Voices in the Wardrobe

by Marlys Millhiser

  The sound of the alarm back in the room managed to pierce the din out here on the rough stone slabs leading to the entrance of Les Artistes. Libby slipped in to turn it off. She’d regained her composure a lot sooner than her mother.

  A San Diego County Sheriff’s cruiser pulled up almost in front of Charlie in the separate parking lot between that of the motel and the Pacific Highway. She slipped behind the stalwart Wallie, but Detective Gordy Solomon didn’t even look her way. He stood with cell to ear, gesturing at the emergency pandemonium drill as if describing it to someone at the other end of the conversation and shaking his head, appalled and frustrated by what he saw. Where, Charlie wondered, was his saucy sidekick, Lydia Saucier? And why wasn’t he at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol helping out the Feds and looking for Maggie and Luella?

  If Charlie had been in a less troubled mood and time she’d have found the scene hilarious. A couple of young boys with huge grins and some kind of futuristic laser-sword weaponry slashed through the fallen dead and wounded, squealing, and escaped from sight around a stranded semi across the side street. But a couple of belly dancers were herded off by sternvisaged plainclothes before they could get properly wound up. Charlie slipped quietly back to the Georgia O’Keeffe room and out of sight—she was most probably on a wanted list about now—only to find lovely Libby sprawled across the bed on her stomach, Fluffy stretched across the small of her back, Libby’s feet and her legs in the air from the knee and crossed at the ankles.

  “Libby, I told you about using your cellular and being traced. What—”

  “Mom, chill. Okay? Oh, my mother’s blowing fuses again. So—they really can’t trace cells that well yet? What’s the deal on the wedding and is Tux behaving himself, and dorky Jacob back to take care of Mrs. Beesom? Um … yeah … okay. Sounds like you better keep the laptops and the cat hidden for awhile.”

  Charlie stepped out onto the tiny back deck/patio, expecting Solomon to come pounding on the door any second. So what difference did it make now if Libby used her phone? In fact, if Charlie was about to be taken into custody or something she’d better get busy checking some of her own calls.

  She ignored the first four, listened to one from her boss wanting to know what had happened to Luella Ridgeway, but didn’t return it. The narrow backyard was a jungle of palmy, ferny, swordy, spiky leaves and fronds—all making scratchy whispers in a light sea breeze. Was it that sheltered back here or had the exercise in chaos out front and above ended suddenly?

  The next call was from Detective Gordon Solomon. He needed to know what she knew about Sarah Newman, the murdered Grant Howard’s sister-in-law. Charlie didn’t answer that one either. She’d be seeing him any minute anyway. The next from Maggie’s maybe lawyer, wanting to know if Maggie had been found and in what condition. And then Mitch’s call—where the “hell” was she? Charlie was about to answer that one when she thought better of it—what if “they” had forced him to send that message and were ready to trace her here? But then Solomon was already here. Still, she sensed they were two different sets of “theys.”

  There was lots of ratty, jagged bark, three foot canoe-shaped leaves down here, poofs of piney spines high overhead on ends of monstrous branches. Some leaves like swords. Even a potted bamboo tree, about ten foot high. She knew that because a sign sticking in the pot told her so.

  “Mom,” Libby snuck up behind her, “here. Hilsten, your elderly creepo, wants to talk to you. He’s been trying to get you.”

  “Libby, he’s only forty something. They could be using him to get to us.” But Charlie took Libby’s cell. Mitch was at the marina. He didn’t know where Kenny was. Neither had any more trouble driving away from the Sea Spa than Charlie or Libby. “What do you think’s going on? Mitch, did Kenny hurt you?”

  “No, I hurt him. And I think there’s a hell of a disconnect happening at the Sea Spa and I’ll bet elsewhere. You and Libby sit tight until I—”

  “Mitch, Detective Solomon’s out front in the parking lot right now.”

  “No he’s not,” Libby said behind her. “They’ve almost all left the fright scene.”

  Then Mitch explained the “disconnect.” According to a local news “leak” the federal government had mandated a search into the financial files of the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol and conscripted local county officials to aid them, while another federal agency had scheduled months ago many of the same departments to conduct the Emergency Response Drill. “The ease with which we all drove out of there tells me most of the sheriff’s department chose to honor the previous commitment.”

  After the disdainful attitude of those people sitting across the coffee cups from Charlie at the Spa in the wee hours, Charlie didn’t blame them. “So no one’s even looking for Maggie and Luella? What if they’re alive and tied up somewhere and—”

  “Charlie, don’t go there, leave it alone for a few hours at least. Things are too unpredictable and volatile right now. I’m going to see if I can wrangle a way up there on the sly and—”

  “Mitch, you can’t go anywhere on the sly. Everybody over thirty knows you on sight.”

  “Okay, I’ll wrangle a disguise then. Just sit tight till I call.”

  Charlie wondered, considering all the “wrangle” talk, if he’d scheduled an upcoming Western project—the man was on self-destruct. She returned Libby’s phone. The kid was splayed majestically across the other wooden chair and onto the wooden deck railing with ankles and feet, like a graceful wet noodle, the whole effect ruined by her jaw movement.

  Hey, she’s alive, remember? So she’s chewing gum. That’s one thing she doesn’t do gracefully, but yeah, you’re even right for once.

  “Ma-ahhmm, don’t get all googly-eyed again,” Libby warned. “You’re creeping me.”

  “He wants us to stay here, let him snoop around the Sea Spa to find a trace of what’s happened to Luella and Maggie. I don’t want to have to start worrying about him too.”

  “I think it’s time you started worrying about you. So does Grandma.”

  “She called again?”

  “I called her.”

  “Ohgod. Tell me she’s not coming out. I can’t take anymore.”

  “She will if I call.”

  “Is this a power play? Remember your grandmother is up against semester exams and whatever about now and she’s no longer a young woman.”

  “Yes, this is a power play and you remember she has grad assistants to handle that and the lab work now.”

  “And a desert rat manuscript due soon.”

  “And a daughter who’s losing it.”

  Pine needles dried to brown stuck out of the ends of the tiles in the roof overhang, washed down from upper tiers of tiles when it rained. The lot across the alley-garden had humongous trees not quite hiding a good-sized house and … Charlie woke to the Coastal, warning all that it was roaring through on tracks down by the sea and by a hummingbird fluttering up to some kind of bell-shaped flower above her head and then down to check on her face. It was so peaceful out here she felt drunk with it. Her back hurt, her mouth was dry, only Fluffy occupied the other chair out here now. Her watch said she’d slept for two hours more. Where was everybody?

  Out front two men picked up trash left by the homeland “disaster” and threw it in the back of a pickup. The front parking lot didn’t belong to Les Artistes and was home to craft fairs and farmer’s markets on weekends, Keegan explained. He and Brodie sat at the little table across from her window in the shade of all the hanging debris. Libby had walked up to the local convenience store/deli within sight on the corner.

  She brought back a tuna salad sub to split with her mother, a six pack of Diet Coke, and a newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

  “Libby, you don’t read newspapers—what’s the deal here?”

  Libby set it down on the crowded table and the men had to lift their beer bottles. “I saw it on the counter up at the little store. That’s the guy whose nuts I did my best to crack last night.” />
  “It was dark on that path, honey. How can you be sure?”

  “We got up close and personal.”

  “Wow, he was so incensed at my pitch,” Brodie said. “Didn’t want to hear the truth about the real profits to be made on starry-eyed hopefuls. How could anyone in his profession live so close to Hollywood and not know that? It’s hardly news.”

  “You don’t understand, Brodie,” Keegan said. “You know it’s rampant in other professions, even those related to your dream-wish one, but you don’t want to believe it true in yours so bad, you won’t listen to reason. It’s like a wish fulfilling drug or something—I could probably rewrite that better but I’m too relaxed.”

  Charlie wished he’d rewrite it for Libby, tried to ignore how long her own mother’d had to support her and her daughter until Charlie could make a living as an agent.

  It was front page but not the headline story. Small picture and article about a reporter receiving a national award for an exposé on drug companies handing out enormous amounts of sample drugs to local doctors and therapists. It was Jerry Parks. He’d been carrying records and whatever toward the chasm at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol. Helping the VanZants hide evidence of something?

  Twenty-Nine

  “Mom? I hate to do this to you but, I’ve got a confession to make. Actually two.”

  Ohgod not now. Why was it when Charlie couldn’t take any more there always was some? They’d walked downhill toward the tracks and the ocean, just to keep from going crazy. It was a few blocks and sometimes there was sidewalk and sometimes there wasn’t. Keegan and Brodie had gone on and on about the difficulties of writing and the unfairness and stupidity of the industry. Charlie loved writers and made a living off their talents, but had to admit when they talked shop they were the most boring people on earth. “What is it, honey?”

  “I love it when you hyperventilate like that. Sorry, can’t resist it, you’re so—”

  “Vulnerable.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real—”

  “Wuss.”

  “Nobody says that anymore, except old people. But … well, Doug and me are going to—”

  “Doug and I—”

  “WE are going to stand up with Ed and what’s-her-name at the wedding.”

  “Certainly unusual, but I guess it’s their wedding and he’s paying for it and it’s at his house. I actually have bigger things on my mind right now. We going to need to get you a dress on short notice?”

  “I’ve already been measured—it’ll just have to do.”

  “And Tuxedo’s going to be flower girl?” Their families had a strange relationship. The Esterhazies lived in a mini-estate on some of the most valuable property in Long Beach.

  “No, what’s-her-name actually has a niece or something.” Doug Esterhazie had called the new fiancee “what’s-her-name” for so long the Greenes had trouble remembering her real name.

  “So what’s the other thing you have to tell me?”

  “Grandma’s plane gets in tomorrow.”

  The Greenes avoided profanity and/or violence only because Charlie’s phone tinkled. It was Richard Morse. “Charlie, I just listened to a message from Luella.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. But she’s alive or she was when she made the call about two hours ago. Tried to call her back but got no answer. You still at that spa or marina?”

  “No, I’m in Del Mar. But it’s not that far. I might try to get back there. Did she say anything about Maggie?”

  “Not a thing, but if she was alive today to make that call, she didn’t go off the cliff with her car.”

  “So what did she want?”

  “Wanted to talk to you. But, Charlie, she sounded like maybe she’d been drinking a little much. You know?”

  “What did we do before cell phones, Mom?” They hurried back up toward Les Artistes.

  “I don’t remember, but we must have been totally out of touch with reality, life, everything, huh? I mean, like … cordless wouldn’t get you down the street even. You could be all alone in the world.”

  There had been any number of times Charlie’d wished they had never been invented and this was one of them. She checked her own voice mail and also got a message from Luella, “Sharly cotsh, cotchja, helpshus, cotjachas—”

  She’d received it about fifteen minutes ago. She tried to get Mitch. He didn’t answer. She was afraid to leave a message.

  “She didn’t sound much like Luella to me, but she did kind of sound like she was in a bar someplace, Mom, like, you know, the background noise?”

  Charlie listened to it again and didn’t hear the bar scene. “Maybe it’s traffic. And voices too. But I do think it’s Luella.”

  “Sounded like a slurry, ‘help us,’” Brodie Caulfield offered when he heard the message, “might mean your friend Maggie’s still alive.” He sat on the footstool facing her and Keegan Monroe in the other chair out in the tiny back deck garden of the Georgia O’Keeffe room among the hummingbirds and a few butterflies. Libby sprawled on the bed inside talking on her cell. It bothered Charlie. What if the authorities got it right this time? Doug Esterhazie couldn’t know everything.

  “Mitch is supposedly up there, could be him she was talking about. I still don’t know where Kenny is.” Charlie so longed to enjoy the peace here, but knew it was not to be. She had to do something soon. Problem was, how to shed Libby?

  “Gotcha,” Keegan said, listening to the strange message on Charlie’s cellular. He sounded a tad slurry with beer himself—but nothing like Luella—if it was Luella. “Gosh you cha. Cots ya. Gotch ya. Cots ya hus. Cots ya jus. Cot ah jus. Gotta jud-ges. Cottages. Charlie, mean anything? Cottages?”

  “Detective Solomon? This is—”

  “Charlie? You’re alive—I mean well? Jesus, that’s good news. Where are you? I’ve been really worried.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you and a few others seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth all of a sudden and I felt some responsibility there—”

  “Who?”

  “Well, I hate to tell you this but we have some evidence that your daughter is up here.”

  “You’re at the Spa? Libby’s fine, she’s with me. Who else?”

  “Well, we haven’t been able to locate Mr. Hilsten, or your tall author, Cooper, either. Are they with you too? Where are you?”

  “Detective Solomon, I just got a call from Luella—I’m coming up there. I may know where she is.”

  “No, Charlie, I appreciate your mistrust of authority after that odd grilling you got last night and your worry for your friends—but please trust me on this one, okay? You keep you and your daughter safe and I’ll do my best to find Ms. Ridgeway and Ms. Stutzman too if she’s alive. I don’t know what’s going on but I don’t want you and your daughter in danger as well. Please trust me, I know it’s hard—”

  “Gordy, let me tell you something. Luella said that she and at least one someone else were in the cottages and asked me to help them.”

  “Cottages …”

  “Those little buildings behind the Spa and, Gordy, she sounded drugged.”

  “Drugged …”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. That place is so full of drugs if they were nuclear and somebody detonated them we wouldn’t have to wait for the big quake to take out California.”

  “Are you alone, Charlie?”

  “No, I’m sitting in a room full of witnesses—and I’ll tell you and them that if you betray my trust and tell the wrong people what I’ve told you and something happens to my friends because of it, I’ll devote the rest of my life to making yours miserable and I’m very resourceful. I’ll wait one hour for your call and then I’m on my way. Oh, and watch out for Jerry Parks of the Union-Tribune. He was hauling files, vials, and tapes out to the quake pit where you found Libby’s purse.”

  “What say we all go someplace else for an hour—just in case they can trace us here,” Charlie said
to the roomful of witnesses, namely Libby, Brodie Caulfield, and Keegan Monroe. And Fluffy. Even the cat looked tense.

  “Think we should move the vehicles?” Brodie said.

  “Why don’t we take them downtown? There’s a mall of sorts with a shadowy parking barn where you could lose Air Force One. Not park them together.” Keegan wiped his brow with a tissue. “Sometimes you scare me, Charlie.”

  “Yeah, me too. And she’s only your agent. I got me a lotta trouble for a motha.”

  “You’re very intense, Charlie,” Brodie added when they were ensconced in a small bar with an hors d’oeuvre bar set up to take care of dinner too, should they decide to stay the evening and drink. There were inviting outdoor or “courtyard” tables in the open but they chose a semi-enclosed corner where they could see outside but were still undercover. It would be lusciously warm in summer, but a chill breeze that smelled of rain reminded them it was still April.

  Charlie munched on carrot, bell pepper, jicama, and celery sticks, tomato and cucumber slices, corn chips and guacamole, and sipped at a beer. She ate more to prepare for an uncertain evening and night than out of hunger. When she felt this stressed, nothing really tasted very good. She checked her watch. This had to be the slowest hour she’d ever endured. It was the guilt thing. She was as bad as her mother but what if she’d let her friends down in a life and death situation by reading the signs wrong?

  It was, selfishly, just as much about her having to live with the guilt of a bad decision at crisis time as it was about them losing their lives altogether because of it. Libby came by her selfish streak naturally.

  “Look,” Brodie said, “why don’t you give him two hours? I know you don’t trust anybody, but what difference will it make if the damage has already been done while the detective was trying to get a hold of you?” Since he’d left the conference Brodie had reverted to wearing a baseball cap with the bill at the back and eyeing Libby Abigail Greene at every opportunity. Charlie estimated he had four years on her and Libby had two inches on him. One would think that after what she’d done to Jerry Parks, Brodie would have lost interest fast. Libby appeared unaware of his interest, which her mother thought highly unlikely.