by Susan Kandel
I was going to get Andrew’s fingerprints.
How hard could that be? And then they could be checked against the second set on Jake’s suicide note, and when they didn’t match, well, then Bridget could have her boy toy back.
Unfortunately, Andrew was AWOL. How was I going to find him? Maybe I didn’t actually have to find him. Maybe I could get his prints off some personal possession of his, like a toothbrush or a piece of clothing. But then I’d have to get into his apartment, which was a designated crime scene, and that was a big no-no. Maybe Bridget had some of his stuff at her place. Oh, she was not going to like this.
“Here you go, babe.”
“That’s some lethal dose of pepperoni.”
“At least you’re going to die happy.”
I looked up at him, dizzy with the heady scent of rendered pig. If it weren’t for a few unsolved crimes, yeah, I could die happy right now. But I’d die happy later. First, I had to make sure Bridget was going to die happy, too. All I had to do was exonerate her Peter Frampton look-alike lover—with or without her help.
29
Turned out I got Mitchell’s fingerprints instead, which wasn’t entirely beside the point if they could get Andrew off the hook. There was also Mitchell’s generally unpleasant demeanor to consider. As per Nancy Drew, the culprit is invariably the one who racks up the most negative adjectives, and if you asked me, Mitchell Honey was nothing if not one big negative adjective.
The way it happened was a bit convoluted. I called Bridget first thing the next morning to discuss my plan, but she, too, had gone AWOL. No answer at home, no answer at work. But the fact that the store was closed on Tuesdays precluded the need to panic, at least for the moment.
Meanwhile, all that talk about the ex–pig farmer detained in a Pensacola, Florida, prison reminded me of a certain felon closer to home. I decided to pay another visit to Asher Farrell’s gallery, to pump Melinda for some details about her boss.
By ten-thirty the place was already crowded, meaning that there were three tattooed hipsters in baggy shorts prowling around. It must’ve been that rave review in the Times that brought them in because it sure wasn’t Melinda’s people skills.
“Good morning!” I said cheerily.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. “Good morning!” Her hair was askew and her cheeks were flushed. She stepped out from behind the desk to greet me with three catalogs in one hand and Asher Farrell’s leather folio in the other. She looked panicked. “Back so soon?”
“The show really stuck with me. I wanted to see it again.”
“Did you enjoy the catalog? Oh, dear!” The folio had slipped out of her hand.
“Are you all right?” I bent down to retrieve it for her. While I was down there, I cast my eye over today’s date. Asher Farrell had back-to-back appointments until five, starting with Mitchell Honey in (I looked up at the clock) less than half an hour. Too bad. I was not prepared for Mitchell Honey.
“Thanks,” she said, taking back the folio. “I’m fine. It’s just so early for clients. Usually I have a while to get things organized.”
I glanced over at the three young men, all of whom were wearing Von Dutch trucker hats. “They’re clients?”
“They run an alternative space in Hollywood. Their dad is actually the client. They’re kind of like scouts.”
“I see.”
She made her way over to them and passed out the catalogs. They shot out their hands without taking their eyes off a photograph of two prepubescent models having their makeup done. You wish.
“I did enjoy the catalog,” I said. “Very provocative essay. But comparing Lari Uklanski to Rembrandt, isn’t that a stretch?”
“The handling of shadows, that’s all. Anyhow, you’re doing great!”
“What do you mean?”
“The dyslexia.”
“Thank you.”
“Okay, then. Why don’t you look around? I’ve got to take care of a few things.”
“Can I ask you a quick question?”
“Of course.” I followed her over to the front desk.
“I have a friend who’s in the market for a Salvador Dalí print. Does Asher handle things like that?”
“It’s interesting you should mention that.”
“It is?”
“Yes. And no, I’ve never known him to handle anything by Dalí.”
“Why is it interesting?”
“Dalí ’s interesting, that’s what I meant.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. “So you’re saying no collectors have popped up lately looking for something by Dalí?”
“Not as long as I’ve been here.”
So much for the theory that all Asher and Mitchell were doing was helping Edgar with his shopping needs.
“How long has that been?”
“Two years.”
“And you would definitely know about it if someone had popped up?”
“I would definitely know about it.”
“Of course you would. You run the show around here, I’m sure.”
“That isn’t true,” she said, looking down demurely. “But Asher can find anything. Maybe you want to talk to him when he gets here. He’s busy today, but I’m sure he can squeeze a good friend like you in.”
Speaking of good friends, Mitchell Honey had arrived, twenty minutes early. I couldn’t exactly hide.
“Hello there.” I gave him a little wave.
“Ms. Caruso. Yet again.”
“Do you two know each other?” Melinda asked brightly.
“We’re ex-lovers,” I said. “Just kidding.” Just then I noticed the unopened bottle of Perrier sitting on Melinda’s desk, and—what can I say?—inspiration struck.
“Do you mind if I wait for him in his office?” Mitchell asked Melinda.
Before she could say yes, I swooped upon the small green bottle, wiped it down with the dangling sleeve of my sweater, and without letting it touch my skin, shoved it into Mitchell’s left hand.
“You look really thirsty!” were the words I heard coming out of my mouth, on the tail end of which I snatched the bottle back and dropped it into my purse, directly on top of a wad of Kleenex. “Actually, I’m the one who’s dying of thirst here! And I love Perrier! I’m going to guzzle it on the ride home, if that’s okay with everyone!”
“Ms. Caruso,” Mitchell said, inhaling deeply. “Oh, forget it.”
He retreated to the back, fuming, no doubt.
“It is important to keep hydrated,” Melinda said cautiously.
“Our bodies are mostly water,” I said. I was going to walk out of Asher Farrell Fine Art with Mitchell’s fingerprints. He already thought I was crazy, and Melinda was hardly about to pluck the bottle out of my purse. I was actually going to do this.
“Our next show is going to have a water element, speaking of water. The artist has been saving her tears for the last eleven months. She keeps them in glass beakers in her apartment in Brooklyn.”
“How intriguing.” I glanced toward the back, but Mitchell wasn’t anywhere in sight. I had a minute. “While we’re talking art, you haven’t encountered a young sculptor named Jake Waite, have you?”
“The name doesn’t sound familiar. Should I know him?”
“Well, he’s a real up-and-comer, and I know Asher has the reputation of having an eye, so I figured you guys would be all over him.”
“Wait.” She turned beet-red. “Is he…good-looking?”
“He looks good in jeans.”
“I know him. I’d just forgotten his name. But I could never forget him. I mean, the work.”
She went to a shelf and pulled down a thick three-ring binder marked “Walk-Ins/2003.” It was stuffed with page after page of artist’s slides. I shuddered at the thought of all the wounded egos trapped in there.
“When did Jake drop those off?”
“He stopped in, must have been a couple of months ago, with an older guy, a friend of Asher’s.”
Edga
r.
“Look at this,” she said, laying a sheet down on a small light table.
I’d expected tacky bronzes. Big, triumphant phallic things. What I saw startled me. Arranged on the floor and mounted on the wall were what looked like the craggy rocks and mountains of Japanese landscape scrolls, but rendered in shiny, rainbow-hued plastic. It was safe to say I’d never seen anything like it.
“Asher wasn’t particularly taken with it.”
“Not his cup of tea?”
“You could say that.”
I smelled discontent brewing. “What’s your opinion?”
She looked pleased to have been asked. “I think the work is amazing. It reconciles all sorts of oppositions: nature and culture, East and West, contemplation and consumerism. And it’s luscious, absolutely luscious.”
“Melinda, I think you’re the one with the eye.”
“Not at all,” she said, smiling as wide as humanly possible.
30
Perhaps it was naive to expect Detective King to welcome me with open arms.
“I have new evidence!” I exclaimed. “We might be able to use it to nail Jake’s attacker. The one who faked his suicide!”
King stared at me from the other side of a scuffed-up metal desk. It was covered with papers. Bulging file folders, ripped-open manila envelopes, newspaper clippings, reports to be filled out in triplicate.
“Detective?” asked a uniformed cop who had followed me over.
“It’s okay, Brooks,” King said, still staring at me. “You can go.”
I noticed then that all the buttons on his phone were lit up.
“You must be busy,” I said.
“Now why would I be busy, Ms. Caruso?”
He indicated a chair, then interlaced his thick fingers so tightly they turned bright red. All the veins in his hands were popping out.
I sat down and pulled the bottle of Perrier out of my purse with one of the Kleenex tissues.
“You must be parched. Shall I send out for finger sandwiches?”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “This is evidence.”
“What’s evidence?”
“This bottle. It’s got Mitchell Honey’s fingerprints on it. He lived with Edgar and Jake, and he hated Jake. I think there’s a distinct possibility that he—”
“He who?”
“Mitchell! That he, Mitchell, set this all up to make it look like Jake killed Edgar for his money and then decided to kill himself out of remorse. All you have to do is check these fingerprints against the ones on the suicide note. Then we’ll know for sure.”
He looked distinctly underwhelmed. “Jake Waite and Mitchell Honey lived in the same house, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“There were communal spaces in that house.”
“Yes.”
“Living room, dining room, kitchen, library, den.”
“Yes.”
“Do people in general keep paper in any of those rooms? Say pads of paper for market lists, or scraps for phone messages or games of tic-tac-toe, or letter paper for letters?”
“Yes.”
“Can we say, then, with any degree of certainty that a piece of paper Jake Waite may have taken from his house could not at some point in time prior to the writing of the suicide note have been touched by someone else living in that house, say, Mitchell Honey?”
Asshole.
“Your evidence is shit.”
“Aren’t you going to dust it for prints anyway? Just to see?”
“Just to see what? How you muddied the prints with your grimy tissue paper, with dust from your purse, with—”
“All right already!”
“Excuse me?”
A secretary had appeared holding a stack of While You Were Out slips.
“Toss them on top,” he said. “And I’ll take a refill. Black this time.” He handed her a chipped Lakers mug, then turned back to me. “Was there anything else?”
“Now that you mention it, yes.” I was here. I might as well ask.
“I knew there would be.”
“That painting that Lasarow and Dunphy say they found all ripped up at Edgar’s house in Palm Springs. I’m really curious. I want to see it.”
He stood up abruptly. “If it’s evidence, it’s in an evidence locker, where it can be maintained until such time as it becomes necessary. Nobody’s going to break the chain of custody to satisfy your curiosity.”
“It pertains to my research. And it’s not evidence, it’s trash. That’s why it wound up in the trash.”
“I suggest you take up its status with the lady detectives.”
“Where are they? Are they still in L.A.?”
“I believe they are still here, yes.”
I certainly hoped so. Because a plan of action had just popped into my head, and I didn’t want them interfering.
As I climbed back into my Camry, I cracked open the ill-fated bottle of Perrier and took a swig.
Assuming traffic wasn’t too heavy, I’d be in Palm Springs in no time.
YOU KNOW HOW IT IS in classic Westerns. The sheriff and his trusty six-shooter are at the city limits, waiting for the guy in the black hat to come riding up. That’s kind of how it was when I pulled onto Palm Canyon Drive and saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror.
When Lasarow and Dunphy stepped out of the cop car, I understood this was no routine traffic stop.
“Welcome to Palm Springs, Ms. Caruso,” said Lasarow, whipping off her sunglasses. Dunphy was wearing the kind senior citizens wear. Big old blinders. She left them on.
“Well, thank you. Lovely weather you’re having.” The sun felt warm. The air smelled like Creamsicles. I had a sudden desire to take the aerial tramway up to the top of Mount San Jacinto and stick my nose in a Jeffrey pine. They’re supposed to smell like butterscotch. But I went on the offensive instead. “Let’s not waste time with small talk. I’m concerned about how the case is going. I have to say I’m disappointed an arrest hasn’t been made.”
Dunphy started to sputter a response, but Lasarow interrupted. “You think you’re awfully clever, Ms. Caruso. But you aren’t half as clever as you think. Listen to me very carefully. Whatever you think you’re looking for, forget about it. You are to stay away from Edgar Edwards’s house. Far, far away. Do you understand? You will be arrested for trespassing if we find you there.”
“Who said anything about going to Edgar Edwards’s house?”
“Why are you here in Palm Springs?”
“Body scrubs, herbal pedicures. Rest and relaxation. Dry air.”
Dunphy snorted.
“Where are you staying?” asked Lasarow.
My mind raced. “The Wyndham. They really take care of you at the Wyndham.”
“We’d be happy to escort you.”
“No need.”
“We insist.”
They got back into their car, pulled out in front of me, and put on the siren. I followed them the quarter mile or so there. I felt like I was part of a presidential motorcade, sort of.
Despite the crowd we attracted at the entrance—gawker types with nothing better to do—things were more sedate than they were last time I was in town. No visors.
The valet—not Norman, unfortunately—handed me my ticket stub. “Don’t forget to get a validation. It’s good for three hours.”
“Oh, she’ll be busy with beauty treatments much longer than that,” Lasarow interrupted. “You can park her car way, way, way in the back. Ms. Caruso here won’t be needing it.” She handed him her business card. “Are you on duty for a while?”
“Yes, ma’am. Until midnight.”
“Excellent. Please give me a call if Ms. Caruso comes looking for her car. And inform whoever comes on duty after you to do the same. She’s a VIP—that’s Very Important Person—and we want to be extra sure she gets the protection she needs if she leaves the premises.”
“I’m on it.”
“And can you get someone out here
to help the lady get checked in and settled in her room?”
“I’ll call Randy. He’s the head bellman. He’ll get her all squared away, make sure the climate control in her room is up to snuff, show her the entertainment options, the works!”
Yeah, they really take care of you at the Wyndham.
31
With the midweek discount, the room only cost me $159 that I didn’t have.
I hated Detective King.
I hated Detectives Dunphy and Lasarow.
There was nothing good in the minibar.
There was, however, a shower that didn’t take precisely three and a half minutes to warm up (not that I particularly needed a shower, but what else was I going to do?) and a sign on the bathroom counter that read “If you have forgotten any essentials, please call housekeeping and you will be provided with those items free of charge.” Within minutes, a woman in a neatly pressed uniform had brought up a blow dryer, brush, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, and honey-mint body lotion for dry, sensitive skin.
I was down but not defeated.
One hour later, smelling like a cough drop, I slipped back into my Jean Paul Gaultier tribal tattoo dress, which over the years had proven an exemplary purchase. Stretch mesh doesn’t wrinkle.
I had revised my plan of action.
I took the elevator down to the lobby and exited by way of the swimming pool, bypassing Lasarow and Dunphy’s stool pigeon at the valet station. It couldn’t have been easier. I walked up East Tahquitz Canyon Way, kitten heels clicking, toward Palm Canyon Drive, the town’s main drag.
It was hard to imagine that two thousand years ago, Palm Springs’s first residents, the ancestors of today’s Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, had enjoyed a rich ceremonial life in the absence of thirty-four places to purchase a smoothie. Former Palm Springs mayor Sonny Bono was responsible for encouraging economic development in the late nineteen eighties and nineties (and outlawing thong bikinis), but it was actually the advent of air-conditioning in the postwar era that did Palm Springs in. It meant that visitors and residents alike could stay year-round.
Desert Communities Realty was located between a Nike store and a gallery of southwestern tribal art.
