by Dianne Emley
“Look at you!” she cried. “What’s happened to you? You’re no better than she was.”
Art slowly turned his hands toward himself and studied them. He sat back on his heels, still crouched over her. She scrambled out from under him, got to her feet, grabbed her purse, and ran to the elevator.
He stood, still looking at his hands, then threw them down, clenched his fists, and started walking toward his car.
Iris pounded the call button. It was lunchtime, and the elevators were busy. She looked at the stairs a short distance away and was starting to run toward them when she heard the Mustang’s engine turn over. As her outstretched hand touched the doorknob at the stairwell, she heard the V-8 engine speeding toward her. She pulled the door open and threw herself inside the stairwell, but not before something smacked against the back of her legs, knocking her onto the steps.
After the sound of the engine faded, she got up and peeked into the garage. The Luis Vuitton satchel, which had hit her when Art flung it from the car, lay on the ground.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The day before Chief Greenwood was going to have Barbie Stringfellow’s body cremated, a man identifying himself as Ms. Stringfellow’s brother called the Las Pumas Police Department. The story had made it as far as a local newspaper in Denison, Texas, where Leon Calhoun recognized his sister, Louise, from a photo that had run with the article.
Greenwood and Calhoun both looked down at the metal table that held Louise’s remains.
“You taking her to Denison?” Greenwood asked.
“No. Back to Coffman, Mississippi, to a little hillside cemetery where my momma’s buried. Where I finally had her buried. Daddy had her stuck out in the yard. After he died, I gave Momma a proper funeral. Louise’ll be next to her. She loved her momma.”
“Your mother was buried in your yard?”
Calhoun nodded sadly. “Yep. Daddy told us she just left one day, but the way he used to beat the bejeezus out of her, we figured he just finally killed her.” His eyes glazed. “Louise and I grew up in a hell house. My two older brothers used to molest me and Louise from when we were just little kids. Our daddy knew, but he didn’t stop ‘em. Louise left home when she was a teenager and never came back.
“Louise was the only one in the family I kept up with. The rest of ‘em can go to hell. Louise used to send gifts for the kids. Expensive things. Cash sometimes. Lord knows, we could always use it. She was kind of sketchy about how she made her money, so I never pressed it. I had a feeling she didn’t want me to know. I guess I didn’t want to know either. She was such a sweet girl. Friendly, popular. A real personality kid. You can break a child, you know?
“Seeing her here, I feel like part of the past has died too. Because she was there with me, witnessed it with me, I knew it happened the way it did. Maybe it’s best. Some things are better off forgotten.”
Still shaken, Iris’s hands trembled as she hurriedly opened the door of her condo and locked it behind her. There were two messages on her answering machine.
The first one was from Charles Greenwood. “I wanted you to know that Art Silva just confessed to murdering Barbie Stringfellow. He moved in on your client behind your back to invest in a nightclub scheme of his and when she ripped him off, he killed her in a rage. Wilkin and I had suspected she was a con artist. Well, best of luck to you, Iris, and give me a call the next time you’re up this way.”
Iris spoke to the machine. “Well, Arturo, you did the right thing.”
The second message played. “Hello, Iris. Garland Hughes from the New York office here. I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to call you at the office. Maybe it’s not appropriate to call you at all, but I’ll let you decide. I’m going to be in L.A. next week and I’d be honored if you’d have dinner with me. I’ve checked the employee handbook to make sure there’s no policy against this, and everything appears to be copacetic. If you have the time, I’d look forward to it. Give me a call.”
She stared at the machine as it rewound the tape. “Best offer I’ve had all week.”
She took the Luis Vuitton satchel into her kitchen, set it on the sink, took a folded brown paper grocery sack from the cupboard where she kept them and put the satchel inside. She carried it into her office, taped it closed, and wrote on it with a black marker:
John,
I’m returning this to you.
Love, Iris
She drove north on Pacific Coast Highway with the top of the Triumph down. The normally brown hills showed their spring green and were dotted with patches of California golden poppies. Iris turned her face into the sun.
At Topanga Canyon Boulevard, she turned east and headed up through the mountains into the canyon. The road twisted and turned and she finally reached the gravel clearing down from John Somers’s house. She carried the paper bag up the road.
A mailbox painted with primitive white and yellow daisies with green stems on a yellow ground was perched on a pole at the end of his driveway. Iris pulled open the mailbox door, which gave with a metallic grate, and took out the mail. There was a handful of slick department store ads, bills in neat white envelopes, and small cards with ads for carpet cleaning, closet redecorating, maid dust-busters, or some other small business enterprise printed on one side. The other side asked, HAVE YOU SEEN? and displayed poorly reproduced photos of toothy pre-adolescents or younger children with showy grins. Several of the bills had yellow post office forwarding labels affixed to the front.
“Didn’t waste any time getting settled, did you, Penny?”
Iris crammed the mail back into the box and slammed the door closed. She marched down the driveway toward the house. The dog, fenced in the backyard, started to bark huskily.
Iris yelled, “Buster, quiet!”
The dog was momentarily silenced, startled by the sound of his name, then started his lusty barking again. He began flinging his solid body against the fence.
Iris left the grocery bag on the woven hemp front door mat, making sure the label faced out.
“Like opening John’s mail, do you, Penny? Have a gander at this.”
She returned to the Triumph without looking back and sped down Withered Canyon Road, sending the gravel into a satisfying spray behind her. She made quick business of Cat Canyon Road, turned onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard with a squeal of tires, then headed south on Pacific Coast Highway, heading home. She glanced at the ocean as she drove. It shone a hopeful blue.
ﾍBONUS: EXCERPT FROM FAST FRIENDS
The third Iris Thorne mystery
CHAPTER ONE OF BONUS EXCERPT
Dolores Gaytan DeLacey knew she risked making her husband mad by straightening his newspapers, but if she just straightened them and resisted the temptation to throw any out, maybe he wouldn’t notice. She never threw out anything that belonged to him anyway. She’d learned her lesson a long time ago—even though he’d accused her of exactly that as recently as last month. He had eventually made her understand that the newspapers weren’t junk. He was going to read them when he had the time. And until he found the time, he’d keep them in his office, where she had no business being anyway. Why, just the other day, he told her, he’d taken one down and read it and had thrown it away when he was finished. So he didn’t want her saying he never threw anything away.
Many of the piles of newspapers still had not been righted and lay where they had toppled over. Others listed to the side. It wouldn’t take much to send them tumbling to the ground too.
She shoved the handle of her feather duster between the ties of her apron and leaned over to pick up a stack. She checked their dates to make sure she heaved them back where they belonged, then wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead and tried to catch her breath.
It had been an unseasonably warm and dry January for Los Angeles. Even though the thick adobe walls in the old part of the house kept the air cool, Dolly was hot. It didn’t take much for her to overheat these days, but she did
n’t want to sit down and rest. She’d had enough of that.
It had taken her a long time, but she had finally made a navigable path to his desk. Of course he’d used his desk since the papers and everything else had fallen. He’d simply crawled over them with the ease of a much younger man. That’s one thing Dolly could say about her husband. Nothing, not even age, seemed to slow him down. Crawling up and over was not an option for her, not that she had any business in his desk anyway. She had no business there at all.
She dropped heavily into his desk chair, the worn leather and old springs singing, and picked up the hem of her apron to blot her face. She looked out the small paned window that was cut into the adobe wall, and waited for her breathing to return to normal. The sun shone through lacy, dusty cobwebs strung across each of the corners. She wondered how she could have let her house go for so long. She told herself it wasn’t her fault, not really, but she still felt it was. After all, this was her house. It would always be her house.
She pulled open the lower right-hand drawer of the old wooden desk and was glad to see that the metal box was still there. Grabbing its handle, she lifted it from the drawer, then carefully shoved the clutter on the desk out of the way to set it down. She opened it. It wasn’t locked. Why would he bother?
The box held just two things. She took out the will, her will in which she’d left him all her worldly possessions. Those were the exact words: all her worldly possessions. She’d reread that phrase many times since she’d found the single typed sheet a month ago. The signature was shaky and infirm but it could have been her signature in 1971, twenty-five years ago, which was when the will was dated.
She had no recollection of making the will but she remembered very little from that time. It was during her amnesia. Of course, she didn’t really have amnesia, but it was easier to explain things that way. Since then, some of her memories had returned, slowly creeping into her consciousness like creatures crawling from a dark cave. Most of the memories were joyful. Some were not. Still, huge chunks were missing. Years and years. Vanished.
But there was one thing she never would have done, even then. She never would have left him all her worldly possessions. There was really only one thing he coveted anyway and she’d promised her father that her husband would never own the remaining five hundred acres of Las Mariposas.
It was all that was left of the forty-three thousand acres granted to her great-great-grandfather in 1830 by the Governor of Alta California in payment for his services in Mexico’s war of independence. Her great-great-grandfather had named the rancho Las Mariposas because of the swarms of butterflies he said he encountered when exploring the property. In reality, he had confused fields of golden poppies with butterflies.
Her husband said her father had specifically stated in his will that they were to own Las Mariposas jointly, but she still didn’t know how that had happened. It was one of the things that remained hidden.
It would sort itself out. After all, her husband was twenty-two years older than she was. Certainly she’d outlive him. But things had been happening lately that made her uncertain. It had started with the baked chicken in mushroom sauce that he’d cooked. She was sick for two days after she’d eaten it while he remained healthy. Then there was the patch of flooring that had given way under her feet. She’d nearly dropped into the basement. One day she’d had a look around the garage and found all sorts of things that she’d never seen before. Rope, rat poison, saws. She’d only put it all together after she’d decided to stop taking her medication. It was as if a fog had lifted. Everything became crystal clear.
Reaching into the metal box again, she took out the other item it held: a gold wedding band. She held it up so she could see the inscription etched on the inside. Gabriel y Isabella 14 Junio 1934. She clutched the ring in her fist and her fist to her chest. The tears came immediately, forcefully. She felt the need to sink down, to get close to the ground, or to cling to something like the desk or a wall, but she fought it. She had to be strong. She had to keep her wits about her.
After calming down, she reached into her apron pocket, took out a square that she’d clipped from the neighborhood newspaper, the El Sereno Sentinel, unfolded it on the desk, and read it again.
SECURE WITH YOUR RETIREMENT PLANS?
UNCERTAIN ABOUT FINANCING YOUR CHILD’S EDUCATION?
I was raised in El Sereno and attended the local schools where I later taught hearing impaired children. Now, as a senior investment counselor for McKinney Alitzer Financial Services, I’m in a unique position to understand your financial concerns…
Dolores looked at the small picture of Iris Thorne’s face in the corner. She picked up the heavy metal receiver of the old telephone. Her father, Gabriel, had installed that telephone. It had been the first one in the house. She looked around the desk for something to help her turn the rotary dial that had round openings above each number, which were too small for her fingers. She used a pencil.
A recording answered. It told her what to do if she had a Touch Tone or a rotary phone and Delores became confused and hung up. Her eyes again teared. She steeled herself and tried again and finally reached a real person, who put her through to Iris Thorne’s number.
“Iris?” she asked apprehensively at the sound of Iris’s voice. It was another recording. Determined not to hang up, she clutched the telephone handset with both hands and listened carefully until it was her turn to speak.
“Iris! It’s Dolly. Dolly DeLacey. I don’t think he knows I know. I don’t know who I can trust. He’s turned my children against me. He knows everyone on the police department and at City Hall. I think he knows the governor and even the president and the president runs the FBI. Who can I turn to?”
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She was getting hysterical. She knew firsthand that no one paid attention to a hysterical woman. “Iris, he’s trying to kill me. Bill’s trying to kill me. There’s a rope in the garage and some saws and poison, Iris! It says it’s for rats but there’s a skull and crossbones on the box. It’s deadly poison! Then in his desk I found a metal box with my will in it. But I don’t remember it, Iris. How could I leave him everything? What about my children? And my father’s ring is there, too…”
She paused and listened. “It’s him! There’s his car. It’s him. Oh my goodness!”
She quickly hung up, put the box back in the drawer, slid the drawer closed, pushed the chair underneath the desk, and with trembling hands tried to return the clutter on top of the desk to its original position. She started to leave the room, then rushed back to grab the ad that she’d forgotten on the desk. Hurrying out, she bumped against the stacks of newspapers. She felt more and more out of breath. Ducking into her bedroom, she closed the door and tried to compose herself. When she heard Bill go into the kitchen, just like she expected him to do, she began to calm down. Everything was going to be fine, she told herself. Everything was going to be fine because over the years she’d finally learned to think like him.
He walked into his office and said, “Huh,” when he saw that she’d straightened it up. Standing behind his desk, he reached down and picked up a small, carefully folded square of white paper that lay on the carpet. A self-satisfied smile crossed his lips as he wedged the paper back between the desk and drawer, down low on the far side. This was the best location—confirmed via many tests—for it to drop to the ground almost unseen when the drawer was opened.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks, as always, to my intrepid and astute editor, Dana Isaacson.
To Rowland Barber, for listening, advising, and letting me tap into his muse when mine had gone home for the day. Thanks also, Rowland, for your priceless wit.
To friends who had the courage to give me their thoughts on the manuscript and the grace to speak diplomatically: Ann Escue, Mary and Don Goss, Jeff McLellan, and Jennifer Urick. Special thanks to Mardi Bettes, who read two drafts—truly “above and beyond…”
To my mother, Th
eda, and my sister, Sheila, for attending signings and readings as if they were at the hottest venue in town. Thanks to other family members, especially Jeanine, Craig, Cameron, Mark, Jennifer, Carter, Madalynn, and my father William whose delight over having a published author in the clan delights me.
And to Charlie, who stood by through riots, fires, earthquakes, and step aerobics, and who I’m proud to have by my side for the good times, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dianne Emley is a Los Angeles Times bestselling author and has received critical acclaim for her books which include the Detective Nan Vining thrillers: The First Cut, Cut to the Quick, The Deepest Cut, and Love Kills and the Iris Thorne mysteries: Cold Call, Slow Squeeze, Fast Friends, Foolproof and Pushover. Her books have been translated into six languages. A Los Angeles native, she’s never lived more than ten minutes away except for the year she lived in Southern France. She now lives in a hundred-year-old house near L.A. with her husband.
www.DianneEmley.com
