Knot in My Backyard (A Quilting Mystery)

by Mary Marks

  There were two families with children, folks who were victims of the economy and first lost their jobs and then their homes. Hilda told me I wouldn’t find many single homeless women in the wildlife reserve who weren’t prostitutes. Unless they were protected by a pimp, a partner, or a family, they could be raped and assaulted.

  “Hilda, you’re a single woman down here. How do you manage?”

  “These people come to me when they’re sick. They need me because I’m the only ‘doctor’ most of them will have. If anyone dared to hurt me, the rest of them would probably kill him. I’m prob’ly safer down here than anyone else.”

  She pointed to a small tent under the trees. “Switch got hold of some runaway kids—boys and girls. In exchange for food and a raggedy bedroll, he pimped ’em out in parking lots and behind seedy bars in Van Nuys. The tent is where he used to keep ’em.”

  I stopped and looked at her in shock. “Where are those kids now?”

  She shrugged. “In the wind, I guess. As soon as your guys took out Switch, they saw their chance and ran.”

  We were now close enough to see all the packages and blankets had been distributed. Many of the homeless stood around the truck, smiling and chatting with Lucy, Birdie, Sonia, and the bikers. One woman rubbed soothing hand lotion into the skin of her cheeks and cracked lips. Another gently fingered the ties on a quilt made up of multicolored square patches.

  The sound was faint at first; but as it got closer to the basin, the chopping helicopter became unmistakable. The big black-and-white bird stopped above us and hovered. A police helicopter. Not low enough to kick up dust, but near enough to send people scattering.

  As I looked up, someone in fatigues stood next to an army jeep parked above us on the Sepulveda Dam service road. I suspected it was Army Specialist Lawanda Price.

  I moved sideways. The ground gave way slightly under my foot and something wet seeped through the bottom of my shoes. I’d just stepped in a pile of garbage reeking of rotting fish.

  Hilda wrinkled her nose and looked at me. “I told you to watch where you stepped down here.”

  I dragged my feet several times over a clump of dry grass in a futile effort to clean my shoe.

  Sonia pulled out her cell phone. “Where are you? Well, hurry up. You have to get over here now. There’s going to be a confrontation with the police.”

  Sirens pierced the silence.

  Oh, God, please don’t let it be Kaplan. Worse. Don’t let it be Beavers. My shoes stink to high heaven.

  CHAPTER 25

  At the first sound of sirens, all the homeless people hurried to scoop up their meager belongings and scattered over the wildlife reserve, heading for the trees and sprawling parkland beyond. Lucy and Birdie lost the color in their faces and stood close together, holding hands. Hilda had vanished.

  Sonia clasped her hands together and bounced nervously up and down on the balls of her feet. “Oh, my God. Are we going to be arrested?”

  Crusher took a step toward her. “Listen, everyone. We did nothing wrong. Don’t argue, be polite, and, if they do arrest us, just be cool.”

  A dozen policemen in riot gear appeared on the path above us, shields raised and batons in hand. They looked like giant beetles with the visors of their shiny helmets pulled down over their faces and their bodies encased in protective padding. A couple of stripes adorned the sleeve of the leader, who I guessed was a sergeant. None of us dared move as they advanced in a wide phalanx toward where we stood.

  Sonia smiled. “Oh, my God. Let’s do a sit-in like the old days!”

  Lucy looked at the ground. “I’m not going to sit on that!”

  Crusher frowned at Sonia. “Were you even old enough to’ve sat in?”

  “Well, I was a school kid during Vietnam, but I wanted to. Now we have the chance. We could protest the conditions down here.”

  Lucy frowned at her. “That’s pointless. Who would know?”

  Just then another helicopter appeared above. The second copter had EYEWITNESS NEWS and a big 7 painted on the side.

  Sonia pointed to the sky and grinned. “A lot of people would know. I called a friend.”

  Of course she did. She was the yenta.

  The army jeep previously parked on the service road had vanished. I was certain Price was the one who called the police. She didn’t want us to be in the reserve, and I was pretty sure I knew why.

  Price probably hadn’t counted on the news cameras also showing up. When they did, she must have left the area to avoid being implicated in this fiasco. After all, calling in the police to enforce law and order was one thing. Calling in the riot squad to harass a small group of volunteers distributing free supplies to the homeless was quite another.

  Whatever intimidation Lawanda Price hoped to accomplish unobserved, Sonia thwarted by that call to the news media.

  A voice shouted out a command: “Stand where you are and put your hands on your head.”

  “Do as you’re told,” Crusher urged quietly.

  Everyone complied, but Birdie. Her arthritic shoulders made bending a problem.

  When the police got close enough, the sergeant told Birdie, “You too, lady.”

  Birdie’s newly adopted grandson Carl—all six feet of him dressed in black—stepped between Birdie and the cops.

  Birdie twisted the end of her white braid and peered at the cop from behind Carl. “I’m sorry, dear. I’d like to comply with the police. I’m a big fan of Law and Order, but I can’t. My arthritis, you know.”

  The cop pointed to a spot of ground away from the rest of us. “Okay, Granny. Step over here.”

  Carl looked ready to pounce on someone. Birdie lightly patted his side and stepped out from behind him. She walked over to the cop, craned her neck to look in his face, and pointed an arthritic finger at him.

  “Shame on you, young man. There’s absolutely no reason for you to be rude and disrespectful to me or anyone else. Absolutely no one addresses me as ‘Granny.’ My friends call me ‘Birdie,’ but you may call me ‘Mrs. Watson’!”

  Carl snorted. Lucy’s mouth hung open. I looked around. All the bikers were grinning. Even some of the cops smiled. Sonia thrust a power fist in the air.

  Really?

  The cop in charge looked up at the news chopper and over his shoulder at his troops. One of them urged, “Go on, Sarge. I’ll stay with her.”

  The trooper slowly led Birdie over to the side and nodded once. “Ma’am.”

  She hung on to his arm for balance. “Thank you, dear.”

  At the sergeant’s command, several officers stepped forward and searched the men for weapons. When none were found, he glanced again at the news choppers. “Okay. You can lower your arms.”

  Crusher crossed his arms across his barrel chest. “Why are we being detained, Officer?”

  “Trespassing.”

  “This is public parkland. We have a right to be here.”

  “Your truck doesn’t,” the sergeant growled.

  Crusher maintained his cool. “That hardly warrants a riot squad and a search. A ticket, maybe.”

  “Suspicious activity gives me a right to stop and frisk.”

  “Nothing suspicious going on. We were just distributing blankets and gear to the homeless. We needed to transport the items in, so we brought a truck. We stayed on the path so as not to disturb the wildlife habitat.”

  The sergeant squared his shoulders. “There’s wildlife here, all right. Drugs, prostitution, and thieves. This-here’s their habitat. We got a report of gang activity.”

  “Do we look like a gang?”

  The sergeant glanced from the bikers to Birdie and me and back to Crusher. “Yes and no.”

  “Well, just ask the people who live here what we were doing.”

  “Yeah? What people?”

  I looked around. Every soul had disappeared. Who could blame them?

  A reporter spoke into a microphone with a television camera aimed at us from the Sepulveda Dam service road, where the
army jeep used to be. I raised my hand to speak.

  The sergeant looked over at me. “Yeah?”

  “Who called in the complaint?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear the officer admit the army had called.

  “We don’t give out that information.”

  “It was someone from the Army Corps of Engineers, wasn’t it?”

  “Like I said before, lady, I can’t tell you.”

  “It’s Mrs. Rose. Martha Rose.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I thought I heard a familiar name.”

  I looked up. Detective Arlo Beavers frowned at me as he walked down the trail into the reserve.

  As soon as I saw Beavers, my heart started racing and my mouth went dry. God, how I had missed him. God, how I wished my shoes didn’t smell.

  I suspected the department sent over a detective to handle this incident because of the news media. The mayor and the LAPD were very sensitive about public perception. Since Sunday is a slow news day, we were probably being broadcast live as “breaking news.”

  Beavers would be skillful with the press: cool, professional, and soft-spoken. As always, he wore a suit and tie, with a crisp white shirt. Tall and fit, with white hair and a mustache, he looked so good, my teeth ached.

  Sonia whispered, “Martha, your boyfriend’s here.”

  “My ex-boyfriend,” I mumbled. Like I didn’t notice him all on my own?

  Beavers scanned the crowd. He spotted Crusher and then looked back at me. “Why am I not surprised?”

  He turned his back to us and spoke to the sergeant. “What do we have here, Mike?”

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but a couple of times Beavers looked over his shoulder at me.

  Finally he turned around and walked over, his face a mask. “Talk.”

  CHAPTER 26

  I worked my hands together and licked my lips. My voice cracked with nerves. Beavers and I were now face-to-face for the first time since the morning he threw his key to my house on the hall table.

  “We brought over fifty blankets and fifty packages of hygiene items to distribute to the homeless who live here. We drove all those supplies down into the reserve with Yossi’s truck. We didn’t do anything illegal. We were just helping people.”

  The leaves of a nearby bush rustled and a familiar voice said, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” Hilda emerged slowly from hiding, along with the smelly old vet with the wild beard and an African-American youth too young for facial hair. The vet clutched a bag of toiletries, which he desperately needed, and the boy hugged the green Windmill quilt to his chest.

  Hilda looked at Beavers. “She’s telling the truth. See for yourself.” The two homeless males held up their packages for the cops to see.

  Beavers twitched his nose. “What’s that smell?” He looked down at my shoes, which were covered in an oily brown substance. The corner of his mouth turned up for a nanosecond. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  Birdie walked up to us. “Hello, Arlo dear.”

  Lucy followed.

  Beavers maintained his professional demeanor in front of the other cops. “Mrs. Watson, Mrs. Mondello. Nice to see you again.”

  Oh, sure. He can be nice to my best friends. After all, they haven’t done anything to piss him off.

  Birdie lowered her voice and leaned toward him, forcing Beavers to bend down. “Confidentially, this is ridiculous. Much ado about nothing. Now my knees are really hurting and I have to sit down. I’d like to go home, if you don’t mind, dear.”

  Beavers straightened up and spoke briefly to the sergeant. Then he announced to the rest of us, “You’re free to leave. Next time you plan something like this, let the authorities know beforehand. You’ll save everyone a lot of trouble.” He turned abruptly to walk away.

  I cleared my throat. “Arlo.” He turned back, face sober, hands on his hips. Cops and bikers streamed past us toward the road above. Birdie and Lucy sat in the truck with Sonia, waiting for Crusher to drive them up the hill.

  Crusher came over and stood next to me. “You okay, babe?”

  Beavers glared at him.

  “I’m fine, Yossi. I need a word with Arlo. I’ll be up soon.”

  When we were alone, I asked, “How’s Arthur?”

  “Still recovering at the hospital.” He turned to leave.

  “Someone from the Army Corps of Engineers called the police on us, didn’t they?”

  He turned and faced me again. “You know I can’t answer.”

  I wanted to tell him everything I suspected about Beaumont School and the corps, even though Ed’s attorney wanted to sit on the information for a while longer. I hoped to steer the police away from Ed and to prevent his arrest. I also hoped Beavers would see we were on the same side and soften his attitude toward me. How could I get him to take a closer look?

  “Well, you might want to ask yourself why the Army Corps of Engineers—specifically Lawanda Price—would call for police intervention in an obviously peaceful activity.”

  “Why would I bother?”

  He didn’t deny the caller was Price.

  “The homeless problem has been a part of the basin for years. Why did the corps choose today to call for a police invasion into the reserve? Is there someone they’re trying to scare out of the area?”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Like maybe a couple of witnesses to a murder they’d like the police not to solve?”

  Beavers took a deep breath. “So that’s why you’re really here. You’re trying to find the homeless witnesses I told you about, aren’t you?”

  “I resent that! Can’t I just be doing a simple good deed?”

  “Not when you’re here with Levy and all his biker friends. Did you think I wouldn’t realize you’re meddling in police business again?”

  Well, that’s snarky!

  I was all huffy until I remembered Uncle Isaac also called me a “meddler,” only in Yiddish. He called me a kuchleffel. He also suggested I didn’t trust Beavers to do his job.

  Didn’t I? The thing was, I did trust Beavers. Since Aiken wasn’t ready for us to share our information with the police, I counted on Beavers to understand what I could only hint at.

  I couldn’t come right out and tell Beavers about Martin’s affair with Diane Davis because of my promise to the Beaumont groundskeeper. Beavers would want to know where the information came from, and I’d have to tell him. I needed to point Beavers toward a possible criminal conspiracy between Beaumont and the corps, a conspiracy that might have resulted in Dax Martin’s murder. If Beavers followed the trail, he might get to the affair on his own.

  “What if the homeless witnesses could identify the killer? What if the killer then reveals something not kosher involving the baseball stadium, which connects to Dax Martin and the Beaumont School and even the headmaster and the Army Corps of Engineers?”

  Beavers waved a sweeping hand around the wildlife reserve. “Let me give you some friendly advice, Martha. Get out of this crap hole and go home. Your fun is over for the day.”

  My patience ran out and I was on my last nerve ending, but I bit my tongue. I wasn’t ready to be dismissed. “I know I’m right, Arlo. Lawanda Price and Barbara Hardisty from the corps are up to their ears in this. Why won’t you at least consider what I’m telling you?”

  “You and I’ve been down this road before. I know you’re smart, and I know you have this weird knack for educated guesses, which turn out to be right. Unless you and your new boyfriend over there have some real information, I’m outta here.”

  That does it! Now I’m officially pissed off.

  “Listen, you self-righteous prig. You couldn’t be more wrong about me. Not that I care anymore, which I don’t. Yossi Levy is not my boyfriend! But you know what? He’d like to be. You’re not the only fish in the sea. Maybe I’ll consider climbing on the back of his bike and sliding into his bitch seat!”

  It started in the corner of his mouth. Small at
first, because I knew he was trying to control it. Then it crept into his eyes and burst out of his nose.

  Arlo Beavers was laughing! “‘Bitch seat’?”

  Fury nearly blinded me as I followed everyone else out of the reserve. With his long legs, Beavers easily climbed past me, chuckling on the path to the road above. I don’t remember walking back up. I was so mad. Tears of humiliation blurred my vision; and I could have slogged through an entire stinking landfill, for all I knew or cared.

  The television reporter waited for us at the top of the access road. “Hi, I’m Heather Park from ABC news.” She asked Beavers’s name, then shoved a microphone in his face and turned to the camera.

  “We’re here at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve in Encino, talking to Detective Arlo Beavers, of the LAPD. Detective Beavers, what can you tell us about the gang activity today?”

  Beavers still had a smile on his face. “There was no gang activity here today.”

  Heather Park leaned forward aggressively. “Well, then, why was the riot squad here? The people of Los Angeles deserve to know what’s going on in their own backyard.”

  Beavers leveled a look at her, refusing to rise to the bait. “I’m glad you asked. We responded to an urgent call for help and sent a dozen officers here to handle a report of violent gang activity. The call turned out to be a false report, which will end up costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars.”

  “Was this another incidence of ‘swatting’?” She referred to a recent spate of prank calls to 911 resulting in the deployment of SWAT teams to locations where no crime was being committed.

  “Filing a false report is a crime. We’re now focused on finding the person responsible.” Beavers flicked his eyes in my direction.

  So he did listen to me! Beavers would check out what I told him about the Army Corps of Engineers. I felt hugely relieved and a little less angry.

  Crusher’s truck backed up out of the reserve and turned onto the road with a loud rumble. The interviewer raised her voice to be heard over the noise. “What did go on down there today, Detective?”

  Beavers pointed to where I waited for Lucy and Birdie. “This lady can answer the rest of your questions.” Then he strode toward his silver Camry.