Something's Knot Kosher (19 page)

C
HAPTER
33

After I left Gail Deukmejian, I walked to the market down the street from the restaurant and picked up four bags of badly needed groceries. I had just unloaded the last of the organic veggies in my kitchen, when I remembered tomorrow was Quilty Tuesday and, for the first time in sixteen years, Birdie wouldn't be there. I made myself comfortable on the sofa and called Lucy at home.

“Hello, hon,” she answered slightly out of breath. “You calling about tomorrow?”

“How'd you know?”

“You keep forgetting about my powerful sixth sense.”

I laughed. “Or maybe you're just a good guesser. Where shall we meet? Your house or mine?”

“Jazz called this morning and says he wants to join us. He'd like to get started on a memory quilt, so I told him to bring all his fabrics and meet us at my house at ten. What're you up to today? I've got loads of laundry from the trip.”

I told her about my meeting with Gail the loan officer and how Russell discovered the string of bad loans. “I'm ready to hand over his diary to Agent Lancet. From what Gail described, it seems pretty clear Russell was uncovering the embezzlement, not covering it up.”

“Nice work, girlfriend. I'm sure both Birdie and Jazz will be sad but relieved to know Russell wasn't doing anything illegal.”

My next call was to Agent Lancet's cell phone. “Hello, Kay. How was your flight back to LA?”

The phone beeped a couple of times and her voice faded back in. “. . . Virginia for a debriefing.”

“Well, I have something that will break your investigation wide open.”

She chuckled. “Come on, Martha. No disrespect, but what could you possibly have that we haven't already thought of?”

Well, that was a bit snarky
. I told her about the diary.

“You held back evidence all this time?” Her voice turned from amused to angry.

“We had no idea what we had at first, so we didn't know how important it was. But after speaking to Gail Deukmejian this morning, I'm convinced I know
why
Russell was killed. I'm confident you'll find out who's responsible. It looks like it's someone within the bank.”

“Are you accusing anyone specific?”

“According to Gail, it could be any of the other five branch managers. Even one of their loan officers, if he had access to the database and computer skills good enough to bypass the approval process. You probably know a lot more about how these things work than I do. Anyway, I'm more than happy to have you take this diary off my hands.”

“You're damn right you're handing it over. I'll be back in LA early tomorrow morning. I expect to see you first thing.”

“Wow, Kay. That wasn't the reaction I expected. I mean, how often does the FBI get such a big clue just dropped in their lap like this? Whatever happened to ‘We exes have to stick together'?”

“That only applies to boyfriends and husbands. I mean it, Martha. Don't leave town.”

Not more than five minutes later my phone rang. Arlo Beavers sounded really annoyed. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Did you not like my earlier message about adopting your German shepherd? It's just that Arthur is such a great dog, and I've grown so fond of him. But if you're going to get all sensitive on me, forget I ever asked.”

“Kay just called. She told me about the diary you've been sitting on all this time. She wants me to take it from you before you do anything else stupid.”

“I don't believe you,” I huffed. “She wouldn't call me stupid. We've bonded.”

“You and my ex-wife? God help me. I'm finishing something up here at the station. Don't leave the house. I'll be there in a half hour to retrieve the evidence and my dog.”

The shepherd nuzzled my hand, asking for ear scratches. “So you're definitely going to take Arthur back?”

The tone of his voice changed, and he spoke quietly. “Artie is part of a package. If you want to adopt the dog, you have to adopt me, too.”

“I'll pack his things.”

My body still ached from sitting in a confined space for eighteen hours the day before. I wanted to lie down, but a suitcase full of dirty clothes stared at me. And since my underwear drawer was almost empty, I had no choice but to start a load of laundry. I'd be able to relax once everything was clean and put away.

I'd just turned on the delicate cycle of the washing machine when someone knocked on my door. Beavers already? I looked through the peephole. Only one person I knew wore thick green eye makeup—my neighbor Sonia Spiegelman.

I opened the door and embraced her. “Sonia. Come in. Thank you so much for taking such good care of Bumper while I was gone.”

“It was no problem. I really enjoyed spending time with him each day.” The Indian bangle bracelets tinkled on her arm as she crossed the threshold and pointed to a pile of envelopes and catalogs on the hall table. “I brought in your mail each day and separated out the solicitations from the bills. No letters. People don't write letters anymore.” She picked up one of the envelopes. “I noticed you've changed from cable to satellite. Do you like it better?”

Sonia was our resident yenta. Nothing, and I mean
nothing
, happened in the neighborhood without her knowledge. Her prying used to irritate me, but I gained a real affection for her when she helped save my life a year ago. Sonia was a lonely, middle-aged ex-groupie of Mick Jagger's. Her house was a shrine to the seventies, and she smoked medical marijuana for a condition I had yet to figure out. I guided her toward the living room and gestured for her to sit.

“How was your trip?” she asked.

“Exhausting. And my hip is really bothering me today. I brought something back for you.”

Her face lit up. “You shouldn't have.”

“Wait here.” I retrieved a small cloth bag containing the handmade turquoise earrings. “When I saw these I thought of you. The tag that comes with them says turquoise has tremendous healing powers and protects the wearer.”

Sonia's eyes sparkled. “I love handcrafted jewelry. I'm going to put them on right now.” She walked over to the mirror above the hall table, removed the silver hoops she already wore, and threaded the new gold hooks through the holes in her earlobes. The turquoise stones swayed when she turned to face me. “How do I look?”

“Like a healthy, safe person.”

“And I have something for you.” Sonia reached into her pocket and pulled out a handmade cigarette. “I'm sorry you're feeling crummy.”

“Weed?” I asked.

Sonia laughed. “Ganja. Boo. Paca lolo. Have you ever tried it for your fibromyalgia? I take a couple tokes of this special blend when I'm in pain.” She thrust her fist forward and deposited the joint in my hand. “Just try it, but be careful. It's powerful. One or two hits should be enough.” She kissed my cheek and turned toward the door. “Thanks again for the beautiful earrings.”

With my mouth hanging open, I stared at her back as she walked out, leaving as abruptly as she came. I doubted Dr. Lim at UCLA would ever prescribe cannabis as an anti-inflammatory. But now that medical marijuana was legal in California, maybe I'd take her advice and give it a try. I put the cigarette on the hall table and headed for the kitchen, thinking what was the worst that could happen?

Beavers called again. “Sorry I'm late. Something came up. But I'll be there around six to pick up the diary and Arthur. Do you still have enough kibble to feed him dinner?”

What did that man have against saying a simple hello? “Sure. Everything's ready. See you later.”

I ended the brief call and unloaded the bags from Miller's fabric store on my kitchen table. Most of my purchases were pieces of fabric cut into fat quarters. Cotton yardage was typically around forty inches wide. So a yard would measure forty inches wide and thirty-six inches long; a half yard 40”x18”; and a quarter yard 40”x9”. A quarter yard cut that way was not a very useful strip of fabric. But if the half yard was divided vertically down the middle, the resulting piece was 20”x18”, a much more useful size. Buying fat quarters was an economical way to build a stash of fabric, and quilt stores were happy to provide them for their customers.

I had a rule about new fabric. Every piece had to be washed and dried before it was allowed in my sewing room. For one thing, I wanted to get rid of all the chemicals from the manufacturing and dying process. For another, I wanted to preshrink the cotton fabric so the seams of the finished quilt wouldn't pull apart when washed later. I unfolded each of the fat quarters and sorted the lights and darks in preparation for washing after my clothes were done.

By early evening, the pain in my hip and lower back had reached a crescendo. I limped from the laundry room, where I was folding clothes, into the kitchen to take my pain meds. I reached for the bottle of Soma but stopped in midair. Maybe I should try that joint. What if smoking pot really could ease my chronic pain?

At least thirty-five years had passed since I'd experimented with marijuana in college, but I still remembered what to do. A small box of wooden matches hid out in the kitchen junk drawer. I pawed through expired coupons, rubber bands, odd plastic lids, and orphan screws to find them. Sitting at the kitchen table, I lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and held the hot smoke in my lungs. A cough exploded out of my chest.

I inhaled a second time and pinched the flame off the end of the cigarette. As I held my breath, a gentle feeling of euphoria began to swirl around me in a soft cloud.
No wonder Sonia smokes this stuff.
I forgot all about my throbbing hip.

A sharp pang in my stomach reminded me it was dinnertime. I couldn't remember the last time I ate, and I was starved. I could make a salad with the organic veggies I had just purchased, but that would take too long. I rummaged through the freezer, looking for something already prepared that I could nuke.

Instead, I found something even better; a quart of Trader Joe's double creamy Coffee Bean Blast ice cream with a million calories per half cup, which came to eight million calories per quart. I took the unopened container straight to the table. Who needed to bother with a bowl when you could eat it right out of the carton? The coffee flavor burst on my tongue, and the cold silky texture cooled the inside of my mouth. My taste, my sight, all my senses seemed to be a thousand times more acute.

Twenty minutes later I was scraping the bottom of the carton when someone rang the doorbell. It had to be Beavers! Technically, he could cite me for possession since I didn't have a prescription for pot. I picked up the partially smoked joint and tossed it in the junk drawer. Then I reached under the sink for a can of air freshener and quickly sprayed the heck out of the air, hoping to mask any telltale smoke.

When I finally opened the door, he took one look at me and chuckled. He saw the puzzled look on my face so he pointed to my chest. “What have you been eating?”

I looked down at the girls. Big latte-colored drips stained the front of my T-shirt, where my spoon had dripped on the way to my mouth. “Crap.”

Arthur trotted over to greet his owner, who bent down to rough up the dog's fur.

“How's my buddy? Did you have fun in Oregon?”

Arthur responded with a bark and a wagging tail. Then Beavers stood and breezed past me into the house.

As he entered, I caught a whiff of his woodsy cologne. I had always found it sexy and compelling, but tonight the scent was so much sharper and complex. Mixed in with the musky, patchouli, lemony overtones, was the aroma of this man's body. Memories of our past intimacies flooded my senses like an aphrodisiac. I couldn't help myself. I was hot for Beavers.

He didn't waste any time. “Where's the diary?” I handed it to him and he looked inside. “Tell me what I'm looking at.”

We moved to the living room, and he sat so close to me on the sofa, our thighs touched. At this proximity, his scent became even stronger. A warm flush started at the base of my spine and slowly crept all the way up to my chest. I leaned toward him and pointed to the diary lying open in his hands. I explained how Birdie had decoded the key phrase substitution code. “Russell made a list of loans awarded to bogus companies by someone in First Encino Bank. He uncovered evidence of systematic fraud. I believe he intended to report the embezzlement and that's what got him killed.”

I explained the meaning of each entry in the book. “When the FBI uncovers who owned these companies, they'll find the embezzler and the killer.”

Beavers turned his head toward me. His face was inches from mine. I was so mesmerized by the movement of his soft lips beneath his white mustache, I barely heard what he said. “You're so damn smart, Martha.”

I looked into his dark eyes and knew he was feeling the same urgency I was. All it took was a slight movement in his direction. With a little moan, he grabbed me and pulled me toward him. As his eager tongue probed my mouth, I knew “the worst thing” was about to happen, but I didn't care. I fell backward on the sofa, dragging him with me.

An hour later, Beavers and I lay both satisfied and spent in my bed. Our clothes were strewn around the room, and the sheets lay in a frenzied tangle. He kissed the tip of my nose and smiled. “Well. That was fun.” He pulled me closer. “I've missed you, honey. We were always so good together.”

Yes, until our breakup a year ago, we had been good together. That was, as long as he could be the boss. Beavers was an alpha male. Because of that, I found him both sexy and maddening at the same time.