Hairy thumped his tail against the floor, then followed her to the bedroom, where she dressed and tried not to think about the fact that her husband was nearly a continent away, chasing demons who had haunted him for twelve long years.
The flight was uneventful.
Once, after dozing, Bentz thought he smelled gardenias. He took a long look around the cabin of the 727, eyeing all the passengers, half expecting Jennifer to be calmly seated near the window, reading a book. She would, of course, upon feeling his gaze upon her, look up and smile with that sexy little grin that had always gotten to him. Without saying a word she would tell him that she knew he’d follow her.
It didn’t happen.
No one on the plane remotely resembled his first wife…ex-wife he reminded himself. Ex. They had been divorced, though living together, at the time of her death. But those arrangements had been about to end. Because she hadn’t been able to give up her lover.
The plane touched down at LAX with a soft bump as the back wheels hit the tarmac, then even less of a jar as the wheel under the nose of the plane found the pavement. As the 727 taxied to the gate, most of the passengers were already turning on cell phones, unbuckling their seat belts, and shifting the luggage at their feet. After spending the entire trip with her nose in a book, the woman in the seat next to Bentz swung a purse the size of Guatemala onto her lap and scrounged for her cell frantically. Touchdown propelled her into frenzied mode and she hastily dug through her huge purse. Bentz barely avoided being knocked over by the bag as he pulled his computer from beneath the seat in front of him and she located her phone and clicked it on, immediately making a call.
He couldn’t help but overhear her conversation, a one-sided affair in which she was trashing her ex’s latest girlfriend.
Fortunately, the plane emptied fairly quickly.
On the way to baggage claim Bentz called Olivia and left a message that he’d landed safely. He found his one bag, then rented a small SUV with a G.P.S. already installed. He’d done it all without using his cane and, though his hip ached, he ignored the pain and threw the damned walking stick that he’d brought along into the backseat.
As he exited the rental lot in the Ford Escape, he slipped a pair of sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose. The scenery was familiar, the tightness in his chest new. Years ago he’d left L.A. with a bad taste in his mouth; now all those old feelings came back at him in a rush. Guilt over Jennifer’s suicide, remorse over the death of a twelve-year-old kid with a toy pistol, gnawing frustration that he would have been able to solve the Caldwell twins’ double homicide if he’d been at the top of his game, and the fog of too many numbing shots of whiskey.
He’d been a mess. Jack Daniel’s had become his best friend and that friendship had damaged every other relationship. It had also compromised his job performance and his ability to see clearly.
Though officially he’d quit the LAPD, the pressure to resign had been palpable, the tension in the department thicker than the smog that blanketed the city. Even his remaining friends, the few coworkers who “had his back,” had been relieved to see him leave. His departure had been better for all concerned. Especially him.
Except that he’d left some unfinished business behind.
It had been years since he’d been in Southern California, and though the area had changed, the royal palm trees and space-age arches of the Encounters restaurant at LAX were reminders of a time he’d tried hard to forget.
As he maneuvered onto the freeway he couldn’t see the surrounding hills through the layer of smog that hovered over the area. He fiddled with the air conditioning to combat the rising temperature as buildings rose ghostlike through the shimmering heat waves. By instinct he headed toward his old neighborhood, which wasn’t too far from Culver City.
The area had changed a little. The shrubs and trees were larger, the neighborhood as a whole seeming to have gone a little downhill, evidenced by the cracked sidewalks and wrought-iron bars on some windows.
His old house looked pretty much the same. Sometime in the past twelve years, it had been painted a dove gray, but now was in dire need of another coat. The garage door was blistered and didn’t quite close, the yard overgrown and dry. Weeds turned brown in the sun-bleached bark chips near the tired front porch. A FOR RENT sign was wedged into the grass, but it too was fading beneath the intense California sun.
Leaving his cane in the rental, Bentz walked around the house and peered through the dirty windows to spy dusty floors and dingy walls, some the same color they had been a dozen years earlier. Stepping backward and shading his eyes, he gazed up to the window and was bombarded by memories of images within his former bedroom, the scene he’d walked into more than a decade ago. Twisted sheets of the unmade bed and slivers of broken glass spattered beneath the gaping hole where a mirror once hung. In his mind he retraced the path to the spare bedroom on the second floor, the guest room Jennifer had used as her office. He remembered that it had taken a while to find the note that she’d left, not in an obvious location on a table or a counter, but tucked away in her desk drawer, written to Kristi and signed in Jennifer’s flowing hand.
He’d always wondered about that.
The suicide note to their daughter that had been tucked away in the pages of the latest self-help book Jennifer had been reading. The Power of Me, or something just as self-centered.
All the advice in the world hadn’t helped his screwed-up ex-wife.
But she hadn’t left the note out in the open.
As if she’d had second thoughts.
Or was waiting. Hadn’t yet made a final decision.
At the time he’d discovered the note he’d pushed aside the nagging questions and had rationalized that in her pursuit of death, as in so many facets of her life, Jennifer had done a lousy job. But now he had renewed doubts. What if Jennifer’s death hadn’t been suicide? What if she hadn’t been driving the car? What if the woman he’d identified as his wife and buried six feet under had been someone else?
Just who was decomposing in that grave?
His gut twisted at the thought and he didn’t let his mind wander too far down that dark, rocky path.
He returned to the Escape and drove nearly five miles to a cemetery, the spot where he’d thought Jennifer had been laid to rest. Parking in the shade of a live oak tree, he fished out his wallet and found a battered card for Detective Jonas Hayes of the LAPD. He’d carried the damned card around for twelve years and remembered the day Hayes had pressed the card into his palm. “Hey, if you ever need anything,” he’d said after the burial as clouds had rolled in and rain had started to fall. So long ago…and now Bentz wondered if Jennifer were truly entombed in the casket lying under the granite headstone.
He walked through the drying grass and found the plot, read the simple inscription, and felt a strange pang in his heart. Had he made a mistake? Did the corpse beneath his feet belong to someone else? He glared down at the grass, as if he could see through the sod and six feet of dry earth to the casket where a woman’s body had been decomposing for twelve long years.
A whisper of a breeze slid across the back of his neck and the scent of gardenias was suddenly heavy in the air. Did he hear someone whisper his name? He turned, expecting to see Jennifer beckoning with that come-hither naughty smile that had been her trademark. But she wasn’t leaning against one of the taller headstones, her auburn hair shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. Nor was she standing anywhere within the wrought-iron fencing surrounding the silent graveyard.