Free An Unexpected Grace by Kristin von Kreisler Page B

information he had registered for the site. He lived in San Francisco—no surprise. His age was thirty-seven, and his e-mail address was [email protected], probably meaning he was a Russian man born in 1975. Lila ached to e-mail him and demand, Why did you do it?
    Under interests, Yuri listed music and art—but didn’t say what kind—and boxing. Boxing? Did he watch or pound fighters in rings? To Lila, the interests conflicted and indicated a dissonance inside him. Out of the soil of his soul, the flowers of music and art had grown along with a testosterone-driven, down-and-dirty, thorny cactus of destruction. How had he reconciled the opposites? Maybe he hadn’t . Maybe that was the problem, and boxing had been one step away from shooting. For half an hour, Lila stared out the window at nothing and wondered.
    The English he’d posted was as garbled as the English he’d spoken. “Own 1994 Nissan Maxima. How get catalitic cheap converter? Must okay in California. I highly thank anything of this subject information.”
    So for his Nissan Maxima, Yuri wanted to find an inexpensive catalytic converter that measured up to California standards. A reasonable request. It contained no hint of a motive for murder.
    Since cars people drove were supposed to reveal their identities and values, Lila looked up images for 1994 Nissan Maxi-mas. But the car seemed plain and ordinary—a fender here, a bumper there. Headlights. Doors. A windshield. The best the car could say was, I’ll get you there.
    Only one person on NICOclub.com had replied to Yuri’s message: “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a cheap Cali-spec converter.” Lila stared at the person’s forum name until her eyes blurred: the Minister of Doom.
    An irony like Goodlife vs. Doom had to contain a cosmic message. Was the universe tugging at Lila’s sleeve to underscore opposites, such as art and boxing? Or was it pointing out a linear progression in Yuri’s life—from happy boy to tortured killer? Or was the message about her own life, changed by a bullet from a tolerable and healthy struggle like everybody else’s to a painful string of challenges? Whatever the meaning, one thing was sure, and Cristina and Lila had discussed it many times: The universe could sprinkle tantalizing signs around you. You had to be on the lookout for them and try to understand.
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    Side by side on the living room sofa across from Lila, Rich and Joe looked like a pair of buzzards until Rich set his elbows on his knees and gave Lila one of his eager Boy Scout looks. Joe leaned against the pillows, jingled the coins in his pockets, and hooded his eyes at her as if he didn’t feel like opening them wide on what he didn’t like. The week before, he’d seemed to want more from Lila than she could give, and flowing out of him had been an undercurrent of disapproval. It kept Lila off balance, though maybe that had been Joe’s aim.
    He glanced at Grace lying in the corner on her side so he couldn’t miss her protruding ribs. He gave Lila an accusatory look. “Where’d that pathetic dog come from?”
    She couldn’t tell him that Grace was stolen. “She came with my house-sitting job.”
    â€œShe needs some decent food,” Joe said, seeming to suggest that Grace’s scrawny body was Lila’s fault.
    â€œI tried to get her to eat this morning. She wasn’t interested.”
    â€œChange her diet.”
    â€œI’m supposed to feed her what my friend left her,” Lila said politely. She sat back farther in her chair, recrossed her legs.
    Grace seemed to know she was being discussed, and she wanted to wring more sympathy from Joe. She hobbled to the kitchen and, with a wrenching sigh, plopped down on the oriental rug under the table where he could see her.
    Joe shook his head and muttered, “Damned shame.”
    Rich flashed Lila a smile