When I arrived at Nectar, Helen was at the stove in the workroom, stirring up a batch of Buster Brownies to take to Detective O’Brien as a peace offering. Her white chef’s jacket seemed to have sucked all the color from her face. She looked as if she’d aged ten years in the past few days.
“A messenger dropped off a letter for you today,” she said. “It’s in my office.”
I hurried to her cubbyhole, thinking it might be another message from Eugene. Instead I found a note from Alexis Raines, thanking me again for saving her rat, Aldo. Attached to the note were four tickets to her concert scheduled for the following month. At least she’d been lucid enough to follow up on her promise.
The lobby of the retail store was full of customers. Murder in the workroom hadn’t kept people away. On the contrary, it seemed to have added cachet to the store.
“Business looks good,” I said.
Helen grabbed a thermometer to test the temperature of a bowl of chocolate melting above a pot of simmering water. “One of my customers told Kathy that Nectar is now considered the best chocolate shop in Southern California.”
“That’s great, Helen,” I said. “By the way, I thought you might want to know I stored your collectibles in my spare bedroom. It’s quite a collection. Where did you find all that stuff?”
“Various places. I bought the Cadbury heart box online. The chocolate tins came from yard sales and antique shops. I don’t remember where exactly.”
“What about the spouted chocolate pot?”
Helen transferred the bowl of melted chocolate to a trivet on the marble tabletop. Then she dumped some eggs and flour into the bowl and began blending the mixture. “Lupe gave it to me.”
I was stunned by the news. “Where did she get it?”
“From one of her customers, I think.”
“Why did she give it to you?”
Helen pestered the batter in silence. “I told you before. She liked me. She was probably just showing her appreciation for all I’d done for her. Why are you so curious about the chocolate pot?”
“I just showed it to an expert at the Natural History Museum. She thinks it may be a priceless antiquity.”
Helen turned toward me. “That’s absurd. How would Lupe get something valuable like that?”
“Maybe the person who gave it to her didn’t realize how much it was worth. Or maybe Lupe took it without permission.”
“Are you saying she stole it?”
“It’s possible. If it’s true, somebody might have killed her to get it back.”
Helen folded a cup of walnuts into the chocolate. “So why didn’t this person tell me or the police that the pot was stolen? He’d get it back eventually.”
I thought about the Mayan pot that had been pilfered from the Guatemalan museum. I wondered if it had found a home with a collector in Los Angeles. Maybe that collector was also Lupe’s customer. If Lupe had stolen the pot, the victim may not have reported the crime to the police, especially if he knew or suspected it had been looted from a museum. Dealing in stolen antiquities was illegal. The collector would not only lose his investment, but he might go to jail.
“Let’s say he couldn’t report the crime,” I said, “because he had some reason to keep his identity hidden. He found out the chocolate pot was at Nectar and came to the store last Thursday night to get it back. Either he planned to kill Lupe all along or he panicked when he realized the pot wasn’t in the store anymore. Maybe that’s why he went looking for it at your condo.”
“So Lupe interrupts a burglary,” Helen said, “but before the guy kills her, she gives him directions to my home.”
“Addresses aren’t that hard to find.”
Helen dropped the spatula she was holding, splattering chocolate on the tabletop. “Your theory is implausible. In fact, it’s ridiculous. I don’t understand what you’re doing, Tucker. Lupe’s death has nothing to do with a spouted chocolate pot. Her son killed her. He’s a drug user and a gang member. He caused the family all sorts of problems. The police know all this. That’s why he’s in jail.”
“At least you should find out if the chocolate pot is real. I’d like your permission to leave it with Marianne Rogers at the museum.”
Helen looked pale and distracted. She picked up a towel near the sink and began wiping the spilled chocolate from the table.
“All right,” she said. “Go ahead.”
I couldn’t argue with the facts. Roberto was the police department’s only suspect at the moment, but if the chocolate pot factored into Lupe’s death, I doubted her son was guilty of the crime. The theory just didn’t add up.
On my way out of Nectar, I noticed one of the small signs Helen used in the glass cases to identify her chocolates. This one read DEATH BY CHOCOLATE. It looked as if she’d taken Alexis Raines’ advice. She hadn’t renamed the store, but I wondered if she was thinking about it. The thought left me feeling slightly unsettled.
As soon as I left Nectar, I called the museum. Marianne Rogers had been called away on a family emergency and couldn’t be reached. I didn’t want to leave the pot with any one else, so I left a message for her to call me as soon as she returned. Then I hotfooted it home to change for my meeting with Dr. Jordan Rich.
Chapter 18
Once at home, I took the chocolate pot out of my car. As I carried it up the stairs to my side door, I heard the sound of someone playing single notes on a piano, followed by a woman’s voice warbling whoo-eee.
It was my neighbor Mrs. Domanski. She’d recently started taking singing lessons again, hoping to revive her career. She claimed she’d once had a decent set of pipes, but the vagaries of her husband’s career as a movie producer had forced her to give up any dreams of performing at Carnegie Hall. I didn’t think all those gin martinis she inhaled every day helped her voice much, either.
I imagined Mrs. D’s seventy-year-old body draped across the top of her Steinway, a baby spot illuminating her ruby pageboy, her boggy butt camouflaged under a sequined gown. At least she was following her dream, unlike Nerine Barstok, who seemed like a gray lizard hiding in the shadows, lashing her tongue at unsuspecting bugs.
Then reality intruded.
“Whoo-eee.”
My grandma Felder would say, if Mrs. D was aiming at superstardom, she had a long row to hoe. I imagined Muldoon under her bed with his paws over his ears. Too bad. He’d have to tolerate the noise until I got back from my meeting with Jordan Rich.
The spouted chocolate pot was still swathed in padding inside the box Marianne Rogers had provided. It just fit inside the clothes dryer, so I decided to leave it there until I could make arrangements to drop it off at the museum.
At four thirty I left for Bunker Hill, wearing a conservative black dress that made me look like a mother-in-law at a Sicilian wedding. In case Venus had told Dr. Rich I was single and looking for love, the dress should keep his libido in check long enough for me to set him straight.
Traffic was a mess. I was on the road an hour and a half before I pulled into the Music Center’s underground garage and took a series of escalators to the plaza level, where the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Ahmanson Theatre were spread out over several acres of prime downtown Los Angeles real estate.
The night air was chilly. I pulled the collar of my coat around my neck and walked toward Pinot Grill, the outdoor restaurant on the plaza. To the east was the Jacques Lipchitz sculpture, which arose amid the dancing waters of a circular fountain. I scanned the tables of people huddled beneath freestanding gas heaters, looking for a man alone. Everybody was with somebody. I was beginning to think I’d been stood up when I heard a man’s voice call my name.
I turned to see a well-dressed male in his early forties, wearing a charcoal gray overcoat. You seldom see one of those on a man in Los Angeles. That was East Coast apparel, maybe Chicago, certainly not here. He was probably two inches shorter than I, five-seven I guessed. In lieu of traditional good looks, he had brilliant blue ey
es and dimples that graced his cheeks when he smiled. He handed me a single red rose with a bow tied around the stem.
“Venus told me you were brilliant, but she didn’t say you were beautiful, too. Just as well. It’s more exhilarating to discover it for myself.”
Beautiful. Brilliant. Exhilarating. I hoped Jordan Rich wasn’t going to be a problem.
“I see you’ve been watching too many Cary Grant movies,” I said.
His smile was warm and embracing. I was glad. There was no reason to offend him before the hors d’oervres arrived. The hostess set down a couple of menus for us at a table under one of those blazing gas heaters, so I was spared having to comment further. For many, it was invigorating to be at an outdoor café in Los Angeles in November, surrounded by genteel people enjoying the company of friends before a night at the theater. But for me, this night was all about business.
“Would you like a cocktail?” Jordan said. “Or should I order a bottle of wine?”
“Wine. I don’t drink the hard stuff.”
He caught the attention of the waiter and ordered Bordeaux, the most expensive bottle on the list.
“Venus tells me you’re one of medicine’s superstars,” I said.
Jordan looked down at his hands and smiled. “I prefer to think I’m a good physician who cares passionately about his patients.”
“What do thoracic surgeons do, anyway?”
He reached for a breadstick in the blue plastic cup on the table. “I’ll give you the short version. We fix everything between the neck and the diaphragm.”
“Venus says you travel all over Central America for Air Health.”
“I’ve been involved for several years now. It’s a wonderful organization.”
A breeze fluttered the paper tablecloth. I anchored the corners with the salt and pepper shakers and the blue plastic cup filled with breadsticks. I held down the fourth corner with my hand. Traffic from the nearby freeway and tumbling water from the fountain created an urban symphony.
“So, tell me about Guatemala,” I said.
He unwrapped the breadstick and broke it in half. “It’s a beautiful country with many problems.”
“Like what?”
“Poverty. Drugs. Pollution. The aftermath of a civil war that only ended in 1996.”
He was the second person that day who had mentioned the war. I vaguely remembered reading about it in a college history class, but I couldn’t recall any of the details except for one.
“Wasn’t the CIA involved?” I said.
Jordan laid the breadstick down untouched. He leaned toward me. His expression was somber, his gaze intense. In the background, strings of small white lights glimmered like fireflies in trees shaped like monster broccoli.
“The conflict started in the 1950s during the peak of the McCarthy hysteria. A few wealthy Guatemalan land-owners objected to President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman’s land reforms, which they felt favored the poor. They sent representatives to Washington and whispered communists in the right ears. The U.S. government panicked and sent the CIA to Guatemala with a hit list.”
The details were coming back to me now. “Wasn’t there a coup?”
He nodded slowly, as if the movement took some effort. “Our CIA armed, trained, and funded a group of military dissidents that overthrew the legitimate president and installed a dictator in his place. What followed was a thirty-six-year political genocide carried out by the Guatemalan National Police. Hundreds of Mayan villages were destroyed and two hundred thousand people were murdered, or ‘disappeared, ’ mostly poor, indigenous farmers.”
The waiter arrived with our wine and went through the ceremony of showing the label, opening the bottle, and pouring a splash into the bottom of Jordan’s glass for his approval. He ignored the ritual and told the waiter to pour the wine.
“Once our government realized what was happening,” I said, “didn’t they try to stop it?”
“Unfortunately not. The U.S. continued providing military aid and intelligence to death squads. The massacre is often called the Silent Holocaust.”
I glanced at the table next to ours, where a well-dressed couple was seated. The woman had pushed the plump croutons from her Caesar salad to the edge of the plate, too many calories perhaps. She leaned over and spoke to her companion, who checked his Rolex watch, maybe to monitor how long before curtain time.
“What happened to the National Police when the war was over?” I said.
“Its legacy was so tainted it had to be disbanded and replaced with a new police force.”
“Was anybody prosecuted?”
“Both sides agreed to an amnesty. Most of the officers melted into the population. Some came to the U.S., including Los Angeles.”
Jordan seemed to sense how troubling this news was to me, but he couldn’t have fully understood why. It was because of Eugene and the trouble he may have found looking beyond a long, iridescent green feather.
Jordan sat back in his chair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn the evening into a political rant.”
“There’s no need to apologize. I’m interested in anything you can tell me.”
“Why this fascination with Guatemala?” he said.
I gave him a brief account of Eugene’s disappearance and my search for anything that might help me find him.
“I’m not sure how history will help you find your friend,” he said, “but I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“Have you ever heard of the MayaBoyz?”
“I’ve not only heard of them, I’ve operated on their victims in the ER. More gunshot wounds than I care to remember.”
A pall settled over the table, caused by too much talk about war and death. The simple ritual of upper-middle-class Angelenos sipping wine at a trendy outdoor café seemed sacrilegious in light of the events Dr. Rich had just described. I averted my gaze toward the Lipchitz sculpture with its tangle of figures reaching up toward what looked like a dove perched on a gigantic tear. At the base was a caption I hadn’t noticed before. It read PEACE ON EARTH.
The musical was lighthearted, but watching it didn’t lift my spirits. I kept thinking about all those murdered Guatemalans, Lupe Ortiz, and the families destroyed by drugs and gang violence. And I thought about Eugene and where he might be. Even though he’d grown emotionally stronger, I still couldn’t shake my urge to protect him. Not knowing where he was made me feel as if I was fleeing a tormentor without the benefit of legs.
When the show was over, Jordan and I walked toward the escalator that led to the parking garage. A man was sitting on a blanket, torturing the reed of his saxophone, playing a melody meaningful only to him. Jordan stopped to listen. He pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and placed it in the velvet lining of the instrument’s case. The musician tipped his horn in appreciation.
Jordan walked with me to my car, steering our conversation toward lighter subjects. We chatted about the Lakers and Jordan’s first run in the L.A. Marathon the previous March. When we reached the Boxster, he watched as I slid into the front seat.
“I’d like to see you again, Tucker. What about this weekend? A patient of mine has a vineyard in Santa Ynez. He’s always trying to entice me to come for a tour. We could leave Saturday morning, spend the day.”
Most people would have said Jordan Rich was a catch. He seemed to be an intelligent, compassionate person, a humanitarian. I considered both his offer and Venus’s warning about traveling with a man. She claimed it destroyed a relationship. Jordan Rich and I didn’t have a relationship to destroy, maybe we never would, but it was too soon to leave town with him.
“I can’t go,” I said.
He lowered his gaze as if searching for guidance from the parking-garage floor. “And why not?”
“I’m busy on Saturday.”
He looked up, studying my expression. “I must have misunderstood. Venus told me you weren’t involved at the moment.”
“I’m not. I have to work, that’s all.”
/> He slid his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. “Look, Tucker, I’m not going to pretend I don’t find you attractive. The truth is you’re a delightful woman, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
His directness was both refreshing and intimidating. The easy way out would have been to say yes, and then send him an e-mail in a day or so telling him how truly sorry I was that my schedule didn’t permit a wine-tasting trip to Santa Ynez. Except, I couldn’t do that. It was dishonest. I just wasn’t ready to plunge into another relationship. It was too much effort.
“It was a fun evening,” I said. “I hope we can do it again sometime. But just so you know, I’m not looking for anything beyond friendship.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. I’m willing to work with that.”
I was leaving the parking garage when Charley called. He was just going to bed—on the couch, he wanted me to know. He’d been listening to the news when he heard Roberto Ortiz had been released from county jail.
My breathing became shallow. “I didn’t think murder suspects were eligible for bail.”
“He didn’t make bail. They cut him loose by mistake. Confused him with another prisoner with a similar name. I don’t think he’s a threat to you, but just in case, watch yourself. Okay?”
I told Charley about the chocolate pot and the receipt for the cell phone charger from Radio Shack I’d found in Eugene’s desk. He said he’d check it out.
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