“Was there any trace evidence of poison from inside the locket?” I asked.
“That’s really more something that the police labs should investigate, but Grace found none.”
“Is that everything?” Peggy asked Penelope.
“Just one last bit, on the underside of the locket lid you can see a faint series of lines in the shape of a horseshoe. This was a common superstitious practice of the time, said to ward off demons and bring the wearer harmony, success, and happiness. This one had Grace scratching her head a bit.”
“Why?” Sally asked, and we were all interested in her response.
“Well, it’s just a bit of mixed metaphors. It seems like the jewelry designer was trying to cover all the bases and has added every kind of symbol.”
“Interesting. Have you told Grace that the family name is Rose? Maybe that will help her trace the crest.”
“I have, but no luck yet.”
“Great job,” Paula said, looking fully restored to her brand of normalcy.
“Sally, I’ve already commissioned Jack and his dog to pay Malcolm a visit,” I said. “He plans to introduce himself and explain our connection and just say hello. The subtext being, ‘don’t mess with Halsey.’ Perhaps you could play ‘good cop’ after Jack’s visit, maybe bring him some of your yummy vodka drunken tomatoes and see what you can get out of him?”
“Can do, but I’ll have to pick up more vodka.”
And this is why I love Sally.
“What about the phony lawyer, Snyder?” Paula asked.
“Ah, he’s been so persistent in trying to get my address so that he could drop by and tell me all about how rich I’m about to become that I thought I’d take him up on it. I might even be his first customer, record the whole transaction, and make it a sting operation.”
“You can’t do this when you are alone, Halsey. We already know the man can’t be trusted,” Peggy said.
“Well, I can’t have any of you there, he’ll know it is a trap. The same goes for Jack. I’ll have Bardot with me, what could go wrong?”
“Everything,” Sally said. “This guy will stop at nothing, he’s shown that. He’s so low you can see his feet in his driver’s license photo.”
“How about your neighbor, what’s her name? Marisol. She could keep you company,” Paula suggested.
I’d rather spin around thirty times and then run with scissors.
Chapter 16
“Hello, Mr. Snyder?” I asked although I recognized his nasal voice immediately.
“It is indeed, and to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
“My name is Halsey, I live on Rose Avenue. You might remember my dog Bardot? People forget me, but she leaves an indelible impression.”
“Of course, of course. How could I forget a beautiful girl like yourself?”
I had to hold the phone away from my face for a moment. I knew I was imagining it but I could swear that I felt slime running down my hand and onto my arm. I had Max’s research papers on the coffee table and put them out of sight in the middle of a thick Fall fashion magazine.
“How may I be of service, Miss Halsey?”
“I’ve read over the literature you gave me, and I’d like to learn more about procuring the mineral rights to my property. Would you be able to drop by at your convenience and walk me through the process?”
“Absolutely, let me check my calendar. Ah, it so happens that I had a rare cancellation for this afternoon, thus I could be at your lovely home within the hour.”
Cancellation my butt, he’s probably sitting right outside in his ratty car.
“That works for me.” I gave him my address.
“Will your charming dog be joining us?”
“I can put her in another room,” I replied, suspicious about why he was asking.
“Excellent, I shall see you shortly. How do you take your coffee?”
“I don’t drink coffee, just bring yourself please.”
Just after hanging up, I saw Marisol appear in the back at my patio doors. I grimaced remembering that she had keys to my house and could enter at will. Bardot greeted her like a long lost friend.
“You couldn’t just ring the doorbell?”
“Course not, I didn’t want anybody to see me. This is supposed to be a sting operation right?”
It was then that I noticed that Marisol was dressed in a nurse’s uniform.
“What’s with the costume, are you auditioning to be an extra on General Hospital?”
She pushed past me and into the house where she deposited a heavy-looking bag on my living room floor.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m in disguise for the mission. If this creep tries anything, I’ll be in like a flash.”
“And do what? Listen to his lungs while he coughs?”
“And tell him that I’m your at-home nurse and he’d better leave because you are still contagious, that’s what.”
Not bad . . .
“Okay, but I doubt that it will come to that. Like we discussed, you are to stay in the bedroom with Bardot and make sure that we are recording all of this. Is that the equipment in that bag?”
She nodded and bent down to get started.
After Paula’s kind but ill-conceived suggestion to involve Marisol, I got to thinking that I did in fact need her after all. But not for moral support, I needed her for her spying tools and capabilities.
I have to admit that it was quite hilarious to watch this senior citizen with her white tights and matching sensible shoes hide cameras around the living room and wire them to a receiver. She stopped after placing another camera and stared at a handful of wires. She seemed to be running through the sequence in her head. When she asked for a ladder, I put my foot down.
“Oh no, any climbing I’m doing. I don’t need to have my ‘nurse’ lying on the floor with a dislocated hip while I’m trying to entrap Mr. Snyder, Esq. in the act of committing fraud.”
“You’d fall before I would,” Marisol said defiantly.
“And just how do you figure that?”
“You drink wine all day long. I’ll bet you’re seeing three of me right now.”
“One more word and I’ll be seeing zero of you. He could be here any minute. You and Bardot need to disappear. Now! Is everything ready to go? It’s all turned on?”
“Of course, this isn’t my first rodeo,” Marisol replied, taking one more look around. The receiver was hidden under a sofa and she could listen in through wireless headphones. “If I hear anything that sounds off, I’m calling Augie.”
I wondered what she considered “off” but had no time to investigate. She and Bardot marched away to my bedroom.
“Don’t go snooping in my stuff while you’re in there.”
“I wasn’t going to but now that you mention it . . .”
I held back my yell just in time as the doorbell rang. From the set of three small windows in my wooden front door, I could see the straw bowler and the tips of some flowers.
Crap, he was going to lay it on thick.
Something in the back of my head made me pause. I had that nagging feeling that I was missing something. When the bell rang again, I gave up and went to the door.
“Mr. Snyder,” I said. “Thanks for coming over.”
“The pleasure is all mine. Since you don’t drink coffee, I thought that these would offer some enjoyment although their beauty doesn’t hold a candle to yours,” he smarmed.
I think I threw up a little in my mouth. As I closed the door behind him, I caught sight of Peggy and Sally across the street pretending to be out for a fitness walk. The plan was that once Snyder left they would follow him either on foot or by car to see where he goes next. I saw Peggy’s car parked out front. I felt a little better knowing that they were at the ready.
“We can sit in the living room,” I said, guiding him to the seat where the cameras were pointed.
He removed his bowler and stood politely until I was seated. Once I did, he began
his spiel.
“As you are aware, Miss Halsey, the house in which you reside is sitting atop enormous wealth with endless possibilities.”
I gave him a blank, unimpressed stare. If he was planning to steal from me, he was going to have to work hard for it.
“Are you prepared to show me any sort of proof that there is oil in this land before I invest?”
“Right down to business, I admire that,” he said. “I have brought some ‘show and tell’ for you.”
He opened his weathered leather briefcase, and I could see that the lining had been shredded.
Even his cat must hate him.
“Proof number one.” He produced a thick stack of long papers reminiscent of home sale closing documents. “This is the field inspection report conducted by our geophysicists. Their high-tech instruments take measurements and record data from deep under the property’s surface. In the case of Rose Avenue, the vibration signals and empirical science tell us that there is a high probability that oil exists on your property. You can see that this study has been signed and certified.”
Before I could pick up the document and read anything on it, Snyder returned it to his case. All I saw was a signature that wasn’t legible and some kind of seal.
“I’d like to—”
“But this is only the tip of the iceberg,” he interrupted me and pulled out a collection of stones wrapped in cloth. “These are called source rocks; I’ve got some limestone, black shale, and coal. All of these were taken from a nearby test site that we have constructed.”
“And what, pray tell, do these indicate?” I asked, picking one of the larger ones up and feeling the heft of its weight. I was sick of watching this charade, but I needed to see it through in order to go to the cops. I put it down and went for the black shale, admiring its wafer thin layers and striations.
“I am so glad that you asked, Miss Halsey. You see, these rocks possess a high occurrence of hydrocarbon; in other words, oil and gas.”
“How do you know this? Is there another document in there with a seal and a signature?” I asked, nodding with my chin to his briefcase.
“Nothing so pedestrian, Miss Halsey.”
The magician reached back into his bag of tricks and this time presented some sort of version of a Geiger counter. It was yellow and looked like a toy from RadioShack.
“Why don’t we just look at the contract, shall we?” My intelligence had been insulted enough.
But before I could stop him, he’d turned on the thing and was about to wave a wand over the rocks. It sounded like a combination of hail on concrete and a little child tap dancing. I was about to press again for the contract when he stopped over a couple of rocks that triggered the machine to wail like a herd of fire trucks. He must have discretely turned up the sound.
This wasn’t going to end well.
The intrusive noise, as I knew it would, set Bardot off into a series of wolfish howls followed by overly loud shushing from Marisol.
“Is someone else here?” Snyder asked, returning his props quickly to his bag and rising from the chair. “Where’s the dog?”
I guess Snyder realized that Bardot was not a fan. Jack had explained to me that sometimes when dogs hear sirens they think that the sound is coming from another dog. They answer back as a form of communication.
“You need to go out?” I heard Marisol say to Bardot, again not in a whisper.
“No!” I yelled and then heard Snyder do the same.
Too late, Bardot came bursting into the living room, bumping into Snyder who had made a fast dash to the door. He tripped and recovered, losing his hat in the process. Snyder exited the house with his briefcase, leaving his headwear as a casualty of war.
“I’ll call you,” I heard his muffled voice say from the other side of the door.
“What’s with him?” Marisol said, trying on the bowler.
I looked at her in that silly thing and that’s when it clicked.
Chapter 17
“We’re having a sunset Wine Club in about an hour,” Sally said to me over the phone the next day. “Want me to swing by and pick you up? Peggy and I have some good recon to report on Mr. Slimy Snyder.”
“Great, and I do as well.”
The “sunset” part of this Wine Club meant that we gathered at a specific location at a specific time. We usually did this in the summer when we wanted to change things up, and the general aviation, single runway Santa Monica airport played host. When Sally pulled up to my curb, I saw that she already had a full car. Paula was riding shotgun and Penelope and Peggy were in back. Sally drives a roomy SUV, so it was nothing for me to squeeze in with the girls.
My contribution today was ice-chilled Lillet. This is a French aperitif from Podensac, a small village south of Bordeaux. My introduction to this delicious potent potable came when I lived in NYC and in the summers used to frequent a very authentic Parisian bistro called La Goulue. It is light and aromatic, perfect for heat and humidity and is a blend of selected wines and macerated fruit liqueurs all crafted on site and then sent around the world. I like it just with ice, a wedge of orange, and a few fresh raspberries. But just about any fruit would bring out the best in this wine. Except kiwi, don’t use kiwi. Trust me.
Our chosen watering hole to tie up to was the observation deck outside and above Typhoon Restaurant that sits directly on the side of the Santa Monica airport runway. It is open to the public, and the noise from the planes is mostly not a bother as the small aircrafts give off more putts and hums than rampaging roars. Besides having the privilege to witness the genius of the Wright Brothers over and over, at the western end of the runway is a gorgeous panoramic vista of the Pacific, and in the late afternoon, the setting sun. Hence the specific “place and time” caveat for this sort of Wine Club. There were tables and chairs on the deck, so we daisy chained what we needed and made ourselves at home.
Today the enticing sustenance was expertly prepared by Typhoon. The Pan-Asian appetizers included ahi tuna sliders, curried deviled eggs, Korean fried cauliflower, rice paper shrimp and vegetable rolls, and sweet potato fries with spicy ketchup. The Lillet was a perfect pairing as was the Japanese beer sampler flight courtesy of the restaurant.
We all settled in and let the beautiful environment warmly seep into our pores. As if on cue, a blue-and-white propeller-driven Cessna readied for takeoff at the east end of the airport. We watched as it gracefully accelerated on its three wheels, and when it was just about in front of us, the back end lifted first and then the nose. After a slight wobble, the plane righted itself and headed off into the beautiful, saturated blue sky.
“That never gets old,” Peggy said. “I remember when I’d just started dating Vern, and he took me up in a little puddle jumper like that one. We ate dinner on Catalina Island and ended up staying the night.”
“Peggy, you trollop,” Penelope joked. “I bet it was fantastic.”
“Which part?” Peggy riposted.
“First off, cheers,” I interrupted. “To a fabulous end to a not so wonderful week, although things are looking up!”
The Lillet went down like caviar.
“I want to hear your report,” I said to Peggy and Sally, “and then I’ll add my news. I have a feeling that we are close to tightening the noose on our friends Howard the developer and Slimy Snyder.”
“Well, we haven’t definitively been able to tie the two crooks together, but what we’ve got seems awfully close to ‘probable cause,’ ” Peggy said.
Sally pulled out her iPad and swiped until she found what she was looking for.
“While we were getting what we could online about Howard and his property, Paula went downtown and pulled copies of the records,” Sally said, and Paula nodded. “Paula, why don’t we begin with what you found out?”
Paula removed some official-looking legal-sized papers from what appeared to be a gardening tote because it was decorated on the outside with cartoony smiling flowers and had a series of long pockets for tra
nsporting planting tools. She laid the papers on the table and I quickly anchored them with the beer flight. Next she produced oversized folded plans and blueprints.
“Howard submitted these in May of last year and they were approved in September,” Paula explained, pointing to some date stamps on the blueprint. “The start for breaking ground was to be January one of this year.”
“Was there a completion date included?” I asked. We were all looking hard at the blueprint, but if the other girls were like me, they were still trying to figure out if the paper was upside down or right-side up. The confused looks on their faces told me I’d guessed correctly.
“There always is but it’s a joke really, at least that’s what the clerk told me,” Paula continued.
“What was the date for this project?” I had moved to the other side of the table and was finally able to orient myself to what I was studying.
“That’s the thing that struck the clerk as so odd, he said that completion dates range anywhere from eight months to two years. But in this case it was clearly stated that final inspection should be scheduled for the end of March.”
“Just three months. I knew about developers making empty promises, but to build a house from the ground up in that short a period of time? That’s crazy,” Peggy said.
I pulled the blueprint closer to me and took a minute to really take it all in.
“Do you notice what’s missing from this?” I asked.
They all pored over the paper, but again, I don’t think that the drawing had become clear in their minds yet.
“The basement, where’s the basement?” Penelope asked.
“Exactly,” I said. “There is no indication here that they planned to dig any deeper than the foundation. We now know that all kinds of geological surveys and tests need to be done before getting a permit to dig.”
“That could have delayed the start by months or even years,” Paula said, turning the plan in her direction. I could tell that she was a little mad with herself for missing this detail.
“So the basement was going to be built under the radar, so to speak. But why?” Penelope squeezed an orange slice and the juice melded with her last two sips of Lillet.
Murder Most Fermented Page 11