The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  I don’t remember starting my car, gunning it out of the underground garage, and flooring it up the 405. I don’t remember anything until I pulled up at the preschool and stampeded to Petey’s classroom.

  Where is he? Where is my boy?

  There in the corner! He was mixing paint in a bean can, clutching a stained brush, gazing dreamily at a sheet of white poster paper the teacher had just clipped to his easel.

  As I snatched him into my arms, startling the living hell out of him, I saw that the paint was a gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful, perfect shade of summer green, and as it flew out of the can and splashed down Petey’s blue sweatshirt and soaked into my toffee-brown suit jacket, it looked absolutely lovely.

  “Wow!” he said. “Mommy!”

  After making a nonsensical explanation to the teacher, I calmed down, stripped off Petey’s sweatshirt (thankful I’d put a T-shirt on him as well), returned him to the peaceful sheepfold of the classroom, dabbed my suit with a paper towel, and called Daniel on my cell phone from the school steps.

  “Did anyone ever,” I asked, “come into the apartment while you were babysitting?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “Ever?” I pressed.

  I heard his exercise video in the background. He owned the entire Hurts So Good series by that famous former POW, what’s his name? The guy who makes guys feel like they’re really in the army while they’re trying to do their hundredth push-up. “Again, you pussy! And again! And—”

  “Just a sec,” said my friend, and the video went mute. “No, nobody ever came by. I mean, I never had any company over, if that’s what you’re wondering. Why?”

  My throat eased. “OK. Good. I’m kind of embarrassed to tell you this, but I just made a fool of—”

  “Oh, wait a minute, Rita, I mean nobody came over except that one night when the super stopped in.”

  “The super? You mean the property manager? When was that?” A bird cheeped weakly in a bush next to the school steps. I glanced over. A baby had fallen—or been pushed—from a mud-daub nest beneath the eaves. Tiny and fuzzy, it was sitting on the ground uttering painful rapid cries. From the stone ledge two stories above, an adult swallow looked on in distress. The baby beat its beensy wings and rocked from side to side.

  “Let’s see,” said Daniel. “It was the night my show got canceled. I was so busy feeling sorry for myself I guess I forgot to mention it.”

  “Oh. Well, what was that about?”

  “She said she was the building supervisor, and she wanted to check the security light outside Petey’s room, where the fire escape is. We chatted for a few minutes about acting and so on. She tested the light, it was fine, and she left.”

  “She?” With sickening slowness, my heart grew cold. “My building manager is a guy. Did she introduce herself?”

  “Well, maybe it was his wife or something. Funny, I don’t think she ever said her name.”

  “Was she black?”

  “No, she was white.”

  “My building manager and his wife are black,” I said grimly. “Was she holding a Starbucks cup when she came in, by any chance?”

  “Uh, yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Was she smoking?”

  “Damn.”

  “Daniel, what?”

  His voice took on his abashed confessional tone, which usually I found charming. “To be honest, Rita, she and I had a cigarette on the fire escape. She offered me one, and I thought what the hell. I know you asked me not—”

  “Did you use the coffee cup for an ashtray?” I asked.

  “Yes. I must have—”

  “Left it on the windowsill.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, God, Daniel.”

  “If my littering was such a big deal, how come you didn’t mention it before?”

  I didn’t answer, but made him describe the “super.” As his voice projected her face, hair, and mannerisms, a picture coalesced on my mental movie screen of the only person it could possibly be: Janet. I tried to remember the pack of cigarettes that sat before her on the table at the Starbucks on Santa Monica. The butt left in the cup at Eileen’s house was Benson & Hedges. When I asked Daniel if he could remember the brand the super offered him, he said, “I think it was Benson & Hedges.”

  “Did she say something like, ‘I myself’ am this or that?”

  “Yeah! She used that exact expression.”

  “How about jewelry?”

  “Well, she had these gigantic rhinestone earrings that looked like they were from my mom’s dress-up box.”

  “Could they have been topazes? Or were they green? Emeralds?”

  “They were amber-colored, I think. Plus she had this flashy faux-emerald pendant that was just too much.”

  “How did you know it was faux?”

  “I don’t know, you just don’t wear real jewels like that to your job in an apartment house.”

  I made him promise to be extra-careful about Petey, our angelic little bastard. “Be sure to get there before school ends every day, OK?”

  “I promise. But Rita, what’s this all about?”

  “I’ll tell you soon. Just be careful with him.”

  “Relax. Who’s going to mess with me?”

  I looked up at the empty nest again. There was no way I could reach it to return the baby to it. As I stood watching the baby bird, it moved. With a burst of energy, it skittered into the bushes and was gone.

  Chapter 23 – Blind Date

  When I reached Gary on his cell he was driving to the office after court. I explained my sudden exit from the courtroom.

  He listened, then simply said, “That is a little strange. Well, be careful. This will all be over soon.”

  I stared into the lightwell. “That’s all I get?” I asked plaintively. “‘Be careful’?”

  “Rita, what do you want from me?” Gary’s voice was tired. “I’m trying to marshal my energy here. What I need is a goddamned night off from all this. Clear my mind. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Then a brilliant idea occurred to me. “Come to my apartment tonight for dinner. I’ll fix my Gramma Gladys’s meatloaf. And—and—I have a friend I think you’ll enjoy meeting.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ll forbid talk of work. We’ll forbid worrying. We’ll have some wine. Come on, what say?”

  “Hm.”

  “Gary, he’s cute.”

  “Rita! Are you trying to fix me up?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “Well...all right!”

  _____

  Daniel was, to my surprise, quite torn at the prospect of a blind semi-date with someone of my choosing.

  “I totally trust your judgment,” he said fervently, “but I’ve just been so burned lately.”

  I was scurrying around my apartment with the phone to my ear, doing the one-handed tidying dance. “It’s just for fun,” I told him. “Don’t get too keyed up. But he is wonderful. I met him not long ago, and I’m embarrassed to say I fell for him until—”

  “Oh, Rita, you didn’t.”

  “Look, I don’t have gaydar.” I swept my dust cloth along the bookshelf, swagging it in and out along the book spines.

  Daniel said, “But you do, at least you have it better than any straight person I know.”

  “I’m afraid I’m turning into a fag hag.”

  “Hm. I don’t think so. You’re not old enough yet. If you hit menopause before you get married again, I’d start to worry, but—”

  “Do not even speak it. Hey, remember when you were telling me about your ideal guy? This one qualifies. He’s handsome—though you’re handsomer—smart, mature, accomplished—”

  “So how come he’s not claimed already?”

  “Well—I’d say he’d be the best person to answer that.”

  “Hm.”

  Whew. Hotfooted it through that one. I flicked a dead fly off a windowsill. Daniel still seemed undecided, so I briefly changed the subject. “Hey, I b
ought a new cartridge for the kitchen faucet. I’ll try to put it in this weekend so that drip’ll stop. But being a guy, do you think I’ll need any special tools? Because—”

  “The only tool you need is a phone. Call a plumber. Or the landlord, for God’s sake.”

  Daniel believed one hundred percent in summoning experts. “He’s out of town,” I said. “But I like doing things myself. Or trying, anyway.”

  “Well, that’s the key phrase, isn’t it: or trying. Listen to me. Never do for yourself anything you can pay a professional to do. It’s always cheaper in the long run. You’ll try to fix it and screw it up and have to call somebody to come and fix not only the original problem, but the new problems you’ve caused.”

  I said, “I’ll call a plumber if you’ll come over for dinner.”

  He made a sound as if he’d just had a boil lanced. “All right. All right. Do you think I should wear my cashmere T-shirt, the periwinkle one?”

  “Absolutely. You look gorgeous in it. And not too much hair gel.”

  “Rita, I know how to do my hair.”

  _____

  I bribed Petey with McDonald’s and unlimited Spider-Man on his ScoreLad until bedtime, which I moved up to seven-thirty, by which time his little peepers were so tired they rolled shut like doll eyes. I made sure his window was locked tight.

  I lit some candles and chilled a good bottle of Chardonnay to go with the crab dip, and stationed the Cabernet on the counter for use with the meatloaf. Gramma Gladys really did know how to make a great meatloaf—moist but firm, no ketchup, plenty of onions.

  I’m not that much of a chef, if you haven’t noticed. I love good food, but I never learned to cook as well as I wanted. I never got that knack where you look in the cupboard, see what’s there, and throw a few things together with that indefinable cooking intelligence some people have. So I generally follow recipes. My older sister has that cooking intelligence. I could live on nuts and chocolate and red wine.

  When Gary walked through the door and saw Daniel, they both stopped in mid-“Hi.” Their faces looked like they’d hit cold air. Frozen, stunned.

  They stared at each other. I didn’t know what to do.

  Finally Gary opened his mouth. Slowly, he said, “Whiskers on kittens.”

  “Schnitzel with noodles!” exclaimed Daniel.

  “Huh?” I said.

  They looked at me. Daniel burst out laughing. For a few horrible seconds I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake, like one of those nauseating sitcom moments when one person starts laughing and then everybody joins in.

  But he kept laughing, delightedly, and then Gary laughed too. “Heh-heh ha!”

  “Guys, please. What have I just done?”

  They ignored me. Daniel, smiling wide as a river, opened his arms, and Gary practically fell into them, still laughing.

  There was a what-the-hell feeling in the air.

  Whiskers on kittens.

  Schnitzel with noodles.

  Even I finally figured out the unbelievable. “Oh, don’t tell me.”

  “It’s true,” Gary said, wiping his eyes. “We met at Sing-a-long-a Sound of Music.”

  “In San Francisco,” added Daniel. “Castro Theater. Popcorn line.”

  Gary said, “He wore little whiskers under his nose, that was all. Simple. Eloquent.”

  My God, they were kindred Rodgers and Hammerstein buffs. I’d known it of Daniel, but only at this instant did I realize Gary was one too. Suddenly I remembered little moments when he’d quoted bits of lyrics—from The King and I, South Pacific, Carousel. I’d gotten used to discovering unexpected connections between people in L.A.—it’s a much smaller town than people think—but this was extreme.

  As they broke their semi clinch, “How,” I asked, “did Gary make himself look like schnitzel with noodles?”

  Daniel looked at me kindly. “Sometimes it’s best not to learn certain details.” Then he stepped back, hands on hips, and said, “I’ve known for a long time where you’ve been going every day, but never, like a dummy, did I connect it with Gary. I thought you were doing something else at the courthouse.”

  “How did you know I was going there?”

  “I followed you a couple of times. To the jail too. But I never saw you two together. I always lost sight of you going into the parking garage, and I never followed because I didn’t want to be too obtrusive.”

  “Well—now you know.”

  Daniel laughed incredulously. “Know what? You’re working for Gary, right? But what the hell are you doing—giving Eileen Tenaway tips on how to snow the jury?”

  I looked at Gary, who said, “Um, yes.”

  “Really?”

  Gary said, “I can explain it to you.”

  I withdrew to open wine. Whatever was about to happen, I wasn’t going to make us all face it stone sober. From the quiet of the kitchen I heard Gary say, “I’ve missed you.”

  Softly, Daniel said, “I couldn’t wait for you. You know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve regretted it.”

  “So have I.”

  Chapter 24 – Nuts With Tips

  “Joshua Tree again, Sally?” A woman in a kimono robe and tinfoil pincurls peeked from behind her apartment door. Her skin sagged, but her face was kind. “I see you got a new backpack.”

  “Yes, I was about to call and let you know,” said her neighbor. “I’m leaving tonight. I’ll be back in a week, I think.”

  It was now Wednesday of the Tenaway trial’s eighth week, and Gary Kwan had that morning launched into the case for Eileen Tenaway’s defense, sparking a new surge of press coverage. The woman named Sally carried a newspaper with Gary’s picture on it.

  The other woman said, “Well, it’s getting dark now. You going soon?”

  “Yes.”

  Sally Jacubiak, a slightly built young woman with eyes that took a little longer to focus than most people’s, needed the desert. Her nerves were shot, just shot. She closed the door to her apartment, a gummy little place in a building on Crenshaw Avenue south of Olympic. If you opened the window for one second, oily black traffic dirt would settle on everything. One good thing the landlord had done was install tough security doors on every apartment last summer. There hadn’t been a break-in since. She threw down the paper and her sunglasses.

  Sally wore her chestnut hair in a Ukrainian-style braid pinned around her head like a crown, and it was very becoming. Though her mother found many things to criticize about her, the hair was not one of them. “Our women know da best way to wear hair,” her mother would assert in her guttural accent. “Wedder they have a job or not.”

  Well, that was a fact: Sally was unemployed. She received disability payments because her shrink had convinced the state she couldn’t work. She thought she would like to work, and she tried to attract job offers by sewing small magnets into her clothing and sometimes interweaving dried herbs into her braids, but no job ever materialized. Couldn’t was such a subjective term, she thought. There were plenty of things she could do, certainly, but none of them happened to bring her any income.

  After she’d filled her new pack with her stuff and tried it on, Sally Jacubiak changed into her hiking shoes, placed the pack next to the door, set her keys on it, and turned to look at the telephone in her dining nook. She glanced apprehensively at the door, then made a decision.

  _____

  Mark Sharma gazed at his increasingly portly, full-length reflection in the night windows of Gary’s office and asked briskly, “And your conclusion, Doctor?”

  He shifted his weight, stepping one foot dynamically forward. He hooked a thumb into his belt loop, flipping his suit coat open in an assertive, comfortable gesture. “Please tell the jury exactly how your analysis showed the DNA from the ball cap came from a possible sex offender.”

  Gary had launched the case for the defense brilliantly today, and in one or two days’ time, Sharma would be handling their witnesses on physical evidence.

  Mark b
ecame aware of a phone ringing. Irritated, he ignored it, but it rang on. He strode to Gary’s desk. “Yes?” he said into the receiver, Gary-style.

  “Um,” said a tense female voice. “I thought I’d get a machine. I wanted to leave a message for Gary Kwan.”

  Something in her voice, an extraordinary urgency, made Mark Sharma hesitate. On a hunch, he said, “This is Gary.”

  “Oh!” said the voice. “Well, I just want to tell you something that’s been, uh, well, I’m not supposed to—”

  “Just tell me,” Mark interrupted.

  “That little girl, Mr. Kwan? Her mother didn’t kill her. I think.” Sharma inhaled slowly and deeply. He grabbed a pen and wrote the number showing on caller ID on a pad of sticky notes. “You mean Gabriella Tenaway? What do you know about it?” he asked. “Norah Mintz knows something about it.”

  “Norah Mintz!”

  “Gabriella’s aunt. You know? She’s been, uh, quote-unquote missing.”

  “Yes,” said Mark, his midsection tense with excitement. “You’ve talked to her?”

  “Yes. She’s my friend.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At the moment I don’t know.”

  “Why do you think she knows something about this case?”

  “She herself told me. We were watching TV and the trial came on the news. She said, ‘That kid was a brat, but her mother didn’t kill her.’”

  Mark Sharma’s eyes narrowed. “Have you called the police?” Sally Jacubiak snorted. “They wouldn’t be interested. I’m not stupid, you know. The police never like to be wrong. They come after you.”

  Hearing the instability in her voice, Sharma agreed, “Good point.”

  “Mr. Kwan, I knew you’d be the best person to tell this information to. See, I once had a dog I rescued from a homeless situation.”

  “Yes?”

  “So you can see I feel strongly about injustice.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “I’m taking my life in my hands telling you this.”

  “Why is that?”