by Jan Burke
“Told you she was a bitch,” I said.
“Not exactly,” Lydia said.
“Yeah, well . . .” I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got a couple of hours to try to find the Las Piernas Rentals location that rented out the van.”
I used the Yellow Pages in the phone book to get the three addresses and phone numbers of the rental places, then opened the Thomas Guide, a book of detailed maps of Los Angeles County that only a fool would try to live without. A lost fool.
Cokie readily agreed to come along with me, but Lydia, thinking of the discomfort associated with being the third person in a Karmann Ghia, opted out.
* * *
WE DROVE TO THE ALLEY behind Cokie’s house, where I spent some time looking around as if I thought I’d see something. I’m sure the streets of London and other locations that may have required Holmes’s attention also had a lot of meaningless debris spread over them.
I didn’t go so far as to pull out a magnifying glass. I hadn’t owned one since I was nine, when my father caught me lighting discarded cigarette butts in the backyard by using focused solar power. He seemed to think I was a hairsbreadth away from burning down the house. I’m not saying he was wrong.
It didn’t look as if there was much I could learn there, two days after the singing clowns had come and gone. So I got back into the car, wrote down my odometer reading, and took the shortest route to the closest rental place. The energy crisis had caused the cost of gasoline to skyrocket, so I thought that location would be my best bet.
Although the geezer behind the counter didn’t seem averse to talking to two young women about his customers, we struck out. The only van that had been rented on Wednesday was still out—not due back in until Saturday. Rented by a young couple. The husband’s parents were giving their old house to the couple and moving to San Diego; the van was being used to move the parents out and the couple in. This might have been a complicated cover story, but I doubted it.
Owing to said fuel crisis, I asked the manager if he would call the other locations to see if anyone had handled a same-day rental of a moving van on Wednesday.
Fortunately, midmonth, autumn weekdays were not popular moving days, and we learned that the next-closest location had rented a van that day.
Unfortunately, the manager at that location was an unhappy woman of middle years who was not so forthcoming. She did say a van had been rented on Wednesday for a few hours, but didn’t see how it was any of our business.
“I think someone was trying to play a mean trick on my friend,” I said. “Or maybe worse.”
She was skeptical. There was no alternative, it seemed, to having Cokie tell her story. The woman laughed—before that moment, I wouldn’t have betted on her capacity to do so—and remained skeptical.
“The person who rented from us was very nice,” she said. “We didn’t rent our van to a person who might do something so immature.”
“We know it was a man, so don’t bother with the ‘person’ stuff,” I said, and saw her mouth prim up and a look of self-satisfaction come into her eyes. So—a woman rented the van. “It would have been illegal for the renter to put two people in the back and let them roll around between here and Cokie’s house, right?”
“You’re just trying to worm information out of me, and I won’t tell you a thing,” she said. “Next time you make up a story, try to come up with something better than a tall tale about clowns.”
She was convinced of that. I heard it in her voice, and wondered why she was so sure. When I realized the answer, I wanted to kick myself in the pants. Of course no one had shown up at the rental place with five people dressed as clowns.
I walked outside the office, Cokie trailing me. I walked past rototillers, a forklift, lawn spreaders, and post-hole diggers. I walked until I came to the place where the trailers and vans were parked. I pointed to two moving vans that were positioned next to each other. “Which one is closer to the size you saw?”
Cokie pointed to the larger of the two. I walked toward the back of it.
By now the manager had noticed that we hadn’t returned to the Karmann Ghia, as she had expected, and began marching toward us. “Hey, you!” she called out, attracting the attention of a couple of her workers.
I wasn’t dressed for this kind of action, I thought ruefully, but at least I was wearing flats. I stepped onto the wide, flat back bumper, grabbed on to a handhold, and swung myself up to have a closer look at the big black numbers stenciled on one of the side panels.
“Get down from there this instant!” the manager said.
“Look,” I said, running my fingers along a sticky line. “Tape marks. The identification number was covered up, just like Cokie said it was.”
The helpers who had joined her were nodding as I pointed at the places where you could see adhesive. That, or they were looking up my skirt.
“Get her off that truck!” the woman ordered them, and since they seemed way too eager to obey her, I hopped down.
“You know no one hides the numbers on a truck unless they are up to no good,” I said.
“Get out of here. Leave this property before I call the police.”
I considered calling her bluff, and then asking her to explain to the police why she was covering up for someone engaged in criminal activity, but that presented two problems. One was I had no proof that there had been any criminal activity or idea of what the crime was. The other was I’d have to tell the police the clown story.
So we left.
* * *
I BEGAN TO SEE THAT this case was and was not like “The Red-Headed League.” Like Jabez Wilson, Cokie was being pulled away from some action on the street. Not a bank robbery, but something.
Back at the apartment, I took out a piece of paper and sketched a diagram of Cokie’s street. I had her tell me who lived in each house and what they were usually doing on Wednesdays at ten o’clock. She was able to provide an almost scary number of details, and while the Sandses were likely baddies, no one in the family seemed to have his or her act together, let alone the wherewithal to plan and sponsor “alley theater.”
Someone had a goal, a goal that required Cokie’s attention at a certain time. I kept coming back to the members of the canasta group, the only ones with a fixed schedule.
“Let’s say someone knows of your interest in the activities of your neighbors.”
“My snoopiness?”
“Your keen powers of observation. Someone wanted to make sure you wouldn’t look out a front window, or see something at that time of day. The day was different from most Wednesdays because there would be no canasta game. And . . .”
“And what?”
“Process of elimination. Do you know the name of Mrs. Redmond’s beautician?”
“Yes. She gets her hair done at Lola’s Snip and Curl. She’s been getting it cut there since 1953.”
“And hasn’t changed her hairstyle in two decades, right?”
“Just about.”
“Kayla’s father is still living, right?”
She kept up with the apparent change in subject. “Yes. Mindy lives with him and her mom.”
“Why isn’t Kayla living with them, instead of her grandmother?”
“Kayla doesn’t get along with her father’s third wife. Mrs. Harding—my neighbor, I mean—Mrs. Gertrude Harding—doesn’t like Mrs. Lina Harding. Gertrude was on a long cruise when the trouble came up about the stolen car. She believes her son would have paid for an attorney, but Lina talked him into ‘letting Kayla learn her lesson,’ as Lina put it.”
“Is Mrs. Harding well-to-do?”
“She’s not super-rich, but she does have some money. She likes nice things.”
“Mindy is Lina’s only child?”
“Yes.”
“And Mr. Harding—is he well-off?”
“They do fine, as far as I know. Lina works, so there is ex
tra income.”
“Where does she work?”
“In a doctor’s office. She’s an office manager or something like that. No medical degree.”
“Hmm. Do you have your neighbors’ phone numbers?”
“Of course.”
Of course. “Would you please call Mrs. Lumfort and ask her if Lina works in the office of the doctor she went to see on Wednesday?”
A few minutes later, we had the answer. Yes. Same office. I was beginning to see that the “mature” person who rented the truck was described to me by her age—Lina was probably in her forties—and not her behavior.
“Next, Mrs. Redmond. Ask her to call Lola and try to discover if her hair appointment was changed from its usual time at the request of Lina or Mindy Harding.”
Mrs. Redmond was a little hard-of-hearing, so everyone in our building and the buildings on either side of ours heard Cokie’s side of the conversation. Lydia came in to find out what was going on. Eventually we learned that Mindy had influenced the time of the appointment change.
Cokie stared at me wide-eyed after she hung up. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Lola’s. I wonder what Mindy’s hair looks like.”
We started laughing. Lydia probably thought we were losing it.
“How is Gertrude Harding’s hearing?” I asked.
“Excellent,” Cokie answered.
“Call her, tell her about the singing clowns, and then ask her if she’ll talk to me for a minute.”
She did so, and after the understandable time it took to get past the story of the musical number in the alley, she handed the phone to me.
“Mrs. Harding, I know I’m a complete stranger to you, and you probably think I’m too young to know anything, but it’s really important that you take my advice.”
“Yes?” she said doubtfully.
“It’s my belief that while a show was being put on to distract Cokie, something was taken from you. Some cash, perhaps, or more likely some jewelry, or something else that’s valuable and portable. If you haven’t discovered this for yourself, I’d bet you anything that either your daughter-in-law or Mindy—perhaps even your son—will ask you about some valuable object, you’ll go to look for it, and it will be missing. My theory is that it is still in the house, and has been placed somewhere that will ensure that Kayla will be blamed. It may already be planted somewhere in her bedroom or in her purse or in her clothing.”
There was a long silence. About the time I decided she’d hung up on me and the dial tone just hadn’t kicked in yet, she said, “As it happens, this morning I noticed that a diamond tennis bracelet is missing. And your advice?”
“Have you said anything to anyone other than me?”
“No.”
“Great. First, look for it now. It will be in Kayla’s room, but she didn’t steal it.”
“I’m sure she didn’t. Why are you sure?”
“She wouldn’t need clowns.”
“No, of course not.”
“You could set a trap for those who planned this, or at least amuse yourself when they try to reveal its hiding place. I don’t have advice about that part. It’s your family.”
“Sad but true.”
“I’m a little worried about you, Mrs. Harding. I think someone may covet your belongings, if you know what I mean, and greed can inspire worse things than false accusations or a clown show. Perhaps you might know an attorney or someone who could let the planners know that this didn’t work, and that if anything happens to you—”
“Thank you for your concern, Miss Kelly. I’ll think over my options. Tell Cokie I’ll see her at the canasta game next week.”
* * *
I NEVER GOT THE DETAILS about what Mrs. Gertrude Harding did from there, but I do know that within a few weeks, her son filed for a divorce from Lina, who did not contest it. She took Mindy with her when she moved to Florida. Cokie later told me that Kayla and her father were spending more time together.
I also learned that there had been a change in management at one of the rental company locations.
I eventually tracked down the clowns. In my freshman year of college I had dated a stage manager, and while that didn’t last long, the friendships I’d made with other theater-arts majors had fared better. I asked a few of those friends to let me know if anyone had bragged about a strange gig that involved clown costumes, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a rental van.
In about three days I had a list of names, and a couple of my actor friends arranged a meeting with them.
A few minutes’ conversation made it clear that the clowns had no idea that they might have been accessories to a burglary, or potentially, even a murder. When I pointed this out, I could tell that for the near future, the alleys of Las Piernas were safe from other spontaneous musical productions. I also pointed out that they had frightened Cokie, and made her feel ridiculed.
“So what are you going to do about it?” the beefier of my actor friends asked them.
They shrugged and looked helplessly at me.
“She does a lot of stuff for the old people on her street. Maybe you could apologize, and then offer to help her do errands for them for a week or something.” I smiled. “If that happened, I might not give any names to the police or the rental company.”
That was 99.9 percent bluff on my part, but it worked. Apparently no one loves theater as much as a drama major.
* * *
NONE OF THIS EVER MADE the papers. And as far as I know, the police didn’t hear about it.
Cokie started a business to provide assistance and home care to seniors. She invited Lydia and me to her wedding. Aside from the bride and groom, Kayla Harding, and us, Cokie’s parents were the youngest people there—she’d invited all her elderly friends. It was one of the coolest (and rowdiest) weddings ever.
Oh yes. She ended up marrying some clown.
Harriet read the letter again. She wasn’t sure why; each re-reading upset her as much if not more than the first.
“Once again, I must tell you that the ending of this story positively reeks,” Kitty Craig had written. “I can’t imagine any reader believing Lord Harold Wiggins would choose this method of killing off his enemy, nor would any reader believe he could manage to mask the taste of antimony by mixing it into the braunschweiger. Rewrite.”
Harriet Bently had been writing the popular Lord Harold Wiggins series for ten years now. She knew exactly what dearest Harry (as only Harriet had liberty to call him) would choose to do in any given situation, even if her editor did not. After all, Harry had moved into Harriet’s life—lock, stock and barrel. No, she didn’t invite him to tea like a child’s imaginary friend; but she thought of him constantly, and had grown comfortable with his presence in her life. Like any series character and his author, they had become quite attached to each other.
It was more than Kitty Craig’s rude tone that upset her. Kitty was notorious in the publishing industry for her biting, sarcastic remarks; Harriet told herself (not entirely successfully) that she shouldn’t take Kitty’s insults personally. What upset Harriet was Kitty’s disregard for Lord Harold Wiggins’s intelligence. His trademark was to effect justice without costing the English taxpayers a farthing for an imprisonment or a trial; once Lord Wiggins knew who the guilty party was, he cleverly killed the villain. In this book, Lord Wiggins made sure the poisoner Monroe would never age another day by slipping him a lethal dose of antimony. Monroe was a villain of the first water, and certainly deserved the punishment Lord Wiggins meted out. Harriet couldn’t help but feel proud of her protagonist.
Her previous editor, Linda Lucerne, had loved Lord Harold almost as much as she did. Linda never changed much more than a punctuation mark; Kitty used industrial strength black markers to X through pages of manuscript at a time. Pages that had taken hours of research, planning, writing, and rewriting before they were ever mailed to Shoe
horn, Dunstreet and Matthews (known affectionately as SDM), the esteemed publishers of the Lord Harold Wiggins series.
Yes, Linda Lucerne had loved Harriet’s style, and said so from the moment she accepted the first novel, Lord Wiggins Makes Hay While the Sun Shines. And make hay he did. Linda’s faith was proved justified, and the success of Makes Hay was repeated in Lord Wiggins Beards the Lion in His Den and the next seven Lord Harold Wiggins books. Alas, Linda had suffered a heart attack just after the tenth book, Lord Wiggins Throws Pearls Before Swine, had been mailed off to SDM. Upon her recovery, she had opted for retirement from the publishing industry.
Harriet tried hard to remember a sin she might have committed that would have justified so mean a punishment as having Kitty Craig become her new editor.
She had known other writers who had suffered under Kitty’s abuses. Upon learning that Kitty would be her editor, Harriet had complained long and loud to her agent. But Wendall had pointed out that Kitty had been personally chosen for Harriet by Mr. William Shoehorn III. He had also mentioned that unless she was willing to come up with a new main character, they had no hope of moving to another publishing house. SDM owned Lord Harold. Wendall urged her to be open-minded.
Harriet loved Lord Wiggins too much to forsake him, and so she had tried to follow Wendall’s advice. Tried, that is, until she received her first editorial letter from Kitty Craig. A long list of changes were demanded, each demand phrased in abusive language. The one that bothered Harriet the most was the demand to change the ending:
“How absolutely boring! Monroe dies when he swallows lemonade laced with strychnine. Strychnine! That old saw? Is your imagination so limited? Formula writer though you are, I would hope you could come up with something a tad more original.”
Old saw indeed! Strychnine was a classic poison, she lamented, famous throughout detective fiction. But Kitty would hear none of it.
