“What the fuck are you doing messing around with Alejandro Costilla?” she finally asked.
“I would have to be an idiot to be messing around with Alejandro Costilla,” I said. “Detective.”
She nodded in agreement. “Yeah. You would have to be an idiot. And most of the time you are.”
I finished the beer and pointed the empty bottle at her. “That was rude. After I apologized and everything. I think you should leave now.”
She stood and sighed deeply, her annoyance with me evident. It was a sigh I’d gotten used to hearing when we’d been together.
“This is bigger than you, Noah,” she said, her voice softening. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” I said. “What’s bigger than me? Tell me what I don’t know.”
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head.
“Then if you can’t trust me, why would I trust you?”
“Because I’m telling you to.”
The fact that she wouldn’t tell me what she knew bothered me more than her attitude. Our relationship had always been rocky, personally and professionally, but we’d always been straight with one another. Our paths had crossed professionally over the last couple of years, and while we weren’t best friends, she’d never asked me to get out of the way.
“That’s not enough, Liz, and you know it,” I said. “You knew it before you said it.”
She looked at me for a moment, and I thought maybe she was going to tell me what I was missing. But it passed quickly, replaced by an expression that said she knew better than I did.
“Noah, whatever you’re doing,” she told me, walking by me toward the house, “don’t. Because as good as you think you are, Costilla is better at being bad. Much better.”
I heard the front door close. One of the seagulls gave up the fight for the bun, flew toward me, and landed on the wall, his beady eyes bearing down on me.
No one was on my side.
18
Kate’s service wasn’t that different from other funerals that I’d been to. All Hallows Catholic Church sits atop Mount Soledad, overlooking the La Jolla shoreline, but even the view couldn’t change why we were there. Lots of flowers and crying, and everyone wishing they were someplace else.
The one exception was that her husband threatened to rip my head off.
The service had ended, and Carter and I were out in the courtyard next to the church, watching the Criers receive condolences from friends and family. I hadn’t wanted to come. Not that anyone ever wants to attend a funeral, but Kate’s death felt too close. I wasn’t ready to bury her. But I realized that if I was going to figure out what had happened to her, I was going to have to get used to doing things I wasn’t ready to do.
“They look wrecked,” Carter said, watching Marilyn and Ken nod and shake hands.
“Yeah.”
“You gonna talk to them?”
I shook my head. “Not here. They’ve got enough to deal with today.”
Carter nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I don’t think Marilyn would care to see me anyway.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Was the last time you saw her…”
“Yep.”
“The whole I-jump-farther-”
“-if-I’m-naked episode,” Carter confirmed.
The week before Kate and I broke up, Kate’s older sister, Emily, was home from UCLA with some friends having a party. The UCLA coeds had immediately taken to Carter, and he’d responded in kind. They’d dared him to jump off the roof of the Criers’ house into the pool. He’d claimed he could only do it naked because he jumped farther without any clothes on.
Unfortunately, Marilyn Crier had walked out onto the patio just in time to see Carter soar over her into her pool. Naked.
“An unforgettable performance,” I said.
“Legendary,” he said. Then he tilted his head. “Hey. Didn’t you and Emily-”
“Shut up,” I said, cutting him off.
Almost as if she’d heard us, Emily Crier emerged from a group of people near her parents and came toward us.
“Noah,” she said, a tired smile forcing its way onto her face. “It’s good to see you.”
We hugged briefly, and I was surprised by how little she’d changed. Slightly taller than Kate, she was still model thin. Her blond hair looked yellow in the sunlight, cut slightly above her shoulders. Soft brown eyes. She wore a black sundress with expensive-looking black heels. Put a bikini on her and she could’ve been back cheering for Carter in the pool that night.
She put a hand on Carter’s arm. “You are still…huge.”
Normally, he would have had at least fourteen responses to that statement, most of them obnoxious and funny. But maybe the most startling thing about Carter could be his sense of civility.
He nodded. “Good to see you, Em.”
She returned the nod, and an awkward pause engulfed the three of us like a bubble.
“I’m sorry, Emily,” I said finally. “I really am.”
“Thank you,” she said, shading her eyes from the sun. “It’s…I don’t know.”
She looked around the courtyard for a moment, watching her parents shake more hands. She kept snapping the fingers of her left hand softly, trying to burn the nervous uncomfortable energy that comes from losing someone close to you.
She turned back to me. “Dad hired you, I hear.”
“He did. After your mother hired me.”
She laughed and shook her head. “That is a partnership I never would’ve bet on.”
I watched her father, forcing a smile as he hugged an older woman. “Me either.”
“Was Mom a complete bitch to you?”
“Not complete. Partial, maybe.”
She groaned. “I doubt that.”
“Which one’s Randall?” Carter asked, scanning the crowd.
Emily spotted Kate’s husband first. “Over there. Tall, handsome.” She paused and the finger snapping came to a halt. “Huge bastard.”
I recognized Randall speaking with two other men.
“He’s not so tall,” Carter observed.
“Bastard?” I asked, surprised by Emily’s comment. “You don’t like your brother-in-law?”
Her stare was still locked on Randall. “Have you met him?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
I glanced at Carter, but he was looking at Randall, too. “Seemed alright.”
Emily turned to me, the soft brown eyes now hard as slate. “He’s a prick, Noah.”
Her face flushed, her anger gathering itself. “Phony two-faced prick. He didn’t love Kate.”
“How do you know?”
She turned back in Randall’s direction. “He was cheating on her. From day one.”
I looked across the courtyard at Randall. I hadn’t pegged him for infidelity when we’d met. I thought there was something off about him, but I didn’t get the sense that he didn’t love Kate.
“How do you know?” I asked.
Emily turned back to me, the anger changing to sadness, tears in her eyes. “Kate and I were sisters, Noah. We talked. I know, okay?” She brought her hands to her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this now. I’ll see you later.”
She walked away quickly and disappeared into the church. Her reaction made me wonder if old Randall had suckered me into thinking he was a good guy when he wasn’t.
“You think?” Carter asked, his gaze still on Randall.
“I don’t know.”
Randall glanced in our direction, raised his eyebrows in recognition, said something to the men he was standing with, and headed our way.
“But maybe I’ll ask,” I said.
Carter adjusted his sunglasses. “Oh, goodie.”
Randall strode toward us, his eyes visibly red. “Noah, hello.”
We shook hands. “Randall, this is my friend Carter Hamm. He was a friend of Kate’s also.”
They shook hands.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” Carter said.
“Thank you,” Randall said, his voice tight. “Thank you both for coming.”
Carter and I nodded, that awkward bubble again forming around us. The sun felt hot on my neck, and I was sweating in my suit.
“Have you learned anything?” Randall asked quietly, his eyes darting from group to group.
“Not really,” I lied. “This has all happened pretty quickly.”