Not A Girl Detective (13 page)

pebbled drive.

I was a little offended that nobody believed I’d done it by accident.

12

The next few days Gambino and I were all about

crossed signals. I finally caught up with him Wednes-

day morning at his desk. But we’d barely said hello

when his partner showed up, champing at the bit. They were working a double homicide, two men found dead

in a burning car. It had taken them out to Yucaipa three times since Saturday night, and they were on their way out there again. He knew I had something important to tell him, and asked me to be patient. I wanted to be patient, but I was afraid that if much more time passed I’d lose my nerve.

Looked like it’d been a good week for the grim

reaper. Besides the twosome Gambino had told me

about, the newspaper was full of inventors, mathematicians, retired army lieutenant generals, prizewinning horticulturists, and theatrical producers all winging their way to the hereafter. Poor Edgar’s obituary didn’t make it into the
L.A. Times
until Thursday.

I read it with my morning coffee.

Edgar Edwards was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, the

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only child of a machinist and a homemaker. As a

teenager, he played sax. After graduating from high

school, he moved to Chicago and worked as a hospital

orderly during the day while fronting a local band at night. He was good. But it was in the early seventies that his lucky streak began. He won $15,000 in the state lottery and within ten years had parlayed it into a fortune in real estate, buying up buildings in Chicago’s warehouse district when they were cheap and riding the gentrification wave all the way to the bank.

I dropped an English muffin into the toaster and

read on.

Edgar brought his sax with him to California, a re-

tiree at forty. He took a crash course in art history at UCLA, then threw himself into collecting. He was

catholic in his tastes: plein air painting, Mayan carv-ings, documentary photography. I’d seen only a frac-

tion of what he’d amassed.

Several works from his British art pottery collection were considered masterpieces, promised gifts to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “Edgar had

a voracious appetite,” said a prominent dealer from San Francisco. “Once he believed in something, he

wouldn’t let it go.” The director of a small
Kunsthalle
in Cologne claimed that “he could see through to the insides of things, not merely on their outsides,” which had to have lost something in the translation. A curator of Japanese art and antiquities at the L.A. County Museum commented that Edgar had “that rarest of talents, the ability to recognize true quality.” Probably true, but I’ll bet she was after those Edo fans, the ghoul.

My muffin popped up, a little burnt around the edges.

I scraped the black parts into the sink. I hadn’t known 110

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this, but Edgar was on the board of JazzFest L.A. and the Children’s Museum, and was active in several AIDS

charities. It didn’t seem fair. He was a good guy whose luck had run out too soon.

Services were to be held Thursday afternoon at Hol-

lywood Forever Memorial Park, with a private recep-

tion to follow at the home of the deceased. The executor of the estate, Mitchell Honey, asked that in lieu of flowers, donations in Edgar’s memory be sent to the charity of one’s choice. That didn’t sound like the Mitchell

Honey I knew. Then again, he had all those allergies.

Probably didn’t want any more pollen around him than

necessary.

There were no immediate survivors.

I made quick work of my muffin, washed my plate

and cup, and placed them on the dish rack to dry. Then I went to the hall closet and pulled Buster’s leash from its hook. The little guy raced to the door, leaping and yap-ping with excitement. I think we both needed some air.

It was a beautiful day, which contrary to popular

opinion not all of them are around here. August and

September are too hot; June is known for its gloom;

January, February, and March bring the rain; but April can be as perfect as early July, and today was one of those perfect days.

I sucked in the air, greedy for oxygen. Ever since getting back from Palm Springs I’d been having a hard

time sleeping. I was so tired. The phone never stopped ringing. Who did I think murdered Edgar? Could I

speculate on the missing Jake Waite? Too bad about his solicitation arrest. It was several years back, but it still didn’t look good. Unlike Jake’s mug shot, which I have N O T

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to say did him justice. Still, rough sex gone bad seemed to be a prospect no news reporter could resist.

Then there was everyone I’d ever met, wanting to

bring me a casserole. Annie and Vincent beat them all to the punch. Dinner had been waiting on my doorstep

every night this week: I had no idea tofu could be so versatile. My mother took a different tack. She called several times, then FedExed me a two-pound box of

dark chocolate turtles with a note reading something to the effect of, did I not care that my shenanigans were sending her blood pressure through the roof? I suppose it was comforting to know that solipsism was alive and well in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Buster started pulling me across the street. He’d

spied Scarlett, an attractive standard poodle from

around the corner. She towered over him, but Buster

liked a challenge.

“Hello, Buster!” said Melanie, Scarlett’s owner. She

was carrying a fistful of plastic bags and a half-gallon jug of water. “How are you today? You’re looking very frisky.”

In West Hollywood you address the dog, not the hu-

man. I didn’t dare break protocol with Melanie, who

was unnaturally attached to her pet.

“Hello, Scarlett,” I said. “You look like you’ve just been groomed.”

“I have,” said Melanie. “And Mommy and I are exer-

cising this morning so we can’t chat for long.”

I was about to throw up when Pushkin, the sex-

crazed Siberian husky from down the street, showed up.

After the requisite greetings, Buster and I beat a hasty retreat.

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We were headed for Book Soup. The new edition of

The Chicago Manual of Style
was hot off the presses, and I’d special-ordered a copy. What can I say? Strange things excite me. Like the fact that the comma is omit-ted after short introductory adverbial phrases unless misreading is likely. And that
cross-country
gets a hy-phen and
crossover
does not. But maybe everybody’s interested in such things.

I was partial to the scenic route so we took the steep detour up La Cienega to Sunset Plaza, a Eurotrash oasis smack-dab in the middle of the Sunset Strip. The Strip was the fabled home of rock clubs and runaways;

Sunset Plaza was more moneyed if equally sleazy. It attracted, among other colorful types, a sizable contingent of tanned Italian sexpots with dachshunds in their purses, along with the ne’er-do-well younger sons of

deposed dictators trying to get into said sexpots’ Ver-sace jeans.

Buster enjoyed the ambience.

I’d planned on stopping for a chocolate croissant, but there was a middle-aged man with a ponytail sitting out front at Clafoutis who gave me the kind of grin that

kills appetites. Maybe I should go there more often, I thought, tugging at the waistband of my skirt. Today I’d gone Andalusian retro, with my hair pulled back into a bun, an off-the-shoulder blouse, and a matching silk

chiffon skirt with tiered ruffles. The skirt was a size too small, but beggars can’t be choosers when you’re talking marked-down Prada. I passed on the pastry and

flounced down Sunset past Holloway to the bookstore,

one of the best in the area.

While I waited at the back counter for my book, I

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wondered about Edgar. There were no immediate sur-

vivors, the paper had said. So who was going to get it all? The houses. The art. The Blue Nancys. The painting of Grace Horton. Shoot, I’d never had a chance to speak to Edgar about reproducing it in my book. I wondered if Mitchell could give me permission. Right. I’m sure he’d bend over backward to help me out.

“Excuse me?” I asked, my patience wearing thin.

“Did you find that book yet?” The clerk had taken several phone calls since I’d been standing there, and was now engaged in a spirited debate with a coworker about the year Francis Ford Coppola’s
Rumble Fish
had been released. He held up his index finger. What did that

mean? One minute? I walked over to the fashion sec-

tion to wait. Some leisurely pace they kept around

there.

“Cece?” The voice came from behind a top-heavy

rack of paperbacks. “I’m over here.”

I peered around a pile of books on animal prints.

“Andrew?” It was Bridget’s intern, bearing little re-

semblance to the sexy layabout of the other day. There were beads of perspiration on his upper lip and his

clothes were wrinkled. “What are you doing, scaring

me like that? Don’t tell me you’re playing hooky?”

“It’s my day off, and I followed you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I followed you, from your house. I wish you hadn’t

taken the long way. I’m in a hurry.”

“Does Bridget know you’re crazy?”

“I’m not crazy. I need you to come home with me.”

He had a lot of cojones. “Hold it right there. Bridget is one of my best friends, as you very well know, not to 114

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mention the fact that I have a boyfriend. A policeman!”

Buster started barking. He knew when I was upset. Not that he was much of a Gambino fan.

“Calm down. It’s not what you think. But we didn’t

know who else to turn to.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Jake and I.” He paused, waiting for it to sink in.

“Andrew,” I whispered, stealing a glance in either direction. “Are you talking about Jake Waite?”

“Yes,” he said. “Jake’s in trouble, and you have to

help him.”

“Me? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was a tall man in a

Burberry raincoat. “Can you point me to Sylvia Plath?”

“Bugger off,” I said rudely. We waited for him to

move on, which took forever.

“I am dead serious, Andrew,” I said, turning back to

him. “Do you know where Jake is? Because if you do,

you have to tell him he’s got to go to the police. He’s got to turn himself in. Throw himself on their mercy.

He’s making this much worse for himself.”

“He’s innocent, Cece. He didn’t kill Edgar. I’ve

known Jake for years, and believe me, he doesn’t have it in him. But he’s scared. He’s got a record. You know

what the papers are saying.”

“All the more reason he should come forward.”

“You must be kidding. Do you really believe that’s

how it works?” He started plucking at the buttons on his shirt. “I told Jake this was a bad idea,” he said, shaking his head. “Regardless of what Edgar thought.”

“Edgar?”

“Jake says Edgar spoke very highly of you. He

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thought you were a decent person, which was high

praise coming from him.”

Even though I barely knew Edgar, I felt the same way

about him.

“What does Jake want me to do?” I asked in a low

voice.

“He wants to talk to you, face-to-face.”

“Where is he?”

“At my apartment. Are you coming?”

Consorting with a known criminal. Aiding and abet-

ting a fugitive from justice. Accessorizing (or what-

ever) after the fact. My rap sheet was getting longer by the minute.

“Let’s go,” I said.

FOR SOMEONE WITH the face of an angel, Andrew drove

like a bat out of hell. We must’ve hit every red light between West Hollywood and Echo Park, which might

have slowed down the average person, but not this guy.

He glanced right and left, and if no one was coming he just kept right on going, fifty miles an hour down Sunset Boulevard, which I truly didn’t think was possible.

By the time we got to his place, I was totally discombobulated. But it was less the driving pyrotechnics than the prospect of seeing Jake. Actually, of being alone in an apartment with a suspected killer and someone who

knew him from the good old days—the good old hus-

tling days, that would be.

Andrew lived above a mom-and-pop grocery store at

the top of a terraced complex facing Echo Park Lake.

Anywhere but L.A., Echo Park Lake would have quali-

fied as a mirage—a shimmering body of water right in

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the middle of a working-class community. On sunny

days you could find families picnicking along the

shore, vendors selling blow-up toys and shaved ice, and lovers paddling among the lotuses. After dusk, however, the gangs owned the place. It had one of those

stratospheric murder rates, which wasn’t exactly soothing my frayed nerves.

We parked the car in the garage around the side,

walked back to the front, which was decrepit by any-

body’s standards, and up four short flights of stairs. We didn’t say a word to each other until we were at his

front door. We looked at the peeling paint, beneath

which was more peeling paint. Finally, Andrew turned

to me.

“Please don’t tell Bridget about this.”

“Andrew, I can’t promise you anything.”