Cass stepped into the kitchen, her red hair damp. “He did the fun part,” Cass clarified. “I did all the hot work, ripping the old kitchen out. Bruce got to build the new stuff.”
“Only because you got shot in the shoulder and wimped out,” Bruce said.
A dog barked and I knew Darla and Mitch Stone had arrived. “Can I do anything?”
Bruce motioned me to the stove. “It’s hollandaise. Keep it off the double boiler and add the butter cubes a couple at a time and keep stirring. Put it back on the double boiler if it’s too cool for the butter to melt.”
Cass raised an eyebrow as I walked past. “Nobody but Bruce has touched that stove since he installed it.”
The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them. “There’s something sexy about a man who cooks.”
Bruce grinned on his way out the door and Cass followed, carrying plates and cutlery.
“I hope you’re setting up a fan,” I called through the screen door.
“Bruce brought one from the college,” Cass said as she came back inside, wiping her forehead. “And a tent thing for shade.”
Bruce followed her in, took over stirring duties, and I escaped to help Cass take food and iced tea outside. A foil-covered platter waited on the picnic table, now devoid of checkers. Abe and Mitch were adjusting a white tent that covered the patio and part of the yard. A gale-sized breeze hit me as Cass turned on an industrial-sized fan.
“Who won?” I asked.
“Goober,” Abe said, and I swear he was pouting.
A lanky greyhound slurped water from a bowl and when he was done, presented himself for an ear rub. “Hello Zeus,” I cooed. “Sit with me. I’ll sneak you plenty of scraps.”
“Maxine,” Mitch scolded as he folded himself into the picnic table. He’d suffered severe injuries in the spring when he and Cass were trying to stop a cult. And although he was moving pretty well, if you knew what had happened, you could still see the stiffness in his right leg. “He farts when he eats people food.”
“Ignore him, Maxine. He farts no matter what he eats,” Mitch’s pretty wife Darla said as she hugged me. “And yes, I mean Zeus and Mitch.”
Mitch groused as his wife slid onto the bench and scooted him over, but the love they felt for each other was palpable. I tried not to, but I envied them.
It felt so natural to crowd around the picnic table with these people. We settled in to an amazing dinner of ribeyes cooked to perfection and drenched in a velvety hollandaise, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a massive salad. I think I’m falling in love with Bruce Elliot based on the quality of his cooking alone.
“How’d it go today?” Cass asked between bites.
“We found him.”
“Awesome.” She high-fived me. “What’s the poop?”
I summarized our day, ending with details about Baxter Bretton Ivey’s multiple names and marriages.
“I’ve never understood why a man would want more than one wife,” Mitch mused.
“Hey,” Darla protested. “You got a pretty good deal here.”
“I do. Why risk ruining a perfectly good marriage by adding a second wife?”
“I think it’s for the money,” I said. “Nicole Ivy is a hotshot lawyer who works with Hollywood types. Blue is independently wealthy, even though she doesn’t flaunt it.”
“What’s Blue going to do?” Cass asked.
“Talk to her lawyer about whether she’s legally married. Technically, her husband was married to Nicole before he married her. Blue’s marriage might be void.” I sipped tea from a glass weeping condensation, then glanced at Goober and lowered my voice. “She told me about her expediter. Did you go to the scene?”
“It was unpleasant. How was Blue?”
“Holding it together. What happened?”
Mitch and Cass exchanged a glance. “Blue said no one had heard from Annie in several days, so she went to go check on her.”
“Blue thought she might’ve committed suicide because Bret broke up with her.”
An engine growled from the driveway and then shut off. Kado emerged from around the corner of the house and slid in next to Cass. She tried to hide it, but I caught her smile. It was nice and made me want one of my own. I sneaked a look at Bruce, who was filling a plate for Kado.
“So?” Mitch asked.
“It’s homicide,” Kado said.
“Who?” I asked.
Kado glanced at Mitch. “Give us the cliff notes,” Mitch said. “Wally Pugh was nosing around. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow.”
“Annie. Grey found evidence on her body. The irregular evidence I told you about earlier points in that direction, too.”
It took me a moment to catch on. “You mean someone killed her and made it look like suicide?”
Kado nodded.
I looked at Cass. “Could it be Bret Ivey?”
Mitch frowned. “Why would you think Bret Ivey did this?”
“He dumped her. Maybe she wouldn’t let go.”
“Maybe,” Cass said. “But let’s see where the evidence takes us.” Sometimes her logical nature drives me nuts. She nudged Kado. “Tell Max about the fingerprints from the truck.”
Kado swallowed a bite of steak. “I got hits on two people. Sugar Murphy and William Garcia.”
“Sugar?” I asked.
“That’s what the system says. Both from California. They’ve done time for breaking and entering and William Garcia’s prints show up on a guitar damaged during a robbery in Arcadia a couple of weeks ago.”
“Where?”
“The VanZandt’s.”
“What are California boys doing in East -” I started to ask, but Mitch interrupted me.
“Man, I don’t believe it.”
“Believe what?”
“Poison Ivy and the Dismembered Bunnies.” He looked around the table as if expecting recognition. “Really? Nobody?” Mitch put his fork down. There was still food on his plate. This was major. “Poison Ivy and the Dismembered Bunnies was the hottest folk punk band in the early eighties.”
“How can you use ‘folk’ and ‘punk’ in the same sentence without your head exploding?” I asked.
Mitch frowned.
“Oh yeah,” Bruce said. “You and Jack were really into them. He had one of their albums, didn’t he?”
“Their first and only album, which is a shame. They were young, late teens or early twenties, and had years of musical life left. They played loads of venues in the late seventies. Most of them crappy, but I think they hit CBGB in New York and that gave them a big boost.”
He was speaking a language only he and Bruce understood.
“The band broke up, right? The drummer spontaneously combusted?” Bruce asked.
“That was Spinal Tap. With the Bunnies, it was murder. They were almost done with a week’s recording session when Sonny Arellano up and went to Mexico.”
“Whoa. Arellano as in the Arellano-Felix drug cartel?” Kado asked.
Mitch nodded. “Something happened while he was there. A shooting? An attack on the family business? Sonny never resurfaced and as far as I know, is assumed dead.”
“The band broke up when Sonny died?”
Mitch nodded. “The studio burned, and the unmastered recordings from their last session went missing. It kind of gave them cult status.”
Nobody was eating now, which is huge when you think about the Elliot family and how vital food is to their functioning. Even Zeus was interested in the conversation. Or maybe in the lack of scraps.
“The guys who left fingerprints in the truck, Murphy and Garcia, how do they fit in?” Cass asked.
“They were band members. BB Ivy, Big Billy Garcia, Sugar Murphy, and Sonny Arellano.”
“BB Ivy was Poison Ivy?”
“Yup.”
“You think BB Ivy is Bretton Baxter Ivy?” Cass asked.
Mitch nodded. “Gotta be.”
Kado speared a bite of steak. “It makes sense when y
ou consider we found their fingerprints in Blue Ivey’s music room, too.”
I was stumped. “Back the truck up. If we assume the Murphy and Garcia who are leaving fingerprints all over Forney County are the same guys who played in a band with Bret Ivy back in the day, what are the chances they’re the same people who broke into Nicole Ivy’s house in Dallas and ransacked the music room there?”
“Pretty good,” Cass said.
“But why?” Darla asked. Her pretty face was troubled. “If Bret Ivey has been out of the music business for decades, why would his former band mates steal a truck and chase him? Why destroy his instruments? What are they after?”
A SACK OF ROCKS
THEY WERE PICKING THEIR way through the pine forest surrounding BB’s house when they heard shouting. The men stopped in their tracks, and then the blond crept forward.
“Sugar,” the dark-haired man whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Come here, Billy. I think it’s BB.”
Big Billy followed and they stood inside the tree line near the garden. A man stood absolutely still as a woman screamed and jabbed him in the chest.
“What was that?” Sugar asked.
“Something about Annie. Be quiet.”
She continued to rant and it seemed he was trying to soothe her.
“You see that?” Sugar asked.
“What?”
“He’s BB’s twin. From back in the Bunnies days.”
Billy took a step closer. It was eleven o’clock and although the garden was dark, a bright moon shone in the sky. The man was young and strong. Tall, with a healthy head of hair. He was a white kid, but tanned. Had kind of a surfer look going on. Billy looked closer. Sugar was right, from this distance, the kid looked a lot like BB back when they were playing together. But a lot of kids wore the surfer look.
“Nah,” Billy said. “Any kid with bushy hair and a tan looks like BB to you.”
He started to ease back into the forest but stopped when the woman picked up a bat and pulled back to swing at the man. He caught the bat mid-arc and laughed, a clear, happy sound, before smacking her in the head with it.
She dropped like a sack of rocks.
“Oh man,” Sugar whispered. “That was brutal.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“What about the house?”
The man was standing over the fallen woman, and at last he bent to pick her up, slinging her easily over his shoulder. He disappeared around the house.
Billy shuddered. “After that? I’m not going near the place. Ever.”
“Then you call and tell him.”
“No problem. Let’s go. I need a drink.”
SUNDAY
BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS
CHEWIE RODRIGUEZ BACKED HIS zero-turn mower off its trailer and let it idle, listening to the engine. It was early Sunday morning but the VanZandts were out of town, and the house’s location on ten secluded acres ensured no neighbors would be bothered by the noise. Although it was unusual for him, Chewie was in a hurry. His new niece’s baptism was today and Uncle Chewie wouldn’t miss that for the world.
Once the engine was suitably warm, Chewie tied his hat’s straps under his chin and adjusted the blade height. He mowed in a contented bubble of engine hum and dust motes, focusing on aligning each pass of the mower with the last to maximize the reach of the blades and minimize the amount of gas and oil he used. Chewie Rodriguez ran a landscaping business that was growing in reputation, but he still guarded every penny of every expense as if it were his last.
He rounded the house to start on the backyard, drawing to a stop as he saw the car parked in the driveway, still shrouded in early morning shadows. It belonged to the VanZandt’s daughter, Daphne, a striking young woman who rarely stopped to speak. Daphne always parked in the three car garage attached to the house, but he’d understood she would leave Saturday night to meet her parents wherever they were traveling. That was one reason he’d felt confident in showing up so early on a Sunday.
Chewie turned around. He’d come back after the christening, when it was more likely Daphne wasn’t sleeping. And then he saw the shoe and a flush of goosebumps shivered across his arms. He eased the mower forward, wishing he could ignore what was surely a bad omen.
A black tennis shoe lay forlornly in the rose bed near the driveway, and almost hidden behind the shoe, a bottle. They were incongruous in this landscape. Mrs. VanZandt was fastidious with her home’s appearance, and Chewie couldn’t imagine any sort of trash had been here when she left for vacation.
Chewie looked over his shoulder at the little car sitting alone in the drive, and then at the stone steps to the front door. He considered picking up the shoe and bottle, leaving them on the front mat, hoping someone would reunite the shoe with its lonely partner. But something made him turn the mower around and creep back to Daphne’s car.
The shade was so deep on the west side of the house that it wasn’t until he was nearly on top of it that he saw the sparkle. A sprinkling of diamonds lay scattered at the car’s front end, and rubies littered the ground at its rear. Instead of pinstripes, the car sported a jagged decoration along its flank, and its tires were flat.
He turned off the mower. The quiet was immense. A sixth sense prickled the short hairs along Chewie’s neck, and he moved to the car as if in a trance. The jagged decoration morphed into letters and then into words and his eyes could hardly believe the hatred in them. “NOW it’s over, bitch.” The urge to flee hit Chewie hard, but his feet stepped forward against his will.
She was buried deep in the sheltering arms of the morning’s shadows, her body leaning back in the driver’s seat, her face tilted to look in the rearview mirror.
Against all logic, Chewie tapped on the window. Receiving no reply, he knocked harder, and then walked around to the driver’s side of the car, avoiding the diamonds and rubies. The same message was scrawled in the paint on this side, and through the window Daphne’s skin was the perfect alabaster of a calla lily. A wooden handle protruded from her long neck and a crimson stain the color of a Scarlett O’Hara rose spread downward, disappearing into the neck of her blouse.
Chewie debated. If he called the police, he might miss his niece’s christening. But if he didn’t call, the police would see part of a mown lawn and discover he’d been here. So Chewie did the right thing: he crossed himself, uttered a prayer for Daphne’s soul, and pulled out his cell phone to dial 911.
A SENSE OF LOSS
SUNDAY IS MY ‘DO not disturb’ day, when I sleep in, often until early afternoon. This Sunday found me wide awake by seven o’clock. Yes, alone. And surprisingly, I wasn’t disturbed by that fact. Instead, my head was swimming with thoughts of folk punk music, lost recordings, and irate band members. As strange as that was, I offered up a prayer of gratitude: it must’ve saved me from the rape nightmare.
I hopped in the shower and, after running the usual safety checks, put on my big shades and a floppy hat and rode my bicycle to The Golden Gate Café.
The Golden Gate is something of an institution in Forney County, although it hasn’t always been that way. Stan and Sally Overheart moved from San Francisco to Arcadia about a decade ago, and opened the little eaterie. Located just off Arcadia’s square, it’s homey but not clichéd. They serve all the normal country fare, but also offer a selection of healthy options.
At first, the locals shunned The Golden Gate because Stan is tattooed and has a ponytail. Sally is thin as a whip and her frizzy hair gives her something of a wild look. Never mind that the tattoos are fading, the hair is gray-streaked, and they must be in their fifties or sixties, folks assumed that because Stan and Sally came from San Francisco they must be hippies. And hippies mean only two things in the Bible Belt: devil music and drugs.
Over time, the locals thawed and people came to appreciate The Golden Gate for being a safe place for kids to hang out and offering wholesome music and food. We have another coffee shop located on the square called, ironically, The C
offee Shop, but The Golden Gate is my favorite, both for the food and for Stan and Sally.
I stepped through the door at eight-fifteen, slipped my hat and shades off, and wiped the sweat from my face. I doubt if the temperature had even dropped into the eighties overnight, and the humidity was already unbearable. The café was busy this time of morning, with people grabbing breakfast before heading to Sunday School or early church services and I waved at several faces I recognized.
My bare legs made a horrible skidding sound as I slid into a red-vinyl covered booth. Sally buzzed my table and left a glass of ice water and a mug of steaming coffee. “Stan’ll be around in a minute, Max. There’s a Forney Cater in the rack if you’re interested. You can steal the funnies from the Pettigrew brothers. I think they’re done with them.”
I unstuck my sweaty legs and scooted out of the booth to grab a copy of the paper, sans funnies. The front page bore a smiling photograph of the woman who must be Annie from Cedar Bend Winery. The byline was Wally Pugh and the story was bare bones, offering her short history, a few details about how she was found on Saturday, and statements from Blue and others at the winery about what a sweet girl Annie was and how shocked they were.
Although Cass was right and evidence had to be pursued, I wondered if Bret Ivey really could be a suspect. And then it struck me like a bolt of lightning - for all intents and purposes I was done with Blue and Bret Ivey. I’d done what Blue asked me to do, which was find Bret. The stolen truck, the break-in at Blue’s house, the break-in at Nicole’s house, the mystery over the missing recordings and the band members - none of it was my business. When Aunt Kay told me that I’d done a good job last night, she meant it in the sense that I’d delivered my assignment.
I tried to resist it, but I felt a sense of loss as I sat there alone in The Golden Gate Café that Sunday morning. I almost felt sorry for myself. There I’d gone and done my job. The chase, the rush to find Bret, all of that was exciting. But the rest of the investigative business? I wasn’t sure I wanted to pull on yoga pants and take pictures of insurance malingerers with their boom-booms in the air. How boring.
A Case of Sour Grapes: A Cass Elliot Companion Novel (Cass Elliot Crime Series Book 3) Page 14