CoverBoys & Curses (23 page)

Chapter
Sixty-Eight

Perhaps
Not Circumstantial

AS
THE ROOM swirled to keep up with my stomach, I snagged my cell phone and called
the only person I could think to call. Someone who had helped the bad things go
away, ever since grade school.

           
Brock was at my house within twenty
minutes.

“Forty-two
of these photographs,” he counted out. “That’s not just one moment of
indiscretion we’re looking at.”

           
The photographs now lined the top of
my dining room table. The dimmer on my chandelier was set on high to cast the
maximum light on the disgusting exhibit.

           
Brock asked me to find a magnifying
glass, which he knew I often used to scour Sukie Fields’ work.

           
“What should I do?” I asked.

           
“You’re sure about this statue?”

           
“I’ve been told it’s one of kind.
And that one of a kind is in Harlan Coal’s office. Plus I recognize other
things, including the rugs.”

           
“You should call the police. That
detective.”

           
“I have to think about that. The man
already believes, and with every right, that I’m up to my eyeballs in murder.”

           
“Okay. Then think about this. How is
it you ended up with these photographs?” Brock picked up the photo with the
statue. It seemed eerily weighted in his hand.

           
“I have no idea. Coincidence?”

           
“Something stinks,” Brock said.
“Think back. We were together when we found the wallets. The day I picked you
up at the airport and we ran into those would-be car thieves.”

           
“So maybe they belong to you. You
should have taken them.” I tried and failed to break a smile.

           
“You returned the wallets to their
rightful owners. And then some guy sends you back a receipt and the receipt
lead to these clubs.

           
“Did you save his name and address?”

           
“No. I remember I didn’t use any
tracking numbers. No insurance or return receipts. I just wanted them out of my
possession and back to their owners.”

           
The rain continued to pelt down against
the glass panes of my windows. It would have hurt like peas flying out of a
peashooter against raw flesh.

           
Bare
flesh. Young boys. Dr. Coal?

           
I jumped up to close the plantation
shutters. I suppose I tried to keep out the boogey-man.

           
Brock dropped the photograph back
onto the table. “Do you think someone put those photos in the golf bag after it
was already here at your house?”

           
“Now you’re scaring me!”

           
“I’m not the one who wants to scare
you. The obvious suspect would be that gloved maniac that threatened you at
your doorstep. He wanted to scare the piss out of you. I think we need to call
that detective friend of yours.”

           
“He’s not my friend, and wait, Brock.
Please. Just you and me, for now. Let’s keep playing detective ourselves. It’s
a gut instinct. Please.”

           
“No telling how old these kids are,”
Brock said. “A lot of ‘
em
look to be of age, but then
we have ones like this and we’re looking at a serious crime, Laurs.” He tossed
over a photo of a skinny little boy pulling himself up out of a black Jacuzzi.
He had the face of a cherub; the only puffy flesh on his body filled out his
cheeks. He couldn’t have been more than ten. Maybe eleven.

           
“Where are these kids now?” Why do
you suppose not one of them has come forward or gotten any media attention?” I
choked back tears.

           
“There’s no crime without victims.
And you and I have both seen your Doctor Coal in action. He’s a fucking
bona-fide
bullshitter
that could sell bicycles as
transportation in the middle of the fucking Aegean Sea. You know what he does.
He’s the provider of verbal lobotomies!”

           
I nodded. Disdain filled my mind
just as despondency laced my throat. “Through experience, I know a few things
too many about the pathways of our legal system. Just because some of Coal’s
possessions seem to be in the photographs, he’s not in them. He could claim it
to be anyone. Especially with his no-locks-on-doors policy.

           
“And he wants me to move onto The
Centre grounds.”

           
“He fucking what?” Brock yelled.
“Why didn’t you tell me this? When?”

           
“It’s no big deal. A home became
available at The Centre and he asked if I wanted it.”

           
“Bullshit. Fucking coincidence, my
ass.”

           
“I know you’re the poster boy of
baseball on game days,” I said, desperate to change the subject if only for a
moment. “No drinking a few full hours in a row. But you’re off the field right
now. How about a brandy?”

           
“I bet my doctor would insist upon
it. Help with my physical therapy. I’m sure somewhere in there I was told
alcohol relaxes the muscles.” Brock foraged in my kitchen until he retrieved
the coveted bag of popcorn.

           
“We do what we must to heal your
shoulder,” I said from the bar. “I’ve never understood how they can expect
anyone to play as many games as you guys play. You give up over half of your
year, and on the road.”

           
“Way more than half, if we’re lucky,
babe. We can still make the post-season if we keep at it. It’s why I don’t take
on a serious relationship, remember?”

           
We retreated to my living room. As I
had done in the dining room, I drew the plantation shutters closed to keep out
the boogey-man.

           
“Yes. I remember. All you players
with pent-up emotions and living in hotel penthouses. You poor boys have to
resort to getting off with your groupies.”

           
I turned on the gas fireplace to
take the chill out of the air but the freeze penetrated my soul.
CoverBoy
had run the article on
perverts, albeit only perverts in the priesthood. Could there be a connection
there?

           
Ding. Dong. The priest was dead. No
one was denying any connection there. At least not to me.

           
Brock chomped away on handfuls of
the popcorn, spilling much to the floor.

           
“Something about those car thugs?”
His question was rhetorical in tone. I didn’t attempt to answer.

           
Brock waved his brandy snifter in
the air, imploring a refill. I obliged.

He
stuffed a final wad of popcorn
carbs
in his mouth.
“Maybe that asshole Coal tried to hurt those kids, and somehow they knew you
could help.”

           
“No way. I didn’t even know Coal
then. And we’ve just established that we don’t know when those photos were
actually stuffed into the golf bag.”

           
“Lauren. There are a couple things
we keep sidestepping.”

           
“We’re sidestepping a lot for the
moment, but I’ll bite. What?” I could call it whatever I wanted. Synchronicity.
Coincidence.

           
Brock glided the basket of popcorn
to the table beside him, as if he had a catcher’s mitt and he was sliding with
the prized ball to make a homerun. Safe. Home base.

           
I’d propped myself up against a
chair, on the floor, preferring to stretch my legs out in front of me. Some
tension eased out of my body with each stretch.

           
“Why are you so nervous?” he asked.

           
“Nervous?”

           
“Yeah. Whenever you’re uptight you
pull on your ear and pop your neck.”

           
“I’ve heard that before,” I said,
remembering Carly’s comment to me. “Lucky I’ve never seen it.”

           
“Sometimes you add a nervous giggle.
You’re not giggling tonight,” he said.

           
“I’m thinking, Brock. You told me to
think.”

           
Brock remained quiet. The rain abated;
the thunder provided regular and ominous booms partnering with blazing bolts of
lightning that penetrated the protection of the closed shutters.

           
I watched as the gas fire fought a
few drops of rainwater that had fallen down the flue. The fire won.

           
“There’ve been a couple times I
thought Coal was coming on to me,” I said.

           
“Wishful thinking?” Brock asked.

           
“Damn you!”

           
“I’m just stating the obvious. If
we’re right, he’s not into beautiful redheaded women.”

           
Damn me. Once again, Brock got it
right. At least, maybe.

           
“What kind of money are you paying
him?” Brock asked in such a matter of fact manner the arrogance in his demand
didn’t even hit me before I proffered my response.

           
“Probably five times as much an hour
as L.A.’s top psychiatrists. Ten times the daily rate of a day spa where you
can buy eight hours and a sprout lunch and heal instantly.”

           
Brock didn’t back off now that he
was reeling again. “How much? Are your bankers checking you into Mount Sinai
for a brain scan? That kind of big?”

           
“Could’ve saved an entire third
world community rather than a Hollywood Hills bi-polar psycho-center. That kind
of big.”

“This is
a circuitous set of circumstances. That Detective Wray is right, and we have to
figure out why.”

           
“Why what?”
           
“Why all roads lead back to
you.”

           
I smacked my glass down so hard on
the table it should have shattered.

           
Brock looked at me, his beautiful
eyes now only casting worry. “What?”

           
“Not all roads lead back to me.
 
Where the hell is Carly? She lives at The
Centre. Dr. Coal’s center. No one has heard from her in days!”

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Missing

I
CALLED AND TEXTED Sterling four times. Maybe my messages came off a bit terse,
given the fact she had just buried her beloved father, but damn it! Carly was
in trouble. I sensed it in every bone and in the structure of every cell in my
body. Something was wrong.

           
When she did call, I felt remorse.
She was worried about Carly, but still sinking in her own pool of deep grief
while saying her goodbyes to relatives and friends as they headed back out of
town.

It
occurred to me that with no other heirs, at least Sterling wouldn’t be bogged
down with estate affairs.

           
 
I wondered. If I had known Oliver Falls better
I would have feared my Visconti Curse. Maybe because I didn’t have much of a
relationship with him Sterling’s father had lived a long and happy life,
working well beyond his retirement years. Still, Sterling’s voice resonated
sadness from a week of trying to pick up the pieces. I had a relationship with
sadness.

           
I proceeded with a cautionary voice,
“Do you know where Carly’s design job is?”

           
“I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure. I
think she said Big Bear.”

           
“Do you know where? No one at her
studio seems to have a clue.”

           
“There was something about privacy.
I remember that.”

           
“Sterling, think. What was the
client’s name?”

           
“For sure she never told me that,
but just maybe I have the address at Dad’s store.”

           
Falls & Falls had always been
their
store. Now, upon her father’s
death, it became her Dad’s store. That was the unselfish Sterling I knew.

But why
would she have an address there? I wondered.

           
Sterling had already disconnected.

THE
NOISE CAME from a car coming up the remote dirt driveway. Carly then heard a
door slam shut.

           
One of my guys, Carly thought. All
of her helpers had keys to her projects. Never once had her trust been
misplaced.

           
She attended to her task at hand,
placing the leather bound books onto the shelves in the library. Books that
would likely never be read, Carly had to assume.

           
What she missed was the distinct
purring from a luxury car’s performance engine.

           
A loud voice demanded, “Who is
here?”

           
From around the corner Carly smiled.
“As if you can’t tell by the van parked outside. Larry? Is that you?”

           
“You’re trespassing,” the voice
boomed.

           
“Cut the bullshit, Larry. Mike?”

           
Silence.

           
Determined to end the cat and mouse
game with her drapery installers, Carly stormed out of the library.

           
A smallish man stood firm ground at
the door front. Actually, the gun in his hand stood all the ground.

           
“Fuck,” Carly whimpered as she
caught her trembling fall against the new club chair.

           
“Carly Posh?” the man demanded.

           
Carly tried to stand. Disoriented.
Trying to think while she stared down the barrel of a gun.

           
“Posh?”

           
“Yes. That’s me. Are you A.J.
Ehm
? The owner?”

           
The man chortled something beneath
his breath and replaced the gun into the deep pocket of black pants.

           
He’s here early, Carly thought. Is
it really him? Oh my god. I’m in his home. It’s not ready.
 
I’ve been sleeping in his bed. I’m going to
lose this job and my antique store. She retreated further against the chair.

           
“Calm down, Ms. Posh.” The man
tilted his head as if amused by the sight of her panic. A long black ponytail
fell to his left shoulder.

           
“I’m sorry”, Carly muttered. The man
seemed familiar, she thought.
Probably
just his voice. I have spoken to him on the phone.

           
“I want to see what you’ve done with
the place, but I’ve been driving for six hours. There’s a place in town. You
look like you could use a meal as much as me.”

           
“But you weren’t due in for a couple
more—our contract says—”

           
“I didn’t expect to find any work
completed and I certainly didn’t expect to find you here. Now come. Let’s have
some lunch and get to know one another. “And you can call me Armand.”