Marry, Kiss, Kill

Home > Other > Marry, Kiss, Kill > Page 10
Marry, Kiss, Kill Page 10

by Anne Flett-Giordano


  Twenty-One

  The Coastal Commission met in one of the loveliest rooms in the courthouse. Lush, color-saturated murals of Spanish explorers, Chumash Indians, and Franciscan padres told the story of Santa Barbara’s history. The early inhabitants’ faces were so nobly depicted they bordered on angelic. Nola imagined her own face in the murals: scrunched up in disgust, fingers pinching her nose to protect her olfactory senses from the onslaught of bad odors that must have been endemic in the age of exploration. She’d always been grateful not to have been born in older, smellier times. With deodorant yet to be invented, the Franciscan padre raising his arms beneficently over the Chumash children seemed like a crueler assault on the native population than the explorers eyeing their land.

  In the center of the room, two rows of dark wooden benches, carved in the early ranchero style, were packed with interested parties from both sides of the Wyatt Development argument. Friends of the beach on the left, friends of development on the right, natch. Both sides were murmuring insults as they scoped each other out, anxious for the proceedings to begin.

  Nola and Tony had taken seats in the back, hoping to be inconspicuous. When they arrived they’d been surprised to find Haven seated on the dais with the rest of the commissioners. It looked like a tragic error by the prom committee, seating the homecoming queen with the audiovisual club. One young glamour puss amid six middle-aged men in boring business suits and a lone woman who looked so painfully proper she probably showered in her Spanx.

  Haven was wearing a body-hugging, business-appropriate skirt and blazer, and her hair was pulled back in a wedding bun. It was a look that had been stirring men’s imaginations since women first joined the workforce. The blazer comes off, the hair falls down and . . . Why, Ms. Carstairs, you’re beautiful.

  Nola had been unable to convince Tony that a connection between Waxman and Gillette — both planning to attend this meeting, and both turning up dead — was anything more than a coincidence, so she was hoping Haven’s unexpected presence might pique his interest in more ways than one.

  Leaving him to it, she scanned the gathered crowd and zeroed in on Lawrence Wilson. The Wyatt Development Corporation’s majority stockholder was seated, front row, right, signing autographs. Wilson, the former star of a long-running hospital show, had been dubbed Dr. McDorable by the tabloids, and the name still fit. Known as Larry to his friends, he’d remained Hollywood handsome due to good genes, an Ayurvedic diet, and knowing just how much plastic surgery was enough. Unlike his costars, who had squandered their lucrative network paychecks, Larry had realized that what Les Moonves at CBS giveth, he eventually taketh away. Rather than fast cars and even faster race horses, Larry had invested in land, parlaying his TV cash stash into a small real estate empire that included a string of posh housing developments and a successful winery where tourists flocked to buy his wine, his book, and various hospital-themed souvenirs emblazoned with the name of his once-top-ten show.

  Nola nudged Tony. “Check out Dr. McD. Early fifties and still bringing it.”

  “So, go flirt,” Tony replied, nudging her back.

  “Right. After the smile he just tossed to Haven of the d’Urbervilles.”

  “You’re as sexy as she is.”

  “In what universe?”

  “Well, you might have to throw in a set of tires . . . and the Lamborghini that goes with them.”

  “Gee thanks, but even if he did prefer the beauty that comes with cranky old age, I can’t be off sleeping with the enemy.”

  “Who says he’s the enemy?”

  “My latest eco-alert. The Green community is up in arms about this proposed development, as you can see by how many people in this room are still wearing Earth Shoes. And frankly, I agree with them.”

  “You don’t see the upside of Dr. McDorable turning unspoiled beachfront property into a thriving country-club community with no rustics allowed?” he said.

  “No,” Nola said defiantly. And if I wasn’t here as a city employee required to stay neutral, I’d stand up and say so.”

  A woman who’d gone overboard on collagen lip injections shot Nola a dirty look.

  “Not so loud,” Tony whispered. “You’re pissing off Apoco-lips now. Although, I think Madame Commissioner up at the dais is on your side. She’s looking at Haven the way you look at me when I wear my Hurleys.”

  “Can’t be sure,” Nola replied. “She may just have a serious case of Bitchy Resting Face. Some women just always look like they’re watching a grown man trying to pull off colorful cargo shorts.”

  The meeting was called to order by a stout gentleman whose head was two sizes too large for his comb-over. He led off with a short tribute to Gus that seamlessly segued into a treacly introduction to Haven. He practically gushed as he described how she’d selflessly put aside her grief to honor Gus’s memory by delivering his final speech to the commission. When he actually said the words, “Wyatt Development,” half the crowd cheered and half the crowd booed. It was an earsplitting example of “democrazy” in action.

  The female commissioner’s BRF got even bitchier as she watched Haven cross to the microphone like Daria Strokous slinking down the catwalk.

  “You’re right, Tone.” Nola said. “Madame Commissioner is definitely voting my side.”

  Tony didn’t answer. He was watching Haven. And he wasn’t the only one; every man in the place was pumping testosterone like a Clydesdale. Even the painted faces on the murals seemed to follow her with their eyes. There was no denying the girl had impact. When Haven reached the microphone, she graciously acknowledged that the speech she was about to read would come as a disappointment to some of the people in the room, but she wanted everyone to know that her late husband had given the matter his deepest consideration before composing it.

  Haven read Gus’s speech in favor of the Wyatt group like she was auditioning to play a part in a movie, the part of somebody who actually cared. Nola’s spidey-senses were tingling. Things like zoning rights didn’t matter to women like Haven unless they stood to profit from them. There was obviously more at stake for her in this deal than just honoring the memory of her late and very unlamented husband.

  Nola heard a few mumbled protests from the anti-development crowd, but no one was crass enough to heckle the widow of a suicide. And then it happened!

  It happened so fast there was no way to stop it. Half a dozen masked marauders dressed as superheroes burst through a back door shouting “Earth First, Fascists!” and “People Over Profits!” Armed with Super Soakers, Superman, Green Lantern, and the rest of the caped crusaders blasted commissioners and concerned citizens alike with a spray of red liquid from their powerful toy guns.

  Tony and Nola rushed forward, shouting that they were police officers, but they got caught up in the tide of frightened people running back to get out of harm’s way. As she pushed through the panicky crowd, Nola was nailed by a blast from Wonder Woman that turned her new silk blouse into a sticky Jackson Pollack. Tony bench-hopped his way to the dais, and the two of them took off after the retreating vandals, but by the time they reached the parking lot, the Justice League of America had already hopped into a white Ford Explorer and were hauling fuel-injected ass toward Carrillo Street and the freeway.

  Tony pulled out his phone. Catching his breath, he called out to Nola. “I got the last three plate numbers — you?”

  “Same three, damn it, but Wonder Woman was wearing Ana Khouri gold cuffs.”

  “In English for the fashion-impaired, please?”

  “Psycho-expensive designer gold bracelets. Not exactly your typical tree-hugger must-have accessory for winter.”

  Tony gave the three license plate numbers they had along with a description of the Ford to Kesha back at the station; CHP and black and whites would take it from there. Frustrated, he and Nola made their way back to the scene of the melee.

  The room was still in a high state of anxiety. Bitchy Resting Face woman was cowering under a table and had to be c
oaxed out. For the second time in a week, Nola saw Haven soaked to the skin in red liquid. Dr. McDorable was showering her with concern. He should have been showering her with diamonds considering the solid she’d done him by reading Gus’s speech favoring his development project with such pathos and dignity.

  A faint cran-apple smell still hung in the air. Tony sniffed Nola’s blouse, a “couldn’t resist” impulse buy that had cost her an arm and a leg and part of a condo payment.

  “Is that fruit punch?”

  “Yes, and if there’s rum in it, I’m gonna suck it dry,” she replied, knowing the expensive silk would be DOA by the time it hit the dry cleaner.

  While she was taking witness statements, she realized that, contrary to the culprits’ intention, calling the commissioners greedy pigs and pelting them with fruit punch had actually fomented a sense of defiance among them. Even Bitchy Resting Face woman, finally coaxed out from under the table, was bravely asserting that she refused to be cowed. Gus’s speech, citing the badly needed tax revenues the project would bring to the city, was starting to make sense to all of them. The tide was turning in Dr. McDorable’s favor. The meeting, so abruptly adjourned, had morphed into a conversational referendum in support of the Wyatt project. Although circumstances necessitated that the final vote be postponed until the next meeting, it was practically a done deal.

  Kesha called Tony back with a hit on the plates. The only white Ford Explorer in the Santa Barbara area with those last three numbers belonged to an Intrepid Rent-a-Car out by the airport. Nola looked down at her ruined blouse. The red punch had dried and was sticking to her skin in spots.

  “Tony, sweetie, does this blouse make my boobs look bloody?”

  Their next stop was Vandenberg and interviewing a post-traumatic-shock therapy group looking like an extra from a Tarantino movie wasn’t going to cut it, so they formulated a new plan. Nola would go home and change out of her juicy couture while Tony checked out the rental place alone. Later he’d pick her up and they’d ride up to Vandenberg together. On her way out, Nola took a last look around the juice-splattered room and wondered what kind of song Charley would have made up about this high-fructose mess.

  Twenty-Two

  The Intrepid Rent-a-Car office was chronically overlit. Management thought the hyper-fluorescent glare helped snap exhausted travelers out of their stupors, making the lines move faster. Employees thought it was slowly giving them brain tumors. Tony thought it made Marisela, the lovely rental manager answering his questions, look like something out of a telenovela version of Twilight.

  When he asked her about the Ford, she checked her computer and found it was still in inventory. In fact, it hadn’t left the lot in a week. When he asked to see it for himself, she offered to walk him out to the appropriately numbered spot. Out in the sunlight, the vampire aura died away, leaving a lovely, middle-aged woman with midnight-black hair and sparkling dark eyes.

  The Explorer was parked in its assigned spot just as Marisela had predicted. The last three numbers on the plates matched the ones Tony had seen. It had to be the same SUV. The gas tank was full and the odometer matched the computer printout, but gas tanks could be filled and odometers rolled back.

  “Do all employees have access to the vehicles, Marisela?”

  “Well, yes. The keys are kept right on the seat. But you’d have to show paperwork to drive one off the lot.”

  The beefy, middle-aged gatekeeper, Arlo, acted suitably affronted when Tony asked if anyone could have driven the Ford past the gate without him knowing. He swore he hadn’t been away from his post all morning, even to take a leak, and there was no way he’d let one of the punk kids who worked there take a vehicle out for a joyride. Tony outwardly took his word for it, but the way Arlo avoided eye contact, and the thin film of perspiration on his upper lip, suggested he probably had more cash in his wallet now than when he’d arrived at work that morning.

  Marisela was apologetic as she accompanied Tony back across the lot. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here for the wrong car.”

  “Oh, it’s the right car. How often do you run them through the wash?”

  “Usually just once. When they’re first returned to the lot.”

  “See, that’s interesting, because that SUV didn’t have a speck of dust on it, and the wheel wells were still wet.”

  The sparkling eyes sparkled a little brighter. It wasn’t everyday Marisela got to play crime stopper. “I guess we’re walking over to the car wash,” she said with a grin.

  “I guess we are.” Tony grinned back.

  The short list of suspects consisted of Kyle, a gangly kid with more tattoos than personality, who looked a little high, and Carlos, who had a gold decal embedded in his front tooth. It was the familiar silhouette of the naked woman that truckers sported on their mud flaps. Shrunk down to fit a tooth, it looked more like an errant sesame seed than bling. If you didn’t look closely, you’d think the kid just needed a little face time with a toothbrush.

  Carlos’s shift had started at five-thirty — Kyle hadn’t started until ten. Tony played neutral, but the timeline pointed to Kyle.

  “Guys, a Ford Explorer from this lot was used this morning in the commission of a crime. I just checked the vehicle, and it appears to have been recently washed. Any thoughts?”

  Carlos shot Kyle a look that as good as ratted him out. Kyle had no choice but to make up a story on the fly. “Ah, yeah, when I came into work, I saw the hood was all covered in bird shit so I ran it through, but it was just sitting on the lot, so no way anybody jacked it.”

  When Carlos threw in his two centavos, the naked woman on his tooth glinted in the sunshine. “How could anybody get it by that fat hot-dog burp at the gate?”

  “Not to cast any aspersions on Arlo,” Tony said, “but gatekeepers have been known to take bribes. Can anyone verify you’ve been here all morning, Carlos?”

  “Yeah, when I wasn’t running cars through the wash, I was shooting the shit with Jordy in the return garage.”

  Marisela confirmed this was true.

  “How ’bout you, K?” Tony asked Kyle nonchalantly.

  “I was hanging with a couple of my buds at their crib in Isla Vista.”

  “Right, I’ll need their names.”

  “Why?”

  “To check your alibi, genius.” Carlos’s glinty toothed interruptions were starting to get annoying.

  “Carlos, I think I can take it alone from here,” Tony said with a look to Marisela. She nodded at the young man to get back to work, and begrudgingly, he obeyed.

  Kyle reluctantly gave up Malcolm’s and Ian’s names and address, but refused to elaborate on the specifics of “just hanging.”

  “You guys must have been doing something. Playing Halo? Bare-knuckle boxing? Braiding each others’ hair?”

  Tony’s sarcasm was wasted on Kyle, who was too wasted to respond. Sullen and pot-eyed, he stuck to his nonstory till Tony gave him leave to get back to work.

  Back in the rental office, Marisela wrote her number down on a brochure. The way she blushed made Tony wonder if she wrestled with the same midlife fears that were currently giving Nola the yips. All women were desirable provided they weren’t ball-breaking shrews. Why didn’t they get that?

  He was pondering this thought when he spotted a food truck parked across the road. What Marisela might or might not be feeling was instantly wiped from his mind by the exciting prospect of a breakfast burrito.

  Food had been trumping women’s feelings in men’s minds ever since the first cavewoman sat fashioning shoes out of hides, wondering where the relationship was going while her boyfriend parked himself in front of the petroglyphs with a hot sabertooth sandwich, not caring in the least.

  A few minutes later, Marisela was back at work and Tony was in high-caloric Mexican heaven.

  Twenty-Three

  Tony was still licking tomatillo sauce off his fingers when he pulled up outside Nola’s condo. She was waiting for him in the park
ing lot, newly dressed in a periwinkle blue tank and a skirt that made her legs look killer but was easily two inches of bare thigh too short for police work.

  “Not exactly dressed to arrest,” he called out as she crossed to his driver’s-side window. “Tackle some dirtbag in that skirt, and the bystanders won’t be innocent for long.”

  “No way I’m taking a beautiful drive up the coast in office slacks. Besides, who would I have to tackle? I’m just going to interview a few soldiers.”

  “Well, you do look like you’re looking for a few good men. Speaking of which, Sam called. The Coastal Commissioners are all over him to catch the terps who spewed ’em this morning.”

  “Terps?”

  “Teen perps.” Tony smiled proudly. “Just came to me.”

  “I like it.” Nola said. “Any potential terps at the rent-a-car place?”

  “I found my man, and I use the term loosely. Kid’s just half a step smarter than Dude, Where’s My Car? But the fat Cerberus at the gate is swearing the SUV was never off the lot, and the kid claims he was hanging with two of his bros in Isla Vista all morning.”

  “You check ’em out?”

  “Not yet. He’d have texted them by the time I was off the lot anyway. Might as well let them sweat a little. I’ll drop in when we get back from Vandenberg.”

  “Sam’s good with us heading up there?”

  “Yeah, I told him if we could find the soldier — who passed the secret — that prompted the headline —”

  Nola picked up her cue: “— that came from the terps — who filled the Super Soakers — that sprayed the commissioners —”

  “— that swallowed the cat — that ate the rat — that lived in the house that Jack built — we’d have his bad guys,” Tony ended with a flourish.

  “Nicely done. I love a good Jack story.” A flock of pelicans gracefully traversed the violet-blue sky. It was the kind of lazy, sunny day where even mean old men smiled and waved at the noisy neighbor kids on their skateboards.

  “Climb in, and I’ll tell you a few more on the ride up.”

 

‹ Prev