Iris awoke from a restless sleep sometime in the middle of the night and made her way into the bathroom by the thin light that filtered through the miniblinds. There, she turned on the overhead light, which glowed harshly, making her squint. She stood over the sink and looked at her face in the mirror. “It’s going to be all right,” she said to the image, which was cast in hard shadows. “You were a good friend. You’ve always tried to do the right thing and will now.” She spoke lovingly. “It will be all right. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” Iris realized she wasn’t controlling what was coming out of her mouth. She tried to stop talking, but couldn’t. She stared at the moving lips, barely hearing the words that went on and on in a soothing tone, the message repeated over and over like one would speak to quiet a child. “I’m fine. Worry about yourself and Brianna and Kip.”
As she stared at the face and the moving lips, the image morphed into Bridget’s face. “Don’t be sorry,” her friend murmured. “Don’t feel guilty. You couldn’t have stopped it.” Slowly the image transformed back into Iris’s own face and she was talking to herself in the mirror; she could stop when she wanted. Blinking, confused, she did.
Iris awoke at what was a late hour for her. She didn’t remember the dream immediately. It suddenly came to her as she was busy making final preparations before the movers arrived. She walked to the bathroom mirror and peered into it, trying to recapture Bridget’s image. She even touched the cold, silvery glass as if she could penetrate it, but her friend was gone.
It was near the end of the two-hour time window the movers had provided and they still hadn’t arrived. Iris didn’t have much to move. She’d never replaced the living room furniture from her condo that had been drenched by a broken water pipe during the earthquake. She’d furnished the downtown apartment she’d moved to after unloading the condo with bare necessities that she’d picked up cheap. The living room contained a plain couch, a TV sitting on a plastic crate, and a ginger-jar lamp she’d bought for $15 at Thrifty. Another plastic crate served as an end table. All her crystal and china had been destroyed in the quake, and she’d replaced them with cheap nothings. She did have a dining room set, however, bedroom furniture, and a furnished office. And she had clothes. Lots and lots of clothes.
The Bunker Hill apartment she’d lived in for the past year was just a few blocks from her office. In true L.A. style, she drove to work anyway. She saved many commuting hours but couldn’t get used to living downtown. It was full of people during the day, but grew deserted shortly after 6 P.M. except for multitudes of street people. Downtown L.A. was set up for people to work, not to live. Simple tasks became a hassle since there weren’t any dry cleaners or grocery stores downtown and the surrounding residential neighborhoods were shabby and unsafe. There was a terrific view from her fifteenth-floor apartment of the L.A. skyline. The swooping, clean lines of the Harbor Freeway, lit at night with a river of white lights in one direction and red in the other, was like a living work of art. But after a few months, the advantages of downtown life faded for her. She felt smothered by asphalt and concrete and longed to get back to the coast.
As she waited for the movers, she logged onto the Internet and accessed some of the chat rooms for computer-games aficionados. Several were devoted to Pandora, and Iris lurked in a few until she found an especially lively conversation in one room.
“SUCKERS FINISH LAST is AWESOME!!! Free the Kipmeister!” GameGeek.
“Kip’s a gone man. He totally immersed himself in the game life. The dude couldn’t tell cyberspace from reality.” Errorprone.
“WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!! Kip’s not the man. Kip couldn’t be the man. Get a clue people!!!” Arsenal.
“What about the slingshot? No one’s talking about the slingshot!” MindF.
“It was the tenth-level battle played for real.” GameGeek.
“The slingshot was a brilliant touch, don’t you think? It was the boss monster’s move in a larger game.” MindF.
Iris finally typed in a comment. “What slingshot?” ITGirl.
“What slingshot?!? Stupid bitch! If you’re not with the program, get lost!” Errorprone.
Iris persisted in spite of having been flamed by Errorprone. Chat room etiquette was exacting and unforgiving. Participants were expected to be well versed on all the previous conversations and not to ask obvious questions. “Someone please tell me about the slingshot.” ITGirl.
“Word of mouse is the murderer put a slingshot in Bridget’s hand. The police are trying to keep it out of the press. Ease up, Errorprone, you snert.” GameGeek.
“Take a flying fuck,” Errorprone.
“Some secret! Any Websurfer can find out about it. Cops are idiots!” MindF.
“What’s the significance of the slingshot? Does it have something to do with SUCKERS?” ITGirl.
“ARRGGHHH! NO WAY!! BEGONE, ITGirl!!!” Errorprone.
“What’s the significance of the slingshot? :-)” ITGirl. Iris tacked a happy face drawing onto the end of her message as a cheery response to Errorprone’s relentless flaming.
“Fucking female! Do your homework, ITGirl, and stop wasting our time. Download SUCKERS FINISH LAST and play it to the end, and then and only then attempt to chat here.” Errorprone.
“What’s up with the tenth level? Kip Cross, you freak!” Arsenal.
“Free the Kipmeister!” MindF.
“The boss monster’s made her move. Let’s see if Kip can get out of this trap.” GameGeek.
“Wait a minute. We’re talking about real people and a real murder, not some computer game.” ITGirl.
“Oh really? Duh. I didn’t know that.” Errorprone.
“That’s why it’s so much more fun. Isn’t this what Kip wanted all along?” MindF.
“One thing’s for certain. If Kip goes down, Pandora’s going down. Kip’s irreplaceable. He’s the master. After him there will be no other.” GameGeek.
Iris’s phone rang. The movers were downstairs.
“Lily, I raised you and your sister on my own. Don’t tell me how hard it is. I know,” Rose Thorne said authoritatively.
“I know you know, Mom. And I appreciate your opinion, but I’m going to make my own decisions, okay?”
“It’s not good to raise kids in an unhappy home. It was hard at first when I divorced your father, but I did it and you can too.”
“Mom, I’m not divorcing Jack. We’re having a rough spot right now and we’re going to work through it.”
“You don’t know men, Lily. I’ve been around longer than you. They never change.”
“Mom, you’ve known one man.” Lily’s voice was muffled as she spoke with her head deep inside a kitchen cupboard. She struggled with a rectangle of adhesive shelf paper and finally managed to press it flat. She withdrew her head, wiped a lock of damp hair from her forehead, and carefully moved onto the step stool from where she had been kneeling on top of the sink. “And Dad wasn’t the best example of a loving husband and father.” She used a tape measure to mark another length of shelf paper which she then began to cut. “And frankly, I’m not certain you and Dad couldn’t have done more to work it out.”
Rose Thorne was sitting on the floor straddling a drawer in which she was awkwardly laying shelf paper. She was wearing black-and-white polka-dotted pants with an ample, long-sleeved black top that covered her once shapely figure. Her white sandals set off her pedicure. Her dyed red hair was carefully styled and she wore dramatic makeup, including false eyelashes. She never allowed herself to be seen without full makeup and perfect hair, even if the circumstances, like today, warranted something more casual. She came of age during the glamour days of Hollywood and never left the style behind.
She twisted to look at her eldest daughter. “You’re not trying to insinuate I did the wrong thing by divorcing your father, are you?”
“I’m just saying you made what you thought were the best decisions for your life, and I’m going to make what I think are the best ones for me and my family.” Lily Rossi was wearing blue jeans, tennis shoes, and one of her husband’s navy blue, single-pocket T-shirts which came down low over her hips. Her ash blonde hair was cut in a short, layered style and had a wiry, dried-out texture from too many home dye and perm jobs.
“Mom, I feel like you’re pressing me to get divorced because it would validate that you made the right decision with your life.”
“That’s ridiculous! I just want you to face facts. Once a marriage is gone, it’s gone. Why beat a dead horse?” Rose fiercely plowed a pair of eight-inch scissors through the shelf paper. “All you and Iris talk about is how bad you had it growing up. There’s lots of kids out there who had it worse. Kids will survive their parents getting divorced. You did.”
“Let’s see what Iris thinks,” Lily chirped when her sister came into the kitchen.
“See what Iris thinks about what?” Iris asked suspiciously. She rifled through some plastic shopping bags that were scattered on the floor and pulled out two rolls of blue shelf paper printed with seashells and starfish.
Rose summarized. “About whether Lily should leave Jack because he’ll never change and she’s still young enough to find someone else, or whether she should continue to let Jack walk all over her.”
“And I think Mom’s negative about marriage in general and wants to justify her own life.”
Iris looked from Rose to Lily who both petulantly waited for her response, clutching the rolls of paper more tightly in her arms as if they might shield her. “I’m going to work in the bathroom.”
“Coward,” Lily spat.
“She agrees with me,” Rose said smugly. “She just didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“She did not!” Lily protested. “Tell her, Iris.”
“I’m trying to stay out of this,” Iris yelped.
“Well, you’re in it!” Rose snapped.
“Mom, you need to get a life so you’ll stop being so involved in Iris’s and mine.”
“I think I hear someone at the door.” Iris tried to slip from the room.
“Get back in here,” Lily ordered.
“Iris doesn’t accuse me of ruining her life, do you Iris?” Rose demanded.
“No one’s said you ruined our lives, Mom,” Lily insisted. “You always go off the deep end. No one can tell you anything.”
“Mom, it’s harder to try to work something out than it is to leave,” Iris finally said.
“See there!” Lily said triumphantly.
“Hellooo?”
“Neither of you girls was there.” Rose was annoyed. “You can’t judge me.”
“We weren’t there?” Lily said incredulously.
“Hel-looo?”
“Why do we have this same conversation over and over again?” Iris loudly complained. “Is there no getting past this issue?”
Lily saw the woman first. “Oh! Sorry. We didn’t hear you at the door.”
“I heard her,” Iris corrected.
“I’m so sorry to have startled you, but I rang the doorbell. You might want to have it checked because I don’t think any sound came out. The door was ajar and I heard voices and thought I’d come in. I brought you some sandwiches.” The woman carried a silver platter lined with a paper doily and piled high with sandwiches cut into finger-sized rectangles with the crusts removed. “I’m Marge Nayton. I live next door. Which one of you is my new neighbor?”
Iris took the tray from her and set it on the counter. “I’m Iris Thorne.” She shook the tiny hand that the woman extended. “I’m pleased to meet you at last. Unfortunately, your name came up when I was talking to the police about Bridget Cross’s murder. You helped them confirm the time that Kip said he went jogging. The Crosses are…friends of mine.”
“Ghastly business, isn’t it?” Marge Nayton stood just over five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety-two pounds. She was smartly dressed in a beige suit with a hip-length, shawl-collared jacket which she wore buttoned to the neck, a slim skirt, and bone-colored high-heeled pumps. She was delicate and blonde with a heart-shaped face. Her hair was carefully coiffed in a smooth style that was teased high and round in back and curved into a wave on one side of her face. Several jeweled rings that appeared to be the real thing glittered from her bony fingers. She might have been in her seventies.
“My condolences about Bridget. On a happier note, I’m thrilled to meet you, Iris, and I want to congratulate you on your new home.” Marge spoke slowly, carefully enunciating each word, smiling all the while.
“Thank you,” Iris said. “This is my mother, Rose Thorne, and my sister, Lily Rossi.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Marge said. “And I’m glad that this charming house has found a good owner. I always thought it was just the sweetest thing.”
“I’m so proud of Iris,” Rose gushed. “She’s still single, but she hasn’t let that stand in the way of her making a home for herself.”
Iris glowered at her mother.
“We ladies need to know how to live on our own.” Marge fastidiously ran a manicured finger across the wave in her hair. “Men are wonderful when you have them, but they just don’t last.”
“That’s what my daughters and I were discussing when you came in,” Rose said enthusiastically, thinking she had a reinforcement for her side. “I’ve been divorced for many years and my daughter’s headed that way.”
Lily scowled but said nothing.
“Are you married, Marge?” Rose was never one for subtlety.
Iris glared at her mother to no avail. Rose ignored her.
“Oh, noo.” Marge widened her eyes.
“I’m divorced, too,” Rose offered.
“When I said that men don’t last, I meant literally.” Marge chuckled and pressed her fingertips against Rose’s arm. “You see, I’ve been widowed three times. I was married to three of the most wonderful men in the world. Lost them all.”
“They died?” Lily asked. “What happened?”
“Lily!” Iris was consistently mortified by her family’s lack of manners and good taste.
“Oh, I don’t mind, love. I married my first husband, Ely, just before the war. I helped him establish his business, Nayton Manufacturing Company. He made nuts, bolts, screws, and such. It was very prosperous during the war. I ran it while he was overseas, fighting in Europe. We built our house, the one next door to you, in ‘48. We had a son in ‘50. Shortly after that, Ely died. Dropped dead of a heart attack.”
“Poor thing, left to raise a child on your own,” Rose commiserated. “I know how hard that can be.”
“I married Herb in ‘76. He died in ‘87. Heart attack.” Marge leaned forward as if to divulge a secret. “Happened when we were having sex.” She paused. “Most embarrassing. But I was glad that Herb died happy. Then I married Dub in ‘89. Pour soul wasn’t around too long after that.”
“Heart attack?” Iris ventured.
“Oh, noo, love. He drove his car off the bluff one night. I told him his night vision was failing, but he was too proud to admit it.” With her thumb and middle finger, Marge turned a gold watch that was loose on her thin wrist so she could see the face. “I’ve got to skedaddle. I have a million errands to run.” With a swoop of her hand, she gestured toward the platter of sandwiches, like a game show hostess. “I made an assortment of sandwiches—cucumber, watercress, egg salad. I hope there’s something there for everyone.”
Iris said, “Thank you, Mrs. Nayton.”
Marge patted Iris’s hand with long, bejeweled fingers. “Call me Marge. So nice to have met you all. Come by for cocktails. I have my martini at five and I always make a few canapés. No problem to put out a few more. Stop by anytime.” She turned on her heel and left the kitchen, head held high, back straight, hips swaying not too much, but enough. “I can find my way out.”
Iris, Lily, and Rose followed her out the front door. A well-preserved black-and-white 1955 Buick Roadmaster was parked in Marge’s driveway next door. Marge had made it halfway down Iris’s brick walk when the women were startled by screeching tires. A butter yellow Ferrari swung around the corner of the street and zoomed past, hanging a quick right onto Capri Court. The top was down and a woman with long blonde hair was driving. Soon they glimpsed the Ferrari tearing along Capri Road, the street above Iris’s.
Marge took mincing steps back to Iris. “We’ve just had a close encounter of the bimbo kind.”
“That looked like Summer Fuchs driving Kip Cross’s car,” Iris said.
“Oh my dear, she’s not Summer Fuchs anymore,” Marge said. “She’s Summer Fontaine.” Marge angled her eyes meaningfully. “She has a modeling career and will soon be on TV. Feature films will surely follow. Just ask her. She’s already booked appearances on talk shows.”
“No!” Lily shouted with outrage.
“Yes!” Marge continued. “Due to poor Bridget Cross’s misfortune, the modeling jobs have just been flooding in. So much that she can now afford silicone injections in her lips. She had it done today.”
The women winced at the thought.
“Oh, yes. Summer idolizes Pamela Anderson. Her goal is to remake herself to look as much like Pamela Anderson as she can.”
“Bridget told me Summer had her breasts redone because they weren’t large enough after her first operation,” Iris said.
“Well she should be very happy with them now,” Marge commented. “I’ve never seen such large breasts in all my days. They’re quite remarkable.”
“What’s she doing driving Kip’s car?” Iris asked.
“She’s caretaking the house,” Marge responded. “I saw her in the market yesterday. She bragged to me that she has the full run of the place.”
“Why on earth did Bridget ever hire her?” Rose asked. “She must have been out of her head to let someone like that move into her house with her husband around.”
“Mom, not all men cheat on their wives,” Lily said.
“All the ones I’ve known have.”
Iris shot a withering look in their direction, mortified that they would persist in airing the family’s dirty laundry in front of a stranger.
“Summer didn’t look like that when the Crosses first hired her,” Marge interjected.
“You know how bighearted Bridget was,” Iris said. “Summer was a casual friend of Kip’s cousin in Ohio. He called and asked if Summer could stay with them for a few weeks after she moved to L.A. to seek her fortune. A few weeks turned into a month and longer. Bridget had been thinking about hiring a live-in anyway. Summer and Brianna got along great. So…” Iris shrugged and gazed at the top of the hill. She could barely see the turquoise tile roof of the Cross house. “Bridget fired her the day before she was murdered. I guess Kip rehired her.”
Marge again twisted the face of her watch. “I’ve got to fly. See you girls later.”
Iris, Rose, and Lily wished Marge good-bye and watched her get into the classic Buick in which her head was barely visible above the steering wheel. After she had driven away, Rose and Lily turned and walked toward the house.
Iris watched as a minivan with two men in it drove past and turned on Capri Court. Soon the car passed on the street above, just as the Ferrari had.
“Iris?” Lily said.
Roused from her thoughts, Iris looked at her sister. “Oh, I…I’m going to put some things away in the garage so I can park the Triumph in there tonight.” She made a show of walking in that direction.
After her mother and sister had gone back inside, Iris sprinted across the street and up the cement staircase. A contractor’s stamp pressed into the first step indicated the stairs were built in 1927. There were many such staircases—remnants of pre-automobile-crazed L.A.—scattered across the hilly, older neighborhoods of Los Angeles. A group of enthusiasts mapped and walked them.
The city had not maintained the staircases. It was a credit to their original design, solid construction, and sheer luck that they were still usable. Three staircases comprised the Casa Marina stairways. A set of sixty steps led from the bridge traversing Pacific Coast Highway to Casa Marina Drive where Iris and Marge lived. Eighty steps led from Casa Marina Drive to Capri Road. Seventy steps led from Capri Road to Cielo Way, where the Cross house was located. The Casa Marina stairways were decrepit in spots but functional enough to allow Bridget Cross’s murderer to escape.
As Iris ascended the steps that led to Capri Road, she passed the backyard of the abandoned house on the street above hers. She gingerly stepped over the thick brush, flowering vines, overgrown ivy, and creeping roses that grew from the house’s long-untended backyard past the staircase’s two parallel, round steel railings. The thorns of a bougainvillea vine caught her jeans leg. She struggled to quickly free herself, not wanting to be stuck there.
At the top of the staircase, Iris scurried across Capri Road and only paused to look back at the derelict two-story house when she was a safe distance away. Most of its window glass had been broken out. Its front door stood ominously open. The foyer beyond the open door was strewn with garbage, bricks, and broken pieces of masonry.
She climbed the next set of steps, stretching her legs to cross a section that had pulled away from the hill and was separated from the step above by a gap a foot wide. A storm drain ran along the ground in the brush and scrub oak beyond the railing. It led from the Crosses’ backyard and drained rainwater from their patio. Last year, Bridget had the patio and pool installed but ran out of time to properly bury the drain before the rainy season arrived. The drain consisted of several long aluminum pipes, about twelve inches in diameter, connected by aluminum sleeves. It extended the length of the hillside all the way down to Capri Road.
Iris mentally counted the steps as she ascended. Something rustled in the brush and low trees nearby, making her jump. After hearing no other noise than her pounding heart, she continued. At the fifty-fourth step up from Capri Road, she saw rust-colored stains and carefully tiptoed around them. This was where the police said the bloody flip-flop footprints disappeared into the brush. The blood had been incompletely removed by a crew Bridget’s parents had hired. The Tylers were shocked to discover that the city only took care of the bodies. The clean up was not their job.
Iris now reached the cinder block wall that enclosed the Cross property. She tried the wooden gate that led into the patio, but it was locked. She continued up until she reached Cielo Way where she turned left toward the front of the Cross house. The yellow Ferrari was parked in the long driveway, and the minivan Iris had seen go up the hill was parked behind it. Cielo Way dead-ended into the Crosses’ front yard.
Iris noticed that the massive wooden front door of the Spanish Gothic house was ajar. The door, made of broad planks held together with strips of riveted metal, was originally from an old church in Spain. It creaked appropriately when she pushed it open. She walked into the foyer, her tennis shoes silent against the ceramic tile floor.
“Summer?” she said, none too loudly. She didn’t want to be accused of breaking in but had no intention of warning the woman of her visit. She crossed the foyer and descended the three steps into the family room which was separated from the foyer by an arch. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were to the left. Standing in the family room, through French doors that opened onto the patio, she saw Summer Fontaine vamping in skimpy lingerie on a patio lounge chair. A man was looking at her through a camera positioned on a tripod. A second man was holding a sheet of reflective material behind Summer’s head. Photography equipment was scattered about.
Iris saw red. Without hesitation, she burst through a set of French doors. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Summer’s swollen lips, heavily colored with two tones of pink, first parted with surprise, then curled with disgust. “You ever think of ringing the doorbell?”
The two men looked at Iris with mild interest.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
The man who had been looking through the camera answered, “We’re from the National Enquirer. We purchased exclusive rights to photograph Summer at the murder scene.”
“Rights? You can’t sell rights you don’t have, Summer.” Iris snarled at the men. “Get out!”
“We’ve paid for photographs,” said the man with the camera, “and we’re not leaving until we get them.”
Summer bolted from the lounge chair. Her heavy breasts swayed beneath the sheer lingerie. “You get out! Kip knows all about this, okay? He doesn’t care if I make a little money. This is none of your business.”
“I won’t have you profiting from my friend’s murder.”
Summer put her hands on her hips. Her abdomen was so flat it was almost concave. “Bridget’s not around anymore and you don’t have a damn thing to say about anything that goes on here.” She drew back her lips, revealing bleached-white teeth. “Get out before I call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”
Without another word, Iris left by the front door and ran back down the stairs all the way to her house where her mother and sister were still arguing.