As soon as I closed the front door behind us, we heard a voice. “Who’s the pup?” It sounded just like Mustard, but it looked like the old woman we’d seen walking next to the canal. She wasn’t bent over now, or walking painfully as she had been when we’d first seen her. At close range I could see that Mustard’s disguise hadn’t been very thorough—a head scarf, an old coat, a woman’s old-fashioned lace-up shoes. I gathered that the view from a distance had been all that mattered.
“That’s quite the getup,” I said, my mirth at the sight of him almost overpowering my nervousness. “Are you going for the prize of world’s ugliest woman?”
“Cal!” My head shot up at the female voice, and my heart brightened as Brucie flew into the room and into her brother’s arms. Her shoulder was bandaged, but other than that she looked right as rain.
“So are you going to tell me why you’re playing dress-up,” I said to Mustard, “or is this what you do on your days off? Come down to Venice and don an old woman’s clothes?”
“You’re right,” Mustard said, straight-faced. “This is what I do for fun.” He was shedding his ridiculous costume as he spoke. I was relieved to see everyday Mustard emerge within a few seconds. “And Venice is just the place for it… no one around to see. I’ll ask it again though: Who’s the pup?” His expression was neutral, but I could tell he wasn’t excited about seeing Calvin, who was now in a corner, speaking urgently and quietly with Brucie.
“It’s her brother,” I said, noting the small look of relief I saw wash over Mustard’s face as he digested what I’d said. “He showed up at the office this morning.”
“Where’s Dex?”
“Back in Frisco. It’s a long story and I don’t feel like telling it right now. You got anything like tea around here?”
“There’s a kitchen,” he replied, leading the way. “Come on.”
Mustard put a kettle on a stove so ancient, I was surprised to see it still worked. The little house was tidy, however, and well stocked. The only place the cottage looked derelict was from the outside. I wanted to ask about it, but I had so many questions I didn’t even know where to start. Mustard saved me the trouble.
“I don’t really dress up in old women’s clothes for fun, you know.”
“I guessed that,” I said with a smile.
“I mailed the card yesterday, so I figured you’d show up today—though I thought it would be you and Dex. Or even just Dex. So I put on this getup and kept an eye out for you.”
“But we saw you a while ago. Well, we saw you being her. You didn’t say anything. Or wave.”
“I wanted to be sure you weren’t followed.”
“And we weren’t?”
“Didn’t look that way. Did you see anyone?”
“Just some ducks,” I said. “Since we left the Grand Lagoon. You two been holed up here the whole time?”
Mustard nodded. “Yeah. Turns out it wasn’t Dex those torpedoes were gunning for. It was Brucie.”
“I figured that out by myself.”
“Yeah? I figured it at the hospital. I went to see Brucie the day after the shooting. When I got there a couple of gunsels were hanging around outside her room. I figured they were waiting for a quiet moment.” He made a slashing movement across his throat with the tips of his fingers.
I gulped. “You figured they were there to kill her?”
“I’m sure of it. So I just bundled her up and got her out of there. The doctors kicked up a bit of a fuss. Said she wasn’t ready to go home. And they were probably right, but I figured if I left her there she’d be leaving feet first.”
“You didn’t just up and walk her out.” It wasn’t a question.
He grinned, a little rakishly, I thought. “No, you’re right. I didn’t just waltz her out. But we fooled those torpedoes pretty good, me and Brucie. They’re probably still wondering what happened to her.”
I digested this. Clearly, Mustard wasn’t going to illuminate the details, but I’d caught the gist of the thing and that was important: Brucie had been in danger and now she was not.
“She looks fine now,” I said after a while.
“She does, doesn’t she?”
“She does what?” Brucie said, entering the kitchen with her brother in tow.
“I was just saying you look well. Mustard said he hustled you out of the hospital before the doctors said you were ready.”
“Oh, silly,” she said, smiling at Mustard fondly. “He was jumping at shadows. I came with him just to shut him up.”
“Huh,” Mustard said, pouring boiling water into a teapot. “Some shadows. You’d have been pushing up daisies by now, sister.”
“But, Mustard,” I said, “why here? I would have thought you’d head for the country or something.”
“That’s easy. This is my place. I don’t get here very often, but it’s here for me when I need it. Hidden in plain sight.”
“Dex knows about it,” I said, suddenly understanding the postcard. The little code was probably something they’d worked out.
“Sure he does. But just him and no one else. Well, now the three of you.”
Calvin piped up. “Four,” he said.
“And the disguise … ?” I asked.
Mustard nodded. “I’ve used it before.”
“You really think all this was necessary?” I asked, with a gesture that indicated Brucie, the little house, the discarded scarf.
“It was the only way,” Mustard said. “At first I thought stashing her at your place was enough.”
“Maybe it would have been,” I said, perhaps more sternly than I’d intended, “if you hadn’t paraded her around the Town House Hotel in a gold lame dress.”
“Now, Kitty,” Brucie said, “don’t take that tone. Mustard didn’t really know.”
“She don’t like to be called Kitty,” Calvin interjected.
“What didn’t Mustard know?” I asked.
I saw the two of them exchange glances, but I didn’t think to wonder about it in that moment.
“I saw … I saw Ned killed,” Brucie said haltingly.
“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think I knew that.”
“I saw him die,” Brucie replied. “But I didn’t tell you I saw who killed him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
BRUCIE TOLD HER STORY without passion. The words came slowly, carefully, as though she’d removed herself from the scenario. I could understand that. The husband she’d loved had died violently. The way to get through it was to make it be someone else’s story as much as you could. To distance yourself from the place where your heart connected with all of it. I thought I could hear this in her voice.
She told us about a Saturday afternoon in Westlake Park, at Wilshire and Alvarado. Just her and Ned, who’d stolen a few hours to be with his wife.
They’d rented a punt in the morning and spent a relaxing hour or so on the lake. You can imagine them, weaving their shared dreams, their heads close together, co-conspirators of their future, or thrown back in laughter, so pleased with this stolen sliver of time.
He wears a boater hat; it’s old-fashioned, but it makes them both laugh. That and the awkward way he handles the paddles. He’s strong enough, but no country boy. He’s inexpert with the mechanics of pulling a boat through the water. More laughter.
It’s a cloudless day. The sun is a benign disc on the horizon. It’s warm on the water but pleasantly so. Everything is perfect.
There are other boats on the small lake, but neither of them notice. Lost in love, as they say, and not paying attention to anyone, anything.
When the big yellow punt approaches, they pay no attention. There are other boats on the water, other lovers. It’s their world but they’re willing to share it. Their hearts are made large by the love held within. When the other boat bumps theirs lightly, they look up, the laughter dying on their faces. Ned reaches beneath his light jacket for his gun; he’s never without it. It’s too late though. He dies as his hand touches the
metal.
The impact of the bullets causes the little punt to list dangerously. Brucie follows the motion, slides into the water just ahead of the burst of bullets intended to take her.
She’s an accomplished swimmer and has instinctively taken a deep breath before submersion. Underwater, she wiggles her feet out of her shoes as she dives, finding Ned deep in the reeds at the bottom of the lake. There is no need to check his vital signs or even hang on to the slightest ray of hope: she can see that her husband is dead.
Their punt is above her, upside down in the water. She pushes herself toward it, emerging into the protection of its inverted hull with the last of her held breath. Though her instinct is to raggedly inhale as much oxygen as possible, greedily filling her lungs, she knows she must be quiet. She can still hear their voices; they are not far away. They think they have killed her too. And she can tell that they hope that they have. She understands why they think she should join her husband in his watery death. There is one man in particular. And she has seen his face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
WHAT I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND—and I told them so now—was why on earth they would have gone dancing— dancing, of all things—in what was not only one of the most popular nightspots in the city, but was also clearly in the middle of Lucid Wilson’s turf.
“She hadn’t told me then,” Mustard said, a slightly defensive note in his voice. “Not that she’d seen who it was and certainly not that it was Lucid Wilson himself. I mean, what are the chances?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, Lucid doing the killing himself.” Mustard looked speculatively at Brucie, like he still expected her to fill something in. She didn’t take the bait. “I mean, a guy at that level? Sounds pretty personal.”
I nodded. I could see what Mustard meant.
“And you didn’t know why Lucid Wilson would have wanted to kill your husband … personally?” I asked.
“I wasn’t even sure it was Lucid himself until I saw him that night at the Zebra Room,” Brucie said.
“I’m guessin’ that’s where he saw you too,” Mustard said.
“But how could you not know it was him?” I asked. Something wasn’t sitting right with me. “You obviously would have seen him before; it sounds like you and Ned went to nightclubs enough. You would have crossed paths.”
“C’mon, Kitty,” Mustard said, “take it easy on the kid.”
“I knew he looked familiar,” Brucie said. “But I couldn’t quite place him. You know, out there on the lake in daylight— and it all happened so fast—I just wasn’t sure.”
“See? That makes sense,” Mustard said. I didn’t like how puttylike he’d become in the few days I hadn’t seen him. He seemed quite willing to believe anything, as long as it was Brucie doing the telling.
“So then you saw him at the club,” I pressed Brucie. “And then you knew.”
“That’s right.”
“And so your first reaction is to drag Mustard and Dex up on the floor for dancing.” It still wasn’t making sense to me.
Brucie studied her shoes. They were dark puce in color, each one decorated with a wide fabric bow. “I figured … I figured if Lucid saw me enjoying myself and not being bothered, he’d maybe think I hadn’t seen him that day.”
This actually made some sense to me and I relented slightly. I’m not sure that in her puce shoes I would have done the same, but I could see where she was coming from.
“So now what do we do?” I said, letting things go for the moment. “I mean, your little house here is cozy, Mustard. But she can’t stay here forever.”
“No, not forever,” Mustard agreed. “But for the time being. Me, I’ve got to get back to my office. That’s gonna be easier now, since Brucie’s brother is here. He can stay with her until I… until I take care of a few things.”
I looked at Mustard and thought about what he meant. I even considered asking him, then thought better of it.
“Can you handle a gun, pup?”
“Calvin,” I said, knowing Mustard had forgotten the youth’s name.
“Calvin, you know your way around a gun?”
“Sure,” Calvin said. “I even got one.”
“That’s all right then,” Mustard said. “You shouldn’t need it, but it’s best to be prepared. I’ll be back to get you guys in a day. Two at the most. There’s plenty of food and stuff here.”
“I’m not stayin’ here another two days!” Brucie complained.
“Oh, but you are,” Mustard said. “We’ll not have you get-tin’ shot up again. But two days is all it should take.”
“What you gonna do?” Brucie asked.
We all looked at Mustard, but he didn’t say anything. I thought his determined face spoke volumes.
“I think I know what he’s going to do,” I said finally.
“Do you now?” Mustard said.
“I do. You’re going to fix it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THOUGH THE GRAND LAGOON was no longer either grand or a lagoon, we made our way back there carefully. Mustard didn’t say anything, but I could tell he had one sharp eye out for any kind of monkey business. I was relieved not to see any.
“Where’d you park?” Mustard asked, when we got close to the Grand Canal Restaurant.
“Park?” I said with a slight smirk. “How did you even figure I could get my hands on a car?”
“Well, Dex has the Packard, for one … oh, right. You said he’s in Frisco.”
“Right. And even if I had wanted a car—which I wouldn’t have just to come down here—how could I have called to get one? You weren’t there.”
“Good point,” he said. “But I don’t like the way this is going.”
“That’s all right. I kinda like the idea of seeing you on a streetcar.”
It was a joke, of course, but in the end I was right. Mustard on a streetcar was a humorous sight. And he didn’t go without putting up a fight. “Look, we’ll find a phone. Call a taxicab. It won’t be that hard.”
“Aw, don’t be a baby, Mustard. Here it comes now; we don’t even have to wait. And don’t worry. I won’t tell any of your friends you rode the Red Car.”
He harrumphed at that, as though he didn’t care what his friends thought. Maybe he even believed it. But I knew better.
It was around three o’clock by the time I got back to Spring Street. I found myself looking forward to an hour or so of just sitting at my desk and relaxing. It had been an exhausting few days, and I felt as though I could use an hour or so alone just to recharge.
As the elevator approached the fifth floor, I thought about making myself a cup of tea, flavoring it with some of the honey Mustard had surprised me with a few weeks before, when he’d come back from a trip to the San Gabriel Valley; then I thought about just sitting in the office and lazing around until it was time to close up shop for the day. It was a good plan, but I didn’t get to put it into action.
As I had that morning, I sensed something was wrong before I even got to the office door. Unlike the morning, however, there was nothing in this assessment that was due to my sixth sense. The frosted glass in the office door, where the words “Dexter J. Theroux, Private Investigator” were painted in black-edged gold letters, had been smashed.
Peering through the hole, I could see that glass covered the office’s scuffed hardwood floor. The door was unlocked. Whoever had done this had simply smashed the glass, then reached through and opened the lock from the inside. When they were done, they hadn’t bothered locking up. Thinking about this though, I found myself ridiculously glad the glass was broken and not the lock. It would have seemed a real shame to replace a lock twice in a single day. As it was, the glass had been there longer than I had.
I took care not to step on the glass as I entered. I didn’t want to grind it down further; I knew who’d be cleaning this mess up. Unlike the morning when I’d entered cautiously, fearing someone was there, I wasn’t concerned that anyone would be in
the office. The breaking glass would have been heard in the other offices on our floor. I was guessing that whoever did it had broken the window, gone about their business, and then skedaddled.
Determining what that business might have been took me a while. We didn’t have much that was valuable in the office. Even my typewriter would have fetched only a buck or so at a pawnshop. But these days it was hard to tell. With breadlines getting longer, jobs getting harder to find, and the Okies adding their presence to the city’s increasingly unemployed throng, small crimes like this had been on the rise. When a man couldn’t find honest work in order to buy milk for his babies, sometimes dishonest things started looking like an option. At a time like that, even the dollar you’d get for a used typewriter might start to look better than going hungry.
As I entered the office, however, I could see this wasn’t the case. When I saw my typewriter sitting in its usual place on my desk, I was almost disappointed. After all, if the thief wasn’t after the typewriter, then what was he looking for? Dex’s green ashtray? The heel of a bottle of bourbon Dex might have stashed somewhere? His heavily doodled desk blotter? I’d almost feel sorry for the thief who wasted time on our operation. Item by item, there wasn’t anything in the office of Dexter J. Theroux worth stealing.
It took me a few moments of inventory before I noticed. It just wasn’t the first place you looked. Once I saw it though, I couldn’t look away. The office safe was standing open. On inspection, the only thing missing was the set of fingerprints that had been taken from Harrison Dempsey’s corpse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THERE WASN’T MUCH I COULD DO. I called a glazier, of course. Like the locksmith earlier in the day, he sounded hungry and was happy enough to promise to hustle right over to fix the broken pane. Getting Dex’s name painted back on the door would take a little longer. The manager of our building insisted that all the doors be done by the same person. Since this same person was his brother-in-law, we’d have to wait a few days. Apparently brothers-in-law were not as hungry as everyone else in town.
Death Was the Other Woman Page 17
