“I’m not your daughter,” Baby said after the server left.
“Look at this,” I said, pushing a newspaper toward her. The Los Angeles Daily News had a little more on the murder of Derek Benstein than we had heard on the radio the night before. The eighteen-year-old, pictured beside a huge yacht, had been shot dead in his home while two female “acquaintances” were outside. The women had discovered the body and raised the alarm with police. Witnesses mentioned seeing an out-of-place white van without plates parked two blocks from Benstein’s house.
“Whoa.” Baby sighed. “I knew that guy.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Not well. We were at school together. Never shared a class or anything.”
“Could the ‘acquaintances’ have been people you knew?” I asked.
“No. Hookers,” Baby said, perusing the article. “They always say ‘acquaintances’ when it’s hookers.”
“How do you know that?”
“One time Dad went night swimming down the beach after a big party at the house. He was really drunk. Five female acquaintances left over from the party had to go in and pull him out of the surf.” Baby slid the paper back to me. “It made the news.”
“What eighteen-year-old has hookers over to his mansion on a Thursday night?” I asked.
“Benstein and Miller are, like, the biggest film agents in LA,” Baby said.
“When I was eighteen, I was going to slumber parties at my friends’ houses and watching horror movies in my pajamas,” I said.
“That one hundred percent doesn’t surprise me,” Baby said dismissively. “What were you doing at fifteen? Playing with dolls?”
I went quiet. At fifteen I’d been a huge professional wrestling fan and had used my birthday money to buy action figures of all my favorite wrestlers.
“Oh, my God,” Baby yelped when I didn’t answer.
“They weren’t dolls, they were collectible figurines.” I huffed. “Try to focus. We’ve got two eighteen-year-old rich kids targeted in the same week. White van at both incidents.”
“Hmm.”
“Do me a favor.” I pointed to her phone on the edge of the table. “Find out if Derek Benstein and Ashton Willisee are friends on Facebook or Instagram or whatever the hell.”
Baby fished around on her phone while I gripped the edge of the table, waiting for her answer. It was clear now that my curiosity was piqued over what had happened to the kid I had seen in my father’s office. Why had he lied to protect someone who had apparently tried to abduct him? Was it the criminal investigator in me, my propensity to want to learn the truth and see justice done whenever I could manage it? Or was it just that I sensed this investigation was something Baby and I could do together, a project we could share that might bring us closer?
“Bingo,” Baby said, showing me her phone screen.
I saw Ashton Willisee’s picture beside an image of the brawny and taut-faced Derek Benstein.
In the parking lot, Baby stopped by my Buick, still playing on her phone.
“So thanks for the free breakfast and all, but I’ve got to roll,” she said, tapping away. “Places to go, people to see—you know how it is.”
“First of all, that wasn’t breakfast,” I said. “You consumed exactly zero calories in there. We’ve still got Dad’s funeral to organize, and I need your help with—”
“Black carriage with horses,” she said. A purple chrome Subaru WRX was pulling into a space behind her. “He always said he wanted a black carriage pulled by six black horses for his funeral. That’s all I know.”
Of course Dad had told Baby about his funeral plans. It was one of a million conversations he’d chosen to have with her and not with me over the last decade and a half. A spark of anger flared.
“Are you kidding me?” I sighed, snuffing it out. “A carriage and horses? This is present-day Los Angeles, not Victorian England.”
“You’ll figure it out.” Baby sighed. “Call a movie set or something.”
“I want to look into this Willisee and Benstein thing,” I said. “There’s something there.”
“Not my problem,” Baby said. “I gotta bounce.”
I was about to tell her she wasn’t going anywhere, but her retreat was halted by a force much more persuasive than mine. She turned and slammed into the chest of a big thick-necked guy in a black shirt covered with roses. Three more men emerged from the purple Subaru, which I recognized from last night. They were all around us before I could even begin to form a plan of escape.
“Rhonda, right?” the big guy said to me. “We want to talk to you.”
Chapter 34
I took Baby by her impossibly small biceps and pulled her backward, away from the huge lug in the ugly shirt. The four guys seemed to be attendees of some kind of bad shirt convention. Embroidered roses, lilies, and hibiscus flowers adorned lapels and cuffs all around us. And the poor aesthetic choices didn’t end with fabric and car paint. The guy closest to me had a gun tattooed on his right cheek, the barrel edging on the corner of his mouth.
“I’m Martin Vegas,” the big one said. “We’ve got a problem.”
“You bet we do,” I agreed. “Baby, get in the car.”
“No way.” She stuck close to me, as she had in the desert, her hip and shoulder against mine as though my physical bulk could protect her. Her voice dropped to a murmur. “I’m not leaving you alone with these guys.”
“What are you gonna do?” I murmured back. “Unfriend them to death? Get in the car.” She didn’t budge.
“We can probably skip right to it,” Vegas said. “We’re friends of Earl’s. Or at least we were. I understand he passed away a couple of days ago. Sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah, you guys look real torn up about it,” I said.
“We are torn up. About losing not only Earl but our very talented cook too.” Vegas was looking Baby over. “Tuddy was hard to obtain. He’s very in demand. A real asset. Your dad played a big part in bringing him in, and now the two of you have undone that arrangement.”
I tried to stifle the fear and dread running through me at the mention of your dad. I could imagine how these men pieced together that Baby and I were connected to Earl—we’d been seen on a camera likely monitored by the cartel at the shipping container, and freed their meth cook, after all. It was even reasonable that Vegas could know my name—Baby had probably mentioned it in the container. But if Vegas knew we were Earl’s daughters, it meant he probably knew everything. He would know I was staying at my father’s house. He would know about my job in Colorado. He would know I was the only adult in Baby’s life. And those were very dangerous pieces of information for drug cartel guys to have in their pockets.
“Well, we won’t waste your time,” I said, pulling Baby toward the car. “You must be anxious to go find Tuddy again. Good luck. Last time I saw him he was on a Greyhound bus to Seattle.”
I stepped back. The assembly of men moved around us. One of the guys leaned on the passenger-side door of my Buick, preventing me from shoving Baby in. I found myself wishing I had let her go to Milan after all.
“Tuddy will show up again,” Vegas said. “What we’re anxious about now is getting our money and product back.”
“We don’t have that stuff,” Baby said. Her voice seemed impossibly small and squeaky in the circle of big men.
“Yeah, we do,” I corrected her.
“What?”
“I took all the meth from the shipping container,” I said. “And about three million bucks in cash from Dad’s office in Koreatown.”
“First, why the hell would you do that?” Baby slapped at me. “And second, why the hell would you admit all that right now?”
“They’ll figure it out eventually. They’re rubbing at least two brain cells together, although probably not much more.” I glanced around the circle of guys. “And I took that stuff because I didn’t have a full grip on the situation yet. That’s what I do in my job. I gather all the pieces together and
hold on to them until they make sense.”
“Well, now you’ve got a grip,” Baby said. “So give the guy what he wants before his goons kill us. My Wikipedia page can’t say I died in a Denny’s parking lot!”
“Goons?” the guy with the gun-mouth tattoo said.
“Sorry.” Baby pulled her head in like a turtle. “I meant, like, helpers?”
Gunmouth glared at her.
“Henchmen?” she squeaked.
“I could probably accept henchmen,” he grumbled.
“Look,” Vegas said. “We’re offering you an opportunity to put things right here. We’re businessmen, okay? We don’t like losses, either of assets or useful relationships. I don’t know what you’ve seen on TV about the Mexican drug cartels. But we’re not like that.”
“You’re not?” I glanced at the purple chrome car and the roses on his shirt.
“We’re not,” he confirmed, oblivious to my scrutiny. “We’re practical people. So your father didn’t brief you on what you were supposed to do when he died. That’s okay.” He waved a consoling hand. “Not your fault. No need for things to go sour between us. Just give us our stuff back, and we’ll all move on from this.”
“No,” I said.
Vegas blinked in disbelief.
“You might have read Business Ethics for Dummies cover to cover, but that doesn’t make you any less of a drug-peddling scumbag,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the meth or the money. But I do know I’m not giving it to you.”
All the air seemed to go out of Baby at once. She wavered a little by my side. I didn’t. I held strong, because someone my size does that—stands steady and as immovable as a sea cliff, ready to take the brunt of a storm before it ravages the land.
Gunmouth moved first. But I wasn’t far behind him.
Chapter 35
Baby’s headscarf was the perfect handle. Gunmouth went for it, grabbing it like the end of a rope. I covered his hand with mine. My hand was bigger; my fingers squeezed his like a mitt around a baseball. One of the most useful things you can have in life is good grip strength. You can punch, kick, and scratch at an adversary as much as you like, but if they latch on to you and you can’t get them off, you might be in for some serious damage. I had learned that lesson the hard way, trying to intervene in a fight between two teenage girls in the courthouse waiting room one morning. One of the girls latched on to my arm like a cat on a tree, her nails digging in. It took three bailiffs to get her off. I still had scars from the claw marks.
Gunmouth’s eyes widened as I increased the pressure on his hand. In less than a second, something in his hand made a dull pop sound. He screamed. I held on. Baby was wailing, bent double, her hair and scarf enclosed in our two fists.
I kicked out as another guy came for me, a sideways donkey-style kick to the side of his knee. Another crunch. His leg bent at an unnatural angle, and he released a guttural scream. I squeezed Gunmouth’s hand one last time, heard another pop, and let him go.
Two men on the ground, wailing, two standing looking very unsure of themselves—Vegas and his only remaining henchman, who looked less than enthused by the prospect of attacking someone who had broken three bones in three seconds. Vegas wasn’t going to lower himself to a physical fracas. His Business Ethics for Dummies reading would have told him that physicality is power—he needed to stay high and proud, as reliably rigid as a skyscraper.
I knew they were thinking about drawing their guns, but the windows of the Denny’s beside us were now crowded with people, some filming on their phones, others probably calling 911. We all knew the smartest thing for Vegas and his crew to do was make a hasty retreat.
“Get in the car, Baby,” I said a final time. She slipped into the vehicle, and I got in after her, refusing to make eye contact with Vegas as he glared at us all the way out of the parking lot. I didn’t need to see his hateful gaze to know what it communicated: that he would be back in my life sooner rather than later.
Chapter 36
Jacob saw Neina in the hospital cafeteria. Hurt and confusion flashed over her face, because he hadn’t come right to the room where Beaty lay slipping away, maybe dying. He had gone to the cafeteria instead.
He’d done it because the food fueled him, and he needed strength before facing his child. Killing Benzo had done to Jacob what he’d expected: both invigorated and drained him. His first life taken in twenty years. He’d watched the beat of Benzo’s heart stop suddenly, a vital irrigation system shut off, the traffic of blood cells through the boy’s body stilled. In that moment he’d felt the great relief of sating his rage for a moment—as well as the overwhelming terror that one of these days he might see the same switch flicked off in his daughter. There’d be no going back and punishing Benzo a second time.
He could kill them all, but he couldn’t save Beaty. That fact had lit the fire of Jacob’s rage again in seconds.
“How long have you been here?” Neina asked. She’d crossed the colorless space in front of the sandwich counter and stood with her head down, looking miserable. He reached for her, but she folded her arms across her chest.
“Ten minutes. I just needed a coffee.”
“Where the hell were you all night?”
“I went home,” he said. “Cleaned the house a little.”
“We don’t need a clean house. We need our daughter.”
Jacob didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Neina was used to it. Over the years, he’d always shut down if she asked about his past, about the scars all over his body, about the things he said in his sleep.
She wasn’t stupid. He could have found a stupid wife in any city in the world, but he’d chosen Neina because of her lightning-fast wit and her strong, gifted hands. He’d seen her through the window of a pottery school in Studio City, teaching a bunch of retirees how to turn cereal bowls on a wheel. On their first date, she’d made him laugh, a rare and wonderful thing for him: the loss of control, the sound fluttering from between his lips.
Around them, the cafeteria bustled with families of the sick and injured wandering in, eating, wandering out. But they were still, the two of them standing there: Jacob determined to move ahead into the darkness, Neina determined to call him back into the light.
“Come up and see her,” Neina said. “Hold her hand.”
“I will,” he said. “I’ll just finish this.”
He gestured to the half-drunk coffee on the table. But her eyes went to what was beside it. The newspaper showing the image of a dead teenager, squad cars outside a mansion nestled behind tall palm trees.
Neina was smart enough to know that Jacob had done bad things in the past. And, very likely, that he had begun to do them again.
“Leave the coffee,” she said. She put a hand out. “Come.”
He didn’t take it. He couldn’t meet her eyes.
When he looked up again, she was gone.
Chapter 37
“Yeah, sooooo,” Baby said in the car. “Can we, like, make a deal?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Can you maybe tell me the next time you’re going to break a guy’s hand? Like, maybe give me some warning?”
“It’s not something I usually spend a lot of time planning,” I said.
“Where’s the money?” she asked.
I laughed.
She folded her arms and huffed. “What, you think I’m going to take it all, drive to Vegas, and have a wild time?” she asked.
“That does sounds like something you would do.” I shrugged. “That or spend it all on teeny-tiny handbags.”
“Seriously, though, you bust into my life all, like, Hey, Baby, guess what? You can’t do this. You can’t do that. You’re too young. You’re too irresponsible. Then you go and steal from a Mexican drug cartel?” She threw her hands up.
“I wouldn’t say steal. I prefer confiscate.”
“Those guys chop people’s feet off,” Baby said. “I read the news. The police in Me
xico City just found a big barrel full of feet last week on the side of the highway. Just feet! Nothing else.”
“What do you want me to say here, Baby?”
She shook her head but didn’t answer. Traffic was backed up on the 105 heading east toward the 110. Palm trees stuck up like ragged black fingers out of the sea of warehouses and car lots. The Hustler Casino was advertising unlimited garlic bread with dinner Friday through Sunday.
“If you’re not going to give the cartel their stuff back, what are you going to do with it?” Baby asked, cleaning her huge sunglasses on the hem of her tank top.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Why don’t you give it to the police?”
“Because the police will want to know where I got it,” I said. “And the answer will implicate our father in a major criminal enterprise.”
“So? What do you care?” she asked. “The guy’s dead, and you hated him anyway.”
“How do you like the idea of being homeless?” I said, gesturing to a homeless encampment on the strip of land alongside the freeway. Under a crumpled blue tarp strung between eucalyptus trees, a woman was giving a toddler a bath in a plastic tub. “If the police think Dad was a drug dealer, they can take the house. They can empty his bank accounts. They can take anything he owned.”
Baby just stared at the homeless mother and her child.
“And I didn’t hate him,” I said, hearing the uncertainty in my tone. “He just…He abandoned me.”
Baby snorted.
“What?” I felt anger rising in my throat.
“‘He abandoned me,’” she repeated. “That’s kind of dramatic, isn’t it?”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “I haven’t seen the guy since I was thirteen years old. That’s twenty-five years. A quarter of a century. He had me cash in some stocks that were in my name, then he dropped me at my mom’s house and disappeared. He didn’t even tell me he was leaving. He didn’t even say good-bye.”
Baby shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The words were spilling out of me suddenly, my palms sweaty on the steering wheel.
2 Sisters Detective Agency Page 9
