Not A Girl Detective (25 page)

in shadow. She is radiant, her head tossed back in

laughter. She’s wearing rolled-up dungarees and a

man’s white shirt.

I had to catch my breath.

Grace Horton.

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Now Grace is standing with one arm draped across

the shoulder of a good-looking man. Russell Tandy. I

recognized the mustache and long, serious face. This

Grace I’d know in my sleep. Her features are carefully composed. They reveal nothing but suggest everything.

This is the Grace who poses for a living. For Tandy. For others, too. This is the Grace who wears the mask.

But sometimes the mask slips. That’s what Asher

Farrell said that day.

Now Grace and Tandy are clowning around. She’s

put on his hat and pulled it down low over her eyes. He is standing at the easel, pretending to paint her. They look happy.

“They didn’t mean much to me at first,” Nancy said.

“Except that I thought it was cool to see my grand-

mother so young. She looks a little like me, don’t you think? I always thought so. My mother and I don’t resemble each other at all.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Nancy had her mother’s feroc-

ity. She was ferocious to the bone.

“When I started kindergarten I was really scared. I

thought at the end of the day they wouldn’t give me

back to my mother because my hair was so curly and

hers was so straight. I thought no one would believe I belonged to her.” She gave a little laugh. “Wishful

thinking.”

I picked up another picture. Tandy and Grace are

standing on either side of an easel. They are in a studio, with spilled paint on the floor and dozens of drawings pinned to the walls. The drawings are too small, too

faint to make out. The painting on the easel is not. It is Edgar’s missing painting. Blue Nancy Drew.

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“I had this one blown up and cropped,” Nancy ex-

plained. “For my show. But my mother wasn’t sup-

posed to see it, not ever.”

My gaze moved from Nancy back to Grace, standing

there next to Tandy, but I couldn’t see anything there—

nothing in her eyes, nothing in her smile. She had to have loved the painting. Who wouldn’t want to be seen as that kind of beautiful? But why, then, had she let the painting slip away? Had she sold it long ago, needing money? Had she given it to an admirer? Had she tossed it in the garbage, thrown it out the window, or just

walked away from it, sick to death of looking at herself?

The last picture is of Grace in the studio, with the

painting on the easel in front of her. But this time there are two men there. The first has his arm around her slim waist. Tandy again. The second is standing behind her, his hands covering her eyes, his chin resting on her

shoulder. He is wearing what looks like a crown of laurel leaves. He is smiling, and his mustache seems like it is smiling, too. It is long and curled at the ends, as thin and spindly as if it had been drawn on with a pencil.

“It can’t be,” I said in disbelief.

“What can’t be?” God, I wish I could smoke in here.

But it is. The second man is Salvador Dalí.

WHEN I GOT HOME I went straight out to the office and started pawing through the mess on my desk. Notes and scraps and abandoned outlines and cryptic messages to myself I’d jotted down upon waking and crumpled pho-tocopies and balled-up mistakes, and there it was. The very piece of paper.

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“Here you go,” read the memo scrawled on top. “No

charge. Just keep me updated on your project.” It was from the publisher of an obscure journal called
Yellow-back Library
. It’d taken me weeks to locate him. A librarian at the Society of Illustrators in New York had tipped me off to an article she thought he’d run back in the early eighties on Russell Haviland Tandy. She’d had a good memory.

The article was very useful. There was lots of per-

sonal information. Though he’d become almost totally

deaf at the age of fifteen as a result of double pneumo-nia, Tandy had been a fine musician—a trumpet soloist and band director. Fond of alcohol and tobacco, he was known to have visited relatives carrying a suitcase filled only with handkerchiefs and bottles of gin. Prior to his work on children’s books, he’d worked as a commercial artist out of his studio in New York City. His first regular employment was in 1917 as cover artist for pack-

ages containing Butterick sewing patterns. He was soon doing catalog ads for Sears, Montgomery Ward, and

JCPenney, all during the twenties. His sons remember

visits paid to their father by Edward Stratemeyer. Their friendship, plus Tandy’s reputation, led to his being hired as staff artist for the publishing firms Grosset & Dunlap and Cupples & Leon. His work for those and other companies publishing works supplied by Stratemeyer, most memorable among them the Nancy Drew

mysteries, lasted from 1929 to 1949.

And here was the good part. It had slipped my mind

until now. Tandy was always up to something. The in-

corrigible type. Obstreperous. Loved a challenge. During the thirties he’d taken part in an art competition to see which artist could produce the best piece of work N O T

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within a four-hour period. Among the contestants were himself, Norman Rockwell—
the
Norman Rockwell—

and a favorite drinking buddy of theirs, an eccentric Spaniard enjoying great success in his adopted hometown of New York.

Salvador Dalí.

Salvador Dalí was Russell Tandy’s drinking buddy,

his sidekick, his partner in crime.

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The thing about mind-bombs is they generate an aw-

ful lot of noise. I needed quiet. I needed caffeine. And I needed to find out about Jake. Salvador Dalí had been dead for a long time. Russell Tandy, too. They could

wait a little longer.

I called Hattie. She was sweet, but there was nothing to report.

“Well, no news is good news, right?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t the case here, dear.”

“What do you mean?”

“We would have liked to have seen some progress

by now.”

“There’s been no progress?”

“No. But we mustn’t give up. Things can change at

any moment.”

Even she didn’t sound like she believed it. Not a

good sign. Neither was the sound of the doorbell, which normally buoyed my spirits even when it was only

Javier needing me to move my car so he could bring the trash forward on pickup day. Today there was a nasty, N O T

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tinny undertone in there I’d never heard before. An-

other thing that needed fixing. And that wasn’t the half of it.

Standing on my doorstep were four people, only one

of whom I was happy to see. And in the company of the other three, he didn’t look all that appealing.

“Peter.”

“Hi, Cece. Sorry to bother you at this hour.”

“It’s only six. Not exactly my bedtime.”

The look he gave me was so pained I almost regretted

my smart mouth.

“You remember Detectives Dunphy and Lasarow,

from Palm Springs, don’t you?”

It was an ambush. “Of course. Come in.” I swept the

myriad items on the couch over to one corner, along

with several fur coats’ worth of cat and dog hair. It still wasn’t very inviting, but it was the best I could do on short notice.

“Sit down, please.” Nobody did. “Would anyone like

a Diet Coke?” They stared at me like I was an alien

from Mars. “I could make coffee. I have wine, too, but you probably don’t drink on duty. And you’re on duty, aren’t you?” I looked right at Gambino. “All of you.”

“Nobody’s thirsty,” said Dunphy, ever the diplomat.

“Cece, I don’t think you know Detective King.”

Gambino indicated a short but powerfully built man in his midfifties. He was mean, and I’m not talking the

kind of person who wouldn’t tell you there was a piece of lettuce stuck between your teeth. I’m talking big

mean. Bad mean. I looked at Gambino, who was shak-

ing his head ever so slightly. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me, but “Don’t mess with this guy” was a distinct possibility.

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“Ms. Caruso, let’s get something straight right

away.” King gave me a hollow smile. “The Jake Waite

case is mine now. And insofar as it ties in to the Edgar Edwards investigation, I will be working with the detectives from Palm Springs.”

“Okay.”

“This is a courtesy call. Playtime is over. Am I mak-

ing myself understood? Because if I’m not, I’ll be glad to go over anything you might be unclear about back at the station.”

“I think Ms. Caruso understands the gravity of the

situation,” Gambino said, walking over to me.

“You don’t need to protect her, Gambino.”

“I don’t need you telling me what to do.”

“I think we’re done now,” I said, heading to the door.

“You’re not the one who decides when the interview

is over,” said King, who sat down on the couch and

started jiggling his leg. Why do people do that? It had to be a caveman thing. But maybe he was just trying to shake off the pet hairs.

“While we’re here, maybe you can clear up a couple

of things.”

“You said this was a courtesy call,” I said, holding

my ground.

“We’ve just been to see your friend Bridget Sug-

arhill.”

Shit.

“We were looking for some information about An-

drew Damiani. You know Andrew Damiani. You and

Detective Gambino found Jake Waite at his apartment

last night.”

Damiani. I hadn’t known his last name until now. I

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wouldn’t have guessed he was Italian, but you never can tell. Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic gymnast, is also

Italian.

“Ms. Sugarhill was expecting him at work today, but

he never showed up.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t seem very surprised.”

“I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Look, Andrew has nothing to do with

me.”

“What did he say to you to get you to come over to

his house in the middle of the night, Ms. Caruso?”

I paused a beat. “It was Jake.” Why did I say that? I shouldn’t have said that. But I wanted them to leave Andrew alone, for Bridget’s sake. And it was clear they didn’t plan on leaving him alone. He was their number one suspect.

“Jake Waite called you?”

“Yes.”

“Not Andrew Damiani.”

“No.” What was I doing?

“You and Andrew have no special relationship?”

“No.” What was he insinuating?

“No business relationship?”

“No relationship of any kind.”

“Fine. We’re getting off track here. Was Andrew

Damiani there when Jake called you last night?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Jake sound as if he were speaking under

duress?”

“No.”

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“What did he say exactly?”

“That he’d remembered something. Something I

should know.”

“Fuck!”

Everyone turned to look at Lasarow.

“Sorry. I broke a nail.”

King looked disgusted. Misogynist. “Was anybody

else there when you arrived at the Echo Park address?”

“No. Well, Detective Gambino.”

“Lucky for you.”

What he meant was that if Gambino hadn’t been

there it would’ve been me, not Andrew, who was on the top of their list.

“Detective, don’t you think a more fruitful line of in-quiry would involve the gun? Or maybe the fake suicide note? Detective Gambino said there were two sets of

prints on it. One was obviously Jake’s. So who does the other set belong to?”

“We don’t have any matches at this time.”

“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

“Show some respect,” said Dunphy, back from the

dead.

“I can take care of myself, thank you very much,”

King shot back.

“Of course.” Dunphy turned red. This jerk was mak-

ing me feel sorry for two women I didn’t even like.

“I suppose we’re done,” he said, getting up. “For the time being.”

Lasarow took Dunphy’s arm and pulled her toward

the door, desperate to get away.

“I have something to add here,” Dunphy said, disen-

gaging herself from her partner. “Something Ms.

Caruso will find interesting.”

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“Yes?”

“It’s about that painting. The one that belonged to

Edgar Edwards.”

I bit my lower lip. “Uh-huh.”

“You asked us about it at the memorial service. Do

you remember?”

“I remember.”

“Well, we found it.”

Finally. Finally, I was going to get somewhere.

“Aren’t you going to ask where?”

“Where?”

Lasarow jumped in. “At the bottom of a trash can at

Mr. Edwards’s place in Palm Springs. The one in the

service porch, near the washing machine. Destroyed.

Totally ripped up. Thought you’d want to know.”

“I’m going to walk them out. I’ll be right back,”

Gambino whispered to me. “Don’t move.”

I wasn’t even sure I could breathe.

2 8

Aminute later there was a soft knock at the door.

I opened it.

“What the hell just happened here?” I asked Gam-

bino as I headed into the kitchen.

How could that painting have been destroyed? Who

would have done such a thing?