by Josh Lanyon
J.X.’s laugh was more natural that time. “At least we know our house managed to survive the last major earthquake followed by raging fire. Okay. Then if you’re really sure about this, I’ll talk to you tonight.”
I started to click off, but he hadn’t disconnected yet, seemed to be waiting for something, and I realized I couldn’t leave things the way they were. Or the way they weren’t.
“J.X.?”
“Yes?” He sounded a little wary.
“Look. What I said yesterday. I shouldn’t have. It was uncalled for. And I definitely shouldn’t have hung up on you.”
J.X. drew a sharp breath and I knew my instinct had been right. “It’s my fault. I pushed too hard. It’s just that I want us…”
“I want us too,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but I knew in that moment I wanted it to be true.
“I want us to be a family, want you to be part of the rest of my family. I know you think they don’t accept you, don’t like you, but it’s just they don’t know you yet.”
“Yeah. Well.”
“And I honestly really feel like this is the perfect opportunity for you. It’s a chance to get to know Nina and Gage without me around, to do something for them, to wi—” He caught himself.
“Win them over?” I asked.
“To bond with them.”
“Mmhm.” I called upon my inner resources. Surely I still had some vital elements left? A little sodium. Probably some sulfur. “Does she, Nina, still need…something?”
“Maybe if you could call her and ask? If you could just make that first gesture, Kit.”
I closed my eyes. Opened them. “What’s her number again?”
I felt worse after I listened to J.X.’s progressively worried and angry messages.
He’d had a couple of drinks by the last one, placed at 1:15 in the morning. It got a little confessional in tone and I turned cold listening to it. “Kit, if you’re deliberately not taking my calls, if you’re this childish, this selfish, this heartless… I don’t know where we go from here.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t see it from his perspective. I did. After an afternoon of phone calls, I didn’t blame him for being upset. He’d stayed calm a lot longer than I would have. But that peek into his uncensored brain made it clear he too realized there was a good chance things weren’t going to work out for us, that the idea of it not working out was already in his mind, and in some corner of his heart he was already preparing for it.
And since I was already preparing to prepare for it too, I’m not sure why it made me so sad. But it did. It was like someone cut my lifeline. I sat on the edge of the unmade bed in my hotel room and I replayed the message a couple of times, and on each replay J.X. sounded more tired and more…done.
I deleted his messages, wiped my eyes, and used the hotel phone to call down for breakfast, which arrived as I was shaving.
The Fairmont did not let me down. Breakfast consisted of the house granola—almonds, mixed oats, seeds, vanilla yogurt, and fruit compote—coffee, juice and an omelet of free range eggs, smoked chicken sausage and cheddar cheese. Having waived the temptations of pastries, cappuccino, and breakfast potatoes, I felt quite virtuous as I nerved myself to call Nina.
She answered on the third ring, just as I was starting to hope my call would go safely to message.
“Hello?” She sounded soft and sleepy at ten in the morning, which was unlikely for a young woman with a small child to care for.
I said briskly, “Hi, Nina. This is Christopher. J.X.’s, um. J.X. got your call, but he’s out of town right now and he asked me to contact you.” Contact you? That certainly sounded businesslike. I tried to sound less like a coworker and more like a caring family member. “Is everything okay? Do you need something?”
Please say no. Please have mercy.
“J.X. is out of town?”
“Yes, he’s in Las Vegas at a mystery fiction convention. But I’m here getting the house ready, so if you need something…”
There was a pause and she said, “My ring went down the sink.”
“Your ring?”
“My wedding ring.”
Oh right. That ring. “That’s… Did you call a plumber?”
She said tearfully, “I don’t have money for a plumber! I don’t even know who to call. J.X. always handles this kind of thing.”
Of course. Of course he did. Because he was a glutton for punishment. Which was how we got together in the first place.
“Do you want me to…?”
She said nothing to fill my awkward pause.
“Should I come over there?” I asked, and if she couldn’t hear the reluctance dragging on every word I spoke, she was tone deaf.
Nina said with equal reluctance, “If J.X. isn’t there, I guess you have to.” Which was about as faulty reasoning as it got, but I was not moderating her debate performance, I was bonding with her. And so far it was going brilliantly.
You know what? Fine. What the hell ever. I couldn’t go back to Cherry Lane till the police sounded the All Clear, and I didn’t want to sit in a hotel room—even a nice hotel room—reading about parasites and professors and people who hated their parents. I said, “Okay. Sure. What’s the address?”
They say when you marry someone, you also marry their family.
For me and David that had been irrelevant. I liked my family—when taken at the required minimum dosage—whereas he didn’t get along with his relatives at all. So there was never any hassle of trying to split holidays fairly or making time for monthly visits to the in-laws.
J.X., however, was part of a closely-knit family. He spent holidays with his kinfolk and even visited them between official three-day weekends. He was crazy about his nephew and made the effort to see him a couple of times a week.
All of which I liked and respected about him. So long as it didn’t involve me.
But it did involve me now.
And I honestly wasn’t sure how that was going to work out.
It took me forever to find the house. I got lost twice trying to locate Capitol Avenue. And then I got lost again trying to find a place to park. But eventually I arrived at a small, stucco Spanish/Mediterranean home with an attached one-car garage—that alone put the property beyond price in this parking hell of a city.
There was a security screen in front of the heavy dark wood door and an even more powerful protective measure behind the heavy dark wood door: Laura Moriarity—J.X.’s mother. I deduced Nina had rung her up in a panic after talking to me. Was Laura supposed to be chaperone or moral support or simply outside observer?
Whichever, whatever, the sight of her triggered my own panic attack, which as usual resulted in the immediate flapping of my mouth. “Somebody call a plumber?” I asked brightly. I don’t do “brightly” very well, so it mostly sounded desperate. Less like a question and more like a plugged-up sink crying for a doctor.
“Mr. Holmes,” Laura said forbiddingly. She was a tall and chilly blue-eyed blonde. Castilian Spanish, according to J.X. who got his own warm coloring from his “Black Irish” father. If Laura ever got tired of terrorizing in-laws, she could always find work as a butler, scaring tradesman away from the front entrance of Persnickety Manor.
“Mrs. Moriarity. I understand there’s a plumbing emergency.” Now I sounded equally grave. The specialist flown in from Zurich for consultation. Code Blue! Code Blue! Find me a plunger STAT!
Without wasting time on chitchat, she led the way into the house. I had a quick impression of tidy, sunny rooms and hardwood floors. Nothing fancy but well-kept and cozy. There were several framed photos of a handsome, young, blond man in military uniform.
Nina was waiting in the den. There were toys at her feet, but I assumed they were not hers. She did look very young. Small and plump and pretty. She had big brown eyes and shiny dark hair. She rose as I followed Laura into the room, gazing up at me with eyes as wide and worried as something caught in a trap.
“Hi,” I sai
d.
“Hi,” she replied.
I waited, but it did not seem to be a through street. I reversed and turned to Laura. Nina might be genuinely helpless, but Laura wasn’t. I wondered why she hadn’t simply summoned a plumber herself. Why again was I here?
Laura met my gaze coolly. In fact, they both seemed to be watching me with an expectancy that reminded me of lionesses contemplating zebras at a watering hole.
“So you lost your ring down the sink?” I prompted, turning back to Nina. “Which sink?”
“The bathroom. The main bathroom.”
“Would you like me to call someone?”
“J.X. just usually takes care of it himself.”
“It’s happened before?”
“Twice.” She looked sadly down at her bare left hand. “My ring is a little big. He bought it when I was pregnant.”
“Couldn’t you have it resized?”
“That’s how J.X. bought it.”
Was there sentimental value in having a ring in the wrong size? Wasn’t it more likely that a ring that wouldn’t stay on your finger was a bad omen?
Nina said, “J.X. usually just takes the sink apart. I know to turn the water off now.”
Now. J.X. really was up for sainthood. Me, I’d have summoned a plumber on her behalf. There are some things worth paying for. But Laura and Nina continued to watch me with those intent, unreadable expressions, so maybe this was some kind of a test? It seemed to be a test as far as J.X. was concerned.
I said, “Well, if it’s just a matter of removing the P-trap, I can do that. I mean, assuming you’ve got a wrench or a pair of pliers.”
“J.X. leaves his tools here.” There was a hint of a challenge in the way Nina said that, so yes, this was probably some kind of territorial thing. And maybe me demonstrating acceptance of her boundaries would help? Or would I look weak? The zebra with the bad limp?
I was just glad she hadn’t dropped her ring down the bath drain because clearly nothing less than shifting the tub would do, and with my bad back, I’d probably have ended up writhing on the floor beneath their pitiless gaze while they drew straws on who would put me out of their misery.
“Lead on, Mac-er-Ma’am,” I said.
Nina did the honors, leading the way to the garage where a plastic bucket sat with a wrench and a pair of rubber gloves inside. So yes, apparently this was not an uncommon occurrence. What did she have against drain guards? Or was I missing the point of this exercise?
I picked the bucket up and Nina said, “The bathroom’s this way.”
We returned inside, Nina pointed out the bathroom, and withdrew a safe distance to the den.
It had been twenty years since I’d had to dismantle a drain pipe. The last time, my mother had dropped a diamond earring down the kitchen sink. It was one of a pair my father had bought her on their tenth wedding anniversary, and though my father was out of favor, she still loved the earrings.
Anyway, I had been successful that time, and hopefully I would triumph here too. I needed a little triumph this morning.
Laura and Nina spoke quietly, in Spanish, in the front room. It would be childish to let that bother me, right? They were probably not talking about me. They were probably discussing the Giants’ scores or what to do about the Middle East.
I placed the bucket directly beneath the P-trap to capture whatever lovely goop fell out after I removed the trap. I sat down on the bathroom floor and used the wrench to loosen the P-trap’s slip nuts.
A floorboard squeaked. I glanced around and the kid, Gage, poked his head around the door frame. He had been four at Christmas, and I had the vague idea there had been a birthday since then, so he was a brown and skinny five-year-old with eyes like Bambi and a perpetual frown. Or maybe the frown was only perpetual around me. Judging by appearances, he’d been playing outside. Or possibly mud wrestling.
“Hi,” I said.
He ducked away, but a couple of minutes later he was back. This time he stuck his tongue out.
I ignored him.
He departed once more, only to return in a minute or so, stepping boldly into the doorway. He put his hands on his non-existent hips and stuck his tongue out again.
“You know, I see you,” I said. The slip nuts were loose enough that I could now unscrew them the rest of the way by hand.
Gage stuck his tongue out again.
“That’s not very nice.”
“You’re not my friend,” he said.
“I’d like to be.”
This was trespassing. He scowled, looking uncomfortably like J.X. in his less charming moments. The dirt on his little face even suggested the shadow of a beard. “I don’t like you.”
I don’t like you either, you little shit. But to my surprise I heard myself say calmly, “That makes me sad. And I know it makes your uncle sad.”
His brows drew together. He opened his mouth, but before he could respond, Nina yelled from the other room, “Gage! Come in here now. Stop bothering Mr. Holmes.”
“He’s fine,” I called. Maybe they didn’t hear. There was no response.
Gage scampered away on muddy, soundless feet.
My phone vibrated suddenly and I jumped, nearly braining myself on the underside of the sink basin. I got to my knees, fumbled my cell out of my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number. But I had learned my lesson. I answered. It was Inspector Izzie Jones telling me I could go back home anytime I chose.
I reached over and swung the bathroom door shut. “Was there any identification on the body?”
“No, but we know who he is.”
“You do?”
“I recognized him the minute I saw him,” Jones said cheerfully.
I thought over our two conversations the day before. He sure as hell hadn’t given any indication at the time he knew who the victim was. So the inspector hadn’t been quite as blasé and trusting as he’d seemed. Cynicism. I liked that in a man.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Elijah Ladas. We’ve been looking for him in connection with a robbery homicide at a gallery in Sausalito.”
“A gallery? You mean an art gallery?”
“Arts and antiques.”
“What would an art thief be doing in my moving van?” Come to think of it, what would an art thief be doing in Barstow, assuming Barstow was where he’d joined the safari? Was there any art worth stealing in Barstow? Was there any art in Barstow at all? Not counting Paint-by-Number kits.
“That’s something we’d certainly like to know.”
I said, “Unless someone is after my Dell mapbacks or my Criterion DVD collection, there was no reason to target me.”
“Yeah, well, we think it wasn’t targeting so much as innocent-bystandering.”
That was a relief. “Do you have any suspects?”
“The usual,” Jones said, and I wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg or not. He promised to keep us posted and bade me adieu.
I undid the final nuts, freed the trap, and a dank-smelling watery sludge slopped into the bucket.
Nice.
I tugged the plastic gloves on and began sifting through the muck, wondering if I was still in bed at the Fairmont having some weird, psychologically significant dream about searching for J.X.’s ex-wife’s wedding ring? Because it was hard to believe I was doing this in real life.
A gleam of gold shot through a hairy green lump. I dug out the ring—a plain gold band—wiped it off with a handful of toilet paper, and squinted at the engraving inside the band. It was just a date, which was sort of a relief. An expensive wedding ring or a tender inscription would have bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
I dumped the dirty water down the toilet, replaced the P-trap, fastened it, turned the valves back on, rinsed the ring and carried it out to Nina, who was still talking quietly with Laura. Nina looked up, her eyes red as though she had been crying.
I said awkwardly, “Here you go. Good as new.”
“Thank you,” she said huskily, taking t
he ring and not looking at me. She slipped it on her left hand.
Laura rose. “I’ll see you out,” she said.
I’ll. See. You. Out. Wow. Didn’t they have a footman for that? But maybe it was just the uncomfortableness of the situation because at the front door she unbent enough to say, “Thank you for coming over here this morning. It was very kind of you…Christopher.”
“I’m glad I could help.”
Gage, who had been playing with a couple of Tonka Gear Jammer Big Rigs in the front hall, joined Laura at the door to give me one final view of his—in my opinion, unnaturally elongated—tongue. I raised a hand in farewell.
Back on Cherry Lane, everything looked pretty much as usual, not counting the news van from independent television station KAKE parked out front. A slim, dark-haired woman in a pale pink trench coat jumped out of the passenger side as I approached the gate. The driver was slowed down by his camera.
“Mr. Holmes? Sydney Nightingale, Baywatch News. I just have a few questions.”
I snorted at the idea of “Baywatch News,” put my head down and kept walking. Nightingale trotted alongside me, her tan kitten heels making a clippity-clop sound on the bricks.
“Is it true you found the body of notorious art thief Elijah Ladas buried beneath your basement?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?” She sounded startled, so her source at Police HQ must have been generally infallible. “Whose body did you find?”
“This is private property,” I said.
She wore her dark hair in a stylish flip. Her blue eyes were made up to give them a cat’s eye tilt. She had a cute spattering of freckles across her nose. “Was there or was there not a body in your basement, Mr. Holmes?”
I reached the front porch, got my key in the lock. The wrong key as it turned out.
“Can you confirm your relationship to crime writer J.X. Moriarity?”
I found the right key, turned the lock and opened the door.
“Any comment? Any comment at all, Mr. Holmes?”
I stepped inside and closed the door in Nightingale’s pretty face.
A woman was speaking loudly from the kitchen. More cops? More reporters? I charged down the box-strewn hall to do battle, but realized I was listening to Rina, my Southern California realtor, leaving a message.