Hell on Wheels

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  He reached out a hand, grabbed the iPad from me, and started typing furiously again. When he was done, he handed it back. “ ‘OK,’ ” I read to Greg, “ ‘tell people I was in a bad car accident. But that’s it!!! Tell them I’m working at home for a bit. Have Jill cancel any meetings I have and not reschedule until I tell her. But don’t you dare tell anyone the truth!!!’ ” I even added all the exclamation points in my recitation.

  “Okay, okay,” I said to Steele. “Consider it done. It’s not like I haven’t covered your butt for you before. But in return I want to know why you were in Perris. Why in that dive bar? And why did the fight break out?”

  “Not happening,” Steele slurred in my direction.

  Six

  “So what are we going to do about the murder?” The question came out of my mother right after she swallowed a bite of sweet and sour pork.

  Across the table, Greg and I stared at each other. He was holding a spring roll just inches from his mouth. I had just shoved a solid forkful of Mongolian beef into mine. I didn’t know what part of Mom’s comment disturbed me more, the we or the part about murder.

  Chinese takeout is our fallback dinner when we don’t feel like cooking. We both love it and don’t mind eating it often. Turns out it’s one of my mother’s favorite foods, too. So when we got home from San Diego after our stopover at Steele’s, it seemed natural to pick some up and have Mom stay for an early dinner. We’d ordered it by phone from the car and picked it up on the way home. Mom had already seen the news about Peter’s death the night before. While unpacking the food and setting the table, we told Mom the details of what had happened at the gym, with Greg leaving out the part about our encounter with Peter Tanaka. I’m not exactly sure why he did that, but it did save us a lot of explanation about his personal history with the guy.

  “There’s nothing to solve, Grace,” replied Greg. “Peter Tanaka is dead, and Rocky is being charged with his murder.”

  “What about the wife?” Mom persisted. “Aren’t you going to look for her?”

  “The police are looking for her,” I answered after swallowing my food. “We’ve made a few calls, but beyond that we’ve been told to butt out.”

  Mom looked at me over the top of her glasses. “And when did that ever stop you before?”

  I wiped my mouth with a napkin, when what I really wanted to do was chew on it. “This is one time there is really nothing we can do. Rocky’s wife was probably having an affair with the guy. Rocky beat on the guy. The guy died. It’s pretty open and shut.”

  “Odelia’s right, Grace,” Greg told her. “We discussed it on the way home from Steele’s place. There’s really nothing for us to get involved with here, no loose ends or investigation. I got in touch with Rocky’s brother like Rocky asked, and he’s handling everything else, including trying to find Miranda. All we can do is hope Rocky’s lawyer can get him a good deal.”

  “Steele’s place?” Mom asked, her brain switching gears quicker than a dog smelling a treat. “So you did get in touch with him?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “We stopped by his condo on our way back.”

  Mom seemed concerned. “Is he okay? He sounded funny on the phone.”

  “He was in a car accident and got a bit banged up,” Greg told her, “but he’ll be fine.” Greg looked over at me, then added, “He just wanted to make sure Odelia knew so she could handle a bunch of things for him this week at the office.”

  “Yeah,” I added. “You know how obsessive Steele is about his work.”

  Mom still wasn’t satisfied. “Maybe I should go over there and take care of him. I could take soup or something. I can ride down with Cruz.”

  “No!” both Greg and I said at the same time. Mom looked at us with surprised curiosity.

  Mom hadn’t driven or owned a car since she moved to the retirement home in New Hampshire. Afraid of the heavy traffic in Southern California, she hadn’t even been tempted to drive once she’d moved here. Now I was glad because if she did have wheels, she’d get herself into all kinds of trouble—something she did without driving.

  “No, Mom,” I said with a calmer voice. “Steele’s a bit embarrassed by how he looks right now. He’s not only obsessive but very vain.” I scooped another helping of veggie fried rice onto my plate. “We got him some groceries, and Cruz will take care of the rest. He was going to see if she would come in a little extra this week.”

  Cruz was the same Cruz Valenz who also cleans my house. I hired her more than ten years ago to clean my townhouse every other week when I was single. When I married Greg, she moved her duties up the highway to our home in Seal Beach. She’s now a weekly fixture in our lives, along with her husband, who takes care of our yard work. Since my mother moved here, Cruz also helps her out once in a while. The two women get along great, and I suspect Cruz, who is in her sixties, keeps Mom company as well as cleans.

  Steele’s history with housekeepers was about the same as his history with secretaries until I hired Jill—and about the same as his history with girlfriends, but he’s on his own there. He went through them all like a whirling dervish, leaving anger and obscenities in his wake. Since I’d done so well in hiring Jill, when his last housekeeper left in a huff several months ago, Steele had asked me to find him a housekeeper, specifically putting mine at the top of his wish list. I’d flat-out told him no. I didn’t want Cruz tossing me and Greg aside when Steele pissed her off, as he would definitely do with his fussiness and demands. But when he became obnoxious about it, I caved and approached Cruz. Much to my surprise, she wanted to try it out. She’d lost a couple of clients when the economy tanked and was looking for a good steady gig. She was also thrilled to learn that Steele required her services twice a week, not once every other week like most condo clients. Also, Cruz reminded me, she’d met Steele several times over the years, so it wasn’t like she was buying a pig in a poke. Even though she’d said the last part in partial Spanish, I think it meant the same thing. So far, so good. As with Jill, Steele adores Cruz. She cleans and does laundry, mending, grocery shopping, assorted errands, and some cooking for him. She also doesn’t take any crap from him. I also think she negotiated top dollar for her time because now she only works for me and Steele, and sometimes for my mother.

  “Well, if you’re sure.” Mom pushed her food around on her plate with her fork.

  “You have a good heart, Grace,” Greg said to her with a smile. “Why don’t you send him a get-well card? I’m sure he’d like that. You can give it to Odelia, and she’ll make sure he gets it when she sends him his work.”

  “Okay, I’ll do that. But I still wish we had a murder to work on. It’s been kind of dull around here lately. My blog is suffering.” Mom resumed eating with gusto. My mother is in her early eighties, taller than me, and a bit slender. The amount of sweet and sour and moo shu she could pack away would put a smile on a truck driver’s face. While I had her appetite, I had inherited my father’s short, squatty build and penchant for putting on pounds. Mom also writes a blog called An Old Broad’s Perspective. It’s a homey, chatty monologue about life in general and her adventures as a senior New England transplant in Southern California. It has a surprising amount of regular readers, and Mom even gets fan mail. Who knew?

  Shortly after dinner, Greg took Mom home while I unpacked from our trip and settled in for the night. It had been a busy and emotionally exhausting weekend. As soon as Greg returned, we tucked ourselves in bed with books. Muffin was curled up between us, and Wainwright was on his rug at the foot of our bed. Both seemed very happy to have us home, even though they were sad to see Mom leave. Our little family was in place for the night.

  Right before I turned off the lamp on my side to go to sleep, I picked up my cell phone.

  “Who are you calling at this hour?” Greg asked.

  “No one. I’m texting Zee to let her know we’re home. She’d left me one earlier about getting together for lunch tomorrow, and I’d forgotten to respond. Lunch will depend
on my workload with Steele out of the office.”

  Finished, I put the phone back, then grabbed it again.

  “Now what did you forget?”

  “Nothing—now I’m texting Steele, checking to make sure he’s okay.”

  “Ah,” said Greg, not taking his eyes off his book. “You’re feeling guilty again.”

  “Can’t I just check up on someone without a reason?”

  “Sure, but not in this case. This smacks of guilt.” There was a slight snicker in his voice.

  Less than thirty seconds later, my phone vibrated a reply. I read it, then put the phone on its charger and turned off the light. “He said he’s fine but getting sick of protein shakes. And he sent me three more work-related emails.”

  Greg laughed.

  A few seconds later, Greg’s phone vibrated. “It’s probably Steele,” I said, turning over to face Greg while he checked it out. “He probably wants to ask you again if you think the car accident story will fly.”

  “No,” Greg told me, studying the display. “It’s a text from Dev. He said Rocky Henderson has been released.”

  “Really? That’s great news.”

  “I’ll give Rocky a call in the morning and see how he’s doing.” Greg started to put his phone back on his nightstand when it vibrated again.

  “Steele or Dev?” Our phones were getting more late-night action that we were.

  “Neither,” said Greg with surprise. “It’s Rocky. He wants me to call him in the morning.”

  When Greg finished reading the text, he immediately hit the call button and put the phone on speaker. “Hey, buddy,” he said when Rocky answered. “Just got your text, but we’re still up. I’m here with Odelia. Your text said you’re home and you wanted to talk.”

  “Yeah,” answered Rocky, his voice slow with exhaustion. “Actually, I’m at Lance’s right now, but I wanted you guys to know I’m out of the clink. Thanks for everything.”

  I scooted my face closer to the phone. “Did you make bail?”

  “I actually didn’t get that far; they let me go. Lucky for me, the beating didn’t kill Tanaka. The cops said he was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?” My voice squeaked in surprise.

  “Yep. They think it’s cyanide, but they’re not sure yet. Guess it takes a few days for the tests to confirm it.”

  “Wow!” Greg ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sure glad that’s over, at least for you.”

  “It’s not exactly over, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. I need a really big favor.”

  “Anything,” Greg said, meaning it.

  “The cops said they found the poison in Tanaka’s water bottle and prints on the bottle. They say the prints belong to Miranda.”

  Greg and I were stunned into silence.

  “They still can’t find Miranda. I know you guys have done some detective work in the past. Do you think you could snoop around and see if there might have been anyone else with a reason to kill Tanaka?”

  “Seems like it would be a pretty long list,” Greg said.

  “True,” Rocky snorted. “I’m thinking no one would notice you asking a few questions here and there, but they might me. I can’t believe Miranda would do something like that, no matter what else she’s done.”

  I finally found my voice. “What exactly did Peter say to you on the court that made you so angry?”

  “Let’s talk about that tomorrow—if you guys are free, that is.”

  “What time is good for you?” asked Greg.

  “How about after work? I really need to show up at my office tomorrow, and you guys probably do too. Greg, can we meet at your office? It’s not far from mine.”

  “Sure. How about seven o’clock? My staff is mostly gone by then. There’s a pizza place almost next door. We’ll grab a pizza and some drinks and have dinner at the same time.”

  “Sounds good,” said Rocky with a bit of relief in his voice. “Maybe by then Miranda will show up and be able to prove this is all a lot of nothing.”

  This time Greg’s phone made it to the nightstand without buzzing.

  For a long time we lay in bed staring up at the ceiling before either of us spoke. “Do you really think,” began Greg, “that Miranda killed Tanaka?” He thought a little more about it. “Maybe Tanaka told her he was going to tell Rocky about their affair so she panicked.”

  “Hard to say, honey. People have certainly killed for less.” I turned toward Greg and snuggled against him. He wrapped an arm around me and drew me close. “One thing is for sure: my mother can’t accuse us of having a dull life anymore.”

  Seven

  I really don’t know which is worse: having Steele in the office with me within arm’s reach or having him work from home and call and email me every fifteen to twenty minutes.

  I’d stuck to the agreed-upon script of him having been in a car accident on Sunday. Lying to people in the office and to the T&T mothership in Los Angeles didn’t seem to bother me a smidge, and I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed. My mother always tells me I’m a lousy liar—a trait she claims I got from my father. She, on the other hand, could win an Oscar for it. Frankly, I was surprised she hadn’t called me on the car accident story over dinner the night before. If Greg hadn’t been there singing the same tune, she might have fixed her maternal lie detector on me and discovered the truth. The one person I had difficulty looking in the eye and talking about the accident with was Jill, Steele’s secretary. She wanted details, and I kept claiming I didn’t have any. I knew if I started making up stuff, it would come back to bite me and I’d look like a bigger fool. My plan was to keep any information about Steele simple and to a minimum. Earlier this morning on one of our calls, I’d begged him to let me tell Jill the truth and stressed that she could be trusted, which she could be, but he was adamant that I go to my grave with the bar fight details—or, rather, the few I had—forever locked in my brain. Considering how difficult it was to understand Steele on the phone, I could say that I didn’t hear his demand, but I lost that excuse when he texted me the same and underscored it with a dozen exclamation points. That poor punctuation mark was certainly getting a workout.

  I’d even begged off lunch with Zee. I gave her a quick call and simply said that Steele had been in a car accident and that I was holding down the fort while he convalesced. She’d pressed for details and I gave her the few I’d given Jill, which was next to nothing. I could have gone to lunch with Zee. I wanted to go to lunch with Zee. I just couldn’t risk it. Zee Washington knows me inside and out, and she is even more talented than my mother when it comes to sniffing out lies that dribble from my mouth, full or partial, like spit when I sleep. She can also tell when I’m holding something back just by looking at me.

  I really need to work on my duplicity skills. I wonder if there’s an app for that?

  Near the end of the day, I packed up Steele’s mail, along with everything Jill and I had done for him that couldn’t be emailed, and headed down to his place. I had planned to send it with a messenger but Steele had insisted that I bring it to him personally. With traffic, time would be tight for getting to our meeting with Rocky Henderson. Laguna Beach is south of where our office is located. Then I’d have to fight traffic north along Pacific Coast Highway to Huntington Beach, where Greg’s business, Ocean Breeze Graphics, is located. Hopefully Steele would let me get in and out without too much chitchat or annoyance. If he wasn’t going to tell me about Perris, then I saw no reason to stick around and be late for the meeting with Rocky. I’d called Greg before leaving the office to let him know I had to see Steele first, but I only reached his voice mail.

  Even though I had a key to Steele’s condo—something he’d stashed in the office in case of emergencies—I rang the doorbell and waited. A few seconds later I was let inside by Cruz.

  “How’s he doing today?” I asked when I entered.

  In response, she waved her right hand, palm down, back and forth. “Sometimes good, sometimes not so mu
ch. He doesn’t like to take the pain pills.”

  “Is his mouth still swollen?”

  She nodded. “I drove him to the dentist today. His teeth are going to be okay. A little loose, but nothing broken.”

  “That’s good news.” I stopped her when we were halfway down the entry hall and whispered, “Has he mentioned anything to you about it? The accident, I mean?”

  “Not a peep. But,” she said, whispering back and shaking an index finger in the air, “those injuries are not from a car crash. I know a beating when I see one.”

  Without confirming her suspicions, I asked, “Have you asked him about it?”

  “Yes, but he threatened to fire me if I asked again.”

  “Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes. “He’d never fire you any more than he’d fire Jill or me. We’re his support system—his gals Friday who make his life run smoothly—his Charlie’s Angels without the glamour.”

  She smiled. “I know, but I respect his privacy, and you should too, Odelia.” She patted my arm in a motherly way and winked. “One day we’ll know. It just won’t be today.”

  When we got to the dining room, I noticed a couple of beautiful floral arrangements on the table. “Where did these come from?”

  “The big one is from the firm,” she explained. “The other one is from the Washingtons. It arrived just a few minutes ago.”

  Leave it to Zee to be speedy on sending get-well wishes, putting the rest of us to shame on good etiquette.

  I found Steele sitting on a chaise longue on his terrace, a long balcony that could be entered from either the den or living room. As soon as I stepped outside, I could hear the sound of the waves and call of scavenging gulls from the beach below. Steele was wearing sunglasses and his head was tilted down, making me wonder if he was napping. In spite of the chill in the late afternoon air, he was shirtless. I’d seen Steele without a shirt before when he’d shot hoops with Greg or when we’d gone to cheer him on in some of his races. He was well developed but much more slender than he appeared in his suits, almost to the point of being thin. He had more chest hair than Greg, and I suspected he practiced regular manscaping. What I’d never seen before was the wide pattern of bruising going down the left side of his torso. It looked like a map of the Great Lakes. A gasp escaped my lips before I could stop it.