The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Page 3

  I started feeling somewhat surreal, talking to this famous lawyer whose face was regularly all over the papers, this guy who aggressively, indeed nastily, defended big famous stinkingly rich celebrity people accused of celebrity crimes.

  The little girl he’d nodded toward a minute ago came running over and started climbing his leg. He braced himself against the bookcase. “This is Jade,” he grunted.

  “Hello, Jade.”

  Jade, about three, had a black haystack of hair and shining eyes. She swung herself athletically on her father’s belt.

  “Sweetheart, you’re going to rip Daddy’s pants off. Stop. Go over there for a minute. See those kids over there? I think they need help with that book.”

  Jade charged off and Gary Kwan adjusted his waistline. It was a trim one, his belt curving nicely over his hipbones.

  “She’s a dear,” I commented, smiling after her. “That’s my boy Petey, with the other Y chromosomes over there.” The sudden ridiculous thought came to me that if Gary Kwan and I ever got married, that would not preclude Petey and Jade from marrying someday.

  Gary Kwan had had enough smiling. With a measure of tenseness, he asked, “Have you been in any films? Ever had a big part? Or on TV?”

  “Just a few commercials—Young Mother—that’s the casting designation my agent looks for for me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I did a Johnson’s Wax one where I’m so happy my twins can’t hurt my floor anymore, and I did a Home Depot one where my husband wrecks the hedge but then he goes to Home Depot and everything’s OK again. That wasn’t a speaking part, so I didn’t get full scale. I’ve done a couple of hosiery ads for magazines. And I’m like in the background on this series of bank ads—B of A, print ads for magazines. I’m at a conference table looking bright.”

  “Good, good, Rita.”

  “I mean, I’ve got my SAG card and everything—Gary. But you know, uh, I am no stranger to the unemployment office. So what kind of non-Screen-Actors-Guild work are we talking about?” With a pleasant expression, he swiveled his head to scan the room. The kids were deep into their business. He motioned me to follow him to a deserted corner of the expansive room, where we wouldn’t be overheard. We remained standing, both of us subconsciously remaining spottable by our children.

  In a quiet, direct tone, he said, “I’ve been working on a tough case, and watching you I got an idea and now I’m just plunging ahead with it, even though I haven’t thought it through.” He gazed at me keenly, his eyes like lustrous black shells. “One more thing before I go further. Have you trained as an actress, or are you self-taught?”

  I quieted my voice too. “Oh, I’ve got training. Only Bubbles the Chimp has more training than me.”

  “Who have you worked with?”

  I searched his face. Where the hell is this going? He just maintained his focused, intelligent expression.

  “Well,” I answered, “after I tried and failed to get acting work without formal training, I bit the bullet and went for my degree from UCLA—and I’ve got the outstanding student loans to prove it. I studied primarily with Karen Bell and Sam Wojczyk. These days I’ve been dropping in on an improv class led by Ann Marie Drago, just to keep working on my skills, you know. Do you know them?”

  “I’ve heard of Karen Bell and Sam. Good. This is all very good.” Gary Kwan’s face broke into a sunshine smile. His teeth were small and multitudinous and he looked increasingly happy.

  Lowering his voice even more, he said, “What I want to know is this: would you be willing to serve as a private drama coach to an incarcerated client of mine? She’s up for first-degree murder. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars a day, and the job would probably last a few weeks, if not months.”

  Chops of thoughts tumbled through my mind. The main one was, A thousand dollars a day? Even though I only had an inkling of what this was about, I felt a huge weight lift from the back of my neck. A thousand dollars a day. I couldn’t believe I’d been pitying myself so desperately just an hour ago, and now here’s somebody waving a wand at me with dollar signs shooting out of it.

  I looked at him, trying to understand the rest of what he’d said, feeling like a dumb ox. He waited, an eyebrow cocked in amusement.

  I said, “Drama coach? Is there, like, a theater troupe in the jail? I’d think she’d have other things on her mind than—”

  He laughed. “No, no. It’s not for that. I’m talking about the courtroom.”

  “The courtroom.”

  “Yes.”

  It broke on me. “You want me to help her put on an act in front of the jury.”

  “That’s the cynical way to put it. The compassionate way is, I want you to prepare her so she has the best possible chance of being acquitted.”

  I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. I let it out. Now, this was interesting.

  I think Gary saw that thought on my face, because he took his plunge. “Do you know,” he asked, “who Eileen Tenaway is?”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why did you say oh like that?”

  Because Eileen Tenaway killed her baby. News of the crime, all over the papers for months, had been ugly and dreadful. A little corpse in a crib, a bottle of pills, a rich-bitch mom who had passed out from some intoxicant or other: a rich bitch who was surely lying, a rich bitch who was surely guilty. Because, I thought, I basically despise Eileen Tenaway, as every human being should, but of course you’re her lawyer, you’re exactly the one she would want to defend her.

  Gary waited.

  I answered, “I’m trying to make up something to cover the fact that I’m disgusted by her.”

  “So you understand my position.” He shifted his weight on his feet and shelved his elbow on a bookcase. I stood a little closer to him and paid attention.

  He began, “Four months ago today, as it happens, Eileen Tenaway woke up in the morning, went into the baby’s room, and found her daughter, Gabriella Tenaway, aged eighteen months, cold and stiff in her crib. She called 911. Paramedics confirmed the baby was dead. The police asked questions. She said she didn’t know what happened. She’d heard nothing in the night. The house had been ransacked, and the police found evidence of a possible intruder, but the DA contends that Eileen planted it to cover up her crime. The house had an elaborate alarm system, but Eileen and others say the Tenaways never used it.”

  “How come?”

  “Richard Tenaway felt invulnerable, and Eileen never learned to use it. The autopsy showed the baby died of an overdose of Valium. A bottle of same was found in the medicine cabinet, prescribed for Eileen. Three weeks after the autopsy results, Eileen Tenaway was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of her child.” He paused, looking at me frankly. “Do you think she did it?”

  The question surprised me. “Why are you asking me?”

  He slid his hand along the smooth wood of the bookcase, which held a bonanza of Madeline books, my childhood favorites. Good old intrepid, impulsive Madeline. Many’s the time I’d wished to be her. Gary said, “I want to know if you have an opinion.”

  “My only opinion is that Eileen Tenaway is...well, pathetic, to put it nicely, just from seeing her in the party pages with all the bling and that fake smile. I have to say, the incident looks like an upscale version of a hillbilly giving her kid a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with a nipple on it.”

  “Except Eileen Tenaway, with all her advantages, should have known better.”

  “Right.”

  “Unless she didn’t do it.”

  “Well, did she?” I thought he would surely know the answer to that.

  “She says she didn’t.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “Not my department,” said Gary, meeting my eyes calmly. He drew himself tall, feet together. “She’s hired me to defend her. Period. It’s irrelevant what I think about her guilt or innocence.”

  “I see.”


  Petey trotted over to me, patted my thigh in his habitual mom-check, then trotted off again.

  “The trial,” Gary said, “should start in about a week, we almost have a jury. The main thing is this: a jury trial is a show, with actors and actresses and an audience. The audience watches the show, and then they get to create the ending they want. It’s as simple as that. My job is to build a sympathetic plot around my client.”

  “She was rich and safe and envied, and now she’s up against it.”

  He nodded slowly, smiling.

  I said, “Nobody likes Eileen Tenaway.”

  “They hate her,” Gary agreed.

  “People love it when the rich and smug go down.”

  Gary touched the spines of the Madeline books. “They love it more than sex with chocolate sauce.”

  A shriek split the air. The librarian who had uttered it jumped up. She sprinted from her desk just in time to stop Petey from shinnying up one of the bronze lamps to the inviting stratosphere of the Children’s Room. He’d clambered up a bookcase to adult height, and had just hoisted himself aboard the lamp, which swayed but did not topple.

  Spouting apologies, I retrieved my boy, who was glorying in the commotion he’d caused. “I went up!” he boasted to the world in general. Even the librarian was smiling, now that the danger was over. Petey was so cute and male.

  It was time to leave. I turned to Gary, who held Jade on his hip. She and Petey, safe in the grasp of a parent, gazed at each other like chimps in the zoo. Gary said simply, “You’re going to help me, right?”

  “I don’t have the whole picture,” I said.

  “You will. Meet me in my office tomorrow, and we’ll go over everything.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Yes.”

  “There won’t be anyone around your office?”

  “Correct. That’s the point. We need to be alone; our conversation must be totally confidential.”

  I looked at him.

  “Come on, Rita, you’re a big girl. In case you’re wondering, I’m married.”

  “Oh.”

  “What, now you’re disappointed?”

  “No!” I laughed.

  “You’ll come, right?”

  “Um. Yes.”

  “Good.” He gave me his card, which showed an address on Wilshire. “Ten o’clock?”

  “Ten.”

  “Come to the front. It’ll be locked, but I’ll wait for you in the lobby. Remember, don’t discuss this with anybody. Don’t even tell anyone you met me. All right? This is good.” He clenched his fist. “This is so good.”

  “Gary, uh?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s so good?”

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “You’re an unknown.”

  Chapter 4 – Breakfast With Daniel

  I slid an egg onto Petey’s Spider-Man breakfast plate and threw the toast on.

  “Spider-Man says oboy an egg! Nature’s perfect food! Time to sit down and eat, honey.”

  Petey jogged to the table and grabbed the piece of toast.

  “Sit down, honey, please, and join the grown-ups.” I heard the cajoling in my own voice, and as he so often did, he exploited it. He was too little for it to be conscious. Entirely my fault. He bit the toast and remained standing, holding a black helicopter in his other hand.

  I’d invited our beloved friend Daniel Clements over for breakfast. After a glance at Petey, he poured three glasses of orange juice. Daniel, a working actor, played the smarter-than-his-boss desk sergeant on the police sitcom Abilene Cop Shop. He was towering and gorgeous and big-chested, which made it funnier when the dinky chief ordered him around. He and I had become friends in acting school, and he’d been more or less steadily employed for about the same length of time I’d been struggling, three years.

  In a quiet voice, Daniel said, “You heard your mother.”

  Petey put down the helicopter and climbed into his chair. “Good fellow,” said Daniel with a smile.

  I looked at him. You’re the good fellow here, but why the hell didn’t he obey me?

  Daniel added, “A man with the same first name as Peter Parker has to take life a little more seriously than others.”

  “When will I get muscles?” demanded Petey.

  “Maybe next week.”

  I smiled.

  “Make a muscle, Daniel!”

  “Later. Eat.”

  The three of us ate and discussed the comics in the Sunday L.A. Times Daniel had brought, then Daniel helped me with the dishes.

  I knew he was watching me stealthily. He cleared his throat. “So what’s this errand upon which you must go alone without your offspring, I ask casually?”

  Holding the frying pan over the sink, I looked up. “You must have heard the mystery in my voice.”

  A wedding gift from one of my aunts back in Wisconsin, the frying pan had started out fully coated with state-of-the-art nonstick material, but now the Teflon was flaking away like scrofulous skin.

  Daniel took the pan from my hand. “I should have gotten you a new one of these for Christmas instead of the day at the spa.” He clanked the pan into the dishwasher rack.

  “Oh God, no. I’d have killed you if you’d given me a frying pan.” I wished I could go to the spa once a week. I wished my kitchen were larger so that big cheerful Daniel didn’t have to squirm his way around it.

  My apartment was Manhattanesquely small, which was a disheartening thing because L.A. apartments are almost always bigger than New York ones. That was supposed to be one of the consolations of acting in L.A. instead of New York—you could afford a bigger apartment. But not me, hell no. I managed to get the crummiest (but rent-controlled!) apartment in one of the becoming-thunderously-more-expensive-because-of-all-the-gay-guys-moving-in zones of West Hollywood, on Curson Street off Sunset. The neighborhood was all right. A high percentage of older Russian immigrants still anchored things, in their stone-faced way. And there was a really nice city park just two blocks away. It had been important to get into a decent neighborhood because of Petey. He had the bedroom, a cubic nest with a window to the ugly iron fire escape overlooking the alley, while I made my bed every night on the futon in the quote-unquote living room.

  To complete the claustrophobic atmosphere, the kitchen window overlooked a lightwell, which was worse, in a way, than having no window at all.

  I’d known nothing of lightwells in rural Wisconsin, where I’d grown up; a lightwell, I learned when I married Jeff and moved to Torrance, California, where he’d landed an accounting job with a glitzy restaurant chain, is simply an open shaft surrounded by buildings. The buildings’ sides make the walls of the shaft. At the bottom of every shaft is always a sorry array of detritus—things dropped or flung from the windows overlooking it: candy wrappers and condoms, Star Wars action figures, pearl necklaces (it has happened), rotted auto parts, and lots of pacifiers. It pays to be on good terms with the people in the ground-floor unit, through whose window you can climb to recover anything discarded in heat or haste or both.

  The kitchen air smelled greasy. I gave a shove to the warped aluminum window and a spurt of fresh air came in from the lightwell, pushed down by the square of blue sky.

  I did the best I could with thrift-shop furniture I spray-painted in glossy blacks and reds, plus throw pillows and an amazingly OK color-block rug from Target. Fortunately, Daniel painted a little, and he’d given me a few groovy abstract canvases. Their whorls and splashes lent a SoHo-ishness to the place.

  Petey was lying on his back on the living room floor about three paces from the kitchen, his feet on the coffee table, his portable ScoreLad perched on his stomach, Spider-Man game in progress. The game made frantic sounds of conflict.

  I asked Daniel as we hip-sat on the edge of the kitchen counter, “Didn’t you have a date last night?”

  “Yes, and it’s only because it went like birdshit that I’m here on time and without a hangover.”

 
“I thought he seemed promising.”

  “He was promising! Fifteen-inch biceps and quads so cut you could see them through army pants. And he was second unit director for The Emperor of Miami! I mean my God. But unfortunately he is so in love with himself he couldn’t even be bothered to say hi to Sarah Finch—Bed Head Dead—when she came over to our table.”

  I easily followed Daniel’s showbiz habit of just saying the name of whatever last film someone was in, as a shorthand ID aid.

  “He ogled all the guys in the room, of course,” Daniel continued, arching a brow to show me, “and he did it so condescendingly. He’d check out this guy’s butt, then look over at me in this evaluative sort of way, like daring me to compete for his attention. I was his date! I should have known it wasn’t going to work when he finally asked me to dance and I jumped up and said, ‘On a bright cloud of music shall we fly?’ and he didn’t get it.”

  “Did you say it in rhythm or anything?”

  “Yes! I half sang it, just like that, with the actual rhythm and everything. How can you not know ‘Shall We Dance?’ from The King and I?”

  “A-hole.”

  “A-hole.”

  “Complete.”

  “Yeah.” Daniel folded the towel over the oven door handle. His high forehead gave him a serious look even when helping with the dishes. Fortunately he hadn’t developed a hint of male-pattern baldness yet. Nice thick bitter-cocoa hair, not too wavy.

  The two of us tried to be sparing with vulgar language when Petey might hear. Hell, damn, and God were all OK, I mean let’s be real, and Daniel had allowed himself birdshit a minute ago, but my current feeling was that asshole must be reserved for adult ears. “So anyway, sweets, you haven’t answered my question.”

  “Daniel, I can’t.”

  “That is very unbestfriendlike.”

  “I’m sorry—it’s true, it’s just this—odd thing, you know, this odd opportunity that came up. I don’t even know exactly, uh—”