Chihuahua Confidential

by Waverly Curtis

  “Can I have a towel to dry him off?”

  “Of course,” said Rodney, handing over his purple towel. It appeared to be part of his nature to be helpful. “You can use this one. I’ll go get another.” He headed back into the house.

  I took the towel and began rubbing Pepe down. He made grunting noises that were halfway between complaint and pleasure as I worked over his little body. Finally I just wrapped him up, like a baby in swaddling, and plunked him down on one of the lounge chairs. Rodney had returned with two new towels. “I suppose you need one, too,” he observed.

  “Thank you.” I took the towel and used it to dry my hair. There wasn’t much I could do about the rest of me.

  “So you jumped in to rescue him?” Rodney said.

  “I was afraid he would drown,” I said.

  “I thought all dogs could dog paddle,” Rodney said.

  “You would think so,” I said. “But even if he made it to the side, I wasn’t sure he could get out of the pool.”

  “Unless he was smart enough to swim to the shallow end and just walk up the steps,” Rodney observed.

  “Yes, too bad he wasn’t that smart,” I said, looking at Pepe.

  Pepe wriggled out of the towels, stood up, and studied the pool. “It is hard to see exactly where the steps are when you are floundering in the deep end,” he said. He looked over at Rodney. “Ask him how long he has lived here.”

  “So how long have you lived here?” I asked.

  “Ever since I was hired. Nigel wanted me to be available twenty-four seven.”

  “And now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well . . .” I didn’t want to be rude. “Nigel obviously doesn’t need you anymore.”

  “True,” said Rodney, “but someone has to answer the phone and go through the mail. Leo, that’s Nigel’s manager, asked me to stay until they settle the estate.”

  “I imagine it’s substantial,” I said, looking up at the house, which loomed over us: all gray stone walls and stained-glass windows and turrets with conical roofs.

  “That’s what you’d think, but they’re about to foreclose on the house. Nigel was completely broke.”

  “What about all that money he made as the judge on So You Wanna Be a Star?”

  “It went straight up his nose. Nigel hasn’t paid any bills in months. Leo told him he had to get a job. That’s why he agreed to be a judge for Dancing with Dogs. He didn’t want to do it. He thought it was beneath him.”

  “Hey!” said Pepe. “I have seen So You Wanna Be a Star. Dancing with Dogs is a step up!”

  “So how was he paying you?”

  “He wasn’t,” said Rodney with a grimace. “But he gave me a place to stay.” He pointed at the pool house, a miniature version of the big house, which sat at the end of the pool. He picked up his drink from the table and took a sip. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Sure,” I said, thinking it would take me a while to dry out, and it might be pleasant to sit in the sun and have a drink. Besides, as Pepe had pointed out, we were supposed to be investigating. Maybe we would learn something important about Nigel.

  “What would you like?” asked Rodney, always the helpful assistant.

  “Whatever you’re drinking is fine with me,” I said. Rodney trotted off to the main house and soon came back with another frosty glass.

  “I see he did not think to ask my preference,” Pepe said.

  “What is your preference?” I asked.

  “Water, neat, no chaser, please,” he said.

  “Can I have a bowl of water for my dog?” I asked.

  Rodney went back into the house again. Meanwhile, Pepe wandered over to the base of the wrought-iron table at one end of the pool and lifted his leg.

  “Hey!” I said. “That’s not cool!”

  “I am merely letting the other dog know I am top dog.”

  “What other dog?” I asked.

  Pepe sniffed around the base of the table. “The perro that lives here.”

  Rodney returned carrying a gilt-rimmed china bowl filled with water.

  “Does Nigel have a dog?” I asked.

  Rodney frowned. “No! What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I couldn’t really explain that my dog told me so.

  Rodney set the bowl down beside the lounge chairs. Pepe sniffed it and then turned away.

  “You asked for it!” I said.

  “It is always better when it has had a little time to breathe,” Pepe said.

  He went off on another sniffing expedition, this time along the edge of the trimmed hedges by the kitchen door. “Ah, the scent is very strong here. Yes, there was definitely another perro here. Maybe two days ago.”

  “You’re sure Nigel didn’t have a dog?” I asked.

  “No!” Rodney sat down on a lounge chair and waved me to a seat. “What is it with you people and dogs? Just because you like them doesn’t mean everyone in the world does.”

  Pepe jumped up beside me on the lounge chair and gave my drink a sniff. “Ah!” he said. “This is the smell I smelled at the murder scene. I would recognize it anywhere.”

  I took a sip. It was a strong gin and tonic. One of my favorite summer drinks.

  “Nigel was drinking gin and tonic?” I asked.

  Rodney almost dropped the glass he was holding.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “I just recognize the smell,” I said.

  “It is I who recognized the smell!” said Pepe.

  “Well, you can’t tell anyone that Nigel was drinking!” Rodney told me.

  “What? Why?”

  “Nigel was supposed to be sober,” Rodney said. “We met in rehab. But he just couldn’t handle having other people tell him what to do. He managed to convince Leo to let him do rehab on his own at home. So Leo hired me to be his watchdog, so to speak.”

  “Not a very good one,” Pepe observed. “I am a much better watchdog.”

  “I was supposed to make sure none of his druggy buddies could get to him.”

  “But drinking was OK?” I asked.

  “Well, you know. He slipped a little.” Rodney waved his glass in the air. “So did I. But as long as he wasn’t doing drugs, I figured I was doing my job.”

  “So is that why you were worried about leaving him alone?”

  “Yes, as soon as he got his advance for Dancing with Dogs, he started sneaking around, making phone calls and hanging up when I came in the room. I thought he was trying to score some drugs. That’s why I was so worried when I left him alone at the studio.”

  “Did you tell the police this?” I asked.

  Rodney shook his head vigorously. “No, and you can’t either.” His voice went high with anxiety. “Leo would cut me off without a cent if he knew any of this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Leo promised me a big bonus to be paid at the end of six months if Nigel stayed sober. It was only a week away when he died. If Leo finds out that Nigel was drinking or buying drugs, he won’t pay me. And I need that money!”

  “Because you need to find a new place to live?” I asked.

  “No,” Rodney said. “One of my friends made a film based on my screenplay. We’ve got a chance to enter it in Sundance, but we need to finish it within a week. If I don’t get that bonus, we’re out of luck.”

  “Everyone in L.A. is in the movie business,” Pepe muttered.

  Chapter 9

  My shoes were still squishing as I headed toward the car with Pepe.

  “Perhaps you should not drive when you are all wet, Geri. It could be dangerous,” he said.

  “What can I do?” I said. “You want to walk all the way back to the hotel?”

  “That does not sound good, either,” he said.

  “Let’s just get in the car and go,” I told him.

  As I dug into my purse for the car keys, he said, “Say, I may have a solution for your wet clothes.”

&n
bsp; “What’s that?”

  “It is how Conchita took care of a similar problem in one episode of—”

  “How is one of your Spanish soap operas going to help me?”

  “Easy,” said Pepe. “Conchita was running away from the evil Fernando and fell in the river. When Fernando could not find her, she got out all soaking wet.”

  “And?”

  “She went to a nearby gas station restroom, took all her wet clothes off, and dried them under the hand dryer—you know, those things on the wall that blow hot air out to dry your hands.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No. It worked. We just need to find a gas station.”

  “Not happening,” I told him. “I’m not going to stand around naked in some public bathroom trying to dry my clothes!”

  “It worked for Conchita.”

  “I’m not Conchita. Get in the car. We’re leaving.”

  “As you wish,” he said, hopping into the front passenger seat when I opened the door.

  “Look on the bright side of things,” Pepe told me as I started the car. “At least our investigation is proceeding apace.”

  “Oh, I forgot to ask Rodney about the package!” I said as we pulled away from the curb. “But I guess I can ask him tomorrow. And it’s true—we did learn some new things about Nigel.”

  “Sí, it seems that he was planning to buy drugs at the time he was killed.”

  “But surely he couldn’t have drugs delivered to him at the studio?”

  Pepe snorted. “Are you kidding?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him, annoyed at his superior attitude.

  “I have been on many a Hollywood set, Geri,” Pepe said. “They are crawling with drugs.”

  “OK, if you say so.” I had to give him that. I had never been on a set before. “But why would someone who wanted to sell him drugs kill him?”

  “Perhaps because he owed them money?”

  “But surely it would have been smarter to wait, since he was about to begin earning money again,” I pointed out.

  “But that would go quickly if he returned to his old habits,” Pepe pointed out.

  It seemed we had reached a dead end. I started to ease the car back into the traffic on Sunset Boulevard.

  “Geri, can you stop at a 7-Eleven? All this investigating has left me famished.”

  “I kind of doubt there are any 7-Elevens in Beverly Hills, Pepe.”

  “Wait!” he suddenly exclaimed, his nose sniffing like mad. “I smell something!”

  “Don’t tell me, you smell a 7-Eleven?”

  “No, it is something else.”

  “What?”

  “Turn right here,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Right, right,” he repeated. “Right on this street.”

  I almost missed the corner but did as he asked.

  “Now what? What are we doing?”

  “Turn right again!”

  I turned.

  “Now left!” Pepe said after we’d gone a couple blocks.

  I followed his directions once again and ended up going down a wide, tree-lined street that serpentined past luxury mansion after mansion, most set well back from the road.

  “Slow down!” Pepe commanded, his nose sniffing a mile a minute.

  Instead of slowing, I pulled over to the curb and stopped, saying, “I’m not going any farther until you tell me what we’re doing.”

  He turned and faced me. “Geri, por favor, just a little more. It is muy importante!” He stuck his nose back out of the car and took a deep breath. “Ah, sí,” he said like some particular odor was instantly recognizable. All I could smell was the scent of freshly mowed lawns.

  “Move the car forward, Geri,” said Pepe. “Slowly! We are almost there.”

  This seemed so important to my pooch that I gave the car a little gas, and we crept forward at about ten miles per hour.

  “Even slower!” Pepe said after we’d gone less than a hundred feet.

  Down to five miles per hour.

  “Slower still!”

  Down to two miles per hour, barely a crawl.

  “¡Alto!” he told me. “This is it!”

  “This is what?” I asked, applying the brakes.

  “Ah, the hacienda of my youth,” he said, his tail wagging furiously. “I would recognize its sweet smell anywhere!”

  “What? Where?” I asked, looking past his nose. I couldn’t see anything but an eight-foot-tall hedge like the one at Nigel’s house.

  “Move the car up to the gate,” Pepe told me. “You will see.”

  Rolling forward a bit, I stopped at a short driveway between the hedges. There, beyond a wide, wrought-iron gate, was a magnificent, Spanish-style mansion, two stories high with white stucco walls and a red-tile roof. A number of cars were parked in the circular driveway.

  “This is where you grew up?” I asked my dog.

  “Sí,” he said. “It is the casa of Caprice Kennedy.”

  “We’re at Caprice’s house?”

  “Of course, Geri. It is what I smelled. One does not forget meaningful odors—especially the happy ones.”

  I could hardly believe it. We must have driven close to a mile since Pepe first noticed the scent of Caprice’s place. If this was Caprice’s place. I pulled out my Map of the Stars and began looking for a star with Caprice’s name on it.

  After a few moments, Pepe said, “Well?”

  “Well what?” I looked up from my map. The star that marked the home of Caprice Kennedy did seem to be in the general area where we had stopped. Perhaps Pepe had sneaked a look at the map.

  “Are you not going to pull up to the gate so we can go in?”

  “Pepe, why would they let us in?”

  “Because they know me,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Pepe, even if this is the right house—”

  “Just pull forward,” he said. “There is a radio intercom there. I can talk them into admitting us.”

  Well, maybe I could dissuade Pepe from his delusions by going along with him. “OK,” I said. “Why not?”

  At the gate, there was indeed an intercom mounted at the driver’s side of the car. I pressed the button, and it was only a couple seconds before I heard a male voice, deep and sonorous. “Who is it?”

  “Hi, uh, I’m Geri Sullivan,” I said.

  “Yes?” asked the man.

  “Tell Caprice that Pepe has returned!” said Pepe.

  “Is that a dog with you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh, you must be with the dog show. Come on in!” the man said. “The party is out back by the pool.” And the gate began to glide open.

  “You see, Geri!” said Pepe as we cruised up the driveway. “Caprice has not forgotten me.”

  Chapter 10

  “You know, Pepe,” I told him, “it sounds like she’s having a party.”

  “Caprice is always throwing parties,” he said. “She is famous for them.”

  Caprice had a lot of guests, judging from the line of cars parked in front of the house. I found a spot at the end of the line for my rented red convertible.

  “This way, Geri!” said Pepe, jumping out of the car and charging around the corner of the house. I followed behind him somewhat reluctantly. Unlike Pepe, I’m not good at parties. And I felt even more awkward than usual because we were crashing this one. Plus I was still dealing with the consequences of falling in the pool. My damp jeans had molded themselves to my legs, as wet jeans will do. And although my yellow cotton blouse was mostly dry—thank God it was no longer transparent—my hair had scrunched up into ringlets all over my head. Not the most fashionable look for a party at the home of a movie star.

  Pepe had no such concerns. He dived right into the crowd of people gathered around the huge swimming pool, in the back of the house, which had been landscaped, complete with waterfall, giant boulders, and lush foliage, to create the illusion that we were in some sort of tropical paradis
e.

  Fortunately, I saw right away that this was a Dancing with Dogs party. A TV screen was set up on the terrace, shaded by a striped awning. Scenes from the show flashed across the screen. The German shepherd leaping through a hoop held by his owner. The three judges conferring, their heads together. The poodle, his little pom-poms jiggling as he pranced around the stage. Rebecca stood near the screen with a silver-haired man, possibly the cinematographer. She was watching the images and gesturing with her hands. The guy leaned back with his arms crossed across his chest.

  A bar was set up by the back door, and most of the guests held drinks in their hands. I thought I recognized some of the camera guys and lighting techs, but I didn’t see any of the other contestants, or choreographers, or dogs. Or Pepe, either. Where was he?

  I finally located him in the crowd of young men gathered around Caprice. As I approached, he was telling her, “Caprice, you will be so proud of me! I found our house by smelling it!”

  Our house. Those words pierced my heart.

  Caprice stopped midsentence. She wore a formfitting, blindingly white cotton dress with some strategic cutouts, which provided plenty of glimpses of her tanned flesh. “I swear that dog is talking to me!” she said with a little laugh.

  “I am talking to you, Caprice!” said Pepe.

  She looked down at him, and I held my breath. Could she hear him, too?

  Then she smiled and said, “Oh, I know who you are! You’re the Chihuahua from the show.” She raised her head, and I thought for a moment she was looking for me. But instead she called out, “Jennifer!”

  A dark-haired young woman, who was dressed in black jeans and a black tank top, stepped out from the shadows behind a palm tree, where she had apparently been waiting for such a command. She presented herself in front of Caprice.

  Caprice picked up Pepe and kissed him on the head. “He looks like the dog I used to have,” she said with a wistful tone in her voice. “Do you remember that dog, Jennifer?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. She bent her head so her straight hair fell forward and covered her face.

  “Don’t you think he looks like my Pepe?” She cradled him in the crook of her arm and rocked him like a baby.