Murder Most Fermented

by Christine E. Blum

  “Are you liking Malcolm for this, Halsey?”

  “No, Peggy, I think that we have to go further back. I remember the older Coast Guard captain telling me that after Abbot Kinney built his renaissance dream in Venice that the carnival people came in to take advantage of the crowds he’d drawn.”

  “So, con artists,” Sally said. “Time to see if young Malcolm has some swindlers in his past.”

  She was already starting a search on her tablet.

  “I’m impressed; we are getting closer. The last thing for today I think is to look through the document Paula gave you,” Peggy said doing just that.

  “I’m doing this from memory, but I’ve been told that I have a mind like a steel trap.”

  “Remind me never to get totally drunk with you, Peggy.”

  “Ah, interesting,” she said after a couple of minutes.

  Sally and I both looked at her.

  “The whole section about the woman murdered up in the gardens is missing. That took up about three pages in the digital file, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Well, these pages are numbered and after page sixteen it skips to page twenty.”

  “So Max must have removed them not knowing that the report was already online,” Sally said.

  “Or maybe Paula,” I said.

  * * *

  I cannot possibly tell you why but I found myself knocking on Marisol’s door. Her brand of wackiness was just what I needed to keep my mind off my woes. I know I’m in trouble when the wine stops working.

  “What?” I heard from behind the dark metal screen door.

  “I brought some of that cheese you liked at my house and some crackers.”

  “Okay, you can come in, but don’t dillydally, just tell me what you want.”

  She stood aside and I walked through and into her living room. I looked at the framed family photos displayed on every surface and remembered the night she’d told me about her husband.

  “I don’t got any wine, if that’s what you’re looking for,” she said.

  I smiled. “No, I don’t want any wine.”

  “You got a fever? Should I call 9-1-1?”

  “No, I’m fine. May I?” I asked, motioning to the powder-blue sofa. She nodded.

  “I’ll get some plates and paper napkins.”

  While she was gone, I looked again at the wedding photo sitting over the mantelpiece and remembered the conversation:

  * * *

  “My family came to America in 1940. I was ten,” Marisol began. “Javier’s family, the same thing. We’d grown up on the same street in Mexico.

  “We did two big things when we turned eighteen. We became American citizens and we got married.

  “In 1951 Javier was sent to Korea. He was so proud to be fighting for America; he wore that damn uniform even before he needed to.

  “He got shot one week before he was coming home.

  “He had a bullet in his spine and them doctors said it was too dangerous to operate. He came home in a goddamn wheelchair.

  “He couldn’t work; he couldn’t play with his girls, we couldn’t—

  “One day he said he was going to lunch with a friend who came by and picked him up. Another guy back from Korea. I’d never seen him or heard about him before.

  “He never came back.”

  * * *

  “You sure I don’t need to call a doctor or something? You don’t look so good,” she said, returning with plates, napkins, and two bottled waters.

  “I’m okay. I suppose you know that Jack and I had a fight?”

  “Oh no!”

  “Marisol?”

  “Okay, so I may have heard something about it. Was this on account of you getting arrested for trespassing?”

  My head snapped in her direction. I’d told her I’d spent the night in jail but that was it.

  “Augie told me, he’s worried about you.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of arrestee/police confidentiality that he has to follow?”

  “Guess not. Don’t worry about Jack, he’s just worried about you.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  The train was definitely off the tracks.

  “I remember when my second cousin Manny, they live in Pacoima, came over to spend the weekend. His parents needed to make a quick trip to Mexico and back for a death in the family,” Marisol went on.

  “You haven’t answered my question!”

  “We were just kids and I was very into climbing trees.”

  “All the better to spy on people, you started young. Can we get back to Jack?” My patience was fading fast.

  “Hello, Auntie,” Augie said, letting himself in. “Ah, Halsey, just the person I needed to talk to,” he added, noticing me.

  “Why not just tell Marisol like always? It’ll get back to me soon enough.”

  “Look, I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when you were brought in, Halsey, although there wouldn’t have been much I could have done to help. You got off with a fine, you should be very thankful for that.”

  “Her boyfriend left her,” Marisol said. Augie appeared caught off guard.

  I gave her a serpentine eyes look.

  Was she trying to set me up with Augie?

  “You said that you needed to talk to me about something, Augie?” I wanted to get the heck out of here.

  “Yes,” he said, sitting down and helping himself to the cheese plate. “Very good, Auntie.”

  Marisol beamed and I gave her the snake eyes again.

  After another helping, he finally started talking.

  “We’ve gotten the autopsy report back on Carlos, the workman found dead on Howard’s construction site.”

  “I’d heard that but nobody would tell me the results.”

  “He died of an overdose of Methamphetamine mixed with alcohol.”

  “So he wasn’t murdered?” I asked.

  “Sounds like he murdered himself,” Marisol said, disgusted.

  “Correct, that was not a homicide, but he sustained a deep head wound prior to his death that is consistent with an assault with a large, sharp rock.”

  “How can they distinguish an assault from him hitting his head? You remember he was lying facedown in the basement pit?” I was very careful not to say, “When I found his dead body,” which I had.

  “The circumference of the wound itself shows blunt force different from what it would look like if he’d fallen onto a rock.”

  “So what does all that mean?” I asked, and Marisol nodded. She needed answers.

  “That’s what the officers were doing when they caught you back on the property the other night. They’d been sent to secure the crime area in advance of the crime scene investigators who were coming back to collect some rocks the size and description from the autopsy report to bring back for testing.”

  “So, what does this have to do with me besides being in the wrong place at the wrong time?” I was beginning to get that feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “That’s the unfortunate news I have for you. Your fingerprints were found on a large piece of limestone that the CSU recovered, remember that we have them on file from the last time.”

  “Again, so? You know that I’d been down there, how else would I have found the body?”

  “Understood, and the first time we investigated the scene, we concentrated on collecting evidence of a perpetrator. It was only after the autopsy report that we were tipped off to look for a rock like this one.”

  Augie showed us a photo of the rock on his phone. “It was the only one we found with your fingerprints on it. If you were crawling around in the dark, it is highly unlikely that you would have touched just one rock that night, Halsey.”

  Augie showed us a photo of the rock on his phone.

  Marisol got up from her chair and turned on her TV. Was my fate that boring to her? She needed to see if Family Feud was on?

  Augie seemed oblivious to her and continued, “Look, Halsey, I know th
at you wouldn’t hurt anyone, at least I think so. And I know that you’ve been through the wringer, which is why I convinced the commander to let me come here and bring you in myself. We’ll make you comfortable and have this cleared up in no time.”

  “No! I cannot go back there; I’m already scarred for life. This time I demand a lawyer.”

  Augie was about to speak when we heard a loud siren being emitted from the speakers hooked up to Marisol’s TV. We both stared at her, and she turned it down and proceeded to rewind the picture. I looked at the screen and recognized bits of my living room going by.

  “Let me see that picture of the stone again, Augie.” Marisol grabbed the phone from him. “Now watch this.”

  She hit “play” and the video showed Slimy Snyder sitting on my sofa, his array of phony evidence had been laid out across my coffee table.

  “But this is only the tip of the iceberg,” you could hear him say as he presented his 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.”

  We watched as Snyder unwrapped the rocks and placed them in front of me.

  “And what, pray tell, do these indicate?”

  You could clearly see me picking one of the larger ones up and feeling the heft of its weight.

  Marisol froze the video frame and held up the photo from Augie’s phone beside it.

  Augie and I gaped.

  “Now, Augie, be a good boy and go back to your people and tell them that they’d better hurry and arrest this Snyder before he uses his slime to get away. Go, I’ll email this video to you.”

  “Yes, Auntie Marisol,” he said and dashed out.

  “Marisol, do you really think that Snyder staged this entire show and tell at my house just so that he could get my prints on that rock? And then go back and plant it at the site? He stood to gain more by selling me a mineral rights package. Unless of course, he somehow murdered Carlos, supplied the drugs or something.”

  “That guy’s slimy but he’s also dumb as bait. Plus, he’s too much of a wimp for murder. I think he needed to grab some rocks for his scam, took them from the site, and then tossed them back at the end of the day. Skinny runt like him could hurt his back carrying around that weight. Besides Augie has the video now.”

  “I shudder to think what I’m going to owe you for this.” I gave Marisol a hug.

  “You are right to be afraid.” She gave me a gold-toothed grin.

  Chapter 20

  Walking along Rose Avenue always gave me a sense of calm and belonging. Every house looked welcoming and gave a hint as to what was happening with the people inside. The Millers were having their windows replaced, two doors down, the grass was being taken up to make way for a drought tolerant rock and succulent garden. I noticed that the training wheels were finally off one of the kid’s bikes.

  All this should have put me in a better mood but I’d had three hours of sleep last night and was operating on fumes. I should have slept like a baby knowing that Augie and his team had Snyder in custody and were hopefully roping Howard into the case they were building.

  But despite my warm, furry bedmate, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jack. Now more than ever I needed to feel centered and focused on the things that really matter. All qualities that came naturally to him. Instead, I had this nagging feeling that everything was about to implode. I’ve had this before and have even given it a name: “impending doom.”

  I tried to shake it off and put on a happy face as I entered Penelope’s house.

  * * *

  “Augie, let me put you on speaker, I’m with the girls and they all want to hear the latest,” I said, doing so and placing my phone on Penelope’s coffee table.

  Penelope was hosting Wine Club that afternoon and it was her first time, so she’d gone all out. Lest you think that meant little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and scones because she’s English, you’d better think again. Penelope had been a world traveler as a student and was drawn to exotic locations and cuisines. Case in point, today we were treated to Vietnamese finger foods.

  Penelope had a tray of rice paper spring rolls filled with veggies and mint served with a tangerine dipping sauce. There were fried wontons with a sweet and sour hot mustard sauce, pickled scallions and spicy prawns, and some sort of rice teacake that melted in your mouth. Her house was equally decorated with souvenirs she’d picked up while globetrotting. I saw old-looking batik fabric that was placed behind glass in a simple frame. There were several lengths of kukui nut leis from Hawaii hanging on a peg and a tapestry with religious art that looked like it could be from the Crusades. There were many other fascinating items that I couldn’t identify, and I made a mental note to ask her about them later.

  “Augie, say hi to Sally, Peggy, Paula, and Penelope. You said that you had an update on this Slimy Snyder character?” I said.

  “Yes, I do. First of all we dusted the rock for other fingerprints in addition to yours and we got a match with Snyder’s. He’d been in the system from an old arrest back in his ambulance chasing days. That gave us enough to bring him in for questioning. He admitted that he and the developer, Howard, worked together on a real estate project but denied that any part of the mineral rights acquisition business was a scam. Since he never got to complete a transaction with you or anyone else for that matter, there is nothing to prosecute. He still maintains that you are all sitting above vast amounts of oil.”

  “I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night,” Sally said. “That guy needs to learn a new song.”

  “What did he say about his fingerprints being found on the rock? Was he there that night with Carlos?” Peggy asked.

  “He denies being anywhere near Carlos that night or any other. As for his prints, he says that he had taken samples from the basement trench for his sales presentation but that one was too heavy to keep lugging around, so he tossed it back.” Augie sounded tired.

  Just as Marisol had called it. How far did her spying really extend?

  “That’s about all we’ve got, Halsey, I’m afraid that this is a dead end. We know it was drugs and alcohol that killed Carlos, and frankly, I believe that Snyder and Howard had nothing to do with it. They may be scammers but that’s as deep as they go. For now, naturally we’ll still keep an eye on them.”

  I had to agree but I hated it.

  “If I remember correctly, Howard was caught with marijuana on him when he was a teenager working as an apprentice,” Paula said.

  That perked us all back up again.

  “You should check the records, Augie; this would have been around 1975.” Paula was suddenly a font of information.

  “Good to know, but doubtful that I’ll find anything. He’d have been arrested as a juvenile and those records often get expunged. If you’re implying that Howard may have supplied this Carlos with the drugs, that’s a stretch, but I’ll follow up. Have a nice afternoon, ladies.”

  With that the call disconnected.

  “Wow, Paula, great save,” Peggy said.

  “Yes, how on earth did you dig that out of the old attic?” Sally asked.

  Emboldened, Paula poured herself another glass of wine.

  Today Penelope was featuring a Francis Ford Coppola Sofia Rosé. Yes, that Coppola. It was the perfect accompaniment with its excellent concentration of fresh, juicy fruit flavors.

  “I just remembered you telling me that Howard had worked for the neighborhood’s old contractor, Sam, when he was just starting out in the business. Sam had built our pergola over the back patio and I’d remembered him saying how disappointed he was in Howard. He told us the whole story. He said the kid was already a real hustler.”

  Geez, these people are harder to nail than Jell-O to a wall. I resolved to amp up my efforts in this investigation. I was tired of the merry-go-round. It was time to hit the roller coaster.

  * * *

  The nex
t day, I decided to pay Paula’s husband, Max, a visit at the small office they rent for the local historical society. This was my chance to talk to him without Paula being present. Plus, I’d been told that it was a really cool place.

  The “office” was actually one big room that sat above the carport of one of the oldest homes on Grandview Blvd. The street was so named because it provided views of both the ocean to the west and the mountains to the east. It ran parallel along the top of the gardens and baseball fields. The only way to tell that the place existed was by reading a small brass plaque that was affixed to the white lathing above the garage. A circular wrought iron staircase led up to the entrance.

  I knocked and then walked in.

  “Well, hello, welcome to our little society.” Max was his usual jolly self.

  The space was divided into four sections, separated by large wood bookcases brimming with everything from atlases, a set of encyclopedias, books of every shape and size, and a fascinating array of local artifacts. In the center of the room sat a long dark wood table that must serve as host for their monthly meetings.

  “I’m afraid that we’re out of coffee, but I can offer you a bottled water.” Max pulled out a chair for me at the table.

  “I’m fine, Max, coffee is not really my thing and it’s too early for wine,” I joked. “I won’t take up much of your time but wondered if you could tell me a bit about the research study you began some years ago on the history of Mar Vista? And also if you intend to continue with the endeavor?”

  “Definitely not, that subject has been put to bed and locked away.” Max mimed turning a key.

  “That is a shame, it sounded so fascinating. And with all the new building and development going on around us, I’m afraid the history of the area could be buried for good.”

  “I agree, which is why we and this exist.” He spread his arms wide to the room. “But I believe that we stopped at the right place in the study.”

  “Which was where?”

  “Just before launching our investigation into the presence of oil in the area both historically and in modern times. It just got too dangerous.” Max shook his head in disappointment.