Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Read online

  "Isn't Sterling Hacket being investigated for procuring kids for sex?" Callie asked.

  "Right. So maybe Sterling's deal with Marathon is that they take care of any trouble with the porn police and he makes movies at a lower fee. Whatever all these deals are, they involve more than Barrett's telling."

  The nurse reappeared, even more agitated this time, and personally ushered us out of the room, leaving us only when she saw us disappear down the hospital corridor headed for the street.

  When we got in the car, I checked my watch. "We can still make Rita Smith's viewing."

  "Viewing?" Callie wrinkled her nose.

  "As a spiritualist, I would think you would welcome any opportunity to commune with the dead," I said darkly.

  "I'll have to spend a week cleansing my aura. Hospitals, crime scenes, and now cemeteries!"

  In spite of Callie's protests, I popped onto the 405 north, then took the 134 east and exited at Forest Lawn Drive. We drove up exquisitely manicured hills to the southern slope of the cemetery until we were overlooking the Disney studios. Spending eternity staring at Mickey Mouse on a water tower apparently appealed to a lot of folks, since burial plots on that side of the hill were SRO.

  Black limos lined the circular drive, and hordes of men and women in business suits climbed the steps to the chapel, having momentarily put show business on hold to say goodbye to Rita Smith. Inside the chapel, an organist played tear-jerking tunes about love lost as a group of well-to-do women wept loudly in the front row. Eddie was putting on quite a show. As people filed past Rita's open coffin, he shook their hands and in a trembling voice, thanked them for coming.

  Callie and I took a seat in the back row of the chapel and knelt in prayer. Glancing around, I recognized a lot of studio insiders: attorneys, agents, division presidents. It did cross my mind that I'd reached a new low. First, I'd crashed Frank Anthony's wake, now I was pretending to be one of the bereaved at the funeral of a woman I'd never met!

  After about fifteen minutes of mogul watching, I decided we'd better go have a look at Rita. We cued up with dozens of other people lining the east wall of the chapel alongside a parade of wreaths and flower arrangements and waited our turn to make the horseshoe curve that would let us pass in front of her casket. As we inched our way forward, Callie fingered the cards on each wreath, reading the famous names bidding Rita farewell. At one particularly huge display, she seemed to lose her balance and staggered before the man next to her caught her by the arm.

  "I'm sorry," Callie said. "I'm just a little overcome; that's all." But I noticed, after she regained her balance, that the card attached to the large wreath was missing. I gave her a raised eyebrow, and she dabbed her eyes in reply. There was no time to pursue it, as Rita's lifeless form loomed, outstretched, only yards ahead of us. Apparently, Rita had indeed died from a blow on the head and smoke inhalation, and not a fire, because she looked like a large porcelain doll dressed in peach, her hair falling in beautiful curls around her shoulders, her face and hands looking a lot like marble.

  After passing the coffin, I turned and shook hands with Eddie, expressing my sorrow and quickly moving on before he could ask who the hell I was. Callie and I walked along the west wall of the chapel and straight out the front door to the parking lot.

  Callie flashed the stolen florist's card in front of my eyes. The big Marathon logo was embossed in one corner. It read: Let sorrow be a gift that brings the sufferer closer to Heaven.

  "Now is that a strange thing to say or what?" Callie remarked.

  "What's so strange?"

  "Let sorrow be a gift. Get it?" Callie raised her eyebrows at me. "Like Rita's murder was a gift to Eddie..."

  "Maybe that's what his Marathon deal was contingent on," I said. "Maybe that's what 'do her' meant."

  "Could you stop and let me get a Coke?"

  "Now?"

  "I'm thirsty," she insisted, so I merged onto the 34 eastbound and exited again just before Highway 2, a couple of blocks from a local burger joint. Up ahead I spotted a parked car with two Latin men in it. I pulled up to the order window, then cut a sharp right, jumped the curb and floorboarded it.

  Callie screamed at my sudden reversal, but I signaled her to be quiet. She paused a moment, then tried to speak again, but I waved her into silence. A few blocks away, I drove the car into the automatic car wash. Once the soap and brushes got started, I opened the driver side door. Callie shrieked as the hot water sprayed inside, soaping the seat and splattering the dashboard. Crawling out onto the metal guide rails of the car wash, I knelt down, the soap and water splattering all over me, and felt around. I located what I was looking for, ripped the box from under the car, and crawled sopping wet back inside, then reached under the front seat and yanked a wire.

  "It's one thing to be followed to a fast food joint, it's another to have guys already there waiting for you. We were tapped and traced. They had a wire inside the car listening to us and a signal under the car so they could follow us," I said, handing her the tracking device.

  "When was it put there?"

  "Had to be at Marty's repair shop. I should have gone over the car after I got it back," I said, looking left and then right as we drove out of the car wash, relieved that we had finally lost the men trailing us.

  "I've got to get home and change clothes. I'm a freaking sponge!" I yelped.

  "Tight, wet clothes. Kind of sexy—except for the soap." She grinned and wiped a large mound of suds off me, tossing it out the car window.

  "You're taking the fact that we're being stalked pretty cavalierly," I said.

  "Sometimes you have to take charge and change the energy. I've decided to stop being fearful around the issue of our safety and just see it all working out for us."

  "Good," I said, thinking she was without a doubt the strangest woman I'd ever known.. .and wanting her even more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I was greatly relieved to know that we were no longer tied to a tracking device and I could focus now on the source of the stones.

  "Waterston Evers is the collector who arranged the private showing for Frank Anthony. We need to talk to him," I announced to Callie as I pulled on a clean, dry pair of jeans and blew my wet hair dry.

  Callie rummaged through my closet and found a shirt for me. “Wear this. The light blue looks great on you," she said.

  "Thanks." I kissed her soft, sweet lips. "Give me a minute to walk Elmo. He's been alone a lot lately and he's feeling neglected."

  Jamming my feet into my tennis shoes, I hooked Elmo up to his lead. We headed out the front door. Callie walked along beside us.

  Just across the street, with her back to us, was the most gorgeous Samoyed dog I'd ever seen. She was huge and fluffy, with snow-white hair, all brushed and sparkling in the sunlight. She was obviously new to the neighborhood. Elmo stopped short just outside the front door, stricken with her beauty. He plopped his butt down on the ground, threw his head back and howled like I'd never heard him howl—a howl that bordered on a wolf whistle. He jumped up, dragging me with him across the street, and circled the dog, giving her the once over. Elmo had good taste. She was hot. Then she turned to face us, revealing a very pointy muzzle and small, squinty eyes. Elmo froze. He snorted. He turned. He did a full body shake and marched on, never looking back.

  "Did you see that?" I asked Callie. "He thought she was gorgeous until she turned around and he got a look at her face. He likes gorgeous blondes with a great ass, but the front has to be as good as the rear. He's a lot like me, actually."

  "Animals see beauty and judge it just like we do," Callie explained. "But I think Elmo was a little too critical of her. He should have gotten to know her before rejecting her over something as superficial as her nose."

  "He's a guy. He's not going to take time to get to know her." I nodded ahead at Elmo's nicely formed hindquarters and his matching, dangling accessories. "He knows what he's got to offer. Check those chalangas! A guy like Elmo's got options, Callie." I smirk
ed proudly, and Callie laughed at both of us.

  Callie located Waterston Evers's phone number in the directory, along with his address in La Canada Flintridge. With that in hand, we drove north on Highway 2, exiting up into the foothills, and wound our way around an elegant old neighborhood with houses that looked more midwestern than Californian, pulling up in front of a three-story stone-built Tudor. An elderly silver-haired man with a pear-shaped body answered our ring and admitted to being Waterston Evers. I introduced Callie and myself.

  "You are the most gorgeous woman I believe I've ever laid eyes on," Mr. Evers said, missile-locked on Callie's frame. "That hair. Is it natural?"

  I realized again what a knockout Callie was to the uninitiated.

  "Yes, it is," Callie replied sweetly.

  "Waterston Evers is just one step short of plopping down on his ass and howling," I said like a ventriloquist, never moving my lips.

  "We wondered if you might have information about this cuneiform fragment," Callie asked as I produced the stone from my pocket.

  Mr. Evers looked at the fragment as one might a dog that one had given up for missing, only to have it reappear years later. "It's the death stone I sold to a Mr. Frank Anthony and his people."

  He stepped back to allow us inside his foyer. We followed his large derriere, like imprinted ducklings, to an overstuffed study that my nose told me was in dire need of dusting.

  "Least important pieces in my collection," Mr. Evers said, lowering his sizeable frame into a well-worn leather armchair liberally stained with numerous liquids, the origins of which I did not wish to contemplate.

  "You heard Mr. Anthony died," I said.

  He paused. "No, I had no idea. Are you investigators or some such?"

  "We're writers," I said.

  "I never speak with the press." Mr. Evers tried to rise in indignation, but his was not a chassis that could swiftly throw us out.

  "We're not press, we're screenwriters. A friend of ours—you met her, Barrett Silvers—was attacked recently and is in the hospital badly burned. We're trying to help find out who was responsible."

  A mangy little dog snarffled into the room, clawing at the rugs as if grubbing for worms, and then deposited its body in the center of the floor and scratched. There were spots on its balding hide where it had made itself bleed, and I wanted to suggest a vet but then decided I was already interfering in enough lives without taking on Mr. Evers's psoriasis-ridden mixed-breed.

  "Nice man. I'm sorry to hear of his death, and about Miss Silvers. Mr. Anthony was a knowledgeable man with a great appreciation for Egyptian antiquities. Knew more about them than most, I would say."

  "You said 'Mr. Anthony and his people.' Did Frank Anthony have someone else with him the day he visited you?" I asked.

  "Yes, Ms. Silvers, of course, and a man and woman not at all interested in antiquities. Mr. Anthony sat right here at this table and examined the stones with a glass while I gave his three guests a tour of the grounds. Fuji hated the man. Yeah-yus." Mr. Evers dissolved into baby talk at the mere mention of the little rat-dog's name and bent to scratch its head. "And Fuji was terrified of the woman. Don't know why. She never spoke a word, but Fuji just has a sense about people."

  "Do you, by any chance, remember their names?" Callie asked.

  He got up slowly and went over to a rolltop desk whose top had not been lowered in decades, if one could judge by the papers, envelopes, books, and receipts jutting out of every cubicle. He rummaged for a while as Callie and I rolled our eyes at one another over Fuji, who was blithely peeing on the Oriental rug as if that were where she routinely went. From the smell of the room, I suspected it was.

  "Ah, here it is...knew I'd written it down. The two other people with him were Mr. Caruthers and a Ramona Mathers."

  My eyes lit up. "Would you happen to know what the writing on the death stone means?"

  "Sanskrit or Egyptian word. I looked it up when I purchased them years ago. Let me double-check to make certain before I say." He shuffled over to the bookshelf and stood on tiptoe to pull down several dusty volumes. Holding the stone in his left hand, he opened the largest volume with his right. His eyes moved back and forth from stone to book, book to stone, for what seemed like an eternity.

  "Cloth," he announced soundly. "Like bathing cloth," he elaborated.

  "This hot piece of evidence contains the word washcloth?" I asked.

  "Well, that's the modern equivalent, I guess." He smiled for the first time. "What is it you were looking for?" he inquired.

  "A list of names," I said.

  "Well, I'm afraid it's not a phone book," he chortled.

  Mr. Evers offered us tea, and before I could stop her, Callie accepted. I shot her a look that said she must be mad.

  "I have an overpowering desire for tea," she whispered. "I follow my urges."

  He led the way to a moldy, formal dining room, whose red velvet curtains, if shaken, would have given off enough dirt and sand to make Lawrence of Arabia feel at home. He offered us a seat at the end of a long, dark, mahogany dining-room table and poured the tea. I crossed my eyes at Callie, letting her know that pausing for a tea party was making me nuts. Callie asked Mr. Evers about his work, and he launched into a dissertation on the carbon dating of Egyptian antiquities that sent me into an alpha state.

  "I'm a medical doctor, but I haven't practiced in years. My father wanted me to be a doctor, so I did it to oblige him. After his death, I returned to archeology, my first love." He elongated the word love while staring at Callie, and I realized we were invited to tea because he apparently had a crush on her.

  Callie asked if he knew anything about muscle relaxants.

  "Are you asking if I know how to relax muscles?" he purred. I could feel my blood pressure rising. We were moving into the dirty old man arena, where every phrase would be repeated and given a sexual meaning.

  I jumped in. "She means do you have any expertise, as a physician, with muscle relaxants. Barrett Silvers collapsed in a restaurant while eating lunch, eyes frozen open, all bodily function shut down. The hospital said one of the possible causes could be an overdose of muscle relaxants."

  He hated that I'd interfered with his game, but answered my question professionally. "Tubocurare, of course, is the most common, but it doesn't sound like that's what it was." Everston went to a shelf and retrieved a large reference book with some papers tucked in it. "Interesting you should bring that up. I was looking at South American tribes and their burial rites, and I came across an article on a substance the natives refer to as Batuki Tatungawa. It's a poison made from various chondodendron vines and laced with snake venom, but the piece de resistance, so the natives believe, is marinating it in poisonous toad venom. Exceptionally poisonous toads in those parts, big as sewer rats. The resulting serum in high doses, fired from a blowgun, could flatten a full-grown tapir." Evers pushed the article in Callie's direction and said he was going to the kitchen for some teacakes and would be right back.

  "What's a tapir?" Callie whispered.

  "In Hollywood, it's the opposite of film her. In South America I think it's a big hairy animal with hooves."

  "Very funny," Callie replied, distracted by the pages she was skimming. She whispered excitedly, "Suppose I put a deadly ampoule of this stuff in a vial between my teeth, kissed you, used my tongue to force the plunger in, and shot this stuff into your neck?"

  "If you did, you'd have the most agile set of lips and tongue on the planet," I purred in imitation of our host.

  "Look at this picture. The bulb's back in his jaw, then he transfers it to the front between his teeth, and he uses his tongue to release the poison."

  "Maybe that's why the man in the parking garage was trying to get his mouth on my neck, and why he was breathing heavily through his nose. He had something in his mouth!"

  Mr. Evers was back with the tiny little squares of cake covered in almond icing. Fuji scratched endlessly beneath my feet, hurtling an infestation of fleas into my s
ocks, or so I imagined. Infused with the idea of escaping, I downed a few gulps of tea, suddenly rose, thanked the man profusely for the information, and towed Callie to the door. Waterston Evers looked mildly distressed at losing his fantasy woman, but I was sure he'd have his pear-bottom back in the sagging leather chair in the study before I had the key in the ignition. I groused all the way to the car that I hated sexual innuendo from the unkempt.

  Callie waved off my complaints, far more interested in the fact that it sounded like Barrett Silvers's attacker was South American, if one could judge from the poison.

  "Who are you calling now?" Callie asked as I dialed.

  "Ramona Mathers," I said, having dug her phone number out of my wallet.

  She answered almost immediately. "Ramona, this is Teague Richfield. We met at Frank Anthony's home right after he died,"

  "You're the reporter with the glorious green eyes whom I tried to take to dinner," she said smoothly. "But you turned me down."

  "Not for lack of wanting." I smiled. "You knew of course that Barrett Silvers was nearly killed, and I wondered if you could help me out as it relates to that?"

  She sighed in mock petulance. "I hate it when the object of my fantasies turns out to be just another person wanting something from me. I have no idea why anyone would harm Ms. Silvers. In fact, Frank and I offered Barrett Silvers a job. She was complaining about the tawdry assignments she'd been given recently, something about procuring girls. At any rate, Frank, who was a very kind and generous man, told her to move back to Oklahoma and go to work for him."

  "Doing what?" I asked.

  "Frank had dozens of companies."

  "Who do you suppose had the death stone delivered to Barrett Silvers?" I asked.

  "Delivered? Frank gave it to her himself, right after we left Waterston Evers's house. He told Silvers that the word on the rock meant towel and joked that maybe it was really an ancient country club chit that gentlemen had to present to get into the baths. He said, 'Carry this as a reminder to wipe off the bullshit.'"