by Susan Kandel
The folding canvas roof was still erect and the plastic side screens were in place, though the bonnet was slightly damaged and the speedometer cable broken.
The doors were closed, the brakes were off, the gears were in neutral.
The spare tin of petrol, carried on the side step, was knocked off when the car collided with the bushes, and was found lying in the grass.
There were no signs of skid marks in the soft dirt.
Inside the car was a fur coat, a dressing case, and a license indicating that the owner was a Mrs. Christie of Sunningdale, Berkshire.
But where was Mrs. Christie?
Archie was frantic. He located a recent photo, gave it to the police, and they generated a “Missing” poster. I pulled out a yellow file and from it a sheet of legal paper onto which I’d jotted down the text:
Age 35 Years, Height 5 ft., 7 ins., Hair Red (Shingled),
Natural Teeth, Complexion Fair, Well Built. Dressed—Grey
Stockingette Skirt, Green Jumper, Grey and dark Grey
Cardigan, small Green Velour Hat, may have handbag containing five to ten pounds. Left home in 4 seater
Morris Cowley car at 9.45 p.m. on 3rd December leaving
note saying she was going for a drive. The next morn
ing the car was found abandoned at Newlands Corner,
Albury, Surrey. Should this lady be seen or any informa
tion regarding her be obtained please communicate to any
Police Station.
Clues materialized but led nowhere. The police were inept. Days followed inconclusive days. Searches were conducted, through woods, streams, ponds, copses, fields. Unreliable witnesses recounted unreliable stories, each of which the press took up with lightning speed. The papers were ravenous for news, any news. This was a front-page story, about an almost-famous writer married to a dashing war hero.
There were whispers.
The parlor maid at Styles slipped up.
She told investigators that Archie and Agatha had had a terrible argument the morning of her disappearance. Archie was concerned for Nancy’s reputation, not to mention his own. His movements were being monitored now. He could no longer go to work. His friends were brought in for questioning. Nancy’s name had found its way into the papers.
They knew Agatha had left him a note.
They wanted to know why he’d destroyed it.
He began to crack under the pressure.
Then came the Great Sunday Hunt of December 12, when hundreds of civilians swarmed the area to comb the undergrowth, looking for Agatha. It was a circus. Members of the Royal Automobile Club directed traffic. Vendors set up shop to sell hot drinks throughout the cold winter afternoon. Children sucked lollipops while search parties set out under police direction from three major assembly points: Coal Kitchen Lane, near Shere; One Tree Hill, on Pewley Downs; and Clandon Water Works, on the Leatherhead to Guildford main road.
Archie didn’t make an appearance that day. The press were already all over him. It would’ve only fueled their fire.
Dorothy L. Sayers showed up. She looked around for a few moments, declared that Agatha would not be found, then incorporated the event into her third detective novel, published the following year.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was likewise intrigued. He obtained a glove of Agatha’s and gave it to a medium named Horace Leaf, who insisted that the person who owned it was half-dazed and half-purposeful, but very much alive.
Mystery writers. Archie must’ve been sick of the lot of them.
On Monday the thirteenth, the papers reported that the Great Sunday Hunt had failed.
On Tuesday the fourteenth, the phone never stopped ringing.
The phone was ringing.
My phone.
I dove for it before the machine could pick up.
“Hello?” I said. “Don’t hang up. I’m here!”
It was Silvana. I’d left a message for her earlier in the day.
“How are you, darling?” she asked. “You sound a little stressed out.”
“Sorry. I’m at the computer. Thanks for calling me back.”
“The almost-famous writer? Of course I’m calling you back. How’s the book coming along?”
Why did everyone keep asking me that? “It’s coming along great. Listen, I wanted to apologize for upsetting you about the lobster.”
“I boiled him for lunch. He wasn’t as satisfying as I would’ve liked.”
“Speaking of . . .” I let my voice trail off.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to ask you something about your second husband, the one who was impotent?”
“That was my first husband. Erectile dysfunction.”
“Sorry. Your first husband. Erectile dysfunction.”
“You’re on your second husband, too, darling, isn’t that right?”
I’d never really thought about Gambino that way. “I guess so. Almost.”
“We should start a club!”
Agatha could’ve been a member. She married an archaeologist the second time around. Every woman should marry an archaeologist, she said; the older you get, the more interested he is in you. Probably apocryphal.
“I’m working on Dot now,” Silvana went on. “She’s coming out for lunch on Friday. I’m going to find her an old geezer if it kills me.”
Richard was going to love that. “Listen, Silvana, this may sound a little weird, but did they diagnose your first husband’s condition with a test, like maybe a blood or urine test?”
“Ooh,” she said, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Now I get it. Tell me, how long has this been going on with your fiancé, the cop?”
Suddenly, I felt very, very disloyal.
“I’m sorry,” Silvana said quickly. “I’m prying. But it’s always those law-and-order types. Anyway, let me get to the meat of it, you should pardon my pun. They check testosterone levels. A simple lab test. In and out, you should pardon that pun, as well.”
I was staring at the message Dr. R. had left for Ian: “Failure to Perform, 1200/1300, A.V. East Kern W.P.”
“You still there, darling?”
“Yes. So what do you think about a level of twelve to thirteen hundred?”
“Twelve to thirteen hundred? Is that what you said?”
“Yes.”
“Twelve to thirteen hundred, are you kidding me?” Silvana made gobbling noises. “What I could do with a man like that!”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s off the charts, darling. A sexual prodigy! The problem is obviously psychological.” Her voice turned low, conspiratorial. “Do you know a store called Trashy Lingerie, on La Cienega?”
I did, as a matter of fact.
Silvana spent the next five minutes telling me exactly what types of garter belts and G-strings I should purchase to help Gambino with his mythical problem. She made me promise I’d call her back and tell her how things had gone.
I hung up, puzzled. These numbers obviously weren’t what I thought they were.
I saved my Agatha Christie notes and closed the file. Then I gave it one last shot. I punched the entire message from Dr. R. into Google: “Failure to Perform, 1100/1200, A.V. East Kern W.P.”
This was it.
I’d found it.
A.V. East Kern W.P. was not some arcane bit of medical
jargon. It was the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Project. At last. Something that made sense. I should have known, of course. In California, it’s always about water.
CHAPTER 23
very day, after breakfasting in bed with the London news
papers, Agatha took the beneficial waters known as the Cure. The saline sulfur bath was good for gout, rheumatism, and
hepatic disorders. The sulfur foam bath treated obesity. The alkaline sulfur bath was used mainly for skin diseases. The alkaline sulfur electric bath featured constant, interrupted,
sinusoidal currents to combat muscle weakness and atrophy. The thermo-paraffin wa
x bath eased stiff and painful limbs. The peat baths addressed lumbago and sciatica. If you weren’t already half-dead, it might be enough to kill
you.
The Harrogate Massage Douche was the worst. You’d perch on a wooden stool as a continuous needle spray was directed at your spine and you were massaged by an attendant wielding a warm douche in a flexible tube. Useful for gout, arthritis, and lumbago, none of which she suffered from.
Still, one had to fill the day. And so she would sit, in the pleated bathing costume and cap
she’d ordered from town, staring down at the intricately tiled black-and-white floor, the water beating down on her back like punishment.
She accepted the punishment as her due. She wondered if it meant she were brave. No. She wasn’t brave. What she was was a bit of a masochist.
CHAPTER 24
hat night I had three surprises for Gambino. The first was, I’d picked a tentative date for our wedding, four weeks hence. Father Joe was free. Our neighbor Butch gave me his word that the backyard would be done. Bridget wrote the date in her calendar in permanent marker, and asked if she should have a lining sewn into the sheer Greek goddess dress she’d picked out for me (yes). Lael said she and whoever she was sleeping with at the time wouldn’t miss it for the world, which was very comforting. Annie was ecstatic. Gambino’s partner, Tico, and Tico’s wife, Hilda, had no prior commitments. And my mother didn’t return my call, which made it perfect.
The second surprise was, I’d paid a visit to Trashy Lingerie. The Cherry Bomb collection worked like a dream.
The third surprise was, I’d rented Chinatown, which we put on once we got our second wind, around one A.M.
“Look at that!” said Gambino admiringly.
I rubbed my own nose. “You’re a savage.”
“Roman Polanski played the thug who cut Jack Nicholson.” Gambino shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth. “It was a trick knife. They make ’em with special hinged blades that only bend in one direction. But if they put the blade in the wrong way—” He ran his finger across his throat.
“Ssh,” I said, grabbing his hand. “You’re distracting me.” As if anybody could resist Faye Dunaway in noir-ish widow’s weeds, with penciled-on eyebrows and Cupid’s-bow lips. Ali MacGraw, who was married to the film’s producer, Robert Evans, was supposed to play the part of Evelyn Mulwray, but she lost it when she left Evans for Steve McQueen, which actually sounded like a fair trade to me. And when you come right down to it, who wants to see Ali MacGraw in anything other than a poncho, plaid miniskirt, and knit cap? I wondered when Bridget had last seen this movie. She’d go crazy for Faye Dunaway’s cream-colored suit with the gray trim. Anthea Sylbert was the costume designer. This was the second movie she’d done with Polanski, after their collaboration on Rosemary’s Baby. Anthea Sylbert had been the one who’d put Mia Farrow in baby-doll dresses, which got shorter and shorter as Satan’s minions closed in on her. But Anthea Sylbert outdid herself in Chinatown. It wasn’t just Faye Dunaway. It was the parched colors of private investigator Jake Gittes’s suits, which made your teeth feel sticky and your mouth dry.
Water.
Chinatown was about water.
After getting his nose cut and following numerous false leads, Jake Gittes learns that corrupt water officials have been blowing up tanks, putting poison down wells, and diverting irrigation water to cause a drought, allowing speculators to grab valley lands cheaply pending the construction of a reservoir, which would pump water to those lands, driving their value back up exponentially.
Without a steady water supply, the land’s worth nothing, he explains to Evelyn.
With water, it’s worth tens of millions.
That’s Chinatown, Jake.
Which got me thinking about why exactly Ian Christie had received a message from the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Project about a “failure to perform.” Maybe Liz saw that message. Maybe she was there the day Ian’s assistant received it. Bridget said that Liz had been out to Christietown on several occasions, to prepare for her role in the play. Could she have been blackmailing Ian? Or Dov? About what? What exactly had failed to perform?
I heard snoring. It had taken Gambino all of two minutes to fall asleep. I leaned over him to get the phone and punched in Lou’s number. I knew I’d be waking him up (Lou, not Gambino, who slept like a log), but I needed to know if Liz had said anything to him that might shed some light on the situation.
Unfortunately, the line was busy, which was odd considering it was three o’clock in the morning.
CHAPTER 25
Seven A.M. came in the blink of an eye. My goal for the day was to pretend that everything was normal. I fed the pets. I made a pot of coffee. I kissed Gambino good-bye. I popped two Advil. I read the op-eds, then flipped to “My Favorite Weekend,” which is at the back of the L.A. Times calendar section every Thursday. I am addicted to “My Favorite Weekend” mostly because I find it curious that everybody’s favorite weekend—whether they’re symphony conductors, sitcom actors, pro-ball players, or indie-band guitarists—is exactly the same. Saturday morning, it’s pancakes with the kids; Saturday afternoon, it’s biking, hiking, Rollerblading, or antiquing in the Santa Monica Mountains, Venice boardwalk, Griffith Park, or Rose Bowl Flea Market; Saturday night, it’s a babysitter and Italian for dinner, followed by drinks at a funky jazz spot. On Sunday, there’s dinner with friends and family by the pool, maybe some grilled steaks and scampi. I didn’t understand why nobody ever
wanted to ditch the friends and family and hang out behind the 7-Eleven. Or gamble. Or set small fires.
Today’s subject, however, was a woman with a show on the Food Network who spent most of her favorite weekend in L.A. in Solvang, buying clogs and eating aebleskiver. This woman didn’t have a pool. On Sunday, she liked to visit a Hindu temple in Agoura Hills.
So much for pretending things were normal.
It seemed like a sign.
I picked up the phone and punched in the number of the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Project.
“How may I direct your call?” asked the receptionist, who’d answered before I’d had a chance to think through my story.
“Hi!” I said too loudly. “How are you? I’m calling from Christietown. I work for Ian Christie.” Not a lie.
“Yes?”
“I believe you left a message for him a couple of days ago.” Also true. I sneezed.
“Yes?”
Then I coughed. “Sorry. I’ve been kind of sick.”
“Something awful is going around,” she conceded. “Hong Kong flu or something.”
“Right! Hong Kong flu. Anyway, I’ve had this Hong Kong flu thing, and then my husband broke his leg, so I’ve been a little preoccupied and didn’t write down the message properly. It’s just that my boss is a little skittish, and I don’t want to get it wrong.”
Pause. “Why don’t I go ahead and connect you with Mr. Knight?”
There were a million reasons why she shouldn’t go ahead and connect me with Mr. Knight, but that was beside the point because mere seconds later a man’s voice boomed, “Teenie? Harry here. How are you?”
Teenie? What kind of name was Teenie? Ian’s assistant didn’t look like a Teenie. And why were Teenie and Harry on a first-name basis anyway?
He went on, “I was just about to mail you folks the follow-up. It’s a whole report, actually. Lots of pages. Are you heading this way anytime soon? Save us the postage.”
“Actually, Harry”—the wheels were turning now—“we have a new gal working for us. Great gal. Her name is Cece. Why don’t I have her come by for them?”
“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “The truth is, I wouldn’t mind seeing you, Teenie. It’s always the highlight of my day.”
I scratched my head. I had a bad feeling about this.
Harry’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What about that drink you promised me? Are we still on for next week? You don’t need to worry. Whatever happens between us stay
s between us.”
Don’t do it, Teenie! You’re a married woman and your husband has a broken leg! “Here’s the thing,” I said. “We don’t want to do anything we might regret.”
He sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“You were?”
“Yes. And of course, you’re right.”
“I am?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Guilt is a destructive emotion. I’m already unhappy enough. Do I really need that kind of negativity? I don’t think so.”
“It’s not that you’re not an attractive man,” I said, immediately berating myself for not leaving things well enough alone.
“No, no. I understand. It’s good you’re sending Cece. No need to make it any harder than it has to be.”
“It’s for the best.”
“Good-bye, Teenie,” he said, his voice breaking.
I’d missed the morning rush, so it took me a little less than an hour and a half to get there. The Antelope Valley East Kern Water Project was located in one of those soul-destroying office parks. Even the shrubbery looked alienated. It was that grayish-green Javier was always trying to talk me into. The security guard gave me a visitor’s badge and had me sign the guest register. I caught a glimpse of myself on the video monitor, pen in hand, and had the odd, fleeting sensation that I was watching a cop show, and the tall woman in the clingy navy blue knit dress and matching beret was about to be busted. But I hadn’t done anything. Not yet, at least.
My red suede platforms clicked loudly on the polished stone floor as I strode across the main lobby and out the rear door, in search of Building C. In the middle of the wind-whipped quad stood a lone cappuccino cart manned by a tired-looking woman in a parka. As I passed, she called out, “The machine’s broken. All we’ve got is Snapple today.” I told her I wasn’t thirsty, but thanks.
Building C faced the mountains and the heating and air equipment. The sniffling receptionist had a thick manila envelope waiting for me. There was an awkward moment when she looked at my visitor’s badge and noticed that I spelled my name “Cece,” whereas the name scrawled on the envelope was “Ceci.” I reassured her that surprisingly few people know that “cecis” are garbanzo beans.
