“Have either of you seen a feather like that before?” I said.
Charley crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s none of your business.”
Eugene rolled his eyes. “Tucker’s not asking what kind of sex toys you and Lorna use when the lights go out.”
“Yeah?” he mumbled. “Well, there’s not much of that going on these days.”
“A feather seems like an odd thing to find at a murder scene,” I said. “I’d like to know where it came from.”
“Robin Hood’s hat?” Eugene said.
Charley looked at the ceiling as if he was praying for patience. “It probably fell out of her duster.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but most dusters I’ve seen have brown feathers.”
Eugene leaned forward in the chair. “Why speculate? Let’s look it up on the Internet.”
“What’s Tucker supposed to look for? Long, green iridescent feather?”
Eugene flapped his hand toward the computer. “Don’t be a pessimist. Give it a try, Tucker.”
To humor him, I opened my search engine and typed in long green iridescent feather. A list of links appeared on the screen, including the word quetzal. I clicked on the link and found a photograph of a male bird with a spiky hairdo that made him look hip. There was only one way to describe the guy—magnificent. His brilliant crimson chest feathers stood in stark contrast to the snowy white ones below his breast. The two long green plumes of his tail looked exactly like the one I’d found near Lupe Ortiz’s body. A short article accompanied the picture.
Charley’s curiosity got the better of him. He walked around the desk and started reading over my shoulder. The article claimed the quetzal—pronounced ket-ZAHL—was a rare bird found in the isolated jungles of Central America. The Maya and the Aztecs revered the bird for its strength of spirit, and used its feathers in ceremonial costumes. It was also the national bird of Guatemala. I scanned a few more pages but saw nothing that told me if the species was living or extinct.
Helen had named her store Nectar because the Mayas, who had used chocolate thousands of years before the Europeans, called cacao the Nectar of the Gods. Now a feather from a bird revered by the same ancient culture had been found at her store next to a murder victim. It was a creepy coincidence.
“Check the L.A. Zoo Web site,” Eugene said.
I did, but found no quetzals listed in its inventory.
Charley apparently grew tired of reading about zoos and feathers because he returned to the chair, staring into mid-space as if he was deep in thought. “Do the police have a suspect?”
I shrugged. “They asked if Lupe had problems with her husband or her kids. The husband has an alibi. He’s out of town. Her teenage son is a possibility. He looks like trouble.”
Charley frowned. “How do you know?”
I told him about going to East L.A. and my encounter with Roberto. Charley seemed uneasy, especially when I described the bumps on the teenager’s face and his chemical odor.
“Sounds like a tweeker,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “A what?”
“Somebody who’s addicted to methamphetamines. The drug plays havoc with both your mind and your body. The kid has all the classic symptoms. Was there anything in the paper this morning?”
“I was running late and didn’t have time to look.”
Charley turned and walked out of my office.
“See?” Eugene whispered. “I warned you. He’s really cranky.”
A short time later, Charley came back to my office, carrying the California section of the Los Angeles Times. He handed it to me, folded open to page six. I scanned the columns, stopping at a small article near the bottom of the page.
Woman found strangled to death
A 16-year-old boy was taken into custody early Friday morning on suspicion of strangling his mother to death following an argument, according to a Beverly Hills Police Department spokesperson. Authorities said the boy was arrested without incident at the family’s residence after the body of his mother, Guadalupe Ortiz, 43, was found at Nectar, the Beverly Hills candy store where she worked. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Once again, Nectar’s name had appeared in the newspaper, this time in connection with a homicide investigation. I just hoped that old saying was true that there was no bad publicity.
“I have to tell Helen,” I said.
Charley and Eugene watched as I pressed numbers on the telephone keypad. As I listened to Helen talk, I felt my forehead muscles constrict into a deep frown. When I ended the call, my legs felt rubbery.
“What’s going on?” Charley said.
“The police just left Helen’s house.”
“That was fast.”
“It wasn’t about Lupe Ortiz. Somebody broke into her condo last night and tore the place apart.”
“Looking for what?” Charley said.
“She doesn’t know. She asked me to drive over. I’d like you to come with me.”
“What for?”
“I need your opinion. To me, it seems odd that both Helen’s condo and her store were broken into on the same night. I think the two events are connected.”
“The authorities will sort it out.”
“Maybe, but that means cooperation from two police departments and a lead detective who’s willing to push the envelope. What’s the likelihood that’ll happen anytime soon? Look, maybe I’m just being paranoid, but Helen has a lot riding on Nectar’s success. If it fails, she loses everything. All I want you to do is evaluate the situation. If you think the break-ins are random, then fine. If you don’t, I’m going to suggest Helen hire you to find out who’s targeting her and why.”
Charley hesitated. “I have a lot of cases on my desk right now.”
“Then one more isn’t going to make any difference.”
Eugene’s hand was clutching his throat as if he needed help swallowing. He looked ashen. “Charley, can’t you see how important this is to Tucker? You can’t say no.”
Charley crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the window as if he was rearranging appointments in his head.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
Chapter 6
Charley suggested we take separate cars to Helen’s place. He claimed he didn’t like riding in my Porsche, which was true, but that wasn’t the whole story. A hit-and-run driver had totaled his van the previous June. He’d used part of the money he earned from solving a missing-heiress case to buy a Subaru Forester. I warned him the Forester had a reputation as the vehicle of choice for the nerdy but intellectual Birkenstock crowd, but he pooh-poohed the theory because he loved driving the thing. Twenty minutes later, we were standing in the foyer of Helen Taggart’s Brentwood condo.
Helen hadn’t slept all night and it showed. Her makeup needed refreshing, and a few hairs had defied the hairspray and were poking out of her coiffure like swizzle sticks. Her boyfriend was there, holding her hand in a show of support.
Dale Ewing worked as a part-time political science instructor at Santa Monica College, where he’d met Helen while she was teaching an evening candy-making class. He was tall and portly with white hair and a bushy mustache and goatee that concealed a weak chin. His crumpled tweed jacket had leather patches on the elbows and may have been designed to look professorial, but succeeded only in making him seem like a cliché. I’d only seen Ewing once. He’d come into Nectar on the pretense of buying chocolates, but I sensed he was there to check on Helen. He was taciturn, probably a decent guy, but as stimulating as a long, boring novel.
The window in the kitchen door had been broken and glass still covered the floor. The crime scene investigators were finished collecting evidence, but they’d left the place in a state of disarray. Black fingerprint powder was everywhere in the kitchen and in Helen’s bedroom, as well.
Somehow in the chaos, Helen had managed to brew a pot of coffee. Several dirty cups sat on the kitchen counter. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d
served the criminalists a light buffet as they dusted for prints.
The living room was small but tastefully decorated with traditional furniture. The only material trappings that may have been a target for thieves were a Persian rug that was too big for the room and a modern painting hanging on the living room wall. The artist had probably meant it as an expression of something profound, but to me it looked more like an aerial shot of New Guinea.
Charley and I sat on the overstuffed chairs. Helen sat on the couch across from us. Several sympathy cards were laid out on the coffee table. One was already addressed to the Ortiz family. Knowing Helen, she probably kept an assortment of disaster-appropriate greeting cards tucked away in a file somewhere.
Ewing retired to a corner of the room, away from the circle of conversation, and began paging through a National Geographic magazine. His apparent lack of interest seemed unusual under the circumstances, but maybe he just didn’t want to interfere.
“So what happened?” I said.
“After I left Nectar last night, it finally sank in. My store was a crime scene. I was a wreck. I didn’t want to go home, so I drove out to Simi Valley to see Dale. We talked. I told him I’d done all I could to help Detective O’Brien, but instead of being grateful, he’d been quite rude. Poor Dale. He was so upset, he called O’Brien’s supervisor to complain. He told her I needed to reopen the store as soon as possible and wanted to know when they’d be finished collecting evidence. He said he’d stay on the phone until he found out, all night if necessary.”
Complaining to O’Brien’s supervisor took cojones. Maybe I’d misjudged Ewing. Maybe he wasn’t so boring after all.
“After that, Dale told me to go home and get some rest,” she went on. “So for his sake, I did. I got to the condo at around three a.m. and found the window broken. Food was pulled out of the cabinets. The closets in the bedroom had been ransacked. Drawers were open. Clothes were thrown all over the floor. I called the police.”
Helen hadn’t seen the newspaper. She was shaken when I told her Roberto Ortiz had been arrested for killing his mother.
“He was at home last night,” she said. “We saw him there. How could he have murdered her?”
“I’m sure the police are working on a timeline,” Charley said.
Helen shook her head in disbelief. “How could he kill his own mother and then go home and watch television?”
I turned toward Charley. “Lupe had a key to the store. Do you suppose Roberto duplicated it and was using Nectar after hours to sell drugs? Maybe she found out and confronted him about it.”
Charley shook his head. “Too risky. It’s easier to work out of his backyard or from the nearest street corner.” He turned toward Helen. “It’s an odd coincidence your place was broken into on the same night Ortiz was killed. Is anything missing?”
“Some cash I had laying on the dresser. It wasn’t much. A hundred dollars, I think.”
“How long have you known Lupe Ortiz?” Charley said.
“About three months. She started cleaning the shop the week it opened. Back then I worked late every night, so I saw a lot of her. She was sweet and easy to talk to. We chatted about our kids, our lives. . . . A lot of things. She brought the three youngest children into the store several times. I even taught her daughter how to make brownies.”
“Did Lupe ever come to your condo?”
“She cleaned for me a couple of times when my regular girl was sick. She didn’t normally do that sort of work, so I appreciated the favor.”
“Did you talk to her about any valuables you had? Things she might have mentioned to her son?”
“You think Roberto Ortiz broke into my condo?”
Charley shrugged. “Anything is possible. From what Tucker said, it sounds to me like the kid is hooked on methamphetamines. Drugs cost money. Most tweekers steal to support their habit. I suggest you call the detective in charge of the Ortiz investigation. Tell him everything you know.”
It was clear from Helen’s careworn expression that Charley’s advice was not welcome. “If Nectar gets associated with another crime, it could ruin my business. The store can’t fail, Mr. Tate. If I lose it, I lose everything.”
“You’ll lose more than your business if you withhold possible evidence in a homicide investigation.”
Dale Ewing looked up from the magazine he was reading and cleared his throat. “I don’t want Helen to have any more contact with O’Brien unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“You want me to call him?” I said.
Charley shot me a warning glance. It was clear he didn’t think that was a good move, but it was too late for a retraction.
“Before you do anything,” Ewing said, “I think Helen should tell you the rest of the story.”
She swallowed hard and met Charley’s gaze. “I think somebody tried to get into the condo before last night. A couple of days ago I noticed the lock plate on the back door looked bent, like somebody had jimmied it with a tool. I didn’t report it because I wasn’t sure.”
“Do you think these break-ins are related to Lupe’s death?” Charley said.
“I don’t see how that’s possible. I’m just thankful my recipe books were in the trunk of my car last night or they’d be gone, too.”
“Who’d want to steal your recipes?” I said.
She hesitated. “I’m not sure. At first I thought it might be Bob Rossi.”
“The guy who owns the restaurant next door?” I said. “He would ruin you over a parking dispute?”
Helen glanced at Ewing and then at me. “Our problems started long before that. I didn’t tell you this, Tucker, but right after I opened the shop, Bob approached me with an offer. He wanted to serve my chocolates as a dessert option at the restaurant. What he offered to pay didn’t cover the supplies, much less my time, but his customers were all raving about my chocolates, so I told him I’d think about it. He was so sure I’d say yes he went ahead and printed new dessert menus. Dale convinced me I couldn’t afford to do it. When I told Bob, he was furious. He wanted me to reimburse his printing and design costs. I refused.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not directly.”
“Tell them the rest, Helen,” Ewing said.
She took a deep breath. “For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been getting strange calls in the middle of the night. The person never speaks. All I hear is heavy breathing and then he hangs up.”
“You sure it’s a he?” Charley said.
“No, but I sense that it is. And chocolates have been disappearing. At first I thought we were just busy because of that newspaper article you pitched to the Times, but the cash receipts don’t account for the missing inventory.”
“Helen,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you’d worry.”
“What about your employees?” Charley said. “Maybe somebody’s developed a sweet tooth.”
“I don’t think so. My assistant Kathy brought the problem to my attention. She’s the only one I leave alone in the shop.”
“Except for Lupe Ortiz,” he said.
Helen closed her eyes as if she wanted to shut out the world. “It may seem odd to you, but Lupe and I were friends. I did whatever I could to help her. If one of her kids was sick, I always encouraged her to leave early. When she sold her car, I told her how to transfer the title. She always seemed so appreciative of everything I did for her. I can’t believe she would steal from me.”
“Has anybody been hanging around the shop lately?” Charley said. “Somebody that looked suspicious?”
She shook her head. “We have a lot of regular customers now, but nobody I’d consider strange.”
At least not by Beverly Hills standards, I thought. I told Charley about the Mercedes I’d seen parked at Nectar the night Lupe was killed.
He frowned. “Did you get a license number?”
“There wasn’t one. Just a dealer advertisement behind the license frame.”
“Garvey Motors. Alhambra.”
Neither Helen nor Ewing had seen the car before.
“You said Rossi might want to ruin your business,” Charley said. “Was there anybody else?”
Helen looked at Ewing before answering. “My ex-husband.”
Charley and I exchanged glances but kept quiet as Helen told us about living the good life in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her CEO husband of twenty-six years. On her fiftieth birthday, Brad Taggart had sent her an e-mail, canceling the dinner they had planned for eighteen of their closest friends and telling her he was leaving her for the company’s twenty-nine-year-old corporate attorney.
The divorce had split the family in two. Helen’s grown daughter had sided with her ex. The son supported his mother. Helen couldn’t face running into Taggart or his new wife at the local market, so she took the money from the divorce settlement and moved to California. She drifted for a while, too emotionally damaged to worry about what the future held. Eventually, she took most of her savings and opened Nectar.
I remembered Eugene’s comments earlier in the day about Helen and all she’d gone through. He must have been referring to her messy divorce. I was surprised he’d grown so close to her in such a short amount of time. Chocolate and bad family relationships must be strong bonding agents.
“Brad was involved with this woman a year before he left me,” Helen said. “All during that time he was hiding our assets in secret accounts. After he filed for divorce I hired a forensic accountant to track down the money. He was livid. He said all sorts of horrible things to me. Told me he’d make me pay.”
“The Ortiz woman’s murder changes everything,” Dale Ewing said. “Her death may have been collateral damage. Helen could have been the real target.”
Collateral damage was an interesting choice of words. I wondered if Ewing had been in the military. If so, it must have been a long time ago. He looked doughy and benign now, but I’d learned over the years that looks could be deceiving.
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