Iris unlocked the front door of her house and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it had not been ransacked. At first, she didn’t think it had been entered at all, then she found small things out of place, drawers carelessly left ajar, and an empty wine glass that had been washed and left in her dish drainer next to a saucer that had also been washed. The odor of cigarette smoke hung in the air. She found ashes and a Dunhill cigarette butt in the kitchen garbage. Winslow and her henchman had gained access by cutting a small circle out of the glass of a side window. At least they were neat.
She kicked off her pumps, re-washed the glass standing in the dish drainer, and poured what was left of a bottle of Chardonnay into it. At the sound of laughter in front of her house, she peeked out her front windows to see Kiki and Roger from up the street heading toward her neighbor Marge’s house. They were followed by an older man carrying a large bouquet of flowers—Kiki’s father. Iris thought he and Marge would make a cute couple.
Too edgy to sit down, Iris picked up her remote phone and called Garland while she paced around her living room. He wasn’t home. This was the normal pattern of their weeks, leaving messages and connecting about half the time. It was no way to build a relationship. She knew that. He knew that. They’d talked about it, but neither of them wanted to move cross-country. Maybe what Iris’s mother had told her was true. Iris was too set in her ways to get married. Iris had dismissed the comment as fatalistic and bleak. Certainly, two bright, determined people who wanted to be together could work things out. She left a message telling Garland she was looking forward to Palm Springs that weekend. They’d lie in the sun and engage in conspicuous consumption like capitalists.
Thoughts of a romantic weekend away only momentarily distracted her from the incident with Rita Winslow and the sultry Latino. She kept replaying her experience at the L.A. airport with the customs officer. If she’d smuggled something, it must have been inside the urn, but how?
The officer said he’d X-rayed it. Certainly he would have seen the statuette that Winslow was talking about—unless of course the urn was lined with lead.
From a bookcase in the guest bedroom that she’d set up as an office, Iris located her road atlas of California. She changed into loose jeans and a T-shirt, brushed her hair, freshened her makeup, grabbed a jacket, Todd’s portfolio, and a jug of water, and headed out the door. At the corner gas station, she gassed up the Triumph.
Iris reached the Bakersfield city limits in an hour and a half. She pulled into a gas station to ask directions to Tracy Fillinger’s house. Todd had given her Tracy’s address when they’d lived in Paris. She’d kept it in a box where she threw the addresses of people with whom she’d lost contact. She didn’t throw the addresses away. It seemed like throwing the people away.
The house was white with dark blue trim and looked as if it had been recently painted. A nylon banner with bright flowers hung from a pole attached to the porch roof. Terra cotta bunnies nestled in a flowerbed. When Iris drove up, the front porch light clicked on.
With difficulty, she pulled Todd’s portfolio from where it had been wedged into the front passenger seat. She walked up a cement path to the house. A dog fenced in the backyard of the neighbor’s house began to bark.
Iris rang the doorbell and before long a man with neatly trimmed, receding wavy hair answered.
“Hi. I’m sorry to bother you, but is Tracy Fillinger home?”
The man appeared surprised and amused by Iris’s question. “Tracy Fillinger?”
Behind him, Iris saw a girl and a boy of about eight and ten years old, sprawled on the floor too close to a large television. “Is she here?”
“Yes, she’s here. I just haven’t heard her called by that name in a while. We’ve been married for seventeen years. Who can I say is calling?”
“Iris Thorne. I’m a friend of her brother Todd.”
He looked at her with heightened interest. “Todd? Oh sure.” He turned inside the house and yelled, “Tracy!” then said to Iris, “Come on inside.”
The kids rolled on the floor to look at Iris and then returned their attention to the television.
“Here, let me.” He took the portfolio from her and leaned it against the arm of an easy chair. “I’m Richard Beale.”
Iris shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
The furnishings in the house were comfortable and practical. The sole excess was the large-screen television that occupied most of the far wall.
A woman walked across the dining room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She had short, dark hair and a rotund figure that was somewhat camouflaged by the oversized blouse she wore over black jeans. She smiled at Iris and looked at her husband for assistance.
“This is Iris Thorne,” he said. “She’s a friend of Todd’s.”
The woman held her hand out. “Pleased to meet you.”
Iris tentatively accepted her hand and squinted with confusion. “You’re Tracy Fillinger?”
“Yes. Well, that was my maiden name.” She exchanged a glance with her husband. “Is something wrong?”
Iris rubbed her forehead. This was not the woman she’d met at the airport. “You can’t be Tracy Fillinger.”
Richard took a step forward. “Ma’am, we don’t mean to be rude, but why don’t you tell us what you want?”
“Do you have a sister?” Iris ventured.
“No,” Tracy answered. “There’s just me and my brother. Kids!” she shouted, turning toward them. “Go watch television in the back, please.”
Iris pressed her fingers over her mouth as she pictured handing the urn to the woman she thought was Tracey Fillinger at the airport. She remembered the woman’s edginess and tears, which Iris had attributed to grief. What a fool she’d been. It was all a ruse to string her along, to dupe her into transporting the urn into the United States and delivering it. Rita Winslow was right—Iris was a smuggler. And Dean Palmer, her supposed one ally in Moscow, was behind it.
Then something else occurred to her. Palmer had probably never contacted the real Tracy Fillinger about Todd’s murder. She slowly exhaled. “Umm…Can we sit down?”
Tracy gestured toward a blue couch and sat next to Iris while Richard took a leatherette easy chair. No one seemed relaxed.
Iris nervously rubbed her hands together. There was no good way to deliver bad news.
Tracy folded the dishtowel, tossed it on the coffee table, and guessed what was on Iris’s mind. “Did something happen to Todd?”
Iris looked her over. It was clear that this woman bore more of a familial resemblance to Todd than the woman at the airport. She took a breath and spoke quickly. “Todd was murdered in Moscow a few days ago.”
Tracy sucked in air.
“He was shot to death while he was standing in front of a hotel. The police don’t know who did it, but they suspect the Russian Mafia.”
Tracy stared intently at Iris. The silence in the room was deafening. Iris babbled to fill it. “I was there when it happened. I went to Moscow to see Todd and to discuss investing in a chain of art galleries he’d wanted to launch. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this. I’m so sorry.”
Tracy sat back on the couch and looked at her husband. “Well…We’d figured Todd for dead lots of times, hadn’t we, Richard?”
He clasped his hands between his splayed knees and nodded.
Tracy explained. “Long periods would pass when we wouldn’t hear from him. It almost became a joke between Todd and me. Todd would show up out of the blue and we’d tell him, ‘We’d figured you for dead,’ and then we’d all laugh.” Tracy emitted a choking sob. Her husband winced in sympathy. She covered her face with her hands and cried.
Iris briefly stroked her arm then dropped her hand, feeling like an unwelcome intruder.
Richard rose from the chair to kneel on the carpet next to his wife, wrapping his arms around her. At this, she cried harder, as if she could let go knowing there was someone to lean on, someone who wouldn’t let her completely tumble down. Richard handed her the dishtowel, his face grave.
“My Todd, my baby brother,” Tracy cried.
Iris wiped tears from her own cheeks.
“Poor, poor baby. He never had a chance.”
After a while, Tracy’s sobs subsided. Richard left the room and returned with a box of tissues and two glasses of water. Iris drank greedily.
The discussion quickly returned to the practical. “What happened to the body?” Tracy asked.
Iris’s face burned. She couldn’t bring herself to tell this woman that she’d handed her brother’s ashes to a stranger. “They cremated the body in Moscow. A consular officer at the U.S. Embassy knew Todd and said he’d talked about wanting to be cremated when he died. I don’t know what happened to the ashes.” It wasn’t a complete lie. “I brought back that portfolio from Todd’s apartment. It has samples of Todd’s photography. I thought you might want them.”
She walked around the coffee table and picked up the portfolio. From it she took the scrapbook of Todd’s magazine work.
“Todd has some nice furnishings in his apartment. Probably not worth the cost to ship them here, but I can ask someone at the Embassy to help me sell them and you can have the money.”
“That would be very kind but don’t go to too much trouble if they’re not worth that much.”
Tracy moved a potted plant on the coffee table and some knickknacks to make room. She began slowly turning the stiff pages lined with plastic film. “Death Valley. I remember when he shot these photos for a travel magazine.”
There was a photo of a city marker apparently in the middle of nowhere. Two donkeys were dozing next to it. The sign said: FURNACE CREEK. Pop: 78. El: -190.
“Todd loved Death Valley. We went there a couple of times when we were kids, on family vacations. When we were still a family.” She started to weep. “Everyone’s gone now. They’re all gone.” She snatched a handful of tissues from the box on the coffee table.
Iris reached into her purse. “Here’s a letter Todd was writing you before…”
Tracy unfolded the plain, white paper. “He was writing me a letter? I hadn’t heard from him in…must be three years or more.”
“Really? The tone of the letter doesn’t sound like years had passed.”
After reading the letter, Tracy refolded the pages and pressed them flat on top of the scrapbook. “I’m glad he was doing something he enjoyed. Sounds like he was finally settling down.”
“He looked good. Very successful. He had a…” Iris stopped before mentioning the Mercedes. What had happened to it?
“When did you meet him?”
“I met him about five years ago when he lived in Paris.” Iris was intentionally vague.
Tracy regarded Iris with new interest. “I remember Todd talking about you.”
Her husband leaned forward to get a closer look.
Iris shifted uneasily.
Tracy pointed at her. “You sent a letter here for Todd. He’d left Paris and was living in London. He’d come home for Christmas. My goodness, he had all these expensive gifts for the kids. Remember that, hon?”
Her husband nodded.
“Anyway, I gave Todd your letter. I’d had it here for a couple of months.”
“He read my letter?” Iris asked.
“Yes.” Tracy hesitated. “He read it. Then he balled it up and threw it in the fireplace. I didn’t ask him about it. Probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Todd was kind of a private person. You never really knew what he was thinking. All he said was that you were someone he’d met when he was living in Paris.”
“We dated for a while.”
“I figured it was something like that.”
Iris changed the subject. “This is the house Todd was raised in, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Richard and I moved in after my father became ill. Would you like to see Todd’s old room? His nephew has it now, but he keeps his uncle’s football trophies on display. He wants to play football someday too.”
“I’d like that.”
Iris followed Tracy through the small house. A large bedroom was at one end, the style and size incongruous with the rest of the house. Iris figured they’d had it added on. The two children were sitting on the bed in there, watching a television installed in a wall unit with shelves crowded with framed photographs. The kids turned their attention briefly away from the tube to glance at the adults.
Tracy introduced them. “That’s Emily Rose and that’s Richard Todd. Say hello to Iris, she’s a friend of your Uncle Todd’s.”
They gave a lackluster greeting.
Tracy led the way to a small bedroom at the end of the hall that was boldly decorated in navy blue and red. Posters of heavy-metal bands were thumbtacked on the wall next to posters of bikini-clad supermodels of the moment. Brass-and-chrome football trophies were displayed on a bookshelf. Tracy picked one up and handed it to Iris.
“I didn’t know that Todd played football,” Iris confessed.
“Todd was the best player East Bakersfield High’s ever seen,” Richard enthused. “I was assistant coach when he was on the team. After graduation, he got a football scholarship to USC. He was disappointed when they put him on second string. I told him everybody’s got to start somewhere. Then he got hurt in his third game and that really got him down. I told him to rebuild his muscles, go back the next season, and give it his all, but…” He shrugged. “Lost his spirit, I guess. It’s hard to go from being a star at your hometown high school to playing with guys as good as or better than you are.”
Iris set the trophy on the shelf. “Todd went to USC? I thought he went to Cal State Fresno.”
Tracy swatted dust from a trophy. “That’s where he transferred after he left USC. We tried to get him to go back for his second year. Even his coach talked to him, but I guess he was too afraid of not making it. Todd was a big, tough guy on the outside, but he was pretty fragile deep down. Cal State Fresno was where his buddy Mike was going.”
Iris scanned the other trophies. “It’s odd that he never talked about football, seeing that it was such a big part of his life. He never talked much about his past at all. I guess his mother’s death when he was so young really affected him.” She felt silly for making such an obvious statement. “Well, of course it did. It had to.”
Tracy and Richard became very still and Iris sensed she’d said the wrong thing. Tracy said, “Todd told you about what happened to our mother?”
“She died in a car accident when Todd was ten. Didn’t she?”
Tracy raised a corner of her mouth. “She died when Todd was ten but it was no accident. It’s always been sort of a family secret, but since everyone’s dead, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” She took a deep breath. “My mother was murdered. Shot to death by her lover. They were boozing one night in a hotel and…something happened and he shot her. They arrested him and he went to prison. Got out after a few years and disappeared. My dad knew about my mom’s chasing around, but he really went downhill after she died. He drank before. Drank a lot more after. Managed to keep his job at the post office and put food on the table, but that was about it. Retired with a pension. I was left to raise Todd. I was sixteen. We kind of made a home of sorts. My dad was here, but he was a shadow.”
Iris touched Tracy’s arm. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“Now you tell me Todd’s been shot to death.” She bitterly shook her head. “Some family, huh? It’s not that way for my kids. My kids have a normal life.”
“Of course they do, hon,” Richard said soothingly.
Tracy raised her chin. “Now you know everything about the Fillingers.”
Iris smiled sympathetically. She felt she knew less than before.