Murder Under Cover (14 page)

I checked my tires before I got into my car. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d slashed my tires, even though I was never able to prove it was her dirty work. As I drove away, it hit me. Now I remembered who the vicious Galina reminded me of. Minka LaBoeuf.

 

“That was my mom,” I announced to Robin later that afternoon after hanging up the kitchen telephone. “She insists that I take you up to stay at her place for a few days.”

Robin wandered over and sat on a barstool. The look she flashed me was skeptical, to say the least. “I’m supposed to believe your mom came up with that idea all by herself?”

“Why not? You know she loves you.” I smiled brightly as I continued chopping garlic for a steak marinade recipe I’d stolen from my dad. “Okay, fine. I might’ve suggested that you needed a quiet place to rest and recuperate. Preferably outside of the city. After that, it was all her idea.”

Robin groaned. “I don’t want to burden your poor mom with my problems.”

“My
poor mom
? You’re kidding, right? She thrives on this kind of stuff. She did such a great job nursing Gabriel back to health that he still shows up for lunch and dinner almost every day.”

“She must love that.”

“You know it.” Scooping up the garlic bits, I tossed them with grated ginger into a heavy-duty plastic bag that held three rib eyes. After pouring healthy doses of olive oil and organic tamari into the bag, I zipped it closed, mushed everything around, and placed it in the fridge to do its thing.

Robin closed her eyes and breathed in the pungent fragrances. “That smells so good.”

“You can’t go wrong with garlic and ginger.”

“You’ve been cooking a lot. You don’t have to, you know. We could do takeout.”

“It’s nice to have people to cook for.” I met her gaze. “And Mom feels the same way. She’d love to have you stay there. It’s just her and Dad in that huge house.”

“I’m not really good company right now, Brooklyn. In this mood I could even depress your mom.”

I shook my head. “Impossible. You know she’s itching to slather her latest concoctions all over your face. Probably whipping them up right now.”

She winced and lifted one hand to her face. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Can’t blame you for that.” I found the bag of lettuce in the fridge and emptied it into the salad bowl, then grabbed a tomato from the vegetable basket. “She said she’s been practicing enchantment spells and wants to try them out on you.”

Robin’s good eye widened. “Oh, God.”

“You know she chanted away my sister Savannah’s acne. Just think what she can do for your lovely bruises.”

“I do long to have skin as clear as your sister’s.”

I chuckled as I chopped the tomato. “Dad says she did a rain dance the other day.”

“Did it rain?”

“Of course.” I sifted through the vegetable bin and pulled out half a cucumber. Before chopping it, I pulled three glasses from the cupboard. “I thought we’d have sparkling water tonight instead of wine. Okay?”

“Good idea,” she said. “I already have a headache, so alcohol would only make it worse.” Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on the bar’s smooth wood surface. “I really hate this. I hate being dependent on you. Or your mom, or Derek, or anybody.”

“I know, but you need to get over that.” I walked around the bar and sat on the stool next to her. “Look, you were just brutally attacked by some nut job with a stellar right hook. The fact is, you may still be in danger.”

“I doubt it.” Her lips tightened. “What the hell did I do to piss off that bitch?”

“You didn’t do anything.” I grabbed hold of her hand. “She’s just nuts. But look, they could release her from jail at any time, and even if they don’t, she might have cohorts watching the place. Remember the black Town Car?”

“I’d forgotten about it.” She grimaced. “Thanks for replanting that scary seed.”

“I’m sorry. But that’s why it can’t hurt to leave the city for a few days. At least while you’re in Dharma, you can get out of the house, take walks, enjoy nature. If you stay here, there’s no way I’ll let you leave the confines of these four walls.”

Her shoulders slumped as she accepted the reality of her situation. “Fine, I’ll go to Dharma. But I’ll drive myself.”

“Not a good idea.”

“I don’t want to be there without my car.”

“I know, and I have the perfect solution.”

“Why am I not surprised that you’ve already got this whole thing planned out?”

“Because I’m a genius. We all recognize that, right?”

She laughed. “Okay, genius. What’s the plan?”

“I drive your car and Derek will follow us there.”

“He won’t want to do that. He’d rather drive up there with you.”

“He’s already offered to follow us. I asked him this morning.” I patted her hand and stood. “Besides, it’s only an hour’s drive. We can survive without breathing each other’s air for sixty minutes.”

She sat back and considered the plan. “Okay, I guess it’s a good idea. Except for the part where you drive my car.” Robin owned a vintage Porsche Speedster. She never allowed anyone but herself to drive it.

I rubbed my hands together. “See, that’s the best part of the plan.”

“No way.”

“No offense, but you’re a little too jumpy to drive. And there’s the small detail of your eye being swollen shut. That’s going to make it hard to focus on the road.”

She harrumphed and flounced for a minute, then gave me a grudging nod. “Fine.”

“Great.” I moved back into the kitchen to start on the cucumber. “It’s settled.”

The doorbell rang and Robin flinched. “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.” I headed for the front. “Probably Vinnie or Suzie.”

She followed me into the workshop. “Look through the peephole first.”

“I will.”

She moved to my desk and grabbed the phone. “I’m ready to dial nine-one-one.”

“Stop worrying. We would’ve heard the elevator if it was someone from outside the building.” I stared through the peephole but didn’t see anyone. That was weird. Maybe they took off.

“Who’s there?” she whispered.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” I swung the door open.

Robin let out a tiny shriek and brandished the phone receiver above her head.

Six-year-old Tyler blinked in surprise. “Miss Brooklyn, I brought you my book.”

“Hi, Tyler. Please come in.” With a smile, I waved him inside. “Do you remember my friend Robin?”

“Hello,” he said, and nodded solemnly. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Robin’s hand went to her cheek as she remembered her swollen face. “Um, yes, I did.”

He continued to stare at her. “Are you playing a telephone game?”

“A telephone—Oh.” She waved the receiver, then placed it in its cradle. “Yes. But we’re finished playing.”

“Tyler, does your mother know you’re here?” I asked.

He nodded again. “She’ll be here in a minute, but I didn’t want to wait.” He thrust the book at me. “See? Because the pages are falling out now.”

There was another knock at the door. Robin’s shoulders jerked.

“Easy,” I whispered.

“You know what?” Robin said, shaking her head. “I’ll be in the other room.”

“Do you want me to fix another ice pack for you?”

“I can do it.”

I let her go, then opened the door for Tyler’s mom. After a brief tour of my workshop, Lisa was satisfied that I knew what I was doing when it came to books.

“Can you fix it right now?” Tyler asked.

“It’s going to take me a few days, because I want to do the best job possible for you. Can you wait until Saturday to get it back?”

He looked up at his mother with a serious expression on his face. “What day is today?”

“Today is Wednesday,” she told him.

He stared at his hand and counted the days off on his fingers. “Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.” He gazed at me. “That’s four days.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“How much do I have to pay you?” Tyler asked.

I smiled at Lisa, then looked at Tyler. I picked up the book and weighed it in my hands, thought for a moment. Then I knelt down to talk on his level. “I’ll have to take the book apart here, glue new endpapers here, then sew these pages together. See?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I’m going to have to charge you . . . five dollars.”

He nodded once, firmly. “You have a deal.”

We shook hands, and Lisa smiled proudly. Leaning close, she confided, “I told him it might cost one hundred dollars, so now he thinks he’s a smart negotiator.”

With a quick grin for Tyler, I said, “I was thinking of charging you fifty dollars.”

He shook his head. “It’s too late to change your price. We shook hands and everything.”

 

Giving Lisa and Tyler the quick tour of my workshop had made me anxious to get back to work on the Kama Sutra. But that work would have to wait until Robin was out of the city and safely delivered into my mother’s care.

So first thing the next morning, I called Inspector Lee to make sure it was acceptable for Robin to go to Sonoma. She gave her approval, of course, since it was pretty obvious from Galina’s attack that Robin had become a target. I gave Lee my mother’s phone number, just in case.

After I packed Robin’s three sweat suits, various accessories, and meager supply of toiletries, the three of us hit the highway.

Driving Robin’s vintage Porsche Speedster was a total blast for me, though not so much for Robin. I could actually hear her teeth grinding as I revved the engine on the straightaway out on Highway 37. I might’ve ground the gears once or twice, but it wasn’t my fault. The car was old. Yes, it was a classic, but let’s face it: The old thing wasn’t as fluid as it once might’ve been. But Robin acted as if I’d taken an ax to the engine just by shifting gears. I knew she was a little sensitive, so I didn’t take her swearing and cringing personally.

At one point along the highway, Derek flew by in his Bentley Continental GT. He passed on Robin’s side and she gazed over at him. When I glanced over, I saw Derek laughing uproariously. Was Robin making a face? Was I being mocked? I ignored them both. This was the sort of thing a true friend like myself had to endure once in a while.

An hour later we parked in my parents’ driveway, and I couldn’t stop smiling as Mom and Dad came out to greet us.

Mom wore a long-sleeved, full-length rainbow tie-dyed dress that floated and swung around her boots as she jogged down the stairs of the front porch. She’d dyed and sewn the dress herself from thick cotton knit that accentuated her tall, still-youthful figure.

Dad was dressed in the familiar faded Levi’s he’d always worn whenever he worked with the grapes in the fields. Today he wore another Mom original, a sage-colored tie-dyed henley shirt that looked almost new.

They were still in love, still adorable, and if you squinted just a little, you could picture them as two young Grateful Dead fans who first met at a Dead concert in Ventura County almost forty years ago.

After many hugs and outraged cries over Robin’s injuries, Mom touched Robin’s forehead, her third eye, where higher consciousness was centered, and chanted quietly, “
Om shanti . . . shanti . . . shanti
.”

My mother used this chant whenever anyone around her was distressed.
Shanti
is the Sanskrit word for “peace.” Repeating the word three times brought peace and protection from the three disturbances. The first of these disturbances was said to come from God, things like floods and earthquakes and hurricanes. The next came from the world around us, such as noisy neighbors, barking dogs, telephones ringing incessantly. The third came from within and was the one disturbance we could actually control. This included the negative emotions we tended to bring upon ourselves, such as jealousy, fear, anger, and sorrow.

All the pent-up tension seemed to melt from Robin’s shoulders and she smiled. “Thanks, Becky. I’m so glad I’m here.”

“Me, too, sweetie,” Mom said. She wrapped her arm about Robin, Dad grabbed her small suitcase, and Derek and I followed them into the sprawling ranch house in which I’d grown up.

“I’ve made sandwiches and potato salad for lunch,” Mom said, then turned to Derek. “You’ll stay for the day, won’t you?”

Clearly, Derek was the authority as far as Mom was concerned. She was probably right to consult him instead of me. I would’ve been happy spending a night or two, but Derek had an actual office to run back in the city.

Dad poured everyone a glass of the new sparkling wine he’d been experimenting with at the winery. Robin took one sip, then set her glass down. I could tell she was still in pain and was glad to see Mom come over and rub Robin’s shoulders. She relaxed instantly.

We ate lunch under a huge oak tree on my parents’ terraced patio overlooking the vineyards Dharma was famous for. Off to the left of the house and rambling up the hill was the apple orchard Mom had started the first year we moved into the house. In honor of Robin’s arrival, Mom had made her fabulous Crazy Delicious Apple Crisp for dessert.

Many Thanksgiving moons ago, when, as usual, I’d insisted on pumpkin pie after the huge meal, Mom also brought out her fledgling attempt at apple crisp. Not impressed with the presentation at first—it wasn’t pumpkin pie, after all, and I was so devoted to pumpkin pie that my family and friends had taken to calling me Punkin—I forced myself to take one small taste. I didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings, after all. Then I took another bite. Then another. In the end, I declared it my new most favorite dessert ever. Especially the way Mom made it, with spicy, lightly sweetened apples and the crunchiest, most crumbly, crispy layers of yumminess on top. Her secret ingredient was a luscious caramel sauce she added at the end. And ice cream on the side of the dish didn’t hurt, either.