Knot My Sister's Keeper

by Mary Marks

  * * *

  Crusher arrived home at six and gave me a long kiss. “I have good news and bad news.”

  “Okay. Give me the good news first.”

  “New York had hundreds of art galleries active in 1971. But I was able to narrow it down to fifteen in the general area of Watts Street in Soho.”

  “Wow! That’s great. What’s the bad news?”

  “They all had openings during the months of February and March of that year. Some of them had two openings, one each month. Based on Jayda’s comment that the show was at a ‘funky little place,’ I eliminated six well-established galleries. That still left nine, with fourteen possible dates.”

  “Well, fourteen is a lot better than three hundred sixty-five. Did you look up those dates on the birth register?”

  “Yeah.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers. “Here’s a printout of all the baby boys born in LA on those dates in 1971 and also on the days after. We know the mother of Quinn’s son was in labor that night, but we don’t know whether the boy was born before or after midnight.”

  “Good thinking!” I took the stack of papers and my mouth fell open. There were hundreds of names. “How in the world are we ever going to find him in this crowd? Wait.” I remembered a detail Jayda told Giselle and me on our first visit. “Do you remember I once told you Jayda said Quinn didn’t want the boy to have his name? He probably isn’t even mentioned on the birth certificate as the father. Maybe we could eliminate all the records with the father’s name listed.”

  “Already thought of that. What you have in your hands is a list of all the boys born in LA County on twenty-eight specific dates without a father’s name. If you want to narrow the field even more, you need to come up with some other search parameter. For instance, do you have an idea of where the woman might’ve lived? I could go back and look at hospitals with maternity wards in that area.”

  “That’s an interesting thought. Quinn’s other LA girlfriends seemed to live in or near Beverly Hills. Maybe she did, too.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow I’ll sort for boys born in hospitals in the West LA area.”

  After dinner, we’d just settled down for Jeopardy! when the phone rang. “Are you ready for that drink?”

  “Captain Farkas! I see you arrived safe and sound.”

  “It’s Bela, remember? I rolled into LA this afternoon. Had a nice dinner with the kids and wouldn’t mind a beer right about now. Where can I meet you?”

  “Depends on where you’re calling from. You’ve driven all day. I wouldn’t want to make you drive more than necessary this evening.”

  “Gabe lives in Culver City. He tells me you live in the Valley. How about someplace in between, like Westwood?”

  After reassuring Crusher I’d be perfectly safe by myself, I left him throwing answers at Alex Trebek, and headed for the 405 south. Thirty minutes later I walked into the dimly lit Czardas Hungarian Restaurant near UCLA. Classical music spread a blanket of calm over the diners, some of whom spoke in foreign languages. This definitely wasn’t a student hangout, judging by the linen tablecloths and leather-bound menus.

  I spotted the white-haired Bela Farkas in the bar and walked over to the small round table where a half-full glass of beer sat on a paper coaster. He stood as soon as he saw me and grinned. When Giselle and I had visited him in Arizona, he’d been wearing shorts. Now he sported freshly ironed gray Dockers and a white short-sleeved shirt. He gestured toward his glass and spoke in his gravelly voice. “Thought I’d get a head start while I waited for you. What’ll you have?” He turned and signaled the barmaid.

  “Just some Perrier. With lemon, please.”

  For the next ten minutes he listened quietly while I told him everything Giselle and I had pieced together. “My first question concerns the sixty-thousand-dollar advance Chief Nelson paid Quinn to paint a portrait of his wife. We have to assume that once the commission was filled, Nelson would’ve had to pay Quinn another sixty thousand dollars. In 1980 that was a lot of cash. How does a cop get hold of that kind of money?”

  CHAPTER 28

  Captain Bela Farkas pulled on his glass of beer then dragged the paper napkin across the foam on his upper lip. “You’re right on one account. Even the Beverly Hills chief of police didn’t make that kind of money in 1980. But his wife was a Garfield. Old LA money. She had plenty of dough to hire a famous artist.”

  “So you’re saying the money Nelson gave Quinn for his wife’s portrait wasn’t dirty?”

  Farkas nodded. “The money may have been clean, but shutting down the investigation and sanitizing the file wasn’t.”

  “How did Nelson and Eagan know each other?”

  “The wife’s great-grandfather Garfield was one of the founding members of the Jonathan Club. Jerome Eagan was also a member, which explains their connection.”

  There it was, the 1980s version of the billionaire boys club, where being a member apparently put you above the law.

  “We’re talking about covering up a murder, here. Not fixing a parking ticket. Why didn’t you report him?”

  Farkas smiled at me and looked deep into my eyes until I looked away. “Nelson was as well connected as they came. There was no hope in hell of getting anyone to take him on. That’s why I hung onto my notes for thirty-two years. I hoped someone would come along and expose the truth someday. It looks like that someone is you and that someday is now.” He lifted his glass in a salute and drained it. Then he signaled the barmaid and ordered another beer. He looked at me and wiggled his eyebrows. “How about joining me this round?”

  I shook my head. “I’m good. What can you tell me about the missing notes from the file?”

  “About a week after we got the forensics back from the Cadillac, I reviewed what we had in the file. At the end of the day, I went straight to the chief and told him your father wasn’t just missing. I was convinced we were now investigating a high-profile homicide, and, based on the evidence gathered, we needed to look more closely at the family.”

  “What was that evidence?”

  “Detective Gomez had a hard-on for this case. She was adamant Quinn’s wife was involved and wanted a chance to prove it.”

  I shifted in my seat. What if Gomez was right? How could I tell Giselle her mother might have been a killer? If only we could question Gomez and find out why she’d come to that conclusion.

  Farkas took a healthy slug from the frosty glass of beer. “Nelson told me to leave the file on his desk. The next morning, he shut down the investigation. When I looked for the file, it was gone. Days later it turned up with several pages missing.”

  “Why do you think he removed certain information, but not all of it?” I lifted my glass of Perrier and took a sip.

  “Nelson couldn’t get away with cleaning out the whole file, so he left just the stuff about Quinn’s sexual infidelities that suggested he’d either run off with another woman or was killed by a jealous lover. Since the Eagan family all had alibis for the day he disappeared—including the wife—none of them could be considered suspects in that scenario.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Here’s the interesting part. The notes Nelson removed from the file suggested an alternative motive for murder. Rohrbacher was looking into large amounts of unexplained missing cash and rumors of gambling debts. That line of questioning might have led us back to the family. Eagan was a notorious control freak. Maybe he just got tired of an uncontrollable son-in-law.”

  “Do you think Eagan hired someone to murder Quinn?”

  “I always thought it was possible, but, without a body, a murder weapon, or a witness, there was no way to know.”

  I thanked Captain Farkas for the drink and the information. He paid the bill and walked me out to my car. He opened the driver’s door and leaned on the frame while I slid behind the wheel. His voice sounded like a coffee grinder at low speed. “You’d like it in Green Valley. I could teach you how to fish.”

  I smiled at th
e handsome older man. “As tempting as that sounds, Captain, I’m going to have to say no. I’m really quite happy with my present situation.”

  “My loss. Drive safe.” He closed the car door and, with the flat of his hand, slapped the roof twice in a snappy farewell.

  * * *

  Thursday morning at eight, I phoned Giselle. Her sleepy voice told me she was still in bed. “Did I wake you?”

  “We had another late night.” She yawned. “Harold says he’s making up for lost time.”

  A man’s voice murmured in the background, and Giselle giggled.

  I told her about my conversation with Jayda Constable and Crusher’s search in the archives of the New York Times and the LA County birth records.

  “That’s great work, Sissy. Really clever of you.”

  “That’s not all.” I brought her up to date on my conversation with Captain Bela Farkas last night. “The thing is, G, Detective Meredith Gomez was going after your mother. Apparently, Gomez found something incriminating.

  “No! I don’t buy it. Mother was way too passive.”

  “Then why was Detective Gomez certain she was a viable suspect?”

  “Ask her!”

  I sighed. “You know we can’t. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless we can find a way to question her in the morning when she might be more lucid.”

  “How do you propose to do that? Detective Gabe Farkas saw her and said she’s too far gone. Her son, Carlos, refused to give us access. And we can’t talk our way in, because Miss Leathy already knows who we are.”

  “We’ll just have to get creative. Jazz and Lucy will help.”

  At ten-thirty, the four of us sat in my living room with fresh coffee and chocolate éclairs from Benesh Bakery, thanks to Giselle.

  Lucy rubbed her hands together. “I’ve got an idea. One of Ray’s customers is Acme Housekeeping. Ray maintains their fleet of vans. Maybe we could ‘borrow’ one of their vehicles and pose as cleaners.” She tickled the air with finger quotes. “I brought his lunch to the shop yesterday, and I know he’s working on two of them as we speak.”

  “We can’t just show up out of the blue.” Jazz offered Zsa Zsa a tiny drop of vanilla custard on the tip of his finger. “What makes you think they’d even let us inside the place?”

  I typed on my laptop and immediately found what I was looking for. “Here it is. Thanks for the Memories Assisted Living is owned by the Hamilton Group. Just a minute while I follow the link.” Google took me straight to the corporate URL. “Okay. Hamilton operates memory care facilities all over the country.” I went deeper into their web page. “The Western regional director is a Matthew Auerbach. We could say we’re negotiating a contract with Auerbach and he sent us to do a trial cleaning.”

  Giselle made a face. “Won’t work. Miss Leathy will recognize us right away.”

  “But she doesn’t know Lucy and Jazz. Maybe we can figure out a way of disguising ourselves.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Lucy. “Ray should be finished with the vans by tomorrow morning.”

  “I hate to bring this up, but we need to dress for the part.” Jazz pointed to Giselle. “Especially you and your Alexander McQueen outfits. Nobody would believe you were a cleaner! We can’t go waltzing in looking like ourselves. Well, maybe Martha could.”

  I could be so insulted, especially when nobody else contradicted him. “There’s a uniform store not too far from here in a strip mall on Ventura Boulevard and Newcastle. We could go there now and buy matching outfits.”

  An hour later we left the store, each holding a sack with a blue jumpsuit. We had fake names embroidered in white thread on the left side of the chest of each. Jazz’s said Rock and Lucy’s read Mildred. Giselle spied a wig shop two doors away and insisted on buying us all fake hair to deepen our disguises. “Just in case we run into Miss Leathy.”

  I adjusted the “Dolly Parton,” a blond bouffant teased into a frothy helmet. “How do I look?”

  Jazz studied me for a nanosecond. “You look desperate. It’s perfect.”

  Lucy selected a shoulder-length brown bob, Giselle chose a jet-black pixie, and Jazz opted for a bushy brown white-boy Afro. We agreed to meet the next morning at Lucy’s house at six-thirty. We needed to allow extra time to join the rush-hour commute if we wanted to arrive in Burbank by eight a.m.

  Crusher’s Harley pulled into the driveway that evening. As soon as he came in the house, he handed me a printout of names many times smaller than the one the day before. “I think you’re going to like what I found. There are only forty-eight names on this list.”

  “Thanks, Yossi. I’ll look at this later.” I set the printout on the apricot-colored marble countertop in the kitchen and told him about our plans to disguise ourselves and pay Detective Gomez a visit in the morning. I put on the blond wig and did a little pirouette. “What do you think?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Babe. Lay a little ‘Jolene’ on me.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Crap! I rolled over and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock at five-thirty Friday morning. Ten minutes later the alarm pierced the air again. Crusher nudged me gently in the back.

  “All right,” I mumbled, “I’m going.” I shut off the insistent ringing and rolled out of bed.

  I zipped up the front of the blue jumpsuit I’d bought at the uniform store the day before. The pant legs were much too long, so I rolled up the hems several times. Finally, I pinned my gray curls on top of my head, put on a stretchy stocking cap, and pulled the Dolly Parton wig into place.

  Staring back at me from the mirror was a zaftig, slightly bewildered-looking cleaner with the name LaWanda embroidered in white on the left side of her ample chest. If we ran into Miss Leathy, I doubted she would recognize me, at least not at first.

  As I walked toward the kitchen to make some coffee, the cuffs on my pants slowly began to unfold. So, I detoured into my sewing room, found a stapler, and tacked the cuffs together to keep them from falling back down.

  Fifteen minutes later, hot travel mug in hand, I drove to Lucy’s house on the south side of Ventura Boulevard. Even at six-twenty in the morning, traffic had started to accumulate on the streets feeding the 101 Freeway.

  Lucy greeted me at the door wearing her “Mildred” overalls, long brown wig, and dark-rimmed reading glasses. She carried a clipboard holding a tablet of yellow lined paper. “Well?” She grinned. “Do I look official?”

  “Not only official, but elegant. Too elegant for a cleaner.” Jazz appeared behind me. “Kick off those kitten heels and put on some sneakers.”

  I turned to look at “Rock” and burst into laughter. Not only did he wear his curly brown wig, he’d pasted on a fake mustache that resembled a caterpillar in a long fur coat.

  “What’s wrong?” He frowned.

  “Nothing. It’s just that you look like a time traveler from the nineteen seventies.”

  “I am, in a manner of speaking.” He examined his fingernails. “Those were my glory days.”

  Zsa Zsa tugged on the end of a blue leash that matched her tiny blue jumpsuit. A triangular piece of the same fabric was tied in a knot on top of her head like Rosie the Riveter.

  “You can’t bring her inside the facility,” I said. “Who brings a dog to work?”

  He picked up the little Maltese and showed me the ZZhe’d embroidered on the chest of her jumpsuit. “But she was counting on joining us. Look how excited she is.”

  Zsa Zsa’s tail wagged furiously.

  “She’s really good with old people. Couldn’t we say she’s a therapy dog our company provides at no extra charge?”

  “I’m sorry, Jazz. But we want to get in and out as fast as we can. She’ll have to stay in the car.”

  “Fine.” He pouted as he untied the miniature do-rag on her head.

  Last to arrive was Giselle in overalls that said Jane.

  “Well, I must say, the drive to the Valley at this time in the morning wa
sn’t as awful as it usually is.” She turned to Lucy. “Your house was easy to find. By the way, this is a much nicer neighborhood than Martha’s. What does your husband do?”

  Lucy opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. Finally she said, “He fixes cars.”

  “That explains everything. Mechanics charge a fortune.” She smiled brightly. “I guess you could say we’re both in the oil business. Are we ready?”

  Her black pixie wig made her look perky, but Jazz didn’t seem satisfied. “You look like you’re wearing a wig. Your red eyebrows are a dead giveaway.” He turned to Lucy. “Do you have a dark eyebrow pencil?”

  “No, but maybe I have something else that will work.” She disappeared into the house and returned wearing sneakers and carrying a roller of black eyelash mascara. Jazz brushed the dark liquid into Giselle’s eyebrows and stepped back to look at his handiwork. “Okay,” he said. “Better.”

  A white van with ACME HOUSEKEEPING painted in red letters sat in Lucy’s driveway. Below the words, a picture of a roadrunner winked at us with the motto SPEEDY SERVICE.

  Lucy held up the key and said, “Shall we?”

  We backed out of the driveway and headed toward the 101.

  I asked, “How did you manage to get Ray to agree to letting you borrow the van?”

  “I think he had a come-to-Jesus moment with his recent health scare, because he’s been much more laid back about everything. I explained that we had a vitally important mission and needed the van just for the morning. When I promised that we wouldn’t be in physical danger, he brought the van back to the house last night and handed over the keys.”

  At five to eight, we parked the vehicle on Bob Hope Drive and opened the rear doors. Jazz, Giselle, and I grabbed mops, buckets, cleaning rags, and a jug of purple soap heavily scented with lavender.