Randall nodded and smoothed his tie down his chest. “Sure. Please tell me if I can do anything to help.”
Carter glanced at me, and I knew he was waiting for me to say something. I was having second thoughts because we were at a memorial service and I didn’t want to take advantage of someone’s vulnerability.
But Kate was dead and I was frustrated.
“Actually I do have a couple of questions.”
He blinked several times, looking almost surprised that I’d taken him up on his offer, then shrugged. “Alright.”
“The other night you said that Kate didn’t want to be married anymore.”
He nodded. “That’s what she told me, yes.”
“Any more thoughts on why she might’ve felt that way?”
“She didn’t give me anything else,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Never told me what she was unhappy about.”
“Could it have been you?”
He blinked again and shoved a hand into his pocket. “I don’t know, I guess.”
I watched him. “Maybe something you’d done?”
Randall shifted his weight, his impatience starting to show. “Like?”
“What do you do in your spare time?” I asked.
“I don’t follow.”
“Water ski, collect art, knit,” Carter said. “For example.”
Randall glared at him. “Was I talking to you?”
“No. That was me talking to you. Pay attention.”
Randall looked back to me. “Don’t play with me, Noah. Not today. What do you wanna know?”
He’d raised his voice, and several looks were directed toward us.
“You and Kate had a good marriage?” I asked.
His jaw tightened. “I thought so.”
“How good?”
The other hand disappeared into the other pocket. “I don’t know how to answer that. I told you things were strained.”
The sun was high in the sky and aimed directly at us.
“You cheat on her?” I asked.
Randall’s cheeks flexed slightly, his jaw set. His eyes narrowed, and the sun wasn’t the only thing that was hot.
“What the hell is this?” he growled.
“An investigation into your wife’s death,” I told him. “You asked if you could help.”
Randall looked at Carter, who had settled into his imposing-but-nonchalant stance. I thought Randall wanted to hit Carter, but the more I thought about it, that didn’t make sense because Randall didn’t seem like a dumb guy.
Randall looked back at me. “Leave-now.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
His right hand emerged from his pocket, his index finger pointing at me. “This is my wife’s funeral. You wanna fuck around with me? Fine. But not here, not today.”
“Then when?” I asked.
He jabbed the finger in my direction. “How about after I rip your fucking head off?” He spun on his heel and walked away from us.
I looked at Carter.
He adjusted his glasses. “How will you hear his answer if your head is detached?”
19
Carter left the funeral before I did, mumbling something about having to be somewhere. I didn’t ask where.
I hung around for a while, despite Randall’s threat. I scanned the crowd looking for people who seemed out of place, who maybe didn’t belong at Kate’s funeral, who looked like a walking clue.
I went zero for three.
I was heading for my car when I heard someone call my name. I turned around and saw Emily coming toward me.
“Sorry,” she said, as she reached me. “Didn’t mean to yell.”
“It’s okay. What’s up?”
She frowned, looking embarrassed. “I wanted to apologize for earlier.”
“Earlier?”
She nodded. “Walking away from you and Carter like that. I just got too upset.”
I watched the cars trickle out of the lot and down the hill. “I think you’re allowed to be upset, Em.”
“Well, thanks,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “But I don’t need to be rude, too.”
“You weren’t. It was fine.”
The corners of her mouth flared into a small smile. “Always the nice guy. Even after living through my family.”
“Even after.” I paused for a moment. “At some point, I’d like to talk to you, though. About what you told me.”
She turned and looked back at the church. “The thought of going back in there to help clean up isn’t exactly enticing.” She turned back to me. “How about now?”
“I didn’t mean we had to do it right away, Emily. It can wait a day or two,” I told her.
She waved a perfectly manicured hand in the air. “I’m fine. Really. I need to vent anyway. I’ll buy you a drink at George’s. Just let me grab my things.”
She hurried back to the courtyard and quickly reemerged with a sweater and her purse. She reminded me of a more sophisticated Kate. They were both attractive, but Kate had always been the little sister, looking up to her sister with a sense of admiration and awe. Emily had always been more into the fashion trends and a little more into risk taking, a very cool older sister who didn’t mind letting the little sister into her life.
I followed her BMW down the back side of Mount Soledad to the jammed up area at Prospect. La Jolla was a tiny strip on a cliff above the water, and traffic was ever present in the area. We parked up on Ivanhoe and walked back to the bluff-top restaurant at the northern edge of the La Jolla downtown district.
We walked out to the ocean terrace at George’s, a rooftop bistro that drew raves for both its food and coastal scenery, small tables with candles dotting the deck. The restaurant faced north, up along La Jolla Shores all the way to where the cliffs at Torrey Pines jut out into the Pacific at Black’s Beach. The sun looked tired, taking its time getting down in the west as we sat at a table near the railing.
“Pretty day for an ugly day,” Emily said, sighing.
“Agreed.”
The waitress appeared quickly and efficiently. Emily asked for a gin and tonic, and I requested a Jack and Coke. They were on the table in less than two minutes.
“So,” Emily said, twirling the small straw in her drink. “Pretty weird, huh?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
She tossed the straw on the table, then sipped her drink. “I think I’ve gone through the emotional gamut. Sad, angry, irritated, confused, horrified, miserable. Did I miss anything?”
“Don’t think so.”
She shook her head, the sun reflecting off of the small pearls in her ears. “It just doesn’t feel permanent.”
I hadn’t seen Kate in over ten years, but I felt the same way. “I know.”
We sat there for a few minutes, nursing our drinks and watching the sun retreat behind the edge of the water. The breeze swept up off the ocean and felt cooler than normal. But maybe it was our mood.
“You didn’t believe me about Randall, did you?” Emily said quietly, setting her drink on the glass top of the table.
I shrugged. “Not that I didn’t believe you. I just didn’t get that feeling from him when we met. What you said surprised me.”
“He fools almost everyone,” she said, the disdain in her voice unmistakable.
“Even Kate?”
She laughed softly, sadly. “Especially Kate.” She finished her drink, pointed to it as our waitress walked by, and tried to smile. “The thing is, Kate was always the one you couldn’t get anything past. I’m the ignorant one. But this time, someone fooled her.”
I had never seen Emily as the ignorant one in the Crier family, but I knew firsthand how her parents could make you feel like something other than what you were.
“You said before that he was playing around from day one,” I said. “Kate told you that?”
The waitress set two fresh drinks in front of us and scampered away.
“About six months in,” Emily said, pulling at the napkin under the drink, “she started getting weird signals.”
I sipped at the drink, the bourbon snaking a hot path into my stomach. “Like?”
“Paging him at the hospital and he took longer than usual to return the page,” she said. “Some hang-ups at home when she answered the phone. He lost a shirt she had given him. Just very un-Randall-like things.”