Hector got out of the front seat and shook his head but I could tell that even he enjoyed it. Despite the ordeal he had gone through he didn’t look any different. Black shoe polish really was the great concealer. I didn’t know what to say to him so I just put out my hand and settled on, “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For saving my life,” I told him. “I guess I owe you.”

At which point he tossed my hand aside like it was something rotten.

“You don’t owe me shit,” he said. That same logic had changed the course of his life and he didn’t want it to change mine.

A car desperately in need of a new muffler coughed its way toward us. I recognized Nelson at the wheel and moved out of the way to let him pass. As the car went by I spied Jeanette in the back seat with the baby. Whether it was deliberate or not, she didn’t look up. Perhaps it was better that way — the last thing she would need was any kind of reminder of the events that led her to that moment. But for me, just getting a glimpse of her put my own mind at ease. As the clunker rattled up the driveway I turned back to Hector.

“She living here now?” Hector nodded. “The old man must be in all his glory.” Hector didn’t have to confirm it because I was certain that was the case. I could even see it on the old man’s face when I told him to leave us to talk.

We stood there for a moment but there was really nothing left to say and it was slowly becoming uncomfortable so I just wished him some random good-bye and headed back to my car.

I drove along the ridgeline until I came to one of the passes. I made the turn and crested the top of the hill and then began the long, rapid descent towards the Westside.

There were questions that needed to be answered.

***

The details surrounding the blackmailing scheme defied logic. The first request for money came from Jeanette for forty thousand dollars. I assumed that money was for the payment to the birthing clinic. She had asked Morgan for a similar amount. The money was paid to Nelson’s brother who was clearly doing his little sibling a favor by collecting it in case there was trouble.

Nothing after that made sense.

Jeanette had the baby in the dingy clinic in Alhambra but was kicked out after Gao got a call from an anonymous woman alerting him to her location. If the caller’s goal was money, she could have easily extorted it from Gao but she never asked for it. Then Jeanette inexplicably leaked her own story to a gossip blogger. I assumed this was her way of putting pressure on Valenti to ramp up the price of her return. But when I spoke to the kids at Nelson’s house, they kept talking about some miniscule amount of money — fifty grand — when the amount requested and delivered to Tala was in the millions. That was where the anonymous female caller returned, and this time it couldn’t have been Tala. Someone had tipped Sami off to Jeanette’s location at the Beverlywood house. Someone wanted her and the baby dead.

Meredith answered the door. Maybe it was the weather but this time she wore a plain pair of jeans and a loose-fitting cardigan. You couldn’t be impressed by the lack of body fat under that ensemble. There was a change in attitude as well. Gone was the transparent pursuit of attention under the overly-flirtatious behavior, which only succeeded in making you feel sorry for her. She just looked like a pretty, middle-aged woman at one of the higher-end department stores. Meredith led me into the living room and we sat in opposite chairs.

“I’d pay you the money if I had it,” she said.

“I know you would,” I told her. “But that’s not why I am here. Have you spoken to her?”

“Have you?” Meredith asked hopefully, and I correctly assumed she hadn’t. I shook my head. “Jeanette’s living with Dad now.”

“I just came from there.” Despite informing her that Jeanette and I hadn’t spoken, she leaned in as if I were about to give an update, but I had very little to give. “She looks good. Nelson seems to still be in the picture.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Poor kid will eventually realize he’s gay but for now it’s better for both of them to have each other. She’ll need that support. And Dad?”

I hadn’t realized the extent of her exile.

“I don’t know, it’s always hard to tell with him,” I started. “He seems happy.”

“I’m sure. It’s a second chance for him,” she added.

I heard no resentment in her words. I gathered from previous talks with Meredith and from my own observations that the old man wasn’t the best father out there. And it seemed that Meredith was coming to the same ugly conclusion about her own efforts. Behind the “second chance” was a hope that there would be one for her. She conveyed that in an odd, but brutally honest way.

“The truly unforgivable is to fail as a parent,” she said.

Once again I treaded in a world I knew nothing about. But I refused to believe in that kind of finality.

“Nothing is unforgivable,” I told her. “It might just take a very long time.”

My words warmed her more than I intended. We talked for a little while about nothing in particular. Soon she slipped back into staring out the sliding door at the expanse on the other side of the glass, and I slipped out the front door without saying good-bye.

My suspicion that Meredith was the anonymous caller no longer felt plausible. She may have inadvertently put her daughter in danger allowing a man like Sami into their household. She may have ignored some of the early signs that Jeanette needed help. She may have done a lot of things that were now coming back to haunt her as only regret can. But I just couldn’t believe she willfully wanted her daughter dead.

That left only one other person.

AN ENDLESS SUNSET

I arrived at the convalescent home after visiting hours. The front desk was empty and I proceeded down the main hallway. I glanced inside the little chapel with the dimly-lit, makeshift altar, but didn’t expect to find her there. I went up the stairs and stepped out onto the balcony. The taillights from outbound traffic cast the entire area in a reddish glow. A voice called out to me.

“I’m over here,” the old woman said.

Sheila Lansing sat in the same chair under the potted palm and looked out at the passing traffic like she was watching a beautiful sunset from a quiet beach, except this kind of sunset never ended.

“What do you want?” she asked as I stood over her.

“I want to know why.”

“You know why.”

“I want you to say it.”

Sheila fixed her gaze on the void in front of her. I needed for her to look at me, to acknowledge my presence, so I moved to my right and cast her face in shadow.

“Because he ruined my life,” replied the voice from the dark.

“Are you aware of what you did?” I asked. “Two people lost their lives. One of them was just a young girl.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with—”

“Neither of them deserved it,” I cut in. I couldn’t let her slough off Morgan’s murder. Without the old woman’s meddling, that girl would be breathing today. I then thought of the Sunday morning that almost got me killed and what the scene could have looked like in that little house if Sami had been successful. I felt something I had never experienced before — a desire to inflict harm on another human being.

“Did you think three million dollars would hurt him?” I asked. “Three billion dollars wouldn’t hurt him.”

“It wasn’t about the money,” she dismissed.

“Then why the ransom?”

“So we could get out of here.”

Sheila clarified the “we” for me — it included her, Jeanette, and the baby. She admitted that the chance encounter with Jeanette wasn’t entirely that. She helped orchestrate the program with Jeanette’s school. And how elated she was when she finally got to meet the young woman. “She is such a sweet girl,” she said without any acknowledgment of how odd it sounded coming from her. “She listened to me. She cared for me. And I cared for her.”