The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  He smiled with those horrible teeth. “I thought so too.”

  _____

  It had taken me hours to get ready. With personnel!

  My friend Chino, a costumer, brought over the pregnancy vest, essentially a leotard with a twenty-four-week foam abdomen built in, and the obnoxious Donald Duck T-shirt, in children’s large, which was just right for that my-tits-want-to-pop-out look. My slight build worked well here: the big belly made my arms and legs look spindly.

  Gina supplied the pink sweatpants, having found them abandoned in the laundry room downstairs last week. She also furnished the blue jellies.

  I told Chino I was planning to crash a party hosted by an ex-boyfriend and needed to blend in with the crowd.

  “Some company,” he said. “What are you gonna do there—sabotage?” He had a cute mustache and a barrel chest.

  “No, just some eavesdropping.”

  “Oh.” Another journeyman in Hollywood, he got his start doing blood and gore effects for low-budgets, and moved into costumes after losing a chunk of his forearm in an explosive-squib mishap.

  He did a lot of costumes for Half Fast Pictures, of Fingershredder fame, and we’d worked together briefly when he dressed me as a young mother for a detergent ad. He didn’t get much chance to design original costumes; mostly he combed the secondhand shops and went to estate sales.

  Then my good friend Yvonne swept in, trailing her makeup trunk on wheels. She was wonderfully large and beautiful, wearing one of her signature flowing caftans, this one a Japanese-patterned silk in shades of gold and charcoal. Very cool.

  Chino took off, with a thank-you bottle of wine from the interested hands of Gina.

  I sat in a kitchen chair under the best light in the apartment, the bland fluorescent tubes over the middle of the kitchen. Yvonne supplemented with a small mechanic’s lamp that she plugged in and hung on a cupboard handle.

  She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and fastened them in place with rubber bands. She stood before me, hands on hips. “Now, then. What do you need?”

  “A couple of years on the streets,” I said. “Drugs. Booze.”

  “You got it.”

  She was a freelance makeup artist, one of the best in Hollywood. She was an unapologetic fat chick who loved life.

  As she worked, she murmured aloud. “I’m gonna use this new liquid latex, it’s very thin.” She stretched the skin on my left cheek and painted on the cold liquid with a brush. The latex dried almost immediately. She released the skin. “See, this thin stuff makes the finest of wrinkles, nothing too much. We use a thicker brand for aging. I’m just making you look shopworn.”

  “That’s it,” I encouraged. The smell of the liquid latex was sharp at first, then nothing as soon as it dried.

  Yvonne did this over and over, in the right places on my face and neck, also my arms and hands.

  “The hands and wrists have to show equal wear,” she said.

  Gina was fascinated. “What’s that?”

  Yvonne tossed an auburn tress from her eyes. “Mortician’s wax.” She molded a lump of it over the bridge of my nose. “I could give you a real honker, but I gather you’re going to be in close proximity with the people you want to fool tonight, so we won’t overdo it.”

  “That looks good,” said Gina.

  Yvonne dropped my chin with shadows and deepened my natural frown lines. “I’m adding tiredness lines here under your eyes, and the way I’m gonna do it will suggest bags. But I won’t actually thicken up bags for you, because that too, can be detectable on close-up.”

  Yvonne used a fine brush to paint a line of red along my inner lower lids. “This stuff used to sting, but they’ve improved it,” she said. I’d never had it on before. She used a coarse stippling sponge with two shades of foundation to make my face mottled and weary.

  Next she picked up a small palette kit with five rich-colored pastes. “Now I’ll use a little of this stuff—”

  “What’s that?” queried Gina again.

  “This is a bruise-and-burn wheel. I’m going to apply just a little of the darkest maroon to suggest an almost-healed bruise under her left eye here.” She dabbed it on and smoothed it with a foam-tip applicator. The applicators were like disposable plastic spoons, except with white foam tips about the size of a fingertip.

  “I remember using makeup to cover a black eye,” I said.

  “Yeah, I can do that pretty well too,” said Yvonne, and named a male film star. “I’ve covered him up on more than one occasion.”

  “Wait, what?” said Gina.

  “Yeah, he’s sort of a postmodern Montgomery Clift. Goes out to leather clubs in search of rough trade. They give it to him, all right.”

  Gina was dumbfounded. “You mean you’ve covered up bruises he got in gay clubs?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s such a stud! How could he…”

  I said, “Man versus myth.”

  Yvonne shrugged and went on, “Bruises change with time, so this kit gives me everything I need to blend a bruise of any age. See, here’s red, sick-yellow, olive-green…” She rummaged through another drawer in the trunk. “Now we’ve got to make you dirty. Here.” She came up with two vials of soil-colored powder. “Let’s see, shall it be Flagstaff Umber, or Cheyenne Russet?”

  “Skid Row Black,” I suggested.

  “We call that ‘Chimney Sweep.’”

  “Ah.”

  Her laugh rang out like an opera diva’s. I just loved Yvonne. She worked with the powder.

  I’d already stripped off my nail polish and gnawed my nails short. Gina had mourned that, but I’d said, “For art, you gotta suffer.” Yvonne forced some grime under what nails I had left and reddened my knuckles.

  “What else have you got in there?” Gina wanted to know.

  “Apart from all this? Blood, sweat, and tears, honey! Blood, sweat, and tears.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got fresh scab, blood capsules—here’s one I really like.” She held up a flat plastic container of Contac-sized capsules. “This kind has red powder in it, not liquid blood. You tuck it back in your mouth and when you crush it in your teeth a little bit, the powder mixes with your saliva, and you can spit blood over the course of a fairly long scene.”

  “What if you swallowed one?” I asked.

  “Oh, they’re nontoxic. I mean, this month they’re nontoxic. Everything’s going to gang up and kill us someday, right?” She laughed again, her hands nimble and busy with tissues and puffs.

  She painted some nicotine stains on my teeth with a tiny brush. “This stuff comes off with alcohol,” she mentioned, “so if you drink tonight, be careful.”

  I sucked wind in and out through my teeth to dry them.

  Even though hair wasn’t her specialty, Yvonne helped me darken mine with some water-soluble dye. I studied myself in her hand mirror.

  “That doesn’t look right,” said Gina.

  Yvonne agreed. “Your haircut’s too good. Even if we slicked it back, drowned-rat style, you’d still look too crisp.”

  “Get my scissors,” I told Gina grimly.

  “Wait!” cried Yvonne. She plunged her arms into the bottom of her trunk and came up with a dead poodle and a raccoon pelt—at least that’s what they looked like.

  “These got wrecked during a murder sequence in Sumo IV—remember when the sumo trainer attacks the wasabi merchant after the kid throws the match and the bad guys win their bet?” She paused. “You guys probably didn’t see that one.”

  “No,” Gina and I admitted.

  “Well, anyway—”

  “I like the raccoon one,” I said. I tucked my hair into a wig stocking and put it on.

  Gina said, “That’s it. It’s very you.”

  Yvonne held up the mirror and I had to agree. The jagged, short-fur pile made me look as if I’d tried to cut my own hair with a propane torch.

  “Man,” said Gina, “you look vile.”

  _____

&n
bsp; Now, in the dim upper corridor of the ABC Mission, I whispered to George, “I thought you were going to start by looking into this Dale Vargas online.”

  “I did, after we ate breakfast. A man by that name exists. He did time for check fraud at the Men’s Colony the same time Nathan Cubitt went in, they did overlap, so that part checks out.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. That’s a project for me, all right—try to find this guy. But I think there’s something of interest to us right here, tonight.” He led me up the staircase. “You’re going to be my lookout.”

  We ducked into a recessed classroom doorway. The door was solid oak.

  “The other doors have windows,” I observed.

  “Yes, and they’re not triple-locked. There’s another one like this at the opposite end down there.” He sized up the door.

  “Is there a basement?”

  “Yeah, there must be, for the boilers for the hot water.” He drew a leatherette case about the size of a checkbook from his pocket.

  “You going to pick the locks?”

  He glanced upward at the old-fashioned transom with a swivel pane. “I should, but on second thought, let’s save some time. Good old public-school architecture.”

  “Wait,” I said, “that’s like ten feet up there. You’re not going over it.”

  “No.”

  “Good, because—”

  “You are.”

  Well, I hadn’t come here to sit around and eat bonbons. I stifled my fear, and all I can say is, I’m glad I’m little, and flexible from my yoga.

  “Can you take off that—fetus?” George asked.

  “God, no, if we get caught—”

  “Yeah, OK.”

  I climbed his thighs and he boosted me to his shoulders. The transom window was about two feet by three—perfect classical ratio. I was able to push the pane in at the top, then pull it out fully at the bottom. Balancing on George’s shoulders, I clambered in, first my left leg, then my pregnant belly, then my right leg, then the rest of me. I had to hang on to the edge and drop down, about five feet. I could see just well enough to judge the drop. I landed OK.

  I unbolted the locks and George came in.

  Watery shadows danced on the ceiling from the traffic skimming by one story below.

  The desks and American flag were long gone, though the chalkboards remained, even the trays holding pieces of chalk. The boards were empty of writing, however. The room smelled musty, and I thought I detected a machine-oil odor as well.

  The room was unoccupied except for three black things that looked like overbuilt refrigerators. They said BROWNING in nice lettering across the fronts.

  “Gun safes,” said George.

  A chill gripped the back of my neck.

  “This would be the glory hole, then,” I said.

  “Maybe.” He sucked his hillbilly teeth.

  “Can you break into them?” I asked.

  “Not without a welding torch. Let’s move on.”

  We went to the door. “How are we going to throw the deadbolts from the outside?” I asked. “I can’t climb out the way I came in.”

  He again pulled out his leatherette case.

  “You can pick a lock shut?”

  “I can, yes.”

  George fiddled with his picks as I watched the still-empty corridor. Glancing back at him, I remembered encountering Vince Devereaux begging on the street last year at Gramma Gladys’s parking lot; he’d been in homeless-guy costume and character, preparing for a role, and famous as he was, I didn’t recognize him until he said his name. People’s assumptions really work with you when you’re trying to fool them.

  “There,” said George.

  We walked down the corridor, flanked by the rows of lockers, all without locks—doubtless too much trouble to tear them out. “What could be stored in these?” I wondered.

  George said, “I doubt anything of interest to us. These hallways are in use during the day for counseling and group meetings and so on. Some of the offices are up here too. No need to hide bodies in the lockers.”

  We stopped at the other triple-locked door, which was recessed like the first.

  George set himself back on his heels, thighs out, and I gripped his hands and began climbing him to the transom, when we heard a man’s voice.

  “Hey, who’s there?”

  George had half lifted me. He straightened his legs so that I more or less fell into his arms. He looked at me with a gleam, and began madly kissing me.

  He grunted like a bear rooting for grubs, and I whined with pleasure like one of my neighbors did at night with her sleazy boyfriend. He couldn’t kiss me properly with those buck teeth, and his breath smelled of the awful wine he’d bought, but all that plus his corn-oil dirt couldn’t cover up what a virile damn stud he was. I dug my fingers into his strong shoulders like a white-trash cat and kissed him back in spite of myself. My pregnant belly got in the way somewhat. He gave me a tiny shake, as if to say, “So there!” He fumbled with his zipper. My pulse raced double-time.

  A security guard in his gray T-shirt stomped at us. “Now why’d you two come up here?” He was a thick-boned Latino guy with blackwork tattoos on his forearms.

  Slowly, we disengaged ourselves, grinning stupidly.

  “Why do you think?” George said lewdly. I giggled.

  “Well, get the hell away from here. Go outside in the bushes if you want to do that.” He shooed us down the staircase. “You, sir, are disgusting!” he said to George. “Can’t you see she’s expecting?”

  “I like ’em that way,” he slurred.

  We moseyed along. To our surprise, the guard didn’t march us all the way back to our respective dormitories, on either end of the main corridor, but peeled off to patrol another corridor.

  I led us to Amaryllis’s office, which was also locked, but with only the regular type of doorknob lock. George took a Safeway card from his back pocket and slipped it easily.

  “I don’t know if this is even worth it,” I said, “but—”

  “We’re here, let’s make the most of it.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything unusual.”

  “Everything in here’s unusual.”

  Among the piled-high donations were half a dozen boxes of coconut cookies, four infant bathtubs, nested, a horse’s-head ashtray, a Parcheesi game from about fifty years ago, fat orange hanks of extension cords, and a tall pile of used Bibles.

  George rifled through her desk drawers. “I’d like to find an address book. A phone list.”

  I flipped open her laptop and powered it up. At the sound of its welcoming dwing-dwong! we caught our breaths, but realized the sound would have been barely audible out in the corridor. I clicked around, but without her password I couldn’t get into any of her files. I guessed she kept her address book with her, or on the laptop.

  “Ah, here’s a locked one,” said George. He got out his leatherette kit again and in a second the drawer came open.

  In it lay a thick brown envelope, with a string closure and a number scrawled on it in black marker.

  “That’s tomorrow’s date,” I realized. I unwound the string and handed the envelope to George. “You look.”

  “It’s cash, all right,” he said, drawing out a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Ben Franklin never looked so calm and neutral. You’re at the center of so many things, buddy, aren’t you? George quickly counted it. “Ten thousand.”

  “We could buy a lot of fortified wine with that,” I remarked. He put it back and handed the envelope to me to retie. I started to wind the string around the paper circle, when he touched my hand.

  “No,” he said, “the string was wound counterclockwise.”

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “These are the kinds of things you have to pay attention to. We could rearrange all this crap lying around here and I bet she wouldn’t even notice, but if she goes to untie this envelope again, she’ll realize it wasn’
t like she left it.”

  I wound the string counterclockwise.

  “There was about an inch and a half left out,” he added.

  He walked me to the women’s dormitory. “Do you suppose she’ll be here in the morning?” George murmured as we went along.

  “Maybe, they have chapel every Sunday morning in the gym. I’d think she’d want to be here for that.”

  “Let’s try to watch for her, OK?”

  “OK.”

  Wichita, the security guard, was hanging around, talking to a volunteer who was handing out towels.

  “Oh,” said George when he saw Wichita. He stopped walking.

  “What?” We weren’t quite within earshot of them.

  “Nothing. Rita?”

  “Yes?”

  He looked into my eyes with such warmth. “You know I care for you.”

  “Yes, George.”

  He paused. “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  In the women’s dormitory everyone was getting ready for bed. There were maybe twenty of us. A volunteer had put out a last-minute snack of taco chips, poured from a giant bag just past its sell date, donated by a grocery store.

  Earlier, I’d stashed my vodka between the sheets of the cot I’d been assigned. The toothless black lady who’d taken the cot next to me watched me check for it.

  “I could have helped myself to that,” she said.

  “Uh,” I said, “well, want a slug?”

  She smiled and reached for it. “It’s against the rules,” she whispered, “but we’ll be real quiet-like.” She wiped her mouth carefully on her sleeve before and after swallowing a third of the bottle. She handed it to me and I took a sip.

  I said, “I’m DeeDee.”

  “My name’s Pearl.”

  “So, uh, do you come here often?” I asked like a complete total moron nitwit.

  Pearl smiled, and it looked like even her gums were decayed. Her face was as seamed as a Texas ranch wife’s, and her long gray hair had been wild when I first saw her, at dinner. She’d just bathed, though, and had wrapped up her hair in her towel, which gave her a queenly look. She seemed to feel it, holding her head to me in profile.

  “Way too often,” she answered. “But this is the nicest shelter I’ve ever been in, and that’s saying a lot.”