by Alex Ames
I looked out to the ocean, glistening in the sun.
“And what did you think about her? Is she a candidate for you?”
Ron glanced at me, otherwise concentrating on the traffic. “Sure. She is not in the clear. Juanita is checking for money motives. Real estate, life insurance. And her income situation.”
“What is the most likely explanation for Phoebe’s upscale lifestyle?”
“Come on, surely you can think about it,” Ron gave me a smile.
“No, really. A working girl?”
“Girls and their dirty minds. No, a rich boyfriend!”
“You think so?” I was disappointed.
“Sure. I bet he is either married and having a blonde artist on the side—sorry, nothing against blonde artists.” He chuckled. “Or he is one of La Jolla or San Diego’s upper ten thousand having a steady thing with her. You must admit that Phoebe is attractive.”
“Yeah, if you like the busty California beach bunny.”
“Uh, bust-envy!” Ron cried out. “There is a cushion in the back seat to upholster you for the drive back.”
When we had calmed down, I asked him for his remaining Thanksgiving plans. “My Mom’s invitation still stands, you know.”
“Thank you. Tell your mother that I will take a rain check and maybe come back another day. But I feel that Thanksgiving is a family event.”
“You got family?”
“Sure, I’ll be meeting with Juanita downtown to catch up with our investigation and then I’ll be heading to my parent’s home. You look astonished?”
I moved uneasily in my seat. “Yeah, I took you for the typical cop—divorced, no next of kin, living from fast food, moss in the fridge, dedicated to his work.”
“Less than two out of five. Never married, so never divorced. Parents alive and kicking.”
“How come?”
“They didn’t stop breathing.”
“Nooo, the other thing.”
“I planned to, once. But then I saw too many marriages of my fellows go bust. So I decided to stick with easy partnerships. Maybe things will change if I make it up the ladder or quit one day. What about you?”
Nice trick question, delivered in a matter of fact voice and I almost fell for it, being relaxed and all, chatting with an attractive male. But I cut the corner in time and chastised myself for dropping my guard.
“Well, you have met Mundy. We go way back to college and it has lately developed into a steady relationship.”
“He looks like a steady and nice guy.”
“He is.” And I definitely had to invent a decent way to break the relationship with him soon to keep my chances with Ron.
We stopped at the House on the Moon and I asked Ron about the next steps.
“Nothing’s going to happen today; we did the important preliminary steps but now we have to wait for the reports from forensics. Unfortunately, there are not too many hot leads right now.” Ron tapped his fingers on the wheel.
“The jewelry angle? What about that?”
He looked at me. “Well, how could we ever know whether the Montenhaute set will turn up again? As you said, it was a very special piece among other valuables but only this one was stolen. In my eyes, that makes it a made-to-order job. I doubt that it will be fenced.”
“Detective, you don’t make the most optimistic impression on me.”
“How long will you be in San Diego?” Ron asked.
“The weekend. I plan to open my store again on Monday.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday. I propose we meet tomorrow at headquarters and discuss things. The prelims should be in by then.”
“Fine, I am looking forward to it.” We shook hands in an awkward formal fashion, Ron had nice warm hands, wrapping around my tiny fingers nicely. I jumped out of the car and watched him drive away.
When I turned to step up to the front door of the House of the Moon I saw a car approaching. It was a black Ford Explorer. Taller than me, it stopped right beside me. The windows were tinted so I couldn’t make out the inhabitants until they opened the side window. The driver was a thin man with a thin moustache and thin black hair. He wore a non-descript business suit and a dark tie, probably got his inspiration from a Tarantino movie. On the passenger seat lurked a giant with a mean look, twisted and pressed into the seemingly smallish interior. He wore a light brown suit without a tie and he had a noticeably expensive haircut. Everything else about him looked less nice. A flat nose, cauliflower ears and fleshy slits that seemed to hide his eyes.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, not showing any fear in stance or voice, sounding more courageous than I actually was.
“Miss Moonstone? A word with you.” The thin man was not smiling, a shark circling its prey. His giant companion was not moving at all. “Did you already meet my associate Billy? Billy Bounce?” Had to be the mean giant’s stage name, no hit man would ever be called Billy Bounce. Without looking at me, Billy nodded once.
“What do you want? Who are you?”
“Let us just say that we were hired by a certain party to… retrieve a lost item.” The thin man had the knack of pausing before the last part of a sentence. He tapped on the wheel with leather-gloved hands to make an understated emphasis. “The party is looking for… something. We are inclined to believe that it is… in your possession.”
“You are wrong,” I said evenly, looking into the thin man’s eyes. “Whatever it is, look elsewhere.”
“You will reconsider your statement in time, we are sure of that, Miss Moonstone. Time and patience are running out… quickly.” The thin man leaned back. The interview was over. He threw the car in gear as the window started to slide up. Billy Bounce didn’t look at me; he simply took his left hand into his right, cracked some joints and audibly crunched his teeth over the sound of the Ford motor and the whining window. Or so I imagined. They vanished behind the tinted glass and drove off. When I turned around, I saw Dad standing in the doorway of the House of the Moon, looking after the Ford.
I walked up the stairs and he stepped aside to let me in the kitchen.
“Friends of yours?” he inquired simply, walking over to the stove.
“Not sure. Friends of an old friend, maybe.” I was thinking of my run-in with Thomas Cornelius the night before.
Dad opened the pot with the wild rice, stirred it to check its consistency and said, “There were bad vibes coming from that car.” He looked me in the eye, anticipating my wise crack. “And I don’t mean bad car maintenance!” Went back to the cooking. He knew me too well to probe any further.
“I hear you, Man on the Moon.” I kissed Dad’s cheek and got myself an all-natural mint ice tea from the fridge.
While Dadster, the giant at the toy stove, tended to the kitchen, I walked out into the wild garden where the rest of the family was making a racket like Super Bowl. Mundy had organized a ‘Battle of the Sexes,’ Keith and Mundy vs. Sunny and Jen.
It turned out to be a very nice dinner, Sunny held back on her corporate raids and Dad didn’t mention the cancer of capitalism. It was like a temporary cease-fire, the usual family conflicts suppressed. Don’t mention the war. Mundy told some nice action laden journalistic stories for the kids and Mom was watching us from the wings, enjoying as much as possible the short time with a full family in her home.
Sunny refilled the kids’ cups with soda. “By the way, I changed my name back to Moonstone,” she declared.
“Hear, hear.” My Dad had never liked the ‘Highler’ name, never had liked Tom anyway.
Mom clapped her hand. “Now the sun and the moon are together again, like they should be.” She leaned over to give Sunny a kiss.
Mundy turned to me. “Callie, what about your day as a policewoman?”
Jennifer looked up at Mundy and corrected him with the full seriousness of a kid’s absolute knowledge. “There is no such thing as a policewoman. It’s called police officers, now.” Dallas, Texas!
“We did some interviews. Dull stuff, c
ome to think of it. In my opinion, we got no closer to finding the murderer.”
“How is Andrew Altward?” Dad was asking.
“You know him?”
“Andrew is a regular contributor to our cause,” Dad said. “We sat together on some events. Not lately though, haven’t seen him for a while.”
“He has a very nice penthouse overlooking North Bay and Coronado.”
Mom asked. “Did you meet any of his young girlfriends? At some of the social events, he turned up with young things at his side.”
“No, just the maid.”
“He got hit very hard?” Mundy was asking with mouth full. Jennifer playfully hit him in the ribs.
“Some eighteenth century jewelry got stolen, nothing spectacular, around 500K value.”
“In the news, they said that they are baffled how the murderer had gotten into the safe.”
“Yeah, it is an impressive construction. A whole floor turned into a safe, plenty of electronics.”
The most chaotic moment of the Thanksgiving dinner was the moment when Mom declared the choices for desert. Jennifer and Keith had been under the impression that the salad and vegetables were a mere starter and that the turkey entree was about to come. The wailing and crying were so loud that Mom gave in, went over to the Kozlowski’s and begged for some slices of leftover meat.
Mom sat through the rest of the dinner with arms folded, looking disapprovingly at the children wolfing down cold roasted turkey.
“Mom, look at it from the light side. At least the meat is kosher,” I said to cheer her up.
Mundy got Sunny into a discussion about law ethics in America and Dad and I played a round of softball with Keith while Jen and Mom did the kitchen. Almost a real family. And for the first time on this trip, I felt content.
The calm before the storm.
Chapter 11
SATURDAY I GOT up early to burn some of the extra calories I had collected over the Thanksgiving holiday. I ran three miles in the nearby park, did some stretches to keep me elastic and ended with some fast kickboxing moves against an innocent tree.
During the final run back to my car, I made a stop at a non-descript phone booth. Using an anonymous long distance calling card that was only used once and for this call only, I made a call to Philadelphia. With three hours ahead, Yehova Feingold had just opened his shop on Philly’s jewelers’ row, near the old town district. His creaky old voice took the call and I said, “Hello Uncle Yehova, it is Sarah speaking.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Sarah, my good child, how are you? Happy Thanksgiving.”
After a few non-relevant pleasantries, I said, “By the way, Uncle Yehova, I came across some silver chandeliers with engravings. Would you be interested?” Anything to do with light was our code name for diamonds and any latter modification like ‘engraved’ meant ‘cut.’
I immediately knew that something was wrong because he didn’t ask me how many chandeliers I had to offer. Instead, there was a second of silence.
“Yehova?”
“Dear child, dear Sarah.” Yehova was stalling, trying to find a way to say ‘no.’ A complete novelty. “Are they a recent acquisition of yours?”
“I got them a few days ago and I immediately thought of you.”
“My child, I am afraid I have no use for them at the moment.”
“Uncle, what is the matter? Is family coming over from Europe?” ‘Family’ was the code word for police.
Stalling, Yehova blew his nose. “You know… my mother told me not to buy any new stuff right now.”
His mother, who was his mother? That code didn’t exist. I decided to blow the spy talk. “Whose mother? Not yours, Uncle, you are close to 75.”
“No, the mother of the, eh, East. In a literal sense.”
Mother of the East? What did he mean? Who the heck? A mother was an authority figure, some kind of politician? Uh… oh… things were beginning to dawn on me. I dropped the handset of the phone, did a few steps back and began to kick a nearby trashcan with all my might. It fell over and spilled paper, trash and a fat rat that took off toward the next rain gutter. I picked up the phone again.
“Nothing you could do? Make an exception for a little girl?”
There was another silence, and then he hung up, kind of an apologetic gesture.
Shit. I kicked the trashcan again. Hurt my big toe. Did a little scream and dance. Everything coming down on me. Continued to jog back home.
Yehova Feingold was my main contact for getting rid of my stolen goods. To this point, we had always had a good and fine working relationship, never a hitch. I specialized in uncut stones or bigger cut stones and he would cut, divide or modify the stones and, to say it in banking terms, laundered the jewels.
But Thomas ‘The Fence’ Cornelius III had somehow pulled the stops. Mother of the East. That meant that I couldn’t try any of my other Eastern contacts besides Yehova. To prove the point, I made another stop at a pay phone and called another number, this time in Miami. This time a nice Spanish-speaking lady told me in a haughty voice that all transactions were currently suspended, call back another time.
Another call to Boston gave me a similar response.
I was stuck. I was stuck with 200K worth of stones that were hotter than hell.
I finished my run, showered and wolfed down a quick fruit salad. The rest of the family, including Mundy, was still sleeping. Then I set out with my Miata to the Downtown San Diego police headquarters. I arrived at nine a.m. sharp and Juanita picked me up at the front desk. Me, being a good citizen, I had never actually been inside police headquarters, so I looked left and right.
Juanita read my mind. “You won’t see too many criminals here. Most of them are booked at the local precincts and then transferred directly into the central jail.” She looked slightly amused at my playful disappointed mimic. We somehow had reached a non-aggression pact without agreeing to anything. Fine with me.
Ron shook my hand and offered me some original SDPD coffee in an original SDPD mug. We had Danish pastries and doughnuts as we spread out in a small meeting room that had no windows. And no fresh air. I felt like I was on SDPD Blue.
“So, what is new?” I asked them.
“Who starts?” Juanita looked at Ron.
He took a quick sip, consulted his notes and gave a hurried wrap-up of our own adventures. “We interviewed the surviving daughter, Phoebe Eastman. A starving artist, without talent, according to Calendar. And I am not one to disagree. But living in La Jolla, with an atelier in San Diego and a very nice car. Not much room for a brush and canvas in the trunk.” Ron put a DMV computer printout on the table. BMW Z1, nice, nice.
“Don’t forget the very expensive necklace,” I threw in.
“Hang on, yesterday you said ‘excellent’ piece. Overnight it became ‘expensive?’”
“OK, OK, lesson number 18, excellence always means expensive.”
Ron continued, “Credit rating agency gives her a good mark. Debt free, healthy credit limits on her cards. That’s what I found out so far.”
Juanita threw in her results of yesterday’s research. “She has an art major, never had an exhibition apart from an obscure gallery representation, a year ago. Found it on the Internet.” She showed us a note in the local paper mentioning Phoebe. “She will inherit Daddy’s small apartment. And here we have a nice segue to talk about our victim. He was a former college professor who lost his job in an education downsizing cycle—don’t laugh, that’s what it was called in the early nineties. Daddy had small jobs on the side, did SAT and GREP training and lately, night watchman. His apartment is almost debt free, around 15K left on the mortgage. Has a small life insurance policy, he opened in his academic days but quit paying premiums after he couldn’t afford them anymore. Phoebe will get about 20K from that. Plus an old Cadillac Cutlass twice around the odometer.”
“That’s sad, don’t you think?” I said, feeling it. “A life resulting in such few belongings of value, some policies, a car,
a home. And maybe a box of photos of better times.”
Ron ignored me; he probably saw worse things going on every day of the week. We looked over some of the papers Juanita had collected on Phoebe and her dad. “I think we agree that she is not the hottest candidate to have killed her old man and do the jewelry store job.” As Juanita and I didn’t answer immediately, Ron looked up. “Do you? Or don’t you?”
Juanita raised her hand. “I do, I think there is something fishy with her lifestyle. But as you said, maybe it’s her rich secret boyfriend.”
“Let’s work a little more on that angle. Maybe there is a reason why the boyfriend threw money at her.”
“You mean the boyfriend used Phoebe to get to Daddy to get into the safe.”
“Sounds farfetched, I agree. But still, something about her lifestyle.” Ron smiled. “As a great man once said, ‘our main weapons are called check, double-check and recheck.’”
Juanita nodded. “Maybe the neighbors will know something. I’ll snoop around this afternoon. Gives me a reason to move my stubby little legs.”
Ron continued. “OK, the other interview was Andrew Altward, the mustache of the year. Seemed more occupied with his art than with his dead personnel. All he was thinking about was his Calder, not a word about poor Wally Eastman.”
“Calder?”
“Alexander Calder. Twentieth century sculptor. Famous for his mobiles and murder weapons.” Ron delivered the information matter-of-factly and gave me a wink. “Altward has some very valuable stuff in his gallery, Calendar assured me of that. And surprise, surprise, only the tacky French grandma stuff was stolen. None of the hot trendy stuff, which is strange. And Altward is one of the few people who are able to open the safe room.” Ron looked over at me. “Did I miss anything important?”
“Guess not.” I said, my consultant input worth its money.
Juanita cleared her throat. “All right, my turn again. I looked into the finances of our Mr. Altward. Phones listed in his name revealed the home you already know of, the penthouse. He resides in another home in Newport, inherited from his mom, sounds like a vacation place. I inquired with the Newport neighbors; they said he visits sometimes on the weekends.”
