by Rick Copp
As our bus dropped a group of us off in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, my stomach rumbled, which caused Charlie to raise an eyebrow.
“Hungry?”
“Yeah, so?” I said, rather abruptly. The fact was I was always hungry.
In my defense, during all the excitement, I never even took a bite from my hors d’oeuvre plate. And hours had passed since the all-you-can-eat brunch at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara. So Charlie knew to find the nearest roadside diner pronto or my mood would inevitably darken during the long drive home, and he would be the one to pay the price. After turning left for the Pacific Coast Highway scenic route south toward Los Angeles, Charlie spotted the San Simeon Beach Bar and Grill just across the road from sweeping views of the glistening, hazy blue ocean. He instinctively jerked the wheel and pulled in and parked right in front of the entrance in order to cut down on the length of time it would take to get some food into me, and thereby make his journey back home more pleasant.
“This look good to you?”
I nodded, choosing not to reply with a verbal response that could be laced with sarcasm or a slicing edge. When I was ugly from hunger, just staying quiet was my preferred method of dealing with my mood. This foresight was one of the chief reasons Charlie and I were still together.
The sea-blue paint on the one-level, dilapidated structure was fading from the sun’s intense daily beating. The restaurant probably did a good business owing to the fact that it was so close to the Hearst property and all that traffic, not to mention there didn’t seem to be another dining establishment within ten miles. And it was probably safe to say that this bar and grill in the tiny seaside hamlet of San Simeon, California, wasn’t going to make any top ten lists in Bon Appetite magazine.
Charlie and I strolled inside, and took a table next to the window so we could gaze out at the impressive view. A hefty waitress in her late fifties, with a seen-it-all scowl, ambled up with her pad of paper and asked if we were ready to order before either of us had even opened the menu. I was fine with that. I didn’t need to peruse. I was ready to eat now. One quick two-second glance at the lunch offerings, and I was raring to go.
“Club sandwich, no mayo, extra cheese, with chips and a small salad, peppercorn ranch dressing on the side, a Diet Coke, and a glass of ice water.”
The waitress stared at me. I could tell she was impressed. I knew what I wanted with no annoying questions or irritating special requirements. Her day just got a little bit easier. Charlie, however, was another matter. He hemmed and hawed as his eyes scanned up and down the menu. The waitress, who was almost ready to give us a smile after my precise ordering, went back to scowling as Charlie considered his options.
“Let’s see . . . what do I feel like? The omelets look really good, but I might be in the mood for some French toast. Of course, that sandwich you’re getting sounds pretty good too.”
Since Charlie was willing to put up with my hunger-related mood swings, it was only fair I dealt maturely with his incessant waffling when ordering in a restaurant. The waitress didn’t share a bed with him like I did, so she didn’t have to be patient.
“Should I just come back?”
“Yes,” he said with a weak smile. “Two minutes.”
As she started to walk off, I gently grabbed her arm. “But go ahead and put my order in, okay?”
She nodded with understanding, closed her pad, and huffed off into the kitchen. I stared out at the crashing waves across the road and we sat in silence for over a minute as Charlie glanced at the menu, but then he put it down on the table and said, “So what do you think? Do you believe Juan Carlos somehow poisoned Teboe?”
I took a moment to consider, but it was pointless. I knew my answer before he even asked the question. “Yes,” I said emphatically.
“Me too.” His tone was even more certain than mine. And as he launched into his intention to stay on top of the case, get a copy of the autopsy report, and stay in contact with the San Simeon investigation, my attention was drawn to a man who had just walked in the door. He looked vaguely familiar from the back as he approached the waitress, who had just come out of the kitchen with my Diet Coke and ice water. She pointed to a table across the room perpendicular to ours, and he sauntered over to it. Just as he slid in his seat, the waitress blocked my view as she stopped to deliver my drinks.
She gave Charlie a wary look. “Got any decisions for me yet?”
Charlie gave her an embarrassed shrug. He had been so busy discussing the Austin Teboe murder, he hadn’t yet had the chance to make any.
“One more minute,” he said as he cracked open the menu. “No, wait. I’ll have . . .” But the poor guy just couldn’t commit. Luckily, unlike a lot of gay men, he was much better committing to relationships. “No, forget it. Just give me . . . another minute.”
The waitress shook her head slightly and tossed me a look, knowing I shared her contempt of indecisiveness when it came to food. And then she disappeared back into the kitchen again, clearing my obstructed view of the new diner.
My heart almost stopped. I could feel the blood draining from my face. Charlie glanced up from his menu, and instantly knew something was wrong.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s him. He’s here,” I said.
Charlie looked across the room, and his face froze at the sight of Wendell Butterworth, my insane childhood stalker, sitting across the room from us, calmly skimming the lunch specials at the San Simeon Beach Bar and Grill.
Chapter 5
Charlie was up out of his seat like a shot, and charged over to where Wendell Butterworth sat with a satisfied smile on his face. He barely acknowledged Charlie looming over him. His dead gray eyes were fixed on me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Charlie said with controlled anger.
Wendell glanced up at him and, with an innocent shrug, replied, “Just having some lunch.” And then he looked back at me, and gave me a flirtatious wink.
Charlie’s imposing six-foot-two frame towered over Wendell as he reached down, grabbed him by his shirt collar, and hauled him out of his chair, which tipped over in the scuffle.
Charlie pulled him forward in his grip until their faces were mere inches apart. “I want you out of here . . . now!”
“I’m just here to get something to eat,” Wendell said calmly, going limp in Charlie’s grasp. He wasn’t going to give Charlie the satisfaction of fighting back.
The seen-it-all waitress, who’d just come out of the kitchen carrying my club sandwich on a rectangular plastic tray, apparently hadn’t seen anything like this. Charlie let go of Wendell’s collar and hooked an arm around the back of his neck, securing him in a headlock. Then, he yanked him toward the front door. Wendell let his feet drag across the floor, making it even more difficult for Charlie to maneuver him out of the restaurant.
The waitress dropped her tray in surprise, and let out a squeak before she turned back to the kitchen and screamed, “Joey, Lanny, you guys better get out here now!”
Charlie kicked the door open with his right foot, planted the palms of his hands squarely in the middle of Wendell’s back, and shoved him hard outside. He then was instantly back at our table, where I sat trying hard not to show him how scared I was. He put a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“You okay, babe?”
“Yeah, it just kind of freaked me out, that’s all.”
I lovingly placed my hand over Charlie’s and we were both still for a moment, contemplating the surreal nature of what had just happened.
Joey and Lanny, the cook and busboy, and prime contenders for a tag team WWE Smackdown title, came bursting through the revolving kitchen doors. They charged up behind the five-foot-two waitress, their bulky size dwarfing her.
Without taking her eyes off us, she said, “The tall one just accosted one of my customers. Kicked his poor ass out the door.”
Charlie reached into his back pocket to retrieve his badge, but I stood up and took
his hand under the judgmental stares of the obviously straight brutes.
“Let’s just go,” I said, noticing the remnants of my club sandwich littering the scuffed, dirty floor. “We’ll stop somewhere else to eat.”
I tossed a ten-dollar bill down on the table. Lanny, hairy everywhere except on the top of his head, waddled over to the front door and pushed it open. He glared at us as we passed by in a vain attempt to intimidate us as we were leaving.
With Charlie’s martial arts background and advanced weapons training, it would take a lot more than a three-hundred-pound goateed gorilla in a stained white cook’s uniform to intimidate me. On the other hand, if Charlie hadn’t been by my side, I probably would have peed in my pants.
Out in the parking lot, we both cautiously looked around for any sign of Wendell Butterworth. He had obviously been released from prison for over a week now. Plenty of time to drum up a handgun. But Wendell had disappeared as quickly as he first appeared, like a ghost. I never once deluded myself into thinking he wouldn’t pop up again to haunt me.
Charlie and I climbed into his Volvo, Charlie behind the wheel, and we pulled back onto the highway, riding south toward home in silence. I stole a brief glimpse of Charlie as he drove. He was lost in his private thoughts, and there were worry lines creasing his forehead. He hadn’t been there for the hell and pain that Wendell’s wrath had brought upon my childhood. But he was acutely aware of the scars and nightmares it had left on me. And it troubled him. He noticed me watching him, so I offered him a reassuring smile. I didn’t want him to think I was going to let this guy get to me again. After all, I was older now, stronger, and wiser. I could handle one loony tune. But the reality was, all the fear and anxiety that had paralyzed me as a child was starting to come back. And the idea of this monster kicking off a new campaign of terror made me shudder.
“Monkshood. Very lethal. They call it that because the plant it comes from resembles a monk’s cowl.”
Charlie and I listened with rapt attention to Susie Chan as she talked while devouring her blackened swordfish at The Little Door on Third Street in West Hollywood. This quaint French bistro, aptly named for its small wooden front door, was one of the top dining spots in LA, and, with even the Diet Coke imported from Europe, very expensive. But the splurge was worth it tonight because in exchange for a forty-dollar piece of fish and a couple of hundred-dollar bottles of wine, Charlie and I were gathering invaluable bits of information.
“It was used in ancient Europe and Asia to poison enemy water supplies during times of war. Hunters also used its sap to poison spears, arrowheads, trap baits, you name it,” Susie said between bites of her swordfish.
After returning from Laurette’s wedding, Charlie had called his ex-wife, who was the best medical examiner the county of Los Angeles had to offer. She was a five-foot dynamo, appearing on television as a coroner to the stars. She had made quite a name for herself. But despite her enormous career success, she never quite got over her husband coming out of the closet. And she blamed me for breaking up her marriage even though Charlie and I met years after they’d divorced and he’d declared himself gay.
Relations between Susie and myself had always been strained, but lately they had been particularly dicey thanks to a blowup we had when Susie intimated on television that I was directly connected to the murder of my friend Willard Ray Hornsby last year. Of course I didn’t do it, and I subsequently unmasked the real killer. But an apology never came from Susie, and we had barely spoken since. Charlie, in the interest of diplomacy, had maintained a cordial relationship with his ex-wife, and they still met for dinner once a month to catch up on each other’s lives. I rarely attended these evenings, but tonight was an exception. Susie had agreed to conduct an independent autopsy on Austin Teboe to clarify the cause of death. And owing to her celebrity status, the San Simeon police were more than willing to accommodate her. Some of the officers probably even secretly hoped they’d make the pages of her next book.
Nobody seriously believed Austin Teboe had died of a heart attack. He was still in his early forties and in reasonably good shape. No, there was something else at work here, and Susie was more than willing to help out because, well, let’s be frank, she was still in love with her ex-husband.
Susie gulped down a mouthful of a pricey Chardonnay. We were almost down two bottles, and Susie, the lush she was, would undoubtedly order another knowing full well it was my acting residuals picking up the tab.
“Interesting fact. In ancient Greece, legend had it that the plant originated from the slobber dripping from the fangs of Cerberus, the three-headed dog Hercules supposedly brought back with him from the underworld.” I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Greek myth of a poisonous plant. But I nodded as if I were caught up in a riveting Discovery Channel documentary.
Susie poured herself another glass of wine and then batted her big brown eyes at me. “Should we order another bottle?”
“Sure,” I said, clenching my teeth.
Charlie flagged down the waiter.
“So, you’re sure this is the poison that was mixed into Austin’s champagne?” I said evenly, trying to get as much out of Susie as I could before she got too drunk to speak coherently.
“Yes. It’s very bad. Causes burning and tingling, numbness in the tongue, throat, and face, followed by nausea, blurred vision, and paralysis of the respiratory system. Mr. Teboe probably felt as if there was ice water in his veins. And with the amount we found in his glass, it’s fatal within ten minutes.”
“Was there anything we could have done had we known what it was?” Charlie asked.
“Nope. There’s no antidote, at least not that we know about.” She pushed her plate away with a third of her swordfish still left. “I don’t want to get too full. I hear their dessert menu is fabulous.”
“So he was definitely murdered,” I said just to confirm it out loud.
“Absolutely. Even the ME in San Simeon, who does maybe one autopsy every two years, knew there was foul play involved before he even cut Mr. Teboe open.”
“Where do you think the killer got the stuff?”
“In Nova Scotia, monkshood survives as a garden plant. It’s not impossible to come by. So I don’t think it’s going to help narrow down your lists of suspects.”
“You’ve been a big help, Susie, thanks,” Charlie said with a smile.
I felt it was in my best interest to agree. “Yes, Susie, thank you. You never cease to amaze me with your crime scene investigation talents.”
Susie knew she was the best, and was always open to fawning accolades. She simply sat back and enjoyed letting them wash over her.
The waiter returned with our third hundred-dollar bottle of wine, and Susie nearly clapped with glee as he twisted the corkscrew into the top of the bottle and popped it open. He poured a small amount into one glass, which Charlie tasted and approved, and we commenced with another full round. Susie signaled another waiter, who was carrying a tray with the evening’s dessert selections, and he hustled over to her side so she could ponder over which sweet appealed the most to her. She just couldn’t decide, and the poor guy, who had about seven other tables to attend to, was left standing next to her, holding a silver tray lined with seven different dessert selections. At least Susie and Charlie had had one thing in common when they were married: culinary indecisiveness.
As Susie debated between the crème brûlée and the chocolate mousse cake, my mind wandered to Laurette’s wedding. The killer had to be somebody in attendance. Austin Teboe had apparently known only two people at the ceremony. There was a definite history between him and Dominique, though it was still a mystery what exactly it was. But she left early, long before the wedding toast, so it would have been impossible for her to mix the monkshood poison into his champagne. That only left one other person: Juan Carlos Barranco. Charlie had made a few calls to Miami Beach, and found out Teboe had worked at a trendy Lincoln Road eatery called the Nexxt Café, which was one of the more popular
spots in South Beach. He’d served as a chef, having resigned just two weeks prior to the wedding. Still, we weren’t sure that was the restaurant where he had met Juan Carlos; Charlie couldn’t verify whether Juan Carlos had ever worked there, or even dined there.
But although I wasn’t yet sure about the details, I was convinced Laurette’s new husband was behind the murder. And with the happy couple returning from their Maui honeymoon the following morning, I knew this already precarious situation was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated.
Chapter 6
Brave soul that she was, Laurette rang me the morning she got home from her four-day honeymoon at a resort world-renowned for their sumptuous all-you-can-eat buffets, and suggested we rendezvous at a Weight Watchers meeting so we could both weigh in. She decided that if either of us had dropped even a fraction of a pound, we could immediately drive to Hugo’s, a West Hollywood brunch spot, and split a plate of their delectable pasta alla mama, to celebrate. From what I could speculate from our brief conversation, the honeymoon did not go well. Her voice was hushed and strained, and when I asked her if everything was all right, she deflected the question by asking how many Weight Watchers points a McDonald’s breakfast burrito would cost her.
I hopped into the car and drove to the nearest Weight Watchers location, which was on Beverly Boulevard, in the heart of Los Angeles’s teeming Russian immigrant community. There was no reason for Weight Watchers to be in this particular location as far as I could tell. The Russians in the neighborhood didn’t look any heavier than the Americans.