Dead Ex by Harley Jane Kozak

Author:Harley Jane Kozak [Kozak, Harley Jane]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2007-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

Thirty-one

We headed to Zuma Beach, where Elliot’s BMW was parked. Van Beek, over the phone, had suggested it as a place to meet while he tried to get more information from the police. Then Simon called.

“I’m waiting to hear from the sheriff ’s department in Malibu,” he said.

“They found him,” I said.

“Alive?”

“No.”

Simon let out a long breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” I said. “Who was it that reported him missing, besides us?”

“Another surfer, a friend of his, noticed his car parked on the beach all night. His sister called it in too. The sheriff sent out a lifeguard boat midmorning to start looking. How’s Joey doing?”

I turned to look at Joey, behind the steering wheel of my Integra. She’d insisted on driving, and whatever grief was doing to her, it wasn’t affecting her skill. She zoomed west on Sunset Boulevard, swerving in and out of traffic, passing cars whenever possible. “Stoic,” I said.

“And you, my love,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“I miss you.”

“Me too,” I said, and hung up.

Joey said, “It’s all right to tell him you love him in front of me.”

“He knows.”

“Tell him anyway.”

“It’s not like rubbing salt in your wounds?”

“I can’t feel my wounds,” she said. “I just have to get to the beach. I have to see Elliot. How long was he in the water, do you suppose?”

“Apparently some surfer last saw him around midnight, and it sounds like they found him an hour or so ago, so maybe as long as twelve hours. Why?”

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “When I worked in the morgue, we fished someone out of the lake who’d been dead for a day. She didn’t look good. Of course, I don’t know what she looked like alive. Most of the drownings that summer, we got to them a lot faster. And there’s no ocean in Nebraska. I don’t know if seawater’s different, what it does to people. I want to prepare myself.”

I didn’t point out that she need not see the body. It made sense to me that she’d want to. It would give substance to an event that seemed impossible to absorb.

I kept thinking, First David, and now Elliot. Maybe Joey was thinking it too, so I said it aloud: “First David, and now Elliot.”

She nodded. “You should get a grace period between deaths. It doesn’t seem fair. They’re not connected, one’s got nothing to do with the other, but it feels like an epidemic. Of two. I’m trying not to take it personally.”

“Shall I call Fredreeq?” I asked.

“Yes. But I can’t talk to her yet.”

I nodded, dialing, and left a message. Fredreeq would want to mother Joey, and I saw how that could short-circuit the compartmentalization process that was allowing Joey to function. She hadn’t let me touch her. No hugging. Unsure of what else to do, I let her set the tone and steer the conversation, along with the car.

Van Beek and Rupert were in the parking lot, staring at the BMW convertible. The top was down, which Rupert explained was for the surfboard.

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