Murder & The Monkey Band: High Desert Cozy Mystery Series (11 page)

“Meet you in the car. I
left it unlocked,” Marty said to Laura as she walked over to the photo
department. “Hey, Lucy. Good to see you. I trust you got the photos I uploaded
to you last night and my photographs are ready.”

“Sure thing,
Marty,” Lucy said looking around to make sure no one could hear her. “Know I’m
not s’possed to look at the photos, but ya’ always got the best. Purtier things
than I’ve ever seen. Lawdy, some of that furniture, guess it was in the dinin’
room, jes’ ‘bout took my breath away. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like that. Must
be somethin’ bein’ an appraiser.”

“I’m very
lucky. I really enjoy what I do, and I really appreciate the job you do for me
with these photographs. I need them to be very glossy and very clear so the
marks and some of the things like mortise and tenon joints show and can
substantiate the age of a piece. You always manage to make me look good, and I
want to thank you.”

“Ain’t no need
to thank me. Jes’ doin’ my job. Gonna’ send me some more tonight?”

“Yes, I’ll
transfer the pictures I took today from my camera to my computer and send them
to you.”

“Whatcha’ see
today?”

“Well,
normally for confidentiality purposes, I never discuss my appraisal or who I
did it for, but since you’re going to look at the photos no matter what I say,”
Marty grinned, “get prepared to see some of the oldest and most beautiful
perfume bottles I’ve ever seen.”

“Ya’ mean
people have enough money they can collect somethin’ like perfume bottles? Man,
guess I better be a little more careful ‘bout that Avon bottle Jake gave me for
Christmas.”

“Uh, Lucy,
these are not store bought brand name bottles, they’re containers which fine
perfumes were put in with most of them dating from the 18
^th
century.”

“Well, dang it
all. Had my heart goin’ fer’ a minute jes’ thinkin’ I could get rich offa that
Avon perfume. Never can ‘member the name. It’s some fancy schmancy Frenchy
name. ‘Member it means water.”

“In that case
it would probably be ‘
eau
’ of something. That’s the French word for
water.”

“Ya’ know, ya’
ain’t the only one who has me develop pictures of old things. Ol’ Randy, ya’
know the one who lives in that shack outside of town with the shed behind it?”

“I don’t think
I’ve ever met him,” Marty said, “but yes, I know the shack you’re talking
about.”

“No big loss.
He’s kinda mean, but man ya’ outta see the pictures he gets developed here. Got
lots of Injun stuff, ya’ know some pieces of pottery, headdresses, and beaded
belts. Think that meanness comes because he’s lonely. Used to live with Marty
BirdSong, but he kicked her out awhile ago. Comes inta town some Saturday
nights and gets all drunked up over at the Road Runner Bar. I kinda like that
bar, and some Saturday nights Jake and I go in and have a coupla of brewskies.
That’s when I seen him.”

“I was in
there once, and it does have a lot of local flavor. Tell me more about Randy.
I’m curious.”

“Well,” she
said, looking around again. “Ya’ didn’t hear it from me, but one time Jake and
I were sittin’ at the bar and Randy was talkin’ to some dude ‘bout sellin’ him
some of his stuff. Didn’t hear much but ‘member he was tellin’ the dude that
his stuff was real Injun stuff. Said he was always worried the feds would come
and take it away from him. Don’t know whatever happened ‘bout that. He’s a
strange bird. Want me to tell him yer’ some hot shot appraiser?”

“No, thanks.
I’d rather you didn’t. Sounds like he knows the value of what he’s selling,
although I remember reading something about certain Native American items being
illegal to either sell or possess, particularly if they were found and removed
from federal government land or burial sites.”

“Oh, I jes’
‘membered hearin’ somthin’ else that night. Ol’ Randy told this dude he’d found
a cave where the Injuns had kept their stuff, and he was the only one who knew
‘bout it. Kinda got my interest up with that one.”

“I can see
where it would. Sounds like something out of a novel. If we’re ever in here at
the same time, I would like to meet him. He must be quite a character.”

“That he is,
ceptin’ for his meanness I’ve always liked him. Gives me a tip every time he
comes in. None of the other customers do that. Kinda surprisin’ comin’ from
him. Always wondered ‘bout it.”

Sweetheart,
I think the tips he gives you might just be called insurance, hoping you won’t
tell anyone what’s in the photographs you’re developing for him. Obviously you
missed the memo on that.

“Lucy, I’ve
got to go. We have a dinner guest coming to dinner tonight out at the compound,
and John’s cooking up some new dish. He doesn’t like it if I’m late for dinner.
See you tomorrow night. As always, thanks!”

“Can’t wait to
see them perfume bottles. Tell John ya’ got somethin’ to do before you eat,
like sendin’ me them photos,” she said laughing.

Marty walked
out of the store and saw Laura sitting in the car waiting for her.

“Got them, now
home for another fantastic John meal. Any idea what tonight’s is going to be?”

“I thought he
said something about Cuba, but I could be mistaken.”

“Sounds good,
of course anything John makes is wonderful.”

“Laura,” Marty said as she
got out of the car and looked at her watch, “I’ve just got time to get the
photos we took today downloaded onto my computer and send them over to Lucy at
the Hi-Lo Drugstore. I’d like to pick them up tomorrow after we finish the
appraisal. While I was talking to Lucy, I had a quick look at the ones we did
yesterday, and so far, everything looks good.”

“I’m glad to
hear that. I could use a shower. Meet you in the courtyard.”

Marty sat down
at her computer and downloaded the photos she’d taken during the day from her
digital camera and sent them to Lucy, knowing full well that Lucy would look at
each one and probably compare her Avon perfume bottle with the perfume bottles
in the photographs.         

She paused for
a moment and thought about Lucy and her Avon perfume bottle. It brought back
memories of an appraisal Marty had done many years ago, actually it was her
first appraisal. She’d been so nervous that she wouldn’t be able to identify
what something was, and then she had to laugh when she realized her first
appraisal was going to be nothing but Avon products. The owner had made her
home into a museum for Avon products. They filled the bookcases, shelves,
kitchen counters, bathroom counters, and the woman even had special Lucite
stands built to display what she considered to be the most important ones in
her collection.

I remember
thinking I’d spent all that time in college taking art history courses, spent
money traveling all over the United States taking courses that were required in
order for me to become certified, and here my very first appraisal was an Avon
collection. When I told the woman what my fee was I felt a little guilty,
because my fee was more than the items I’d appraised, but the woman hadn’t
cared. She was infatuated with her Avon pieces and the fact that now she could
tell people her collection was so important she had to have it appraised was
all she’d cared about. People! So many define themselves by their “stuff.” I’d
never realized how many until I started appraising.

She heard
voices coming from the courtyard, so she quickly changed clothes, and joined
the others. “Good evening,” she said as she looked around at Jeff, John, Les,
Max, and Laura. “Sorry I’m a couple of minutes late, but I had to get some
photographs downloaded and sent to the drug store so they could be developed,
and I could pick them up tomorrow. Anyway, looking at the full glasses in front
of you, you obviously didn’t wait for me,” she said, laughing as she poured
herself a glass of wine.

“How did the
appraisal go today?” Jeff asked.

“We got quite
a bit done, and we’ll finish tomorrow. After dinner, I’d like to talk to you
about a situation that came up. Since it falls into the realm of the murder
investigation, I probably should only tell you.”

“Aw, Marty,
that’s not fair,” John said. “We’re all really interested in it.”

“No, Marty’s
right,” Jeff said. “It’s been my experience when a person is aware of a little
known fact about a crime, it’s very easy for them to innocently say something
to someone, and it could cost us an arrest or worse. There are some things I’d
like to talk to you about as well, Marty, but for now let’s just enjoy what I’m
sure will be another fabulous dinner. I can’t believe my good fortune in
getting invited here two nights in a row. John, what do you have for us
tonight?”

“I was
watching television a couple of nights ago and there was a movie on about a
food truck in Florida that had made a name for itself because of the sandwich
it specialized in. It was called a Cubano sandwich, and it’s made with slices
of marinated pork shoulder. I’ve had Cubano sandwiches before, but this one’s a
little different. I marinated the pork shoulder that goes on the sandwich for
twenty-four hours in a citrus type of marinade. I had a couple of slices after
I baked it, and I have to say it’s really tender and tasty. Of course the fact
I studded it with a lot of garlic slices didn’t hurt.”

“Okay,” Laura
said, “you’ve piqued my curiosity. What else goes on it?”

“Black Forest
ham, sandwich pickles, Swiss cheese, butter, and mustard. It’s a lot simpler to
make than most of the things I serve. We’ll see how you like it.”

“John,” Max
said. “When ya’ tol’ me ‘bout it yesterday when we was serving people downtown,
I went home and made one. Course I didn’t have no time to marinate the pork, so
I just cooked a pork chop and sliced that sucker up, and man, gotta tell you,
even without that slow cooked pork, it was one good belly thumper. And I just
used them ham slices that are processed, not that fancy Black Forest ham.”

“Glad to hear
that. Actually, since Marty and Jeff need to do some business after dinner, I
think I’ll go in the kitchen and get started. Max, you can give me a hand.” The
two of them walked into John’s house. They returned a half hour later with John
carrying a huge platter of Cubano sandwiches, and Max following him with halves
of fruit-stuffed cantaloupes on a large serving dish.

“John, this
looks wonderful, and the cantaloupe halves with fruit inside looks delicious,”
Marty said.

“The
cantaloupe is something I serve at The Red Pony. I mix raspberries, chopped
apricots, and strawberries together, and mix them with some whipped cream
cheese and a little brown sugar. Then I pack the mixture into the cantaloupe.
It’s really refreshing on a hot day, and you know how many of those we have
here in the desert. Now, as the Italians would say,
mangia, mangia
, or
eat, eat!”

Everyone was
quiet for a few moments and then Les was the first to speak. “John, this may be
the best sandwich I’ve ever had. I know I shouldn’t, but I’m going to have
another one, even if I do have to work tomorrow. The combination of flavors is
great.”

“Thanks. So
you think I should put it on the menu?” John asked.

There was a
resounding chorus of yeses as hands reached out for their second Cubano
sandwich.

“I’m so glad
you like it. When I was looking at the movie, I thought it would be tasty. I’ll
buy several pork shoulders tomorrow and start marinating them.”

An hour later,
John said, “Max, would you help me clear the table and do the dishes? I need to
load the truck a little early tomorrow. We’ll be delivering some boxed lunches
to a company on our way into town, so I have to get up early and assemble
them.”

“No sweat,
Boss. I can come over here and help ya’. Ain’t no skin off my back to get up an
hour early. I kinda like the quiet you find early in the mornin’ in the
desert.”

“That would be
great. You can leave your car here, and as soon as we finish making the boxed
lunches, and we have to make forty of them, so it’s going to take a little
while, we’ll head out. Should give us plenty of time. While you’re making the
boxed lunches, I can do some prep work for the lunch crowd at The Red Pony.”

“I’m on it,
Boss. Don’t ever need to worry ‘bout stuff like that when I’m here.” He
followed John into his house, loaded with plates and cutlery.

“Laura,” Les
said as he stood up. “I finished a painting today, and I’d like you to take a
look at it.”

“I’d love to,”
she said following him into his house.

It was quiet
in the courtyard for the first time that evening. “It’s so beautiful tonight,
mind if we stay our here and talk?” Jeff asked Marty.

“Actually, I
was going to suggest exactly that. Think there’s some saying about great
minds…”

“Think alike,”
Jeff said, grinning.

“Do you want to go first,
or do you want me to?” Marty asked, after the others had left, and they were
sitting alone at the picnic table in the courtyard.

“Why don’t you
start?” Jeff said. “And by the way, this conversation is not to be repeated.”

“Jeff, one of
the things I learned early on when I started appraising was the importance of maintaining
confidentiality. I lock my appraisals up in a file cabinet, put the computer
files on a thumb drive, and never talk about them to anyone other than in a
very, very general way. It’s quite a responsibility when you know who has
really good things and where they live. I’m sure there are a lot of unsavory
people who would like to have the information I have, so they could commit a
burglary. It’s kind of a heavy burden.”

“I’m sure it
is, and I wonder if all appraisers are as honest as you are. I would think
there’s a lot of money to be made by letting that confidential information get
into the wrong hands.”

“That’s
probably true, but I’ve never had to deal with it. Okay, I’ll get started.
Nikki Bolen visited me this afternoon at the Jensen home.”

His right
eyebrow shot up and he lowered his head and looked into his almost empty glass.
“I hope I wasn’t the cause of that visit.”

“Yes and no.
She said you told her you wouldn’t be seeing her again…”

Jeff
interrupted her. “You and I haven’t really gotten to know each other that well.
I think I mentioned the other day that I was divorced many years ago while I
was still working in La Quinta. There were a number of reasons for the divorce.
We married when we were just out of college, kids really, and grew to have
different interests and different ways we wanted to lead our lives. She was
adamant about having a family. I was just as adamant about not having children.
I’ve seen too many of my colleagues shot or hurt in the line of duty. I made a
vow I would never have children, because there was always the chance that
something might happen to me. I couldn’t have children knowing there was a
chance they might be raised without a dad.”

“Oh, Jeff.
What a tragedy that you even have to think about things like that.”

“Anyway, after
five years of being married we got divorced. There was no rancor, we didn’t
hate each other, in fact we’ve actually remained good friends and even talk now
and then. She remarried and has three children. That’s what she always wanted,
and she’s happy. I have no children, never remarried, and thought I was happy
until I met you yesterday. Nikki and I have been seeing each other for the last
couple of months. No, I’m wrong. Might as well be honest with you. I’d want you
to be honest with me and starting out a relationship with dishonesty is not the
way I want ours to develop.

“We weren’t
just seeing each other, we were having a torrid affair, an affair I ended this
morning. I have no idea what happened when I met you, but there was something
about your warmth and easygoing manner that made me want to know you much
better. Nikki’s perfect cosmetically enhanced body and face seemed so totally
false after I met you. Anyway, I just wanted you to know the background.”

“Well,” Marty
said, “while we’re talking about the past, might as well tell you my story. I
thought I had a perfect marriage. We’d been married for twenty-five years when
my husband told me he wanted a divorce, so he could marry his secretary. My
perfect world in a small town in the Midwest crashed. After he told me, I
understood why conversations always stopped when I walked into a room or a
store. I had to be the only one in town who didn’t know about the affair. I
didn’t know what to do or where to go. About that time Laura called and told me
she knew Scott and I were getting divorced.”

“She knew
about you getting divorced? How?”

“I have no
idea. It’s that psychic thing she has. Anyway, she told me there was going to
be an opening here in the compound, and she wanted me to come out here to live.
She also told me she was sure I could get some appraisal referrals from the
insurance company where she works. I shipped my books and some clothes to her
and drove out here a few days later. I’ve never regretted it, and I’ve grown to
love this funky little town of High Desert and this compound where I live with
the others.”

They were both
quiet for a few moments and then Marty spoke. “Jeff, I’m glad you ended your
relationship with Nikki. I’d like to get to know you better.”

He put his
hand on hers and said, “Marty, at our age I really don’t want to spend a lot of
time doing some requisite ‘get to know you’ dance. Pure and simple, I want to
see where this goes, because I think it’s definitely going to go places. That
doesn’t mean I’ll go caveman and drag you into your house and throw you on the
bed, but it does mean I’m not going to wait a couple of years for permission to
really kiss you. By the way, has Laura said anything about us? She probably
knows more about our relationship than we do,” he said with a twinkle in his
eye.

“No, but might
be worth asking. Okay, let’s get back to business. Here’s what Nikki had to
say.” She told Jeff about George Ellis and the Monkey Band that Jill had seen
in his office earlier that afternoon. “I haven’t wanted to think this, but if
Pam Jensen told George she wasn’t going to marry him, and it totally shocked
and angered him because he’d been counting on it, do you think he could be the
one who murdered her and stole the Monkey Band set?”

“I don’t know,
but I think based on what you just told me I might be able to get a search
warrant for his office. Even though I’m the detective on the case, it’s
obviously a police investigation. I’ll go to my sergeant and ask him to request
a warrant from the judge who issues warrants for cases like this. I’ll call him
when we finish,” Jeff said.

“I remember
Laura telling me she had a feeling or a vision that while the Monkey Band would
play an integral part in Pam Jensen’s death, it wasn’t the reason for her
death. If she’s right, George might have killed her because she wouldn’t marry
him, and in order to make the killing look like a burglary gone bad, he stole
the Monkey Band to try and cover up the murder he’d committed.”

“That’s a
strong possibility considering she was right about Rosa.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Remember,
Laura said she sensed guilt coming off of Rosa. Well, let me tell you about the
conversation that Rosa and I had.” He spent the next twenty minutes telling
her.

When he’d
finished, Marty said, “This is so sad. No wonder people sometimes engage in
some sort of criminal conduct that you wouldn’t normally expect of them. Often
it’s not because they’re bad people, but circumstances force them to take
actions they normally would never do. Rosa’s taking money to not turn on the
security system is sure a case in point. I hope her granddaughter is going to
be okay. This revelation by Rosa certainly gives another angle to the case.
Maybe it wasn’t George, and instead it was the guy Rosa told you about, this
man named Lou. The murder did happen the night Rosa left without turning the
security system on. Maybe Pam Jensen surprised him while he was trying to steal
the Monkey Band, and he had to kill her. Are you going to arrest Rosa?”

“In answer to
your question about Rosa, I won’t know until we find out who did it. She may
have left without turning the security system on, but it might not have been
Lou who committed the murder. Both Lou and George seem like viable suspects.
And don’t forget about Pam’s son, Jim, and Henry Siegelman. Her son stood to
gain a lot with her death, and while I don’t for a minute think Henry would
ever dirty his hands by personally committing a theft or a murder, he certainly
could have hired Lou or even someone else. As things stand now, we don’t know who
Lou was working for.”

“Are all your
cases this convoluted?” Marty asked.

“No, and this
really is one of the more challenging ones. You’ve got a great deal of money at
stake in the form of a large inheritance, a love affair that went bad, at least
on one side, a housekeeper who took a $50,000 bribe to arrange for the security
system to be off, and several people desperate to possess a very expensive and
rare antique set. Yes, it’s a very challenging case. I really don’t want to
leave, but tomorrow is going to be a busy day for me, particularly if I can get
a judge to issue the search warrant I’ll be requesting. Maybe I can put this
case to bed tomorrow, so I can concentrate on a certain woman I met yesterday.”

“You know, I
think I’d like that,” Marty said as they walked to the gate. She reached her
arms around his neck and kissed him gently at first, and then passionately.
Jeff returned the kiss with force and pressed his body against hers. After a
moment, she pushed him away. “You’ve got a murder and a theft to solve, and I
have an appraisal I have to finish, but rather than Laura asking, I’ll ask. Any
chance you can come to dinner tomorrow night?”

“Actually, I
was already planning on it. Sleep well.” He grinned and gave her a half salute
as he got into his car.

Marty walked
into her house, shaking her head in disbelief at the way her life had changed
in the last year, especially in the last two days.

Wasn’t
planning on meeting a man and having feelings like this. It’s crazy, but I’m
liking it.