“Oh, man!” Tori said, throwing her hands up in the air. “I'll starve to death by the time you get through looking around.”
Flint nodded at the pad of paper and pen Tori was holding in her hands. “So write a novel while you wait. Let's go.”
Tori mumbled expletives to herself and then snatched open the driver's side door. “We’ve gotta get some drive-thru, for crying out loud! When my blood sugar stops to drop I'm just no good anymore. Sincerely, I just flop to the floor.”
Flint buckled his seat belt and looked at her right in the eyes. “What's the difference between you eating and being hungry, then?”
“Oh, funny. Ha ha ha, very funny, Mr. Comedian. Remind me to catch your other acts sometime.”
Flint threw the car into drive and pulled out of the parking lot. “You’re mean,” he said, teasing her.
She pressed her lips together, unimpressed. “Well, I told you I’m no good when I’m hungry.”
Focusing on the road, zooming through traffic dodging vehicles by mere inches, Flint through hard about Richard Wilson and Mayor Duffy. He had to slam on the brakes behind a white SUV at a red light, and skidded to a stop. Glancing over, he saw Tori’s face drained from color.
“Just breathe,” she whispered to herself, taking in one deep breath after another. “Just breathe. It'll be okay. You'll live to see another day. Just breathe.”
Waiting for the light to turn green, Flint felt a sudden urge for a cigarette attack him. “Come on,” he berated the red light.
Looking to his right, Flint saw a run down, crappy, shopping center fronted with a cheesy hair salon, a crummy insurance officer, a pet store that probably sold stolen pets and a cheap looking Chinese restaurant sitting at the tail end. Glancing over his shoulder, he slammed on the gas and zoomed over a patch of sidewalk, onto a patch of grass littered with cigarette butts, and then planted the car onto black asphalt. Swinging up into a parking space in front of the Chinese restaurant, ignoring the sound of people blaring their horns at him from the street, Flint glanced at Tori. “Let's grab a bite to eat, huh? I guess it wouldn't hurt to--”
With her fingernails dug into the dashboard, Tori slowly turned her head and looked at Flint, her eyes wide. “I'm going to kill you,” she whispered.
“Later,” Flint said, popping off his seat belt. “Right now I want some Sweet and Sour Chicken and Fried Rice. Maybe a sweet tea.”
“He wants sweet tea,” Tori said to herself. “You almost kill us and you want goddamned sweet tea.”
“Hey sister,” Flint said, opening the driver's side door. “I’ve never been in an accident. With me, you're as safe as a baby in its mother's womb. If you don’t like my driving, you’ll have to go get the bus.”
“The bus would be safer!” Tori hollered at him. “What's with you, anyway? You drove perfectly normal this morning.”
Flint looked out at the passing traffic. Spotting a badly painted blue and gray bench people planted their backsides on while they waited for the city bus to come by, filling the air with filthy exhaust, to take them to some other crummy part of town, he thought ‘life’. He was investigating the death of some old broad that had some very powerful people on edge... but so what? Years from now the world wouldn't even remember. Years from now the bus bench would be gone. Years from now different people would be stopping at the red light while the old faded away. “Why do I do it?” he asked himself.
“What?” Tori asked, unbuckling her seat belt.
“Nothing,” Flint said, getting out of the car.
At the front door of the Chinese restaurant he spotted cheap menu prices printed off on computer paper, taped to the inside of the glass of the door. “Not bad. Sweet and sour meal for $3.99.”
Tori examined the dirty shopping center. Except for Flint's car, she didn't see any other potential customers. “Hey, Flint, I don't want to end up at the hospital today having my stomach pumped out. Let's go someplace else, huh?”
Opening the front door, Flint motioned for Tori to follow him. “Come on, it'll be fine.”
Following Flint inside, Tori prepared for the worst. Walking up to a red wooden counter, she was greeted by an old Chinese woman dressed in traditional Oriental clothing. The old woman smiled, handed her a menu, and walked into an empty dining room decorated with cheap Chinese items. Sitting down at a black table that held a salt and pepper shaker and a bottle of soy sauce, she glanced down at an ugly white tile floor. “Nice place. Perfect environment for food poisoning. You know there’s a real nice place over on--”
Flint kicked Tori's leg under the table. “Knock it off,” he growled, opening the menu.
“Jerk,” Tori said, and kicked Flint back considerably harder.
Flint shot her a cold eye.
She grinned back, raising her eyebrows. “Yeah, let's see what's on the menu.”
A young Chinese girl with purple hair strolled up to the table wearing a pink and green shirt over a long black shirt. “What will it be?” she asked, looking like she really couldn’t care less.
“Sweet and Sour chicken meal, sweet tea. And go easy on the salt, huh,” Flint told the girl tossing the menu down on the black table.
“I'll have...” Tori scanned the menu. “Uh... the same as my partner, please. And light on the salt, too.”
“Two sweet and sours with sweet tea,” the girl repeated in a bored voice as she walked away. Tori watched the girl disappear through a red door and shuddered. Could be a filthy kitchen crawling with roaches. “Got any Rolaids?” she asked Flint.
Flint leaned back in his chair. “This case has taken a twist. We have two different paths to sniff our noses at.”
“Really?” Tori asked, eager to throw her mind back into detective mode. “Okay, throw it at me, boss.”
“Stop with the boss stuff,” Flint said. “This ain’t a mafia movie. Let's go over what we know about Lila Crastdale, okay?”
“Okay,” Tori said eagerly. “Well, we know she has a niece.”
“We'll check into her,” Flint said.
“We know Lila Crastdale was married to a man that was murdered, and in the same pool she was found in.”
“Patrick Wilson was active in politics. So was Lila Crastdale. Patrick Wilson also had a lot of the greenback.”
“Greenback? Oh, you mean money, right?” Tori said, looking a little embarrassed.
Flint rolled his eyes and moved on. “After Lila Crastdale was found innocent she relocated to New York. Now, what did she do in New York? She becomes involved in stocks. It's obvious she did well for herself. We'll need to check into her stock portfolio and try to find out what she did in New York for twenty years and why she decided to move back to Los Angeles in 1988, to the same mansion. The same mansion…” Flint said, feeling his mind begin to whisper questions.
“What?” Tori asked.
“Patrick Wilson was found dead in the same pool Lila Crastdale was found in this morning, like you said. It's possible he was murdered inside the mansion and brought to the pool, which makes me wonder... Why would the wife of a man she was accused of killing move back into the mansion the murder took place at?”
“Hey,” Tori said, feeling excitement enter her chest. “Yeah... Yeah, that's a good point.”
“We need to pull the deed to the mansion,” Flint said. “Maybe the mansion didn't belong to Lila Crastdale after all?”
“Wow,” Tori said, loving the fact that Flint was using the word 'We' instead of 'I'. “Does this mean I can drop tracking the piano?”
“No,” Flint said. “Don't you get it?”
Tori pushed out her lip. “Just hurry up and tell me.”
Flint planned on coming back with a cutting remark, but he was too swept up in the case to come up with one. “You saw the piano room, right?”
“Sure, I stood in that room for over two hours,” Tori answered, slowly raising her eyes to look at Flint. “I know I'm not an Ace Detective like you, Flint, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I saw
an empty room holding a piano… If that makes me dense, then I'm sorry.”
Craving a cigarette more than ever, Flint squeezed his hands together. “It's obvious that someone played that piano. Maybe Lila Crastdale, or maybe someone else. That's a lead. You saw the piano, that thing cost a small fortune. If we can find out, if anything, the company that transferred the piano from New York to Los Angeles, we can find some answers.”
“Like what?”
“Like who paid to have the piano moved? When was the piano picked up and when did it arrive in Los Angeles? Was the mansion the original destination from New York or was there another location? If we can find out when the piano was bought, that helps too. How long did Lila Crastdale own the piano before returning to Los Angeles? Who bought it?”
“I'm still confused. I mean, I kinda see why--”
“Suspects,” Flint said. “Lila Crastdale wasn't a hermit in New York and she didn't return to Los Angeles under a cloud of fog, either. She was active in politics, as was her dead husband. I'm sure she didn't stay single, either, after her husband's death. It's obvious that the studio knew Lila Crastdale was back in town, too, maybe the studio even pressured her to move back? I know you see a piano, but I see a clue.”
“Okay,” Tori said, absorbing everything he said. After the waitress brought to red hard plastic glasses filled with sweet tea, she took a careful sip, made an 'it's-too-sweet' face and asked Flint more questions. “So someone could have lived in the mansion with Lila Crastdale, then?”
Flint took a sip of his tea and shrugged his shoulders. “I didn't see any signs of a second person,” Flint confessed. “I checked the woman's bedroom and bathroom. What struck me was the design inside. So different from the traditional design outside.”
“What does that mean?” Tori asked.
“I'm not sure yet,” Flint said, spotting the waitress bringing out the food. “Let me ask you something?”
“Sure,” Tori said, watching the waitress place a hard white plate down in front of her holding sweet and sour chicken and yellow fried rice that—to Tori's shock—smelled pretty good. Taking two napkins holding forks from her back pocket, the waitress asked Tori if everything looked okay. “Sure,” Tori said, taking one of the napkins. “It looks really good.”
Taking the second napkin, Flint studied his food. “Not too much salt?”
“Shouldn't be,” the waitress commented, then walked away.
Flint quickly bowed his head, said a prayer of thanks, and dug into his food. “Not bad,” he said, taking a bite of rice. “So anyway, my question is this. If a woman lives in New York for twenty years, she probably lived in a fancy apartment, right?”
Tori experimented with a bite of rice. “I guess,” she said, surprised that the rice tasted good.
“What I mean,” Flint said, tossing a piece of chicken into his mouth, “is that the interior design of the mansion matched a modern style. I wonder where Lila Crastdale was born? Her file didn't say.”
Tori saw Flint's mind working. She saw more questions than answers walking back and forth in his eyes, but that was okay with her. “I can find out.”
“We need to find out where Lila Crastdale was born. If she wasn't born in Los Angeles, we need to find out where she came from and why she moved. We'll also check on Patrick Wilson and find out what his story was. It's been some years, but we need to look into his case. If Lila Crastdale was accused of his murder, there must have been some evidence.”
“Okay,” Tori agreed, poking at the chicken on her plate with the fork. “Well, you're still alive,” she said, then took a bite. “Hey, not bad.”
“We've got a lot of routes to cover, Arnold,” Flint said, sipping his tea. “The most important thing for us to do right now is to create solid leads and dismiss weak leads.”
Tori finished swallowing the chicken in her mouth and then reached for her tea. Clumsy, she knocked over the glass of tea. It went spilling across the table.
Flint looked down at his plate. Pools of tea now sat under his rice and chicken. “Thanks a lot.”
Tori attempted to jump up and clean the spilled tea. But as she did, her knees caught the underside of the table and flipped it upward. Flint's plate and glass of tea went flying down into his lap. Chicken and rice flew off the plate down into the floor. “Oh! So sorry, so sorry!” Tori said, reaching for her own plate before it could spill. “Here, have mine.”
“No thanks,” Flint said, wiping spilled tea from his shirt and pants. “Tell me something, how do you get dressed in the morning?”
“Very carefully,” Tori said, with a sheepish grin. “Oh, what's the use!” She sighed, plopping down in her chair. “I've been clumsy every since I was a small child. My mother used to buy stock in plates and glasses. My parents had to put warning signs all over the house. On my first date, I accidentally spit chewing gum into Gregory Taylor's hair. He never forgave me.”
“On my first date, I got lost and ended up knocking on the wrong door. An old lady answered the door. She thought I was someone who had come to take her away to a nursing home and started hitting me with a cane,” Flint said in a calm voice as he wiped tea off his pants.
Tori broke out laughing. “You're kidding?”
“I still have nightmares about that old lady's cane,” Flint said, deadpan.
Tori smiled gratefully. Lifting her plate, she held it out to Flint. “Care to share some lunch... partner?”
Flint looked up. Maybe it was the expression on Tori's face, or maybe he just felt plain sorry for her, but he felt his heart melt a little. “Sure,” he said and grabbed a few pieces of chicken.
After leaving the restaurant, Flint drove to Dr. Miles office. Walking down a long hallway lit with bright overhead fluorescent light bulbs that cast an eerie light on the cold gray and white tile, Tori felt a cold chill consume her flesh. “I've never been in a morgue before,” she said, examining the closed office doors she walked by.
“Dr. Miles just finished the autopsy,” Flint said. “He wants to talk to us down in the morgue.” Unable to help himself he added, “You know... where there are no bodies there to bother you.”
“Not funny.” Tori slapped Flint on his shoulder. “This is real horror movie stuff, you know.”
“Arnold, the only thing you are going to find in the morgue are human bodies that are no longer alive. Bodies with no heartbeat, no brain functioning, not blood flow, just cold, dead, bodies. But like the piano, everybody leaves as a clue as to its death. Dr. Miles has been a coroner for twenty-four years. He‘s seen it all. So don't go acting like a scared rookie, okay?”
“But I am a scared rookie!”
“Good grief,” Flint said, shaking his head. “Come on.”
Tori scanned the cold walls with her eyes. “The least they could is put some artwork up and add a few fake plants. Maybe a soft tone of pink or--”
“Will you come on?” Flint complained.
“Maybe I should stay out here?” Tori suggested. “Yeah, I can stay out in the hallway. Stand guard, you know? Make some… uh... mental notes and stuff like that.”
“You're coming with me,” Flint said, grabbed Tori's hand. He tried not to notice how warm and soft it was as he dragged her down the hallway. Just as he was wondering how he’d ever help her become the skilled detective she was so keen to be, Tori tripped over her feet again.
“Get up,” Flint said. He couldn’t help laughing, and held out his hand to her.
“Thanks,” she said, taking his hand and dusting herself down when she’d gotten up.
“You should start wearing knee pads,” Flint suggested.
Tori laughed. “Don’t think I haven’t been told that before.”
At the end of the hallway was a wooden desk sitting before two metal doors. An overweight, middle-aged man in a gray security guard uniform sat at the desk reading a book. Without saying a word, he put down his book and picked up a clipboard. Flint took the clipboard, signed his name and then handed it to Tori.
Tori signed, then handed the clipboard back to the security guard. The guard reached under the desk to press a button. A buzzer sound blurted out into the air.
“Come on,” Flint said, motioning toward the metal doors that were slowly opening.
“Sure,” Tori said, trying to sound confident. Following Flint into a short hallway lined with cold gray tile, she stopped at a metal door.
Flint fished his shield out of his pocket and held it up to a camera mounted on the wall, then pushed a red button attached to the door.
A few seconds later Tori heard a loud click and the door opened. Feeling like she was walking into a zombie movie, she followed Flint into a large, cold room lined with stainless steel walls and a white tile floor.
“Oh my,” she said, stopping in her tracks. There, lining the entire back wall, were rows and rows of stainless steel drawers stacked five high. “Are... there... bodies in--”
“What do you think, Einstein?” Flint said softly.
Sitting a metal desk on the far right wall, Dr. Miles waved his hand at Flint and then refocused his attention on Lila Crastdale's autopsy report. Flint shook his head at Tori and walked over to the desk.
Tori followed, glancing up at the fluorescent light bulbs that cast down a creepy yellow light. A powerful anti-disinfectant smell permeated the place, making her feel nauseous.
“Miles, what's the word?” Flint asked.
Dr. Miles set down his silver pen and looked up at Flint through a set of thick, bottle rim glasses sitting on his wrinkled face. “Officially, sedatives and alcohol,” he said in disgusted voice.
“I'll find out who her doctor was and check the mansion again,” Flint told Dr. Miles. “I didn't see any bottles lying around when I was there last, or any open bottles of alcohol.”
Standing up from the desk, Dr. Miles glanced at Tori. Even though he was a man in his late sixties who weighed no more than a broomstick, he still felt he had a little spunk left in him. Running his hands through his thin gray hair and then straightening out the white lab coat he was wearing over a brown suit, he smiled at Tori. “And who is this lovely specimen?”
Detective Flint Box Set: A Detective Story Box Set Books 1-3 Page 5
