Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 01 - A Brilliant Plan (13 page)

“Stop right here!” I exclaimed. “Mom, I am not going to discuss this subject any further.”

Sunny and the kids came home and the garden was filled with life again. We had a great farewell dinner with old stories to tell. The commune and the clashes with civilization, as we know it, was an endless source of entertainment to the kids who never ceased to be amazed by the strange family into which they had been born. Even Sunny loosened up a little bit and offered some stories of her own, which was unusual for her, since she had tried so desperately to erase all these tracks from her lifeline.
 

They had planned to take the Redeye flight back to Dallas that night and I got them to the airport around nine p.m. I saw them off, as we exchanged kisses and the always to be broken promise that I would visit them in Dallas the next year. The American Gem Association had their annual convention in Austin next spring so I could actually make it this time, we would see.
 

I drove back into the city without the radio on, made a quick spontaneous turn and rode into the Gaslight district. I found a parking lot that charged only five dollars instead of twelve and took a stroll into one of my favorite sports bars. I occupied a stool and ordered a Corona and some peanuts, watched a Jimmy Fallon rerun. Some courageous guy even tried some pick-up lines on me, I simply ignored him until he shrugged and walked back to his friends.
 

I thought hard about the events of the last days, of Ron and his Sisyphus fight against an unsolvable murder. Thought of Thomas Cornelius and Billy Bounce’s threat. And I thought of Andrew Altward, whatever ‘Max’ dealings he had with Thomas and the affair he had with the night watchman’s daughter, Phoebe Eastman. We had learned a lot about the case so far, but nothing that could be called a break.
 

I gripped the beer bottle harder and decided that I wasn’t supposed to be the sucker in this parade. I came to the conclusion that in whichever way the case developed, it was my turn to lose, I was sitting on some hot goods and I couldn’t get rid of them. Despite my usual stubbornness to be in the right, I decided to make an exception this time and hand the goods over to Thomas. If he fancied the stuff, he should have it, if it enabled me to work properly on future jobs.
 

The only thing that posed an uncertainty was the fact that I was convinced that Thomas was after something else and not the particular stones I had in my possession. But that will be played out when I hand Thomas the loot. If he doesn’t fancy my loot, maybe I will at least get some information out of him about the true nature of whatever it is that he really wants.

The more I thought about this glimpse of a plan, the more I considered it a bad idea. Billy Bounce was all around me and Thomas sometimes had a very bad temper. It was foolish to go into such a thing alone with a sack full of diamonds.
 

Maybe I should simply mail them to him, insured, with a courier, hand-to-hand. And then vanish for a while until grass grew over the whole sorry mess.
 

Suddenly, a thought struck me. And I marveled at Dad’s cunningness, smiling over my beer. That old devil. He just happened to mention that Uncle Bernie was in town. Just happened? I bet my Altward loot against this dry slice of lemon that he had evaluated my trouble, decided to stick to his guns and say nothing but offer a solution in an indirect discreet way.
 

I always hoped that my parents had no idea of what sideline their daughter was in, working as a cat burglar, stealing diamonds and expensive jewelry. But they were intelligent people and must have calculated the economic chances of a well running exotic jewelry craft shop in Redondo Beach. I decided to give Dad an extra big kiss tomorrow.

ON MY PHONE voicemail, “Calendar, thanks for getting back to me so fast. Here is Thomas. I would love to meet you tomorrow, just name a place for lunch or dinner.” I left Thomas the details for place and time.

My visit in San Diego came to an end. I had an early breakfast with my parents. Then I kissed them goodbye, took my bags and made a brief stop at the SDPD headquarters. Instead of taking the public parking spot, I simply drove onto the staff lot, being a police consultant and all.
 

The front desk sergeant called upstairs, authorized me and I walked up to Ron’s office. He and Juanita were not at their desks but I spotted them in a separate office with a large guy in a dark suit. Juanita came out, leaving a meeting room full of heated exchange.
 

“You came at the right moment,” she said and walked straight to the copy machine.
 

“What’s going on in there?”
 

Juanita started making copies of the papers in her hand.
 

“The big guy with Ron is FBI; they have an interest in the case because hacking is a federal crime.”

“Hacking?”

“The safe. The decided to call it hacking instead of cracking. Wordsmithing BS, but that’s the FBI for you.”

“And the papers?”

Juanita gave a sly smile. “That is why I took your arrival as an excuse to leave the office. It is the list of suspects from the FBI. Software engineers who have expertise in safe control computer software. Not too many, since the safe manufacturer is a small company. The FBI guy wouldn’t give us a copy, so Ron started an argument to distract him and I slipped out to greet you.” She was done and we walked over to her desk. “And took along Mr. FBI’s list.”

The argument in the office was over sooner than expected. Eventually, the door to the office flew open and the FBI agent stormed out, made a short halt at Juanita’s table, snatched the original list from her outstretched hand and left the detective floor, banging the door shut behind him.
 

Ron came up, gave a small victorious grin and sat beside Juanita’s desk. They immediately put their heads together and studied the list.
 

“Eighteen names. That’s a small list. But those ten names where the system had current addresses, we are talking all over the USA. Five on the West Coast, the rest in the South and East.”

“Can I make a crazy suggestion?” I ask.

“Sure, shoot,” Ron said, giving me ‘that look’ again.

“Apply the same technique you did when you identified me.”

“How did we identify you? You were in the computer… ” Ron said, not getting it.

Juanita patted his hand. “Come on big guy, this is for us girls. What Calendar means is, she doesn’t live in San Diego but was home for the holidays. Let’s find the parents’ addresses of the suspects on the list and see if anyone is living close by.”

“Don’t you think the FBI won’t think of that?”

“Not in the first round of investigation,” Juanita said.

“Right, it buys you some time and it gives you a head start,” I added.

“Good thinking. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do anymore regarding the regular line of the case. The preliminary reports all came in this morning, no more additional leads, except what the FBI got for us.”
 

“And the suspicious Altward books or financial affairs of Phoebe Eastman?”

“We dug a little bit deeper but came up with nothing more. Without a search warrant—no search. Without evidence—no search warrant.”

“You seem to take it easy,” I noted, dryly.

“I am the easy type,” he said but he didn’t smile. “We’re digging. If there’s evidence, it will appear.”

“A philosopher. Well, you got my number in Redondo, feel free to call,” I said in such a way that the unspoken ‘Anytime’ was obvious. Juanita gave a slight chuckle from her desk; Ron didn’t catch it. Typical man.

HOME AGAIN. I unlocked the front door and dropped the bag with my belongings in the middle of the living room. The air was stale and I opened all the windows, jumped into the pool for a quick swim, machined an espresso and scanned the snail- and e-mail. I stood on the patio, sipping the brew, enjoying the greenery of the garden. Mundy had left a message, I called back and he promised to pick me up for an early dinner.
 

Home was in Redondo Beach, a small community where you could drive from end-to-end in fifteen minutes. It merged seamlessly into other South Bay cities, like Palos Verde and Torrance but had a charm of its own. I was living in a converted garden house of a private estate. My landlord was an old and cranky but lovable lady, Mimi Gardener. A widow and a former TV actress, she was 82, which just about matched the number of her surgical lifts. The estate was not a very large affair, located three blocks from the beach and two blocks from PCH. It sported a hacienda-style main house, a large garden with a pool and a triple garage. There was also a 500 square foot garden house set back at the other end of the estate. These days, Mimi rarely ever left home, she had a maid to take care of the house, a nurse to take care of her, a weekly gardener and a bi-weekly pool guy. The garden and the pool practically belonged to me.

With Mimi’s blessings, I had converted the house to my own liking and installed a small open gallery that hosted my bed, a walk in closet and numerous bookshelves. Downstairs, there was a small bathroom, a large cupboard for all the stuff you didn’t want to leave lying around and a living room with a kitchenette. From an LA perspective, this was as minimal as it got. I wasn’t much of the homey type though and I preferred to eat out or work.

Mundy came walking through the garden a few minutes later; he had a key for the garden gate, and he knocked on the doorframe.

“Did you meet your deadline?” I asked while I checked my website.

“A very sharp comment on the city council’s plan to cut lifeguard support next summer season, the new Tom Petty CD is a bore and Redondo saw a spectacular Thanksgiving fireworks display with good visibility up to Malibu.” Mundy looked happy and fell onto my sofa, stretching his legs.
 

“You weren’t here over Thanksgiving,” I reminded him.

He waved his hand in a very French gesture, “You are no fun. I looked at the pier webcam, saw that the weather was fine and conjured the rest. We are not talking Pulitzer material here. Where do we go for dinner?”

“I am in the mood for Louise’s,” I commanded, switching off my Mac.
 

“Italian, sounds good, not too complicated.”

I locked up and we took his car and rode the short way down PCH to an Italian place called Louise’s. There weren’t many customers so we sat on the plexi-glassed terrace and scanned the menu.

“Any update about your case?” Mundy asked after ordering.

“No, the thing is dying a slow death,” I answered. I told him of the meeting this morning.

“And your fencing friend, Cornelius?”

I took a deep breath, “I have decided to give the diamonds that I stole to him. It is impossible to sell them, so I am going to hand over the goods tonight.”

“Tonight, here?”

“We will meet at Santa Monica Pier later today.”

“And you are sure this is going to work?” Mundy worried about me. His attachment became almost cute.

“Nothing will happen to me.”

“The bad guys always win.”

“No! Remember, the bad girls always win,” I assured him.

Around four o’clock, I made my way to my temporary storage. I had rented a mailbox in one of the many mail offices on Hawthorne Avenue in Torrance—under one of my assumed names. The store also had office supplies, so anyone watching could assume I was stocking up my office. The mailboxes came in various sizes and I had rented one of the bigger ones, able to hold packages the size of a small shoebox. You could store a lot in a shoebox, especially a lot of jewels. I simply wrapped whatever I needed to store for a few days as a regular package, sender, addressee and all, opened my mailbox, put it in and simply left it. The mailbox clerks naturally assumed that someone from another shift had put it in. No one had ever stolen anything from that small-scale mail office.

I entered the mail office, opened my box and retrieved the small package, which was the size of a VCR tape. I opened the package inside the store to dispose of the wrapping paper, along with my secret identity, and I put the box in my knapsack.

The drive to Santa Monica took me less than 30 minutes. I parked at a valet parking lot close to the end of Santa Monica Boulevard. With that many diamonds with me, I wanted to avoid lonely parking garages. From there, it was a brief walk to the ocean front park. It was a vista point above the sea with a spectacular view over the Pacific; the pier was to the left. I found an empty park bench overlooking the sea and sat down to wait. The winterish sun settled slowly.
 

Thomas looked seriously down on me and didn’t deliver his usual ‘glad to see you’ routine. We were long past that stage. Furthermore, this was business.

I didn’t look at him. “Here they are, take them and get happy.”

Thomas looked at the small package beside me, sat down with two feet of distance between us and tapped his fingers on the closed box.
 

“I really regret doing this, you know,” he sounded genuinely apologetic.

“Don’t spill any crocodile tears on my behalf,” I told him and continued looking at the sundown.

“There is a lot at stake,” he answered, still tapping on the package. Then he put it on his lap, carefully opened the lid and looked inside. And then repeated, as if to himself, “A lot is at stake.”

He closed the lid carefully, put the box between us.

“What is this supposed to mean?” Thomas looked at me curiously, as if I were an interesting piece of art instead of a former girlfriend.

“Take the stuff and leave me alone. This is what I can offer,” I said.

His hand found mine and he slowly squeezed.

“Calendar, I am not being taken as a fool. You must know that this is not what I came for. These stones are peanuts, probably the pathetic stuff you usually deal in.” He shook the box and the gems rattled like gravel, masking any other sound. “It is very unfortunate that pain is the only language you seem to understand. Where is the Max?”