’t…deal with it.”
“Oh, Kate, I understand. No one could understand that better than I do,” Marietta pronounced in her husky tones, her eyes moist, and she picked up her coffee mug, cradling it in both hands as if seeking the comfort of its warmth.
Kate sat silently, tearful, unmoving for an expanse of time, aware only of her intakes and exhalations of breath, the smell of the greenery in the room, the lightness spreading through her shoulders as a twenty-year weight lessened with this sharing.
Marietta put down her mug. “I read about the acquittal. That must have been a horror.”
“Ever had a client of yours commit suicide?”
Marietta winced. “Two, actually.”
“Then you maybe understand how I feel about the years taken out of this woman’s life.”
“I won’t bother arguing that it wasn’t your fault; I’m sure Calla’s done her futile best with you. Since it wasn’t her mother, who did kill April?”
Kate smiled thinly. “Given the nature of the Church of the Eternal Word, the possibilities are numerous.”
Marietta said mockingly, “Challenge the god I believe in? In his name I kill you, blasphemer.”
Kate shrugged her agreement with this cynical truth.
“It’s been…how long since the acquittal?”
“A year and a half.”
“I’ve been right here. You’re here only now?”
“I didn’t know about you till now. Long story, I’ll get to it. Marietta, I need to ask some questions about April.”
“Yes.” She spread her hands. “Of course. But you know the rules of my profession.”
“I do. All I can offer are extenuating circumstances.” She enumerated on her fingers: “April’s been dead twenty years. The church has long since disbanded. Her father and Stella Hayden’s parents are somewhere in Africa. The lead detective in the case has died. Ellie Shuster has chosen me to blame for her conviction and a letter hand-delivered right to my mailbox promises she’s about to kill me.”
“Oh Goddess.” Marietta blinked at her. Then heaved a sigh. “Oh, Kate, Kate, you so don’t deserve this.” She shook her head. “Not that deserve means anything with someone entrenched in their own reality. Well, in an ideal world common sense would always prevail over any rule book. Besides, who cares if my governing agency pulls my license? What do you want to know about April?”
“Every single thing you can remember.”
Marietta lowered her frizzy head, massaged her face with her fingertips, blew out a breath, leaned her head back. “Kate, with all this going on I’m doubly glad you’re seeing Calla. About April, I remember quite a lot. First off, I can tell you she was no Dory Quillin. With April, self-assertion was a foreign country. She was a walking bundle of anxiety, fear. You at least got a look at her—”
“Covered in blood,” Kate interrupted bluntly. “Her face and skull crushed.”
“Oh Goddess. But you’ve seen photos—”
“I haven’t. I practiced all the avoidance I could on this one.” Photos of the living April Shuster, as well as Stella Hayden, remained in a sealed envelope locked in her safe.
“Well then, the basics. Dory’s eyes were blue—”
“Yes I know.” She wanted no further description of Dory, of the lifeless body that had pierced her to her soul, the eyes she had seen forever frozen in horror over her killer.
But Marietta was oblivious, inexorable. “Such a…a lacerating blue they were. They pinned you till she looked away. Now April, her eyes were light brown, and when she looked at you they went skittering away as if she was afraid she might reveal something, you might actually see something hidden in her. She was a very pretty girl, Kate, heart-shaped face, turned-up nose, but pretty like a porcelain doll. Rigid, she was so very rigid. Now Dory…Dory was like…” She flapped her hands as if they were an aid in her groping for words. “She was like a lighted candle was inside her. Like a stained glass window with sunlight coming through. But April, her whole body was jittery, as if her feet were always on ice. She was so afraid…”
“Of what?”
“Everything. Imagine being that girl. Imagine your whole existence dictated by that…that…cult. Living in a closet inside a jail.” Her eyes were sparking in anger, her tone scathing. “A Tibetan monastery wouldn’t be as regimented as the home life of that poor youngster. In my book she was an abused, emotionally battered child. But…” She raised a hand, dropped it. “You know how it is, Kate. Parental rights, freedom to call any nutty belief a religion…”
Kate nodded; no need to say more when they both had been daily witness to the destruction caused by these “rights” being taken to extremes.
“April had a girlfriend…” Marietta rubbed fingers together in a gesture that she was searching for a name.
“Stella. Stella Hayden.”
“Yes. I remember that Stella was April’s one and only friend. Her family lived right under the thumb of that cult leader next door in their duplex.” Marietta’s voice rose. “From the moment she woke up in the morning she was battered by people who used the Bible like a weapon. Have you ever read the Bible, Kate?”
“I can quote Leviticus,” she said drily.
Marietta snorted. “That’s enough to know how people use it to justify anything. I’ve always wished someone would come along and proclaim Shakespeare the reincarnation of Christ, and his plays the new gospel. I mean, why not? It’s the greatest and wisest literature the world has ever known. It holds every guidepost to human behavior and morality.”
“I wish,” Kate said, struck by the concept. But then, she thought, people would still find ways to interpret and distort the plays to suit their purposes. She asked, “Given April’s home life, how did she ever come to identify as lesbian?” Then, realizing that she had only Stella Hayden’s diary for this assumption, she quickly asked, “Or did she?”
“She did. She found a book—”
Kate’s sharp laugh was involuntary. “A book,” she repeated. “The true weapon of mass destruction. No wonder they burned them throughout history. Do you happen to remember which one?”
“Sure. Annie on My Mind, Nancy Garden. My recollection is she found it—someone left it on a desk in one of her classrooms. Probably a kid I was treating. Back then, the novel was number one on my recommend list for teens struggling with their lesbian identity.”
Kate shifted in her chair. What a different turn her own life might have taken had she found a book like that in high school. Or a Marietta Hall. “Her sexual orientation…had she acted on it?”
“How I wish she had,” Marietta said wistfully. “But what she took from the book wasn’t affirmation. Only confirmation of her worst fears about evil desires inside her and committing a sin that would consign her to the fires of hell.” She sighed. “I wish I could have done something, anything…But, she was so thoroughly indoctrinated…The fact that she was willing to listen to me at all—well, even that much was amazing.”
“Why was she sent to you? I assume it wasn’t voluntary.”
“It was, actually. In those days I was at the school two afternoons a week. A teacher came to me out of concern for how isolated and troubled April seemed. So I approached her on my own, very casually, told her I was talking to a number of the girls at the school and asked if she’d like to come in and talk to me, tell me about herself. And she did.”
“How many sessions did she have with you?”
“Only three. And let me tell you, they were more distressing than you can imagine. The whole time she would sit perched on the edge of her chair like she was about to bolt. I did challenge her—very, very delicately—about her view of herself, and every time she answered with a Bible quote. But the way she was always early for our meetings, Kate, I got the feeling there was something inside her trying to get out, that God wasn’t nearly enough company for her. I was kind as I could be. I think she was glad for any sort of approval of her, caring about her.” She was looking dolefully past Kate into the distance of her memories. “A tragedy, she was a tragedy in so many ways, and the worst one is, I got trapped by my goddamn rule book. I had to tell her that by school policy—by goddamn policy—I could only see her the three times before I had to notify her parents. And that was it, I never saw her again.” She raised both hands. “Dory haunts you, April haunts me. How many times since have I regretted that I didn’t throw the goddamn rule book out the window even if it did cost me my career.”
Kate asked softly, “When was the last time?”
“A week before she died.”
Marietta picked up her mug, drank coffee, and Kate picked up hers as well. She finally broke the silence to ask, “Did she talk about her parents?”
Marietta’s round face seemed to darken with her scowl. “Her father was the disciplinarian. They never laid a finger on her, mind you—I asked, almost hoping they did so I could make a report to CPS and spring her out of that environment even briefly, show her something else was possible. Punishment consisted of sensory deprivation, locking her in her room which her father described as isolation to expiate her sins and pray for forgiveness.”
“Jesus,” Kate muttered.
A flicker of amusement crossed Marietta’s face. “If he ever turns up, I’ll be the first to tell him he has a lot to answer for.”
“What about the mother?”
“The mother.” Marietta frowned. “She’s why I never questioned her conviction for the murder. What came out at trial. According to April, she was always trying to break up her relationship with Stella Hayden. I knew that was true.”
“What did she tell you about that?” Kate asked eagerly. “What do you remember?”
Marietta said regretfully, “April didn’t go into much detail. Only that her mother was always telling her that Stella monopolizing her was not a good thing and she should make other friends.”
Eloquently confirmed in Stella’s rage at Ellie Shuster. “Do you think April’s mother was suspicious of the nature of the relationship?”
“She may have been, but I can’t confirm that for you.”
“Did you ever have any contact with Stella?”
“Only indirectly. I remember seeing her in the cafeteria with April and one other time. What a study in contrasts. April so feminine, Stella so much more on the androgynous side. Dark hair, dark eyes, angular face. She was taller, huskier. April was so passive, but Stella, she kind of, I don’t know, bristled with a kind of belligerent energy.”
“I got vibrations of that from her diary,” Kate said with a faint smile. “She used as many exclamation marks as she did words.”
“Sounds very teenage. The other time I saw her I happened to be in the gym. She was playing basketball and she hip-slammed some poor girl so hard she went flying into someone else and a whole bunch of them all went down in a howling heap. It was actually pretty funny, but the coach benched Stella and she was furious, looked at that coach like she was shooting lightning bolts.”
She was smiling now, and Kate too smiled at the image. She reached into the shoulder bag she’d placed on the floor beside her, extracted the sheet of paper tucked into a side pocket. “Marietta,” she said, “what led me to you is something Stella Hayden wrote about you in her diary.”
“Me? I’m in Stella’s diary?” She stared at Kate. “That diary was all over the news. Wasn’t it key evidence at the trial?”
“It was. If you’re wondering why you weren’t contacted, the mention of you is so obscure in its context that I missed it and I’ve been through that diary at least a dozen times—”
She broke off with the thought: But if I’d seen it at the time, so close to Dory’s murder… “Miss Hall” might well have caught her eye. Something else to add to her lengthy regret list.
She explained, “Your name looked to be included with her ridicule and hatred of a number of members of her church and a few teachers. The last police partner I had at Wilshire Division, he’s a very good detective and a fresh pair of eyes. He saw the slight difference in context just yesterday, questioned who this ‘Miss Hall’ might actually be. Even went the extra step to check with the school.” She added bitterly, “He saw it, I didn’t. Add stupidity to my list of transgressions.”
Eyes widened in consternation, Marietta placed her coffee mug carefully on the table beside her. Then fastened her gaze on the page in Kate’s hand. “What on earth would Stella Hayden have to say about me in her diary?”
“Something that makes no sense to me.”
Kate handed her the page. Marietta seized it, grabbed the spectacles from the side table and set them on her nose, read aloud the passage Kate had outlined: “‘Miss Hall, I hate hate hate you. You’re every bit as bad, no, the garbage you put in her head is the worst, just as awful as all the preachy stuff from her bitch mother.’”
Kate said, “Knowing you’d have been completely supportive of April’s lesbian identity, this mystifies me.”
“You’re right—of course it’s not about her lesbian identity. All I did was support her, defend whole aspects of herself she was trying to smother under church doctrine.”
Kate said baldly, “Stella was in love with her. The diary was very much confessional, very passionate.” She added as a surprising thought struck her: “Did April even know it?”
Marietta shook her head. “If she did, she didn’t tell me. I remember Stella coming up in conversation only once, when I asked April about the friends she’d had in her life. That’s when she told me that Stella was it, they’d been inseparable for as long as she could remember. That’s when she mentioned her mother’s disapproval.”
“Any idea what would bring this outburst from Stella?”
“Sure. Possessiveness. Because I agreed with April’s mother and told her so. I floated the idea that April should open herself to both girls and boys her own age in the church.” She waved the diary page at Kate. “Stella knew I was threatening her exclusiveness with April. I figured if I couldn’t get April to reassess her view of the world as a sinful place, other friendships could be nourishing even in the claustrophobic world she lived in. It was even possible,” Marietta said with a melancholy smile, “that getting out from under the thumb of one single-sex friendship with a girl who was so aggressive, so overpowering, so overwhelming, might bring other options. It’s possible April might even have been bisexual.”
Kate gave an emphatic nod. “I’m with you on that. I have a trans nephew. Dylan’s given me quite an education.”
“I’m afraid that’s about all I can remember.” Marietta thrust the copy of the page from the diary back at Kate as if it were burning her. She looked at the wall clock. “Sorry to say they’ll soon be coming to get me for the book club.”
Kate tucked the page back into her shoulder bag. “One more thing,” she said. “Since I’m now a retired detective, and I never was anywhere near being a good one where this case is concerned, from where you sit, might you have any theories as who might have killed April?”
“What an interesting question.” She sat back in her chair. “Take our coffee mugs out to the kitchen for me, will you, and let me think a moment.”
When Kate returned after rinsing the mugs in the tiny kitchen sink, Marietta said, “I’ll tell you who I don’t think it was: her father. Unless they had some sort of hideous relationship that never came out at the trial or my conversations with April, I don’t believe Daniel Shuster would have killed his daughter and then sat back to let his wife take the blame.”
“I don’t think so either,” Kate said.
“But it could have been either one of the Hayden parents. Especially if they got wind of their daughter’s feelings about April. The father could have held April to blame and killed her, never dreaming his daughter would commit suicide over it. Then justified himself by blaming April’s mother for raising her daughter in sin. It would be a good reason why he fled to Africa.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that scenario too.”
Marietta shook her head. “Kate, honestly, it could have been any member of that nutbag church. April told me lots of them were in and out of the duplex all the time. What if one of them caught the girls fondling each other in the backyard or something like that, wanted to spare the church leader and the parents the embarrassment of such a thing, and killed April in the name of God?”
“Also possible. What about Stella killing April and taking her own life?”
“Possible too. There’s no exaggerating the power of teenage passions and drama and how they can teeter on the edge of insanity. All I have to do is think about my own adolescence. Remember those poltergeist tales that were so popular when we were younger, Kate? They were actually parables about teenage hormones making youngsters capable of conjuring up supernatural creatures.”
Smiling ruefully, Kate just shook her head and picked up her shoulder bag.
“Even if you found out who did it, Kate, how would you ever prove it after all this time?”
“At this point, I’d just like to know who it was.”
“Will you let me know? Will you keep in touch?” She added hopefully, “Maybe come back for a visit?”
“Marietta, I would love to,” Kate said with sincerity.
“And will you take very best care of yourself? If your former partner is involved in the case, I assume you’re under police protection.”
“I am. I’m doing my best.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Give my best to Calla, and how about you come visit me maybe next week?”
“It’s a date,” Kate said. “I’ll call you.”
A few minutes later, keys in hand, riding the elevator down to her car, Kate thought about the two women who had suddenly converged in her life. First Natalie Rostow and now Marietta Hall. And how much she was looking forward to seeing both of them again.
If I live.
For the first time in many months, maybe years, she thought that maybe she might actually want to.