Burning Garbo

by Robert Eversz

  “I say bullshit. He took advantage of a vulnerable older woman, made love to her a couple of times, and it turned her head. I can’t say whether or not he intended to worm his way into her will, but I’m sure he was using her to advance himself, one way or another.”

  “But he is cute,” I said.

  She laughed again, said, “Why is it all the really attractive men are either gay or worthless shits?”

  A trim gentleman in a blue suit and pencil moustache stopped by the table to offer Arlanda his condolences. Snowbirds crowded the tables at El Conquistador, in town for the warm weather and cheap room rates, but the restaurant also functioned as a meeting place for the town’s elite, such as it was. The gentleman’s offer of condolences included an invitation to dinner when her grief allowed.

  “Sells car insurance,” Arlanda said after he left.

  “Might be a good catch for you, then.”

  “Biggest catch in town. Car insurance is a big business here, Americans need it to drive in Mexico. He sells insurance to half the cars crossing the border.”

  I said, “Wow.”

  “It passes for glamour around town. In my age range, there are about three available men, and he’s at the top of the list. Everybody else is married. I could always date one of the widowers, I suppose, but I’d like a man I don’t have to push down the sidewalk in a wheelchair.” The way she was talking, I didn’t think she’d date the insurance salesman for long, if at all. The minute her inheritance cleared, she’d be on her way to Los Angeles. Then she said, “I need you to do me a favor, when you get back to L.A.”

  “Sure, whatever you want.”

  “That thing about what the accountant said, about Aunt Angela buying art? It’s been bothering me. So I called around when I was in L.A., galleries listed in the Yellow Pages. I didn’t have any luck until somebody suggested I try a place I didn’t see in the Yellow Pages at all. And I found a salesman there who said she’d been what he called a patron. But he wouldn’t say anything over the phone, and before I could get to see him, I had to come back here to make arrangements for the memorial service.”

  “You want me to go see him for you?”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure. What do you want to know?”

  “What she bought. How big it is, how much it cost. You see what I’m saying? Maybe she didn’t keep her purchases at the house. I’m trying to find out if she kept a storage vault somewhere her accountant didn’t know.”

  “If she did, would you inherit it? Whatever was inside.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because the will gives Troy Davies whatever’s not in the house, if I remember right.”

  “She was my aunt. I won’t let him have it. Not the storage vault, not if there’s anything in it. That’s part of the house.” Her voice rose at the end to a firm and strident tone that turned heads.

  “How is a storage vault part of the house?”

  “The key.” She said it like “checkmate,” as though the logic was inescapable. “And that’s another thing. What if they were stealing from her?”

  “Who?”

  “Davies. Her housekeepers, too. Who knows? They all had access. They could have stolen her blind. If I know what she bought and it shows up for sale somewhere, then I’ll be able to do something about it. Now, they could sell what they stole from her and I’d never even know.”

  “Do you really think Yolanda and Maria would steal from your aunt?”

  “We’re talking about two, three million dollars. For that kind of money, most people would be willing to do more than just steal.”

  She was right. Money does things to people, always has. Arlanda didn’t seem so immune either. “What’s this gallery you want me to check out?”

  “You’ll find it in Beverly Hills,” she said. “It’s called Harry Winston. Like the cigarette.”

  Harry Winston is not just anywhere in Beverly Hills, it’s on Rodeo Drive, and though it doesn’t define itself as an art gallery, its customers are convinced the work on display is every bit as much art as any canvas by Jasper Johns or sculpture by Henry Moore, even if the colors are limited to basic colors such as diamond white, ruby red, emerald green, and those of the world’s precious metals, above all platinum. The manager stared at me like I’d come to rob the place when I walked through the entrance and bent over the glass of the central display case, which contained a diamond necklace that may have weighed more than my head. “Umm, may I help you?” He said it doubtfully, polite by training but painfully aware I was beyond help.

  “Got anything with genuine zircon?” I pointed to my left nostril. “Preferably in a nose stud.”

  “Perhaps you could try Wal-Mart. I understand they carry, ah, zircon products.”

  He pronounced zircon as though allergic to the word. I handed him the notarized letter of instructions Arlanda had given me, with an explanatory note from Doubleday’s accounting firm. He warned a sales associate with a glance that I needed watching and excused himself, passing through a door behind the counter. When he returned a dozen minutes later, his smile was a well-practiced welcome, and he invited me to join him privately, in his office.

  It didn’t hurt to be nice. I said, “Come Oscar time, I see Winston jewels on half the stars of Hollywood.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The well-dressed half.”

  I heard another language buried within his vowels, and I wondered whether it was genuine or an act to impress clients who thought being from Europe prestigious. The walls of the office were soft green and if I knew what a Persian carpet looked like I would have bet my chair rested on one. The manager sat behind a gilded desk, the surface as neatly manicured as his nails. One of the many ironies of Beverly Hills is that ninety-nine percent of the sales staff have better taste and manners than their customers.

  “May I ask what your role is in this?”

  “Friend of the family,” I said.

  “Certainly not of Ms. Doubleday’s.”

  Like he knew her well enough to know I wouldn’t.

  “Her niece and principal heir.”

  “The fire, such a tragic catastrophe.”

  “Yes. The world mourns. And her niece looks for assets.”

  His eyes shot to the ceiling and he shook his head, sighing at the responsibility to carry on despite the burden of grief. “Ms. Doubleday came to us twenty years ago, when she was nominated for her first Oscar. She hadn’t been a Harry Winston star before then, but the moment we dressed her in jewels, she became the embodiment of Harry Winston.” He closed his eyes to better remember, and when he spoke again, his voice glowed with pride, or perhaps just good salesmanship. “That first night she wore a necklace of perfect white emerald-cut diamonds and two-tier diamond-drop earrings. Simple but classic. She loved our jewelry, and we loved her.”

  “The necklace and earrings, did she buy them?”

  “Not those. Harry Winston loans many of its jewels to the Oscar nominees, and we bejeweled Angela Doubleday for each of her Oscar appearances, free of charge.”

  “Must be good advertising.”

  “The most beautiful jewels for the brightest stars. We’re pleased to do our part to support the Academy.”

  “Did she buy any of the later jewels?”

  “The items on loan for her Oscar appearances?” He pursed his lips, an expression I took to mean he disapproved of breaking the confidence of a customer, even a dead one. “Just one item. An exquisite articulated brooch depicting an American Beauty rose, crafted in rubies and diamonds. She bought very few of our signature pieces. After what happened, I’m not sorry she didn’t. Many of our pieces are unique. I shudder to think what happened to them in the fire, poor things.”

  “The diamonds, would they have survived?”

  “Oh yes, beyond doubt. But perhaps not the platinum. If stored in a fireproof safe, then yes.” He fingered the diamond clip pinned to his tie, a gesture of alarm, like the sign of the cross. “Are they missing? The insuranc
e company usually contacts me in cases like this.”

  “Her policy hadn’t been updated in several years.”

  “That is tragic.”

  “Could you provide a list of what she bought from you?”

  “It would take a few days.”

  “The list is extensive?”

  His fingers slid up the tie and tugged at the lapel of his suit coat. “Oh, very. As I said previously, she bought very few signature pieces, but she loved diamonds, and over the past five or six years, she couldn’t visit without buying something.”

  “She visited often?”

  “Every month.”

  “I thought she didn’t visit anybody.”

  “Harry Winston isn’t just anybody. We felt honored, of course. Everybody knows how terribly she suffered, how she recoiled from public life. Diamonds were one of her joys, particularly toward the end, and we were happy to bring her joy.”

  “She came by limo?”

  “Always.”

  Troy Davies hadn’t mentioned visits to the jeweler. Perhaps he lied to protect Angela Doubleday’s privacy. That seemed a reasonable explanation. He might have thought it none of our business. But where money is concerned, seemingly reasonable explanations do not always hold true, and I wondered if he was playing games with the estate, aware of the stipulation in her will that awarded him her investments and cash assets. Arlanda couldn’t claim what she didn’t know existed. If he knew about a safe-deposit box, he wouldn’t warn her before claiming the contents. Somebody needed to talk to him, and I knew it couldn’t be me. Davies would just tell me to go to hell. I said, “I heard her chauffeur brought her joy, too.”

  His glance changed, and I thought the remark offended him. Then he said, “He was very attentive to her every need,” and I realized he was speculating, curious to see if I’d elaborate. If the sex life of Hollywood stars didn’t enjoy broad appeal, the tabloids wouldn’t sell millions of copies every week.

  “Did he come into the store with her?”

  “Always. They’d pull to the front five minutes after closing time. We’d open for her, of course; we’re always open by appointment to special customers. If there was space at the curb, he’d come right in with her. He never said much, but if she so much as sniffled, he’d have a handkerchief ready for her.”

  “He saw what she bought?”

  “The British say the queen has no secrets before her servants, and that saying is no less true among a certain class of people in America. He looked at nothing and saw everything.”

  “And she bought?”

  “Oh, yes. Bought and bought. Most often, I served her right here, in this office.” He showed his palms to the walls, as though they shimmered in reflected glory. “She liked to have the jewelry brought to her, you see, rather than picking through the display cases. You know my tastes, she’d say. Choose something I’ll like. She’d enthuse over the finer pieces, but then, after threatening to buy something really grand, she always selected a smaller piece, a bracelet or earrings, some of our more anonymous pieces, actually. Poor dear, she was on a budget, I’m almost certain of it.”

  “So in the end, what she bought didn’t amount to much.”

  “By the standards of the house of al-Saud, no, but very few of our customers meet that high standard. Over the years I personally sold more than a million dollars in jewelry to Ms. Doubleday. Well over a million. Closer to two.”

  Maria Potrero opened the door to Lupe’s room just wide enough to allow me to slip through the crack, shutting it quickly and quietly as though afraid someone—or something—might follow me in. Yolanda tended a votive flame on the dresser, the wick spiraling smoke before a framed print of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Lupe’s down-the-hall neighbor, El Cangurito, stood by the window, big-knuckled hands respectfully folded at his belt. The sisters had phoned my mobile a half hour earlier, their voices so despondent that I’d rushed over from Beverly Hills despite their inability to say what precisely was wrong. They both wore loose-fitting black cotton dresses hemmed at the knee, the same dresses they had worn at Angela Doubleday’s memorial service. The smell of candle wax and vanilla masked the alcoholic’s reek of smoke and sweat.

  “¿Qué pasa?” I asked. What’s going on?

  A string of rosary beads wound through Yolanda’s fingers and she crossed herself before the Virgin. El Cangurito, watching closely from the corner, matched the Father-Son-and-Holy Ghost movements of her fingers and clenched his hands again at his belt.

  “We hear Lupe’s voice, crying to us,” Yolanda said.

  “We think something bad happens to him;” Maria added.

  “You heard his voice?” I asked. “He called you on the phone?”

  Yolanda’s eyes glimmered in the candlelight. “He calls my heart. He is lost somewhere, in terrible pain.”

  “She started to hear his voice last night,” Maria said.

  Yolanda stared at the ceiling, head tilted as though listening. “His cries are weaker now. He’s still here, but he’s leaving us.”

  I edged to the far corner of the room, near El Cangurito, who followed the conversation with one eyebrow flexed in concentration, the other eyebrow arched in the confusion of one who understands no more than half of everything said. I asked, “He didn’t come back to his room last night, you don’t know where he is, that’s the problem?”

  Maria’s fingers worried at the seam of her dress as obsessively as Yolanda worked her rosary beads, and when she nodded she meant far more than a simple yes. “He’s in trouble. We know.”

  “Lupe drinks,” I said. “He probably went drinking last night, found a best friend, closed the bars, and fell asleep on somebody’s couch.” I didn’t want to say what I really thought, that there was no best friend, only the bottle, and his couch was the lot or alley where he’d passed out.

  Maria clasped my arm to her side and turned to El Cangurito. “Tú hablaste con Lupe ayer. Dinos, ¿qué te dijo?” You talked to Lupe yesterday. What did he tell you?

  He unclenched his hands, let them hang at his side, big and agile things in movement but awkward when they had nothing to do. He dressed carefully, for the sisters or perhaps in respect for the occasion, his slacks neatly creased, his cotton shirt crisp, and his hair freshly slicked back. His eyes drifted up at the mention of his name, and though he may have been fierce and graceful in the ring, he stood stiffly in Lupe’s room, his glance failing to project beyond the surface of his eyes. “Lupe se vino a mi habitación ayer tarde en la mañana. Le había prestado algo de dinero la semana pasada.” Lupe carne to his room yesterday, he said. He’d loaned him some money the week before.

  “Nunca deberías haberle dejado ese dinero,” Yolanda said. He never should have given Lupe money.

  The boxer’s hands fluttered at his sides as though wishing to fly up to his face in defense. “No fue mucho; sólo veinte dólares, pero me tenía que pagar ayer.” It was only twenty dollars, he said, but Lupe was supposed to pay him back.

  “¿Y no lo tenía?” I asked. He didn’t have it?

  “No, no lo tenía, pero me dijo que si le podía esperar un día más, me daba cien dólares.” No, he didn’t have it, but he promised to pay him a hundred dollars the day after, if he’d wait.

  “¿Cien dólares?” I asked, not sure if I’d heard right.

  The swelling from the blows he had taken in his last match had receded to a dull yellow, and his lip had healed enough to allow an embarrassed smile. El Cangurito didn’t understand either. He didn’t want a hundred, he’d said to Lupe. He’d loaned out twenty. He wanted twenty back. Lupe could pay him when he had the money, but he had to pay him, because neither of them were rich men. Lupe laughed and said he’d be rich that night, because he knew the secret of the trees. That sounded a little crazy to El Cangurito and so he asked, “Lupe, have you been drinking?” But no, he said he hadn’t, maybe just a little, for courage. He was just excited, and maybe he was afraid, too.

  “¿De qué tenía miedo?” I asked. Afrai
d of what?

  “Se iba a encontrar con alguien, con un hombre.” He was going to meet someone, a man. “Parecía tener miedo de ese hombre, pero lo tenía que ver para coseguir el dinero.” He seemed afraid. But he had to see the man to get the money.

  “¿Dijo cómo se llamaba el hombre?” Did he say the man’s name?

  El Cangurito slowly shook his head.

  “¿Te dijo algo sobre el hombre?” Did he say anything about him?

  “Sólo que era peligroso.” Just that he was dangerous.

  “¿Dijo dónde se iban a encontrar?” I asked. Did he say where they were going to meet?

  “Yo sé donde,” Yolanda said. She knew where. “When he speaks to me, I hear the sea.”

  We found Lupe’s pickup truck parked on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway a half mile from El Matador State Beach and less than a mile from the ruins of Angela Doubleday’s estate. He’d parked legally, but the beach is difficult to access until the park entrance, and his truck stood alone, buffeted by the wind and the slipstream of vehicles racing east, toward the city. I told Yolanda and Maria to stay in my car with the Rott and approached the truck alone. The accuracy of Yolanda’s prediction didn’t surprise me; the area around Doubleday’s estate would have been one of the first places to look, based either on premonition or logic. Rust fringed the truck’s wheel wells, and the back bed was heavily scarred, the factory white scraped and burnished orange from the oxidizing steel below. The truck was old and battered and because it looked like what it was, a gardener’s truck, it did not seem out of place parked between the gated and heavily landscaped estates on both sides of the highway.

  I examined the ground for footprints before I approached the cab, not wanting to scuff existing ones or to leave my own should the truck become a crime scene, but the ground near the highway was packed hard as sandstone and took no marks. I slipped my hands into a pair of cotton gloves taken from my camera bag and tried the door. Locked. I peered into the interior of the cab, careful not to get too close to the glass—forensic science had made great strides in the past decade, and I didn’t know whether or not nose prints were admissible evidence in a court of law. Fast-food wrappers and crumpled cigarette packs littered the floor on the passenger side, and a clipboard rested on the bench-style seat. Nothing had been written on the clipboard. The clipboard didn’t even have any paper.