Thicker Than Blood

by Penny Rudolph

  Back at the car, she told Hank, “I think I woke him up.”

  Hank moved toward the driver’s door. “Want me to drive?”

  “I’m fine.” She climbed back behind the wheel and waited for him to get in on the passenger side. The Honda jounced back to the highway, causing more thumps from the trunk.

  Hank groaned. “What the hell is loose back there?”

  “The box from the plane.” She caught his look. “Forgot I had it.”

  Hank unlocked his door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “So I can throw myself into a ditch if you get stopped by a cop.”

  She bit her lower lip and hit the brakes. “Didn’t think of that. You want to drive?”

  “Not on your life.”

  The Honda crept back to LA in heavy Sunday traffic.

  She parked next to the Mustang, which looked like a lost puppy in the concrete desert of the garage.

  Hank said a weary goodbye and climbed into his car.

  Not until she was in the elevator, digging through her purse, did she remember putting the apartment key in her shirt pocket to keep it separate and easy to find.

  A search of all pockets yielded nothing but her car keys, a used Kleenex, and a Tootsie Roll wrapper. She screwed her eyes shut in frustration, pushed the elevator’s stop button, and sent it back down to level A where she kept a spare key in the booth.

  Finally home, she closed and locked the apartment door and realized she was hungry.

  As she slapped together a turkey sandwich, a realization shook itself loose from all the other thoughts cluttering her brain: she had lost the key at the plane, either when she was wriggling into the cockpit or sliding down from the wing.

  No ID on the key, no name or address, she reassured herself. Nonetheless, she made a mental note to get the lock changed.

  Another thought percolated to the surface: the box from the plane was still in her trunk. Reluctantly, she left the food on the counter and headed back to the elevator.

  The smell didn’t hit her until she opened the trunk. She fanned the air in front of her face. A pale, lopsided circle had appeared on the floor of the trunk. In one corner, next to a faded blue first-aid kit, was a quart bottle of Clorox. Under Hank’s forgotten canvas bag was the bright yellow cap that must have popped loose when she bounced over the chuckholes.

  The box had fled to a far corner. It was lined with plastic but the bleach had seeped through the puncture. The carton was sodden and reeking. She found a trash bag, scooped the mess into it, and left the trunk open to air out.

  Back in the apartment, turkey sandwich and cottage cheese in hand, Rachel sagged onto the sofa and clicked the TV’s remote.

  “…some biologists say the dying birds at wetlands surrounding Farwell ponds near Salinas are.…”

  She flipped through the channels and took another bite of the turkey sandwich.

  Chapter Twenty

  Twenty-four hours later, Rachel looked up from posting invoices to find men in uniform peering at her through the booth’s glass wall.

  One looked about sixteen, with red hair that stood up in irregular little spikes despite the fact that it had been shorn within a quarter inch of the scalp.

  The other officer was shorter, thirty years older, with the face of a disappointed basset hound. “Rachel Chavez?” The words had to work their way past some ardent gum chewing.

  “Yes.” She wanted to ask if they had found the plane, but she had learned painfully and well not to anticipate a cop’s questions.

  The basset’s eyes sneaked a glance at a piece of paper in his hand as if it held notes for a speech he should have memorized. “Lonnie B. Saltillo.” He pronounced the silent L’s almost belligerently. “He worked for you?”

  She stared at him in astonishment, then nodded slowly.

  “He a vitamin freak?” This from the baby-faced redhead.

  “A what?”

  “Vitamins.” The word made its way around the older cop’s gum. “He do a lot of health shop stuff?” Across his nose was a tiny red web of blood vessels.

  “Not that I knew of.” Both men seemed to be watching her closely. She stared at the older one’s jaw as it worked away at the gum, wondering how vitamins could be sinister.

  The older man pointed at his mouth. “Just quit smoking.”

  “Good for you.” She gave him a stiff smile, thinking he looked like he could use some vitamins himself.

  Long-suffering brown eyes peered at her from beneath brows that slid down at the edges. “Nothing good about it. It’s lousy.”

  The redhead gave an ill-concealed smirk. “You say this Lonnie Saltillo was not a vitamin popper?”

  “He never mentioned it.”

  “You are, of course, aware he is deceased?” the gum-chewer asked.

  “Yes.”

  He glanced again at the paper in his right hand. “According to the autopsy, the death was caused by ingesting a toxic substance.”

  Rachel shifted her gaze to her desk. “Is that a politically correct term for drugs?”

  He shrugged. “More like poison, I think.”

  She gaped at him. “Poison?”

  The younger man was fidgeting with a pencil. “Selenium something or other.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sold in health food shops. Supposed to stop skin itching, and I don’t know what all.” The gum popped.

  The redhead glanced at his partner, then back at her. “He have itchy skin?”

  “I have no idea.” Why would Lonnie take selenium at all, much less an overdose? Could it be snorted? Did it deliver a rush, a high of some sort? But Rachel asked none of these questions.

  Instead, she looked at one man, then the other. “Did he, uh…take the poison himself?”

  “Far as we know. We do have to rule out homicide, though,” the young officer said stiffly. “You know any of his friends?”

  “No. Lonnie was pretty much a loner.”

  “You ever been to his apartment?”

  “Yes,” she gulped, realizing her fingerprints would be everywhere. Did they run prints in a case like this? “You have any suspects?”

  “Not really,” the older cop said in a bored voice.

  The younger one asked, “He have a locker or anything? Leave any personal belongings here?”

  “No.” She ran nervous fingers through her hair and willed herself to composure.

  The older man handed her a card. “If you happen to find anything…unusual, give us a call.”

  “Right.” She looked at the card, then calmly back at the officers and nodded goodbye.

  333

  In the after-hours darkness of the garage, Rachel’s face glowed bluish as her eyes peered at the computer monitor. There was more information on the Internet about selenium than she would be able to sift through in a week.

  It was a trace element that had “a close interrelationship with vitamin E.” It was supposed to “aid in body growth.” Among sundry nonmedical items was the diverse news that selenium was responsible for the color in red lights, as well as for the “loco” in locoweed, which caused cattle to go berserk.

  She paused when she came to the comment that a “large dose gives the breath a faint odor of garlic.”

  Was Lonnie telling the truth? Was he so bent on improving his health that mega doses of vitamins had actually killed him?

  Rachel supposed that was not impossible. Addicts were famous for overkill on just about anything.

  But if that was the case, what was the powder in the plastic bag she had removed from Lonnie’s teapot? And what about the envelope in Jason’s bathroom?

  333

  Goldie looked at Rachel as if she were babbling in Farsi. “They said what killed your friend?”

  Rachel leaned her head back against the vinyl-covered headrest in the cab of the Merry Maids van. “Selenium. It’s a mineral they put in vitamin pills.”

  One of Goldie’s eyebrows rose over a disbelieving bro
wn eye. “You saying he OD’d himself on vitamins?”

  “I guess large doses are lethal.”

  “Must’ve chowed down enough to choke a friggin’ horse.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t take a whole lot if it entered the bloodstream all at once.”

  Goldie cast her eyes to the roof of the van. “Some of those health freaks are pretty weird. It’s a wonder more of them don’t keel right over into their alfalfa sprouts.”

  Rachel could see the windows on InterUrban’s second floor going dark one at a time. She glanced back at Goldie. “First Jason and the powder in that envelope, then Lonnie and the bag of powder in his teapot, then that plane.…”

  Goldie stared at her. “What plane?”

  “Sunday.” Rachel leaned back in the seat, propped her feet on the dash and explained. “I keep wondering if there’s some connection.”

  A car sped past the van and jerked a fast turn at the corner, tires squealing.

  “SOBs who drive like that oughta be shot,” Goldie muttered, then leaned her elbow on the steering wheel. “You sure got a way of getting yourself smack in the middle of a lot of things that smell to high heaven of dope.”

  Rachel didn’t answer. Something was nibbling at the edge of her mind like a skittish fish.

  333

  The phone was ringing when she got back to her apartment.

  “You Rachel Chavez?” The voice was male, and stern.

  The back of her neck prickled. “Yes.” In a knee-jerk reaction to the sternness she added, “Sir.”

  “This is Deputy Sheriff Moran. You reported the crash of a small plane on Sunday near Coyote Reservoir, on County Road one-nine-four?”

  “Yes.” She drew the word out but gave it no tone.

  “Are you aware that it is a criminal offense to make a false report?”

  “Ex—excuse me?”

  “There was no debris from a plane crash.”

  “But of course there was!”

  The voice on the other end grew icicles. “I assure you there was not. We made a thorough search. Are you aware you could be billed for the expense caused by your little prank?”

  “But that’s impossible.” She said it twice before she realized she was talking to a dial tone.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Rachel hung up the phone and called Hank, whose husky mumbles spoke of sleep. Her words tripped over each other as she repeated what the sheriff had said.

  “That’s crazy,” he sputtered. “They must have looked in the wrong place.”

  “But he said ‘near Coyote Reservoir.’ You think someone could have moved that plane?”

  “Sure didn’t look to me like it would be off the ground anytime soon. Those cops must be blind. Maybe one of us should drive out there, show them exactly where it is.”

  “Not me,” she said quickly. “Can’t you think of some business reason to go to the reservoir? It belongs to InterUrban.” She could hear Hank breathing into the phone in the pause that followed.

  “Too many real things to do. My desk is breeding paperwork like fleas.”

  Annoyance rose in her like heartburn. Was his work more important than hers?

  But it wasn’t because of her work that she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to talk to cops. “If they can’t find something that big, I guess that’s their problem,” she said irritably.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m tired of all this. Why is it happening to me?”

  “It didn’t just happen to you. I was there.”

  “I don’t mean only that damn plane.” Her voice shot over the line before she realized that Hank didn’t know about Lonnie or the envelope from Jason’s office, and certainly not why she was so peevish about talking with the sheriff. Maybe it was time to tell him, if not everything, something.

  One thing she knew for sure. It was time to do something. She had made plans, had even made a list. But she had done nothing.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap. Can we talk sometime soon?”

  Hank hesitated. “I’ve got a terrible week coming up.”

  “Never mind.” Knowing she shouldn’t, doing it anyway, she hung up. She was getting into bed when the phone rang. She turned out the light and pulled the covers over her. Let him talk to the tape.

  “Rachel. Pick up,” squawked Hank’s voice from the answering machine.

  She reached for the phone, clicked it on. “I said, never mind.”

  “Okay, let’s talk. Just tell me where. And when.”

  Something silenced the angry retort before it spilled from her mouth. She asked him to meet her the following night at the Pig’s Whistle.

  333

  The next morning, Rachel stopped at level C just in case the Cadillac had been returned. The space was still empty. It had been gone a week now.

  While the cars streamed in, she sat in her booth with the Yellow Pages and a Thomas Brothers map, cross-checking body shop locations. As soon as traffic thinned, she drove over to Wilshire.

  The BJ Body Shop was in a short stubby building sandwiched between two high-rises on the rim of the inner city, miles below the chic addresses the Wilshire Boulevard was known for.

  A man looked up from his paperwork at the jingle of a bell when Rachel opened the door. His white shirt was so full of starch the fold marks stood out. The name Jeff was embroidered in a white oval above the pocket. “Yeah?” He threw his pencil down but didn’t get up. “Tax audit,” he growled. “Three hundred million liars out there and they have to pick me.”

  “Sorry for interrupting. I’m not even sure I’m in the right place. I’m looking for a late-model Caddy that had a dented—”

  “You a fuzz?”

  Rachel almost laughed. “No. It’s my father, you see. He used to be very sharp and everything, but now he’s sort of…forgetful. He took the car to a body shop in this area because of a dented right front fender, and now he can’t remember where he took it.”

  Jeff stared at her a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Happens, don’t it? We’re living longer these days, but we can’t even remember who we are. Piece of crap, you know? Then we arrive at the pearly gates, and they audit your goddam life.”

  She examined her thumbnail. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a Caddy like that in here for repair? It’s a late-model. Black.” She hoped that if the car was there, Jeff wouldn’t remember that it bore an E plate and couldn’t have belonged to an absentminded old man.

  He thought a moment. “Not that I remember, but already I’m losing it. Have a look for yourself.” He pointed at a door to the right of his desk.

  “Just go look?”

  “You need an escort? No one here but me. Can’t get a good body man to come in before eight-thirty.”

  “Thanks,” she said moving to the door. Engrossed in his paperwork, he didn’t look up.

  Nine cars sat in various states of disarray like women in a department store dressing room. The only black car was a Chrysler.

  “Thanks anyway,” she told Jeff, who grunted as she exited to the street.

  333

  An overhead light gleamed on the balding forehead of the round-shouldered, round-faced man behind the counter at Benchmark Analytic as Rachel handed him a Ziploc bag.

  Wordless, he tipped his chin up to peer at it through bifocals. Wiping perfectly clean fingers on the front of his short-sleeve white shirt, he plucked at his necktie, then held the bag up to gaze at it again. He put it down as carefully as if it were an egg, picked up the brown envelope, folded back the flap, and examined the contents.

  Rachel shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She had given her name as Wanda Feiner. “They look the same, don’t they?”

  His round shoulders rose and fell noncommittally. “Many substances look alike.”

  “Can you tell me what they are?”

  He was peering into the brown envelope again. “Expect we can.”

  “How long will it take?”

  He fixed
her with an owlish gaze that declared that the first mark of civilization was patience. “You have no idea what it is?”

  She shook her head. “None. Could be sugar for all I know.”

  His watery blue eyes looked at her sadly. “I’m afraid we’re a bit backed up. At least a week, possibly two.”

  Rachel rubbed a thumb over her forehead. “What if they turn out to be a…?”

  He cleared his throat and then supplied, “Pharmaceutical?” His round face grew a shade pinker.

  “All right, yes, a drug. Suppose it’s even an illegal drug?”

  “I expect we could not return it to you.”

  “You’d just confiscate it?”

  “We would have to let the police know. I hope it’s nothing of that sort. The paperwork is terrible.” He held the paper she had filled out between two fingers, then laid it on the counter. “You forgot to fill in your phone number.”

  “I’m not in much. I’ll call next week.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “I’ve never needed one.”

  “We do need a number.”

  She wrote the garage number down, reversing the last two digits.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Charlotte Emerson closed the door of her office and took a zippered packet from her purse. It was embroidered in bright greens and blues and contained her makeup. In the adjoining restroom, she stood before a mirror framed with blue stained glass, feeling as if she were primping for a date. In a way, she told herself, she was. Perhaps the most important date of her life.

  This was why she had done it. This was why she had wanted to become chairman. This would set the stage for the renaissance of this wild, throbbing, gasping, choking, astonishing place called the Southland by those who knew and loved it best.

  Why, she wondered, does water howl in the Emerson veins like a werewolf?

  She ran a tissue over her face. “Not a bad complexion for an old lady,” she said aloud, well aware that her warm ivory skin was the envy of women far younger. She brushed blusher onto her cheeks and darkened her eyebrows with a little mascara.

  They hadn’t wanted to meet in either of their offices, settling instead on neutral territory. And Charlotte would be just a little late. Seven minutes would be about right.

  She blotted the rose lipstick, put the cosmetics in her desk, took her navy blue leather purse, and told her secretary Janet she would be late returning from lunch. It was only six blocks. She would walk. Parking was a nightmare and she needed the exercise.