Cool Cache (21 page)

“Will you come to dinner with me Friday night?” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I need some intelligent conversation.” When I didn’t answer right away, he added, “No pressure. Just dinner. You have to eat.”

“Okay,” I said. “Dinner sounds good.”

After I hung up, I had a flash of clarity. I’d almost pulled a Deegan, turning down a perfectly sincere offer of help. I wondered what had happened in our collective experiences that made us always choose to go it alone. I suspected it had something to do with fear.

It was around five thirty by the time I got to Beverly Hills. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, but the door to the service entrance was unlocked. The narrow hallway led me past a kitchen filled with the sounds of clattering pots and pans, and into a back room of the restaurant where I found Bob Rossi sitting at a table, folding napkins.

He looked up, startled. “We’re not open yet.”

“I need to speak with you about Lupe Ortiz.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“Then I have nothing to say to you.”

“You’re serving chocolates from Nectar in your restaurant. I know all of Helen’s clients, and you’re not one of them. So my question is, How are you getting them?”

His jaw muscles twitched, but he didn’t respond. He just kept folding.

“Did you have some kind of deal with Lupe Ortiz?” I went on. “Maybe the chocolates were an even exchange for dinner, or maybe you just used the food to distract her while you raided Helen’s store.”

He pushed his chair back so hard it toppled over. “Get out of my restaurant.”

“Either you talk to me or you talk to the police. Frankly, I’d choose me, because you already have a criminal record. Do you really need another arrest added to your rap sheet?”

Rossi’s hands were balled into fists. He seemed to be fighting to control his rage. “What do you want?”

“Where were you Thursday night between six thirty and eight thirty?”

He paused before answering. “I had an appointment with my shrink.”

“For anger management classes?”

He smirked. “No. I finished those, but I’m still angry. Can’t you tell? I didn’t like the doc I was seeing, so I found somebody else, a lady this time.”

“And she’ll verify you were with her?”

He picked up the chair and set it upright. “You think I’m stupid enough to lie about that? Of course she’ll tell you I was there.”

“You brought Lupe dinner every night. Why?”

Rossi sat down and started folding again. “Because I’m a nice guy.”

“How did you get into the store?”

“She always left the door unlocked.”

“So you had an open invitation?”

“Yeah. So what? I felt sorry for her, having a no-good son like she did.”

“How did you even know she had a son?”

“I broke up a fight between those two one night out in the alley. The kid was screwed up on drugs. I recognized the symptoms.”

“So she owed you big time, and you decided to take it out in chocolates.”

“You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Not all of it,” I said. “Why don’t you fill in the blanks?”

“Why should I?”

“Better to tell me than the police.”

He stared at the napkin in his hand as if he was weighing his options. “A bigwig studio executive came in for dinner one night with a party of eight. They all got drunk. Mr. Bigwig wanted chocolates, and not just any kind. He wanted Nectar chocolates. He started to get loud. If he’d been anybody else, I would have thrown him out, but you don’t alienate politicians or Hollywood suits if you want to be in business next week.”

“So you went next door and asked Lupe if you could raid the refrigerator.”

His neck turned red. “She didn’t know. I took a few when I brought her dinner. I figured nobody would ever miss them.”

“One bigwig doesn’t account for all of Helen’s missing inventory.”

“Okay, so maybe I did it a few more times. I lost a lot of money because of Helen Taggart. She owed me.”

“Did you get chocolates on Thursday, too?”

He held his hands palms up in a gesture of mock surrender. “My shrink is a chocoholic. So sue me.”

“My assistant is missing. I think he was looking into the murder of Lupe Ortiz. His name is Eugene Barstok. I’m wondering if he stopped by the restaurant to see you.”

“Never heard of the guy.”

I took the photograph of Eugene from my purse and showed it to him. “He may have been using another name.”

Rossi studied the picture and frowned. “He looks like a guy I saw arguing with one of my valets last Saturday night, except he wasn’t your assistant. He was a reporter.”

“From the
New York Times
?”

“No.
National Geographic.
”

Eugene was branching out.

“Is the valet working tonight?”

“Not tonight or any night. I fired him. He dented the fender of a customer’s Bentley later that night. I gave him his final paycheck and told him to hit the road.”

“How can I reach him?”

Rossi picked up the stack of napkins he’d folded, and I followed him to a busing station, where he offloaded the napkins into a storage cabinet.

“I don’t know. I think he moved back to Avalon.”

“On Catalina Island?”

“Yeah. He used to work at a golf cart-rental place on Casino Way. He might try to get his old job back.”

Rossi told me the kid’s name was Aidan Malloy. I had to talk to him. He spoke with Eugene on Saturday night, and he might have some idea where he was headed next.

Jordan Rich and I were having dinner the following evening. I hoped he’d be willing to have lunch instead—in Avalon. We could get there on the ferry, but it would be so much faster to fly.

Chapter 27

When I got home that night, I found a troubling message from my mother. Pookie was in Santa Barbara, but said she planned to be home sometime the following day. The tension in her voice worried me, but I almost didn’t want to know what was bothering her. I had too many problems of my own to worry about.

All that deep contemplation was giving me a headache. I had to prove to myself I wasn’t a total loner, so I called Venus and told her about Jordan Rich’s offer to fly me to Avalon to question Aidan Malloy.

“He seems so strong and supportive,” I said.

“Jockstraps are strong and supportive. Don’t commit until you see his four-oh-one K. Any word on Eugene?”

“No. I’m worried, Venus.”

“He’s tougher than you think. He’ll be okay.”

At about nine p.m., I dialed Charley Tate’s number. I was surprised when he suggested we meet at an Irish pub in Santa Monica for a Guinness and some conversation. The truth was, I didn’t want to be alone, so I told him I could be there in half an hour.

O’Reilly’s Pub was dark and brimming with attitude when I walked through the door. The room resonated with music and the chatter of men sharing a pint and a few war stories with anybody who’d listen. It took a moment to spot Charley sitting at a table in a corner, hunched over a glass filled with dark liquid. He looked glum. I strolled over and slid into a chair across from him.

“I’m surprised Lorna let you out of the house this late.”

“Lorna doesn’t care where I go these days. She told me if I wasn’t going to give her a kid, there was no reason for us to be together.”

I studied his expression but saw no sign he was teasing me.

“So what happens next?” I said.

He just shook his head. “Nothing. She’ll get over it. By the way, I found out what kind of car Rossi drives. A Toyota Maxima.”

“No Mercedes?”

“Nope.”

“Interesting, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Rossi didn’t kill Lupe Ortiz. He was with his shrink on Thursday evening. What did you find at Garvey Motors?”

“Nothing. They wouldn’t give me squat, except to say they sold twenty black Benzes last month.”

“I’m getting desperate, Charley. The longer Eugene is out there on his own, the greater likelihood he’ll run into trouble. He’s looking for the person who gave Lupe that chocolate pot. We have to find him before Eugene does.”

“I still think Ortiz could have killed his mother. The timeline is tight, but if the traffic gods were with him that night—”

“Roberto told me he didn’t do it.”

Charley tilted his head back to take a drink of his beer but his gaze didn’t leave mine. “Dopers lie.”

“And sometimes they die and can’t clear their names.”

“The truth will come out one way or the other.”

I let his words settle in the air. “You always taught me to keep an open mind, Charley. Blaming Roberto for his mother’s death seems too easy. We need to look beyond the obvious. How are you coming with the list of Lupe’s customers?”

He stared into his beer. “Nothing to report yet. I’m still working through the names.”

“Hurry, Charley. Okay?”

He nodded. “I hope to have some answers by tomorrow. Call me as soon as you get back from Avalon.”

Chapter 28

The following morning before leaving for the airport to meet Jordan Rich, I called Nerine to see if she’d heard from Eugene.

“Who?” Her voice sounded way too mellow. Either she was having an early morning Booker’s or she was in insulin shock from all those cookies.

“Your son . . . Eugene. Have you heard from him yet?”

“No, dear, I haven’t, and I’m running out of sugar. Can you drop by the store and bring me some next time you’re in the neighborhood?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

I hung up and started packing a bag for Muldoon, who was spending the day with Mrs. D. We were just heading out the door when the telephone rang. It was Mr. Winn from the retirement home.

“I found a message from Eugene,” he said. “I never check my answering machine. I don’t see very well, and I’m always in my room to answer the telephone. His call came in this morning at seven. I must have been at breakfast.”

My heart was pounding. “What did he say?”

“He was sorry he didn’t come last Saturday, but he’d be back for our usual get-together tomorrow.”

“Anything else?”

“He said the capital of Arizona was still Phoenix, but there was a new capital of California. North Hollywood. I think he just made that up to tease me.”

North Hollywood was a town in the San Fernando Valley and certainly not the capital of California. I wondered what Eugene meant by it. Maybe he’d found some evidence linking the city to the chocolate pot. If so, he was closing in on a killer, which meant he was in more danger than ever.

Armed with the photo of Eugene, I drove to the Long Beach airport to meet Jordan Rich for our flight to Catalina. I hadn’t been to the island in years. I remembered it as rustic and quaint, an unspoiled treasure twenty-six miles across the sea from a string of crowded cities linked by ribbons of freeway. At one time or the other, Catalina had been home to Native Americans, Spanish explorers, Yankee smugglers, and Union soldiers. In 1919, William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum mogul, bought controlling interest of the island and turned it into a playground for sport fishermen, yachts-men, and Hollywood celebrities. The island was now under the control of the Catalina Island Conservancy, whose mission was to preserve the land for posterity.

Once at the airport, I turned into the hangar parking area under the SIGNATURE AVIATION sign and left the Boxster in the visitor’s area. I found Jordan inside the hangar, looking through a metal binder.

A young man stood behind the counter, speaking to him. “The seven-twenty X is right outside. Oil is checked, windshield cleaned, and preflight complete.”

Jordan nodded but kept reading, as if he appreciated the information but preferred to verify it himself. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I paused by the door to watch. He was dressed casually. His hair was ruffled by the wind, which made him seem boyish, but it was the compassion in his eyes that made him handsome. I waited until he set the binder down before walking toward him.

He flashed a warm smile when he saw me. “Are you ready to go?”

“I think so. What’s that book you were just reading? I hope it wasn’t
Flying for Dummies
.”

He laughed. I was glad, because I hadn’t meant to offend him.

“It’s an aircraft logbook,” he said. “I always check the maintenance history myself. Good pilots don’t take anything for granted.”

“That’s comforting news.”

I followed him through the hangar. Just outside the door, I spotted a miniature airplane perched on three toylike tires. I was hoping it was some kind of horrible mistake. The thing looked too frail to play with, much less to fly.

“This is your airplane?” I said.

“Actually, no. I have a Cessna Citation at John Wayne in Orange County. It’s perfect for long-distance trips, like to Central America, but the Catalina runway is too short for the jet, so I borrowed this Piper Warrior from a buddy of mine. He’s too busy with work to fly much, so he’s always trying to get me to take it out more.”

Contrary to its menacing name, the Piper Warrior didn’t look as if it would fair well in a fight. Jordan helped me up to the wing and into the airplane. Then he climbed into the pilot’s seat and focused on his preflight ritual.

“Here. Put this on,” Jordan said, laying a pair of large earmuffs in my lap. “The headset has a voice-activated hot microphone intercom. Talk in a normal voice and I’ll hear you just fine. You can also hear me talk on the radio to Air Traffic Control, so that might be a good time to just listen.”

Jordan Rich was telling me to keep my mouth shut. He didn’t know me well enough to realize it was a risky move and not for the faint of heart. He saved himself by flashing a teasing smile to show he meant no offense. He fastened my seat belt and then his. A moment later, a twin-engine aircraft swung around in front of us, blasting the Piper with a gust of air so strong it made the airplane shudder.