by Mary Marks
“Hey, babe.”
“Hi, Yossi. What’s up?” I met my biker friend Yossi Levy, also known as Crusher (don’t ask), a few months ago. We helped prove a mutual friend innocent of murder.
“I’m at Brent’s. Do you want me to bring over a couple pastramis on rye?”
Oh my God. Brent’s Deli sold the absolute fattest, tastiest, most mouthwatering pastrami on the planet. I’d save the salad for tomorrow. A person needed a little protein, didn’t she?
“Heck yes. I’ll open some red wine.”
Thirty minutes later the roar of a Harley engine pulled up in front of my house. The bearded Crusher filled the doorway with his six foot six, three hundred pounds of solid muscle. He wore his leathers against the December chill. A blue bandana covered his graying red hair.
He grinned as he handed me a large paper bag like a present. By the weight and smell, I realized with a frisson of guilty pleasure the bag held more delicious things besides two sandwiches.
We sat at my kitchen table and I poured two glasses of a hearty Chianti. I pulled apart my sandwich and smeared brown mustard on the spongy rye bread. Then I helped myself to kosher green tomatoes, crispy coleslaw, and kasha varnishkes, a warm dish made of buckwheat groats and egg noodles. I never said I did Weight Watchers perfectly.
Between bites I told Crusher about Harriet Oliver’s tragic life and death and how I became involved in settling her estate. “You know, Yossi, I can’t get over the dreadful way she died. Nobody missed her.”
He fixed his blue eyes on me. “How come?”
“That’s one of the questions I hope to answer. Anyway, I scheduled her funeral for Monday, so my next task is to notify people.”
“Do you need me for a minyan?” Crusher referred to the quorum of ten Jewish men necessary for the recitation of certain prayers during the mourning period. To be part of a minyan was considered a mitzvah, a good deed.
“Thanks for the offer. I’ll know more when I get a sense of how many people will be attending.” I took a sip of wine. “When we were teenagers, Harriet loved being with friends, but she died a recluse. I’d sure like to know more about why.”
Crusher chewed a bite of sandwich and poked an errant string of pastrami back into the corner of his mouth. “Seems to me you’ll get to know a lot about her by the time you’re through. Need any help? We made a great team investigating the murder of the baseball coach.”
How could I forget? Crusher protected me from a knife-wielding psychopath, guarded me against death threats, and then proposed marriage two weeks after we met. He and the guys in his motorcycle club, the Valley Eagles, helped me out a couple of times.
I grinned. “Actually, yes. Some really valuable things are sitting in Harriet’s unoccupied house. I want to hire some of the Eagles to protect the place until her stuff can be sold or relocated.”
“Anything you want, babe.”
I put the leftovers in the refrigerator and wiped the table clean. Crusher stood watching me as he drank a glass of wine. “How about some dessert?”
“Sorry, I don’t think I have anything sweet. I do have a little fruit if . . .”
Crusher laughed. “I’m not thinking of food.”
My love life tanked three months ago. My boyfriend, LAPD Detective Arlo Beavers, dumped me when he learned his dog was seriously injured defending me. Crusher briefly stepped in to take Beavers’s place. Each of them decided they wanted a permanent, exclusive relationship with me. So I did what any right-thinking woman of my generation would do. I turned them both down. Crusher and I agreed to be just friends, at least until I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Beavers, not quite as sanguine, dropped out of sight.
Crusher looked at me expectantly. Remembering the one night we spent together made my toes curl with desire. I took a deep breath. “Not tonight, Yossi.”
“I’ll wait,” he smiled.
That night I dreamed I sat behind Crusher on his Harley, speeding in the dark down the 405 Freeway. Closing in behind us was Malach haMavet, the angel of death.
CHAPTER 4
Thursday morning I rummaged through my closet, looking for appropriate yoga clothes. The flyer from Sublime Yoga pictured a slender blonde in a blue halter top and skinny black tights. No way could I ever put my size-sixteen thighs into tights. I finally located a pair of L.L. Bean dark knit trousers, with an elastic waist, folded in a pile destined for a small church in Van Nuys that ministered to the homeless.
I pulled on the trousers and an old red T-shirt and drove to the yoga studio on the boulevard in nearby Tarzana. In the middle of a sunny reception area stood a round counter and shelves full of yoga supplies for sale. Fit young men and women with rolled-up mats streamed toward the receptionist, who electronically scanned their little plastic ID tags before they disappeared into a classroom. I felt as out of place as a pork chop on Passover.
The blonde from the flyer stood behind the desk.
“Hi. My name’s Martha. I’m here for a tour.”
She put her palms together and dipped her head. “Namaste. I’m Heather.”
After a quick circuit of the classrooms and locker room, Heather and I sat in a lounge where she poured me a demitasse of hot green tea. “I suggest you start out twice a week in a class for seniors.”
Octogenarians sitting around on chairs waving their arms? “I think I can handle something a little harder.”
Heather just smiled and walked me over to an open classroom doorway. “This is our Vinyasa Flow class.”
I could have been observing an audition for Cirque du Soleil. The instructor called out, “Warrior two.” Everyone took a wide stance and lunged sideways with arms parallel to the floor. “Triangle.” Still in a wide stance, they all bent sideways at the waist and shot an arm straight up. “Tree pose.” The students effortlessly balanced on one leg and reached their arms straight overhead. I got the picture.
Ten minutes later Heather settled me on a borrowed orange rubber mat on the bamboo floor of classroom two. Two men stuck out in this class of mostly senior women of every body type, including a white-haired former ballet dancer and me.
The short, buxom teacher in her forties with wild cherry-colored curls stood in the center of the classroom and knocked together two delicate brass bells to get everyone’s attention. “Hello, class!” she said in a thick Russian accent. “This is Yoga for Seniors, and I am Dasha. Do we have anyone new today?”
I raised my hand.
Dasha walked over and smiled. “Do you have physical problems I should know?”
I told her about my fibromyalgia.
“You’re in the right place. Welcome.”
An hour later, after breathing deeply through leg, hip, and spine stretches, we assumed the corpse pose, Shavasana, and rested quietly on our backs for the last five minutes of class. My muscles protested against all the unaccustomed exercise, but I was energized. Maybe Dr. Lim at UCLA knew what he was talking about. I walked out of Sublime Yoga with a new pink rubber mat, a six-foot-long woven strap, and a little plastic tag with my membership number.
After a shower at home, I changed into jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and sweater and demolished the leftover coleslaw and kasha varnishkes from the night before. By twelve thirty I headed on the 405 south toward Harriet’s house in Brentwood.
I took Sunset Boulevard west to Bundy Drive, turned right for a half mile to her large Tudor-style home, and parked in a circular driveway hidden from the street by lush landscaping. Not one flyer, throwaway paper, or business card lay on the ground. By the moisture in the soil, I guessed the gardener recently watered and cleaned up, just as he had been doing for the last ten months.
I braced myself before turning the lock with the keys Abernathy had given me. What would I find? What would I smell? Poking my head inside, I took small, cautious sniffs of the air. Thankfully, the house harbored no unpleasant odors.
At least a couple weeks of mail, dropped through the slot in the door, littered t
he hardwood floor. Several months’ worth of envelopes and papers sat in cardboard boxes on a round table in the middle of the walnut paneled foyer, waiting for me to sift through them.
I closed the door and flipped a light switch. An iron chandelier with alabaster globes turned golden in the gloom. Directly in front of me a dark staircase led straight to the second floor. A powder room stood opposite the stairs. A painting hung on the foyer wall of a fair-haired toddler holding a toy fire engine. He bore Harriet’s smile and sensitive eyes.
The living room to the right gave off an English vibe, with hand-rubbed plaster and a ceiling coffered in more dark wood. Harriet loved Jane Austen and Paul McCartney.
A pair of overstuffed chairs, upholstered with red chintz roses, sat on either side of a game table, and two green leather sofas flanked a large stone fireplace. Photos of Jonah, Harriet, and Harriet’s family lined the wooden beam serving as a mantel.
Where was Nathan’s picture?
Framed paintings hung slightly askew on the walls as if shifted by an earthquake. Didn’t Abernathy say he thought things looked a little messy?
Continuing on to the right, a door at the end of the living room opened to a library, which also served as an office. Books stuffed the floor-to-ceiling dark shelves on the far wall. An antique rolltop desk sat in one corner and a rectangular table with six oak chairs took over the center of the room.
Two volumes lay on the floor. I read the titles as I picked them up and placed them on the library table. Communicating With Spirits: Contacting the Dead and Aura Reading for Dummies. Poor Harriet. She must have been aching to be with her deceased family. Just how far did she take this obsession?
The papers and envelopes lying in the desk were carelessly mixed up, not the way I’d expect Harriet’s desk to look. When we did our homework together, I used to tease her about the precise way she organized her notebook by subject and date. She never turned in an assignment with sloppy handwriting. She wrote round, neat cursive and dotted her I’s with hearts. Someone else had disturbed Harriet’s desk.
I sorted through the mess, looking for an address book, and finally found a small one bound in blue leather with only a few names. No person on this list missed her for ten months?
The left side of the foyer led to a formal dining room. Two heavy branched silver candelabras, now tarnished, stood in the center of a long table covered in dust. A massive china cabinet with a curved glass front displayed dozens of pieces of fine porcelain. I winced at the thought of having to inventory each and every item.
A vintage design hid a state-of-the-art kitchen with white AGA appliances, black granite countertops, white cabinets, and a black and white checkerboard floor. A person could easily prepare meals for a hundred people in this space. When we were teens, Harriet and I baked package brownies in my bubbie’s small kitchen. Heaviness gripped my chest as I guessed Harriet seldom used more than one of the eight burners on her fancy range.
Beyond the laundry room sat a maid’s room and bath. About twenty cardboard cartons full of God knows what sat in the middle of the area. I’d have to open and catalog the contents of each one.
Something niggled at me.
Obviously Harriet didn’t employ live-in staff, but she still needed someone to take care of this big house. Did the cleaner carry a key? Why hadn’t she discovered Harriet’s body?
I moved into a family room on the other side of the kitchen, filled with comfortable furniture and a large-screen television. Next to a VCR stood a neat stack of old video cassettes: Pinocchio, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Pippi Longstocking, and The Muppets. Apparently Jonah’s movies.
I steeled myself to go upstairs. Who knew what sort of unpleasant surprised awaited me? The finial on top of the newel post wobbled a little in my hand as I began to slowly sniff my way up the stairs. On the second floor, I peered down the wide hallway in both directions. Through an open door on the far end, directly above the living room and library, I spotted the large master suite, the place where Harriet’s body lay for ten months. I’d go there last.
In the opposite direction, rooms sat on either side of the hallway. Another door at the end turned out to be a long, narrow linen closet. The shelves inside held piles of neatly ironed white sheets and stacks of towels in pastel colors. Blankets and pillows filled the bottom cupboards.
A cheery yellow guest suite greeted me behind the first door. Abernathy said Harriet had become a recluse. When did she last entertain visitors?
I stopped in my tracks as I passed through the door across the hall. Children’s books, stuffed animals, Legos, and toy trucks filled the light blue room. A car-shaped bed, painted with a red racing stripe, sat in the corner under Lindberg’s famous painting of an angel guarding two children crossing a bridge.
Harriett had preserved Jonah’s bedroom for more than fifteen years, but this shrine to the boy’s memory appeared disarrayed. One drawer gaped slightly open, and the small mattress sat somewhat askew.
I steeled myself to enter Harriet’s bedroom. A portrait of Jonah sitting in Harriet’s lap hung in a gilt frame on the taupe walls. Opposite the doorway a queen-sized bed with a headboard upholstered in rose velvet dominated the space. Black polka dots covered the matching duvet. Black dots also covered the carpet and every other surface. I looked closer. Dead flies scattered like dark cornflakes around the room. My stomach revolted and I ran to the guest room just in time to puke in the white toilet.
At the sink I swished water in my mouth, rinsed my face, grabbed a yellow towel, and regarded myself in the mirror.
Calm down, Martha. Take a yoga breath. You can do this.
I moved down the hallway toward Harriet’s room, noticing that the dead flies also littered the dark hardwood floor. I stepped gingerly across the dotted beige carpet to a door standing wide open and forced myself to look inside a closet as big as my bedroom. The shelves and hangers filled with women’s clothes lined three of the walls. I found no trace of a man’s clothes or belongings.
A built-in bureau stood in the center of the closet. Nearby, a huge section of broadloom had been removed where Harriet’s body must have lain. A dark, greasy spot stained the exposed subflooring. Clearly I’d have to replace everything before the house could be sold.
At first glance, the closet seemed orderly, just the way Harriet would have left it. When we were girls, she often borrowed the cool pair of jeans with the hole in the knee from my closet. She used to chide me for being disorganized and messy. “I can never find anything in here,” she’d complain.
On closer inspection, a few items lay on the carpet, and a floor-length gown hung out of place between her jackets and coats. Someone had searched this area after Harriet’s death. How long after?
I stepped carefully around the missing carpet. Some nice pieces of ladies’ costume jewelry sat in the top drawer of the bureau, but the expensive pieces listed on the insurance rider were absent. Also missing were any items belonging to Nathan. Why didn’t Harriet keep something of his as a keepsake—a watch or a pair of cufflinks? After all, she kept everything of Jonah’s.
Harriet would’ve been mortified for anyone to see her home in such a revolting condition. I retrieved a vacuum cleaner from the linen closet at the other end of the hallway and spent the next half hour getting rid of the fly carcasses. Before I left the house, I gathered up the mail from the foyer and carried the boxes to my car.
On the drive back to Encino, I reviewed my next steps. Make an inventory of every item in her house. Arrange for the appraisal of her possessions. Hire an estate manager to organize a sale. Hire Crusher’s guys to secure the house in case the intruder decided to return.
The question of the absent housekeeper bothered me. Why hadn’t she discovered poor Harriet’s body? I needed to call Abernathy.
CHAPTER 5
By the time I returned to the San Fernando Valley, Larry the Locksmith had locked his doors and I was too tired to hunt for another key shop. I headed straight for home and
last night’s salad from Trader Joe’s.
Bumper meowed and scolded me for my late arrival, so I let him sit next to me on the sofa while I ate with a plastic takeout fork. He sniffed at my clothing, jumped up on the back of the sofa and nosed my hair. Then he yowled and leaped to the floor, staring from a distance. Bumper possessed a keen and discerning nose. Although I didn’t detect unpleasant odors in Harriet’s house, the scent of death must have hitchhiked home on my body.
After retrieving the boxes of mail from the car and dumping them in the living room, I headed straight for my second shower of the day. Then I climbed into my cozy blue flannel pajamas, sat on the sofa wrapped in a blue and white quilt, and wrote a to-do list with a call to Abernathy at the top. I reached his voice mail.
“Mr. Abernathy, Deke, this is Martha Rose. You were right about Harriet’s house being disturbed. Someone’s been inside. The private Brentwood Security Patrol has been useless. I’m arranging for twenty-four-hour protection on the premises. And something puzzles me. Didn’t Harriet employ a housekeeper? Why didn’t she discover the body? Where is she now? Please call me at your earliest convenience. Thanks.”
The measly salad wasn’t enough, so I boiled a cup of spicy Indian tea with milk, sliced an apple, and cut a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese from an orange brick of Tillamook. Then I called Crusher at his bike shop.
“Hey, babe. Change your mind about dessert?”
Oh Lord, I’m tempted!
I laughed. “Not yet. Listen, Yossi. I inspected Harriet’s house today.”
“How’d it go?”
“Really creepy. Looks like someone searched through her things. Her good jewelry is missing, maybe more. Can I hire a few Eagles to secure the place?”
The playfulness left his voice. “I told you. Anything you want. How long will you need them for?”
“It may take a couple of weeks. The good news is, money’s not a problem. I’ll pay whatever you think is fair.”