by Alex Ames
Detective McCloseky looked at him skeptically. On the verge of amusement, he was obviously close to offering a spontaneous repartee, but instead kept it neutral, “We were just leaving.” He said.
Time to step in; otherwise, I would never leave this town again. “Stop! No one leaves!” I shouted. “Time to clear things up.” My voice echoed from the pots and pans on the walls.
With all eyes on me, I pointed at the detectives. “Mundy, tell them where we were last night and what we did!”
Mundy’s mouth opened. Torn between truth, lies, embarrassment and loyalty, he looked desperately between the detectives, my mom and me.
I pointed at Mundy. “Please meet Mr. Mundy Millar. He can confirm… ”
Garcia gave a sharp cat-like growl and McCloseky lifted his hand to stop me.
“Mr. Millar?” Detective Closeky’s tone made it clear that he meant business. I love it when men talk that way. Does that make me a bad person?
Mundy swallowed and only managed a nod. I gave a small prayer to the god of the trees that he didn’t mess up our plan.
McCloseky asked Mundy for his credentials and then he studied them.
Garcia asked, “Where were you last night, Mr. Mundy?”
Again, Mundy’s haunted look between Mom and me. “I was home,” he squeaked, cleared his throat to make it sound more truthful and repeated, “I was home.” Fail!
“Your own home?”
“I mean home in Redondo.”
“In your apartment or house or whatever?”
“No, I was with Calendar, Miss Moonstone here.” Growing beet-red in the face. Good, his earnest embarrassment covered his bad lying.
“You were at Miss Moonstone’s home, with her?”
“Yes, I mean no. I was with Calendar at my home.”
“The whole night?”
“Sure, we… eh… we spent the night… ”
“All evening, all night?” Caging him.
“Yeah, I think Calendar left early.”
“You think?”
“I know… I mean… I think she did.” Again that helpless, very believable look. Atta boy. “I mean, I was asleep when she left.”
“You slept. Soundly?”
“All right. I slept all right. We were up until late, two or so.”
“You can vouch for her until two.”
“Yeah, then we slept and I got up around eight. Cal was already gone.”
The detectives simultaneously gave me a quick look, as if to corroborate the story with me—or it could have been pity that I had such a fried brain ball for a lover. I felt all chances dwindling with Detective Ron.
“You agree with his story, Miss Moonstone?”
“Yup. Up until about two, went to bed, I left around 7:30, took the laundry with me and drove here. To spend the holidays with the police.”
As Detective Garcia picked up her notepad, she prompted, “You didn’t mention the laundry part before. You got a name and number for the laundry service?”
“The place,” Mundy prompted, “on Pacific Coast Highway, PCH, near Torrance Boulevard.”
Garcia nodded and closed her notepad. “You are in the clear if this checks out. Are there any other people who would have called last night? Friends, family, customers?”
“No,” I shook my head.
Mundy followed my lead. “Just us two,” he piped, suddenly turning red again.
The detectives exchanged glances to see if the other one still had some question for Mundy or me.
“Consider yourself off the hook, Ma’am,” Garcia stated in my direction. I was under the distinct impression that they both knew more about me than they pretended. With that, the detectives said ‘Good-bye’ again—and they left, finally.
Mundy closed the door behind them. I went over and gave him a welcome kiss—I bet he had waited years for that one. I managed to touch his lips without exchanging too many body fluids.
“Hi, Mum-bun. What brings you here?”
Mundy needed a second to recover from the unexpected treat. “I had heard… ” He noticed that my mom was still around, trying to make herself as invisible as possible in order to eavesdrop as much as possible.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Stone, how are you?” Beet-red, he could light the kitchen.
Mom buzzed forward, glad to be back in the game again. “Mundy, long time no see. Last time we met was at Berkeley U’s graduation, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was. You look great. Your kitchen does, too.” As was every other new visitor to the House of the Moon, he was impressed by what he saw, the eclectic mixture of designer kitchen, witchcraft accessories and the big tree growing in the wall.
“Why, thank you, Mundy.” Then going for the kill, “Calendar never mentioned that you two are an item.”
Looking at me and mouthing a silent ‘… like thirty minutes ago.’ Mundy looked back at her and winked. Don’t overdo it. “You know, Mrs. S., she is a grown woman and she lives her own life. It is not that we live together. Though I brought it up just recently, didn’t I, Callie?”
I forced a smile. Bet you would. “I invited Mundy for the weekend, if that is all right with you?” Get this, Mundy, for changing the plan.
Mom was delighted and intrigued. This was a first. “Of course it is…. A pleasure. We will have a full house, Calendar’s sister Sunny will get here anytime, with her kids. It will be wonderful to have so much life under our roof again. Where will you be staying, Mundy?”
Obviously, good old Mundy hadn’t thought of this trivial little detail when he hatched his ill-fated plan to join me in San Diego. He stalled and Mom offered, “What I mean is, will you stay in Calendar’s room or do you want a separate room?” Mundy’s head played traffic light again. I rolled my eyes and couldn’t suppress a smile at Mom’s wickedness. She had us made, of course.
We bathed in Mundy’s dilemma for a few seconds, then Mom turned the wicked witch thing on me and said, “Oh, Mundy, don’t be embarrassed, I took part in so many hippie orgies when I was your age. Of course, you can sleep together in one room. We are quite liberal here. Is that all right with you?”
For a good American kid like Mundy, even though a Berkley graduate, this was clearly too much. He stammered a weak agreement while I put on my sweetest smile and placed another kiss on his cheek.
Mom picked up her knife again, made a dangerous swirl with it to remind us who the peace-loving boss was in the house and she continued cutting vegetables.
I grabbed Mundy’s arm and we went out of the kitchen into the back-hall and from there into the den. The second I closed the door of the den, I rubbed my sleeve over my mouth to get rid of any Mundy-germs that remained on my lips and then I pushed Mundy violently onto the same sofa that had been occupied by a very kissable police officer just moments earlier.
“What, in God’s name, brings you here, you moron? Can’t you do one thing right? What were my instructions? Stay. At. Home. Do nothing. Collaborate with the police.”
Mundy looked scared, but I didn’t know whether it was me or the situation in which I was in that scared him. He stammered, “Wh… when… I heard on the morning news that there had been a murder in an art gallery involving jewelry in San Diego, I knew that day ‘X’ had come.”
“That’s what alibis are for! So why not ride it out in Redondo as planned?”
“I would have, I swear, Callie.”
“You know, the last person who ever called me Callie was a football jock in high school? He was able to play without a crotch guard fort the rest of the season after I was through with him.”
Predictably, Mundy started to stutter, “I… I… I made it up on the fly, I swear. It sounded cute.”
“Is that what you call me in your fantasies? You dirty fink!”
Mundy looked trapped. Suddenly, the fun was gone out of Mundy-bashing and I sat down beside him on the sofa and sighed, “Well, so what?”
“I swear to you, I planned to stick to the arrangement. But then, maybe half an hour af
ter you left, around 8 o’clock there was a knock on the door and this guy wanted to see you.”
“Police, in Redondo?” That’s what I needed, the local police on constant vigilance around my shop.
“No, not police. It was a guy from a big insurance agency, Limes and Limes, London.” Mundy fished a business card out of his shirt pocket.
“Fowler Wynn!” Slumping back, I was holding my head before he could even produce the card.
Mundy gave me a surprised look. “Exactly. A skilled guy, I couldn’t make up the story as fast as he was asking for details. Fortunately, I could block the more intimate parts but I bet he goes sniffing around. He made a very determined impression on me. He’s out to get you, you know.”
I scratched a worn patch on the old sofa fabric. “You bet,” I said, “he will never let go until he has found all the angles.”
“You know him? Ever met him before?”
“Did I ever? He is a pest. He is convinced that I am Jane Ruby, the cat thief, and that I am responsible for half of the jewel heists in this country.”
Mundy gave me an ‘As if you weren’t’ look. I threw my hands up. “Even if, it doesn’t matter. He has never been able to find a shred of proof, not even leads. What is disturbing though, is the fact that he knows that you are playing my boyfriend and that you are my standard alibi.”
Mundy looked stunned, he hadn’t thought of that yet. “So he knows everything about you?” I held up my hand, heard a familiar rumble from the front side of the house. “What is that, an earthquake?” Mundy looked into the garden and onto the shelves.
“No, my father,” I said.
Harry Moon was a big man and he came from a big family. When I was a small girl, I used to pray that I would grow up to be as strong and big as my dad, so I would be equipped against all the evil dangers of the world. However, after I discovered boys, around sixteen or so, I prayed that I would inherit Mom’s slender feline bones and that I would not develop into ‘Hilde, the Norwegian troll girl.’ A good mixture of them both had won.
With Mundy on my trail, I walked back to the kitchen to greet Dad. He still held his motorcycle helmet in one hand and had just finished kissing Mom, “Hello Calendar, my surfer girl.” He gave me a bear hug, lifting me off the floor and forcing all the air out of me. We held on to each other for a few seconds, and then he put me down again, the gentle giant.
“Dad, do you remember Mundy? I invited him over for Thanksgiving; otherwise he would have stuffed himself full of McDonald’s chicken burgers.”
Dad shook Mundy’s hand, a bear paw crushing the slender fingers of a boy. “Welcome to the House of the Moon, Mundy. Of course, I remember you. You turned to journalism, I heard.”
Mundy and Dad started a chat about working conditions at the Washington Post, one of Mundy’s former employers, while Dad took off his leather jacket and stored the helmet in the cupboard. He rode an old Harley from the 50s, meticulously restored during countless mornings in the garage. Although he was pretty wild in the old days, and he belonged to the hippie generation of Monterey and Berkeley, it was only a few years ago that he started restoring the bike. Before that, he was more into gardening and surfing.
Mom and Dad were very well off, an unusual thing for the hardcore hippie generation where many had taken the road to the American way of life quite late. Of all things, Dad had made some clever investments that turned out extremely well. He had only invested in outcast stocks as he called them—the likes of AOL, Apple and Yahoo had turned Dolores Stone and Harry Moon into rich people, who now held various social functions in San Diego.
The rest of the morning and early midday was rather unspectacular; we helped Mom prepare Thanksgiving dinner, even Mundy managed to peel his share of potatoes without jeopardizing his typing career. Later, I saw Mom and Dad in the garden. In low tones, she updated him on the detectives’ visit—while they pretended to pick fresh herbs. No further remarks were made about the visit or any possible predicaments of their daughter. The pact of silence and ignorance was intact. But it lingered between us all, unspoken.
Chapter 3
SHORTLY AFTER NOON, peace came to a sudden end. My sister and her two kids arrived spilling out of their taxi with an endless stream of bags and cases. Hugs and kisses all around, little useless presents for most of us. Oohing and ahhhing at last year’s improvements on wardrobe, architecture and hairdos. After eight hours on the plane, my niece and nephew, Jennifer and Keith, were soon playing football with Mundy in the garden. They were screaming and shouting for the best throws and catches. The kids loved Mundy instantly; he was very natural around them. Something they had probably never experienced with their father or mother, since Sunny and Tom were both stiff and over caring parents, projecting a lot of their own fears and life ambitions into their kids. Jen was the older of the two, eight years old, she was a typical commerce driven child of this generation—iPhone, PlayStation and Barbie were her most uttered words. With her straight honey-blonde hair and coquettish looks, she took after my sister Sunny. In comparison, Keith, at seven years old, was a serious dark haired kid with glasses and a thoughtful hesitant manner. He had taken after his father, Tom Highler, an accountant with a Dallas oil company. Sunny and he had gone separate ways for five years now. Sunny looked a lot like me but she was the more mature one, sturdier frame and bones, a little more of the ‘Hilda’ genes. Where I had taken refuge in my diamonds, crafts and not-to-be-named adventures, she had rebelled against the hippie fraction by embracing capitalistic America to the fullest. She had become a corporate lawyer. Specializing in mergers and acquisitions, she prepared billion dollar deals that destroyed numerous jobs and economic microstructures. ‘Synergy’ was her favorite word and to the dismay of Mom and Dad, she was proud of her achievements. Define ‘dysfunctional’ in the new Millennium.
Mom finally announced, “We will eat in the garden under the trees,” and clapped her hands.
And so we did.
Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be pleasant with the occasional strained overtones that uniquely marked this family as my own. Mom had outdone herself with the cooking; the dishes she had prepared deflected any joke about non-tasty veggie food. Dad told story after story of San Diego’s social elite and their ways of ignoring the poor and underprivileged. Mundy behaved, not embarrassing me any further. Conversation circled around family affairs, catching up with neighborhood gossip and the ethical conflicts of corporate America.
Nearly two and half hours later, we finished eating, absolutely stuffed. Mundy was giving me a light neck massage; had he attempted such a stunt 24 hours ago, I would have slugged him. I bet he enjoyed the whole thing immensely. Well, my price for a good alibi. When this was over, it was my turn to let him suffer.
Sunny sat with Mom, sipping ice tea and chatting away. The kids played with the cats and helped their granddad fix something on the motorcycle. Later, Mom brought out her guitar and we sang Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez songs, the three Stone-girls in a strange sad harmony.
Mundy and I hadn’t finished our little chat from before noon so after we were able to move again and had done the dishes, we headed down to the waterfront to walk the vegetable lasagna into the ground. The sun was already gone and we wandered under yellow light, skaters and joggers buzzing by.
“Your folks are nice,” Mundy stated. His parents had been gone for many years, both taken by the Big C.
“No complaints. But you caught the gang in a good mood,” I nodded. “These family gatherings often end with loud quarrels, tears and inhabitations that last until the next time around. Your presence helped to keep us civilized.”
We were silent for a moment. Then I gave him a quick kiss.
“What was that for?” Mundy asked, rubbing his cheek.
“For being there,” I said, meaning it. He was my best friend after all.
“Did you have anything to do with the death of the watchman?” Mundy blurted out.
“Jesus, you must have been a pressure co
oker all through the afternoon.”
“Come on, you can tell me, I have a right to know. I am your alibi but I won’t cover for murder.”
“Mundy, dear, I swear to you, I had nothing to do with the murder and the theft they are investigating. When I stumbled on the guy, I even checked his pulse… ”
Mundy gave a sharp breather; I could feel a hyperventilation coming up with him. “Touch! You touched the body, probably left hair and sweat, a million DNA cells and everything for the police to find.”
“I always wear gloves while I’m working, plus I am hooded up. He was already dead, though not for long, he was still warm to the touch. I finished what I was doing and left quickly,” I explained. “I’ve been in this game for a while now.”
“Game! You found him and you checked on him. Curiosity killed the cat burglar.”
“When I started, he was alive and doing his rounds. I was doing my business. I was preparing to get away when I stumbled on him dead. Did a check to see if I could help and then left. I didn’t see anyone else.”
“You know, it could have been you,” Mundy said and after I understood what he meant, realized that he was probably right. It could have been me left dead. A little scary. Actually, quite scary.
We walked a little further along the beach. Mundy stopped and sat down in the sand. “A close shave.”
“Yup, what a mess.”
“Think our alibi worked?”
I nodded. “For the police, yes, it is as good as it gets for now. The initial danger is over because a trustworthy person accounts for me and they will focus on other leads. Plus, since I was using my cash rental, they won’t find any record of my car being in this area the night before.” I hoped that they had other suspects on their list besides me.
“But this insurance guy, Flower?” We started skipping stones into the low evening surf.
“Fowler. Fowler Wynn. An old friend of mine.”
