Grave Endings by Rochelle Krich Read Free Book Online Page A

about the TV, which ran over three grand four years ago when my ex, Ron, had lusted for one. “That and his Porsche.” She pronounced it “porch.” “Like I said, he made good money ’fore he took sick, but I think a lot of it went up his nose.”
    She didn’t know what kind of work Randy had done and didn’t have the time right now—or the inclination, I thought—to look through her files to see where he’d worked. “Ask his daddy,” she said.
    There was a black mug on the coffee table, which was piled with stacks of newspapers and magazines.
Variety,
the
Hollywood Reporter,
a church newsletter. More of the same on the desk. With Gloria breathing down my neck, I opened the drawers. Pens, paper clips, pencils. A rubber-banded stack of bills looked tempting, but Gloria said she didn’t feel right letting me look at those, a man was entitled to his privacy, and I didn’t even ask if I could STAR-69 the phone to find out to whom Randy had made his last phone call.
    In the dining area, next to a kitchen not much bigger than my teeny galley, were a white bistro table and two white chairs with black vinyl seats, one of which was torn. A dinner plate on the beige-tiled kitchen counter bore the congealed remains of what looked like lasagna. Next to the plate were four empty Heineken cans, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and the glass, with a cloudy amber coating on the bottom, that he’d used in emptying it.
    An eclectic mix of unframed movie posters brightened the ivory walls throughout the L.
The Sting. The Truman Show. Terminator 3. The Matrix. Braveheart. Lord
of the Rings. North by Northwest. Legends of the Fall.
In the center of the living room a green plastic bucket sat on the worn beige carpet, directly beneath a large, nasty-looking brown blister on the ceiling.
    â€œRandy was goin’ to take care of the leak, too,” Gloria said. I sensed she was sorry about his death and not just about the repairs he hadn’t completed.
    The bathroom off the living room was tiny. I didn’t find anything of interest in the medicine cabinet, just the essentials. Creeley’s bedroom, around ten by ten with a window not much larger than my eighteen-inch flatscreen computer panel, barely accommodated the king-sized platform bed and black lacquer nightstand. On the wall at the head of the bed, which was a tangle of brown sheets and a black comforter, Randy had hung a cross. From the rectangle of paint around it, lighter and fresher than the paint in the rest of the room, I could see that the cross was a recent addition.
    The odor was stronger here, and I had no difficulty identifying it as vomit. Neither did Gloria.
    She crinkled her nose. “I sprayed yesterday, but I’ll have to get the carpet cleaned to get rid of the smell. That’s where I found him,” she said with somber theatricality, pointing to a darkened area of matted carpet between the bed and the opposite wall.
    I followed her finger with my eyes and pictured Creeley jerking on the floor, dying. Somehow it didn’t give me the satisfaction I’d anticipated. I glanced at the walls, covered with more movie posters and a framed black-and-white headshot of a handsome young man whom Gloria identified as Randy Creeley.
    â€œI tol’ you he was good-lookin’,” she said. “Sexy, too.”
    He was. Artfully tussled longish blond hair with darker roots; large, expressive dark eyes; a chiseled nose; a strong, square chin. He didn’t look like a killer, but neither had Ted Bundy or the man who had tried to choke me seven months ago.
    I studied the photo a while longer, but if there were hidden clues to Randy’s identity, they eluded me.
    I looked through his closet. Randy’s wardrobe had been mostly casual: a dozen pairs of jeans, a lineup of athletic shoes, flip-flops, and two pairs of dress shoes. A couple of Hawaiian print shirts looked