Star Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 3) Read online

  “All right.” Margaret gave her a heartfelt hug. “Thank you, Lacey. I’ve missed you.” When she pulled away, she stared into Lacey’s eyes. “My son was a fool to let you go.”

  Lacey felt her face flame with embarrassed pleasure. “Thank you, Margaret. You’ve very sweet. Don’t forget, I’ll be back Wednesday afternoon to check on the phone.”

  “I’ll call you if it’s installed sooner.” She smiled with impish delight.

  “Deal,” Lacey said, laughing. “See you then.”

  Driving home, Lacey felt good about the day. Even if her work on the ghost case had pancaked again, at least she was able to make a difference for Margaret. And she had Celeste to thank for that. Without meeting her, seeing the fierce way Paula protected her, she might have dragged her feet too long, and Margaret would have paid the price—literally. Well, no more. If Allison so much as peeped about being cut out, Lacey was perfectly willing to threaten criminal prosecution. And Allison would know she was capable of it.

  ~~~

  SEVENTEEN

  Later that evening, as Lacey fixed herself a bowl of ice cream and planned to veg out with a movie, her phone rang.

  No more, she thought. I’m done for the day. But the caller ID brought her back.

  Sam.

  “Hey,” she said, curling into a corner of the couch. She set her ice cream on the end table and promised herself to take little spoonfuls before it all melted.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said. “I wanted to find out how it went yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” It seemed days ago already. “Oh, out at the prison? Fine, actually. It wasn’t near as difficult as I thought it might be.”

  “That’s good to hear. I was going to call you last night but got balled up in the crisis of Kenzie’s birthday party.”

  “Uh, oh. What’s up with that?” Lacey managed to eat some ice cream as Sam talked.

  He exhaled heavily. “It seems that Kenzie had her heart set on a zoo party, but the L.A. Zoo is booked out every weekend for a month. Her mother’s suggestion of a pizza party instead went over like a lead balloon.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Lacey said. “I know how Kenzie loves animals.”

  “Yeah. Now she actually wants to be a vet when she grows up. Anyway, I don’t know what we’ll do about the party now.”

  “When’s her birthday?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Hmm. Not much time,” Lacey noted.

  “Nope. We may just have to postpone it to next month.” Sam switched gears. “So, any luck running down Lance’s daughter?”

  “Yes and no,” Lacey said. “I found her, but she insisted she knows very little about him. Pretty much stonewalled me. I don’t think we’ll get any more information than we already have, so I’m really thinking we’ll have to go with what we’ve got. What’s your feeling about that?”

  Seconds of silence ticked by as he pondered that. “I guess you’re right. I’d like to have more detail, but if we’re just not going to get any more, we’ve got to try to make it work. I’ll call Deidre and set it up for next Saturday. That work for you?”

  “Sure. I’ve got nothing else this whole week except checking on Derrick’s mother.”

  She gave him a brief summary of her accomplishments of the day, and what looked like an ongoing commitment.

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s tough that both of her kids turn out to be slackers, leaving her with no one. Except you, of course.”

  “Of course.” She sighed. “I really don’t mind. I mean, it wasn’t anything I’d planned on but I can’t turn my back on her. It was seeing Paula with Celeste that cinched it for me.”

  “Celeste is lucky to have Paula looking out for her.”

  “She sure is. I’d be nice to think we’d all have someone like that when we get old, but it’s not always the case.”

  “Far from it,” Sam agreed. He chuckled. “Maybe I’d better be nicer to Daniel and Kenzie so they’ll remember me when I’m old.”

  “Yeah, you’d better quit beating them every day,” she joked.

  “Aw, who told?” He laughed. “No, they’re good kids. Kenzie especially has empathy to spare. I don’t think she’d ever leave her dad alone in a rest home.”

  Lacey had a sudden thought. “Hey, speaking of that… I might have an idea for her birthday. Is Christine still searching for animal venues?”

  “I think she’s about given up and is ready to book the zoo for next month. We’re pretty sure there isn’t anything acceptable that’ll be available by her birth date.”

  “Let me work on it,” Lacey said with a grin. “I just might have an inside track to something. Can you ask Christine to back off for a day or two?” Luckily Lacey knew Sam’s ex-wife wouldn’t feel threatened by her involvement. Or at least she hoped not.

  “Sure,” Sam said. “You gonna tell me what you’re thinking? Or leave me in suspense?”

  “I’d rather leave you in suspense. Anyway, I’m not sure it’ll come together. Let me see what I can do.”

  “All right,” he said with a martyred sigh. “Be that way. So I’ll see you Saturday?”

  “With bells on.”

  “Okay. Keep your fingers crossed that we can get through to Lance.”

  “Consider them crossed,” she said. “See you then.”

  ~~~

  With several days to go until their last—she hoped—session at the Laurel Canyon house, Lacey was free to concentrate on other things. She took some jobs doing simple background checks, nothing that required a heavy commitment of time or energy.

  She actually thought she might hear from an enraged Allison, especially once she found out her debit card no longer worked. But the phone never rang. Just as well, Lacey thought. She didn’t really want to get into a screaming match. She had a hunch that Allison just might want to steer clear of her, since Lacey very obviously knew she was scamming Margaret and Allison also knew Lacey still had plenty of friends in the LAPD.

  On Wednesday, Lacey drove over to Margaret’s. As she walked through the entry, she called a hello to the lady behind the counter. The woman stared rather dumbly at her, only responding after a moment. Lacey chuckled as she walked by, wondering what the woman thought of the drama unfolding here. Wondering what Allison might have said or done here.

  Margaret opened the door at her knock and immediately began an excited monologue.

  “Lacey! Come in. The phone man just left about ten minutes ago. I was just going to call you. I feel so much better now, having a phone. Come in, sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  The change was dramatic. Margaret had been almost comatose when Lacey first saw her on Monday; now she was up and walking around, fully dressed, chattering like a jay. What a difference a little bit of caring made.

  “No, I’m fine,” Lacey chuckled. She set a large bag on the couch and drew something from it. “I have a present for you.”

  “Scrabble!” Margaret beamed like a child at Christmas. She took the large, flat box and read the cover. “The deluxe version.” She glanced at Lacey for confirmation. “This is the one with the turntable built in?”

  “That’s the one,” Lacey said. “Now you can brush up and get ready for the tournament.”

  “Ooh, let’s play!” Margaret took the game to the small table and ripped off the plastic.

  “In that case,” Lacey said, “maybe I will have a cup of tea. If I’m going to get my ass kicked, I might as well relax and enjoy it.” While Margaret set up the game, Lacey rummaged in the few kitchen cabinets and found a cup, a tea bag and a spoon. She nuked water in the cup, then dunked the tea bag and added sugar. “Do you want a cup, also?” she asked.

  “I’ll get one later,” Margaret said. She was gleefully anxious to start playing. By the time Lacey brought her cup to the table, Margaret had the trays set up and all the tiles in the bag, ready for picking.

  “Okay, go easy on me,” Lacey joked.

  Margaret did not. In a brutal twist of
luck, she not only got all the high value letters—Z, Q, J, X—but she got the lower value letters to make good words with them. She trounced Lacey, easily accumulating a total three times Lacey’s score.

  “Sheesh,” Lacey said. “You’re ready for the tournament right now. I think I’ll just go home and lick my wounds.”

  Just then Margaret’s phone rang. The sound startled her, but once it registered what it was, she grabbed it up.

  “Hello? Derrick! Guess what? Lacey brought me a Scrabble game and I won! That’s the first time I’ve played in years.”

  Smiling to herself, Lacey got up to rinse out her tea cup and get ready to go. She listened marginally to Margaret’s side of the conversation, just pleased that the woman sounded so much more animated. She paid a bit more attention when Margaret mentioned Allison.

  “I’m assuming I’ll see her this weekend,” she said. “No, don’t worry about that. The more I think about it, the madder I get. She was stealing from me! Just plain stealing! … I’ll tell her. Now that I have you and Lacey looking out for me… What? Oh, she’s getting ready to go. Just a minute.”

  Margaret held the phone out to Lacey. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “You know what?” Lacey said. “I’m going to go. You two have a nice, long conversation.” She came and kissed Margaret on the cheek, then bent close to the phone. “Bye, Derrick.” And she waved to Margaret as she walked out the door.

  She couldn’t help but feel pretty darned proud of herself on the drive home. She felt like she’d really made a big difference with actually very little effort. Just seeing Margaret so animated was worth all the annoyance of hauling herself out to the prison and fending off Derrick’s attempts to recapture the relationship he had so blithely thrown away.

  Now if she and Sam could bluff Lance into believing they understood his agony, her week would be a stellar one.

  ~~~

  EIGHTEEN

  Friday Lacey devoted herself to going over all her notes on Lance, reviewing the video and all her findings so it was all fresh in her mind. She remembered a weird sense of pain when Deidre described the way the religious artwork was placed on the floor, and Sam’s description of sleep as bliss. It was so obvious Lance had tortuous demons on his back, demons he couldn’t escape any other way but through oblivion. And sex. When Sam said sex was validation and damnation, Lacey could only imagine that the gay sex validated who Lance actually was, but she felt sure the image of a disapproving father dampened any joy he may have received from the physical interaction. She thought again about Richard, being so totally and unashamedly who he was, no apologies, no denials. He reveled in who he was, and lived life to the fullest. She felt sad that Lance could never have known such freedom or acceptance. That he would have spent his entire life as a creature of the night, shrinking away from the lies he spun by day.

  She really hoped she and Sam could free him from the web of misery now.

  She was jarred from her musings by the ring of her phone. Derrick? Margaret? When she looked at the screen, it said only unknown name. Hmm.

  “Hello?”

  “H-hello? Ms. Fitzpatrick?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “This is Doreen Byers.” A sighing inhale. “Lance Tynan’s daughter.”

  Lacey jerked upright in her chair. “Yes, hello. How are you?”

  No wonder she hadn’t been able to track her down. The woman had married again, apparently.

  “I’m—I’m fine. I, uh, I’ve been thinking about what you said. About my father. I, uh, want to help.”

  Lacey reined in her desire to jump at it. This was obviously difficult for Doreen, evident in her halting words. Take it slow, Lacey told herself.

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” she said. “My partner and I have found that your father was quite a tortured soul. All we want is to be able to put him at ease so he can move on.”

  “Tortured, yes,” Doreen said. Lacey could hear the quaver in the thin voice. “That is exactly the word. Would you mind telling me as much as you’ve found out about him?”

  “Certainly. I was just going over my notes. Our impressions were that he was extremely unhappy, and he sought escape in the oblivion of heroin. When I reviewed the autopsy report, I found the signature of it there, although it was not obvious and I believe it was easy for the studio to sugarcoat it. Were you aware that the movie studios of the time went to great pains to not only mold their stars but to protect them, as well?”

  “Yes. My mother told me about that. It was a two-edged sword.”

  “That’s what I understand.” She took a breath. “Did you also know… he was gay?”

  A thoughtful silence. “Yes. My mother told me that, as well. I’d never heard that before, but when my mother died almost ten years ago, she told me all this on her deathbed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lacey said.

  “Thank you. It was a difficult time. Cancer. It had spread everywhere. But apparently she had been thinking about my father and decided that I should know the truth. All I had heard to that point was the glowing fantasy.”

  Lacey waited. She resisted the urge to prod, but let Doreen find her way in her own time.

  “Do you know about his father?”

  “A bit,” Lacey said. “Methodist preacher. I read in his obituary that he often cautioned his congregants on the wages of sin. I’m guessing Lance’s sexual persuasion was not accepted.”

  “Accepted,” Doreen said with a disdainful huff. “You have no idea.”

  Lacey heard a bit of fumbling. She guessed Doreen was getting to uncomfortable truths, and was perhaps settling herself in for the revelation. She waited.

  “My mother never met the man, thank God, but my father told her about him. His father, even being a preacher, drank heavily.”

  “I did see his death certificate,” Lacey said gently. “It said cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Doreen said. “But it fits. Apparently he would drink in the evenings, and was the kind of drunk who got meaner and meaner as the night went on. He would harangue his wife no end, until she would finally have enough and lock herself in the bedroom. Then he would turn on Lance.”

  Lacey heard Doreen pull in a deep breath.

  “He bullied the boy terribly, accusing him of all sorts of sins: disrespect, disobedience, impure thoughts. He would finally build up a head of steam and drag Lance out to the woodshed, where he would force the boy to drop his drawers so he could paddle his bare behind. He said the only way to save him was to beat the devil out of him.” She paused. Lacey thought her voice was beginning to crack. “But the spanking, the bare hand on the bare behind, would turn into… more. Spanking turned into stroking, then groping. It turned into rape. The old man would rape his own son, then lay all the blame for it on Lance. As if Lance were the cause of it all. As if that boy, that eight-year-old boy, were the cause for his loss of control, his… depravities.”

  “Oh, my God,” Lacey barely whispered. She felt a heavy sickness in her stomach.

  “Yes. You see how it was. You said he had a tortured soul. Now you know why.”

  Lacey swallowed painfully. “Part of the activity that occurs in the house involves religion. Any time the owner puts religious art on the wall—a cross or a picture of the Madonna—she comes back later to find it on the floor, face down. Not dropped, but placed. Taken down and laid face down on the floor.”

  “I would guess religion brought no comfort to him,” Doreen said.

  “No, just the opposite, it sounds like.”

  “Yes.” Doreen sighed. “Religion brought him shame and guilt. Pain. Mental and physical.”

  “My God,” Lacey said again. “How awful. He was eight?”

  “When it started,” Doreen said. “It went on until he left home.”

  “Eight years old.” Lacey thought of Kenzie, Sam’s daughter, and she shivered with dread. A child. Just a child.

  “So now you have it,” Doree
n said.

  “I—I’m so very sorry. But I thank you for telling me. I know now we can help your father. Knowing, witnessing, we can help him. We will help him.”

  “I hope so,” Doreen said. “When you called before, I didn’t even want to think about it, to remember what my mother told me, but what you said about him still being there, being tied there… I couldn’t let it go. If it will help him, then… it’s worth the pain of knowing about it.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lacey said. “And I promise you,” she said fiercely, “that we’ll do all we can for him. We’ll do all we can to bring him to peace. To rest.”

  “That is all I can ask.” The old woman’s voice was soft, tired.

  “Mrs. Byers—Doreen—thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. If there’s one thing I’ve found with these investigations, it’s that only the truth can free these souls. Only the truth, no matter how awful, no matter how depraved, can set them free. My partner and I owe you a huge debt of gratitude.”

  There was a quiet laugh. “I never in all my life thought I’d be able to do anything to help my father. You, Ms. Fitzpatrick, have made me very happy.”

  “I’m glad,” Lacey said. “We’re going to the house tomorrow. Would you like me to let you know how it goes?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I think not. Thank you, but I… I feel it’s in good hands now. I’ll leave it to you and your partner. You seem like… good people.”

  “We try to be. And we’ll do our very best tomorrow.”

  “I know you will. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Lacey said. “Take care.”

  ~~~

  NINETEEN

  Saturday morning, when Lacey picked up Sam, she was thoughtfully quiet. She’d called him the night before to tell him of the developments, and as he climbed into the car, his mood matched hers.

  “You know,” she said as she drove, “I’ve told you before how working these cases with you has changed me. How I used to be totally geared toward catching the bad guys and making them pay for their crimes. Even our first few cases were like that, and we brought murderers to justice. But with these two cases in Deidre’s house, the criminals are already dead and buried. They’re not going to face any consequences except maybe with God.”