Granny Apples 05 - Ghost in the Guacamole (18 page)

T
HE
offices of Quickie LA were located on Central Avenue in the industrial section of downtown Los Angeles. It was an area that housed garment manufacturers and produce companies along with trucking firms. The office wasn't much, just a small building painted robin's egg blue with a sloped roof. It was attached to the backside of another business facing in the opposite direction like a lean-to or cheerful growth. The front door of the business faced a small parking lot. On the side of the building facing the street a plain sign announced,
Quickie LA
—
big city, little time
. Emma and Phil pulled Emma's SUV into the parking lot and into a vacant spot next to a white tour van sporting the same name and logo.

Phil opened the door to the office and held it for Emma to enter. A pencil-thin older woman with a fake tan and sandy-colored wig in a chin-length blunt cut with bangs looked up from behind the counter and peered at them over the top of half glasses. “Is this Quickie LA?” Emma asked as she stood on the threshold. From a small side window, an air-conditioning unit was making a heroic effort against the day's heat.

“It is, but don't stand there letting all the AC out. We can't afford to cool the parking lot.” The woman stood up as Emma and Phil came in and closed the door behind them. “What can I do for you?”

“We'd like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't mind,” Emma began. “It's about what happened yesterday at Restaurante Roble.”

“You mean that Mexican place on Olvera Street?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” answered Emma. “We understand one of your vans stopped there yesterday about the time of the shooting.”

The woman looked them over closely, squinting over the glasses. “You're not cops,” she observed. “Besides they were here early this morning as soon as we opened asking all kinds of questions.”

“You're right, we're not the police,” Phil said. “This is Emma Whitecastle and I'm Phil Bowers. We're friends of Rikki Ricardo, one of the owners of the restaurant. She wanted us to look into some things for her.”

The woman leaned over the counter and squinted again, this time specifically at Emma. The action left creases in her thick green eye shadow. “Aren't you on TV?” Emma nodded but said nothing. “Yeah, I know who you are,” the woman continued with satisfaction. “You're the lady that looks into all that spooky stuff on that cable show. I saw it a few times when I stayed at my sister's place when she was recuperating from hip surgery. She's a big fan of all that crap.” The woman waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Me, not so much.”

“I'm not here about my show, Mrs. . . .” Emma said, leading the woman into giving up her name.

“Bradford. Mrs. Nancy Bradford,” the woman offered up. “Call me Nancy.”

Emma smiled at the woman. “And you can call me Emma and that's Phil.”

“Yeah, caught your names the first time around,” Nancy told her. “I'm old, not senile. Now what do you want to know? I'm busy.”

From the look of the tiny business, Nancy was anything but busy, but Emma proceeded. “I understand one of your vans took a group of tourists over to Restaurante Roble yesterday. Is that a regular stop for your tour busses?”

“No, first time for us. Our specialty is quick tours of LA. You know, for people just spending a day in the area and don't want to take one of those Starline tours or hop on and off tour buses all day. We load them up and drive them around town, pointing out sights. Mostly, though, we handle private groups in town for conferences. You know, shuttle them around to events or dinners together so they don't all have to find their own way. We also hire out for special things like bachelor parties.” She rummaged around below the counter until she found what she was looking for. She put a couple of brochures on the counter and handed one to Emma. The brochure was not fancy and glossy, but budget quality and simple. “Sorry, but we almost never have walk-ins. Our brochures are mostly in hotels or we advertise online. Most of our business comes from referrals.”

Phil stepped up to the counter next to Emma. “Did someone on your tour yesterday ask to stop by Roble?”

“No, that was a promotion from the restaurant,” Nancy told them. She caught Emma and Phil exchanging glances and looked at them with the slyness of a fox. “Tell me again what's in this for me if I tell you what I told the police?” Another glance passed between Phil and Emma, followed by Phil reaching into his pocket and pulling out a money clip. He peeled off two twenty-dollar bills and placed them on the counter without saying a word. Nancy put a knobby hand sporting several gaudy costume jewelry rings on the money, then said, “And an autograph from her,” she said, pointing at Emma, “to my sister Helen.”

Emma took another of the brochures from the small pile on the counter, and grabbing a nearby cheap pen, she scrawled across a section with the least amount of printing:
To Helen, Happy ghost hunting. Best, Emma Whitecastle
. She pushed the signed brochure across the counter to Nancy. “Done.”

“And a photo,” Nancy said, upping her price.

“I don't have any PR photos with me,” Emma told her, struggling to maintain her cool.

Nancy produced a cell phone and handed it to Phil. “He can take it.” She came from behind the counter and stood with Emma. She was a tiny thing, like a garden gnome robed in polyester. Standing next to the tallish Emma, her head barely cleared Emma's shoulder. Phil took the photo. “Take another just in case,” Nancy directed him. He took another. Nancy took the camera back from him and checked the photos. “Good.” She looked up at them. “Now what was that question again?”

After taking a deep breath, Phil asked, “So why did the tour van stop by Restaurante Roble yesterday? You said something about a restaurant promotion.”

“Yes,” answered Nancy after putting away both the cash and the autograph as if the offer ran the risk of being revoked. “And it was rather a weird one, too. I mean, we sometimes get promos from restaurants or attractions for our customers, but this one was very different.”

“How so?” asked Emma.

“Well,” Nancy began, “the restaurant offered us cash up front to stop by, not the usual discount on food and drink for our customers.”

Emma frowned. “You mean they gave you a kick-back?”

“More like a kick-front,” answered Nancy. “We got cash up front to stop at Roble.”

“Do you know who offered you that? Was it the owner or the manager of the restaurant? Can you describe the person?” asked Phil. He smiled at Nancy, turning on his charm. She smiled back and nearly blushed.

“You'd have to ask my grandson Peter that. He owns this business and that parking lot outside. The property was left to him by his grandfather on his other side. My side doesn't own so much as a blade of grass in this city. Besides the tour business, he leases out monthly parking spaces to people who work in the area. Easy money.”

“So he gives the tours?” Emma asked.

“Yes, and when we have more than a van full, one of his friends drives the other van. But it was Peter who took the group to that restaurant.”

Phil glanced outside then turned back around. “There's one van parked outside. Where's the other today?”

Nancy looked up at a big round clock fastened to the wall. “I'd say just pulling into San Diego. The group from yesterday wanted to go down there for the day. They all fly home this weekend. It was some sort of group from a company in Kansas City.”

Phil smiled again at Nancy. “So you have no idea who gave Peter the money?”

“None, just that Peter peeled off a couple of hundreds and gave them to me saying it was a bonus.” She smiled again, showing off dentures behind apricot lipstick. “He's good to me. I do his books and man this booth a couple times a week and he pays me under the table.” She leaned forward and whispered, “But I didn't tell the police that part.”

“Did you tell them about the cash
kick-front
?” Emma asked with a slight wink.

“Nope, just told them that the stop was a last-minute change on the tour.” She winked back at Emma. “I don't like nosy cops. I told them only what they asked about. Not a thing more.”

“Do you know if they talked to Peter yet?” Phil asked.

Nancy shrugged. “Not sure, but I don't think so. I told them he was with a tour and they might have called his cell. I didn't give the number to them, but I'm sure they have their ways of finding it.”

Emma and Phil thanked Nancy and started to leave when Emma turned back around. Phil had opened the door and now closed it to corral the struggling cool air. “Nancy,” Emma began, “do you know if the person from the restaurant specified any particular day for the drop-in at Roble for the promotion?”

“You mean did it have to be yesterday?” Nancy asked.

“Yes,” Emma said. “Or was it to be anytime you had a tour in the area?”

Nancy sat back down in her desk chair to think. Emma and Phil had to look over the counter to see her. On the other side of the counter was a computer with Facebook on the screen and a small TV. A talk show was on the TV with the sound off.

“You know,” Nancy began, “I believe it could be anytime. Peter just said we had to give them a heads-up ahead of time so they would be ready for us.” Emma felt her eyebrows rise at the information. Next to her, Phil nudged her hip with his.

“So did you call the restaurant and let them know the van would be coming yesterday?” Emma asked.

Nancy shook her head back and forth, dislodging her wig a quarter of an inch to the left. “Peter said he called them, so I didn't have to do a thing.”

“Thank you for your valuable time,” Phil said to Nancy, “but one last question and we'll be on our way. Do you remember when Peter received the money for the promotional stop?”

“Not exactly,” she answered, “but he gave me my bonus last week. Wednesday, I think. We didn't have this group booked until this Monday. Fortunately for them, we had a van available. Summertime is a lot busier.”

Phil took one of the brochures and pushed it across the counter at Nancy. He pulled out two more twenties and laid them on top. “Peter's cell number would be very helpful,” he told Nancy with a devilish wink.

Back in their SUV, Phil turned on the vehicle and said, “The snippiness of that woman reminded me a bit of Granny.”

Emma chuckled. “Especially the comment about not being senile.” She buckled up. “That last bit of information was worth the payoff, don't you think?”

“Yes, but I'm a bit hurt that she didn't ask for
my
autograph,” Phil said with a fake pout. “After all, I am a world-famous tax attorney.” He put the SUV in gear. “Where to now?”

“Roble Foods. I don't think it's far from here.” Emma looked at the address she'd jotted down from the Roble Foods website before they left and plugged it into the vehicle's GPS. “It's over off of Main, not too far from Dodger Stadium.”

“Which means not too far from the restaurant.”

“Yes,” Emma agreed. “No wonder Lucy and T.J. dropped in so easily.”

Once they were on their way, Emma started talking out the pieces of the puzzle harvested from Nancy Bradford. “Rikki said they were blindsided by the tour van's arrival, so it's safe to say whoever set up the van's visit might have done it as a distraction but they had to wait until Quickie LA had a busload of tourists to bring by the restaurant.”

Phil nodded in agreement as he maneuvered his way through the maze of downtown city streets. “And it could have been someone from inside the restaurant or someone from the outside, so no help with that.” He glanced over at Emma. “Nancy said she received the extra money from her grandson last Wednesday, so it couldn't have come from the cash Steve handed Carlos just a few days ago.”

“That still doesn't mean that Carlos didn't set it up,” Emma said. Before leaving the house she'd grabbed Phil's notes and was updating them so she wouldn't forget what they'd learned. “Maybe he paid Peter and was reimbursed by Steve.”

“Maybe,” Phil said, “but a kid going off to college and waiting tables usually doesn't have a lot of loose cash to pay for things up front.”

They rode along in silence. When they stopped at a red light, Phil said, “Maybe the tour was more than a distraction to keep people busy while the shooter went after his target.”

Emma turned toward him. “How so?”

“Maybe the shooter slipped in with the tour group, did his business, then slipped out with them,” he suggested. “Vans like the ones Quickie LA uses hold around thirty people. That would mean about seven extra tables to wait on during a busy lunch rush. It could have been chaotic with people waiting to be seated and the kitchen and waitstaff on fast forward—an easy time for someone to slip in and out without being noticed.”