The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (8 page)

This day had started out bad and was rapidly getting worse.

“I’ll keep trying,” he said. “But first I gotta sleep for a couple hours. Later!” Mike hung up, his voice sounding almost ebullient at the challenge.

I called Heather.

“Hey,” she said.

“Have you seen the peanut butter?”

“The
peanut butter?”
Now I felt ridiculous, as well as put upon. “Have you tried looking for it?” Heather’s voice sounded taut and high-pitched, as if she were angry with me for asking. “Sorry, Ten, but I have to go.”

I settled for toast and honey, but every bite rankled, as did the fact that I was back to square one and Clara’s time clock was running out.

I walked into my designated meditation area and got as far as looking at my cushion before walking back out. I stared across the living room at my computer: I could Skype Yeshe and Lobsang, maybe bring them in on the meager facts at hand. My mind rebelled. I was a certified private investigator with more than a decade of police work behind me. I was the Sherlock Holmes of missing people. For once, I wanted to solve a case without resorting to the inner tools and secret weapons I’d inherited from the other side of the world.

The six-year-old in me still wanted to prove my father wrong.

For the next several hours, I used every non-meditation-based investigatory tool known to technology to try to track down Clara Fuentes. I entered my five-digit P.I. license number and executed various searches from simple to complex, using Merlin, TRACERS, and the LexisNexis offshoot People Search. By estimating Clara’s age (mid-50s) and entering both Lancaster and Los Angeles as her cities of residence, all three sites turned up several dozen versions of Clara Fuentes, from a 16-year-old student in Covina, to a 75-year-old retired day care assistant in Fresno, as well as their neighbors, relatives, home addresses, and annual incomes. But not one of these Claras matched mine.

The California DMV was out: she didn’t have a license, much less drive a car. And anyway, thanks to the tragic Rebecca Schaeffer case—a stalker hired a P.I. to acquire the actress’s home address so he could shoot her—I wouldn’t get much in the way of personal information via that department.

My Clara Fuentes had no record of arrests, no accidents, no bank accounts, no credit cards, no late payments—in fact, no payments at all. She was like a ghost, living beneath the social radar as effectively as if she were living under a bridge. I recalled an infamous case when I was still a rookie cop: one of our patrol units, answering a call about a bad smell wafting from a storage unit in the City of Industry, discovered inside a huddle of people, gaunt and filthy—illegal immigrants starved, beaten, and trapped like rats in a sewer. They were the victims of a “coyote” kidnapping, snatched and spirited across the border by a soulless Mexican smuggler—or coyote—and stashed out of sight while their captors used violence and threats to extort money from their families back home. These immigrants, too, had no identification. They, too, were ghosts.

Clara worked for a person with a public presence and money. Maybe there was a coyote behind this disappearance as well. But if so, why had there been no ransom note?

On the other hand, Bets McMurtry had a good reason for Clara to disappear. Illegal employees were a huge liability in politics, as Bets herself had pointed out.

But I remembered her clutching my wrist, her horizontal tears. I’d already experienced the aggressive, almost sexual charm, her “tell” as a con, and she was not conning her need for me to find Clara. I was almost 100 percent certain Bets McMurtry was not behind Clara’s disappearance. I looked across the room at Tank, sprawled in a patch of sun.

“So who is responsible, Tank? Who is?”

I typed up a report of the first 24 hours, such as it was, and attached the document to an e-mail to Mac, subject:
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
. My report took up maybe a page and a half.

My phone alarm pinged a reminder: time to return the Tesla and pick up my newly refurbished Mustang from the mechanic. I electronically transferred $1,500 from my savings to my checking account—thank you, Julius. Now the greatest challenge to my practice of non-attachment had adjusted valves, a jetted carburetor, an advanced distributor, and a balanced camshaft.

Tank was suddenly nowhere to be found and refused to come when I called him. I ate the last of the cereal dry from the box and dumped cat kibble in Tank’s bowl—fair’s fair.

I hurried outside and jumped in the Tesla for our final drive together. I dialed Heather as we zoomed down Topanga, and put her on speaker. Crossed wires aside, I was starting to really miss her.

“Good morning!” Heather was slightly breathless. I could hear a repetitive metallic squeak-squeak-squeak in the background. As a medical examiner, she spends her days doing forensic exams and autopsies. I tried not to visualize the cause of the squeaking.

“Good morning to you.” I gave in to morbid curiosity. “What’s that noise?”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, “I’m pushing a gurney with a gangbanger on it. One of the wheels has a nasty habit of squealing, and I haven’t had time to oil it.”

“I presume this is a
deceased
gangbanger.”

“Extremely deceased,” she said. “Whoever killed him really wanted him to stay dead. I extracted fourteen slugs from his groin to his sternum, plus some knife wounds I’d rather not describe in detail to a fellow vegan. Let’s just say it involves a few essential body parts. Weirdly, we’ve had a slew of these lately.”

“Shooter probably emptied his magazine—seventeen rounds,” I said, picturing the victim as target practice. “Only three bullets missed. Pretty good shot pattern.”

“Well, Juan Doe here might disagree.”

The nickname sparked an idea. “Have you come across any Juanita Does lately?”

“Not that I know of. You want me to ask around?”

“Thank you. Yes, I would.”

Squeak-squeak-squeak.

Shoptalk was over. Which left personal talk. Heather didn’t say another word. I took a deep breath, and executed an Acapulco high dive right into the middle of the silence. “When would you like to … to have our conversation?” I asked.

“Hold on a second.” The squeaking stopped. “He’s all yours now,” I heard Heather say to someone. “Okay, I’m back. How about tonight?” she asked. “I can come to you.”

“Sure.” I thought about the daisy Post-it note, and the dark forces took hold of me. “How about six o’clock?”

She paused. “Um, sorry, I’m working late today. I’ll try to get there by eight, depending on traffic.”

I wondered, snarkily, how many times this year bad traffic had been used as a cover for something else in Los Angeles. Had to be at least a million.

Make that a million and one.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep my electronic eye out for you.”

“And I’ll bring my battery-operated buddy, just in case.”

As the Tesla and I hit Pacific Coast Highway, fog was creeping across the road from the ocean, bringing a damp chill to the air. It matched the mood that had settled on me during the call with Heather. Yes, there’d been some humor in our banter, but like a lot of humor, it masked a deeper subject, which could be summarized in two questions Heather had posed to me at the Inn of the Seventh Ray on my birthday. I’d been thinking them myself but was too afraid to ask. Ever since, they’d hung over everything we did together, like dank ocean vapor:
Any idea where this relationship is going?
and
We hardly ever make love anymore, do we?

So far, the only answers I’d been able to come up with were
No
and
I guess not.
Neither seemed remotely sufficient to either one of us.

The sex part was especially unpleasant to admit, but the truth was, except for our first few weeks together, Heather and I didn’t work that well together in bed. Not that I’m an expert, but I’ve had a couple of relationships where the sex worked great, and I’ve had a couple where it didn’t, and I’ve yet to figure out the magic formula. In fact, 90 percent of this whole sexual attraction thing still puzzles the hell out of me. With my ex-ex, Charlotte, aka She-who-hates-cats, the sex was rocket ship–ride fantastic, the rest of our interactions as toxic as botulism. With Heather, it was the other way around: we hummed like a top in the head and heart but got numb down toward the pelvis.

And Julie?

Sorry, I wasn’t going there. Julie was old news.

Heather and I connected in so many ways. We liked the same music, the same kind of books, even got a kick out of each other’s style of untutored but enthusiastic jump-and-flail dancing. We almost never fought. We loved to talk shop, not easy when you’re dealing with corpses and drug dealers. It was only in bed that we couldn’t seem to find the right rhythm. The first time we’d spent the night together was great. The first time we’d actually made love, I thought everything went pretty well, considering. But the next time, Heather had burst into tears and told me she was sorry, but she needed her vibrator to have an orgasm.

“Oh, okay,” I’d said. “Fine by me.” And it was. But ever since I’d returned from India, the vibrator issue had grown bigger and bigger between us. I could tell she was more and more bothered, and that made me want her less and less. I couldn’t figure it out. I was starting to think the whole subject was a smokescreen for something else. But what?

I returned the Tesla to the dealership, full of praise but quick to fend off the salesman with the excuse that I was late for an appointment, thanks to that darned Los Angeles traffic. (One million and two.)

As I walked up the block to my auto mechanic’s shop, the cutting edge of a headache pressed against my temples. Then I spotted my Shelby, displayed out front for all to admire. Call me shallow, but the sight of her gleaming yellow frame chased off my headache faster than three Advil and a week of meditation.

“She’s a beauty, all right,” my mechanic Scott said as he pocketed his check. Scott was a collector, as well as a fixer-upper. “You ever want to sell her …”

“Not going to happen, Scott.”

He shrugged. He knew.

I decided to take my Mustang for a fast dash up the coast, to clean out both our pipes. The low roar of her V-8 engine sucked up my bad mood and blew it right out her dual exhaust pipes. I passed Malibu and was pointed toward Oxnard when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and squinted at the screen. Shit. It was Mac Gannon’s landline. He’d probably read my report and wanted his money back.

I had to go all the way to Point Mugu State Park before I could pull off and call him back.

To my surprise, Melissa answered the phone.

“Hi Ten,” she said, her voice subdued.

“Hi, Melissa. What’s going on?”

“Nothing much,” she said. “Daddy’s gone away, and Mommy’s in bed. She’s having one of her little headaches, so I’m not s’posed to disturb her.” I could hear Melissa parroting her mother’s words, and I shuddered. How many times growing up had my own mother’s “little headaches”—brought on by too much wine combined with other things—meant I was in for some lonely, scary hours? For the first time, I wondered what secrets Penelope Gannon might be harboring.

“How was school today?”

“Okay,” she said. Definitely not the effervescent Melissa I was used to.

I waited.

“Um, uh, Ten? I have a detective question for you.” She paused, and I pictured her hand creeping into her mouth for a quick gnaw. “You’re still our detective, aren’t you?”

The way she said “our detective” was charming, as if every family had a personal detective to go along with their gardener, plumber, and priest.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m still your detective. What kind of detecting do you need?”

“Can you come over? It’s not a telling thing; it’s a showing thing.”

“Can you show anyone else?”

“No,” she said. “I need you.”

I was back at Mac’s compound in half an hour. I pressed the intercom, and a phone rang somewhere inside. Someone picked up.

Silence. Then a familiar, nine-year-old voice whispered, “Ten. Is that you?”

“Yes. It’s me, Melissa, but what in the world are you … ?”

The gate swung open.

Melissa was already in the driveway, bouncing from foot to foot. Her hair was a cascade of red, tumbling down her back, and she wore jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with sequined butterflies.

“Melissa, do your parents know you’ve figured out how to open the front gate?”

She threw her arms around me. “I knew you’d come! I just knew it!” she said, and without another word raced up the hill toward a grove of swaying Monterey cypress. I followed, my feelings mixed. She veered right around the sentinel of trees and halted. As I reached her side, I spotted a tiny outbuilding surrounded by a miniature white picket fence. I gaped. I was guessing this was a child’s playhouse, but it was also an architectural jewel, a light blue, Victorian-era structure of scalloped wood, complete with a wraparound porch, stained glass, and window boxes bursting with blooming geraniums—real ones.

Melissa tugged me over to the door.

“Shall I push the doorbell or use the brass knocker?” I asked, but Melissa had already run inside. I ducked in after her and was no less impressed, if that’s the right word, by the interior. The curtains matched the upholstery, and the patterned walls had been sponge-painted. There was even a fireplace—and a baby grand piano, as in a grand piano for a baby-sized person. I calculated that the price tag for this playhouse was the equivalent of enough
dana
, or donated room and board, to sponsor 200 monks for a full year of study at Dorje Yidam.

I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, the only way I could fit, as Melissa dove behind the little sofa. “I found something today,” her muffled voice announced. She reappeared, rolling a small steamer trunk behind her. “I hardly ever play here anymore, but I was feeling sad because of Mommy, and Maggie being gone to her other Mommy’s, so I decided to have a pretend tea party. But I couldn’t find the teapot anywhere, so I looked inside this.”

She parked the trunk at my feet, her face solemn. “I didn’t take it out, or anything.”