Cool Cache

by Patricia Smiley

  O’Brien leaned over and opened the door. Gatan slid into the passenger seat with the fluid grace of a woman who knew she turned heads. As she pushed the hood off her sleek black hair, a drop of rain slid down her broad nose and disappeared into the folds of her suit jacket.

  “The owner IDed the victim,” she said. “Lupe Ortiz. Forty-six. Married. Four kids. She cleans the store five nights a week.”

  “Just what we need,” O’Brien said. “Another domestic violence case. I wish these people would settle their beefs on their own turf instead of spoiling a perfectly good night on mine. Does Taggart know where we can find the husband?”

  Gatan looked as if she was anticipating trouble. “I didn’t ask her.”

  O’Brien narrowed his eyes. “Strike one. Go get her.”

  Detective Gatan waited for what seemed like a long time before shoving open the car door with a tad more force than necessary. I felt like shoving something, too. O’Brien was out of line for a lot of reasons, least of which was his assumption that Lupe’s husband was the only suspect. It was too early in the investigation to close every door but one.

  A few minutes later, Gatan returned with Helen in tow. The two detectives sat in the front of the patrol car. Helen climbed into the back with me.

  Helen was somewhere in her fifties, with soft brown hair, which she kept styled and sprayed to perfection between once-a-week appointments at a Beverly Hills salon. Her figure was expanding with middle age but she made the best of it with well-cut clothes that camouflaged any flaws. The double strand of pearls she wore was a remnant of a past life she could no longer afford to maintain. At least the necklace disguised the loose flesh below her chin. I didn’t want to look at it, because it reminded me of the ghost of sagging necks yet to come.

  Helen was what my grandma Felder called high-strung, and at the moment, she looked like Mount Vesuvius ready to blow. Her lipstick was smeared and her nose was red from crying. Identifying Lupe Ortiz’s body must have triggered a range of emotions, from sorrow to apprehension. No surprise. Nectar wasn’t a lark for her. It was her life. She must know death and chocolate were a hard combo to spin even for an experienced marketing expert like me.

  “What time did Mrs. Ortiz get to work?” O’Brien said.

  Helen dabbed at her nose with a shredded tissue. “Around six. She has a key, but I usually stay at the store until she gets here just to make sure she’s okay. Lupe was always telling me how much she appreciated that. Today I had to leave at five thirty for my hair appointment. Then I drove directly to the mall. I was supposed to get together for dinner and a movie with my boyfriend, but he called at the last minute to say he had to work and couldn’t make it. I skipped dinner and went to the seven o’clock showing of that new Nicole Kidman movie. I had some popcorn and called it a night.”

  “Did Mrs. Ortiz usually leave the door open while she worked?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Helen said. “Maybe.”

  O’Brien began tapping his fingers again, but it was hard to separate that sound from rain that was pelting the roof of the cruiser. “Other than you and the victim, who else has a key?”

  “Just my assistant manager, Kathy.”

  Detective O’Brien’s long legs weren’t made for sitting sideways behind the wheel of a car. His torso was twisted. His face was in profile. A red scratch blemished his right cheek. I wondered if he’d had a shaving mishap or had run into an angry fingernail.

  O’Brien made a note in his book. “Did Mrs. Ortiz have any problems with her husband?”

  “There were a couple of minor issues, but I helped her work through them. After that, her marriage seemed solid. I’m sure she would have told me otherwise.”

  “Any of her kids gang members?”

  Helen hesitated for what seemed like a long time. I wondered why. It was almost as if she was filtering her response through some sort of politically correct colander.

  “They’re just normal kids,” she said.

  O’Brien stared at Helen with a deadpan expression. “Is there anybody who might have killed Lupe Ortiz to get back at you?”

  Helen’s lips parted slightly, but no words came out. It was as if something had cut off the air that gave power to her voice. I held my breath, hoping she could hold it together until the interview was over.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was a whisper. “Nobody hates me that much.”

  “When you were inside the store, did you notice if anything was missing?”

  “My recipes are the most valuable thing I have, but the books are still on the shelf. I checked the cash register, too. No money is missing.”

  “The display shelves in the retail store are gone,” I said.

  “Maybe Lupe interrupted a burglar.”

  O’Brien’s frown made it clear he didn’t welcome my interruption or my theory. Either something or someone had put him in a foul mood or else he just didn’t like women.

  “The shelves aren’t missing,” Helen said. “I took them down yesterday to make room for another table. All that stuff is in the trunk of my car until I can find a place to store it. Anyway, none of it’s valuable. It’s just collectibles.”

  That was bad news all around. If a burglar had killed Lupe Ortiz, he’d left without taking anything except her life.

  “Look,” Helen continued, “I have to take my recipes home tonight. If something happens to them I’m in big trouble.”

  “Once we’re done processing the scene,” O’Brien said, “you can take anything you want.”

  “How long will that be?” Helen’s voice was becoming shrill.

  “We’re done when we’re done.”

  “That doesn’t tell me anything. I have to know.” Detective Gatan’s lips were pursed, as if her partner’s hard-line tactics were annoying her. She turned toward Helen. “Check back with us in a couple of hours. Maybe we can release the books then. Meanwhile, I’ll make sure nobody disturbs them.”

  “Helen, the police are here,” I said. “I think the books are safe for now.”

  Gatan measured me with her dark eyes before returning her gaze to Helen. “I tried to call the Ortiz house. The line was busy. Does the husband have a cell phone?”

  Helen shifted her gaze from me to the detective. “I don’t know. Probably. Lupe has one. It’s a gaudy purple thing with rhinestones on it. But it doesn’t matter if he has a cell phone or not. You can’t reach him. He’s in Guatemala. Visiting a sick relative, I think.”

  O’Brien shifted in the seat. “The kids are home alone?” Helen moaned. “Those poor babies. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  O’Brien glanced at his partner. “Call children’s services and have them check into it. They’ll probably have to take the kids into custody.”

  Helen leaned forward and grabbed the back of the seat. “They just lost their mother. You can’t leave them with strangers. I know the three little ones. Lupe brought them to the store several times. Let me take them to my place.”

  Detective O’Brien shook his head. “You’re not a relative. We have to go through channels. That’s children’s services. End of story.”

  Helen fingered the pearls around her neck as if they were worry beads. “Lupe has a cousin in the area. I’ll get her to stay at the house until we locate Mr. Ortiz.”

  A thick silence settled in the car, displacing the stench and the tension. Gatan stared at her partner as if she was searching for operating instructions on his forehead.

  “Let her try,” she said to him. “What can it hurt? The kids are better off with family.”

  O’Brien’s jaw muscles twitched as he pointed his index finger in Gatan’s face. “If this goes south on us, Detective, it’s on your head.”

  Something about their relationship reminded me of a dysfunctional couple on aTV drama. I wondered if O’Brien’s Irish digits had ever danced over the soft brown skin of his partner’s butt.

  Gatan handed Helen her card. “Call me when you locate the cousin. I�
�ll handle the rest.”

  As we got out of the patrol car, dozens of camera flashes lit up the alley. A crowd was gathered outside the yellow tape, people drawn by curiosity, boredom, or maybe just a sense of the macabre.

  The rain had stopped but the street was still wet, so I offered Helen a ride to her car. As soon as she slid into the passenger seat of my Boxster, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number. I could hear the blare of the busy signal from where I sat. I backed out of the parking space and waited while a patrol officer lifted the crime-scene tape and motioned the crowd to step away from the alley.

  By the time we got to Helen’s car, which was parked on the street a couple of blocks away, her breathing had become shallow. I asked if she was okay.

  “I will be as soon as I know Lupe’s kids are safe.”

  “Is that her cousin you’re trying to call?”

  She closed her phone with an audible snap. “I’m trying to reach Roberto, but the line is still busy. I can’t leave him alone with those children.”

  A feeling of dread settled in my chest. “Helen, what’s going on?”

  “Lupe was having problems with Roberto. He was running with a bad crowd, experimenting with drugs. His dad tried to straighten him out, but he wouldn’t listen. Other people tried to help, too—school counselors, her parish priest. I told her I’d pay for a psychologist, but her husband was against it. He didn’t want people to know he couldn’t control his own son.”

  “Why didn’t you tell O’Brien?”

  “Because I didn’t want to cause more problems for the family.”

  Helen got out of the car and slammed the door.

  I lowered the passenger-side window. “What are you going to do?”

  “Drive to East L.A. and talk to Roberto.”

  “Helen, that’s insane. You have no idea what kind of mess you’re walking into.”

  She glared at me. “And Lupe’s children? What about them? Their lives are a little messy right now, too.”

  “They don’t even know their mom is dead. Are you going to tell them?”

  “I’ll have to.”

  “Why are you doing this? Lupe’s not even your employee.”

  “I don’t want to do it. I have to because there’s no one else.”

  I hoped Helen’s compulsion to meddle in other people’s lives wouldn’t become a problem, but if rescuing Lupe Ortiz’s children was her latest cause, trying to talk her out of it was futile. There was only one thing I could do to save her from herself.

  “Get in the car,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

  Chapter 3

  There were many reasons why a trip to see Roberto Ortiz could turn into disaster. It was late at night. The streets were slick with rain. The freeway would be a mess. And East L.A. could be a dangerous place. At the moment, telling a troubled teen that his mother had just been murdered seemed like the least of my problems.

  Locals call East Los Angeles East Los or ELA. Once home to Russians, Jews, and Japanese immigrants, the area is now ninety percent Latino and the largest Mexican-American community in the United States. It’s larger than Manhattan. Larger than Washington, D.C. One million people. Hundreds of colorful outdoor murals. Graffiti. Discotecas. Farmacias. Pastry shops. Hardworking people. ELA also has young mothers in short skirts carrying babies that already know how to hold a gun, and young men with no work and few alternatives, selling weapons from the trunk of a car. There are good neighborhoods in East L.A. Lupe Ortiz and her family didn’t live in one of them.

  The house was a downtrodden bungalow that looked like a child’s crude drawing—a square box with a slanted roof and a front door flanked by two small windows. A few blocks away, a police helicopter swept a spotlight over the neighborhood, searching for something or someone I didn’t want to know about.

  Cars and pickups lined the street, so I parked in the driveway behind an older-model Toyota. Gang graffiti marred the surface of a three-foot cinderblock wall that barricaded the neighbor’s yard from the outside world. A man stood on the porch, struggling to restrain a pit bull that was lunging at us with bared teeth. The barking triggered a response from canines up and down the block until it sounded like the doggie version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

  “I hope that collar doesn’t break,” Helen said.

  I wanted to allay her fears, but it was all I could do to keep my own in check. “We’re here now. We might as well go to the door.”

  No fence barred us from entering Lupe Ortiz’s yard. We made our way up the sidewalk through a lawn that was dead except for tufts of grass that reminded me of hair plugs on the pate of a desperate man. Paint was peeling from the wood siding of the house. The doorframe was hollowed out in places, probably from termites. The windows were covered in blue floral bedsheets that would make Martha Stewart proud.

  I knocked on the front door and waited. A faint rustling sound could be heard from inside the house. A moment later, the bedsheet on the window to my left parted, revealing the face of a girl of around eight. I waved to her. She waved back.

  “Angelica,” Helen said through the glass. “I’m looking for Roberto. Is he home?”

  The girl stared at us for a moment and then stepped away from the window. The curtain drifted shut. We waited, but nobody came to the door.

  “Try calling the number again,” I said to Helen.

  She dialed and listened. “Still busy.”

  I knocked, louder this time. A short time later, the door jerked open and an unpleasant chemical odor drifted onto the porch. A young man of about sixteen stood in front of us. I assumed he was Lupe’s son Roberto. Small bumps covered his face. They looked like a crop of mini Botz dots that had gone on a rampage. Heavy, arching eyebrows accented his broad face. A metal stud pierced the skin just below his lower lip. He had on an oversized white T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were so large they would have fallen off if he hadn’t been holding on to his crotch.

  Behind him were three young children—the girl I’d seen in the window and two younger boys, age three and four, I guessed. They were all huddled in front of a television set.

  “Roberto?” she said. “I’m Helen Taggart. Your mother cleans my chocolate store. I’m sure she’s talked about me.”

  Roberto raked his nails over the blemishes on his face. His gaze flitted from me to Helen and back again, as if our presence had made him hyperalert. His lips were dry and cracked. He moistened them before speaking.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “What do you want?”

  Helen reached out as if she was going to embrace him. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. Your mother’s dead. The police asked me to identify the body. It was awful. I drove all the way over here to see if I could help.”

  I grabbed her arm before she blurted out any of the gory details.

  Roberto seemed repelled by Helen as much as by the news of his mother’s death, but the two younger boys didn’t even look away from the TV. Angelica did. Her dark eyes burned with anger as she stared at Helen and me.

  Pain etched Helen’s face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “Listen, Roberto,” I said. “It’s important for you to contact your father right away and tell him to come home. In the meantime, you need to find an adult relative who can stay at the house.”

  He lifted his chin and looked down his nose at us in a gesture of defiance. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Helen broke free of my grasp. “The police said—”

  I interrupted her. “Of course you don’t. But you might have to leave the house, and your brothers and sister will need someone to watch out for them. What about your cousin? Would you like me to call her?”

  He didn’t answer for some time. Perhaps it was shock or just machismo that allowed him to stand in the doorway without shedding a tear.

  “I don’t need your help.”

  I felt the music before I heard it, that loud, thrumming base that reverberates in your chest like thunder. I turned toward the street
and saw an older-model American sedan with tinted windows, maybe an Oldsmobile, cruising down the street. It slowed to a roll as it neared us. The neighbor pulled his pit bull into the house, and the barking grew muffled. The rear window of the sedan rolled down. Rap music pounded into the night.

  Roberto’s eyes narrowed. The last image I saw was the glow of the television screen and three wide-eyed children scurrying for cover as the door slammed shut. A moment later, the lights in the Ortiz house went out.

  In my mind’s eye I saw tomorrow morning’s newspaper headline. NOSY BUSINESSWOMAN MOWED DOWN IN DRIVE-BY SHOOTING. Next to the article would be that old high school picture of me with the perm that looked like a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert. People would come to my funeral. People I didn’t know. Just to see if my hair really looked that bad. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Get in the car,” I whispered.

  “We can’t leave without the children,” Helen said.

  “Get in the car,” I said, louder this time.

  Helen seemed to sense the urgent tone in my voice, because she followed me down the sidewalk toward the Boxster. Once we were both inside the car, I locked the doors—for all the good that would do. You didn’t need a PhD to know that bullets penetrated glass.

  Every house on the street seemed to be dark now. I watched the taillights of the sedan grow smaller as it continued down the block. When the car was out of sight, I turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the driveway.

  Helen pressed her forehead to the window, staring into the darkness. “I failed Lupe. They’ll take the children away now.”

  I didn’t answer right away because I was focused on navigating us out of the neighborhood and back to the freeway.

  “You did what you could,” I said. “The police will take care of the rest.”

  That was easy enough to say, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lupe Ortiz’s death was only the beginning of Helen’s problems—and mine. The next challenge was convincing Detective O’Brien to release Helen’s recipe books, but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to let them go without a fight.