Dusted (A Maid in LA Mystery)

by Jacobs, Holly

  I hung up.

  Miles and Eli were staring at me.

  “Was that a girl named Julian?” Miles asked.

  I shook my head. “No. A guy I met today.”

  “And you’re going out with him?”

  “No, I’m meeting him for coffee. It’s a work thing.” Which wasn’t a lie. It was about work. He was a new client. And if we didn’t find out who stole the paintings, our business could be bankrupt.

  “Sounded like a date to me,” Miles said.

  “Me, too,” Eli agreed. “Your voice got all girly and you twirled the cord as you talked to him.”

  Now, that’s another thing that’s wrong with cellphones. Not only do people have instant access to you, there’s no cord tying you to one place. No cord to twirl while you talked and thought.

  “It’s business,” I assured them.

  “That’s good,” Miles said. “We like Cal.”

  “So about this weekend?” Eli said, taking us back to our original conversation.

  I didn’t want to let them go. Frankly, I didn’t want to let Hunter move away to college. But part of being a good mom is letting go. My mother had said as much when she reminisced about me leaving with those silly glasses and a bunch of dreams.

  “Yes,” I said. “But you have to swear to behave.”

  Both boys pretend-spit in their hands, then they crossed their hearts in unison.

  At least I hope it was a pretend spit.

  I should be thrilled at the thought of having a weekend off. Just me and Cal. Only I didn’t know if there was a me and Cal.

  My life was a mess. I needed to find the painting thief and forger. Then there was Tiny’s wedding.

  I had a script to work on.

  And now there was Cal.

  Were we dating or not?

  And if we weren’t, what was that going to do to my boys, who apparently liked him?

  My life was a lot simpler before I found that dead body last month.

  Chapter Seven

  On Tuesday I discovered Julian was a fun companion. I ordered a black coffee and, at his insistence, an apple fritter. It was still warm.

  I think that heaven is full of warm apple fritters and hot black coffee.

  And of course, ice cream…that goes without saying.

  Pattycake herself waited on us. She normally saw me with the boys, and recently with Cal. She looked at Julian and raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

  It turns out Julian and I shared not just a love of all things Brenda Leigh and The Closer’s spinoff, Major Crimes, but any number of other mystery shows. Although we did have some major differences.

  “I love to try to figure out who-dunnit,” I said. “It’s so much fun when I get the answer before the characters.”

  “Not me. I’m just going along for the ride and enjoying myself,” he said as he took a bite of his bear claw.

  “When I’m reading a mystery and think I know who did it, I sometimes skip to the end and check.”

  Julian mock-gasped. “No. That’s sacrilege.”

  I laughed. “I know, it’s terrible. I think that love of solving the puzzle is what allowed me to figure out what happened to Mr. Banning,” I said, then remembered that Julian was a new friend and didn’t know the story.

  At his insistence, I told it.

  “Let’s hope you don’t become the next Jessica Fletcher. I mean, I loved Murder She Wrote, but I’ve always thought at some point, she’d stop getting invited anywhere. Who wants to hang out with someone when they’re always stumbling over dead bodies?”

  “My one dead body was enough. Although it did bring Cal and me together.”

  “So that’s how you met your boyfriend.”

  “My maybe boyfriend. He didn’t seem to care I was having coffee with another man.”

  “Oh, he cares,” Julian assured me. “He doesn’t care when you flirt with his friend…”

  “Big G,” I supplied.

  “Yeah. He doesn’t care about that because he trusts you and he trusts his friend. But he definitely cares about you having coffee with me because he doesn’t know me, so he doesn’t trust me.”

  “But he said he didn’t care.”

  “Quincy, you were married and have three sons, and probably other men in your family. You have to know that just because he said he didn’t care doesn’t mean he doesn’t. He cares a lot. And I think there’s a very good chance you and I are simply destined to be friends. Good mystery friends. Maybe if I’d met you before he met you we could have had a chance at something more, but you care about him.”

  I harrumphed.

  Julian’s only response was to point at some point beyond my shoulder.

  I turned.

  There was Cal, glowering in my direction.

  “I think we can both safely assume he cares. I think our next get-together will consist of you, me and Cal watching some good mystery show on television.”

  Cal walked over. Julian stood. “Hi, Cal. I’m Julian. Quincy and I were just planning a mystery night. Maybe some old episodes of The Closer. And you, of course, are invited. Think about it. And on that note, I’m leaving. Quincy, call me.”

  He left.

  I glared at Cal. “You scared him away.”

  He sat down in the seat Julian had just vacated. “That fight was ridiculous. I don’t know how it happened, but be assured, I care if you have coffee with other men. We might have only been together for a short time, but I still care.”

  “Julian and I decided we’re just friends. We both have a surplus of fondness for good television detective shows. You know, maybe we can set him up with Cassandra. She was dating Mr. Banning. And though he seemed different with her, I find it hard to believe that particular zebra changed his stripes. She deserves someone nice. Julian is nice.”

  “You just met him,” Cal said. “That’s too soon to form an opinion.”

  “I liked you right after I met you.”

  “You didn’t like me at all. You thought I was trying to put in you jail.”

  You know, men sometimes get muddled in logic. Liking someone had nothing to do with logic, and caring about them had even less to do with it. “More than thinking you were trying to put me in jail, I thought you were trying to put me on death row. I never did look to see if California has one.”

  “I’m not telling you. You solved the murder and you’re not going to jail. And I care about you, and I care who you have coffee with.”

  Here’s the thing, I didn’t want to have an overly jealous boyfriend, but it was nice to know that Cal cared.

  “Are we done with our first fight?” I asked, just to be sure.

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  “Do you have to get back to work?”

  He glanced at his watch, and rather than annoying me, I found it endearing that he wore one.

  “I have a bit of time,” he said slowly.

  “The boys won’t be home for a couple hours. There is a tradition after people have a fight—especially a first fight.”

  “What is this tradition that you speak of?” he teased.

  “Come back to my place and I’ll show you.”

  He did and we did.

  And it was good.

  After dinner, Cal headed back to work, and I went to meet Dick at the coffee shop we tended to meet at. We’d tried meeting at Pattycake’s, which was one of the boys’ favorite breakfast places, but after the first half hour the waitress gave us death glares for tying up her table and her income stream, so we moved to the coffee house, Ground Up. At the coffee house people were not only expected, but encouraged to linger. There were comfortable armchairs and couches, tables and booths. The walls were covered with book covers, and one entire wall had framed covers that used the word ‘ground’ in the title.

  Ground Up.

  Ground covers.

  I thought it was cute.

  Ground Up was a gathering place for starving writers. Everyone thinks of Hollywood as a plac
e where every waitress or waiter is an actress or actor just waiting to be discovered. But a number of them were writers, just waiting for their big break.

  And a lot of them waited here.

  Dick and I were on a couch in the back. He handed me back a very marked up copy of what I’d written so far.

  “You understand the concept of a killer opening,” he stated.

  I’m glad he thought I understood it, but I wasn’t sure I did. “What do you mean?”

  “They say the best way to start a story is drop a dead body in it. What that actually means is start with action…with something happening. Something that will set up the rest of the story. You did that and then some.”

  “I didn’t do it by design. It’s simply where the story started.”

  “But you didn’t waste a ton of time on backstory. You found the body by page six. You gave me enough backstory but then there was a dead body. Bam.” He smacked his fist into his hand.

  I thought his praise was unwarranted because really, I hadn’t done it by design, but I said, “Thanks.”

  “The problem is, your—or rather your heroine’s—reaction to the Cal-character. You were lusting after him, and he was trying to put you on death row. That doesn’t ring true.”

  So there was a death penalty in CA.

  I shivered in hindsight.

  “I did lust after him.”

  “Then rewrite that bit and do a better job of making believe that even while you were afraid he was going to send you to death row, you lusted after him.”

  “I haven’t written much since this whole painting thing,” I confessed. “Between that, my mom and my fight with Cal.”

  “You’re fighting with Cal?”

  “I was. We made up.” My expression must have told Dick more than I wanted because he burst out laughing.

  “You go, girl,” he said. “I understand life is busy, but a writer writes. It’s that simple. You need to find some time to write every day, even if it’s only an hour. I have this friend who tells all new writers the most important thing they can do is to write something, anything, every day. She told me that when I started writing, and I’ve been employed at writing since my second year.”

  He leaned closer. “Here’s the thing, there’s an element of luck to being discovered, but that’s only one tiny piece of what it takes. Mainly, it takes hard work. It takes setting yourself up to succeed. So, write. Every day.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, where are we on the new case?”

  I sighed. “Nowhere.”

  “Let’s recap. I know that sometimes talking over a script’s plot helps. Let’s pretend the artwork is a script. So in Quincy’s movie of the week, there are three people with varying amounts of art stolen and replaced with forgeries. So far, the only thing you’ve found that ties everyone together is the fact Mac’Cleaners works for them.”

  I’m not sure laying it all out was going to make me feel better. To be honest, I was sure it wouldn’t, but Dick was right, I needed to see this all with a fresh eye. So I said, “Yes, that sums it up. And you can add that all the art was abstract. Dots, slashes, and blobs of color. We know that even though it’s called art, it can be reproduced, at least well enough that an untrained eye can’t tell the difference.”

  “And you know that two of the victims know nothing about art, so it makes sense that they didn’t notice their artwork was stolen. But the third one…”

  “Yes, snooty designer-shoe Miriam not only knows art, she works at a gallery. A gallery that showcases Kirchoff’s work.”

  As I said the words, I realized that fact didn’t sit right with me. You’d think that if she dealt in Kirchoff’s work on a regular basis, she’d have noticed that hers were replaced with forgeries.

  I didn’t like her, but I had to be careful that my distaste for her didn’t influence the investigation. But I couldn’t help wondering how someone who worked in a gallery hadn’t noticed that their art had been stolen and replaced with forgeries.

  “Where did the other two buy their art?” Dick asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “If it was at the Arthur Wadsworth Gallery, you’d have a connection.”

  “What if the gallery was selling forgeries, not real paintings?”

  “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. You need to find out where they bought the other art, then move on from there.”

  “Right.” I nodded and tried to get everything clear in my head. This was good. It was a new angle. “Okay. That’s a new direction to start looking at.”

  “And I know you’re busy with work, the kids, the boyfriend and now the art heists, but…” Dick left the sentence hanging.

  “But I’m going to write something every day,” I promised.

  “Even if it’s crap because…”

  “Because I can fix a crap draft, but I can’t fix a blank page.”

  “Right,” he said with a teacherly smile. “And call me if you need any more help from the insurance investigator.”

  “I will.” I started to gather my things, then stopped. “Hey, Dick, I want to say thank you. Thank you for taking time with me and thank you for believing in me.”

  “You’re welcome. But I’m serious, someday when you win a Mortie, you can thank me in public. I mean, really pour it on with all your actressy umph. Dick Macy, he’s amazing.”

  I laughed. “It’s a deal.”

  I left the coffee shop with new ideas.

  Wednesday morning, I was sitting at my desk in the office. I’d come in early and worked on the script. Dick would be pleased.

  I leaned back in my chair.

  My office was almost Spartan. I had a desk, a couple chairs, a small love seat in the corner, and a few shelves that held mostly pictures. Peri hated my office almost as much as Tiny did. Both wanted me to froo-froo it up, but I resisted until last Christmas when Peri gave me the perfect picture for my wall. It was a series of three photos matted together with captions underneath. The first was a woman in a French maid’s outfit. The caption read, What Men Hope Their Maid Looks Like. The next panel showed a woman with warts, wild hair, and a dress that even a serf wouldn’t wear, lugging a bucket and mop. The caption read, What Women Hope Their Maid Looks Like. The final panel was a picture of me and Tiny wearing jeans and Mac’Cleaner t-shirts. The caption read, What Real Maids in LA Look Like.

  I adored it and didn’t mind that one adornment.

  Tiny burst into my office and stood in front of the picture “The wedding planner called, she said everything’s set, but I can’t help but worry—” she started.

  “As long as Sal shows up, it’s going to be a perfect wedding. Remember that, Tiny. And speaking of Sal, do you and Sal want to go to dinner on Friday?” It was a ploy to change the topic.

  Unfortunately, it was harder and harder to get Tiny to think about anything but the wedding day. “It’ll only be a week until the wedding. I’m not sure I’ll be able to eat.”

  “Tiny, you didn’t want a bachelorette party or even a big deal for a rehearsal dinner. So, what about you and Sal, joining us for dinner? I’m inviting Julian and Cassandra, too. It’ll just be dinner. No one from work. No family. Nothing weddingish. Just three couples enjoying a meal.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “If you don’t eat, you’ll pass out as you walk up the aisle, and that would be a wedding faux pas you can’t come back from.”

  She laughed. “You just want someone else there while you try to hook up Cassandra and Julian.”

  “Maybe. But still, there will be food.”

  “What about Big G? Are you going to set him up, too? Are all single men in danger?”

  “Let’s see if Cassandra hits it off with Julian, and then we’ll decide if I’m hanging out my shingle. I just think after Mr. Banning, Cassandra deserves to date a nice man, and Julian is that.”

  “And if he’s dating a friend, you can hang out with h
im and talk about your weird obsession with television detective shows without making Cal mad.”

  “There is that.” I laughed. There was something comforting about having someone know you so well you can’t get anything past them. “But you don’t really enjoy watching them, and all Cal does is pick apart the police procedures. He claims they’re unrealistic.” I harrumphed. “They’re entertaining and educational. I wouldn’t have solved Mr. Banning’s murder if I hadn’t learned a lot from the shows.”

  “You wouldn’t have solved it without a lot of dumb luck,” Tiny said with honesty.

  “Yeah, there is that.”

  “Let’s hope your luck holds out with this one. Did you get any further?”

  I told her about my discussion with Dick, about maybe a connection to a gallery, and about our wondering why Miriam, the supposed art expert didn’t notice that her paintings were forgeries. “I’ve made some calls. Mrs. Neilson is asking her husband, and Mrs. Graham said she was pretty sure they’d bought a couple at the gallery, but not all of them. So, I guess that eliminates that theory.”

  It had been a good theory.

  “So, what about the fact that Miriam works at a gallery but didn’t notice that four of her paintings had been stolen and replaced with forgeries?”

  “I’m heading over there this afternoon to find out,” I told her.

  “Want me to help?”

  I loved that Tiny offered, but right now, her only worry should be about her wedding, not that she had any legitimate worries. Everything was done.

  “No,” I told her. “I’ll be fine. I do want you to say yes to dinner on Friday night.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a nag?” Tiny asked.

  “No, no one’s ever said that to me. You’ve mistaken me for my mom. She’s the nag.” I felt bad as soon as the words left my mouth because our last visits had been…better. And definitely unnnaggish. “Or at least, that’s how it felt when I was a kid.”

  I wondered how much of my childhood recollections were colored with time.

  “So about Friday?”

  “Yes. If you’ll stop nagging.”

  “Want to go to Psst? Honey’s got this new rice dish that’s to die for.” I thought of Mr. Banning and vowed to never use that phrase again.