“Does this mean you need another outfit?”
“No, but it’s so soon. I thought I had the week.”
“For what?”
“To get used to the idea.”
“It’s just dinner, right? Why the cold feet? You have to eat.”
“Not at the most expensive restaurant in town.”
“In town. That’s the operative phrase,” I said. “Lincoln Point. We’re not talking about San Francisco.”
“Goodson’s doesn’t even have prices on the menu,” she reminded me.
“It’s not like he has kids to feed. I’m sure he knows what he can afford.”
“Am I nuts to worry?”
“That’s Maddie’s word, but yes, you are nuts.”
“I’m sorry. Still love me?”
“You know it.”
Passing Tucker’s pharmacy on Springfield Boulevard, I got back to what I should be thinking about. Did Nadine give Mr. Mooney medicine? Yes, if I put any stock in his numerous digressions. Could that have caused his allergic reaction? Certainly. But Nadine wasn’t one to lie outright, especially to me. I doubted I rated enough in her mind to deservean answer of any kind. I had the feeling she just blurted out the truth to me before she could think about it. Maybe this was one case where Mr. Mooney was mixed up and it was actually Nadine who saved him.
If so, who administered the bad pill? If that was what happened. What if someone else had been there, besides the lifesaving EMTs?
Also nagging at my brain—why would Mr. Mooney think he was Dominik Ostrowsky, one of the charity cases?
I missed Beverly, with whom I could discuss matters like this. She’d been my sounding board and she’d turned into a single white female, seeking dating advice.
I hoped I’d get her back soon.
Chapter 22
I hardly recognized Chrissy, standing at the counter of the café in her regular twenty-first century clothes, which included a bare midriff, reasonable all year long in this part of the country. I wondered if this style of crop-top sweaters combined with low-slung pants was as popular these days during winters in the Bronx, where even a sliver of exposed flesh might result in a case of frostbite.
Chrissy had also changed from the tiny Victorian-style glasses with beaded frames she wore last night to regular-size, plain ones. The look of a serious reporter, except for the little butterfly tattoo above her navel.
I’d given up the nicer clothes I’d chosen for my morning meeting with Dolores. After last night’s cumbersome and slightly uncomfortable caroler’s outfit, it felt good to be in jeans and my oversize Irish knit.
Chrissy led me to the last table at the back of the store, though the café area was hardly crowded—I said “hello” to a few unremarkable former students as we made our way.
She waited until I sat down to pull a packet of loose pages from her briefcase. Not the notebook, but I should have realized she wouldn’t have been able to get an item out of the evidence room. It was amazing enough that she had contact with someone with access who was willing to copy it.
“I have just a few pages,” she said, in a whispery voice, “but it’s a start.”
The text was in the middle of legal-size white paper, with some images crooked on the page. A rushed job, no doubt. I had visions of a tiny camera hidden in a wrist watch, clicking away, but these looked like good “old-fashioned” photocopies, where the center of a book can’t be truly flattened on the machine and a wide band of black appears down the middle.
Carlos Guzman had kept a ledger of names and amounts, presumably dollars, in a simple multicolumn arrangement. The first column was labeled NAMES, followed by a slash mark and what I took to be a city designation, like LP for Lincoln Point, and PA for Palo Alto; the second was labeled IN; the third OUT. The fourth column didn’t have a heading, but looked like it could be “reason for our illegal arrangement.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t ask how you got these?”
Chrissy frowned: not worth answering that question. “The names are sort of in code, but not very sophisticated. Like this one”—she pointed to an entry at the top of one of the pages.
“Farn-dollar sign must be Farnesworth. Remember him?” Chrissy asked.
I noted the “kback” designation in the last column. “Isn’t he the contractor in Palo Alto who was imprisoned for fraudulent business practices?”
“Uh-huh, kickbacks. See, there’s a line through his name. You can barely see it on the copy.”
Apparently he stopped being a client once he was put away. It was a wonder he didn’t turn Carlos in.
Chrissy covered the pages with her soft-sided briefcase when Rosie’s weekend fill-in waiter, Randy, came by to take our order. We ordered coffee only, more to get rid of the talkative young man than because the brownies and maple bars weren’t tempting. As soon as Randy left, Chrissy whipped the briefcase off the table and we continued scanning.
Another obvious line was for Dolores Muniz of Lincoln Point.
Carlos was paying Dolores $8,300 per month. An odd number. I did a quick calculation. Rounded off, an extra hundred thousand dollars a year. Enough to support her family in style and to keep her from IDing Carlos.
In a way, I felt sorry for Dolores, who would now be called to task for her choices. She’d had other options for her grandmother and herself, however. I wasn’t an expert on California blackmail law, but I was sure there were stiff penalties. Would the DA be stricter or more lenient with someone who worked in city hall? Would it matter that the person she was blackmailing was a very unsavory sort who by all accounts had done great harm to her family? It remained to be seen.
“This is quite a list,” I said, too overwhelmed to offer anything smarter or more insightful. “And this is only part of the notebook. He must have been doing business with everyone in three counties.”
“I know.” Chrissy ran her finger down the pages. “We have council members, store owners, people I recognize from the Civic Club. And geographically, we have San Jose, Santa Clara, Menlo Park, and, look, even L.A.”
“Maybe that’s for Los Altos,” I said, trying to rein in Carlos’s influence to the greater South Bay at least.
“Good point. And LG would be Los Gatos. Hmmm, maybe only two-word cities are overrun with crime. There’s no C for Cupertino, and no M for Milpitas, where I thought most of the trouble started.”
“Thanks for lightening this depressing moment,” I said. “I’m almost afraid to look.”
“I get it. Someone you trust might be on it.”
That was it, exactly. But, so far, so good. No immediate family member or good friend. No Nadine Hawkes, either, I was sorry to see.
Another hiatus while Randy brought our steaming mugs of coffee. He made another attempt to engage us in conversation—something about how it was too bad it didn’t rain more over the weekend since we really needed it—but it was all one-sided.
“What did you have in mind to do with this list?” I asked Chrissy once Randy had given up.
“I thought we could put our heads together and maybe make some sense of this and find out who killed the man. All these people had a reason to kill him, assuming this isn’t his Christmas list. We could—”
Chrissy, who was facing the door, stopped. She swept the pages off the table and put on a practiced smile.
I turned to see what had that effect on her. My nephew’s appearance was what did it.
“I heard that my number-one snoop is meeting with a reporter. So, I couldn’t resist stopping in to say hi,” Skip said, pulling up a chair.
“Aren’t you off duty?” I asked him.
“The LPPD is never truly off duty.”
“How did you know where I was? I guess I’m still being followed.” (I was strangely relieved to think I was being watched over.)
“The LPPD doesn’t divulge its policies and procedures to civilians.” He turned to Chrissy. Having fun. “Or to reporters.”
Chrissy, not swayed by Skip’s charm, h
ad a more substantive question. “Is it true that Carlos Guzman went around digging up dirt on people and getting money from them?”
“I can confirm the spirit, if not the language of that summary. We went to a fast-food place listed in his notebook, for example, and all of a sudden half of their staff is on vacation. Carlos’s murder sent up flags. You’d be amazed at how many businesses, small and large, use illegals.”
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to hire legal workers and save the money Carlos was extorting?” I asked.
“I’ve seen this kind of practice,” Chrissy said. “It’s how many companies operate. I know several that choose to pay fines rather than clean up their toxic waste pits, for example. It’s the same principle.”
“You got it,” Skip said. “I’m sure they had it down to a science, and Carlos came in under budget, cheaper than legitimate hiring practices.”
Skip and Chrissy had more experience in the ways of the world than your average retired high school English teacher, I realized.
“So Carlos was your basic bad guy,” Chrissy said. “Except the people he took money from all had something criminal, or at least scandalous, to hide.” She’d magically produced a steno pad where, earlier, unauthorized photocopies had lain.
“Not that I’m sympathetic, but how frustrated he must have been, accumulating all that money and unable to use it openly,” I said.
“He sent a lot of money to his son’s family in Mexico, but he could never visit because he knew he’d never get back into the United States. INS has been looking for him for a long time. It would take us all into the next decade to investigate every one of the people on his list.”
“And Carlos is not worth the trouble?”
“I’m not saying that. Anyway I’d think you’d be pleased. It means we’re not pursuing a case against Sofia Muniz. Not right now, anyway. By the way, Chrissy, just to set the record straight, we didn’t withhold information from the Lincolnite. Sofia Muniz was a person of interest for a time, but never arrested. And at this point there are way too many loose ends and too many possibles. The missing van driver for one.”
Chrissy wrote furiously.
Skip played into the moment. “Plus”—Skip pointed to Chrissy’s briefcase—“all the people on that list.”
We both blushed.
“Gotta go,” Skip said. “Everybody cool?”
“We’re cool,” we said.
I wanted to talk to Skip about Nadine and the finances of the Mary Todd Home, but not in front of Chrissy. I had my protocol. I’d corner him at dinner, which, since I’d be preparing the meal and feeding him, his mother (if she didn’t go on her date with Nick), and his girlfriend at my home, I felt was my prerogative.
Chrissy pulled the pages out from her briefcase. “That was embarrassing,” she said.
“Skip often brings that to a party,” I said.
“He’s cute. Is he . . . ?”
I thought of June, swimming with Maddie. “Yes, he is.” “Serious?” she asked.
How would I know? I shrugged my shoulders and gave her a helpless look. Here I was once again in the middle of my relatives’ dating lives. “You’ll have to ask him yourself,” I said.
Chrissy was untroubled. “No problem. Back to these pages. We should go down the list and see who are the likely suspects. We can divide up the—”
I held up my hand. “Isn’t that the job of the police?”
Chrissy’s look of disappointment was the same as if her favorite teacher had fallen from grace. “Don’t you care who killed this man and why? I mean someone picked up a rock or a two-by-four or whatever it was and killed another human being.”
Not a rock or piece of wood, but I got the idea. I may have been misjudging her, but I had the feeling Chrissy’s good-citizen glasses were tinted with a Pulitzer prize plaque for herself and a gold medal for the Lincolnite. Here was the opportunity to expose nearly every prominent person in town.
“I’m not a trained investigator, Chrissy.” I left it to her to admit whether or not she considered herself in that category. “What makes you think we can do better than the professionals?”
“It’s not that I think I’m smarter than the police, but I do have investigative skills, and I can focus on this in a way that they can’t. They’re dealing with all the crime in town.” She sounded as if Lincoln Point was near the top of the list of cities with the highest per capita crime rate. “You heard Skip. They have a whole notebook of people to look into for this case, plus keep the streets safe. All we have to do is put together some theories and follow through. What’s there to lose?”
My own sense of safety, and that of my family for one. Neither was I willing to violate the privacy of the people on Carlos’s list, a Pandora’s box that surely would have far-reaching effects.
Chrissy tapped her steno pad. Waiting for an answer. Are you in? I read.
I stood to leave. “Investigating these people is just not my job, Chrissy.”
She gave me a sideways look. “You’re not going to work with another paper are you? The Mountain View Voice? The Campbell Reporter? Because if it’s some kind of perk you’re after, I might be able to arrange it.”
Amusing as the idea was, it hit me the wrong way. I was annoyed that Chrissy knew that little about me.
“I have to bake holiday cookies,” I said.
She folded the notebook pages and stuck them in my tote. Nervy. “In case you change your mind.”
I turned to leave. “Merry Christmas, Chrissy.”
Chapter 23
I headed down Springfield Boulevard toward home. As the number of shopping days till Christmas plummeted, the street became more and more busy and the quantity of sparkling decorations grew. I looked forward to visiting with my son and daughter-in-law soon and seeing firsthand that Richard was not suffering from a deadly disease.
I had to get moving on baking the cookies I’d used as an excuse to refuse Chrissy. I ran through the list of ingredients in my head, mentally checking off what I already had in my pantry (an outstanding feature of Lincoln Point’s Eichler homes), but the list became inextricably entwined with elements of the crimes of the past few days. Maraschino cherries turned into the blood-splattered nightgown Sofia Muniz was wearing when they found her in her old neighborhood; licorice tubes became slashed tires; the rolls of dough I would twist into candy-cane shapes stiffened into a piece of rebar.
In spite of my “final” word to Chrissy, I had a nagging feeling that I already had all the pieces I needed to put together the puzzle that was Carlos Guzman’s murder. Not that I would change my mind about working with the Lincolnite reporter. For all my feminist leanings—like wanting Maddie to be in a position of great influence someday—when it came right down to it, I didn’t like pushy people, male or female.
But I hated loose ends even more, and right now there were many, sticking out everywhere, like the stray threads I wrestled with when I tried to fringe tiny swatches of velour to look like a beach towel. I wondered if I’d be able to sweep away my shiftless thoughts as easily.
It had been a long day, beginning with my meeting Dolores and extracting her confession and ending with my tussle with Chrissy. I was glad to arrive home, especially to the unexpected aroma of a pot roast dinner. Beverly had taken it upon herself to prepare our Sunday evening meal.
“What a treat, Beverly,” I said. “But did I miss something on the calendar for tonight?”
“No, no. It’s a surprise. I know you had a tough time today.”
Not a good enough reason for taking over my kitchen. My sister-in-law was behaving much too skittishly. “And?” I asked.
She patted down her beautiful hair and grinned. “I invited Nick. I hope that’s okay.”
“I thought you were going to Goodson’s for dinner tonight.”
“I couldn’t do it. Too formal. I need to feel comfortable, like we’re just hanging around with family. And, you know, my house . . . well, I’m not ready to have him over to my hous
e. I mean cooking dinner for just the two of us? Not yet. It’s okay, isn’t it?”
“It’s fine, Beverly.” I savored the aroma of boiled carrots and potatoes and rubbed her shoulders. “Take a breath and calm down. You’re a nervous wreck. You’re making me realize how long it’s been since I had to worry about these things.” And how glad I am I don’t have to right now, I added silently.
“It’s not worry.” She ran her hands down the sides of her apron (my apron). “Okay, it’s worry. He’ll be here about seven. Skip and Maddie are at June’s making dessert. I’m glad we could have this chat first.”
“Me, too.”
Thanks to Maddie, who kept up a constant chatter about June’s club and the “cool kids” she met there, the conversation around the dinner table wasn’t as strained as I thought it might be. We resorted to such comments as “these carrots are perfect” and “wow, the meat melts in your mouth” only a few times.
Once Maddie left the table to help June dish out the dessert—fruit cobbler with homemade ice cream—I took advantage of having two cops, one on either side of me, eating from my holly-and-ivy china.
“Did you check out the finances at the Mary Todd?” I asked them. “Shall I repeat the suspicious names? Ethel Hudson, Juanita—”
“I got the names,” Skip said. “I’ve had them for all of, like, three hours. What kind of miracles do you expect?”
“Skip doesn’t want to give you too much credit, but the lead on the van driver has paid off,” Nick said. He addressed Skip’s frown. “It’s going to hit the papers in the morning, anyway.”
“I just don’t want my aunt to hear it first.”
If it weren’t for his telltale smirk, which he tried to hide behind a buttermilk biscuit, I would have thought Skip was serious. I turned my head to block him out, and asked Nick, “Did you find Gus Boudette?”
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