The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Read online

  “Oh, honey, it’s all right,” I soothed, holding him close.

  “I wish Ryan didn’t come to school today,” he sobbed. “Then it wouldn’t of happened.”

  “Don’t worry, honey, Ryan’s arm will get better.”

  “But my Spider-Man jacket got torn.”

  “You tore your Spider-Man jacket? Where is it? Did you leave it at school?”

  “I let Ryan wear it to the park and it got torn when the bad lady grabbed him.”

  It didn’t strike Daniel, but my protective-mom adrenaline was surging and it rammed my gut like a paranoid rocket: the woman meant to snatch Petey! The boy in the Spider-Man jacket! “Petey,” I said, “did you know the bad lady?”

  “No.”

  “Does Daddy’s lady friend have a blue car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I left the command center and called Petey’s teacher at home, not caring what time it was. Moreover, as a mother herself I knew she’d be sleepless tonight anyway. Ms. Crayden told me the would-be abductress was white and wearing a headscarf and big sunglasses. One of the parents who saw the incident from across the park remembered seeing a similar blue sports car parked in front of the school that morning. “The police are looking into it,” said Ms. Crayden in her reassuringly brisk voice. “Let’s try not to worry.”

  _____

  I was shocked, on Saturday morning, to hear a knock and see Jeff through the peephole.

  I debated whether to open the door.

  Jeff called, “Hey, Petey!” and pounded.

  “Daddy!” cried Petey, scrambling for his backpack.

  I opened the door. “I thought this weekend was canceled.”

  “Because of my arrest?” The curled lip.

  “Yes.” I figured he’d have gotten out on bail, but didn’t expect him to have the gall to come here yet.

  He slouched past me into the apartment and shut the door. I smelled neither liquor nor gasoline.

  With smug triumph, Jeff explained that he’d called in a favor with a cop he knew and gotten the charge dropped.

  “You can do that?” I asked like a naïve idiot.

  “No, you can’t do that,” Jeff said, hitching up his cargo shorts. “Not everybody knows the right people. Come on, big guy.”

  I could only watch in horror as Petey raced to the door.

  Jeff let him out to the corridor, where he thundered down to the elevator. Jeff said, “You have to let me take him. It’s the law.”

  Venomously, I said, “If you let anything happen to him, I’ll kill you.”

  Jeff laughed and slammed the door.

  I wandered vaguely around the apartment, went for a walk, came back, drove to Gary’s office, where only Mark Sharma and Steve Calhoun were working, went home, vacuumed, looked at Trial TV for a while. They were doing a full-saturation job on the Tenaway trial, in spite of not having video feed from the courtroom. Judge Davenport hated TV cameras in courtrooms and wasn’t about to allow one in his, no matter how pruriently interested America was. It was odd to watch it all, occasionally catching a flash of myself in the background of a shot of Gary striding toward the press in the corridor or courtyard. I’d managed to keep my face away from the photographers, not that I cared all that much by this point. The whole thing was just so surreal. I turned the TV off.

  I tried to read Nicola Glassmore’s latest novel, this one about a twelve-year-old girl who runs away from an abusive poverty-stricken broken home and just as she’s about to die from hypothermia gets adopted by a coven of crones in the woods who teach her the ancient ways of being kind to the earth. In turn, she uses her youthful agility to procure cliff-growing herbs for their healing potions. Usually I enjoy Nicola Glassmore’s books—I love all those Empowerment Of The Weak themes she uses—but this one I couldn’t get into.

  The phone rang and I hoped it was Daniel, but I guess even he needed a break from Planet Petey-Rita. The person on the other end was a compassionate-sounding woman who said she knew who I was, whatever that meant. “My name is Janet,” she said. “I want to see you.”

  “Uh, what about?” Holding the cordless, I hip-shoved the armchair, which hadn’t quite gotten back into place after the dismantling of the command center.

  “You and your little boy are in danger, and I can tell you why. And what to do about it,” she added.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “No joke, Rita Farmer.”

  “Does this have something to do with Jeff? Is he there? Put him on.”

  “Meet me at the Starbucks on Santa Monica at La Brea.”

  “Well—oh, for God’s sake!”

  “Let’s just be low-key.”

  Gramma Gladys would go find out what the hell this was about.

  “OK,” I said. “When?”

  “I’m here now.”

  _____

  At the Starbucks a brunette in a flare-collared yellow top motioned to me and I joined her at her table on the plaza. She was smoking a cigarette in the sunshine and sipping from a frothy iced beverage, which competed for table space with her large pink purse. I wanted nothing to drink.

  The main thing I noticed about Janet was her distracting amount of jewelry, which reminded me of the stuff Eileen had worn during her police interview. It had to be costume jewelry, though; this woman was no Tenaway. Janet, while pretty, looked hard-bitten and older than she probably was. Cheap, especially with that vinyl purse. A little thick in the body. Still, she hadn’t lost all the juice of youth yet. You know how there’s a litheness about a younger person that doesn’t go away even if her face betrays time spent on the streets, or too many nights alone with a bottle or needle?

  She told me a wild story.

  “Eileen Tenaway is insane,” she began bluntly. “She’s got a friend trying to intimidate you and other people, including I myself.” Her voice was one of those top-of-the-throat ones, not exactly high-pitched, but childlike and intense. It cut through the ambient clinks and fizzles and hipster music coming from the café, not to mention the engines zooming along Santa Monica. “You ask why? Because Eileen and Richard embezzled money and stuff from Gemini. They smuggled and stole and covered it up, and they cheated a bunch of people out of money, again including I myself.” She tugged on the sleeve of her smooth yellow top, something from Ellen Tracy, I thought. It was nicer than the purse. Trying to follow, I said, “Yeah, but what does—”

  “Now she’s afraid. She wants to be convicted of killing her child, that way she’ll be in prison, safe from the people she’s cheated.” She looked at me from under her eyebrows as if daring me to believe her. “All of whom are very angry.”

  “Including you yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  A Starbucks employee came out to us and reluctantly said, “I have to ask you to stop smoking. We’re no-smoking.”

  “But we’re outdoors,” Janet said. “I’ve smoked here before.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” said the black-aproned barista, clearly uncomfortable with the nicotine-squad thing.

  “OK, I’ll put it out,” said Janet, not putting out her cigarette. That was enough for the barista, who went back inside. Janet kept smoking and talking. This Starbucks is attached to the nicest Target shopping center you’ve ever seen. Dozens of Hollywood transsexuals are addicted to shopping here. I noticed one old grim one sitting in a purple dirndl skirt and a tight scoop-neck top with a Starbucks venti and three teddy bears lined up facing him at his table. At first glance I thought he was trying to sell the bears, but then I realized they were keeping him company. A hard breeze eddied around the plaza, shifting, lashing the palms and baby jacarandas in their urban pots.

  Janet was making no sense, but I listened. At one point she saw me looking at her gems and said, “Oh, this is nothing. You should see.”

  I asked, “Why did you call me and how did you get my number?”

  “You’re near to Eileen, and she’s got something I want.”

  I studied her face.
“Have I seen you in the courtroom?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I said, “Well, if you want access to Eileen, why aren’t you talking to Gary Kwan? Or just go to the jail and ask to see her.”

  “He won’t return my calls. And she wouldn’t see me, no way. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter now that I’ve got you.”

  “You don’t ‘have me.’ Who gave you my home number, any—”

  “Just forget that, OK? For now, just forget that, OK?”

  I shook my head. “What does this have to do with my son? This danger you’re talking about.”

  Another customer, two tables away, got up and stood in front of us. We looked up.

  “You’re polluting my environment,” he said with cold pissiness. He wore a polo shirt that said Coppermill Glen or something and cargo shorts. Considering the carbon monoxide engulfing us from La Brea and Santa Monica, I thought his anger amusing.

  “Well, my friend, fuck off,” said Janet in an elfin voice. His face flushed. He looked at me and I stopped smiling and stared at the brick pavement.

  Janet shook out another Benson & Hedges from her pack on the table and lit it from the first.

  “You stop smoking,” the man commanded, as he might speak to an annoying dog. “It’s against the law!”

  “I have a personal arrangement with the government,” said Janet.

  “You do not!”

  “Call a cop on me, then, Rambo,” she said, flicking her little finger at the man as if he were a flake of pastry. “I’m sure one will come running.”

  The man looked as if he might try to snatch her cigarettes away, but he thought better of it and stomped away, saying loudly, “Rude bitch won’t put her cigarette out.” Other customers glanced over indifferently.

  Janet turned back to me. “You have to understand there are forces beyond your scope. If you get to know me, you’ll see that I’m a very deep thinker. I have certain connections. You are valuable to certain people. I’ve got a deal for you. Want to hear it?”

  “Yeah, sure.” A bad feeling crept into my stomach. Connections.

  “Get Eileen to tell you where a certain key is. Then you tell me where it is, and if I find it, there will be no trouble for you and your boy.”

  I couldn’t believe this. I managed to say, “That’s not a deal, that’s a threat. You’re saying something will happen to Petey or me if I don’t get some key for you, right? You’re threatening me. What’s this key to?”

  Janet sipped her cold latte or whatever the hell it was. “Look, I’ll cut you in and it’ll be a real deal. The key is to a storage locker. Inside the locker’s everything Richard Tenaway stole from Gemini. Stones and cash. There’s millions of dollars’ worth of stuff in there. I think about fifteen million’s worth. You should see!” The look in her eyes was penetrating yet blurry, exactly like I’d seen in my uncle Fritz just before he burned the barn and got diagnosed schizophrenic.

  I almost wanted to talk to her about her problems, whatever they really were. But at that point I had too many people with problems in my life.

  “Well, have you seen it?” I asked.

  “In a way,” she responded, the same screwy look in her eyes.

  So I got up, as Gramma Gladys would do right about now. “That’s complete bullshit,” I said, and walked away.

  “Wait!” called Janet, following. “Think it over. It’s just you and me, Rita.” She seized my arm in a surprisingly strong grip.

  I turned on her, flinging her arm away. She held her hand up beseechingly. “You’re nuts,” I told her. “You just made up the whole thing to try to get money from me somehow.”

  Janet’s neck slumped and she stared at her shoes, a pair of sad sulfur-yellow Mary Janes. People walked by in their detached city way. I left her standing there in the sunshine and went to my car, which I’d parked two blocks down. Yet, just like my uncle, there was something sympathetic and lost about Janet. I almost liked her.

  I circled the block to go the other way on Santa Monica. As I pulled up to the light I saw Janet unlock a royal-blue Audi parked on the side street. Blue sports car! I followed her, trying to see the license plate, but a bus cut me off. When I got around it she was gone.

  Chapter 20 – Rita Makes a Complete Fool of Herself

  “Rita, I can hardly understand you, you’re talking so fast,” said Gary. “You’re driving now? For God’s sake hang up and come over to the office.”

  In the cool safety of Kwan & Associates, which this Saturday afternoon was deserted except for his dazzling presence, I did calm down. I started over about Ryan’s near-abduction while wearing Petey’s jacket, then my strange meeting with Janet.

  “So should I call the police? I mean, they could look into...all this.”

  Gary set his square shoulders back on his little office sofa, his unlogoed silk polo shirt draping glossily over his muscles. I had the feeling he wouldn’t wear cargo shorts if his life depended on it. He said, “You could call them, certainly, but I’m not sure exactly what you’d tell them, nor what you’d expect them to do.

  You’ve already said this Janet didn’t fit the description of the kidnapper—”

  “Only in that the teacher said her hair was blond, and this Janet’s hair was brown. There are wigs.”

  “OK, there are wigs but the point is this: Los Angeles is full of crazies, every city is. They come out of the woodwork when they smell excitement and money. You don’t know how many screwballs have written letters to me—and to Eileen, and the police, and the DA. False tips, pleas for money, people wanting to get involved somehow. Psychics. Mind-readers. Lip-readers. Reward-seekers. Amateur detectives. They all watch Trial TV. As disturbing as it is, it’s nothing to worry about. You should have just hung up on this woman in the first place.”

  “Except she knew my name and unlisted phone number.”

  “Rita, listen to me.” He grasped my arm firmly, and my diaphragm, guts, and pelvic organs fibrillated as one. Looking into my eyes in an incredibly reassuring way, he said, “There is nothing to worry about. This incident in the park where the little boy’s arm got hurt—you weren’t there, you have no idea whether the woman was actually trying to abduct him or what. For all you know, there was a misunderstanding between that kid and her kid, or something, and the teachers blew it out of proportion. Even if it was an attempted abduction, they didn’t take your kid! It was a coincidence.”

  I said, “But what about the blue sports car?”

  “There are thousands of blue sports cars in Los Angeles. You don’t even have a license number. Forget it. You’ll never hear from her again. You were right to walk away. If Tenaway had stashed a bunch of loot from his company, do you think he’d talk about it to some nut wandering the streets? Do you think he’d put it in a storage locker instead of an offshore account?” Gary’s powers of reason calmed me. He concluded, “But go ahead and ask Eileen, if you want to, about this storage locker key. I guarantee she won’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “OK. OK.”

  He released my arm almost caressingly. “I too know the power of parental paranoia.” He smiled, as did I.

  We sat in silence for a minute, during which in my mind’s eye I saw Gary and me coming home to our lovely home after a long day in court and on the soundstage, respectively. I envisioned us cooking a gourmet dinner of organic salmon and heirloom pasta while Petey and Jade read their schoolbooks and practiced their dulcimers or looked at plant specimens under their microscope which they share without quarrel. I saw us taking family vacations to offbeat yet beautiful places like the Gaspe Peninsula or Kiev. If hard times ever hit, we’d tough them out together.

  Maybe it was the stress, or maybe my heart was fed up with being Miz Nice Guy, but at any rate I still can’t believe what I did next, which was to start unbuttoning my blouse while holding Gary’s eyes with mine.

  Slowly, his jaw dropped. He turned his head toward the door. “Rita, please.”

  “Please what?
” I let my blouse fall from my shoulders, revealing my cognac lace Victoria’s Secret bra and my acreage of unblemished skin above it.

  His profile was beautiful. “Stop this and pull your shirt back on.”

  I didn’t. I knew I was making an irrevocable idiot of myself, but something propelled me forward. Something? Yeah, hormones, for God’s sake. I hadn’t had a man in so long I’d practically forgotten how intercourse felt. Gary was so achingly right for me that somehow, at this moment, I was able to smush down every bit of good sense I was born with. “But,” I said in a smoky voice, trying to channel Ava Gardner in something like Mogambo, “I was just getting started. Don’t you—”

  “Rita, come on.”

  “Jacqueline doesn’t have to find out.”

  “My God, Rita.”

  “Gary, admit it: you want to. Don’t you?”

  He scrubbed his face with an open hand. “Rita, there’s something I—”

  “No, Gary,” I interrupted firmly. “This time I get to talk first.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I love you, Gary.”

  “Rita, I—”

  Goddamn it, when Gramma Gladys wanted something, she went after it.

  “You’ve stolen my heart,” I told him softly, “and it’s time I said so. There is not one thing about you that’s not perfect. You’re attractive, you’re brilliant, you’re brave.” I saw him shaking his head no, no. I pressed on, “You’re a great daddy, yes, you are, Jade adores you—and I know I’m being insane here. I know it. I have no idea about yours and Jacqueline’s intimate life, but—”

  “Rita, I really need to—”

  “And I’m sure she’s wonderful and everything, but—”

  “Rita!”

  “Please, Gary! I’m not asking you to leave your family.” My own lie stopped me for a millisecond. “To be honest, I would like you to leave Jacqueline. Take Jade and set up housekeeping with Petey and me. That’s my dream, OK? But at the moment all I’m asking is for you to—well—let me love you too.”

  He took a deep breath. “Are you finished?”

  I didn’t want to stop, because I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say. “You’re what my Gramma Gladys would call a man of intuition.”