Candy Cane Murder (20 page)

Needless to say, they didn't have nachos at the burger stand two feet away from us. So we trekked to every restaurant and snack shop on the pier till we finally found a place that sold them.

I got a burger and Angel got her precious nachos and we settled down on a bench to eat them.

“Mmm, this burger is good,” I said, wolfing it down with impressive speed.

Angel took two bites of her nachos and yawned. Then, before I could stop her, she tossed them in the trash.

“What did you do that for?” I wailed. “We traipsed all over the pier for those stupid nachos.”

“I wasn't hungry any more,” she shrugged.

“Why'd you throw them away? I could've eaten them.”

“I bet you could,” she said, her voice ripe with innuendo.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” All wide-eyed innocence. “You said you could eat them, and I agreed.”

“C'mon.” I wadded my burger wrapper and slammed it into the trash. “Let's go play frisbee.”

“Do we have to?”

“Yes, we have to.”

“But I'll ruin my shoes.”

“So take them off.”

I took her by the hand and practically dragged her down to the beach.

“I'm cold,” she whined, as we made our way toward the ocean.

“Your dad
told
you to take a sweater.”

“Well, I didn't.”

“Take mine.”

I took off my hoodie and handed it to her. She looked at it like I'd just handed her a dead rat.

“Do you want it, or don't you?”

“Oh, all right,” she said, putting it on. It hung on her tiny body like a bathrobe.

I reached in my purse and fished out the frisbee I'd brought along for our carefree day at the beach. Then I tossed it to her, only to have her gaze at it vacantly as it whizzed by.

“Do I have to go get it?” she moaned, staring at where it had landed. “It's so far away.”

“Yes, Angel. You have to get it. That's how playing frisbee works. If you miss the frisbee, you have to go get it.”

She took her sweet time and sauntered over to pick it up. At the rate she was going, I'd be on Medicare by the time she threw it back to me. At last she got it and tossed it back. A feeble toss that landed practically at her feet.

“Now it's your turn to get it,” she smirked.

My jaw clenched in annoyance, I ran over to her and picked it up. I was standing so close to her when I tossed it back, she had no choice but to catch it.

“Okay,” I grunted, “now throw it back.”

I'd had gum surgery more fun than this.

Then, to my surprise, she flung her arm back and hurled the frisbee with decathlon force. I watched as it sailed into the ocean.

“Your turn to get it,” she trilled.

For a minute I was tempted to let it float out to sea, but that's just what the little brat wanted.

So I took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans and waded out into the surf. The ocean was rough, and for a minute it looked like the frisbee was a goner, but then I saw it drifting back toward the shoreline.

I raced over and snatched it out of the water, holding it aloft in triumph.

So there, you little monster!

I stood at the shoreline, waving the frisbee at Angel and savoring my victory. Which was a major mistake. If I hadn't been standing there flapping that damn frisbee, I would've seen the wave that was about to break right behind me. And break it did, with a big wet thud against my fanny. The next thing I knew, I was sopping wet and dripping with seaweed.

I looked over at Angel. For the first time all day, she was smiling.

 

I checked my watch, and to my dismay, I saw that we'd been at the beach for little more than an hour. Funny, it felt like decades. I'd planned on spending the whole afternoon with her, but I simply could not face five more minutes with this brat.

“C'mon,” I said, yanking her by the elbow. “Time to go home.”

“Fine with me,” she snapped, and we trudged back together in icy silence to my car.

I dried myself off as best I could with a mildewy beach towel from the trunk of my car, then sped back to Angel's apartment with my foot on the accelerator, cursing every red light in our path.

At last, we pulled up in front of her building and got out of the car.

“So,” she said, as we headed to the rickety metal staircase, “you taking me to the L.A. Girlfriends Christmas party?”

Was she crazy? Not if my life depended on it. I didn't care how nice Tyler was. Or what sort of job Sister Mary Agnes might offer me. Never in a million years was I seeing this spawn from hell again.

“Probably not. I think I'm going to be out of town on a business trip.”

Was it my imagination, or did I see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes?

“Who cares?” she said, with an exaggerated shrug. “I didn't want to go anyway. I bet it's just a bunch of dorks standing around drinking punch.”

And then, out of nowhere, she started gasping for air.

“Angel, what's wrong?”

She shook her head, unable to speak, and groped around in her purse. Finally she found what she was looking for. An inhaler. She clamped her lips around it and began pumping intently.

After a few terrifying seconds, she began breathing normally again. “Quit worrying,” she said, seeing the fear in my eyes. “It's nothing. Just asthma. I've had it since I was a little kid.” She tossed the inhaler back her purse. “Well, see ya round.”

Then she started up the steps to her apartment, her bony shoulders stiff with pride.

As I watched her pathetic leopard skin purse flap against her hip, I was suddenly overcome with guilt. This poor kid was not only motherless, she had a debilitating illness. What sort of cold-hearted bitch was I to bail out on her after just one hellish date?

“Wait a minute,” I called out.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“That business trip. I think I maybe be able to get out of it.”

“Don't do me any favors. You just feel sorry for me because I've got asthma.”

“That's not true,” I lied. “I really think I can make it.”

She shot me a skeptical look.

“Honest.” By now I was begging. “I really want to go.”

“Well, okay,” she said, clomping back down the steps to my side. “And in case you decide to bring me a gift, here's what I want.” She thrust an ad torn from a newspaper into my hand.

The kid never gave up, did she?

Then she tore up the steps to her apartment and began banging on the door with the relentless drive of a jackhammer.

“Pop!” she shrieked. “Open up!”

Kevin Cavanaugh opened the door, his face crumpling at the sight of her.

“Back so soon?” he called out to me over the roar of the freeway.

I pretended I didn't hear him and, with a merry wave, dashed off to the sanctuary of my Corolla.

I
woke up the next morning, still recuperating from my encounter with Angel Cavanaugh (or, as I was now calling her,
Rosemary's Other Baby
).

I'd staggered home from our date, damp and shivering, and spent the next hour or so soaking in the tub, Prozac gazing down at me from her perch on the toilet tank.

I told you you should've stayed home and scratched my back.

I'd whiled away the rest of the day mindlessly watching sitcom reruns, getting up only to run out for some Chinese take-out. Okay, so I ran out for some Ben & Jerry's, too—to reward myself for surviving a whole hour and forty-six and a half minutes (but who's counting?) with Angel.

Now, after a restless night dreaming I was being chased down the Santa Monica Pier by a giant nacho, I lay in bed, gazing up at the ceiling. I thought about bailing out on L.A. Girlfriends and leaving Angel to another mentor, preferably one who'd spent some time as a prison warden.

But then I remembered how vulnerable she'd looked gasping at her inhaler, and I knew I had to give her another chance. Somehow, I vowed, prying myself out of bed, I had to make our relationship work.

I'd just sloshed some Hearty Halibut Guts into a bowl for Prozac and was standing at the kitchen counter, breakfasting on a cold egg roll, when the phone rang.

Seymour Fiedler came on the line, sounding light years more cheerful than the last time we'd spoken.

“Good news, Jaine. I just talked with my lawyer, and I may be off the hook for Garth Janken's death.”

“That's great, Seymour.”

“Now the cops think it was premeditated murder. In fact, they just brought somebody in for questioning. A guy named Willard Cox. Apparently they found some incriminating evidence linking him to Garth's death.”

“What evidence?”

“I have no idea. All I know is they're questioning him.”

“Do you want me to continue my investigation?”

“You may as well. Just in case they change their minds.”

I hung up with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Some of it was probably indigestion from that egg roll. But mainly, I was concerned about Willard. Something in my gut told me he was innocent.

I know he hated Garth, but there's a big difference between wishing somebody were no longer around to bother you, and actually trying to kill him. Besides, if Willard were really the killer, would he have been so openly vitriolic about Garth?

No, my gut was telling me that the cops had brought in the wrong suspect for questioning.

But what, I wondered, was the incriminating evidence they'd found?

I decided to pay a little visit to Ethel Cox and find out.

 

I made my way past the frolicking reindeer on the Coxes's front lawn and rang the bell.

Ethel came to the door, still in her nightgown. A far cry from the happy hausfrau I'd met the other day, her gray curls had lost their bounce and her once rosy cheeks were drained of color.

“Ethel,” I asked, in what had to be one of the Top Ten World's Most Rhetorical Questions, “are you okay?”

“Willard's gone!” she cried, her eyes wide with fear. “The police took him away for questioning!”

“Try not to worry, Ethel. They'll probably release him in a few hours. Let me come in and make you some tea.”

She nodded numbly and allowed me to lead her down the hallway to her kitchen.

Minutes later, we were seated across from each other with steaming cups of tea, laced with lemon and plenty of sugar. The warmth from the tea seemed to calm her a bit.

“Oh, Ms. Austen,” she said, taking a grateful sip. “It's just awful. The police found a
Fiedler on the Roof
cap in Willard's toolbox out in the garage. They think he was the one who loosened those shingles on Garth's roof.”

So that was the evidence Seymour had been talking about.

“I don't know how it could've gotten there,” she said, bewildered.

Clearly this woman didn't have a suspicious bone in her body.

“Somebody may have put it there, Ethel. To frame Willard for Garth's murder.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Did any of the neighbors have access to the garage?”

“Actually, they all did. There's a little door on the side of the garage we never lock. In case the gardener wants to get in.

“To think,” she said, the color rushing back to her cheeks, “that some awful person would try to blame Garth's death on Willard. Who would do such a terrible thing?”

The first person who sprang to my mind was my lead suspect, Libby Brecker. Hadn't she said she'd been watching the roofers work? What if she'd seen one of them leave his cap behind? How easy to snatch it up, disguise herself as a roofer, and clamber up the roof to set Garth's deathtrap. And how easy to slip over when the Coxes were away and plant the cap in Willard's toolbox.

My musings were interrupted by the shrill ring of a phone.

“Oh, dear!” Ethel said, jumping up. “Maybe that's Willard!”

She hurried out of the room, her granny gown billowing behind her.

I sat there, stirring my tea, wondering whether Libby Brecker was indeed Garth's killer and/or whether Ethel had any brownies left over from the other day.

I know. I'm impossible, thinking about food at a time like this. I bet Sherlock Holmes never sat around wondering if Dr. Watson had any brownies in his kitchen.

I was in the midst of giving myself a stern lecture when Ethel came bursting through the door.

“Willard's in jail!” she cried.

“They arrested him?”

She nodded miserably. “He got into a fight with one of the police officers and threatened to ‘punch his lights out.' Now they're holding him without bail.”

She sank into a kitchen chair, dazed.

“Oh, Willard,” she moaned, “what have you done now?”

Then she turn to me and said: “Do you know how to write a check, Jaine?”

I nodded, confused. Where the heck had that come from?

“Willard told me to pay the gas bill.”

“And?”

“And I don't know how to write a check. Can you believe that? I'm seventy-two years old, and I don't know how to write a check.”

She put her head on the table and burst out sobbing.

“Oh, God. What am I going to do without him?”

I jumped up and wrapped my arms around her.

“Don't worry, Ethel. They can't keep him there for long if he's innocent.”

She looked up at me, her eyes wild with panic.

And in that moment I knew that, even worse than the fear of coping by herself, Ethel was afraid her husband might have really killed Garth Janken.

 

After teaching Ethel the fine art of check writing, I left her with a hug and a promise to keep in touch, and headed out into the bright sunshine, convinced that somebody had planted that roofer's cap in Willard's toolbox. I simply couldn't believe he'd be foolish enough to leave it there himself.

My money, as you know, was on Libby Brecker. But I had no proof she was the killer. I wasn't even certain that the flocking I saw on her rug came from Garth's roof, or that it was indeed flocking.

I had no idea where to turn next. My interviews with the residents of Hysteria Lane had been a bust, yielding no leads whatsoever. No juicy gossip about Decorating Wars or poisoned roses. Just some tepid complaints about Garth hosting loud parties, turning away trick or treaters at Halloween, and being—in the words of eighty-six-year-old Mrs. Garrison—“an old grouchpuss.”

It was one of those moments when a lesser detective would have given up hope and drowned her frustrations in Ben & Jerry's. But not me. I wasn't about to waste valuable detecting time driving around in search of ice cream. No, sir. I drowned my frustrations in an Almond Joy I found buried at the bottom of my purse.

Actually, the rush of sugar was just what I needed. Standing there, inhaling my candy bar, I remembered that there was someone I still hadn't questioned—Prudence Bascomb, president of the local homeowners association. The lady Willard had accused of taking bribes from Garth.

Old Mrs. Garrison had pointed out her house to me, but so far I hadn't been able to catch her at home.

Licking chocolate from my fingers, I crossed over to Prudence's impressive white colonial.

Interesting, I noted, that her only Christmas decoration was a simple wreath on the door. Perhaps as judge of the decorating contest, she'd decided to put herself above the fray.

I rang her bell, but there was no answer. I was just turning back down the path when I saw the mailman coming up the street.

“Hey, there!” he waved, the sun glinting off the hair on his well-muscled forearms. I still couldn't get over the difference between this guy and my mail carrier, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Frankenstein's aide-de-camp, Igor.

I guess everything gets more attractive when you live north of Wilshire.

“How's your investigation coming along?”

“Slowly,” I sighed. “This is where Prudence Bascomb lives, right?”

“Yep,” he said, coming up the path with her mail. “But she's never home during the day. She's an attorney.” He deposited the letters in her slot with brisk efficiency. “Has her own law office. In Century City, I think.”

“Thanks. I'll try reaching her there.”

“No problem,” he said, hustling off on his rounds.

I whipped out my cell phone and got the phone number for Prudence Bascomb, Esquire, then called her office to set up an appointment.

“Her first available slot is two weeks from Monday,” her secretary informed me curtly.

The Law Biz was clearly booming for Prudence.

“I was hoping for something a bit sooner. Like today.”

“Are you kidding?” she said, as shocked as if I'd just asked her for a loan. “That's out of the question.”

“Just tell Ms. Bascomb I want to talk to her about Garth Janken's death.”

“Hold on,” she commanded. For the next few seconds I was treated to the soothing strains of classical music, and then Ms. Congeniality came back on the line.

“Can you be here in twenty minutes?”

I could, and I was.