Fast Friends (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 3)

by Dianne Emley

  “Don’t you think Gaytan DeLacey gleaned certain scruples from his father?” Rosen asked.

  Iris looked at him. “What if he’s spent his whole life trying to be unlike his father? And this is his reward.”

  “Life’s tough, isn’t it? Even for wealthy little boys like Thomas Gaytan DeLacey.” Alvarez leaned back in his chair and leered at her. “I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear from the DeLaceys.”

  She smiled back at him. “Then you’re ready for anything.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She glanced at her watch. “My goodness! That late already? Let me quickly review what I have.” She snapped open her briefcase, took out a manila file folder, leaned forward onto his desk, and flipped the file open. “I’ve taken a careful look at your portfolio and have come up with some excellent suggestions, if I say so myself.”

  He cooed, “I can hardly wait.”

  “They’re all laid out in this report.” She lifted a handful of stapled pages to show him, squared them in the folder, and closed the cover. She pushed the folder across his desk. “And it breaks my heart to tell you that I can’t manage your money.”

  Alvarez’s face dropped.

  “Why not?” Rosen asked.

  “I have some good news and some bad news.” She cupped her hand against her cheek as if she was about to share a secret. “The good news is confidential so…”

  Alvarez frowned in mock outrage. “It will not go outside these walls.”

  “I’m going to be promoted to manager of our L.A. office.”

  “Congratulations!” Alvarez reached his hand across his desk to shake hers vigorously.

  “That’s terrific, Iris,” Rosen enthused.

  “The bad news is, I simply cannot take on any new clients.” She sadly shook her head, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it. She was a terrible liar, but at least she knew it. Then she visualized the commission check that could have been and sincerely said, “I’m really sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am, pretty lady.”

  “That’s sweet.” She stood. “I tell you what. I’ll make a list of some excellent money managers I know and fax it to you on Monday.”

  Alvarez and Rosen stood as well. Alvarez moved to walk her to the door. “I’m sure none of them can hold a light to you.”

  Iris touched her forehead. “All these compliments are going to go to my head.”

  “I’ll send you an invitation to the inaugural party. I want you to come as my personal guest. And Jeff, let’s invite Iris to the fund-raiser.”

  She smiled and extended her hand. Instead of shaking it, he grasped her fingers and pulled the back of her hand to his lips. She slipped out the door. As soon as she was in the outer office, she dropped the smile. By the time she’d reached the Triumph, she was smiling again but this time the smile was genuine. A stranger had offered her candy and she had resisted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The circular electric saw shot sawdust from both sides of the blade as it cut through the wood plank. Les Thorne released the pressure on the C-clamp that held the plank against the sawhorse and fitted the angle he’d cut into the wood against a matching angle on another piece of wood.

  Nearby, a teenage boy was drilling holes into a block of wood that had beveled edges. The boy looked up from his work when he saw Bill and Junior DeLacey enter the garage that served as a workshop. He called out, “Dad!”

  Les looked up and nodded once to acknowledge them. He reached down to turn off the saw but did it slowly, without urgency, as if it were something he was going to do anyway, as if he wanted them to know that their presence hadn’t disrupted his normal mode of activity in the least.

  “Fine-looking boy, Les,” DeLacey said.

  “Thanks.” Les was in his sixties but was fit and trim. His blond hair had gone white but it was still thick and contrasted starkly with his tanned, sun-weathered skin. He was still a handsome man.

  Junior stood with his thick fingers tightly jammed into his jeans pockets and his weight on his heels so that his body was tilted slightly backward. His eyes followed the direction of his head so that his gaze fell at a point somewhere in the rafters of the garage roof. He was as removed as he could be without leaving the room.

  “Brian,” Les said to the boy. “Why don’t you go see if your mother needs anything?”

  The boy looked the two men over one last time, then left the garage.

  “You doing carpentry as a trade, Les?” DeLacey asked as he roamed through the garage with his hands behind his back.

  “Yeah. For a few years now.”

  “Honorable trade.”

  “Got a nice business built up.”

  DeLacey examined some cabinets that were lined against a wall, completed save for staining the wood. He intoned, “Wherever there is one alone, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me. Cleave the wood, and there am I.” He ran his hand over the smooth, sanded surface of one of the cabinets. “Cleave the wood, and there am I.”

  “I had a feeling you’d show up, Bill.” Les dusted his hands against his dungarees. On his left hand, half of the middle finger and the tip of the index finger were missing.

  DeLacey frowned at Junior. “Go sit in the truck. You’re just standing there like a lug anyway.”

  Junior took his hands from his pockets and took a step backward, as if to place himself beyond DeLacey’s grasp. “I need to hear what you’re going to say.” He pursed his lips and defiantly stared at his father with eyes sunk deeply within fleshy lids.

  DeLacey’s shoulders began to quiver as he inhaled and exhaled laughter. “So you’re ordering me around now?” He raised his index finger. “Let me tell you something, Junior. As long as you work for me, you’ll do as I say.”

  Junior’s cheeks became pink and blotchy. He trudged from the garage to sit in the pickup truck.

  After he had left, Les said, “What is he now, forty years old? And you still talk to him like that?”

  “Don’t know what would have become of him if I hadn’t been firm with him. I figure I’ve taken the raw materials and made the best of them. I hope us DeLaceys can leave our mark somehow before I’m dead and buried. Should have done what you did. Got a new wife and had more kids. It’s a numbers game. Gotta have a lot just to get a few good ones.”

  “If you felt that way, why didn’t you divorce Dolly?”

  “You know I couldn’t do that, Les.”

  “Why not?” Les smiled, squinting his blue eyes. “You loved her too much?” He grinned to himself as he picked up a sandpaper block and began striking it against the edge he’d just cut. “She leave any of that land to you?”

  “She left it all to me, which is only right. I sacrificed a lot for her over the years.”

  Les stared at DeLacey. Suddenly, he began to laugh.

  DeLacey gazed at him with rheumy, pale gray eyes.

  “Bill, you’re living proof that if you tell a lie often enough and long enough, you’ll eventually believe it.” Les put the plank down. “I know you’re here because of that article in the paper about Gabe’s murder. A couple of reporters have already called me. I told them the same thing I said back then. I wasn’t around that night. I don’t know anything that happened.”

  “It’s not as simple as that, Les.” DeLacey raised his gnarled index finger. “That was always just like you, simplifying. Simplifying things that are complicated. You see, Alvarez’s people might try and get to you. Maybe even offer you money.”

  “They’ve already called. I told them I don’t have anything else to tell them.”

  “That’s not good enough. What I want you to do is—”

  Les put his palm up. “No.”

  DeLacey drew down the sides of his long face, making the jowls of his cheeks dangle even further. “What do you mean, no?”

  Les looked evenly at DeLacey. “I’ve done enough. You have some nerve talking about sacrifice. You’ve never done a single thing your entire life unles
s it somehow benefitted you.”

  DeLacey’s breath hitched spasmodically in his throat as he laughed. “You’ll never know the sacrifices I’ve made.”

  Les raised the sandpaper block toward DeLacey. “I’m not getting into a pissing contest with you, Bill.” He started sanding the plank again. “I have to get back to work.”

  “What about Sonja?”

  “You leave her out of this. I was with her that night. She doesn’t have any reason to say anything else.”

  “See. You’re oversimplifying again. Someone could give her a reason.”

  “Some things in this life are more valuable than money or power. I don’t think you’ll ever learn that, Bill.”

  “That’s exactly why you’re the weak link, Les. Everyone has their price. You just don’t know what yours is yet.”

  “Please get off my property. I’ll only ask you nicely once.”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you feel about it.” He started to shuffle out of the garage. As he left, the teenage boy returned. DeLacey asked him, “What do you want to be when you grow up, young man?”

  The boy shrugged. “Maybe a fireman.”

  “Well, I guess there will always be fires to put out. You should get yourself a college education. Then when you can’t put out fires anymore you can use your head.” DeLacey looked at Les. “I’ve seen Iris and Lily.”

  Les put down the sand block. “Where?”

  “At Dolly’s funeral. Saw Rose too. She looked real good. Would have thought you might have at least kept up with them.”

  Les scratched his head.

  DeLacey smiled slightly, apparently pleased to have made Les uncomfortable. “Thomas and Iris went out on a date.” His shoulders bobbed as he laughed. “That Iris has turned into a good-looking female. Thomas and her seemed to get along real well. They’re going out again.”

  Les’s face became flaccid and his rich tan color paled.

  “Course, you couldn’t care less about that other family of yours anyway,” DeLacey said. “You got yourself a new setup here, don’t you?” He continued walking toward the truck.

  Junior fired the engine when he saw his father heading down the driveway.

  Brian watched the red pickup pull out of the driveway. He turned and looked at his father.

  Les fitted a new plank under the C-clamp on the sawhorse, turned on the power saw, and began cutting the wood. The loud grinding noise precluded conversation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Saturday morning, dressed in jeans, a plaid, lightweight flannel shirt, and tennis shoes, Iris packed some snacks in a paper bag, grabbed a liter of bottled water, and rechecked her map directions. She replayed the message that John Somers had left on her machine just to make sure she’d taken down the address correctly.

  “Your blue nineteen seventy-eight Oldsmobile is registered to a Robert Bridewell. Address is eighty-seven forty-four Avenue K in Pearblossom out in the Mojave Desert. I checked his record. Has some prior arrests—two counts of possession of marijuana and cocaine for sale, three counts of burglary.” The tape picked up a disheartened sigh. “I don’t know what your angle is with this guy. Call me before you put yourself in a bad situation.” There was a long pause where the tape just hissed quietly and it seemed as if what was unsaid hung portentously in the air. “Uh, bye.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Johnny boy,” Iris said to the machine as it rewound. “You know I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Always have. Always will.”

  There was one last thing to do. She picked up the Louis Vuitton satchel and began packing the rubber-banded bundles of cash that were stacked on the dining room table.

  She had counted it even though John had said it was all there. She told herself she had to replace the rotted rubber bands anyway. She stopped and considered another angle. “I don’t need to take it all. A hundred grand should be plenty.” She scolded herself. “Iris, you never wanted this money. You can’t spend it. You don’t even want to spend it. Get it the hell out of your life.” She put her hands on her hips and retorted, “Why are you so hard on yourself? None of that was your fault. The money just landed in your lap. Some people would consider themselves lucky. But not you. Unless you’ve sweated blood over something, you don’t think you deserve it.” She negotiated a compromise. “Okay, okay. I’ll take half—two hundred grand. The rest of it goes in a safe deposit box for when I’m a doddering old lady. Okay, I’ll just take a hundred grand.”

  Her route, which normally would have been straightforward, requiring only two or three freeway changes, had been complicated by the earthquake. The Antelope Valley Freeway, the Fourteen, had collapsed near the junction with the Five, causing a motorcycle police officer on his way to work to plunge to his death off the broken edge in the dark early morning of the quake. Sections of other freeways were closed for repairs or inspection.

  Iris had dragged out maps and compared them with newspaper diagrams of damaged and otherwise closed freeways. She plotted a circuitous route that switched between undamaged stretches of freeway to surface streets, then back to freeways again. Now following her route, she was moving slowly. Traffic was terrible even though it was Saturday. This was postquake life.

  After driving for three hours, she exited the freeway onto the flat, gridlike streets of Pearblossom. It was none too soon. The Triumph’s temperature gauge had been steadily creeping up for the past hour and was now well past the midway mark.

  Pearblossom’s east-west streets were named with numbers and the north-south streets were named with letters. She drove down 22nd Street looking for Avenue K. The buildings were low, as if they could scarcely raise themselves from the street. Everything looked bare, sandy, windblown, and sun damaged, including the desert rat denizens. A large supermarket was on the corner of 22nd and K and Iris pulled the now-overheated Triumph into the parking lot. People were going about their Saturday-type affairs. The parking lot bulged with a preponderance of pickup trucks with camper shells and motorcycles.

  She secured the Triumph as best she could, immobilizing the steering wheel by locking two bright red Club devices onto it. She looked at the car’s bright, shiny red paint glinting innocently in the brutal sun and decided to drape it with the canvas cover stored in the trunk. A couple of locals were watching her. She stroked the Triumph as if it might be the last time she’d see it and again mentally promised to retire it and buy something plain Jane and practical for commuting.

  Tightly clutching the Louis Vuitton satchel under one arm and her purse under the other, she began walking up Avenue K. According to the corner street sign, the address she was looking for should only be three blocks away. She was glad she’d dressed down.

  She passed small wood-framed houses built on large plots of cheap desert land. For every well-maintained house, there were ten others with peeling paint, torn and rusted screens, pot-holed driveways, and threadbare roofs. There was an occasional green lawn, looking as lavish as a diamond tiara on one of the local biker babes. Some yards were covered in pebbles or colored rocks. Most were brown, sandy dirt. Some were cluttered with cars, some with artifacts hauled out of the desert such as wagon wheels, horse tackle, mining implements, or rubber tires used as flower beds. Some displayed colorfully painted plaster figures. There were deer, rabbits, wishing wells, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, even a white-robed Jesus and a blue-robed Virgin Mary. There were several collections of plastic pink flamingos.

  Iris saw the faded blue Oldsmobile parked in the driveway of 8744 Avenue K on the corner of K and 18th. The house was small and rundown like the others in the neighborhood and the front yard had no lawn or plaster figures—just dirt.

  She climbed the cement front porch steps. Through the sheer drapes covering the windows, she could see the bright flickering colors of a television set. The volume was high and she heard urgent, excited voices followed by applause and yelling, which elicited corresponding yelling from people inside the house. She knocked on the frame of a rust-st
ained screen door. The screen was pocked with small holes and rips. Her knock wasn’t nearly loud enough to be heard over the television. She opened the screen, the spring that held it to the door frame stretching and creaking, and knocked against the flaking paint on the front door.

  “Paula!” a male voice from inside the house yelled. “Someone’s at the door.”

  Paula, somewhere farther off, yelled, “For Chrissakes, Angus. You’re sitting right there!”

  “Paula baby. Answer the fucking door!”

  After a few seconds, the drapes near the door stirred.

  Iris moved so that her face could be seen. “Hi!” She waved maniacally. “It’s Iris.”

  “Who is it?” The man seemed to possess only one tone of voice—loud and abrasive.

  “It’s Iris from L.A.”

  There was the sound of metal sliding against metal and chains rattling as assorted locks were unfastened. The door opened and the scent of cigarettes and marijuana wafted out.

  Paula stood with one hand on her hip and the other on the door frame and looked at Iris with a mixture of scorn and pleasure. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  Paula smiled. Her full lips angled up to one corner, like Thomas’s.

  Iris took a step forward, inviting a hug or a handshake or something.

  Paula didn’t move but just swung back and forth against the door frame, using her flip-flop-clad foot as a pivot. “How the hell did you find me?”

  “Friends in low places.”

  “You didn’t tell my dad, did you?”

  “No.” Iris was offended.

  Paula stepped aside and pulled open the front door. Iris walked into a sparsely furnished living room. A wide-screen television was against one wall. A football game was on. A worn sofa draped with an old bedspread stood perpendicular to the television. Bobby Bridewell, whom Iris remembered from the Last Call, was stretched out there. In front of the sofa was a scratched wood coffee table which held a bong, plastic lighters, a feathered roach clip, dirty glasses, beer cans, and several packages of cigarettes.