Too Big to Die

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “Really?” I asked with surprise. “I mean, I know those videos are popular and some people doing them are becoming celebrities, but a business?”

  “You bet a business. A lot of those YouTubers are making a living doing those videos. The more subscribers you have, the more money you can make from sponsors and other contributions. Chris is very interested in working on the production end of his friend’s channel. It’s like filming a TV show for many of those people, complete with lighting and cameras. The big ones are not just sitting in front of a webcam talking, although some make videos with selfie sticks and the like. It just depends on your audience.”

  “Huh. Where have I been?” I asked, more to myself. Because of my job I’m used to using business technology, but a lot of the new, popular stuff was passing me by like a too-crowded bus at rush hour.

  “Getting older, sweetheart, just like me,” Greg laughed. “Not all the YouTube stars are young, but most of them are. They’ve tapped into a whole new way of getting their products, services, and themselves out there without going through traditional routes. And I say, good for them.”

  “Do you think Holly, the Human Stain, is earning a living from this?” I asked.

  Greg loaded his plate and mine onto his lap and pushed back from the table. “Who knows, but I’ll bet she’s making something with all those followers.” He rolled over to the sink and started rinsing the plates to put into the dishwasher.

  “Do you think she has other videos with you in them?” I asked as I ferried the uneaten food to the kitchen and started packing it up for the fridge.

  Greg shrugged. “I doubt it. Grace subscribes to her channel, and I think she would have noticed if I showed up in any before now, don’t you? Your mother doesn’t miss much.”

  I nodded. The bus might be passing me by, but Mom was riding it right up front. Once her granddaughter Lorraine had set her up with an iPad, there was no stopping Mom, and she eagerly explored and learned about the internet and its offerings. “Yes, that’s true. But maybe we need to look through some of them to see if Burt shows up in any others, especially the more recent ones.”

  Now it was his turn to nod. “Now that’s a very good idea.” After putting the dishes in the dishwasher, Greg dried his hands and rolled over to my laptop. “We can do it now, while we wait for Marigold.”

  I refreshed my iced tea, and this time Greg indicated he wanted one. I brought both glasses over to the table and settled in to watch a lot of videos. All that was missing was some popcorn.

  Starting with the video of the dog rescue, we watched it again, taking note that Burt was on it but not there later, after the police arrived. Greg rolled over to the counter, where he picked up a notepad and pen we kept there for messages and grocery lists. First he wrote down the date of the video showing Maurice’s rescue, followed by a couple of notes about Burt not being in the video once the police got there. I was glad Greg was doing the note taking since his handwriting was much better than mine.

  We moved backwards through the Human Stain’s video library. Between the video taken today and the one with the dog was a short piece filming a mural being created at a small public park in Westminster by a local artist. The video just before the one with the dog chronicled a peaceful march by food service workers, mostly Latinos, that moved slowly up Wilshire Boulevard. I remembered hearing about the march on the news. They were protesting low wages and lack of benefits. The way the video was shot, it looked like Holly was on the edge of it, then moved into the march itself, following the wave of humanity up the busy corridor. The audio recorded a continuous chant by the marchers. There was no sign of either Burt or Greg, though I didn’t expect to see Greg in these other videos.

  Videos weren’t posted every day, just a couple times a week, and seemed well edited, catching events of everyday life in Southern California, both political and cultural. There was a short series on the homeless in Orange and San Diego Counties, spotlighting a serious problem that people usually connect only with Los Angeles County. We scrolled backwards, viewing about a dozen videos, and found no sign of either Greg or Burt on any of them. My senses were almost dulled when something caught my eye.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Greg.

  “That?” he said, pointing at the screen. “It’s another rally or protest.”

  “Yes,” I said, pausing the video. “But pay attention to what the video is about.” I moved the slider on the video to backtrack about a minute, then hit continue.

  In silence we both watched, eyes glued to the action on the screen. I hovered the mouse over the pause button, just waiting to capture what I had seen or thought I had seen. Maybe I was seeing something that wasn’t there, desperate to find something—anything—that could be a link. “There!” I said, stopping the action. “Right there, on the stage.”

  Greg studied the screen, first without his reading glasses, then with them, finally deciding without gave him a better view. “Is that Kelton Kingston?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “In fact, I’m sure of it. The title of this video is Fighting the Rape of Local Wetlands. Remember several months ago when Kingston Industries was trying to get permits to develop some of the wetlands that had dried up in the drought?”

  “Yes, I do. It was on the news, then quieted down,” Greg said. “Did he ever get the permit? I don’t remember.”

  I shook my head. “No, he didn’t.” What I didn’t add was that Kingston had lost his bid for the permit in spite of my firm’s best efforts to obtain it for him. Most of the work had been handled in the LA office, but Steele had been fuming about it. He may seem like a money-focused capitalist on the outside, but under Steele’s Armani suits beats the heart of an environmentalist. “Before it was denied he held a press conference, trying to sell the idea to the general public to calm down the protests. Trying to explain why it would be a good thing to develop that land.”

  “So he was pissing on them and calling it rain,” Greg said with a glance my way.

  “Basically, yes.” I stabbed at the screen of my laptop. “I think this was that press conference. See the press and cameras closer to the stage, with the protesters in the back? And on the stage next to him is his wife, Marla.” The power couple stood next to each other, Marla slightly behind Kingston. Kingston was a tall, slender man with thick, dark hair and a jutting chin. Since he was pushing seventy, I was pretty sure his hair was either a dye job or a weave.

  “Yeah,” Greg said, “I can see it now that I know what I’m looking for.”

  I looked at Greg. “Maybe Holly wasn’t following you or Burt. Maybe she was following Marla Kingston.”

  Greg leaned back in his wheelchair to give the matter some thought. “But why Marla and not Kingston himself?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “And if she was following Marla on Saturday, why was she surveilling the shop today?”

  Another shrug from me.

  We scrolled through a dozen more videos and found a couple more with the Kingstons in them. Mostly it focused on Marla Kingston, but sometimes they were together at an event. All of the videos had a barely veiled political comment in the title.

  “Is she stalking the Kingstons?” I suggested.

  “I’m not sure a few videos of public personalities like this would be considered stalking,” Greg said. “I think it would depend on what else she has that she hasn’t published online. This looks more like she’s using them to make a point, like making them the poster kids for greed, which isn’t that far from the truth.”

  A notice of an incoming email popped up in the lower-right corner of the screen. I clicked over to it and saw it was from Marigold with my report on the Human Stain.

  “Okay, the report’s in,” I said to Greg as I opened the attachment to the email. “Let’s see if there’s anything worth while.”

  The report was short. Very sh
ort. The Human Stain was listed as a business with a P.O. Box in Long Beach. “Her mailing address is in Long Beach,” I pointed out. “So she can’t live too far from us, at least not in Ventura or Van Nuys. And there’s no photo. Sometimes Marigold will provide a photo.”

  “Good location to work from since she seems to cover LA, Orange, and San Diego counties in her videos,” Greg said. “Anything else?”

  “The report says it’s a business and the owner’s name is Holly West.” I sighed. I’d never seen such a short Marigold report. “If you remember, on YouTube there is a message button where you can send her a message, but at least here we have a Gmail account. No phone number, cell or otherwise.”

  “So what now?” Greg asked. “Should we send her an email and ask her what in the hell she’s doing?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Let’s run a search for Holly West in Los Angeles County.”

  “Not Long Beach?” Greg asked.

  “Just because she has a mailing address in Long Beach doesn’t mean she lives there,” I told him. “I’d prefer to cast a wider net.”

  He nodded in agreement. “See, sweetheart, you’re good at this. You could find work researching if you don’t go back to the firm.”

  I started a new search, indicating Los Angeles County as the location, and sent it off. Finished, I stretched and purged my mind about the possibility of not returning to T&T, at least for the time being. “And now we wait.”

  “That’s not the fun part,” Greg said as he went to the cupboard where we kept the animals’ food. He gave Wainwright his dinner and dished some cat kibble out for Muffin. “Come here, you little mooch,” he said to the cat. While Wainwright dug right in, the cat sauntered over to her bowl like it was beneath her. “You better hurry,” Greg told her, “or Wainwright will gobble up his and yours.”

  Years ago, before I met Greg and we adopted Muffin, I had a surly cat named Seamus. I kept kibble out for him all day and he grazed at will. Once we moved in with Wainwright and Greg, I had to feed Seamus on a schedule with the dog or put his dish on the counter. If I didn’t, the dog would devour both dishes. Seamus didn’t like being on a schedule, but it was either that or starve. He learned to eat all his breakfast and dinner when served. We were already on that schedule when Muffin came to live with us.

  While Greg was doing pet duty our doorbell rang. Wainwright stopped eating and ran for the door, barking. When he got to the door the barking turned to whining; there was someone he knew on the other side. I pulled open the door to find Dev Frye.

  “Surprise,” Dev said in his gravelly voice. He was dressed casually in a knit shirt and jeans. Dev is a really big man. Not fat but tall and solid like a brick building. I threw myself into his arms for a hug while Wainwright danced around his legs.

  “Let the man get in the door, Odelia,” Greg said, laughing. He had wheeled up to the door and was awaiting his turn to greet our friend.

  “Yes,” I said, “come on in where it’s cool.” I backed away, and Dev stepped into our home and pumped Greg’s outstretched hand with gusto. I closed the door and ushered everyone back to the dining area as I offered Dev something cool to drink. He and Greg both took a cold beer.

  “What a nice surprise,” Greg said. “Why didn’t you tell us you were going to be in town for a visit?”

  “Did Bev come with you?” I asked as I handed each man a cold brew. I went back to refresh my iced tea.

  Dev took a swig from the bottle. “Bev didn’t come with me,” he answered. “I moved back.”

  Greg and I exchanged wide-eyed looks. Beverly was a doll, but their relationship wasn’t always stable. She hated Dev being a cop and he hated not being one. After he retired from the force, he’d had a rough time finding interesting work up in Portland.

  “Okay,” Dev said, “since I can hear the big question in your silence, I’ll skip the formalities. Bev and I broke up again, but this time it’s for good. I just didn’t like living in Portland.”

  “Hey, man,” Greg said, “we’re happy to have you back, no matter what the reason, but we’re sorry about Bev.”

  “Thanks,” Dev said. “Me too.”

  “What about your house?” I asked, knowing Dev had rented out his home when he left town.

  “My renters left in June, right after school was out, so I told my daughter not to lease it again, that I was probably coming home. I got back last weekend to find she’d cleaned it and had it painted, and all my furniture that was in storage was moved back in.”

  “Sounds like she was also happy to have you back,” I said with a smile.

  “Yeah, her husband and kids too,” Dev said with a chuckle. “It’s nice to be missed.” He took another drink.

  “Are you going to try to get back into police work?” Greg asked.

  “Not really. I’m a bit long in the tooth for that, but I have some interesting options, one of which is to go into a PI partnership with a former cop from LA who has been gumshoeing it since he retired. His name’s Jeremiah Jones. We’ve been kicking around pooling our resources and putting out a shingle together. I’d cover Orange County and he’d cover Los Angeles. We’d handle big cases together.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Greg said with enthusiasm.

  “Well, nothing’s finalized yet,” Dev told us. “We’re going to meet up next week to hammer out some details and see if a partnership makes sense.” He paused. “I just came from having coffee with Andrea Fehring. I wanted to run the idea past her since she has a good feel for things like this.”

  “And what did Andrea say?” I asked. I had taken the chair in front of the laptop and kept my eye on the screen for the search on Holly West.

  “She’s all for it. She says Jeremiah’s a good man with a solid reputation, a widower like me.” He grinned. “Quirky, she said, like me. She thinks we’d make a good team.”

  “Fehring actually called you quirky?” Greg asked with a chuckle.

  “That she did.” Dev took another drink from his beer. He leveled his blue eyes at the two of us but remained silent.

  “What are your other options?” I prodded.

  “Well,” Dev began, then paused. I could tell he was weighing his words. “Well, let’s just say when I told Clark I was returning to California, a friend of his got in touch with me and offered me an opportunity.” Another pause. “Or should I say a friend of yours?” He winked at me.

  “Are you saying that Willie Proctor offered you a job?” Greg asked, his eyebrows arched high in surprise.

  As for me, my mouth dropped to my knees. Willie was a friend, yes, but he was also a felon on the run. My brother Clark, also a former cop, worked indirectly for Willie in one of his legitimate businesses that on the surface had no connection to Willie. Clark assured us that all of Willie’s businesses now were legal, even if he wasn’t. Years before Willie had embezzled money from an investment company he owned, leaving his clients high and dry and broke. He’s since paid back all the money, but he’s still a wanted man, living in the shadows. We see Willie and his wife, Sybil, from time to time, and he often comes to our aid with his interesting connections. He’s like Batman but with the feds after him.

  “The man himself called me,” Dev told us. “Said he could use someone like me in his organization. Swore it was totally on the up-and-up. Said I’d work with Clark in security.”

  “And?” I asked as the suspense made my heart flutter. In spite of my great affection for Willie, I wasn’t sure I wanted Dev working for him. I worried enough about Clark, but Clark had flirted with the dark side of legality before, when he was a cop. To my knowledge, Dev was a total straight arrow. He might be more flexible now that he didn’t have a badge, but I didn’t think he’d be as flexible with the law as Willie might need. “What did you say?” I asked.

  Dev laughed. “Calm down, Odelia. I told him I’d think about it but that plan A was going
into business with Jeremiah. Willie said to give him a call; a job would always be waiting for me.”

  “That sounds like Willie,” Greg said with a grin. “He takes care of the people he likes and respects.”

  Dev turned the bottle in his hands around several times. “Now, back to Andrea. She told me you two are up to your asses in crap again.”

  “None of this is our fault,” I said, my jaw set.

  “It never is, is it?” Dev said rather than asked.

  “Not true, sweetheart,” Greg said, correcting me. “I did break the glass on Marla Kingston’s car.”

  “But what about the dead guy at your shop, Greg?” Dev asked. “How is that fitting in?”

  “You already know about that?” I asked with surprise. Was everything instant knowledge these days?

  “Andrea told me about both,” Dev answered. When we remained silent, Dev added, “You didn’t think a murder in Huntington Beach with the shooter still at large would go unnoticed by other local forces, did you?”

  Greg and I exchanged glances, then Greg turned to Dev. “Got a little time on your hands right now?”

  Dev raised his beer bottle in our direction. “I’m retired. I’ve got a beer, and it’s cool in here. I’ve got nothing but time.”

  “This might take a while. Are you hungry?” I asked. “We just finished Chinese food, but there’s plenty left.” I got up from the table. “I can heat it up for you.”

  “Sure, but don’t bother heating it up,” Dev said. “Just give me a carton and a fork and I’m good. That’s how I eat leftover Chinese at home.” When he caught my doubtful look, he added, “Seriously. Just the food and a fork, Odelia.”

  Greg laughed. “That’s how we usually eat leftovers here too.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but Dev’s company.”

  “I’m hardly company.” He got up from the table. “But I am going to use your guest bath.” He started down the hall while I pulled out the leftover Chinese food and a fork.

  When Dev returned, he said, “What’s with the duck in your tub?”