The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  The pawnshop not only smelled bad, it was tomb-chilly as well, air-conditioning blasting from an ugly box over the transom. It had been a warm January week. I hated the word January because all it meant to me was Christmas bills.

  The pawnbroker, whose name I guessed was Adil, Jr., squirted the jeweler’s loupe from his eye and neatly caught it in his hand. He laid the brooch on the counter.

  I wished Petey hadn’t said the word hungry, it was too good a bullet for Adil, Jr., who smiled and fired it into my heart. “The sapphires are OK but there’s a huge crack in the diamond.”

  This pawn dude was unstereotypically young, maybe only twenty, and dressed in a white T-shirt with a pink puppy on it. But his eyes were as flat as dimes. Surely you can only get a look like that by growing up in the business. Years of skillful belittling.

  I knew enough not to say something pathetic like, But it was my grandmother’s. The provenance of the brooch was irrelevant. The meaning of the brooch was irrelevant. The brooch had no meaning anymore. The brooch was going to transmute into sacks of groceries and a rent check. I hoped to God.

  “How much?”

  “I can give you four hundred.”

  I further knew enough not to say, But you see my credit card was declined at the grocery store two hours ago and I had to leave all the food and detergent lying there and hustle with Petey to the bank before noon because it’s Saturday to get this diamond pin out of the safe-deposit box and it is the last pin. It is the last anything except for my wristwatch, which I need until I get mugged for it some night. The watch anyhow is a knockoff of a Longines, in fact if you look closely and you are the sort of fellow who would look closely, you would see that it says Longunes. And I’m only one month behind on my rent but I cannot let it become two months because there are Plenty Of People In Los Angeles Who Would Rent My Apartment In A Second, people with pay stubs to show the landlord, pay stubs with regular sequential dates on them, every two weeks, pay stubs, pay stubs.

  What I did say was, “That’s a two-carat diamond.”

  “It absolutely is.” The pawn dude quirked both eyebrows. “But the setting is the only thing holding that diamond together. If I was to pry open those prongs, the thing would fall apart into a million pieces. I’m buying this on the basis of the sapphires.”

  It was my cue to fix him with an unflinching gaze, which I did. “There’s no crack in that diamond. Four hundred is an insult.”

  He fixed me back with heartbreaking disinterest. “You don’t have to pawn it here.”

  The reputable jewelers who buy jewels, used jewels, vintage jewels—it’s vintage to you and used to the dealer who’s buying it from you—they don’t like to do transactions like this. In the first place the appraiser guy only comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and when he does buy something he gives you a receipt for it and then the office person cuts you a check. These reputable jewelers like to buy in lots, they like to buy a boxful of jewelry from an estate. They don’t like to deal with people who come in off the street wanting to sell one piece because grocery stores don’t give change for two-carat diamond pins.

  Petey hung by his shoulder socket, lusting for junk. “Let’s buy that fishing pole.”

  “No, honey.”

  “Let’s buy that saw.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sh, honey, Mommy’s doing business.”

  He hated to be shushed. “Why not why not why not? Mommy!”

  “Honey, please.”

  “MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!”

  “Please stop, Petey,” I interrupted, trying for a tough tone but I felt so damn sorry for the little guy. “Because I really don’t need a tantrum right now.” Which effectively tripped his tantrum circuit. He squeezed his eyes shut and cranked his volume to jet-turbine level and I had to stop him because I needed to sell this fucking brooch. Four hundred dollars was not going to pay our back rent of nine hundred dollars plus nine hundred current, but it would buy us plenty of food, and I would have to think of something else as far as the rent went. I needed to sell the brooch to this T-shirt-clad asshole, so I got down in Petey’s face and said, “If you’ll stop I’ll buy you anything you want from McDonald’s as soon as we leave here.”

  He shut up instantly. Adil, Jr., waited. Another customer came in.

  Adil, Jr., cleared his throat. I looked at him.

  “Four hundred,” he repeated.

  My eyes slid off his shallow uncaring face and I muttered, “All right.”

  _____

  Think happy thoughts.

  Petey had recently passed the milestone of buckling his own car seat harness. Soon he would learn to tie his shoes. But in Los Angeles so many children put in more hours staring at their shoes from the padded shells of their car seats than walking in them. You can buy Velcro shoes for your kid and let him learn to tie a bow when he’s fifteen, but the value of car seat competence can hardly be overstated. Your arms are laden with laundry, your purse is slipping off your shoulder, it’s raining, you’ve got cramps, and the kid clambers in and snappa snappa. Kid stays put. Yes, that’s a downright miracle the first time it happens.

  Our Honda Civic had recently celebrated its eighth birthday, bravely holding up under the disappointment of not receiving any new motor oil or wiper fluid. I pulled the car into traffic on Sunset and headed for McDonald’s, my mouth watering thinking about a fish sandwich and Diet Coke. The car looked like it had been spit out by a sea monster and shuddered in right turns, but otherwise it was a fine machine. There wasn’t time to do groceries before Storytime at two o’clock, so I drove through and we ate in the car on the way to the library where I had the story gig.

  Driving and eating while interfacing with L.A. traffic requires no brainwork, just reflexes, so I took the opportunity to mentally beat myself up about my Visa card. My old brain-loop started up: stupid, stupid, stupid. Gramma Gladys would no doubt visit me in my sleep tonight and raise a gnarled finger: That brooch was the most decent thing in the whole family! Where’s my brooch? No more cookies for you, ya little turd-butt!

  I am educated, yes, but some people have Nobel Prizes and forget to turn the stove off. I feel kinship with such people. I hated to let down Gramma Gladys. She was dead, but I felt we communed. When I was growing up, everybody—everybody—kept calling me pretty. Which was nice, but when Gramma Gladys used to tell me I was smart, I felt special and strong. She was the only one who ever told me I was smart.

  My cell phone played “Fame,” and I dug it out of my purse.

  “I was at cocktails last night with some casting people,” said Marly Haynes, my agent. “Fame” was the ring song I’d selected for her incoming number, a little bit of hopeful irony. “You didn’t get it, sunshine.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, palming the wheel onto the ramp to the Hollywood Freeway.

  “M’kenge said your screams weren’t real enough.”

  “She did, huh?”

  “Yeah, she said you sounded like a coed during a panty raid.”

  “I didn’t think college boys did panty raids anymore.”

  “Well, she must’ve read a history book. Look, I think we need to skip horror auditions for a while. It was a faulty strategy for you. My bad.”

  A cushion flew off a sofa somebody was moving in a pickup truck. I swerved as it tumbled along the concrete, breaking apart into a thousand beige stuffing chunks. “Thanks, Marly. Uh, well, let’s move on, then. Any word from the Oatberger people?”

  “Not yet, but I’m working on them. You would be perfect for Oatberger, just perfect.”

  “I know.”

  Every man, woman, and child in Hollywood was talking about Serge Oatberger’s new project, Third Chance Mountain. Based on the hit novel by the same title—I forget the author—the movie reportedly was going to be the most ambitious yet by the legendary director. He dealt with important themes in new, imaginative ways. Like if there was a death scene coming up, he wouldn’t do the obviou
s thing of showing a flower dropping its petals. He’d put in something like a gecko rubbing its nose against a rock, and you would have to work a little to interpret that. All of his images came together so beautifully, and at the end there was never any doubt about right versus wrong. Every man, woman, and child actor in Hollywood wanted roles in his movies.

  Oatberger hated working with stars. He liked humble people who took nothing for granted. And he really liked actresses who were youthful but not kidlike, wore bob-style haircuts, and had learned acting from Karen Bell and Sam Wojczyk. At any rate, he tended to put one such actress in the lead or second lead of every one of his movies. Then they’d win an Academy Award and become stars and he wouldn’t want to work with them again. Who cared at that point? They were stars.

  _____

  It is a privilege to be chosen to do Storytime by the personnel of the Los Angeles Central Library. Storytime is every Saturday afternoon and there’s competition for it. To have a good chance of being selected, you don’t just offer to read some story from a book, you must either (a) tell your very own folk story or (b) tell an old story in your own new folk-type way, preferably in costume or with hand shadows or other cultural features.

  I demoed how I could give a new spin to Hansel and Gretel, with sock puppets. That was a winner.

  Given the events of the morning, I didn’t feel much like performing, but the puppets were ready and I was certain my mood would improve once I began. Besides, I was getting paid fifty bucks, which equaled Petey’s recent vaccination deductible.

  _____

  “‘Where to today, Hansel?’ asked Gretel.

  “‘Straight into the heart of the forest!’ shouted the boy.

  “‘But why?’

  “‘Papa says fairies live there.’”

  I felt so incredibly glad the children were too young and pure to snicker at fairies. My heart swelled with love for them, the whole crowd of fledglings sitting there in the gorgeous glow of the warm wood-paneled children’s room. It was the kind of room—big, serious, not junked up with construction-paper daisies—that prompted in kids respectful behavior. They were the lucky little folk of Los Angeles: children whose parents brought them to the library for a spot of free culture on the weekend. Children whose parents gave two shits.

  The sock puppets I’d created last night had button eyes and tiny pompon noses, and the Gretel puppet wore a punkish hairstyle of sewn-on Brillo. Hansel sported a tiny cap of Yoplait foil.

  The puppets did the dialogue, but my face and voice were the solder that welded my audience to me. The young humans ranged in age from three to seven years today, roughly, plus one girl of about thirteen, hanging humbly in back. It was a multicultural bunch, reflecting today’s Los Angeles: much perfect brown clean skin, varying eye shapes. The older girl, I saw, was unwilling to grow into the small breasts nature had seen fit to slap on her one night recently while she was unconscious. I met her gaze with a big-sister look that said, Don’t worry, dear one, you don’t have to be a grown-up yet. I kind of wish I hadn’t gotten there myself.

  I flung my soul into the story. The sock puppets played and quarreled and then sat side by side on my knees, and their scrunchy faces turned up to listen intently to their parents, whom I portrayed by shifting my shoulders and assuming each persona in turn.

  “‘Fool!’ growled the stepmother, right in her husband’s face.” I bared my teeth and spat the words. “‘In that case we will all starve!’”

  The children responded to my energy and the story. The startling thing about me to them was I was actual. I was not electronic, I was not a small image on a screen. Their jaded little ears registered the change in air pressure when I dropped to a whisper or cracked a consonant. My body moved three-dimensionally, the sock puppets glided to and fro in space, their little egos bumping around harmlessly and entertainingly.

  Petey was having a ball too, completely in the here and now of being four. I caught his eye with a special wink and he blinked back, delighted.

  I swapped around parts of the plot, giving Gretel the idea of trailing the bread crumbs. Hansel ought not to be the only initiative-taker in the family. I shocked my audience by cramming Gretel’s head briefly into my mouth, to signify the freestyle dragon I invented, and I imprisoned Hansel in the horrible dark cavern of my armpit.

  The parents who’d stuck around appeared to be enjoying themselves. A few exchanged friendly looks. I hoped they were thinking, What fun! Isn’t she amazing?

  At first I didn’t notice a man standing off to the side, watching me with particular intensity. But then I did.

  He was dressed in a silk polo shirt and knife-creased chinos, nothing imaginative but obviously expensive. His posture was relaxed. He watched my face, and he watched the children watch me. His eyes were quick and smart, I thought, and his eyes were where the intensity came from.

  It wasn’t a love-at-first-sight type of intensity, nor was it a clinical intensity, though that was closer. No, he was looking at me in the sudden powerful wham! way of someone perceiving, all at once, the solution to a problem he’d been stuck cold on for months.

  Chapter 3 – A Chance Meeting

  I pulled down the story with a flourish:

  “‘O Papa! Now we are rich!’ Their papa gathered them to his heart and said, ‘We shall feast and dance tonight in our forest home! O Hansel! O Gretel! How I love you!’”

  Afterward, as I was excavating a Kleenex from my purse, chino man came up to me.

  “Congratulations,” he said, smiling.

  “Uh, thank you.”

  “You’re very good. You almost made me cry a couple of times.”

  I laughed. “Well. Thank you.” I turned away to dab my nose, then turned back. Seeing no trash basket nearby, I stuffed the tissue in my pocket. “It’s just for fun.”

  Petey, across the room, watched two older boys build a chair fort. A weary-looking librarian nearby was being cool about it.

  Chino man said, “You’re an actress, aren’t you?”

  I straightened. “Yes.” My confidence was not totally shot, so I answered that way. Yes, I am.

  Furthermore, I’m OK with the term actress. The style these days was to call all of us, male or female, actors, but I like actress. It makes me feel more—oh,—flowing.

  The man rested his elbow on a bookcase and took a long easy breath. As did I. We stood beneath one of those incredible bronze deco-type lamps that add still more serene gravity to a lovely room. The library’s odors were safe and familiar—that unmistakable cocktail of binding glue, paper dust, and rubber bands.

  “You had us all eating out of your hand,” he said. His diction was precise. He was a multicultural person himself, of Asian descent—Japanese, probably. I noticed his good grooming, lack of obvious nose hair, and Rolexy watch.

  “Well, thanks,” I answered, “but being great with sock puppets doesn’t necessarily translate to the big screen, you know? I mean … oh, you know.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. He watched me, saying nothing. As I’ve mentioned, my hair was cut in a bob, as crisp as I could get it, which swam rather upstream against the feathery layers everybody else seemed to wear, but that was the point. Plus it was a darker shade of gold than might be typical of an anxious actress, but Trini, my stylist, told me it looked good on me, and I felt his judgment was sound.

  “You’re very kind,” I said, “but I wish I could make a living at it. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  The shame of the twin fiascos of the Safeway and the pawnshop came back to me and I felt my mouth set itself against them.

  “Oh, I think you can,” said the man. “You’re very talented. Strikingly so. That’s my daughter over there.”

  In Los Angeles, when you are an unemployed actress and you are approached by a well-dressed stranger who spews compliments, you stick out your hand and say your name.

  “I’m Rita Farmer.”

  He grasped my hand firmly with both of his. “Gary Kwan.” Hi
s hands were exactly the same temperature as mine. He moved his left one subtly to my wrist, as if feeling my muscle tone, or pulse. His name had a familiar ring, but at the moment I was coming up blank. He was a handsome son of a gun, but the look in his eyes wasn’t a come-on one.

  “I’m an attorney,” he told me, “and I think you might be able to help me.” He glanced around. “I’m not in the movie business, but I’d like to talk to you about an acting job. Are you working now?” He settled himself more comfortably against the bookcase, one arm hugging himself, shoulder down, making his body language slightly submissive.

  That’s unusual for a guy to do when he’s talking to a woman. I noticed and appreciated it. “Actually,” I said, “I’m auditioning all the time. I have a couple of important ones coming up, uh, which means no! No, I’m totally unemployed.”

  Gary Kwan’s laugh was warm, and I realized that didn’t fit my image of him, and then I remembered my image of him.

  “Oh! Gary Kwan. Gary Kwan, oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry I didn’t connect your name before. Roscoe Jamison!”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  I could think of nothing to say except, “Well, uh, how is Roscoe?”

  He laughed again. “Roscoe’s great! Enjoying his freedom.”

  “Did they ever catch—”

  His tone hardened. “No. Not yet.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or sarcastic. So I just said, “Right.” Then it occurred to me that he was just being professionally neutral. It wasn’t his business to wink about Roscoe Jamison, the professional golfer who’d been arrested with his ex-wife’s blood all over his shirt but who beat the rap, thanks to Gary Kwan’s defense team, which did this incredible jujitsu move against the prosecution by showing how the arresting cop could have gotten there first and sliced apart Mrs. Jamison with her own steak knife, then swabbed blood all over Roscoe while he was asleep, which made perfect sense to that particular jury.