Beautiful Girls

by Gary S. Griffin

  Lomita greeted me with a strong handshake and said, “We need to stop meeting like this, Garrett.”

  “Hello, Lieutenant.”

  “So, where is your little lady?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “I’d like to talk to her, too.”

  “Sure, I’ll wake her in a few minutes, but I’d like to talk about a few things first.”

  Lomita said, “OK.”

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure, I take it black.”

  “Come in and have a seat, Lieutenant.”

  He said, “Things have come full circle. My first homicide investigation was Sid Senior and his wife’s drowning back in 1983. Then, I was on his son’s murder in ‘95, and now, the grandson, Troy, and two others. Something’s not right for all this death to happen to one family.”

  “I agree.”

  I went to the kitchen and poured a mug for Lomita. I handed him the coffee and sat across from him.

  I asked, “Any news on Rob Nealy or Tawny?”

  “No. I spoke to Tucson and no one has shown up at the mountain cabin. It looks like Nealy was there sometime in the last week, but not in the last day or two. They’re checking out that soup kitchen you mentioned last night. They’ll keep an eye on the cabin twice a day.”

  “Good. I don’t like that he’s completely out of touch.”

  Lomita understood what I meant. “We’ll find him. So, what do your private eye instincts tell you?”

  I shared my earlier thoughts.

  Lomita said, “I’m thinking like you, too.”

  I asked, “Any more on the blood on the paving stone?”

  “Not yet, but I need your fiancée to get a blood test. It’s our best chance to see if it’s her father’s blood. If not, we’ll also compare it to Tawny’s mother and half brother’s.”

  I knew what he meant.

  I said, “We’ll do it today.”

  “OK.”

  “Edie wants me to look for Tawny. She’s like a big sister to the girl and this is tearing her up. I don’t know how she’s keeping it together with the other three deaths.”

  “Sure, it’s understandable. What kind of looking are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I think Edie wants to reconstruct Tawny’s day on Sunday. She thinks she was with a friend Sunday afternoon. I think it could be why Edie didn’t find Tawny’s body when she got here.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too. OK, Garrett, here’s the deal. You do your private eye stuff. But, you work with me, in two ways.”

  “Two ways?”

  “Yeah; first, you take ‘No’ as an answer from me. And, second, you call me at the end of every day and check in, and immediately if something big happens. Got it?”

  “Sure do, Lieutenant. What do I get from you?”

  “You get me listening to you and having these little chats.”

  A feminine voice said, “That sounds nice.”

  It was Edie, walking out of the bedroom, wrapped in her white knee length bathrobe.

  Lomita said, “See, Garrett, your fiancée knows how nice I am.”

  I smiled at Lomita, got up and gave Edie a hug. She nodded when I offered coffee. She sat on the love seat across from the detective.

  Edie said, “Is there any news, detective?”

  Lomita and I recapped our brief conversation for Edie.

  She said, “Oh, I don’t want to think about the blood on that rock. I won’t right now. I’ve seen more blood…it’s a nightmare…”

  She stopped talking and held my hand.

  I said we would go to the lab later today. Lomita gave us the address where the blood sample should be sent. Edie told him we would get it done at her obstetrician’s office as she had her sixteen week checkup later that morning. That statement raised Lomita’s left eyebrow and caused him to look at me and smile.

  Edie didn’t really have other questions.

  Lomita said, “Miss McCall, I’d like to conduct a search of the mansion with you.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, Stevie mentioned that last night. I’ll get dressed after I take my vitamins.”

  Lomita said, “I’ll get the patrolmen and wait outside.”

  As he left, Edie said, “We’ll be out in five minutes.”

  Edie waited a moment after Lomita shut the pool house front door. Tears were running down her face. I moved over closer to her and patted her back. She turned and whispered, “Thank you,” and kissed me.

  As she got up from the love seat holding her coffee cup, her robe caught and pulled open. First her bare legs, next her rounded tummy, then her behind and finally her uncovered chest came out of the robe, leaving her naked except for a tiny thong.

  I said, “Lomita will never know what he missed.”

  Edie smiled at me over her shoulder, slipped completely out of the robe and walked on to the kitchen. She calmly and deliberately took out her morning vitamins, poured a glass of milk, drank the pills down and walked back to the bedroom without thinking of covering herself again.

  I simply admired the view for the long seconds that it took before the bedroom door was shut behind Edie. But not before she caught my eye and winked at me.

  Mansion Search

  We talked as Edie got dressed.

  Edie asked, “Did Lomita say what the mansion looks like?”

  I said, “Nothing he spoke about, but you’ll notice anything odd better than the rest of us. Detective Lomita told me that they found a half-drunk cup of tea in the library. There were clothes in the washer and dryer, but, otherwise, nothing that seemed unusual. Did you hear anything else?”

  She answered, “No, they really didn’t speak to me about what they found.”

  Edie walked out of the bedroom wearing a knee-length flower print dress and sandals. She grabbed her keys and held my hand as we left the pool house.

  Lomita was sitting at the poolside table with the young, redheaded patrolman, McBride.

  He introduced us and said, “Let’s go, but make sure you don’t touch anything.” I think Lomita’s comment was mostly directed at McBride.

  It was 9:00 when the four of us entered the mansion’s basement tunnel in the hillside near the pool. The thirty foot walk ended inside what was once the bomb shelter, now the wine cellar. The wine cellar looked unchanged since my visit the prior year and Edie didn’t see anything out of place. Further on, we walked into the basement under the mansion. The next room had a large sectional couch and a huge wall-mounted television. Edie thought it looked in order.

  She then said, “Let’s check my father’s area.”

  She meant the old servant’s quarters which had an entry here in the basement, in addition to its outdoor entrance. Bambi had generously allowed Edie’s father, Rob Nealy, to use this space when he was in L.A., which happened once or twice a month. He did maintenance work for Bambi. Nealy spent the remainder of his time in Edie’s mountain cabin, high above Tucson, Arizona.

  Edie unlocked the servants quarters’ door. We walked in, and turned on lights as we began a slow search of the two bedrooms, living room, dining area and kitchen. These quarters were furnished in new, durable-looking oak furniture. The place looked untouched from the last time Solana cleaned it. The bed was made, sofa and chair cushions had not been sat on and the curtains were drawn.

  I hadn’t been in here before and was surprised to see photos and memorabilia of Edie in the second bedroom. Clearly, this had been her room when she grew up. I lost track of time for a while. Intrigued and interested, I lingered and simply looked around. There was Edie at a dance recital. In another photo she was acting on stage. I guessed correctly; Edie had always been gorgeous, with a precocious, intelligent look in her eyes — even in the earliest photo of her, which I guessed was around age five or six. The high school diploma and other awards of Edith M. Nealy, Edie’s birth name, were in wall-mounted frames. I was seeing, in this brief time, a new view of my love. I had never known or seen any of this about her.
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br />   On Edie’s desk was a photo of a beautiful middle-aged dark-haired woman with Hispanic features. The woman smiled at the camera and looked quite a lot like Edie. It was her mother.

  Edie blushed as she saw me taking in her life. She whispered, “Oh, Stevie, do you really want to look at this stuff?”

  “Yes, I do, I love looking at this beautiful little California girl.”

  “We can come back sometime soon.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  I walked into the main bedroom while Edie used the bathroom. Rob’s room was spare and orderly. The closet and bureau were less than half-filled. There were photos of Edie and her mother on the desk. On the wall, a photo of a younger Rob smiled out at me. He stood on the deck of a yacht docked in a harbor.

  I asked, “Whose boat is that?”

  “It was Sid’s parents’. My father sailed it for them when they were alive. He really liked that boat but he sold it after his parents died. It held too many sad memories for him.”

  I walked into the kitchen with Edie right behind me. A newspaper folded in half, and half again sat on the kitchen counter top. A nearly empty Dunkin Donuts foam coffee cup sat next to it. I pointed it out to the detective.

  Lomita unfolded the paper without touching it by using a wooden cooking spoon so he could read the name and date of the edition. It was the sports section of the Sunday Arizona Daily Star.

  Edie, looked and said, “My dad’s been here.”

  I said, “Yeah, and it couldn’t have been before Sunday.”

  That’s when Edie broke down again. I hugged her.

  Edie recovered enough to say, “Oh, Stevie, this keeps getting worse.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I kissed the top of her head, held her hand and led us out of the servant’s quarters, back to the basement hall.

  Lomita said, “I’ll get a tech in here.”

  The rest of the search was anticlimactic. In the laundry room we saw Bambi’s cold cup of tea and the wet and dry clothes.

  I met Solana, the maid. I asked and Solana said she locked the front door and shut the bedroom and bathroom doors when she finished cleaning the pool house the prior Thursday.

  Some cards and flowers had been delivered, and Solana had placed them in the living room. Edie stopped and looked at the cards and the notes attached to the flowers. She read out the names of the friends and celebrities who sent the condolences.

  While Edie did that I looked at the three Oscars statues on the mantle. Two of these were earned by Sid, Senior for his Sheriff movies. I wondered when they were made. I knew there was a gap of ten or more years between the two films.

  I asked and Edie said, “The first one was made in 1969, the year before I was born. My parents moved to L.A. to work here after filming ended. I think the second one was made in 1980. Both movies were filmed in Tucson.”

  The first and second floors of the mansion were neat and undisturbed by the exterior violence. The only surprises to me were the few decorating changes Bambi had made in the past year and the messy state of Tawny’s teenage bedroom.

  Baby Doctor

  We returned to the pool house and Edie called the home of Tawny’s best friend, Jessica Manning. Edie had met Jessica many times before and had driven Tawny to and from the Manning’s home. No one answered the phone so she left a message with her cell phone number. We planned to stop there on there on the way home. Both of us continued our phone calls to family and friends postponing our wedding and talking about the sad news. By 10:45 AM we were glad for a break from the emotionally draining conversations.

  We escaped in the BMW and drove to Edie’s OB/GYN doctor’s office down the hill into Westwood. The drive went smoothly through late morning traffic. I parked the BMW and led Edie inside. The receptionist welcomed us and told Edie to go to an examination room when we entered. Fifteen minutes later, I was escorted to Edie’s room. Edie was sitting on the examining table wearing a hospital gown.

  The doctor, Sally Tobin, was a heavy set, short woman in her late twenties with thick, closely cut dark brown hair. She was a serious, conservative looking woman.

  Dr. Tobin turned towards Edie and said, “Well, everything seems okay. You can get dressed Edie. Relax and get comfortable.”

  The doctor asked me, “Are you Ms. McCall’s husband?”

  I said, “I’m her fiancé, Stevie Garrett.”

  She looked at Edie, “Is he the father of the child?”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor took off her latex gloves, extended her right hand to me, and said, “Congratulations, Mr. Garrett, your fiancée is four months pregnant and mom and your baby boy are doing very well.”

  Both Edie and I said, “A boy?”

  Dr. Tobin blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. Edie didn’t want to know. Please forgive me.”

  I asked, “Are you sure we’re having a son?”

  “I’m fairly confident. We’ve been doing ultrasounds for a few visits now and I’m sure I see something between his legs. I’m not 100% certain, because we didn’t do an amnio, but I’d bet I’m right.”

  I said, “A boy…”

  Edie laughed and said, “Oh, Stevie, look at you. You’re totally dazed!”

  I said, “Wow…”

  The doctor again said, “I’m sorry, Edie…”

  Edie said, “Oh, doctor, I’m not upset. This is the first good news we’ve had in several days.”

  “Mr. Garrett. Mr. Garrett!”

  “Stevie!”

  I snapped out of my daydream of Little League games and Boy Scout hikes.

  I turned to Edie. “Oh, right, I’m sorry, baby.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “This is terrific!”

  “Yes, I’m so glad you think so.”

  I gave Edie a hug and kiss and asked the doctor, “We’ve had a terrible family tragedy. I’m worried. Is there something we should do to protect Edie and the baby?”

  Dr. Tobin said, “Be careful. Make sure she eats right, that she gets plenty of rest and sleep, and that she takes her vitamins. Protect her and the baby, Mr. Garrett.”

  “I will.”

  Dr. Tobin then finished, “Congratulations you two and good luck. I’m so sorry to hear about the terrible things that happened. Stevie, whatever you two do, think of your baby and make life the least stressful you can for Edie. Be very kind to her!”

  Then Edie spoke clearly and determinedly. “He is my wonderful man and he’ll get me through this. First, we must find my father and Tawny Gabriel and figure out why this happened. Then, we’re getting married.”

  Dr. Tobin looked at her, then at me, nodded and walked out.

  After the doctor left, I leaned over and kissed Edie again. Edie told me she’d had blood drawn before I came back to the examination room. The doctor would have it ready for the police lab technician.

  We walked on a cloud out of that office. Once inside the BMW, we kissed for a moment and then we started talking.

  Edie said, “Oh, this is all so screwed up. I’m so happy and sad, all at the same time, Stevie. This has been an incredible experience. It’s unbelievable!”

  I hugged her tight and whispered in her ear, “I can’t believe all this either.”

  Edie told me, “Oh Stevie, I can’t describe how much I’m in love with you.”

  With that, we kissed again for a long, long time.

  I then said, “Let’s have lunch.”

  We had a soup and salad lunch at a casual restaurant. We refilled her prescription, and then headed to Tawny’s friend’s home in Beverly Hills.

  90210

  The Mannings had a beautiful, sprawling ranch-styled home on Laurel Way. Carol was the forty-four year-old wife of Dr. Timothy Manning, plastic surgeon to the wannabe-hot girls and the young-at-heart women of Beverly Hills. We found Carol and her only child, Jessica, sympathetic and empathetic to Edie’s tragedy. They wanted to help anyway they could.

  We sat at a table in the shade of a yellow umbrell
a next to the swimming pool while we sipped lemonade. I couldn’t imagine the value of this one story home. It seemed to spread all across the top side of a small mountain and had wonderful views to the east and southeast. Carol was a redhead with pale, freckled skin. She avoided direct sun, and lived her life in the shade – a tough thing to do in L.A. Jessica inherited her mother’s friendliness and her father’s darker hair and coloring and was a true water bug. She sat next to us in the seat with the most sun, sunning herself in her green bikini.

  We determined Tawny’s whereabouts before the crime on Sunday. She spent the afternoon sunbathing poolside with Jessica Manning. Jessica said Tawny seemed fine and the girls worked on a school Social Studies project due that week.

  Carol Manning said Bambi dropped off Tawny at 1 PM. She drove Tawny back to the mansion at dinner time; around 6 PM. Carol didn’t see anyone at the mansion. She saw four cars in the driveway, Bambi’s white BMW, Edie’s blue BMW, Troy’s black Jeep and a silver Ford sedan with an Arizona license plate. She remembered it was white and purple because she pulled right behind the Ford as it was stopped in front of the other cars, blocking the turnaround by the garages.

  Tawny said everyone was home so Carol didn’t need to wait. She waved to Tawny and backed down the driveway. Carol thinks Tawny started talking to someone as she started driving away.

  That’s all they could remember. That said, the Mannings provided better information than we expected and confirmed our worse guesses.