The Curse of the Holy Pail #2

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  "Sterling did send me a lunchbox that day," I told him. "A Zorro box."

  "We found that in your office."

  Willie stood up and got himself another cigarette.

  "Originally, I thought she might have it-the one who gave us your name. And maybe she does. She was one of the few people who had an opportunity to grab the box between your visit and Sterling's death. But I offered her a great deal of money for it. She said she didn't have it, didn't know anything about it. My personal opinion is that if she did have it, she would have handed it off like a hot potato instead of trying to contact another buyer. She seems a nervous sort, and that box isn't going to be easy to sell."

  "Unless she'd already sold it," I said.

  He shrugged. "Could be, but I don't think so. I think she would have confessed if she had, if only to get Enrique here off her back."

  I looked at Enrique. He stood immobile in front of the door, like an Aztec god guarding a temple.

  "Good point," I said.

  I turned to look Willie straight in the eye. "So, just how much did you pay Amy Chow?"

  Willie winked at me. "Like I said, Odelia, smart and straightforward."

  TWENTY

  A SCATHING HEADACHE CAUSED me to squint my eyes as I drove from Santa Ana to Tustin. I was on my way to Amy Chow's place. Willie had given me the address. According to him, she lived alone with her widowed mother.

  I still had almost two hours until my manicure appointment. After that, I was heading to Glendora for my visit with Lester Miles. It was just after eight in the morning; a little early to go calling, but a good time to catch someone at home. I found the house easily. It was a small white bungalow set behind a larger house on a quiet middle-class residential street.

  The front door behind the screen door was open. I felt better knowing the household was already awake. Peering through the mesh, I saw an immaculate and nicely furnished living room with a huge TV as the focal point. Sounds of movement drifted to me from other parts of the house. I knocked on the screen door gently.

  "Yes?" a woman asked as she made her way to the door. She was a middle-aged Asian woman, very thin and under five feet tall.

  "What you want?" she asked, stopping in front of the door. Her English was choppy and accented, but easy to understand. She looked me up and down suspiciously. Before I could say anything, she started in on me. "We don't want to buy nothing. We don't want your religion." She started to shut the front door. "Go away. Leave people alone."

  "But I'm here to see Amy," I said quickly, before the door closed completely.

  The woman reopened the door slightly. "You want Amy?"

  "Yes," I told her. "I know her from work. Is she home?"

  The woman shook her head. Her hair was black like Amy's, but worn pulled back tight into a bun. She was dressed simply in cotton trousers and a sleeveless shirt. "Not right now, sorry," she said in a friendlier tone. "Later. She'll be back later."

  "How much later?"

  "Not long. She left early, say she had to pick up something. Say she'd be home by nine. Then we go to my sister in Phoenix."

  Phoenix? Phoenix, Arizona, was hardly a day trip. Was Amy leaving town for a reason?

  "How nice," I said. "Going for a little visit?"

  "Yes," the woman answered, smiling. "Amy say if we like, we move there. She go to college ASU next semester maybe."

  When I hesitated, she said, "You wait, okay? I have to pack. Very busy."

  I said thank you and headed back to wait in my car. Fortunately, it was still cool enough not to melt inside a vehicle.

  From where I parked, I had a great view of the drive and walkway leading to the Chow house. Amy would have to hurdle a back fence to avoid me. I checked my watch. It was almost eight thirty. My nail appointment was for ten thirty. I put my sunglasses on, scrunched down in the seat, and waited. Fortunately, I had used the facilities at Willie's place.

  The face of the young woman came to mind. I found it hard to think of her as a cold killer, but as an accomplice, maybe. For sure, Amy was in the middle of this somehow. She had access to the bags of poisoned coffee before they were put in Sterling's office. She had access to the Holy Pail before its disappearance. And she had been the one to find Sterling's body. Added to that was her strange behavior around Karla. And let's not forget that she sold my name to Willie and Enrique. She may not have the Holy Pail, but I'd bet one of Seamus's lives she knew where it was.

  A little before nine, a silver Honda Accord pulled up and parked in the Chow driveway. Amy got out and occupied herself with something in the trunk. She had her long hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore black shorts and a blue tank top. I quietly left my car and slowly approached. Amy didn't hear me until I spoke.

  "Hi, Amy, going somewhere?"

  She jumped out of her skin and whipped around, turning pale at the sight of me.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked in a whisper, looking back over at the house. "How did you find me?"

  "I just came from seeing mutual friends-Willie Porter and his muscle boy, Enrique. Know them?"

  Quickly, she looked behind me, clearly frightened. She dropped her head and I heard big gulps.

  "Where's the lunchbox, Amy?"

  "I don't know," she said in a stifled voice, her head still bowed.

  "I don't believe you," I responded sarcastically. "Wonder why? Could it be maybe because you lied about my having it?"

  She looked up at me. Her cheeks were splotchy. "Please," she begged, "my mother knows nothing. I need to get her out of here to someplace safe. Please, Odelia." She voiced my name in supplication, like a prayer.

  "Amy," a voice from the house called. "Is that you?"

  Amy flashed me a pleading look before turning her head to the house. "Yes, Mom, it's me"

  "You see your friend?" her mother called out.

  "Yes, Mom, I did."

  Amy looked at me again and bit her bottom lip. She was clearly terrified. Of me? What a laugh. Was it Willie and Enrique? Did they threaten Amy and her family? Or was it someone or something else?

  "I'm going for a walk with my friend, Mom. I'll be back soon. Then we can go. Okay?"

  "Not long, Amy," her mother called back. "Must leave before too hot."

  "I'll be right back."

  Amy lifted a small gardening spade from a pile of pots and plants at the side of the house and started walking down the driveway. I followed. About a half block down the street was a small park. It was deserted.

  She walked to a small cluster of trees by a utility shed and knelt down. The ground at the base of one tree looked as if it had been recently disturbed. Using the spade, she began digging, scooping out small clumps of the soft, churned dirt. Just a few inches below the surface, she hit something hard and started digging around it. A moment later, she put the spade down and worked with her hands to free the item. It was the Holy Pail, wrapped tight in protective plastic. She handed it to me.

  "There," she said with soft finality. "You take it. I don't want any part of it."

  While I opened the plastic and checked out the box, Amy started walking away with double-time steps.

  "Not so fast," I called after her. Trotting, I caught up and grabbed her arm. "You have a lot of explaining to do, starting with who killed Sterling Price."

  She stared down at her feet, clad in sturdy sandals. Her shoulders shook with her tears. "I don't know. That wasn't part of the plan."

  "The plan?" I firmly guided her over to a bench and plunked her down, hard. "Out with it," I demanded.

  She cried harder. "I didn't know the coffee was poisoned, honest." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I was just supposed to steal the lunchbox."

  "Who were you working for, Amy? Stella Hughes?"

  She nodded. "Yes. She said she'd give me twenty-five thousand dollars if I'd get it for her." She looked up at me. "I was going to take the money and move my mother to Arizona. I was going to finish college with it."

  She sniffe
d and coughed slightly to clear her throat. "It seemed easy enough. Carmen was gone. I planned on never going back there again. I would have been long gone before they noticed it missing the next day."

  "But someone poisoned Sterling?"

  She started crying again.

  "When did Stella contact you about this?"

  "That Friday, just before ... just before he died. She was waiting by my car in the parking lot. I knew who she was. She asked me if I wanted to make some money. But all she wanted was for me to take the lunchbox. She never said anything about killing Mr. Price."

  "Do you think she did it?" I asked her. Amy hesitated a long while. I waited patiently.

  "I don't know," she finally responded. Her nose was running. Before she could use her hand again, I grabbed a tissue from my bag and handed it to her. "Thanks"

  I waited while she blew her nose before continuing. "Amy," I said quietly, "what you did was wrong, you know that." She nodded. "But I get the feeling you know something much more important that you're not telling anyone." She looked at me like a bunny caught in a trap. "Do you know who killed Mr. Price?"

  There was another long pause while she stared out at the open park. A young mother with a baby in a stroller and a toddler in tow arrived. The toddler made a run for the colorful plastic climbing structures embedded in a sand pit.

  "The coffee was sitting on Carmen's desk when I got to Mr. Price's office that morning," Amy recited in a nearly dead voice. "There was a note from Carmen to make sure I put it in the cupboard over the sink as soon as I got in. Which I did."

  "But you didn't know it was poisoned or who poisoned him?"

  We both watched the child, a small boy, gleefully climb the lower blocks and shimmy through the tubes while his mother cautioned him to be careful. Amy never looked at me while she spoke.

  "Not really, but I did overhear something that day. It was early in the morning. I was working on the other side of the building. I often came in early and worked for Mrs. Blake on the side, on her personal business that she didn't want anyone knowing about. She paid me quite well to keep my mouth shut. Said she'd get me a good promotion in the company, too."

  Secret personal business. This could be what Kyle dished to his father in return for the property. Thinking back to the day Sterling died, I remembered hearing the sound of a keyboard that morning coming from another office on the second floor.

  "Were you working that morning around eight?" I asked her.

  "Yes, I was there. Mrs. Blake had me come in around seven and leave her area by eight thirty so her secretary wouldn't see me. The executive staff always began at nine. I would leave by the back stairs. I had been doing this for several months."

  "What were you working on, Amy?"

  She sighed. "Mr. and Mrs. Blake were working with another company, feeding them information, setting up separate agreements on their own. I overheard Mrs. Blake tell Mr. Blake that morning that as soon as her father was gone, things were going to change"

  The box of documents in my car came to mind. The documents I was supposed to review for irregularities and loopholes. It was one of the assignments given to Woobie that came to a halt as soon as Sterling died, supposedly on Jackson's orders.

  "Was that other company Howser Development?"

  "Yes" Her voice remained small and resigned.

  This still didn't prove that Karla or Jackson poisoned Sterling, but it showed they had motive.

  "Did Kyle Price know about this plan?" I asked Amy.

  Finally, she turned and looked at me. Her bottom lip was bleeding where she had chewed it.

  "I don't know. But he did come in one morning about two weeks ago for a meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Blake."

  "Really?" I asked with greater interest. "I didn't think he was involved with the company."

  "He wasn't, but Mr. and Mrs. Blake asked him to be on the board of directors."

  "But there wasn't an opening until Mr. Price died. Mr. Blake filled the last opening. Are you sure this was two weeks ago?"

  Amy nodded and started crying again. "They had me type up minutes showing Kyle Price taking Mr. Price's place. They had me leave the date blank."

  The crying turned to sobs. I put my arm around the young woman and drew her close to me. She buried her head in my shoulder and sobbed harder, her small, delicate body shivering in my arms like a child's.

  Directors were usually elected by the shareholders of a company. Normally, in the event of the death or resignation of a director, the remaining directors appoint someone to fill the vacancy. But even without the other directors' approval, it would be a slam dunk. Sterling Homes is a privately held corporation with the majority of stock owned by the family. Banded together, they could pretty much put anyone on the board.

  Wow, I thought. Sterling Price wasn't even gone yet and they were filling the vacancy. Now that's pretty darn cold and calculating, and a vote in favor of possible premeditated murder.

  All cried out, Amy straightened herself up. "Thanks, Odelia. But I've got to get back."

  I stopped her. "Not quite yet, Amy. I need to know what you were planning on doing with this lunchbox. How were you supposed to get it to Stella?"

  Amy pulled away from me like she'd seen a monster. Or at least one standing behind me.

  "When I first took it, everything was so crazy, I changed my mind. I mean, I didn't want to be involved with a murder. So I hid the box here in the park and told Stella I didn't get the chance to grab it. I told her that it wasn't there when I found Mr. Price."

  "But you told Willie Porter that I had it."

  She nodded, her head down. "I knew that Mr. Price had sent documents to you that day and that he had included one of the lunchboxes, so when Willie Porter offered me money for information, I gave him your name. Sorry.

  "Late last night, I changed my mind and called Stella. I told her I had the box and would sell it to her for the twenty-five thousand dollars. I ... I ... I was supposed to go by her place early this morning with it," she stammered, "and she'd give me the money." She hesitated again, shook herself slightly and said, "I did, but she wasn't home."

  "But you just dug it up for me, so you couldn't have had it with you when you went to see her."

  She looked down at the ground and her cheeks reddened. "I didn't trust Stella to pay me like she promised. I thought she might pull something. I planned on giving her a map of where to find it in return for the money."

  Smart girl.

  Amy dug into the back pocket of her shorts and produced a piece of paper. On it was a map from Newport Beach to the park in Tustin and the exact place where the box had been buried.

  She started back to the house. I followed.

  "So you're leaving for Phoenix without the money?"

  "Yes," she said resolutely and walked faster.

  "N"Y?"

  She came to a stop in the driveway just behind her car. She had turned pale again. In spite of it being almost eighty degrees out, Amy shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She started to say something, but just then Mrs. Chow came out of the house with a couple of suitcases. She ran to help her mother.

  "Mom, don't worry, I'll put those in the car for you"

  "I'll be back," Mrs. Chow said. "I have more things. Lunch, too."

  "Amy, what are you running from?" I asked as I helped her put the bags into the trunk of her car.

  Looking first to make sure her mother was nowhere around, Amy looked me square in the eyes. "Death, Odelia. I'm running from death."

  She started to tap the lunchbox, but restrained herself, afraid to touch it. "That thing really is cursed." She took a deep breath. "I should have left it in the ground to rot."

  TWENTY-ONE

  EYES CLOSED, I LEANED back in the comfy chair and tried to connect the dots to and from the players in the Sterling Homes drama, and finally to the missing lunchbox that was no longer missing.

  William Proctor had pulled a Lazarus and wanted revenge on Stella Hughes. Stella hir
ed Amy Chow to steal the Holy Pail. Amy was running for her life, leaving behind the twenty-five thousand dollars promised her by Stella. Jackson and Karla were in bed with Howser, plotting changes in management after Sterling's death, but while he was still vital and healthy. Kyle, after accepting the offer to join the board of directors, had pulled a double-cross on his sister and brother-in-law and told his father of his sister's plans. And Stella was romantically involved with both Jackson and Kyle. Stella Hughes seemed to be the most common denominator.

  Stella had told me last night, after being pressed, that Kyle had uncovered a plan of his sister's to take over Sterling Homes and that Karla was working in cahoots with another company to pull the rug out from under her father. Stella claimed not to know any more, only that, in gratitude, Price had bought the Center for Kyle and given him the house. According to what Kyle told Stella, Price was going to oust his own daughter and son-in-law from the company the very next week-the week following his death.

  This information jelled pretty much with what Amy had divulged before setting off for Phoenix, although Amy had no way of knowing that Kyle had pulled a fast one and that the plug was about to be yanked on the Blakes.

  Geez, it wasn't even eleven thirty and I was already on overload.

  At least part of the puzzle was solved. The Holy Pail was found and safe, although I was still dying of curiosity about its background. I had stashed the lunchbox in the box of Howser documents in the trunk of my car and taken the box back to my office at Woobie. After all, my office had already been ransacked once. What safer place could there be for it?

  Somewhere on the road from Amy's house and the office, it briefly crossed my mind to turn the Holy Pail over to Dev, but I decided not to until the entire puzzle was solved. After all, I wasn't positive that the murder and the theft weren't connected. And even if the box wasn't a part of the murder, it might be useful as a bargaining tool.