Cover Your Assets

by Patricia Smiley

  Just inside to the right were several matching chairs and a small round table dolled up with a bouquet of faded plastic flowers. To the left, in what was originally meant as the living room, were two beauty operator stations, each with its own sink and styling chair.

  There were two women in the place. One sat under a hair dryer, reading La Opinión. The newspaper obscured her face, but the spider veins on her legs told me she was too old to be Monique Ruiz. The other was standing in the kitchen, eating what looked like a chile relleno. Estela Sandoval, I assumed. It was difficult to determine her age, but I guessed late forties. Lush brown hair tinged with auburn highlights crouched in springy curls around her shoulders. The sheen on her flawless skin looked more oily than dewy. At least two hundred pounds of dense flesh hugged her five-foot frame, leaving her arms and legs unnaturally splayed like the limbs of a gingerbread man.

  When Estela saw me, she looked around the shop as if she’d just noticed the accumulation of grime and was embarrassed by it. She left the food and picked up a nearby broom and a clamshell dustbin and started hurriedly sweeping up hair that had drifted around one of the styling chairs.

  “Sorry, I didn’t see you come in. Do you want an appointment?” Her voice was slightly nasal, with an accent that had survived despite at least a generation of acculturation.

  Even if I hadn’t been wearing my tomato red pantsuit, I would have looked out of place in her shop. The expression of caution on her face told me she knew that, too. I decided against faking interest in a cut and blow-dry and got right to the point.

  “I’m looking for your niece.”

  She flashed a warm smile laced with affection. “Which one? I got quite a few.”

  “Monique Ruiz.”

  The smile disappeared along with any interest in sweeping. She propped the cleaning tools against the counter near a funky blue backpack.

  “Why do you want her? She in some kind of trouble?” Her voice sounded overly tense. I wondered what kind of a family brouhaha I’d stumbled into.

  I told her I’d come from L.A. to pick up the key to Evan’s apartment. She looked relieved and then puzzled. “You drove all this way for a key? Why? Your friend can’t get into his place or what?”

  I didn’t want to get into it with her, so I told her my friend was moving. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but even so, the aunt’s eyes watched me cautiously, as if she was used to people holding out on her.

  “Can you tell me where Monique is?” I said.

  The timer on the hair dryer clicked off. Estela seemed relieved by the distraction. She raised the hood to check her client’s hair.

  “She’s not here.”

  I felt frustrated. “Do you know where she is?”

  “No.” She paused for a moment to think. “But all you want is a key, right? Just a key.”

  I nodded.

  The woman under the dryer stopped reading the newspaper and reached into a purse by her feet, pulling out a tin of Altoids. She popped a couple into her mouth as Estela guided her head back under the dryer, reset the timer, and motioned me toward the front door.

  “Maybe I can get a hold of Monique about your friend’s apartment key,” she said. “Give me your number. I’ll call you. Monique’s a good girl. If she has something that belongs to your friend, she’ll give it back.”

  “Why don’t you call her now? I’ll wait. As you said, I drove a long way.”

  “No, no, I can’t. I’m busy now.” She nodded toward the woman under the dryer. “I have a customer.”

  To highlight her predicament, she walked over and turned off the timer. For some reason Estela Sandoval was stalling. That irked me. There was little I could do about it at the moment, so I gave her both my home and cell phone numbers.

  “By the way,” I said, “who’s Nonny?”

  She looked startled. “Monique’s sister. It’s a nickname. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  I left the salon and parked the car down the street from Estela’s Salón de Belleza. I rolled down the windows for air and watched and waited for anybody who looked as if she might be Monique Ruiz. Unfortunately, the only person who walked by was an old woman pushing a baby stroller that looked sturdy enough to survive a crash at Indy.

  Apparently, the lady with the spider veins was the last customer of the day, because after she left the shop, Estela flipped the sign on the door to “Cerrado” and headed toward the apartment building next door.

  “Nice car. How much you pay for it?”

  The voice startled me. I whipped my head around to see Latina Madonna standing on the curb, peering through the open window of the Boxster. I’d been so intent on spying on Estela Sandoval’s shop that I hadn’t noticed her approaching the car. Her baby was fast asleep, draped over her shoulder like a fox stole.

  It took a moment for my pulse to slow and my mind to process her question. It was incredibly cheeky, but she didn’t seem to notice. I considered telling her the car was a gift from my ex-husband, the remnant of a failed marriage, but somehow I didn’t think she’d care.

  Finally I said, “Why do you ask?”

  She shrugged. The movement produced a hoarse whimper from the baby. I calculated how much cough medicine a Boxster could buy. It made me feel guilty enough to wish I had my eleven-year-old Corolla back. She jiggled the kid for a moment or two until he quieted down.

  “Having such a fancy car might make some people think you have a lot to lose.”

  With that, she kissed the baby’s head and walked back toward the apartment building, leaving me wondering if I’d just been threatened.

  -6-

  it was dark by the time I left Oxnard and headed home. On the drive I thought about Estela Sandoval and Latina Madonna. I suspected both were playing dumb about the whereabouts of Monique Ruiz. That funky blue backpack on Estela’s counter didn’t look as if it came from her closet. It didn’t belong to the woman under the dryer either; she had a purse. It seemed more like something Monique Ruiz might have left behind in her rush to escape out a back door to avoid talking to me. I wondered where she was now and why everyone was lying to protect her.

  For a moment I gave my imagination free rein. Monique Ruiz had a key to Evan’s apartment. She’d also left town around the time of the murder. When I’d asked to see her niece, Estela Sandoval had immediately jumped to the conclusion that Monique was in some kind of trouble. So why weren’t the police breathing down Monique’s neck? And what about her boyfriend? What role, if any, might he have played in Evan’s death?

  On the other hand, it was possible that Estela Sandoval had only used the word “trouble” because life had taught her to expect the worst. Maybe Monique Ruiz was merely a sheltered young woman, protecting little old ladies from bad hair days. Hopefully she’d call me tonight, so I could judge for myself.

  I was relieved when I finally arrived home. I had inherited the beach cottage from my grandmother Anne Sinclair. It was built in the 1940s, and for years she had used it primarily as a family getaway. Over time, her surviving children, Sylvia and Donovan, had lost interest in the place. Eventually, she turned it over to a management company that farmed it out to vacationers looking for a short-term taste of California oceanfront living.

  I’d never actually met my grandmother. After my father died, the Sinclairs made it clear that our branch of the family tree was being pruned back. Read, lopped off. So I was caught off guard when I learned that Anne Sinclair had died and left the beach house to me.

  While I was surprised, my uncle Donovan was blasé. He didn’t even show up for the reading of the will, preferring instead to remain ensconced in his villa in Provence. On the other hand, my aunt Sylvia was horrified and has made taking the house away from me her raison d’être. Most of her dirty tricks have failed, but a few months back, she’d petitioned the court to reopen probate, claiming she’d found a new will that left the house to her. Our respective attorneys were still exchanging nasty letters, while my pile of legal bills nea
red critical mass.

  It’s not that my aunt needed the house or the money the sale of it would bring. She’s loaded. She has no real emotional attachment to the place, either. She just doesn’t want me to have it. I suppose I should be grateful that I’m finally experiencing one of those dysfunctional family psychodramas all my friends keep raving about.

  Anyway, it should come as no surprise that I’d never seen the cottage until the probate judge had, in effect, handed me the keys. The place looks like a little brown shoebox on the sand, but when I walked through the door that first time, it was love at first sight.

  The house was suffering from renter’s ennui, but with some cosmetic work and a few repairs, I managed to fix it up without compromising its rustic integrity. The existing furnishings included an iron bedstead and an old steamer trunk that belonged to my grandmother. I’d integrated both those pieces into the new decor. I also added a hooked rooster rug for the kitchen floor, and hand-painted seashell tiles above the stove. I had my living room furniture re-covered in a soothing celery-and-rose-colored fabric. For the deck I bought a set of white wicker furniture, which, even on the sunniest days, you can hardly tell is plastic.

  My mother’s lime green Beetle was parked in my driveway, which meant she and her boyfriend were back from looking at real estate. I spent a moment or two letting exhaustion sweep through my body and mourning the loss of independence that comes with having visitors who stay too long.

  Pookie Kravitz is not my mother’s real name, of course, but when she began her acting career in her twenties, she thought the name had more pizzazz than either Mary Jo Felder or Mary Jo Sinclair. She’d never been too thrilled with “Mom,” either, so I’ve always called her Pookie.

  Being an actor hasn’t been an easy life, but until recently it seemed to suit her. Bruce was about to change all that. She’d met him four months back while searching for her power animal at a shaman boot camp in British Columbia. While she was away, I took care of Muldoon. After boot camp, she and Bruce traveled to a kahuna workshop in Maui. When they returned to L.A., they moved in with me—temporarily, just until they found a place of their own. The only problem was, I knew from past experience that “temporary” had a completely different meaning in my mother’s lexicon.

  Something had happened while they were traveling that made my mother decide to leave acting in order to help Bruce open a yoga studio so he could satisfy the “living a productive life” clause in a trust created by his generous but not stupid grandfather. I didn’t mind that she was giving up her recurring role as a celery stalk in a thirty-second spot for a produce co-op called Lettuce Entertain You, but not to babysit some guy in his sixties who was so serene he seemed lobotomized.

  I opened the back door and stepped into my kitchen, which is one of those small apartment-type arrangements that have an open counter with a view to the living room and, in my case, to the beach beyond. “Mustang Sally” was playing on the stereo. On the coffee table, burning incense coiled toward the ceiling, making the air heavy with the smell of lavender. Nearby, a bottle of champagne lolled against the side of an ice bucket.

  Through the open French doors, I saw two silhouettes on the deck, swaying against a backdrop of dim light from a crescent moon. Pookie and Bruce were doing some kind of jerky bump-and-grind routine. My mother is a good dancer, but Bruce looked as though he’d just had a run-in with a power line.

  Muldoon, my mother’s Westie, was sprawled on my white fake-wicker lounge chair, looking bored, or maybe he was just embarrassed for them. He was snuggled up with a yellow cashmere sweater, a gift from my neighbor Mrs. Domanski, a woman who is a soft touch for big brown eyes and very dry martinis. Muldoon looked up at me as though he were caught in the Sturm und Drang of greeting etiquette: cashmere, Tucker; cashmere, Tucker. In the end he stayed put, but it didn’t bother me. I’d lost out before to less impressive things than cashmere.

  I scanned the room from Anne Sinclair’s steamer trunk to the couch and easy chair, to the wire colander filled with seashells, and immediately sensed that something was wrong. Then I spotted it. A lacquered-blue room divider covered with crimson flowers was now blocking off my office alcove from the rest of the house. It hadn’t been there this morning. Bruce!

  He was into feng shui and had rearranged everything in my house at least once. He’d peppered the living room with Ficus benjamina trees because woody trunks meant something good. He’d also brought home two canaries, which I promptly made him return to the Fish and Chirps store from which they’d come. All because he was convinced that the stuff in my house inhibited the free flow of my chi. Personally, I think my chi would be a lot freer if it didn’t have to flow around Bruce.

  I tried to cut him some slack because he made my mother happy, but the room divider was just too much. I folded it up and leaned it against the wall. After that, I doused the incense and switched off the stereo. From out on the deck, Muldoon produced a rolling growl to let me know he’d noticed. It sounded like gr-r-r-OOF.

  Pookie waved and glided in from the deck. She was wearing vintage 1970s flowered bell-bottoms and a matching orange tube top. It was risky garb for a woman half her age, but my mother takes care of her body the way a classical pianist takes care of her hands, and it shows. Her hair is short and blond, and her eyes are blue. She’s five-three and 105 pounds, even though she’s not as fragile as those numbers suggest. She eats right, exercises religiously, and banishes wrinkles with Botox injections she discovered when FDA approval was just a glimmer in her dermatologist’s eye.

  My mother and I don’t look anything alike. I favor my dad, at least according to the few people in my world who knew him. I’m a reedy five-nine, with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes that my grandpa Felder says are the color of Old Grand-Dad Kentucky bourbon.

  Bruce greeted me with a “Yo” and slipped into a pair of leather clogs wide enough to accommodate his toes, which I swear could fan out and forklift Fay Wray to the top of the Empire State Building. He followed Pookie inside, inadvertently closing the door in Muldoon’s face. The little Westie waited patiently with his nose pressed to the glass. When I let him in, he padded over to the coffee table to lick condensation from the ice bucket.

  I nodded toward the champagne. “So what are you celebrating?”

  Pookie fluttered her eyelashes and flashed me an ingenue look, the one that had gotten her cast in young-mom commercials well into her forties. “We’re celebrating my eyes.”

  “Why? Did they do something special I don’t know about?”

  “Bruce says they looked inside his heart and found splintered aspects in his soul. Didn’t you, honey?”

  With a resonant burst of air that moved through at least two octaves, Bruce said, “H-h-a-h-h-h,” and articulated himself into downward-facing dog on a blue yoga mat placed alongside the couch, where my dried flower arrangement used to be.

  Muldoon doesn’t care much for loud sounds and started to bark.

  “I guess that’s better than finding plaque in his arteries.”

  Pookie rolled her eyes and sank onto the couch, next to a stack of mail, probably Bruce’s bills. He’s what you call “not good with money,” and lately she’d been handling his checkbook. Both Bruce and the trust attorneys liked it that way.

  “So, did you buy that place you were looking at?” I asked.

  Pookie sighed. “No. Mrs. Gwee said we’d have to tear down walls to redirect the chi. That would cost a fortune. The trust lawyers would never go for it.”

  “I have an idea. Hire six longshoremen with sledgehammers, and your problem disappears.”

  “Very funny, Tucker. I’ll have you know, Mrs. Gwee is the feng shui expert on the Westside. We’re lucky she’s working with us, aren’t we, sweetie?”

  “H-h-a-h-h-h.”

  I felt a headache coming on.

  “Bruce, why don’t you pour Tucker a glass of champagne? I think she needs an attitude adjustment.”

  I could tell that wasn’t g
oing to happen anytime soon, because Bruce had just rolled himself up with his head squeezed between his knees, like a croquet ball stuck in a wicket. He had a vacant smile on his face, as if he was thinking, “Champagne? What champagne? Do we have champagne?”

  Muldoon was giving Bruce’s body the once-over, trying to determine if any part of it was humpable. Suddenly, alcohol sounded like a good idea. I went to the kitchen to get my own glass. When I came back to the bucket and tipped the bottle, nothing came out. It was empty. I mumbled something like “shit” and collapsed onto the couch next to Pookie, rubbing my temples to chase away the pain.

  Muldoon came over and rested his nose on my foot. He pretended to be asleep, but his ears were rotating as though he was trying to pick up any interesting sounds, like maybe a refrigerator door opening. Pookie put down the mail she was sorting.

  “What’s wrong with you tonight, Tucker? You’re no fun at all.”

  It was an attempt at levity, but her tone held an undercurrent of concern. My mother doesn’t like surprises, especially bad-news surprises. I almost felt guilty spoiling her celebration, but she’d learn the news about Evan’s murder sooner or later, either on TV or in the newspaper. It was better if she heard it from me. When I laid out the story, her face grew pale.

  “I told you Evan Brice would come to a bad end.”

  True, my mother had never liked Evan. She thought he was trouble, and had made it clear she’d never be happy until I had a total Evanectomy. However, considering the current circumstances, her attitude sucked.

  “You know, Pookie, I was hoping you’d come up with something more creative than ‘I told you so.’” The words came out angrier than I’d intended.

  Pookie reacted as if I’d slapped her. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I really am. Are you okay?”

  The sentiment was unfashionably late, but I nodded.

  “What happened?” she said. “Who killed him?”