Death of the Office Witch
Page 20
They’d been Rollerblading on the sidewalks in the neighboring Naples area of Long Beach, to the south. A touristy community with high prices, quaint shopping, and signs exhibiting skateboards and Rollerblades in circles, graced with blood red diagonal slashes, placed high on poles cemented into every other seam of the sidewalks.
“Grandma’s check arrived. Did it cover knee pads?”
“No, but I borrowed Lori’s.”
“Oh great, and Lori fell and sidewalk-burned her knees, and now what’s-her-name is going to sue me, right?”
“If you’re speaking of my mother,” Lori scooted out of the booth and began to gather up the dirty dishes, “her name is Beverly. I always thought your mom had some sensitivity, Libby. Apparently, I was wrong.”
“Well my mom has had horrible murders and things and a job to worry about and vomits blood, so how would you know?” Libby blinked and sat up. “That’s right, you saw the doctor this morning. Do you have cancer?”
Charlie was curled up on the couch watching a tow truck on TV haul Mary Ann Leffler’s rental car out of Rizzi Reservoir, when Maggie breezed in with a caramel custard thing and sympathy.
“Do you know the girls are playing gazelle out in the courtyard in the dark? Liable to break something.”
“Practicing for cheerleader tryouts next week. But that’s nothing. Cops picked them up Rollerblading in Naples this afternoon, one pair of knee pads between them. They get to explain it all to a judge on Monday.”
“Yeah, I know.” Maggie had met them at the gate when the police car brought them home. “They’ll probably just get a light fine and some community service for a first offense. Picking up trash along the beach path or something. What’d the doctor have to say?”
Charlie explained it all again and grazed channels to find more news of Mary Ann.
There was the famous author’s husband—tall, gray, weary—flanked protectively by a grown son and daughter. Nice family—handsome, decimated, shocked. They were leaving the grove through the gate with the “No Trespassing” signs. The family refused comment. The police refused to rule out foul play or to speculate on why Mary Ann’s “friends” had brought her from Rizzi Reservoir to the grove.
“But the author, whose books were filled with the bizarre and often included droll depictions of modern witchcraft, is rumored to have been a practicing member of the psuedoreligion known as Wicca. And neighbors say that for years there have been strange ‘goings on’ going on at night in this orange grove behind a condominium complex just off Happy Valley Canyon Road.”
“How could such a normal, nice-looking family have a witch for a mother?” Maggie said, bringing back a spoon from the kitchen for Charlie to eat her flan with.
“Oh, I don’t know, I did. Libby’s sure she does.”
“Come on. Edwina just worries about you. Like you worry about Libby. Comes with the territory. And finish that, damn it. You know how long it takes to make those things?”
“It’s wonderful, but I ate too many beanie wienies. I promise I’ll eat the rest for breakfast. We’re out of Cheerios, anyway. Thank God.” Charlie flicked off the TV and took the custard cup to the refrigerator. “I’m supposed to go out for a walk about now to control my stress, but I think I’ll go to bed and try to catch up on the night I lost last night. I need to get to work early.” She explained about returning the tapes. “If I don’t I’m liable to end up seeing a judge on Monday, too.”
“Oh Charlie, you’re not really trying to solve murders? You’re a sick woman. And a mother. And you don’t know how. Why did I used to think you were so sensible?” But Maggie Stutzman agreed to take the girls to school in the morning on her way to work. Charlie would have had Libby walk, but she knew Lori’s mother would come unhinged. Beverly Schantz insisted the neighborhoods around the school were too dangerous for young innocents. Charlie figured there wasn’t any danger out there that couldn’t walk right onto the school grounds with them. As long as they avoided Recreation Park, where the Vietnamese gangs held sway, they weren’t in any more danger in that neighborhood than anywhere.
Charlie was up and on the road so early the next morning she beat the rush hour traffic. But the morning fog didn’t end at the ramp onto the 405 as usual, and it was cold and clammy, and all she could think of was a cup of hot coffee. Still, she made it to the office before anyone else and, wiping them off with a rag she’d brought for the purpose, she replaced the tapes under Gloria’s desk, then wiped off everything she thought she might have touched in the area. She searched through Irma Vance’s desk until she found a list of addresses and used the rag again. Then, like a true criminal, she left the scene of the crime and threw the rag up into the dumpster on the other side of the end wall on the alley to destroy all evidence of what she’d done.
“I’m getting sick of this,” a voice raged from the dumpster, and Charlie’s rag came flying out again, and so did a plastic bag filled with trash and then a whole flotilla of loose paper and an empty vodka bottle and a constant stream of profanity. Charlie didn’t stick around to watch the airborne garbage hurtle through what a commentator on the Toyota’s radio had just referred to as the morning phlegm of the Pacific. She left the incriminating rag with all the rest of the jetsam and ran for her car.
Traffic was picking up and the fog getting patchy as she turned off the Hollywood Freeway into North Hollywood. She soon pulled over and got out her Thomas Guide to find she was only a few blocks away from Maurice’s but on the wrong side of Riverside Drive.
Odd to realize now that she had never visited the homes of any of her cohorts at the agency except for Richard Morse’s. Maurice, Larry, Richard, and Luella had come down to a party of Charlie’s in Long Beach.
When she located the house, she was stunned at its modesty. She would have expected Maurice to live in a fifties version of a swinging bachelor’s pad in which to entertain his lady friends. But she could see why he chose to visit this Medora woman on his vacation time instead of inviting her over for the week. The house was smaller than Charlie’s, and shabby. A huge old car, all motor and trunk, sat on concrete blocks in the front yard across the street. The tiny lawn next to his was surrounded by a massive chain-link fence enclosing a medium-sized, tired-looking dog.
The houses were all small stuccos with flat roofs and patches and faded paint and metal window frames. Charlie checked Irma’s list again. She drove around to the alley behind to get a look at the car in the carport. It was Maurice’s car, and next to it he sat in a rusting metal lawn chair like you saw only in movies or at garage sales. It had a rug over it to protect his pants. He wore a black shirt with a purple tie and light lavender sport coat. He was dressed for work. And drinking a cup of coffee. And staring at Charlie.
She pulled in behind his gleaming last year’s deluxe Oldsmobile. She didn’t like this detecting, prying. Maurice Lavender was one of her favorite people in the world. He may be a lech, but he was comfortable. Like mashed potatoes and meat loaf.
He came to open her door. “Charlie, what are you doing here? Are you lost?” They didn’t make men like Maurice anymore. He was like the Cary Grant of talent agents. He drew her out of the Toyota and to the foot-wide concrete sidewalk leading from his back door to his carport. Talk about a no-frills house. “Here sit, I’ll bring out another chair. Can I get you a cup of coffee, sweetie? One cup won’t hurt. And it’s not that strong. I’ll be right back. I’d invite you in, but we bachelors are terrible housekeepers.”
Charlie sat in Maurice’s chair, the rug still warm from his body, and stared at the chilly, greasy, gloomy morning. In a couple of hours it might well be hot and glaring, but how bad could your house be to make you want to have your morning coffee outside this early on this kind of morning?
Still, when the thick mug came with the rich, fragrant black liquid, the morning brightened even in this dismal place. She felt like a rat as Maurice settled in a chrome and plastic kitchen chair that had to be authentic old and cheap—not a costly rep
roduction from one of the shops on Robertson Boulevard.
“What’s the matter, sweetie? Is it the coffee?” His voice was the soft, stroking kind. Unlike Irma Vance and Dr. Evan Podhurst, Maurice and his marvelous voice made you feel gifted and desirable.
“Oh no, it’s wonderful. I’ve been craving it since visiting your … our Dr. Williams yesterday.” And so of course she had to explain, one more time, what the good doctor had said and planned to do. “But that’s not what I’m upset about. Maurice, I have to know.”
“Yes?” He leaned forward with an expression that said her problem was the only one in the world worth considering all morning. “You can tell old Maurice. Anything.”
Why do you live this way? “Maurice, who is Medora, and why didn’t you go to Cancun like you said you did?”
Maurice guided Charlie firmly down the hall of Our Lady of the Only Way Nursing Home not three blocks from his tiny patched stucco. He’d walked her here through back alleys, saying it was too close to drive. Every time she tried to talk, he waved a hand at her and increased the pace. Once inside, the odor of institution breakfast and morning bedpans mingled with the cheery voices of nuns and nurses and aides and with the morning phlegm of the ill and aging. And the drone of generic morning television shows at every door they passed.
Maurice swung Charlie into a doorway and startled an aide eating off a tray and watching the television screen behind a slumped form in a wheelchair. Maurice grabbed the tray from the man, whose thinning hair was caught in a greasy ponytail at the back of his neck. His droopy mustache had pieces of scrambled egg in it. “Well, she never eats it. Just goes to waste.”
“Another tray—and now, if you please. And she prefers toast and tea to eggs, and I want it back here fast and prepared right, or I’ll have your job, bucky.”
Charlie was impressed. The guy was out of there in seconds. The woman in the wheelchair hadn’t stirred.
“You have to watch them,” Maurice said, “drop in when they least expect it. I was here last night and she was lying in a lake of urine. They didn’t expect me.”
“Maurice, I—”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced you, have I, sweetie?” He swung the wheelchair and it’s occupant around with a flourish. “Charlie, I would like you to meet Medora Lavender. Mother, this is Charlie Greene.”
Medora gummed the toast Maurice dunked in the tea then slurped the tea from a cup he held to her lips, her hands curled into claws in her lap as if the fingers could no longer part. Her eyes glanced from Maurice to Charlie as if she didn’t know either one of them, but when he wiped her chin and stood, bending to touch her forehead lightly with his lips, she closed her eyes and smiled, placing a crippled hand over his. Charlie almost choked.
“Can you find your way back to your car, Charlie? I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak to the sisters again. It’s hard to find caring, capable people who can afford to work for the little they can pay. Sometimes the shiftless and ignorant are all that’s out there. I’ll see you at the office, sweetie.”
Charlie just nodded and got the hell out of there. She wanted to cry so bad, everything backed up in her throat and she couldn’t.
Luella Ridgeway’s house was every bit as much of a surprise as Maurice’s, but for the opposite reason. High in the Hollywood Hills with a spectacular view of the smog. Sunny redwood decks, pool, and Jacuzzi. Luella was putting on her earrings when she answered the door. “Oh Charlie, I thought you were the cleaning lady. Come on in … is something wrong?”
“I’ve just come from Maurice’s house.” And Charlie lost it right there. It was the time of the month. It was having to go see doctors. It was being around murder. It was not being able to do the work she loved. In other words, Charlie was not the type of person who broke down this way.
Luella had Charlie on a comfortable sofa in front of the view with a box of tissues before Charlie could explain it all. The sun was out, the fog was gone. It was warm. It was like night and day from where she’d just come.
“Honey, have you eaten anything this morning?”
Don’t be so nice. I came here to ask you nasty questions. “I had flan.”
“Flan.” Luella blinked fast like Tracy, thought a moment, and shrugged. “Right. Got eggs in it, I guess.” She tried again. “So you visited Maurice … and—Maurice wouldn’t hurt you, he’s the sweetest, gentlest—”
“I know. He took me to see his mother. I feel like such a total shit.…”
“But Maurice’s mother has to have been dead for years—you don’t mean Medora? Charlie, get control of yourself. You didn’t know about Medora? No, you might not. He doesn’t advertise her much. Charlie, Medora is Maurice Lavender’s wife, not his mother.”
27
“But he called her ‘mother.’ And, Luella, she’s one of the oldest people I’ve ever seen.”
“Their daughter died years ago, college age, I think—before I ever met him. Couples of that generation often call each other what their children call them. I expect that’s what he meant by ‘mother.’”
Medora Lavender had a mysterious and hereditary wasting disease that took her daughter at a much younger age than it had even started in Medora, but the shock of the daughter’s death accelerated the process in the older woman. Several years younger than Maurice, Medora had aged mentally and physically beyond his ability to care for her and earn a living, too.
“It takes a good portion of everything he makes to keep her in that nursing home. And he’s a good agent, charismatic, he makes money. But it’s a no-win situation. It would be a blessing if she died in one way, but he’s so devoted to her, I worry about him when it happens. God, would you stop that sniveling?” Luella removed her earrings and slid off the couch. “I’m going to make us some coffee.”
Charlie couldn’t stop sniveling long enough to explain she shouldn’t have coffee. So she had some—more.
“You realize you’ve ruined your face for the day?” Luella handed Charlie a cup and blotted her cheeks with a tissue. “You see why Maurice couldn’t advertise his devotion to an all but catatonic wife? He earns their living with charm, which he’s always had in abundance. I would guess Ellen Maxwell doesn’t know about Medora, Charlie. To so many of his clients, he’s a safe, handsome escort and their agent. You know what talent’s like—who do you know better at stroking without intimidating than Maurice Lavender?”
“This is so embarrassing.” Charlie had always admired Luella, even if Luella had to share her assistant with Dorian the Jerk. “Oh my God!”
“What? Charlie, I missed getting to the office yesterday, and things are backed up and I have an early lunch meeting.”
The orthodontist bill is due today. It’s Friday. It was due yesterday. And tonight I have to go to the friggin’ yacht club. “And here I sit in your beautiful home making you late to the office, and I already made an ass of myself bothering Maurice and Medora. And I have to ask you some questions.”
“You’re investigating.” Luella sighed and leaned back against the white and gold brocade. “I saw about your Mary Ann Leffler on the news last night and worried you would. Charlie, you have absolutely no expertise in investigating crime.”
“I know that, but they won’t leave me alone. Lieutenant Dalrymple dragged me out there yesterday to view Mary Ann in the orange grove hoping I’d get a psychic revelation.”
“You’re not psychic.”
“I know that, too. But Gloria claimed I was, and now I’m in the soup. And my life and stomach will never settle down until I do something about this problem. So I decided to try to solve Gloria’s murder logically to get the Beverly Hills P.D. off my case.”
“I don’t believe this world.” Luella’s suit was a perfect-fitting olive and white plaid, over a snowy white blouse and collar—stunning against her tan. She spent time on that deck in the sun. Who wouldn’t? Bright red shoes and jewelry. “And if it looks out of control from Hollywood, what must it look like from Peoria?”
“My first husband had money, and I did well in the divorce settlement. My second husband died and left me this house and some investments. But it doesn’t make my job any less important to me, Charlie. My self-esteem is based not on what I have but on what I can do. I’m a damn good agent, and that’s how I want to be remembered. All this is wonderful, and I don’t deny it, but my work is what I get up for in the morning.”
Charlie could certainly identify with that.
“Can’t you just see me sitting here, playing bridge with the other widows? Being a pink lady at a local hospital? I want to feel important for my own working skills, not the time some organized charity would like to steal from me. I do volunteer, but it’s after work, and they don’t ask me to stuff envelopes, either.”
“Why did you go see the Tuschmans the night before the murder?”
When she was in Minnesota helping her siblings put their father in a nursing home, Luella came across one of Roger’s newsletters. “‘The Hollywood Insider,’ it was called. Claimed to have the latest news that could be found nowhere else and all the knowledge needed to break into show business.”
In it was a piece of information that he could only have come by through the agency. “I didn’t tell Gloria or even Tracy about Joe Marsdon’s coming divorce from Lorna on ‘All My Lovers,’ Charlie. That kind of privileged information would earn money from the soap tabloids, but apparently Gloria got a hold of it and just passed it on to Roger. Lance Gregory is my client, and he shouldn’t even have known about it. He told me because he was upset it could mean the end of his job.”
Lance Gregory played Joe Marsdon on the afternoon soap “All My Lovers,” and the only reason he knew about it was that he slept with a guy who also slept with the head writer.
“And Lance called you about it?”
“That must have been where Gloria picked it up. It wasn’t in writing anywhere. I thought I’d lose my client and maybe my reputation because of the Tuschmans’ little prank. They’d already used the agency name in one or more of these newsletters and got Tracy in trouble.”