The Brush Off

by Laura Bradley

  Now, to get rid of the badge.

  “What’d you do to your hair? Stick your finger in a light socket?”

  I wanted to tell him where to stick his finger but decided to be cool-headed and mature instead.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked, clippers poised invitingly.

  “Uh.” Scythe shifted on his toes. I finally had knocked him off-balance. Did it only take a hairstyling tool? Next time, I’d try snapping scissors when he got smart-ass. He cleared his throat. I tried to look earnest.

  “I came to find out why you were at Illusions last night.”

  “Who’s the rat?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  “Well, then, why I was there is none of your concern.” I started the motor on the clippers on the pretense of oiling them. Scythe shivered.

  “The informant likes to dress like a schoolgirl,” he blurted.

  Now I knew whom to avoid, as if I would ever again need the services of a transvestite club. I really had just wanted a concession from him. He gave, so I should. “Okay, I was there to show one of the performers two photos to see if they could identify whom Ricardo met at the club recently.”

  I had Scythe’s full attention now. It also looked like I had earned a modicum more of respect and a modicum more of irritation. Probably a wash all around. “The two photos were of…?

  “Senator Sal Villita and a Mike Van Dyke.”

  I’d shocked him. Boy, that felt good. “And was it either man?”

  “The redhead couldn’t be sure it was Van Dyke. But it certainly wasn’t Villita. Ricardo met with a middleaged gringo tennis player.”

  The relief was palpable. I imagine dealing with a political bigwig was one of the cops’ biggest headaches. “Why did you even consider Villita?”

  “Because his son is really Ricardo’s biological child.”

  “What?” Scythe looked pained instead of amazed.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I haven’t gotten a DNA sample, if that’s what you’re asking. But I talked to Celine Villita and met the son, Jon, and his speech, mannerisms, walk, and profile are dead ringers for Ricardo.” I left out the part about her threatening me. I thought it might make him so mad that it would distract him from the important information.

  “And you knew to go nosing around at the Villitas’ why? Because you picked the highest-profile family in San Antonio and decided to make life difficult for yourself, or what?” He was getting angry. Aw, I didn’t know he cared.

  “Ricardo kept a photo of Celine and photos of Jon.”

  “You saw this where?”

  “At his house.”

  “We didn’t notice them,” Scythe muttered to himself, running his hand through his hair. Then he got back into laser-vision mode and tried to extract honesty out of me.

  “And you got into his house how?”

  “I had a key.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had possession of a key.” Scythe looked a little suspicious. I think he still entertained the idea that Ricardo and I did the nasty. Well, let him think it.

  “I borrowed the key.” I didn’t want Gerald to get in trouble. “Without the owner’s knowledge.”

  “Okay.” He put one hand up. “I don’t want to know. Don’t try to tell me. Just tell me who this Mike guy is and why you had a photo of him.”

  “He’s a rich scion of San Antonio society. I’m ashamed of you that you don’t keep up with the Who’s Who around here.”

  Laser blues heated a hole through my head. “And the second part of my question? Why you had a photo of him?”

  “Oh, because Ricardo did.”

  “House, too?”

  “Right.” He moved toward the doorway. “I’m gone. And remember, you have a tail. Don’t lose it, it’s for your own protection.”

  “Being a devil is protection in and of itself,” I agreed.

  It took him a few seconds to process my rejoinder. Then he shook his head but couldn’t stop the smile. Wow. Good thing he didn’t smile often. I wouldn’t have many pithy comebacks with that looking me in the face. I stopped thinking again. Just briefly, because as soon as it appeared, the smile was gone, and so was Scythe.

  He hadn’t seen the fax. And I was dying to see it, only I had Miss Olive coming unsteadily down the hall at me first. This investigating stuff was going to teach me to be patient whether I wanted to be or not.

  twenty-four

  AS I DROVE DOWN THE SHADED STREETS OF FAIR Oaks, I tried to get my thoughts in order. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the dark sedan that had followed me since I got on McCullough still behind me. The police tail, no doubt. It should’ve bugged me, but it was actually a comfort. Things were coming together too fast for me to assimilate. The report that Espinoza’s friend’s sancha had faxed told me Johnstone had some high-dollar vodka, steak, potato, butter, sour cream, asparagus, and geranium pudding in his stomach contents. Geranium pudding? I’d called a chef friend of mine, who said that geranium desserts were a gourmet food. That fit for a rich man, I supposed.

  Hey, Ricardo, what proof was in this pudding?

  The cause of death was officially listed as massive loss of blood. Paul Johnstone suffered from ulcers, and one had burned a hole in his stomach, so he bled out internally. The medical examiner had made notations that it seemed the victim’s apparent recent vomiting (according to the widow) had exacerbated the situation and could have caused the hole in his stomach to split wider. There was no cause listed for the vomiting. His arteries were clogged but not enough to kill him. His liver was compromised but not enough to shut down completely. He’d had enough alcohol in his system to dull the pain of his bleeding ulcer and have him shrug it off as a bout of the flu.

  The guy was a mess, but something told me it probably wasn’t an accident that he’d died that day. The problem was, that something was nowhere in print.

  A Ricardo Montoya was listed as one of the paramedics who transported Johnstone.

  So now I had more pieces, but they had yet to fit together. Ricardo had a secret, out-of-wedlock love child raised by the most famous man in San Antonio. He was a penniless paramedic who answered the call on a wealthy man who died. Not long after, he gave up one career and bought a business, with which he became a smashing success. Twenty-five years later, he was stabbed to death with a brush pick. The child he never claimed may run for political office.

  I sighed. How did it all fit together?

  I was going to have to go shake the Van Dykes’ tree and see what fell out.

  I felt a bit claustrophic for a moment and wondered why. I glanced into the rearview mirror again and saw the sedan was riding a little close to my bumper. Jerky cops, what were they trying to do, intimidate me on the isolated stretch of two-lane road that fell off into ten-foot-deep ditches on either side? Before I knew it, the sedan pulled next to the truck on the left and swerved, banging into the front panel. I slammed on the brakes, countered the swerve, narrowly avoiding the ditch. The car sped ahead. Then a bubble-gum blue Miata appeared seemingly out of nowhere, buzzed past me, and chased the sedan.

  Yipes. I guess Mario got over his hair after all.

  Before I could get back on the road, another dark sedan (I could’ve sworn it was a Crown Victoria) zoomed past after the other two.

  Now, maybe a bunch of people were running really late to work today and I just got in the way, but I doubted it. I flirted with the idea of going after Mario to stop him but realized we’d be going around in circles, as the bad guy after me would have found me and started chasing me again. Instead of going to Mario’s rescue, I dialed his cell phone.

  “Hola!” I could hear the screech of tires.

  “Mario, I thought you were supposed to be babysitting me?”

  “You left me! You butchered my pelo bonito, and then you left me!”

  “Yes, and now you’ve left me.”

  Screech. “Dios mío! Es claro. Espera. Wait for me, Reyn. I’ll turn around. A
i-ee. Someone is after me now. A big black car!”

  “Mario, that’s the police. Get out of their way, and let them catch the guy.”

  “Hokay. I’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”

  “No, Mario, that scared me nearly to death. I’m on my way home. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Promise?”

  “You’re breaking up, Mario. See you at home.”

  I cut the connection just as the Van Dyke house rose above me, a pinky-peach stucco monolith on the hill, with a driveway that wound its way up ostentatiously, lined by atrociously expensive transplanted palm trees. Most of the estates in Fair Oaks went out of their way to blend in with the Hill Country scenery of craggy limestone, sprawling live oaks, and patches of cedar. This one looked out of place—as if it belonged in Miami, above the coast at Cabo San Lucas, along the French Riveria, not just off a two-lane road in a small, albeit wealthy, community just north of San Antonio with no water in sight. I stopped at the gate and pressed the intercom button. I hadn’t pondered how I was going to talk my way in. With my luck, I knew whatever plan I fashioned would come apart at the seams. I decided to put one together as I went along instead.

  “Oh, you’re early,” a terribly affected female voice blared over the speakers. “I’ll buzz you in, dahling.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wow. That was easy. Wonder who I was supposed to be?

  Dahling? Uh-oh. I remembered Trudy’s client in Terrell Hills and who her darling was. Mixing with the moneyed set without the convenience of hiding behind my blow-dryer was making me nervous. Maybe I should’ve had a plan.

  The gates opened with the speed of a sloth, and I wound my way quickly up the limestone-studded driveway before she realized I wasn’t who she thought I was.

  I passed a gardener planting gold columbine under the palm trees. I waved. Mouth open, he looked at me as if I were landing a spaceship on the property. Guess not too many of the Van Dykes’ guests acknowledged the help. As I parked, I saw another gardener up in a palm, trimming a loose frond. I decided not to call a greeting to him for fear he’d lose his grip on the trunk and fall to the ground in shock.

  Sarah Johnstone Van Dyke must have been watching my approach, because she opened the door with practiced panache as I hit the top porch step. Porch really wasn’t a good description of what was an Entrance with a capital E. It was meant to impress. So was she. Sarah was a perfect high-society specimen with her just-past-shoulder-length, fourteen-karat blond hair straight side-parted and drawn back in the newest sleek look (à la Gwyneth Paltrow) held at the nape with a jeweled barrette. The style, which was calculated for a cosmopolitan image, set off a sharp-featured (almost ferretlike), approaching-fifty face that had been carefully preserved by a Dallas plastic surgeon. I wonder if they know plastic surgeons leave their mark as well as artists do if you know what to look for. I’d done the hair around enough of his faces to know one on sight. Her body was a petite model size two, including surgically enhanced breasts, dressed in a flowing floral print blouse with peasant sleeves, white linen capris, and rainbow-patten leather sandals straight out of last month’s Neiman Marcus catalogue.

  She was so perfectly presented she could be mistaken for a mannequin, except for the eyes. Her green eyes glittered with cunning. Cunning isn’t necessarily smart—cunning is knowing how to manipulate people to get ahead, cunning is knowing how many lies to tell to get what you want, and cunning could be more dangerous than smart any day.

  I guessed that her cunning was dulled by her immense wealth, and that was in my favor.

  She introduced herself, for which I thanked God that she hadn’t embraced me in a steamy kiss. I would’ve been out of there without the information I sought, that was for sure.

  “I am so honored to meet you,” I said, groveling. She preened for a moment.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she gushed. “I think it will be such a tremendous article.”

  Article? So I was a reporter. And she was welcoming, so it was going to be a feature. “It should be,” I hedged.

  “This strategy should really work, slipping the fact that Mike is going to run for the state representative seat into an article about our home.”

  Ah-ha. Did Ricardo know? Did he meet with Van Dyke to tell him to lay off the challenge against Jon? But why, then, would he have the twenty-five-year-old article about Johnstone’s death? He must have had something to blackmail Van Dyke with. But what? Maybe he’d known sweet Sarah had knocked him off with pudding and could prove it. But how? There was no trace of poison in his system, according to the autopsy. But then, coroners in the late seventies didn’t have the technology they did today…

  “It will really turn the tables on the media, have them thinking they’ve uncovered some big secret, and they will be all over it like mud on a pig.”

  Oops, she was showing her common roots? Was she a farm girl turned society matron? Sarah caught herself and smiled. “Instead of a simple declaration that’s turned into nothing but a sound bite at ten, Mike’s campaign will be off with a bang. CNN or Fox might even pick it up.”

  “Hopefully.”

  “My husband is down at the tennis courts. He practically lives in his tennis whites…”

  Double ah-ha.

  “So I’ll take you down there after we talk, and you can meet him.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Where’s your photographer?” She looked around.

  “We come separately. I get the copy and scout things out for him and then make recommendations about what to shoot.”

  “I see. What do you want to do first, look around or do the interview?”

  “Let me get some background first, then I’ll look around, then we can talk some more.”

  “That will suit,” she said expansively. “I’ve canceled my masseuse for today.”

  “How fortunate.” I smiled. “Tell me, how long have you lived here?”

  “Nearly twenty years. Right after we got married, we tried living at my estate in Terrell Hills, but it was difficult for Mike to make it his own. And it was difficult for me with all the memories.”

  I nodded. “I understand completely. That was the home you lived in with your first husband, Paul Johnstone?”

  She stepped back, surprised. “You’ve done your research, haven’t you?”

  “That’s my job.”

  Sarah seemed satisfied, but I would have to tread carefully from here on out. “Paul died in the house, and I couldn’t go into that room again without remembering how horrible it was that night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Paul had been complaining of stomach pains for weeks. His color was bad. I thought his ulcer was getting worse, and his food experiments weren’t helping matters.”

  “What food experiments?”

  “Somebody had talked him into this gourmet dessert discovery using everyday plants and flowers—so he had the gardeners bringing him geranium, rose petals, lavender—depending on what he talked the cook into making that night.”

  “How did they taste?”

  “Truly awful, like rancid lemons, most of them. I don’t know how he choked them down. Of course, he chased every bite with a mouthful of Absolut. I think I tried two, and that was it for me. I stuck with Godiva chocolates from then on.”

  Had the gardener brought in a poisonous plant accidentally a time or two? Or was it on purpose? I racked my brain for plants my sister told her kids to stay away from when they had their poison plant drill at home (Pecan is very militaristic in her parenting)—azalea, poinsettia, oleander.

  “So poor Mr. Johnstone just keeled over, and you called for an ambulance?”

  “Why are you so interested in this?” She stepped back, suspicious. “I thought the article was about the house and the campaign.”

  I leaned into her like I had a confession to make. “I’m sorry. I’m freelance for other publications, and I’ve been hired to do a big spread on the history of paramedics for Parade, you k
now, that insert that goes nationwide in newspapers on Sundays?”

  She nodded eagerly, cunning glittering to attention in those green orbs.

  “And I thought I might be able to put in a quotation from you. The editors might want a photo, too, since I’d guess that cameras love you.” I waved off the idea. “But never mind, I apologize for bringing it up.”

  That did it. Her greed for publicity won out over suspicion. “No. I suppose I could help you. What did you need to know?”

  “How were the paramedics who responded to Mr. Johnstone?”

  “They were fabulous, so soothing in my time of need, I just couldn’t have gotten through the ordeal without them.” Me, me, me. Her husband might have died of medical neglect. She probably mobbed them before they could get to poor Paul.

  “In fact, one of them was so considerate that I took care of him as a little thank-you.”

  Uh-oh, here it came, she did the nasty with Ricardo, and they had a love child, and…what? The jealous ghost of Paul is the one who killed him? Mike Van Dyke finally found out and blew a fuse twenty years later? Maybe she and Ricardo had a long-standing affair, and he found out, but, geez, I couldn’t see Ricardo with this affected mannequin of a woman. Celine Villita was more like it, because she was human under her veneer. Sarah Johnstone Van Dyke’s only sign of humanity was selfishness.