So you called the police when you came to?
That’s right, Chirley.
Unbelievable, you two are SO brave, disguising yourselves and breaking into someone’s home.
Chirley turned back to Ella.
Ella…
Chirley, we did not break into the Frackle mansion. I had reason to believe, now fully justified, that my life was at stake. I was trying to prove who the killer…
I think we all know that by now. What I want to ask you next is to explain the video we’re about to see.
The monitors positioned around the studio came to life. They showed Ella standing at the edge of the cliff the day of the Frackle mansion open house, arms raised in the air, yelling “I am a sinner,” over and over. The screen went black after 15 interminable seconds.
What is that all about, Ella?
Mark chimed in. Yes, Ella, I’m curious myself.
Well Chirley, Mark, I had a kind of realization when that poor little dog was swept over the falls…
Did you have anything to do with the dog’s death?
Ella responded through clenched teeth.
No Chirley, I did not. It just caused me to start thinking about my priorities, and what…
But Ella, tell me, speaking of priorities, you do stand to make a lot of money from the sale of the Frackle mansion, isn’t that so?
Ella stared at Chirley, nearly speechless.
I don’t talk about my income to anyone Chirley…
When’s the big day, Ella? You might want to open an account at a new bank, your present one might not have enough room, ha, ha ha…Seriously, were you having an affair with Safada da Silva?
No! I’m here tonight because this news broadcast unfairly maligned my good name…
Hold your horses, Ella.
Chirley put a hand up to one ear, staring ahead with blank eyes.
My producers are telling me we’re out of time. Thank you both so much for coming on Speak Out! and clueing our viewers in on this exciting story.
*******
A light, evening mist covered the road when Ella swung the Mercedes onto Roberta and Starka’s street. She’d picked up the S600 from the body shop earlier that afternoon, and it sparkled in unblemished splendor once again. She pulled down the visor as she shifted into Park, the light from the vanity mirror illuminating her tired face. Brushing a strand or two of hair out from in front of her eyes, she looked at the file lying on the passenger seat. She took a deep breath, grabbed it and got out of the car.
The early evening darkness did little to hide the fire’s mess once she got closer. Roberta and Starka Littlefeather-Jones’ new home lay in charred ruins, with mounds of blackened wreckage piled up in the driveway. A cracked toilet here, a messy stack of burned two-by-fours there. What remained of the house reminded Ella of news images that flashed annually across television screens in wildfire prone California. Just a few burned remnants still stood, and the brick chimney pointed all alone to the sky, the single element of the home steadfast enough to resist the searing temperatures and fatal lick of flame.
Inside the “handyman” motor home parked permanently in the driveway, a couple of dim lights glowed. Ella heard loud arguing coming from behind the plywood façade, and recognized Roberta’s belligerent tone. Ella climbed the portable metal steps. She stood for a moment clutching the file, then reached up and knocked on the flimsy door. A diamond ring she’d bought on impulse the week before flashed in the soft spread of the streetlights. She pulled it off her finger and slipped it into a pocket.
The door creaked open. Starka stood there wearing a heavy parka. Her eyebrows arched in surprise.
“Roberta, you’re not gonna believe this. Get out here.” A kerosene camping lantern burned on the tiny kitchen counter behind Starka, and Ella could hear the hiss of the propane stove.
“Who is it?” Roberta roared.
Starka turned her attention back to Ella. “So the hero of the day turns up on our doorstep, if you could call it that. You’re all over the TV.”
Roberta shuffled up to Starka’s side wearing a colorful Mexican serape over a baggy, grey sweat suit. She put her arm around the woman she’d been yelling at only seconds before. She peered out into the darkness. “What the hell? It’s you. Now they’re saying Old Lady Frackle’s hot little maid killed them people. First you, then Starka and now her.” Is it true?
Ella self consciously closed her cashmere overcoat. “Yes, it’s true. But I came to see you about another matter.”
Starka sneered. “What now, you want to sell us another house?”
“Here, take this,” Ella said. She thrust the file toward the couple. “It’s uh… a gesture.”
Roberta and Starka looked at each other dubiously, then opened the file.
Ella held out a pen. “I know you probably don’t trust me when it comes to signing anything, but the heat works. It’s an agreement for one of my rentals, a cute little two bedroom one bath in Golden Gate Heights. Tunnel entrance, fabulous ocean view…” She stopped, realizing she wasn’t selling anything.
The two women stared at her. “I don’t understand, we could never afford to rent a house now,” Starka said.
“Wait honey,” Roberta said, examining the document more closely. “It says here the rent is zero.”
“You can stay there as long as you need to while you settle things with the insurance company and rebuild,” Ella said. “Well, a year anyway. I thought with a child on the way, it might help…”
The shaken Littlefeather-Jones’ looked at Ella in stunned silence.
*******
Ella and Jeff left the car with the valet and walked up to the wide glass front door of the Le Garlandique hotel, located downtown on the renovated Embarcadero. After verifying their reservation via headset, the matinee idol doorman granted access and swung a gauzy white curtain out of the way, revealing the inner sanctum of the über hip hostelry. Le Garlandique sizzled and spat trendiness. Guests had to apply in order to stay at the hotel, or receive an invitation to pay the extraordinarily high room rates. Should their social and financial qualifications, as well as press and internet buzz add up to the requisite hipness quotient, an email would arrive confirming the coveted reservation.
Many wanna-be Le Garlandique guests remained stranded in the wasteland of less stylish and discerning locales, often risking repeated humiliation by applying over and over. Le Garlandique publicly released its list of acceptances and denials, followed slavishly by several fashion and entertainment blogs. The recipe for acceptance remained mysterious, but according to rumors a Manhattan address couldn’t hurt. Since her splashy Opera Night spin in jail, Ella had received multiple offers from hotel management offering complementary stays. She and Jeff decided to take advantage of a free night and slip away before escrow closed on the Frackle Mansion.
They entered the lobby.
“Where’s the front desk?” Jeff asked the doorman.
They stood in a cavernous square, double height chamber. More white, billowy curtains covered the walls. No artwork, no furniture, no baggage spoiled the sterile effect. Just the occasional high fashion person entered or exited the area through invisible slits in the hanging walls, and loud chill music echoed through the vast, empty space.
“The Welcome Lounge is across the Atrium. I will accompany you.”
They walked over to a blank curtain. The doorman took a silver whistle from his pocket, and placed it between his perfectly formed lips. He blew mightily and a high pitched, almost painful tone filled their ears. Ella expected the hounds to come running.
He listened to his headset, and pulled back the curtain. “You may enter the Welcome Lounge, Blonde Esmeree will assist you.”
Clad in the extreme fashion of a Paris catwalk, Blonde Esmeree glowered with the puckered, strangely blank expression one sees strutting the runway. Tall, pale and deeply gaunt, she lowered her chin, affixed a bony hand to her jutting hip and looked them straight in the eyes.
“I am Blonde Esmeree and you will speak with me before ascending to your shelter,” she ordered.
“Good afternoon to you too,” Jeff said goodnaturedly.
She shifted her gaze to the computer screen buried deeply within the counter. “Most unusual.”
“Is something wrong?” Ella asked.
“We see very few complementary rooms at Le Garlandique. I must check.”
The fashionista desk clerk pecked at the keyboard with a pair of diamond encrusted chopsticks. She was quite adept and clicked rapidly.
“You are approved,” Blonde Esmeree said.
“Good,” Ella said. “By the way, are you hungry? I have a candy bar in my purse.”
Blonde Esmeree stared back, expressionless. “Greloguevaus will take you to your shelter.”
Ella and Jeff exchanged glances. The curtain behind them parted and the bellman waited. An unlit cigarette hung out of his pouty mouth, accentuating angular, effete looks.
“This way,” he said, indicating the opposite curtain.
“Where’s our luggage?” Jeff asked.
“No luggage ever enters Le Garlandique’s Atrium. Everything is pre-delivered to your shelter.”
“That should make your job fairly easy then,” Jeff said.
The elevators resided behind another gauzy barrier. A chime announced the arrival of the next car, but before the doors opened Ella heard the echo of a familiar and irritating voice. The elevator opened to reveal Chirley Wixon, glued to Giselle Frackle’s chauffeur Elton.
Chirley looked at Ella, and smiled brightly. “And I thought San Francisco was the big city before I came here. You never know who you’ll run into.”
Was the woman ever caught off guard? “I’d say surprise runs both ways in this case,” Ella said, shooting Elton a look.
He didn’t look the least bit chastened. “After what happened, Giselle gave me a couple days to rest up.”
“To recover, no doubt, from the shock.”
Chirley and Elton stepped out of the elevator. She lifted her hand to Ella’s cheek, giving her a quick, mock slap, not quite touching the skin. “Have fun,” she whispered.
The elevator décor included aquarium lined walls. While they ascended brightly colored tropical fish swam about, casting scant shadows inside the glassy cabin.
“When the doors open, you will see the Wondrous Black Curtain,” Greloguevaus said.
“The what?” Jeff asked.
“It’s part of the psychic cleansing experience of Le Garlandique. We ask that you grasp the handrails upon exiting the elevator.”
The doors whooshed open to reveal a pitch black landing. Only the dim light from the elevator aquarium lit anything at all, and Ella saw the lazy shadow of an Angel fish drift across the floor.
The bellman steered the couple to the nearest handrail, an essential part of his job she assumed.
Once the elevator doors shut she found herself in complete darkness, save for faint, muted blue lights spaced every so often on the hallway floor. They gave off no helpful illumination to speak of. As she moved down the hall, one hand securely sliding along the rail, Ella didn’t find the Wondrous Black Curtain at all psychically cleansing, but instead inconvenient and stress producing. She could have used a pair of night vision goggles.
She reached out for Jeff but instead grazed Greloguevaus’s derriere in the darkness. With mild amusement, she realized instead of moving away he pushed himself further against her hand. Well if he was offering, she thought, and took a quick, deep squeeze of his firm flesh. Then she saw their room number reflecting up from one of the blue panels. The bellman opened the door, and the hallway flooded with light.
“Sir, here’s your key...” He stopped in mid sentence when he saw Ella standing next to him. His eyes darted to Jeff right behind her. He looked back at Ella, who smiled graciously.
“Expecting someone else?” she asked.
*******
The whip cracked with a piercing snap next to Ella’s ear. She flinched but pressed her unclothed body even harder against the hotel room’s inch thick, glass shower wall. She stared through the glass at Jeff, stark naked on the other side near the bed, his rock hard penis pulsing ever further toward heaven with each sharp crack of the whip. The tinted glass walls provided the only separation between the bathroom and bedroom, creating the illusion of an icy, sharply angled space populated with chic plumbing fixtures.
The leather whip snapped again in front of her face. She hoped the glass could take the force. But they’d tested it while getting warmed up and the transparent wall had withstood quite a preliminary beating. The arrangement suited Ella fine, in that it allowed Jeff to indulge his more extreme tastes without risk of injury to her.
The whip cracked once more.
“You like that?” he asked lustily.
She threw her head back and moaned, hair falling away from her shoulders.
Jeff cast the whip aside and rushed around the glass to her open arms. He entered his willing partner as snugly and profoundly as a downloaded pop single digitally engages inside the latest iPod.
*******
Ella and Jeff reclined in the all white king size bed, set at an odd angle in the center of the room. Amid the heady afterglow of sexual satisfaction, they sipped champagne and laughed about their impractically stylish “shelter.”
“What do you think that egg thing is for?” Ella asked, lifting her chin toward a cream colored roundish object on the floor, about the size of a microwave oven.
“As far as I can tell, it’s nothing more than a stumbling block in the middle of the night.”
“Right before you smash into the glass walls. I’m glad we’re not paying.”
Jeff softly rubbed the back of his fingers across her cheek. “So are you ready for tomorrow?”
Ella marveled at how gentle he could be after he’d taken care of his more urgent and savage needs. “As ready as I’m going to be, I mean, sure, what’s there not to be ready for?” Ella said.
“Well,” Jeff said sinking back against the pillows and picking up the TV remote off the floor, “it’s bound to be one of the biggest days ever in the history of San Francisco real estate.”
Ella smiled as he switched on the set. Two seconds later they bolted upright in bed, paying rapt attention to a news bulletin flashing between commercials.
…stock options, and the head of Frackle Business Machines vanishes the night before his company’s highly anticipated IPO. The feds want answers. Details at 11.
“Kearney Frackle has run away?” Ella asked with a slight panic in her voice. “What exactly are backdated stock options?”
Chapter 17
“So your IPO shares are worth squat?” Mark asked.
Ella adjusted the washcloth on her forehead. “Apparently Kearney Frackle, with all his money, still felt the need to forge documents, lie to shareholders, manipulate the date the options were granted, and I don’t know what else, but it all adds up to a big fat zero.”
Bootsie ducked into Ella’s office carrying a tray with two cups of steaming tea. “Excuse me, Ella, this should help soothe you.”
“Didn’t you have some kind of minimum guarantee?” Mark asked.
Ella shifted on the couch to look at Mark. “No. And the stock price is at a 20 year low after all this. My options are worthless.”
Bootsie stopped on her way out of the office. “They’re saying on the news Kearney Frackle and some young woman were spotted in the Maldive Islands way out in the Indian Ocean.”
Ella sighed.
“But escrow did close on the Frackle Mansion?” Mark asked.
Bootsie looked at her watch. “About an hour ago,” she said brightly.
“That’ll be all Bootsie, thank you.” Ella scooted up to a sitting position on the sofa. “You know what really burns me up? The guaranteed stake in the contract for Delicia Cardosa’s broker.”
“So CB-Pru-U-Z still rakes it in, even without Tiffany Reynolds in the deal?”
“So she’ll make more than you, even from beyond the grave?”
“You know Mark, you’re such a comfort. How could I get along without you?”
“You couldn’t, it’s as simple as that.”
*******
Giselle Frackle answered the front door of the mansion. “Surprised to see me answer the door myself, young lady? As you know, I’m short on staff at the moment.”
“I’m sorry about all that’s happened to you, Giselle. It must have been terrible discovering Safada’s past, and her involvement with…”
“What I lost was a good maid,” she responded with a wave of her liver spotted hand. “And Edgar’s gun collection. The police took it away to some laboratory or another. To think Safada used his precious weapons in such a dreadful way. They did find her body though, not far from here on China Beach. Horrible it was, all tangled up with a hairy little dead dog.”
Ella gulped. “I didn’t know that, how sad.”
“Life is a series of decisions Ella, and some of us make the wrong ones.”
“What about Kearney?”
“Kearney’s on his own. He’ll have to get himself out of this one, Mommy can’t come running to solve every little problem.”
Sanjay descended the stairs carrying a suitcase in each hand while Giselle rattled on. “Thank god most of my money is still in the railroad, I’d be in trouble if all my chips were in the FBM basket.”
Giselle could hardly be in trouble. She’d clear tens of millions on the sale of the mansion alone.
“In any case,” Ella said, “I just came by to pick up our signs and any leftover sales materials.” She smiled as Sanjay approached. “It looks like you’re planning a little getaway.”
Giselle shifted on her skinny legs. “Yes, that’s right. Sanjay, bring me my wheelchair, my feet hurt.”
Sanjay nodded his head, and moved away silently. Ella wondered whether his future with Giselle held matrimonial or man-servant status. But she supposed either way it beat answering phones in a Mumbai call center.
San Francisco Values Page 20
