“Does Ina’s store have a website?” Mom asked. I was moving slower than normal through the information because she wanted to read it along with me.
“Yes, it does.” I found the website. Unlike Buck’s, the website for Second to None was custom. I knew that because Greg had designed it for them and had showed them how to maintain it. It was clean and uncluttered, containing photos of the shop inside and out, including all the pertinent information like address and hours. According to the website, Second to None boasted vintage furniture in addition to used household goods. I could vouch for that. Besides the two items I’d purchased, there had been a small but nice collection of gorgeous pieces in the store when we visited. Ina told me that most of their antiques came from estate sales in nearby Beverly Hills and Brentwood. She would have liked to expand that part of their store, but they could not afford to buy many pieces at a time. With their store very close to Sony Studios and not far from the Fox lot, they’d also built up a clientele that collected movie and TV memorabilia, which lately had become Tom’s passion. Those items were usually smaller than furniture and were easier to store and sell.
“You done reading?” I asked Mom.
When she nodded, I went back to Bob Y’s profile and checked out some of the other stores, hoping to find one connected to Mazie Moore. I remembered Buck saying she had several locations, but I had no idea what they might be called. I was hoping, like Buck, she used her own name in the store’s name. A store among Bob Y’s reviews caught my eye. It was called Otra Vez. Like Buck’s and Ina’s stores, it had received a bad review and even an ugly racist comment saying the proprietor could “make more money running drugs like the rest of his kind.”
Following the links, I found the official website for Otra Vez, which I knew meant “again” in Spanish. The website was very basic, like Buck’s, but was in both English and Spanish. It was located in Lynwood right off the 105 Freeway. Besides the usual photo of the storefront, there was also a photo of a smiling family—a middle-aged mom and dad, a couple of younger adults, and two small children—all waving to the camera. The caption under the photo read in both languages: The Vasquez family welcomes you.
Vasquez. It sounded familiar. I searched my memory until a mental flash of a man being led away in handcuffs appeared, followed by another man yelling in Spanish into a phone. Vasquez. Roberto Vasquez. He’d been at the auction, and his nephew had been led away as an illegal. I looked again at the photo. The nephew was not in the picture.
Mom poked a finger at the family photo. “Wasn’t that man at the auction? Was he the one the police took away?”
“Yes. That’s Roberto Vasquez. But it was his nephew who was arrested for being undocumented.”
My attention went back to the About Town reviews. The reviews had been done by a Bob Y—Bobby? Could it be Roberto Vasquez was trashing his competition? He could have given his own business a bad review to put people off the scent, but it seemed counterproductive. I stored the possibility in the back of my mind for later consideration.
I continued going through the remaining secondhand store reviews by Bob Y, flipping back and forth between the reviews and searching for websites to the stores. In the few left, none appeared to be owned by Mazie Moore.
“Those shops have such cute names,” Mom observed. “It used to be stores like that were just called Used Furniture or Thrift Store.”
“Guess it’s all about marketing these days and appearing to have better-quality merchandise.”
A search of Mazie’s name on Google did bring up several mentions of a store called Ladybug Vintage. A quick click and I was looking at a charming website for a store specializing in “gently used clothing, furniture, and gift items.” A link at the top led me to Ladybug’s locations. There were two: one in Pico Rivera and another in Inglewood, just as Buck had said. There was also an announcement of a third store coming soon to the Baldwin Hills district of Los Angeles.
Somehow Bob Y had missed Ladybug Vintage, or maybe he just hadn’t gotten there yet. I looked again at his review page.
“Why do you keep going back to that guy’s nasty reviews?” Mom asked with keen interest.
“I want to see how long ago his reviews were posted.”
“You mean it might be a clue?” She leaned closer.
I laughed silently at her enthusiasm. “Who knows, but I want to see if his attacks on these stores are recent or a phase he was going through.”
Going down the list of reviews, both for the stores and the food trucks, it looked like Bob Y had only recently started reviewing. All were posted within the past four months. Not a single review of any kind was posted prior to that, not even for a food truck.
Mom noticed that, too. “Does that mean he’s a fake?”
“Not necessarily. He could have just recently started posting reviews, but it does seem suspicious that he only posts reviews for secondhand stores and food trucks.”
“We always called those ‘roach coaches.’ You saw them around factories and places like that where there was no place for employees to go for lunch. They weren’t exactly known for food that was good, just quick and filling.”
“They’re big business now, Mom. And they serve up not only good food but great food.”
Looking at the list of reviewed food trucks, I saw that Bob Y had left a couple for one food truck in particular, adding a running commentary to his initial review. It looked like he frequented this truck often. It was called Comfort Foodies. The menu on the website for Comfort Foodies showed a mixture of traditional comfort food with a trendy spin. The truck was operated by a family—a mother and her two sons—and served up fancy burgers and sandwiches along with new twists on comfort food, like fried mac and cheese, a meatloaf and mashed potato wrap, apple pie ice cream, and something called Not Your Mother’s Chicken Soup.
I jabbed my finger at the computer screen. “I saw this truck featured on a local news show not too long ago. It’s a very tragic story.”
Mom looked at me with interest. “What happened?”
I combed my memory for the details. “The mom and dad were involved in a hit-and-run accident several years ago. The father died, and the mother was badly injured and unable to work. Shortly after, the family was evicted from their home and scraped by with only part-time jobs held by the two boys, who were in their teens at the time. The eldest quit school to support his mother and younger brother.”
Mom shook her head with sadness. “That is tragic, but it looks like they recovered.”
“That’s what the news story was about. Seems a local anonymous businessman heard about what had happened and came to their aid. He gave them a place to live and helped out so both boys could finish high school. The mother had always wanted to open a restaurant, so when she was well enough, he gave her the money to start one. She decided on the food truck business since that was starting to grow. Now Comfort Foodies pays it forward by going down to skid row in Los Angeles once a month and feeding the homeless lunch from their truck.”
“What a lovely story.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “And from these reviews, it seems Bob Y loves Comfort Foodies and frequents it.”
I toggled over to the Comfort Foodies website and checked to see their schedule. Today they would be at two places. They were going to a food truck rally tonight at a Home Depot parking lot up near LAX, but from eleven to three they would be at a farmers’ market in Manhattan Beach. I checked the time on my computer screen. It was almost twelve thirty and time for lunch. If traffic on the 405 Freeway cooperated, it would take about thirty to forty minutes to get there. Timing would be everything. If they were busy with a lunch crowd they may not have time to talk to anyone, but if I got there around one thirty or even a little after, there might be time to chat with someone from Comfort Foodies and see if they had any idea who Bob Y might be.
“Mom, I may have to go out for a bit.” After sending more items to the printer, I closed my laptop and got up from the table. “Yo
u okay here by yourself? I think there’s still some chicken salad for your lunch. Or you could heat up some soup.”
“You don’t fool me, missy.”
That again. I sighed.
Mom shook an index finger at me. It was the second time in two days she’d said those words and made that gesture. If she did it again, I was going to bite her scrawny finger off at the first joint.
“You’re going to find that truck, aren’t you?” The finger stayed pointed, and I noticed it was shaking a tiny bit.
“I just need to run an errand.” I did some quick calculations in my head. “I’ll probably be gone two hours. Maybe only ninety minutes.”
“You never were a good liar, Odelia. Must have gotten that from your father.”
Fehring had also said I wasn’t a good liar. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or pat myself on the back.
“Dad was not a liar.” I lightly stomped my right foot on the concrete of our patio to make my point. I felt like a kid defending my father to a bully on a playground.
“My point exactly. If you’d taken after me, you’d be good at it.”
Speechless, I stood rooted to the ground, trying to sort out what Mom had just said. Was she condemning me because I was a bad liar, like I’d brought home a C instead of an A in duplicity on a report card? Or was she slyly acknowledging that she had not exactly been up front with the people in her life?
The real question was, when in the hell was Clark coming to get Mom and take her home?
The accusing finger was lowered, and my mother got up from her chair. “If you leave this house, you’re taking me with you,” she insisted. Next to her, Seamus yawned and stretched, then settled back down to nap again. He wasn’t asking to go anywhere.
“It will be boring, Mom. You’d enjoy yourself more if you stayed here and read or watched TV.”
“I can do plenty of that when I get back to New Hampshire.”
Traffic on the 405 moved along at a nice pace. We weren’t able to go the posted speed limit but neither were we crawling, which was often the case during the week. Next to me, Mom looked out the window, taking in everything with eagle eyes as if she were on a life-or-death mission. No matter how much I’d tried to convince her, there was no way she was going to let me leave her behind.
Fine. Arguing with her was wasting valuable time.
“Just let me run to the ladies’ room first,” she’d said. She must have caught on that I was contemplating sneaking out and leaving her behind because as she started to go down the hall to the guest bath, she turned to me and said with a point of the annoying index finger, “And don’t you even think about running off without me. If you do, I’ll simply call a cab and follow you.”
“Mom, Manhattan Beach isn’t around the corner. A cab would be exorbitant.”
“You’re forgetting, Odelia, I’m loaded, and although I’m not as spry as I used to be, I’m still quite capable of doing things on my own. I also have my iPad with me. I’m sure I’d be able to find all the information I need on it.” With those words, my mother gave me a sharp nod to signal the end of the conversation. That settled, she shuffled down the hall.
Once Mom was out of earshot, I had a brief and quiet tantrum laced with swearing. I knew I was beat. Thanks to her first husband, who was also her third husband and Clark’s father, Mom was very well off. But this was the first I’d heard about the iPad. She’d been here a week and I’d not once seen it. I was learning, albeit at a slow pace, that it was easy to underestimate my mother. Her corkscrew gray hair, sensible shoes, and shuffling frame belied a tough and conniving cookie, just like she’d been when she was younger. My mother wasn’t a doddering old fool whom Boy Scouts needed to help across the street. She was the sort of geriatric who ended up in the news for beating an alleged assailant with her cane.
I glanced over at Mom, then put my eyes back on the road. “So when did you get the iPad? Did Clark buy it for you?” The question was a combination of small talk and curiosity.
“I bought it myself,” she answered with an irritated sniff in the air. “When Lorraine, Clark’s youngest, dropped by to visit this past summer, she had one with her. That old hand-me-down laptop I had from the house was about to die, so I asked Lorraine if she’d take me to the store so I could get one like hers.” Mom turned to me. “We had a grand time, Lorraine and I. Before she left, she set it up and showed me how to use it.”
“Don’t they have computers at the retirement home for you to use?”
“Yes, a few, but there’s always some old fart on them and our time is limited. This way I have my own.”
“If I’d known you needed a new computer, we would have gotten you something like that instead of the Kindle.”
“I like that Kindle just fine. It’s smaller and easier to take with me when I just want to read.”
This time I gave her a smile. “Between the iPad, Kindle, and that new phone Clark got you, you’re one hi-tech granny.”
Mom squeaked out a chuckle, something she didn’t do very often. “That’s almost word-for-word what Lorraine called me.”
I checked the car’s GPS to see how soon before we arrived at our destination.
“You’re kind of hi-tech yourself,” Mom noted, “with this fancy new car and all.”
In March, my old car had been destroyed by an out-of-control van with a crazed driver behind the wheel. We’d replaced it with a new one—a hybrid—decked out with the latest in gizmos. The thing not only told me how to get someplace, but it synced with my phone and music and had a rear-view camera. It basically did everything but drive for me.
We rode along another mile in silence before Mom said, “Why are you so interested in this Bob Y? Shouldn’t we be visiting those secondhand stores?”
We?
I swallowed a terse knee-jerk retort and replaced it with a nicer reply. “It’s just a gut feeling. Bob Y might be a lead the police don’t have. I’m sure they’ll be all over the stores owned by the witnesses. Their first thought would be that a competitor might have killed Tom.”
“I’d think Ina would be their first suspect.”
“True—then they would be thinking about the competitors.”
“What about the folks who owned that locker? Someone had to get Tom in there, and it didn’t look like it had been broken into, did it?”
I tried not to show surprise at my mother’s thinking. She was really looking at this from all angles with surprising clarity. Her body might be slowing down, but her mind was sharp as a tack.
“I overheard Kim Pawlak telling one of the officers that the storage unit had been rented to some people who’d left the area to find work. They ended up in North Carolina. They’d stopped paying for the locker and said they didn’t care about the stuff in it.” I put on my left turn signal and changed lanes. “I’m sure the police will give them a call.”
“Whoever killed Tom had to know that locker was up for bidding.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too, Mom. But I don’t think the lockers are known to anyone except for the storage company employees until the actual auction.”
Mom and I glanced at each other at the same time.
“That Red guy and Kim,” my mother noted.
“And others,” I pointed out. “Elite Storage is a big place, and I’m sure they have many employees. I’m sure the police are going over all that with a fine-toothed comb.”
“So you’re hoping this reviewer guy will give you some information the police don’t have?”
“You never know. If Tom was killed by a competitor and this Bob Y has been in all those stores, he might be able to supply us with some telltale gossip that could shed some light on who and why.”
“Like who got along with who and who didn’t play well with others?”
“Something like that.” I saw our exit was coming up and slowly moved toward the right-hand lane to take the ramp. “And if it’s a bust, at least we’ll get a nice lunch out of it.”
eight
Our timing appeared to be perfect. By the time Mom and I reached the farmers’ market in Manhattan Beach, it looked like the bulk of their business was winding down. We found parking with no problem.
For two to three blocks, booths lined the street like a makeshift shanty town of canvas and tables. Some were fancy, some basic, with most having overhead covering to guard against the sun. We made our way down the middle first, passing booths offering clothing and crafts. Next came a booth selling orchids and other live plants, and two offering up baked goods. Finally came the organic fruits and vegetables. The booths selling sandwiches and fresh cooked food were situated just past the produce booths. Glancing down the street, which had been closed off to traffic for the event, I saw two food trucks parked at the far end. One was Comfort Foodies; the other was a truck specializing in Asian food that I remembered from the reviews. A few plastic tables and chairs were set up in front of them for folks to sit and eat.
I backtracked a bit, stopping at a fruit stand to check out some pears. Grabbing a plastic bag, I dropped a few into it and handed them to the man behind the counter to weigh. I did the same with some oranges and squash.
“You’re shopping?” Mom hissed. “Now?”
“It looks more natural than just barging up to the truck.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
I couldn’t tell if the remark was serious or sarcastic.
Once the items were purchased, Mom and I slowly made our way to Comfort Foodies. The truck was large and shiny, painted in cheerful colors in a quilt motif. Facing us were two large rectangular windows through which food was ordered and picked up. There were two customers ahead of us, but by the way the nearby trash cans were overflowing, it looked like they had done a booming business earlier. The Asian truck’s trash was equally filled.
The menu was written in colorful chalk on a blackboard. I looked it over. Mom stepped closer to the board and viewed it along with me. “See what you want, Mom?”
Secondhand Stiff (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) Page 7