Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  “So you’re looking to move?”

  “Not actively, but I always have feelers out. What I’m doing now puts my name out in the regional and national arenas. Being known is a step.”

  “Museum director? You’re practically doing it now, if I’m reading the museum’s YouTube channel right.”

  He nods. “I’d certainly find that interesting, yes.”

  How looped would Bandineau have to be to stop talking like he’s being interviewed? “Are there museum groupies?”

  That jolts a smile out of him. “There… are. They tend to have interesting eyewear and sensible shoes.”

  I’ve seen them. “We need to get you to branch out, then.” I stand and hold out my hand. “Jim, I have to get to work. Thanks for coming by. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

  As he drives away, I wonder if anything I said got to him. I have to remind myself that this is just the first shot. I’ll have more opportunities to set myself up as a life coach or mentor or whatever so we can bond. There won’t be too many, though; the clock’s still ticking.

  But there’s progress. Step two’s only five days away.

  Chapter 24

  Savannah kisses me goodbye at 9:45 on her way to the day’s first gallery appointment. She says, “Miss me terribly.” She wears the Escada from the first time I saw her, white pumps, subdued makeup, and an asymmetrical French twist. Except for color choices, her style sense is remarkably similar to Allyson’s. She roars off in the azure BMW Z4 convertible I rented for her yesterday afternoon.

  I boot my computer and bring up the program that lets me look at the security camera feeds. The cameras are wireless, upload through wifi to the cloud, and shift automatically to night vision when it gets dark enough. They’re also so small that if you don’t look for them, you won’t see them.

  I rewind to around 12:30, when Savannah finally let me fall asleep, and start the camera playback in slow fast-forward.

  At 1:42 a.m., the camera in the bedroom wing’s hall shows the master suite’s door creep open. Savannah slips out. The night-vision picture is green, grainy, and low-contrast, but she’s clearly naked and her hair’s a sexy jumble.

  I watch her on one feed or another as she spends the next twenty minutes going through every scrap of storage in the house. Sometimes she’ll pull out something, light it up with her phone, then put it back. What’s she looking for?

  Maybe she’s not all about being a rich man’s girlfriend. My good mood runs down the drain. Being taken advantage of isn’t fun. Then again, that’s what I’ve been trying to do to her. Maybe she saw the lie behind Hoskins. Maybe she’s looking for the truth.

  She ends up at the office door. A sudden flash of panic: did I remember to lock it? Apparently I did; she tries to open it, can’t, then stands there with her fists on her hips. She finally returns to the kitchen, pours a glass of water from the spigot in the fridge door, then drinks while she looks out the back windows. The droop in her shoulders tells me she’s not satisfied with whatever she found.

  Is that good or bad?

  I spend the rest of the day studying in the office.

  For $25, I buy from ScienceDirect the article that described Nam Ton for the first time. “Ceramics from the Nam Ton Culture: A Preliminary Investigation,” by Dr. Pensri Udomprecha of Silpakorn University, appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of the Journal of Asia-Pacific Archaeological Research.

  Yeah. It’s as exciting as the title. I have to look up every fifth word.

  The short version: in 2008, Dr. Udomprecha dug up what was left of a settlement dating from the late thirteenth century that doesn’t seem to be linked to any other cultures in the area. He found kiln sites and more than three hundred intact or reconstructible wares of a style nobody had seen before. The map in the paper shows a box drawn around northern Thailand and a chunk of Myanmar along the border. The name “Nam Ton” comes from the stream that runs by the site.

  Here’s where it gets messy. If you Google “Nam Ton,” you get 138,000 hits. This includes pages about the pottery as well as a singer, a doctor, and a news photographer. It’s also the Thai name for a type of unglazed ceramic bottle made in the sixteenth century. The hits attached to geography mostly point to (a) a river in Laos, or (b) a suburb of Chiang Mai in Thailand.

  It wouldn’t be any fun if it was easy. Right?

  When I can’t stand archaeology-speak anymore, I check in with Len, then look up Savannah’s parents. I haven’t had a chance to since our Tonga Room date. They both have Wikipedia pages.

  Joseph Kendicott inherited his dad’s small pipeline company in Oklahoma and West Texas. He turned it into a giant through the sheer force of asshattery. He sabotaged competing pipelines, sued competitors into the ground, broke two separate unions, and rammed new pipe through ecologically sensitive areas before anybody knew what was happening. In other words, he was the poster boy for twentieth-century American capitalism.

  Gloria Stark was an heiress with nothing to inherit; the Great Depression ruined her grandparents. She ran away to be a two-bit Hollywood actress in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. A 1973 head shot shows a more spectacular, more Nordic version of Savannah, a platinum blonde with high cheekbones and a swan neck. No wonder Joseph married her—he was a total troll, so she gave his future children a fighting chance of not looking like the Alien. She had two miscarriages before she “delivered a daughter, Savannah Abigail, in 1980.”

  Between Gloria’s beauty and talent as a hostess, and the trainloads of cash Joseph poured into the state and national election committees, Savannah’s folks had the ear of two generations of California Republican politicians. Now I understand what she meant when she mentioned her mom’s “political parties.”

  The fairy tale passed its sell-by date in the late 1980s and spiraled into pathos in the 2000s. Savannah’s childhood and young adulthood weren’t all sunshine and unicorns. Poor little rich girl, indeed.

  The weekend is two bookmatched, postcard-perfect Southern California days: clear, sunny, high seventies, an onshore breeze. The marine layer burns off by ten, just in time for me to wake Savannah (it’s an elaborate and lengthy procedure), for her to finish her morning swim workout, and for us to eat breakfast, share a shower, dress, and head off for the day’s adventures.

  Savannah was supposed to be on the jet Saturday morning, heading north with Bandineau. But Friday night after we got home from listening to soul and blues music at The Mint on Pico (her idea), she asked if she could stay the whole weekend. I said yes. We were in the middle of having sex on a patio lounge; I’d’ve said yes if she’d asked to roast and eat me.

  On Saturday, she asks to see what I consider to be “my L.A.” These days that’s pretty small: the pool house in Palms, the Starbucks in Santa Monica. I have to think back to before the 2008 crash, when I was still an architect with a steady paycheck and Janine hadn’t yet gone completely off the deep end.

  We go to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Park. She asks me a lot of good questions and seems to bond with the art glass and bas reliefs. Afterwards, lunch at the Farmer’s Market at Fairfax and Third. We’re eating at the counter of Loteria Grill (her choice) when I say, “I’ve got a question about Achara.”

  Savannah puts down her taco al pastor and shoots me a look. “Do we have to talk about work? This is our first weekend together. Can’t we just be us?”

  “Sorry. It’s been bugging me for a while.”

  Heavy sigh. “Okay. One.” She holds up an index finger. “I charge for the next one.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. The first time you took me to Achara, there wasn’t any Phimai ware there. But—”

  “There was, but it had a buff slip. You wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “Okay. No Phimai blackware. But after that lunch, there were three pieces. I never saw any Nam Ton there, but when I went to get the second pot, McCarran was getting a Nam Ton bowl. I haven’t seen any doors or a hall to get to a s
torage room. So where does Lorena keep her off-display stock?”

  She finishes her taco, wipes her hands, takes a mouthful from her Negro Modelo bottle. “She doesn’t have a storage room. Not like you mean—she’s got a little closet for boxes and paper and stuff. I’ve noticed the same thing, but I really don’t know where she keeps it. I ask, but all she does is this.” Savannah’s hand closes a zipper on her lips. “That’s it for work questions… unless you don’t want to play later.”

  I definitely want to play later. Her answer gives me an idea, though. When she goes off to powder her nose, I ask Olivia to put Bandineau and Lorena under 24/7 surveillance. I need to know if either of them goes somewhere that can plausibly be used for storage.

  After the La Brea Tar Pits, we twist up Laurel Canyon to Mulholland—the perfect road for the Alfa—then roar west along the crest to get home. We pass a movie shoot at the Narrows Overlook. It’s a very L.A. day.

  I ask her, “Have you thought about where you’d like to go for dinner?”

  Her mischievous smile comes out. “Take me someplace you liked to go when you were a kid.”

  Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler Texas Bar-B-Que is sandwiched between a liquor store and a barber shop on Sepulveda in Van Nuys. It’s not much bigger than two double-wides stuck together, but the ‘que is great. Savannah laughs and eats messy and licks sauce off her fingers. Seeing that becomes my new favorite memory of this place.

  I drive the Alfa back to the house through the warm night with the top down. Savannah’s hair streams out behind her in the wind. All that’s missing is stars; you just can’t see them here. Then the house, the pool, the bed.

  The security video.

  It’s like living an Eagles song.

  Chapter 25

  39 DAYS LEFT

  “Harmon?”

  I look up from the menu. “George?”

  He’s Asian, probably Chinese, short, built like a wrestler. A medium-blue tee with Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (the one with the pipe) on the front, black jeans, a shapeless gray windbreaker. You’d pass right by and never notice him. He slides into the banquette on the other side of the table. Jazz trumpet leaks out the earbud dangling from his neck. “Your number?”

  “One-Seven-Nine. Yours?”

  “Ninety-Nine.” Too bad he doesn’t look like Barbara Feldon. “Where are you staying?”

  “The Marriott on Second, until Tuesday night.”

  We’re in what looks like a diner: lots of Naugahide, Formica, and linoleum, with fluorescent lights blazing in the kitchen on the far side of the counter. If you look closer, you see the shallow barrel-vaulted ceiling, the bar with beer on draft, and flatscreens here and there showing ESPN or cable news. Oh, and Indian food on all the pictures. It’s called Chaat Corner.

  We don’t say anything until we order from the grumpy Indian woman who’s built like George. I pour some water from a fluted glass bottle and watch the going-home traffic pile up on Third Street. “Has anything interesting happened?”

  “Not a thing.” George pours and chugs some water. “He goes to work, goes to lunch, goes back to work, goes home. Boring, boring man. The only thing that changes is when he goes home. Same-same with Montford. She went grocery shopping last night. It was very exciting for that team.”

  We don’t have to worry about anybody overhearing us; the group of ten tech bros at the tables between us and the counter—most bearded, most wearing black tees with a company logo I don’t recognize, all various degrees of geek—make enough noise to cover a jet flyby.

  “Well, we keep watching until ten on Wednesday. If they don’t do something before then, it doesn’t matter.” I try to say this with all the confidence I can dig up, which isn’t much. It’s all a hunch. I feel bad for wasting the time of four associates on the most boring assignment ever based on what could be indigestion. “When’s your next shift?”

  “Eight.” He checks his watch. “You’re sitting in?” I nod. “Hope you like jazz.”

  Bandineau lives in a two-story, late-Victorian townhouse on 18th Street on the Mission District’s western fringe. It’s neatly kept, pear with cream and rust trim, bay windows stacked over the single flip-up garage door. George says Bandineau lives downstairs; there’s light behind the double-hung windows on the ground floor.

  George and I have been parked three doors down since we took over from the other watcher at eight. KCSM-FM plays jazz softly on the car radio. We were talked out in the first hour. That’s okay. There’s plenty going on in my head to keep me occupied.

  I’m still absorbing four days and nights with Savannah. When she hooked up with Hoskins, I expected her to want to go to $200-a-plate restaurants and $1000-a-booth clubs. To go shopping with his credit cards. To drop hints about wanting to keep the BMW. But she seems to be just as comfortable wrapped in a towel as she is wearing Escada. I never saw a bigger smile in Mélisse (a high-end French restaurant I ate in once on the gallery’s dime) than I did on Savannah’s face at Hogly Wogly’s. She could’ve asked Hoskins to spend a mortgage payment for tickets to see Beyoncé at the Rose Bowl, but she wanted to go to a semi-dive to hear blues instead. My kind of woman, even if she’s a blonde.

  Hoskins has to act like he’s into her, but it’s surprisingly easy to do that. I’m getting hooked on her smile. It’s been a long time since I had this much fun while spending so little money and seeing so much joy on a woman’s face. If she’s auditioning for Lead Mistress, she’s got the part. The little brain is very happy.

  The big brain remembers the security video and wonders when she’ll drop the Big Ask… and what it’ll be.

  Bandineau shuts off his lights at ten-thirty. George and I take turns napping. Our relief comes at two a.m.

  A wasted night.

  I’m on solo starting at eight a.m. Tuesday morning. At nine I follow Bandineau’s black Tesla in my silver Prius from his townhouse to the Norris Museum. There are so many Priuses on the street, mine’s essentially invisible. Now I’m half a block from the entrance to the Norris Museum’s underground parking garage, waiting for something to happen.

  Someone calls my work phone at around ten-thirty. It’s a 323 area code—West Los Angeles—but I don’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Harmon? It’s Beth Van Zorn. How are you this morning?”

  Beth the Lawyer. “Just fine. Did your clients make a decision?”

  The longer I’d stayed in the house, the more I thought tearing it down was a crime that needed preventing. So when I got back from dropping Savannah at the airport on Sunday morning, I called Beth and invited her over to look at the place.

  She was amazed. I led her around the house and grounds, showing her what we’d accomplished. She kept saying, “You did all this in seven days?”

  I got her to agree to postpone the demolition until her clients could see for themselves. They came Monday morning. They were maybe in their forties, white, glossy, looking like they stepped out of an ad in Forbes or Architectural Digest, with two junior high-age boys. They, too, were amazed. He goggled at the office; she loved the kitchen; the kids zeroed in on the pool. How cliché.

  When the tour was done, I gathered everybody in the living room, poured what was left in one of Hoskins’ wine bottles, and gave them the sales pitch of my life. A beautiful house, solidly built, (almost) everything working. You can move in tonight. Keep the house, you get twenty-five grand in top-end appliances and twenty-plus grand in new mechanicals for free. Whatever you build here, you’ll never be able to beat this view.

  I thought I had them. If I could’ve given them something to sign—if Beth hadn’t been there being a lawyer—I’d’ve hooked them. As it was, Beth thanked me for the offer and said she’d be in touch.

  And now she is.

  Beth says, “They’re astonished by the work you and your company did. They took into account your very generous offer.”

  “And…?”

  “And they acc
ept. They want to keep the house.”

  Yes! Yes! I saved that gorgeous house from being murdered. If I wasn’t in the car, I’d do a happy dance. Oh, to hell with it—I do a happy chair dance.

  Beth blah-blah-blahs about an inventory and transfer agreement and so on. But it’s all formalities. Some good came of all this.

  Wait, inventory? Good thing that the microwave behind the bar, the Miele coffee machine, the brand-new knife set, the food, and the new towels and bedlinens (all of which we had to buy) have already made it to my real home.

  George pulls in behind me at two p.m. in a white Ford Focus. There won’t be any high-speed chases in this operation. He asks, “Anything happen?”

  “Nothing. Either he ate in the museum café, or he went out the back door and walked to lunch.”

  “Very boring man. See you at eight.”

  I drop the Prius at the appointed place, take a nap to catch up on lost sleep from last night, eat an early dinner, then check into the St. Francis. If I wasn’t about to spend the night sitting outside Bandineau’s house, I’d call Savannah and ask her if she wants to come out to play. Duty first, damn it.

  George rolls down his window when I finally get to his spot down the street from Bandineau’s place at eight-ish. A jazz combo on the radio provides background music. “You’re late.”

  “Sorry. The one-way streets are killing me.”

  He waves me into the Focus’ passenger’s seat. “Mr. Boring isn’t so boring after all. He left the museum at five-forty and drove to Potrero Hill.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “South of here, between the Bayshore and the Embarcadero Freeway.”

  They name their freeways up here instead of using numbers like civilized people. “Doesn’t help. What’s there?”