Milkshakes and Murder

by Christy Murphy

  I opened the door to my bedroom, fired up my computer, and set out to find an address for Howard of Howard’s Housewares in San Fernando. I needed the distraction from the disaster of a marriage, and frankly, I needed to do something right.

  Mining and Motives

  I typed my credit card information into the website hoping that I wouldn't be a victim of identity theft. This Visa was my only working credit card. Robert had destroyed most of our credit, and I'd gotten this secured credit card after he'd left me.

  For a mere eight dollars, this website promised to give me detailed information about Howard Lederer, manager and half partner in Howard’s Housewares. I held my breath as the little icons spun. Payment accepted. Woot! I clicked to the next screen, and it provided me with an address: 1771 N. Polk Street in Sylmar. There were even two phone numbers and a notation that Howard had owned his home for 5+ years.

  "Mom!" I called out as I rushed into the living room.

  Jennifer had already come by after a day at Disneyland to pick up Wenling. Mom looked up at me from the couch.

  "I think he lives in Sylmar. I got his address online," I said.

  "You’re right, we should have gone online sooner," Mom said, turning off the television.

  "But then we wouldn’t have been able to get all the rumors about the food poisoning under control." I’d realized that very important point in my room. That was my entire reason for convincing Mom to set her sights on solving this case. Why did I care if we found out who killed Brent now? The police would figure it out.

  Mom got up from the couch and headed to the hallway.

  "Where you going?" I asked Mom.

  "I’m going to brush my hair and put on my shoes so we can talk to Howard," she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  "Don’t you think it’s too late?" I asked, following Mom into her bedroom.

  "What time is it?" she asked.

  "It’s half past eight," I answered.

  Mom shook her head and opened the door to her closet. "Mom, he doesn’t even know us, and we’re going to show up on his doorstep after dark. It could be dangerous. What if he’s the killer?"

  "He’s not the killer," Mom said.

  "Mom, you don’t think he could be the killer at all?" I asked knowing she was fibbing. Mom looked down at the ground and stopped getting her shoes, her resolve wavering. I needed to convince her this was a bad idea.

  "It’s not like the other cases, Mom. We don’t know this guy, and we’re not in our neighborhood. Sylmar isn’t far, but it’s not Fletcher Canyon. It isn’t filled with people we know. It’s more dangerous. We have no idea what Howard is like, and if he’s a killer who knows what he’ll do to us."

  "What do you think we should do?" Mom asked.

  I stopped to think. "Maybe we can just call him."

  Mom brightened. "Good idea, kid. He can’t kill us over the phone."

  Mom put her slippers back on, grabbed paper and pen from the nightstand, and dragged the telephone phone from its normal resting place into the dining room. I went to my room, printed the information from the website, and brought it to her. "You can pick up the other extension in the kitchen to listen in on us," Mom suggested.

  I was torn. I wanted to listen in on the call, but I wanted to stay next to Mom so I could coach her on what to ask. But then I remembered that Mom always knew what to ask, but she didn’t always give me the full story, and I headed for the kitchen.

  "It’s ringing!" Mom called out from the dining room. I picked up the receiver next to the refrigerator. I’d spent hours as a kid talking on this same phone to my friends and snacking until Mom and Dad came home from work. My big sister used to babysit us. Back then kids could be home alone.

  I poked my head into the refrigerator and grabbed a diet soda while we waited for someone to pick up on the other end of the line. This was exciting.

  The call went to a machine for Howard’s Housewares. Mom hung up and yelled, "I’m going to try the second number," but I listened to the recording. It was a standard recording that gave the address and directions to the store, along with the hours. They were supposed to be open till nine tonight, which meant that Howard hadn’t shown up for work again. Mom picked up the line and dialed while I was still listening to the recording.

  After a bit of confusion and shouting back and forth, Mom dialed the second number. I picked up the extension. I figured the odds were slim that Howard would actually pick up the phone, but three rings later a man answered.

  "Hi, Howard," Mom said.

  "Hello," the man replied. Maybe he was Howard.

  "This is Jo," Mom said, as if they knew each other.

  "I'm sorry, I can't place you," he said. His voice was polite but confused. I could tell Mom's Filipino accent threw him.

  "Your business partner—"

  "Former partner," Howard corrected. "And our store is closed, and we'll be filing for bankruptcy. So if you’re calling for collection on a bill--" I could tell the man was going to hang up on us.

  "I saw him die," Mom interrupted.

  The line went silent, but Mom had stunned Howard enough to keep him from hanging up on us. The awkward tension made my gut churn. I was tempted to hang up myself even though I wasn't even part of the conversation.

  Howard broke the silence. "I’m sorry you had to witness that." I'd read in a book when I was a kid that in a negotiation, the first person who talks loses. Yes, I was a weird kid, but I wondered if that was Mom's tactic here.

  "It looked like he just fell at first, and then he died later. So it wasn't as sad," Mom said.

  "Oh," Howard replied.

  I could tell he wondered what Mom wanted, but I had to admire Mom’s ability to keep the man on the telephone.

  "Listen, his wife Nancy, they weren’t getting along, but—"

  "He wasn’t an easy man to get along with," Howard interrupted.

  "I didn’t like him, and I barely knew him," Mom said, striking a conspiratorial tone.

  Howard laughed, and the conversation flowed from there. I eavesdropped, careful to take quiet sips from my soda, and admired Mom’s ease in talking to strangers. If it had been me, I would have folded the moment Howard struck a stern tone at the prospect of us being bill collectors. It struck me again how much my inability to tolerate even the smallest bit of conflict had caused me to miss out on all kinds of things.

  "It's a shame I won't be able to shop in your store," Mom said. "I'm in the catering business, and I love housewares stores."

  "I was in the catering business for years and then I got a job working as a salesman for Winstead."

  "They make great commercial ovens. I bought one for the commercial kitchen I use!"

  "I wish I'd stayed working for them, but that's where I met Brent."

  "Did he own a restaurant or something?" Mom asked.

  Howard told the story of how Brent had invested in four different restaurants and had been a big customer. Brent convinced Howard to open the store with him. What Howard didn't realize was that Brent wasn't spending any of his own money. He was spending the money of his partners, and he was out of control.

  Brent and Howard had a 50/50 partnership, and it started off well enough, but in the last few years Brent had been spending more and more money out of the business account. Howard had even switched banks for their expenses, only to find that Brent had racked up bills all over town for the craziest things.

  "Shovels, pick axes, and all kinds of machines that I don't even know what they'd do. Stuff that didn't even have anything to do with our business. It was like the man was addicted to failing businesses, and once he found one that worked, he was determined to milk it dry.

  "And then I found out he'd opened a ton of credit cards in the name of the store. It was almost $200,000 worth of debt.

  "I wanted to bankrupt the company, but he refused to sign the papers. I offered to just give him my half of the business hundreds of times, but he didn't want to be on the hook fo
r the half million of debt all alone."

  "So now that he's dead you're in the clear," Mom said.

  "Even better than that. I had an insurance policy on him for $1 million. Now, I can pay off all our debt and sell the store. It's like a miracle. But here's the craziest part. Guess what he was bankrupting our business for?"

  "What?" Mom asked.

  "A freaking goldmine! Can you believe it? In this day and age. The gold rush ended in 1855."

  Mom and Howard made jokes about investing in the telegraph and fire. It was a pretty funny conversation, and Howard seemed like a nice guy. But I couldn't help but think his "miracle" was also a motive for murder.

  Mom talked to Howard Lederer for over an hour. I got the sense that the man was lonely and by the end of the call Mom had told him to stop by the Lucky Dragon and say hello.

  A part of me thought Howard, who'd slipped in his age, and that he was single, into the conversation, had developed a crush on Mom. That part of the conversation either went over Mom's head, or she ignored it. I never could tell which.

  Mom ended the call, and I went out to the dining room to talk to her about it.

  "So what do you think?" I asked.

  "He's not the killer."

  "But he has a great motive."

  "You don't think he is the killer either," Mom said.

  She was right. But before I could ask how she knew, Mom switched the conversation to something more important, food. I hadn't eaten since lunch. I’d been too afraid to make noise while eavesdropping to make myself something during the call.

  "Let's have leftovers and watch television," Mom said as she headed to the kitchen.

  We fixed ourselves some plates and plunked down in front of the television set. As soon as Mom finished eating, Moriarty hopped onto Mom's lap. An old Cary Grant movie was on cable. It was one of my favorites, Holiday with Katherine Hepburn.

  "So corny," Mom said as Katherine Hepburn's character made her climactic speech just before rushing off to catch Cary Grant before his boat set sail. Mom liked to make fun of the old movies, but I knew deep down she liked them, too.

  When I'd first seen it in my early twenties, I’d just dropped out of college to help Robert follow his music dream. I thought I was Katherine Hepburn taking a chance on Cary Grant.

  But Robert was no Cary Grant.

  Cary Grant's character had worked hard to put himself through school and save up enough money, so he could take a "holiday" and figure out what life is all about. I hadn't seen that Robert had always lived his life by sponging off of other people’s hard work. My thoughts flashed back to all of the phone calls, mailed press kits, website building, and cruddy jobs I’d worked to save for demos and new gear. He’d let me do all the hard work, and somehow convinced me it wasn't worth anything. And for a long time, I believed him.

  "Why so quiet, kid?" Mom asked.

  "I'm just thinking of some changes I need to make," I said to Mom.

  Mom smiled. "Change is good," she said, scooping Moriarty out of her lap and putting him on the floor. "I don't have any auditions tomorrow, and we can't go to The Lucky Dragon, so you can sleep in tomorrow."

  I’ve always been a night owl, but my sleep schedule had shifted to waking a few hours earlier so I could hang out at the restaurant or drive mom to an appointment. Mom handed me the remote, said good night, and went to bed. Moriarty followed her.

  The host announced another Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn movie, The Philadelphia Story. I took that as a sign I was meant to binge on old movies and forget about my divorce, money problems, and murder for a few hours.

  Coffee and Confrontation

  My eyes popped open at the sound of our doorbell. I groped around the nightstand for my glasses. My black frames blended with the dark wood. My hands stumbled across them, and I slipped my glasses on to check the time on my parents' old alarm clock radio that rested on the nightstand. It was 7:30 in the morning–way too early for a delivery.

  I heard Mom answer the door followed by familiar voices. It took a moment, but my morning brain made out pieces of the conversation between Mom, Jennifer, and Wenling. Jennifer and the rest of the family were going to the California Adventure theme park, and Wenling decided that she would rather come over and spend the day with Mom watching cable television.

  "Why don't you have cable at your house?" Mom asked her best friend.

  "We have it at the restaurant. Why pay twice?"

  "We'll we have to be quiet," Mom said, her whisper voice still audible. "Christy's still sleeping."

  I couldn't help but laugh to myself as I took off my glasses and settled back into bed for a few more winks.

  An hour and a half later, I woke up to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. Since we had company, I took a few moments to get dressed, brush my hair, and slip into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  I entered the living room en route to the coffee. Mom and Wenling had the television on low and were talking. "Good morning."

  "Morning," Wenling said. "I hope I didn't wake you."

  "Not at all," I lied.

  "I made your half caff, kid," Mom said.

  I smiled and went to the kitchen to kick-start my brain. After a few sips, I brought my coffee into the living room to see what was going on. Mom and Wenling were discussing the case.

  "Most of the mountains here are part of the national forest. You can't prospect on them," Wenling said.

  "But there is that one patch of the little mountains that's part of Fletcher Canyon," Mom said.

  Fletcher Canyon resides at the foot of the Los Angeles National Forest, but there's a smaller group of mountains, more hills really, that start at the end of Main Street near the diner. On the map I think it's referred to as the Los Angeles Crest Mountains, but the locals call it "the little mountains" or "the park." There's a trail and a place to picnic from what I understand. I'm not the hiking type.

  "But you can't mine there. It's our park." Wenling said.

  "If you're honest you can't," Mom said.

  "But he might not be so honest," Wenling said, adding, "And there's a brook, too."

  "I didn't even think of that, because it's practically dried up," Mom said.

  "Do you think that's why he moved here?" Wenling asked.

  "Wait, what is why he moved here?" I asked, hoping they could make sense of my jumbled question. My brain hadn’t had its prerequisite amount of caffeine for sensical speech.

  "The gold at the park," Wenling explained.

  "What does a dried up brook have to do with gold?" I asked.

  Wenling motioned with her hands to demonstrate her point. "Gold is," she paused. "What-you-call-it?"

  "Mineral," Mom said.

  "Right, mineral. It’s in the rock. The water flows over the rock, wears the rock down, and carries the gold and other little rock pieces down the mountain. If the water is fast, you find more gold downstream, if it’s slow, more upstream. That’s why you always see the men in the movies with the pan in the river. You know the pan? Nature carries gold with the water and sometimes it sticks in the river bed." Wenling said, putting her arms down.

  Mom nodded in agreement.

  "How do you guys know so much about panning for gold?" I asked.

  "I panned for gold when I was a kid in the Philippines," Mom said.

  "San Francisco relatives on my father's side," Wenling said. "Big gold rush there in the 1850s. But then," Wenling stopped. She did the same thing Mom did when she got to unpleasant bits of stories, she stopped herself from talking or thinking about it and moved on. "They went into the laundry business. The mining business is dangerous. Laundry is much safer."

  We sipped our coffee and pondered the case. Or rather, Wenling and Mom pondered the case. I thought about how easy my life was at the moment. It’s not that I thought of divorce as minor, but it didn't seem as hard as working in a mine.

  "He must've found out after he moved here," Mom said. Wenling and I both shot Mom a questioning look. "He would ha
ve stopped by the cafe or at least the hardware store at some point, and nobody recognized him visiting the park. We only noticed when he came to shop for a house."

  "That make sense," Wenling said.

  "I wonder if all this gold stuff is why he wanted to be on the City Council so bad," I heard myself say.

  Mom smiled. "You do have to be a council person before you can be mayor."

  "Do you think he was going to try to close the park so he could steal the gold?" Wenling said. "He'd never get away with that."

  Wenling was right. The entire town would be up in arms over that. Mom nodded, and we all sat in silence thinking.

  Well, I didn't think so much as I drank my coffee, but that was my first step towards getting ready to think.

  Mom interrupted the quiet. "Maybe if part of Main Street were closed for construction or something, no one would notice that he was illegally mining for gold."

  "That's true," Wenling said, excited about the idea.

  "But how does all of this relate to his murder?" I asked Mom.

  "You love old movies. What happens when people go in on a goldmine?" Mom asked.

  "I don't watch Westerns," I said.

  "They try to sleep with 'one eye open'," Wenling said with a smile. "because one partner always kills the other."

  "But who was his partner?" I asked.

  Mom got up to refill her coffee. "I think we should all go out to lunch," she said.

  "Where?"

  "The Fletcher Diner," Mom said.

  "That will be interesting," Wenling said to me, her voice low.

  Remembering how Al told us never to be back, my brain thought it would be way more than interesting. "Maybe we should eat first," I whispered to Wenling.

  My stomach gurgled as I swallowed my coffee. I'd resolved that I needed to work on handling stressful confrontation. How handy the universe would provide an opportunity so quickly! If I'd known Fate would be so accommodating, I would have decided I needed to learn how to deal with winning the lottery instead.

  The three of us entered the Fletcher Diner. Mom and Wenling went first, and I trailed behind them.