Cover Your Assets

by Patricia Smiley

  “Apparently, the police think it was Cissy.”

  “Cissy? No way. She’d have to give up her tickets to the Oscars and all those free designer gowns. If you ask me, I’d say it had something to do with drugs.”

  “I don’t think so. From what I know, Evan was clean and sober.”

  “Don’t be naive, Tucker. He spent a couple of weeks in a luxury hotel and called it rehab, but when he got out, I bet the first person he called was his dealer. I’ve seen it happen over and over—”

  “Careful, Goldie,” Bruce warned. “Bad karma.”

  It annoyed me when he called her that. It was as though he considered it a waste of time to learn my mother’s name, because she was just another woman he didn’t plan to stay with for very long. Pookie didn’t look annoyed, though. She looked amused.

  “This isn’t gossip, honey. My friend Sheila did the makeup for one of Evan’s clients on a biker flick that just wrapped. She said he came to the set a few times, acting crazy. She swore he was loaded, and believe me, Sheila knows loaded when she sees it.”

  “You weren’t there, Goldie.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Gossip is a legitimate form of communication in this house.”

  Pookie looked sheepish. “It’s okay, Tucker. Bruce is right. I wasn’t there.”

  My head was really throbbing now. My face was warm, and my attitude resentful. Bruce was turning my mother into a wimp.

  “A friend of mine was murdered,” I said to him. “I’d like to hear about anyone who has any idea how he got that way.”

  “What goes around comes around,” he said.

  “Can it, Bruce.” I picked up Muldoon and stomped toward my bedroom. I got as far as the kitchen.

  “Stella called.”

  I turned and saw Bruce sitting on the yoga mat with his eyes closed.

  “Stella? You mean Estela Sandoval? When?”

  “Earlier.”

  I waited for more, and when it didn’t come, I said, “Well? What did she say?”

  “She has the key.”

  “That’s it? Damn it, Bruce, if you can’t take a friggin message, don’t answer my phone.”

  “Tucker, please—”

  “Back off, Mother.”

  There was an uncomfortable lull in the conversation before Bruce spoke again. “You can pick it up tomorrow . . . after one . . . at Rose’s place.”

  I walked into my bedroom with Muldoon still in my arms and closed the door. Sometime later I checked my cell phone voice mail and found a tearful message from Cissy Brice. By the time I called her back, she sounded calmer.

  “I’m sorry I bothered you, Tuckie, but I was a mess. Mom wasn’t home. I had to talk to somebody.”

  “What’s going on? Is Dara okay?”

  “Yes, but that detective called again, the Moses Green guy. He wanted me to go downtown to Parker Center to take a lie detector test. Can you believe it?”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him no, of course. Then he said ‘no’ was a guilty person’s answer. He sounded mean. It scared me. He can’t make me do it, can he?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s routine for the police to ask members of the victim’s family to take polygraphs, but you should consult a lawyer about these kinds of decisions, not your mom or me.”

  “Don’t worry, Tuckie. It’s over now. I don’t think he’ll bother me anymore.”

  Her naïveté was astonishing. Somewhere deep inside she had to know that this cat-and-mouse game with Moses Green wasn’t over by a long shot. In fact, it was just beginning.

  -7-

  at seven o’clock the next morning, I woke up to the sound of whimpering. It was Muldoon reminding me once again that the house had no doggie door. Pookie and Bruce were still asleep—at least, their bedroom door was closed—so I let Muldoon out to chase gulls. When he came back inside, I wiped the wet sand off his paws. I showered and dressed in a pair of denim jeans and a red turtleneck.

  The first order of business was to find somebody to clean the Venice apartment. I checked the Smart Yellow Pages under cleaning, crime, and industrial, but didn’t find what I was looking for. As a last resort, I called Detective Green for help. He wasn’t allowed to make specific recommendations and suggested I check the Internet. He didn’t bring up Cissy’s name, so I decided to leave well enough alone.

  At his suggestion, I logged on and typed in “crime scene cleanup.” I shouldn’t have been surprised to find numerous companies listed, including several in the Los Angeles area. I called all of them until I found one that advertised service “24/7/365.” The company’s owner, Max Farnsworth, offered to come to the scene, assess the damage, and provide a written proposal, which would include the extent of work to be done, as well as an estimate of the cost. He told me his company also handled any necessary restoration—repainting, repairing, or replacing—and could also help file the applicable insurance claims. I told him I didn’t need a written proposal. If he would send his technicians to Evan’s apartment that afternoon, the job was his. We could negotiate the fine print when he got there. We agreed to meet at two p.m.

  I was scheduled to pick up the apartment key from Rose at one o’clock. There were several hours of productive time before then, so I decided to work on the focus group. The invitations had gone out to randomly selected shoppers in the L.A. area who had a history of buying by mail order. Mr. Geyer had insisted that the artwork include one of his signature muumuus, so I was hoping the mailing list included at least a few Don Ho groupies.

  The group was meeting in three weeks, but in truth, my interest was halfhearted. Maybe that was why my business wasn’t growing as fast as it should be. On the other hand, maybe I didn’t lack initiative; maybe I was just hungry. As usual, I’d forgotten to eat breakfast. I needed brain food, something hearty. Eggs Benedict? I’d never actually made that before, but I’d ordered it in restaurants. How hard could it be?

  I scoured the bread drawer for English muffins. There weren’t any, but I did come up with a slice of stale wheat bread. That would have to do. There wasn’t even a remote possibility I’d find Canadian bacon in the refrigerator, but I did find an egg—the last one.

  I pulled down Pookie’s tattered, orangey-colored Betty Crocker’s Cookbook from the shelf and checked the index for poaching instructions. The recipe was simple: fill a skillet with water, turn the burner to high, slip the egg into the boiling water, and simmer until done. Even I could do that.

  When Muldoon heard the egg break against the side of the skillet, he began pawing my leg. I ignored him, because by that time I’d found Betty’s hollandaise sauce recipe and was shocked to read that it required two more egg yolks and a half cup of butter. Scratch that idea. I didn’t have two more eggs. Besides, my arteries would thank me in the morning.

  I was looking inside the refrigerator for a hollandaise substitute—cheddar cheese or something else yellow—when I heard the telephone ringing. I glanced at my watch. Nine o’clock. It had to be Eugene. I’d forgotten to return his call from yesterday. I braced myself for the consequences.

  Eugene is what you might call “intense.” He’s a loyal friend and a great organizer of paper. He responds to structure, and he loves animals. People are another story. He especially dislikes large crowds of them. But that’s not the extent of his problems. Other things upset him as well—like change. I also suspect he has a phobia that has something to do with raking leaves, but don’t quote me on that one.

  On the advice of his therapist, he’s taken up knitting to combat his stress. After completing truckloads of slipper-socks and sweater-vests, it seems to be helping, but he’s not completely cured. Recently he’d decided to increase his “medication” by volunteering to knit a dozen tasseled berets for patients at a local nursing home. Unfortunately, with having to nurse his cat, Liza, he’d fallen behind on his self-imposed schedule.

  Eugene interrupted in the middle of my “hello.”

  “Something’s wrong with my r
ight wrist. I was just finishing my ninth beret when it started hurting.” He sounded out of breath, not a good sign.

  “Wow,” I said. “Nine. That’s a lot of tasseled berets. Maybe you should stop.”

  “You don’t understand, Tucker. People are counting on me. What if I have carpal tunnel syndrome? What if I can’t knit anymore?”

  I popped the slice of wheat bread into the toaster and checked the egg. It was starting to firm up in the simmering water. I felt empowered.

  “Why not do something else for a while, until your wrist heals?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know . . . what about needlepoint? Or tatting? That’s almost a lost art. You could bring it back. Start a new trend.”

  “That’s not funny, Tucker.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Why not try something completely different, then? Learn to play mah-jongg.”

  “My mother played mah-jongg every Wednesday afternoon with a group of eighty-year-old widows who’d slit your throat for a five-dollar pot. I need relaxation, not hand-to-hand combat.”

  “Skydiving?”

  “Tucker!”

  “So call your therapist. Maybe she has some ideas.”

  “She’s on maternity leave.”

  I glanced at the skillet. The egg looked done, but when I poked the yolk with a fork, it drooled into the water, forming a tiny appendage.

  “Somebody must be taking her calls,” I said.

  “I suppose so, but I couldn’t possibly discuss my issues with a stranger.”

  “It’s an emergency, Eugene. Maybe you should make an exception this one time.”

  While I was listening to him expose the flaws in my hypothesis, the toast popped up. Muldoon looked at me as if to say, Bread? That’s not a good snack. I set the toast on the counter and poked the yolk again. It was now as hard as a hockey puck.

  I consulted the recipe again and saw that I was supposed to lift the egg out gently with a slotted spatula. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one in my utensil drawer. I did, however, find barbeque tongs. Those should work. I carefully grabbed the edge of the egg’s white part and lifted it out of the pan. For a brief moment, it hung from the tongs like rubber barf. Then it fell to the floor. In less than five seconds, the egg was gone and Muldoon was licking his chops.

  I patiently waited for Eugene to finish his white paper on the psychological ramifications of sharing secrets with a surrogate therapist. When he was finished, I said, “Listen, here’s my best advice. Stop knitting berets. Put ice on your wrist, do some biofeedback, and try to relax.”

  “I can’t relax.” He sounded glum. “I have too many things on my mind. Maybe I should just go back to the office and immerse myself in mindless busywork.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt. Eugene had felt abandoned when I left Aames & Associates. To make matters worse, I’d asked Venus to leave with me. I hadn’t offered Eugene a job, because I was trying to protect him. I thought his fragile psyche needed more security than my start-up business could offer. In the end, Venus had turned down my business proposal, which had mollified Eugene’s hurt feelings to some extent.

  Regrettably, after I left the firm, the human resources director had transferred Eugene to the front desk to answer the telephone and greet visitors, a job he hated. He saw it as punishment for his loyalty to me. Maybe he was right, but I couldn’t offer him a permanent job just yet. Not until business picked up. Still, I had to do something to make him feel better, so I laid out a few sketchy details about Mr. Geyer and the focus group project I was working on.

  “Look,” I said, “I could use some help getting organized. Why don’t you stop by for a couple of hours tomorrow? I can’t pay you much, but I promise there won’t be any heavy wrist activity.” He didn’t respond right away, which concerned me. “Of course, it’s only an idea. After all, you’re on vacation. Maybe you’d rather—”

  “I’ll be there at nine.”

  As soon as I hung up the telephone, I was forced to admit that my first attempt at eggs Benedict looked alarmingly like dry, stick-in-the-throat toast—my normal breakfast. I smeared a little peanut butter on the bread and ate it over the sink.

  When I was finished eating, Muldoon decided to take a nap on the living room couch. I went into my office and picked up my things-to-do list, glancing down the page at the two items noted there: (1) buy laundry detergent and (2) Eric’s wedding. The last entry had a big question mark after it.

  Eric Bergstrom is my ex-husband. He was getting remarried, and I’d been debating going to the wedding. I wasn’t still in love with him, but we’d stayed friends after our divorce. I’d always thought of him as a person I could call on for help at any time and for any reason. A little red-haired girl named Becky Quinn had changed all that. I was having a hard time facing the fact that he wasn’t mine anymore. I was having an even harder time accepting that he seemed happy about it. The problem was, if I didn’t go to the wedding, everybody would think I was a sore loser. If I went alone, they’d just think I was a generic loser.

  Bruce claimed that going to the wedding would bring closure. As much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the ceremony unless I found a killer date. The guy didn’t have to know a fish knife from a putty knife; all he had to do was look good glad-handing in the reception line and try not to embarrass me in front of Eric’s aunt I-told-you-she-was-wrong-for-you Lena. Unfortunately, there was no one in my life at the moment who matched that description, which left me only one choice for a date. I decided to delay working on the focus group and use my productive time to stop by and relay the invitation in person.

  Pookie and Bruce still hadn’t emerged from the bedroom, so before I left the house, I filled Muldoon’s bowl with low-fat kibble, because Pookie thought the pup had packed on a little weight on my watch. As expected, Muldoon took one whiff of those dry, unappetizing pellets and backed away. I could almost tell what he was thinking by the look of dismay in his soulful brown eyes: Yeech!

  I didn’t feel comfortable micromanaging his diet, so at the last minute I spooned a glob of oily peanut butter into his dish. He was still trying to lick the stuff off the roof of his mouth as I grabbed my fleece vest from the bedroom closet and headed for the car.

  MY FORMER EMPLOYER occupies an entire floor of one of those inscrutable smoky-glass high-rises in downtown L.A. As in many other consulting firms, the corporate culture at Aames & Associates is on the conservative side. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a female consultant wearing earrings in any metal but gold and in any size larger than a Tums tablet. As for male consultants, the partners once denied employment to a well-qualified candidate because he wore a pair of argyle socks to his interview. Someone should have clued the guy in that wearing anything short of plain and dark meant never having to say, “Honey, I got the job!” Luckily, my days of working for a company that measured a man’s worth by his footwear were over.

  When I arrived at the ground-floor cafeteria, which had been dubbed the barfeteria by those familiar with its cuisine, it was empty except for a woman typing on her laptop computer and a middle-aged man in a business suit, arguing with Mrs. Kim, the cafeteria’s owner, over the price of an orange. I sat at one of the tables and called Venus on my cell phone. She informed me she was finishing up some paperwork but would be down in a few minutes.

  During the years that Venus Corday and I had been coworkers at Aames & Associates, we’d developed a friendship that’s hard to sum up on a Hallmark card. She’s still a consultant there, working mostly with manufacturing companies. Even though she’d decided against leaving the firm to work with me, a shadowy rumor had begun circulating through the hallways of Aames & Associates that she was planning to defect. When the buzz reached the windowed offices of the senior partners, they panicked because they couldn’t afford to lose her knowledge of the nuances of just-in-time inventory. They countered by offering her a substantial raise. The raise was hard-earned and long overdue.
The source of the rumor is still unknown.

  I was in the process of destroying my stomach lining with one of Mrs. Kim’s house specialties—the dregs of this morning’s coffee, aged into battery acid on the warmer—when Venus finally walked through the door. She’s in her late thirties, with a genetic makeup that isn’t easy to sort out. Her great-grandmother came from Barbados so she’s got that whole English, Caribbean, African thing going. I suspect that the clan may have added a few more genes to the pool in San Francisco’s Chinatown before they eventually settled in L.A.

  Regardless of what had gone into Venus’s genetic mix, the end product is a thing of beauty: unfathomable brown eyes, creamy-caramel skin, and long black hair, which today was twisted into a neat chignon. The designer suit she wore was a flowing mango-colored getup that hugged curves like a European sports car. In fact, sitting next to her sometimes makes me feel like the celery in a Bloody Mary. The suit partially explained why she’s still a senior manager at Aames & Associates and not a partner. The other part is attitude. Venus doesn’t suffer fools. That doesn’t sit well with people who make promotion decisions.

  Venus ambled over to join me at the table, lugging a bottle of water big enough to survive a trip through the Sahara for her and the Land Rover. Don’t ask me why, but the H2O just reeked of a new weight-loss scheme. Venus has tried and failed at every diet on the bookstore shelves, mainly because she’s in love with eating, particularly chocolate.

  “Let me guess,” I said, pointing to the water. “You’ve just been accepted into firefighter school.”

  “Joke all you want, Tucker, but I am in the zone. My body is loose, and my mind is clear.”

  “And your Godivas are where?”

  She laughed. “Don’t mess with me, girl.” She sat in the chair across from mine. “So what’s so important that it couldn’t wait for happy hour?”

  I hesitated to tell her about Evan Brice’s murder. I knew it would upset her, but she was my closest friend. She’d want to know. For the next few minutes I explained about the investigation and my efforts to help Cissy close the Venice apartment. By the time I was finished, she’d swallowed enough liquid to fill a dolphin tank at Sea World.