by Susan Kandel
Alexander scrambled out of my arms and started doing somersaults across the floor.
Vincent said, “This is something I didn’t think I’d ever see, all of us together like this. It means the world to Annie.” That was him telling us to be on good behavior.
“You okay, hon?” Annie asked Alexander. He’d bumped his head on a jogging stroller and after a moment’s careful reflection, had begun to sob. Annie knelt down to kiss him, which isn’t easy three weeks before your due date. Struggling to her feet, she tossed the checklist into the trash. “Can’t the baby just sleep with us?”
Snow White’s hand flew up to her mouth. “Absolutely not! Co-sleeping is frowned upon by the medical establishment.”
“What about this?” asked Vincent, holding up a wicker basket lined in checkered flannel. “Let’s just get this and go out for ribs. There’s this famous barbecue joint somewhere around here. Do you know the place I’m talking about?” he asked Snow White.
“Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler Texas Bar-B-Cue,” she replied. “It’s on Sepulveda Boulevard.” She glanced up at a picture on the wall, then looked away guiltily. It was the Three Little Pigs.
“That’s the place,” said Vincent. “We’re done here. We’ll take this.” He plucked the plastic pouch out of my hands. “And this.” He pulled a tiny sheepskin rug off the wall.
“Ooh, soft,” said Annie, rubbing her face against it. “Absorbent, calming,” murmured Snow White. “Jackie’s a vegetarian,” said Richard. “Richard,” said Jackie. “Don’t make a fuss.” “We’ll take your top-selling crib,” said Richard. I looked
over at Vincent, then decided not to argue.
Snow White, visibly gratified, said, “The macaroni salad at Dr. Hogly Wogly’s has these little slivers of celery in it. It’s delicious. No meat.”
Alexander looked at her and asked, “Where are the seven
dwarfs?” “Alexander,” said Vincent. “It isn’t polite to stare.” I was staring, too, at Gambino and Richard. I could just
picture them sitting across from each other in a vinyl booth at Dr. Hogly Wogly’s, ripping flesh off bones with their teeth. “Sepulveda and what?” I asked innocently.
CHAPTER 28
nfortunately, dinner at Dr. Hogly Wogly’s never happened. At Roscoe Avenue, just west of the Van Nuys intersection, Annie started having what she thought were contractions. She and Vincent called her doctor from the car. He’d examined Annie just two days earlier and was fairly certain it wasn’t time, but suggested they turn around and meet him at the hospital just to be on the safe side.
Gambino and I took Alexander home with us in case this wasn’t a false alarm. We stopped at In-N-Out Burger on the way. Alexander said he could eat two orders of fries, which I found hard to believe considering he was only three, but it turned out to be true.
Annie called us just after nine. They were already home. The doctor had assured them that the baby was staying put for the time being. I was relieved. And grateful about the impromptu sleepover. Having Alexander over defused the lingering tensions between Gambino and me. We took Buster for a walk, played with Mimi, then got ready for bed. While the boys were brushing their teeth, I gave Lou a quick call. The line was busy again.
Alexander was asleep within the hour. Gambino was the next to collapse. I shut the door to our bedroom and snuck out to the car to get the envelope I’d borrowed from the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Project.
It was nice to be outside. The air smelled sweet, like orange blossoms. It was that time of year. The jacarandas would be next, littering the streets with their sticky purple flowers. They say that if you walk underneath a jacaranda and a trumpet blossom falls on your head, you’ll be granted your heart’s desire. In the meantime I thought I’d wish on a star, but I couldn’t see any on account of the massive neon Emser Tile sign up on Santa Monica Boulevard, which shone like a beacon through the night. The Emser sign is actually a cinematic landmark. The first time we see Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, he is dangling somebody upside down from it.
I unlocked the side gate, made my way through the “dog run” (imagine Buster cracking up right about now), and traipsed out to the office, also glowing like a beacon. I’m bad about lights.
The envelope was big. I opened it and fanned the sheets of paper out across my desk. I was intimidated. Scientific, technical, and legal documents are not my specialty. My eye went straight to the alarming words and phrases: “toxic plume”; “wide-scale irrigation”; “ammonium perchlorate”; “groundwater basin”; “litigious carrot farmers.” At least “litigious carrot farmers” made me laugh.
My saving grace was the cover letter.
In a nutshell:
Ian and Dov needed water. The Antelope Valley East Kern Water Agency (AVEK) wanted to provide them with it. AVEK handled state water imported via the California Aqueduct, which would run Christietown only slightly more money than the water they were currently getting from the Palmdale Water Company (PWC), which owned and operated twenty-three wells in the immediate area. AVEK saw an opening for themselves because this January, just four months earlier, ammonium perchlorate, which is a component of rocket fuel, was discovered in one of PWC’s wells, located just a few miles downstream from a former Cold War–era munitions plant. In the cover letter, AVEK acknowledged that PMC had announced immediate plans to shut down the contaminated well and clean it up. Nontheless, AVEK’s head honcho was concerned that the plume of perchlorlate could be spreading west toward its other drinking wells.
It didn’t take a Harvard M.B.A. to get that the people at AVEK were neither altruists nor environmentalists.
What they wanted was a contract.
That part was business as usual, like Teenie said.
But what about the other part?
Poisoned water going from PMC’s wells into the pipes leading to the kitchen sinks of every house in Christietown?
Dov and Avi too cheap to change providers?
I kept coming back to the same question: did Liz somehow know about this? And what about Silvana? Did knowing get them killed?
Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Now I knew it, too.
I went back into the house and tried Lou again. Still busy. This was getting ridiculous. I had to talk to him. Maybe I could just go over there. It was late, but he obviously wasn’t asleep. I wouldn’t keep him long. I just needed to clear up a few things. Gambino and Alexander wouldn’t even know I’d been gone.
Five minutes later, I was putting the key in the ignition. I even found an old bottle of Diet Coke rolling around on the floor. When you are addicted to caffeine, it’s best not to be picky.
On the way I realized what night it was.
Thursday.
If Liz were still alive, Gambino and I would’ve had our last dance lesson tonight.
The foxtrot.
Lou would’ve been patient as he took us through the intricate steps.
Liz would’ve been popping allergy pills and trying to keep a straight face. She turned off the music at ten sharp. Lou never noticed the time. If she hadn’t been minding the store, he would’ve danced all night.
I took a shortcut via San Vicente, swinging a left just past the traffic island with the sculpture of a miner panning for gold.
Midnight in Carthay Circle.
It was quiet.
Everybody had punched in alarm codes, turned on porch lights, gone to bed. This was a nice neighborhood. No loud music, no trailers in the driveways, no stray beer cans in the bushes.
But as I turned onto Commodore Sloat, I saw something that surprised me.
A white VW convertible with a license plate reading BRDGRL.
I’d seen this car before.
Right here, the other day.
BRDGRL. Bird girl.
This was Wren Abbott’s car.
Parked right in front of the home of her recently bereaved employer, Lou Berman.
My first thought was, It’s a little late
for a social call.
My second thought was, Wren is so devoted. The other day she’d been carrying groceries and a box from the bakery for the man in mourning. So sweet.
But Wren is a redhead. Redheads aren’t sweet. They’re fiery, impassioned. And it’s awfully dark in there. Why aren’t the lights on?
Ridiculous. Lou isn’t the cheating kind. He loved his wife.
I put my car in Park and started toward the house. Then I did an abrupt about-face. All of a sudden I felt uneasy, like I’d be interrupting something if I just walked up there and rang the bell. Something personal.
Maybe I should just bang on the door and demand an explanation. Maybe he’d deny the whole thing while she hid, trembling, behind the shower curtain. Maybe the two of them were just sitting in the living room talking.
In the dark? Who converses in the dark?
In eighteenth-century parlance, “conversation” is something two people conduct horizontally.
Just then I remembered something from Chinatown, an old PI trick.
Jake Gittes is tailing Hollis Mulwray, the water engineer. Hollis is parked by the ocean, watching the water. It’s been hours. Jake is impatient, but he wants to know how obsessed Hollis is, so he places a cheap pocket watch under one of the tires of his car, the idea being that when Hollis finally drives away, the watch will break and when Jake comes to pick it up the next morning, he’ll know exactly how long Hollis sat there.
It was a good plan. Not to mention an excuse to destroy my Eiffel Tower Swatch watch.
I glanced at the house again. Still no lights. No signs of movement. Hurrying now, I unbuckled the watch from around my wrist and bent down in front of Wren’s car.
A blue Mazda cruised by. “You got a flat?” the guy called out.
A Good Samaritan. Just what I needed.
“No,” I said, smiling. “Just dropped my keys. Thanks.”
He moved on.
I fussed over the placement of the watch for a couple of minutes, finally shoving it as far under the right-front wheel as I could manage. Then I made my getaway.
In the morning I’d find out exactly how devoted Wren was.
CHAPTER 29
Two A.M. Two forty-five. Three twelve. The drummer two doors down liked to practice in the middle of the night. He never woke me up if I was sleeping. Since I was awake, I listened to him play. He was definitely improving. An ambulance drove by, sirens blaring. A car backfired. Two alley cats went at it for a while. Mimi stood by the glass doors in the bedroom, ears pricked. She was jealous. Love hurts. I closed my eyes, but I kept seeing Liz and Lou and Wren; Agatha, Archie, and Nancy; me and Gambino; me and Richard; Richard and Jackie. I curled myself into Gambino’s chest. He stirred, then wrapped an arm around me. He was protective even in his sleep.
After that, I think I fell asleep for a while.
At five o’clock, I heard the thwack of the newspaper. I got up, showered, fed the pets, and made breakfast, hoping the dizzy, nauseous feeling would soon dissipate. Two cups of coffee and one English muffin later, my head had started to clear. I checked the front page. At least there were no more murders at Christietown.
At five forty-five, Alexander came trotting out in his Power Rangers underwear. I made him a muffin and got him washed and dressed. It was Friday, a school day. I had to get him home. I checked on Gambino, who was still asleep, and Alexander and I got into the car.
Half an hour later, Annie was waiting for us at the front door.
“Hi, big guy,” she said. “Thanks, Mom. You want to have a cup of kombucha mushroom tea before you go?” My thoughts on kombucha mushroom tea are unprintable.
“Can’t,” I said, already back in my car. “Busy day,” I called out of the open window. “Love you.”
I was back in town by seven.
In front of Lou’s ten minutes later.
Wren’s car was gone.
I sighed. Of course it was. I must’ve been out of my mind to think there was anything going on between the two of them. I circled the block once and parked on the side street, just in case Lou stumbled out to get his paper or something. I didn’t want him to see me. I’d just pick up my Swatch watch, see what time Wren had left, and be on my way.
The watch was lying there, not far from the curb, in the exact spot where I’d left it. I bent down and checked the time. Seven twelve. Seven twelve? That’s what time it was now. The thing was indestructible. Not even a scratch. Oh, well. It didn’t
really matter. Wren had gone home.
Or so I thought.
As I turned the corner, I heard a car door slam. I turned instinctively. And that was when I realized it wasn’t just Wren’s car that was gone. It was all the cars that had been parked on that side of the street. I looked up at the sign posted at the corner: NO PARKING, STREET CLEANING, FRIDAY, 8AM–10AM.
Today was Friday.
Everybody had moved their cars late last night or early this morning to avoid being ticketed.
And there they were, on the other side of the street: Hondas, SAABs, Audis.
And a white VW convertible with a license plate reading BRDGRL.
Lou Berman and Wren Abbott.
They were sleeping together.
Oh, Liz.
Love hurts.
CHAPTER 30
t is a terrible mistake to marry a stranger. Agatha should have known better. She’d been twenty-four years old and had given serious consideration to three different men before Archie came along on his borrowed motorbike.
All three had been properly educated, with private incomes. All three were deeply in love.
But Bolton Fletcher was too old.
And Wildred Pire, obsessed with spiritualism.
And Reggie Lucy, ever chivalrous, had gone off to India with his regiment, giving her the opportunity to change her mind.
It was a woman’s prerogative and, like a fool, she’d exercised it.
Agatha didn’t know Archie. She couldn’t predict how he would react to a word, a phrase, a look. He was scary, unknown, on a tear through her safe, sane world, and still she found herself drawn to him, like metal to a magnet.
Agatha’s mother despaired of her daughter’s romantic sensibility.
She refused to allow her to rush into the marriage, insisting upon a curative regime of French realist novels, in which the passionate heroines are hurled inexorably into disaster, degradation,
and death. But the cure did not take.
Agatha and Archie married on Christmas Eve.
Scary, unknown: Agatha got what she’d bargained for, and more.
“This thing has happened,” Archie said one dark December day. “I must be with Nancy. One way or another I will be.”
Fine, then. So be it.
Agatha resumed her handiwork. She’d always been good with scissors. Today she was cutting stories out of the newspapers and pasting them in an album.
One day, they’d be yellowed with age, curled in the places where the paste wouldn’t hold. She’d study them and remember. Now their edges were sharp enough to draw blood.
Archie had said in his own defense that everybody can’t be happy, that somebody has got to be unhappy.
But why, Agatha asked herself that evening as she slipped on the silver dress and slippers she’d purchased in town, should I be unhappy and not you?
CHAPTER 31
he bell rang while I was doing the breakfast dishes. I
opened the door with my pink rubber gloves.
It was Mariposa and McAllister, the former wearing his usual smirk, the latter looking like he was about to be sick.
This wasn’t going to be good news.
I had them sit down on the couch while I perched on a wrought-iron chair opposite. I peeled off the gloves and deposited them on the coffee table. The cool air chilled my hands.
“Strange weather,” I said, crossing then uncrossing my legs. “Don’t you think?”
“Perfectly seasonal,” said Mariposa. “Not a native, are
you?”
“No, I’m not. Look,” I said, “I think we got off on the wrong foot somehow. We’re not enemies—at least I hope we’re not. Are we?”
“I don’t have any enemies.” Spoken like a choirboy.
“Why are you here then? Is it Ian?” I asked. “Did you find him? Is he okay?”
“Ian’s not the problem,” said McAllister, shaking his blond curls.
“Then who is?” Dov Pick. They’d figured it out at last.
McAllister said, “Wren Abbott was arrested earlier today for the murder of Liz Berman.”
As I sagged backward, a wrought-iron curlicue dug into my spine. I let out an involuntary gasp.
“Are you really that surprised, Ms. Caruso?” Mariposa asked.
“Sorry. The chair.” I sat up straight.
“So you’re not surprised.”
“Well, actually, I am.” Everybody knows if it’s not the husband, it’s the desperately jealous and resentful other woman. Except when it’s not.
Mariposa said, “Don’t play the fool with us, Ms. Caruso.”
“I would never do that.”
He glowered at me. “You know exactly why we’d have reason to accuse Wren Abbott of murder.”
“That isn’t—”
Mariposa interrupted, “What were you doing outside Lou Berman’s apartment in the middle of the night tampering with Ms. Abbott’s car?”
Shit.
“Yeah, I’m waiting. This ought to be good. Maybe you were getting ready to whack her, so you could be next in line for Loverboy.”
I blinked. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Mariposa, come on. Why don’t you slow down? Cute dog,” McAllister said, bending down to pet Buster. Then he turned his guileless blue eyes on me. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation, right, Ms. Caruso?”
“Yes, there is,” I said, standing up. “I was doing the exact same thing you were.”
“Oh,” said Mariposa. “Silly me. I see. And you were trained in surveillance techniques—where, exactly?”
“My father was a cop,” I said. “Both of my brothers are cops. I’m getting married to a cop. I know more than you think.”
