Not A Girl Detective (30 page)

“Tiffani and Brandi. They would’ve gotten away

with it, too, if Brandi hadn’t turned on her sister. You should’ve seen them going at each other at Brandi’s

apartment. They were throwing things, screaming.”

I swallowed hard.

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“Gambino?”

“Yes?”

“I’m really glad you solved the case.”

“Thanks. You helped.”

“Gambino?”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

“About what?”

“About this Jake thing. And the related Edgar thing.”

He waited.

“I’ve sort of been poking around where I shouldn’t

be.”

“Cece—”

“The thing is, I’m finally getting somewhere. I’m re-

ally close.”

“Stop for a minute. I want to say something. You

were right when you blew up at me the other day.”

“I was?”

“I’m not your father. I can’t tell you who to be. I

don’t want to tell you who to be. I love you just the way you are.” He stopped short. “Not a word.”

“Not a word.” Billy Joel. How embarrassing.

“But I also don’t want to be the person who rescues

you. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

“I think so. And I don’t want to be a person who

needs to be rescued.”

“I know that. So I’m going to say one thing, and then I’m done. I trust you.”

“Is that the one thing?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“Watch yourself.”

I promised him I would. And I truly meant to.

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For dinner, I made myself a nice sticky pasta car-

bonara. I ate slowly, stalling for time.

At nine, I checked on the Chums.

Nothing.

I came back inside and ate two Tofutti Cuties while

watching a Lifetime movie about a woman who sleeps

with her best friend’s husband.

I went back outside at eleven.

I had an answer.

In fact, I had maybe a hundred answers.

Those Chums were something, all right.

Tabby Cat was the most succinct:

You ought to come to more conventions, Cece.

Then you’d know that “L. Sands” refers to Rudy

Nappi’s oldest daughter, Lynn, whose married

name was Sands.

We all know about Russell Tandy, of course.

But Rudy Nappi was the illustrator of most of

the second and third covers of the Nancy Drew

Mystery Series. Lynn was the model for many of

those covers. Your picture is a trial cover of #21,

THE SECRET IN THE OLD ATTIC. It’s reproduced in the

eleventh printing of FARAH’S GUIDE. You really

should have a copy of FARAH’S GUIDE. I know it’s

expensive, but worth every penny. Anyway, how

thrilling for you to own something so rare and

wonderful!

Best, Tabby Cat

P.S. I had my baby. It was a girl!! :)

We see what we believe we are going to see, not what

is there.

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I was such a fool.

I could’ve saved so much time.

And Jake. I could’ve saved him from so much suffer-

ing. What had thrown me was the fact that Rudy

Nappi’s daughter, Lynn Sands, was a brunette while

Nancy Drew is blond—mythically, symbolically so.

Blond as in fair, good, true. Blond as in one who shines light into the darkness, brilliant like the sun.

But anybody can have blond hair. All you need is a

bottle of bleach. Or a wig.

Or an artist, to transform you from ordinary girl

into icon.

I could’ve saved so much time.

If only I hadn’t forgotten that art and life are not the same thing.

3 4

It was early Thursday morning, around eight. I was

parked kitty-corner from Edgar Edwards’s house with a pair of binoculars on my lap. I took a sip of my vanilla latte, then opened the window and tossed it out. Splat.

Not all experiments are successful.

Carroll Avenue was more dead to the world than

usual. The sky was dark and the clouds so menacing

even the neighborhood dogs had forfeited their morn-

ing walks. And quiet. It was so quiet the only sound you could hear was the wind whistling through the half-naked trees.

It felt like the dead of winter.

A door slammed. I grabbed the binoculars and

peered through the scratched lenses, more for effect

than anything else because I could see perfectly well from where I was parked. It was a paunchy guy in his

boxers, getting the morning paper. The wind had swept the door shut behind him. Shivering, he rang the bell and waited. His wife opened the door and handed him a steaming mug of something. These people had a great

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house, a crazy Victorian with purple trim and what

looked like a baby grand in the living room.

The car window went up with a muffled whoosh. Ac-

cording to my calculations, Mitchell Honey would ap-

pear any second. Thursday was one of his two yoga

days with Guru Chakravorty, whose studio was on

Larchmont Avenue. Master class began at nine, and

with so many asanas to work on, Mitchell would be

wrapped up until at least noon.

The night before, I’d spent a while at the guru’s Web site. It was a model of information design. I learned about yoga styles, yoga postures, yoga facials. That

yoga is good not only for the muscles and ligaments but the nerves and glands as well. Then there was the cor-nucopia of yoga-related products available for online purchase: mats, mat covers, straps, blocks, yogatards, personalized yoga software, copper tongue scrapers,

stainless-steel neti pots for nasal irrigation.

It’s very important to dry the nose properly after

nasal irrigation.

I heard another door slam. I picked up the binocu-

lars. It was Mitchell Honey, skipping down the moss-

covered steps, his yoga mat under his arm. He looked

up at the sky with concern. Please tell me a little rain wasn’t going to scare him. He pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket. No, rain didn’t scare him. I’ll bet the guru scared him. The guru scared me. Mitchell clicked the car alarm with his thumb. Two beeps later he was

seated in his blue Jaguar, and then he was gone.

I waited five minutes before getting out of my car.

Then I walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

The pretty young Latina I’d seen at the memorial ser-

vice answered.

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“Yes?” she asked in heavily accented English.

“I’m Cece Woodbury from the Office of Historic

Preservation.” I flashed my expired gym membership.

“It’s a city agency. Is Mr. Edwards at home?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. He is now

dead.”

“How awful!”

“Yes. Everybody feels very sad.”

“Is there someone else I could speak to?”

“Mr. Honey goes to exercise. He comes back later.”

“Oh. That’s a pity.”

“Have a nice day.”

She started to shut the door.

“The thing is, Miss . . . ?”

“Vasquez.”

“Miss Vasquez. Mr. Edwards inquired at our office

regarding his attic. This was some time ago.” I opened my briefcase and pulled out a clipboard with the one-year no-parts guarantee for my washing machine af-

fixed to it. “Yes, here it is.” I patted the guarantee. “Mr.

Edwards wanted to build out the attic and we rejected his application for a permit. He was very upset about it.

He had big plans. But in going over the documents, I realize there may have been an error made.” I shook my

head regretfully. “It happens. So I’m here to perform a reinspection.”

“What?”

“I need to take a look at the attic.”

“Please, you must come back when Mr. Honey is

here.”

“That’s the problem. I was in the neighborhood,

down the block at the Josephsons. Nice people. Any-

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way, I had a free hour, so I thought I’d squeeze you in.

Otherwise, it’s a minimum eighteen-month wait on

reinspections.”

“I do not know the Josephsons,” she said skeptically.

“Listen, I’m just going to run up there for a minute, do my thing, and get out of your way. It would be a huge help to me. Clear some paperwork off my desk.”

“I am now going out.” She waved her purse at me for

proof.

Shit.

“Home Depot,” she explained.

“The one on Sunset and Willoughby?”

“Yes.”

My heart soared. “The one with the long lines?”

She laughed. “One mop is three hours in line.”

“I’ve got news for you! You can forget about ever

waiting in line at Home Depot again!”

It was more than she could fathom.

“Yup. All you have to do is ask for the manager,

Raoul Ortiz, and tell him Cece sent you. He’ll treat you like a queen.” Raoul Ortiz was the brother of Tomas Ortiz, who was practically a part of Lael’s family. Tomas was the default architect of Lael’s ramshackle spread in Beachwood Canyon. They liked to keep it casual,

Tomas and Lael. Nails and two-by-fours. Tomas was

the king of two-by-fours. He could’ve built Versailles out of two-by-fours.

“I do not know.”

“Look. All I have to do is go up to the attic, take a quick peek around, make sure it’s safe for wiring, check out the ducting, stuff like that, then I’m gone.”

“It is not safe.”

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“I do this kind of thing every day. It’s routine. I don’t take chances.”

“It is raining soon. The roof is bad.”

“I’ll be gone before it starts raining.”

She looked down at my delicate sling-backs. “Your

little shoes.”

“This will save your employer a long wait. I know

Mr. Honey will be grateful.”

“Mr. Honey is very kind to me. He has been so sad.”

She grabbed her sweatshirt off the entryway table. “I am going to tell Mrs. Ramirez you are okay. She makes pies.”

Mrs. Ramirez wasn’t going to be a problem for me.

Only Mitchell would have been a problem for me.

Miss Vasquez came back, smiling. “Okay. But do not

bother Mrs. Ramirez. The door locks behind you when

you go.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Raoul Ortiz.”

“He’ll change your life.”

After she left, I realized I’d forgotten to ask her how you got up to the attic.

In the kitchen Mrs. Ramirez was up to her elbows in

flour.

“Hola, señora,”
I said, tapping her gently on the back.

“Aiyeee!”
she screamed, knocking over a bowl of egg whites.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” I grabbed a roll of paper towels

off the counter. “Can I help you clean up?”

She snatched the paper towels away from me and

started wiping up the sticky mess.

“Qúe muchacha más estupida! ¡Fuera de mi cocina!

¿No puedes ver que tengo que trabajar?”

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I got that she didn’t want to be friends. Still, it never hurt to be polite.

“¿Cómo estás?”
That was about it for my Spanish.

“Cuál es tu problema?”
She washed her hands and walked over to the refrigerator, pulling out a fresh carton of eggs.
“Estoy haciendo un merengue y está en un
punto muy delicado. ¿No debes estar en el ático?”

“Did you say
‘el ático’
?”

“Sí.”

She cracked one egg, separating the white from the

yolk. The white went into a plastic mixing bowl, the

shell with the yolk into the sink.

“Señora.”

She was ignoring me.

“Señora. ¿Por favor, dónde está el ático?”

Mrs. Ramirez had moved on to the second egg. She

said, without looking up,
“Hay una escalera raquitica
cerca de los dormitories de atrás. Se queda cerca del
dormitorio azul.”

Azul
means “blue.” The attic was somewhere near the blue bedroom.

“Muchas gracias.”
She said some other things to me as I left, but I didn’t recognize a single word except
“in-terrumpiendo,”
which I think means if you don’t get out of my hair, I’m going to hit you over the head with the frying pan.

Busy, busy. Everybody was so busy. The defunct

mop, its handle broken in two, was lying on the floor at the bottom of the staircase, next to a bucket of soapy water. At the top of the stairs, there was a wooden lad-der leading up to the stained-glass window, a bottle of Windex posed artfully on the top rung. Miss Vasquez

had her hands full taking care of this house. And she 282

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was sweet, worrying about how sad Mitchell was. But if I was right, he was really going to be sad.

I walked down the hall, my briefcase whacking me in

the calf with every step. It was that damn
Chicago Manual of Style
. I’d stuck it in there so the briefcase wouldn’t look so empty, but the thing must’ve weighed ten pounds. On the bright side, it was the closest I’d gotten to exercise in months.

I jog, but only when I’m feeling fat or testy.

Now what I was feeling was edgy. And embarrassed.

I’d taken advantage of Miss Vasquez. I wanted to run

straight home to West Hollywood. But I couldn’t do

that. I couldn’t leave this house. Not without what I came for.

Just past the blue bedroom I came upon a low door

with a finely cut glass knob. I hadn’t noticed it the other times I’d been in this house. It looked like something out of
Alice in Wonderland
. I turned the knob slowly, half expecting that when the door opened I’d go tumbling down a rabbit hole. But when the door opened