At least now I could check out the street as we walked back past the sideways Santa. Under the circumstances, I could see how she might not care about the decorations. The only vehicles on the street at this time of day were usually gardeners, pool cleaners and cleaning women, with an occasional plumber or pest-control truck thrown in. The assorted cars and vans seemed to fit those parameters. But were they what they seemed?
I watched a man sitting in one of the cars on the street. Was he eating his lunch or keeping an eye on Emily? I shuddered, thinking of being in her position.
Dinah and I went into my backyard. I knew just where to throw it over the fence, thanks to my adventure with Mason. I stepped up on the bench and leaned through the bushes to the chain-link fence. I took the bag and tossed it over. It landed with a plop. There were some rustling noises and I heard something that might have been “thank you” before receding footsteps and finally the sound of a sliding glass door closing.
“Now what?” Dinah said when I climbed down.
“Let’s see what she does,” I offered. Really what I meant was let’s see if she goes anywhere. As if an answer, I heard the rumble of her garage door opening.
“C’mon,” I said, running across the yard to the driveway. As soon as we got in the greenmobile, I backed down the driveway just far enough to see what was going on in hers. A moment later, Emily’s SUV roared backward toward the street. She stopped and checked both ways before backing out. A moment later she was zooming away.
I didn’t bother to look if anyone had pulled away from the curb. I just made the same move she had and took off after her. I was disappointed when I realized she was headed toward the few blocks of stores considered downtown Tarzana. She parked the SUV on the street next to the back parking lot behind the bookstore and the stores adjacent to it.
“Looks like we rushed for nothing,” I said, pulling into the parking lot next to a car with a bike in a bike rack. Still, as soon as I’d stopped the motor, we jumped out and tried to catch up with her. “Geez,” I said, “it really was for nothing.” Ahead she’d just walked into the bookstore. We plastered ourselves against the wall and watched her through one of the big windows that faced the main street.
“The snowflakes look really nice from the outside,” Dinah said. I stepped back to get a better view, then caught myself. We weren’t there to admire the windows. Emily kept walking around, appearing to be looking at books, but every time she picked one up, she fluttered through the pages and replaced it. She spent about five minutes with the books and walked toward the door quickly. We tried to wish ourselves invisible as she came out of the bookstore.
If she saw us, she didn’t seem to care. Her pace slowed and she walked down to Luxe.
“See, I told you,” Dinah said, nudging me in the ribs. “She’s got something going with him.” We crept down the street, staying close to the buildings. When we got near Luxe’s display window, we moved just far enough to look in. Emily was sitting by the waterfall, drinking a cup of tea. Every so often, she looked toward the counter where Nicholas was waiting on a customer. It was pretty clear after a couple of minutes that she wasn’t going anywhere.
We slunk back to the bookstore. “There you are,” Adele said, stopping us near the entrance. “Pink, someone wanted to buy some yarn as a gift. A knitter,” Adele said, practically spitting out the word. “She wanted to see a knitted swatch, but there was nothing hanging on the bin. What’s up with the swatches?”
I was impressed that Adele had actually waited on a knitter. I was always afraid if any came in while I wasn’t there, Adele would ignore them until they left.
I explained that I wasn’t really back to work, that I’d just stopped in. Adele’s eye’s narrowed. “What are you two up to? Some detective thing, Jessica Nancy Fletcher Holmes?” I didn’t answer and she went on. “More about your neighbor?”
I said nothing and Adele stayed planted, saying she wanted to come with. She didn’t even ask where we were going, she just wanted to be part of the action.
“Remember, we’re musketeers,” she said, referring again to a title she’d come up with during our last adventure. She started to pout but then saw that William had joined us and we were suddenly old news. I don’t know what was harder to deal with, Adele trying to get in the middle of stuff or acting flirty with William as she explained to him the musketeer reference.
I told Adele there were some swatches in my tote bag in the office, hoping she heard among all the eye batting and touching the lapel of his sports jacket. “I’ll be back this evening,” I said as Dinah and I headed for the door. Dinah’s house was barely a block from the bookstore parking lot, and instead of going home, she’d suggested I come over. The area was called Walnut Acres because at one time it had been a walnut farm. One of the nutty trees still stood in Dinah’s yard.
We walked around the corner off Ventura onto the side street. Emily’s SUV was still parked where she’d left it. “Maybe I was wrong about everything,” I said as we walked down the block almost completely past the parking lot. “Besides, what am I going to do—I can’t keep trailing her.” Instinctively I looked back toward the parking lot and the greenmobile, but something else caught my attention. Something moving. I elbowed Dinah and she watched with me. The back door of Luxe had opened and someone’s head was sticking out and checking over the area.
“What the . . . My God, it’s her,” I said. Emily pulled the door shut behind her and sprinted across the parking lot. You didn’t have to be a Mensa member to figure out she was headed for her Element.
“Where’s your car?” I said. Dinah was already getting her keys out as we speed-walked across the small street toward her house.
Emily jumped in her SUV and made a sharp U-turn back toward us. Dinah’s car was parked in the direction Emily was now going and a moment later we were inside the Honda with the motor running. Emily was already down the block when we took off after her. Even with the commonness of the car, we kept our distance so as not to be made, as the PIs called “being seen.” I looked over at my friend as she hovered over the wheel, keeping the SUV in sight. Her smile was unmistakable. She was having a good time. I had to admit I was, too. Was it wrong to get caught up in the thrill of the chase when someone might be dead and lots of people had lost their money? I hoped not. We were on the side of good, I reminded myself.
The stop in the bookstore and Luxe must have been just to shake off anyone on her tail. I looked around to see if anyone was following us. There was just one car in the distance behind us that I figured was just traffic.
She had to be taking the crocheted piece to Bradley. I thought she would double back toward the freeway, thinking that she must have arranged to meet him in some crowded place again. Instead she zigzagged on side streets. When she got to the stop sign at Vanalden, I looked for her right turn signal to go on. Instead no turn signal flashed, but she turned anyway—onto Vanalden going left. She stayed on the street as it wound around and then began to go uphill. Ahead I could see the greenery on the side of the Santa Monica Mountains. The telephone poles marked the unpaved section of Mulholland that ran along the top.
She turned onto a side street that paralleled the mountain and zipped onto another steeper street. We stayed a safe distance behind her. The street was almost vertical and the houses were built on pads cut into the side of the hill. I knew where we were now.
“Park,” I said to Dinah. I knew from coming up here before that the street dead-ended ahead. We waited a moment to see if the SUV would make an abrupt U-turn and head down the hill, but a few moments passed and it didn’t drive by us. Dinah turned off the car and we got out and hid behind a bush. It was eerily quiet up here. For just a moment I looked back at the panoramic view of the Valley.
We peeked from behind the bush. The black SUV was parked with its wheel curbed and Emily was just getting out. She pulled out a backpack, and as she slipped it on, I saw something green sticking out. She pushed the door shut and I heard the
chirp of the lock as she was already walking toward the metal bumper and closed gate that marked the end of the street. She walked around the barrier and started up the sandy road.
I grabbed Dinah and we followed in Emily’s footsteps. When my boys were young we came up here to walk and I was familiar with the area. The road Emily was on intersected with Dirt Mulholland, the name of the unpaved section of the road that ran from Encino to Woodland Hills. I knew once Emily reached Mulholland she could go left or right. The dirt road wound around the top of the mountains, and whichever way she chose, she’d disappear around a bend in moments and we’d have no idea which direction she’d gone.
The sky was overcast and the afternoon light was already beginning to fade. Damp cold air rose off the sandy road as we went up the hill. Emily neared the top and must have been confident she had eluded anyone following her because she never looked back. We’d stayed to the side of the road where we were less visible in case she turned around. Our clothes choices helped us blend in, too. We looked like the khaki twins in our slacks and similar-colored hoodies.
Emily paused a moment, probably to catch her breath after the steep walk.
“She went left,” I whispered. Dinah was bent over, breathing heavily and swatting at a swarm of black flies. I worried that this might be too much for her, but she straightened and followed along up the rest of the way to Mulholland. We followed in the direction she’d gone even though the dip in the road had obscured her. She came back into view when we got a short way down the road.
We stayed back, hoping if she looked back she’d just think we were two walkers. It was never crowded up here, but today it seemed absolutely desolate.
There was a meadow on one side of us, though thanks to the winter rain, the grass had grown so tall it blocked any view of the Valley. On the other side of the road there was a large concrete pad. The ground around it had a scattering of green and then big stone boulders. I’d seen a helicopter land there once. I thought it was probably a staging area for fire trucks in the event of a forest fire. Either way, it seemed out of place in this area where everything else had been left to go natural. Ahead the ground rose on either side of the road and was covered with tall grasses, reedy bushes and low trees with thick foliage. Emily’s footprints stood out in the damp sandy road.
When I looked around at all the wild growth, it was hard to imagine we were just minutes away from the traffic-clogged Ventura Boulevard. I heard a crunch behind us just before a mountain biker flew past.
“Usually, they at least call out some kind of warning, like ‘on your right,’”Isaid, looking ahead at the figure on the bike as it whizzed toward Emily. The biker flew past her without even slowing and she was startled just as we’d been. She stopped and looked around.
I took Dinah’s hand and pulled her into the growth on the side of the road before Emily saw us. When she started walking again, we went back on the road. My BlackBerry strained against my pocket and I took it out. It slithered from my hand and I made a fast save to grab it. There were so many gizmos on it, I knew I hit something by mistake.
When I looked up, Emily had turned off the road. We rushed ahead, trying to catch up.
We got to the spot where she’d disappeared, and an expanse of blacktop road ran up a steep hill next to a barbed-wire fence. Beyond it there was a huge water tank surrounded by a green lawn. The road looked like someone must have made plans that were long since forgotten. It ended abruptly at the edge of a cliff. Looking down, all you could see were mounds of green scrub and bushes that extended into the valley below. Beyond there were just more mountains. A white-tailed rabbit ran in front of us and disappeared in the brush. Where had Emily gone?
Some branches crackled and I turned toward the sound. In the distance, I saw that Emily had taken a path paralleling the cliff. We kept low as we followed her. The path was narrow and ran between bushes as tall as we were. She had picked up speed and we struggled to keep her in sight but not get too close.
She stopped next to a tree surrounded by a thicket of bushes. I pulled Dinah into the cover of a twiggy bush as someone stepped from inside the leafy tent.
“Bradley,” I gasped. I spent some time just staring. After all the uncertainty if he was dead or alive, finally I was seeing him with my own eyes. He wore jeans and a leather jacket. His face looked florid, as if he’d been spending a lot of time outside. Emily rushed toward him and threw her arms around him.
Quickly my wonder at seeing a living, breathing Bradley turned to anger. Thanks to him the bookstore and my future were in jeopardy. People like that woman on the news had lost their life savings. All the nice stuff he’d done, like coach the girls’ soccer team, had just been a way for him to get clients. He was a bad man and he shouldn’t be able to walk away from what he’d done.
I still had the BlackBerry in my hand. But who to call? It was too convoluted a story to try to tell to a 911 dispatcher. Better to call Barry. I clicked on his number, but nothing happened. True we were only a few minutes from civilization, but there was no cell signal.
Dinah saw me fiddling with the phone and I showed her the screen. “We have to do something,” she whispered.
“I have an idea,” I said, holding up the BlackBerry. “I’ll take some pictures of him. At least we’ll have proof we saw him and I can send them to Barry.”
I quickly took a number of photos before we slipped down the path and retraced our steps, checking my phone every few moments to see if I’d gotten service.
We were practically back to Dinah’s car before I got a signal. As soon as I talked to Barry and sent the photos, despite his telling us to stay put, we rushed back toward where we’d seen Bradley.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” Dinah asked as we made our way back. “We can’t make him stay there until the cops show up.”
It turned out not to be a problem.
CHAPTER 20
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO OUR VANTAGE POINT, WE looked over at the bushes and tree and the surrounding tall grassy area. There was no Bradley and no Emily. The only activity was a hawk flying overhead.
“Where’d they go?” I said, looking around. It was more of a rhetorical question or at least that’s how Dinah took it and didn’t answer. Brushing past sparse sage plants, we kept moving closer until we ended up at the tree where they’d been standing. The pungent-smelling bushes that hugged the California oak formed an enclosure with an opening at the front.
Dinah peeked in and pointed at the ground. “Look at this.” I looked over her shoulder. It was hard to see because of the darkness, but there was a pile of dirt and a hole in the ground.
“I wonder if there’s anything in it?” I said. I was hopeful Dinah would pick up on the question and offer to stick her hand in. She didn’t and I really wished I had the Pinchy-Winchy with me. The toy claw hand would have been perfect to stick down the hole. Finally curiosity overcame my concern over crawly and slithery things that might be in there and I knelt down and put my hand in. I’d reached all the way to my elbow before I hit the bottom. The dirt was cold and damp and empty. I sat back on my heels and examined the nearby area. The afternoon was fading and it seemed like the sun had come out just in time to go down. I noticed something dark in the tall grass. When I touched it, it felt slippery.
“It’s a plastic garbage bag,” Dinah said, bending next to me. We opened it with a fair amount of trepidation. Instead of reaching in, we decided to dump out the contents. We stood and I held the bottom at arm’s length and shook. A couple of hundred-dollar bills fluttered out along with what looked like a small booklet. I gathered them off the ground where they’d fallen.
“It’s a passport,” I said, opening the booklet. The photo was Bradley, but the name was listed as Allen Richman. “I wonder what that’s about.” We stuck the money in the passport and kept examining the ground. Around the side of the tree we found a motorcycle helmet and a backpack. I opened the backpack and looked inside. A map of northern Mexico fell out. B
elow there just seemed to be some clothes and a bottle of water and some energy bars.
“I wonder why they left this stuff,” Dinah said.
“And I wonder why we didn’t pass them on Dirt Mulholland.” I stood up and surveyed the area. The narrow path we’d been on continued up a hill. Dinah and I followed it up to the top, which was flat and mostly rocks with some short grass. From there we could see that the path continued on down into a valley and roughly paralleled Dirt Mulholland. “I think that explains why we didn’t see them,” I said. The path was an alternative to the unpaved road and joined Mulholland in the vicinity of the short road we’d taken up from the street.
“Maybe we weren’t as stealthy as we thought and they saw us,” Dinah said. The hilltop gave a good view of the whole area. We could see the Dirt Mulholland as it passed the concrete pad, which from here seemed postage stamp- size, and continued on to the road that ran down to the street. Turning the other way, the water tank seemed far away and small, too. From here we got a different view of the area around the oak tree. As I looked down on it, my breath caught. There was something partially hidden by the wild growth.
I rushed down the narrow path so quickly I lost my footing and slid. Dinah came behind me and helped me get up. We pushed through the bushes and tall grass until we found what I’d seen. Bradley Perkins was sprawled on the ground. His pale blue tee shirt was spattered with blood and his eyes were wide open as if he’d been caught in surprise.
For a moment, I froze at the shock of the discovery. Then autopilot kicked in and I reached to touch his neck and check for a pulse. He was still warm.
I knelt down to get closer, but I didn’t feel any sign of life. Dinah got down next to me as the reality began to sink in. I wanted to look away, but I felt compelled to do something. I had seen the new method of CPR on television. The directions were simple and there was no need to do mouth-to-mouth. I put my palms together and began to do the pumping motion on his breast bone. I tried for several minutes, but nothing was changing, and Dinah touched my arm.
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