The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Read online

  I said nothing to Eileen, simply sat down in the chair across the interview table and held her eyes. Actually, I drilled in just above her eyes as if I intended to extract coconut juice from her forehead.

  She looked away. “I had to keep you busy.”

  I gripped the seat of my chair. If I stayed in it, I could not pick it up and slam it across her tired, wily face. Which would have been counterproductive.

  “So you moved the goods after Richard ran away,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  No answer.

  “Eileen, your baby sister is holding my boy.” My eyes felt dead. “All for some pretty rocks and wads of paper with oval pictures on them.”

  “Rita, I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck you. We went to get the key together,” I added.

  She cut me a sharp sideways smile. “Did she react when she saw the car?”

  “Yes, she did. Like she was seeing a ghost.”

  The smile widened slightly as she hooked an arm over the back of her chair. “I hadn’t planned that. Too bad it didn’t give her a fatal heart attack.”

  “Would’ve been a nice coincidence.”

  “Make no mistake: It wasn’t that she gave a damn about the victim,” said Eileen. “That car’s a huge piece of evidence against her.”

  “Yes, I understood that.”

  “And that’s when you figured it out—you realized she was Norah?”

  “Yes. Tell me about the car.”

  And she told me about a fucked-up night about a year ago, the night when everything changed.

  “It was the middle of the night. I woke up to—there was this pounding on the front door, this slow pounding. Richard grabbed his pants and went down, and I followed. I was scared because you never know, people get shot by some asshole, you know?

  “It was my sister standing there in her white mink coat—it was November—her face is all crooked, she’s drunk. She stumbles through the door, crying and talking about some party in Los Feliz she’d been to. She was on her way home—she had a condo in Brentwood—and she’d hit something on Franklin. The way she said it, I tell you, my blood ran cold. I go, ‘You hit...something?’ She nods and I can tell she’s going to throw up, and she does, all over my Kilim entry mat.

  “Richard thought she’d hit another car, but I knew it was a person, I just knew it. We go into the kitchen and I make coffee and she tells us she’d been driving her Jaguar ‘in a perfectly straight line’ down Franklin toward Cahuenga when she felt a thud and someone in a down jacket and boots flew over the windshield.”

  The down jacket explained the bits of fluff I’d seen still sticking to the dent. “Oh, my God,” I said. “So she didn’t—”

  “She panicked and floored it out of there. Then she ran out of gas on Santa Monica.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “That was Norah. A fuckup from the word go. She’s there at my kitchen counter, drunk on her ass, and she’s telling us she just ran somebody over and she strokes the countertop and says, ‘I myself would like a kitchen like this.’ Always wanting what I had. Yeah!”

  Including Richard, I thought. Including Gabriella?

  “Richard asked how she got here, and she said she walked up from Santa Monica.” Eileen stopped and looked searchingly into the middle distance. “She always projected this appeal, that I could never figure out. Not exactly babe in the woods, not exactly wounded puppy. There was always a good-time aura about Norah. She tried to act so delicate. Which was a charade, when you think about it.”

  “A party girl?” I suggested.

  “With a smart mouth and a soft heart. Except when she gets in trouble. Then it’s number one all the way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The car, by the way, had been a gift from Richard. He says, ‘Where is it?’ I noticed she still had her stiletto heels on, so it couldn’t be far. We’re all sitting there looking at each other. Nobody’s saying it! Finally I do. ‘We have to call the police.’ She starts shrieking no no no, then she passes out. Richard carries her to the sofa and says, ‘We have to get the car.’ I’m like, Richard, do you realize how many times we’ve bailed her out of a mess? There was the lawsuit with the renter, then that crazy boyfriend—oh,” Eileen swooped her hand in a gesture of infinity, “and before all that was the shoplifting. All my life I’ve covered for her. I even used to take the blame, if I thought nothing else would work. When was it going to end?

  “We argue and argue, and finally he tells me to go get the car! And I do! He siphons some gas from his Land Rover into a can and hands it to me and says, ‘Unless we’re lucky enough that it’s been stolen already, pour the gas in and drive it here. Leave your car wherever, we’ll get it tomorrow.’ And I went, and my nerves almost killed me. I found it in front of a cleaner’s, with that dent in the fender and some scrape marks on the roof. I got it home and drove it into the garage. It was three in the morning, nobody saw me. Richard put one of those covers on it and that was it.” Eileen looked at me, although her eyes were still on that night.

  “All these thoughts went through my head: Why did he want to put us both at risk like that, without any discussion? He’d seen what a nutbag Norah was, he’d picked up the phone at all hours too. The next day we learn a student from USC was killed in a crosswalk on Franklin Avenue last night. An attractive young girl, Korean, I think. There was her picture in the paper. Nobody had seen the car.”

  “How,” I asked, “did Richard react to that?”

  “Good. He said good, with real relief in his voice. Student killed, no suspects. Good. That’s when I realized they were having an affair. And what’s more, they’d been at it for quite some time.”

  I observed, “You’ve done an awful lot to protect your sister.”

  “I sure have.” If I’ve ever heard a rueful sentence, that was it.

  All the facts I’d gleaned, all the gut-level sensations I’d felt for weeks now—all of it made me decide this was the time to take the leap.

  I said, “She planted that half-assed evidence the night Gabriella died, didn’t she?”

  Eileen paused. Then she said, “She put me here, you know.”

  “Tell me about that night.”

  “I can’t—yet. But I think, Rita, you and I might have a chance to...do something about her.”

  “Yes?”

  “But we have to wait.”

  “Depending on what the jury says?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eileen, do you know where Padraig McGower is?”

  I heard her catch her breath. Fucking fine.

  After a moment, she said, cautiously, “No.”

  I drew it out. “Would you like to know?”

  She nodded, searching my face for something good, but knowing no good could possibly be there.

  I thought about cute ways to put it, like, He’s occupying a very small sublet in Florence, or He sleeps with the fishes, but I finally just said, “He’s in that gray chest.”

  She gulped and dropped her head. She mumbled into her hands, “Oh, my God. Padraig. Padraig.” She looked up. “I had a feeling.”

  I reached across and took her wrist, then dropped it, remembering the vigilant deputy. Fuck Padraig McGower, and I bet you did. Richard’s back. Fuck Richard. We’ll deal with him. But first, but first—this: “Eileen, you’re a mother. Your child is dead, but you’re still a mother who gave birth and nursed your baby and watched the umbilical stub fall off. We are mothers. We have unity, you and I. You’ve got to help me.”

  She lifted her head and cleared her throat. “Don’t mistake Norah. She’s not motivated by greed, she’s motivated by hate. Rita, I want to help you.”

  Was that actual warmth coming from her? Actual sincerity? I wanted to think so. Maybe it was. I smoothed my sleeves, comforted by the fine feel of the silk-rayon blend. “Why,” I asked, “did Richard do this embezzling thing anyway? You two had it all.”

  She watched me touch my clothing, and I sa
w she appreciated the fabric. “It looked like we had it all,” she said, “but really we didn’t. Nobody does.” She paused, thinking about that. “Richard was a good-looking bull, and he was a persuasive guy, but he was an atrocious businessman. He and Padraig became highly skilled at judging stones and bribing South American bureaucrats, but that only goes so far. They never had the guts to get into the business in Africa or Asia, where guys’ll kill you over ten feet of dirt. He and Padraig discovered that you can fool a lot of people by how you look. And”—she smiled crookedly—“by who you owe.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  “We piled up material things, few of them paid for. The guys kept borrowing to build the business, they posted losses all the time, but all the while they’re drawing huge paychecks for themselves. People advised them to take the company public, but they knew it couldn’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny.”

  I said, “So Richard decided to stock up a lifeboat.”

  She glanced at me sidelong. “Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. And stocking the lifeboat caused the ship to sink!”

  We both smiled at that witticism, but it felt uncomfortable. Eileen said, “Do the police know about Padraig?”

  “Not yet, as far as I know.”

  “He was never a match for Richard.”

  I decided to go for the present tense and see what happened. Bit of a trick. “What motivates Richard?”

  “What motivates Richard,” she repeated. “Well”—and the last of her pretenses fell away as she unconsciously lifted her arms to adjust her hair, which told me that he still moved her sexually—“if you ever meet him you’ll immediately see that he’s not a deep thinker. He’s a schemer. He likes sex, lots of it, and he was starting to like it younger and younger. Get it?”

  I had eased her into it.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Your little sister, then young girls.”

  “I even started to be afraid for Gabriella. Isn’t that unspeakable? He liked luxury and he liked sex. Not much more there, other than arrogance, which he kept fairly well hidden. He was so good with people. A smile from him bought a year’s worth of loyalty from some people, I’m not kidding. If he’d been a politician, I’m sure he’d have been president by now. He loved to get away with things. Deceit came so naturally to him.”

  That was all good to know. At last I said, “Eileen, you’re going to be acquitted. I know it down in my gut: You could be free as early as today. I could tip off the police about what’s in that garage. I could do all sorts of things to fuck you up once you’re free. You’ve said you want to help me. Well?”

  She looked startled, gazed at me intently, evidently did not find the hidden meaning she suspected, and relaxed with a touch of bitterness. “He tried to hold things over me too. He didn’t think I’d hide his retirement fund—that’s what he called that pile of stuff—from him, given my collusion in everything. He tried to hold that over me.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Just wait. Just wait.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said in a hard voice. “It has to be today. When you’re acquitted—Gary told you about the house I rented for you, right?”

  She glinted with amusement at my use of when, not if. “Yes, I’d rather go there than...home.”

  “Today, Eileen.”

  She looked at me, and I couldn’t tell if she was just putting me off for the moment, but she said, “All right, today.”

  By the looks of her I saw I wasn’t going to get anything from her until she was damned ready. My child was still alive—I prayed—and her child was dead. Somehow that gave her the power to outstare me. I felt compassion for the pain she’d been through—would never finish going through—but that was beside the point today.

  I said, “I want you to do something. When the trial’s over, I want you to speak to the press just for a minute. Say you’re glad to be free, but justice has not yet been done, blah-blah, OK? Then say you’re leaving the country tomorrow for a much-needed rest.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Cayman Islands. Tell them that.”

  Her hazel eyes glinted into mine. “What are you up to, Rita?”

  “Just please do that. All right?”

  “You want the world to think I’m only going to be in Los Angeles for one more night. And that I might be going to arrange a financial thing or two.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Could be good. Could be good.”

  Chapter 35 – Daniel’s Mission

  Unlike the police, Daniel Clements was not obliged to go on to another duty when Sally Jacubiak did not answer her door.

  After his first reconnaissance with the flower bouquet, when he heard the locks rattling after his knock, he thought the nosy neighbor might be able to do him some good, somehow. Now that Petey had been snatched, he brought another bouquet and knocked, quite early in the morning, on the neighbor’s door. But now she wasn’t home either.

  Last night, during the date he’d consented to go on with the former police advisor from Abilene Cop Shop, he’d gotten the guy talking about police work. He’d learned something important.

  “Police work—investigative work, I mean,” said Olin, placing a rawboned elbow on their cocktail table at the Chuckwagon, a gay club in Studio City, “is largely a matter of taking dots that look random and seeing if you can connect them. If you’re looking for a line, you won’t see it at first. All you get are dots. There’s this dot here and that dot over there and you try to figure out the line. Sometimes there is no line, then you have to find more dots.”

  “So,” said Daniel, “a fact is a dot?”

  “Right.”

  “But if totally all you have is two dots—”

  “Then you work like hell to find a line.” Olin laughed. “‘Cause what else’re you going to do?” He stared at Daniel’s chest hair peeping out from his orange Lycra bar shirt. “So, you want another mojito?”

  Daniel’s dots were:

  1. The call from Sally Jacubiak’s apartment to Gary Kwan just before his murder.

  2. Petey’s abduction.

  Both Gary and Petey had a connection to Eileen Tenaway. Eileen was in custody. Gary was dead. Petey was somewhere. Sally’s apartment seemed a reasonable place to look.

  When the tinfoil-headed lady didn’t answer, he knocked on Sally Jacubiak’s door. No answer. He shouted, once, “Hello!” and put his ear to the door. Nothing. Or maybe there was a small sound, a bump or something, but he couldn’t be sure. For the sake of thoroughness he tried the knob, then inspected the door more closely. Steel, in a steel frame. No way could he just kick it in.

  He returned to the street and walked all around the building, looking at it. He got into his car. He watched the lobby doors, thinking.

  _____

  In the courtroom I studied Tracy Beck-Rubin. She looked as if someone had tied her to a tree and left her there overnight. She had given her closing arguments for three hours yesterday afternoon, following her head-to-head with Eileen that morning. Prosecutors generally want time to prepare their remarks after the last of the testimony, but perhaps Tracy just wanted to get the damn thing over with. All she did was practically reiterate her opening arguments. Clearly this case had taken her to her limits. I took pleasure in her exhaustion. You wanna know exhaustion, lady? Stand in my shoes for fifteen minutes.

  I wanted my boy back so bad I hurt all over, like the flu. Focus, focus.

  Mark Sharma began the morning by making short work of his closing arguments, just as he’d pledged to. I was so intent on my plans, all of which hung by the merest of threads, that I hardly heard what he said. I thought about that house up Topanga Canyon, and about what might happen there later.

  I can tell you Mark was forceful, precise, and passionate. The jury nodded madly. Eileen sat poised and brave. At last Mark stopped talking and sat down with sweat streaming down his neck, like a small, well-groomed horse. I looked at him sitting there so proud of himself. We were all s
o proud of ourselves, Team Eileen.

  This was our triumph. Every member of the jury was looking at Eileen, openly and without anxiety. They appeared almost relaxed, yet clearly they wanted to get on with it and be the hell out of there.

  Judge Davenport droned instructions to the jury, then it was time for an early lunch, only eleven-thirty.

  I had a message from Daniel on my cell phone. “Just call me,” said his buzzy electronic voice. “Please.”

  I phoned him back and he answered. I said, “Are you still trying to quote-unquote help?” I was in no mood.

  “Yes, though you needn’t be such a bitch.”

  People never understand. “Yes, I do need to be such a bitch.” At this point, being a bitch was all I could cling to. “I might as well ask how you’re doing, then.”

  A shame-filled sigh. “Not well, I’m afraid. But I’m—”

  “Now I don’t want to know.”

  “Will you be home tonight? That’s why I called.”

  “Daniel, I don’t know. I suppose I’ll either be there or at the morgue identifying Petey’s—”

  “Rita, don’t!”

  “—his body, Daniel, or I may be at a house in Topanga Canyon trying to salvage what’s left of my life and his.”

  He asked for the address, and I gave it to him.

  After lunch the jury began its work, their absence from the courtroom as strong as a new presence.

  Nobody left the building.

  Mark Sharma and Steve Calhoun and Lisa Feltenberger speculated in low tones, their voices rutabaga-rutabaga in the hallway. I did not take part. The jury had already told me what they were going to do.

  _____

  After two hours Daniel felt foolish sitting in his car in front of Sally Jacubiak’s apartment building. He started up the silver Porsche and released the brake, but then froze because a woman walked out of the building, a woman wearing sunglasses and carrying a pink shoulder bag. Her jeweled pendant gave off sparks of sunshine. It was unmistakably her, the woman who had come to look at the light over Petey’s window. The woman he’d shared an intimate smoke with on the fire escape.