The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Michael Craven

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  On a recent Tuesday morning, I was using one of the cinder-block sidewalls in my office as a backboard for Ping-Pong practice. I’d hit the ball against the wall, and before letting it drop to the slick concrete floor I’d pick it out of the air and send it back. I’d pop a few backhands in a row, then hit the ball so that it would come off the wall at an angle, over to my forehand side. After some forehand work, I’d angle it back over to my backhand side. And then I’d do the whole cycle over again. And again. And again. Truthfully, this exercise probably wasn’t doing a whole lot for my game, but I was enjoying it immensely. Keeping the ball in the air, never letting it drop, popping it back and forth, making it look like it was on a string.

  My office is a warehouse in west L.A., in Culver City. And not too long ago, I’d installed some pretty nice speakers in my space. So as I practiced I was listening to a playlist, at fairly high decibels, of some of my favorite Replacements songs. The music was loud and full, bouncing off the walls and coming right at me, just like the Ping-Pong ball. The sound really filled up the space, and it filled me up with a wild range of emotions. Like, when “Alex Chilton” came on, I felt like dropping to the ground and firing off push-ups. And yet when “Skyway” played, I wanted to drop to the ground and sob uncontrollably.

  At some point I looked over at my desk and saw my phone shaking, shivering, frantically moving around like a small, terrified animal. It was ringing too, but I couldn’t hear it. The new speakers doing their job. I killed the music, let the Ping-Pong ball drop to the concrete for the first time in a while, and answered my phone.

  “John Darvelle.”

  “Um, Mr. Darvelle? Um, hello, my name is Peter Caldwell.”

  This guy was a nervous wreck. I could tell after one sentence.

  “Hi, Peter. What can I do for you?”

  “I got your name from another lawyer I know. Um, let me back up. I’m a lawyer. But the other lawyer is Franklin Beverly.”

  I’d done some work for Franklin in the past. “Sure,” I said. And then, again, “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’m the lawyer for the estate of a woman named Muriel Dreen. Mrs. Dreen is old. Quite old. And she, well, she has an . . . issue. At first she didn’t ask me to try and help, to try and figure out the problem. This kind of thing is really outside my duties as an estate lawyer . . .”

  I thought, If I had a lawyer who had this much trouble getting to the point, I’d probably get rid of him. Or her. But that’s just me.

  “Peter,” I interrupted. “Are you looking to hire me on behalf of Muriel Dreen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s meet in person so I can do two things: tell you how much I cost, and then, if we’re in business, find out what’s going on.”

  “Right. Great. Actually, that’s what I was going to ask you. To see if you were willing . . . Um, Mrs. Dreen wants to tell you the situation herself. So can you come over? That is, if I give you the address, can you come over? I’m assuming you’ll be able to find it, you know, if I give you the address.”

  I wondered, Is he done? Is he done with his rambling series of questions? And, more important, am I supposed to answer all of them?

  Instead of doing that I just said, “Yes. Give me the address. I’ll head over now.”

  I lowered and locked the big metal sliding door that is the entrance to my space—I keep it open almost any time I’m in my office—then got in my car and headed toward Beverly Hills. Muriel Dreen’s house was in that section between the shopping area and the actual hills. The flatlands. The flatlands of the Hills. Oxymoronic. Or maybe just moronic. But a nice area, that’s for sure. Big, wide streets lined with palms, a lot of older mansions that, while still quite large, don’t take up too much of the lot. There’s nothing more desperate-looking than a house too big for its lot. It’s like, either fork out the dough to get a bigger lot, or build a house that actually fucking fits. You know what I mean? Man, seeing that, it upsets me. It really does. Anyway, as I was saying, there are no hills in this section of the Hills. You could see some up ahead, but right here? Flat as Kansas, babe.

  I pulled into the semicircular driveway that sat in front of Muriel’s large, cream-colored French château–style house. There was an old white Rolls parked in an open garage and a new BMW 3 Series parked in the semicircle. A man who looked to be about thirty-five got out. I summoned my greatest detective skills to determine that this was Peter.

  I got out of my car and walked over to him. He stuck out his hand. “Peter Caldwell.”

  I nodded, and we shook.

  He continued, “Thanks for coming over, Mr. Darvelle.”

  I thought about telling him to call me John but decided against it. It was fun to be called “mister” every now and then.

  I looked at Peter. Thin and tall, maybe six-two, an inch taller than I am. But one of those people who, despite some height, stand kind of hunched over, permanently looking at the ground. He had sandy blond sort of messed-up hair, balding a bit, and a nervous, uncomfortable look in his eye. But a nice, sensitive, even hurt look in his eye as well. This was a decent guy, with manners. If you hired him, he’d probably do right by you. He’d be a stammering, indecisive wreck at times, and maybe drive you crazy eventually, but he’d probably do right by you.

  Probably. In my line, it takes a whole lot more than a first impression to make me trust someone.

  I liked him. For now. But, man, just visibly uncomfortable in his own skin. I pictured him unzipping himself, his skeleton stepping out of his body and then dancing around in front of me, smiling, moving its shoulders around, kicking its feet like it was at a hoedown, happy as hell to be freed from the prison that was Peter.

  I think I smoked too much weed in college.

  Peter looked at me and said, “Let’s go meet Mrs. Dreen, okay? That’s what Muriel prefers to be called, Mrs. Dreen.”

  He furrowed his brow a bit and then said, “Wait. We should talk about your fee—what you charge—first, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  I told him my rate and how I bill: by the hour. I told him what counts as a business expense and what doesn’t: Dinner with someone I’m talking to on behalf of a client? Counts. Dinner at home during the course of an investigation? Doesn’t count. I also told him what information I put on the actual invoice when I send it in: client’s name, invoice number, date, amount. That’s it.

  As I
went through my spiel, his eyes widened and he started nodding. His already-nervous expression was now exaggerated, which I hadn’t thought possible.

  When I was finished, he said—referring, I thought, to my rate—“Really?”

  “Really,” I said.

  He nodded some more, and some light beads of sweat popped up on his already-furrowed brow. And then he just said, “Okay. Okay. Let’s go inside.”

  He opened the front door of the house and we walked in to meet Mrs. Muriel Dreen.

  2

  Inside. An old-fashioned Beverly Hills mansion. Lots of beige and cream. A shiny, pristine piano in one room. A grandfather clock ticking loudly in another. Antiques everywhere. All the rooms we went through were clean and uncluttered and polished. But you got the feeling that no one had spent any actual time in them in years. And not just because there were vacuum tracks in the carpet. There was an eerie emptiness, a palpable stillness.

  We got to a back room that most people would probably call the den. Peter went in first, I followed. The room was pretty small if you compared it to the other rooms we’d just walked through. But not small if you compared it to a similar room in a house in a neighborhood with a less desirable zip code. There was a large flat-screen TV in one corner broadcasting a stock-analysis-type show, but with the sound off. Some more antique-type furniture was neatly positioned around the room. There were little tables with pictures in silver frames on them. An olive green couch that perhaps had never been sat on lined one wall. And in the corner farthest from the doorway, a comfortable-looking navy blue chair housed Muriel Dreen.

  She wore eyeglasses, a burgundy dress, a white cardigan over her shoulders, and deep blue shoes that matched the chair. I’m pretty sure she got everything from the Talbots catalog, maybe even the chair. She had the TV remote in her left hand and a lit cigarette in her right. On a little table next to her: a mostly empty ashtray, a Bic lighter, and a just-opened pack of Carltons.

  “Mrs. Dreen,” Peter said. “This is the detective. This is John Darvelle.”

  Muriel Dreen switched off the TV. Then she gave me a big, charming smile and said hello. She knew how to engage someone quickly. She’d probably done it a lot at fabulous parties when she was in her twenties and thirties, two or three hundred years ago.

  She told me to have a seat on the couch and charmingly dismissed Peter. Then she just kind of stared at me, her big eyes magnified through the lenses of her thick glasses.

  She stabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, then grabbed the pack and tapped out a fresh one. She went through a whole ordeal of lighting it. She held the lighter up to the end longer than she needed to, and then she puffed and puffed, creating a big cloud of smoke in front of herself and getting a bright orange cherry going.

  I just watched. It was, I’d say, mildly entertaining.

  Finally she took a long, full drag, exhaled a roomful of blue smoke, and stared at me some more, with those exaggerated eyes and that charming and, I could now see, manipulative smile.

  Seeing that the show was over, I put my hands up and said, “So, what’s up?”

  Quickly she said, “One of my workers has stolen from me.”

  “Okay,” I responded cleverly. “Stolen what?”

  “My engagement ring. It wasn’t even that valuable, not like the tacky rings girls want today. But it was valuable to me. And that Heather stole it. I’m sure of it.”

  Man, that big, charming smile she’d shot me was gone. Her magnified eyes had narrowed to magnified slits, and her mouth had twisted into a viperlike sneer.

  She continued. “Heather Press is her name. She tended to the plants before I fired her. A common little girl with a common little face. And a common thief too. She took my ring. I know she did. I filed a police report, and some policemen went over and talked to her, but they said Heather denied it and there wasn’t anything else they could do. I don’t think those policemen were very good at their jobs, because I know that common little girl took my ring. I know she did.”

  Just like that, Muriel had riled herself up. She was breathing heavily. Shifting a bit in her chair. Maybe even starting to perspire. And showing me through all this involuntary agitation that it wasn’t so much the ring that she was upset about. It was that someone had defied her.

  “Okay,” I said. Man, I was really on a roll with the clever responses that day. “How do you know it was her? Don’t you have other staff?” What I wanted to add was: Are you sure you didn’t lose the ring? You know, because you’re a hundred and twelve? I mean, look, Muriel—or Mrs. Dreen, as you prefer—I’m in my late thirties and I found my lost cell phone in the freezer the other day.

  But I didn’t add any of that. Instead I just asked the aforementioned, more respectable question.

  She answered, “Because the rest of my staff has been with me for years, forever, so it had to be her. And it’s not possible that I lost it, because I don’t wear it. A few years after my husband, Inman, died—and Inman died ten years ago—I started keeping it in a box in a drawer in the dresser next to my bed. Close to my heart, you see. But not on my hand. So it’s not as if the ring ever moved. It just sat in its box. Before it was taken—stolen, that is.”

  Hmm. She’d addressed the question I asked and a couple I hadn’t. Those being: Do you wear it? And: Do you keep it somewhere specific when you aren’t wearing it? Sharp as a tack, this nonagenarian appeared to be.

  Right then a thought occurred to me, and I’m a little bit embarrassed to share it, but I’m going to anyway. Here’s what I was thinking: What the fuck is this case? I’m getting hired by a little old lady to find her stupid ring that her gardener took? Excuse me, but I’ve solved murder cases that the cops couldn’t figure out. In Los Fucking Angeles, no less. I’m not Encyclopedia Fucking Brown. I’m John Fucking Darvelle. But then I realized that that attitude is terrible. That’s arrogance. And arrogance is what gets you in trouble. Arrogance isn’t just ugly, it’s stupid. Because right when you start strutting around like a peacock, spreading your feathers and claiming you’re too good for things—that’s just the moment when you get burned. And the sting hurts twice as bad because you said you were too good for the thing that burned you in the first place. I’ll be guilty of arrogance again at some point in my life, for sure. Maybe even pretty soon. I hope not, but maybe. But right now? I’m not going to let it get the best of me. Look, I’m not dying to investigate this case. But, bottom line, I’m a detective for hire. I was hired at my rate. I accepted the case. And now I was going to find out what happened to that fucking ring.

  I said, “All right, Mrs. Dreen. You seem like you’ve thought this through. Why don’t I go talk to Heather Press. If you’re right, if she took your ring, I bet I can get it back.”

  “Oh, she took it, all right. You’ll be able to see it written all over her common little face.”

  “Does Peter have a picture? A phone number? An address where I can pay her a visit?”

  “Yes, he does, Mr. Darvelle.”

  Again with the “mister.” Again, I let it ride.

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I got up, and even though her right hand was free—she was no longer using it to handle her smoke; she’d housed it in one of the ashtray slots a few seconds ago—she extended her left hand. You know when people do that? Maybe they’re holding something in their right hand, or even have an injured right hand? Except she wasn’t holding anything, and she didn’t appear to be hurt. Maybe it was her way of exhibiting refinement or charm or something. I didn’t know. Anyway, she held it almost like she wanted me to kiss it. I imagined myself getting down on one knee and giving her extended hand a soft, wet, almost erotic kiss. I have no idea why. Don’t worry, I didn’t do that. I just grabbed it and gave it a little shake. It was soft, fleshy, I could feel the loose skin under my thumb. And it was cold, just like those magnified eyes.

  I walked out of the room and found Peter sitting in a chair just off the front foyer. He was lo
oking out a window, trapped in some kind of daydream, I guessed. But then I noticed he wasn’t daydreaming. He was looking at a squirrel nervously scurrying around a tree. The squirrel stopped on a dime—upside down, by the way, his claws stuck to the bark—and, while still sort of shaking all over, looked right at Peter. Did these two creatures see themselves in each other? Was Peter thinking, Man, my nervous disposition would sit better with me if I could just dart around a tree all day, collecting acorns? And was the squirrel thinking, Shit, sure I’m a trembling mess, but I could still get into the field of law with a specialty in estate management?

  Peter, I think feeling my presence in the room, turned to look at me. Right then the squirrel, still upside down, craned its head up to look at me too.

  I stood there face-to-face with not one but two shivering creatures, shivering like my cell phone earlier.

  “Peter, I need a couple of things from you.”

  Instinctively he stood up and said, “Absolutely.”

  The squirrel took that as its cue to split, zipping down and out of my eyeline.

  “Heather Press,” I said. “What does she look like, what’s her phone number, and where does she live?”

  3

  Heather Press lived not too far away, corner of Charleville and Elm, in a less high-dollar section of the Beverly Hills flatlands. Heather’s section was rows of apartment buildings, eightplexes, tenplexes, twelveplexes, all packed in right next to one another just south of Wilshire. Still nice, treelined streets, not a lot of riffraff, very livable, just no mansions with white Rollses in their garages.

  From Muriel Dreen’s, I drove south down Rodeo Drive for kicks. I could have taken a less hectic street, but I wanted to look at all the spray-tanned, surgically altered people milling about, going in and out of the famous, fancy stores, dropping thousands. At one point I saw a lady walking along, with a little dog sticking out of her purse. Not so unusual for this crowd, but, thing is, the little dog had its own little purse. I was still marveling at this sight as I veered left onto Wilshire Boulevard, leaving Rodeo in my rearview.