“When we finish up with Oxman,” I said to her, “why don’t we put our heads together and try to find Art.” She nodded, pleased with the idea.
The GPS directed us to a small mobile home park on the city’s border with Santa Ana. The park wasn’t fancy, but neither was it run down. It was older, with single-wide mobile homes neatly parked side by side, with parking spots and tiny strips of grass between them and in front of each. The grassy areas were so small, the miniscule lawns could have been mowed with a weed whacker. Instead of grass, some of the homes had landscaped with draught- friendly shrubs or covered the area with concrete.
Almost all of the homes we passed as we wound our way through the small community displayed a variety of lawn furniture and accessories, like garden gnomes. In fact, there was a large cluster of colorful garden gnomes present at every home, like a pint-size ceramic army guarding the residents. I had a momentary flash of Gulliver being tied up by tiny Lilliputians and broke out into a slight sweat that had nothing to do with the heat of the day.
Confession: I have a phobia about garden gnomes. It’s one of the things Greg loves to tease me about, and only he and Zee know about it.
“Those things give me the creeps,” Mom said from the passenger’s side. “A few of the residents at Seaside have them, but nothing like this. This looks like a scene in a Stephen King novel. You know, right before everyone is slaughtered.” Mom continued staring, keeping watch as we passed each house with its pack of gnomes waiting for us to let our guard down.
“I once had a dream,” she said, still keeping watch, “that a bunch of garden gnomes attacked me and tied me down like those tiny people did to Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels. Damn dream nearly put me in my grave.”
What can I say? The neurotic apple didn’t fall far from the neurotic tree.
There were no sidewalks in the mobile home park, so I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road in front of our destination: a white older mobile home with dark green shutters at the windows. A silver SUV, about a decade old, was parked in the space next to the trailer with its back hatch open.
“So what do we say?” Mom asked, unbuckling her seat belt. “That we were in the neighborhood selling Girl Scout cookies and thought he might want a few boxes?”
I started to climb out of the car. “How about you follow my lead?”
“Talk about the blind leading the blind.”
There were four steps and a small landing with a thin railing leading up to the door on the side facing the SUV. At the end of the carport was a small storage shed that matched the mobile home. Inside the back of the SUV were a couple of boxes and a large suitcase.
“Looks like he’s heading somewhere,” Mom noted, “and not just for a few days.”
I nodded in agreement as I took the first few steps and rang the doorbell as soon as it was within my reach. On the ground level, Mom fidgeted with something in her handbag.
“What are you looking for?” I asked her. No one had come to the door, so I rang the bell again.
“Nothing,” Mom said, but she kept rummaging.
The main door was open, with only a screen door between us and the inside of the trailer. I stepped closer, cupped my hands around my eyes, and peered in, only able to make out a small kitchen table and behind it a tiny kitchen. I rang the bell a third time, leaving my finger in it for several heartbeats.
A man I recognized as David Oxman came to the screen door and opened it. He was dressed in a black T-shirt, well-worn jeans with rips that had nothing to do with fashion, and a nasty scowl. His stringy, shoulder-length hair was streaked with gray. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Oxman,” I began, “my name is Odelia Grey, and this is my mother, Grace Littlejohn. We called you earlier about Boaz Shankleman.”
“I didn’t want to talk to you then, and I don’t want to talk to you now, so get the hell out of here,” he snapped and slammed the screen door shut.
“It’s very important, Mr. Oxman,” I called into the house as I pressed my face against the screen again. “A matter of life and death.”
“Oh yeah,” he said returning. I stepped back just in time to avoid being hit in the face by the opening screen door. “Whose life and whose death?” The question was more of a sarcastic snarl. His face was gaunt and lined, his eyes deep set and slightly haunted. I knew that look. Dollars to donuts, Oxman had once struggled with a drinking or drug problem, maybe both. He didn’t appear to be currently engulfed by the addictions, but the yearning in his eyes signaled his daily struggles. I knew that look because my mother and brother sometimes had the same look of faraway longing in their eyes, even after all their years of sobriety.
“Um,” I began, searching around for an answer. Oxman had already said he didn’t give a damn about Shankleman, and the mention of Cydney Fox had caused him to hang up on us earlier. “My niece’s life,” I finally said. “She found Cydney Fox in Mr. Shankleman’s home and is now a suspect in her murder.”
“And that’s my granddaughter,” added Mom with emphasis. “The one who found the Fox woman.”
“I can’t help you with that,” he said.
“Wasn’t Ms. Fox your manager?” I pressed. “Don’t you care what happened to her?”
He snorted and cleared his throat. “Bo anointed Cydney our new manager. Simon and I had nothing to do with that decision. She came back into town a few months ago after being gone for years and got all chummy with Bo. Next thing we knew, Titan was out and Cydney was in.” He snorted again, then cleared his throat. I was betting he was at least a two-pack-a-day man. I could even smell stale smoke wafting off of him. “Cydney Fox couldn’t book shit. When Titan’s gigs ended, we had nothing.”
“I was a big fan of the band back in your heyday,” I told him, hoping a little fan worship would grease the wheels. “Didn’t Cydney Fox break up Acid Storm back then? Didn’t she cheat on you with Kurt Spencer-Hall?”
The top half of him disappeared in a twisty movement I’d last seen in the one and only yoga class I’d attended. When the top half rejoined the party, Oxman had a cigarette between lips and was lighting it. “Ancient history, man.”
“Or a motive,” Mom said, still clutching her handbag.
“A motive?” Oxman took a step outside onto the small landing and stared at Mom, his eyes narrowed, smoke curling out of his nose like a dragon. “Are you saying I killed Cydney, old lady?”
Mom did not back down. It wasn’t in her nature. “No, I’m just saying you might have a motive for killing her. She shows up and ruins your bookings. Didn’t she send you all to the poor house years ago?”
I was impressed. Mom had not only checked out the Marigold report, but had read the printout I had of the old breakup of the band and the financial woes that followed.
“My mother is right, Mr. Oxman,” I said. “Maybe you were looking for a little delayed revenge.”
He took a step toward me, his lit cigarette held between his fingers like a pointer. It got so close to my face, I backed off the steps, out of range. “I’m not saying that Cydney didn’t deserve some payback,” he said, “but whatever happened to her, it wasn’t me who did it.”
“Where were you the night before last?” Mom asked.
“That’s none of your business, old lady,” he snapped.
“Who are you calling old?” Mom shot back, stepping closer until she was next to me. “You can’t be that much younger than me, and at least I don’t look like an old retread on its last bit of rubber.”
He took a long drag from his butt before waving it in our direction. “Get the hell out of here, both of you,” he said as he exhaled. “I don’t have time for fatties and old ladies playing Columbo.”
“My mother is just asking the same questions the police are going to ask you,” I said to him, trying to keep my anger in check. “I’m sure they’ve linked Cydney Fox to your band and know how yo
u were treated by her back then and now. You’re going to be the first person they look for, Mr. Oxman. Not to mention you just might be a suspect in Bo Shank’s disappearance.”
“Yeah,” Mom barked. “Maybe you killed him and Ringo.”
“Listen,” he answered, barely keeping his own anger on a short leash, “I have no idea where Bo is. I haven’t seen or talked to him in a while myself—weeks at least. As for Cydney, sure, I was pissed off about what happened with her and Kurt. Who wouldn’t be? But in hindsight, it was probably a good thing for me. She was bad news then and bad news now.” He took a long drag from his cigarette. “But I’m more pissed off about the destruction of the band. I might not be living in this dump with these creepy gnomes if things hadn’t gone down like they had. But it’s all I have now. I inherited this place from my mother two years ago. We were getting steady gigs until Cydney came back and Bo made her manager without discussing it with us. I mean, we weren’t getting rich and famous, but we were able to pay our bills and play our music. Now that bitch has screwed the band over again.”
“Sounds like another motive to me,” Mom pointed out.
Oxman started for Mom, but I blocked his way. “She’s right, and it’s another question the police are going to ask, so get used to it.”
Oxman took another long drag on his smoke before dropping it on the floor of the small landing and snuffing it with the toe of his worn Nikes. With a swipe of his foot, he brushed the butt over the side to the driveway. “Since you two are so nosy, I’ll tell you where I was two nights ago. I was with Simon Tuttle. We were going over some new stuff we’ve been tinkering with—songs we want to cut on our own, without Bo.”
“Simon—that’s the other member of the band, right?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. “Didn’t he take over for Kurt Spencer-Hall?”
“Yeah. Titan had approached Bo about getting the band back together. He said nostalgia gigs were all the rage with the aging baby boomers. Kurt died of an overdose, so we needed a new bass player.” He scoffed. “Not that we wanted that asshole back, but he was one of the best guitarists we’ve ever known. Over the years we’ve had a few different guys fill the spot. Simon joined us about two years ago. Bo found him somewhere, and he’s pretty good. He’s also not happy with the way things started going a few months ago.” He glanced at the cheap heavy watch on his wrist. “Now get out of here. I got places to go.” Without even a glance at us, he went inside and shut not only the screen door, but the inside door. We’d be getting nothing else from him today.
I started back toward my car. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”
I had reached the driver’s side of the car before I realized Mom wasn’t following me. I looked over at Oxman’s home, worried that she would try to barge in on him and ask more questions, but she hadn’t. She was bent over by the back tire. She straightened, and I figured she’d dropped something, but as I watched, she walked behind the open back hatch of the SUV and bent down near the other tire. After straightening, she scurried over to me on her rubber-soled shoes while putting something back into her purse. My eyes caught on the SUV, its back end slowly going down as if someone was lowering a jack.
Holy crap! Did my mother just slash someone’s tires?
“Let’s get going, Odelia,” Mom said as she yanked open the door and lowered herself into the passenger’s seat.
“What did you—” I began to ask, but she cut me off.
“Move it, chubs,” she snapped. “We gotta get out of here before he comes back out.”
Without a word, I jumped into the driver’s seat, started the car, and took off, not even stopping to buckle up until we hit our first red light. Great. It was bad enough Mom and I were turning into some kind of hit-and-run gang, but did my street name have to be Chubs?
“Did you slash his back tires?” I asked as I finally pulled the seat belt across my torso and clicked it into place.
Mom stared out the window, watching a young woman cross in the crosswalk with a large German shepherd on the end of a leash. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
She shrugged without looking at me. “We needed to slow him down. He was obviously making a getaway. One tire wouldn’t work because he probably has a spare, but it’s going to take time for him to get both tires fixed. By then the police will catch up to him.”
“Okay,” I said slowly as I wrapped my brain around all this information. “But first, what did you use to cut the tires?”
When Mom hesitated, the acid in my stomach bubbled like a cauldron. The light changed, and I moved forward through the intersection. “Well?” I prompted. I knew a knitting needle didn’t rip through those tires, and Mom didn’t knit. If she did, Teri Thomson at Seaside would lose a good customer.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out a four- or five-inch black item shaped sort of like brass knuckles. It had rounded ends, a curved middle, and grip indents on one side.
“Holy crap!” I said, this time out loud. “Is that a switchblade knife?”
Mom quickly put it back into her purse and snapped her bag shut. “Maybe.” She went back to looking out the window.
“‘Maybe’ nothing!” I shouted. “Aren’t those illegal?”
“Maybe.”
I was about to reach over and slap the maybes right out of her. And maybe she sensed impending physical danger because Mom turned to me. “An old helpless woman like me needs protection, especially with all the scrapes we get into.”
My mother may look like a good wind could blow her over, but she was far from helpless. “Mom,” I began, trying to get my anxiety under control, “did you have that thing with you at the police station?”
“Nah,” she said, waving off my concern. “I didn’t have my purse. They didn’t give me time to go get it before they hauled us away. Besides, even if they did, I’m smart enough to know to take it out first.”
“When and where did you get that thing?” I had no idea where I was driving but kept moving down the street with the traffic flow.
“I got it after that incident with the body in your trunk,” she answered. “From an online store.” She fixed her eyes on me. “Aren’t you going to call the police and tell them that Oxman is about to take off? That seems pretty suspicious to me.”
“You’re changing the subject,” I said, gripping the steering wheel until my hands hurt.
“Just moving the conversation along, Odelia,” she said. “There are more important things going on here than a little knife.”
“Mom, we’re not supposed to be anywhere near this, remember?”
“If you aren’t getting involved, then why are we here? Why aren’t we home playing canasta?”
I couldn’t argue with that, except that I don’t play canasta. We were here to help Lorraine and to find Boaz Shankleman, although I was pretty sure Lorraine was in the clear on the murder end of things, but better safe than sorry. If Shankleman hadn’t been missing, my first thought would have been that he killed Cydney Fox and took off. But if he didn’t, how did Fox get into his house? And why was she there? Had she and Shankleman started up some sort of affair after she returned on the scene, or was she there in her capacity as the band’s new manager and stumbled upon something she shouldn’t have? There was also the possibility that Shankleman came back, did the dirty deed, and took off again. And why did Shankleman dump Titan West after he’d built up steady bookings with steady income and then put Fox in his place? From just the little bit we got from Oxman, it did seem she was nothing but trouble for the band.
“I can smell the gears in your head burning,” Mom said.
She was right; my mental wheels were turning and at a fast rate. After years of being a reluctant corpse magnet, I confess, working through these puzzles got my juices going. It was the same with Greg, and it was something we’d talked about a few times. While we didn’t care for the danger end of thin
gs, we did find it exciting to talk to people and ferret out the truth, like playing a live game of Clue. We’d become murder junkies.
Without answering, I turned into the parking lot of a grocery store, pulling into a space on its outside edge.
“Did you forget something at the store today?” Mom asked.
“No,” I said, putting the car into park. I turned the engine off, but left the AC running. “I pulled over because I need to think. I do want to find out what happened to Fox to make sure Lorraine is in the clear, and I want to find Shankleman because he’s your friend and you seem to care about him. But, Mom, did you ever think that maybe he came back to kill that woman? Maybe that light you saw two nights ago was him back home, expecting Fox. Maybe they had a spat and he killed her.”
“It was more than a spat that triggered the murder,” Mom said, looking at me, her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t see the blood. Lorraine did. She said it was everywhere.”
Fehring had said that Fox had been killed by several vicious blows to the head, and that Lorraine had vomited a few times. I knew that blood spatter had a way of decorating a scene like a Jackson Pollock wannabe. I was sorry Lorraine had to see that, but glad I didn’t.
“Bo’s a great guy,” Mom continued. “I can’t imagine him brutally murdering someone like that. And what would be his motive?”
“Oxman said that Fox had killed all their paying gigs,” I re-minded her.
“True, but I don’t think Bo had money problems,” she countered. “Unlike Oxman back there, he seems to have saved for his future. Seaside isn’t a grand place, but you do have to have good credit and a nice balance sheet to buy in and pass their resident standards.” Mom was right. I remembered all the hoops we’d had to jump through when she bought her place. Seaside was a co-op, and they wanted to make sure the residents were solvent and could take care of their own needs financially.
“I think Oxman had other problems along the way, Mom. I don’t think he’s using now, but I’d bet he was heavy into drugs and alcohol in the past. Their friend Kurt died of an overdose.”
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