Cool Cache (15 page)

Chapter 17

It was three o’clock by the time I arrived at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park and walked across the grassy commons it shared with the University of Southern California’s coliseum. The guidebook I’d consulted listed the architectural style as Spanish Renaissance, but the blocky stucco building seemed more Socialist-Realist to me.

I walked up the steps and entered the lobby through the heavy bronze doors. Inside, the floor was covered with travertine marble, accented with intricate multicolored inlaid tiles. Doric columns stood guard over the bones of a prehistoric critter. The columns were less elaborate than the ones on Eugene’s Greek revival in-basket, but they still served as a painful reminder that he was missing.

A security guard sat on a stool at the information desk, scrutinizing a line of people waiting to buy tickets. I asked to speak to Marianne Rogers. A few minutes later, she walked into the lobby. As soon as I mentioned Eugene’s name and told her he was missing, she led me past dark wood display cases that looked as old as the exhibits they held.

Rogers looked like a skeleton in somebody’s biology lab. I could almost hear her bones clanking as she guided me to a small office on the third floor where the curators worked. Even though her body fat was low, her enthusiasm was high, especially for all things chocolate.

“Eugene stopped by the museum yesterday morning,” she said. “He was interested in Mayan spouted chocolate pots. As Professor Osteen probably told you, I have a passion for the subject. Eugene wanted to know if we had one in our exhibit. I told him we didn’t.”

“Did Eugene say why he was interested in chocolate pots?”

“He was researching information about chocolate for a client and he ran across a doctoral dissertation on the Internet about the pots. He couldn’t open the link, but it piqued his interest.”

I pulled Helen’s replica from my tote bag.

“How interesting.” Marianne Rogers reached for the pot, holding it up to the light streaming through the window. She seemed almost reverent as she studied it from every angle.

“Where did you get this?” she said.

“It belongs to that client Eugene mentioned. I’m not sure where she got it.”

Rogers shifted her gaze to meet mine. “It belongs in a museum.”

I was taken aback by her comment. “You think it’s real?”

“If it isn’t, it’s a magnificent reproduction. We’d have to run some tests to know for sure. Authentic Mayan chocolate pots are rare. Several were uncovered at Colha in Northern Belize in 1981, but those are now housed at the University of Texas at Austin. At least one was stolen from a museum in Guatemala City during the civil war. It’s never been recovered.”

“Did you mention that to Eugene?”

She nodded. “He seemed interested in knowing everything I could tell him about the theft. All I remembered was an article from several years ago. The Guatemalan police suspected it was an inside job, but they couldn’t prove it. The case is still open, but I don’t suppose anybody’s looking very hard. The country has too many other problems to solve.”

I gestured toward Helen’s pot. “Do you think this could be the missing chocolate pot?”

“I doubt that, but may I keep it for a couple of days? There are a few people I’d like to show it to.”

“As I said, it’s not mine. I’m sure my client has no idea it may be valuable. In any event, I’d have to ask her permission before I let you have it.”

Rogers looked stricken by my response. She pointed to my tote bag. “If the pot is real, it’s also priceless. You can’t carry it around in a tote bag. I’ll get some packing material and a box from the back room.”

If the spouted chocolate pot was real, that changed everything. It created a motive for murder. Anybody who was knowledgeable about Mayan antiquities could have seen the pot in Nectar’s retail store and realized its value. For that matter, the chocolate pot had been clearly displayed in the newspaper photograph of Helen at the shop. Anybody who saw that picture knew she had it, including pop princess Alexis Raines. I remembered her looking at the newspaper photograph of Helen’s chocolate display. She’d seemed overly interested in buying several of the collectibles. I was beginning to wonder why.

It was plausible that somebody broke into Nectar to steal the pot. Lupe got in the way and paid for it with her life. It was also possible she was tied to the pot in some other way. Eugene had come up with a couple of wild conspiracy theories before he disappeared. I could almost see his take on this latest development—the chocolate pot had been stolen during the Guatemalan civil war. Lupe Ortiz was Guatemalan; at least I assumed so. Her husband was in the country, visiting a sick relative. Maybe she witnessed the theft and now, years later, somebody had hunted her down and silenced her forever. In fact, it didn’t sound all that farfetched. If I kept spinning tales, I was sure to come up with a theory about Mayan tomb raiders and ancient curses. If the pot was real, uncovering its chain of ownership was vital. Eugene must have followed the same logic. I had to find out where Helen had gotten the pot.

When I arrived at Nectar, Helen was at the stove in the workroom, stirring up a batch of Buster Brownies to take to Detective O’Brien as a peace offering. Her white chef’s jacket seemed to have sucked all the color from her face. She looked as if she’d aged ten years in the past few days.

“A messenger dropped off a letter for you today,” she said. “It’s in my office.”

I hurried to her cubbyhole, thinking it might be another message from Eugene. Instead I found a note from Alexis Raines, thanking me again for saving her rat, Aldo. Attached to the note were four tickets to her concert scheduled for the following month. At least she’d been lucid enough to follow up on her promise.

The lobby of the retail store was full of customers. Murder in the workroom hadn’t kept people away. On the contrary, it seemed to have added cachet to the store.

“Business looks good,” I said.

Helen grabbed a thermometer to test the temperature of a bowl of chocolate melting above a pot of simmering water. “One of my customers told Kathy that Nectar is now considered the best chocolate shop in Southern California.”

“That’s great, Helen,” I said. “By the way, I thought you might want to know I stored your collectibles in my spare bedroom. It’s quite a collection. Where did you find all that stuff?”

“Various places. I bought the Cadbury heart box online. The chocolate tins came from yard sales and antique shops. I don’t remember where exactly.”

“What about the spouted chocolate pot?”

Helen transferred the bowl of melted chocolate to a trivet on the marble tabletop. Then she dumped some eggs and flour into the bowl and began blending the mixture. “Lupe gave it to me.”

I was stunned by the news. “Where did she get it?”

“From one of her customers, I think.”

“Why did she give it to you?”

Helen pestered the batter in silence. “I told you before. She liked me. She was probably just showing her appreciation for all I’d done for her. Why are you so curious about the chocolate pot?”

“I just showed it to an expert at the Natural History Museum. She thinks it may be a priceless antiquity.”

Helen turned toward me. “That’s absurd. How would Lupe get something valuable like that?”

“Maybe the person who gave it to her didn’t realize how much it was worth. Or maybe Lupe took it without permission.”

“Are you saying she stole it?”

“It’s possible. If it’s true, somebody might have killed her to get it back.”

Helen folded a cup of walnuts into the chocolate. “So why didn’t this person tell me or the police that the pot was stolen? He’d get it back eventually.”

I thought about the Mayan pot that had been pilfered from the Guatemalan museum. I wondered if it had found a home with a collector in Los Angeles. Maybe that collector was also Lupe’s customer. If Lupe had stolen the pot, the victim may not have reported the crime to the police, especially if he knew or suspected it had been looted from a museum. Dealing in stolen antiquities was illegal. The collector would not only lose his investment, but he might go to jail.

“Let’s say he couldn’t report the crime,” I said, “because he had some reason to keep his identity hidden. He found out the chocolate pot was at Nectar and came to the store last Thursday night to get it back. Either he planned to kill Lupe all along or he panicked when he realized the pot wasn’t in the store anymore. Maybe that’s why he went looking for it at your condo.”

“So Lupe interrupts a burglary,” Helen said, “but before the guy kills her, she gives him directions to my home.”

“Addresses aren’t that hard to find.”

Helen dropped the spatula she was holding, splattering chocolate on the tabletop. “Your theory is implausible. In fact, it’s ridiculous. I don’t understand what you’re doing, Tucker. Lupe’s death has nothing to do with a spouted chocolate pot. Her son killed her. He’s a drug user and a gang member. He caused the family all sorts of problems. The police know all this. That’s why he’s in jail.”

“At least you should find out if the chocolate pot is real. I’d like your permission to leave it with Marianne Rogers at the museum.”

Helen looked pale and distracted. She picked up a towel near the sink and began wiping the spilled chocolate from the table.

“All right,” she said. “Go ahead.”

I couldn’t argue with the facts. Roberto was the police department’s only suspect at the moment, but if the chocolate pot factored into Lupe’s death, I doubted her son was guilty of the crime. The theory just didn’t add up.

On my way out of Nectar, I noticed one of the small signs Helen used in the glass cases to identify her chocolates. This one read DEATH BY CHOCOLATE. It looked as if she’d taken Alexis Raines’ advice. She hadn’t renamed the store, but I wondered if she was thinking about it. The thought left me feeling slightly unsettled.

As soon as I left Nectar, I called the museum. Marianne Rogers had been called away on a family emergency and couldn’t be reached. I didn’t want to leave the pot with any one else, so I left a message for her to call me as soon as she returned. Then I hotfooted it home to change for my meeting with Dr. Jordan Rich.

Chapter 18

Once at home, I took the chocolate pot out of my car. As I carried it up the stairs to my side door, I heard the sound of someone playing single notes on a piano, followed by a woman’s voice warbling
whoo-eee
.

It was my neighbor Mrs. Domanski. She’d recently started taking singing lessons again, hoping to revive her career. She claimed she’d once had a decent set of pipes, but the vagaries of her husband’s career as a movie producer had forced her to give up any dreams of performing at Carnegie Hall. I didn’t think all those gin martinis she inhaled every day helped her voice much, either.

I imagined Mrs. D’s seventy-year-old body draped across the top of her Steinway, a baby spot illuminating her ruby pageboy, her boggy butt camouflaged under a sequined gown. At least she was following her dream, unlike Nerine Barstok, who seemed like a gray lizard hiding in the shadows, lashing her tongue at unsuspecting bugs.

Then reality intruded.

“Whoo-eee.”

My grandma Felder would say, if Mrs. D was aiming at superstardom, she had a long row to hoe. I imagined Muldoon under her bed with his paws over his ears. Too bad. He’d have to tolerate the noise until I got back from my meeting with Jordan Rich.

The spouted chocolate pot was still swathed in padding inside the box Marianne Rogers had provided. It just fit inside the clothes dryer, so I decided to leave it there until I could make arrangements to drop it off at the museum.

At four thirty I left for Bunker Hill, wearing a conservative black dress that made me look like a mother-in-law at a Sicilian wedding. In case Venus had told Dr. Rich I was single and looking for love, the dress should keep his libido in check long enough for me to set him straight.

Traffic was a mess. I was on the road an hour and a half before I pulled into the Music Center’s underground garage and took a series of escalators to the plaza level, where the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Ahmanson Theatre were spread out over several acres of prime downtown Los Angeles real estate.

The night air was chilly. I pulled the collar of my coat around my neck and walked toward Pinot Grill, the outdoor restaurant on the plaza. To the east was the Jacques Lipchitz sculpture, which arose amid the dancing waters of a circular fountain. I scanned the tables of people huddled beneath freestanding gas heaters, looking for a man alone. Everybody was with somebody. I was beginning to think I’d been stood up when I heard a man’s voice call my name.

I turned to see a well-dressed male in his early forties, wearing a charcoal gray overcoat. You seldom see one of those on a man in Los Angeles. That was East Coast apparel, maybe Chicago, certainly not here. He was probably two inches shorter than I, five-seven I guessed. In lieu of traditional good looks, he had brilliant blue eyes and dimples that graced his cheeks when he smiled. He handed me a single red rose with a bow tied around the stem.

“Venus told me you were brilliant, but she didn’t say you were beautiful, too. Just as well. It’s more exhilarating to discover it for myself.”

Beautiful. Brilliant. Exhilarating. I hoped Jordan Rich wasn’t going to be a problem.

“I see you’ve been watching too many Cary Grant movies,” I said.

His smile was warm and embracing. I was glad. There was no reason to offend him before the hors d’oervres arrived. The hostess set down a couple of menus for us at a table under one of those blazing gas heaters, so I was spared having to comment further. For many, it was invigorating to be at an outdoor café in Los Angeles in November, surrounded by genteel people enjoying the company of friends before a night at the theater. But for me, this night was all about business.