Cover Your Assets

by Patricia Smiley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Patricia Smiley

  All rights reserved.

  Mysterious Press

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group, USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

  First Edition: November 2005

  ISBN: 978-0-446-50975-6

  Contents

  also by Patricia Smiley

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  also by Patricia Smiley

  False Profits

  For William Solberg, my hero . . .

  Acknowledgments

  I WISH TO THANK the following people for their help and support in the writing of this book: Elizabeth George, Patricia Fogarty, Barbara Fryer, Steve Long, Elaine Medosch, Reg Park, Tim Polmanteer, and T. M. Raymond. I also thank Michael Barich and Martin Waine, PhD, for helping me better understand the anatomy of utility poles. If I got anything wrong, it was certainly no fault of theirs. Many thanks to my agent, Scott Miller of Trident Media Group, and my editor, Kristen Weber, for shepherding me through the process with insight, enthusiasm, and aplomb.

  -1-

  if life allows us only one great passion, Evan Brice was mine. I met him in a poetry class my junior year at UCLA. He was slumped in the seat in front of me, wearing an oversize black tuxedo jacket that hung on his bony shoulders like a bad prom rental. Definitely not my type: delicate hands, pasty skin, and a crumpled posture that made him seem frail.

  At the time, I was working thirty hours a week scraping sticky-bun goop off the floor of a local bakery in order to earn money for tuition. I didn’t have time for men, and I wouldn’t have given Evan a second look if, at the moment I took the seat behind him, a ray of light from a nearby window hadn’t set ablaze the red highlights in his shoulder-length brown hair. My first question had been, why didn’t my hair look that shiny? Then I noticed that his was a rat’s nest, and that led to my second question: why the good-hair, bad-hair dichotomy?

  I constructed then debunked several theories about it during a boring discussion of John Brown’s Body, including the possibility that he’d actually paid big bucks to some Beverly Hills celebrity stylist to create that do. Toward the end of class I surprised myself by reaching out to untangle a few of the snarls with my fingers. He turned slowly to blink at me with penetrating blue eyes. Then a quirky smile warmed his face. He leaned back compliantly, letting his hair cascade over the back of the chair as if he were at some beauty-salon shampoo bowl.

  Later I’d learned that Evan wanted to be a poet. It wasn’t hard to imagine him living in a Greenwich Village loft, scrounging through ashtrays for half-smoked cigarettes and writing tortured poems about his tormented past, except that he didn’t have a tormented past, at least not back then. Evan was an Eagle Scout from an upscale neighborhood in West Los Angeles, the adored only child of parents who were a 1950s cliché. His background was an embarrassment to him, and he tried in increasingly dangerous ways to atone for his good fortune.

  As it turned out, Evan was no Sylvia Plath. He wrote appallingly bad poetry that never seemed to improve even with the amazingly good drugs he took in search of his muse. The drugs made him anxious and unpredictable, which I interpreted as high-spirited and spontaneous, because back then I was convinced that anyone who could love me deserved concessions.

  And Evan did love me. In fact, he loved everything about me, including my name, Tucker Sinclair. He told me it delighted his tongue like a vintage Bordeaux. I’d never tasted vintage Bordeaux, but I was content to take his word for it. He also loved the idea that my father died before I was born, making me half an orphan, and that I’d been raised by a working-actor mom who wasn’t always working and whose professional name was Pookie Kravitz. Most of all, he loved the fact that I’d never lived in a house. To Evan, my life up until then had been an ideal blend of pathos and poverty. Simply stated, it had the perfect cachet for the girlfriend of a struggling poet.

  I loved Evan because he carried spiders out of the house alive, cradled in a tissue. Despite all that neo-bohemian crap, I sensed his gentleness and inner turmoil. I thought him incapable of hurting anyone except perhaps himself, but I was wrong. In the winter of our senior year, shortly after he’d asked me to marry him, Evan dumped me in a way that proved he was more than capable of inflicting pain.

  For months his betrayal rubbed like a burr against every cell, but even the worst breakups are survivable. I’d gone on to complete my BA and then my MBA. I’d eventually married, divorced, and earned a degree of success as a business consultant with a reputation for inventiveness. Sporadically I’d hear about Evan through mutual friends. Hear that in the same ten years he’d gone on to become famous, not as a poet, but as a Hollywood agent hawking the dubious talents of supermodels who wanted to be superstars. Sometimes I’d read articles in entertainment magazines about some mega deal he’d done with the head of Paramount or Sony or Disney, or see pictures of him posing at the Cannes Film Festival or walking the red carpet at the premier of the latest blockbuster movie.

  Occasionally I’d also hear darker rumors about parties, and punch bowls brimming with cocaine, but that was no longer my concern. My memories of Evan Brice still triggered a lot of what-ifs, even though I’d long since given up my one great passion theory. I never expected to see him again, but I had. Unfortunately, our brief reunion hadn’t prepared me for the appearance of a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective on the doorstep of my Zuma Beach cottage one sunny March morning two weeks later, telling me that Evan Brice had been found stabbed to death in a seedy Venice Beach apartment.

  I WAS WORKING at home that morning, just as I had every morning for the past four months, ever since leaving my position as senior manager on the fast track to partner at Aames & Associates, a big downtown L.A. management consulting firm. I had loved my job and thought I’d be with the firm forever, until one of my clients was murdered and I suddenly found myself in very deep doo-doo. The firm’s senior partners hadn’t exactly supported me through the ordeal. My mother claims it was because they weren’t operating at the highest level of their vibrations. She and I didn’t always agree, but this time her assessment was right on.

  By the time I got myself out of a potentially lethal jam, I’d found that climbing the career ladder at Aames & Associates had lost its allure. I resigned and started my own management consulting firm. I call it Sinclair and Associates, even though at the moment the Associates part is just wishful thinking.

  I may have quit my job, but I hadn’t severed all ties with the firm. I still had friends working there, including fe
llow consultant Venus Corday and my former administrative assistant, Eugene Barstok. Venus and I get together when the mood strikes us, but Eugene calls me at least two or three times a week. He considers it his personal responsibility to keep me posted on the behind-the-scenes politicking and backstabbing at Aames & Associates. It’s gossip, but I love to hear him spin the details.

  I was laboring over a project for Marvin Geyer, the owner of a small family-owned business that sold women’s apparel by mail order. Sales were dropping faster than G-strings at a strip club, and he wanted to know why. The answer became apparent the moment I opened the catalog. It was full of merchandise that should have died a natural death back in the 1970s. Occasionally fashions get recycled, but I suspected that muumuus were down for the count.

  I urged Mr. Geyer to consider updating the line, but he demurred. As a compromise, he agreed to test the market via a focus group, which I was organizing for him. I’d already mailed the invitations and was now in the process of selecting items from the catalog to parade in front of the group. I hoped that when Geyer heard the collective gagging of twenty impartial fashion mavens, it would sway him to my point of view.

  As usual, I dressed for the day in old Levi’s frayed at the knees, my favorite green flannel shirt, and a pair of wool slippers I wear for warmth against the damp morning fog even though they make my feet look like Old English sheepdogs. I may have run my fingers through my hair before starting the day, but I doubt I’d bothered with makeup. I do remember I was alone when the LAPD detective arrived. My mother, her boyfriend, and her West Highland white terrier, Muldoon, had already left for the day.

  The detective didn’t call in advance. He simply materialized at my door, clutching a slim black briefcase. He was a black man in his late thirties with a military bearing and bowed legs that disrupted the well-tended creases in his trousers. When he asked if he could talk to me about Evan, I could tell by the look on his face that whatever he had to tell me wasn’t going to be good news. I checked his identification and ushered Detective Moses Green to a folding chair in the little alcove just off my living room that I use as a home office. I sat behind my desk, using it as a barrier between me and any bad news.

  The room was awash in sunlight from the naked window. The brightness served to accentuate the craggy furrows Green had worried into his dark forehead. It also highlighted his large brown eyes, which were several shades darker than mine. Framing those eyes were ultralong lashes that reminded me of a llama’s.

  I’d already imagined the worst, so when Green told me Evan had been found murdered in the kitchen of that Venice apartment, I didn’t cry. I didn’t know what to feel. Shock? Anger? Mostly I felt numb. I stared at the large ruby stone on the detective’s class ring and imagined Evan’s blood seeping slowly from his body in ever-widening crimson circles.

  Green must have watched this scene play out many times before, but it hadn’t dulled his humanity. He didn’t exactly apply cold compresses or call 911, but he was respectful enough to leave space for my grief. Still, I wasn’t naive enough to think that an LAPD homicide detective had come to hold my hand while I grieved for an old boyfriend. I suspected he was sitting on my folding chair for one reason: He knew I’d recently been in touch with Evan, and wanted to hear what, if anything, I could tell him about his death.

  When he finally spoke again, his tone was polite. “Mrs. Brice said the three of you were friends in college, that you and her husband dated for a while.”

  I tensed, wondering what else Cissy Brice had told him. Not the whole story, I was sure. I didn’t want to get into that at the moment, so I just nodded. Then I changed the subject.

  “Who killed him?”

  “We don’t know yet. He was stabbed multiple times with a knife from the kitchen. Somebody was obviously pretty angry with Mr. Brice, but they may not have come specifically to kill him. There was no forced entry, no ransacking, so it probably wasn’t a burglary. We’re interviewing neighbors to see if he had any visitors prior to his death. In the meantime, the coroner’s investigator is sorting through fingerprints and blood samples. That’s going to take a while. I hear the victim liked to party. A lot of people went in and out of that place, and it doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned in a while.”

  “Are you saying the apartment belonged to Evan?”

  He nodded. “A rental. He used an alias on the contract, which raised a few red flags with us. There’s a lot of gang-related drug activity in the neighborhood. Since the victim was a user, we’re looking into a possible connection.”

  “You think he was dealing drugs from the place?”

  “At this point, anything is possible.”

  Green balanced the briefcase on his knees and opened the lid. He pulled out a piece of paper in a see-through bag. “We found this at the crime scene. I’m hoping you can tell me what it means.”

  From my vantage point, the words on the page formed the shape of my grandma Felder’s old sugar bowl, the one she got free from the Shell station for filling her Buick with gas. Even from a distance and even after all those years, I could tell that the handwriting was Evan’s. My breath felt labored as I silently read the words:

  To Tucker With Love and Regret

  Dark warm room warning, warning

  No, no, no, maybe, yes, oh baby

  Springs groan, passion’s screams

  Make love not war she pleads

  Sword slides into scabbard

  A perfect fit it seems

  Till morning comes

  And questions

  Far too late

  For us

  Red rose. Dead rose.

  True love. Cruel myth.

  I felt strangely embarrassed, wishing for Evan’s sake and maybe for my own that the poem at least had been better. My gaze traveled from the paper to Green’s face. I sensed him analyzing my every facial twitch and gesture. It made me anxious. I assumed he wanted it that way. Cops have an instinct for making even the innocent feel guilty.

  “I’m not exactly Robert Frost, ma’am,” he said, “but it sounds like Mr. Brice still had a thing for you.”

  “There was nothing between Evan and me but history,” I said, knowing that the truth was much more complicated than that. “Last time I saw him, he told me he was in a drug recovery program. He felt sorry about our breakup back in college. He wanted to make amends for hurting me all those years ago. Maybe that’s why he wrote the poem.”

  Green looked away briefly. Something about the broken eye contact made me wonder if he understood that kind of regret as well.

  “Tell me about that last time,” he said.

  I explained that I’d gone with my mother to an agents’ panel at the Screen Actors Guild. Evan had been one of the speakers. At the end of the evening he asked me out for coffee. I hesitated at first, but saying no to him had never been easy for me.

  “How many times did you two get together?” he asked.

  “Just that once. After that, we e-mailed each other and talked on the phone a few times.”

  “Mr. Brice must have had a lot of apologizing to do.”

  I searched Green’s face for the snide look that matched the comment, but found only a neutral stare softened by the sweep of his dense eyelashes.

  I gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept the defensiveness out of my tone. “We talked about other things, too, like work and all the fragile egos he had to manage. I let him unload. That’s what friends do.”

  “Did he mention anybody he was having a problem with?”

  “Not by name.”

  Green nodded. Then he shifted in his chair to look outside. Something near the shoreline had caught his attention, but I couldn’t tell what.

  “He ever talk about troubles in his marriage?”

  I’d been peering over his shoulder to see what he was looking at, but the feigned casualness of his question wrenched me back into the room and put me on guard. I was obligated to tell Green what I knew, of course, but I felt shitty ab
out that because it was only Evan’s side of the story, and neither he nor Cissy had a perfect score with the truth.

  “He told me there were problems,” I said.

  Green furrowed his brow in irritation when I waited for his “What kind of problems?” prompt. Nevertheless, he listened attentively as I related what seemed to me like the bad relationship cliché: Evan and Cissy had grown apart, had disagreed on everything from money management to child rearing. Evan worried that their constant bickering would damage the psyche of their seven-year-old daughter, Dara.

  “When was the last time you heard from Mr. Brice?” Green asked.

  “Sunday night. He called around midnight, but I let the machine pick up.”

  “Did you call him back?”

  Guilty heat prickled my chest, making me feel trapped beneath my flannel shirt. I didn’t want to admit that Sunday had been a bad day for me and I hadn’t been in the mood to play any man’s psychotherapist.

  “No.”

  Green nodded solemnly. “Don’t blame yourself, ma’am. Even if you had called him back, it wouldn’t have mattered. A couple hours later, he’d have still been dead.”

  It’s strange how guilt compounds when someone tries to take it from you. Until that moment I hadn’t known the time of Evan’s death. Now I felt sick wondering if that call to me had been his last.

  “Did Mr. Brice indicate in his message that he and his wife had a blowup that morning? That she accused him of having an affair?”

  I wondered where Green had gotten his information and whether Cissy’s accusations were true. I hoped not. Evan hadn’t given me any reason to suspect he was cheating on his wife, but I had to admit I was probably the last person he’d confide in about that.

  “No,” I said. “He sounded tired, and his nose was stuffy like he had a cold. He rambled for a while. Then he asked me to call him back.”

  Green picked up the poem and studied it. “Mrs. Brice seemed pretty upset when she read this.”