Not A Girl Detective (23 page)

I’m sorry for the people I hurt. I’m sorry for who

I’ve become.

Jake

That was it. Short and not sweet. “This isn’t right,

Peter.”

“I know.”

“No, this note isn’t right. Jake isn’t sorry about who he is. He doesn’t have any regrets. He wanted to tell me something. That’s why I’m here.”

“This guy is wanted for questioning. What the hell

are you doing running over here when he calls?”

“It was important. He had something to say to me.”

“I think he said it.”

“Jake loved Edgar. I know he didn’t kill him. And I

know he didn’t try to kill himself.”

“How do you know?”

“He isn’t the type. Plus, he of all people had every-

thing to live for.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that somebody faked this.” But who?

Andrew? Mitchell?

“That’s a serious accusation you’re making.”

“I realize that.”

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The paramedics arrived, put Jake on a gurney, and

slipped an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Then

they hooked him up to an IV.

“Is he going to make it?” I asked.

“Not if you don’t get out of our way.”

I squeezed Jake’s hand as they wheeled him out.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Just get better. I’ll be by the hospital later.”

“That remains to be seen,” Gambino said with an un-

pleasant undertone to his voice.

He walked into the kitchen and rummaged around in

the drawers until he found a box of Ziploc bags. He put the gun in one baggie and the note in another.

“What kind of gun is it?”

“Looks like a twenty-two.” The same as the gun that

killed Edgar. “Since when do you care about guns?”

“Is this your case?”

“For now. I’ll have a better idea of what we’re deal-

ing with soon. And where you will or won’t be going.”

“News flash. You’re not my father. I’ll go where I

want to go.”

“Not if you don’t want to get arrested for obstruction of justice you won’t.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Watch me.”

“You can forget all about your guava and cheese pie,”

I said.

“I’ll call you. I’ve got work to do here. The crime

scene guys are on their way.”

“Are you dismissing me?”

He walked me back out to the living room and

pushed me out the door. “Don’t turn this into something personal. This is business. I’ve got to take care of things N O T

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here, then go to the hospital. Just pray he wakes up and can tell us what the fuck’s going on.”

“I don’t pray. Not anymore.”

“I don’t have time for this, Cece.”

“Neither do I.” I had to find Andrew.

2 4

What are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”

asked Bridget as she unlocked the front door to her

shop. “And in sweatpants?”

I think it was safe to say she usually slept through

this part of the day. “I was in the neighborhood and figured I’d say hello.”

“Well, come on in, then,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Though I’m not exactly ready to face my public.”

“I’m not your public.”

Helmut, nobody’s fool, smelled cinnamon rolls and

leapt for the white paper bag I was carrying.

“Helmut, down! Stop that nonsense right now!”

Bridget turned to me. “His vet has him on a low-carb

diet.”

“We’ll eat his, then.” I opened the bag and pulled out the rolls and two lattes. “So where’s Andrew?” I asked, handing her the one with two sugars. “I brought one for him, too.”

“He’s late.”

She sat down at Andrew’s desk, took a sip of her

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latte, and made a face. She opened the top drawer,

grabbed two sugar packets, ripped them open, poured

the contents in, and took another sip. “Now this is what I call coffee.”

“How can you drink it like that?”

“It’s delicious.” I watched her, waiting for the right moment. But there wasn’t going to be a right moment.

“I’ve got to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it.”

She slammed down her cup. Coffee went every-

where. “I do not want to hear another word about An-

drew! That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Leave it alone, will you?”

“I can’t.”

“You
won’t
.”

“Andrew called me last night.”

“What?”

“You know Edgar’s boyfriend, Jake Waite? The one

who’s been missing?”

She pushed the top drawer closed. It made an un-

earthly sound, like a death rattle. “I keep telling Andrew to oil this drawer,” she said.

“Bridget. Listen to me. Jake’s been hiding at An-

drew’s. They’re old friends.”

“I’m not listening.”

“They thought I could help them figure out who

killed Edgar, and clear Jake’s name.”

“I said I’m not listening.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Well, what you’re saying is insane.”

She stood up, then sat back down.

“I realize it sounds that way. Jake remembered some-

thing in the middle of the night, something he thought I 208

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should hear about right away. So I headed over to An-

drew’s. It was a disaster. I saw Andrew, at least I think it was Andrew, bolt out of there without a word to me, and when we went inside—”

“We?”

“Gambino and me. When we went inside, we found

Jake. He’d been shot. They took him to the hospital. I don’t even know if he made it.”

I stopped.

“You think Andrew had something to do with it,

don’t you?”

“I need to talk to him,” I said gently.

“Well, you can forget about that.” She stood up

again. “He’s not coming.”

“How do you know?”

“He phoned just before you got here. He said he’d

been called away on a family emergency. He didn’t

know when he’d be back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew it sounded like a lie.” She tossed what was

left of her coffee into the trash. “The police must be looking for him, too.”

“They will be.”

“Jesus,” she said. “I really thought he was special.”

“We don’t know anything yet. It may all be perfectly

innocent.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No.”

She turned to look at the racks of beautiful clothes

filling the hallway. Sheer net blouses. Spangled

sweaters. Cocktail dresses. Dinner suits. Princess

coats. “Fuck.”

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“Do you need my help with all this, Bridget?”

She scratched her short curly hair. “I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She gave me a sorry attempt at a smile.

“It’s funny. You peel off the top layer of skin and sometimes you find a stranger underneath.”

“I’ll call you later,” I said, hugging her good-bye.

She didn’t hug me back.

I got home around eight-thirty in the morning, realizing only then that I’d forgotten to check Andrew’s

drawer for the key. Was it still there? Unlikely.

It’d been a long night. The instant the door closed behind me, I kicked off my boots, put Edgar’s photograph back in my drawer next to the Lanvin cape, and yanked off my sweats. I needed a shower. It took exactly three and a half minutes for the hot water to warm up, during which time I think I sat on my bed staring vacantly into space, though I can’t be sure. Following the monumen-tal task of washing my hair, I collapsed at the kitchen table, then got up briefly to put on a pot of coffee. The phone machine was blinking. There were two messages. The first was from Lael.

BEEP.
You’re up and at ’em awfully early this morning. Good for you! I guess we haven’t talked all weekend. Asher’s a fox, I’ll give him that, but there’s no there
there, if you know what I mean. That’s all I’m going to
say on the subject. He has a good orange juicer, the
kind that costs a hundred and thirty dollars at Williams-Sonoma. And there’s a Jackson Pollock painting over
his bed. But that’s absolutely all I’m going to say on the
subject. There’s a huge stack of that particular issue of
People
in the bathroom, by the way.

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There would be.

The second message was from Gambino.

BEEP.
I hope you got some sleep. I’ve been with the
guys in the lab. You were right. Most suicide notes don’t
have two different sets of fingerprints on them.

Because nobody had tried to commit suicide. Some-

body had tried to commit murder.

I called him back immediately, but he was unavail-

able. I spent the next half an hour trying to get an actual human being on the phone, anyone who could tell me

about Jake’s condition. But the Cedars-Sinai automated phone system outmaneuvered me at every turn. I don’t

know why I expected otherwise. Clearly, I was going to have to do this in person.

I hated hospitals. In my experience people go to hos-

pitals and they don’t get better. They die. My father, for instance. One minute he’s walking around, mean as all get-out, the baddest cop in town. The next minute he’s dying in a hospital bed, with silent nurses padding

about silently.

I took a last sip of coffee. That was so long ago.

I got dressed quickly, grabbed my car keys off the

table, and headed out the door. Halfway down the path, I swung back around. I’d forgotten to turn off the

lights. My father used to be a real stickler about things like that.

JAKE WAS ALIVE, but barely. They’d removed two bullets from his brain, but there was still too much swelling to know exactly what kind of damage had been sustained.

He was in recovery. He’d been in surgery for almost

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four hours. He’d be on a respirator for at least a few more days.

I wanted to see him. He was an artist, a sculptor. I

didn’t even know what kind of work he made. I wanted

to hear about it. I wanted to talk to him, to tell him not to give up. But there are no visitors permitted in the intensive care unit except immediate family, and I just didn’t have it in me to pretend to be Jake’s sister or aunt or cousin. I wasn’t even sure I was his friend.

Not that the armed guards would’ve fallen for a scam

like that anyway. I smiled at them, a pair of big guys in uniform, dispatched by Gambino, no doubt, in case

somebody should happen to show up wanting to finish

what he—or she—had started back at Andrew’s.

One of the two smiled back.

“What’s your name, Officer?”

“Jimenez, ma’am.”

“Officer Jimenez, let me ask you something.”

“All right.” He was a baby, fresh out of the acad-

emy, I’d bet. This wasn’t exactly the most challenging assignment.

“Has Mr. Waite had any visitors this morning?”

“No visitors, ma’am.” He was trying to keep a

straight face.

“Thank you.”

“You’re a visitor,” said the other one.

I ignored him. “Keep up the good work, Officer

Jimenez.”

Somebody didn’t like that. “Lady, this isn’t a play-

ground.” He patted his holster menacingly.

“That isn’t necessary, Officer. Really.”

Jimenez shrugged his shoulders.

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I went and sat down on a bench across from the

nurses’ station.

“Can I help you, dear?” asked an older woman. She

looked like she’d been helping people her whole life.

“No, not really. But thank you.”

She smiled. “I’m Hattie, if I can do anything for you.”

So I got to thinking, sitting there on that bench. And the thing was, Jimenez and the other guy, they didn’t know who they were looking for. But I did. I knew the whole motley crew. They wouldn’t let me see Jake.

Fine. But there was no law against hanging around,

maybe seeing who the cat dragged in. Or who dragged

in the cat. Or whatever. Hattie didn’t seem to mind.

I glanced at my watch. It was only nine o’clock. It

definitely wouldn’t kill me to stick around for a while.

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Isat there for almost two hours. Back and forth

went the nurses with their tubes and vials and jars. In and out went the orderlies with their stacks of white linen. Administrators patrolled the hallways with their clipboards and false smiles. Entire families wandered about like zombies. Jimenez closed his eyes a couple of times. His burly colleague fiddled with a silver console that looked like a PalmPilot but was actually a Game

Boy, and who could blame him? Police work can be

profoundly uneventful.

I gave up. Jake’s would-be murderer was probably

not dumb enough to make a reappearance this early in

the game anyhow. If he knew what he was doing, he’d

lie low for a while. And maybe if he were really lucky, Jake would die anyway.

As I was leaving, I asked Hattie if I could call her

later for an update. She said yes. Then I pushed open the swinging door and crashed directly into Mitchell

Honey. He was carrying white roses.

“Ms. Caruso. Why am I not surprised?”

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“White roses are for funerals, Mitchell.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m here for Jake, of course. Have you seen him?

How is he?”

“Still among the living. How’d you find out what

happened?”

“It’s all over the news.”