Monthly Archives: February 2020

Plaster of Paris; chapter two, part one

“Hello?”  I have to admit I’m a trifle snippy in my tone.  I do not like coitus interruptus, even if I am still undecided about whether there will be coitus or not.

“Oh my god!  Rayne, is that you?  I can’t believe it!”  It’s Lyle, and he sounds more agitated than I’ve ever heard him sound as he is normally an even-tempered guy.  “You have to come quick.  Paris is in the hospital.  We had a fight, and he left, and now, oh god.  He won’t open his eyes!  Why won’t he open his eyes?”

“Lyle, calm down,” I say, fighting back my own panic.  “Please.  You’re not making sense.”

“I’m at St. Luke’s.  Can you get here?  Now?  I can’t talk over the phone.”  He clicks off before I can get any more information.

It’s a nightmare, it has to be.  I hang up my cell phone, stupidly looking at it in my hand.  Vashti asks me what’s wrong, but I brush her off.  I need her to drive me to St. Luke’s, and I’m praying that she knows the way.  She does.  We are out the door in a flash, and soon, she’s speeding down Caesar Chavez as fast as she dares.  Neither of us speaks on the way over.  Thoughts are rushing through my mind at breakneck speed, and I don’t bother trying to separate them.  I can’t even think about Paris being in the hospital without wanting to either hurt someone badly or bursting into tears, so I push it to the very back of my brain.  I keep my eyes fixed on the window as Vashti pulls up to St. Luke’s.  She drops me off at the front door and goes to park the car.  Information points me to ER, and I race down the hall.

“Lyle!”  I call out as soon as I glimpse him.  He catches me in his arms and crushes me to his chest.

“It’s so horrible, Rayne.  He was deliberately hit.  Who would do that?  Why won’t he open his eyes?”  Lyle is weeping and has been for a while judging by the looks of him.  We sit down, our arms wrapped around each other.

“Can I see him?”  I ask anxiously, wanting to reassure myself that Paris is ok.

“He’s still in surgery,” Lyle moans.  “Why did I let him run out?  Why didn’t I try to stop him?  What was I thinking?”

“Lyle, tell me what happened!”  I shake him slightly to try to calm him down.  I am sympathetic to his pain, but I have to know what is going on.

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Plaster of Paris; chapter one, part two

“Rainbow!”  She greets me warmly, using my given name instead of Rayne which is what I prefer.  She and my late father were hippies and named me Rainbow Freedom Liang and my sister who is three years younger—almost to the day—Liberty Moonbeam Liang.  Or is that Liberty Justice Liang?  I can never remember her middle name, but I think it’s Moonbeam.  She goes by Libby.  She was also a birthday gift, but not a welcomed one.  She is three years and one day younger than I, and I used to think my parents did it on purpose.  “How are you?”  My mother has given up many of her hippie ways since I was almost killed the first time, but she refuses to compromise on my name.  We speak in English most of the time with Taiwanese interspersed in the conversation.  When we don’t want people around to know what we’re talking about, we switch to Taiwanese.

We chat in a laidback sort of way because that’s the kind of person my mom is, though she’s been more engaged with me the last few months.  She calls almost daily, and I see her once a week.  She lives in Berkeley, of course, which makes communication easy.  We talk about Libby—Liberty, as my mother calls her—who just emailed my mother asking her to fly out a month early for the wedding.  We are both amazed as our Libby loathes to ask for help from anybody.  Also, my mother is involved in many committees not to mention still teaching classes.  Plus, she’s a painter.  It would be difficult for her to take a month off from her various duties.  Libby lives in New York City where she’s a big pooh-bah on Wall Street engaged to a stock broker.  She’s also a major bitch.  I thought she’d be nicer after 9/11, but she’s pushed it out of her mind and refuses to talk about it.  Oddly enough, it’s the wedding which is making her act slightly more human.

My mother can’t go a month early, as we both know.  She hates to disappoint my sister, however, as she asks for so little.  How like Libby.  She doesn’t ask for anything for years then when she does, it’s over the top.  My mother goes on to inform me that Libby has requested that I get a move on with my itinerary for the wedding.  I heave a sigh.  Although she’s eased up on the dictums in the last month, she still tends to bark out orders as if she’s the general of an army.  Among them—I lose ten pounds, not get a new tattoo or piercing, shave my legs, and get a manicure and pedicure.  Not to mention the indignity of having to wear a pink fru-fru dress.  Pardon me, mauve.  The weight is gone, but not through any effort of my own.  I will get another damn tattoo if I feel like it, and as for the other stuff—we’ll see.

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Plaster of Paris; chapter one, part one

“Wake up, Rayne.”  I am being shaken, and it’s not a pleasant sensation.

“Go ‘way,” I croak, vainly attempting to elude the hands that are shaking me.

“It’s almost noon,” the voice persists.  “Get up!”  I open one eye to a concerned Paris.  “Saturday.  March,” he adds.  This has been our ritual for the past few months, ever since I’ve been attacked by two murderers in two separate cases.  Every time I awake, I need to be told the time, the day, and the month.  After the first case, Paris would have to awake me from nightmares as I was screaming and thrashing.  Following the second case, I merely oversleep—no dreams.  I’m lethargic, however, no matter how much sleep I get.  Frankly, I prefer the nightmares to this sluggish state.

“I have to go to the gym in half an hour.”  Paris is a personal trainer as well as a part-time model.  He doesn’t do much of the latter as he’s more focused on taking care of me, his time at the gym, and his relationship with Lyle, his boyfriend.  “You should come work out.”  I used to work out daily before the first attack.  Ever since, I haven’t worked out hardly at all.  Paris is trying to ease me back into it, claiming it’ll help my soul as well as my body.  Even the name, ‘N Sound Shape on Valencia is meant to be soothing, though I find it more irritating than anything else.

“I’ll try,” I say lamely.  We both know I won’t go, but we keep up the pretense.

I look at Paris with real fondness.  He has been my best friend since our sophomore year in high school in Oakland when he chanced upon me cowering away from a group of black girls who were intent on beating me up.  One of them claimed I stole her man, which was a laugh.  I was virgin with men until college when Paris helped rid me of that burden.  We’ve slept together a few times since then, but we’ve both realized that we make much better friends than lovers.  He’s seen me through hard times such as my father dying in a horrible car crash our sophomore year in college as well as the recent spate of murders.  In turn, I’ve helped him deal with his mother who is highly religious and disapproves of his ‘lifestyle’ as she phrases it, the death of his lover from AIDS, his recent discovery that he was adopted, and the more recent death of his baby sister.

“I’ll have brunch made by the time you get up.”  Paris gives me a look, then disappears, not quite closing the door behind him.  I sigh and sit up—no use trying to go back to sleep.  My stuffed pig, Wilfred, whom I’ve had since I was ten—a birthday present from my parents—who has the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen is lying next to me.  I use him in times of distress, though he usually sits on my bookshelf.  I kiss him on his snout and set him back on the bookshelf.  I get out of bed and stretch.  I am wearing sweats, though I prefer to sleep in the nude.  Ever since I’ve been embroiled in two murder cases, I’ve slept in sweats.  I’m hoping to go back to nude one day.

After my daily ablutions, I stare hard in the mirror.  For some reason, the aftermath of the second murder case hasn’t been as traumatic as the first, but I still don’t look as good as I normally do.  My ear-length black hair has regained its luster, but my eyes are guarded.  My lips rarely curve into a smile these days, not without extreme provocation.  I have kept the twenty pounds off that I lost during the trauma of dealing with the first murder case, and lost five more after the latest one.  The first ten pounds were fine to lose—the last fifteen make me look anorexic.  I still am having trouble eating, as most of what I ingest seems to want to go out the same way it goes in.  I was making headway before the climax of the last murder case, but I’m back to square one.  I have various scars on my body as reminders that it’s not a good idea to get involved with killers.  Only my tattoos—a yin-yang on my right breast and an ankh on my ass—as well as my navel piercing make me happy.  They have remained intact.  I idly consider adding another tattoo—perhaps a phoenix rising from the ashes.

After I solved the first case—mainly by the killer trying to kill me—I became somewhat of a local celebrity.  During the investigation, I had dreamt of seeing my face on television, of seeing my name in the papers.  The publicity I garnered after the first case made me rethink my priorities in a hurry.  After the second one, I began to positively loathe the media.  They hounded me at home, at my job, when I went to the store, and any other time they could find me.  Half the stories were speculations about my possible involvement in the killings with the police covering up my role.  For what purpose, I don’t know, but the media doesn’t always make sense.  The other half of the stories hailed me as the ‘Charlie Chan for the new millennium’, gushing about my talent for detection.  Puff pieces.

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Rainbow Connection; epilogue

“It’s good to be home!”  It’s the Friday after the attack, and I’m back home.  The doctors wanted to keep me a few more days, but I insisted.  By some miracle, nothing is broken but my pride.  My face is a cornucopia of bruises and welts; I can’t see out of my left eye because it’s so swollen; my stomach has a fist-sized bruise; I ache all over.  Other than that, I’m fit as a fiddle.

“You sit down,” my mom says, bustling to the kitchen.  She hasn’t left my side since the attack, and neither has Paris or Lyle.  When we are all comfortably ensconced in the living room with tea and brownies, the three of them look at me expectantly.  The inspector had visited me in the hospital today and filled me in on the details she gleaned from Carol.  Seems Carol is proud of her crimes and couldn’t wait to spill the beans.

“I figured it out too late, of course,” I begin, biting into a dense brownie.  I close my eyes to savor the nutty goodness.  My teeth hurt, but it’s a price I’ll willingly pay for something this good.  “When she had a gun pr—” I stop myself in time.  I haven’t given too many details about the actually attack because there is no reason for them to have nightmares, too.  “When we were locked in her office together.”  I give them a brief rundown of what I had deduced.

“What about Ashley?”  My mother asks soberly.  “Why kill her?”

“There’s a few reasons,” I say slowly, feeling a twinge of guilt.  How easy it had been to forget about Ashley and her death, especially after Carol tried to turn the attention to Rosie’s death.  “One, Ashley found out about Carol’s affair with her father.”

“What?”  The three of them chorus, clearly surprised.

“Carol had a brief fling with Mr. Stevenson.  Ashley found out.  Mr. Stevenson was having affairs with many women, and Rosie found out about the one he got pregnant.  Two different women.”  My thoughts are scattered, but I try to order them.

“How did they meet?”  Lyle ask curiously.

“At a bar,” I shrug.  “That in and of itself isn’t a big deal.  Embarrassing, but certainly not illegal.  However, Carol had her little fling with Mr. Stevenson while Mrs. Stevenson was dying.  That’s what pissed Ashley off.  She liked Carol.  She trusted Carol.  Carol betrayed her.”

“That’s why Carol killed that girl?”  Mom asks incredulously.  “Because of a little adultery?”

“No, not nearly,” I sigh.  “Carol has a diploma from Boston College on her wall.  Rosie did a little research and found out Carol never graduated from Boston College.  She never graduated from any of the programs.  She faked the papers.”

“That’s awfully risky,” Paris objects.  “Anyone could have unearthed the deception.”

“It’s quite low-risk,” I say.  “Who looks closely at diplomas, especially when they’re high up on the wall?  Anyway, Ashley was getting suspicious about Carol.  For what reason, I don’t know, but Ashley did a little internet research and found out the same thing Rosie knew—that Carol isn’t an actual therapist.  Ashley, remember, is still mad about the adultery and in no need of money.”

“I can’t believe you went into Carol’s office with her,” Paris interrupts, his brow wrinkling.  “What were you thinking?”

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Rainbow Connection; chapter fourteen

“Change of plans,” Paris says cheerfully.  “We’re walking you to group, having a cup of coffee or a beer at some Mission dive, then we’ll pick you up at nine sharp.”  I want to argue, but it’s not worth the effort.  I simply nod, and we’re off.

“How was the funeral?”  I ask, needing to get my mind off the murders.

“It was hard,” Paris says, his shoulders drooping.  “The casket was so tiny!  It looked like a shoe box.  My mom started wailing the moment she laid eyes on it and wouldn’t let up.”  His face twists in remembrance.  Lyle squeezes his hand on one side while I do the same on the other side.  “Douglas kept shushing her.  He was fucking embarrassed!  Told her she was making a scene.”  Paris sneers as he utters the last word.  “I finally had to tell him to leave her alone.”  Lyle puts his hand on Paris’s back and rubs.  We walk in silence, reaching A Ray of Hope in fifteen minutes.  Paris and I smoke just to have something to do.  When it’s time, I give each of them a brief hug.

“Call when the meeting’s done!”  Paris orders.  Before I can respond, he and Lyle are gone.  I shake my head in mock exasperation.  I take a minute to look for the police, but I can’t spot them—they are that good.  I go inside where the atmosphere is glum.  The women are huddled in their chairs, not looking at each other.  Sharise isn’t there, and I have a feeling that the group is going to disintegrate very soon regardless of what happens tonight.  Jennifer is rocking back and forth and mouthing something, most likely a rosary.

“Good evening,” Carol says, her professional smile in place.  “I know this is a difficult time for all of us, so I’d like to open the floor up to anyone who wants to speak.”

“Dis has gotta stop,” Maria bursts out, her eyes flashing.  “First, Ashley.  Den, Rosie, now her kid.  Who’s gonna be next?”  She throws back her head, but her voice is trembling.  She can’t cover the fear in her eyes.

“Why were you on television again?”  I ask, bringing up the question foremost in my mind.  It has nothing to do with the murders, but I have to ask.

“I know it may seem cold-blooded,” Carol says carefully, looking at each of us in the eyes.  Only Astarte and I return her look.  “I want to help as many people as possible with their pain!  This is a good opportunity to spread the word.  I hate the fact that it’s death that gives me the chance to promote the clinic and my book, but I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation.”

“I won’t be coming any more,” Jennifer says, still rocking.  “I can’t be a part of this.  That girl, she was just a child.”

“Listen, please.”  Carol raises her voice slightly, the smile no longer on her face.  “This is the time when a group such as this is needed, when in the middle of a crisis.  If you quit now, you may regress.  Besides, Mariah’s death proves that the murders have nothing to do with the group.  You’re all safe.”

“I don’t know about that,” I say demurely.  “Maybe Mariah knew something about her mother’s death, and that’s why she was killed.  Maybe she read her mother’s notebooks.”  The silence is sudden and chilling; I have everyone’s undivided attention.  For once, Carol isn’t scribbling in her own damn notebook.

“What notebooks?”  Carol asks, her voice neutral.

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Rainbow Connection; chapter thirteen, part three

Rosie stole things from her employers, just as I surmised.  Usually silver or jewelry, but once in a while, she’d have a sheaf of papers and wouldn’t tell Derek what they were.  When I open my mouth to interrupt, Derek hurries on over my questions.  The last time he saw her, he tried to find out obliquely if she was still stealing things.  She just laughed at him and said that was penny-ante compared to what she had going on now.  When Derek asked what she meant, she explained her newest venture to him.  Venture.  He makes it sound like she was an entrepreneur or a small-business owner, not the blackmailer she really was.  She regaled him with stories of her clientele without revealing their identities.  She said one had killed her husband; one had embezzled some money; one didn’t have the credentials she said she did; one was running an apartment scam.  Things like that.

I couldn’t believe he hadn’t gone to the police, and I tell him so in no uncertain terms.  I mean, we’re talking about blackmail.  Derek doesn’t see it that way.  In his eyes, all her clients deserved it because they are all liars and cheats and thieves, not to mention a killer.  I look at him in disgust.  This is the same man who works with juvenile delinquents, trying to rehab them.  Does his attitude mean that he thinks they deserve whatever happens to them?  I don’t ask because he’s still talking.  He says the fact that Rosie’s clients live in Marin is a blackmailable offense.  By now, he’s slurring his words which means I should get as much information out of him as quickly as possible and save my indignation for later.  Besides, I’m hoping at some point he’ll realize if he had stopped her from continuing her ‘venture’, she’d still be alive.

“What else?”  I massage my forehead, feeling the stirrings of a headache.

“Um, well,” Derek stalls again, refusing to meet my eyes.  Suddenly, I get it and heave a big sigh.

“Derek, I don’t care if you slept with her,” I say earnestly, though Greta might care.  A lot.  “As long as it has nothing to do with her death.”

“No!  It’s just, um, well, we had both drank a bit, and um, I invited her back to my place, just to reminisce some more.  One thing led to another.”  I look at him in exasperation.  That is the lamest excuse in my book.  One thing doesn’t lead to another, not without help.  I don’t debate his statement, however, as it isn’t the point.

“So, when exactly did this happen?”

“The day before she was killed,” Derek says glumly.  “I can’t believe she’s dead!  We spent all afternoon in my bed talking and having sex.  She told me one of her clients would be upping her payment.  She was in such a good mood.  When she left, she told me she’d call me after the deal went through.  To celebrate.  I waited all the next night for that call.”  A call that never came.  I have a ton of questions, most of them irrelevant to the case.  I also remember the day in question at work—Derek had called in sick after taking off to see the counselor at the other agency.

“Has the police talked to you yet?”

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Rainbow Connection; chapter thirteen, part two

“The last day is especially interesting, don’t you think?”  Leticia asks, her eyes watering.

“Yes.”  I hesitate, then ask the question.  “Do you think they’re related?”

“Yes,” Leticia says firmly.  “That means the killer is in your group.”  Her eyes widen as she looks at me.  From the speculative gleam in her eyes, I can tell what she’s thinking.

“I didn’t kill your sister, Leticia,” I say wearily.  It’s never pleasant to be thought of as a murder suspect, but I’m used to it.

“I didn’t think you did,” Leticia says immediately, the flash of fear gone.  I pick up the accounts notebook and thumb through it again.  A.T., C.R., C.T., L.P., M.S.  I stop reading in disgust.  It’s no use.  If she had added some identifying markers to each name, such as what she’s blackmailing them for, then perhaps I could use the information.  Something niggles at me.  I open the diary and read the last entry again.

“Leticia, look at this!”  I show the entry to Leticia.

“I’ve read it already,” she says impatiently, not glancing at the page.  I don’t have time for attitude, so I read it out loud.

“This one, is very special.  I play right, I no have to work rest of my life.  Ten thousand dollars for first increased payment.  Is fair for a life.”  I pause dramatically, but Leticia’s eyes don’t flicker.  “Don’t you get it?  First increased payment.  That means she was already blackmailing the killer!”  I grab the accounts notebook and open it again.  “One of these fifteen initials is the killer!”  Ok, not the greatest grammar, but I got the point across.

“Madre de Dios!”  Leticia gasps, scanning the initials.  “Do you recognize any?”

“It’s hard,” I say slowly, my mind churning.  “I only know the first name of the women in the group.”

“I could probably find the last names at the clinic,” Leticia says eagerly.

“A.T., M.S., T.R,” I recite.  “Those are the possibilities.  I am relieved not to see a R.L., as irrational as that is.

“I’ll ask Carol tomorrow,” Leticia says briskly.

“Can you find out some other way?”  I ask slowly.  There is no C.S., so she’s not a suspect.  Still, I would feel better if Leticia didn’t talk about this with Carol.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Leticia says, energized to have something to do.

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Rainbow Connection; chapter thirteen, part one

There is very little to be gleaned from my conversation with Derek other than Rosie’s strong sense of morality which only makes sense in the case of her murder if her belief system was her excuse for carrying out blackmail.  Asking for money from people she didn’t approve of to care for her child might have seemed like some sort of poetic justice to her.  Derek and I part, and I meander home.  My head is pounding from too much information and not enough evidence.  How I wish I had Paris here to bounce ideas off him—him and Lyle.  Speaking of Paris, there is a message from him on my cell phone which I have forgotten to turn on.  He is put out because he had to find out about Mariah’s death from the news.  I call him when I reach home.

“What the hell is going on over there?”  Paris’s voice has regained some of the vigor it had earlier lost.  “Who’s going to be next?  It better not be you!  Tell me everything.”  I tell him about Mariah’s death and what little information I have gathered about it.  I still don’t tell him about the second attempt on my life or the threatening note in my pocket because there’s nothing he can do about it from Memphis, and the last thing he needs is to be worried about me.

“Enough of that.  What about you?  How are you?”  I want to think about something other than the murders for a little bit even though I’d love to get Paris’s take on it.  It’s clear, however, that his mind is focused on the situation with his family, and I want to be a good friend and support him.

He is at his wit’s end.  His mother is wigging out.  Last night, she started screaming and couldn’t stop.  She kept saying it was her punishment for lying to Paris about being adopted.  She started pulling out her hair, and her husband had to pin her arms behind her back to keep her from making herself bald.  I ask about Lyle, hoping to take Paris’s mind off a difficult subject, but apparently, that is a touchy area as well.  Lyle is trying to be supportive, but understandably, is under tremendous strain as well.  He is spending the day alone because he needs some space.  While Paris can understand the need, it still makes him panic.  Any whiff of abandonment throws him into a tizzy, and they had a fight about it before Lyle took off.  Paris isn’t sure he can come back Wednesday after all with his mom in such bad shape and Mr. Jenson not being any use at all.  He just sits around, scowling, exhorting his wife to pull herself together.  I vaguely remember Mr. Jenson from when the Jensons lived in Oakland, but that was years ago.  He was very phlegmatic; I remember that much.  Seems he’s crossed the line into asshole-ness.

“I don’t mean to be flippant, Paris, but what about your mother’s deep relationship with God?  Isn’t that helping her at all?”  I am not a Christian, but I admire the faith that devout Christians have.  I wish I were that certain of a benevolent force having a positive interest in me.

“That’s the worst part, Rayne!  She’s renounced God.  She spent a half an hour calling Him every filthy name in the book.  I never thought I’d see the day when I wished she would spout Bible verses at me.”  Paris stops.  I hear a distinct sniffle.  “I don’t understand how someone’s faith can collapse like that.  It’s as if she thought because she believed in God, she was protected from bad things.”  I wonder if that’s why Rosie quit church as well.  Her son’s death certainly seems like a catalyst for the catastrophic events to follow.  I shake my head to remind myself that Ashley had been killed first.  I have a gut feeling, however, that Rosie’s blackmailing hobby plays a large part in this whole mess.  What if she found out something about Mr. Stevenson and tried to extort money out of Ashley?  A glimmer of something niggles at my brain, but I can’t force it to the forefront.  I let it simmer, hoping it’ll develop on its own.

“People deal with their grief in different ways, Paris,” I say soothingly, but honesty compels me to add, “Though I’m sure it’s not good to pull out your own hair.  Have you talked to her about seeing a therapist?”

“We are not people who resort to therapist,” Paris says in a sing-song voice, obviously imitating his mother.  Or perhaps his stepfather.  “We take care of our own problems, thank you very much.”  I restrain a sigh.  That is such a prevalent feeling, even in this day and age, and it’s so destructive.  I’m not advocating therapy for everyone or for every situation, and I balked at entering it myself, but at least I intellectually realize that there are some problems I can’t solve on my own and it’s not a weakness to seek out help.  “I almost punched my stepfather when he said he’d take care of my mother himself.  He’s doing a shitty job of it so far.”

“Maybe you should check out therapists yourself,” I suggest.  I don’t want to widen the rift between Paris and his stepfather, but it’s clear that his mother is not coping well at all.

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