Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  “It’s all one color.” She smiles up at me. “You look handsome.”

  I’m in a burgundy Robert Graham jacquard shirt over black Brioni slacks. It’s as casual as I could manage with what I’d packed. “Thanks. You look… amazing.” Her smile says I know.

  A seater leads us through the bar scrum to a round four-top in the corner of a fake ship’s deck. There’s a low exposed-beam ceiling, a mast, and an open floor reaching to another rigged mast at the room’s other side. We can see most of the lagoon from here.

  Yes. The lagoon. It’s rectangular and maybe eighty feet long. A tiki-hut thing floats on the water at the other end. Tables line both long sides of the pool under wooden shed roofs. Nets, floats, tiki gods, ships’ marker lights, and hurricane lanterns are everywhere. The crowd ranges from hipsters to boomer family groups.

  Savannah leans in close so I can hear over the noise. “Isn’t this great?”

  “It’s something else.” It’s a cultural relic, not a place I’d choose to drink in more than once a year.

  We order from a young Asian woman in a maroon polo with a black floral pattern on the back. The house band—four middle-aged guys wearing camp shirts and Panama hats in the floating tiki hut—rolls into a Steely Dan cover.

  I say, “I need to ask you something. It’s work-related.”

  Savannah makes a face. “I’ll have to charge you.”

  “What happened to that smart-friend-who-helps-out thing?”

  “She needs to eat.”

  “How about if I pick up the tab?”

  That brings her smile back. “Eating’s overrated. What’s your question?”

  “At lunch last week? Jim said he needs to know who he’s dealing with ‘now more than ever.’ What’s that mean? Has something changed lately?”

  Her eyebrows crunch together. Her lips purse. Maybe it’s the murky light, but it seems like genuine confusion. “I have no idea. I haven’t seen anything different. It’s not like Jim tells me everything, though.”

  “Have you seen him do anything… questionable? Have any of your clients mentioned anything?”

  Savannah frowns. “Why do you ask? Do you know something?”

  Do you? “I’m trying to figure this out. It’s like something put him on alert. Any ideas?”

  “No, nothing. Sorry.”

  Either she’s on the level or she’s a damn good actress. I’ve seen that go both ways. It usually ends in a surprise. “If you knew, you’d tell me, right?”

  “Of course I would. It’d be wrong to hide something like that from you.” She wraps her fingers around the hand I’m resting on the table. “Rick, I want you to trust me, like I trust you. I’m here for you. I want to make sure you’re happy. Will you let me do that? Please?”

  My old boss at Heibrück Pacific also said trust me—right before he jumped bail and left me holding the bag. “Sure. I had to ask, though.” I give her hand a squeeze.

  She nods. She seems content to sit here holding hands, so I don’t pull away. The waitress brings our drinks on a tray. Mine’s a simple vodka rocks; Savannah’s has a name like a Jimmy Buffett song title. It’s a pinkish brew in a highball glass with a pineapple slice, a long straw, and a paper umbrella.

  Savannah clinks her glass against mine. “To new friends.” She sinks into her chair as she crosses her legs. The low table doesn’t cover anything. Neither does the skirt hem that climbs way up her lightly tanned thigh.

  It’s distracting, but I won’t complain. “You know, when I look at you, I don’t see Asian art. Where’s that from?”

  She leans close. “I grew up with it.”

  “Did your parents collect?”

  “Oh, god, no. They thought ‘art’ meant old European white-guy paintings. I got it from my nannies.”

  “Plural?”

  She giggles, then sucks her straw in a way that gets my complete attention. “It’s a long story. You really want to hear it?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Good.” She sets down her glass and sweeps her hair over her shoulders. “You’ve probably heard of my parents. Joseph Kendicott? Sierra Pipeline? The second-largest pipeline company west of the Mississippi?”

  I shake my head.

  “Hmm. Gloria Stark Kendicott? She was a big deal in the old Republican Party. You know, the one before the one we’ve got now?” Her eyebrows become question marks.

  “My folks were Democrats.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, Mother was too busy to raise me, so she let nannies do it. She liked Asians because she thought they’re smart and clean and cultured and hard-working and basically everything she didn’t think Hispanics are.”

  I don’t stop my wince in time to keep her from seeing it.

  Savannah puts up her hands. “That’s Mother. I’m not her. Thank god.”

  “I’m really glad to hear that.”

  “I’m glad you’re glad.” She flashes a smile. “Okay, nannies. Vu Sen—Susan—was with me until I was ten. Her father used to be pretty high in the Saigon government. She was beautiful, she had a good education, she spoke flawless English and good French…” She sighs. “I wanted to be Susan. Anyway, she taught me about Vietnam, about the culture, the art. I spoke good Vietnamese by the time she had to go away.” Her mouth and eyes turn sad.

  “Why’d she have to go? What happened?”

  “Father happened.” She empties her drink with a loud straw rattle, then flags down the waitress for another round. She leans in again, close enough for her warm, bare shoulder to rub against mine. “Lawan was my next nanny. You know how pretty and graceful and slender Thai women can be? That was her. She taught me the language. She’d studied archaeology in Bangkok before her family got chased out after a coup. She stayed on until I was sixteen, when she had to go away.”

  “Your father again?”

  “Yes. Mother got her deported to Thailand. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” She doesn’t hide the bitterness.

  That’s rough, especially at that age. “What was that like for you?”

  She sighs. “Lawan was my best friend. By then I’d learned to not trust the girls at school much.” She grabs my hand. “I cried for days. I didn’t speak to Mother for three weeks.”

  “I’m sorry.” I really am. She may have had the silver spoon, but it had jagged edges.

  We sit holding hands and listening to the music, swapping glances. New drinks appear. Savannah sucks down an inch in one draw. “Sorry to break the mood.”

  “No problem. So, how many languages do you speak, anyway?”

  “Let’s see. Vietnamese. Thai.” She counts off on her fingers. “Mandarin. I learned that at Stanford. I can’t read it very well, but I get by. I do okay in English.”

  “I noticed.”

  Big smile. “French, of course, though that’s mostly for reading. I needed it for my major. My pronunciation’s terrible. And you?”

  Five languages, three different writing systems. I feel like a post-op brain donor. “English and Spanish.” Right on cue, the band starts in on “Oye Como Va.”

  “Did you get the Spanish from the cook or the housekeeper?”

  “We didn’t have that kind of money. I learned from the guys working on my dad’s construction jobs.” Hoskins’ background is a lot like mine, minus prison. “I mean, I took it in school, too, but I really learned it from them. I can’t use a lot of it in polite company.”

  “I’ll bet.” She inhales another inch of her drink—it’s disappearing fast—then nudges me with her shoulder. “Can you dance to this?”

  “Yeah. Can you?”

  “Of course.” Savannah grabs my hand and pulls me out of my chair. “Come on, dance with me. It’ll be fun.”

  I let her tow me onto the crowded deck between the masts. Most of the people sway more-or-less to the rhythm. She probably thinks I’ll do that too. Her eyelids peel back when I haul her into dance frame. “On four.”

>   I’m rusty, but she’s got the beat and knows how to cha-cha. She moves like her joints are made out of mercury. The last time I danced was with Carson (long story), who kept trying to lead. Savannah knows better. People make room for us to do our thing.

  Savannah’s grin threatens to break her face. The extra swing in her hips might be the umbrella drinks, or it could be her way to keep my attention. I concentrate extra hard on what I’m doing so my little brain doesn’t think too much about what else those hips can do.

  The band finishes and trickles off their raft. I try to lead Savannah to our table, but she holds back. “Stay here for a minute.”

  “Why?”

  “Wait for it.”

  My arm’s around her waist and her hand is on my chest. I don’t remember arranging that, but it’s comfortable enough. “What are we—”

  “Just wait for it.”

  An overhead light flashes. Then thunder. Recorded thunder, but still. It starts to rain.

  Not on us, luckily. (But that dress, soaking wet…) Water streams from the ceiling into the pool. Thunderclaps and lightning flashes overwhelm even the crowd noise.

  Savannah laughs. “I love this place! It’s so kitschy!”

  We get back to the table without being rained on or struck by virtual lightning. Savannah orders another round. “Slow down,” I tell her. “I’m still working on mine.”

  “Now you’ll have a spare.” She wraps both hands around my bicep. “Okay, where’d you learn to dance like that?”

  “UCLA. I needed to do something to get my butt off a studio stool. I thought I’d take tennis—I played in high school—but then I saw the social dance classes. So it was like, go play outside with a pack of sweaty guys? Or be in a nice air-conditioned gym with a bunch of women who can’t say ‘no’ when I ask them to dance?”

  Savannah snorts. “You dog!”

  “Woof. How’d you learn?”

  “When I debbed.” She points to the ceiling. “My ball was right up there.”

  Good lord. Another relic from a lost civilization. “You were a debutante.”

  “Of course I was.” She giggles. “It’s on the Poor Little Rich Girl checklist. You know how that goes, right?”

  Unfortunately, yes. I’ve known several. “Let’s see… rich parents, servants. A big, fancy house in some really white place?”

  “Well, it was big. I can’t say it was all that fancy. And yes, Atherton was about as white as it got back then.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Next to Menlo Park. Walking distance to Stanford. Next.”

  “Daddy drank?”

  “Mother drank. They both had… adventures, if you get my meaning.”

  “Both? That sucks. You mentioned the nannies.”

  She takes a big draw from her drink. “They were just the start. Father liked slumming. Waitresses, shopgirls, secretaries. My fourth-grade teacher.”

  “Jesus.” Good thing I didn’t have any vodka in my mouth. She’s totally clinical about it, like she’s talking about somebody on the news. “How do you know all that?”

  “Mother told me. She made a point of it.”

  “And your mom…”

  “She was more strategic about it. Sex was business. It got her what she wanted.” She pokes my shoulder with a folded paper umbrella. “Father told on Mother too. Keep going.”

  “Okay. Private school, of course.”

  “You don’t think they’d let me mix with the common folk, do you?”

  “Straight-A student? Or did you go the other way?”

  “Oh, no. Straight As. The last B I took home got me a spanking.”

  For a B? Harsh. “Trust fund?”

  “Of course.”

  “Therapist?”

  “Yes, but not after college.”

  “You scored a hundred on the Poor Little Rich Girl index.”

  Savannah holds up a finger. “Not yet. You forgot one.”

  Actually, I left out a couple because they seemed too rude to mention. “Which one?”

  “Cosmetic surgery before I was eighteen.” Yeah, that’s one. “You know what they called me in grade school? ‘Dumbo.’” She brushes back her hair, then pushes her ears forward so they look like open car doors. “From Father. I got his beak, too. And my teeth were a mess.”

  “So your fairy godmother made it all better?”

  Savannah giggles. “This was all Mother. She decided to fix me the summer after sixth grade. I got my ears pinned and my nose done and I got braces. I didn’t leave the house for almost three months, I was so embarrassed. By the time school started, the bruises were gone and my ears were where they’re supposed to be, and I had my cute new nose…” She turns her head and tips up her face so I get a good shot at her profile.

  “Very cute nose.”

  “Thanks. I still had the braces, but everyone else did, too. Oh, that’s also when I turned blond. Mother said all blue-eyed white girls should be blond.”

  “I disagree.” I pick up my glass. Is this my second or third? The pasta I had for dinner isn’t soaking up enough booze. Savannah’s gone a bit soft-focus on me. She’s pounding those umbrella drinks like water, but it doesn’t show at all. “Hey, I forgot to mention… I invited Jim to L.A. next week to see my collection and talk to my LACMA guy.” Wait for it… “Would you like to come too?”

  That takes a moment to sink in. Then her eyes get big. “Really? You mean it?”

  “I mean it. Come down the day before, see my place, see my art. I’ll show you around LACMA when Jim’s in his meeting. Then you can hit the galleries. Sound good?” I want her there early because I want her invested enough to help sell Bandineau.

  She gives me the look I’d hoped to see. “Yes, definitely! I want to come.”

  “Great. I’ll take care of all your expenses. You shouldn’t have to pay for this.”

  “Ohhh, that’s so sweet.” She darts forward to kiss me on the cheek before I can react. “You’re the best. I can’t wait!”

  It rains some more. The band returns. We dance again, a rhumba to “Never My Love.” We chat about nothing while Savannah demolishes her fourth drink. I’ve stopped nursing my third? fourth vodka? I’m as distractible as a Jack Russell terrier and my train of thought keeps crashing off the tracks.

  Savannah says, “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go powder my nose.” She winks at me.

  I watch her hips swing off toward the back of the room. So do a few other guys. It seems brighter and hazier in here than it should be. Everybody looks like they’re having a great time, though.

  Savannah should be completely hammered by now, but other than being more giggly than usual, she seems perfectly okay. Even as foggy as I’m getting, this feels weird. I sniff her glass. There’s alcohol, but not much. After a glance toward the restrooms, I sneak a sip.

  It’s like fruit juice that’s stayed in the fridge too long. Way more sugar than rum. Hmm…

  Savannah returns a couple minutes later, drops her white Tory Burch clutch on the table, then bottoms out her semi-fermented Hi-C. “Where were we?”

  I’m not sure. She orders another round. I ask the waitress for water instead. Savannah makes a face at me. Too bad. She starts in on her fourth? fifth so-called drink? The conversation wanders more than last time, but that’s okay. She strokes my arm, and that’s okay, too. The way she looks at me feels fine, even if she’s really looking at Hoskins.

  It also feels fine when her hand migrates from my arm to my thigh. My usually-right voice tells me it’s time to close this down. Spoilsport. I have to concentrate to say, “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, so I’m gonna have to call it a night.”

  Savannah’s mouth bunches. “So soon? We should dance some more first.”

  “Maybe next time. I texted my town car to come get you. He’ll drive you home.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  A nice thought, but… “Not tonight.”<
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  She sighs, then wraps her hands around my forearm. “Would you like to know the only useful thing Mother ever told me?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ll like this. She said that if I want something, I need to take it. Nobody’ll give it to me.” Her voice is low and purry and goes straight to my little brain.

  Savannah leans in for a kiss. I hesitate for an instant, which is all she needs. It’s nice, light. Just a sample. She rests her forehead against mine. “You could kiss me back, you know.”

  That takes some effort to parse. “I could, but not tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t stop.”

  “That’s okay.”

  I need to work out why she’s pouring full-strength booze into me while she guzzles candy. I can’t do that when we’re swapping air. “Not tonight.”

  She pulls away a few inches. I get a full dose of big blue eyes that are stark naked and crawling into bed. “Okay. I’ll let you go… this time.”

  Chapter 17

  49 DAYS LEFT

  The next five days melt into one very long one.

  I work sixteen-hour days at the Bel Air house, eat pizza and empanadas, and sleep on an air mattress on the concrete slab in one of the four bedrooms.

  Each day is barely controlled chaos. My desk is a dismounted door on two sawhorses in the three-car garage. I churn out an endless number of schedules on my agency laptop—doors, lighting, cabinets, floor finishes, wall finishes, fixtures, window treatments, yadda yadda yadda. I have conferences with Royce (the contractor: no idea if the name’s his first, last, or only) about every thirty minutes. There’s workmen everywhere, climbing on everything, chucking stuff into the battered blue dumpster in the forecourt until I wonder if there’ll be any house left. It’s been twenty years since I’ve had any regular contact with banda and norteño, but it sounds like not much has changed.

  It’s incredibly stressful… and a bagful of fun.

  I’m still paying off the student loans I racked up to become an architect, but I haven’t drawn a single plan since Kunstler Homes augered in after the 2008 crash and left us all short two weeks’ pay.

  Now I’m a project architect again. It’s amazing how fast my brain snaps back into that mindset, and how good it feels. I’ve been making it up as I go along since that day I was left standing in a dirt parking lot at a dead jobsite on the edges of Santa Clarita. For once I know what I’m doing, even if it’s all a fraud.