by Josh Lanyon
“It means that it all went down half a century ago. Our resources are limited. CCHU has six detectives trying to choose among eight thousand unsolved homicides dating all the way back to 1960.”
I groused, “You’d think they could move the cutoff to permit one case from 1959. Couldn’t they temporarily add an extra detective or two?” Granted, if the extra detective was going to be Alonzo, I’d be just as happy if they let it go.
“The focus has to remain on clearing up current caseloads that not only stand a better chance of being solved but have citizens pushing for resolution. No grieving family member is begging us to find Stevens’s killer. No one is begging us to give them closure.”
Our. Us.
Once a cop, always a cop, I guessed.
“I’m begging,” I said.
He looked at me and grinned. “You never begged in your life.”
“I suppose you have?”
An odd expression flickered in his eyes, a sudden recognition of something in the distance — or the past. “I begged for something once.”
To be straight? That would be about right. Or did he mean it in sexual context I didn’t want to know anything about?
I said drily, “And did you get what you begged for?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded funny. “I did.”
I glanced at him. There was nothing to read on his face. Same handsome, unforgiving profile.
I changed the subject. “Have they confirmed that the skeleton belongs to Jay Stevens?”
“It’s not a rock-solid ID. We don’t have any family members to match the remaining DNA to, but Stevens’s fingerprints were all over the suitcase the skeleton was walled up with. The suitcase and the clarinet inside.”
“Stevens’s fingerprints are on file?”
“Oh yeah. Once for possession of marijuana and once for theft.” I could tell by the satisfaction in Jake’s voice that there was more.
“He doesn’t exactly sound like a master criminal.”
“I’ll let Argyle fill you in.”
Yep, he sounded way too pleased with himself.
I said, “What I don’t get is, why now? Why, after all these years, is someone looking for whatever it is they’re looking for in that building?”
“You tell me.”
I thought about it. “Because whatever it is will either be found during the renovation or be lost forever.”
“That’s my guess.”
We made good time on the 101 and got off on Highway 33. At Lake Casitas, we stopped so I could stretch my legs. We strolled down to the small store and bought bottles of water and ice-cream bars. We ate the ice cream, watching the boats on the lake.
Maybe it was the perfect combination of fresh air, sunshine, and ice cream that gave me that rare sense of well-being. Or maybe it was Jake’s standing beside me eating an Eskimo Pie with complete sangfroid that brought a grin to my face.
He raised his brows. “Something funny?”
I balled my wrapper and tossed it into the nearby trash. “Nope.”
He considered this, but what he said was, “Your hair is the longest I’ve ever seen it.” His fingers brushed the strands curling behind my ear — a feathery touch that I felt to the roots.
“Is it? I guess it is.” I rubbed my jaw. “But I shaved for you.”
“True. You looked pretty disreputable the other night.” He added, “Sexy, though.”
Yeah, right. Shaggy and half-naked and skeletal. He obviously thought I needed cheering up. I said ruefully, “You just liked the leather jacket.”
There was a glint in Jake’s eye as he replied, “I did like the leather jacket. Yeah.”
* * * * *
Nick Argyle lived on a small horse ranch in the golden hills of Ojai horse country.
We followed a dirt road a few miles until we came to the front drive. The main house was set well back in shady oak trees. A dog was barking from somewhere behind the house as we parked and walked down to the barn. The pungent smell of horse reached us before we spotted Argyle in the entrance of the twelve-stall breezeway barn. When we reached him, he was talking to a ranch hand about adding warm water to the feed for senior horses.
Argyle was tall, lean, weathered. He wore Western boots and a straw Stetson, wore them like his own skin. This was no weekend cowboy. His eyes were that shade of blue that was often mistaken for gray. He’d have been a very handsome man and still had great bone structure. He moved well, seemed vigorous, although I figured him for midseventies. Jake was right; I hoped I’d be half as spry at that age. Funny to think that I actually had a shot at it now.
Argyle shook hands with Jake, eyed him with that keen, steady gaze, and seemed to like what he saw. He kind of reminded me of Jake, in fact. Jake introduced us, and I received that same keen, steady appraisal.
Argyle’s face didn’t quite fall. He directed an old-fashioned look Jake’s way. He was cordial enough, though.
“So I hear the bad penny finally turned up. You want to know about Jay Stevens?”
We walked out to the corrals, which smelled of horse and hay, where a young woman in jeans and a cowboy hat stood in a round arena, taking an Appaloosa mare through its paces on a lunge line. Argyle observed for a few seconds and called out, “She’s starting to rely on the fence, Francine.”
The woman nodded and cracked the lunge whip.
Argyle turned back to us. “Jay Stevens. My God. That was a hell of a long time ago.”
“Fifty years,” Jake agreed as Argyle shook his head in disbelief. “You were the investigating officer?”
Argyle raised an eyebrow at Jake. “Investigating officer? You could say that, I guess. I tried to nail that bastard for nearly two years.”
I asked, “Nail him for what?”
“Theft. Burglary. Stevens was a high-class cat burglar.” He gave a bark of a laugh at my expression. “From the time he and the kid sister arrived here from…New Haven, I think it was? Someplace in Connecticut. Over an eighteen-month period, Stevens pulled off a series of upscale burglaries in Bel Air, Brentwood, and Beverly Hills. Oh, I knew he was our boy. Proving it was something else. I tried. Jesus, I tried to catch the bastard red-handed.”
“So the musician gig was only part-time?”
“Isn’t it always? They — he and his band — played a couple times a week at Dan Hale’s place.”
“Dan Hale?” Jake repeated alertly.
Argyle gave another of those bitten-off laughs. “Name rings a bell, does it? I bet. You’re right. Hale had a few ties to the old LA mob. He wasn’t a bad guy, really. Very personable. It just happened that he’d do anything to hang on to that club.” He added, “He’s still around, you know. Hale, I mean. Lives in Santa Barbara, last I heard.”
“Hale owned the Tides club where Stevens and the Moonglows used to play?”
“That’s right. The club was in financial difficulty by fifty-nine. It was all Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. Rock and roll. Nobody wanted to hear the kind of music they played at Hale’s place.”
I remembered the discussions and articles I’d skimmed. “Swing?”
“Yeah. Jazz, but not that stuff with no melody. The Moonglows, well, all the bands at the Tides, played the old stuff — Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller — but that music was falling out of fashion by the late fifties.” He broke off to yell more instructions to the girl using the lunge line.
“Francine, do not change your aim to suit the horse. The horse has gotta change her ways to suit your aim.”
Francine, looking harassed, straightened her hat and nodded.
“How’d you come to focus on Stevens?” Jake asked.
“You’ll know what I mean when I say LA wasn’t quite so big a town in 1959. Not like it is now. I was working robbery-homicide in those days, and I noticed a pattern to a series of cat burglaries occurring in the west side. That pattern matched a series of expertly executed burglaries in places Jay Stevens and the Moonglows had spent time.”
“What first d
rew your attention to Stevens?”
“A hunch mostly.” Argyle’s smile was more of a grimace. “I hate to admit that, though it’s the truth. The burglaries always occurred on the nights Stevens didn’t play, and a large percentage of the victims were patrons of the Tides.”
I wasn’t sure if that answered Jake’s question or not — something must have first caught Argyle’s attention in order for him to notice the pattern.
I was starting to feel the heat by then. I wiped my forehead. There were a couple of scrub oaks near a water trough and a skinny bar of shade cast by the fence. Otherwise there was no shelter from the blazing sun overhead. Slowly but surely I became more and more aware of the harsh light shimmering off the dirt and bouncing off the whitewashed sheds and buildings.
All at once, the ground seemed to slide out from under me, and I reached for the fence. At the same instant, Jake slipped an unobtrusive, steadying hand beneath my elbow.
The world stabilized.
“You mind if we talk in the shade?” Jake asked. “Adrien’s still recuperating from surgery.”
I didn’t know what Argyle made of that. He gave me a narrow look. “You do look a little peaked, son.”
I wiped my face on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind sitting down.”
“Sure, why don’t we go inside,” he agreed. “It’s cooler there.” He called out a final word to Francine and led the way back to the house.
“Okay?” Jake asked in an undervoice as we followed. His hand was a warm weight at the base of my spine. Prepared to scoop me off the path if necessary, I suppose. There was a time when he’d have viewed touching me in public in the same light as exposing himself.
I nodded. “I felt…off for a second. It’s the heat.”
“It’s hot as hell,” Argyle agreed without glancing back.
We trooped up the road into the comfortable ranch house. It had that trademark sixties architecture. A sunken living area opened onto a spacious main room with an impressive view of the mountains. At one end of the room was a massive raw-stone fireplace. At the other were an equally impressive gun case and a wall studded with hunting trophies, including a buffalo’s head.
There were no pictures and surprisingly few photos. A couple of old-fashioned framed portraits of a married couple circa 1920, a couple of photos of Argyle receiving commendations or promotions, and that was about it.
“Have a seat,” Argyle invited, and I was only too grateful to accept.
I leaned back on the long leather- and brass-studded couch and closed my eyes. The cool was a relief. So was sitting down.
“He okay?” Argyle asked.
“Maybe a glass of water,” Jake suggested.
I heard footsteps retreating.
Please let me be okay. Please don’t let this be anything. Why can’t I be all right? It made me angry to even ask. It had been years — childhood — since I’d hoped. Or feared.
Jake asked quietly, “Do you need to take something?”
I moved my head in slight negation.
He picked up my wrist, and I jerked my hand away, opening my eyes and glaring at him. “I’m all right.”
He nodded curtly.
I closed my eyes again. I wasn’t angry with Jake. It was simply…
In fact, I was conscious of the familiar, comfortable scent of him. Deodorant soap and Le Male aftershave. Abruptly I remembered those minutes on the Pirate’s Gambit when he’d put his arm around me. I almost wished he’d put his arm around me now.
Argyle returned, and I opened my eyes, sat up, and took the glass of water. I drank while they both observed, as though waiting for Dr. Hyde to make an appearance.
I really did feel mostly all right again. Too hot and too tired, and it was way past my naptime. No wonder I was cranky. I glanced at Jake. He was sitting close to me. Probably too close. I saw Argyle take that in, and I remembered a line from The Long Goodbye. “Patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops’ eyes.” Jake had those eyes too, though he wasn’t looking at me that way now.
I couldn’t deal with the feeling in his eyes.
To Argyle, I said, “Do you think Stevens was killed because of his criminal activities?”
“It occurred to me.” He shrugged. “It seems the most likely explanation.”
Jake asked, “Who did you think was responsible for Stevens’s disappearance?”
“Well, to be entirely honest, I was never sure Stevens didn’t skip town. He was pretty much a rolling stone, and I admit I’d made things pretty hot for him in the City of Angels. I’d told him I’d see him behind bars sooner or later. I guess I thought he took me at my word and split.” His smile was rueful.
“Knowing what you know now?”
Argyle looked reflective. “Fifty years is a long time. My best guess would be he had a falling-out with a partner. Or his fence — whoever that was. I never did know.”
“Did he have a partner?”
“The girl. His sister. Jinx, her name was. I’m pretty sure she was his accomplice. But there’s no way she was involved in his murder. She idolized him.”
Argyle’s determination to see Stevens behind bars didn’t seem to have extended to the kid sister. That seemed revealing. Maybe he’d had a soft spot for her, or maybe she was too small a fish to bother with. Stevens had apparently been the driving force.
“Did you ever hear of a guy named Henry Harrison?”
His brow wrinkled as he thought. Reluctantly, he shook his head. “It’s not an uncommon name. Is he connected with Stevens’s disappearance?”
“We don’t know. It’s probably not even his real name.”
There was a click of nails on the hardwood floor, and a nervous black and tan German shepherd bitch, teats hanging low, came over to check us out. She gave Jake and then me a quick, thorough sniffing over.
“All right, Gerda. All right.”
Gerda thrust her head beneath my hand, and I stroked her head. “Hello, Gerda.”
“She’s a beauty,” Jake said, and Gerda flicked her ears in acknowledgment, although I seemed to have won her affections. Maybe she preferred my aftershave. Maybe she sensed I might soon be doggy food.
“You happen to be in the market for a German shepherd?” Argyle inquired. “Gerda has a litter of eight looking for good homes. Five boys and three girls.”
“Me? No. I don’t have any kind of a yard.” I looked at Jake, remembering that he’d lost Rufus, his own shepherd, a year ago.
“I may be moving.”
My stomach flopped. “What? Where?”
He gave me an unfathomable look. “I’ve got a couple of options.”
I turned back to Gerda, who was panting affectionately into my face. So he was going to have to sell the house. I’d been afraid of that. He’d had that house in Glendale a long time. Would he have to take an apartment somewhere? Or would he rent another, smaller house? What were his finances like?
Probably not my business. Certainly not my problem. I couldn’t help worrying.
Argyle glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Boys, as much as I enjoy talking over old times, I’ve got the vet due any minute. Any other questions for me?”
I asked at random, “Did you like Stevens?”
Argyle appeared surprised. He narrowed his eyes, reviewing those long-ago memories. “In a funny way, I did. We were adversaries, you understand. He didn’t seem to mind that. I, on the other hand, took it all pretty seriously.” His smile was tinged with acid. “I think it sort of amused him. The thing about cat burglars is, they’re thrill seekers. They enter the residence while the victim is home — sometimes while the victim is wide awake and moving about. Cat burglars are risk takers. That makes them dangerous in my book. But Stevens was…engaging. Charming. And a very good musician. He had a way of playing that clarinet.” He shook his head. “There was a song they used to do, him and the girl. ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye.’ You know that song?”
“I know that song. Cole Porter.”
H
is smile was twisted. “It’s a shame it ended up the way it did. I wish he had skipped town.”
That was it. He rose, asking if we wanted to see the puppies. I thought that was a very bad idea. Jake did the socially correct thing and said yes. We walked out behind the house, and there were several German shepherd puppies in a pen in the shade, rolling over and playing with each other.
“How old are they?”
“Seven weeks. Old enough. I’ve started giving them away.”
“They’re pretty cute,” I admitted.
“I don’t have the papers on them, but they’re purebred. The sire is a black sable from down the road. Ex-bomb-detection dog. Son of a bitch got hold of Gerda one night.”
A fat, sleek puppy with a black and reddish coat finished beating up his sisters and waddled over to look up at me with shiny button eyes, pink tongue lolling like he was laughing.
“Yeah, you’re a little reprobate.”
He jumped up and put his paws — big paws — on the chicken-wire fence.
“He likes you,” Argyle remarked.
“You say that to all the suckers.”
“Sure,” he agreed genially, adding, “You can pick him up.”
“That would be a very bad idea.”
Argyle laughed.
I said to Jake, catching a peculiar expression on his face, “We ought to get going.”
He nodded. We thanked Argyle again. As we walked away, the puppy barked a high-pitched, stuffed-toy bark after us.
“That was informative,” Jake commented with satisfaction as the ranch grew small in the distance of the rearview mirror.
“Yes.”
“I meant to ask if he had an address on Hale. I’ll follow up with him this evening.”
I stared out at the sea swell of gold weeds rippling in the summer wind. It looked like wheat. What was it called? Tare? Darnel? Proverbs, was it? Some lesson about learning to tell the real thing from the false, separating the chaff.
“Tired?” he asked at last.
“I didn’t realize you were thinking of moving.”
He said neutrally, “Nothing’s decided, but I either have to buy out Kate’s share of the house or sell, and at this point, selling is the more realistic option.”
“If you do sell…?”
