Jane Kelly 03 - Ultraviolet

by Nancy Bush

  “I can get her home address from Gigi,” I said slowly, thinking it through. The flight from Portland to Los Angeles is about two hours. If I left early the next morning I could make it a day trip. Or I could leave today, spend the night with my mother and return tomorrow afternoon.

  “I’ll take care of Binks,” Dwayne said, solving that issue for me before I’d even asked.

  “Violet paying for this?” I asked.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Seems kind of wrong, since I’m checking on her.”

  “She hired us to learn the truth.”

  “She hired us to save her ass.”

  “She won’t care,” Dwayne assured me. “And if she does, we won’t charge her.”

  My eyes strayed to the window and the beating rain. A trip to sunny Southern California. Why was I arguing? I knew my mother would be happy to see me. “I’ll go,” I said.

  “Good.”

  I hung up from Dwayne and phoned Gigi, who thankfully actually answered before the call went to voice mail. I told her I wanted her mother’s address and she got all huffy and protective. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Violet murdered Daddy! Why does it take so long for everybody to get that!”

  I realized she must not know about Melinda’s accusations concerning Violet’s first husband, which made me wonder about the story’s validity some more.

  “I’m looking into Violet’s past. About some—inconsistencies—that may shed some light on your father’s death. I think your mother can help.”

  “You’re not trying to pin this on my mother?”

  “This is about Violet,” I assured her.

  She thought about it, made a sound of annoyance, then spat out the address.

  Next, I phoned my mother at work. She’s a part-time office manager at a real estate office. She was thrilled to hear I was coming her way. I tried to bypass all the niceties of conversation that seem to take so long whenever I talk to Mom, but there was no hope for it. There seems to be a routine to our conversation that makes me chew my nails and pull at my hair in impatience. I was praying something would happen that would require her immediate attention at work, but no such luck. I pretended to listen as she rattled on about the doings of the four-unit that I co-owned with her. I decided right then and there I needed to take a look at that building as long as I was in the area. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been there to check up on the property, and I could make dual use out of this trip. Finally, she had to grab another call and I told her I’d see her later that day.

  I booked an afternoon flight. Tomorrow I would return in time for the big home game between Lake Chinook High and Brookstone, which was the team from the town of the same name to Lake Chinook’s south and a serious rival whether either team was any good or not.

  I threw items in an overnight bag and remembered to pack my cell phone charger at the last moment. I bought an e-ticket on Alaska Airlines, dropped The Binkster off at Dwayne’s, drove my car to the airport, then inwardly howled at the highway robbery prices for long-term parking. The airline ticket wasn’t cheap, either, but if I have an expectation of what something costs I can generally live with it. Parking fees always send me into overdrive, so to speak. You have to practically leave your car in the next state to keep the daily rate reasonable.

  It took me a while to get through airport security. The TSA workers pulled me aside, searched my bag and came up with a minibottle of water that had been given to me by one of the airlines on my last flight. I’d forgotten about it, which just goes to show how often I go through my luggage. They confiscated the water, gave me a hard once-over, then let me pass. I had my e-ticket in my hand, then had to stop to put on my coat, my shoes, gather my purse and my overnight bag. In the process the e-ticket slipped from my fingers and I had to chase it down. Two security lines over, another man was doing the same chase and grab.

  “Move out of the way,” an authoritative voice called to us all. My feet were only half in my shoes and I had to shuffle toward the concourse. A group of us dropped our gear on the floor and started putting ourselves back together. I know it’s safer. I’m glad we’re all checked to make sure we’re not carrying weapons and explosives. But this traveling by air has become a total pain in the ass.

  After all that screening the flight to L.A. was unremarkable except for the fact that there were only eleven pretzels in my minifoil snack pack. As if my diet weren’t scanty enough.

  It was two-thirty when we touched down at LAX. Through my window seat window I examined the tawny landscape: buildings, tarmac, vehicles, even the sky—were varying shades of tan, like someone had put a filter on a camera to make the setting seem hot, dry and forbidding.

  After all the rain, it looked like heaven.

  Mom had offered to pick me up and I’d gratefully agreed. Not that I enjoy traveling with her in L.A. traffic, but a rental car would have been worse, not to mention more expensive.

  I saw her silver Volvo wagon pull up and I admired a much newer version of my own vehicle. My car had basically been a gift from my mother. She’d upgraded to a new car and I’d ended up with the dark blue Volvo wagon I still own. One of these days I might have to spring for a newer model. Or one of these days Mom might decide to buy new and leave me hers. I began to covet the car with the same desire Binkster eyes a mochi. With an effort, I pulled my brain back to the task at hand.

  Mom stopped in the no-parking area right by the taxis. The whole area is no-parking. It’s insane how fast you have to jump into a vehicle that’s pulled to the side to pick you up. They’re snotty at the Portland Airport, but they’re their own militia in Los Angeles. Out of the corner of my eye I saw airport parking security heading our direction, so I hurriedly threw open the back door and hefted my roller bag inside. I thought about affecting a limp, just to buy some time, but we were okay as it turned out.

  Mom merged into the god-awful airport traffic, barreling in front of another driver, narrowly missing his bumper. He tooted at her and she pretended she was deaf.

  My mother, Carole Kelly, is an older, softer version of myself with light brown hair and hazel eyes. Sometimes I wonder how we can be related. Other times, like now, I see definite familial traits.

  “I left Binks with Dwayne,” I said, as if she’d asked.

  She was stuck in three lanes of traffic, all inching toward the exit. “Binks?”

  “My dog. The one you made me take from dear, departed Aunt Eugenie?” If my tone was long-suffering, I should be pardoned. For reasons unknown to me, Mom cannot, or will not, remember that she’s responsible for me being a pet owner.

  “Oh…right…” Mom had lost interest. She was edging into another lane. I wrapped my fingers around the handle above the passenger door and tried not to press too hard with my foot against the imaginary brake.

  With a deftness bordering on insanity, Mom cut off a stretch limo, which blared at her with its horn. She practically put a wheel on the curb to circumvent another car. I closed my eyes, hazarding a peek out of my right eye when we started speeding up. We were just about to enter the 405 freeway on our way north toward Santa Monica. Mom managed to fight off the traffic and merge us in. I held my breath as we took the exit ramp to 10 West, but we were okay. L.A. driving requires speed and decisiveness. Mom had both. It was accuracy I was worried about.

  We cruised into Santa Monica without incident, turning on Lincoln, which runs parallel to the beach and is eight blocks in. We wound our way into the pricey neighborhood north of Montana, approaching on a street lined with tall, skinny-trunked palms, their ruffed tops all leaning toward the ocean. The city of Santa Monica sits on a shelf of land high above the ocean. Access to the beach is down dizzying stairways and a trip across Pacific Coast Highway. There are several pedestrian overpasses, and I’ve taken them all, but for practical purposes, the houses facing the Pacific mostly have ocean views, not ocean fronts. Malibu, which boasts amazing beachfront homes owned by many celebrities and other wealthy Cal
ifornians, is just north of Santa Monica.

  Renee owned a Santa Monica bungalow with an ocean view, which meant it could be three hundred square feet and cost millions, land value being what it is. Unlike Violet, she clearly had come away with something from her divorce.

  Mom pulled into a parking spot across the street, a lucky break as we saw it being vacated. Renee’s house was actually a bit larger than I’d expected. I calculated a thousand square feet in a two-bedroom, one-bath cottage with a tidy, green lawn and a brick serpentine walk to the dark, plank-wood door with a tiny, iron-grilled viewing window. The bungalow was tan stucco with a red tile roof, typical Southern California real estate fare. There was no garage, but two parallel cement tracks ran down one side of the house where an older model, dark green Cadillac sedan sat waiting by a teensy back porch with four red-tiled steps.

  Mom and I walked up to the front door and knocked. I could smell the jasmine and turned my face to a surprisingly warm sun. November, and you’d never know it. I thought of Randy Newman’s song “I Love L.A.” Yep. I was feeling it. I know it’s popular to denigrate L.A. and its glitzy, shallow image, but hey, ya gotta appreciate the weather.

  Renee didn’t immediately open the door, so I pulled out my cell phone and called her again. I could hear the sound of it distantly trilling away inside the house, so I knew she was probably home. She didn’t answer its call, however. Figured.

  Mom asked, “She a recluse, or something?”

  “Or something,” I agreed, knocking again. I was wondering about the wisdom of bringing my mother along for this trip, but I hadn’t known how to say thanks for the ride and now get lost.

  It took about ten minutes of impatient waiting until I saw a twitch at the front window’s curtains. I waved at the movement and smiled brightly. Let her try to figure out who Mom and I were. Jehovah’s Witnesses in jeans and sneakers? Not likely. I could be with Publishers Clearing House, though.

  My cell phone rang as we were waiting. I debated on answering it, not recognizing the number. I snatched it up impatiently and demanded, “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Deenie. Sorry I couldn’t talk to you before. My boyfriend and I are just—well…it’s such a mess.”

  “Unfortunately, now I’m the one who can’t talk. Let me call you back.”

  “Well, God…fine.” She hung up.

  “Who was that?” Mom asked.

  Before I could answer, the door finally opened. Mom and I turned our heads and stared in astonishment. Catlike, they’d said? No shit. Renee’s eyes were pulled into a slant that tilted upward at the outside corners, and she’d darkened the brows in a way that accentuated the feline look. Her whole face appeared stretched back and her mouth had lengthened into a flat line that seemed to go halfway around her head. Her hair lopped forward over her forehead in a tawny mane, then swept to a sort of fashionable mullet down her neck. The scariest part of it was that it wasn’t unattractive. It was kind of arty and interesting. And, well, weird.

  She was slim and dressed in a pair of black capri stretch pants and a sleeveless black top. She looked as if she were about to do some kind of performance art whereby she would scratch, claw and hiss. If I’d had Binkster with me I think she would have started whining, which is what she does when she encounters a feline. She likes them, but they worry her. I understood the feeling.

  “I’m Jane Kelly,” I said, thrusting my hand toward her. “I called you earlier. I’m the private investigator looking into Roland Hatchmere’s death.”

  She cautiously accepted the handshake. My mother followed suit, smiling beneficently. “Carole Kelly.” Renee shook her hand, too. Her face showed no expression. I doubted there were enough muscles left for that.

  “I don’t know how I can help you,” she said in a normal voice. I had so expected a purr. “You didn’t come all the way here just to interview me, did you?”

  “My mother lives here,” I said easily.

  “I’ve been trying to get Jane to visit for months. Finally the time was right,” my mother put in, just as easily.

  It took all I had not to give her the proverbial double take. Sometimes Mom surprises me. Actually, oftentimes Mom surprises me, it’s just that sometimes the surprise isn’t exactly a welcome one.

  Renee clearly didn’t know what to do with us. Grudgingly she stepped back from the door, then suggested we go back outside through the rear door and follow the gravel path to the backyard. We followed her across a scarred oak floor scattered with area rugs in varying jungle prints. The kitchen was tiny and hadn’t been updated since the fifties, but it was clean and tidy.

  We went down the four steps, past the Cadillac, to a tall wooden fence, a portion of which was a gate with a hook on top. Renee reached up and unlatched it, swinging the gate section inward, and we entered an area that was more patio than yard, but nicely done. Swept concrete was surrounded by potted plants: a lush jade, a red bottle brush plant, some kind of ground cover flowing over one pot that perfumed the air. A round, redwood table with semicircular benches sat under the shade of a coral tree, the branches of which curved and twisted, reminiscent of an ocean reef. Tucked along the grassy edges were metal posts with hooks, and from the hooks hung lanterns with fat, white candles.

  “This is lovely,” my mother said admiringly.

  It went a long way in getting Renee to thaw. She smiled, and that, too, had a cat-who-ate-the-canary quality to it. “I spend most of my time out here. The house needs work but it’s peaceful here.” She grabbed a red flame lighter and touched it to the candles, sending out flickering illumination. Shadows were beginning to spread across the backyard and patio as it was after four o’clock.

  “I own a four-unit in Venice,” Mom added. “Amazing what the property values have risen to, isn’t it? This place, when it was built, when you think about it…” She shook her head, marveling, looking around.

  Renee nodded eagerly. I watched in amusement as she jumped into the game. People love, love, love to tell you how much they’ve made on their real estate investments, as if it’s a ruler for their business acumen and general smartness when in reality if you hold prime real estate long enough, and don’t have an abyss of debt, you’ll generally do fine and sometimes make out like a bandit. I was intrigued that my mother, whose age was probably close to Renee’s, was deliberately getting Renee to warm to her, pulling down her barriers. It saved me a helluva lot of effort.

  They talked price and location and the market for a good ten minutes. I listened with a growing sense of unease I didn’t initially identify. I did an inner search and discovered the source of this dread was my soon-to-be eviction. I would be losing my own piece of real estate unless I did something about it.

  Like what? I asked myself.

  Renee offered to serve us some lemonade and went to take care of it. I gave Mom a look.

  “What?” she asked, but her little smile said she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “I might have to bring you on all my interviews.”

  “You might,” she agreed.

  Renee returned with a tray holding a pitcher of pink lemonade and three glasses filled with cubes of ice. There was also a stack of hors d’oeuvre plates, an array of crackers covered with dabs of cream cheese, a wedge of cold, sliced salmon and a little glass bowl of different varieties of olives. It was damn good on short notice. Maybe not in Melinda’s league, but better than I could ever hope to manage.

  Mom selected a plate, filled it with salmon, crackers and a grouping of olives and accepted the glass of lemonade Renee poured for her. Leaning back in her chair, she eyed me expectantly.

  Showtime.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I mentally prepared myself for the interview, aware that I was slightly nervous.

  Her odd looks just put me on edge.

  Renee was gazing toward the back of her property. “Roland and I were madly in love once. The kind of thing that happens once in a lifetime, at least to me.” She gave us a quick, wry look, whi
ch was a little disconcerting. Sort of like a cat with the power to be self-effacing. “He was an incredible surgeon. I’ve never been able to find anyone who could do work like he did.”

  “You’ve tried, then?” my mother asked politely.

  Like, duh. How much surgery had this woman had?

  Renee nodded, totally serious. “I’ve had some facial reconstruction since Roland retired. But it’s never been the same.”

  “So, you’ve seen Roland—professionally—for years,” I said.

  “Absolutely. He used to try to talk me out of it, but after a while I think it was kind of peaceful for him. Familiar. We knew each other well.” She waved a hand at me. “Violet hated it, when they were together. Wanted to get Roland away from me. That’s why they left for Portland, you know. Oh, sure, Roland was expanding his business, starting those clinics, but Violet was all for it because it got him away from me. I did make a couple of trips to Portland for some touch-up, though, before Roland’s problems got in the way.”