The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Page 28

  Chapter 36 – The House in Topanga Canyon

  Until the jury actually did what I knew they were going to do, there was this unbelievable suspense effervescing through my system, like one of those retro bubble Christmas tree lights, bubble hot bubble red red. No amount of lawyer shows on TV could have prepared me for it. You have to feel it to believe it.

  At two o’clock we got word there was a verdict. Not as fast as Roscoe Jamison, but close.

  At two-thirty everyone was in court.

  At two-thirty-four Eileen Tenaway was a free woman.

  She burst into tears of relief. Mark put his arm around her and murmured something very earnestly. Everybody shook hands and slapped backs.

  I was pleased on several levels.

  Using my cell phone I sent a discreet text message to George Rowe, asking him to wait a few hours, then come to the Topanga Canyon address. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what would happen there, but I knew I’d want him.

  The jury looked pleased with themselves. The judge thanked them.

  Some of them inclined their bodies eagerly toward Eileen, as if they wanted to talk to her, or touch her, but she turned away from them, already dry-eyed. She looked at the bailiff as if to ask, Really? and the bailiff nodded, thinking about clocking out for the day. He too was pleased. She aimed her eyes at the exit, the one for free citizens.

  The press clamored. They wanted Eileen, but Mark held her back, talking in her ear. My thoughts surged around Petey. Maybe today. Maybe today.

  The jurors poured out and I stood in the sun-washed corridor and listened to what they blurted into the microphones.

  “I just thought she was innocent,” said Juror 2, a male middle school teacher who always wore little cap-toed sneakers to court in a futile attempt to be adorable. “I mean, at first I wasn’t sure? But by the time she testified, I was convinced.”

  Juror 8, the guy who’d told Gary about his nonshoplifting mother during voir dire, said, “Yeah, me too. Those rotten cops better find out who killed her kid.”

  Another juror, a female film technician, said, “I know she didn’t do it.”

  A reporter asked, “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Music to my ears. Dissonant music after all this, but music nevertheless.

  The cap-toed juror broke in helpfully, “Well, they had this and that evidence, you know, but they didn’t really show she did it. I mean, show me, don’t tell me is how I’ve always felt about things like this. And I don’t want to be small, but Tracy Beck-Rubin—ugh. It didn’t look like she cared about Eileen at all. But Eileen, though—you could just feel what was going on inside her. You could...” He groped for words. “You could just feel she was innocent. It’s hard to explain.”

  And there you are: the facts hardly count if you put on a good show. Does that make us all charlatans, then?

  Mark bustled up, ready to talk, but the microphones wanted Eileen. Subtly, I took her elbow and pushed her forward. “I’ll meet you in the garage. Lisa will take you down.”

  No one had spoken that day of Gary Kwan. For all I knew, no one had even thought of him.

  I went back into the nearly empty courtroom. Tracy Beck-Rubin sat stiff and blank at the prosecution’s table, gathering papers and tapping them on the tabletop. Her staff of two stood watching her carefully, not quite knowing what to do. Hypnotically, she tapped her papers, dit-dit-dit.

  Seeing my hemline in her peripheral vision, she looked up.

  I said, “I admire you.”

  She looked down at herself as if to check how much was left. When she looked up again, her pupils were small, her lids narrow. “Who are you?” she said. “Who are you really?”

  I should have been ready for that.

  Her gaze held steady.

  Then I thought, What the hell. “Mostly,” I said, “I’m an actress.”

  That baffled her. Then she broke into a smile. “Ah! Ha-ha! I’ve always felt that way myself.” Her assistants chuckled as the tension dissolved.

  Then Tracy Beck-Rubin straightened, quickly stood up tall—the swivel chair went spinning away—and said, “Thank you. I love my job.”

  As I left the courtroom for the last time, I heard her begin speaking to her subordinates in a brisk tone.

  Mark Sharma grabbed my arm as I walked toward the elevators. “What the hell is she going to the Cayman Islands for?”

  The press had taken off to file their stories.

  I kept striding. He trotted alongside me as I said, “You told me if I had a good idea to act on it. I had one, and I did.”

  “But what the hell—”

  I stopped and faced him. “I know what happened the night Gary died.”

  His eyes receded. Then he remembered to demand, “What, then?” His mouth snapped into a razor-clam line.

  Amazing. His reaction told me he knew something and was afraid of telling it. Or afraid of me.

  My anger flared. “I’m going to nail your ass, Mark.”

  “I didn’t do a thing, and you can’t prove it.” That sounded ridiculous and he knew it.

  “Liar. If the police beat me to it, fine.” The elevator opened. “But you’re going to get what’s coming to you, you treacherous piece of shit.”

  I stepped in, and the doors closed before he could think of something to say.

  My cell phone vibed as I emerged into the parking level. The signal was poor, but Norah and I were able to communicate.

  I ducked behind a pillar so Lisa and Eileen, who were waiting at my car, would not hear.

  “So how goes it?” said Norah.

  “Let me talk to my son.”

  “No can do, hon. What’ve you got for me?”

  I hissed, “I want to talk to Petey!”

  Norah sighed heavily into the phone. “He’s fine, believe me. Believe me.”

  “God damn your soul to hell.”

  “No more cursing, OK? Because it gets on my—”

  “Just let me hear his voice.”

  “Hey, kid! Say hey, OK?”

  My boy’s voice came faintly through the tiny phone’s tiny speaker. “Hey!”

  “Petey!”

  “He’s busy, OK? You satisfied?”

  “All right,” I said, forcing my brain—slicing it—into calmness. “What if I could do better than give you the treasure? What if I could give you Richard, too?”

  “Don’t play with me, he’s—”

  “I’ll tell you where to find him. Today.”

  “I don’t want to walk into—”

  “Walk into it, Norah, you’ll be glad you did. I’ll have everything under control. Go up Topanga Canyon in about two hours.” I gave her the address. “Leave your car at the foot of the road.”

  _____

  Topanga Canyon is a gorgeous hassle, spilling in steep-walled glory mile after mile from practically the Ventura Freeway all the way to the ocean. Its only highway, a two-laner, twists you up and around the motliest properties in Los Angeles. Old hippies have established the canyon as their goal-line stand against the Pizza Hut aesthetic, thus you will see wacky yurts with stained-glass cutouts of Jimi and Janis, hard by the herbal grocery stores which adjoin the pottery chimneys of the artisans which border the property lines of the movie people with their French Normandy horse stables and their natural-looking waterfalls, the waterfalls rarely visible from the road.

  I’d always felt the word Canyon after anything makes it sound serious and mystical. The freeway signs abbreviate it CYN, without the period, which confuses nonlocals. “I’m looking for Laurel Sin Road?” they’ll say. “I guess.”

  The house I’d leased for Eileen was a neo-Alamo with five bedrooms, killer views of the Pacific, and lots of privacy. She and I had dropped off Lisa at her health club in Santa Monica and stopped for a few groceries on the way.

  I felt fairly calm at the moment, yet Petey, Petey, Petey, throbbed through my heart. Helpless little fellow, only four years old. Please God, let him live t
o see five.

  I flipped open the control pad next to the front door and punched in the code the lease agent had given me. The alarm lights switched from red to green. I made a deal of showing Eileen how to work it. Doing this technical thing made a sliver of thought come into my mind, of the film Fail-Safe, and then I thought of On the Beach, and then Serge Oatberger popped into my consciousness, surprisingly, like he’d been waiting behind all the heavy furniture to spring out. Oh, Sergy.

  Eileen had tried to start a conversation in the car but I’d squelched it, not wanting to discuss anything of consequence while driving. I was feeling very tunnelly, like I could only do one thing at a time. And she was fine with that, lowering her window and breathing in all the smells she hadn’t smelled in months. Her nose especially lifted when we hung our turn at the ocean and followed the PCH the few miles to the canyon road.

  The day had really warmed up, into the seventies again. It wouldn’t be stifling yet, even though now, in March, we were practically into what Californians call summer. Actually we call January spring, but I don’t expect you to believe that unless you’re one of us.

  I showed Eileen around the swanky house. Outfitted in custom paint colors—three shades of cream in one bedroom—and a cool mix of Mission and modern furniture, plus lots of built-ins, the place was comfortable and sophisticated. I sighed enviously more than once.

  Eileen seemed to relax completely once we were inside, though she seemed a little fragile. She stuck close to me. Waiting for cues? Maybe not. Maybe I was telegraphing something. I put some mental energy into being neutral and innocent. The place smelled stuffy like a closed house does, so I turned the temperature down to jump-start the air-conditioning. “As you can see, it’s furnished and everything,” I told her. Casually but carefully, I peeked into every closet as we went, prepared for Richard to pop out. Although the alarm system hadn’t been disturbed, I wouldn’t have put it past him to have defeated it somehow and been waiting for us inside.

  I’d simply figured, as George Rowe did, that he’d come for Eileen as soon as the trial was over. If she was free, he could squeeze the insurance millions out of her, plus have some time to move his stash out of the region, where, while liquidating it, he could wear a mild disguise and not be recognized.

  If Eileen had been convicted, on the other hand, Richard would have had to figure another way of finding his stash. A way to negotiate with Eileen behind bars somehow. Or perhaps he’d try to blackmail Gemini out of what fortunes it had left.

  When I’d left the note at the Tenaway house with the address of this house in it, I was figuring he’d let himself in after Eileen’s case went to jury but before a verdict. That way he’d be right there if she got acquitted, before she and the press and their cameras showed up at the house.

  That’s what I would have done if I were him.

  So I expected him to find that note and make his way here as fast as he could. I wanted him to confront Eileen about the loot, and I wanted to hear them discuss its whereabouts. I thought if anybody could get that out of Eileen, it would be Richard. Then, of course, all I’d have to do would be introduce him to George Rowe.

  I suppose I should have felt afraid, but I was focused and supremely angry. Rage flowed invisibly through my veins like hot wax. “Oh, the groceries,” I said, remembering them. “Plus Steve’s wife packed you a bag, did you see it in the trunk?”

  “Yes, he told me she did that. I’ll help you bring everything in.”

  That was uncharacteristic, I thought—she was the type to let a lackey do it.

  We lugged the stuff into the kitchen, one of those quarter-million-dollar ones with granite and Sub-Zero and Viking and so forth. Plus tons of pots and gadgets—I even noticed a Le Cork Weasel, just like I had at home—all nicely stored in cabinets that gave an old-growth redwood feel to the place.

  “I’ll make some tea—would you like tea?” I asked, reaching for the kettle, which I found on a fix-it shelf loaded with screwdrivers, duct tape, scissors.

  “Yes, please.” My companion stood leaning against the refrigerator, hugging herself with one arm. “You know, Rita, I’m anxious to talk to you.”

  “Good.” I saw purposefulness in her eyes.

  And I turned, kettle in hand, and caught my own eyes in the black glass of the microwave. In that split second I had to admit something exhilarating: I wanted to kill someone today. Yes, I’d just about figured I’d have to do that, in order to get my boy back. And if I had to, I’d do it with a goddamn song in my heart.

  “What would you like to talk about?” I said, filling the kettle at the tap.

  “Well, I know you’re worried to death about your son. Here’s the thing. Well, first, I really have to bring you up to speed.”

  “Yes?”

  The water began to roil above the blue gas flame.

  “I’ve told you about Norah’s hit-and-run and how Richard and I covered up for her. That...incident...seemed to break something loose inside her. It scared her, and she didn’t drink as much after that, but it was like something was gone from deep inside her—like a barrier was broken. She took a life, even though she hadn’t meant to. Then, everything went easier for her. As if she’d stopped being able to feel guilty about anything.”

  I took the kettle off and poured hot water over the Chinese black tea bags we’d bought at the grocery. The tea bloomed prettily in the white mugs I’d found.

  “Let’s take our tea into the garden,” I suggested.

  We walked slowly along the stone paths and breathed in the damp smells, this early garden with all the awakenings just getting going in all those juicy green plant hearts.

  Surreptitiously, I looked everywhere for the son of a bitch, even saying, “Oh, what an interesting little shed,” and flinging it open to find only the pool machinery. The pool was pretty fabulous, twenty meters long at least, with a deep end, a springboard, and a small high-dive platform way up there. The high dive cast a gallowslike shadow over the water. It made me feel creepy and I turned away from it.

  I checked my watch; it was about four o’clock now, and the sun was slanting through a few clouds to the west.

  I said, “You know we’re both in danger from Richard and Norah.”

  “Yes.”

  “We know too much.”

  “Yes.”

  Walking this way with Eileen suddenly felt pleasant, almost sisterly.

  “So,” I went on, “before they get their hands on us—”

  She broke in, “We have to kill them.”

  Chapter 37 – Daniel at the End of His Rope

  The apartment building on plain-Jane Crenshaw Avenue, near the equally unprepossessing yet arterially essential Olympic Avenue, stood four stories, with six units per floor. Like most of the neighboring mid-rises, this building had no fire escapes. Flat roof, however, which could be the ticket. If Daniel could know for sure Petey was in Sally Jacubiak’s place he’d get him out somehow, fuck it.

  The apartment occupied the front corner, third floor, overlooking the street. The living room overlooked the street, anyway. Probably the other window was the bedroom. Quite exposed.

  After the woman with the jeweled pendant disappeared from sight, Daniel drove quickly to a hardware store he’d noticed a few blocks away, bought a mason’s hammer and a fifty-foot hank of double-braided nylon rope, and hurried back.

  With the rope over his shoulder and the hammer in his belt loop, and wearing his navy blue twill shirt, he looked vaguely professional. Assuming a repairman’s swagger, he walked briskly to the building’s rear.

  The roof access ladder ascended from the gaggingly smelly dumpster enclosure, starting about twelve feet up. Iron rungs, well anchored. He couldn’t jump to it, and the dumpster was too full to drag over for a boost.

  Other than bouldering, Daniel hadn’t free-climbed in years. As a teenager he’d done a lot in the Smoky Mountains back home in North Carolina. Then he sold all of his gear to help pay for his leap to Hollywood.
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  Now he ran his hand over the crappy stucco wall. Cracked and weathered, it gave the impression of finger- and toeholds, but the stuff was as insubstantial as exfoliated greenstone. Using the chisel end of the mason’s hammer, he chipped out bits of the wall, getting down to firmer stuff, holding his breath for the appearance of a manager or somebody. He chipped one-two-three as high as he could reach.

  An elderly man shuffled into the dumpster enclosure carrying a plastic bag bulging with something disgusting. Without seeming to notice Daniel he poured the contents of his bag, which Daniel recognized as used cat litter, directly into the dumpster. Then he looked over and said, “Getting ready to paint?”

  “Ah, sure am,” replied Daniel with a smile.

  The man carefully folded his empty plastic bag in quarters, tucked it beneath his arm for next use, and went away.

  Daniel had worn a pair of sharp-toed lace-ups this day, which wouldn’t do for gripping, so he kicked them off, shoved them inside his shirt, stripped off his lamb’s-wool socks, and started up barefoot, the grainy stucco cold on his toes.

  Once he grabbed the ladder’s bottom rung he scaled it to the roof in seconds. Up top, the breeze tossed the surrounding oaks and sycamores. The neighborhood was heavily Korean, so he could see the tops of Korean business signs with their rectilinear characters. He saw in the distance a line of palms sticking up over some grocery lot on Olympic. Pigeons butted around in alarm. The rooftop had been graveled recently, so he put his shoes on and, skirting a narrow lightwell, strode to the front parapet.

  This was a problem. He had thought to fix his rope to something on the roof and simply lower himself to the third-floor window, kick it in, and have a damn look. So what if it was broad daylight, people and traffic everywhere. He’d be risking getting stopped before he found Petey, but he couldn’t think of a better course of action. Now, he saw, it couldn’t work anyway, because the management had sunk thousands of bits of broken bottle glass into the mortar on top of the parapet, either to keep pigeons off (which it wasn’t) or to discourage burglars.