Cool Cache (25 page)

Nerine took the bag of sugar and gestured for me to come in. When I stepped over the threshold, I stared in disbelief. She had rearranged Eugene’s furniture. His knitted afghan was missing from the couch. Magazines that he would never read were lined up with military precision on the coffee table—
Southern Living, Redbook,
and
Golf Digest
. Big Ben was now hanging on the wall in the kitchen, overlooking trays of cookies covered with waxed paper. She must have found more sugar somewhere, because she looked as if she was going into competition with the Girl Scouts.

She studied my dumbstruck expression. “It helps me cope.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“No. I finally had to tell the colonel our son was missing. He wanted to fly out here and lead the charge, but I told him to wait.”

“I’m surprised he’d do that for Oops.”

Her cheeks turned scarlet. “That was a nickname. The colonel’s little joke. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Excuse me, Nerine, but you can’t really believe that. Every time he said it, he was reinforcing the fact his son was a mistake, and even more hurtful, he was unwanted.”

She took off her apron “Eugene
was
a mistake. I can’t change that. Marilyn was already ten when he came along. The colonel and I thought we were done with diapers and colic and sleepless nights. It was a shock to both of us.”

“Then why didn’t you give him up for adoption?”

She scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. That sort of thing isn’t done by people like us.”

“If you’d given him up, he might have had a happier life.”

She looked stunned by my comment and averted her gaze. “I’ve often wondered which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did my son turn out the way he is because of us, or would he have been that way regardless of how we’d raised him?”

“Eugene is a great person. Maybe he turned out that way in spite of you.”

She took the remark with deep-seated stoicism. “It’s not easy being a parent. You never set out to make mistakes, but somehow you always do. Maybe the colonel and I made more than our share, but regardless of what you think, I love my son, and if anything ever happened to him, I don’t know what I’d do.”

I felt guilty for giving her a hard time. Besides, who was I to criticize? I had no idea what it was like to be a parent. I barely knew how to raise Muldoon.

“Charley and I are doing everything we can to find him,” I said.

Nerine nodded. “Eugene’s credit card bill hasn’t come yet. I’ve been opening all the mail except for personal letters. I hope he won’t mind.”

I smiled to show support for her shift in attitude. “I think he’ll understand.”

A plastic bag full of peanut butter cookies was sitting on my passenger’s seat and Eugene’s apartment was already in my rearview mirror when my cell phone rang. It was Riley Deegan.

“Joe called,” she said. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he apologized to me. Said he was sorry he hadn’t been more supportive. That’s the best news. Do you want to hear the second-best news?”

“Shoot,” I said.

Riley squealed with excitement. “Emma called me from Las Vegas. She and Noah eloped. They called to thank me for introducing them. She said she found her soul mate and apologized for taking that roll of toilet paper the night of the singles’ party. She and Noah were in Claudia’s bathroom, putting their clothes back on, and she didn’t realize she’d slipped it into her tote bag. I did it, Tucker. I made my first match. Luv Bugs is going to work, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “Yeah, Riley. It’s going to work. Congratulations. You did a great job.”

“So when can we get together and talk?” she said.

“How about next week? Call me on Monday and we’ll set something up.”

The smile spread to my entire face as I closed the phone and prepared to interview Lupe’s clients.

Chapter 33

Best-Way Cleaners was located in Montebello, an Italian word that means “beautiful mountain.” It’s a medium-sized residential and industrial city located in the San Gabriel Valley, about eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The place has oil wells, the Barnyard Zoo at Grant Rea Park, and an annual murder rate that generally stays in the single digits.

I parked in one of the three available spots behind the dry cleaning store and went inside. Hanging on one of the walls was a flag that featured a broad white stripe sandwiched between two turquoise stripes of equal width. Centered in the white was a laurel wreath, two crossed rifles, and a quetzal perched on an unrolled piece of parchment that read LIBERTAD 15 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 1821. On the other wall was a plaque that read PROUD TO BE A GUATEMALAN AMERICAN. I didn’t make too much of that. Montebello’s population was predominantly Hispanic.

A stout woman in her fifties stood behind the counter. Her hair was too evenly black not to be dyed. She was chatting amiably with a male customer. According to the information I’d found in Lupe’s personnel file, the owner’s name was Isela Navarro. I watched as the woman counted a pile of crumpled dress shirts. There were fifteen of them, a three-week supply.

She acknowledged me with a nod. “Be right with you.”

Neither she nor the customer seemed to care that I was waiting. Both were more interested in exchanging a series of whiny complaints that went back and forth like a tennis volley. He railed about the high parking fees at the Staples Center. She griped about European shoes being too narrow for her feet. The machine at the counter spit out two pieces of paper. Mrs. Navarro handed one copy to the customer and put the other on top of his shirts. As soon as he left, she turned to me.

“Now,” she said. “You.”

Charley told me to invent a pretext, so I used the first one that popped into my head.

“I’d like to pick up some dry cleaning for my brother. I’m sorry. I forgot to bring the ticket with me. Maybe you can check his name. Bix Waverly.”

“We don’t use names. What’s his phone number?”

I paused for a moment to think. It didn’t matter what number I gave her. The pretext was just an excuse to start a conversation. I rattled off my office number and watched as she typed it into the computer. I expected her to say she couldn’t find it in the database, but her response sent me reeling.

“He picked it up already. This morning. One hand-knit sweater. Right?”

I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket to keep them from trembling. “I guess I made the trip for nothing. Thanks for checking.” I paused and pointed toward the wall. “That’s a beautiful flag. I’ve never seen one up close before.”

She nodded. “Sometimes it makes me sad to look at it and remember. I had a good life in Guatemala. I went to parties with important people. Now look. My hands are rough from too much work.” She held them out so I could inspect her ragged cuticles.

“Did you leave because of the war?”

“The war was the war. It did not affect us much. I didn’t want to leave. My husband made me.”

I remembered Dale Ewing talking about the asylum seekers who’d moved to L.A. from Guatemala during the war and the problems they were having now. Members of the disbanded national police had come here, as well. I wondered if Mrs. Navarro’s husband fell into either of those categories.

“Was your husband in the military?” I said.

Her laugh sounded like a bark from a humorless dog. “Manuel? In the military? He was an accountant at a museum in Guatemala City.”

My face began to tingle. A moment later, I heard a door close in the back of the store. A man dressed in a suit and tie appeared from behind a rack of hanging clothes. My heart felt as if it had just dropped into my stomach. He was the customer I’d met at Nectar who had given up his place in line to accommodate the rude woman with the Fendi handbag.

“Well,” she called to him. “Look what the cat dragged in. Where have you been, Manuel? My feet ache from standing too long, and my head hurts from the cleaning fumes. I need a break.”

Manuel Navarro stared at me with a puzzled frown. My pulse was racing. My thoughts were in overdrive. Isela Navarro was his wife, the one who had warned him that his guilty pleasures would kill him one day. She said something to him in Spanish in an abrasive tone. He responded with a dismissive hand gesture as if he had heard the criticism before and had ceased to give it much weight. It was no wonder that the relationship had soured. She’d given away his priceless Mayan spouted chocolate pot to the cleaning woman.

Isela crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Navarro with a defiant stare. He ignored her, and a moment later she disappeared into the back room, leaving the pile of dirty shirts on the counter.

He walked toward me. “I did not know business doctors made house calls.”

I didn’t dare mention Eugene’s name, so I made up another story, hoping it would allay any suspicions he had.

“What a coincidence. I didn’t know this was your place. I got your name from Jay-Cee Janitorial Services. I’m looking for somebody to clean my office, and they gave me a list of clients to call for references. Your wife’s name was on the list. So, how would you rate the service?”

If he noticed the strain in my voice, he didn’t let on. He pulled a cloth drawstring sack from underneath the counter and began stuffing the dirty shirts inside. “I do not know. Isela manages the cleaning people.”

“Then maybe I should talk to her.”

“You are not likely to get a warm reception at the moment. Something I’ve done, I’m sure.”

“How did you find out about Nectar?” I said.

Navarro put the receipt in the sack and tied it closed with the drawstrings. “Lovers of cacao have networks of spies. I cannot tell you which one told me of this particular shop.”

“Since you’re such a chocolate aficionado, I wonder if you ever noticed the Mayan spouted chocolate pot Helen had on display in her retail store.”

It was a risky move to mention the pot, but I felt safe enough. Mrs. Navarro was in the back room, and I wanted to judge her husband’s reaction. Navarro was so quiet I thought he’d stopped breathing.

“I do not remember such a thing. Is there some problem with this chocolate pot that you should make the long journey to my dry cleaning store to ask me about it? I hope it has not been stolen.”

“No. It’s in a safe place. No one can get to it.”

“And what is so special about it?”

“It may be valuable.”

“So you are looking to return it to its rightful owner?”

“Perhaps.”

A bell tinkled above the door. I turned and saw a woman enter the store, carrying several items of clothing draped over her arm. Navarro greeted her with a nod.

“I would like to help you,” he said to me, “but now is not a good time. Perhaps we can meet tomorrow. There is a place near the chocolate shop called the Brighton Café. I will be there at eleven.”

He turned away from me, making it clear he considered our conversation over. Behind him, a rack of hanging laundry parted, exposing the face of Isela Navarro. Her eyes were dark with suspicion.

I left the store and rounded the corner, staying out of Navarro’s line of vision. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number for John Jones, the man who had toured the quetzal display. I watched as Navarro patted his breast pocket. He pulled out a phone and squinted as if he was reading the caller ID. He studied it a moment, frowned, and closed the phone.

It was time to call in the cavalry.

Chapter 34

Charley told me to go home and sit tight. He’d contact Detective O’Brien at the Beverly Hills police department to let him know what I’ve found out about Navarro. I planned to take his advice, but first I decided to stop by the office to see if I could find more information on the man that might help the police make a case against him.

It was Saturday and traffic was light, so I got to the office at around three thirty and logged on to my computer. Manuel Navarro was a common name. My Internet search produced thousands of links. Many were in Spanish. I scrolled through page after page of listings before I finally moved on to sites dealing with stolen antiquities, Mayan spouted chocolate pots, and the Guatemalan civil war. I stared at gruesome photographs of bodies in mass graves, just as Jordan Rich had described the night we’d gone to the theater. I found nothing connecting Manuel Navarro to any of it. Even so, I could still piece together a theory based on what I knew. Some of the details may have been wrong, but the story held together.

Lupe and her mother had come to Los Angeles to seek asylum from death squads in the Guatemalan Civil War. Navarro came to Los Angeles because he was running from the law. He’d stolen a priceless antiquity from the museum where he worked as an accountant.

Navarro opened the dry cleaner’s in his wife’s name to cover his tracks, and she hired Lupe to clean the store. According to Roberto, Isela Navarro had been clearing out a storage room. She found the chocolate pot, thought it was junk, and threw it out. Lupe found it in the trash and got permission to keep it. Isela Navarro told me she didn’t know why her husband had made her leave Guatemala, so she probably didn’t know he was a thief.

It was difficult to say when or why Navarro discovered the pot was missing. Maybe he routinely checked it. In any event, he discovered his wife had given the pot to Lupe. He began hounding her to get it back, only to find it was in Helen Taggart’s chocolate store, where Lupe meant it to stay. Navarro must have been frantic. Not only was the pot valuable, it also tied him to a crime that could have landed him in a Guatemalan prison.

Under the guise of buying chocolates, Navarro traveled to Helen’s store. On one hand, he must have been relieved to see the chocolate pot displayed on the shelf out front. On the other, he had to be worried someone would break it or even steal it before he could get it back. Maybe he thought the customers would provide enough cover for him to take the pot without being discovered. That didn’t work, so he had to try another approach.