Swimsuit Body (9 page)

Another silence falls, then, “I won't. See her again, that is. She died.”

“Seriously?”

“Hit-and-run. Senior year.”

A chill runs through me. “Did they ever catch the driver?”

“No, they never did.”

The feeling of unease intensifies, and I quickly change the subject. “Listen, I was wondering if you could ask a favor of your uncle.” I explain what I have in mind, and she agrees to put a call in to Uncle Karol. Ten minutes later, she calls me back. “He says we're more than welcome to visit the set. Oh, and he also invited us to a get-together at his house tomorrow evening.”

“Tell him I accept.”

When I learned that Arthur was wanted for questioning in Delilah Ward's murder, I realized I had to find another suspect and fast. The DA will stop at nothing to get reelected, from what Spence told me, even if it means railroading my brother, who, in many ways, is a prosecutor's dream.

He has a history of mental illness.

He's been in trouble with the law. He was twice taken into custody, though never booked, the first time for assaulting a Greenpeace volunteer who he'd mistaken for a CIA operative.

He arguably had access to Casa Blanca through me.

His alibi is flimsy. He said he was home alone on the morning in question.

He has a connection to the victim besides me. His buddy Ray reminded me of it when I called him looking for Arthur. He and Arthur designed a computer game featuring Phantasmagora, the female superhero played by Delilah in
Return of Laserman
. Which could make it appear as though Arthur had been obsessed with her.

His current whereabouts are unknown. And a prominent citizen is claiming that Arthur coerced his elderly mother to flee town with him.

And to think my biggest worry was that Arthur would crack up if he didn't have his Honey Bunches of Oats or he woke up in a strange bed. What's a stay at the puff compared to prison?

CHAPTER TWELVE

When I arrive at the Cummings family's California Tudor on Windlass Lane, the first stop on my rounds the following morning, I'm greeted by the sight of trash from an overturned garbage receptacle. The masked bandits have struck again. As I pick up the trash strewn across the yard, I discover a number of empties, and figure the raccoons weren't the only ones who were up to no good. The current guests are a pair of attorneys, and their two teenage sons, from New York. Mr. Powers and Mrs. Smith-Powers don't seem the type to guzzle beer and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, so the culprits must be their sons. Normally, I wouldn't object, but this neighborhood is subject to a zoning ordinance that prohibits loud parties among other things. If the neighbors were to complain, the owners could lose their vacation rental permit.

I march inside to have a word with the boys' parents. But no one's home except the housekeeper, Esmeralda. The Powerses had arranged for her to clean for them. I find her in the sun-filled kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. “The raccoons have been at it again,” I grumble as I head over to the sink to wash up. “And they weren't the only ones. Do you know what those boys were up to?”

“They're nice boys,” she says, darting me a nervous look. She doesn't want any trouble.

“Nice boys who seem to have made a lot of new friends.” The power of social media. “They'll wish they'd played Monopoly instead, after I'm done talking with their parents.”

“They are sorry. I explain to them already.” Esmeralda beseeches me with her big brown eyes.

“If it was
your
boys, they wouldn't be sitting down for a week.”

“My sons know better,” Esmeralda says firmly, not seeming to realize she's contradicting herself. But she has every reason to be proud. Both her boys are honor students at the Catholic school they attend, and the eldest, Eduardo, will be the first in Esmeralda's family to go to college.

“How'd Eduardo do on his SAT prep?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Best in his class!” she reports, beaming as I high-five her. With her smooth caramel skin and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looks way too young to be the mother of three. She had her first child, Alicia, when she was sixteen, and she still has the figure of a teenager. Esmeralda is also the best-dressed woman I know, though she buys her clothes at discount stores. Today she wears an above-the-knee pencil skirt in a jazzy zebra stripe and a white cotton-knit top shot with gold threads. I notice she's also gotten a manicure. Her sister, Flor, owns a nail salon.

I compliment her on her outfit. “What's the occasion?”

I'm hoping she'll say she has a date with the gardener, Manuel, who has his eye on her, though she claims she has no time for men. Instead, she claps her hands and squeals, “I'm going to be on TV!”

Esmeralda is a huge fan of
Survivor
—she's watched every episode of the reality show—so my first thought is that she auditioned and was picked, and now her dream of being on an island with Jeff Probst is finally being realized. “Wow. That's great. Congratulations. I didn't realize you—”

“Telemundo!” My heart sinks when she names the premier network of the Spanish-speaking world.

“Esmeralda, is this about Delilah? Did you agree to an interview?”

She nods excitedly. “Everyone in my family will be watching.”

“Esmeralda, you can't do this. You'd be making a huge mistake.”

Her smiles fades. “I don't understand. Why do you say this?”

“You don't know what these people are like. They'll make you look bad.”

She shakes her head vigorously. “No, these are
my
people.”

“Just because they speak the same language as you doesn't mean they have good intentions. They only care about ratings.” Esmeralda has little to offer, having worked for Delilah only a short time, but the public appetite is such that they'll seize on any crumb about Delilah's last days. Also, Esmeralda was the last person to see her alive—other than the killer. “If you say anything that makes her look bad—like that she'd been drinking—her fans will call you a liar.”

Esmeralda gasps. “I am not a liar! I only say what is true. I tell about the lady.”

I frown in confusion. “What lady?”

“She call. I say, ‘Miss Ward is not home and can I take a message?' And the lady say …” Esmeralda hesitates, her cheeks coloring. “‘Tell the bitch to call me.'”

I feel my pulse quicken. “Did you get her name?” Whoever the mystery caller was, she had the number for the landline, which would have been given out to only a select handful of people.

“The lady say, ‘She will know.'” Esmeralda wrings her hands, looking distressed.

“Did you tell this to the police?” Esmeralda nods unhappily.

“Well, I'm sure they're looking into it. But they won't want you talking to the press.”

“Then I will say nothing about the lady.”

I hate to be the one to burst Esmeralda's bubble, but … “You won't mean to. But things you never meant to say have a way of coming out on camera.” I recall my outburst on my front stoop; I cringed when I watched it on TV. “And then it will haunt you forever. Trust me, I know.”

“I would never say anything bad,” Esmeralda insists. “She was nice to me. I feel bad for her. To lose her husband so young. The baby, too.” She sighs and places a hand over her heart, the way I'd seen her do when engrossed in the
telenovelas
she sometimes watches when she's cleaning.

“Um. I don't think she was ever actually pregnant.”

“Sí. It was in ¡Mira!”

Not just the Spanish-language tabloid, the story ran in all the rags: It was said that Delilah had been eight weeks pregnant when her husband perished, and that she'd lost the baby in the throes of her grief.
Don't believe everything you read
, I want to say. But I don't. Bad enough that I'm robbing Esmeralda of her fifteen minutes of fame. “So will you tell them you changed your mind?”

Esmeralda sighs again and nods. She looks like a child who had a new toy snatched away from her. After she's made the call, she looks so glum, I try to think of something that will cheer her up. “You know, it'd be a shame to let that outfit go to waste,” I say as she's dragging the sponge mop from the broom closet as if it were a lead weight. “What do you say we make an audition tape for
Survivor
? I bet when they see it, they'll fly you to New York for an interview.” Esmeralda has survived far worse than the jungles of
Survivor
. She emigrated to this country from Mexico with her husband, who then left her with three small children to raise on her own.

Esmeralda brightens. “Really? Oh, Tish, that is my dream!”

I head home to fetch my video camera. This will put me behind schedule, but it's worth it to see Esmeralda smile.

Two hours later, I arrive at my next stop, the Russos' midcentury modern, where I notice an older-model blue panel truck parked at the curb. Its front end is dented and its rear tire wells are speckled with rust, which tells me it doesn't belong to a resident of the exclusive neighborhood. Likely a service person … or possibly a burglar who's casing the joint. As I'm walking over to investigate, the window on the driver's side rolls down to reveal a familiar face, scruffy and unshaven.

“Got her off Craigslist. Ain't she a beaut?” McGee calls out.

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

He shrugs, his expression inscrutable. He wears wraparound shades and his desert camouflage jacket over a rumpled shirt. He jerks his stubbly chin toward the house. “You know this guy?”

“I should hope so. I work for him.”

“You know he has suspected mob ties?”

“It's just a rumor. It's never been proven.”

“Russo was the target of a RICO investigation in 1989. Him and his associates. Then whaddya know, just as the feds are closing in, their chief informant is found floating facedown in the East River. My cousin Johnny was on the task force. He says Russo's as dirty as they come.”

“Then why was he never charged?”

“They couldn't make it stick.”

“All I know is he's a nice man who pays me on time.”

“A real gent,” McGee says, sneering.

“Are you suggesting that I'm in some sort of danger? Because that's ridiculous. I've never had a problem with the Russos. I rarely see them.” Besides this home, they own one in Vegas.

“You're involved in a murder investigation. Which is going nowhere. No witnesses, and no one heard the shot. The thinking is that it could've been a professional hit on account of the vic's being shot execution-style.” McGee's source at the station has been keeping him up to date. “On top of which, you work for a guy with suspected mob ties. What, I gotta spell it out?”

I frown at him. “The only thing I see that's
suspicious
is a
suspicious
-­looking vehicle, belonging to an even more
suspicious
-looking character, parked where it shouldn't be.”

McGee flashes me a grin and hops out. “Anyone asks, I'm your associate.”

I'll never admit it to him, but the truth is I kind of like having him around, so I don't object when he falls into step with me as I head up the front walk.

The home, which was designed by Neutra, is composed of three cubes of varying sizes sided in quarry-cut stone with the tallest at the center and looks out on a lush garden in front and a pool and a patio in back. As we approach, I can see through the sidelights on either side of the door into the slate-floored atrium. “Tell me, does this look to you like the home of a mobster?” I ask when we're inside. The decor is tasteful, no gilded furniture or mirrored walls.

McGee shrugs. “I wouldn't know. Unlike you, Ballard, I don't keep company with wiseguys.”

We move deeper into the house. “Sorry, but I can't picture Russo in a rubout suit,” I say. I'd never seen my seventy-five-year-old client dressed in anything but casual slacks and golf sweaters.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” McGee comments.

We enter the living room, which has a double-sided fireplace at one end and a glass wall through which the swimming pool shimmers in the morning light at the other. The Calder mobile above the Heywood Wakefield coffee table revolves lazily in a current of air. The Eames chair by the fireplace has me coveting it as usual; I'd love to have one of my own, but my house is the wrong era.

McGee makes himself at home, peering into rooms and closets until he's satisfied there are no suspicious characters lurking about, nor any evidence of criminal activity. He stops at the closed door to Russo's study. “He always keep this locked?” he asks, after he's tried the doorknob.

“When he's not in residence.” I've never been inside. Which didn't strike me as odd until now.

Before I can stop him, McGee has the door open. Among his many hidden talents is picking locks, which he learned growing up in a sketchy part of the Bronx (the less I know about his activities prior to becoming a cop, the better). We walk into a room with a picture window at one end and a built-in bookcase at the other. A leather sofa and a matching club chair stand opposite a desk from the same era, above which hangs a collection of framed eight-by-tens. Russo's ego wall. I move in for a closer look. There are photos of a younger, trimmer Russo before he went gray, with his black hair slicked back in a fifties do, posing with individual members of the Rat Pack—Sammy Davis Junior, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra—and other entertainers of the day. The more recent ones show a portly, silver-haired Russo grinning alongside present-day Vegas headliners such as Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Celine Dion, and Elton John.

McGee gives a low whistle. “Get a load of this.”

My blood turns cold when I see what's got his attention: an eight-by-ten of Russo with his arm around Delilah Ward, who is shining like the evening star before the other stars come out at night.