by Laura Levine
In a final burst of speed, I attacked her from behind and shoved her up against a wall.
“Please don’t hurt me!” she cried.
Funny, that didn’t sound like Denise.
“Take my money!” she pleaded. “It’s in my purse.”
By now a crowd had formed around us. The young mother with the twins, I saw, had stopped to take in the show.
“What’s going on here?” asked a concerned bizguy, shooting me a dirty look.
My captive turned to face me, and with a sinking sensation, I saw that it wasn’t Denise. Not even close. She was a fresh-scrubbed gal with freckles and rosy cheeks (no doubt a fear-induced cardiac flush).
Yes, folks. The “killer” I’d just chased across the parking garage and up two flights of escalators was a perfectly innocent stranger.
Ten minutes later I was in the bunker-like offices of the Century City police begging my innocent victim not to press charges.
How could I have been so stupid? Chasing her down just because she was a skinny woman in a designer suit. For crying out loud, this was L.A., where nine out of ten women are skinny and in designer suits. And why hadn’t it occurred to me before I went sprinting off on my wild goose chase that Denise would have had no way of knowing where I’d parked my car?
I’d thought Daddy was nuts, bringing home the wrong guy from the airport. Daddy didn’t hold a candle to me in the Stupid Mistakes department. I was a disgrace to private eyes everywhere. And freelance writers, too.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to my victim. “You see, I got this flyer on my windshield, and the T in DIET had been crossed out so all it said was DIE and I thought you were the killer.”
The cop who’d driven us over on his golf cart looked up from the notes he was taking and shot me a piercing look.
“What killer?”
Oh, crud. The last thing I wanted to do was tell him I was investigating Patti’s murder. Not after having just attacked an innocent citizen. Surely that would lead to all sorts of pesky questions about whether I was licensed to be a P.I., which of course I wasn’t.
“Did I say the killer? I meant a killer. I just thought she was a dangerous person and wanted to make a citizen’s arrest.”
“Talk about overreacting,” my victim piped up. “I got the same flyer on my windshield, and I didn’t go attacking anyone.”
She took out a flyer from her purse, and sure enough, the T in her DIET had been crossed out, too.
At that moment, the door opened and a couple of security guards came in, hauling two sullen teenage boys.
“These kids were hired to put diet flyers under windshields,” said one of the guards, “and they thought it would be funny to cross off the T, so it said DIE. Scared a lot of people.”
“I know all about it,” the desk cop said, rolling his eyes. “Just let me finish up with these women and I’ll get to the kids.”
Finally, after I promised to write free resumes for all three of my victim’s children, she agreed not to press charges.
The cop let me go with a stern warning about overreacting and a not-so-subtle suggestion that I seek psychiatric counseling.
I was just about to leave his office when I looked up at a TV mounted on the wall. There on the news was a picture of Julio, the Devanes’ gardener.
I raced over and turned up the sound just in time to hear the anchorman saying, “—found dead in a ravine, his body riddled with bullets.”
Needless to say, I was glued to the news that night. Normally the death of a gardener wouldn’t rate much coverage, but because of Julio’s connection with the Devanes, he was granted his fifteen minutes of posthumous fame.
All the local stations ran with the story. According to their accounts, Julio had been dead for at least two days, killed in what the police were saying was most likely a drug deal gone bad.
A drug deal? I didn’t think so.
I’m no expert on drugs (unless you consider Chunky Monkey a narcotic), but I had a hard time picturing timid little Julio in a dark alley forking over hard cash for white powder.
The way I figured it, Julio was offed because he’d seen the killer. Somehow she found out that there’d been an eyewitness to her crime and tracked poor Julio down. Even though he hadn’t been able to give a clear description of her, she was taking no chances that someday he might be able to identify her.
Zapping from one newscast to another, I saw that one enterprising station had sent out a news team to the East L.A. apartment building where Julio had rented a room. The reporter tried to talk to the manager of the building, a tank of a woman in a floral muumuu and a headful of rollers. But—in a moment I was certain would never appear on the reporter’s demo reel—she chased him away with a broom and a string of bleeped-out curses.
A formidable woman, indeed. I wouldn’t want to be late with my rent in her building.
But maybe she’d seen or heard something that would lead me to Julio’s killer. Maybe she’d even seen the murderer. I needed to talk to her and pump her for information.
As the frightened reporter scurried to the safety of his news van, I saw a sign on the apartment lawn:
LUCILLE ARMS. VACANCY
Lucille could have been the name of the woman in the muumuu, of course. And the building could have been named for her pendulous arms. But I didn’t think so. A quick trip to Mapquest, and I discovered a street in East L.A. called Lucille Avenue. Like so many apartments, Lucille Arms was probably named after the street it was built on.
It shouldn’t be too hard to drive along Lucille Avenue until I spotted it.
Now all I had to do was think of a way to approach the manager without getting attacked with a broomstick.
Then I remembered the VACANCY sign on the lawn. And I knew exactly how to get an audience with the muumuu-clad manager.
First thing tomorrow morning, I would go apartment hunting.
Chapter 21
Lucille Avenue was a lot longer than it looked on the map. When I passed my third bodega it was clear I was in a predominantly Hispanic section of town.
Crawling along at fifteen miles an hour, scanning the streets for Lucille Arms, I stood out like a gringo sore thumb. Drivers behind me honked impatiently, but I couldn’t risk going faster or I’d miss Julio’s apartment.
At last I found it—a squat two-story building with security bars on the windows and a patch of weeds masquerading as a front lawn.
I parked my ancient Corolla (which was right at home on the streets of East L.A.) and headed up the front path.
Reassured to see the VACANCY sign still up, I rang the manager’s buzzer. A blast of static came on the line, and then a hoarse “Yeah? Whaddaya want?”
“I’m here about your rental unit.”
“Hold on. I’ll be right out.”
I peered past the security bars on the glass door into a musty hallway with a bare overhead lightbulb. The same woman I’d seen on the news came out of one of the apartments, carrying her trusty broom. She waddled to the front door in the muumuu she’d worn yesterday, her hair still in rollers. Why did I get the feeling those rollers had been in her hair since 1987?
She opened the door warily, a cigarette dangling from her lips. With beady raisin eyes and a most unfortunate mustache, she looked a lot scarier in person than she had on TV. And that was pretty darn scary.
“You the one who buzzed me?”
I nodded mutely.
“Why the hell do you want to rent a place here? It’s all Mexicans.”
“That’s okay with me. I think Hispanic people are just fine.”
“Well bully for you,” she sneered. “Somebody get this girl a humanitarian award.”
Mexicans, I liked. Her, I didn’t.
Her beady eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“You’re not a reporter, are you?”
“No,” I blinked, all innocence. “I’m not a reporter.”
“You a hooker?”
“Only on my lunch hour.”
“I still don’t understand why you want to live here,” she said. “You’d be the only white person here except for me.”
“Well, I work nearby and I thought the rent would be reasonable.”
“It’s three hundred a month. That reasonable enough?”
“Sounds great!”
“No pets, no loud noise, no smoking.” This uttered with an inch of ash dangling from her cigarette.
“Fine with me,” I chirped.
“You sure you’re not a reporter?”
“No, I’m not a reporter.”
She peered out behind me and, convinced that there were no cameramen lurking in the bushes, she motioned me inside.
I followed her down a dank hallway that smelled of onion and mildew.
“It sure would be nice to have another white person living here,” she said, as she waddled along with her broom. “I’m tired of habla-ing espanol all the time. We could hang out together. Knock back a few beers and watch Friday Night Smack-down on my plasma TV.”
What an appalling prospect.
“Well, here it is,” she said, opening one of the doors.
We stepped into a barren cell of a room. Floral wallpaper that had been picked out sometime in the Truman administration was peeling from the walls. One tiny barred window looked out onto a scenic view of the neighbor’s trash cans.
“Comes completely furnished,” she said, gesturing to a sagging twin bed and a scarred wooden dresser. “Here’s your kitchen.” She waved to a hot plate sitting atop a mini-fridge. And here’s the bathroom.”
I peeked into a closet-sized room so moldy, I was surprised moss wasn’t growing on the faucets.
“So what do you think?” she asked, giving me her impersonation of a smile. “Wanna take it? First and last months’ rent due in advance. In cash.”
Whoa. This was going way too fast. I had to change the subject or I’d wind up with a five-year lease on my hands.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, as if recognizing her for the first time. “Didn’t I see you on the news last night? In the story about the gardener who was killed?”
“That was me all right,” she muttered. “Damn reporters, ringing my bell in the middle of Judge Judy. Made me miss the verdict.”
“Gee,” I gushed. “You’re so much more attractive in person!”
Why I wasn’t struck down by lightning for that whopper I’ll never know.
“Oh?” she preened, flashing me a tobacco-stained grin. “So you know about Julio, the guy who got mowed down?”
“Yes, I heard all about it. Was this his room?”
“Yeah,” she nodded ruefully.
I casually opened one of his dresser drawers, hoping maybe they hadn’t yet been cleaned out. But no luck. Totally empty.
“You don’t mind renting a place whose previous tenant took a round of bullets in the gut, do you?” she asked. “Some people are queasy that way.”
“As long as it didn’t happen in the room.”
“No, it didn’t happen here,” she assured me. “Those bloodstains on the wall are from a previous tenant. Julio was shot in a ravine miles from here.”
“Poor guy,” I tsked. “I heard on the news it was a drug deal gone bad.”
“Who knows? He sure didn’t seem like a druggie to me. Sober as a judge every time I saw him. Paid his rent on time. That’s all I cared about.”
“Did any women ever come to visit him at his apartment?”
“Why the hell do you need to know that?” she barked, her suspicions aroused.
I put on my tap shoes and did some fast dancing.
“Well,” I vamped, “the last place I rented, the former tenant had a bunch of ex-girlfriends who were always banging on my door in the middle of the night. And I don’t want to live through that again.”
Thank heavens, she bought it.
“Nah. No women ever showed up here. Julio had a wife and family back in Mexico. Sent them money every month. No women, no music, no nothing. Guy was quiet as a mouse. Hardly ever talked to him. Except the day he gave his thirty days’ notice. Then he was real chatty.”
“He was planning to move?”
“Yeah, he must’ve come into some money. Said he was going to be on easy street.”
“He came into some money?” Very interesting indeed. “Do you know from who?”
Now her eyes got all beady again.
“Why are you asking so many questions? You sure you’re not a reporter?”
“No, I swear I’m not a reporter. I’m just inquisitive, I guess.”
“Yeah, well. I’m inquisitive, too. I wanna know if you want the damn apartment or not.”
“Um. Sure. You don’t mind pets, do you? My cat is very quiet, and the vet says her incontinence should clear up any day now.”
“You got a cat?” Her double chin quivered in irritation.
“Yes, didn’t I mention that? That’s why I’m moving. My current landlord is so heartless. Just because of a few ‘accidents’ on the carpeting. You’d think nobody ever had a cat with diarrhea before.”
“What are you wasting my time for? I already told you—no pets.”
“Did you? Gosh, I was so excited about seeing the room, I guess I didn’t hear.”
“Beat it, girlie. I’m missing The Price Is Right.”
And before she could reach for her broom, I was gone.
“So what do you think, Prozac? Where was Julio getting that money?”
I was stretched out in my bathtub, up to my neck in strawberry-scented bubbles, mulling over my meeting with Julio’s Godzilla apartment manager.
Prozac gazed down at me from her perch atop the toilet tank.
“Julio told Ms. Muumuu that he was going to be on easy street, that he was coming into a lot of money. So where was it coming from?”
Prozac thought this over and then, as she so often does when faced with a thorny problem, began licking her privates.
It looked like I was flying solo on this one.
Where, I asked myself, would a guy like Julio get a lot of dough?
The first answer that sprang to mind was blackmail.
Maybe, contrary to what he told the cops, Julio got a good look at the woman who was out on the balcony. Maybe he knew exactly who she was and had been blackmailing her, threatening to expose her unless she coughed up some dough. And maybe, instead, she coughed up a round of bullets.
I’d always thought it was odd that Julio wasn’t able to give a clearer description of the killer. Surely he would’ve been able to identify something about her.
But who was he blackmailing?
It had to be someone with money. Which let Normalynne and Cheryl off the hook. Neither of them could finance a life on welfare, let alone easy street.
My leading suspect was Denise. From the looks of her office, she was rolling in big bucks. If indeed she’d knocked off Patti to keep her from blabbing about her topless cheerleader past, surely she’d have no compunctions about blowing poor Julio away. Denise was a tough cookie; quite capable, I thought, of firing off a round of bullets between court cases.
And of course there was Eleanor Potter. Although not megarich, the Potters certainly had money. Maybe Eleanor didn’t go to Patti’s room to look for sex tapes, but to sabotage the balcony with her husband’s power drill. And then, when Julio threatened to expose her, she’d packed a pistol in her sweatsuit and used him for target practice.
And what about Veronica? I’d bet she was making a pretty penny from her catering biz. True, I had a hard time believing that someone who could cook such heavenly empanadas was capable of murder, but I had to leave my taste buds out of this equation and look at things objectively. It was possible she knocked off both Patti and Julio to keep things cooking at Hubbard’s Cupboard.
I was lying there in the tub, thinking about my suspects—and not incidentally about Ve
ronica’s empanadas—when the phone rang. I groaned as I heard Walter Barnhardt’s nasal whine on my answering machine, reminding me that tonight was the night of the Hermosa High reunion and that I was to meet him at 8 o’clock in front of the buffet table, in case I’d forgotten.
No I hadn’t forgotten. Mainly because this was his seventh message in three days. I didn’t tell you about the others because I wanted to spare you the aggravation. (Not many authors are this considerate; just remember that the next time you’re in the bookstore wondering what to get.)
With a weary sigh, I hauled myself from the tub and trudged to the bedroom to get dressed.
I reached into my closet for the black cocktail dress I’d worn to Patti’s wedding. I’d been meaning to take it to the cleaners but had never gotten around to it. It still smelled faintly of the flaming rum punch that sloshed on it when I’d set fire to Walter’s toupee.
Oh, well. It would have to do.
As I proceeded to rummage in my dresser drawer for a pair of unclawed panty hose, my mind drifted to thoughts of the night ahead.
I’d always harbored a secret fantasy of showing up at a reunion one day, cool and sophisticated and fifteen pounds thinner, my hair miraculously straight, my thighs miraculously toned, a hunky yet sensitive escort at my side. My fellow classmates would gaze at me, awed, as I sailed into the room, laughing gaily, a far cry from the goofy gal they’d last seen crash landing on Principal Seawright’s lap.
And now, here I was—about to show up with Walter Barnhardt and his mail order toupee.
But I had to remind myself why I’d agreed to go to the reunion with Walter in the first place. It was the least I could do after all the pain I’d caused him in high school. Was I so shallow that I cared what a bunch of people I hadn’t seen in nearly two decades thought of me? Was I still stuck in that adolescent need to impress my peers?
Well, actually, yes.
But it was high time I got over it. I’d go to the reunion and show Walter a good time. I owed him that much.
It was a new, nobler me that fished out a pair of only marginally clawed panty hose from my dresser drawer and finished dressing. I’d just spritzed my final spritz of cologne and was checking myself out in the mirror when I heard a knock at my front door.