The Second Goodbye

by Patricia Smiley

  “How long were you on the phone with Gerda before you heard the gunshot?”

  He blew on the coffee and slurped up a mouthful. “Five minutes. Maybe less.”

  A bell above the shop door jingled the arrival of a young female with a backpack. Davie lowered her voice before continuing. “Just so I understand the timeline. Ms. Montaine came into the store to look at guns. The phone rang. You left the keys in the case lock and went into the back room. You spoke to Gerda Pittman for five minutes. During that time your theory is that Montaine opened the case, loaded your gun with her rounds, and shot herself, correct?

  “Yeah … sounds about right.”

  “I couldn’t find any record that Sara Montaine ever owned a gun. Five minutes isn’t much time to do all that, especially for a novice.”

  “So what? She certainly knew what she wanted: a Smith & Wesson .38 snubnose. That’s what I showed her.”

  Davie tilted her head and frowned. “The crime report identified the gun as a Colt .38 Special.”

  Blasdel began nervously tapping his foot. “Right. It was a Colt. It’s been a while. Guess I forgot.”

  “Were you still on the phone with Gerda when you heard the shot?”

  His tone sounded cagey. “I don’t know. Maybe. What did Gerda say?”

  Davie leaned into his personal space without touching the table. “Where exactly were you when you heard the gunshot?”

  He stared into his coffee, looking for an answer, she guessed. “I’m not sure, maybe in the back room. Gerda was screaming at me. I shouted back. Things got heavy, so I stepped outside into the alley—no, wait—it was the bathroom. I remember because I closed the door for privacy.”

  Davie raised her voice over the sound of milk steaming. “What happened when you heard the shot?”

  Blasdel wiped sweat from his brow and brushed it on his pant leg. “I ran to the front and found the chick dead on the floor. Then I called 911.”

  “You just said you were on the phone with Ms. Pittman. Did you end the call when you heard the shot or did you talk a while before hanging up?”

  He ran his hand through his greasy hair. “I don’t remember. I probably hung up. Yeah, I think I told her I’d call back later. All I know is I saw that woman on the floor and called the police.”

  Davie nodded and watched him squirm. “Your neighbor Mr. Nazarian said it took first responders twenty minutes to arrive after he heard the gunshot. You say you called right away, but maybe you didn’t. What were you doing all that time? Talking on the phone with Gerda or with someone else? I can get a search warrant for your phone records if it helps jog your memory.”

  Blasdel clutched the coffee mug with both hands. “I could have called somebody else but I can’t imagine who.”

  Davie fired off another question to keep him off balance. “You closed the store shortly after Sara Montaine died. Why is that?”

  “It was a crime scene. I couldn’t even go inside the place for days. I had to pay somebody to clean up the blood—Hazmat suits, the whole ball of wax. Cost me a fortune. After that, nobody came to buy guns. A few looky-loos stopped by, searching for blood in the grout. The place was cursed. I cut my losses and closed the doors.”

  The woman with the backpack sat at the table next to them with her muffin and cappuccino. Except for the three of them, the place was empty. Davie wondered why people did that. It was as incomprehensible as parking next to the only car in an otherwise empty lot.

  “Who cleaned the place?” Davie asked.

  He looked at the ceiling, maybe hoping the answer was written there. “I don’t remember.”

  Blasdel had a bad case of CRS—can’t remember shit. Who had paid to clean the store was an odd thing to lie about, but somebody was lying: either Blasdel or Nazarian. Her bet was on Blasdel.

  “Your neighbor told me you abandoned the store after Ms. Montaine’s death. He said he hired a service to clean up the mess and negotiated to lease your space.”

  Blasdel thrust his index finger toward her face. “Don’t trust anything that assclown says. He’s nothing but trouble.”

  “What did you do with your inventory?”

  He leaned over the cup and slurped more coffee. “I broke the lease when I moved out early. The mall owner came after his money, so I gave him a few guns and some ammunition and we called it even.”

  The young woman finished her muffin and pulled a laptop from her backpack. Davie regretted not moving to another table.

  “What did you do with the rest of the weapons?”

  “Kept a few. Sold the rest to another store.”

  “You told Detective Sarlos that Montaine must have brought the ammunition into the store with her. What gave you that idea?”

  “I’d heard stories about people who can’t afford a gun, but can buy a box of shells. So, they bring in their own ammo and load it into a gun from the store. They either rob the place or pop a cap in their temple.”

  “Had you ever seen Ms. Montaine before?”

  Blasdel glanced at the exit and then cleared his throat. “She looked familiar but only because she was a type—just not the type who shopped at my store. She came in wearing pearls and smelling good, like she’d just stepped out of some rich woman’s fashion magazine. All I know is she couldn’t have gotten the ammo from me. I told the cops. I kept everything locked up and I had the only key.”

  “You left your key in the gun case. Maybe you forgot and laid the ammo key on the counter.”

  Blasdel’s shoulders slumped. “I got distracted, but I know the key to the ammo case was in my pocket. I found it there when the cops asked to see it.”

  “Was there anybody else in the store when Ms. Montaine came in?”

  He looked at the barista, avoiding her stare. “People were standing on the sidewalk but none of them came into the store.”

  “Can you describe any of them?”

  His voice rose in frustration. “I can’t remember that. Who could? Once you walk out of here, I probably won’t be able to describe you, either, except for your hair. I’ve never liked redheads. They remind me of fire. I hate fire.”

  “Save the phobias for your shrink.”

  “See? Exactly the kind of shit a redhead would say.”

  Davie leaned back in the chair, her tone casual. “When did Gerda Pittman call to tell you we’d spoken?”

  She was only guessing, but people like her didn’t show up at a place of business to collect past-due alimony payments. Blasdel had run when he heard her name, which suggested to Davie that somebody tipped him off that a homicide detective was asking questions about an old suicide case.

  A slight hand tremor rocked the cup. “Gerda? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen Gerda in a while. How’s she doing, by the way?”

  Verbal diarrhea. He was nervous, probably lying.

  “You know,” she said, “I can just call her to find out.”

  “Okay, whatever,” he said, bouncing his knee. “We stay in touch sometimes. What’s the big deal?”

  Everybody lies, she thought.

  “Did either you or Gerda tell anybody else I was looking into Sara Montaine’s death?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Answer my question.”

  His eyes kept darting back and forth, searching for another lie. “No.”

  “What’s your cell number in case I need to reach you?”

  He stalled for a moment before rattling off a number. The young woman at the next table watched Davie jot it into her notebook.

  “Give me a call if you remember anything else,” she said, handing him a business card.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he mumbled.

  Davie walked toward the door, punching in a number on her cell. A moment later, Blasdel’s cell rang.

  He put the phon
e to his ear. “Yo.”

  “Just checking,” she said.

  Blasdel’s lips pressed into a hard line. “Effing redheads.”

  21

  On the way back to the car, Davie wondered why Blasdel couldn’t explain the delay between the gunshot and the time the police arrived. Twenty minutes was a long time. She suspected he was covering up the real reason—that he hadn’t called 911 right away as he claimed. She wondered if a judge would sign a search warrant for Blasdel’s phone records so she could see for herself how long his call with Pittman had lasted and if he’d spoken to anyone else. Getting a warrant was a long shot. This was still a closed case. She would have to establish probable cause that Blasdel had committed a felony. Otherwise, her request would be considered a fishing expedition.

  Davie hoped the peace in the division held so she could continue looking deeper into the Montaine case, but she worried every time her cell rang, fearing she’d be called out to a fresh homicide.

  Every victim was important to her. She reminded herself that Javi Hernandez’s family was also waiting for their measure of justice. She hadn’t forgotten about him, but the mystery surrounding Sara Montaine’s life and death intrigued her. Montaine’s stepson hated her. The neighbors gossiped behind her back. There was nothing Davie had discovered so far to explain why she deserved the animosity heaped on her. The woman seemed isolated, lonely, and, toward the end of her life, afraid.

  Robert Montaine’s storage unit was on the way back to the station, so she would stop by and search through Sara’s personal property in hopes of finding a new lead. As she approached the overpass near the entrance of the 405 South she could see that traffic heading toward Los Angeles was bumper to bumper. There was no alert on the radio about an accident ahead, but she did learn that the wildfire in the hills above Malibu had grown.

  The normal May winds were predominantly from the west, but for the last several days they’d been abnormally high at 15 to 20 miles per hour. It was possible the fast-moving blaze might be forcing drivers on the 101 to take alternate routes. She opted for Sepulveda Boulevard instead, a twisty two-lane road that connected L.A. and the San Fernando Valley. Once she left the residential area and drove into the hills, she could smell the odor of burning wood combined with sage baking in the afternoon sun.

  The storage rental where Robert Montaine kept his stepmother’s remaining possessions was a sprawling two-story building on Olympic Boulevard about three miles inland from the border of Santa Monica. It consumed a chunk of pricy Westside real estate on a lot where one of Davie’s favorite Italian restaurants used to be, a family-owned place that had served the best cannolis this side of Sicily. The Bellini family held on to the place for years, but as high-rise office buildings and big box stores rose from the ground on all sides, it had been only a matter of time before they sold the land to developers.

  At the self-storage entrance, Davie pressed Robert Montaine’s key card to the sensor and the gate rumbled open. The lot was empty except for her car and one other that she assumed belonged to the manager. The same card opened the door to the building, where she found him in his office.

  His manner was brusque. “Mr. Montaine asked me to let you into his unit, but I may have to leave early. Please lock the door when you’re finished.”

  He led her into a freight elevator and pushed the up button. The car creaked and jerked, stopping with a jolt on the second floor. The dim hallway lights paved the way to a metal roll-up door painted orange. The manager aimed the beam of his flashlight at the numbers on the combination lock, rotating the dials until it opened. The door clanked as it rolled onto its spool. He laid the lock just inside the unit and reminded Davie to secure the door when she left. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous building as he strolled toward the elevator.

  Davie stepped into Montaine’s unit, inhaling a mix of smells—plywood and something flowery. Before beginning her search, she slipped on a pair of powderless latex gloves from her pocket. A string hung from a light fixture on the ceiling. She pulled it, illuminating an aisle carved in the middle of stacks of boxes and items covered by tarps. She lifted one tarp and found an exercise bicycle and a gym bag.

  Montaine said he’d dropped the coroner’s box just inside the door, but it wasn’t there, so she continued searching. Since Sara Montaine’s death was officially listed as “undetermined,” Davie doubted the coroner would release anything of evidentiary value. The clothes she had worn the day she died would have been stained with blood in any event. Those items would be wrapped in paper, tied with string, labeled with her name and the case number, and stored in the coroner’s evidence room. Davie wondered about the pearls Montaine had on that day. She assumed her stepson had taken those, too, since there was nothing in the reports to indicate they were missing. Still, they must have been contaminated with blood.

  Davie swept the flashlight beam along the floor where she found a box, but it wasn’t an official coroner’s evidence box. The contents appeared to be a few nonessential items they’d returned to Montaine as a courtesy. Davie picked it up and moved it under the light. Montaine’s wallet was inside but contained only discount cards for a car wash, a grocery store, and a stationary shop. There was also a business card for Four Paws and a receipt from the post office for a hundred first-class stamps she’d purchased the day before she died. If Montaine planned to kill herself the next day, it was curious that she’d bought a hundred stamps she would never use. Davie slipped the receipt in an evidence envelope, just in case it was important.

  She sorted through a garbage bag full of clothes until she found a cream-colored silk blouse infused with a light, flowery fragrance. The blouse wasn’t Davie’s style, but its soft femininity seemed fitting for the Sara Montaine she had come to know. In the bottom of the sack was a bottle of Chanel Bois Des Iles perfume.

  This was the moment in the movie where a grieving family member smothered his face in the dead woman’s blouse to conjure her essence one last time. Davie’s limbs felt heavy as she realized only June Nakamura and a handful of people at Four Paws had ever grieved for Sara Montaine. She sat quietly for a moment before spritzing perfume on her wrists. It was a small gesture to let the universe know that Davie also cared about Montaine and would search until the person responsible for her death was brought to justice, however long it took.

  Inside a box marked books, she found several photographs, a snapshot of what appeared to be the rescued kittens placed with Four Paws, and a close-up photo of three men standing on a street corner. One wore a Hawaiian shirt, the other a business suit. The third man was in profile but Davie noted his appearance: military-style haircut, a black leather jacket stretched across his broad back, well-defined jaw, medium complexion, and a dark spot on his upper lip, which could have been a mole. His ears looked unusually small. They reminded her of a sliced mushroom glued to the side of his head. It looked like he had a hoop earring in his right earlobe.

  Davie set the photographs aside and kept searching. Deep inside the box she found a coffee mug that read Seaglass Cafe and a day planner stuffed with old bills and a deposit slip, the generic kind a bank gives you when you open a new account. A list of grocery items had been scrawled across the paper. She thumbed through the pages of the notebook and found a section of lined paper filled with doodles that reminded her of Greek or Arabic handwriting.

  Davie had lost track of how long she’d been in the storage unit. She wanted to take the photos and the planner back to the station for a closer look. Robert Montaine had signed a consent form giving her permission, so she tucked the planner and photos under her belt at the small of her back and retrieved the lock from the floor by the metal door. She glanced at the numbers. The manager hadn’t reshuffled them after he’d lined up the digits, which meant the sequence on the dial was the code he’d used to open the lock. She jotted the numbers in her notebook. With the gate keycard and now the lock combination, Davie could come bac
k for another look even if the manager wasn’t on the premises.

  She was about to leave when she heard footsteps in the hallway. It was public storage, so it could be another customer or maybe it was the manager checking to make sure she’d secured the unit.

  “Who’s there?” she shouted.

  The footsteps immediately halted. There was no response.

  She drew her weapon and listened. Fear prickled her jawline. She was alone in a small room in a cavernous building and still spooked by the assault at Mar Vista Gardens. She quietly inched toward the unit’s roll-up door. With her back to the wall, she peeked around the corner. In the dim light she saw a shadow. Somebody was standing out of sight where the hallway made a turn. Whoever it was must have heard her call out.

  Her muscles felt hard as granite. Her pulse raced as she called out again, louder this time, “Who’s there?”

  In the distance, she heard the sound of a door creak and footsteps clanking down a metal stairway. Davie inched down the hallway with her gun drawn until she reached the place where she’d seen the shadow. She craned her head to look around the corner. The hallway was empty. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she sprinted down the stairs, exiting the building in time to see a white van race out of the gate and barrel into traffic on Olympic Boulevard.

  22

  Davie ran toward the van to jot down the license plate number, but by the time she got to the street, the vehicle had disappeared into the scrum of L.A. traffic. She considered the possibility she was overreacting, but her life had been threatened enough times in her career to embrace paranoia.

  She glanced around the parking lot and noticed hers was the only car remaining. The manager was gone. She returned to Montaine’s storage unit, locked it, and headed for the station. On the way, her cell phone rang. Still feeling unnerved, she flinched. She steered to the side of the street to answer the call, checking the time on the display. It read 3:30 p.m.