Christietown

by Susan Kandel

  “You’re obviously a smart person, Ms. Caruso,” said McAllister. “Maybe you want to tell us how a smart person like yourself can—”

  “Act so fucking stupid!”

  “Put yourself in grave personal danger,” McAllister corrected his partner. “We don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Sure you don’t. Their good cop/bad cop routine was wearing thin. McAllister was as big a phony as Mariposa was. And they were missing the point entirely.

  “I want to show you something,” I said. “Excuse me for a minute.”

  “Don’t flee the jurisdiction,” Mariposa said.

  I ran out to my office. The envelope from AVEK was sitting on my desk. I grabbed it and raced back into the living room, where Mariposa was unabashedly leafing through my mail.

  “Find anything good in there, Detective?” I asked.

  “To be honest, I was hoping for the Victoria’s Secret catalog.” He put the stack of mail back on the coffee table without a word of apology.

  “Just listen to me for a second. There’s something you need to know.” I stood in the middle of the room, smoothed down my apron, then announced, “Ian and Dov have been pumping water tainted with ammonium perchlorate into all the houses in Christietown.” Breathless, I waited for their reaction.

  “Now who are you supposed to be exactly,” Mariposa asked, “Erin Brockovich?”

  “No,” I said, exasperated. What was wrong with these people? “There’s a lot more at stake here than you seem to understand. If word of this got out, Dov and all the rest of them would go under. It’s the perfect motive for murder.”

  Mariposa shook his head slowly. “Hardly.”

  “Here,” I said, shoving the papers at him. “Why don’t you just look at what I’m showing you? Take them. Please!” I appealed to McAllister. “I don’t want them in my house.”

  “No thanks,” said McAllister, putting up his hands. Finally, he’d abandoned the act.

  “Us cops, we’re putting our money on Wren Abbott,” said Mariposa. “Motive, means, and opportunity. You ever hear those three words?”

  “Wren worked with Liz,” McAllister said. “She could’ve slipped foxglove into her allergy medicine anytime.”

  “So could about a million people,” I protested.

  “Even you, I suppose,” said Mariposa. “Is there something you want to confess to? Guilty conscience you want to clear?”

  “Of course not.” I picked up the rubber gloves and started fiddling nervously with them.

  “There’s more,” said McAllister.

  “Yes?”

  “We found some shredded-up foxglove plants in Wren’s garbage.”

  Not good. I put the gloves down. “So what? Anyone could have put them there.”

  “We’re going to find the place she bought them soon.”

  Maybe she was going to plant them in her garden. Maybe she liked the way they looked when they were in full bloom. Maybe it turned out she didn’t have a green thumb and she got rid of them.

  “We talked to your gardener,” McAllister said, thumbing through his notepad. “Javier Gomez. Wren gave Javier a call last week.”

  “To talk about the murder-mystery play, I’m sure.” I’d given everyone in the cast a complete list of phone numbers so they could get together to rehearse if they’d wanted to. As far as I knew, nobody had, with the exception of Javier and Lael, and that was another story.

  “Wrong again. Wren didn’t talk to Javier about the play. She talked to him about foxglove. She had some very specific questions about its toxicity.”

  I paused, floored for the first time that morning. “There must be some explanation. What does Wren have to say in her defense?”

  “That’s the strange thing,” said McAllister.

  “She’s saying nothing,” said Mariposa. “Absolutely nothing.”

  I remembered Wren bringing Lou that package from the bakery, tied up with a pretty ribbon. I remembered her eyes.

  Oh, god.

  Of course Wren was saying nothing.

  And I knew exactly why.

  The blinds were drawn at Le Palais de Danse, but I pushed

  open the front door.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Where are you, Lou?”

  The trash hadn’t been emptied. The mirrors were streaked with grime. The lightbulbs were sputtering. Lou was the artist and Liz ran the show, but Liz was gone.

  And now Wren was gone, too.

  Lou shambled forward from the back room. His eyes were black holes. He was unshaven. He smelled like sweat.

  “Guess you heard the news,” he said, taking a seat at Liz’s desk. “Or maybe you’re here to get a refund on last night’s lesson. Sorry about that. I hope you didn’t have your heart set on the foxtrot. It’s pretty tricky, even if you’re an expert.” He made a show of sorting the papers on the desk into piles, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was staring into space.

  “You must be feeling very sorry for yourself,” I said. “Both of them abandoned you. Left you all alone.”

  He slumped deeper into the chair, like he wanted to disappear.

  “Get up,” I said.

  “I don’t want to get up,” he said. “I want a cigarette.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of Marlboros, and lit one. I watched him take the smoke in, lean his head back, blow the smoke out. “Today’s not a great day for a visit, Cece. I’m really tired.”

  “I don’t care how tired you are,” I said. “I want you to get up and look me in the eye while I tell you what a coward you are.”

  “No.” He shifted his weight in the chair. “I know why I feel so bad. I haven’t been dancing. Every bone in my body hurts.”

  His self-pity enraged me. “I can’t believe you! How can you sit there complaining while Wren is locked up in some miserable holding cell somewhere because she doesn’t want you to get hurt? Do you have any idea how much she cares for you?”

  “I care for her, too.” He stubbed out his cigarette in a dirty ashtray.

  “Then how can it not matter to you that she’s not saying a word in her own defense?”

  “It does matter.” He blinked his bloodshot eyes. “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t you see?” I was shaking my head. “She doesn’t want to implicate you—her lover, the husband of the dead woman, the most likely suspect. She’s protecting you at her own expense.”

  He turned his head away.

  “Listen to me, Lou.” I stopped talking until I had his full attention, then I spoke slowly and deliberately. “You have to pull yourself together. And then go down there. And then admit to them that you’re sleeping with Wren, but that doesn’t mean she killed your wife!” I started to lose it at the end.

  He was silent.

  “Unless—” I stopped short, took a deep breath. “Unless you think she did kill Liz.”

  “Of course she didn’t kill Liz,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “She’s a good kid.”

  Jesus. “You betrayed your wife for a good kid?”

  “Look, what do you want from me? I care about Wren, I truly do. But it was Liz I loved. It’s Liz I miss. It’s always been Liz. Look at this.” He yanked open the drawers of his wife’s desk. They were stuffed with Agatha Christie paperbacks: A Murder Is Announced. The Moving Finger. A Caribbean Mystery. A Pocket Full of Rye. Nemesis. “Even this little play you wrote. Liz researched her role like her life depended on it. I swear, she read every single word Agatha Christie ever wrote about Miss Marple. She didn’t want anything to get by her. She didn’t do things halfway.” His voice started to crack. “I don’t know what I did to deserve her.”

  “If you loved her so much,” I asked, “then why did you cheat on her?”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s complicated.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Look, Cece. I’ve talked to the police. I’ve told them Wren and I have been having an affair. They know all about it. And Wren knows I told them. I even off
ered to put up my house for the bail money, for a lawyer, for whatever she needs, but Wren won’t have it. They’re going to stick her with some lousy public defender. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

  I pulled up a folding chair and sat down on the other side of the desk. “Let me ask you something, Lou. About Liz. I know she went out to Christietown on a couple of different occasions, to work on her Miss Marple character.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did she ever mention anything strange she encountered while she was out there?”

  “What do you mean, strange?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Suspicious, maybe. Something she saw or overheard?”

  “She never mentioned anything.”

  “Anything about a key?”

  “No.”

  “Anything about meeting anybody there?”

  “You mean Ian, somebody like that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying not to get excited, “Ian or somebody like that.”

  “She might’ve met Ian.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure. And I really don’t know what you’re getting at. She never said much of anything about her visits. Just that she had to lay the groundwork. That was it. End of story.”

  Great. He was no help at all.

  “You should move your car, Cece,” he said, looking up at the clock. “The valets show up to take care of the lunch crowd around now. They’ll have you towed. I’m telling you, they’re ruthless.”

  They, and who else?

  CHAPTER 32

  nfortunately for Wren, she got arrested on a Friday. According to Gambino and his cop friends, the weekend judges have a reputation for being hard-nosed. And who could blame them? In any case, there were no visits allowed before the preliminary hearing, which wasn’t scheduled until late Sunday. Wren was on her own until then.

  In the meantime, I had to find Ian.

  The problem was, I didn’t have his home address and the only number I had for him was his cell phone, and unfortunately, the mailbox was full. Guess I wasn’t the only one trying to locate him. I tried information, but he wasn’t listed. I even called Lois and Marlene, thinking maybe he’d given them a different number, but all that got me was yet another recitation of the story of Marlene’s near-affair with Omar Sharif. I thought somebody at Christietown might be able to help, but a machine answered and I hung up before the beep. I was tired of leaving messages.

  Things were looking bleak.

  Until I remembered the “While You Were Out” slips I’d stolen from Ian’s trash can.

  Sometimes, crime does pay.

  My first stop was Showtime Cleaners on Doheny and Santa Monica. I parked in the Petco lot, which was for customers only. It said so in big red letters. I was definitely a customer. I’d spent enough money on chew toys and fancy kibble to last three lifetimes.

  “Sorry. Mr. Ian picked up his shirts two days ago,” said the woman behind the counter. She pressed an unseen button and a conveyor belt sprang to life, shuttling plastic-swathed garments across the room.

  “Yes, I realize that,” I said, shouting over the din. “But I think there may be one left. The Tommy Bahama one? It’s very cheerful.”

  She pushed the button again and the conveyor belt shuddered to a stop.

  “He likes to wear it on the weekends,” I continued. “Maybe you could double-check?” I gave her a hopeful smile.

  “No, miss,” she said, shaking her head. “I gave that shirt to Mr. Ian myself. It had many stubborn stains. The whole team worked hard to remove them. I am sorry if it is personal, but maybe you can remind him about Mitchum? We recommend it to all our customers. It’s an excellent product. We even sell it here. We also sell lint brushes,” she said, looking at my sweater. She removed a hot pink dress from the conveyor belt and hung it on the rack near the register. “Customer coming in later,” she explained. “Big party tonight.”

  I acknowledged the ruffles, then invented a missing comforter. “Mr. Ian dropped it off quite some time ago,” I said. “I think it must be lost in the system. Can you check back there? It’s been getting kind of nippy in the evenings.”

  “Oh. You are the wife?” she asked.

  “Um.” I was smiling less certainly now.

  “Hold on a minute,” she said, heading into the back.

  Unfortunately, the moment the woman was out of sight, a tall man in a dark suit came in carrying a pile of pastel-colored button-downs. He looked like a law-and-order type. Foiled again. With a goody-goody like him standing there, I could hardly leap behind the counter, punch Ian’s name into the computer, and find his home address.

  The woman drifted back on an odoriferous cloud of chemical solvents.

  “Any luck?” I asked, already halfway out the door.

  Suddenly, she was handing me something big and unwieldy and covered with little blue flowers. “You were right. Smart lady, Mrs. Ian. This comforter has been sitting here for weeks. I didn’t know whose it was. No tag. Sometimes we make small errors like that. Sorry, Mrs. Ian.”

  She presented me with a bill for $45.00.

  I had no choice.

  While I was at it, I bought a lint brush.

  My luck at the gym was no better. They guarded their computer like it was Fort Knox. Maybe they worried about stalkers. The front-desk guy said he hadn’t seen Ian in days. He was willing to extend the renewal offer for another week, but that was as far as he could push it. A flame-haired beauty engrossed in a fitness magazine lifted her head up long enough to inform me that her power step class was being moved from Tuesdays and Thursdays at eight A.M. to Mondays and Wednesdays at seven fifteen. She was Gina? Ian was one of her biggest fans? I said he talked about her constantly, and promised to pass on the information.

  My last chance was the manuscripts-and-collectibles store on Sunset Boulevard. I knew that if Ian had legs to walk on, he’d stop by to get that Agatha Christie memorabilia. However much it cost him, it would be worth it. A huckster like him could practice copying the Great One’s signature and forge some collectibles of his own—for the walls of the Blue Boar Pub, of course.

  The tiny storefront was located on the south side of the street. I drove past in slow motion, then turned the corner and cruised down the alley at the rear. The cigar store and coffee shop spaces on either side were full. There was one space behind the manuscripts store, and it was taken by an old black Lincoln with a bumper sticker reading SURFERS DO IT BETTER. Ian would have to park in front. I circled back around to Sunset, looking for a metered spot. No luck there. It was ten to two now. Time to stop pussyfooting around. I had to get into position. I pulled into the Tower Records lot across the street. It had a perfect view of the front door. Now all I had to do was wait for the rosy-cheeked man in the guayabera.

  Slowest twenty minutes of my life.

  I found an emery board in the glove compartment and did some repair work.

  I perused the plastic surgery ads in a stray piece of the L.A. Weekly that had been shoved between the seats.

  I organized my wallet.

  Then I saw Ian pull his car—a green Jag—into the yellow loading zone in front of the store.

  At last. I grabbed my purse and whipped open the door, then stopped short. What was I going to say when I finally confronted him? I had no idea. Was he laying low because he was afraid? Or because he had something to hide? I tended to think it was the latter, but couldn’t be sure. Why had Teenie described him as a maniac? Was Lou right in saying Ian and Liz had met at Christietown? I pulled the door closed. Perhaps the most prudent course of action would be to stall until I’d made up my mind. I’d wait until he came back out, then I’d follow him for a while, see where he went. Maybe that would tell me something I needed to know.

  Five minutes later, Ian and the bearded proprietor appeared in the doorway and exchanged good-byes. Then Ian emerged into the sunlight, a manila envelope under his arm and a smile on his face, the latter of which didn’t v
anish even as he plucked a parking ticket from his windshield. Ian got into his car and pulled out into traffic, heading east. Without thinking twice, I swung an illegal left out of the Tower Records parking lot and fell into place behind him.

  It was kind of exciting not knowing where we were going.

  Mid-Wilshire? Lots of interesting architecture.

  Koreatown? I’m a fan of Korean barbecue.

  Union Station? The Brits loved their trains.

  We turned right at Fairfax and drove past Canter’s, where fluffy matzo balls reign; past Farmer’s Market, which I tried never to visit after eleven A.M. because you can’t get parking; past Johnnie’s, the defunct space-age diner; past the beautiful old May Company building with its faded gold ziggurat; through Little Ethiopia, where you get to eat dinner with your hands; past the graffiti-scrawled exterior of Mo’ Better Meaty Meat Burger. Block after block of cinder-block apartments followed. Just after the power plant, we merged onto the 10 heading west. The image of Ian in a Speedo flashed suddenly before my eyes. Given the chill in the air, however, ocean frolicking seemed unlikely, thank god.

  Being on the freeway was a good thing. Saved me the trouble of worrying about losing him at a light. He was a timid driver, which also helped. No zig-zagging. He’d picked that middle lane and was loyal to it. After National, we approached the on-ramp to the 405, which leads you straight to LAX, but Ian sped on by. He was a man on a mission. At Cloverfield, he moved into the far-right lane. At Lincoln, he exited. I was still only one car length behind him.

  WELCOME TO SANTA MONICA read the colorful sign.

  I opened the window to breathe in the good sea air, then put it up because it was actually cold. I followed close behind as Ian turned right at the penguin perched on the roof of the offices of Dr. Beauchamp Credit Dentist, and right again at the ten-gallon hat parked in front of Arby’s roast beef.

  We were on Santa Monica Boulevard now. Up ahead, I could see the palm trees silhouetted against the grayish sky. Below was the blue haze of the Pacific Ocean. We blew past Fifth Street, then Fourth. Were we going to the Third Street Promenade? Maybe there was a Tommy Bahama store there.