by Susan Kandel
One of the best things about this project was getting to look through old issues of Top Notch, Black Mask, and Best Detective. They were called “pulps” because they were printed on cheap wood-pulp paper, unlike the higher-toned and more expensive “slicks.” I loved the gaudy illustrations, full of blood and cleavage, the advertisements for things like mustache wax, and the sheer pleasure of stumbling across a story by somebody like Raymond Chandler, who’d claimed, somewhat improbably in my opinion, that he’d learned to write by dissecting one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Ed Jenkins novelettes.
There were sports pulps, Western pulps, adventure pulps, fantasy pulps, science-fiction pulps, and sexy pulps (the Spicy series is one of my favorites). At their height, the two hundred pulps that were published once or twice a month needed hundreds of millions of words’ worth of stories a year. Eager to get in on it, Gardner had tried his hand. The first story he submitted to Black Mask was “The Shrieking Skeleton.” It was a dog. One of the big muckety-mucks at the magazine read the story and sent a note around the office saying the characters talked like dictionaries and the plot had whiskers on it like Spanish moss hanging from a live oak in a Louisiana bayou—obviously a frustrated writer himself. They sent the story back, but someone had inadvertently left the note between the second and third pages of the story, and Gardner read it. Instead of falling into a depression, as I would have, he stayed up for three nights rewriting the story. He typed with two fingers, and when he pounded his skin off, he just kept hammering away on the blood-spattered keys. He was that kind of tough guy. Finally, he sent the story back and it was accepted, mostly, he suspected, because the editors at Black Mask were so disconcerted by the whole incident.
My book was going to be good. This guy was great material. I was going to figure everything out. And I couldn’t wait to get my hands on my newest acquisition. Only I couldn’t lift the box. I got a knife from the kitchen and sliced through the tape right there in the entry hall. The box was full of those styrofoam peanuts, which I tossed on the ground to Buster’s and Mimi’s delight. But what I found underneath was not a collection of Top Notch magazines. It was Jean Albacco’s lockbox, and it seemed to be made of solid steel.
20
If I had bothered to look at the return address, I would have seen right away that the package had been sent to me by Mrs. Flynn. There was a note inside:
Dear Miss Caruso,
I’m leaving this in your care. I don’t think it’s safe to keep here. I’ve been hearing noises. I think you may be right about everything. You will know what to do.
Best,
Theresa Flynn
The stationery had a row of teacups on it, with a fluffy kitten right in the middle. This was a horror show. What had I done? How could I be right about everything when I obviously knew nothing? Mrs. Flynn had been hearing noises. That had to have been the killer. But how did he know she’d had that lockbox in her possession? She hadn’t claimed it for forty-odd years. He must’ve known she’d gone to that insurance office. He must’ve been watching her. He must have followed her there. But why? What had triggered his interest? My stomach gave a sudden lurch. It wasn’t her he’d been watching. It was me. Was he watching me right now?
I leapt up and yanked the living room curtains closed. The sound of the iron rings skittering across the rod was worse than nails on a chalkboard. I picked up the knife I’d dropped on the floor and ran to the phone table in the hallway. I got my hammer out of the drawer. Holding one weapon in each hand like a lunatic, I ran around the house, searching every corner and throwing open every closet door until I was satisfied there was no one hiding anywhere. Only after turning on the burglar alarm was I ready to retrieve the keys I’d scammed out of the locksmith. They were hidden in the butter dish.
I sat down on the floor of the entry hall and tried them, half expecting the lock not to turn. But it did. Slowly, I lifted the lid of Jean Albacco’s lockbox. It felt heavy, like your limbs as you’re falling asleep.
Then the doorbell rang. It was Javier. He wanted to talk about my black mondo grass, which I already knew was failing. I told him I had laryngitis and we’d work it out on Thursday. I slammed the peephole shut.
I sat back down on the floor and closed the box. Did I really want to do this? Wasn’t I taking this method-acting thing a little too far? I was no Erle Stanley Gardner, much less Perry Mason. Wouldn’t it be better to get out of these people’s lives and hand the whole thing over to the police, who knew what they were doing? Well, yes, that would’ve been fine in principle. But the police didn’t know what they were doing, and even if they did, they didn’t care—about any of it. Joseph Albacco was being punished for a crime he didn’t commit, and Mrs. Flynn had gotten in the way. I’d put her there. Looking inside that box was the least I could do. I lifted the lid again. It smelled like the past, like ashes.
There were pictures on the very top. Jean and her sister as children, at the beach in 1947. Jean’s parents at their wedding, the bride and groom looking terrified. Joe in high school, handsome in his football jersey. A stained photo of a small child wearing a frilly white dress. There was Jean’s social security card, and Joe’s life insurance policy, which would pay out five thousand dollars to his survivors. Then some receipts, one for a watch purchased in New York City at Promenade Jewelers in 1933, another for a stove, dating from 1956. A warranty for a camera. A letter from Joe to Jean, written while he was working on an oil rig the summer after high school. Sweet.
Underneath the photos I found two slim bankbooks held together by a rubber band. I peeled off the rubber band and put it around my wrist. Then I studied the book on top. It was navy blue, with embossed gold letters that read “Ventura Savings and Loan.” I turned to the first page. The Albaccos’ joint checking account. They’d opened it in 1956, the year they were married. I scanned the pages, a little surprised at how easily snooping came to me. But then again, I’m the sort of person who looks inside people’s medicine cabinets at parties. It’s horrible, I know.
Jean, or Joe, one of them, was frighteningly organized. Every entry was annotated with a red pencil. There were regular deposits made every two weeks. One set was marked “JLA,” the other “JA.” Jean Logan Albacco and Joseph Albacco. Paychecks, I assumed, from Gilbert, Finster, and Johnson, the insurance company where Jean had worked, and the Ventura Press, where Joe had been employed. Jean earned more than Joe did. He would’ve hated that. He seemed the type. Had she rubbed his nose in it? Probably. The withdrawals were all for small amounts—twenty-five, thirty, one hundred dollars. Household expenses, rent maybe. Nothing unusual. The second bankbook was more curious.
It was for a savings account at the Bank of Santa Barbara. And it was held in the name of Jean Logan. It seemed to have been opened while Jean was still in high school. I didn’t have a bank account of my own until I got divorced. I guess I lacked Jean’s ambition.
There were no withdrawals made. None whatsoever. I looked over the deposits. There were a hell of a lot of those. There was a series in the amount of $35 that were made every two weeks for a year starting in July of 1953. These were marked “LP.” Then a series of deposits of $150 that were marked “BW.” They came every three weeks for six months in 1955, then stopped. There was a group from 1956 marked “DG,” and these were in the amount of $200. They appeared at irregular intervals, a couple a month, nothing for two months, then deposits for three days in a row. The last group was from 1957. Every week like clockwork, in the amount of $400. They were marked “MA,” and the last one was made a week before Jean’s death, on December 6, 1957.
Now my head was swimming.
Any way you did the math, it came out the same. Jean had accumulated a small fortune. The conclusion was inescapable. She was a teenage blackmailer, just like Meredith Allan had said, and making a pretty good go of it up until the moment she went and got herself killed.
Yeah, up until that moment Jean had done everything right. She was a real pro. She’d even stashed
her loot out of town, in Santa Barbara, where nobody knew her. Where nobody would’ve paid a lick of attention to a dark-haired girl looking for someplace to hide a whole lot of dollar bills.
But who were these people lining up to make her rich—“LP,” “BW,” “DG,” and “MA”? “BW” had to have been Bill Winters, the infamous gym teacher. Ellie had confirmed that. “LP” was a mystery, as was “DG.” And then there was “MA.” It couldn’t be a coincidence that those were Meredith Allan’s initials. That woman was in this mess up to her eyeballs, I just knew it. But it didn’t make sense. If she had been one of Jean’s victims, why would she have breathed a word about it to me? Even implied anything of the sort? Sheer perversity, maybe. But why would Jean have been blackmailing her husband’s mistress to begin with? Isn’t the cheating husband the one who gets blackmailed? Perhaps Jean had something on Meredith Allan that was entirely unrelated to the woman’s affair with her husband. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit. I’d bet the farm Meredith Allan had skeletons in every one of her overstuffed closets.
At the bottom of the box there was a manila envelope marked PERSONAL. I hesitated for a second, but who was I kidding? I had gone too far already. I opened the envelope carefully and pulled out a sheet of paper with a California State Legislature letterhead. It was dated May 17, 1928. It was a carbon copy, but it was here, in Jean’s lockbox, so clearly it had meant something to someone. I had to read it a couple of times, but it still didn’t exactly make sense. Somebody was advising a Mr. Allan (Meredith’s father?) to dispose of his tidelands holdings immediately. Besides that, there was a lot of mumbo-jumbo, business-type stuff, and I didn’t speak that language. So how come Jean did? Who taught her? What was she doing with this letter? How badly had someone wanted it back?
21
Call me crazy, but I had a feeling Jean’s lockbox should not remain on the premises if I wanted to keep breathing, which I did. But I needed help. The thing was small but heavy. I called Yellow Cab and asked them to send some muscle. I had a safe-deposit box at the Bank of America on Santa Monica Boulevard near Crescent Heights that was empty except for the deed to my house and some floppy disks so old they should probably go to the Smithsonian. It was the perfect hiding place. Public and inviolable. I’d tip the cabdriver, and he’d haul it in.
Ahmed was a peach, and no one said boo. I raced home. I had to change and meet Annie in less than an hour, and the setting warranted a hat.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is located in Pasadena, the oldest of Los Angeles’s old-money enclaves. It’s a stone’s throw from Caltech (home of the Mars Rover and many bespectacled earthquake pundits) but immune to the siren call of intellectual panic that echoes there. At the Huntington, the air is warm, but not thin. At the Huntington, all is luxe, calme, et volupté.
It’s not often that a railroad magnate decides he has to have 150 acres of gardens, filled with the world’s rarest and most beautiful blooms. And grottoes and tempiettos and a Zen rock garden and a Gutenberg Bible and Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Lawrence’s Pinky and an English tearoom that serves scones with real clotted cream. The old guy wasn’t responsible for the scones, of course. But back in 1903, Henry Edwards Huntington had had the vision to buy a working ranch in San Marino (it came with a dairy herd, a bunch of chickens, orange and avocado groves) and turn it into a landmark. Inside the museum was a portrait of Henry’s wife, Arabella, which I studied every time I visited. Arabella wore dark-rimmed glasses and looked fierce. I suspected she provided Henry with additional impetus.
The last time Annie and I had been at the Huntington was back in May, for their annual plant sale. The theme was “Weird and Wonderful Magical and Mystical Plants,” and we went determined to put together a black garden. Burnett was right. I was morbid, and I’d infected my only child early on. But what was I supposed to do? Was it my fault she found Miss Marple more compelling than Winnie the Pooh? Her kindergarten teacher certainly thought so.
Anyway, we’d had Lael’s red Radio Flyer wagon that day, and we’d piled a fabulous assortment of plants into it, plants that were not truly black but superdark shades of purple and maroon: black-flowered hollyhock, a dark ajuga called “Chocolate Chip,” a dianthus named “Sooty,” a cordalis with dark purple leaves, a strange columbine named “Chocolate Soldier,” the camellia “Midnight Magic,” and the doomed black mondo grass I’d have to deal with on Thursday with Javier.
“There’s nothing like the enthusiasm of a new convert,” the smiling docent had said to me at the checkout area, cracking my hard-won veneer of sophistication with a single blow. You can take the girl out of New Jersey, blah, blah, blah. My whole problem was I didn’t want to accept that. That wasn’t my whole problem, actually.
Today, Annie was waiting for me in front of the galleries. Arm in arm, we walked inside. We ogled a Hepplewhite desk with turquoise tile inlays that I’m sure would have helped me write my book faster. We marveled over the shelves and shelves of first editions under glass, like pheasants, and the miniatures in pearl-or diamond-encrusted frames. Anything except talk to each other. In a dimly lit room we stopped in front of a seventeenth-century painting that depicted a little girl reading the palm of a boy about her age. He was looking out at the viewer as if to confide that he knew he was being scammed but didn’t mind. The painting was a perfect metaphor for the way men patronize women, which made it all the more alarming that I found it so cute.
“I don’t like it, Mom,” Annie said.
“Good for you. It sends a bad message.”
“I’m not talking about the painting, Mom. I’m talking about the creepy stuff you’re into lately. It’s like you think you’re in one of your Perry Mason mysteries. It’s not healthy.”
“Annie, you don’t need to worry about me. Let me worry about you. That’s how it’s supposed to go.”
“Everything’s fine with me,” Annie said as we stepped outside into the sunlight. It was quiet except for the steady hum of lawn mowers.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about. Annie, there’s something about Vincent I need to tell you.”
“Well, don’t be so melodramatic. I said I was fine with all of it.”
“I saw Vincent at the farmer’s market on Sunday, with Lael.”
“What was he doing with Lael?”
“No, I was with Lael. He was with somebody else.”
“With Alexander, his son? And Roxana?”
I was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I’ve spoken to Vincent, Mom. He told me he had gotten in touch with them. It’s wonderful, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes, of course. But how do you really feel?”
Annie laughed. She seemed to have not a care in the world. It was unnatural.
“Look at all these heat lamps, Mom. In the middle of a desert garden. It’s so funny.”
We sat down on a bench in front of a field of small cacti as round and white as snowballs. They were surrounded by some orange plants that resembled huge pumpkins. I was riveted by the six-foot phallic plumes. They were pointy all over and reminded me of Annie’s father. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nada.
“Well, San Marino isn’t Madagascar, sweetie. That’s where these babies came from.”
“I guess it can get cold here in winter.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to help Vincent do what’s right.”
“But what about what you want?”
“That doesn’t matter anymore, Mom.”
“Are you saying that you want him back? Because he wants you back.”
“He needs to be with his son. And if he can make it work with Roxana, that’s how it should be. Do you really expect me to get in the way? It would be selfish.”
Annie was anything but selfish. And I was as proud of her as I was devastated for her.
We strolled past the towering stalks of bamboo and the lily ponds stuffed with carp, past the herb garden, where the doce
nts ordered us to pinch and sniff. By that time the sweat was pooling under the brim of my hat and I’d had enough. Even the lemon verbena couldn’t tempt me.
On my way out to the car, I noticed the morning-glory vines trailing across the tops of some Italian cypresses. It made me feel better that the Huntington had morning-glory troubles, too. Bloodsuckers, Javier called them. Got to pull them up the minute you see them, or they’ll take over and eventually everything will die. It was hard. They were so pretty.
We said good-bye in the parking lot, and I gave Annie an extra hug.
“Mom, don’t freak out on me,” she called out of her car window, waving.
“Do I ever?” I called back. She didn’t reply. She must’ve been too far away to hear me.
So I had a little problem on the 134 going home. Someone was following me. Again. It was when I peered into the rearview mirror to check my makeup that I first noticed the car. Also, that the Mango-a-Go-Go had bled into the little bitty lines around my mouth. I reapplied my lipstick and forgot about the whole thing, but there it was, fifteen minutes later, that same car, a dark SUV, right behind me. I sped up and changed lanes a couple of times, but there seemed to be no getting away.
I tried to remember the tricks of the trade, how to lose a tail and all, but since investigating murders past and present wasn’t really my trade, I found myself at a loss. But I didn’t fall apart. In fact, I was surprised at how calm I was. And why shouldn’t I be? It was still light out, I was in a Camry that had seen me through worse days, and I’d suddenly remembered that the best thing to do when you thought you were being followed was to drive straight to the police station. So I got off the freeway at the Forest Lawn Cemetery exit, which I hoped wasn’t prophetic, and headed straight to the only precinct house in L.A. whose address and phone number I knew by heart.
