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

  I sat frozen in thought. Frank Anthony gave the death stone to Barrett right after Frank purchased it.

  "Are we through talking for now?" she asked. "Because I'm having a massage."

  "Yes, yes, thanks so much." I hung up. "There must have been two," I blurted out and dialed Waterston Evers, asking him about the possibility of two stones.

  "Didn't I mention that? Yes, two identical. He bought them both."

  I thanked him and hung up.

  "Two stones," I said to Callie. "And Caruthers and Mathers knew there were two stones."

  "So if the stone delivered to Barrett at Orca's belonged to Frank Anthony, where the hell's the stone Frank gave Barrett at Waterston Evers's house? Maybe Caruthers and Mathers want to know that too."

  "And why didn't Barrett tell us she had another stone?" Callie asked.

  "Because she's got the stone that counts," I said, wheeling the car around and heading for Los Feliz.

  We pulled up in front of Barrett's house in Los Feliz. I checked my watch. It was early enough that her housekeeper would still be on duty. In fact, I surmised she was probably staying there to care for Barrett's dogs while Barrett was in the hospital. We climbed the steep steps to the entrance of her beautifully landscaped, fifties deco home overlooking the hills. Callie rang the bell. Merika, a pretty, slender Japanese lady, answered the door.

  "Miss Tee-kee!" Her face broke into a wide grin. "Oh." Her face turned grave. "Ms. Seebers in hose-pee-tal."

  "How do you know her housekeeper? Have you spent the night here?" Callie whispered.

  "Just visited.. .a party, I think, one time," I lied.

  I told Merika I'd come over to pick out a few things for her to take up to the hospital for Barrett. Signaling Callie to keep Merika busy, I flew through Barrett's bedroom at warp speed checking dresser drawers, pants pockets, jewelry boxes, attaches, and anything else that might contain the stone. Nothing. I collected myself for a moment and began again, lifting the mattress to check under the edges, checking the rim of the platform bed, looking behind books and inside the medicine cabinet. After twenty minutes, I could hear Callie approaching loudly in order to give me warning.

  "Merika, I'm feeling like I would like a drink. Would it be all right if I got myself something?" Callie asked.

  Merika took Callie into the kitchen. "Soda pop? Water with lemon? Coffee, tea—"

  "What kind of tea does Ms. Silvers drink?"

  "Very nice tea. Special kind, uh..." She searched for the name. "In here." She tapped the little canister.

  Callie reached inside the canister and extracted a teabag. "Could I boil some water and make a little of this?"

  "I make." Merika turned to get a teapot, and Callie held the stone up for me to see. My eyes almost popped out of my head. In fact, I could barely contain myself as the water boiled, the tea brewed, and Callie drank, making pleasant conversation with Merika and grinning mischievously at me.

  Half an hour later we were back in the car, and I was bouncing up and down like a kid at Christmas.

  "How did you know it was in the tea canister?" I said, comparing the two rocks to see if they differed. Barrett's stone was much smoother than the stone Frank Anthony had kept for himself.

  "I had this uncontrollable urge to drink the tea at Waterston Evers's house, so I knew there was something else going on, because I would never drink tea in a house as dirty as his, so I knew the tea was connected to the stone in some way. Where are you going to keep these stones?"

  I pulled my shirt open and dropped one stone into each side of my bra. Callie shot me a look.

  "Can you think of a safer place?" I smirked. "No one's looked there lately." Callie put her hand inside my bra and my nipples hardened.

  "Really?" she said. "I guess we'll have to do something about that."

  "As much as I hate to say it, stop it," I moaned and Callie laughed.

  I asked Callie to thumb through the pages in Barrett's date book and see if there was anything that would help us. After much searching, she found a page on which Barrett had scribbled a 213 area code and a seven-digit number alongside the words pick up/deliver/Benny Kaye.

  I picked up the cell phone and dialed the number. A rough voice answered, "Bono's!" I asked the man what kind of shop this was, and he replied curtly, "Who wants to know?"

  "We're a delivery service, and we're sending someone over to pick up an order. We need an address."

  "Hollywood and Vine," the man growled and hung up on me.

  "It's not Benny Kaye's phone number, but definitely a place his friends shop for him," I said.

  "I don't want to go to some sleazy store on Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the night!" Callie said emphatically.

  "We don't have to go in, but this might be our first tangible proof of Marathon's barter deals with their stars. Something's being picked up there, and I'd love to know what it is."

  "We could go by Bono's tomorrow," Callie offered, leaning back against the headrest and looking highly seductive, but I was already driving west on Hollywood Boulevard.

  "Stop trying to distract me from my work." I grinned at her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  An array of street people and addicts could be seen crawling out of their daytime hideaways to prowl through alleys piled high with dirty rags and bottles, their grocery carts brimming over with the treasures they'd collected.

  I looked out the car window at a barefooted black man, an army blanket pulled up around him, swearing at an imaginary enemy from his bus bench. A woman somewhere between sixty and death walked aimlessly out into the street in front of our car. She was wearing red house slippers with big fuzzy balls on the end of them, and four layers of clothing, her red hair sprouting out of her turbaned headgear like spring onions. I glanced over at Callie, who was pale and silent.

  "I can't stand to look at this," she said quietly.

  "You can't save everyone."

  "I wouldn't try. We choose our life, and it's ours for whatever reason."

  I was incredulous that Callie could believe people actually chose to live this way.

  "Well, if everything's predestined, then there's no point in trying to change our lives," I replied.

  "We have the power to change everything if we believe we can." Her voice seemed self-condemning.

  "Makes no sense to me," I said. "But if what you say is true, then you chose this trip to the slums this evening."

  "No, you chose this trip. I chose to follow you, and right now I don't feel good about it. "

  I slowed up in front of a sleazy storefront with homemade lettering above the door spelling out "Bono's." There were no parking spaces available, so I had to drive around the block, which gave us a close-up look at the city side streets where drug deals were taking place out in the open. An old man was shooting a syringe into his dirty arm in full view of anyone driving by. I opened the car door.

  "I thought you said we weren't going in!" Callie's voice registered alarm.

  "Cops patrol this area all the time. Come on, two minutes," I said, and she jumped out of the car and followed me into the store where filthy inflatable blowup dolls with plastic holes for vaginas hung from the ceiling by a string. The wooden bins lining the walls contained boxes of dildos, edible fantasy fragrances, and large leather straps with little metal brads embedded in them. A middle-aged man with a three-day beard looked up and gave Callie an appreciative whistle.

  "Honey, take it from Bono, you could be a star," he said, poking a dirt-encrusted fingernail in her direction. Callie pulled back from the offending digit as if stung by it.

  "Marathon Studios pickup," I said flatly.

  "You called earlier," he said. "Nobody ordered nothin'."

  "Maybe it's under a different name." I turned his grimy order book around so I could see the names. He promptly turned the book back in his direction and flipped to earlier pages. "Last order picked up by...Barnett..." He struggled to decipher the name, but I recognized it immediately as Barrett's
scribbled signature. He looked up. "So what do you need? Leather body harness, inflatable dolls..." His eyes never left mine. "Rainin' outside?"

  Rainin'... The gears suddenly meshed in my mind. Rain, sleet... snow. Benny Kaye is a coke head.

  "No rain...snow maybe," I gave him a resolute stare. Callie watched us as if we were crazy, and we were. Him for having it and me for asking.

  Bono reached under the countertop, maintaining eye contact.

  "We need to go, Tee," Callie whispered with desperation in her voice.

  Bono pulled out a small plastic bag containing white powder.

  "Put it on the tab," I said and reached for the package.

  He gave a low laugh in appreciation of my bravado and pulled a gun from beneath the counter. "You ain't from Marathon. Into the back room!" he ordered. I glanced over at Callie. This was an undesirable turn of events, and definitely the wrong part of town in which to be towed into a back room at gunpoint. I glanced back at the door, praying some sleazeball customer would come in long enough to distract Bono, but no such luck. My mind flashed on my gun, which was safely locked in my car. Bono, his pants dangling off his skinny behind and his faded blue and white plaid shirt pungent with body odor, herded us into a closet so small that, side by side, neither of us could get our hands up above our waist. The floor was painted brown and smelled of urine. The wall, two inches from my face, had a variety of fluid stains dripping from it, colors I could see even in the dark.

  "Shit," was all I could say, my heart pounding.

  Outside we could hear Bono talking to someone on the phone, his voice raspy and hushed but still loud enough for us to hear. He was telling someone that we'd tried to pass ourselves off as Marathon employees. I was pretty certain it wasn't the police he was calling.

  I asked Callie what she had on her, in her purse or in her pockets. "Just give me a running inventory," I said nervously.

  "Keys, fingernail file, handkerchief?"

  "Try to reach the file."

  The next five minutes were spent wiggling around trying to get inside her purse and, purely by feel, to locate the file without dropping it to the floor. She passed it to me between her third and fourth fingers, and I got a frantic grip on it. I maneuvered myself over to the lock, sucked in my breath, and yanked my arm up, nearly dislocating my shoulder. My eyes were getting used to the dark, and I could see that the inside edge of the dirty, wooden door was chewed and clawed, as if others had tried to make their way out of this closet. If I could just wedge the file in between the latch and the battered wall, I might be able to pull the door open. I made a few quiet attempts, but the lock was sturdier than I'd originally thought.

  "Fuck." I rested a moment.

  Bono was at the door, his mouth pressed against it. I could smell his beer-stale breath even through the hairline crack. "He's sendin' someone who'll put the fear of God in you, believe me. Marathon don't fuck around."

  I waited until he moved away from the door, and I could hear him busily straightening up the counter and opening the cash drawer as if holding people against their will were routine. It was five, ten minutes at the most, and the front door of Bono's shop swung open with such force that the bell at the top clanged in distress. Within seconds our door was unlocked and a man yanked Callie out by her shirtfront, banging her head on the door jam.

  "Don't hurt her, you fuckhead!" I yelled.

  "Teague!" Callie's warning came too late as another goon dragged us across the store, through the grimy front doors, and out into the street, where we were thrown into the backseat of a waiting car. The man behind the wheel sped away with us as his partner leaned over the front seat and pointed a gun at us. I realized this could easily be our last trip anywhere with our hearts still beating.

  "Who are you and where are you taking us?" I demanded. The man in the front seat leaned forward and pressed the silver metal gun barrel into my forehead, the universal symbol for shut up. We were headed west toward the ocean, not a good sign. They must be thinking of drowning us or dumping us along the forested coastline. My mind was about to crash from overload. Should I make a stand now, or wait until I had more maneuvering room? If I make a move now, maybe I can cause them to wreck the car and get somebody's attention, rather than have to face them alone on the beach or in the woods. I clasped Callie's small hand in mine, sorry I had ever endangered her life and wanting only to get out of this mess and be with her.

  Suddenly, the car swerved right, through the gates of Bel-Air, moving swiftly through the streets the wealthy called home. I felt relieved. Dying in a nice neighborhood seemed preferable to dying in a remote area.

  The driver swerved again, this time into a large rear driveway of a palatial two-story mansion. The driver got out, leaving the door ajar, and rang the bell. Our captor spoke to someone who was apparently irritated that we'd been brought here. There was more murmuring and muttering, and finally the two men dragged us both out, holding us by the napes of our necks as a mother dog would drag small pups. I decided to find out who we were meeting before I created a stir.

  Inside, we were taken to a cozy den with a fireplace and a small leather couch facing two chairs across a teak coffee table. A fire blazed in the fireplace, throwing odd shadows all around the room. Things were looking a lot less violent and decidedly upscale. I tried to steady my breathing. The men deposited us on the sofa, side by side, and backed away, guarding the door. Callie and I exchanged glances, wondering who would appear next. Moments later, Robert Isaacs in a velvet dinner jacket, looking like a Hollywood leading man, strolled into the room, his brow knitted together over the dilemma in his den. He stopped short and then gave an odd smile.

  "Well, hello, Callie. Why am I not surprised to see you?" he said.

  "Hello, Robert," she replied.

  "You two know each other?" My breath was faster now.

  "Intimately," Isaacs said. "We were married for ten minutes, isn't that right, Callie?"

  I looked at Callie in utter shock, but she didn't look back.

  "I heard you were traveling with Ms. Richfield. Another in a long line of your girls." And he grinned at the pain he was inflicting on both of us.

  "And which of your thugs told you that?" Callie asked coldly.

  He moved closer to examine the large, bloody bump on Callie's forehead. "I see someone has managed to strike you in the head. Are they still living?" he asked slyly. Callie ignored my incredulous stares in her direction. Isaacs waved off the guards, asking them to simply keep an eye out at the entrances while he talked to us. He offered us a glass of wine and assured us that, in spite of the dangerous-looking men who had delivered us to him, we were in no danger.

  "Certainly not from me. Now, why are you pretending to be Marathon employees? I could, on behalf of Marathon, prosecute you, you know, but instead, I'll simply ask you to hand over the merchandise you stole. The stone." He held out his hand.

  "I stole nothing, and the stone doesn't belong to you or me," I said.

  "I just purchased it recently." He smiled convincingly.

  "What's so important about a rock?" I pressed my luck.

  "It's not necessary to know what's important about other people's property, only to know that what you have doesn't belong to you."

  "I'm interested because this is the second time in two days we've been roughed up for it, but you're a day late. We no longer have the stone. Lee Talbot's men took it from us yesterday."

  "You're lying," he said, and I felt the stones move inside my shirt.

  "Call him!" I said with my best poker face. "Call him now." It was a gamble, but I was pretty sure Isaacs wouldn't call.

  "I'll contact Talbot tomorrow. If he doesn't have the stones, I'll be seeing you again."

  His refusal to contact Talbot led me to believe that whatever they were doing, they weren't doing it together. He obviously didn't want Talbot knowing what he was up to.

  "The gentlemen who brought you here will give you a lift back to your car," Isaacs said.
r />   "No thanks. We'll catch a cab." I took Callie's arm and walked past the staring goons.

  "We're not through with each other yet, Callie!" Isaacs called after us.

  I pulled her through the front door before anyone could have a change of heart about our departure. When we hit the street, I kept up a fast pace to Sunset, wanting to make sure we weren't being followed.

  "He's gonna find out Talbot doesn't have the stones, and he'll kill us. You don't know who you're dealing with here!" Callie panted at my side.

  "You married that guy! Are you still married to him?"

  "Of course not," she said.

  "Of course not. Well, how the hell would I know?"

  "I was a kid. My friends all thought he was wonderful. I was married for ten minutes..."

  "What is this 'married for ten minutes'? No one is married for ten minutes."

  "A year."

  "Good, now we're talking English. You were married for a year and..."

  "My kid brother came out here with us to work for Robert Isaacs, his hotshot brother-in-law. Isaacs was working for Artinia Records. Drugs and the record business are synonymous."

  "Incidentally, lying is bad karma. Am I right?" I said, angry over her deceit.

  "Robert knew people were giving my brother drugs, and he did nothing to stop it. In fact, toward the end, he was paying my brother in drugs himself, rather than in cash. Another of his barter deals. My brother died of a drug overdose at a club on Sunset. He was so young and green and stupid that he accidentally OD'd," Callie said.

  "So that's why I got the passionate kiss on the first night I met you, and that's why you wanted to travel with me. Someone who's mad about you like 'all your other girls,' and that's why you've been fine with our risking our lives to crack this story, because you knew it would lead you to Isaacs and your revenge. The word you hate, by the way!"

  "Teague, I came out here to be with you, but when you told me about Barrett working at Marathon, I knew that's where Robert Isaacs was. Then you mentioned the barter system and I knew."