I take a quick look around, then scramble for the phone. The number rang. And rang. And rang some more. And I was about to give up and hang up when a man with the voice of a grizzly bear says, “Cosmo's Curios.”
I cleared my throat and said, “Uh… can you tell me what your hours are?”
“Nine ta six,” growled the grizzly. “Closed tomorrow and Monday.”
“Uh… and where are you located?”
“Sixty-six thirteen Hollywood Boulevard.” He slurped something from a cup. “You buyin' or sellin'?”
“Uh… selling.”
Slurp. “Well, come on in. I'll make ya a good deal.”
When he hung up, I turned to Marissa and said, “Sixty-six thirteen Hollywood Boulevard.” I hooked the receiver back on the wall. “C'mon!”
“Come on? Come on where? How are we going to get to sixty-six thirteen Hollywood Boulevard, and what are we going to do when we get there?”
I peeked out the kitchen door, my brain still running full throttle.
“Sammy, don't just leave! Where are you going?”
“Shh! I have to try something. Come on!” I waved her along, and we tiptoed down the hall, past the dining room, then took a right through Little Egypt to the back door.
Now, when my mother had let us in the night before, all I'd really seen was the pattern of the entry code, and even though I didn't know if I'd be needing it or not, I didn't want to leave without being sure I could get back in. So I made Marissa wait inside while I went out and closed the door behind me.
First I checked the handle. It was locked. I punched in 2-8-6-4.
Still locked.
I tried crossing over the other way with 2-8-4-6, and bingo! I let myself in.
I grinned at Marissa and whispered, “The code's 2-8-4-6, c'mon!” I dragged her out the door, down the steps, past ferns and palms and periwinkle vines, clear over to Hali's cottage. “I'm praying the code hasn't been changed since Opal got canned.”
“Praying? First you don't care, now you're praying? God, you're acting so weird today!” Then she mutters, “You're reminding me of Hali!”
I knocked on the frame of the cottage's screen door and called, “Reena? Hali? Hello…?” as I peeked into the front room.
A door inside slammed, and Hali's voice cried, “I don't care, Mama! I don't care! He's a coward! A fraud! A liar! And you! You should've told me years ago! Like it's not my right to know?”
Marissa grabs my arm and whispers, “Sammy, we shouldn't be here.”
And we're about to hightail it out of there when a voice behind us says, “They're not answering the door?”
How we let Tammy hippity-hop up behind us is beyond me. But there she was, towering above us, twitching her nose like she's hot on the trail of some fresh-sprung clover. We step aside and she moves forward, calling through the screen, “Reena! Hali! They're calling an emergency meeting in the dining hall. Max wants you there right away!”
Inside the bungalow, the voices stop. And for a few seconds all that comes through the door is dark, cool silence. Then Reena appears and says through the screen, “We'll be there in a few minutes. Leave us be now, won't you?”
Tammy nods and starts scurrying down the path, and I chase after her, saying, “You're Tammy, right?”
“Right,” she says, then eyes me like I'm some renegade ragweed. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.” I tried on a smile and said, “Is it always like this around here?”
She starts hopping along again. “You mean does someone get murdered around here every day? No.”
“But is there always so much drama around here? I heard about Opal getting kicked out and—”
“No! Okay? There are your typical little spats and stuff, but nothing like this.” Her eyes sharpen down on me as she says, “How'd you hear about Opal? From Dominique?”
“Well, we slept in her bed last night, so it sorta came up.” I hesitate, then add, “Doesn't seem real fair, kicking a person out like that.”
“Anyone will tell you Opal had it coming. Now, the bit with her contract, I can see her being miffed about. But Opal was lazy, and Opal was a hothead, so Opal pretty much got what Opal deserved.”
“What do you mean about her contract? What happened with that?”
She shrugged. “Max wouldn't release her.”
“But he fired her, right?”
“Yeah. She told me he said he'd ‘invested,’ and he wasn't about to let her out of what she owed him.”
“So where'd she go?”
She turned on me. “You're starting to sound like those cops in there, you know that? It's not like I was her best friend or anything, so why are you grilling me?” She frowned and bounced her way up the steps, saying, “I heard she was working at the Peppermint Peacock down on Hollywood—all the more reason to walk the straight and narrow around here, if you ask me.”
“What do you mean? What's the Peppermint Peacock?”
She turns and studies me, then her nose gives a mighty, circular twitch, like it's trying to unscrew itself right off her face. She zooms in on me and says, “It's where girls who think they're gonna make it go right before they start walking Sunset. You get the picture? Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to use the bathroom and report to Max, 'cause I have no interest in winding up there.” She punches in the code, then asks, “Are you coming inside?”
“Uh, not right now.” I nod at the keypad and say, “Is the code the same as yesterday? We don't want to be locked out or anything.”
“Yeah, it's the same.”
“Well, how often do they change it?”
“How should I know? It's been the same for…for months! Now would you go interrogate someone else?”
The minute she's inside, I grab Marissa by both shoulders and shake her. “It was Opal! It had to be!”
“And you're happy about that?”
“Yes!”
She looks at me like I'm waltzing barefoot on barnacles. “Why?”
“Because … because!” I race down the walkway calling, “C'mon!”
“Where? Sammy, wait up! Why don't you just go in and tell Max? Or the police?”
I whisper, “Because …I don't have any proof, and…I don't want them asking me a bunch of nosy questions.”
One look at me, and she knows I'm holding out.
“Sammy, tell me what is going on in that head of yours! You've been acting bipolar all day, and it's not just from being around you-know-who. Now tell me what it is!”
I hesitated, then dragged her way off the pathway and around the corner of the house. And when I was sure no one could possibly hear me, I yanked her behind a giant fern and whispered, “Three-thirty A.M. I hear banging through the wall. Three-thirty-five A.M. my mother comes sneaking back into the room.”
She gaped at me, then said, “You think your mother killed LeBrandi?”
So I give her my Desperate Diva theory along with all kinds of supporting evidence, and what does she do?
She laughs. Out loud, head back, tears streaming out of her eyes, howling.
“Shh! Marissa, stop it! Stop it!”
“You stop! Oh, please … your mother? Suffocate someone? She has trouble swatting flies! Sammy, I've seen her try. She's timid, she flinches, she's got no swing. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your mother's got the killer instincts of a butterfly.”
A butterfly?
Marissa was right about one thing, though—my mother couldn't kill flies. But that wasn't because she didn't want them dead. No, it was because of bug blood. Bug blood grosses her out. Worse than regular blood, even. It's the combination of guts and blood. She just can't take it.
She was, however, perfectly happy to catch one under a glass and let it die that way.
By suffocation.
A rattly, scraping noise above us shook me from my thoughts. And when I looked up to see what it was, there's Max, coming onto a second-floor balcony. I nudge Marissa, then put my finger to my lips
and point.
Marissa crouches a little farther into the fern, and we both hold our breath, but Max doesn't seem to be looking for us. He just holds the rail with both hands and looks out past the trees and into the distance—like he's at the helm of a boat, taking in deep breaths of salt air. Then he puts his hands up toward the sky and mouths a few words before he drops his arms and goes back inside.
The minute he's gone, I scoot out from beneath the fern and say, “Let's go.”
“Where are we going?”
I drag her along to the walkway. “Cosmo's Curios … and then maybe up the street to the Peppermint Peacock. Tammy said it's on Hollywood, not in Hollywood, so it's got to be close by, right?”
She chased after me. “The Peppermint Peacock? There's no way we should go there!”
It was my turn to laugh. “We've already had the night tour of Sunset. It can't be any worse than that, right?”
Marissa squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered, “Haven't we been through enough for one day?” But I could tell from the way she said it that she wasn't going to be left behind.
Peppermint Peacock, ho!
TEN
Bumming a ride wasn't the hard part. Hali came storming out of the cottage in jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt, ranting over her shoulder, “Tell them I've gone to get the dry cleaning. Tell them we're out of coffee. Tell them I quit! I don't care what you tell them, I'm getting out of here, and not you or that Nazi or the whole LAPD is going to stop me!”
She flew down the walkway and around back, and we raced to catch her. “Hali! Hali, wait up!”
Her braids whipped the air as her head snapped around. “What do you two want?”
“Um…do you know where Hollywood Boulevard is?”
She kept walking. “Of course I know where Hollywood Boulevard is!”
“Do you think maybe you can give us a ride?”
“Why would I want to give you a ride?”
I ran along beside her. “I don't know. Maybe it's near the dry cleaners?”
She kept right on walking.
“Please? We want to, you know, get a souvenir.”
She scowled at me, then marched the rest of the way to a small garage and pulled up the door. Inside was a battered yellow Volkswagen Bug with faded stickers all along the bumper and a rainbow of ribbons on the antenna. “Squeeze in,” she says as she yanks open the driver's door. “And don't even think about doggin' my driving.”
Marissa started to climb in back, but I said, “Uh… I've got to run inside and get my money. Can you pick me up out front?”
“Look, I want to get out of here!”
“I know, I know. Just go up the street a little ways and wait. It'll only take me a minute.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “If you're not out there in—”
“I'll hurry!” I say, and then go charging toward the house.
I got back inside the mansion, no problem. But as I tiptoed through Little Egypt to the fountain, I couldn't really hear if people were around or not because of the sound of running water. So I ducked behind the fountain for a second and checked to the right toward the stairwell, then left to the dining hall and kitchen. When I was sure the coast was clear, I hurried across the intersection toward the front door.
So there I am, slinking along like a sneak thief in the Smithsonian, thinking I'm actually going to make it to the reception room without running into anyone, when all of a sudden the fading sound of streaming water is slashed by Max's voice.
I dive behind one of the big stone urns by the reception room door, and through the arc along the back of the urn I can see Max come out of the room, followed by a policeman who's saying, “The information collected earlier is not enough, Mr. Mueller. I'm sorry it's such an inconvenience for you, but each and every person who was here last night is going to have to be detained for questioning.”
I tucked my high-tops back as far as I could, then hugged my knees, held my breath, and tried to disappear behind the urn.
Max nods and says, “Well, they all should be assembled by now.”
“I'm curious, Mr. Mueller. Whose decision was it to strip the bedding?”
Max says, “I'm so sorry that happened. We felt it would be less traumatic on the woman who usually sleeps in that room. You have to understand, we had no idea.”
“So it was your decision, then?”
Their footsteps are clip-clopping away from me, but right before their voices fade I can hear Max say, “Uh… well, my sister and I agreed that it would be a good idea.”
“Your sister?”
“I believe you met Inga earlier. The one with the bandages?”
When they were far enough away, I scurried around the urn and into the reception room. Max's office door was closed tight, and there was no one else in the room, so I went straight to work.
First I yanked Claire's picture off the wall. Then I snagged a black-and-white photo from the bottom corner of the same wall and put it where Claire's had been. The man in the photo didn't look a thing like Claire, but at least there wasn't a gaping hole announcing to the world that Claire's mug had been lifted.
I could hear the sputter of Hali's Volkswagen outside, and when I looked out the window, sure enough, there went Hali and Marissa, up the street, past two empty squad cars, and out of sight.
I took a quick peek down the hallway, then zipped over to the large black binder that Marissa and I had gone through earlier.
I slipped out LeBrandi's photo, then Opal's, and at the last minute I decided I should take one more.
Dominique Windsor's.
I closed the binder, then stacked the head shots on top of Claire's photo and tucked them under my sweatshirt, inside the waistband of my jeans. When I was sure they were secure, I checked that the coast was clear, then slipped out the front door.
I was planning to cut across the lawn and hightail it up to Hali, only as I'm going down the steps, I notice another car cruising up the street. And even though it's not a police car, something about it tells me to duck out of view.
So I dive behind a hedge that runs along the front of the house and watch. And sure enough, the car pulls in and parks right behind the two squad cars. Then a man steps out. A man with Crisco hair and a spare tire big enough to fit an eighteen-wheeler.
And for a second there my heart comes screeching to a halt, because this man looks just like the one and only Officer Borsch, come way out of his jurisdiction to chew me out.
Part of what threw me was that I'd never seen Officer Borsch dressed in anything but a uniform before, so I didn't exactly know what that looked like. And seeing this guy out in the street, hiking his tan slacks up around his beef-belted radial, tucking in the back of his short-sleeved shirt as he checks out the house, well, he doesn't look as menacing as Officer Borsch usually does. He looks more like a scruffy Tweedledee who's chucked his bow tie somewhere on the road from Wonderland.
Still, the last thing I want is to be spotted. I've got questions to ask, and I sure don't want to waste my time answering someone else's. So as Tweedledee heads toward the door, I scoot along between the house and the hedge, past the reception room window, until I'm a safe distance away from the front door.
The picture frame is cutting into me pretty good, but I'm forcing myself to squat there, quiet as a rock. Then all of a sudden, right behind me, a fan comes on, vroom!
I stumble back and blink at the blur of a small fan whipping around behind a grid the size of a heating duct, and by the time my heart's stuffed back in my chest, Tweedledee is almost to the porch.
And it's strange. It's like all my senses are on red alert. Everything looks real clear—like it's magnified, only not any bigger. The pebbles on my palms feel like glass, the air has a woody sort of sweet smell to it, and even though that fan is only a purr, it seems to be screaming in my ears.
That's when I see Tweedledee step up to the porch and can tell that he's definitely not Officer Borsch. I mean, he's whistling. And ev
en though part of me is dying to know if he's Gil Borsch's twin brother, the minute he's inside I turn around and scurry along the house and out of there.
When I get to a break in the hedge, I look both ways, then charge across the lawn and up the street to where Hali's Bug is idling.
Hali's watching the rearview mirror like a hawk, and even when I open up the passenger door, she doesn't look my way. She just keeps staring straight into that mirror.
I try to sit down without gouging myself on the picture frame or giving away the fact that I'm packing pinched photos. I tell her, “Sorry it took so long,” but to my surprise, Hali's not mad. She says, “You did good,” and keeps her eyes glued to the mirror, shifting her gaze back and forth between the police parade parked down the road and the mansion's front door.
Now, with her eyes up and open like they are, and with the light from outside kind of bouncing in and shining on them, I catch a glimpse of something in the mirror that I hadn't noticed before. I lean sideways for a better look in the mirror, and sure enough, her eyes are green. Not brown like her mother's. Green.
She grinds the Bug into gear, looks straight at me, and says, “That was a detective, did you know that?”
I'm still leaning sideways, but now I'm looking right at her. And what comes out of my mouth? Not Yeah, that's what I figured, or Yeah, for a minute there I thought he was this cop I know back home, or even Yeah … and why are you so charged up about it?
No, what comes out of my mouth is, “Are those contacts?”
She stares at me a minute, then snorts and gives the Bug the gas. “You and every guy who's ever asked me out.” She shakes her head, muttering, “They're mine, and they're blind.”
“Blind? What do you mean?”
“Never mind. No, they're not contacts!” She pulls the gearshift into second. “Wish they were.”
Marissa pipes up from the backseat, “Do you know where we're going?”
Hali snickers and throws the car into third. “That would help. What block of Hollywood Boulevard?”
I say, “Sixty-six hundred? The address is sixty-six thirteen.”
“What's there, anyway?”
“Oh, just this store we heard about.”
Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy Page 8