False Profits

by Patricia Smiley

  Logically, I knew that Sylvia couldn’t sell my house without owning it, and she couldn’t own it until the probate judge said she owned it. She was just yanking my chain by sending that real estate agent. Of course, the sensible thing would have been to wait until morning and call her attorney to protest. Except, I’d tried that numerous times after Sylvia contested the original will. The guy never returned my calls. This time never was too long to wait. I had to confront my aunt before she pulled another Jane Ventana or something even more creative. Besides, Sylvia had left two telephone messages for me the previous day. Obviously, she wanted to talk. I decided to make her wish come true.

  I copied down my aunt’s address, and forty-five minutes later I was cruising past the entrance of Vista Hills, a gated community on the San Fernando Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains, wondering how to get past security. I hadn’t counted on that. If I drove up to the gatehouse, the guard would see that my name wasn’t on Sylvia’s list of approved visitors. He’d call her, and she’d call out the Dobermans. It was too risky. I’d come too far to be thwarted now.

  I could cause a diversion and sneak through the gate when the guard wasn’t looking, but that worked best with a sidekick, and Venus was nowhere in sight. I’d just have to sneak without a diversion. I parked a couple of blocks down the road and sprinted for a six-foot stucco wall that surrounded the enclave. I crouched down so I wouldn’t be seen from either the road or the guard gate, and quietly made my way toward the entrance, stopping only to disentangle an oleander branch that got caught on my sweater.

  As I neared the gate, I saw a well-built black man dressed in a neatly pressed uniform. He was sitting inside the guardhouse with the door closed, watching a small television. It must have been a funny show, because even from where I was hiding, I could hear his hearty guffaws. He might have been on the lookout for unauthorized cars, but he didn’t seem too intent on watching for unauthorized pedestrians. I stayed close to the wall and crept past the wooden arm of the gate.

  Inside, the neighborhood looked like a movie set—familiar but not quite real. It reminded me of the Forbidden City. Cars on the street—forbidden. Litter on the sidewalk—forbidden. In fact, sidewalks—forbidden. I hoped snarling Dobermans were forbidden, too.

  I’d never been to my aunt’s house, so I checked the curb for addresses. There weren’t any. And if there were numbers on the houses, they were too far away for me to see. These people obviously didn’t want to be found. The whole neighborhood must be in the witness protection program.

  I couldn’t wander around too much longer without attracting attention, so I started looking for names on mailboxes. That wasn’t so easy, either. Finally, I spotted a huge French chateau—pink, no less—looming at the top of a hill at the end of the cul-de-sac. I felt as if I’d just been plopped smack-dab in the middle of Disneyland’s Versailles Adventure. There was a tiny brass plate on a mailbox near the driveway. Printed on it was the word Branch. I was out of breath by the time I jogged up the steps to the front door. I waited as the bell chimed out what sounded like “The Best of Lawrence Welk.”

  The more I thought about confronting my aunt, the harder my heart pounded. I was about to turn and run when a light switched on from inside the house and the door opened a crack.

  An elderly man of medium height stood in the light of a huge crystal chandelier hanging from the foyer ceiling. He had tousled white hair and unmanageable eyebrows. They reminded me of Eric’s brows and how they might look when he got old. The man had a slightly befuddled but kindly smile on his face. I wondered who he was. He definitely wasn’t Sylvia’s husband. Mr. Branch had died several years ago. Wherever he was, I bet he was resting in more peace there than by Sylvia’s side in the here and now.

  “I’m here to see Sylvia Branch,” I said.

  His smile turned to a puzzled frown. “How did you get in here? The guard didn’t call.”

  I paused a moment to think. “I live in the neighborhood.”

  He nodded as if to say, ah, that explains it. “Sylvia’s not available. She’s in a meeting.”

  I wanted to ask if I could come in and snoop through her desk drawers until I ran across a copy of Grandma Sinclair’s bogus new will, but I didn’t.

  “Will you see her when she gets home?”

  He smiled. “She is home. The meeting is here, in the library.”

  Library? Wow. My aunt not only had money, she had Dewey decimals.

  I smiled cordially. “I could wait.”

  He looked uncertain. “Maybe it would be better if you came back another time.”

  Who was this guy anyway? He looked too old to be a gigolo and too smart to be her boyfriend. He also looked too nice to be the conveyer of the nasty message I had for Sylvia Branch.

  “Who are you talking to, dear?”

  It was my aunt’s voice. It seemed hollow and faint, as if she was speaking from some distance away.

  “It’s the neighbor girl,” he said. “She wants to talk to you.”

  I heard the sound of shoes thumping down stairs. Shortly thereafter, the door opened wide, exposing a foyer that was as big as my bedroom. On the far wall were massive windows that were draped in enough fabric to tent my house for termites and sew new outfits for the Vienna Boys’ Choir with the leftover yardage. It made me wonder why my aunt wanted my little shoebox of a house. She had no children of her own to leave it to. How much money could she possibly spend in her lifetime?

  “You!” she said in a tone that could hardly be classified as friendly.

  Sylvia Branch stood silhouetted by the light from the chandelier. She was an imposing woman and might even have been labeled handsome if it weren’t for a deep crease between her eyebrows that made her look mean. She was tall, like me, but her dark hair had turned gray. Her fingers were long and slender, and the nails were polished a subtle pink. Everything about her reeked of wealth, from her dove gray wool slacks and pink cashmere sweater set to the three-strand string of pearls around her neck.

  “Nice to see you again, Aunt Sylvia. May I come in?”

  My cozy familiarity had obviously made her uncomfortable, because her frown deepened. “Since you haven’t had the courtesy to return my calls, why should I invite you in?”

  “Because we’re family, and blood is thicker than water.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, young lady. My lawyer warned me you’d cause trouble. He advised me to have no further contact with you.”

  “That sounds good to me, too, but let me ask you a question first. Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Doing what?”

  She said it as if she was stalling for time in order to come up with something other than the truth.

  “Trying to steal my house, that’s what. Why can’t you accept the fact that your mother wanted me to have it?”

  “You can’t be serious.” Her tone was indignant, but her eyes looked moist and pained. “I know my mother. She would never have left anything to you. I was the one who always took care of her. I did everything. And when she was dying, I sat by her bed, holding her hand. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not part of this family. You don’t deserve anything that belonged to her. You’re a fluke.”

  I’d been called many things in my life, but never a fluke. I won’t say that my feelings weren’t hurt by her comment, but in truth, they weren’t hurt all that much. You never get over being abandoned by your family, but after a while it just becomes part of your day. Besides, maybe she had a point. What claim did I have on anything that belonged to a woman I’d never met?

  My tone wanted to be forceful, but it missed the mark. “I may be a fluke, but as hard as it is for you to accept, I’m a Sinclair fluke.”

  Her expression became cold and sly. “You’re a Sinclair by accident only. My brother didn’t want you. Your mother tricked him into marriage by getting pregnant.”

  Okay, I’ll admit it: That one hurt. Maybe it was even the truth, but I doubted it. Sylvia was likely just being
spiteful. I was still analyzing the emotional impact behind her words when she slammed the door in my face. I knocked several times, calling to her through the door, but I knew that she couldn’t hear me. She’d already retreated deep into her house and into her bitter memories.

  I still didn’t understand why Sylvia resented me so much. Maybe she thought that after all she’d done for her mother, she should have gotten everything, including the beach cottage. Perhaps in her distorted view, getting the place away from me would even the score.

  That theory had a few holes, but nonetheless, I planned to tell Sheldon Greenblatt to launch a two-pronged front to defeat both Mo Whitener and Sylvia Branch. That is, if he ever called me back.

  Again I wondered about the old duffer who answered the door. I would have pegged him for hired help, except for the fact that Sylvia called him “dear.” That didn’t sound like something she’d say to her butler.

  When I made my way back to the gate, the guard was still slapping his knee over some show on the tube. I tiptoed past him and made my way to the car.

  When I finally got home, I found Muldoon standing by the refrigerator. Uh-oh, I thought. In all the confusion, I’d forgotten to buy dog food. Well, he’d have to forage just like me. There was some turkey in the meat tray, so I made us a couple of sandwiches and then carried the food to the couch.

  “Okay, here’s the thing, Muldoon, if Pookie asks, you don’t remember any turkey sandwich. None of this happened. Deal?”

  Munch, chomp, murff. Muldoon didn’t seem to approve of my ploy, but he definitely approved of my sandwich. He had finished his and was now eyeing mine. In a pinch, Muldoon wasn’t so bad to talk to, but it might be nice to add another human point of view to this little think tank. Someone like Eric? After all, he was smart, and he had good ideas. He was a little fussy and pessimistic sometimes, but what the heck. I wasn’t perfect, either. I decided against phoning him, because I’d used up my quota of favors for one day. Still, the fact that I was considering calling him at all made me wonder if our relationship deserved another look.

  Muldoon was pressuring me for seconds on the turkey, but settled for tortilla chips instead. Pookie would not be happy with the menu, but the little guy looked healthy enough, and he certainly looked happy.

  I was too keyed up to sleep, so I went to get the papers I’d taken from Milton Polk’s desk and separated everything into piles. The household bills, the seating chart, and the newspaper clipping, I’d return next time I saw Mona. The rest I’d keep for now.

  I also spread out the contents of the Deep Six carton on the floor, putting all the insurance claim forms into a separate pile. Some of the forms actually listed Sunland as the employer, so I flagged those. I went through each mound again, carefully looking only at the addresses until—bingo.

  In all that chaos I found an insurance claim for a patient named Anton Maslansky, living at a very familiar Beverly Hills address where I knew there would be posters of Brad Pitt movies hanging on the walls. I felt like saying wah-hoo. This was the evidence I needed to show that the Tucker file was not a typo as Francine had suggested. Someone was using the Rexford Drive address as a mail drop to warehouse insurance payments. I wondered how extensive the scam was and how long it had been going on.

  NeuroMed needed money—lots of it—and from the information I’d gathered from Eric’s databases, so did Sunland Manufacturing. According to Madie, Polk had purchased equipment from Sunland through some special deal. Did that deal also include collaboration and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud? Maybe. I batched all the claims from patients listing Sunland as an employer and set them aside.

  Tomorrow I’d pay a call to Bernard Cole. From what I’d read in Eric’s database files, Cole seemed like an upstanding guy. I assumed he’d want to investigate these claims to see if someone in his organization was masterminding the scheme.

  I cleaned up the few dishes in the kitchen sink. That made me feel neat and organized, but what I really wanted to feel was loved and appreciated. I sat in the overstuffed chair in the living room and thought about playing Pookie’s message again—not the whole thing, just the first part, before I knew that the mommy kisses were for Muldoon and not me. But I didn’t, because I was a big girl and above all that. Muldoon evidently saw that I needed cheering up, so he walked through my papers, disrupting my neat little piles. He put his front paws on my leg, looking eager.

  I leaned down and looked him in the eye. “Kiss, kiss, Mommy loves—” He apparently didn’t pick up on the sarcasm in my voice because he licked on the word “loves,” and tongues collided.

  “Eeyew.”

  He liked that sound even better, and round two grazed my cheek, leaving a thin coat of slime that smelled like tortilla chips. Oh, well, at least his kisses were sincere and meant only for me. Maybe I’d been looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe tomorrow I’d figure everything out, and people wouldn’t be mad at me anymore. Tomorrow. At Tara.

  Well, maybe Tara was too much to hope for, but at least I hoped that tomorrow would bring some answers to my questions about Polk and his connection to Sunland. It was risky talking to Bernard Cole, but I had no other choice. I just hoped that Sunland’s CEO wasn’t the person who’d helped Polk falsify my business plan, or—scarier yet—the person who’d killed him.

  15

  the following morning, I put on a soft pinky-beige silk suit with a long skirt that I called my Out of Africa outfit, and a pair of shoes with two-inch chunky heels that pushed me dangerously close to six feet tall. Since it was a dual-purpose day, I hoped the getup looked businesslike enough to impress Bernard Cole and charitable enough to wow Wade Covington at his luncheon later in the day.

  Sunland Manufacturing was located in Santa Fe Springs, a cluster of track homes, business parks, and heavy industrial sights located about twelve miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It’s a city where more people work than live, and is better known for its workplace shootings than its drive-by shootings.

  There were no neat brass nameplates on the mailboxes in the part of town that Sunland called home, so it wasn’t easy finding the place. Luckily, there are two things I always keep in my car: a gym bag with a set of sweats and a pair of athletic shoes, in case I’m ever moved to exercise, which isn’t often; and a Thomas Guide, the inch-thick map book of Los Angeles County streets that no Angeleno could do without, especially if that Angeleno wasn’t fortunate to have GPS in her car. I checked the map to make sure I was on the right road.

  It was nine o’clock by the time I finally spotted Sunland’s name painted on the side of a concrete building. I nosed the car onto the dusty shoulder and parked behind a roach coach, which was surrounded by the aroma of refried beans. A dozen or so men stood in line waiting to buy food.

  I moved through the powdery dust along the chain-link fence to the entry gate and followed a path to a building with white letters that read OFFICE stenciled on the door. By that time, my shoes were covered with dirt. Not exactly impressive for either a chichi charity bash or a business call. A dust cloud formed around me as I stomped on a bristly mat in front of the door. Inside, the odor of stale cigarette smoke permeated the room. A stressed brown tweedy loveseat with two matching butt prints slouched against the opposite wall. I hoped Sunland’s manufacturing facilities were cleaner than their office.

  A heavily made-up woman in her late forties sat behind a metal desk. Her pageboy was black and heavy-handed and seemed better suited for someone with a pierced tongue. The letters on her fake wood nameplate read, Irene Borodin, Human Resources Manager. Smoke from a burning cigarette coiled from an ashtray on her desk. In L.A. you were barely allowed to smoke in the privacy of your own home. How’d she get away with it here? A computer terminal sat on the credenza behind her. It slept while she posted to a ledger book on her desk. She picked up the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “What can I do for you?” she said, picking a piece of cigarette grit from her tongue with a long acrylic fingernail.<
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  “I’m looking for Bernard Cole.”

  “He’s not in.”

  “Know when he’ll be back?”

  “He doesn’t come to the warehouse much. He’s probably at the plant.” She surveyed me closely, as if something was out of place but she wasn’t sure what. A moment later she added, “We’re not hiring.”

  Did I have unemployed written on my forehead, or what?

  “I’m not looking for a job,” I said. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Cole about employee benefits.”

  She looked bored. “Well, you’ll have to talk to me about that. What are you selling?”

  I’d decided to be up front with Bernard Cole, but no one said anything about Countess Dracula here. I reverted to plan B.

  “I represent a medical facility used by a number of your employees,” I said. “We’ve selected a group of people at random to help us with a survey to see how satisfied they are with the service.”

  “Who are you with?”

  I paused. “NeuroMed Diagnostic Center.”

  She winked against the curl of smoke that had snaked toward her right eye. “What did you say your name was?”

  I couldn’t tell her my real name. It might make her suspicious, especially if she’d seen the fake Tucker Sinclair claim form. I needed a name without star quality, something bland and forgettable.

  “Mary Jo Felder,” I said. “The survey would be strictly voluntary and confidential, of course.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest defensively, as if I’d just accused her daughter of being big for her age. “Who do you want to talk to?”