Skies of Ash (8 page)

“By what?” Luke asked.

“By whom?” Pepe wondered.

“The fire?”

“Her husband?”

My body went cold. “Or both.”

BENEATH THE DECEMBER MOON, BENEATH A SKY STILL SMOKY FROM FIRE AND ASH
, the Chatman house resembled the
War of the Worlds
plane-crash movie set found on the Universal Studios lot—random wood boards strewn across the property, plaster and wallpaper hanging off walls like dead, burned skin, dirty insulation dripping from the eaves like broiled intestines. All of this but without the crashed 747 on the front lawn. Hard to believe that a family had lived here. But as I surveyed the destruction, I found it easy to believe that a family—three-quarters of it anyway—had perished.

As a homicide detective, I regularly entered the homes of slain victims. There, I smelled tobacco caught in the curtains; smelled spilled beer and whiskey fumes in the rugs and wafting from the mountain of empties in the trash can. I noticed walls dented by doorknobs, fists, and skulls; crimson-colored splatters on ceilings and floorboards; teeth stuck in carpet.

With the Chatman house, I saw nothing personal like that. Just groups of big men swinging axes, wielding chain saws, shouting “
Whoa whoa whoa
” over the crackle of radios. Mops, water vacuums, and chamois cluttered the lawns and sidewalks. The business end of death.

“I wanna go back into the main house for a moment,” I told Luke and Pepe. “To make sure there ain’t a packed suitcase for Mr. Chatman.” Then, I pointed to Colin. “Then, we’ll check out the back house.”

The electricity to the property was still shut off, so we clicked on our flashlights to navigate through the darkness. But we didn’t find a suitcase—not in the foyer, den, or home office.

No suitcase in the laundry room, either. “Looks full,” Colin said, peering through the window of the swanky dryer. “Maybe he was washing the clothes he planned to pack.”

“Maybe.”

He opened the dryer door, then pulled out pink shirts, white shirts, jeans, and girls’ swimsuits, a few bath and hand towels, and soccer socks—all of it covered in glitter. “Nothin’ but girl. What the hell’s bells is all
this
?” He brushed glitter from his clothes, but the flecks only multiplied.

“Looks like a stripper threw up all over you,” I said, grinning.

“Is that a
thing
now? Putting glitter on clothes?”

I nodded. “But you wash it first, to get off the excess. The rest gets caught in the lint filter. See?” I lifted the filter from its slot.

Clean.

“That’s strange,” I said with a frown. “Usually…”

Colin rubbed his left eye. “Think some of that shit flew in my—”

“Where’s the lint from this load?” I wondered. “There should be some of the usual gray stuff along with glitter from Chloe’s shirts.”

“Does it matter?” Colin blinked to be sure that the glitter had left his eye.

Uncertain if it mattered or not, I stared at the filter. “Just find it strange.” I plucked the digital camera from my pocket and snapped pictures of the clothes, the clean filter, and the machine itself.

Flashlights in hand, Colin and I crept out of the service porch door, stepping over boards, debris, and leaves, all soggy from drizzle and fire-hose water. Our beams of light led us to the Chatmans’ Away Place. And except for a plywood sheet covering the busted bay window, the converted garage had escaped disaster.

Colin clucked his tongue. “Crazy how some things survive.”

I tossed a cone of light up and down the structure. “Take this.” I handed him the Mag so that I could snap pictures.

A moment later, flashes of light from the camera popped in the darkness. I took one more picture, then tilted my face to the misty rain, closing my eyes as my skin tingled and tightened.

Colin wiggled the doorknob.

Unlocked.

The darkness hid the room’s detail. But it felt close and damp. If the air, the Persian rug, and the sofa didn’t dry out soon, mold would come and that would be that—another claim form for Christopher Chatman to submit. The walls were light-colored, and three dark wood beams traversed the ceiling.

“Mice in here?” I whispered.

“Fire probably scared ’em away.” Colin chuckled. “You scared of critters?”

“Nope. Scared of vermin.”

We wandered around the room in silence.

Something scurried and scratched behind a piece of furniture.

I went rigid and stopped in my step. “Vermin?”

“Big ones, too,” Colin kidded.

I swung the light: a bookcase stocked with books, a desk strewn with papers, and a glass mug filled with tea, the tea bag resting on a coaster. A book of stamps sat near that glass of tea. A planning calendar had been opened to January.

“She was sitting here yesterday,” I said. “Started doing something—writing a letter, planning that getaway—and the doorbell rang or the kids called her to the front.”

“Didn’t get to come back and finish her tea,” Colin added, his voice tight, his flashlight trained on the mug.

Next to the planning calendar sat a daily planner opened to December 10. In neat print, someone (Juliet?) had written “APPT @IMG @ 2:30,” and on December 11, “FUP w/Dr. K @10.”

I flipped to the past week: on Thursday, December 6, she’d had an appointment with Dr. Kulkanis at ten o’clock. A business card from the obstetrician-gynecologist had been stuck in the journal’s crease. Three appointments, just days apart.

Sarah Oliver had mentioned Juliet being sick. And Juliet was supposed to visit her doctor this morning. A baby doctor.

How many women died each year after visiting baby doctors and then sharing the news with their significant others? Too many.

I took the journal and the calendar and then opened the top drawer—pens, pads, clips. In the large bottom drawer, I found letters bundled together with strands of raffia.

As I browsed through the envelopes, Colin drifted over to the bookcase.

I found nothing obvious in the first couple of letters—notes from friends and from her mother—but I took them all anyway. I stepped over to the coffee table: a
Self
magazine with Heidi Klum on the cover. A pen and two slips of paper. I shone light onto the words of the first note, written in neat cursive.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Our life is a lie. It will be over soon and what we are will no longer be.

Hunh.

Then, I read the second note. “Found something.” My stomach clenched as I took pictures of both documents.

Colin stood beside me and read the first note under his breath. “Suicide?”

I shrugged. “Read note number two.”

His eyes skipped across the page. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“May not mean anything.”

“You just said
may not
.”

He gazed at me, glanced at the notes, then pulled two evidence bags from his pocket.

Those notes weren’t teeth lost in carpet, banged-in walls, or pools of blood on bathroom linoleum. Nothing hard like that. But the family’s pathology—secrets and fear and betrayal—were starting to poke out and stink.

THE DRIZZLE HAD STEPPED UP ITS GAME, AND NOW, THIN RAIN, THE KIND THAT
destroyed hair and made driving more dangerous than skydiving, fell from those Hollywood clouds. Colin and I left Juliet Chatman’s Away Place as the fire company loaded equipment back onto the engines and as two patrol officers wrapped new stretches of yellow tape across the front yard. Pepe and Luke had beat it back to the station with boxes of evidence crowding their cars’ trunks and cabins. At Ruby Emmett’s brick bungalow across the street, a group of neighbors huddled on the lawn.

Colin smiled. “Looks like everybody’s home. Be a shame to leave right now.”

“It would.” I winked at him. “Ready, partner?”

“Always, partner.”

“No mention of the gun or the suitcases or the 911 call.”

“Got it.”

Interviews are usually conducted in isolation—you and the witness in a locked room, knee to knee. But after finding that second note on the coffee table, I wanted the women of Don Mateo Drive in one room, clucking like pissed-off hens. A dangerous game? Certainly. But the potential payoff…

All group discussion came to a halt as Colin and I approached.

“Evenin’,” Colin drawled.

No one responded.

Delia Moss, the playwright, clutched an iPad to her chest. A chubby, balding white guy stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders. Round Ruby put her hands on her hips as Nora the real estate agent readjusted the plastic bonnet that protected her weave from the rain. A hatchet-faced black man and Ben Oliver smirked at me.

“I know it’s dinnertime,” I said, “but we’d like to talk to anyone who’s willing.” I smiled and nodded at Ben Oliver.

He didn’t smile back.

My face warmed, and my jaw tightened so much it creaked.

“I’m tired of all this pokin’ around,” Ruby said. “Y’all, the reporters, everybody.”

“We don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Delia Moss added. “You’re only interested in placing blame on the victims.”

“Not true,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m interested in the truth.”

“We’ve told you everything we know,” Ben Oliver said.

I forced myself to remain smiling. “The sooner you talk to us, the sooner whoever did this is brought to justice. If you folks won’t do this for Juliet and the kids, who will?” I turned to Ruby. “ ‘Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.’ ”

Ruby waddled to the front door. “Come on in, then. I’ll talk. Ain’t got all night, though.”

Those three years of Sunday school memory verses had just paid off.

A minute later, Colin and I found ourselves hunkered on a low love seat with sunken cushions in a stuffy living room crammed with an upright piano, an overdecorated Christmas tree, and brass elephant planters filled with peacock feathers. We were joined by the others who had stood with Ruby on her lawn—including Ben Oliver.

Ruby’s kids, thirteen or fourteen years old and just as round as their mother, had been splayed on the carpet in front of the large-screen television, playing
Left 4 Dead
on the Xbox. “Y’all need to take that noise upstairs,” Ruby told them.

“But—” both started to say, but stopped once Ruby gave them The Look.

Obedient children, they huffed out of the living room, throwing me sullen gazes as they retreated up the stairs.

“My husband should be back soon,” Delia said. The white guy, Eli Moss, had run next door to grab his video camera.

As we waited, my stomach rumbled—Ruby had fried some type of meat for dinner, and I hadn’t eaten since that smashed, three-o’-clock Snickers bar.

Ben Oliver sat in the armchair across from Colin and me. He considered me coolly as though I had planned to sell him expired Amway products.

Eli Moss bustled into the living room with his camera. “Thanks for waiting.”

The attorney glanced at his watch with irritation. “Another last-minute interrogation, Detective?” he asked me. “Many of us have been up since four o’clock this morning.”

I leaned forward and glared at him.
This is my meeting, not yours.

Usually, men shrank under that glare. Ben Oliver, though, also leaned forward and blossomed under my glare like a sunflower on the first day of summer.

Damn.
I would have to consult my witch’s spell book for a glower just for him. Something frosty enough to kill sunflowers.

“Let’s start with an easy question,” I said. “What was Juliet’s state of mind, say, last week this time?”

Several confused moments of silence before Delia said, “She was happy.”

The room buzzed with murmurs of approval.
Good answer, good answer.

“She was never sad,” Nora added. “Never, ever, ever sad.”

“She was a devoted wife,” Ruby volunteered as she plopped onto the piano bench. “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, Solomon wrote, and Juliet was definitely Christopher’s crown.”

“She adored her children,” Delia Moss continued. “She went beyond loving them.”

“Are any of you familiar with Melissa Kemper?” I asked.

Blank stares from everyone… except from Ben, who had narrowed his eyes.

“No one?” I met the gaze of each person sitting before me.

A breeze suffused with the aroma of fried meat wafted through the room and twisted into my nostrils. Light-headed now, I felt my stomach rumble louder. “Okay. Back to Juliet. And I’ll be blunt just to save us some time. Did she ever talk to any of you about wanting to die?”

Ruby shrieked,
“What?”

Nora clutched her neck. “Jules was probably the most well-adjusted woman on our block. How could you ask something so—?”

“Nora, please,” Micah Galbreath said. He was the hatchet-faced black man who had stood with Ben Oliver.

“So intrusive,” she complained. “Intrusive and totally disrespectful.”

“These questions,” Delia Moss said, “it’s too soon to be asking these questions.”

“I know that this is difficult,” I said, “but I’m asking because we found two notes in the back apartment.” I flipped through the pages in my pad, then read, “
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Our life is a lie. It will be over soon and what we are will no longer be.
We believe this note may have been written by Juliet Chatman.”

Ruby cocked her head. “I know the first part of that, about vanity. It’s from the book of Ecclesiastes. It basically means everything we do is in vain and is meaningless.”

“What about the rest?” I asked. “The part about it being over soon?”

Everyone shrugged.

“The second note we found,” I said, “was written by the mysterious Melissa Kemper.
Dear Juliet, you need to know some things. I don’t want to bring it up in a letter—you’ve ignored my other ones so far—so please stop ignoring me and pick up the phone and CALL ME. It’s a matter of life and death!!!
”

Ben Oliver cleared his throat. “Melissa is a friend of ours.”

“What kind of friend?” Colin asked.

“A good one.” Ben glared at Eli and the video camera. “Must you record this?”