Cool Cache

by Patricia Smiley

  Taking about Eugene reminded me that I had an obligation to call Detective O’Brien and tell him Lupe Ortiz’s cell phone wasn’t missing anymore. He wasn’t going to be happy. The phone was a vital piece of evidence in a homicide investigation. Deep undercover or not, Eugene should have come in from the cold and turned it over to the authorities. He hadn’t, and that could cause problems.

  It was late. I didn’t expect O’Brien to be at work, but I called and left a message, anyway. At least he couldn’t say I didn’t try.

  Chapter 31

  I arrived in Brentwood early Saturday morning. I knocked on Helen’s door, but she didn’t answer. She must have already left for Nectar. As I turned around, I heard somebody blowing his nose. I peeked through the trees that screened Helen’s sidewalk from the one next door. A man in his thirties was walking down the path toward the street. He looked pale and wilted like a celery stick that had been left too long in the refrigerator. I could see the impressions of a pair of knobby knees under his sweatpants as he struggled with a black plastic garbage sack.

  I parted the tree branches and said, “Excuse me.”

  He dropped the sack and whipped his body into a karate stance.

  “Stay back! These hands are registered weapons.”

  I almost laughed. He was skinnier than Eugene and his feet were so large they looked as if they could anchor him to the ground in a hurricane. He seemed weird enough to be the man Charley had interviewed through a closed door on Friday.

  I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of him. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m looking for Helen Taggart, but she’s not home. Have you seen her today?”

  His brows were heavy and low over his eyes, which made him seem feral. “No. I haven’t been out much. I’m just getting over a cold.” He picked up the bag. “Excuse me. I have to take this to the garbage before I get chilled.”

  “If you’re sick, I’ll take it.”

  He hesitated and then he handed me the bag.

  “My name is Tucker Sinclair. I think you spoke to my colleague a few days ago. Charley Tate. He wanted to know about the burglary at Helen’s place last Thursday night. You told him you hadn’t seen anything.”

  “What I told him was I hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.”

  His response seemed evasive. I wondered what he was hiding.

  “If you saw anything at all, I’m sure Helen would like to know about it. Some cash was stolen from her place that night.”

  “Oh, please. You’d think somebody broke into Fort Knox, the way people are acting. I actually had a reporter from the New York Times come to my door yesterday to interview me.”

  A weight pressed against my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “Did this reporter give his name?”

  “It was one of those pretentious nicknames, Buff or Biff, something like that.”

  “Bix Waverly?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Good old Bix.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Just what I told your so-called colleague. I didn’t see any strangers around the area that night.”

  “Did you see anybody?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you a private eye, too?”

  “No. I’m a business associate of Helen’s.”

  “I don’t want to get involved in her problems. I make a point to distance myself from the neighbors. It’s safer that way.”

  “Look, you have nothing to fear from me. I’m just curious to know what you saw.”

  “You won’t tell anybody?”

  “What’s said on the sidewalk stays on the sidewalk.”

  He scowled. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Not at all.”

  He looked around to make sure nobody was close by. “I drank a lot of cough medicine on Thursday. I slept off and on all day. Just before midnight, I heard a loud noise. It woke me up. It seemed to be coming from the condo next door, so I got out of bed and went for my binoculars.”

  I felt my eyes open wide. “Binoculars?”

  He grabbed the garbage bag out of my hand and held it protectively against his chest. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not a pervert. I’m a bird watcher. I’d been monitoring the progress of a Carpodacus mexicannus that’s been building a nest in the eaves outside my kitchen window. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I agree. So what did you see?”

  He set the bag on the sidewalk. “The kitchen door was open and the light was on. Then it went out and another light came on in the upstairs bedroom. I know it was the bedroom because my condo is the mirror image of the one next door. I looked at both units before I chose this one. I liked mine better because streets border the other unit on two sides. I’m a light sleeper and I didn’t want traffic noise keeping me awake.”

  “So, the light in the bedroom went on. . . .” I prompted.

  “Yes. The mini blinds were down but the slats weren’t closed. I could see a man. I just assumed it was Helen’s boyfriend. I’ve never met him before, but I can hear them sometimes through the bedroom window . . . you know . . . making noise.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Pulling out dresser drawers and scattering clothes everywhere, and I know why. You hear about it all the time. People pretend to burglarize their own apartments so they can collect money from insurance companies.”

  “You think this was insurance fraud?”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Please don’t make me state the obvious.”

  I tried to make sense of what he’d just told me. It was mind-boggling that Helen was so desperate for money she’d recruit Dale Ewing, a former CIA analyst, to defraud an insurance company for chump change. If she were going to take that kind of risk, she would have claimed more was missing.

  “Did you tell the police what you saw?” I said.

  “They knocked on the door, but I didn’t open it. I told you before. I don’t want to get involved.”

  “What did this guy look like?”

  “Short, stout, black hair. And he was wearing a suit.”

  The neighbor was more than a little strange. He admitted to overdosing on cough medicine, which may have distorted his recollection, but the man inside Helen’s apartment didn’t match the description of Helen’s boyfriend. Dale Ewing was tall and his hair was white. It sounded more like the man Aidan Malloy had seen getting into the Mercedes parked outside Nectar the night Lupe was murdered.

  “If I showed you a picture of Helen’s boyfriend, do you think you could tell me if he was the man you saw that night?”

  The neighbor seemed less sure of himself. “I have to go inside now. I’m getting cold, and I don’t want to have a relapse.”

  He grabbed the garbage bag and hurried inside his condo. A moment later, I heard threes sets of dead bolts click into place.

  I was just walking back to my car when Charley called. He asked me to meet him at the office. He had some important news.

  Chapter 32

  “There’s a research foundation up in Thousand Oaks that collects birds from all over the world,” Charley said. “They test DNA to find out why birds are dying or why their eggs are getting so thin. And guess what? They have a drawer full of quetzals.”

  Charley was sitting at his desk, trying with little success to pry something out of his stapler with his lock-picking tools.

  “That’s not all,” he went on. “The place gives tours to the public. A couple of days before Lupe Ortiz was killed, one member of the group seemed overly interested in the quetzals. The purpose of the foundation is to educate the public about birds, so the guy was allowed to get up close and personal with the display. When the tour was over, one of the scientists noticed a quetzal was missing.”

  “Did they confront the guy?” I said.

  Charley banged the stapler on the desk. “Nah. They can’t prove he took it. They considered it an unfortunate loss and moved on.” />
  “Do they know who the guy is?”

  “He gave John Jones when he made the reservation, but I’m sure that’s not his real name. He left a telephone number. I talked the docent into giving it to me. I called, but there’s no answer and no voice mail.”

  “Is there another way to find out who the number belongs to?”

  Charley gave up on the stapler and used a paper clip to attach several sheets of paper that looked like one of his case progress reports. “I tried. It isn’t listed. The police would have to issue a warrant to get the records.”

  “So you think this guy stole a quetzal and left its feather by Lupe’s body. Why?”

  “He may have known her son was a gangbanger and wanted to set him up for the murder. If so, it was a good call. It worked.”

  “That means the guy planned to kill Lupe when he came to Nectar that night.”

  “Maybe he got tired of playing games with her. He wanted the chocolate pot back and he wanted Lupe dead for making his life difficult.”

  “So what do we do now?” I said.

  “I’ve been following up on the list of customers you gave me. I’ve contacted everybody on the Westside and in the Valley. None of them recognized Eugene’s picture. Only three of the owners knew Lupe Ortiz by name. None of them knew about the spouted chocolate pot. I still have a few places to check in the east. If those don’t pan out, we’ll have to get more names from Jay-Cee. I have to meet with a client this morning, but I’ll try to get through the list by tonight.”

  “Nerine Barstok asked me to pick up a bag of sugar. I’ll already be in Silver Lake. Give me the names and I’ll check them out.”

  He hesitated. “Okay, but make up a pretext. I don’t want anybody knowing what you’re up to. If you sense trouble, get out. Fast. Call me if you have any questions, and don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Charley.”

  “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

  Charley gave me the address and contact name for a suntan salon in Arcadia and a dry cleaner in Montebello. I added the suspected quetzal thief’s number to my cell phone address book. It was improbable, but maybe I’d be able to connect it to one of the businesses I was going to visit.

  Pookie was still ensconced in my spare room, weighing her future, so Muldoon would be safe with her until I got home. After I left the office, I stopped at the market for a five-pound sack of sugar before heading to Eugene’s apartment.

  Nerine opened the door, releasing the aroma of baking peanut butter into the November afternoon. She was wearing an apron and what looked like one of Eugene’s cats on her head. On closer inspection, I realized she had the same uncontrollable cowlick in the same spot as his. Her hair must have been plastered down with spray the first time I saw her, because I hadn’t noticed it before. Somehow it made her seem more human.

  Nerine took the bag of sugar and gestured for me to come in. When I stepped over the threshold, I stared in disbelief. She had rearranged Eugene’s furniture. His knitted afghan was missing from the couch. Magazines that he would never read were lined up with military precision on the coffee table—Southern Living, Redbook, and Golf Digest. Big Ben was now hanging on the wall in the kitchen, overlooking trays of cookies covered with waxed paper. She must have found more sugar somewhere, because she looked as if she was going into competition with the Girl Scouts.

  She studied my dumbstruck expression. “It helps me cope.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “No. I finally had to tell the colonel our son was missing. He wanted to fly out here and lead the charge, but I told him to wait.”

  “I’m surprised he’d do that for Oops.”

  Her cheeks turned scarlet. “That was a nickname. The colonel’s little joke. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Excuse me, Nerine, but you can’t really believe that. Every time he said it, he was reinforcing the fact his son was a mistake, and even more hurtful, he was unwanted.”

  She took off her apron “Eugene was a mistake. I can’t change that. Marilyn was already ten when he came along. The colonel and I thought we were done with diapers and colic and sleepless nights. It was a shock to both of us.”

  “Then why didn’t you give him up for adoption?”

  She scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. That sort of thing isn’t done by people like us.”

  “If you’d given him up, he might have had a happier life.”

  She looked stunned by my comment and averted her gaze. “I’ve often wondered which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did my son turn out the way he is because of us, or would he have been that way regardless of how we’d raised him?”

  “Eugene is a great person. Maybe he turned out that way in spite of you.”

  She took the remark with deep-seated stoicism. “It’s not easy being a parent. You never set out to make mistakes, but somehow you always do. Maybe the colonel and I made more than our share, but regardless of what you think, I love my son, and if anything ever happened to him, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  I felt guilty for giving her a hard time. Besides, who was I to criticize? I had no idea what it was like to be a parent. I barely knew how to raise Muldoon.

  “Charley and I are doing everything we can to find him,” I said.

  Nerine nodded. “Eugene’s credit card bill hasn’t come yet. I’ve been opening all the mail except for personal letters. I hope he won’t mind.”

  I smiled to show support for her shift in attitude. “I think he’ll understand.”

  A plastic bag full of peanut butter cookies was sitting on my passenger’s seat and Eugene’s apartment was already in my rearview mirror when my cell phone rang. It was Riley Deegan.

  “Joe called,” she said. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he apologized to me. Said he was sorry he hadn’t been more supportive. That’s the best news. Do you want to hear the second-best news?”

  “Shoot,” I said.

  Riley squealed with excitement. “Emma called me from Las Vegas. She and Noah eloped. They called to thank me for introducing them. She said she found her soul mate and apologized for taking that roll of toilet paper the night of the singles’ party. She and Noah were in Claudia’s bathroom, putting their clothes back on, and she didn’t realize she’d slipped it into her tote bag. I did it, Tucker. I made my first match. Luv Bugs is going to work, isn’t it?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, Riley. It’s going to work. Congratulations. You did a great job.”

  “So when can we get together and talk?” she said.

  “How about next week? Call me on Monday and we’ll set something up.”

  The smile spread to my entire face as I closed the phone and prepared to interview Lupe’s clients.

  Chapter 33

  Best-Way Cleaners was located in Montebello, an Italian word that means “beautiful mountain.” It’s a medium-sized residential and industrial city located in the San Gabriel Valley, about eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The place has oil wells, the Barnyard Zoo at Grant Rea Park, and an annual murder rate that generally stays in the single digits.

  I parked in one of the three available spots behind the dry cleaning store and went inside. Hanging on one of the walls was a flag that featured a broad white stripe sandwiched between two turquoise stripes of equal width. Centered in the white was a laurel wreath, two crossed rifles, and a quetzal perched on an unrolled piece of parchment that read LIBERTAD 15 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 1821. On the other wall was a plaque that read PROUD TO BE A GUATEMALAN AMERICAN. I didn’t make too much of that. Montebello’s population was predominantly Hispanic.

  A stout woman in her fifties stood behind the counter. Her hair was too evenly black not to be dyed. She was chatting amiably with a male customer. According to the information I’d found in Lupe’s personnel file, the owner’s name was Isela Navarro. I watched as the woman counted a pile of crumpled dress shirts. There were fifteen of them, a three-week supply.

&nbs
p; She acknowledged me with a nod. “Be right with you.”

  Neither she nor the customer seemed to care that I was waiting. Both were more interested in exchanging a series of whiny complaints that went back and forth like a tennis volley. He railed about the high parking fees at the Staples Center. She griped about European shoes being too narrow for her feet. The machine at the counter spit out two pieces of paper. Mrs. Navarro handed one copy to the customer and put the other on top of his shirts. As soon as he left, she turned to me.

  “Now,” she said. “You.”

  Charley told me to invent a pretext, so I used the first one that popped into my head.

  “I’d like to pick up some dry cleaning for my brother. I’m sorry. I forgot to bring the ticket with me. Maybe you can check his name. Bix Waverly.”

  “We don’t use names. What’s his phone number?”

  I paused for a moment to think. It didn’t matter what number I gave her. The pretext was just an excuse to start a conversation. I rattled off my office number and watched as she typed it into the computer. I expected her to say she couldn’t find it in the database, but her response sent me reeling.

  “He picked it up already. This morning. One hand-knit sweater. Right?”

  I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket to keep them from trembling. “I guess I made the trip for nothing. Thanks for checking.” I paused and pointed toward the wall. “That’s a beautiful flag. I’ve never seen one up close before.”

  She nodded. “Sometimes it makes me sad to look at it and remember. I had a good life in Guatemala. I went to parties with important people. Now look. My hands are rough from too much work.” She held them out so I could inspect her ragged cuticles.

  “Did you leave because of the war?”

  “The war was the war. It did not affect us much. I didn’t want to leave. My husband made me.”

  I remembered Dale Ewing talking about the asylum seekers who’d moved to L.A. from Guatemala during the war and the problems they were having now. Members of the disbanded national police had come here, as well. I wondered if Mrs. Navarro’s husband fell into either of those categories.