Not A Girl Detective (3 page)

through some clothes that had just arrived.

Bridget’s dachshund, Helmut, led the way. The dog

seemed upset.

“What’s wrong, boy?” I asked, bending down to pat

his head.

“Hi, Cece!” Bridget’s Afro poked up out of a clingy

mini-cocoon of hot-pink chiffon pleats.

Helmut looked up at me beseechingly.

“Isn’t this so
Valley of the Dolls
? I never thought a baby-doll halter dress would work on me. I need hot-pink tights to match and I’m set!”

“For what?”

“That’s not the point, as you very well know,” she

scolded. “Helmut, stop that!” Helmut was trying to bite the wire used to crimp the lettuce-edge hem of the

dress. “It’s by Travilla, the king of pleats!”

“What does Helmut care?”

“That dog knows more about vintage fashion than

most of my clients.”

“And he’s trying to tell you something.”

“Oh, please. Travilla was brilliant. Do you know

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what he said? He said when he died he didn’t want to be cremated, he wanted to be pleated.”

“Not to change the subject, but you’ve got to see the car we’re taking this weekend.”

“What’s wrong with the Camry?”

“It’s unwell.”

She slipped into a pair of heels and scooped up Hel-

mut, who started licking the ceramic brooch pinned to her dress’s peculiarly Elizabethan collar.

“No, baby,” she said firmly. “We don’t want you to

get lead poisoning.”

“You look amazing,” the intern murmured as we

swept by him on our way out.

“Thank you,” Bridget said. Her tone was lofty, but

she looked like the cat who’d eaten the canary.

“Anything you need to tell me?” I asked once we

were outside.

She gave me a wicked grin, the whites of her eyes

gleaming against her ebony skin. “Do you want details?”

“You and the intern?”

“His name is Andrew. And he’s the only straight

man I’ve ever met who knows how to pronounce
m-a-i-l-l-o-t
.”

“My-oh.”

“You’re a woman.”

Bridget walked around the convertible slowly, study-

ing every inch of it with a jaundiced eye. Then she

paused significantly.

“Does it have power windows?”

“Why do I bother with you?” I said, climbing back in.

“The same reason I bother with you,” she said. “True

friends are hard to come by.”

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“You’d sell me out for a power window.”

“Lighten up, honey. What time Friday?”

“Bright and early,” I said, waving good-bye.

“Is there enough room for all our clothes?” she

shouted after me.

“I am not renting a U-Haul!” Famous last words.

It was a quarter past ten when I got home, home be-

ing a 1932 Spanish bungalow in West Hollywood I’d

bought with the proceeds from my divorce settlement

almost ten years ago. The house, and a Makita power

drill. Also Mimi the cat, whom I’d envisioned as a sort of substitute father for my daughter. Mimi was still

around. Likewise the drill. The real surprise was that the house hadn’t fallen down.

It was a wonderful house, don’t get me wrong, but it

required near-constant maintenance. A fearless electrician. A plumber who didn’t consider emergency calls

at three in the morning an imposition. Fungicide for

the mushrooms that grew every once in a while out of

the cracks in the vintage turquoise tile shower. But it was mine, all twenty-two hundred square feet of it—a

good percentage of which were supposedly sinking

into the foundation, but I didn’t trust that guy. I’d gotten his name from a flyer tucked under my welcome

mat. Structural engineers should not have to advertise door-to-door.

The mail had been delivered early. I poured myself a

cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Bills, bills, junk mail, and more bills. Despite my many com-muniqués, the electric company persisted in addressing me as “Fleece Caruso.” I plucked a thick manila envelope from the stack. At least my seeds had arrived. I N O T

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spilled the brightly colored packages onto the table.

This year I’d selected the giant edible sunflowers

known as Sunzilla, Baby Ball Dutch beets, Chelsea

Prize F-1 cucumbers, tricolor cherry tomatoes, a cus-

tom mixture of radishes in rainbow shades of red,

white, purple, and pink, some haricots verts, and slow-bolt cilantro. I was cutting back after being overly am-bitious last year. No eggplant.

I let Mimi and my teacup poodle Buster play with the

padded envelope while I opened a letter from Clarissa Olsen, the president of the Nancy Drew Society of

Chums.

Clarissa Olsen was a stalker. She’d found me after

reading an announcement in Publishers Lunch about

my upcoming book on Carolyn Keene. You could call

her impassioned, I suppose. A fervent believer in the goddess that is Nancy Drew. Other things, too, like

plain, old-fashioned correspondence. E-mail was crass and beneath her dignity, but postings on the Nancy Drew Society of Chums Listserv were acceptable. Phone calls were acceptable, too, but only if they dragged me away from
All My Children.
And it was always urgent.

Initially I’d been put off by Clarissa’s ferocity. But after a while I’d actually taken a liking to her, despite her proud claim that her daughter had graduated from

high school never having eaten a store-bought cookie.

I’d had my daughter when I was barely out of high

school myself, and had felt less impassioned than im-

prisoned, but that was all about my ex, not Annie, who’d always seemed perfectly happy with Chips Ahoy.

Anyway, Clarissa wanted to remind me of two last-

minute things.

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Number one, my speech should run forty-five min-

utes and not a millisecond longer because the scav-

enger hunt would follow immediately thereafter.

I stopped right there. Number one alarmed me. It

would seem I’d miscalculated. Again.

For weeks I’d been logging onto the Chums’ Web

site and clicking on the postage stamp–size dust jackets of the “Blue Nancys,” the original books published in the thirties. There, in my uninsulated garage office, by the virtual light of my computer screen, I’d ponder the details of Nancy’s face. Her bright eyes. Her pert nose.

Her blond bob. I’ve been told I have nice eyes, but my nose is less pert than handsome, and my brown

hair—well, on a good day it lacks discipline, and on a bad day it looks like Don King’s. Nancy Drew and me:

no resemblance whatsoever. So why, then, every time

I’d look at her, did I feel so unnerved, like when you catch sight of yourself unexpectedly in a mirror? How, I’d wonder, can
she
be
me
? I suppose a shrink would say I suffer from a pathological overidentification with my subject. It wouldn’t be the first time. It’s a biographer thing.

To make a long story short, I’d dumped my assigned

topic, “The Changing Demographics of River

Heights,” and penned an elegy to Grace Horton, the

otherwise unknown New York model who’d posed for

those covers. I was captivated—not least with the irony of Grace Horton, a working girl, incarnating Nancy

Drew, the privileged amateur. And they were going to

hate it. Nobody who likes a scavenger hunt could possibly like a Marxist feminist critique.

Well, I wasn’t there to wow them. I was there to make N O T

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a contribution to human knowledge. And to the sleuth-

themed gift exchange. That was reminder number two.

Bring something simple and preferably homemade.

Maybe I could crochet a magnifying glass.

I stuck Clarissa’s letter inside a Lillian Vernon catalog and went into the living room. Mimi and Buster had strewn padded envelope stuffing all over the place. Now they were playing with the mohair sweater I’d left on the couch, the object of the game being to shed as many hairs as possible onto it. I pulled it out from under them, checked my watch, grabbed my purse, and headed out

the door. What was I doing puttering around? I’d promised Edgar Edwards I’d deliver the Nancy Drew book to him before noon.

I’d forgotten that Wednesday was street-cleaning

day. There was a big fat ticket on the windshield of the Caddy.

Speaking of signs, that wasn’t one.

I pulled up to Edgar Edwards’s house at 1111 Carroll

Avenue. It was 11:11 A.M.

All the hallmarks of a sign, but no.

I walked up the steps and reached into my purse for

the book. Its brown paper wrapper was shredded to bits.

Definitely a sign.

And not what I’d call a good one.

3

Most people don’t find out about Carroll Avenue

until they get lost on their way to Dodger Stadium,

which means that if you’ve got a good sense of direc-

tion or you don’t like baseball, you’ve probably never heard of it.

Carroll Avenue is the land time forgot. Urban re-

newal, too. Picture a secret enclave of restored Victorians, painted teal or lilac or midnight blue. Spindly

verandas, open belvedere towers, and antique street-

lights. Hitching posts at curbside—real ones, not replicas from the Restoration Hardware catalog. People

actually navigated this city before they invented the car.

By
horse
. It boggled the mind.

Edgar Edwards lived in a rather grand-looking

Queen Anne with a third-story porch and a wrought

iron railing crowning the roof. I walked up the moss-

covered steps. There were no moss-covered steps in

L.A. It wasn’t humid enough. Those he’d definitely ordered from a catalog. I pushed the buzzer but didn’t

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hear anything, which was why I was somewhat un-

nerved when a very tall, very bald man opened the door.

I stepped back as he stepped closer. His smile was

unctuous, like an undertaker’s.

“Yes?”

“I’m Cece Caruso. We spoke on the phone.”

“We most certainly did not,” he said, still smiling.

“Aren’t you Edgar Edwards?”

“Do I look like Edgar Edwards?”

“I have no idea.”

“Of course you don’t. Let me introduce myself.” He

put out his hand, which was soft and slightly damp.

“I’m Mr. Edwards’s curator. My name is Mitchell

Honey. Not ‘Mitchell, honey,’ just plain old Mitchell Honey.”

I would be making this fast.

“Nice to meet you. Is Mr. Edwards here? He’s ex-

pecting me.”

“That he is. Follow me.”

The interior had a gloomy sort of allure. A small

Tiffany lamp in the vestibule shed not enough light onto the gleaming dark wood paneling. Heavy Oriental rugs

muffled our footsteps as we walked down the hall and

into the living room, where velvet curtains obscured

the midday sun. Mitchell Honey sneezed, and a log fell in the fireplace, sending a shower of sparks flying.

“Damn allergies. This way, please.”

We entered a hexagonal room stuffed with antique

furniture—hulking armoires, narrow cabinets, carved

end tables. There were no windows. The air was stale.

Everywhere I looked there were ceramic statues of

creepy things: eagles with squirrels in their beaks; trolls 22

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sticking their fingers into other trolls’ mouths; laughing mice. The dark side of Wedgwood, I guess.

“Mr. Edwards has an encyclopedic collection of

British art pottery,” said Mitchell, who was sandwiched between a pair of three-drawer chests. The ceiling was so low he was stooping, which added to his general air of obsequiousness.

“A lot of pots,” I said, studying a satyr hanging off the spout of a teapot.

“A lot of money.” The low voice came out of nowhere.

“Jake, please. We have company.”

Jake sidled in. He didn’t need much room. He was the

sort of skinny guy who wore his jeans half falling off his ass because someone had once told him it was sexy.

“Right,” he said, rolling his eyes. Ennui became him, but Mitchell, blowing his nose, didn’t want to know

about it.

“Do you have an extra hundred bucks?” Jake asked,

swinging his leg over a small chair with a needlepoint seat.

“Careful!”

“Sorry. Edgar said it’d be okay. I didn’t have time to make it to the bank.”

Mitchell pulled out his wallet and counted out five

crisp twenties.

“Later.”

“You’re welcome,” said another voice, this one deep

and sonorous.

“Edgar,” Jake said. He hiked up his pants, which

promptly slid back down. “I didn’t know you were

standing there.”

Mitchell looked triumphant.

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“Don’t look so triumphant, Mitchell,” the older man

said, his gaze going right to Jake’s jutting hipbones.

“About what?” Jake asked.

Edgar sighed, tugging at his salt-and-pepper beard.

He was heavyset but moved with stealth, a lion intent on dinner. “And you must be Cece. I’m Edgar. Welcome.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all. What do you think of my babies?”

Mitchell Honey and Jake? They’d go over great on

Jerry Springer.

“I started this collection with a single monkey jar in 1978, before the prices went through the roof, and now look at me. Sotheby’s calls me for advice!”