Cool Cache (24 page)

I trailed behind her. “Look, Pookie. You’re pushing fifty-two. Opportunities like this don’t come along that often anymore. This could be your last chance.”

“I know, Tucker. I just have to think it through.”

The solution was clear to me, but it wasn’t my marriage or my future at stake. My mother would have to wrestle with the issues and make her own decisions.

She’d just poured soap under the running water of the washing machine when I remembered the spouted chocolate pot was still in the dryer. I pulled it out, wondering why Marianne Rogers hadn’t called me back. That must be some kind of family emergency she was dealing with. I could identify. I’d had a few of those myself.

“What’s that?” Pookie said, pointing to the box.

That’s when I realized she didn’t know Eugene was deep undercover. She didn’t know anything.

“I’ll tell you, but it’s a long story.”

She closed the lid of the washing machine. “Will I need a glass of wine?”

“Yup. Maybe more than one.”

While Pookie wrestled the cork out of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, I looked around the house for a hiding spot for the chocolate pot. The garage wasn’t secure. Every place else seemed too obvious. I thought about leaving the box at Mrs. D’s house, but she got woozy after a couple of martinis and had a history of breaking vases. I finally hid the box in a ratty cooler in a cupboard above the washing machine. I just hoped it would be safe there until I could drop it by the museum.

Pookie nestled into the cushions of the living room couch next to Muldoon and his yellow cashmere sweater. I sat in an adjacent chair and told her about Lupe’s death and Eugene’s undercover search to find her killer. I laid out all of the contacts he’d made in the past several days, just to keep them straight in my own mind.

She curled her body into a tiny ball. “I just hope you don’t get sucked into another situation where you could get hurt.”

“Charley’s in charge of the investigation. I’m just helping out.”

“How is he, anyway?”

I told her about Lorna Tate pushing Charley to have a baby, which I realized was yet another example of a dream conflict. Lorna wanted a baby. Charley wanted Lorna. Maybe there wasn’t much of a conflict after all.

“I think it’s sweet she wants his baby,” Pookie said.

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Charley will be close to eighty when the kid starts college.”

“So? By that time they’ll have had a good eighteen years together. I think men enjoy children more when they come later in life. He might love being a father again.”

I wanted to say,
Yeah when pigs fly,
but I realized Pookie might be right. Charley could be cranky sometimes, but he was a stand-up guy. He’d make a good father. His resistance might soften if Lorna stopped forcing the issue and let him get used to the idea.

“I feel petty complaining about my acting career when your life is falling apart,” she said. “I mean, seriously. What else could happen?”

That’s when I told her about Joe Deegan’s engagement. She hit all the right notes in her response—his marriage to the evil Carly McKendrick wouldn’t last, he’d regret letting me go, and that tired old saw about how there was somebody wonderful waiting for me just around the corner.

I didn’t buy any of it, but after a while I realized how satisfying it was to be sharing a glass of wine with my mother and airing my dirty laundry while she washed hers in my machine down the hallway. I didn’t know how I’d feel about my new roommate in a day or two, but for tonight she was just what the doctor ordered.

Taking about Eugene reminded me that I had an obligation to call Detective O’Brien and tell him Lupe Ortiz’s cell phone wasn’t missing anymore. He wasn’t going to be happy. The phone was a vital piece of evidence in a homicide investigation. Deep undercover or not, Eugene should have come in from the cold and turned it over to the authorities. He hadn’t, and that could cause problems.

It was late. I didn’t expect O’Brien to be at work, but I called and left a message, anyway. At least he couldn’t say I didn’t try.

Chapter 31

I arrived in Brentwood early Saturday morning. I knocked on Helen’s door, but she didn’t answer. She must have already left for Nectar. As I turned around, I heard somebody blowing his nose. I peeked through the trees that screened Helen’s sidewalk from the one next door. A man in his thirties was walking down the path toward the street. He looked pale and wilted like a celery stick that had been left too long in the refrigerator. I could see the impressions of a pair of knobby knees under his sweatpants as he struggled with a black plastic garbage sack.

I parted the tree branches and said, “Excuse me.”

He dropped the sack and whipped his body into a karate stance.

“Stay back! These hands are registered weapons.”

I almost laughed. He was skinnier than Eugene and his feet were so large they looked as if they could anchor him to the ground in a hurricane. He seemed weird enough to be the man Charley had interviewed through a closed door on Friday.

I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of him. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m looking for Helen Taggart, but she’s not home. Have you seen her today?”

His brows were heavy and low over his eyes, which made him seem feral. “No. I haven’t been out much. I’m just getting over a cold.” He picked up the bag. “Excuse me. I have to take this to the garbage before I get chilled.”

“If you’re sick, I’ll take it.”

He hesitated and then he handed me the bag.

“My name is Tucker Sinclair. I think you spoke to my colleague a few days ago. Charley Tate. He wanted to know about the burglary at Helen’s place last Thursday night. You told him you hadn’t seen anything.”

“What I told him was I hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.”

His response seemed evasive. I wondered what he was hiding.

“If you saw anything at all, I’m sure Helen would like to know about it. Some cash was stolen from her place that night.”

“Oh, please. You’d think somebody broke into Fort Knox, the way people are acting. I actually had a reporter from the
New York Times
come to my door yesterday to interview me.”

A weight pressed against my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “Did this reporter give his name?”

“It was one of those pretentious nicknames, Buff or Biff, something like that.”

“Bix Waverly?”

“Yes, that’s it. Good old Bix.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just what I told your so-called colleague. I didn’t see any strangers around the area that night.”

“Did you see
anybody
?”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you a private eye, too?”

“No. I’m a business associate of Helen’s.”

“I don’t want to get involved in her problems. I make a point to distance myself from the neighbors. It’s safer that way.”

“Look, you have nothing to fear from me. I’m just curious to know what you saw.”

“You won’t tell anybody?”

“What’s said on the sidewalk stays on the sidewalk.”

He scowled. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Not at all.”

He looked around to make sure nobody was close by. “I drank a lot of cough medicine on Thursday. I slept off and on all day. Just before midnight, I heard a loud noise. It woke me up. It seemed to be coming from the condo next door, so I got out of bed and went for my binoculars.”

I felt my eyes open wide. “Binoculars?”

He grabbed the garbage bag out of my hand and held it protectively against his chest. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not a pervert. I’m a bird watcher. I’d been monitoring the progress of a
Carpodacus mexicannus
that’s been building a nest in the eaves outside my kitchen window. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I agree. So what did you see?”

He set the bag on the sidewalk. “The kitchen door was open and the light was on. Then it went out and another light came on in the upstairs bedroom. I know it was the bedroom because my condo is the mirror image of the one next door. I looked at both units before I chose this one. I liked mine better because streets border the other unit on two sides. I’m a light sleeper and I didn’t want traffic noise keeping me awake.”

“So, the light in the bedroom went on. . . .” I prompted.

“Yes. The mini blinds were down but the slats weren’t closed. I could see a man. I just assumed it was Helen’s boyfriend. I’ve never met him before, but I can hear them sometimes through the bedroom window . . . you know . . . making noise.”

“Was he alone?”

“As far as I know.”

“What was he doing?”

“Pulling out dresser drawers and scattering clothes everywhere, and I know why. You hear about it all the time. People pretend to burglarize their own apartments so they can collect money from insurance companies.”

“You think this was insurance fraud?”

He put his hands on his hips. “Please don’t make me state the obvious.”

I tried to make sense of what he’d just told me. It was mind-boggling that Helen was so desperate for money she’d recruit Dale Ewing, a former CIA analyst, to defraud an insurance company for chump change. If she were going to take that kind of risk, she would have claimed more was missing.

“Did you tell the police what you saw?” I said.

“They knocked on the door, but I didn’t open it. I told you before. I don’t want to get involved.”

“What did this guy look like?”

“Short, stout, black hair. And he was wearing a suit.”

The neighbor was more than a little strange. He admitted to overdosing on cough medicine, which may have distorted his recollection, but the man inside Helen’s apartment didn’t match the description of Helen’s boyfriend. Dale Ewing was tall and his hair was white. It sounded more like the man Aidan Malloy had seen getting into the Mercedes parked outside Nectar the night Lupe was murdered.

“If I showed you a picture of Helen’s boyfriend, do you think you could tell me if he was the man you saw that night?”

The neighbor seemed less sure of himself. “I have to go inside now. I’m getting cold, and I don’t want to have a relapse.”

He grabbed the garbage bag and hurried inside his condo. A moment later, I heard threes sets of dead bolts click into place.

I was just walking back to my car when Charley called. He asked me to meet him at the office. He had some important news.

Chapter 32

“There’s a research foundation up in Thousand Oaks that collects birds from all over the world,” Charley said. “They test DNA to find out why birds are dying or why their eggs are getting so thin. And guess what? They have a drawer full of quetzals.”

Charley was sitting at his desk, trying with little success to pry something out of his stapler with his lock-picking tools.

“That’s not all,” he went on. “The place gives tours to the public. A couple of days before Lupe Ortiz was killed, one member of the group seemed overly interested in the quetzals. The purpose of the foundation is to educate the public about birds, so the guy was allowed to get up close and personal with the display. When the tour was over, one of the scientists noticed a quetzal was missing.”

“Did they confront the guy?” I said.

Charley banged the stapler on the desk. “Nah. They can’t prove he took it. They considered it an unfortunate loss and moved on.”

“Do they know who the guy is?”

“He gave John Jones when he made the reservation, but I’m sure that’s not his real name. He left a telephone number. I talked the docent into giving it to me. I called, but there’s no answer and no voice mail.”

“Is there another way to find out who the number belongs to?”

Charley gave up on the stapler and used a paper clip to attach several sheets of paper that looked like one of his case progress reports. “I tried. It isn’t listed. The police would have to issue a warrant to get the records.”

“So you think this guy stole a quetzal and left its feather by Lupe’s body. Why?”

“He may have known her son was a gangbanger and wanted to set him up for the murder. If so, it was a good call. It worked.”

“That means the guy planned to kill Lupe when he came to Nectar that night.”

“Maybe he got tired of playing games with her. He wanted the chocolate pot back and he wanted Lupe dead for making his life difficult.”

“So what do we do now?” I said.

“I’ve been following up on the list of customers you gave me. I’ve contacted everybody on the Westside and in the Valley. None of them recognized Eugene’s picture. Only three of the owners knew Lupe Ortiz by name. None of them knew about the spouted chocolate pot. I still have a few places to check in the east. If those don’t pan out, we’ll have to get more names from Jay-Cee. I have to meet with a client this morning, but I’ll try to get through the list by tonight.”

“Nerine Barstok asked me to pick up a bag of sugar. I’ll already be in Silver Lake. Give me the names and I’ll check them out.”

He hesitated. “Okay, but make up a pretext. I don’t want anybody knowing what you’re up to. If you sense trouble, get out. Fast. Call me if you have any questions, and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Charley.”

“Sorry. You know what I mean.”

Charley gave me the address and contact name for a suntan salon in Arcadia and a dry cleaner in Montebello. I added the suspected quetzal thief’s number to my cell phone address book. It was improbable, but maybe I’d be able to connect it to one of the businesses I was going to visit.

Pookie was still ensconced in my spare room, weighing her future, so Muldoon would be safe with her until I got home. After I left the office, I stopped at the market for a five-pound sack of sugar before heading to Eugene’s apartment.

Nerine opened the door, releasing the aroma of baking peanut butter into the November afternoon. She was wearing an apron and what looked like one of Eugene’s cats on her head. On closer inspection, I realized she had the same uncontrollable cowlick in the same spot as his. Her hair must have been plastered down with spray the first time I saw her, because I hadn’t noticed it before. Somehow it made her seem more human.