Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 01 - A Brilliant Plan

by Alex Ames

  I parked in front of my parent’s house and got out, locking the car. I hadn’t noticed the brownish Oldsmobile parked on the other side of the street. My eyes registered the movement and I looked over to see Billy Bounce, the dumb executor, walking over to me, holding something furry in his giant hands. This time he was alone. The thin slimy man from yesterday’s encounter was nowhere to be seen.

  Billy’s voice was a mean mumble, as if he had problems opening his mouth properly or his brains couldn’t coordinate the muscles necessary to form the words. “Miss Moo’shn.” Him being polite somehow didn’t make a difference.

  I safely retreated behind the garden door of the House of the Moon, as if it gave any protection against a brute like Billy. I slightly regretted being a non-carrying pacifist.

  He approached the garden door. “Me boss want s’mth’g you… got.”

  I stared at the small cat in his hands purring away happily, his big index finger stroking it between the ears.

  “Whoever your boss is, tell your boss that I don’t have what he wants.” Then I got a sudden inspiration and added, “The Fence should look at Andrew Altward a little more closely. He has something to hide.” My, what a feeble attempt to confuse the opposition, Calendar girl.

  Billy looked at me with an almost sad expression; I wasn’t sure whether anything that I said registered in his pea-sized brain. If in doubt, repeat. “Excuse me, Miss. Me boss wants something you got. You know what you got.”

  “Then tell your boss to forget it or come in person.” More courage delivered than felt.

  Billy took the cat in two hands and twisted its neck until it broke with an audible crunch, the cat not even beginning the meow it had breathed in to make. He held out the quivering dead body in his open palms to emphasize his message.

  Since I needed all my oxygen not to faint in the garden, I didn’t have time to fill my lungs with enough air to scream. The killing of the cat had been delivered so matter-of-factly; I just stood there rooted to the ground, not comprehending the situation.

  Billy had already turned and walked across the street. He passed the neighbors trash can, pulled open the lid and threw in the dead cat. He got in behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile and started the car.

  I heard the front door opening and my father calling out, “Calendar, is that you?”

  I couldn’t answer, just nodded. Dad stepped out of the kitchen, went down the small front garden and put an arm around me; I held his big bear paw and pulled him close. We looked after the Oldsmobile until it was turning at a corner further down the hill, finally out of sight.

  “Come on in,” Dad said without further comment or inquiry. I walked by his side, weak kneed.

  Chapter 17

  IF I LOVE any one thing about my dad, it is the fact that from our early childhood, he treated my sister and me as full human beings. When the Moonstone family left the commune and Sunny and I entered real life and the public school system, we ran into quite a culture shock with the superficiality of our peers, the twisted pretenses of schoolmates and, of course, the violence, both physical and psychological. It would have been easy for our parents to mediate each school conflict we bought home with teachers or other parents but Dad insisted that it was up to Sunny and me to solve the conflicts on our own. If we asked Mom or Dad for help, they would give it, but not earlier. Sunny and I developed nice independent minds that way and maybe a hard shell, too.

  Therefore, I was not astonished that Dad treated the episode as just another Calendar conflict, solvable by her alone. No flippant remarks, no nosey questions.

  We walked through the house and into the large back garden where Mom was sitting under the tree, deep into some yoga exercises.

  “You want to join us?” Dad asked.

  “You are into yoga, lately?” I managed to ask coherently after I swallowed a few sips of green tea lemonade.

  “Not any more than you are,” Dad smiled his distant smile. I could see that he was torn between his way of giving his daughters free rein and his duty as a helpful dad.

  I settled in an ancient deck chair made of driftwood and enjoyed the autumn sun. Dad resumed his book and Mom stretched herself in meditation.

  After my nerves had steadied themselves and my heartbeat was back down to normal, I took another swig of ice tea lemonade to see if my hands were in working order. They were.

  I sat up and asked, “Where is everyone?”

  “Sun and the kids are at Sea World,” Dad sighed. “Probably another way of rebelling against her parents.”

  “Dad, come on. Keith and Jen are growing up as regular Americans. They just want to have fun and Sea World is as much fun as it can get.”

  Dad gave me a long look. “How many times have you been to Sea World or similar parks?”

  “Never, I can’t stand to see these beautiful creatures in those bleak surroundings, turning tricks for food.”

  “See, with you, our education of basic ethic nature values worked out. With Sunny, it didn’t.”

  I hated it when Dad was right, but I had given up fighting Sunny’s Americanization. I sat back again enjoying the garden, Mom and Dad were not making conversation. Suspiciously quiet.

  Oh, dammit, I almost forgot. “Where is my boyfriend?”

  Dad couldn’t suppress a smile, my parents had the ways and intuition of the KGB and CIA combined. “Your Mundy told me to give you this and he thanked us profoundly for our hospitality.” Dad took out a folded note from his book and handed it to me.

  ‘Dear Callie, thanks for the nice Thanksgiving. Have to work today for the Monday edition of Redondo Daily. Regards to your Mom and Dad, Sunny and the kids. They make a great family to marry into. See you around, LOL, Mun.’

  “He is gone and he gives his regards,” I simply stated, trying to underplay the situation.

  “Is it serious between you and him?” Mom asked from upside down, knotted in a strange yoga-position. No escape.

  “Mom, you will be invited to the wedding.”

  “Sunny and Mundy make a much nicer pair.”

  “You want to test my level of jealousy, Mom?”

  “Mundy is a nice fellow. But he is a little bit too… ‘Normal’ for your taste. But Sunny and Mundy would be a good fit. Makes a good combination, journalist and lawyer. He pleads the fifth to protect his source and she bails him out.”

  “Wouldn’t that have made a great Redford/Streisand movie in the seventies?” Dad said from behind his book, his mouth and eyes hidden from us.

  “You didn’t go to the movies once in the seventies!” I exclaimed.

  “Weeeelll, you know… ” Dad shifted in his seat.

  “We sneaked out of the commune without you hippies noticing,” Mom said, still upside down.

  “Really? Don’t shatter my world.”

  And when Mom and Dad didn’t answer, “Come on, you did?”

  Then both of them started to laugh, Mom crumbling into a heap from her yoga headstand. I crossed my arms and started sulking. “I will pass on Mundy’s number when he and I are through.”

  “Don’t be so sarcastic about it. Don’t you love Mundy?” Mom got up and stretched.

  “Stop right here!” I exclaimed. “Mom, I am not going to discuss this subject any further.”

  Sunny and the kids came home and the garden was filled with life again. We had a great farewell dinner with old stories to tell. The commune and the clashes with civilization, as we know it, was an endless source of entertainment to the kids who never ceased to be amazed by the strange family into which they had been born. Even Sunny loosened up a little bit and offered some stories of her own, which was unusual for her, since she had tried so desperately to erase all these tracks from her lifeline.

  They had planned to take the Redeye flight back to Dallas that night and I got them to the airport around nine p.m. I saw them off, as we exchanged kisses and the always to be broken promise that I would visit them in Dallas the next year. The American Gem Association had their an
nual convention in Austin next spring so I could actually make it this time, we would see.

  I drove back into the city without the radio on, made a quick spontaneous turn and rode into the Gaslight district. I found a parking lot that charged only five dollars instead of twelve and took a stroll into one of my favorite sports bars. I occupied a stool and ordered a Corona and some peanuts, watched a Jimmy Fallon rerun. Some courageous guy even tried some pick-up lines on me, I simply ignored him until he shrugged and walked back to his friends.

  I thought hard about the events of the last days, of Ron and his Sisyphus fight against an unsolvable murder. Thought of Thomas Cornelius and Billy Bounce’s threat. And I thought of Andrew Altward, whatever ‘Max’ dealings he had with Thomas and the affair he had with the night watchman’s daughter, Phoebe Eastman. We had learned a lot about the case so far, but nothing that could be called a break.

  I gripped the beer bottle harder and decided that I wasn’t supposed to be the sucker in this parade. I came to the conclusion that in whichever way the case developed, it was my turn to lose, I was sitting on some hot goods and I couldn’t get rid of them. Despite my usual stubbornness to be in the right, I decided to make an exception this time and hand the goods over to Thomas. If he fancied the stuff, he should have it, if it enabled me to work properly on future jobs.

  The only thing that posed an uncertainty was the fact that I was convinced that Thomas was after something else and not the particular stones I had in my possession. But that will be played out when I hand Thomas the loot. If he doesn’t fancy my loot, maybe I will at least get some information out of him about the true nature of whatever it is that he really wants.

  The more I thought about this glimpse of a plan, the more I considered it a bad idea. Billy Bounce was all around me and Thomas sometimes had a very bad temper. It was foolish to go into such a thing alone with a sack full of diamonds.

  Maybe I should simply mail them to him, insured, with a courier, hand-to-hand. And then vanish for a while until grass grew over the whole sorry mess.

  Suddenly, a thought struck me. And I marveled at Dad’s cunningness, smiling over my beer. That old devil. He just happened to mention that Uncle Bernie was in town. Just happened? I bet my Altward loot against this dry slice of lemon that he had evaluated my trouble, decided to stick to his guns and say nothing but offer a solution in an indirect discreet way.

  I always hoped that my parents had no idea of what sideline their daughter was in, working as a cat burglar, stealing diamonds and expensive jewelry. But they were intelligent people and must have calculated the economic chances of a well running exotic jewelry craft shop in Redondo Beach. I decided to give Dad an extra big kiss tomorrow.

  Chapter 18

  ON MY PHONE voicemail, “Calendar, thanks for getting back to me so fast. Here is Thomas. I would love to meet you tomorrow, just name a place for lunch or dinner.” I left Thomas the details for place and time.

  My visit in San Diego came to an end. I had an early breakfast with my parents. Then I kissed them goodbye, took my bags and made a brief stop at the SDPD headquarters. Instead of taking the public parking spot, I simply drove onto the staff lot, being a police consultant and all.

  The front desk sergeant called upstairs, authorized me and I walked up to Ron’s office. He and Juanita were not at their desks but I spotted them in a separate office with a large guy in a dark suit. Juanita came out, leaving a meeting room full of heated exchange.

  “You came at the right moment,” she said and walked straight to the copy machine.

  “What’s going on in there?”

  Juanita started making copies of the papers in her hand.

  “The big guy with Ron is FBI; they have an interest in the case because hacking is a federal crime.”

  “Hacking?”

  “The safe. The decided to call it hacking instead of cracking. Wordsmithing BS, but that’s the FBI for you.”

  “And the papers?”

  Juanita gave a sly smile. “That is why I took your arrival as an excuse to leave the office. It is the list of suspects from the FBI. Software engineers who have expertise in safe control computer software. Not too many, since the safe manufacturer is a small company. The FBI guy wouldn’t give us a copy, so Ron started an argument to distract him and I slipped out to greet you.” She was done and we walked over to her desk. “And took along Mr. FBI’s list.”

  The argument in the office was over sooner than expected. Eventually, the door to the office flew open and the FBI agent stormed out, made a short halt at Juanita’s table, snatched the original list from her outstretched hand and left the detective floor, banging the door shut behind him.

  Ron came up, gave a small victorious grin and sat beside Juanita’s desk. They immediately put their heads together and studied the list.

  “Eighteen names. That’s a small list. But those ten names where the system had current addresses, we are talking all over the USA. Five on the West Coast, the rest in the South and East.”

  “Can I make a crazy suggestion?” I ask.

  “Sure, shoot,” Ron said, giving me ‘that look’ again.

  “Apply the same technique you did when you identified me.”

  “How did we identify you? You were in the computer… ” Ron said, not getting it.

  Juanita patted his hand. “Come on big guy, this is for us girls. What Calendar means is, she doesn’t live in San Diego but was home for the holidays. Let’s find the parents’ addresses of the suspects on the list and see if anyone is living close by.”

  “Don’t you think the FBI won’t think of that?”

  “Not in the first round of investigation,” Juanita said.

  “Right, it buys you some time and it gives you a head start,” I added.

  “Good thinking. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do anymore regarding the regular line of the case. The preliminary reports all came in this morning, no more additional leads, except what the FBI got for us.”

  “And the suspicious Altward books or financial affairs of Phoebe Eastman?”

  “We dug a little bit deeper but came up with nothing more. Without a search warrant—no search. Without evidence—no search warrant.”

  “You seem to take it easy,” I noted, dryly.

  “I am the easy type,” he said but he didn’t smile. “We’re digging. If there’s evidence, it will appear.”

  “A philosopher. Well, you got my number in Redondo, feel free to call,” I said in such a way that the unspoken ‘Anytime’ was obvious. Juanita gave a slight chuckle from her desk; Ron didn’t catch it. Typical man.

  Chapter 19

  HOME AGAIN. I unlocked the front door and dropped the bag with my belongings in the middle of the living room. The air was stale and I opened all the windows, jumped into the pool for a quick swim, machined an espresso and scanned the snail- and e-mail. I stood on the patio, sipping the brew, enjoying the greenery of the garden. Mundy had left a message, I called back and he promised to pick me up for an early dinner.

  Home was in Redondo Beach, a small community where you could drive from end-to-end in fifteen minutes. It merged seamlessly into other South Bay cities, like Palos Verde and Torrance but had a charm of its own. I was living in a converted garden house of a private estate. My landlord was an old and cranky but lovable lady, Mimi Gardener. A widow and a former TV actress, she was 82, which just about matched the number of her surgical lifts. The estate was not a very large affair, located three blocks from the beach and two blocks from PCH. It sported a hacienda-style main house, a large garden with a pool and a triple garage. There was also a 500 square foot garden house set back at the other end of the estate. These days, Mimi rarely ever left home, she had a maid to take care of the house, a nurse to take care of her, a weekly gardener and a bi-weekly pool guy. The garden and the pool practically belonged to me.

  With Mimi’s blessings, I had converted the house to my own liking and installed a small open gallery that hosted my
bed, a walk in closet and numerous bookshelves. Downstairs, there was a small bathroom, a large cupboard for all the stuff you didn’t want to leave lying around and a living room with a kitchenette. From an LA perspective, this was as minimal as it got. I wasn’t much of the homey type though and I preferred to eat out or work.

  Mundy came walking through the garden a few minutes later; he had a key for the garden gate, and he knocked on the doorframe.

  “Did you meet your deadline?” I asked while I checked my website.

  “A very sharp comment on the city council’s plan to cut lifeguard support next summer season, the new Tom Petty CD is a bore and Redondo saw a spectacular Thanksgiving fireworks display with good visibility up to Malibu.” Mundy looked happy and fell onto my sofa, stretching his legs.

  “You weren’t here over Thanksgiving,” I reminded him.

  He waved his hand in a very French gesture, “You are no fun. I looked at the pier webcam, saw that the weather was fine and conjured the rest. We are not talking Pulitzer material here. Where do we go for dinner?”

  “I am in the mood for Louise’s,” I commanded, switching off my Mac.

  “Italian, sounds good, not too complicated.”

  I locked up and we took his car and rode the short way down PCH to an Italian place called Louise’s. There weren’t many customers so we sat on the plexi-glassed terrace and scanned the menu.

  “Any update about your case?” Mundy asked after ordering.

  “No, the thing is dying a slow death,” I answered. I told him of the meeting this morning.

  “And your fencing friend, Cornelius?”