Christietown (17 page)
Authors: Susan Kandel
I sat down in my car, turned on the interior light, and pulled out the thick stack of papers. But I didn’t get a chance to go through them. Not then at least. My cell phone had started to ring. It was Bridget, sounding upset. She told me to turn on the radio and find a news station right away.
They had just reported another murder at Christietown.
he Vicarage was an unholy mess. Business types in rum
pled suits were pacing the floor, looking panicked. Cops were filling out reports and bellowing into cell phones. A pair of reporters from the
L.A. Times
had taken over Teenie’s desk. The plasma screens had all gone black.
I marched in looking for Ian, but Detective Mariposa inter
cepted me like a heat-seeking missile.
“You again,” he said. “Keep turning up like a bad penny and people are gonna talk.” Somebody called his name from across the room. “Be right there,” he answered without taking his eyes off me. “Is that a beret?”
“Can you please tell me where Ian is?” I was trying to keep my voice calm, but he brought out the worst in me.
“Why are you asking about Ian?” Mariposa’s beeper went off. He checked the number, then turned on me again. “You interested in who got whacked? You want to know if it was him?”
Asshole. “Yes.”
“Classified information, sorry.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Probably looking for a pen to suck on.
On the other side of the room his partner, Detective McAllister, was hunched over a phone. He looked pale. Some people don’t have the stomach for the profession. Gambino said it’s like being a doctor. You have to disconnect from your emotions. If you get too involved, you can’t do the work.
Mariposa, following my gaze, said, “He’s talking to the next of kin. We always let Pretty Boy break the news. Do me a favor and don’t bother people at work, okay?”
Ignoring him, I started across the room but stopped short when I saw McAllister look up and give a nod to one of the reporters, who then shouted into his phone, “That’s ‘
h
,’ not ‘
z
.’ You deaf or something? Holtzman!”
Silvana.
My stomach lurched.
Mariposa was on me like a flash. “You knew her?” he asked.
I’d have to tell Dot her Friday lunch date was off. I’d have to tell her that her friend was dead. I didn’t think I could do it.
“Yes,” I said. “I knew her.”
“Come with me,” said Mariposa, taking my arm. “I want to ask you a couple of questions. McAllister,” he yelled, “I think you might want to be in on this.”
He led me into Ian’s office and pushed me into the same upholstered swivel chair Dov had. That seemed like a long time ago.
McAllister stood in the doorway and gave me a small smile. “Hey,” he said. “How have you been?” Then he shook his head.
“Are you done now?” Mariposa asked, ushering McAllister in and closing the door. “We got a job to do, remember?”
“There’s this key,” I blurted out. I turned to McAllister. “I don’t know what it’s to or where it is, but Dov Pick was very upset about it the other night.”
“Do you think it has something to do with what happened to Silvana Holtzman?” he asked. “Or Liz Berman?”
Hell if I knew. “I think Dov and Silvana went back a ways.”
“Since when is that a reason for shooting somebody?” Mariposa interjected.
Oh, god. This wasn’t happening. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and wished everything was different, but when I opened my eyes everything was exactly the same. Liz was dead. Silvana was dead. Neither of them was coming back.
“What is it?” McAllister asked.
“Silvana said she and Dov had an understanding,” I said, trying to make sense of it myself. “That’s a strange thing to say, don’t you think? About somebody with a reputation like his?”
“He’s quite the ladies’ man,” Mariposa said. “You seen his girlfriend? The one who looks like Gina Lollabrigida? Boobs out to here.” He stuck his hands out in front of him. “Don’t know why he’d cheat on her, but maybe he and Silvana had some
thing going. Hey, forget about Dov. Maybe Gina Lollabrigida whacked Silvana!” He turned to McAllister. “Crime of passion, what do you say?”
“What is wrong with you?” McAllister asked. “This isn’t a joke.”
Mariposa pursed his lips. “Didn’t mean to upset you, Pretty Boy. Sorry, okay?”
“Maybe Silvana knew too much about Dov’s shady business affairs,” I said quietly.
Mariposa’s eyebrows shot up. “What shady business
affairs?”
The papers from the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Project were still in my car. I didn’t know what shady business affairs yet.
“Look, can I go?” I asked. “I have to talk to Ian.”
“Be my guest,” said Mariposa. “And if you find him, give us a call.”
If you find him? Where was he? “Is he a suspect?” I asked.
“Classified information,” Mariposa said with a smirk.
“No, he’s not a suspect,” said McAllister. “We just want to make sure he’s okay.”
“Is Ian in some kind of danger?”
“Who isn’t?” said Mariposa philosophically.
I opened the door and the cool desert air slapped me across the face.
Dot.
She’d become close to Silvana in the past few days.
Was she in danger, too?
Was someone going to shoot her?
No. Dot was fine, I reassured myself. But my racing pulse told me otherwise. I ran out to my car, whipped open the door, grabbed my cell phone from the charger, and furiously punched in her number.
Dot had nothing to do with this.
Why would anybody want to hurt Dot?
My heart felt like it was coming out of my chest until I heard her voice on the other end of the line. She started to thank me for the other evening, but before she could get too far I blurted out the news. I probably should’ve had her sit down, or made sure she wasn’t alone, but I didn’t think of those things at the time. In any case, Dot didn’t cry. She barely even
seemed shocked. She did ask a lot of questions.
How exactly did it happen?
Who did it?
Why?
I didn’t know.
All I did know was that I’d never seen aquamarine eyes like Silvana’s.
Dot had to go. There was someone at her door. I’d used that excuse before. I was about to pull out of the parking lot when I caught a glimpse of Teenie, walking toward the Vicarage with an empty cardboard box in her hands.
I leapt up, slammed the door shut, and ran her way. “Teenie!” I called out. “It’s Cece. How are you holding up?” A diamond on the third finger of her left hand caught my eye. I was glad we weren’t going to be cheating on our husband with Mr. Knight.
“Not well,” she said.
“I can imagine. Do you need help with that box?”
“I’m fine,” she said tersely. “If you’d excuse me . . .”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hold you up. I was actually looking for Ian. Have you seen him today?”
“No.” Her face was etched with worry lines I didn’t remem
ber from two days ago. “Not today and not tomorrow, if I’m lucky. And not ever again once he pays me the two weeks he still owes me.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Are they shutting this place down or something?”
“No, they’re not shutting this place down.” She put a hand up to block out the sun. “Didn’t Ian tell you? Murder is good for business. But I’m done. I’m through making tea for a madman. I’m quitting. I can’t take this anymore.”
“I have some papers for you at my house,” I said carefully. “They got mixed up with some of my things accidentally. What would you like me to do with them?”
“You can burn them for all I care.”
“They’re from some kind of water company. In Antelope Valley, I think it was. Does that ring any bells? Some kind of trouble there?”
“Just business as usual,” she said bitterly. “To tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn.”
Teenie was history.
Ian was missing.
Two women were dead, and as far as I knew, all they had in common was Christietown.
It didn’t sound like business as usual to me.
nfortunately, I was not able to reflect upon the day’s events
as I would have liked because I was stuck on the 14 for two hours and didn’t dare lose focus. Lose focus on the 14 and you die. That was no exaggeration. The 14 was home away from home for people who lived so far away from the places they worked that they had to get up at four o’clock in the morning to make it on time. Bleary-eyed, they listened to talk radio and sucked down coffee from commuter mugs in the hopes they wouldn’t fall asleep and crash and die and kill you while they were at it. The return trip was worse because everybody was eight hours more tired. The 14 represented everything that was bad about southern California.
I stopped at home for five minutes to get Gambino and to freshen up. We came to a screeching halt outside Walt’s Baby Headquarters at exactly 6:28
P.M
., two minutes early. Richard was going to hate that. Nothing would please him more than to have us stagger in just before closing smelling like sex and cigarettes—except maybe if Gambino was also wearing a ZZ Top T-shirt.
I’d made him change.
At the moment, Gambino looked imposing in a black three-button cashmere-blend blazer he must’ve borrowed from another six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound friend, because I’d never seen it before. I, too, was sporting business
like attire: hair pulled into a sleek bun, pin-striped trousers, black sleeveless turtleneck. Of course, the sweater plunged to my waist in the back but Richard wasn’t going to know that unless I turned my back on him—and after ten years of mar
riage I knew better than to do that.
As we walked through the front door, a woman who looked like Snow White (pale skin, black hair) handed us each a checklist and a paper cup of hot cocoa. We downed the cocoas and checked each other for mustaches. Then we heard Jackie’s voice.
“Over here, Cece! By the gliders!”
Snow White led the way, telling us how important gliders were for the mother-child bonding experience. Studies show that babies who are breast-fed in gliders—in particular, col
lectible gliders handmade by Amish craftsmen exclusively for Walt’s Baby Headquarters—do better in life than babies who are fed in regular chairs or beds. Gambino started to cough and I pinched him.
“Hi, guys!” Jackie said brightly. The ex-cheerleader made quite a sight, gliding back and forth in her pale yellow Lacoste dress, a patchy-haired baby doll in her arms.
“Hi,” I said. “Where’s Richard?”
“Using the facilities,” she replied. “And this must be your fiancé. I’m Jackie Dehovitz.”
“Don’t get up, please,” said Gambino. He leaned down to shake her hand. “Peter Gambino.”
“Would you like to meet ‘My Breast Friend’?” She indicated the large foam-rubber pillow in her lap.