Not a Girl Detective

by Susan Kandel

  Not for Nancy Drew. My lusty friend had no patience for professional virgins.

  Not for the sunshine. Lael was a Norwegian blonde who freckled like crazy.

  I think she wanted an adventure.

  Me, too.

  We should have remembered that when it rains, it pours.

  2

  I’m the sort of person who’s always looking for signs. And when you’re the sort of person who’s always looking for signs, you tend to find them. When I was a kid, for example, I had a knothole on the floor of my bedroom that looked exactly like Abraham Lincoln. I was sure this meant I was destined for greatness. Then, one day, my mother announced her intention of installing shag carpeting throughout the house. I begged her not to—or at least to spare this particular spot. I didn’t see why the carpet guys couldn’t cut a hole around our sixteenth president’s head. It was in the corner. Who would notice? After regaling my brothers with the tale, however, she went ahead with her plans for wall-to-wall respectability, thereby dooming me to an ordinary life. But that’s another story.

  This morning, I had a sign. Several, actually. The first materialized at Hollywood Toyota. A more unlikely spot you could hardly imagine. And things kept getting unlikelier by the minute.

  First of all there was the service manager’s demeanor, which went from aloof to abashed after one look under my hood. It seemed my crack mechanic had forgotten to put the oil cap back on when he’d serviced my car two weeks ago, which didn’t sound like such a big deal until Maynard explained the gravity of the error.

  Over the course of the subsequent fourteen days, nearly three quarts of motor oil had bubbled up, coating the outside instead of the inside of my engine and nearly locking up the pistons in the process. Maynard took my hand as he broke the news. My car had had a coronary. But there was no need to panic. He’d get his best guy to fix it up, wash it down, relube everything, and replace the cup holder and tape deck, too. And because this mess was their fault, he’d be providing me with a loaner, free of charge, one from his own collection—a real classic. Before I could say boo, he wheeled me around and pointed toward a baby-blue Cadillac.

  A convertible.

  My jaw dropped. He beamed. I went starry-eyed. He turned red. There was a dent on the passenger side, a missing rear taillight, and a vanity plate that read SMUTHE, but I’d still call that car one hell of a sign.

  “Maynard, are you sure?” This couldn’t be happening.

  “Ms. Caruso,” he said, “a pretty lady like you shouldn’t worry so much.”

  He was smuthe all right.

  “Here’s the long and short of it. I’m selling the car. A guy is coming down from Merced the first of next month. You know where Merced is, right?”

  “Right.” Wrong.

  “And, maybe you noticed, I don’t know, but there’s a little touch-up work I have to take care of. Nineteen sixty-nine wasn’t yesterday. But I got time, you’re a good customer, what the hey.” He ran his thick fingers over a nick on the hood. “That one I’m not touching,” he said. “It adds to the patina, right?”

  “Right.” Wrong.

  He tossed me the keys. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  I wouldn’t have loaned me the car, which I think gave me a lot of leeway.

  I had to show somebody. My daughter and son-in-law lived too far away. Lael was probably busy getting the kids’ things packed up for their vacations. Gambino was in Buffalo for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. That left Bridget. Her shop was sort of on my way home.

  I started up the engine and backed out of the driveway. Maynard gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I reciprocated and narrowly avoided plowing into a Chevy Nova parked at the curb. Good thing I had fast reflexes.

  After that, it was smooth sailing. I’d never been so far away from my front bumper. The world felt liquid. Captain Cece Caruso.

  New perspectives engender new insights. The farther west I ventured, for example, the thinner the pedestrians and the thicker the foliage. Had to be a money thing. Not that there were many pedestrians. Another money thing. Not that I’m getting into that. It’s just that I was heading to Bridget’s, where clothes are sold, and I’m addicted to clothes, which cost money, which is a sore spot for me. The money thing. But I’m not getting into that.

  Fifteen minutes later, I’d arrived at the brick building on Burton Way in Beverly Hills. There was a space in front, but the jacarandas were in bloom and I was wary of their blossoms. They might stain the tan upholstery. Worse yet, my zebra-striped wrap dress (Diane von Furstenberg, 1977). Also, there really wasn’t enough room. I docked by a hydrant. I’d only be a second.

  The bell on the celadon-and-gold door jingle-jangled. Bridget’s new intern jumped to his feet. He had been sitting on her Louis XIV desk. Even though it was a reproduction and he looked like a rock star, this did not bode well. He said the boss was in back, sorting through some clothes that had just arrived.

  Bridget’s dachshund, Helmut, led the way. The dog seemed upset.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” I asked, bending down to pat his head.

  “Hi, Cece!” Bridget’s Afro poked up out of a clingy mini-cocoon of hot-pink chiffon pleats.

  Helmut looked up at me beseechingly.

  “Isn’t this so Valley of the Dolls? I never thought a baby-doll halter dress would work on me. I need hot-pink tights to match and I’m set!”

  “For what?”

  “That’s not the point, as you very well know,” she scolded. “Helmut, stop that!” Helmut was trying to bite the wire used to crimp the lettuce-edge hem of the dress. “It’s by Travilla, the king of pleats!”

  “What does Helmut care?”

  “That dog knows more about vintage fashion than most of my clients.”

  “And he’s trying to tell you something.”

  “Oh, please. Travilla was brilliant. Do you know what he said? He said when he died he didn’t want to be cremated, he wanted to be pleated.”

  “Not to change the subject, but you’ve got to see the car we’re taking this weekend.”

  “What’s wrong with the Camry?”

  “It’s unwell.”

  She slipped into a pair of heels and scooped up Helmut, who started licking the ceramic brooch pinned to her dress’s peculiarly Elizabethan collar.

  “No, baby,” she said firmly. “We don’t want you to get lead poisoning.”

  “You look amazing,” the intern murmured as we swept by him on our way out.

  “Thank you,” Bridget said. Her tone was lofty, but she looked like the cat who’d eaten the canary.

  “Anything you need to tell me?” I asked once we were outside.

  She gave me a wicked grin, the whites of her eyes gleaming against her ebony skin. “Do you want details?”

  “You and the intern?”

  “His name is Andrew. And he’s the only straight man I’ve ever met who knows how to pronounce m-a-i-ll-o-t.”

  “My-oh.”

  “You’re a woman.”

  Bridget walked around the convertible slowly, studying every inch of it with a jaundiced eye. Then she paused significantly.

  “Does it have power windows?”

  “Why do I bother with you?” I said, climbing back in.

  “The same reason I bother with you,” she said. “True friends are hard to come by.”

  “You’d sell me out for a power window.”

  “Lighten up, honey. What time Friday?”

  “Bright and early,” I said, waving good-bye.

  “Is there enough room for all our clothes?” she shouted after me.

  “I am not renting a U-Haul!” Famous last words.

  It was a quarter past ten when I got home, home being a 1932 Spanish bungalow in West Hollywood I’d bought with the proceeds from my divorce settlement almost ten years ago. The house, and a Makita power drill. Also Mimi the cat, whom I’d envisioned as a sort of substitute father for my daughter. Mimi was still around. Likewise the dri
ll. The real surprise was that the house hadn’t fallen down.

  It was a wonderful house, don’t get me wrong, but it required near-constant maintenance. A fearless electrician. A plumber who didn’t consider emergency calls at three in the morning an imposition. Fungicide for the mushrooms that grew every once in a while out of the cracks in the vintage turquoise tile shower. But it was mine, all twenty-two hundred square feet of it—a good percentage of which were supposedly sinking into the foundation, but I didn’t trust that guy. I’d gotten his name from a flyer tucked under my welcome mat. Structural engineers should not have to advertise door-to-door.

  The mail had been delivered early. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Bills, bills, junk mail, and more bills. Despite my many communiqués, the electric company persisted in addressing me as “Fleece Caruso.” I plucked a thick manila envelope from the stack. At least my seeds had arrived. I spilled the brightly colored packages onto the table. This year I’d selected the giant edible sunflowers known as Sunzilla, Baby Ball Dutch beets, Chelsea Prize F-1 cucumbers, tricolor cherry tomatoes, a custom mixture of radishes in rainbow shades of red, white, purple, and pink, some haricots verts, and slow-bolt cilantro. I was cutting back after being overly ambitious last year. No eggplant.

  I let Mimi and my teacup poodle Buster play with the padded envelope while I opened a letter from Clarissa Olsen, the president of the Nancy Drew Society of Chums.

  Clarissa Olsen was a stalker. She’d found me after reading an announcement in Publishers Lunch about my upcoming book on Carolyn Keene. You could call her impassioned, I suppose. A fervent believer in the goddess that is Nancy Drew. Other things, too, like plain, old-fashioned correspondence. E-mail was crass and beneath her dignity, but postings on the Nancy Drew Society of Chums Listserv were acceptable. Phone calls were acceptable, too, but only if they dragged me away from All My Children. And it was always urgent.

  Initially I’d been put off by Clarissa’s ferocity. But after a while I’d actually taken a liking to her, despite her proud claim that her daughter had graduated from high school never having eaten a store-bought cookie. I’d had my daughter when I was barely out of high school myself, and had felt less impassioned than imprisoned, but that was all about my ex, not Annie, who’d always seemed perfectly happy with Chips Ahoy.

  Anyway, Clarissa wanted to remind me of two last-minute things.

  Number one, my speech should run forty-five minutes and not a millisecond longer because the scavenger hunt would follow immediately thereafter.

  I stopped right there. Number one alarmed me. It would seem I’d miscalculated. Again.

  For weeks I’d been logging onto the Chums’ Web site and clicking on the postage stamp–size dust jackets of the “Blue Nancys,” the original books published in the thirties. There, in my uninsulated garage office, by the virtual light of my computer screen, I’d ponder the details of Nancy’s face. Her bright eyes. Her pert nose. Her blond bob. I’ve been told I have nice eyes, but my nose is less pert than handsome, and my brown hair—well, on a good day it lacks discipline, and on a bad day it looks like Don King’s. Nancy Drew and me: no resemblance whatsoever. So why, then, every time I’d look at her, did I feel so unnerved, like when you catch sight of yourself unexpectedly in a mirror? How, I’d wonder, can she be me? I suppose a shrink would say I suffer from a pathological overidentification with my subject. It wouldn’t be the first time. It’s a biographer thing.

  To make a long story short, I’d dumped my assigned topic, “The Changing Demographics of River Heights,” and penned an elegy to Grace Horton, the otherwise unknown New York model who’d posed for those covers. I was captivated—not least with the irony of Grace Horton, a working girl, incarnating Nancy Drew, the privileged amateur. And they were going to hate it. Nobody who likes a scavenger hunt could possibly like a Marxist feminist critique.

  Well, I wasn’t there to wow them. I was there to make a contribution to human knowledge. And to the sleuth-themed gift exchange. That was reminder number two. Bring something simple and preferably homemade. Maybe I could crochet a magnifying glass.

  I stuck Clarissa’s letter inside a Lillian Vernon catalog and went into the living room. Mimi and Buster had strewn padded envelope stuffing all over the place. Now they were playing with the mohair sweater I’d left on the couch, the object of the game being to shed as many hairs as possible onto it. I pulled it out from under them, checked my watch, grabbed my purse, and headed out the door. What was I doing puttering around? I’d promised Edgar Edwards I’d deliver the Nancy Drew book to him before noon.

  I’d forgotten that Wednesday was street-cleaning day. There was a big fat ticket on the windshield of the Caddy.

  Speaking of signs, that wasn’t one.

  I pulled up to Edgar Edwards’s house at 1111 Carroll Avenue. It was 11:11 A.M.

  All the hallmarks of a sign, but no.

  I walked up the steps and reached into my purse for the book. Its brown paper wrapper was shredded to bits.

  Definitely a sign.

  And not what I’d call a good one.

  3

  Most people don’t find out about Carroll Avenue until they get lost on their way to Dodger Stadium, which means that if you’ve got a good sense of direction or you don’t like baseball, you’ve probably never heard of it.

  Carroll Avenue is the land time forgot. Urban renewal, too. Picture a secret enclave of restored Victorians, painted teal or lilac or midnight blue. Spindly verandas, open belvedere towers, and antique street-lights. Hitching posts at curbside—real ones, not replicas from the Restoration Hardware catalog. People actually navigated this city before they invented the car. By horse. It boggled the mind.

  Edgar Edwards lived in a rather grand-looking Queen Anne with a third-story porch and a wrought iron railing crowning the roof. I walked up the moss-covered steps. There were no moss-covered steps in L.A. It wasn’t humid enough. Those he’d definitely ordered from a catalog. I pushed the buzzer but didn’t hear anything, which was why I was somewhat unnerved when a very tall, very bald man opened the door.

  I stepped back as he stepped closer. His smile was unctuous, like an undertaker’s.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Cece Caruso. We spoke on the phone.”

  “We most certainly did not,” he said, still smiling.

  “Aren’t you Edgar Edwards?”

  “Do I look like Edgar Edwards?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Of course you don’t. Let me introduce myself.” He put out his hand, which was soft and slightly damp. “I’m Mr. Edwards’s curator. My name is Mitchell Honey. Not ‘Mitchell, honey,’ just plain old Mitchell Honey.”

  I would be making this fast.

  “Nice to meet you. Is Mr. Edwards here? He’s expecting me.”

  “That he is. Follow me.”

  The interior had a gloomy sort of allure. A small Tiffany lamp in the vestibule shed not enough light onto the gleaming dark wood paneling. Heavy Oriental rugs muffled our footsteps as we walked down the hall and into the living room, where velvet curtains obscured the midday sun. Mitchell Honey sneezed, and a log fell in the fireplace, sending a shower of sparks flying.

  “Damn allergies. This way, please.”

  We entered a hexagonal room stuffed with antique furniture—hulking armoires, narrow cabinets, carved end tables. There were no windows. The air was stale. Everywhere I looked there were ceramic statues of creepy things: eagles with squirrels in their beaks; trolls sticking their fingers into other trolls’ mouths; laughing mice. The dark side of Wedgwood, I guess.

  “Mr. Edwards has an encyclopedic collection of British art pottery,” said Mitchell, who was sandwiched between a pair of three-drawer chests. The ceiling was so low he was stooping, which added to his general air of obsequiousness.

  “A lot of pots,” I said, studying a satyr hanging off the spout of a teapot.

  “A lot of money.” The low voice came out of now h
ere.

  “Jake, please. We have company.”

  Jake sidled in. He didn’t need much room. He was the sort of skinny guy who wore his jeans half falling off his ass because someone had once told him it was sexy.

  “Right,” he said, rolling his eyes. Ennui became him, but Mitchell, blowing his nose, didn’t want to know about it.

  “Do you have an extra hundred bucks?” Jake asked, swinging his leg over a small chair with a needlepoint seat.

  “Careful!”

  “Sorry. Edgar said it’d be okay. I didn’t have time to make it to the bank.”

  Mitchell pulled out his wallet and counted out five crisp twenties.

  “Later.”

  “You’re welcome,” said another voice, this one deep and sonorous.

  “Edgar,” Jake said. He hiked up his pants, which promptly slid back down. “I didn’t know you were standing there.”

  Mitchell looked triumphant.

  “Don’t look so triumphant, Mitchell,” the older man said, his gaze going right to Jake’s jutting hipbones.

  “About what?” Jake asked.

  Edgar sighed, tugging at his salt-and-pepper beard. He was heavyset but moved with stealth, a lion intent on dinner. “And you must be Cece. I’m Edgar. Welcome.”

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Not at all. What do you think of my babies?”

  Mitchell Honey and Jake? They’d go over great on Jerry Springer.

  “I started this collection with a single monkey jar in 1978, before the prices went through the roof, and now look at me. Sotheby’s calls me for advice!”

  “That must be very gratifying.”

  “Very gratifying!” His laugh came from somewhere deep in his belly. Had I said something funny?

  “This, by the way, is for you.” I handed him The Mystery of the Ivory Charm. The shredded paper remained in my purse. Thank god the book hadn’t been damaged. I swear I’d have Mimi declawed if it weren’t illegal in West Hollywood. The only city in the country.

  “Much obliged.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I heard all about you from the twins. You’re from New Jersey.”