by Jesse Miles
Borrowing the step ladder, I silently pushed up the window and climbed inside. The bedroom was painted an agreeable two-tone blue scheme with white trim. The bed, armoire, and dresser were an expensive-looking matching set. Everything was in harmony and in the money.
The other bedroom was set up as an art studio. There was a long table, a drafting table, a chair, and a stool. Storage racks, shelves, and drawers held paint bottles and tubes, paint brushes, and other art supplies. A blank framed canvas rested on an easel. More wooden frames, some with canvas stretched on them and some without, leaned against a wall. One-gallon cans of turpentine and smaller containers of paint thinner were on the floor, sitting in plastic tubs.
A soft metallic thump came from the living room. I floated to the hallway and leaned my head around the corner. Through the front bay windows, I could see the mail carrier toting her bag down the front walkway. She had dropped three pieces of mail in the chute next to the front door: advertising from Tiffany and Co., Barneys New York, and Saks.
The living room arrangement met with my full approval. A wide, pillow-strewn leather chaise sofa and matching ottoman faced the television and tall KEF loudspeakers. Two side tables were designed to swing over the sofa ends to facilitate eating while viewing. There was no furniture in the dining area, but there were strips of blue painter’s tape on the wood floor, apparently to mark the location of a soon-to-be-delivered table.
The wall hangings included three of Cinnamon’s oil paintings and a collection of photographs celebrating her life as a celebrity and pretty girl. None of the paintings floated my boat, but the photos were entertaining. My favorite showed a very young Cinnamon dancing on a nightclub table while the guests, especially the men, pumped their fists in fervent approval.
I moved through the house fast, hardly touching anything. Everything was put away properly, which made it hard to conduct a search without leaving a trace. The towels and bedding in the hallway cabinets were folded like a Bloomingdale’s display. The kitchen utensils were stored logically, the opposite of mine. Cinnamon’s wardrobe wasn’t as extensive as I expected, but almost everything was in a box or garment bag.
Off the back porch a dark, narrow pantry held nonperishable food, paper products, and cleaning supplies. There was no light inside, but my penlight showed a smallish shoe print on the fresh paint, halfway up the wall. On the ceiling hatch were three barely visible finger smudges.
In order to satisfy my burning curiosity, I had to go outside and bring in the step ladder, move a vacuum cleaner out of the pantry, and remove the paper products from the top shelf before moving the shelf itself out of the way.
I climbed the ladder, pushed the hatch up and aside, and stuck my head and penlight into the crawl space. I carefully rotated on the ladder. The light showed unfinished wood, electrical conduits, spider webs, and primordial dust. Something more provocative came into view: a colorful, round cookie tin. I grabbed it, took it to the kitchen counter, and examined it in full light.
The graphic design on the metal container was a row of smiling Christmas trees holding hands. The lid was dented near the center. Imprinted on the bottom was MADE IN ENGLAND. Inside I found a bundle of one-hundred-dollar bills and bags of white powder. I divided the currency into two equal stacks, based on my eyeball estimate. I quickly counted one stack, multiplied by two, and came up with an estimate of forty thousand dollars.
I put the tin, with all the contents inside, back in the crawl space and replaced everything in the pantry. I placed my business card in the mail slot and left the residence of Cinnamon Strauss exactly as I had found it.
During the drive to my office, I thought things over. Cal Lamont had phoned Cinnamon from his apartment, under the threat of physical harm from Marty Trask. Cal reported that Cinnamon claimed not to have kept her Tuesday morning appointment at the Castellammare house. I tended to believe Cal and the gardeners at the house below the Loretta Sommer residence. Most of all, I believed what the cute, hand-holding Christmas trees had shown me.
26
4
I had fish tacos for lunch, then drove to my office and worked on emails, snail-mail, and miscellaneous paperwork.
A phone call came in from Zara. “I’m in Westwood now. Can I drop by your office? I’d like to see you, if you’re not too busy.”
“I’m glad you called. I could use some company, and I have a few more questions about the people in Lillie’s social circle.”
Fifteen minutes later she came in the door wearing her funeral attire—a dark gray business suit—and carrying a black alligator purse. “There’s nothing like the burial of a family member to start the day off on a joyful note.” She walked up close to me and stared. “What happened to your face? That abrasion wasn’t there Friday.”
“I went to a doctor, and the nurse hit me.”
She laughed good-naturedly. “I’m not going to ask what the provocation might have been, but before I say another word, I want to apologize for my previous wisecracks about your office being a little below my lofty standards.” She shifted to a more serious tone. “I was researching you on the Internet last night, and I found an article about your father. I extend my deepest sympathies. The shooting was in the alley, wasn’t it?”
“I see it every time I park in back.”
“How old were you when it happened?”
“Six.”
She shook her head slowly. “That must have been quite a blow. Is there any hope of finding the culprit?”
I shrugged. “The investigative technology keeps improving, and there’s always the chance of a death-bed confession, or maybe someone wakes up one morning and their conscience gains the upper hand. I would bet the chances are better than fifty-fifty someone out there knows something.”
“Would you mind if we went for a walk down the alley?”
“I do it all the time.”
We went out the back door and walked about twenty yards. I pointed toward the base of a telephone pole. “He died right there. You remember Rocky Platt, the police detective?”
“Yes, he seemed to be a friend of yours.”
“He was my father’s partner. Rocky was a probationer, just out of the police academy. They were responding to a silent alarm from the drugstore where that carpet and flooring place is now.” I rocked my head in a north-easterly direction. “Dad came around to the alley. Rocky took the front. Rocky heard the shot and ran around the building and found Dad on the ground.” I walked over to the gap between two triple garages and pointed to the south. “Rocky says he can still hear the shooter’s footsteps running down this walkway to the next street. He chose to stay with my father.”
Zara clenched her teeth and groaned. “What a dreadful thing for him to have to carry with him all these years. And I’m sure it hasn’t been very easy on you.”
“Rocky made sure I ended up in a good foster home. I still keep in touch with my foster parents.” I was relieved Zara didn’t ask about my mother. I wasn’t in the mood for that story.
She reached into her purse, shook a cigarette from its pack, and popped it almost into her mouth. She stopped abruptly and said, “I should have asked this earlier, but do you mind if I smoke?”
“Doesn’t bother me. You can even smoke in the office, but at some point, you will be required to listen to a friendly lecture on why you should quit.”
She pulled a gold and red-lacquer cigarette lighter from her purse and lit up. Her long, elegant fingers and perfect pale-pink fingernails moved with an easy quickness, almost sleight of hand. “I’m planning to quit as soon as I can arrange to have a brief period of time in my life without some traumatic shock. I’ve certainly quit a few other bad habits, and I will be happy to listen to your lecture.” She stepped into the walkway between the garages. “I want to see where the criminal ran to.”
We walked between the garages, then between a house on the left and a duplex on the right. We stopped at the sidewalk in front. Across the street it was all houses. On ou
r side, houses were mixed with duplexes and triplexes.
I said, “The shooter probably came to this point. He could have driven away from here or made some other evasive maneuver. From here, it’s a total mystery. There were no witnesses to the shooting, no video. Some of the neighbors heard the shot, but they thought it was a firecracker.”
Zara said, “What was your father like?”
“I barely remember him, but when people described him, the single word I heard most often was decent.”
Zara took a deep drag off her cigarette and blew it away from me. “We certainly have one thing in common. Both our fathers were killed with a gun. Make that two things. The criminal was never caught. The difference is your father was a decent man. I wouldn’t call mine indecent, but he was an artful predator. He made his money lending money to a multitude of people who never should have borrowed.”
“Is that why you do all the charity work?”
“I’m sure it’s a factor. I feel as though I owe something to society, but I’m certainly not going to live with the unwashed masses and join flagellant processions. And I should say in my father’s defense that he was a nurturer. He disciplined us when we needed it and was never abusive in any way. He was fair. He played T-ball and other sports with my sisters and me when we were little. Mother and the hired help would always join in. It’s one of my favorite memories.”
She looked away smiling at the memory, then continued, “We girls always had to pick up our toys and put away our clothes and take out our trash. I actually had to shovel dog poop in the back yard on days when the gardeners were off. Our allowances were based on our performance doing our chores and our school grades. It was his way of teaching us how the real world operates.”
I said, “It’s funny you mention T-ball. My clearest memories of my father are T-ball games with the local kids, when I was five or six. The neighbors would always gather to watch. Dad was the umpire, and sometimes he would step in as a pinch-hitter and hit one-handed if the teams were lopsided. It was great fun, and there was always a sense of fairness and sportsmanship.”
Zara’s phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her purse. “Excuse me for a moment, Jack, but I think this will interest you.” She spoke briefly to someone named Carmelita then put the phone away. “The housekeeper said your check came in the mail. I should have mentioned this earlier, but Arden and I would like to take you to lunch tomorrow. We could go from my place, and you could pick up your check.”
“I thought I was fired.”
“I should have mentioned something else. Mother didn’t exactly say she was wrong for her rude phone call to you last week, but her tone was contrite. Coming from her, that’s a lot. Really a lot. She fully understands that when we first talked to you last Wednesday and asked you to find Lillie, it was too late for you to do anything. She agreed that you had to be paid in full. All things considered, I think we may have shorted you.”
“Where are you taking me for lunch?”
She held her hands out wide. “Anywhere you want.”
“Have you ever been to Casa Humberto, in Santa Monica?”
“I haven’t been there for a couple of years. Sounds like fun.”
As we walked back to my office, she pulled her notebook and pen from her purse and wrote me a note with her address and home phone.
Back in my office, I gestured toward the sofa. “Make yourself comfortable.”
She took a seat and set her purse aside.
I landed on my desk chair and said, “Okay, back to business, have you ever been to the club ShangriLA?”
“I patronized ShangriLA when it first opened, and it later became one of Lillie’s hangouts. She had a tendency to follow my historical pathways and try to outdo me. I should have mentioned the place earlier.”
“Do you know the owner, Marty Trask?”
“I know him, and I don’t want to know him too well. He’s very intelligent, and he comes across as educated and maybe even a little refined, but people are afraid of him. The rumor is he had a rough childhood. I run into him every now and then, and we are cordial to each other, but I keep my distance. To complicate things, I’m pretty sure he always had his eye on Lillie. I think Lillie could have transferred from Rod to Marty by simply dropping her handkerchief.”
I flipped through the notes on my desk. “Have you ever heard of a wannabe celebrity photographer named Cal or Cal Lamont? His actual name is Chesley Alden Lamont, but everyone calls him ‘Cal.’”
“I’ve heard the name before, and I’ve heard he is a photographer, but I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”
“Did you ever run into an over-the-hill fitness star named Cinnamon Strauss?”
She paused and thought for a moment. “She was quite a character. She ran with my crowd briefly but has long since faded away.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“Not for years. Cinnamon was famous for her skill at telling dirty jokes at parties, but she was a little rough around the edges when it came to social niceties. She was always laughing and joking and dancing around. Somebody—I can’t remember who—said being with Cinnamon was like being in a cartoon or a sitcom. The turning point for Cinnamon came when a couple of my friends took her to a party. Cinnamon embarrassed them by being overly familiar with the celebrities, and that was Cinnamon’s swan song, as far as my crowd was concerned.
“She also considered herself an artist, as though she were one of the Dutch masters reincarnated, but I saw her work one time at a gallery, and I’m pretty sure Vermeer and Rembrandt are safe.”
I agreed with that, but I didn’t mention that I had been reviewing Cinnamon’s art just two hours before, after climbing through her bedroom window.
I said, “I didn’t mean to interrogate you. I’m still in a fog over the events of the past week.”
“I fully understand. This has been a terrific shock for all of us.”
She looked at her watch, grabbed her purse, and stood. “I am now obligated to go up to Mother’s house and sit around and look glum for the rest of the day. We’ll see you tomorrow at . . . eleven o’clock?”
“I’ll be there.”
After Zara left, I closed down the office, drove to a grocery store, and stocked up. At home, I ate a light snack while putting away the groceries, then headed out to the gym. I was determined to get back into a regular workout schedule and stick to it.
27
4
The next morning, I arrived at Zara Manning’s residence right on time. Her house, a vintage, bright-white Spanish, was on a narrow street where the homes were backed up to a wooded area and a stream. Across the street were the back walls and tall foliage of neighboring mansions. Arden’s white Mercedes was parked on a stretch of stone pavers near the front porch.
Pushing the doorbell button resulted in a mellow chime, barking dogs, and a muffled female voice.
The door opened, and Zara appeared. She slipped a folded check into my shirt pocket. “For services rendered. Please come in.”
A pair of blue-gray Great Danes stood behind her and watched me. One of them growled.
She pointed at him. “Shut up, Rex.” She said to me, “These boys are named Rex and Atlas. My sister is down in my bedroom trying on clothes. We’re going shopping later and try to spice up her wardrobe.”
I said, “Have Rex and Atlas been to obedience school?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s go to the kitchen.”
Once there, I said, “Where do you keep the dog biscuits?”
Zara pointed to a cupboard, where I found a bag of peanut-flavored dog cookies. Atlas and Rex showed me their understanding of the commands sit and give me a paw. They inhaled their snacks, and there was no more growling.
Zara’s house had three levels. We went down two stairways to the lowest level. The dogs followed us and ran down a hallway and through an open door where Arden’s voice greeted them.
Zara and I went out onto a rough-hewn stone patio.
Stone steps dropped down through a miniature forest and ended at the stream. A few inches of slow-moving water were left over from December’s rains. Across the stream, another house was barely visible through the trees. Other than the whispering flow of water, it was silent. We sat on a steel bench that rested on a strip of cobbled paving stones.
I looked up through the trees. “I never thought you could have a pastoral setting like this in your back yard, anyway not in the city.”
Zara said, “Those were my exact thoughts the first time the realtor showed me the house and we walked down here. The house was a total fixer. The bones were good, but the restoration took almost a year. There were so many decisions to make and details to take care of, it was like a full-time job.”
After discussing the frogs and coyotes who hung out at the stream, we climbed back up to the house. In Zara’s bedroom, the dogs were resting on the carpet, near the door. Various items of women’s clothing were laid out on the bed. Arden was standing over them with her hands on her hips, clad only in her underwear, examining them intently. Looking up at us, she opened her mouth wide and crossed her arms in front, then screamed comically and jumped into the walk-in closet.
I said, “Would Emily Brontë entertain a gentleman guest in such an indecorous manner?”
From deep inside the closet, she giggled and said, “There’s no impropriety here. I’m being chaperoned by my older sister Charlotte.”
Zara lifted a blue suede shirt jacket off the bed and held it up for inspection. “Arden’s wardrobe needs to be energized. We wear the same size, so she’s trying on some of my things. Then we’re going to get some hot ideas and go shopping.” She laid the jacket flat on the bed and smoothed out the wrinkles. “Damn! I just remembered something. I have to go to a charity event tomorrow night at the Bonaventure Hotel. I have to decide what to wear.”