I watched Ginny’s face register incredulity. A spoonful of soup was raised above her bowl, and it stayed there, making no more progress toward her lips while she listened to Mullen weave his story. Now she said, “Did you think…did you think Felix and I were having an affair?”
Mullen looked down at his soup and then back up at her again. “I’m sorry, Ginny.”
She put her spoon back into the bowl and leaned away from the table. I thought for a moment that she was going to bolt.
Then Mullen spoke again. “But there is a silver lining. You see, because of my suspicions, I hired Mr. Strait here to watch you. He and his assistant have been, uh, tailing you I think is the term. For a few weeks now, right?”
He looked at me as he said this last bit, and I looked at Ginny to see her face go pale.
“Is this true?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She looked from me to Mullen to Carmelita and back to Mullen again, her expression shifting from shock to anger as she did. Mullen must have seen the change come over her as he tried to fix things. “I can see that you’re upset with me, and you have every right to be. I should have just talked to you instead of hiring a private detective. But then, if I hadn’t, Mr. Strait here wouldn’t be able to provide you with an alibi, now would he?”
“I was with my parents all through the night!” she said, flabbergasted.
“Well…yes, but how well would that stand up in court. They’re biased, aren’t they?”
Ginny seemed unable to speak.
And I was about to make things worse for both of them.
“Uh, listen Mr. Peale,” I began. “I don’t want you to get ahead of yourself here. From my experience, if the police haven’t formally questioned Miss Flynn or actually arrested her by this point, they’re not likely to.”
“But she’ll still have you for an alibi, won’t she?” Mullen asked. “Just in case?”
“Mr. Peale, you need to understand that my assistant and I work a variety of cases. We’ve billed you for the time we actually spent surveilling Miss Flynn, but we couldn’t keep an eye on her twenty-four hours a day.”
“What are you saying?” He was starting to sound upset.
“It’s just that after a bit of time spent watching Miss Flynn pretty closely and finding no evidence of the relationship you were concerned about, Miss Garcia and I dialed back a little bit on the surveillance.”
“Dialed back? What does that mean?”
“It means that once we established patterns of behavior, there wasn’t much point in camping out all night to wait for a variation.”
“What he’s saying,” Ginny said to Mullen, “is that they weren’t watching my parents’ house all through the night on Friday.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Mullen said. He raised his voice and a few of the nearby patrons turned their heads in our direction. “That’s not what I paid you for!”
“Calm down, Mr. Peale. Please,” I said. “You will recall that I reported to you more than a week ago that we were coming up with nothing.”
“And I insisted that you keep on the job.”
“And I did. As instructed. But not to one hundred percent capacity. And I’m only billing you for the surveillance that was actually conducted. You’re getting exactly what you paid for.”
“But that wasn’t the point! You were supposed to watch her. Not just check on her and leave.”
“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, Mr. Peale, but as I said before, I’m reasonably sure the police aren’t actually looking at Miss Flynn as a suspect. They’re just keeping their options open until the investigation yields results.”
“This is unbelievable.” Mullen pushed his chair back and stood up.
“Let’s finish our soup, Mullen,” Ginny said, still seated. She gave her companion a bored look, and it brought his show of disgust to an end. He sat again and pulled his chair in. Then he went to work on his bowl of soup without saying another word. He did shoot me terrible stares, though, when I started cutting into my steak. It was getting cold, but I didn’t care.
It took only a minute or two for their bowls to be drained, and when Ginny was finished, she wiped the corners of her mouth and folded her napkin. Then she looked from Carmelita to me and said, “Thank you for meeting us. I’m sorry if things were arranged under false pretenses.” Here, she shot Mullen a look that suggested she was still terribly unhappy about what he had done. “I’m sure you’ll understand if I do let the police know you were watching me, Mr. Strait. Just in case they want to verify any parts of my story.”
“Of course,” I said. “And, again, I’m sorry to hear you’ve been going through such a tough time.”
The corners of her mouth turned up just a little at this, her demure way of thanking me for the gesture of sympathy. She shook my hand and then Carmelita’s. Then she left with Mullen, who did not offer to shake hands. I found it curious that she had made no snide remarks about my having spied on her. Usually when that kind of information gets found out, especially by a woman, there are nasty innuendos thrown around about the kind of things that I’ve observed. Ginny Flynn was all confidence though, and I got the feeling that if she found out I’d caught her in compromising positions, it was fine with her.
As Carmelita and I waited for the valet to bring my battered Winslow sedan up to the line full of shiny Terranovas and Esplanades, she said, “I guess I was wrong about Mullen Peale.”
“How so?” I asked, a little surprised. The screenwriter had shown himself to be suspicious, temperamental, and entitled. His petulance seemed in line with Carmelita’s complaints about him during the last few weeks. “He’s not the whiny stoat you thought he was?”
“He’s whiny, but he’s not the stoat.”
The valet pulled the car up, left it running, and ran around to the passenger’s side to open the door for Carmelita. I tipped him and got in, wondering what Carmelita had meant by her last comment.
“So, who’s the stoat?” I asked.
“Ginny Flynn,” she said, sounding surprised that I’d needed to ask.
Both amused at Carmelita’s self-assuredness and confused by her answer to my question, I said, “How so?”
“The whole thing was her idea.”
“Which whole thing?”
“Hiring us to surveil her.”
I raised an eyebrow as I pulled onto the thoroughfare and pointed the car back towards Echo Park. “You’re losing me. Didn’t you see how upset she was that we’d been following her?”
“That was an act.”
“And you know this how?”
“They’re sleeping together.”
I stopped at an intersection. It was good that the car had arrived at a stoplight, as I likely would have stopped anyway in response to Carmelita’s comment—even if we’d still been in traffic.
“What are you talking about?”
“Wasn’t it obvious?” she asked. When I said nothing, she went on. “The way he deferred to her, ordering the same thing she did, everything about him pretty much screamed it.”
“I still don’t see it.”
“Ginny Flynn is not the type of woman that a man like Mullen Peale lands every day. She’s playing him. And through him, she’s playing us.”
“To what end?”
The light changed and we were off again.
“I don’t know. But I aim to find out.”
I chewed on this for a little while. Glancing at Carmelita as I drove, I could see that she was deep in thought as well. I wondered at the process going on in her brain, but I decided long ago that understanding how her mind worked was beyond me. Finally, I said, “You’re still thinking there’s something here to solve, and that it’s going to get you that raise, right?”
She took a moment before turning to glare at me. “Yes. Of course. But now it’s something more. It’s the principal of the thing, Jed. I’m not about to just sit here and let that woman use
us this way.”
I didn’t think of Carmelita as particularly protective of me or the business, so I took a shot at interpreting her meaning. “And when you say us, you really mean you, don’t you? Ginny Flynn has stirred your personal nest of hornets?”
“You could say so, I suppose. But that isn’t going to change how I move forward from here.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I’d like to take the car out for a bit after we get home.”
“To do what?”
“To get some work done, of course.”
I almost asked what specifically she had in mind, but I decided against it. There were some things I was better off not knowing.
* * * * *
As I listened to the sound of my car’s engine fading in the distance, I popped two more aspirin and went to lie down. The headache wasn’t too bad any more, but I was sick of it and just wanted it and everything else to go away. Between trying to track down Elsa Schwartz, dealing with the pair of writers at the Barker House, and walking a fine line with Carmelita, I was worn out, and it was only two o’clock. A long Sunday afternoon stretched out ahead of me with no prospects for relief on any of my problems.
I slept for more than an hour and felt better—at least in my head—when I got up. Having the house to myself was not something I was used to, so I took advantage of Carmelita’s absence and spread out on the couch in the front room, putting my feet up on the cushions and telling myself I should grab my guitar. As had happened earlier, though, I couldn’t bring myself to play it, not really. The prospect made me as anxious as I felt on nights when I worried my nightmare would return, so I opted to look for a baseball game on the radio instead.
Later, I fixed a simple meal and found I actually had the courage to have a bottle of beer with it. Sitting down at the little Formica-topped table with its ugly gray and white pattern, I ate my meal and drank my beer and relished the quiet, pleased that I felt normal again.
It got dark, and Carmelita wasn’t back yet.
I started getting concerned. Although I knew the chances were good that she was in a boring surveillance situation, probably camped out on Ginny Flynn’s street waiting almost desperately for something to happen, there was still a nagging little voice in the back of my head that told me Carmelita had gotten herself into trouble and that I was going to get a call from O’Neal telling me about it. This line of thinking reminded me of the scary vision I’d had of Carmelita coming at me, a bullet hole in her chest and murder in her eyes. I didn’t think anything that drastic was going to happen tonight, but experience told me it had happened elsewhere, in a different world and with different versions of Carmelita and myself.
All of this made me uneasy; it was impossible to sit and wait. Getting up from the table, I looked around the house for the portable phone Carmelita had first shown me the day before. Not seeing it in the front room, I checked Carmelita’s room. It took less than a minute to see it wasn’t there; Carmelita had almost nothing in her room save a few dresses in her closet and other clothing in her bureau drawers, so there was no chance that the phone was hidden away among her possessions.
Back in the kitchen, I looked through my pockets to find the number and then I gave it a try. She picked up on the third ring, and I knew from the static on the line that the call was going to be just this side of pointless.
“Carmelita?”
“Yes?”
“I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
“No,” she said, “not all night.”
I rolled my eyes. “No…that’s not what I said. Are you okay?”
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“If you are.”
This didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t tell if the problem was at her end or mine or somewhere in between.
“Where are you?”
“Glendale.”
“What’s in Glendale?”
“Yes,” she said.
“No, no. Why Glendale? What are you doing?”
The static cranked itself into high gear then. All I got was “airship.”
I imagined her buying a ticket to tail Ginny Flynn into the sky but didn’t want to try getting that point across over Guillermo’s crazy phone.
“Will you be home soon?” I tried instead.
That must have gone through, as she said, “I think so.”
“All right. Be careful.”
“Probably around eight.”
I nodded at this and said goodbye.
It was 6:30 now. I turned on the radio again and listened to a few programs. Just over an hour later, I heard the car pulling into the drive.
Carmelita came in looking excited. “I knew there was something not right about her,” she said as soon as she saw me.
“With Flynn?”
“Yes!”
“What happened?”
She set her purse down and sat on the couch next to me. “I parked down the street and watched her house for a couple hours. She was alone, no sign of Mullen Peale. And then she left.”
“Okay.”
“But not in her car. A taxi showed up and took her up to Hollywood Boulevard. I was worried that the driver might notice me tailing him, but it was all fine. The taxi took her to a hotel at the east end of the strip, the Califia.”
“I think I know it.”
“Kind of a fleabag. She went inside, and the taxi left. About half an hour later, another taxi pulled up, and I watched her come out and get inside. And this time, she didn’t go home. The taxi took her up to Glendale and the airship station.”
“That’s where you were when I called.”
“Yes. I parked in a spot where I could see through the windows of the main lobby. She bought a ticket and then waited in the lounge. When the boarding doors opened, she filed in with everyone else. I waited until the ship took off. Then I went inside and checked its destination.”
“Which was?”
“Phoenix, Arizona.”
“A short hop,” I said. “She could probably make it there and back in the same night if she’s trying to keep the cops happy.”
“Yes! I thought the same thing. The police told her not to leave town, and she has. You see? There’s something not right about her.”
I nodded at this. “You might have something there after all.”
She beamed, her eyes alight with energy that came from something more than Guillermo Garcia’s secret element, mined from the ground beneath Chavez Ravine.
Chapter Twelve
I was overdue for a nightmare, and sometime before the morning light, my subconscious made up for its recent shortcomings, prompting me to bolt from my bed gasping for breath, my hands on my face to make sure it was still there. As always, it took some time for me to come down from the shock of the nightmare, so after going through the motions of getting ready for work, I let Carmelita drive us to the office and also tasked her with parking the car while I went up to the office ahead of her. The first order of business was to try and get O’Neal on the phone to tell her about my Saturday night conversation with Klaus Lang and my early Sunday one with Elsa Schwartz. If nothing else, I hoped the information would get her to turn her gaze away from Carmelita as a suspect in the Mercy Attentater killing.
As was typical, Peggy was already in the office when I got there, my secretary always seeming to be one step ahead of me. Normally, we would come in to find Peggy at her desk with Saturday’s mail sorted and a list of tasks she needed me or Carmelita to take care of; on Mondays, she’d seem especially eager to get on with things, as though the weekend had been a necessary evil that had done nothing but dampen her productivity, and she’d always have a special Monday smile for me just before she hit me with all the jobs she needed me to complete.
That smile was not present when I opened the outer office door this morning, however. Peggy looked serious, her lips tight and her eyes filled with deep concern. She appeared to be in the middle of sorting mail that had already been
sorted, and when I came into the office, she dropped the pile in her hand onto one of the piles on her desk, undoing the work she’d already done.
Before I could ask what was wrong, she stood and came across the little lobby.
“The police are here, in your office,” Peggy whispered.
“Why?” I asked, more alarmed at Peggy’s distressed state than at the mere presence of police.
“I don’t know. It’s that O’Neal woman and a couple others.”
Crashaw, I thought. But who else?
Peggy went on. “She wanted to know if both you and Carmelita were coming in this morning and where either of you could be found if the two of you didn’t make it in as normal.”
I nodded at this. They had come for Carmelita; I was almost certain of it. But why? Had more evidence surfaced tying her to Mercy Attentater’s murder? And, if so, was it hard evidence or more circumstantial foolishness? My mind began working all the different possibilities—including the one where Carmelita was actually guilty. I hadn’t given it any thought the night before, but she had been away from the house for hours tailing Ginny Flynn; what if the whole time hadn’t been spent doing what she’d claimed? What if she’d gotten into something else incriminating and the detectives had connected the dots?
“She say anything else?” I asked, trying not to let my alarm show.
“Not really. Just wanted to know what time you’d be here.”
“When did they get here?” I asked as Carmelita came into the office behind me.
“About fifteen minutes ago. I almost called you at home to tip you off, but I thought better of it.”
“That’s good. You did fine.” I could see she was still worried, so I gave her hand a squeeze in the hope that I could reassure her. It didn’t seem to help. “It’ll be fine,” I added.
Turning to Carmelita, I said, “It looks like I have a little meeting to go to in my office. Can you wait out here with Peggy for a few?”
The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2) Page 13