“Has your relationship with Elizabeth always been so strained?”
“Actually, no. We were close the first year. That’s how I know about her family. But we drifted apart.”
“Aren’t you both in the same department?”
“Yeah, but I do postcolonial studies. Liz isn’t exactly a serious scholar. She’s into Jane Austen. I mean, can you think of anything fluffier than that? And my god, have you ever read Mansfield Park? Complete garbage.”
“So, you had a falling out over... Jane Austen?”
“No, it was over the bathroom. She wanted things spotless. No matter how much I cleaned, it was never enough. And don’t get me started on all her little passive-aggressive comments.”
“Such as?”
“Liz was a strict vegetarian.” Natalie held up the bag in her hand. “If I want to eat Jack in the Box, I’ll eat Jack in the Box. It’s none of her business.” She reached into the bag and popped a soggy french fry in her mouth.
“So her vegetarianism became an annoyance?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Natalie replied. “You know who else was a vegetarian? Hitler. And Pol Pot.”
“I guess that’s what happens when you love animals too much — genocide.”
Natalie giggled. My little joke seemed to have won her over.
“So, just to make sure I’m understanding you correctly, the reason you called Elizabeth a slut was because she had loud sex with her boyfriend? Is that all?”
“N-no, that’s just part of it. Elizabeth stole Chet away from another girl, and then turned around and cheated on him. Did Alice tell you about the flowers?”
I nodded.
“Chet didn’t send them. He put up with all her whiny bullshit, and this is how she rewards him?”
“A potential love triangle. Interesting.” I took out my smartphone and began typing up notes. Natalie didn’t know I’d already started recording her.
“Don’t quote me on that!” she said, only half-serious.
“I’ll keep your name out of the article. But tell me this: who else was Elizabeth seeing?”
“Not sure. Someone older, I think.”
“What do you know about Chet?”
“Nothing, really. I’ve never spoken to him.”
I handed Natalie a business card. She inspected it like a cashier examining a suspiciously crisp hundred-dollar bill. “If you think of anything, my cell number is on the back. Don’t call the office. That’s not a direct line. I don’t want anyone getting my messages and poaching the story, okay?”
“Sure,” Natalie said, “but I gotta eat my lunch now. My tacos are getting cold.”
Elizabeth’s social media accounts offered few clues. Highlights included a couple of gorgeous West Cliff Drive sunsets and a handful of perfectly composed selfies highlighting Elizabeth’s natural beauty. She’d crafted her online persona to suggest her life was incredibly fun — and conspicuously solitary. Her last post had been the previous summer.
I’d brought a box to pack up some of Elizabeth’s things, but to my disappointment, the police took almost everything of value. No laptop. No tablet. Not even a stapler. Her desk drawers were all empty too. I thumbed through every book on her shelf, hoping to find some sort of clue — a diary, a scrap of paper, something.
Back in the Mustang, I stared at the only thing of value I retrieved: a photograph of a little Korean girl, probably five or six years old, smiling between two adoring Caucasian parents — Gregory and Susan White. The couple had difficulty conceiving, but with the help of an international adoption agency, they found and fell in love with a baby girl named Jae-Hee Kim, soon to be renamed Elizabeth Jane White.
While it’s true that Elizabeth’s parents were initially childless, her roommate Natalie didn’t know half the story. The first twelve years of Elizabeth’s life were relatively happy, though when her parents divorced, things took an ugly turn. Her father had only agreed to the adoption for the sake of his wife, so once the divorce was finalized, he cut off contact with Elizabeth, never to be heard from again.
Elizabeth’s mother retained custody, yet when she remarried two years later, her new husband wasn’t fond of a teenager in the house, especially one so obviously not his. Having to explain the existence of this Korean child, a constant reminder of his wife’s previous marriage, made him deeply uncomfortable. Elizabeth’s stepfather wanted children of his own, and he got his wish when her mother became pregnant with twins through the miracle of in vitro fertilization.
When Elizabeth completed high school, her stepfather accepted a job in Boston, taking her mother and her half-siblings out of state. Elizabeth’s weekly phone calls from college to her mother slowly turned into an annual call and then into no calls at all. By the time she graduated from Michigan State, the family had ceased all contact. Thankfully, she’d been accepted into graduate school at Santa Cruz, a place where she could begin again — or so she thought.
Perhaps there was more to the story. But with Elizabeth gone, it was unlikely that I would ever discover the full truth.
My thoughts returned to the happy little girl in the photograph. Her adoptive parents looked happy too, no clue of the misery they would cause in the years to come. After drying my eyes, I put the photograph down and reached under the seat. To my relief, my pistol — a Ruger 9mm — was still there. I popped the magazine and checked the bullets. All seven rounds were ready for use.
At first glance, Chet Crawford was something of a disappointment. Despite Elizabeth’s interest in all things Jane Austen, I’m sorry to report that Chet was no Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. If anything, I suspected he had more in common with Mr. Wickham, Darcy’s charming but deceitful foil.
Chet’s apartment wasn’t difficult to find. Boasting Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and an iconic bell tower, the Beach Street Villa must have been breathtaking during its 1930s heyday. Eighty-five years later, the place was considerably less impressive. I suppose “crack house” might be a more apt description. Still, the appeal lay mainly in its location: to visit the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, all you had to do was walk across the street.
For some reason, I expected Chet to be taller, but we were at eye level when he answered the door. He was alone, accompanied only by the distinct stench of alcohol. When I identified myself as a reporter, I figured Chet would slam the door in my face, but instead he invited me inside without protest.
If the villa’s exterior looked bad, the interior of Chet’s apartment was worse: dirty clothes draped everywhere, empty cans of beer stacked on the dresser, even a couple fast-food wrappers crumpled on the floor. Chez Chet had all the charm of an indoor landfill. Adorning his yellowed cracked walls were the markers of a cultured man: a framed poster for Wong Kar-Wai’s Days of Being Wild, a reproduction of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, and Yousuf Karsh’s iconic photograph of Bogart.
“Beth was always so sensitive,” he told me later, his handsome face blotchy with an alcoholic’s sunburn. “I mean, being sensitive is fine if it means you’re sensitive to other people’s feelings, but it was a one-way street with her. She was so thin-skinned. Actually, it was like she was missing a layer of skin.”
“Why didn’t you break up with her?”
“Because she beat me to the punch. We hooked up at the end of spring quarter, and she wanted to keep seeing me through summer break. I was planning a cross-country road trip with my buddies — y’know, do the whole Kerouac thing — but I ended up canceling because of her. At the time, I didn’t mind. I thought things were going well. But then, out of the blue, she breaks up with me and starts sleeping with somebody else. It’s crazy!”