The Name of the Rosé

by Christine E. Blum

  “Ms. Hall, why don’t you tell me what brought you to the hangar at this time of night,” the detective asked me as we talked outside the building. He had my driver’s license in hand and I guessed was running a check as we spoke. If I’m being exceedingly generous, he was tall, dark, and handsome. But in a cartoony, Dick Tracy way.

  “As I explained to the other two officers, I was accompanying my friend, Sally, and her cousin to the museum. Jimmy had just been hired to do some docent work for them, and he wanted to pick up his new ID card. We’d come from dinner at Spitfire.”

  I left out the part about looking for Jonas to ask about the crash and Rusty. That would add nothing to the investigation except get us in hot water and keep us here longer. Luckily, I had managed to tell Sally and Jimmy to do the same before they separated us.

  “Wouldn’t the tags have been in the museum office? What brought you into the restoration hangar?”

  “Jimmy. He was bursting with pride at getting this job, and he wanted to give us the grand tour. He’s going through a major life change at the moment. He and his wife of thirty-two years recently got divorced, his kids are all grown and the only thing that kept him stuck in Chicago was the ice and snow. He moved out here a month ago and is just starting to get his footing.”

  “Were you supposed to be meeting anyone in here?”

  “Who? No.”

  The detective was writing furiously in his notepad, and I instantly regretted giving him so much detail about Jimmy, harmless as it seemed.

  “Okay, I understand a peek into the place, but what drew you to walk all the way to the other end of the hangar to the flight simulator?”

  I had to be careful now.

  “There was a light left on in the simulator. Jimmy wanted to turn it off.”

  He stared me in the eye for a minute.

  “No other reason?”

  “What other reason are you looking for?”

  Oops. Now he was getting mad.

  “Who found the body?” he asked, ignoring my question.

  “I did. I was the first one up the steps.” I felt the blood leave my face, remembering. “It was, is, the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Did you know the victim?”

  “No.”

  “How long have you known Jimmy?”

  “Just about a month, since he moved here.”

  “He’s never visited before? Did your friend Sally over there talk about him much?”

  “No and not really.” It was time to give terse, vanilla responses until I knew where he was going with this.

  “One last question, Ms. Hall. Did Jimmy tell you that he’d known the victim Jonas was working late and he wanted to check on him?”

  Rats. Jimmy must have forgotten my directive. This cat was now caught way out on the limb of a very tall tree.

  I opened my mouth, not knowing what would come out.

  “Detective?” We were interrupted by one of the officers. “Something you need to see.”

  He gave me a slight grin, knowing he’d caught me and I was going to sweat it out for a bit longer. He flattened his hand and held his palm out to me, indicating I was to stay put. He followed the officer back inside.

  Just like Bardot, I obeyed until he was gone and then snuck over to the hangar entrance to eavesdrop.

  “We ran this guy’s license through Chicago PD. It’s expired now, but he has an outstanding moving violation and some parking tickets he’s ducked. Enough to bring him in?”

  The detective nodded and caught sight of me at the door.

  “There was some large animal stalking me! How could you leave me alone out there in the dark to be shredded by some rabid coyote? With distemper!”

  Not sure why I added that last affliction.

  “Let’s read Jimmy his rights and take him to the station,” he told the officer.

  The detective looked back at me.

  “You didn’t answer my last question.”

  “And now I’m not going to. You want to read me my rights and take me in too?” I stuck out my chin and cocked my head.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, walking away.

  I stuck my head into the hangar.

  “How will I ever sleep until you do? I’m so excited I could just die.”

  Who knew that my words, bad choices as they were, would be amplified and echo throughout the structure.

  * * *

  I dropped Sally back at home and could see she was completely spent after the day’s roller-coaster of emotions. I tried to assure her that all would be settled in the morning, but I didn’t sound convincing, so how could I expect her to have faith? She reiterated that the curse was back.

  When I pulled into my driveway, I was greeted first by a happy, furry, yellow face peering out the dining room window and secondly by the diminutive Latina from next door. Her face was framed by blue-black, dyed chin-length hair betrayed by a band of gray at the crown. She was thin and looked a bit frail. Until she opened her mouth.

  “What were you doing out so late? You bring me something from Spitfire?”

  That’s Marisol, my nosy, strangely clairvoyant neighbor who has been both the bane of my existence and my lifesaver since I moved to Rose Avenue.

  “How’d you know I was at Spitfire?” I asked, getting out of the car with the carryout bag. I’d put in the order for Marisol’s favorite when we went to the museum and Britt had been kind enough to keep it warm for me. She’d left by the time I retrieved it.

  As I said, Marisol seems to know things without being there, without getting reports from witnesses or by any other earthly means. I’m not saying she’s some sort of mystical spirit, although there have been times when I’ve wished I could load her on her broomstick and send her to the moon.

  “That sure smells like a turkey burger,” she said, taking the bag. Her eyes lit up like sparklers when she peeked inside the container. She took a sniff and grinned wide enough for the moonlight to catch her gold tooth and illuminate her face.

  If only I were so easy to please.

  “Go grab Bardie; she’s been locked up for hours. We’ll eat on my back patio.”

  I dug my keys out of my purse, and when I looked up a few seconds later, she was gone. She’s also famous for her disappearing acts.

  When Bardot and I entered her backyard through the driveway, she’d already eaten a good chunk of her burger with such gusto, she hadn’t bothered to stop and do anything about the ketchup dripping from the corners of her mouth and her chin.

  “When was the last time you ate?” I asked, watching her Hoover some fries.

  “Around six. Here Bardie,” she said, pointing to the one fry that had gotten away and was making a run for it on the cobblestone.

  “Marisol, what have I told you about calling my dog by her real name?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Yes, you do. Her name is Bardot, after the French actress and swimsuit model Brigitte Bardot. Not Bardie, Bard, Borrow or any other derivatives. You understand that, right?”

  Her eyes grew wide and her legs swung in the lawn chair hanging about a half foot from the ground. She looked like a child being scolded. That was until she finished her last bite of burger, dispensed with the pickle and let out a burp that seemed to emanate from her coccyx.

  Bardot’s head went up in the air; she took in a noseful and licked her lips as if she’d just walked into an aged steak house. I figured out which way the wind was blowing and moved alee. When the air had cleared enough to breathe, I filled her in on the crash and the events after, including the murder. She listened, but her expression never changed. Even after I told her how I found Jonas. I’d seen her be stoic like this before and I never knew if it was due to fear, boredom or some kind of defense mechanism she’d designed to brace herself against bad news.

  “Now Jimmy’s a suspect and Sally’s worried sick. I’ve got to figure out a way to help them. We need to find out who sent that cooler of fish in the first place; that’ll be
a start. I just wish I’d had a chance to look at the fish to see what kind they were. That would at least tell us if they were local or not.”

  “Who’s got ’em now, can’t you ask them?”

  “Augie. I’m not exactly his favorite person in the world . . . but you are his favorite aunt!” I said, remembering. “Please talk to him? I just need to know the species.”

  “I’ll think about it, because you gave me the burger and all.”

  “That’s mighty big of you.”

  I noticed a slight grin cross her face, telling me that I’d get my answer one way or another. We have a funny relationship, the two of us. We freely throw insults back and forth but seldom admit to the true affection we have for each other.

  “You must have seen your share of plane crashes at the airport, given all the years you’ve lived here, Marisol.”

  “You bet I seen ’em. Taking off at one end and landing at the other is the most common. But I’ve also seen planes sticking nose first into people’s house roofs.”

  I felt my face blanch.

  “Don’t worry; Rose Avenue is parallel to the airport, so it’s difficult to hit. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen.” She crossed herself, looked to the sky, then to the grass and finally plucked out a clover from her lawn and pulled off its leaves one by one.

  I half-expected it to start raining.

  “Have you ever heard of anyone being murdered at the airport?”

  “How would I know a thing like that?”

  “Because you’re a snoop. You know everything.”

  “I am not!” My accusation got her to hop down off her chair to proclaim her innocence.

  “Be careful. I don’t want you to fall and break your neck. Well . . .”

  She gave me the death stare.

  “I’m just kidding. So, no murders, huh?”

  “Back in the day, there were fistfights, but the only people killed were riding in those tin cans in the sky.”

  It was getting late and I was getting nowhere.

  “How much do you know about Jeb and Mary Ann?” I asked, switching gears. That whole scene with Jeb was still bothering me.

  “They’re nice, quiet neighbors.”

  Meaning she’s spied on them and found nothing.

  “Except lately.”

  I sat down on a log that bordered the lawn and pulled Bardot into me for warmth. Marisol loved to drag out her stories when she had something I wanted.

  “Go on.”

  “A couple of weeks ago I seen Jeb walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his house, really early in the morning.”

  “Do you ever sleep? Never mind, please continue.”

  “It turns out he was waiting for the mail carrier. When she approached, Jeb stopped her on the sidewalk and they had a conversation. She then handed him a package and put the rest of their mail through the slot.”

  “What did the package look like? Big, small, a box?”

  “It looked like a package!”

  “Marisol, your powers of observation rival a hungry hawk’s.”

  “Okay, it was about the size of a shoebox, tan paper and only a little bit poofed out.”

  “You mean filled. You’re talking about how thick the package was?”

  “I mean poofed out. Is all that wine drinking making your hearing go bad?”

  I exhaled to control my rising temper.

  “What did Jeb do with the package?”

  “He put it in the trunk of his car.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  I stood up to go.

  “Except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  “Except I saw him do it again, wait outside for the mail carrier. But she didn’t have no package for him.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “This morning.”

  My head was exploding, and it was time to tuck into bed with my dog and a rich glass of Italian Valpolicella.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Was there ever something called ‘the Curse of Rose Avenue’?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. First your hearing goes, and now your brain.”

  She disappeared into her house. I couldn’t help but think her denial of knowing about a curse was a sure sign the opposite was true.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day arrived with another cloudless sky to warm my now pathetically low body threshold for cold temperatures. Less than forty degrees is simply inhuman. Thankfully, you could count those days on one hand. Funny how, for a place with consistently lovely weather, we pay such close attention to the forecast each day. I’d become an admirer of nuances, and today’s weather dictated that it was time to climb a mountain. The first order of business was to prepare a picnic.

  As I do every morning, I went out and surveyed the back forty to see which crops were ready for picking. Okay, so it’s actually an eight-foot-by-five-foot raised bed, but it has proved bountiful. Just not so much today. My garden yielded a couple of nice-looking green onions, but that was it.

  “Time to go up the hill to our garden plot, Bardot.” She cocked her head and gave me her trademark ear-to-ear smile. Bardot then ran inside and to the front door, where she showed her excitement with a series of leaps off her back legs that thrust her higher and higher in the air with each jump. When she saw me turn instead and go into my bedroom, she let out a whimper.

  “What? I can’t go out in tiny pajama shorts and a tank top. You may be able to walk around in the nude, but in these parts, they don’t appreciate humans going out half naked.” Her indifference told me that she wasn’t buying it, and when I remembered we lived just a few miles from Venice Beach, I understood why.

  I changed into my hiking outfit for the day: army green shorts with lots of pockets, an off-shoulder white embroidered peasant blouse and pink high-top Chuck Taylors. I have to keep up appearances, after all. I put a leash on Bardot and we went out the door and started up the hill.

  I live toward the top end of our section of Rose Avenue, which allows for an unobstructed ocean breeze that cools the house all year long. At the very top of the hill sits a community garden offering six acres of fifteen-by-fifteen-foot plots of incredibly rich soil available for rent and almost guaranteed to produce, well, produce. I use the term available for rent loosely, as this is some of the most coveted land in Los Angeles and is willed down through families for generations.

  So how did a city girl like me end up with a plot on the hill? The wonderful girls in the Rose Avenue Wine Club gave it to me last year for my birthday. It had become available in a nasty probate battle and they were at the right place at the right time. How could they have known that the octogenarian at the center of the fight had been buried alive in said plot? Of course, I—rather Bardot—uncovered the body, and it all turned into a very long story. But that’s a present for another Christmas.

  We reached the top and found my little garden. The view up there was fabulous and the briny air I breathed in while admiring the ocean on the horizon made me think of Blue Hawaii drinks and bronzed Hawaiian men.

  Don’t judge me.

  To my delight, a garden buddy had left me a basket of apricots from her overabundant crop. I clipped some watercress and arugula from my little horn of plenty and lunch was starting to take shape in my mind. I needed one more ingredient to complete this gastronomic palette. A grapefruit for the dressing. The owner of the tree near my plot had given me carte blanche to help myself, with the subtext that I would partake modestly. When I examined the branches, I saw that for the most part they were bare. Except for one large almost-bursting-with-flavor fruit at the top. It clearly needed to be liberated.

  “Bardot, if I fall and break my leg, go and get Marisol for help. If I fall and break my neck, go and get the bottle of La Tâche I’ve been saving for Armageddon.”

  I hoisted myself up onto the first branch and looked skyward into the tree to chart my course. These trees are typically wider than they
are tall, and the younger ones have relatively small, wispy appendages. This particular beauty was probably over one hundred years old, and a proud specimen indeed.

  As I snaked through the branches, I looked down and saw Bardot waiting patiently for me to send a squirrel her way. The glass is always half full for her. When I reached my quarry I still had to stretch another foot or so to get my hand on the fruit. When I did, balancing on my tiptoes, I yanked, but the grapefruit remained firmly attached to the limb. I was a good twenty feet above the ground and was not about to climb down, trod home and return with some pruning shears. No, I was going to give it the good old Halsey try.

  I could clearly see the Santa Monica airport from here, brimming with activity as small planes taxied, took off or landed. The sound of their engines buzzing echoed up the hill.

  Time for my second attempt.

  I elongated my body and caught hold of the fruit. My other hand was clasped around the strong center trunk to hold me steady. This time when I pulled, I lifted my feet to let the entire weight of my body apply the pressure. Two things happened next and I’m not sure in which order: The grapefruit broke free from its stem and a yellow and black small plane buzzed by only about fifteen feet from my head.

  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  My feet never found the branch again; the hand holding on to the trunk slipped, and because I stupidly refused to let go of the prize in the other hand, I was now falling through the tree. I would like to attribute the next occurrence to my catlike reflexes, but in truth, it was only because I was afraid of landing on Bardot and killing her.

  My free arm caught a horizontal branch and I was able to swing and wrap my legs around it like a monkey would. My other hand hung freely, gripping the grapefruit. I got my bearings and assessed my situation. I was about six feet from the ground, Bardot was jumping up and down and wagging her tail and one of my neighbors and her two young kids had stopped their nature walk to view what they knew would be far more interesting to their social media audiences. The kids had their cell phones out and were snapping away.

  “Oh my goodness, how can we help?” asked the mom warily.