Peggy seemed to be sticking to her critter theory.
“I’m not sure how we get an answer to that.” I felt my frustration rise again.
Peggy shifted her position on the sofa so Bardot could enjoy her fleeced bosom before she continued.
“Then we have the guy or gal who buzzed you with a plane. If you suspect Rusty, he’d have to have known you were aware of the drugs found. He was supposed to be home sick. Whereas everyone who was at Spitfire Grill that night knows you were one of people who discovered Jonas’s body.”
I took a sip of rich, red wine and considered that.
“Meaning the murder could be something entirely separate from the drugs. And until we have an estimate on time of death, we don’t really know how many people could have had access to Jonas. Heck, that hangar is enormous. Someone visiting the museum during the day could have hidden in there until after they locked up for the night.”
“Correcto-mundo.”
Peggy was now in full CIA mode. As the story goes, her late husband, Vern, served in the Air Force and later worked at the Santa Monica airport, which was a crucial asset during wartime. The airport started allowing business jets to land and take off from there after WWII and the Korean War. The air force called in the CIA, who enlisted Peggy when they discovered a shipment of Russian weapons hidden aboard an aircraft they were servicing. Vern had recommended her. She claims it was only surveillance, and as a woman, she could get chummy with the pilots’ wives for intel. They gave Peggy a special compact mirror and some other gadgets, but she says she never knew if she’d helped or not. At least, that’s what she says. But Peggy admits she’s only allowed to tell me a fraction of the story. No matter how much wine I ply her with, the rest of the story is buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa. But she clearly learned to develop into an ace sleuth, and I trust her observations implicitly.
Peggy must have sensed I’d drifted away and did a pronounced clearing of her throat before continuing.
“Which means we need to find out what Jonas knew, did or said that would make someone want to kill him. Without that, the suspect list is practically endless,” Peggy concluded.
“Britt seemed to have had some contact with him according to what she said at Wine Club. She implied he had a crush on her. Maybe it was reciprocal, and what we have here is a classic lovers’ quarrel that turned deadly.” I was reaching.
“That would be quite a leap from ‘let’s see other people.’ I think I’ll give her a call and ask her to help me prepare for the next Wine Club I’m hosting. I’ll tell her this old lady could use some young inspiration and subtly extract information.”
“I love it when you play the granny card, Peggy.”
I went to the kitchen and got a glass of water, I was done drinking for tonight.
“Care for water?”
Peggy shook her head and savored her wine.
“So, are you going to say it, or am I?”
Peggy’s question gave me a jolt.
“You mean, how much do we really know about Sally’s cousin Jimmy?”
“Of course, I may be old but I’m not deaf, dumb and blind. You’ve had a wild hair up your caboose for most of the day. When you invited me to dinner that confirmed it.”
“That’s not why—”
Peggy dismissed my comment with a wave of her hand.
“Okay, I mean we have to look at this from every angle.” I could feel my face heat up at saying that.
“True, but then we’d have to show some prior connection between Jonas and Jimmy. On the other hand, there’s the matter of the envelope with the prescriptions that was addressed to Sally. Maybe Jimmy ordered them.”
“See? Nothing adds up. Then there’s Jeb. When he came into Spitfire he was so out of it, he could barely speak. His eyes were glazed over and distant. I’ll admit he perked up after we got some fluids into him, but that was still a very strange incident.”
“You think he’s a boozer?”
“It didn’t smell like it.”
“And Mary Ann—she seems like an awfully smart cookie,” Peggy continued. “She must have recognized how severe Jeb’s condition was when Joe brought him home. Yet she seemed naïvely dismissive about the test results.”
“You think she sugarcoated it to us?”
“It’s possible. I’m curious about the substance she said they’re going to test his blood for again.”
It was time for me to fill Peggy in on Marisol’s sleuthing.
“So, Jeb’s intercepting packages from the mail carrier before Mary Ann can see them?”
“At least one, and it appears he was expecting a second the day of Charlie’s crash.”
I was feeling so much better having gotten this off my chest. Peggy has a way of getting people to talk.
“We’re going to have to be careful how we handle this aspect. It could all be some kind of coincidence, and we wouldn’t want to raise doubts where none exist.”
“Agreed.”
“Let’s keep this between the three of us.” Peggy got up to leave.
“The three of us?” I looked around, confused.
“You don’t think she understood every word?”
Peggy pointed to Bardot. She was back to laying supine, her head and floppy ears hanging pink-side-out off the sofa’s edge. A bit of her tongue poked out from behind her canines, which helped to facilitate her soft snores.
CHAPTER 7
The next day, I decided to embark on some online research for the contraband fish. I was in my office, sitting in front of my computer, something I needed to do more often for actual, wage-earning work. It was another glorious day in paradise, and I had all the windows and French doors open to let the breeze pass through, and I listened to a full-chorus concert from the sparrows hiding in the bougainvillea tree that hovers high over my pool. They perform every day and twice on Sundays. The only time I can remember them being silent for any period of time was when a brown-tailed hawk was circling the property. In typical eyes-like-a-hawk form, he spotted his quarry and swooped down to snatch it into his talons before disappearing into the top of a hundred-foot evergreen. The silence was palpable until I heard one sparrow say, “Shit, he got Jeremy.” And that’s why I never get any work done.
I first tried to identify the specimen in Marisol’s freezer using my image search apps. Think Google, but instead of searching using words, you query with images. These are fun to use at a produce department when you spot an odd-looking fruit, but the database just isn’t big enough yet to drill down to rare species of fish. Instead, I decided to look geographically starting with Southern California and then moving out. I set up a little query string program and then let it do its magic.
While that was running, I decided to do some small plane shopping. Yellow small plane shopping. Jack had wanted me to steer clear of the airport until he did some investigating on the plane that buzzed me, but that didn’t need to stop me from doing a little digital digging. I started by reviewing photos taken at the Santa Monica airport and posted on their website in hopes of catching a glimpse of the offending aircraft. When that didn’t pan out, I moved on to sites selling these planes.
I’d made notes on what I’d seen that day and reviewed them as I shopped. The wings were above the cockpit, and I learned that’s what they call a parasol-winged aircraft. It had a single propeller on its nose. These types of planes arrived on the aviation scene around the start of the Depression and were popular until the mid-1930s. These planes were lighter in weight and cheaper to build. They were also very stable and gave the pilot better visibility from the fuselage. The plane I saw didn’t look like an antique, which got me to thinking that perhaps this was a homebuilt job. That was the way to go if you didn’t have a lot of money to spend. I was hot on the trail when Jack walked in the street-side door to my office and peered over my shoulder at the screen.
“Hey babe. I thought the plane research was my job,” he said, kissing me. He looked handsome in his jeans and soft ye
llow silk shirt, which set his amber eyes into high beams. His lingering kiss made me forget all about planes.
It was then that I realized this was date night and my short shorts and Hitching Post tank just wouldn’t do. I couldn’t believe it was five o’clock. Time flies when you’re plane shopping.
“I was just going to change. Pour yourself a glass of wine and I’ll be right back.”
“I’d rather watch you change,” he teased.
“Then pour me a glass of wine anyway. I’ve got a yummy Australian blend open.”
He met me in the bedroom with filled glasses and an eager spirit.
“Bardot is guarding the pool,” he said.
I looked out the window and, sure enough, Bardot was lying at the far end of the yard, monitoring her watery playground.
Needless to say, we left a little later than originally intended, but neither of us seemed to mind.
* * *
“I’ve got to make one stop before we go to the restaurant, but it’s on the way. It will only take a minute or so.” I was the designated driver tonight.
We were heading toward Marina del Rey into the sunset—my favorite time of day.
“Why do I doubt that?”
“I just want to drop in on my Coast Guard friends to ask them if they recognize the fish from Charlie’s plane. Trevor, the guy on duty tonight, is an avid angler and goes on trips down the California and Mexican coasts.”
“I would love to do that, but not the sport fishing part. I’m all about catch only what you can eat. But the thought of a seafood crawl along the Baja Peninsula warms my cockles.”
I laughed.
Again? This man is an animal!
The local Coast Guard was one of the first clients I won when I moved here. They needed an internal online system to share info and communicate during emergencies. I’ve since expanded the site’s capabilities and made some great friends along the way. Plus, they rock at what they do.
We were headed to Marina del Rey, home to the yachts of the rich and famous as well as more modest houseboats and the practice waters for several collegiate and masters crew teams.
Along the main channel lie Fisherman’s Village, a waterfront mall, a commercial boat anchorage and a tourist attraction with live-music concerts, restaurant and café dining, harbor and fishing cruises. And at the westernmost end is the Coast Guard station.
The sun had just started thinking about setting when we parked. The station was quiet when we walked in, but I figured this was just the calm before the storm. It was Saturday night, after all—boats and booze do not make for a happy couple.
“Hey Trevor. Fueling up for an evening of saving the overserved?”
He was chowing down on some delicious-looking shrimp tacos with rice and beans. I had to really focus on not rescuing that one shrimp that had fallen out and onto his plate.
“Hi Halsey, good to see you.”
“We won’t keep you from your supper; what I have to ask shouldn’t take long. This is my boyfriend, Jack. You may remember him from the drug boat rescue and arrest a couple of years ago?”
“Sure do. How’s it going, big fellow? Who are you in pursuit of now?”
“It’s more Halsey than me, but then it always is.”
The men shared a conspiratorial chuckle.
“The who this time is actually a fish. It was found on a plane flown by a friend of mine, and it was frozen and stuffed with heroin. I was hoping you could identify it for me.”
I pulled up the photos on my cell phone.
“Yikes!” He gasped and pulled back from the photo. “Does that thing have two heads?”
“Ha! No, the one with the gold tooth belongs to my nosy neighbor, Marisol. Although I totally understand why you were taken aback.”
He continued swiping through the photos and studied them carefully.
“I have some ideas. It’s some kind of whitefish, but I’ve never seen this particular configuration in local waters. South America maybe?”
Not what I wanted to hear.
“Trevor’s ruled out a lot of geography, Halsey. That should save us some time.”
Jack was tugging on a spot on his beard, a sure sign he was uncomfortable and probably hungry. Those tacos must be getting to him too.
“My friend Shelly works at the Aquarium of the Pacific, I bet she could help you, or at least point you in the right direction. We dated for a short time, it didn’t work out, but we’ve remained friends.” Trevor opened the address book on his smartphone.
“That would be of enormous help, Trevor. I promise not to tell her that you just got engaged,” I said.
“She knows; she’ll be invited to the wedding. The fish and water world is a small one.”
“That’s what I’m always telling Halsey.” Jack smirked, getting more and more antsy to leave.
“Okay, I just texted you Shelly’s digits and I’ll let her know you’ll be calling. I hope it pans out. So, is someone going down for the drugs? I hope not your friend.”
“Me too, Trevor. As usual, it’s a lot more complicated than it first appeared, and several of my friends could be implicated. I’ve got to clear their names and get the cops looking in the right direction.”
“If anyone can do it, you can, Halsey.”
“Thanks so much, Trevor. I’m afraid your food’s gone cold. Let me give you money for another order.”
“No way. Hot or cold, it does the job. Good luck, Halsey; let’s go fishing sometime, Jack.”
“I’d love that.”
“I love fishing too,” I replied as Jack dragged me out of the station.
* * *
We drove back along Admiralty Way and turned in to the Marina del Rey Hotel. This establishment had been around for many years, but in the not too distant past it was a haven for rundown houseboat denizens known to drink too much, smoke too much and end up in dockside fights with their wives, girlfriends, mates and the errant pelican. The hotel had a happy hour every night and served hotel-pan, sterno-heated Swedish meatballs, egg rolls and pigs in a blanket. The frayed shag carpet was perpetually wet from the runoff from bathing suits and bare feet. But then an angel in the form of Pacifica Hotels took over and turned it into boutique accommodations with a restaurant called SALT that sits directly on the side of the Marina waterway.
The key is to go early, like we were tonight. Our table by the edge offered a front and center view of the sunset. Date night always kicked off with a cocktail, and a Moscow Mule was calling my name.
How to make vodka better? Add ginger.
Jack was feeling magnanimous and suggested we share the shellfish platter of Maine lobster, crab, oysters, prawns and Salt Creek mussels. Hot sauces and drawn butter completed the food porn picture.
Perfect.
After the initial gorge—I had to try one of everything—I could relax and talk.
“Okay, your plane research was confined to online, so I’ll allow it into evidence,” Jack began. “How about you tell me what you learned and then I’ll share my info?”
Because technically what he said was true—I wasn’t scheduled to meet a guy selling these plane kits until Monday—I proceeded.
“Can do,” I mumbled between licking butter off my fingers. Jack and I had that kind of relationship now. “The plane this guy was flying looked similar to the light planes from the thirties developed by a guy named Bernard Pietenpol. They had the same parasol-wing placement. You can buy reproductions today in the range of about one hundred and fifty thousand.”
“That’s a big nut,” Jack said, going in for another oyster.
What? So I was counting; I’m an only child.
“Yes, that will buy a lot of oysters.”
Jack took the hint and moved on to the shrimp.
“But if you’re are an historic plane fanatic and must have a certain model, I found out you can buy the plans from Pietenpol Aircraft Company for about a hundred bucks and the aircraft-grade wood kits for the stabilizer, rudder, el
evator, fuselage and wing for about three thousand. If you have resources for the hardware, engine and covering, I’m guessing you could be in the air for under twenty thousand.”
“Wow, I’m impressed. You learn all this off the web?”
“I have a suspicion this internet thing might just take hold, Jack.”
Ugh. Can the snark, Halsey.
Jack grimaced but recovered quickly.
“Here’s what I’ve found, and it dovetails nicely with your theory. Rusty has worked at the airport since he was in his teens, so about fifteen years now. He had dreams of being a stunt pilot but always seemed to look for shortcuts through the system. I got this from an old-timer friend of mine over there.”
“So he wasn’t exactly rising up the aviation ladder?”
“Not so much. He also hung around with three guys who were a little older and would never pass up an opportunity to help themselves to plane parts or fuel when no one was looking. But apparently, one time someone was looking, and they were fired and banned from the airfield. Lucky for Rusty, he wasn’t with them at the time, which doesn’t mean he never participated in those thefts. It just means he wasn’t caught.”
“Interesting. Have you been able to find out if he owns a plane?”
“My guy suspects so, but Rusty got wise and stores it somewhere secret. I’ll continue asking around and add your kit theory to the equation.”
“We need to find that plane. At least that will solve one mystery. Our work is cut out for us,” I said as we both eyed the last oyster. Jack made a grab for it, added some hot sauce and then fed it to me.
I have really got to start taking my love for this guy seriously.
“Hmmm,” I said, savoring the transporting briny delicacy.
Jack grinned.
“Listen, Halsey, I’ve been thinking—”
“Now we need to track down where this heroin might have come from,” I said, stepping on whatever he was about to say.
He looked at me with sad eyes for a moment.
“I’m meeting my friend Mark with the DEA for breakfast. I’ll fill him in and see what information he can provide. They are probably already working the case.”
The Name of the Rosé Page 6