Dream a Little Death, page 14
Lieutenant Hepworth turned up his palms. “I don’t pretend to fully understand the criminal mind.”
“This is all very interesting,” I said, “but I’d appreciate it if we could just sit here in silence until my attorney arrives.”
Lieutenant Hepworth looked up at the clock. Well, his good eye looked up at the clock, and the other looked in a vaguely westerly direction. “I hope it isn’t much longer.”
Nope. He couldn’t stop.
“You do realize these big-shot attorneys hit you up for transportation time,” he said. “What does he charge? $400 per hour? $500? But then you probably aren’t hurting for money, what with the extra cash your uncle has been socking away lately.”
It kept coming back to Uncle Ray.
“Maybe now you understand why I’m so interested in someone else’s murder investigation.” Lieutenant Hepworth smiled. “That’s right. We’re a team here at the L.A.P.D. We help each other out when we can, pool our information. Here’s a choice tidbit: your uncle was seen at Miss Pimentel’s a couple of days ago. But maybe you already know that. What you might not know is he ran an illegal search on her phone records immediately thereafter. Food for thought, am I right?”
If Lieutenant Hepworth was right, I didn’t want to know who was wrong.
“You don’t have to answer,” he said. “I get that you don’t like me. You don’t return any of my calls. But don’t feel guilty. Even if you had called me back I still would have shared my intel with the higher-ups. Some of them, for god knows what reason, still support your uncle for Deputy Chief.”
“Just stop!” I burst out. “I told you before. You’re making a terrible mistake.”
“There’s always a first time.” He looked up at the clock, then pushed back his chair. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. My wife’s holding dinner for me. Lamb chops, which are my favorite. To save all of us a little time, I’m going to kick you out of here. So feel free to call off your overpriced attorney. But if you don’t mind some unsolicited advice, be nice. I have a feeling you’re going to need him later.”
From police headquarters, I drove straight to Gram’s.
Gram lived in the time-warp that is Laurel Canyon, immortalized by Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young as a cannabis-scented Neverland just above the Sunset Strip where pretty girls in bell-bottoms wandered from backyard to backyard and the soulful thrum of guitar chords reverberated 24/7 through the sage-covered hills. Gram’s house was perched at the edge of a steep drop-off, behind a grove of eucalyptus. It wasn’t unusual to see deer wander past the bedroom window, a raccoon peering through the screen door, even a possum who’d let himself in through the cat door. At night, especially when there was a full moon, you could hear coyotes howling, owls screeching, feral dogs barking. I’d always thought it was magical.
Gram’s doorbell hadn’t worked since the seventies.
“Knock-knock,” I called out as I let myself in.
The lights were on, but no one stirred. The only sound was the wind whistling through the bamboo chimes, which had been a present from Glenn Frey, who was not one of my uncles. As opposed to Don Henley, that is.
Then I heard someone coughing.
The lights were on in the bedroom.
“Gram?” I tiptoed over to the bed. “Are you sleeping?”
She turned around, sat up. Her eyes were wide open. And red.
“Sweetie.” Her cats—Three, Dog, and Night—hopped off the bed and hid behind the beaded curtains. “What are you doing here?”
Gram’s silky hair was a mess, and she was wearing a baggy sweat suit. I’d never seen her like this. She wore top hats, antique lace, and toreador pants to clean the litter box. “I wanted to check on you. Are you sick?”
“I’m fine.” She ran her fingers under her eyes, forced a smile. “You just saw me this morning.”
I sat down next to her on the bed. “A lot can happen in a day.”
She nodded. “Let’s go into the kitchen and make some nice kombucha tea.”
“Yum,” I said. “Kombucha tea makes everything better.”
“That’s my girl.” She stepped into her dressing area and came out a minute later in an antique kimono, her hair tucked into one of her shawl-cum-headwraps. She seemed more like herself already.
I sat at the kitchen table while she pulled out a gallon-sized mason jar covered with a white cloth.
“I used to use paper towels,” Gram said, “but these do a better job of keeping the fruit flies and gnats out.”
Oh, happy day.
“It’s been a full week, so it should be ready.” Gram opened the jar, and pulled out a festering spongy mass with brown stringy bits hanging off of it. She studied it for a minute, then shoved it in my face. “I don’t smell cheese. Do you smell cheese?”
I assumed it was a rhetorical question.
“I like seeing those bubbles collecting around the scoby,” Gram said. “It’s a sign of healthy fermentation.”
She poured us each a glass and downed hers immediately. “Did you get anything at Barneys after we left?”
“A green bikini,” I said. “I’m broke, so I put it on my credit card.”
“Good girl. Anything else?”
“A teddy,” I said.
“A teddy,” Gram repeated. “Interesting.”
I told you she was good.
“So spill it,” Gram said. “Why did you dump hot and nice?”
I broke in, “Because I’m an idiot? There’s also this other guy. Clayton. A tattoo artist. He’s way more my type.”
“A scoundrel?”
“Gram.”
She shook her head. “I only say that because I’ve been there, done that. More times than you can possibly imagine.”
Not sure about that. When I was in ninth grade, my teacher assigned a paper on influential people of the sixties. I chose Gram’s nemesis, Pamela Des Barres, which totally pissed her off. After that, she’d insisted on sharing her entire romantic history with me. It took weeks. No detail was spared.
Gram got up and walked over to the freezer. While her back was turned, I poured half my tea into the cat bowl. I would’ve poured all of it, but I was afraid of poisoning innocent animals.
“I thought I finally had it right.” Gram set two frozen bananas on the table. “You know, it’s always been me and Ray. I just didn’t see it. I wasted so much time. I guess was blinded by the sparkle: spotlights, flash bulbs, disco balls, a tight pair of black leather pants.”
“Stop right there,” I said. “With the pants.”
“Sorry.” Gram sucked lasciviously on one of the bananas.
I stared at her. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
She gave me a look. “Excuse me, but what was the tattoo artist’s name again? Clayton?”
I nodded.
“Yes, well, apparently, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
She had a point. I picked up my banana and stuck it into my mouth. “I didn’t come here to talk about me.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“The woman you saw Ray with the other night.”
She stood. “Are you going to finish your tea?”
“Gram, please. It’s important.”
“I don’t want it to go to waste.”
I put down the banana and sucked down what was left of the evil brew, then rummaged around in my basket until I found my phone. While Gram nervously tidied the kitchen, I went to the L.A. Times website and clicked on local news. I scrolled past an article about a rash of stingray attacks in Huntington Beach, another about three human skulls found at a nursing home in Palmdale. Then I found what I was looking for.
Lizeth Pimentel.
They’d dug up her senior picture from high school. God, she was so much younger than I’d thought. My age, in fact. She’d had her whole life in front of her. It was heartbreaking.
“Is this the woman?” I turned my phone around and showed Gram.
She took the phone out of my hands, studied the picture for a minute, then looked up, confused. “I don’t understand. This woman was just murdered.”
“I need to know if she was the person you saw with Ray.”
She handed the phone back to me. “It was dark,” she said. “I have no idea.”
“Gram, it’s going to be okay.”
“You’re scaring me,” she said. “Ray is a good man.”
I put down the phone and took her hands. “I know that. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this. I want to help him.”
Gram dropped my hands. “All right! Yes! Yes, this is the woman I saw at Ray’s house! Who is she? What is going on?”
I looked her in the eye. “What did you see that night?”
She took a deep breath. “It was hot. The windows were open. They were in his room, talking. The conversation was intense. They were standing very close to one another.”
“Did you hear what they were saying?”
She paused. “Some of it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to,” she said.
It was true. She’d tried that day at the café. But I was distracted by Teddy’s call. It was all about the gun then, and I couldn’t even remember why. As usual, I’d obsessed about the wrong things.
Gram said the conversation wasn’t what she’d expected. It wasn’t personal. It was about work. Specifically, the preliminary hearing Ray was testifying in on Tuesday. The situation was pretty cut and dried. Ray was off-duty. He’d gone to a dive bar with some friends. There was a guy there who was drunk and waving around a weapon. Ray called it in, and a couple of beat cops came and hauled the guy away. That was it as far as Gram knew.
“So what’s the big deal?” I asked.
“I have no idea. And Ray hasn’t told me. I don’t know why he shuts me out. I want to be part of his life.”
“Think back. What exactly did Lizeth say about the prelim?”
“She told Ray that it was the guy’s third strike, and that there would be trouble for Ray if he testified. More trouble than he’d ever seen.”
“Oh, my god,” I said. “Was she threatening him?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t get that feeling at all. It was more like she was stating a fact.” Gram looked down at her hands. “She didn’t want to see him hurt.”
“She said that?” I asked.
“She didn’t have to.” Gram looked up, her beautiful face as worn and tired as I’d ever seen it. “I saw it in her eyes.” Then Gram turned away from me and headed back to the bedroom. It was late and she needed to sleep. I hugged her goodbye, and told her everything would look brighter in the morning.
I said it.
I hoped it.
But unfortunately, I didn’t believe it.
Chapter 26
The alarm went off at 6 a.m. I slammed down the button before the beeping accelerated from the mildly annoying to the heinous.
“Jesus,” mumbled Clayton. “I haven’t been up this early since—ever, actually.” He rolled onto his side.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and glanced over at Clayton’s bare, hairless, perfectly sculpted back. Yeah, I’d known I was going to wake up feeling mighty conflicted so I’d organized my penance in advance.
Five miles, with ankle weights.
I’d even curated a Monday-themed playlist, which turned out to be more downbeat than anticipated, between “Monday, Monday” by the incestuous Mamas and the Papas, “Rainy Days and Mondays,” featuring the vocals of poor, anorexic Karen Carpenter, and the Boomtown Rats’s ripped-from-the-headlines “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which is what sixteen-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer of San Diego reportedly said when asked why she’d opened fire on a school playground. But who can say what made me feel worse: the depressing music, the grayish day, or the fact that Teddy’s car wasn’t parked in the usual spot in front of his house.
At six in the morning.
You do the math.
My run took me from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica pier, with a short detour to the 7th Street stairs. By the time I came home, Clayton was gone. He didn’t leave a note. I spent twenty minutes cleaning up the mess he’d left in the kitchen, then showered, dressed, and headed back out the door.
The sun was now shining, the birds merrily chirping, the homeless guy in the alley contentedly sipping his morning coffee. Another day in paradise. Not even Miles McCoy could screw that up.
Last night I’d received a text summoning me to the offices of 25-A-Day. Miles had an urgent matter to discuss. That was convenient because I, too, had an urgent matter to discuss. Actually, several. I only hoped Pee Chee had taken the day off. I wanted Miles alone, and preferably unprepared. Which is why I’d decided to show up an hour early.
Miles’s Chandler obsession ran deep. Not only was the name of his record label an homage to Philip Marlowe, his offices were located in the same building—the former Security Trust and Savings Bank at the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga—on which Chandler had modeled the fictional detective’s office. I took the rickety elevator up to the sixth floor. But instead of being greeted by the sight of Marlowe with a Camel, I got Mookie with an Android. He was playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I recognized Ice-T’s voice.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “But Miles asked me to come by.”
Mookie looked up, dazed. “Miles?”
“Your boss.”
“Oh. He isn’t in.”
“I’m early.” I pointed down the hall. “Which door again?”
“Nice try.” Mookie rose to his feet.
“I like your suit.” It looked like he’d bought it yesterday and had yet to master all the moving parts.
“Uh-huh.” He walked toward me, and when he was about four feet away, kept right on walking.
“I see you had a Spanish omelette for breakfast,” I said.
Mookie stepped back. “Do I have something—?”
I tapped my front tooth. “Little bit of green pepper.”
He extracted a toothpick from his pocket and removed the offending speck.
“We good now?” I asked.
“You should come back another day,” he said. “Boss canceled all his meetings.”
“Why?”
Mookie flicked the toothpick into the trash. “He went to the hospital to collect Maya.”
I stared at him. “That isn’t possible.”
“Not sure where you get your information.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “They’re probably home by now.”
I was dumbfounded. “But it’s only Monday. The doctor said Wednesday or Thursday. I was standing right there. I heard her myself.”
“Lady must’ve changed her mind.”
It didn’t add up. “So you’re telling me Maya woke up and just walked out of there?”
“Guess so.” Mookie went back to his seat, and pulled out his Android. Suddenly, the room was filled with the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire and the squealing of tires. “Sorry, but I gotta get back to work.”
This wasn’t happening. “I need to speak to Pee Chee.”
Mookie said, “Not sure where she is. Look, I don’t know why you’re so upset. This is good news.”
Bullshit.
Maya was up. Maya was talking. And at some point in the very near future I was betting she was going to be making it known to all and sundry that she hadn’t tried to kill herself, and was looking forward to wearing all her new clothes from Neiman Marcus. And then what?
I’d wasted enough time with Mookie.
I had to make sure Maya was okay.
It took fifteen minutes to get to the Eastern Columbia.
“Good day, Miss Black.” The concierge called upstairs, then gestured toward Miles’s private elevator. When the doors opened Pee Chee was standing there, a butcher knife in her hand.
“Was it something I said?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I tend not to listen when you’re moving your lips.”
“My mother says distraction is a big problem in the perimenopausal years.”
“From what I read online,” Pee Chee said, “your mother has a lot of problems.”
“One of them being trolls who stalk her on the internet,” I shot back.
There was a large cardboard box at her feet. Pee Chee knelt down and slit it open with her butcher knife. Inside were dozens of full-sized yellow legal pads. Pee Chee let loose with a string of epithets, then looked up at me.
“This had better be good.” She tucked a few stray hairs back into her gold lamé turban. “Because I really don’t have time.”
“Miles wanted to see me.”
“He’s busy now.”
“I hear Maya left the hospital.”
“You heard correctly.”
“She up for a visitor?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, but are you a friend of hers?”
At that moment, I was guessing I was the best friend Maya had. “Actually, I have something for her.” Not true, but I’d address that problem on an as-needed basis.
“Nobody wants anything from you.”
“I can slip it under the door.”
“Unbelievable.” Pee Chee shook her head. “Maya can’t be disturbed. She’s tucked into her gondola bed, fast asleep.”
“You moved her entire room back here already?”
“Lock, stock, and barrel. It’s a service economy, Dreama. You pay people, they do shit for you. Speaking of that, don’t move.”
Pee Chee left me standing there for a couple minutes. I knew the name of Maya’s doctor. I could call and find out if she’d actually released the patient early. But before I’d had a chance, Pee Chee had returned, juggling several stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
“Think you can fit all of this into your little basket?” she asked.
I backed away. “What is this?” I knew exactly what it was. A bribe. She wanted to be done with me.
Pee Chee said, “It’s the $40,000 we owe you.”
There was that number again. “I can’t accept it.”
Pee Chee dumped the cash onto a low console. “What is the matter with you? The wedding is back on, and so is the wedding present! Get the fuck out of here and get back to work!”
