Cover Your Assets

by Patricia Smiley

  “Mind if I take a closer look?” I said.

  Reluctantly, she held the book close enough for me to see that a black Honda Civic had been parked on the north side of the street on Wednesday evening from five until seven-thirty. The license plate number was also neatly recorded. Under the comments column were the words “Took up two spaces AGAIN!!!!”

  “Do you know the owner’s name?”

  “Asshole. Capital ‘A.’” I wanted to ask if that was his first or last name, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate my flippancy. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he hit your car on purpose—the prick.”

  “Okay if I jot this down?” I said.

  Brenda shrugged, but underneath the nonchalance she looked pleased. I copied the information onto a bank deposit slip I found crumpled in the bottom of my purse. When I was finished, she slipped the journal into a pocket of her kimono, took her drink, and walked over to a sliding glass door, which was corroded to a rusty patina by the salt air. She pulled it open and walked out onto the balcony. I followed.

  Except for a few palm trees, Brenda’s lanai offered an unobstructed view of the beach. Evan’s apartment also faced the water, but the windows were on the small side and didn’t take full advantage of the panorama. Maybe that was one reason why his rent was relatively low.

  “I heard somebody across the street was murdered a few days ago,” I said. “What was his name? Brice? Something like that.”

  “Who knows?” she said. “He called himself Tom around here. I heard it was because he didn’t want to be bothered by us lowlifes. As if I give a shit that he was some Hollywood agent. Do I look like somebody who cares about being famous? Damn rich people think they’re so special. Pisses me off.”

  She set her drink on the parapet and picked up a pack of Marlboro Lights parked on the seat of a bentwood rocking chair. If she planned to smoke, I hoped she’d do it out in the open air. The last thing I needed was black lung disease. As she tapped the soft pack against the side of her index finger, she scanned the street below, looking for parking scofflaws, I presumed. She pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit it with a match from a book she’d tucked inside the cellophane wrapper. Brenda seemed to spend a considerable amount of time smoking and spying on her neighbors, which made me wonder if she’d been on duty the night Evan Brice was killed.

  “You know,” I said, “it just occurred to me. I may be wrong about Wednesday. I was in the neighborhood on Sunday, too. I’m wondering if you could check to see if the Honda was here then, just to cover all the bases.”

  Brenda looked annoyed, but nevertheless pulled the journal from her pocket and flipped through the pages. Again, she held it in front of my face. I could see that Monique’s boyfriend had been parked in front of Brenda’s apartment between ten and ten-thirty the night Evan Brice was killed. Interesting, but the timing was wrong. According to Detective Green, Evan had been killed sometime between one and three a.m. That meant the boyfriend probably wasn’t the killer. There was another one of my theories shot to hell.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  Brenda studied her entries and then flipped to the next page. Her gaze lingered there for a moment. Once again she held the journal out for me to read. I scanned the page to see if the black Honda Civic appeared, and was rewarded with another hit. According to Brenda’s records, the Honda had come back to the apartment at around one fifteen a.m., which put the boyfriend at the scene at around the time Evan was killed.

  Brenda Boyd must be some kind of vampire. She never seemed to sleep at night. I was still considering what to make of it all when I spotted another listing near the bottom of the opposite page. At 2:15 a.m. a car had been double-parked for twenty minutes in front of the entrance to Evan’s apartment building. It was a black Mercedes, license plate number 1GR8MOM—Claire Jerrard’s car.

  I was stunned. I tried but failed to think of any reason why Claire would have come to see Evan that night. As painful as it was, I also tried to think of any motive she may have had for killing him, but the idea was simply unthinkable. Somebody else must have been driving her car.

  Cissy told me she’d argued with Evan on Sunday. Later that night she’d met a friend for dinner. She drank too much alcohol and asked the friend to drive her to Claire’s place so she could sleep it off. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Cissy could have waited for her mother to fall asleep, taken the keys to the Mercedes, and driven to Venice. Obviously, the police had considered that, too.

  I wasn’t sure what Cissy had done after arriving at Evan’s place, but I did know one thing: She lied about never being at the Venice apartment. And if she lied about that, she was probably lying about a whole lot more. It wasn’t surprising that the police didn’t buy her alibi; it was full of holes. I closed my eyes for a moment and let those old feelings of betrayal bubble to the surface.

  “You ever talk to the police about this stuff?” I said to Brenda, nodding toward the journal entries.

  She blew a lungful of smoke in my face. “You should know something about me. I don’t talk to cops—ever.” She patted the journal. “This information is going to somebody at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest who has the power to do something.”

  Brenda Boyd’s relationship with L.A.’s finest was obviously not of the warm and fuzzy nature. I wondered what events had soured the rapport—her vigilante justice or her bad attitude. On the other hand, who needs rapport with the local cops when you have juice with the president of the United States?

  Brenda was sitting on information that could possibly send Cissy Brice to jail for the rest of her life or worse. I wondered how the police would react to her journal. Maybe they’d be thrilled, or maybe they wouldn’t give much weight to a neighborhood busybody who may have slammed down a half-dozen gin and tonics before stepping out to take a smoke on her lanai that night. For all I knew, she had another journal hidden in the back room, where she’d also recorded Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and Elvis going into Evan’s building that night.

  I thanked Brenda for her information and headed back to my car. When I slid into the front seat, my first instinct was to call Cissy and confront her, but an uneasy tremor kept my fingers from hitting the right buttons on my cell phone. It took two failed attempts before I came to my senses.

  If Cissy had killed Evan, I didn’t want to tip her off that I had evidence against her. In my experience, people do crazy things when they’re backed into a corner. And if there was one thing I wanted less than tar in my lungs, it was a sharp kitchen utensil.

  -27-

  pointing fingers is easy. Proving guilt is hard. I had no proof that Cissy drove her mother’s Mercedes to Evan’s apartment building the night he was killed. Brenda Boyd hadn’t seen the driver, only the car doubled-parked in front of the lobby door. Even if Cissy had been at Evan’s place, it didn’t prove she killed him. To complicate matters, it appeared that Monique’s boyfriend had likely been in the building around the same time.

  Cissy’s life was at stake. I couldn’t go to the police with incriminating evidence without knowing more, like the boyfriend’s name and whether he had any reason to want Evan dead. I had the Honda’s license plate number, but I couldn’t do much with that. It’s all but impossible to pry information out of the California Department of Motor Vehicles ever since deranged fan Robert Bardo got the address of actress Rebecca Schaeffer from the DMV, then went to her apartment and shot her dead. The Screen Actors Guild lobbied to limit access to that information, and now, as far as I knew, only police departments or similar agencies could see those records. I was certain Moses Green wouldn’t share information with me. Neither would Joe Deegan. As of two days ago, he wasn’t even speaking to me. However, Charley Tate might be able to get the boyfriend’s name through his PI contacts. Hopefully he’d help, because he owed me big-time for scaring the shit out of me on the 405 and ruining my perfectly good theory that Lola Scott’s porn connections were responsible for Evan’s death.

  -28
-

  after leaving Brenda Boyd’s apartment, I drove to the groomer’s place to pick up Muldoon. In lieu of a silly bow in his hair, she’d tied a spiffy red kerchief around his neck. Not only did the pup smell great, he looked good, too. As an unexpected bonus, she also sold me a pair of doggie goggles from a small gift shop she maintained. As compromises go, the goggles weren’t perfect, but at least my new partner could hang his head out the window without getting a bug in his eye. When we got back to the car, I double-checked Charley Tate’s address on his business card and headed for Culver City.

  Tate Investigations was in a small two-story building located on a pie slice of land between Washington Boulevard and Washington Place in Culver City. After parking in the only available space the toy lot had to offer, Muldoon and I were forced to make one complete circumnavigation of the building before we located the entrance. On the glass door was a name lettered in gold: “Manny Reygozo, Esq.” A piece of tablet paper was duct-taped below that. It read, “Tate Investigations, 2nd floor.” Either Charley Tate was a new tenant or he didn’t rate gold.

  Once inside, Muldoon zeroed in on a patch of carpet near the door, sniffing like crazy. I coaxed him upstairs as quickly as possible so he wouldn’t go territorial on me. The door to Charley Tate’s office was unlocked. I stepped inside and found a small but pleasant lobby. There was no receptionist, just a reception desk devoid of ornamentation except for a telephone and an old-fashioned bell shaped like a mini Bundt cake. Hanging on the walls were several framed posters of famous art, and a bulletin board covered with papers and cartoons thumbtacked to the cork. Many seemed to be lawyer jokes: “What do you call twenty lawyers skydiving from an airplane? Skeet.”

  At the far side of the room, next to a closed door, stood a dusty plant that looked as if it hadn’t been repotted since Woodstock. I rang the Bundt-cake bell, and moments later the door flew open.

  Charley Tate stood in the doorway. He had on brown huaraches, white Bermuda shorts, and a yellow Hawaiian shirt. His legs were muscular and hairy.

  He frowned when he saw me. “How’d you get in here?”

  I nodded toward the door. “It was unlocked.”

  “Damn you, Reygozo,” he muttered as he stomped over and turned the dead bolt. “Just because he owns the building doesn’t give him the right to come into my office anytime he wants. I hate lawyers.”

  Muldoon objected to the angry tone in Tate’s voice and let out a rolling growl that picked up speed like the Coast Starlight leaving Union Station. Tate seemed to notice Muldoon for the first time. Not much of a detective if you asked me.

  “For crissakes,” he said, “what’s with the mutt?”

  “He’s my new partner.”

  “Get him out of here. I’m allergic.”

  “Too bad. The mutt stays.”

  He paused. “Fine. I’m not going to trade spit with you. What are you doing here anyway? I gave you Lola Scott, and I don’t give refunds on a freebie.”

  “I’m not here about Lola. I need your help with something else.”

  He crossed his arms and squinted at me. “I hope you came with more than a wish and a smile.”

  “I can pay, if that’s what worries you.”

  He studied me for a moment longer. Finally he shrugged. “Come on in.”

  Muldoon and I followed him into a back office, which was in stark contrast to the neatness of the reception area. Along one wall was a row of three-drawer file cabinets as imposing as Buckingham Palace guards. An ornate oak desk was buried under mountains of paper. Apparently, Tate was enamored with yellow number-two pencils, because at least a dozen of them were lying on his desk, surrounded by eraser crumbs. The guy was obviously prone to making mistakes. His electric pencil sharpener looked like a sci-fi fire truck: red with all sorts of dials and flashing lights. A few slivers of wood had spilled out of the chip catcher and were floating in a cup of dead coffee. More file folders spilled onto the floor, blanketing the gray industrial carpet in a layer of manila. In the midst of all the chaos was a five-by-seven silver frame, which held a photograph of an attractive dark-haired woman who could have been his daughter but probably wasn’t.

  “Sit down.”

  Tate gestured toward his two guest chairs, which were covered in a wintry green and blue plaid. Both were piled high with file folders. Subtlety seemed like a waste of time, so I dumped the debris on the floor and gave the seat a quick dust-off before I sat.

  He flashed a crooked grin. “Excuse the mess. I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  What, I wondered. A tornado drill?

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Muldoon lifting his leg over what looked like an old blue sweatshirt wadded up on the floor. I didn’t want to stress the pup out by drawing attention to his lack of etiquette, so I decided to wait until the smell demanded explanation. Luckily, Tate was oblivious. As he lowered himself into his desk chair, he seemed to grimace in pain. The look disappeared so quickly, I wasn’t sure if I’d seen it at all.

  “So,” he said, “what do you need?”

  “A name to go with a license plate number.”

  He held up his arms in surrender. “No can do.”

  “I thought you were a private investigator.”

  “I am, but you have to have juice to get that kind of information.”

  “You used to be a cop. Isn’t that juice enough?”

  “You got that right. Used to be.”

  “It’s important I find out who owns a certain black Honda Civic.”

  “Why? Some lowlife key your Porsche?”

  I leaned forward and looked him straight in the eye. “Cut the crap, Tate. You offer a service. I’m a paying customer. If you want me to take my business down the street, just say so.”

  He smiled awkwardly, realizing that he’d pushed the snappy-repartee game too far. “Okay, okay, let me see what you got.”

  I pulled out the deposit slip on which I’d written the Honda’s license plate number. Tate studied it a moment and then retrieved a three-ring binder from his desk drawer. He licked his thumb to leverage the pages, studying each one as if it were a box of his favorite chocolates. He stopped at one page in particular, massaging his chin as he read to himself. A few moments later he looked up.

  “Wait outside.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Probably nothing. Mind if I keep this?” he said, holding up the deposit slip I’d given him. “My copy machine’s down.”

  I looked around but saw no copy machine.

  “Down where?”

  He rolled his eyes and gestured toward the door. “Do you mind?”

  I saw no reason to argue with him, so Muldoon and I returned to the tidy reception desk in the front lobby. Muldoon curled up at my feet while I amused myself by reading jokes from the bulletin board: “How can you tell if you’re a Californian? If a really great parking spot moves you to tears.” That was too close to reality to be funny; just ask Brenda Boyd.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was beginning to feel antsy when Tate opened the door and motioned me back into his office. I saw Muldoon eyeing the sweatshirt again, so I held him on my lap.

  Tate lowered himself into his chair. “Why are you so interested in this guy? Is he dating your sister or something?”

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Good, because the kid’s a problem. He comes from a good family, but every time he’s faced with a decision, he makes a bad one. He started out stealing checks from his mom’s purse. A few bounced so good they were scouted by the Lakers. Since then he’s been picked up for truancy, shoplifting, robo-tripping, you name it.”

  “Robo-tripping?”

  “As in Robitussin cough medicine. Hard to believe these kids get wasted on something you buy over the counter at Rite Aid. See, the stuff has this nifty little ingredient in it called dextromethorphan. It makes you stop coughing, but if you drink too much of it, it makes you high. It also makes you mean.”

  “Mean enough to ki
ll?”

  “Sure. I’ve heard about several homicides associated with robo-tripping. I suggest you steer clear of the guy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll be careful. Just give me his name.”

  Tate shrugged and skidded my deposit slip across the desk with a flip of his wrist. Next to the license plate number he’d written a name: Gilbert Ruiz.

  I frowned. “Ruiz?”

  “Yeah. Lives with his parents in West Covina.”

  Monique Ruiz’s parents lived in West Covina, at least according to Rose Miller. Ruiz was a common name but not that common. There was only one explanation for the coincidence. The Latino with the black Honda Civic was not Monique’s boyfriend; he was her brother. In my head I ran through everything I knew about the Ruiz siblings. Every fact I came up with was linked with the word “trouble.”

  Gilbert’s problems were obvious; Tate had just outlined the particulars for me. As for Monique, she seemed like a good person—responsible and compassionate, at least where Rose was concerned. She went to college and held two jobs. She obviously had a cordial relationship with Evan. She’d made a key chain for him. Yet both her sister and her aunt had implied that Monique was in some kind of trouble. Maybe they were hiding the fact that she’d killed Evan herself, but somehow it seemed doubtful. I thought of other problems she might have: financial worries, health issues, or parental pressure to move back home.

  The night Evan was murdered, it must have been Monique’s brother, not her boyfriend, who drove her to Oxnard. Brenda had seen Gilbert’s Honda parked in front of Evan’s apartment at ten, probably when he picked up his sister. The car had been back again at one-fifteen, which gave him plenty of time to drive to Oxnard, drop off Monique, and return to kill Evan Brice. Only, what was his motive for wanting Evan dead?

  Learning the identity of Monique’s brother solved one puzzle but raised another, more intriguing one: Who was her boyfriend? Not even Rose had met him. That seemed odd, given how close the two women were. Why was Monique keeping him such a closely guarded secret? Was he part of the trouble she was in? Then I thought of her gray pallor, the teddy bear, the small pastel afghan, and came up with another kind of trouble altogether: baby trouble.