Cool Cache

by Patricia Smiley

  Chapter 4

  By the time we got back to Nectar, Lupe’s body had been taken to the morgue. Detective Gatan promised to arrange for the Ortizes’ cousin to stay with the family until the father could be located. I’d been right about O’Brien. He wasn’t going to let the recipes go without a fight, but it wasn’t with Helen or me. It was with his partner. After a heated discussion between the two, Detective Gatan escorted Helen into the store to get her recipe books, plus several boxes of business records she’d need while Nectar remained closed.

  There wasn’t room for everything in Helen’s car because the trunk was filled with the collectible display from the retail store, so she asked me to take the cocoa tins, the heart box, and the spouted chocolate pot home for a day or two until she could free up some space at her condo. Of course I agreed.

  It was past two a.m. by the time I pulled the Boxster into the driveway of my beach cottage just north of Malibu. There were no lights on at my neighbor’s house. Mr. and Mrs. Domanski had likely been lulled into slumber hours ago by multiple martinis and years of marital ennui.

  Cold November sea air seeped into my lungs as I got out of the car. In the distance I heard the surf slam the shore, sizzle, and withdraw to renew the cycle. I pulled my coat tight around my neck and walked toward the house, watching the moon spotlight the water with a milky yellow glow. The only other light I saw was from a house in the middle of a wide arc of beach that sloped gently into the Pacific Ocean.

  I made my way through the sand toward my deck, pausing for a moment to admire my house. It wasn’t much to look at, just a small brown rectangle I’d inherited from a grandmother I’d never known, but I loved the place more than anywhere I’d ever lived.

  Unlike Lupe Ortiz’s neighborhood, mine felt quiet and safe. I trudged up the wooden steps leading to the side door and tried to imagine what it would be like for her children in the days ahead. My father had died before I was born, which had left a void in my life, but I’d never had to mourn a parent who’d been loved and lost the way Lupe’s kids would have to do now.

  I heard barking from inside the house—my West Highland terrier. Muldoon had a good voice, but he’d never make it to Carnegie Hall. He was too handsome to be talented, too. That just wouldn’t be fair. The pup had leading-man good looks—broad shoulders, bedroom eyes, and a melancholy expression that melted hearts.

  The door swung open and Muldoon charged out to greet me. I threw him a couple of air kisses and stepped over the threshold, nearly tripping over his yellow cashmere sweater. It was just one of many gifts from Mrs. Domanski, whom Muldoon had come to view as a generous but eccentric aunt.

  I paused near the small alcove that functioned as my home office and flipped on the lights in the living room and on the deck. By the time I’d laid my coat on my grandmother’s steamer trunk, Muldoon was staring at his empty food dish. The expression on his face read Uh . . . excuse me. Empty!

  I negotiated my way around my apartment-sized kitchen to the refrigerator where I kept Muldoon’s food. I moved his dish to the round rooster rug on the kitchen floor and filled it to the top from a sack of low-fat kibble, waiting for him to dig in. He studied the cuisine for a moment, flicking his tongue at the pellets. Several shot out of the bowl like skeet off the back of a cruise ship. He plopped his butt on the floor and began to whimper. I hated to see the little guy unhappy, so I caved in and nuked a frozen panini that was big enough for two.

  While Muldoon was eating, I changed into a sweatsuit and checked for messages on the answering machine located on the kitchen counter. No one had called. I went to my office and booted up the computer to check my e-mail. Nothing. I was beginning to feel like the Maytag repairman.

  I didn’t feel like going to bed, so I slipped an Aretha Franklin CD into the player and molded myself into the cushions of my rose and celery floral couch with my half of the panini, waiting for a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

  Muldoon finished his sandwich and jumped on the couch to gape at mine as if his X-ray vision might magically transport it from my hand to his mouth. It didn’t work. After I’d finished eating, he settled next to me on the couch while I rested my hand on his bristly coat.

  A photo album lay on the coffee table. It was filled with pictures of a recent cycling trip I’d taken in France with my friend Venus Corday and her boyfriend, Max Huffman. I picked up the book and flipped through the pages of familiar photographs. In every one I saw a thirty-year-old woman who was almost thirty-one. She was tall and thin with brown shoulder-length hair and eyes the color of Old Grand-Dad Kentucky bourbon. All were shots of me. Me, in Paris leaning on a bridge over the river Seine. Me, posing for a portrait in Monmartre. Me, straddling my bicycle in front of the Romanée-Conti vineyard. Me, sipping espresso in an outdoor café in Bonne. If the Tour de France had a wallflower jersey, I would have been wearing it.

  Venus had billed the trip as salve for my broken heart. It was something less than that, but at least for two weeks, the exercise and the French food distracted me from thinking about the end of my relationship with an LAPD homicide detective named Joe Deegan.

  There was nothing profound or poetic to say about our breakup. The relationship had been challenging from the start. He was accustomed to calling the shots. So was I. There had never been any man in my life telling me what to do—not a father, not even my ex. Maybe I was just meant to be alone.

  A moment later, a rumble of thunder jolted me out of my reverie. Lightning flashed through the sky, which sent Muldoon bolting from the room like a reluctant bridegroom. He hated loud noises. It would take a T-bone steak to lure him out from under my bed. I sat up and braced myself for another thunderbolt. None came. I knew thunder. It would wait until I felt safe before shattering my nerves a second time.

  I gazed through the glass of the French doors at the gritty film of sand on the deck and my fake wicker deck furniture, which was covered for the season because even plastic degrades in L.A.’s winter storms, and I thought about Lupe Ortiz. By nature I was a curious person. I wanted to know what had happened to her. Maybe she’d gone out to buy garlic shrimp and had forgotten to lock the door when she came back. Maybe a thief entered the shop, looking for a quick score. Except nothing was missing. Why would a burglar kill Lupe Ortiz and not even take the money in the cash register, which seemed easy enough to find? The other possibility was that somebody came to Nectar with the sole purpose of killing her. Helen said Lupe’s son was troubled. I wondered if he’d been involved in her death. It was a chilling thought because just hours before I’d been standing on a front porch in East L.A., talking to a murderer.

  The rain was launching its full attack now. I could hear the branches of the Domanskis’ trees being whipped by the wind. The deck light illuminated the metal railing that led down the steps to the sand. Drops of water had accumulated on the underside of the pipe. They looked transparent in the light. One grew plump and fell to the ground with a Humpty-Dumpty splat. All the king’s men in the nursery rhyme had failed Humpty. I doubted they could put the Ortiz family back together again, either.

  That night I lay awake wondering if Lupe’s children were with their cousin or in a foster home, surrounded by strangers. I wanted to believe the dawn would bring good news, but I knew in my heart that life, like nursery rhymes, didn’t always have a happy ending.

  Charley Tate was a private investigator and a former cop. He might have some ideas about who killed Lupe Ortiz and how long Nectar would be closed for business. I decided to ask him.

  Chapter 5

  The next morning, I overslept. There was no time for breakfast, so I made a cup of coffee for the road and loaded my purse and laptop computer into the car. Then I dropped Muldoon off at Mrs. Domanski’s house for a play date and headed for the office.

  It was still raining. Not the deluge from the night before, but a gentle spray that darkened the sky and covered the highways with a thin coat of water mixed with oil that made for dicey driving conditions. Los Angeles had been ex
periencing unusually cold weather, thanks to a storm blustering south from the Gulf of Alaska. My response to the chill was a heavy coat and a wool hat with earflaps that made me look like a llama herder in the mountains of Peru.

  Forty minutes later, I arrived at the pie-shaped slice of land between Washington Boulevard and Washington Place in Culver City, where I shared a second-floor office suite with an ex-cop-turned-private investigator named Charley Tate.

  Charley was a combination of father, brother, uncle, and friend. He was sometimes cranky and obstinate and we often disagreed, but we’d been through trouble together and had come out on the other side with a healthy measure of mutual respect. I could count on him 100 percent to cover my back in a crisis.

  He’d taught me a lot in the short time I’d known him, including how to pick locks, not that he’d set out to do that. We’d been chatting in the car one day about copy for a new brochure I was writing for him, and one thing led to another. I guess he felt if I was going to learn to defeat locks I should have the proper tools, so a few months back he’d given me a lock-picking set of my own.

  Charley had learned some things from me, too, like how to change the color of Tate Investigations’ bottom line ink from red to black. Our businesses were separate, but we shared rent, a lobby, and an administrative assistant named Eugene Barstok.

  There was no elevator in our building, so I walked up the stairs to the second floor and found Eugene at his desk, staring trancelike at his computer screen. He was in his midtwenties with a slight physique, round blue eyes that always looked surprised, and a cowlick on the crown of his head that reminded me of an antenna on a spaceship.

  A small plastic object hung from a chain around his neck, humming in a low monotone. It was an air purifier he used to relieve allergy symptoms, which were especially bad in November when the Santa Ana winds blew in pollen from the desert. He also used the purifier when it rained, because he worried about killer mold. Truth be told, he wore the thing in the off-season, too, because he was a bit of a germophobe. The downside to this was that Charley and I were forced to read periodic bulletins from the Center for Disease Control. The upside? The office was always immaculate.

  I wanted to tell Charley about Lupe Ortiz’s murder, but that meant telling Eugene, as well. His psyche was on the fragile side of the spectrum, so I had to be careful how and when I laid out the story. Charley’s door was closed, so I assumed he was busy working or with a client. I decided to wait until he was available so I could break the news to both of them at the same time.

  “How’s the chocolate research coming?” I said. “Find anything I can use in Nectar’s advertising campaign?”

  Eugene craned his neck and squinted at the screen. “How about this? Belgium produces one hundred seventy-two tons of chocolate a year. They have two thousand chocolate shops. The Swiss each eat twenty-one pounds of chocolate per person per year. Belgians and Brits eat sixteen pounds. Americans eat only eleven and a half pounds, but I think those numbers are skewed. Venus accounts for most of that herself. Too bad all that sugar hasn’t sweetened her disposition.”

  I ignored his comment. He and Venus had a quirky kind of friendship that sometimes included trading barbs. None of them were meant to hurt. It was just the way they interacted.

  “What’s happening with the mailing list for the chocolate symposium?” I said.

  He pointed to a stack of labels on an in-basket supported by elaborate Corinthian columns and decorated with laurel wreaths. Eugene had recently become fascinated with the Greek Revival period. I was surprised his computer wasn’t wearing a toga.

  “I have the labels all made up,” he said. “As soon as the invitations are printed, I’ll mail them out.”

  “Good work.”

  I’d arranged for Nectar to partner with a UCLA professor who’d recently published some interesting journal articles exploring the effects of chocolate consumption on depression. He’d organized a panel of experts and planned to present his findings to the public. Helen was providing a chocolate buffet. The university was paying for publicity, so it was a way for her to reach a new audience without breaking her budget, a sweet deal for her. I just hoped Lupe’s death didn’t upend all those plans.

  “This is going to be the event of the season,” Eugene said.

  I picked up a stack of mail on his desk and began sorting through it. “Well, maybe not the event—”

  “Give yourself credit, Tucker. Organizing this affair was a real coup. It’s high-profile and it came just at the right time. Helen’s seemed so uptight lately. I’ve been calling her every day to cheer her up, but this symposium should make her feel more confident about Nectar’s future.”

  “You call her every day? What do you talk about?”

  “Everything. I practically know her whole life story. Did you know she was raised on a farm in Vermont? She’s the only friend I have who knows how to milk a cow. If you discount the eeuu factor, it’s quite an accomplishment. Plus, she had a father who never said ‘I love you.’ Not once in her life. I can so identify. I admire her for rising above her childhood. After everything she’s been through, it takes gumption to start all over again at her age. Remember how hard it was for me to leave corporate America for the private-eye business? And I was young.”

  Helen had never confided in me about her barnyard history, but I knew a little about Eugene’s past. He’d been my assistant at Aames & Associates, the corporate consulting firm where I’d worked before I left to start my own company. After I left, he wasn’t happy there anymore, so a few months back he quit and came to work for Charley and me. I didn’t want to downplay the stress involved in changing jobs, but at least milking cows wasn’t part of his job description.

  “Um, Eugene—”

  “I know, I know. I’m not a pro, but I could be and so could you. Even Charley thinks so.”

  I doubted Charley would agree with him, but I didn’t say so. Instead, I took the mail and headed toward my office. Eugene followed, carrying what looked like a telephone message in his hand.

  My room was understated but professional-looking. I hadn’t been sure if sharing space with Charley would work in the long term, so I hedged my bets and found a furniture rental outlet with an in-house interior designer. She’d put together some pieces, including a pair of metal file cabinets, that were boring, but at least they didn’t look as if they’d been pilfered from a Quonset hut on Iwo Jima. On the wall next to a couple of beach-scene watercolors was a framed blue Frisbee sporting the caption, Don’t Forget to Play. Deegan had given it to Muldoon a few months back, but the pup never used it much. He wasn’t interested in flying through the air to catch anything short of a turkey wiener.

  Eugene laid the message on my desk. “You have an appointment with a new client this afternoon at three.”

  I set my purse and the computer on my desk, disrupting a stack of papers in the process. “That’s good. What kind of business?”

  Eugene eyed the mess and frowned. He moved both bags to a guest chair and straightened the papers. “She was a little vague. She wouldn’t tell me the name of the company, just that it’s a dating service and she wants to expand.”

  I pulled off my coat and hat and threw them across the chair. “She wants me to give her advice on dating?”

  “I know. It’s not exactly your forte, but I know you’ll rise to the occasion.”

  “What’s her name?”

  He folded my hat into a neat triangle and tucked it into the pocket of the coat. “Elizabeth Bennet.”

  The name sounded familiar but I wasn’t sure why.

  I nodded. “Sounds great. Is Charley in yet?”

  Eugene slipped my coat on a hanger from the rack near the door. He buttoned the top button so it would hang just right, and brushed a piece of lint from the sleeve.

  Over his shoulder he said, “He’s in his office, hibernating. He hasn’t been himself for the past few days. He’s not even insulting me anymore. You need to talk to him, T
ucker. I’m worried Lorna has finally succeeded in making him average.”

  “What’s the problem now?”

  Eugene looked toward the door to make sure Charley was out of earshot.

  “You didn’t hear this from me,” he said, speaking in a hushed tone, “but she’s pressuring him to have a baby.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know that?”

  “I sort of overheard him talking to Lorna on the telephone.”

  “You were eavesdropping again.”

  Eugene threw his arms up in frustration. “You’re missing the point. The whole thing is freaking him out. He did the fatherhood thing with his first wife. Now his son is an adult, at least technically speaking. Charley feels he dodged the bullet once, and he doesn’t want to tempt fate by trying it again. And he’s fifty-eight. I’m worried Lorna will wear him down and he’ll do something stupid. You have to talk to him.”

  “Lorna’s ticking biological clock is not my problem.”

  “What’s all the noise?”

  I turned toward the voice and saw Charley Tate standing by the doorway, ramrod straight, running a freckled hand over his crew cut. His normally mischievous smile had been replaced by a scowl. I hoped he hadn’t overheard us gossiping about him.

  “Eugene and I were just discussing my new client,” I said.

  He turned to leave. “Well, keep it down. I’m trying to get some work done.”

  “Charley,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”

  He swung around slowly, looking at me as if he was reading tea leaves in the bottom of a china cup. “What now?”

  “You should probably sit down for this.”

  Eugene’s eyes lit up like they always did when he smelled a good story. “Come on, Tucker. The suspense is killing me.”

  Eugene didn’t know how prophetic his words were until I told them both about Lupe Ortiz’s murder and described the exotic green feather I’d found next to her body. Eugene looked pale and subdued. I could tell by Charley’s expression that he was calculating what might have happened.