An Adrien English Mystery: The Dark Tide (26 page)

He shook his head. “Did you mean it? About my having my job back if I wanted it?”

“I meant it.” If I hadn't been sure before, I was now. The kid had obviously had a rough time of it. He looked years older beneath the mahogany tan. “We're going to have to figure out what your legal status is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you were cleared of involvement in Kinsey Perone's murder, but you might have been implicated in the deaths of Karen Holtzer and Tony Zellig. I don't know. I'll talk to Jake.”

“That asshole Riordan?” he said, energized by loathing.

“That's the guy. If you have a problem with that—”

“No problem,” he said, instantly cowed.

“Have you been in Mexico the whole time? What did you do for two years?”

Angus said hopelessly, “Whatever I could. I worked as a mason, as a houseboy…I picked fruit.” He sounded exhausted, as though he'd done all of it in the last hour.

“Why didn't you come home?”

“There was nothing to come back for. Wanda didn't want me anymore. My family didn't even want to talk to me.”

“Where are you staying?”

He looked at me, his sad eyes meeting mine, flicking away, darting hopefully back.

I sighed, studying him, drumming my fingers on the table as I tried to think what to do.

“Okay, listen. I'll loan you a sleeping bag and an air mattress, and you can stay in the bookstore till you figure out something better. I'll pay you to be my…I don't know. Night watchman, I guess.”

His breath caught, and he looked like he was going to burst into tears.

“In the daytime, you can have your old job back, but…you need to pay attention to this.

My sister—my stepsister—is now also working in the bookstore. You need to…I don't know. Be careful of her.”

He looked puzzled, and I didn't blame him. “Forget it.”

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Josh Lanyon

He nodded.

I rose. “Let's go talk to Natalie and get this settled.”

“Um, Adrien?”

“Hmm?”

“I guess I
would
like a sandwich.”

* * * * *

The Formosa Café started life as a trolley car on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. The last time I'd had lunch there, Paul Kane had broken it to me that he and Jake were lovers—and had been for at least part of the time Jake and I had been together. Indigestion and the Formosa were now synonymous in my mind, and probably always would be.

It was still a great place, though, with a lot of history, and it was hard to imagine a more suitable setting for meeting the old PI Harry Newman.

Newman was already seated and enjoying cocktails and hors d'oeuvres when we arrived.

He smiled unrepentantly as I sat down across from him in the red leather booth and said,

“How are the folks back in Milwaukee?”

He offered his hand, and we shook. “Can't blame a guy for trying.”

“No, that's generally left to the courts.”

He laughed. “I like you, English.”

“I'm so relieved.” I made more room for Jake on the leather bench. Our eyes caught, and he gave me that wry twitch of his mouth.

“Let's order,” Newman said, “and I'll tell you everything you want to know.”

He'd been busy familiarizing himself with the menu while waiting for us to show. When the waiter arrived he requested another mai tai to go with his calamari. Then he ordered rib-eye steak and wasabi mashed potatoes. The most expensive items on the menu. Jake went, predictably, for the Kobe-beef burger. I went for the salmon.

“You're not drinking?” Newman said suspiciously. “I don't trust a guy who doesn't drink.”

I ordered a glass of red wine and sparkling mineral water. Jake ordered a mai tai.

“A mai tai? I've never known you to drink mai tais.”

“This is the new me,” he said. “See what a fun guy I am?”

“By the way,” Newman said, “I believe you have something belonging to me.”

“Like what?”

He pointed to the impossibly black strands coyly arranged on his head.

“The rug? It makes a great cat toy.”

He choked, but our drinks arrived then and he launched into his tale.

“You want me to start at the beginning? For me, the beginning was Louise Reynard.”

“That was Stevens's girlfriend?” I asked. “The one who hired you to find him after he disappeared?”

“You got it. She taught art history at Immaculate Heart College. Pretty girl. Woman, you'd say. Hair the color of dark molasses and big, wide eyes. Very French looking. She used to always wear these silk scarves.” His index finger made a twirling motion next to his neck. “In An Adrien English Mystery: The Dark Tide

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fact, her grandfather had fought in the French Resistance, which is where the story really starts, I guess.”

Jake said, “She wasn't a nun?”

“A nun?” I repeated.

“Immaculate Heart was a Catholic college. My mother went there.”

All this time and it hadn't occurred to me there might have been a heavy dollop of Catholic guilt in Jake's sexual hang-ups.

“Definitely not.” Newman took a sip of his drink. “Stevens was a thief. A high-class cat burglar.” He paused. When we expressed no surprise, he continued. “One night he robbed a house somewhere in Los Angeles. He never did tell Louise the location of the house or the name of the man he ripped off, so don't ask. If she'd known, she'd have gone straight to the fuzz after Stevens disappeared.”

Instead she'd gone to Jinx Stevens, and Jinx had waited to go to the police. Not that it mattered if Jake was right and Stevens had been dead, already placed under the floorboards.

“Stevens only got away with one item that night, but it was a prize. A carved gold cross studded with rubies and agates and pearls. He didn't know exactly what he had, but he knew it was old, and he knew it was special. So he made a sketch of this cross, and he took it to a college art department that seemed safely out of the way, and that's how he met Louise. He was looking for information on the cross.”

“And she just happened to recognize this cross?” I was skeptical.

“You betcha. Right away. Louise knew
exactly
what he had. The Cross of Rouen.”

He was gazing at us expectantly. When neither of us spoke, he said, “That's a place in France.”

“
Je ne comprends pas
.”

“The Cross of Joan of Arc.”

“Uh…” I looked at Jake. He looked blank. “You mean the Cross of Lorraine?”

“No.”

“I've never heard of the Cross of Rouen.”

“Well, the story I heard, it was the cross belonging to Joan of Arc. However, that's sort of beside the point.”

“It is?”

“The point is that the Cross of Rouen was a priceless national artifact, and it was supposedly carted off by the Nazis during World War Two.”

“Supposedly?”

“Yep. Louise knew that this cross had disappeared when the Nazis occupied Rouen.

Naturally she wanted to know how Stevens had got hold of it. She took it kind of personal, seeing that her grandmother died during the war, and her grandfather fought in the Resistance.”

“Stevens wouldn't tell her?”

“No. Well, he promised he would tell her eventually. He said it was complicated.”

“He had an accomplice,” Jake commented.

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Josh Lanyon

“Sure he did, although he told Louise he didn't.” Newman took another sip of his mai tai.

There was a thin line of pink foam on his mustache. I watched it, fascinated, as he spoke. “Here's the thing—and you can take it for what it's worth, but I guarantee Louise believed this to be the truth—Stevens told her he was going to give her the cross to return to the French people on behalf of her grandparents.”

Jake and I exchanged looks. “That wouldn't go over very well with the accomplices.”

Jake was more cynical—and practical. “Why would he?”

“That's the funny part of all this. According to Louise, she and Stevens fell totally and completely in love at first sight. Not only was he going to give her the cross, he was going to go straight for her.” He snorted at what he read in our expressions. “I know, I know. But she believed it till the day she died, and I'll tell you something else. She was a smart lady. Educated, sure, but she had street smarts too. She was nobody's fool. And like I said, a good-looking dame.”

“When Stevens disappeared—”

He cut me off. “Louise suspected foul play from the first. See, Stevens disappeared the very night he was supposed to bring her the cross. When he never showed, she went straight to Stevens's sister and then Dan Hale. Of course they both denied having any idea about what she was talking about. She always believed they were both in on it. On stealing the cross, I mean.

Hale claimed Stevens took off for greener pastures. The kid sister did eventually go to the police to file a missing-persons report.”

“Did Louise believe Hale and Jinx killed Stevens?”

“She thought it was not inconceivable. Hale, in particular, was a pretty rough customer, for all the surface polish. She also thought there was another possibility.” He waited for us to connect the dots.

I said slowly, “That whoever Stevens stole that cross from figured out who took it and came after him?”

“Very good.” To Jake, he said, “Bright boy.”

“Like a shining star.”

I got sparkling-mineral-water bubbles up my nose.

“Right,” Newman said. “Because whoever had that cross sure as hell had no business having it. Louise thought this ex-Nazi war criminal might have come looking for Stevens. See, aside from the considerable monetary value of that cross, having the thing found in his possession was tantamount to a confession. You can see there would have been considerable incentive to get it back and silence the thief.”

“Oh yeah.”

Jake said, “But Stevens never told Louise where he recovered the cross?”

“No. But she had a theory about that.”

Louise sounded like a girl with a lot of theories. I liked her. “What happened to Louise?”

“Breast cancer. She died ten years ago.” It was clear he'd been fond of Louise.

Jake asked, “What was her theory as to the identity of this Nazi war criminal?”

“She believed him to be a friend of her grandfather. A Wilshire Boulevard art-gallery owner by the name of Guilliam Truffaut.” Newman said, “Truffaut was supposed to be another An Adrien English Mystery: The Dark Tide

133

former member of the French Resistance. In fact, he'd built quite a reputation for himself as a slayer of Nazis.”

“Did you talk to Truffaut?” I asked.

“I talked to everyone.” Newman shook his head. “You won't understand this, and I can't quite explain it myself, but there was something about Louise that… You found yourself doing things, taking chances you'd never have dreamt of before.”

“I've known a Louise in my time,” Jake said.

A Louise?

I looked up, surprised. Jake was staring right at me. My heart skipped a beat—absolutely nothing to do with repaired valves.

The waiter arrived with our meals, and the extraordinary moment ended.

After our plates were set in front of us and the waiter had gone, I asked, “What did Truffaut have to say when you interviewed him?”

“He denied everything and threatened to sue me.” Newman shrugged. “Dead end.”

“Did you believe him?”

“No. No, I didn't. But I never quite believed he killed Stevens either, although Louise remained convinced of it. Me, I always figured Dan Hale did Stevens in for trying to pull a double cross.”

I thought this over. “If Hale had killed Stevens, wouldn't he have had possession of the Cross of Rouen? He seems to have died close to destitute.” I viewed Newman over the rim of my glass. “You already figured that out, which is why you tried to search the bookstore.”

Another of those unrepentant smiles. “Knew it was going to be my last chance. Like you say, if Hale had the cross, he'd have had the money to save that club of his—that was the only thing he ever really cared about. Well, and maybe Jinx Stevens ran a poor second. That doesn't mean Hale didn't kill him, though. Just that he couldn't find the cross. Stevens could have hidden it.”

“Why did you wait so long to try to search the bookstore? Renovations started in May.”

He admitted ruefully. “I only noticed what you were up to a couple of weeks ago. I'd sort of forgotten about it, you see? Fifty years is a long time.”

More than my lifetime. More than Jake's lifetime. Yes, I did see.

“Was there anyone else you suspected in Stevens's disappearance?”

“Well, yes and no. Stevens was living with a bunch of dope dealers and thieves and whores in that hotel. It's not impossible someone there might have knocked him off. Hell, someone might have knocked him off for his clarinet. Or his hat.”

Jake said, “The only problem with that theory is, it's doubtful that kind of lowlife would know where or how to dispose of a valuable art object. It would have surfaced by now.”

“Probably.”

“You said you talked to everyone. Did you ever talk to the cop in charge of the case?”

“Argyle? Yeah. But he always insisted Stevens had skipped. I never did believe that. No one ever saw Stevens leave the hotel that night.”

“Is that surprising, though? It was pretty much of a roach motel by then, wasn't it?” I sampled the salmon.

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Josh Lanyon

“Plenty of people saw Stevens getting visitors that night. I don't know why they'd have missed him leaving.”

And of course, Stevens hadn't left.

“What visitors did he get?” The sauce on the salmon was sweet. Not something I cared for.

I pushed my plate aside.

“Hale, Jinx Stevens, the piano player from the band…”

Jake took my plate, slid his over. Absently, I picked up his burger. “Paulie St. Cyr?” I questioned and took a bite.