Sonia studied her. Outside on the deck she had looked so young and fragile, but here, in front of a microphone and audience, she was in control. As the widow told sweet stories from her life with Winston, Sonia began to sob. Moments later Molly moaned, followed by Howard’s soulful howls. A true Hollywood crowd, the other mourners followed suit as if reading a cue card.

  One by one, family members and ex-wives, walked to the podium and shared their memories of the deceased. They remained standing up front, forming an ever-larger semi-circle.

  At a pre-arranged signal from SoVage, who stood discretely behind a potted plant, Howard and the sisters, now in full voice, joined them. As one, Sonia and Molly lifted the mantillas and folded them back over their heads. First Molly, then Sonia dipped fingers into a golden urn and smeared their faces with ashes, moaning and sobbing loudly.

  Family members were invited to do the same. All who were standing did so but few from the seated audience came forward. The room quieted. In that moment of silence, Sonia pulled the mantilla from her head and tore it down the middle. Molly did the same. The sound of tearing lace inspired Howard to lose a double howl.

  The service closed with the singing of hymns. Most were familiar to the sisters but they’d never heard the snappy tune, “Telephone to Glory.” As they left the cabin with the other mourners, Molly found herself humming the chorus.

  Topside, there was a buzz of activity in anticipation of the reef ceremony. Everyone headed toward the stern of the boat where the crane stood at the ready, its three yellow pinchers grasping the top of the now-uncovered reef. The crane operator, a portly, balding middle-ager flicked a half-smoked cigarette over the side of the ship as the guests approached, then leaned against the machine and pulled a remote control from his pants pocket. Sonia felt herself jostled forward by the movement of the group. She passed a small boy with curly red hair clutching a toy truck to his chest with both hands.

  The widow, Destiny, her suit, hair, and make-up again impeccable, stood beside the reef. Even the ocean breeze didn’t ruffle her hairdo. She held a portable microphone and called the crowd to attention. “Quiet, please, everyone.” She had to repeat this several times before people settled.

  “We are now ready for our final farewell to Winston.”

  From the back of the assembled group, a young girl’s voice squeaked. “My turn. I want to hold it.”

  “We’d been married just over a month when Winston gave me a tour of the wine cellar.”

  A little boy’s voice wailed, “Give me my truck back.”

  SoVage’s head snapped in the children’s direction, and with a stern look he raised a finger to his lips.

  Destiny continued speaking. “Most of you know that Winston loved champagne.”

  There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd.

  “In the wine cellar was the first time I hear him say, “Honey, when I die, I want to be launched like a great ship.”

  At that moment, with the small boy momentarily cowed by the reprimand, his sister snatched the truck from his hand. He grabbed the toy back and sent it rolling along the deck.

  Howard, the dog, caught sight of the movement and lunged, pulling the leash from Sonia’s hand to give chase.

  The widow continued, oblivious. “So Winston began buying vintage champagne. He bought all the remaining bottles of Dom Perignon, vintage 1934, the year he was born.”

  A tall waiter wearing a white tuxedo with gold ascot began walking through the crowd. High in the air, balanced on one hand, he bore a champagne flute laden tray. The haughty expression he aimed straight at Destiny prevented him from seeing the moving truck until it was almost under his foot. At the last minute, he managed to side step around the toy.

  “I am going to christen the reef with Winston’s favorite drink.” She waved the champagne bottle in front of the crowd.

  The waiter continued on his way, eyes darting back and forth from his path among the guests to Destiny. From between a pair of trousered legs, Howard dashed in front of the waiter, but he managed to dodge the dog and avoid the trailing leash. As he looked up, a triumphant smile forming on his mouth, a small wheel, dislodged from the truck, rolled under his lowering foot.

  “And then we will all drink the remaining bottles,” the widow said. “The champagne flutes are on the way.”

  Indeed they were. The waiter’s foot came down on the small wheel and slid out from under him. From his station by the tribute table, SoVage rushed to retrieve the tray.

  Wind-milling his arms, the waiter tried but failed, to right himself, sending a fist into SoVage’s face and crashing into the crowd. The tray and glasses went flying, followed by the funeral planner. Person after person began to fall against one another in a ripple effect like the wave at a ball game. As Sonia and Molly went down, they remembered to go limp like they’d been taught in the Fall Prevention class at the Senior Center.

  “Holy shit!” blared from the microphone as the widow watched the unfolding catastrophe.

  The wave of toppling people had reached Mr. Clean. One of the twins, Emeralds, came barreling toward him. He put up his arms to catch her. As she fell, she stretched out her hands, her fingers snagging the bolt in his right ear. Yelping in pain, Mr. Clean stepped backward into the crane operator, knocking the remote control out of his hand onto the deck.

  On impact, a button on the remote was activated. The crane tightened its metal fingers around the reef and lifted.

  The reef began to move.

  The widow backed away, still clutching the champagne.

  People watched in awe as the reef moved upward, then began to swing sideways.

  Suddenly, the widow lost her balance. Destiny tried to stop her forward motion, but could not. Her face pulled ugly in terror, she stumbled into the path of the moving reef. Eleven hundred pounds of concrete hit ninety-five pounds of flesh and sent it flying in a long arc into the endless ocean.

  There were a few seconds of total silence, and then shouts, orders, crying filled the air. A rescue attempt was begun. The captain, locating the fallen microphone, urged the crowd not to panic.

  With each other’s help, Sonia and Molly picked themselves up from the deck and, after retrieving Howard, moved to the other end of the ship. “We may be the only ones who saw what really happened,” Sonia said.

  Molly smoothed her black dress down over her hips. “I agree. In all the clamor, no one else noticed, but I’ll never forget the sight of that moving foot reaching out to trip Destiny.”

  Sonia removed some flower petals from her sensible black shoe. “She didn’t come to the front during the service, but Pearls must be one of the exes.”

  “Five ex-wives together in close quarters was asking for trouble.”

  Sonia looked back at the milling crowd, searching for the funeral planner. “SoVage should have spent less time on his color palette and more time keeping tabs on the exes.”

  Molly caught her sister’s eye. “You think Pearls suspected that Destiny murdered Mr. Sellers?”

  Sonia nodded. “She saw her chance to get even and she took it.”

  “Oh, dear. Should we call the police?”

  “I don’t think so. Justice can be tricky.”

  Doubt crossed Molly’s face. “But shouldn’t we tell someone?”

  “Sonia reached for her sister’s hand. “Let’s tell SoVage. He can decide what to do. After all, it’s his funeral.”

  Back to TOC

  Thicker Than Water

  L.H. Dillman

  At eight o’clock on a January morning, a battered Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb outside a beach-front mini-mansion on Latigo Lane. The house was a two-story contemporary, all angles and glass, as cold and gray as the mist swirling around it. Carolina Roundtree, a sixty-something black woman, exited the car, zipped her jacket and scurried to the front door, head down against the wind. The salt air stung her cheeks as she fumbled with the front door key. “Damn it all,” she muttered. Why the Ellisons had to go and buy a place way out here in Malibu, when they hardly had time to use it, was a mystery to her.

  In the kitchen, she hung up her size sixteen jacket, slipped on a crisp blue smock, and cranked up the thermostat. “Older and colder, that’s me,” she said to the empty room. Then she fixed herself a cappuccino at the Jura machine and popped two frozen waffles into the toaster. The Ellisons did not mind. Mrs. E had made it clear long ago that Carolina could take whatever she liked.

  While the waffles toasted, she wiped down the gleaming granite countertops with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and soapy water. (Mrs. E forbade the use of caustic cleaners in the main residence, and Carolina followed the same rules here. After nineteen years, Mrs. E didn’t need to give instructions.) The beach house never got too dirty in the winter, what with Mr. E being the only regular user and him only here a couple of days a week. Carolina could easily finish the entire job in four hours. It took her four days to clean the Ellisons’ other home, a six-bedroom Mediterranean set into the Los Feliz hills above Los Angeles. Truth was, she probably could finish the main house in three days now that their sloppy son Eric—actually, Mrs. E’s son and Mr. E’s step-son—had gone off to college.

  Carolina knew she was lucky that Mrs. E had found a way to keep her on full time. She also knew Mrs. E was lucky to have a loyal housekeeper who had both pride in her work and the good sense to keep her mouth shut about certain things. They’d been through a lot together. Yes they had.

  Every Friday, Carolina ate her breakfast at a wood-plank table with a view of the ocean, one of the perks of working for two Hollywood writers. This morning, peering out the side window, she could see into the house under construction next door. All two-by-fours and empty spaces. She shuddered. Most of the homes along Latigo Beach were vacant this time of year. Kind of creepy. Mr. E said he liked the solitude, claimed it was good for his creative process.

  After a few bites, she found she didn’t have much of an appetite, her stomach all sour and jittery. She tossed the second waffle into the garbage, and, as she did, an empty bottle of Chardonnay at the bottom of the bin caught her eye. Mr. E didn’t drink white wine; he was a scotch man. Mrs. E never came out here in the winter. Had Eric brought some of his pals down from U.C. Santa Barbara for an overnight? No, there would have more than one empty bottle, and, besides, everyone knew that college boys drink beer. Carolina plucked the bottle from the can and tucked it into her tote. It was recyclable, if anyone asked.

  Time to begin. She grabbed a broom, a mop, a wad of rags and two pails. Her routine began downstairs, a wide-open space with bleached-oak floors and museum-white walls. When she got to the coffee table, she noticed among the butts in the ashtray a stub of a cigarette-type thing without a filter. Damn, if it wasn’t a marijuana roach! Maybe Mr. E needed the weed to finish his screenplay. He had mentioned he was having a rough time with this one. He struggled with all of them, from what Carolina could tell. With each project, there’d come a point when he’d start to stomping around, throwing things, yelling a lot. Alcohol was usually involved. He only hushed up when Mrs. E stepped in to help, and she always did. Mrs. E would stop whatever she was writing and start on his, like a mommy doing her child’s homework. Trained him wrong, Carolina thought. No wonder.

  Once, while she was hanging clothes in the master closet of the Los Feliz house, Carolina had overheard them in the bedroom, Mrs. E telling Mr. E that she had fixed his dialogue and made up whole new scenes and changed the ending, and basically the script was totally new, and Mrs. E wanted credit for all that work. Mr. E had cooed and said she had credit with him. Mrs. E said that wasn’t enough. Mr. E said, in that silky voice of his, that the screenplay was more likely to sell under his name because he was a guy, and he was younger, and that’s what “they” were looking for. Carolina had held her breath, listening for Mrs. E to smack him upside the head. But the two of them took their fuss to another room, and Carolina never saw so much as a swollen lip on that man. Mrs. E just didn’t have it in her. Or maybe she hadn’t been pushed far enough.

  Moving on, Carolina whisked the suede sectional couch and straightened the cushions. In one of the crevices, she found a hoop earring, just one. She slipped it into her pocket, meaning to check Mrs. E’s jewelry box in Los Feliz for the mate, though she had a hunch she wouldn’t find it.

  The windows were next. She filled a bucket with a vinegar-and-water solution and started on the inside of the sliding door, arcing her arm across the glass, swiping the rag over the handle. Every other week, she’d haul the sloshing pail to the deck to do the outside, which took a lot more elbow grease, what with the salt-water spray and the occasional streak of seagull shit. She hated the gulls. They did nothing but make messes for her to scrape and hose down. In fact, one of those damned gulls was sitting on the railing right now! The little pest was staring straight at her. She slid the door open. “Off with you, shoo, go!” And he did. Lucky for him, the recent rains had washed away the cayenne pepper she had sprinkled on the railing; otherwise he’d be screeching in agony like all his brethren had. Stupid gulls couldn’t figure out why their feet burned like hell.

  The clock on the stove said 8:25. She had finished the first level in record time.

  Upstairs, she started in the hallway bathroom. Very zen and very hard to clean. The bamboo-soaking tub required a paste made of baking soda, and bending over to apply it was going to hurt her back. Plus, the smell might make her nauseous again. She thought about skipping the tub just this once. While pondering, she spotted something lacy and black hanging over the sink faucet. A tiny little poontang pouch, just the right size for a bony-assed little wanna-be.

  Poor Mrs. E, she had no idea. Or did she?

  Carolina sighed. The affair before this one had nearly done her lady in. Getting past it had cost Mrs. E a bundle in couples therapy. What a waste. Carolina might not have a college degree, but she had smarts enough to know that a psychologist wasn’t going to cure a man with the itch. Where she came from, if you didn’t want to put up with a straying spouse, you dealt with him in other ways. Twenty years ago, she had served her cheating husband a chicken pot pie laced with rat poison, told him the bleeding stomach was God’s punishment. Well, whether he believed God did it or not, Alfred was faithful after that. Obedient, you might say. Maybe she should have shared the recipe with Mrs. E.

  Carolina stuffed the lacy thong into her smock pocket and tried to focus on cleaning, but her mind stayed on adultery. She stared at the door at the end of the hall. The master bedroom. It was last in order, but it was pulling her now.

  The curtains had been drawn against the light, and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. What a mess. Drawers hung from the dresser, clothes littered the carpet, and the Japanese lacquer box where Mr. E kept his fancy watch lay empty and broken on the floor. A slight metallic scent caught her nose. On the far side of the room was the queen-sized bed, and in it, Mr. E lay face down, naked, on top of the covers.

  She took three steps forward.

  There was a crimson hole the size of a silver dollar in the back of his skull. His shoulders were splattered in red with bits of bone and tissue. The pillow was soaked in blood.

  She reached for her pail and threw up.

  An hour later, Carolina Roundtree was once again sitting at the dining table, this time with a glass of water and company. Homicide Detective Michael Horner from the Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department sat across from her, while the other County personnel combed the house, most of them upstairs with the late Bradley Francis Ellison. Detective Horner was about thirty-five, good-looking, with sun-streaked hair and blinding-white teeth. Carolina had rarely seen Chiclets like that on a white man, and never this close. Figures, there’d be a pretty-boy on the Malibu Five-O, she thought. She stared at his mouth while he asked her the basics—her name, address and phone number; her marital status but nothing about her husband; the names and ages of each member of the Ellison family and how long she’d been with them; and the time she arrived at work that morning.

  “You’re sure you got here at eight?” Detective Horner asked.

  She looked up. “Yes, sir. Like I said, it’s my usual.”

  “Which way did you come in?”

  She nodded to the front door. “I got a key for each house.”

  “So you didn’t come through the garage? Didn’t see Mr. Ellison’s car in there?”

  “No, sir. Didn’t know he was here.” She realized she had slipped into her dumb-folk patois. It came naturally whenever she had to speak to a cop, which, thankfully, was not often.

  “Did you see anyone or hear anything unusual outside?”

  “No, sir.”

  Horner wrote in his notebook, a small, spiral-bound pad like the one her Alfred had kept in his cab to record his fares in the old days, before dashboard computers. She was underwhelmed by the detective’s equipment.

  “And you say Mrs. Ellison is at a conference in Palm Springs?” he asked.

  “That’s right, at the La Palma Resort.” Carolina’s first phone call, in fact, had been to Mrs. E, who had told her to hang up and dial 911. “She was supposed to be there ’til Sunday, but she say she was gone leave the desert right then. Take her ’bout three, four hours to get here.”

  “Was she in any condition to drive?”

  “Well, I guess she was. I mean, she was upset and all, but...” Carolina inhaled shakily, then wiped her eyes and helped herself to a long drink of water. The detective had to understand this was upsetting for her too. He offered to call her husband to come pick her up. She declined.

  “All right,” Horner said gently. “Was that Mrs. Ellison’s cell phone you called, or the hotel where she was staying?”