by James, David
I had an idea. “So whoever dragged Monica would have left footprints?”
“None. The assailant stayed on your concrete and pool decking the entire way.”
“So what do I do now?” I asked.
“I’d begin by adding a little more chlorine to your pool,” Alex replied.
“You go about your normal day. And at night, I’ll be staying here,” Ken stated. “If that’s okay with you, Alex?”
“She’s yours now,” Alex said, planting a kiss on my cheek. “Just remember, she hates it when you pee in the shower.”
Ken couldn’t stop laughing.
“It doesn’t bother you, my ex kissing me in front of you?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t make you jealous?”
“No, from what I remember, your ex-husband is gay.”
“But it doesn’t bother you that I was once in love with him?”
“Not once. You still are.”
“So you’ve noticed that, too, huh?” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re not afraid of that?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Like I said before, I’ll give you plenty of reasons to want to be with me.”
CHAPTER 20
Real Whores Drive Nice Cars
Ken spent the night, making me feel safe, happy, and horny . . . no sex again, but I have to admit, I enjoyed every minute with him.
The next morning, we showered together, ate breakfast together, and Ken bade me good-bye with a passionate kiss that made me remember him for several hours. While I was throwing a load of laundry into the clothes washer that still gave me electrical shocks, the phone rang. Alex wanted to take another step in our investigation. I agreed.
At 11:30, Alex picked me up because my car still smelled like Raid. We headed over to Ed Jensen’s office at Desert, Inc. Ed greeted us promptly and we followed him down the hall to a corner office, where from his spacious corner office, he could stare out at his car, a baby blue Bentley, sporting vanity license plates that read, CALL ED.
Ed motioned for us to take seats. Ed followed suit, but when he sat down, his unbuttoned shirt spread wider, revealing a gold chain decked out with none other than a gold pig head . . . with devil horns. It wasn’t that I thought Ed was involved in some kind of devil worship, it’s just that the look he gave me at Cocka2’s was like that from a soul completely empty of humanity. Like emptiness staring you in the face. There was very little in life that scared me, but the look I got that afternoon still makes my blood run cold.
Of course, I wanted to be sure about Ed being the psycho drag queen. As Alex and he made small talk, I sized up Ed’s height, eyes, distance apart, his ears. No doubt about it—the two were one in the same.
I rejoined the conversation when Alex decided to drop the bomb.
“Ed, as you know, Amanda wants to clear her name, so we couldn’t help but notice that you’ve bought up a lot of land for a limited liability company in between the parcels Marvin Sultan has purchased.
“There’s no law against that,” Ed said as casually as if he had proclaimed that the sky was blue.
“We’re getting that from everyone we talk to,” Alex replied.
“Well, it’s true.”
I jumped in. “Ed, I knew you were at 2666 Boulder Drive the day of the murder.”
“I’ve already been over all that with the police.”
“But we’d appreciate it if you’d tell us what happened.”
Ed let out a sigh of exasperation. “The day before Doc died, your listing popped up on my phone, I have a client who wants to buy in Caliente Sands, so I was in my car, I drove over, went inside your house, looked around, and left. The end.”
“The listing popped up on your phone?”
“I have an e-mail notification when a property that matches my search criteria comes on the market.”
“So you didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when you went in the home?”
“No.”
“And you locked all the doors and windows when you left?”
“Of course. I double-checked.”
Seeing that we weren’t going to get anything more out of Ed concerning 2666 Boulder Drive, Alex took a different tack.
“Ed, you don’t happen to hold a grudge against Mary Dodge, do you?”
“No more than anyone else in this town.”
“So the fact that you’re buying up land in between the parcels Mary’s buying for Marvin Sultan—for much higher prices—has nothing to do with sticking it to Mary?”
“It’s just good business practice.”
“And very profitable for you,” Alex said.
“I don’t do what I do for charity.”
“You also bought some of the parcels for yourself. . . isn’t that right, Ed?”
Ed gestured toward his Bentley with a wave of his perfectly manicured hand. “That car isn’t going to pay for itself.”
“So if it turns out that Mary Dodge and Marvin are convicted on charges of murder, your land will skyrocket in value.”
“I didn’t consider that when I bought the parcels for myself—neither did my client. But now that the possibility has raised its head, I’m just thrilled,” Ed said with a malevolent smile, a smile as twisted as his total-dismemberment frown I received at Cocka2’s.
Alex tried one more angle. “Not that I don’t already know the answer to this question, but who do you think killed Doc?”
Ed smiled again, an awful smile. “Isn’t it obvious? Mary Dodge. She has the motive—money—and she has Marvin behind her to do her dirty work. She doesn’t even have to get her lily-white hands dirty.”
“Ed, let’s suppose Mary and Marvin croaked Doc. Aren’t you afraid that by the way you’re buying property up in the Cone, you could be next?”
“I’m not afraid of anything, Mr. Thorne. If I were, I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have in this business. Now, if you’ll excuse, me, I have some clients to call.”
And that was that. Alex and I went to a late lunch and discussed our brief meeting with Ed.
“Alex, remember the really spooky drag queen at Cocka2’s? The one that looked at me like Satan himself.”
“Amanda, there is no such thing as Satan. The only evil is what we as humans do to each other.”
“Okay, the drag queen that looked at me like a cold-blooded killer?”
“Yes, yes, I remember. You said he really shook you up.”
“Yes, well, that drag queen is Ed.”
“Nooo.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s wearing the same gold pig head around his neck.”
“Maybe it’s just coincidence.”
“Honey, I’ve seen all kinds of charms in my life, but I’ve never seen one like that. A pig head with devil horns. It’s pure evil.”
“Amanda, I hate to wreck your theory, but it probably means he’s a pig. He likes sloppy, dirty sex.”
Ever since Alex plucked me out of the coma I lived in before I met him, I’ve been exposed to a lot of things I never knew existed. But I felt that I was nowhere as naïve as Alex believed me to still be.
“Alex, I don’t know about that. A pig? With horns?”
“It took you two years to realize that eyehooks in the ceiling over a bed weren’t there for hanging plants.”
“I knew that they were there for leather slings. And give me some credit, Alex. A lot of people in America still don’t know that.”
“Or that men can put their fists up places where the sun don’t shine.”
“That one took a few pictures to make me believe it. I was sure they were using Photoshop.”
“The pig is most likely a signal to other guys that Mr. Ed likes sweaty, dirty, hot sex. And lots of it.”
“But he drives a Bentley!”
“Amanda, sluts drive expensive cars. In fact, that’s how most sluts end up owning them: because they put out. And bes
ides, I seem to remember fucking you in a Rolls in the English countryside years ago.”
“Oh, right. Moving on. Alex, none of this matters. We’re getting sidetracked from the main point here.”
“Don’t blame me, you brought up the fisting part.”
“Let’s get back to the point. Ed is a drag queen. The landscapers said they saw a woman in a red dress entering Boulder Drive.”
Alex looked at me as if I was crazy, brilliant, or both.
“That’s crazy.”
“Not so crazy. Who in their right mind is going to suspect that the woman seen going into Boulder Drive was, in fact, a man?”
“Crazy.”
“No, think of it, Alex. The landscapers were mostly Hispanic. They don’t have the cultural exposure to drag like some Americans do. They probably wouldn’t even consider it. Plus, they were far enough away, no one could probably tell.”
“Amanda, I have to hand it to you. It’s a wild theory, but it’s possible. In fact, if it’s true, it’s brilliant. Ed implicates Mary Dodge with her red dress and he gets off scot-free—and rich in the process.”
“Alex, do you still have that recording of when you talked to the landscapers?”
“Yes, it’s still on my smartphone.”
“I think we need to get it translated. Roberto can translate . . . and I think I could use a little touch-up.”
Two hours later, we were at Roberto’s hair salon. Roberto, who had never met Alex before, was smitten with Alex from the moment we walked in. It was difficult trying to keep Roberto’s mind on the recording and off Alex’s crotch. Alex, sensing this, played only one sentence at a time. I wrote down the translation.
“Dees part, he say ‘. . . it was a woman, red dress, she walk very sexy, she have red hat, big red hat. She carry box into house when she go in. She carry box out about an hour later.’ ”
We could then hear Alex asking what kind of car she drove up in. You could hear several men’s voices wavering in their answers, racking their brains. Then came the answer we were all waiting for: “. . . she drive up in square car . . . no, truck . . . like truck . . .” Then another voice correcting the man speaking, “SUV. Square and boxy . . . silver,” Roberto translated. “Like toaster. I think he ees saying a Mercedes.”
“Bingo,” Alex said triumphantly. “A G-class. Exactly the kind that Mary Dodge drives.”
“Maybe it was just the other SUV,” I suggested. “The more rounded one.”
“I believe it was the G-class. Like Mary’s.”
“I’ve got an idea, Alex. Let me make a quick call,” I said, while Roberto hyperventilated near Alex. I dialed, then waited for an answer.
“Good afternoon, Desert, Inc.”
“This is Amanda Thorne, I was just there visiting Ed Jensen and I think I scratched a car there. It might have been Ed’s . . . you know the Mercedes SUV. In silver.”
“Ed only drives a Bentley. And no one here has a silver Mercedes SUV,” came the receptionist’s reply.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? One of those G-class Mercedes. The boxy ones.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” came the slightly acerbic reply. “They cost over $100,000. Believe me, I can see every car that comes in this lot, and I haven’t seen one of them in a long time. You might try Mary Dodge over at Dodge & Dodge . . . she drives one . . . in silver.”
I thanked the receptionist and hung up.
“Well,” I said, “Ed doesn’t have a G-class. So I guess he’s out.”
“Why would you say that?” Alex replied. He obviously had another angle I hadn’t considered. “He could’ve rented one. We need to check that out. Amanda, can you get on the phone and call all the rental car places in town?”
So instead of working like a good Realtor, I finished getting my hair spruced up and headed into the office, where I spent an hour or two calling every car rental place in the Coachella Valley. I found plenty, but the companies sensibly refused to give me the confidential information I needed. I gave Alex a call, who was out landing another listing for the two of us.
“There are dozens of companies that rent Mercedes G-class SUVs.”
“And they wouldn’t tell you if Ed Jensen rented one lately?”
“Right you are. So that was a dead end.”
“Not necessarily, Amanda. At least we know the killer probably drove a G-class. In silver. I wouldn’t call that a waste of time. And Mary does drive one . . . in silver.”
“It looks like all the signs are still pointing toward Mary Dodge.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“It seems so obvious.”
“I imagine most crimes are just that: obvious. It’s probably just a matter of gathering enough evidence to convict. You can’t nail someone with innuendo.”
“And in-you-endo, as we all know, is Italian for sodomy.”
“Who told you that one? Your mother?”
“The Pope, I think. He was drunk at the time. Threw up all over the Sistine Chapel.”
Alex’s face lit up. “I’ve got it. Ed Jensen did drive the murder car. But he didn’t rent one.”
“I suppose he broke into Mary Dodge’s home, found her purse, got her keys, opened her garage door and her ten-foot gate, drove off with her car, killed Doc, and returned the car before Mary sobered up.”
“Nope, but he did, indeed, drive a silver Mercedes G-class.”
“But you said he didn’t rent one.”
“I did, because renting one would leave a trail of a credit card, a driver’s license.”
“Alex, maybe Ed had a boyfriend who did the renting.”
“Nope, Ed has no boyfriend because no one can stand him.”
“Good point,” I replied. “But you did say he drove a silver G-class.”
“I did.”
“But how? C’mon, Alex, spill it.”
“He drove a client’s car.”
“Brilliant, Alex.”
“Yeah, it came to me when I was thinking about banging my knee in our listing over on Mirada Drive. You know, the Simons’ house.”
“Oh, I get it. They’re gone all summer and into the fall, and they leave their expensive cars in the garage the whole time. Ed’s clients wouldn’t know if he took their car out for a spin . . . unless they wrote down their odometer reading, which I doubt.”
“Exactly.”
“So, Alex, I guess Ed is still a suspect.”
“Correct.”
“Well, good . . . I think. I wouldn’t want this to be too easy.”
CHAPTER 21
Amanda and Regina Take a Field Trip
The next day, after getting back from an early-morning ride of thirty miles on my bicycle, Regina invited me over for cocktails. It was 10:30. Okay, so it was a little early.
“Regina, I don’t know what to do,” I said with not just a little exasperation. “We’ve searched high and low, but we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. We’ve been searching low.”
“Low, I didn’t think my life would get any lower until now.”
Regina looked at me with more than a little pity. “What I mean is, we need to search high . . . as in the high desert. Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Pioneertown.”
“You think?”
Regina smiled the smile of the Cheshire cat. “I think we’ll find out a lot more about Doc than we’re finding here in Palm Springs. Let’s go. If we start now, we can maybe catch an act at Pappy and Harriet’s Palace.”
And so we went.
Regina and I made a quick clothes change into something less citified, then took Highway 62 up to the high desert. Winding our way up the long hill past Al Capone’s old hideout in Morongo Valley and leveling out in Yucca Valley, Regina and I shared our plan of attack.
“I think our first stop should be the Institute of Mentalphysics in Joshua Tree,” Regina explai
ned. “Doc was into all this stuff. Plus, you can get a look at a few of the buildings. Much of the center was built by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. From what I know, Frank was supposed to design and build it, but he quarreled so much with the founder of the institute, Edwin Dingle, Frank wouldn’t put his name on it. But no matter how much of the design is due to Frank or his son, Frank’s signature is all over the place. You’ve never been there?”
“No, but it sounds fascinating.”
“Now, remember, these people take this stuff very seriously, so we can’t go making fun of these people.”
“I think the plate just got called Ming by the vase.”
“Amanda, are you implying that I can’t hold my tongue?”
“You can hold it, but you can also kill a person with one blow of it.”
We crested the hill from the Morongo basin and slipped down the hill into Yucca Valley. People from the lower desert sometimes called it Yukky Valley since it didn’t have the cosmopolitan air of Palm Springs, but it had its own kind of charm. If you could peer beyond the Walmart and Applebee’s restaurant, you could see that Yucca Valley had the soul of a little western town. This soul is what attracted many New Age practitioners to the high desert. Low prices, wide-open spaces, cooler days and nights than in Palm Springs all contributed to a sizable population of people seeking spiritual fulfillment in any shape or form. We passed through Yucca Valley into Joshua Tree, the landscape changing little with the exception of the complete disappearance of commercial buildings lining the sides of the road.
“See those buildings up there on the left? Pull in there,” Regina pointed.
We wound our way through a sizable parking lot that was mainly empty and pulled up to the office and gift shop. (What could you sell at a spiritual meditation center? Earplugs? Lotus blossoms?) We went inside and met the manager, a woman who introduced herself as Ohm-Ra. Regina explained our situation.
“I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you. Doc came here from time to time.”
“Did he ever come here with anyone else? Like a woman?” I inquired.
“No, never. Doc was very much a loner.”
“So he came here to meditate by himself?”
