Bentz sat in the shade of an oversized umbrella. “Her suicide,” he said.
Shana frowned, felt her lips pull into a knot of frustration.
“You were one of her closest friends. I thought you could tell me her state of mind before her death-did she really want to end it all?”
“Wow. That’s it? You want my take on what she was thinking?”
“Yeah.”
Okay, he asked. Shana rolled the years back in her head, remembered Jennifer-fun and naughty and terminally sexy. “It never made sense to me. She was too full of life, too into herself to want to end it.”
“We found a note.”
“Oh, pooh!” She swiped at the air as if a bothersome fly were buzzing around her head. “I don’t know what that was all about. Sure, she told me she fought depression at times, but…I didn’t think it was that serious. Maybe I was wrong, but I would have bet at the time she wrote the note it was just a way to get attention, you know? She was big on that. I mean who kills themselves by driving into a tree?”
He was listening, not bothering to take notes.
“She could’ve had an accident, I’ll grant you that. She was known to drink a little and then there were pills, but…” She looked him straight in the eye. “If you’re asking me if I think Jennifer was capable of suicide, I’d say no. Just like I said pretty loudly at the time she died.”
Bentz nodded. As if he remembered.
“I lived with Jennifer at Berkeley and then afterward when…you know she was dating Alan Gray? No, not just dating. I think they were engaged for a while, right?”
She saw the narrowing of his eyes, the quiet assent behind his shaded glasses.
“But she didn’t move in with Alan, probably because she met you. Personally, I thought she was crazy. I mean, Alan was this super-rich real estate developer. God, he must’ve been worth tens of millions. Yet, she fell for you. A cop. Threw the millionaire over. Go figure.” Shana sighed theatrically. “But then who could figure our girl out? Jennifer was nothing if not a dichotomy.” Shana remembered Jennifer the flirt. Jennifer the extrovert. Jennifer the wild. But never could she recall Jennifer the morose. “However, I never considered Jennifer someone who would hurt herself. Not intentionally. I mean I just don’t think she was capable of it. She would do a lot of things for attention. A lot. But never really self-destructive.” Shana caught herself and sighed. “Well, unless you mean the affair.” She met his gaze, but she doubted it so much as flickered behind his shades. “James was definitely her Achilles’ heel.” She looked away to the pool where sunlight danced on the water, clear and aquamarine. “Look, it’s been a long time and really, I don’t know what was in her head at the time. I just doubt that it was suicide.”
Bentz asked her a few more questions about her friendship, then, when she looked at her watch, came up with the bombshell.
“Do you think Jennifer could have faked her death?”
“What?” She was shocked. “Are you kidding?” But he wasn’t. His face was stone-cold sober. “No way. I mean, how would she go about it?” Her thoughts swirled. Goose bumps rose on the back of her arms. Was this some kind of trick question? But Bentz’s expression told her differently. “Okay, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but no, I don’t think she could have…what? Staged the accident? Put someone up to it? Killed another woman? No…that’s nuts, Rick.” She felt her insides churning. This was just too weird. “Weren’t you the one who identified her body?”
He nodded, his lips tightening just a bit.
“Well, then, did you make a mistake?”
“I don’t know,” he said and she let out a long breath. “She didn’t talk to you about it? Didn’t show up afterward?”
“No! For the love of God!” Was the man bonkers? Holy crap! “What kind of dope are you smoking, Bentz? Jennifer’s dead. We both know it.”
“If you say so.”
Shana leaned back in her chair and eyed the man who had been Jennifer’s husband. He hadn’t been known to hallucinate. At least, not before all his problems. At one point he’d been the shining star of the LAPD, but that star had been tarnished, along with his badge.
Today, though, he looked like the old Bentz. Handsome and hard-edged. Oh, he was a little more shopworn around the edges, the years starting to show. But this Bentz was clear-eyed and determined. Passionate. Some of the qualities Jennifer had been drawn to in the first place.
“What makes you think Jennifer is alive?” she asked. This conversation was weird, weird, weird.
He withdrew something from an envelope-photos that he fanned over the glass-topped table. Shana’s heart nearly stopped. The woman in each shot was Jennifer, or her goddamned identical twin. “Where’d you get these? I mean…you’re saying these are recent?” she asked, her mind boggled. Jennifer was dead.
“Someone sent them to me. I thought you might have an idea who.”
“Not a clue…but…this can’t be…I mean, she’s dead. You were the one who-” She picked up the shot of Jennifer crossing the street. A chill slid down her spine.
“I’m just looking into her death,” he said as she eyed the pictures, looking for flaws, some hint that this was a twisted hoax.
“Where did these come from?” she asked.
“Postmarked Culver City.”
“Where you lived.” She swallowed hard. Heard the dry wind rustling the palm fronds. Felt cold as death inside. “This has to be an illusion.”
“I know, but I have some time, so I thought I’d check into it a little deeper.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer, just asked, “Is there anything you can tell me about the last week or so of her life that was unusual or different?”
“Aside from the fact that she died?” Shana asked bitterly, then eyed the pictures again. The truth of the matter was that she missed Jennifer. She wasn’t crazy about talking to Jennifer’s ex-husband, a real son of a bitch who’d been distant from his wife, always putting his work before his damned family.
She felt an allegiance to Jennifer, even now when she was no longer with the living. Discussing her with Rick seemed a betrayal somehow. Shana glanced away from Rick Bentz’s intimidating glare to the garden where heavy-blossomed bougainvillea clung to an arbor, the leaves rustling in a soft breeze.
But what was the point to keeping mum now? Her allegiance was long over. Jennifer was gone.
“All I know is that Jennifer talked about leaving a lot. She mentioned giving herself a break and you your freedom.” To his credit, the man winced, if only slightly. “She thought you were more cut out to be a parent than she was, even though you worked too much, got too involved with your cases, and drank a whole lot more than you should.” Shana lifted her hair up, letting the breeze skim across her nape. “She was smart enough to realize you were a good father. For what that’s worth.”
Crossing one leg over the other, she wondered, could those pictures be real? No way. The woman in the pictures was too young. Or she had an exceptional plastic surgeon. Shana dragged her gaze away, got back to skewering Bentz. “You already said you know she had a lover.” From the tightening of Bentz’s jaw, Shana knew she had hit a nerve. “She was planning to cut it off with him, too. Her life was getting too complicated and since James was your half brother…”
“And the father of my daughter.”
Jesus, he was way ahead of her. Shana shrugged and wished she’d made a pitcher of margaritas. She was suddenly thirsty as well as nervous. “Well, she knew that her affair, with him being a priest and all, only spelled trouble for both of them.”
“Did he know she was going to end it?” Bentz asked gravely.
“Suspected it, I think. She hadn’t actually done the dirty deed, but he’d sensed it was coming. He was beside himself.”