An Unacceptable Death - Barbara Seranella Read online

  AN UNACCEPTABLE DEATH

  Barbara Seranella

  2006

  For Dr Tse-Ling Fong

  PART ONE

  Before and After

  CHAPTER ONE

  MUNUNCH LIKED RICO'S HAIR LONGER. SHE ALSO DUG THE Fu Manchu mustache he had grown, but she was glad he'd given up on the scraggly beard. Mexican men should stick to mustaches. It was Saturday. Asia, Munch's nine-year-old daughter, was at her dance class. Rico had surprised her with his visit, but that's the way they had to play it—snatching moments together when they could.

  They strolled down the sidewalk, Rico's arm resting comfortably on her shoulders. He was a foot taller than her own five feet. They fit together just right.

  If she had lived in a nicer neighborhood, she would have warned her neighbors that this vatto-looking guy was really a cop and in disguise. But between the bikers across the street, the houseful of probably illegal aliens next to them, the crazy Okie next door with the inbred daughter, and the alcoholic divorcée on the other side, it was probably safer for all concerned to say nothing.

  Her WWII-vintage bungalow home was in Santa Monica, on a street lined with untrimmed palm trees and a few Spanish-style quasi-adobe houses that had seen better days. This part of Santa Monica was closer to the gang-hangers of Venice than the pricey shops on Montana Avenue or the large stately homes on San Vincente Boulevard. Her little slice of real estate was far enough inland to be affordable on her auto mechanic's salary and whatever income could be eked from her limo business. If someone had told her ten years earlier that she would one day be a homeowner, she would have wondered what they were on.

  Jasper walked ahead of Rico and Munch with his leash draped across his shoulders. The cocker spaniel looked back frequently to make sure the humans were keeping up.

  "I'm thinking of getting some tats," Rico said.

  He'd already pierced his ear and had taken to wearing a small gold sliver of moon stud. She considered his brown skin and thought red would look good.

  "How about PROPERTY OF MUNCH on your ass?"

  "It's already on my heart."

  She laughed. "Good answer."

  "I'm getting a lot of practice being quick on my feet."

  She shuddered against the chill his words brought. It was hard to think of him out there in the war zone. That world was dangerous enough without being a spy for the other side. She pulled away from him and folded her arms across her chest. "How much longer?" she asked, trying to sound neither impatient nor worried or upset.

  "I can't say."

  She nodded, knowing she would have to be content with that answer and feeling anything but.

  He put his arm back around her shoulders and pulled her close. "How long we got before the kid comes home?"

  "That I can answer." She made a hand signal to Jasper indicating it was time to turn around and head home. "The better part of an hour."

  "I can give you that," he said, picking up Jasper's leash.

  "Uh-oh." Munch spotted a pit bull coming their way. The dog was secured by a short chain to its short master; both were bandy-legged and full of attitude. "Enemy approaching?

  Jasper was still in happy-go-lucky mode, tail up, mouth open in a dog smile, black eyes liquid and trusting.

  The pit bull had scars across his face and back. As he approached, his muscles rippled beneath his short hair. Munch knew the breed had a bite like a piranha and once they'd sunk their teeth in their prey, it was darn near impossible to make them let go. She'd seen the biker across the street use a four-inch nail punch like a hood prop once when his mastiff got hold of another neighbor's cat.

  Jasper finally spotted the approaching danger. He puffed out his chest, straightened his forelegs, and pawed the sidewalk with alternating back legs like a bull getting ready to charge. The hair along his spine sprouted into a Mohawk and he barked his deep boy bark.

  Rico pulled the leash in tight and waited for the other dog to approach. The pit bull and his master drew alongside them and then stopped, as both dogs snarled and snapped at each other. The two men shortened their leashes and the dogs responded by rising up until both were on their hind legs, lips curled back to reveal sharp white teeth.

  Munch wondered why one of the men didn't just keep walking on his way, ending the encounter that much sooner. It would be logical. As if logic dictated the behavior of males in the wild. She also knew Rico wouldn't back down first.

  The owner of the pit bull took a second take on Rico. "Essé," he said, giving his dog a curt command to sit. "You're Xavier's homie, right?"

  Rico tilted his head in a short upward nod and Munch saw him instantly transform into street persona. She knew not to call him by name in case this other guy knew him by something other than Rico. Rico handed Munch the leash. "Wait here," he said. "We've got a little business to discuss."

  Munch assumed the good-ol'-lady pose, taking a few steps back and waiting patiently for her man's pleasure. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. She'd been pretending in the old days, too, before she had become a respectable citizen.

  Rico and the man communicated in a street mix of English and Spanish. Barrio Spanish. Rico pulled a ballpoint pen refill from his coat pocket and found a scrap of paper on the ground. When he finished writing, he returned the ink cartridge and note to his pocket. After shaking hands like they were arm wrestling, the two he-men parted company. The vatto gave Munch an up-and-down as if he were picturing her pinned beneath him with her clothes torn off. She returned the look boldly as if to say, "Not going to happen."

  The guy leered knowingly. Munch wanted to kick him in the balls. She saw the top of the Virgin Mary's head on his upper back as he walked away. Guys in prison favored the tattoo, hoping to put a would-be rapist out of the mood. Probably a tactic that only worked with Catholics.

  "Who's the charmer?" Munch asked when the guy was out of earshot.

  "He invited us to a barbecue," Rico said.

  "Oh, great. I'll make some potato salad."

  "You'd be better off developing a case of amnesia." He grabbed her arm when they got close to her house and kept them walking past her yard without glancing at it. "Just to be safe," he said. Munch was all for erring on the side of caution even as part of her was excited by the action. "Nice touch with the pen, by the way," she said. Street toughs didn't carry Parker ballpoints in their shirt pockets like a citizen might.

  He chuckled. "It's the little things that keep you alive."

  CHAPTER TWO

  ON SUNDAY, MUNCH WOKE EARLY. IT WASN'T YET EIGHT so she let Asia sleep, pulled on her bathrobe, and went outside to retrieve the LA Times from her driveway.

  Fog shrouded the neighborhood. A fine jeweled mist clung to her roses and beaded the limo's car cover. The fog wouldn't burn off until ten. On weekdays, that was long after she had gone to work in sunnier Brentwood.

  She scanned the headlines as she waited for the coffee water to boil. President Reagan was still talking to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, hopefully not about his polyps. The country had learned last summer, in vivid detail, all about colons, following the president's colonoscopy and subsequent surgery to remove the benign cysts growing within him.

  The investigation continued to find out why the space shuttle Challenger exploded last month. What a bummer that had been! Munch heard about the disaster at work, and didn't learn until that evening that many elementary-school kids had been watching the broadcast live. Appalled teachers had their students put their heads on their desks, but by then the damage was done. Asia, who wanted to be an astronaut (or a ballerina or a veterinarian) had been really shaken by the tragedy.

  In science
news, Halley's Comet would be visible this year. The next time it was due around was in seventy-five years. The Griffith Park Observatory was having a special program for kids who would be alive to see it in the year 2061. Thinking of Asia, Munch tore out the article and pinned it to the corkboard above the counter.

  She grinned as she went about her morning routine. Rico had promised to come over midday.

  After finishing her breakfast and reading the paper, Munch went out back into the narrow slice of her yard and examined her crop of vegetables. She had built the raised plant bed herself. It had taken twenty bags of assorted mulch, potting soil and a lot of other junk the guy at the nursery said was essential to fill the railroad-tie-bordered rectangle. She then studied the path of the sun, the height the mature plants reached, and planted accordingly. She didn't spend much time on the correct season for planting. Los Angeles' weather was so mild, she didn't think it would matter. The only mistake she made was in not understanding the germination process of corn. She was a city girl, after all.

  Since corn was the tallest vegetable, she had planted a single row of stalks along the wooden fence that separated her from the Okies. The corn grew straight and over six feet high, but the ears didn't get anywhere as large as the ones she saw at the market. An article she'd read said to harvest the corn when the silk turned brown. She chose that Sunday, so Asia and Rico could share the moment. The same article had also said that the corn was at maximum sweetness when pulled from the stalk and diminished from there as the sugar turned to starch. She figured the corn had cost her ten dollars an ear, not counting labor. It had better be good.

  Rico arrived at eleven and Munch assigned him to the barbecue while Asia and Jasper pestered each other with a tennis ball. They were a regular little family now. The man, the woman, the child, the dog. All together for a nice Sunday family cookout.

  "How are the coals?" Munch asked Rico.

  "What?" called the voice across the fence. It was the Alpha Okie, or at least the lone male of the strange tribe next door.

  Munch looked at Rico and rolled her eyes. "Almost there," Rico called back.

  "You say something, Daddy?" a female voice across the fence shrieked, sounding pissed off.

  "Where's my ladder?" the man responded. Munch knew his name was Earl, but the females next door all called him Daddy. He called two of the women Mother. The youngest female was in her twenties and had teeth growing in every direction. Munch noticed this because on their infrequent encounters the girl never shut her mouth, letting it hang open as she stared. Munch avoided contact with the disturbing clan as much as possible.

  Rico mimicked the dueling banjo music from Deliverance.

  Munch smiled as she picked three of the more promising ears of corn and shucked them. Once the husk and silk were disposed of, she was left with little more than bare cobs. The individual kernels had failed to plump with their promised sweetness.

  "Let's see," Rico said.

  Munch held up an ear, it wilted pathetically to one side.

  Asia pointed one small brown finger at the motley vegetable. "I'm not eating that." There was a touch of hysteria to her voice.

  Just when things couldn't get worse, Munch heard the doorbell ring. She went in the back door, walked through the house, Jasper barking at her heels, and opened the front door.

  A familiar figure stood on her stoop. Today she was a shaggy brunette with violet eyes, a shade not found in nature. Rhinestones glittered from her fingernails and enough cleavage showed through her skintight leotard body shirt to raise the dead. A black Camaro Z-28 was parked at the curb.

  Ellen.

  Or, as she was often referred to by people whose lives she'd touched: Fucking Ellen.

  "I thought I would surprise you." Ellen stretched out every word in that Deep South drawl she'd perfected over the years of living in California.

  "You did," Munch said. "You always do."

  "We have got to talk, and I mean right now."

  Munch could only imagine what Ellen had managed to get herself mixed up in this time.

  Ellen swept down to give Jasper some loving. "Where is that other little rug rat of yours?"

  "We're out back, fixing to eat." Munch heard her shift of cadence. A couple of hours with Ellen and she'd have the accent too. "Come on." Few people understood why Munch kept opening her door to Ellen. The two women had known each other since puberty. Munch wouldn't have laid odds that they'd both make thirty, but here they were. Ellen was even sober, too. Well, most of the time. Munch didn't press the topic as long as Ellen didn't come around loaded. Of course, she didn't come around all that often either. Probably just as well. She was one of those people best taken in small doses.

  Ellen didn't set out to cause trouble everywhere she went. Really she didn't. Ellen had been through the same wars Munch had fought and survived. Ellen did more than survive, she still maintained a sense of optimism. She'd taken her knocks, they all had. It went with the make-it-up-as-you-go and try-not-to-die street life they'd been born to. Ellen had helped make it fun.

  The two women had learned early on to pop right back up, usually with a laugh and a plan, and say, "Next." Even at Ellen's dad's memorial service, when a pigeon shit all over her black dress, she'd just glanced over and said, "Could have been worse." Against all odds, her attitude carried her. Attitude was nine-tenths of the battle, no matter what the skirmish.

  Munch had pursued the life of drugs so hard that she had been left, at twenty-two, with no viable options other than to get completely clean and sober. It was that or prison or some other institution. But more likely her fate would have been an unmarked grave, and few left to mourn her. Ellen had always maintained a modicum of control, never going completely over the edge, and still had some mischief left in her.

  Ellen was closer than blood. Ellen was family by choice and history. Munch would never shut the door on her.

  Munch led her out back. Rico was turned away from them, tending the burgers and hot dogs. His hair was pulled back in a small ponytail. Ellen appraised his backside and gave Munch the thumbs-up.

  "Put another shrimp on the barbie, mate," she said in good approximation of an Australian accent.

  Rico turned. It took him a few seconds to reach Ellen's face. They recognized each other simultaneously. Their smiles transformed into "Oh, it's you" expressions.

  "Ellen Summers," Rico said, sounding every bit the cop.

  "Auntie Ellen!" Asia yelled and came running into her arms.

  "How is my precious angel?" Ellen asked, smoothing Asia's brown curls and tweaking her nose.

  "I've been very good lately," Asia said with an eye on Ellen's big purse.

  Ellen opened her bag and sifted through the twelve pounds of beauty accessories and assorted paraphernalia she felt was absolutely essential to carry with her everywhere. While she searched, she cast another long look at Rico's clothes, hair, and three-day growth of beard. "You working undercover or something?"

  "What's your excuse?" Rico shot back.

  "Like I need one."

  Before Rico could respond, Ellen produced a gift wrapped in balloon-decorated paper and tied with a pink bow. She handed the package to Asia, who tore into it immediately. It was a book with a real silver-plated heart-shaped locket sealed in cellophane in the cover.

  "Oh, thank you," Asia said. "It's beautiful."

  "You will have to read me the story later," Ellen said. "I think it is time to eat."

  "Stick with the meat," Asia said, speaking out the side of her mouth.

  Before Ellen had a chance to crack wise, Munch announced, "We've put in an offer on another house."

  "A bigger one," Asia added, "for all of us."

  "Well, aren't we just the bourgeoises?" Ellen said.

  "What does that mean?" Asia asked, always annoyed when she felt adults were excluding her from the conversation.

  "Nothing bad," Munch said. "Just that we're moving up in the world. Owning more stuff and making more money."
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  "Oh." Asia shredded the plastic holding the locket. "That's good."

  She admired her new piece of jewelry. "When I was little I used to think that when I grew up I would buy lots of money."

  Munch and Rico exchanged smiles.

  "What's your plan now?" Ellen asked.

  Asia wrinkled her nose and nodded sagely. She had obviously given this some thought. "I think I'll marry a millionaire."

  Munch choked back an outraged laugh and chucked her farming efforts in the trash can. "I'1l go get the condiments."

  "You got any of the ribbed kind that glow in the dark?" Ellen asked, following her to the kitchen.

  Munch shook her head. "Behave yourself, will you?" Even as she spoke, she realized she was chastising Ellen for Rico's benefit. She wondered if either of them had picked up on it and why was she always being forced to pick sides between the people she loved.

  Munch took another plate down from the cabinet.

  Ellen arranged the slices of tomato, onion and cheese on a platter, garnishing the outer ring with leaves of lettuce. The girl did have her talents. Munch could spend an hour over the same platter and not come up with anything half so pleasing to the eye.

  Munch opened the refrigerator to retrieve the jars of mayo, mustard and ketchup, discreetly flipping over her and Rico's wedding invitation on the corkboard as she set them on the table. She was still working on Rico's veto of Ellen on the guest list. "What do you want to drink?"

  "What are my choices?" Ellen asked.

  "Coke, apple juice, milk, or water."

  "Milk, then."

  Munch took out the carton. "They really glow in the dark?"

  "Yes, indeed." Ellen marched an upright banana across the kitchen table and sang out, "Here comes the monster."

  Munch laughed.

  Ellen peeled the banana and took a bite. "So things are getting pretty serious between you and Rico, huh?"

  "We've had the keys to each other's houses for six months."

  "You going to get married?"

  There it was. Trust Ellen to hit on the topic Munch most hoped to avoid.

  "I saw your ring," Ellen said.