by Lee Hollis
Poppy knew the young men who frequented Chill may not be so anxious to gossip about a buddy with three old biddies they had never met before, so she hoped they would be more open to talking to a strikingly handsome man who was fun and engaging and off the charts sexy. Unfortunately, the only man she knew who came close to that description was Matt, but he was no longer on the team. Still, she had texted him earlier in the day, explained how she needed him for just an hour, one drink, and some flirty conversation in order to loosen the lips on the boys at Chill, but she had heard nothing back. She had tried calling him in the afternoon with her plan to show up at the bar around 6:00 p.m., but she had just got his voice mail.
Finally, at around 5:30 p.m., the ladies piled into Violet’s car and drove to Palm Springs. After finding one last spot in the adjacent parking lot, they entered Chill, which was packed with a bevy of chatty, excitable, sharply dressed boys barely over the drinking age, along with a handful of older, distinguished men, who were perched at the bar or on the long leather banquette that ran along the wall and were ogling all the beautiful men socializing before the blazing hot desert sun even had a chance to descend below the San Jacinto mountaintops.
It took almost ten minutes for Poppy to flag down the wiry bearded bartender with a red ball cap on his head that read MAKE AMERICA GAY AGAIN. She immediately liked him. He was sweet and polite, paying deference to the fact that she was a woman and an elder, and suggested his world-famous special frozen cosmo. Poppy ordered three and paid with a twenty-dollar bill. She even got some change back. God bless happy hour prices.
The women took a seat at a table near the patio and watched as the surrounding young men chatted and laughed and danced. Poppy had known many gay men in her life as an actress in Hollywood and as a philanthropist in Palm Springs, and she had always marveled at how they always seemed to know how to have a good time. No wonder so many female bridal parties crashed gay bars to dance and celebrate. They could never replicate the same joyous, freeing feeling at a straight bar.
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Violet asked.
“Maybe we should fan out and start some conversations,” Poppy suggested.
“That is not going to work. Nobody wants a woman old enough to be their grandmother interrupting their conversation,” Iris barked.
“So what do you suggest we do?” Poppy asked.
“You need to get them to come to you,” Iris said matter-of-factly.
Several patrons wandered by, not giving them a second glance.
An older Japanese man, tiny in stature but big in voice, was on the makeshift stage, singing “Stand by Your Man” with a karaoke microphone, the lyrics spelling out on all the TVs that hung on the walls of the bar.
Iris stood up, guzzled the remainder of her frozen cosmo, and then crossed over to the man in the DJ booth, who was handling song requests. She scribbled something down on a piece of paper, handed it to him, and then returned to the table.
“Back in Germany, I was what you called a gay icon. The boys loved me,” Iris boasted.
The Japanese singer wrapped up his song to a light smattering of applause, and then the DJ announced over the speakers, “Next, we have Iris singing a Doris Day classic, ‘Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps’!”
No one paid much attention as Iris made her way to the stage, swiped the microphone from the smiling Japanese man, who was stepping down, and then turned her back to everyone.
As the song began playing, Iris slowly turned her head and began singing. Poppy and Violet exchanged stunned looks. Her voice sounded so assured and professional. She swiveled her hips like a dancer and hit the notes perfectly, completely comfortable in the role of seductive songstress. The boys were slow to notice at first, but when they did, they stopped their conversations and herded in the direction of the stage.
“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps . . .”
Poppy looked around. Even the bartenders had stopped serving drinks to watch Iris’s showstopping rendition.
Iris flounced around the small stage, pointing at a different boy every time she hit the word perhaps, and they ate it up. Every last one of them. And when she hit her final note, giving it 100 percent, she was as mesmerizing as if they were watching Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall. The entire bar erupted in thunderous applause.
Poppy and Violet could only watch, slack jawed and totally impressed.
One impossibly tan young man in a salmon Izod shirt and khaki shorts raced forward and held his hand out to help Iris down off the stage. She shot him a sweet air kiss as a thank-you and then made her way back to Poppy and Violet, who clapped their hands wildly at her unexpectedly powerhouse performance. Iris gracefully sat down, surrounded by a gaggle of adoring boys who were paying her gushing compliments, and she made sure to get every one of their names memorized as she accepted their offers for drinks.
“Now we’re all friends, and we can ask them whatever we want,” Iris said.
As the boys eagerly crowded in beside them, chatting and wanting to know more about Iris and where she came from, Poppy managed to pick one or two off from the herd and pepper them with some direct questions about Jayden.
“Oh, sure, I know Jayden,” the kid in the salmon Izod said as he swirled his glass around, watching the ice clink against the sides. “He comes in when he’s not working. But that battle-ax Shirley Fox keeps him pretty busy, so it’s usually just one night a week or really late on a weekend, after she’s passed out from too much bourbon.”
This kid liked to dish.
And he seemed to know quite a lot.
So Poppy decided to keep her focus on him, even though the rest of the boys around the table were full of information about Jayden, too.
How he had a taste for skinny, blond, white boys.
How he had his own dreams of becoming a screenwriter in Hollywood someday, if he could get his firm butt out of the desert.
How he came from an oppressively religious family from Alabama who kicked him out of the house when they discovered he was gay.
But nothing they said suggested Jayden was capable of murder.
In fact, a few mentioned how he had admitted to being a bigger fan of Olivia Hammersmith than of Shirley Fox, a blasphemous statement, if his current employer ever heard him breathe a word about it.
But the boy in salmon had suddenly become noticeably quiet. He watched his gay brethren tattle and prattle and howl with laughter, and shrank away from the conversation, as if he didn’t want to share any more dirt on his pal, for some reason.
He caught Poppy looking at him.
“What?” he said.
“You seem like you have something you want to say.”
The boy reacted, surprised. “No, I don’t.”
He was clearly lying.
He had some dirt, and he was purposely not sharing.
And despite the cadre of fans Iris had accumulated from her sensational karaoke debut at Chill Bar, salmon boy was going to remain tight-lipped.
Suddenly, everyone’s attention was drawn to a man who had just burst into the bar in tight white shorts and a dark blue, short-sleeved, button-up shirt that pressed against his bronzed, hairy chest. There were titters and gasps from around the bar. The man’s eyes sparkled as he flashed a wide smile and nearly blinded everyone with his mouthful of perfect white teeth.
After spotting Poppy, Iris, and Violet, he waved cheerfully as he crossed over to them.
Matt Flowers had arrived at Chill Bar.
“Sorry I’m late, ladies,” Matt said, deepening his voice for effect.
The boys around the table swooned.
“I just checked my phone on my way over. Seems like there was some kind of German Streisand show here that’s trending on Twitter,” Matt said.
“I killed it,” Iris bragged.
“Hi, boys! My, you’re all looking fresh faced and adorable,” Matt said, winking. “Thanks for taking care of my girls in my absence.”
The man sure knew how to flirt.
; He had them all in the palm of his hand.
Poppy leaned in and whispered in his ear. “Thank you for coming. Does Heather know you’re here?”
“No, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Got it.”
“What do we have?”
“The boy in the salmon shirt next to you knows something, but he’s suddenly not talking,” Poppy whispered in his ear.
“I’m on it.”
Matt instantly cranked up the charm meter to redline levels and moved in for the kill, looping an arm around salmon boy’s shoulder, drawing him in, relentlessly captivating him with his bewitching personality.
In less than fifteen minutes, when salmon boy skipped to the bar to buy everyone a round of drinks, Matt turned to Poppy.
“There’s a big rumor going around town that Jayden’s been embezzling money from Shirley for months.”
Poppy sat back in her chair, speechless.
Both from the shocking new revelation about Jayden and from the record amount of time it took Matt to ferret it out of his newfound admirer.
Chapter 35
“You want to go to Detroit and do what?” Poppy asked Violet’s grandson Wyatt, who sat glued to his computer at the garage office, eyes laser focused on the screen, fingers wildly tapping on the keyboard.
“Become human,” Violet answered while hovering over her grandson, watching him work.
“I’m not following any of this,” Poppy said, exasperated.
“It’s a video game,” Wyatt said flatly, still concentrating on what he was doing on his computer. “Detroit: Become Human. It’s all about artificial intelligence and humanity’s future. It’s set in the near future in Detroit, which has become the manufacturing hub for artificially intelligent robots that look exactly like human beings.”
“Okay,” Poppy said, her left eyebrow raised at Violet.
“It actually sounds like a really good story. It follows one female robot named Kara who wakes up from servitude and demands her freedom,” Violet added.
“And it’s a game, not a movie?” Poppy inquired.
“Yes,” Violet answered.
“And Wyatt wants us to buy it for him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“As payment for the work he’s been doing for us.”
“And how much does it cost?”
“Way less than the salary you should be paying me,” Wyatt said, turning his computer screen around for Poppy and Violet to see. “Look at this.”
“Please don’t tell me you hacked into another Web site!” Poppy moaned.
“Okay, I won’t,” Wyatt said, flipping the screen back toward himself and blocking Poppy’s view. “But if I had, I might have found some really interesting financial info concerning Jayden Emery.”
Poppy struggled not to ask him for any details.
It would be unethical for her to do so and also against the law.
Wyatt’s grandmother had no such worries, however.
“What did you find, dear?”
“Violet!” Poppy cried.
“Well, it’s too late now. He’s already done it,” Violet reasoned.
“Did you know the FBI has very capable cyber agents working around the clock to capture lone-wolf hackers like you, Wyatt?”
Wyatt chuckled. “Yeah, but I’m too smart to leave a trail of bread crumbs. Trust me, they’ll never catch me.”
“I refuse to listen to any information you obtained illegally. . . ,” Poppy announced emphatically.
Poppy covered her ears as she marched toward the door.
“I’ve gone over the statements for Jayden’s checking and savings accounts, and there was a series of cash transfers that occurred every month around the same time for the same amount of money from Shirley Fox,” Wyatt called out to her.
Poppy stopped at the door, lowered her hands from her ears, unable to resist hearing more.
“Perhaps he receives his paychecks from Shirley as a direct deposit,” Violet offered.
“Yes. Makes perfect sense,” Wyatt said, nodding. “But here’s the thing. Over the past few months, there were a few random deposits in varying amounts. One for five thousand, one for fifteen thousand and, just last week, one for almost twenty thousand.”
“That’s a lot more than what a personal assistant usually makes in a month,” Violet said, rubbing the top of her grandson’s head. “You’re such a talented boy.”
Poppy’s hand was on the doorknob. She was almost out of there, free and clear from any further criminal activity.
But then she sighed, knowing she had just lost her internal ethics battle, and spun around. “So the rumors appear to be true. Jayden found a way to steal cash from Shirley’s accounts and deposit it into his own.”
“Which is pretty stupid, if you ask me. It’s easily traceable,” Wyatt scoffed. “I would have laundered it through an account I set up out of the country, like in the Cayman Islands.”
“How old are you again?” Poppy asked.
“Twelve.”
“You seem much older.”
“I hear that a lot.”
“We have him red-handed, Poppy,” Violet exclaimed, excited and breathless.
“Not necessarily. We can’t print out his bank statements and hand them over to the authorities. We’ll all be arrested.”
“Oh . . . right . . . ,” Violet said, folding her arms, suddenly concerned.
“And it still doesn’t prove he had anything to do with the break-ins at the Palm Leaf, or that he actually murdered Olivia Hammersmith, despite what your friend Esther and her son Sammy saw.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Jayden seems to be a young man harboring a lot of secrets, so maybe we can use this information to squeeze some of those secrets out of him,” Poppy said, her mind racing.
“See? You’re not the Goody Two-shoes you pretend to be,” Wyatt said, laughing.
Poppy glared at him. “Do you want a copy of Detroit: Become Human or not, kid?”
Wyatt threw his hands up in the air in surrender and then, without missing a beat, said, “We can order it right now on Amazon. Grandma has a Prime membership, so it can get here by tomorrow.”
Poppy knew in her gut this enterprising kid wasn’t going anywhere. Like it or not, he was going to remain a permanent member of the Desert Flowers team.
Which made Violet a very happy and proud grandmother.
Chapter 36
Poppy knew what she had to do.
She placed a direct call to Shirley Fox, who at the moment was wrapping up a show at the Gardenia Restaurant and Lounge in Hollywood. She had previously canceled her dates at the Purple Room in Palm Springs to avoid the gossipy locals but had decided at the last minute to keep her concert dates out of town.
Dash answered the call.
“Hello, Dash. This is Matt Flowers’s assistant Poppy. May I speak with Shirley?”
“She’s removing her makeup now, and we have a dinner reservation. Call back later.”
“It’s important. It’s about the case she’s hired our firm to solve. Please, could you just put her on? It’s vital that she hear this.”
She could hear Dash begrudgingly hand the phone to Shirley. “It’s Flowers’s secretary,” he said.
“Yes?” Shirley asked gruffly.
“It’s Poppy Harmon, Ms. Fox.”
“Yes. I know. What do you want?”
“I have some information about your personal assistant, Jayden Emery, that you need to hear about.”
“We’re driving back first thing tomorrow morning. Can’t it wait until then?”
“I have reason to believe he’s been embezzling money from you.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.
“Did he steal my jewelry, too?”
“We’re not sure about that. But I believe . . . I mean, Matt believes that if we get him in a room with you, like one of those interventions, he won’t be expecting it an
d won’t have time to make up a story, so he’ll be more likely to spill everything he knows.”
“We’ll leave in ten minutes,” Shirley said. “He texted me earlier to say he’d be working at my house tonight. Have Mr. Flowers meet me there at eleven o’clock.”
“Uh, he may be tough to reach right now since he’s working another case, but he provided me with all the proof we need to confront Jayden. He personally uncovered this evidence himself.”
“I see. Well, tell Mr. Flowers he is a very good detective, but he should be a bit more available to his clients.”
“I most certainly will, Ms. Fox. I will meet you and your husband at your house at eleven o’clock.”
“Fine.”
She heard Shirley addressing Dash on the other end of the phone. “Cancel our reservation at Rosaline. We’re heading back to the desert tonight.”
“What?” Dash protested in the background.
And then Shirley hung up.
Poppy debated with herself about whether or not she should include Iris and Violet, who were at the moment waiting for her to return to Betty’s house in the Palm Leaf, but she decided to handle this one herself. Jayden would already be on the defensive with Poppy, Shirley, and Dash surrounding him. He didn’t need two more people, especially the naturally intimidating Iris, crowding him and making him even more nervous.
Poppy waited two hours before leaving the garage office and driving straight over to the Palm Leaf, arriving at Shirley’s house at around five minutes to eleven. Cars were parked all along the street and the house was lit up and she could hear loud music playing inside. She pulled in behind a beat-up Honda Civic with the license plate PARTY BOY.
She marched up the cement walkway, her heels clicking against the concrete pavement, but before she could knock on the door, it flew open, and she was face-to-face with a handsome, young, inebriated man in a bright yellow tank top and tight white shorts, who clung to the door and frowned when he noticed she was empty-handed.
“Where’s the booze?”
“I didn’t bring any.”
“What? No booze? Aren’t you the delivery lady from the liquor store?”