The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  This morning I found myself composed: I felt strong, curious, willful. Nothing was a game. Nothing would be there for me if I crumpled.

  Crumpling was a luxury you could have if there was a safety net for you.

  I felt very unsafe.

  True, I had Daniel, but he had his own shit to deal with. His ideal man had been returned to him, then snatched away. He was unemployed. He loved me like a brother, but he could not make life different for me. He could not manipulate my world as I needed it to be done.

  In the wake of something like this I expected total chaos. Just last week, Steve Calhoun had said, “Only Mount Rushmore has a higher profile than this trial.”

  But I learned this day a valuable lesson: when chaos comes, you carve it into chunks and address them one at a time. In this way all the parts are carried away and dealt with. By the police, the evidence-gatherers and -analyzers. By the coroner with his bone saws and microscope slides. By the widow in seclusion with her rage, bafflement, and little kid whose permanent footnote would be *Daughter of Murdered Lawyer Gary Kwan. By family in Japan, the friends, the broker, the barber. By the media, of course. We are all audience for the Spaceship Media. It chews you up and spits you out, then makes you watch.

  When I dropped Petey off at preschool at seven o’clock, a man with a friendly face stopped us outside on the steps. “Ms. Farmer?”

  He sported one of those straw porkpie hats that suburban dads used to wear to barbecues. Now they were in style with handsome black guys at Dodgers games.

  “Yes?” I gripped Petey’s hand tighter, friendly face or no.

  He handed me an envelope, tipped his hat—quaint gesture!—and said, “Thank you.”

  I hoped the envelope would be full of payola—I don’t know—but I had a bad feeling this fellow was a process server.

  The other moms and dads hurried past. Petey tugged against my antilock grip. I’d dressed him in a sweater this cool morning, having mended his Spider-Man jacket but left it, for now, in my sewing drawer. I released him into the school and went to my car holding the envelope.

  As I unlocked the door, quick footsteps pounded behind me.

  I whirled.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t catch you,” said Ms. Crayden, a large, Birkenstock-wearing woman, “but I wanted to talk about Petey for a minute. I’m afraid he’s gone back to hitting the other kids.” She angled her eyebrows apologetically, but her gaze was pretty direct.

  “Oh!” I cleared my throat, “Well—”

  “Rather a lot.” Ms. Crayden had been in this preschool racket for at least a decade and did not shrink from difficult facts. “It’s become an issue.”

  “I see. Well—”

  “Is there any trouble at home?”

  “Oh, no. Things are fine at home, but you know his dad and I are divorced, and maybe he’s, um, feeling a little, uh—”

  Dominantly, she set her hip against the fender of my car. “I’ve tried to work with him on it, but he hasn’t been cooperative. The other parents aren’t happy. Would you talk to him, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Because otherwise—”

  “Yes! Of course!”

  I went with her into the school and took Petey aside. I squatted down, gripped his little tan sweater, and got in his face. “Ms. Crayden tells me you’ve been hitting.”

  He opened his eyes and mouth wide, the signal for an oncoming lie, so I quickly said, “We don’t hurt. OK? Remember we’ve talked about that?”

  He hung his head.

  I felt for him, because he didn’t have a little brother or sister to beat up. He had to go through this on his own: learning the exhilaration of hitting, the feeling of mastery hitting brings, then making the dismaying discovery that you can’t keep doing it.

  “We’ll talk some more later, OK? Have I ever told you the story of the little panda bear who liked to hit other little pandas?”

  “No,” he mumbled to the floor.

  “Well, you’ll hear it tonight,” I promised grimly.

  He brightened. “I’m going to Spider Con with Daddy tonight!” His eyes danced, and I could see he was already forgetting this scolding.

  “No, honey, that’s tomorrow night.” I wished I could threaten him with not going, but no way would Jeff back me up. “Remember, honey, we don’t hurt.” I gave him a squeeze and left.

  Outside in the car I opened the envelope. Legal papers spilled out—an attorney’s letterhead, Dear Ms. Farmer—Jeff was suing me for exclusive custody of Petey on the outrageous grounds of “risk of substantial harm.”

  I pictured myself throwing the whole goddamned packet down a sewer.

  I pictured myself cramming the papers down Jeff’s surly alcoholic throat.

  I pictured myself blowing Jeff’s head off with a shotgun.

  After I’d made him swallow the papers.

  We don’t hurt.

  Yeah, my ass.

  _____

  With grave sadness, Judge Davenport took the bench. He’d known Gary for ages. The jury’s faces all showed one degree or other of freak-outedness.

  Tracy Beck-Rubin looked gray but determinedly unemotional.

  The usual media huddled about, plus a bunch more in the farther corridors and the ground-floor lobby. Padraig McGower occupied his customary seat, towering tall even sitting down. As usual, he and Eileen met eyes. I watched.

  The judge sent the jury out while he and the lawyers had a discussion in open court. Mark entered a motion to adjourn for one day.

  “Don’t you want more time than that?” asked the judge, surprised. “Don’t you think it would be appropriate to show some respect to your boss?”

  “I respect his memory,” answered Mark. “We will show respect by defending this client who has been promised a speedy trial. We are ready.”

  And I guess we were. He and I had met with Eileen earlier, and I felt my bones chill as I stood by and listened to them.

  Eileen, calm and perfectly dressed for court, had been told the news. Her expression was neutral when Mark walked into the holding cell, then it grew a little hard when she saw me. She focused her attention on Mark.

  They discussed the pros and cons of waiting a decent interval, but there really was nothing that would change about the defense strategy. Gary’s murder had nothing to do with the question of whether Eileen had fed tranquilizers to her baby girl one night six months ago.

  “But wait,” I said. “Aren’t we even going to talk about—”

  Mark interrupted, “There’s no time to sit and speculate. We have work to do.”

  He wore a fresh gray suit with a light gray shirt, and a silver tie like a sword blade down his shirtfront. He held his shoulders square and his head back. His small feet in their exotic shoes tapped with impatience and energy.

  The arrogance had come over him. Yes, I thought, this guy’s got what it takes. He’d been the little follower, the cupcake-eater, and now he’s the king of the jungle.

  Later I showed the custody-suit papers to Steve Calhoun. He was in the conference room that had been put aside for us, eating his twentieth roast beef sandwich of the trial, having hours ago come out of his initial shock about Gary. As Gary’s associates we would all be under suspicion at first. Until we were cleared. If we were cleared. He ate his sandwich steadily. Smelling it, I felt a bit sick.

  For a few minutes we talked about Gary, then I showed him the papers. He looked at them and said, “Man, this guy hates you. How did you break his balls?”

  “It’s a complicated web of bullshit, Steve.”

  “Who did your divorce?”

  I told him, and he said Jim was a good lawyer. “Just forward all this crap to him and forget about it for now. If your ex really thought your son was in danger, he would have had Protective Services on your rear already.”

  My cell phone played “Fame.”

  I thanked Steve, flipped open the phone, and left the room.

  “Hi, Marly.”

 
“Hey, sunshine, it’s closing in, just like I told you it would.”

  I rested my head on a cool steel seismic beam. “What’s closing in?”

  “Fame, baby! No more scream auditions for you, I’ll bet the farm! Oatberger wants to see you again!”

  _____

  Two police officers, one with a slight hitch in his walk from having been bitten by a Doberman during a wife-beating call the previous night, climbed the stairs to the third floor of an apartment building on Crenshaw Avenue near Olympic. The beater and wife lived in a house just a block away. He wondered if the guy had made bail. He wondered if the Doberman would pass quarantine.

  Consulting her notebook, the other officer said, “This is it,” and stopped before a door. She knocked briskly and called, “Police.” She didn’t call with an exclamation point from deep in her chest, since this was not a warrant situation, merely a question-and-look-around situation. A phone call had been placed from this address to Gary Kwan’s office last night. “Ms. Jacubiak? Police.”

  The next-door neighbor popped out and, touching her hairdo, which had come out of the tinfoil pincurls nicely this morning, touching it automatically in the presence of the male cop because he was a total hunk, said, “She’s out of town.”

  She explained about Joshua Tree and next Tuesday, which was when Sally had said she’d be back. The cops stared at the locked apartment door. “But if you need to get in, Mr. Lee will let you in, I’m sure, you being the police and all.”

  “Who’s Mr. Lee?” asked the male cop, rubbing the sore place on his arm from the tetanus shot.

  “The landlord, he’s in—”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” they said, and went away because they didn’t have cause to request a warrant.

  In the patrol car they got in touch with the park service and asked them to look for Sally Jacubiak’s car. They wanted to talk to her and any possible companions. It was a blue Audi, they said, and read off the plate number.

  Chapter 29 – Third Chance Mountain

  Twilight settled on Los Angeles, the great swath of sun moving west and away. I crammed my Honda into the parking lot at Santa Monica and Rodeo and got out. There was no breeze; traffic surged and ebbed beyond the railing; fumes; more fumes. A heavy haze was solidifying into dark clouds. Gary had not been dead twenty-four hours.

  “Gramma?”

  I waited.

  Rain is the castor oil of weather in Los Angeles. Everybody whines when it rains, they crash their cars on the suddenly slick roads, but they know it’s good for them. Rain replenishes the reservoirs and wets down the eager-to-burn undergrowth in the hills and wherever else the ground isn’t paved over.

  Moreover, winter’s grip on the city is always deceptive—in spite of the desert factor, no one ever feels safe from the sudden storms lashing in from the Pacific, carrying over the cold beaches into the city like a foretaste of old age or sickness. Spring was fighting hard to take hold.

  The first drops of a shower fell. A bit of a west wind kicked up. I remained where I was, feeling the rain on my face.

  “Well, Gramma, if that’s the way you feel, so do I. The wheels are coming off my life. I’m trying to be like you. I don’t know. I feel like I ought to be in a modicum of control here. But every time I think I am, somebody gets murdered.”

  I didn’t waste time whining about the man I loved and all that. “Should I just pack up my son and run away? I’m not a sissy, but I don’t want to be stupid. Maybe I’ve made a whole row of bad decisions without even knowing it.”

  Gramma Gladys’s voice came with a brisk gust, Hell no! Don’t you dare run away. Stand and fight. You’ve got to take them all!

  “But fight how? I mean, I can’t imagine myself—”

  To the death, Rita.

  The wind blew the rain away. I waited, not wanting to leave. Not wanting to think about fighting to the death.

  I felt a plop on my sleeve: birdshit. I peered up to see a flock of pigeons zooming gracefully away over the darkening rooftops of Rodeo Drive, chasing the rain. I reached into the Honda for a wad of McDonald’s napkins I methodically accumulated in the console for juice box spills and the like. Console. That’s such a nice word. I wiped off the oily crap and noted to self to get to the dry cleaner’s with this fairly expensive jacket that Gramma Gladys would have really liked.

  As I straightened up again to look at the sky, I heard a shuffle. A street guy rounded the car next to mine and came up to me, quite close, almost touching my sleeve. I pulled back. I hadn’t seen him coming through the parked cars.

  He ran his fingers through his greasy hair, then wiped them on his windbreaker. He jiggled one palm. “Spare change, lady, for me and my dog?”

  I sighed and held out a dollar, expecting to be thanked. I saw no dog.

  Folding the dollar, he said in a completely different voice, “What’s wrong?”

  “What?”

  “You only gave me a dollar this time. Last time it was a five.”

  “What?”

  “Wasn’t I as convincing today?”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked at him closer. It was the same bum I’d given money to before. Different coat. “Buddy, I’d like to be alone, OK?”

  “I’m Vince Devereaux,” he said.

  I looked again. For Christ’s sake, it was. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild I was entitled to vote for the Academy Awards, and I’d voted for him for best actor last year when he was in Storm Surge. He didn’t happen to win that time. I said, “What the hell?”

  “I’m preparing for a role in a picture,” he explained. “Could you tell me exactly why you didn’t think I was as convincing today as before? I’ve been panhandling on and off for two months, and I really thought I was getting better.”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe you’re trying too hard.”

  _____

  My answering machine was packed that night with messages from astonished friends who’d finally seen my face on TV or heard my name mentioned on the air as the person who had called the police to Gary’s murder scene.

  “I didn’t know you’d given up acting!” said Yvonne in dismay. “Well, paralegal—paralegal, right?—’s a nice line of work, I guess. Call me if you want to talk. I mean, how terrible for you, last night. I’m kind of wondering, you know.”

  Marly said, “Whatever you’re up to, it’s working! Oatberger himself called me again after he saw the TV report with you in it. He acted mad! He said, ‘This kind of actress I don’t need.’ But he wanted me to tell you he’ll meet with you at eleven o’clock Saturday, just like you asked. Isn’t that a kick? I played dumb about the Tenaway stuff. Which I am, because I had no idea. All I said was, ‘Well, at least she’s not sitting around the pool waiting for the phone to ring.’”

  As I was deleting messages the phone rang again. I let the machine get it, but when I heard George Rowe’s deep voice I picked up. “George, I’m here.” I was so relieved I almost threw up.

  He’d heard about Gary from his bosses at the insurance company. “I’d just made up my mind,” he said, “that Richard Tenaway wasn’t dangerous, then this happens. How—how are you doing?” I was touched by the concern in his voice.

  “I’m OK. I guess I ought to be more scared than I am. My only worry, really, is Petey. I mean, if something happens to me.” I didn’t tell him about Ryan’s attempted abduction and the Spider-Man jacket, and I didn’t tell him what a little butthead Petey was being, and how guilty I felt about having slapped him, and the process server. But I did tell him about Janet, the strange threat she had made, and the even stranger request about the locker key.

  He was silent, and I thought we’d gotten cut off.

  “George?”

  “Yeah. What did Kwan say about this Janet?”

  “He told me not to worry about it, that the world is full of crazies.”

  “Well, that’s true.” He fell silent again.

  “Uh, George?”

  “I’m thinking.” />
  I let him think. The kitchen clock, an old Sunbeam electric I’d gotten at a junk store, hummed. I smelled the fragrance of six pretty peaches I’d put in a basket. Petey was absorbed in looking under his bed with a flashlight for something.

  George said, “Listen, Rita, as we already knew after your friend inspected that photograph, Tenaway didn’t die in Brazil. He left the country under an assumed name—stolen passport, which I’m sure he ditched immediately. I believe he’s in Tijuana, which is where I am at the moment. I’m very disturbed by the murder of Gary Kwan. It’s possible Tenaway arranged for the hit. It’s even possible he did it himself, but I just don’t feel he’s in California yet. He’s on his way, though, I’m sure. If not him, though, who the hell killed Kwan?”

  “It was a messy hit,” I offered.

  He spoke gently. “Yes, stabbing, right? You discovered the body?”

  “It was terrible, George.”

  “You have a lawyer?”

  “Steve Calhoun is advising me for now.”

  “OK.”

  “You remember the young attorney from the trial, Mark Sharma? He was with Gary just before it happened.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he thinks I did, though.”

  George Rowe sighed into the phone, a deep sigh that ended in almost a growl. “Well, the murderer was someone who wanted to disrupt Eileen’s trial, someone who thought Gary Kwan was about to get her acquitted and didn’t want that to happen. Or maybe Kwan had a mistress and she killed him, or maybe his wife did it, or maybe he had a gay lover or something, or somebody with an old grudge found him, or maybe it was the janitor.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Rita, you have to be very careful,” he said steadily. “Tenaway is out there and he’s doing business. I think he’ll jump the border as soon as the trial is over. If you see anything, call me. When you call, I’ll get to a landline and call you back on yours, OK? Do be careful.”

  I said, “George, what does that mean, be careful? Detectives are always saying it in the movies, but now I don’t even know what it means. I can’t just lock myself in my apartment.”