The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  “I am smart but this man, he made me stupid,” she began, and Rowe saw that, for her, that was the alpha and the omega of it.

  Tenaway, last summer, had found her through the seedy conduits of the town’s after-hours taverns. He had wanted a new U.S. passport, and she agreed to supply it, for three thousand dollars.

  Her method for American passports, which were next to impossible to forge from scratch, was to zero in on a tourist who resembled her client, and who planned to stay in Brazil for at least a week. She would get a look at the tourist’s passport, briefly stealing it if need be to make a quick photocopy. She was good at lifting wallets from day bags, and she had an arrangement with maids at certain hotels. But she would return the passport so it wouldn’t be missed. She would go to her studio and fabricate a replica of it that would fool neither a customs officer nor any government’s computer system. That was not the point; once the replica was exchanged for the real—during another secret visit—the tourist would believe he had his passport up until the moment he tried to use it.

  Meanwhile, the original, perfect passport would have been used by Maria Helena’s client, then destroyed once past the border. This method guaranteed smooth transit for the client. But all this spying and thieving were risky. She was beginning to use some of the rough boys of Ouro Prêto to help her. But that was risky too.

  When she delivered Tenaway’s new passport to him, he rejected it—the owner of the passport was not nearly as handsome as he. He insisted Maria Helena take a photograph of him and replace it in the passport.

  Maria Helena had had to explain to him how one ought to change one’s appearance for a border crossing anyway—one should use hair coloring, new glasses, and makeup to alter the contours of the face. She teased him that he would have to make himself ugly to be successfully anonymous.

  One thing led to another, and Tenaway took Maria Helena to a fine hotel in Belo Horizonte, where no one would know them. With an expressionlessness that Rowe recognized as buried agony, she told Rowe and Raimundo she had been a virgin. She had known enough to reject the dopey boys of Ouro Prêto for all the years of her life. Rowe felt a physical pang at that all the years of her life—for she would have been only fifteen then.

  She gave herself to Tenaway, swept into bad judgment by his charm, his sophistication, his beauty, his promises. She called him Ricardo. They stayed at the hotel three nights in a row. She tried to explain that she had thought men’s promises could only be believed if they could deliver on them, and Tenaway clearly had the means to do so. He had promised to enroll her in film school in the U.S. He had pledged her his body, there in the high-priced hotel room with chocolates and lilies.

  There had been a woman around him at first, Maria Helena knew, because she could smell her on him, but the second night she could not, and she supposed the woman, whom she never saw, had gone away. That night she noticed bruises on Tenaway’s knuckles but immediately forgot them as he told her about UCLA and Hollywood and sailboats and the rest of the horseshit a guy like that would ladle to an underage girl.

  He was an important person, and he made her feel important too. He taught her about sex, though she had been studying it in magazines and on the Internet. She lowered her eyes as she talked about this, but seemed determined to get it all out. “Ricardo” had introduced her to light bondage, which she found to be intensely pleasurable.

  Rowe wiped his face with his handkerchief.

  Still not looking up, Maria Helena said in English, “For ten thousand dollars I tell you everything, I think. You are good men, I see now.”

  Rowe and Raimundo exchanged glances.

  Resuming her narrative in Portuguese, she told them that on the fourth morning of their affair Tenaway asked her to bring her camera and go with him to a funeral home, where he had bribed a mortician’s helper. There they staged the photo Eileen Tenaway had brought back from Brazil along with the pot of cremated ashes. The mortician’s helper applied the makeup, laughing all the while at the reversal of making a live man look dead.

  Wiping off the makeup, Tenaway explained that he would take Maria Helena away the next day. She packed her satchel, said goodbye to her family, and rode the bus to the São Paulo airport. He, of course, never showed.

  Two days later she returned home, narrowly in time to stop her brothers from convincing their mother to empty the bank account Maria Helena had signed over to her. At the time there were seventy thousand reals in the account, equaling perhaps thirty thousand American dollars.

  The brothers knew that Maria Helena’s boyfriend, whoever he was, must have thrown her over, and they jeered at her. The mother had intuited everything and was already crying. She had not tried to prevent Maria Helena from leaving, because while she benefited from her daughter’s work as a forger, she knew Maria Helena too would end up in jail unless she got away. At that point, Maria Helena had not the courage to go to America by herself. But now she was sixteen, a grown woman, ready to make her way in the big world.

  She sipped her coffee and spread some more cheese on a round of bread. She ate the bread with the cheese.

  Rowe spent a moment imagining how it would feel to knock Richard Tenaway to the ground, flip him onto his stomach, steady him by planting a shoe on his back, pull up his head by his wavy pretty hair, and slit his throat wide open.

  Old Raimundo scraped his chair and ordered a brandy for himself. His eyes showed that he was mentally transposing his own granddaughter into Maria Helena’s place. He gnawed his lips. Rowe asked for more coffee and watched the girl eat. Her table manners were nice.

  Rowe took a Hacky Sack from his pocket and tossed it back and forth in his hands.

  Maria Helena’s eyes lit up.

  He handed her the toy, and she jumped up from the table, dropped the little soft sphere, caught it with her foot, then with a hop tossed it to her other foot, kicked it up, caught it in her hand, and sat down again, laughing.

  Rowe said, “Where do you think he went?”

  Chapter 22 – Petey Stresses Out

  LOS ANGELES

  I mourned Gary. I mourned the loss of the possibility of sex with him. I grieved for the stupid fantasy I’d built up about our lives and children merging. In the interstices, thoughts of tiny Gabriella kept coming at me. I wondered whether the dress she wore in the studio portraits had been her favorite garment, or whether perhaps she preferred a pair of red corduroy overalls. Sometimes, reading tales of unimaginable violence in the newspapers, I decided Gabriella had been a lucky child—she merely went to sleep—forever—had not been raped, strangled, mutilated. Could never be.

  When Jeff brought Petey home Sunday night, he acted all confrontational, which meant puffed chest, lowered lids—you know that smug thing?—and theories as to why the world is not a perfect place.

  “You’re just a plain old traditional bad mother,” he informed me as Petey dashed to his bedroom to play with whatever the hell new game Jeff had bought him for his ScoreLad. “He seems afraid of something. Maybe it’s that fag you’ve got for a babysitter. And look at this neighborhood, huh? You call this safe?”

  “Lay off Daniel. What the hell are you talking about?” Discreetly, I whiffed the air for tequila or petroleum. He seemed straight, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Those characters hanging around the park.”

  “You mean the old guys?”

  The elderly men who monopolized the picnic tables played checkers and cards for money and were supposed to be kingpins in the Russian mafia. People said so, but I didn’t think it was a problem. Petey would one day be old enough to go there by himself. The men never talked to any kids. Once in a while you’d see a couple of druggies sitting in the dirt, but they kept to themselves.

  Jeff scuffed the edge of his Nike sneaker on the rug, leaving a dirty line. “Obviously you can’t even afford a decent apartment for my son, even with all the child support I pay. What happens to all my money, besides buying shitty furniture? Do you snort it up your nose?”


  “Jeff, what?”

  As I think I’ve mentioned, he was a high-level accountant (practically CFO!) for a fancy restaurant chain. So fancy, in fact, they don’t even call it anything so vulgar as a chain, no, they call it a collection of restaurants.

  He just stood there, so I said, “Your income is great, Jeff. And I’m glad you pay your child support on time. But guess what? I’ve been getting a little work. We’re doing all right. Petey might be a little anxious right now,” I conceded, “but—”

  “Unlike your work,” he interrupted, sarcastic air quotes around work, “my position with Continental Pavilions will keep paying me year in and year out. What’re you going to do when your commercial for Joe Blow’s Used Cars goes out of syndication? No, Rita”—he chuckled nastily—“you’re a total, perfect failure. And I think Petey needs counseling. I’m setting up a date for him with Harold Saxby.”

  “Who’s Harold Saxby?”

  “That just goes to show, doesn’t it?” he sneered. “Harold Saxby is the most prominent kids’ psychiatrist in L.A.”

  There was something going on as dangerous as it was obvious: Jeff was laying serious groundwork to challenge our custody arrangement. I felt my spinal muscles tighten. I didn’t know what to say or do. He added that he was taking Petey to San Diego for the Spider-Man World Convention two weekends from now, “to give him something to look forward to. I’m trying to get him centered.”

  Centered? That had to be girlfriend-speak. I said, “Oh, it sounds like a perfect venue for that.” I could imagine how nice and calming a superhero festival, with its jumbo-trons and trinket-hawkers and sugared beverages, would be for a four-year-old.

  Jeff added some more nasty comments and took off.

  Later, Petey slammed his pre-bedtime snack of warm pudding to the floor and yelled, “I hate you! Daddy never makes me go to bed!”

  As mildly as possible, I said, “I’ll bet not.”

  He jumped up and yanked the electrical cord of one of our new Swedish lamps, toppling it to the floor, where to my astonishment he stomped on it with all his might, cracking it to pieces, from papyrus-style shade to geometric anodized-looking base.

  “Petey!” Shocked not by the loss of the lamp but by the deliberateness of the destruction, I pulled him to me. His flushed little face was so appallingly full of malice, I could not speak. As if determined to push me over the brink, he socked me in the stomach. His sharp fist felt like an ice pick going into me.

  “We don’t hurt!” I roared.

  Then I slapped him across the face.

  I wish I could say I did it before I knew what I was doing, but that would be a lie. I meant to hurt him. My baby boy!

  For a second he stood absolutely still, eyes wide, mouth slack. Then he took that first deep breath of anguish, and the world split when he began howling. And for the first time in his life when in tears, he ran away from me. He hid under his pillow and would not let me touch him for a long time.

  _____

  I spent that long dreadful night sleepless, berating myself as only a guilt-ridden mother can. I could have given him a concussion. I could have killed him. I was a hypocrite. Jeff was right: I was a plain old traditional bad mother. If I killed myself, would it do any good? No, my punishment was living with this memory for the rest of my life. After Petey permitted me to tell him I’d done a terribly wrong thing, he fell asleep. I checked in on him and rechecked. His face, now, was that of the tenderest cherub Michelangelo ever painted.

  I wanted Gary. I wanted the thought of Gary to soothe me, but it didn’t, couldn’t.

  I tried to read Heaven’s Dose of Comfort, which one of my aunts had sent me for my birthday the year before, but not even that collection of heartwarming stories could ease my agony.

  It’s hard not to make eye contact with yourself when you’re applying mascara, but Monday morning I found it can be done.

  When I met with Eileen I asked her about a woman named Janet and a storage locker key. She shrugged and shook her head.

  “I don’t know anyone named Janet,” she said, meeting my eyes with the practiced, wide gaze we’d worked on in the lockup.

  I did not feel comfortable with that.

  Court came to order. During the brief moments I was able to get my mind off my horribleness, I watched the trial and brooded.

  Eileen was doing well, doing the strategy we’d settled on, even adding her own touches. One gesture she’d perfected was what I called the high-duck shrug in which, in reaction to some dubious prosecutorial point, she’d shrug up her shoulders while simultaneously ducking her head, as if she’d been startled by a low-flying fruit bat. Then immediately she’d straighten and look at either Gary or me with a rueful quarter-smile. It was a wonderfully expressive move.

  By now there wasn’t much more actual work for me to do with her; my holding cell visits had dropped off, and I acted mostly as her quiet support. We didn’t talk much.

  I watched her and wondered. I wanted to find out more about Gabriella’s death on my own. I wanted to skulk around looking for clues, I wanted to talk tough to shady characters. I’d vary my route home every night out of boredom, and as I’d pass through the ickier sections of Sunset or Pico, I’d wonder like a yokel, would any of these shuffling dirty characters know something? Would one of them recognize that ball cap from the bushes?

  More rumors were cropping up about the financial difficulties of Gemini Imports, and I had to speculate yet again about Padraig McGower. Looking at his suave figure in the courtroom, it suddenly struck me that he might have killed Gabriella, as a way of getting back at Richard Tenaway for his embezzlement, if Tenaway did indeed siphon resources from the company. That crazy Janet may have been right about that, who knew?

  It was possible McGower did it, or paid for it to be done. Yet he simply did not give off the creepy vibe you’d expect. If he had done it, that proved McGower knew Tenaway was alive somewhere, waiting for...what? Maybe nothing. Maybe he’d gotten away with everything. Except there were the life insurance millions, controlled by Eileen. I just couldn’t rationalize McGower putting himself at risk for the sake of vengeance.

  “Maybe,” I suggested to Gary during a recess, “McGower’s just pretending to be supportive of Eileen. Why would he want to help her?”

  “Goodness of his heart,” muttered Gary, reading a deposition on his laptop. We’d remained at the defense table as everybody else went to the bathroom or whatever. Eileen had been taken backstage to use the facilities in the lockup. It was the seventh week of the trial and it had begun to seem that we’d all be doing this forever, breaking only to get fitted for dentures and hearing aids and so on.

  “Maybe,” I persisted, “she’s promised him some helpful information.”

  He looked up and sighed. “And maybe a fleet of swans is about to carry this courthouse to a serene mountaintop.” His eyes were tired.

  It was a beautiful image, but all I said was, “Never mind.” I wondered if right now George Rowe might be grappling with Richard Tenaway on some serene mountaintop.

  “Look,” Gary said, “I have a little job for you.”

  I defensively thought, Well, I am doing a job already, unless you’ve forgotten.

  He said, “I want you to rent a house for Eileen in case she gets acquitted. The prosecution’s about to wrap up, and I really don’t think I’m going to belabor our defense. So it won’t be long, one way or the other. I have my plans, and I feel quite confident. Take the rest of the day.”

  “What about her own house?”

  “The press’ll be there like lice. She’ll be better off with a quiet place to decompress for a while. Find a place up a canyon somewhere. Or up the coast, but not too far. Private. Big. She can afford it. Sign a six-month lease. I’ll write you a check.” He went back to reading.

  _____

  When money is no object, things can happen so fast. In two phone calls I’d found a high-end rental agent with a good reputation, and before night fell I�
��d seen four houses and shaken hands on one: a posh Mission-style place up Topanga Canyon with a heart-stopping view of the Pacific, five secluded acres of gardens, and a pool with a high dive, all for only seven thousand a month. I brushed my hands on my skirt as I walked back to the agent’s Bentley, thinking, There now, that’s how you do business around here! Throw somebody else’s money around!

  _____

  Tracy Beck-Rubin began her summation on Thursday of that week, wearing her freshly pressed navy blue suit and, startlingly, a brand-new pair of navy Naturalizers. Puttin’ on the dog there, Trace.

  I felt like lead inside, still so dark and heavy about Petey, who had awakened talking of the upcoming Spider-Man convention. Jeff was trying to turn him against me, clearly. What the hell could I do about it? Stick it out all nicey-nice until the kid’s eighteen?

  I thought it was telling that Beck-Rubin spent so much time belittling the evidence she expected the defense to highlight: the forced lock, the Starbucks cup with a cigarette stubbed out in the dregs, the hat in the bushes—“nothing, really,” said she. “What we do have is evidence that the night this innocent child was murdered in her bedroom, the defendant staged it all after the fact. It’s been done before.”

  Innocent child was murdered.

  Child was murdered.

  Bedroom.

  The Starbucks cup.

  The Starbucks cup.

  Something stirred deep within my medulla oblongata.

  Wham! went my brain cells. Slam! went my gut as I remembered the Starbucks cup and cigarette butts in Petey’s room the night Daniel’s show got canceled. Dear God!

  At that instant I knew that the night Gabriella Tenaway died, evidence of an intruder had indeed been planted—but not by Eileen. And certainly not by Padraig McGower. No, this one had a woman’s touch all over it—a psychopathic woman’s touch.

  I don’t know if I muttered anything to Gary; my heart was thundering out of my chest. I leaped from the defense table and tore out of the courtroom. I heard a shout behind me, but panic drove me and there was no pausing.