The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  Deep inside George Rowe’s sleeping brain a movie started up involving himself and Rita and a soft grassy field, her golden hair riffling in the wind, her small hand on his chest like a bird. He slept deeply, having worked for two days trying to figure out who had attempted to run him over at the Los Angeles River. He knew why.

  His dream graduated to kissing, with Rita so lovely in that green blowing meadow.

  Then a horrendous sound! And in his dream he thought something the size of the Kremlin must have crashed into Earth a few yards away, and he turned but there was only more soft meadow, but suddenly Rita was gone and something told him to run, and he ran himself awake.

  He bolted upright. He smelled it, and he heard the shriek of the smoke alarm.

  He grabbed his pants, already hearing muffled thuds in the apartments above and below. Dangerous acridity in his nose. From his living room came the gut-dropping sound of crackling flames. Dirty light from the street helped him see.

  “Fire!” he shouted. “Fire in the building!” He crouched beneath the smoke and scuttled to the living room. He saw that something had crashed through his living-room window, and the thing had been full of burning gasoline. Holding his breath, he skirted the fire and seized his kitchen extinguisher. He grabbed a breath in the kitchen.

  Flames leaped and boiled in the living room, the couch stuffing feeding them, his whiteboards moaning as the plastic buckled.

  He pulled the pin and shot the white plume at the base of the flames, and the fire died back, but the canister quickly emptied. Fresh air blew in from the broken window, and the fire gathered itself like a hungry hyena and fed on it.

  He ran into the corridor shouting and began pounding on doors. He found his cell phone in his pants and called 911. A tenant who worked as an EMT met him in the corridor, which was filling with smoke and panicked neighbors.

  “Get the people downstairs out,” he said.

  “Don’t go up! George!”

  He sprinted to the stairwell—good air in there. He leaped up the stairs, gulped a big breath, touched the door, and opened it to the third and topmost corridor.

  A gray haze chased people into the hallway. “Come on, come on,” he urged, forcing calm into his voice. “It’s OK this way. Go, go.”

  He knew all the renters by sight and mentally checked them off. There were only twelve apartments.

  Sven, the widower, stood motionless in his doorway, deciding whether to make an effort.

  Rowe yelled his name in his face.

  Sven put up an arm to fend him off. Then his knees buckled. Rowe caught him, maneuvered him over his back, and stumped down to the street.

  A siren screamed up, and the firefighters took over.

  _____

  The door buzzed at six-thirty Wednesday morning and Gina opened it to reveal George.

  He strode in wearing clothes that were too big for him.

  “You might hear something on the news,” he began.

  Five minutes later I was throwing questions at him, thinking hard, trying not to freak out.

  “You didn’t put yourself in danger, did you?”

  He shook his head and smiled that shy, heart-melting smile. “No heroics. Everybody got out. The place is a mess, though. I got out with my wallet and keys and my cell phone.”

  “Stay with us.” The words were out before I knew it.

  He smiled again. “No, thank you, Rita. I’m crashing with my friend Gonzalo, over in Los Feliz.”

  “Is that the trumpet player?” Gina asked from the kitchen.

  “Yeah. He’s a neurologist too.”

  “I didn’t know that!” Her eyes lit up, and I could tell she was thinking income.

  “Down, girl,” I said.

  I thought about those muzzle flashes coming out of that dark car at Kip and me. I said, “OK. You said you might just ‘look around’ after that drive-by occurred.” I used the passive voice in case Petey came out.

  “I did.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got chased off.” He took a seat on the sofa.

  “Was this connected, then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m doing some other work too.”

  “What other work?”

  “I can’t discuss it.”

  I looked at him. His guyness filled up the room, the way he took up space with such ease. Gina turned on the TV and pulsed coffee beans in the grinder.

  I swallowed. “You’re in trouble because you tried to protect me, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know that for a fact. Someone’s unhappy with my existence, though.”

  “Then you’re a pair,” said Gina.

  “What?” he said, turning.

  “Didn’t you see the Sunday paper?” She scrambled through the recycle bin while he looked at me penetratingly. “Here!” She slapped down the story of Sgt. Annette Soames. “Law student look-alike slain in trigger-happy neighborhood!”

  He looked at the picture and read the story carefully.

  “George,” I said, “what happened to your knuckles and elbows?”

  “Little mishap,” he murmured, reading.

  “You look like you got in a fistfight with a pit bull or something.”

  He coughed.

  I felt my gut tighten.

  Gina handed him coffee. “You like sugar, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He folded the paper and looked up with an expression of total, extreme calm. “I think it might be good for you to leave town for a while.”

  Fear ignited my temper. “If L.A. isn’t safe for me,” I hissed in lieu of yelling, because of Petey, “it isn’t safe for you!”

  Gina said, “Aren’t the police investigating everything?”

  “The police don’t know where to bear down yet,” said George. “I mean it, Rita, you should get out of town.”

  “If you think for one instant that I’m going to run away from this trouble and let you face it alone! I’ll be damned if I will. Farmers don’t run!”

  “You have to trust me,” he said.

  “You don’t know me in the slightest.”

  “What about law school?” Gina said.

  “The hell with law school, Gina,” said George, “a law degree won’t help any of you if they throw a firebomb in here next. No, all three of you should go. You could drive out to Colorado. I have a friend who runs a ranch there. He’d—”

  “Why don’t you get out of town, George?” I scream-whispered irrationally. “You go, OK? The women and children will stay and fight this!”

  He smiled a little, amused. “I don’t run, either. They find you in the end.”

  Gina said, “Look.”

  The television showed a night shot of George’s apartment building in flames. A dazed-looking retiree said into the camera glare, “I don’t know what happened. I fell down. My neighbor carried me out. He saved my life. George, my neighbor, he saved my life.”

  I turned to him. “No heroics.”

  He looked away.

  “‘Trust me,’ you say.”

  He sighed. “I’d prefer it if you went away until I figure this out.”

  I straightened to my full height. I felt galvanized by George’s opposition. “No.”

  “I’m not going, either,” said Gina stoutly.

  He took my hand. “Then at least send Petey.”

  We exchanged a long silent look.

  Chapter 12 – Kip Tries to Help

  Petey jumped at the chance to go on an airplane trip with Daniel, whose time was flexible until his movie started shooting in two weeks. Daniel’s job was to deliver Petey, that very night, to Aunt Sheila and Aunt Toots in Wisconsin, and do a recon on their living conditions before heading back to L.A. My aunts were joyful at the prospect of initiating Petey into the rural Wisconsin way of life.

  I’d initially assumed Gina would take him, but she shook her head. “I’m somewhat on the outs with them.”

  “How come?”

  She si
ghed as if we’d been over and over this. “Remember that old black car they had?”

  “You mean their prized vintage Rambler? That they kept in perfect condition?”

  “Um, yeah. Well, I borrowed it last spring, and—” She paused. “Mistakes were made.”

  “They let you use that car? I can’t believe—”

  “Well, I sort of pre-borrowed it before getting total permission. Because my car was in the shop, see, and I needed—”

  “Gina. What happened to the Rambler?”

  She gazed at the herb pots on the patio, and beyond them to the side courtyard between our building and the next.

  “Gina,” I said.

  “It’s at the bottom of the quarry.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “They know where it is and everything! I mean, I didn’t try to hide anything after the fact.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Involving the Burris brothers and some other people and a case of Jack Daniel’s and a really fun time, I mean, Rita, it’s such a fun time with those guys. I kind of don’t want to go into the exact betting situation that led to the car going off the edge—nobody got hurt!—but suffice it to say Sheila and Toots are almost certainly still mad at me.”

  “That’s the kind of idiotic shit high school kids do! Gina, you’re thirty-three years old!”

  She suggested Daniel escort Petey. I said, “I thought you were suspicious of Daniel around Petey.”

  “Oh, gosh, no. I mean, I wondered there, at first, not being any more familiar with the gay lifestyle than Mr. Johnson in typing class with that toupee. But oh, Daniel’s great.”

  So that was a bit of progress.

  Jeff, who knew nothing of the drive-by or anything else, was only too pleased to have his weekends free for the time being. I started to tell him a made-up story about Petey’s trip, but he didn’t even care to hear it.

  Daniel said little. “Something heavy’s about to go down, right?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Is George in it with you?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Then you’ll be all right.”

  At the apartment’s threshold I hugged and kissed Petey to the point of suffocation. He grabbed Daniel’s hand and never looked back. After I closed the door I cried until Gina finally yelled at me.

  _____

  As an opening move, I went to see Kip Cubitt in the hospital the next day, Thursday.

  Kip’s eyes were bright and black like his grandmother’s and you could see the vigor deep inside.

  He took my hand. “I don’t like to be alone.”

  It was ten days now since he’d taken two bullets moments after getting the crap stomped out of him. He was propped up in bed.

  The shooting had barely been reported on, due to some politician plunging his car off the PCH with a load of gay prostitutes in the backseat, which pushed all else into the shadows. So this was just another inner-city shooting. Both of our names had been withheld for safety anyway, so the public didn’t know that one of the victims was the grandson of the Iron Angel of Los Angeles.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  He nodded slowly. “Thank you for helping me.”

  Now I could really see this young man. He was a little older than I’d thought, maybe seventeen or eighteen. His body was quiet, but those eyes were quick. Robust cheekbones, a fine chin, and I thought he was quite beautiful.

  A white bandage clung to the side of his neck like a clamshell. I’d learned that the bullet had not touched his vertebrae, only the soft tissue in his neck. His voice was hoarse. I saw a shaved patch where they’d sewn up the flaplike wound on his skull.

  “How’re you doing, Kip?”

  “I’m doing very well.” He smiled. “I’m gonna be OK. See?” and he moved his body sinuously beneath the light blanket, like a careful tadpole.

  “That’s miraculous,” I said.

  “So says my grandma. But it was the doctors, you know. My guts are working almost right too.”

  I had almost forgotten about the wound in his side. “I’m so glad.”

  The usual paraphernalia of illness hung around the bed, but I noticed only one tube, snaking out from the covers. A nosegay of pink carnations decorated his bedside table. Kip said, “My grandma brought those first thing this morning.”

  “They smell sweet, don’t they?”

  I’d had to arrange for permission to see him, as, once out of intensive care, he’d been more or less hidden away in this unmarked private room, while the police investigated the shooting.

  The room was nice and bright. We heard efficient voices on the PA system in the hall.

  “I’ve been on my feet already, how do you like that?”

  “That is excellent. Here.” I gave him a football magazine, a basketball magazine, and a secondhand copy of The Red Pony.

  “Hey!” he said when he saw the book.

  I’d looked for something with a black kid in it, but saw this and remembered how good it was. “I read this when I was your age. John Steinbeck.”

  Ignoring the sports magazines, he said, “This is a good book. I read this oh, a couple summers ago.”

  I smiled. “Well, then maybe I’ll take it back and get you something different.”

  “Oh, no.” He clutched the novel, his long hands and wrists elegant against the hospital linens. “I want to read it again.” He looked at the drawing on the cover, of the white boy and the red horse. “This happened in the West, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here in California?” He tried to remember.

  “I think so, yes.”

  “I hope I’ll be able to start back to school on time.”

  “Senior year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope so too, Kip.”

  We sat for a while. Occasionally a gull or black crow would skim past the window, which otherwise was an exact square of blue. Wispy clouds today, up high.

  I said, “Do you know that I’m not a police officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand you didn’t want to talk to the police.”

  An agreeing grunt.

  “Still don’t want to talk to them?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know we’re in this together.”

  He looked at me questioningly.

  I said, “They’re after me because they think I saw who shot us. I didn’t, though. They tried for me again. I imagine they’ll try again for you, too, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged, trying for the tough thing.

  “And they’re after your grandma, did you know that?”

  His eyes darted to mine.

  I went on, “I don’t know if anybody’s explained it to you like this yet. Your grandma’s certainly not going to tell you. You might think that keeping quiet will get you out of this. Maybe you feel loyalty to someone. But it’ll come at a cost, and the cost will be to Amaryllis. Because they’re messing with her.”

  He heaved a sigh and looked away.

  I had only the vaguest idea of what I was talking about. “And she would do it, Kip. She’d sell out for you, she’d die for you, you know that. But it wouldn’t be right. And it wouldn’t end there.”

  Kip murmured, “What do you do when something bad’s got ahold of you? I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get away. I was trying to get away that day.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I’m sure you know teenage boys are not the most articulate species, nor the most introspective. I waited hopefully but realistically.

  He closed his eyes, and a long shudder ran through his body. I watched the blue square of window. Then I watched the sunlight brighten on the speckled floor, as a bit of mist or smog blew over.

  My young friend opened his eyes and reached for the bed control. He pressed a button without looking, and the head of the bed moved higher so his head was level with mine. He cleared his throat, wincing slightly.

  Quietly, he
began, “One day this dude comes up to me and he says hey Kip, you want to make some money? I know what that means, so I say no. He says I’ll give you five hundred to take one bag from this corner where we’re at to a house in Brentwood. I say oh? He was, five hundred plus we do you a favor on top of it. You need some favor, we can do it. I say, I don’t know your gang. He says we’re not a gang, we’re an organization. We go and go, and he hands me the five hundred. I say in my head I can put this to college. He says you got a car. I drive my grandma’s car sometimes. I got my license.” In spite of his hurt neck, Kip shook his head at himself. “I was a knucklehead like any of them. Why me and why five hundred, is what I don’t ask him. I do it. He comes up to me next day and says what favor you want, and I say to have no more to do with you. Because I had thought about it, you know.”

  I felt a surge of dread listening to this story, combined with a swell of love for Kip’s courage in telling me. “What was in the bag you delivered?” I spoke softly, as he had done.

  “Drugs, ma’am. Half a kilo of coke, something. That’s a lot, you know, but still five hundred was too much for the job. I didn’t understand that either.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh. School was almost out.”

  “So a few months ago, like in May?”

  “Yeah. Then this dude starts coming to the mission. I work there, I do the computers. People donate stuff, sometimes we can’t use it but I sell it on eBay, and the money goes in the mission account. My grandma pays me ten dollars for every hundred I convert.”

  “Pretty good deal.”

  “Yeah. But I say I don’t want to be a mule. Plenty of fools out there, you know what I’m saying? He asks me about the computers. He wants to know about the ABC’s accounting, and the stuff I’m doing on eBay. I’m like, well, I don’t know anything about any accounting. Then, ma’am, he says to me hey, we know your daddy’s in jail. So what? So if you don’t come with us, he’s gonna get hurt. I just laughed.”

  “Did you know this guy?”

  “I saw him around. He was older. Those kids that lived on Slauson’s uncle? That big family. His name’s Jerrol.”

  “Jerrol?” I leaned forward. “Jerrol what?”

  “Uh, Bay? Bays?” He saw my face. “What, ma’am?”