Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 01 - A Brilliant Plan (18 page)

The excitement of the descriptions and the drawings had me hopping a little bit back and forth on my feet, something I hadn’t done for a while, for years actually. I felt like a little girl before coming down on Christmas morning.
 

And suddenly, I needed to pee.
 

Great, in the middle of a heist and a great finding and I had the needs of a little girl. I closed the description, thumbed further ahead and found a notarized valuation of a well-known institute for gem research in Chicago. Followed by another expert valuation, estimating the total value at around eight million dollars. And after that, even better, some letters to and from ‘investors.’ It actually said ‘Dear investor… ’ on the letter and it congratulated the addressee for the interest in a very rare item to own…
 
I couldn’t read on because my need became very pressing.
 

I sighed and, because rules are rules, I put everything I had found back where it belonged before I left the small room to search for the toilet. I stepped back and looked at the desk; everything looked in order. Strapped on my little knapsack, went to the corridor and followed it in the other direction, passed the front door and silently opened the door of what appeared to be the sleeping room where I hoped to find the bathroom. The Maglite did a little dance over the corners of the ceiling and interior. I froze, switched off the Maglite, and felt the hair on my hand and scalp standing up. Something was not right here! The air was even stuffier than in the rest of the apartment, slightly smelly, maybe Altward hadn’t changed the bed in a while. There was a taste to the smell that I couldn’t yet place.

My still urgent need pulled me out of my hesitation and overrode my fear. I tiptoed over to the window. The eerie feeling of unease sweeping over me like a wave, I checked that the curtains were drawn tight. Then I switched on the bedside light. Again, I found a combination of antique brown polished wood and modern chrome and white furniture. The bed was unmade, maybe that had made me stop in the first place, sheets crumbled and the day blanket folded lazily at one end. But first things first, now ‘it’ was getting urgent. I hated doing this on a job and it was probably only the second time in many years that I had to use a toilet in an object. But this time, I had staked out the apartment for too long and had spent too much time reading the Maximilian articles and descriptions. I moved over to the bathroom, opened the door, the Maglite shining into the dark room revealed the toilet, the bathtub and in the bathtub the deformed blue body of Phoebe Eastman, her face frozen in a mask of a violent death behind a clear plastic sheet wrapped tightly around her.
 

I stumbled back into the bedroom, slamming the door shut by accident, it made a hell of a bang in the silence of the apartment night. I barely managed to pull up my sweater to my face and puked into the fabric, to prevent me from spilling the few remains of my late night snack onto the carpet of Andrew Altward’s bedroom. At the same time, my bladder gave away and I wet myself. I had to fight myself not to faint. I rolled to the side, trying not to leave any urine or puke stains. Breathing in, breathing out, panic washing over me, drowning me, I started hyperventilating.
 

First, finding the night watchman on the Altward Gallery job, now finding his dead daughter. Too much for a girl like me. When I found the door to the safe room open in the Altward Gallery, I already had the feeling that something was wrong and that something bad lay ahead of me. And although the night watchman was lying face down in his own blood with quite a gash on the back of his skull, I hadn’t been too shocked at that time because I was mentally prepared.

But nothing prepared for the look of Phoebe Eastman’s face. A tie or scarf was pulled very tightly around her slender neck, her face grotesquely swollen, bluish white in the Maglite, her eyes bulging, her hair wild around her head. Her body was wrapped in a thick transparent foil, normally used for wrapping large objects like carpets or construction materials but one could see that she was naked except for the scarf.

I was still lying on the floor with the contents of my stomach in front of me in my sweater, sour and acid smell everywhere and I had to retch again. Without looking, I opened my knapsack and got out a plastic bag that I always had with me on a job to transport jewels or gems that had been stored in a freezer or in food—whatever creative idea the former owner had to avoid putting the valuable stuff into a regular safe. I managed to clean my face with a part of the sweater that was not ruined. Then I transferred the whole mess, without dripping anything on the floor, into the plastic bag. I went quickly into the kitchenette, stole one towel from the cupboard and awkwardly cleaned up between my legs, left it there to soak up the urine. Messy.

I glanced at the kitchen clock, already four-thirty. It was getting too early, I had to count in the drive back to Redondo, and I had planned to be there before sunrise. But not possible now.

A minute or so went by without anything happening at all. Sitting in a fetal position in the living room, I thought about my next steps. But everything I thought of was somehow dwarfed by the fact that a dead young woman was lying a few yards away in the bathroom. Uncle Mortimer, who had educated me for this type of job, had given me one universal piece of advice, “Have the heart of a lion but the courage of a chicken.” Though I never have shaky hands on a job nor was I afraid of being caught, this was definitely chicken time. So I decided to abandon mission, checked the kitchen, no one would miss one towel when they found a dead girl here. In the bedroom, I thought for a second to check on poor Phoebe once more, to see whether I found any clues, or whatever, but then my inner chicken got the better of me and I saved myself more future nightmares.

I checked the floor of the bedroom carpet for urine or puke stains, didn’t find any, and made my way back to the balcony door. Hopefully, my smell collection would very soon be overridden by Phoebe’s decay.

Not photographing the folders with the drawings was my biggest regret as I closed the sliding door behind me, locked it back with the toothpick trick and glued in the mock screws to hide the drilling holes in the frame. At least one thing worked out right.

The morning was slowly approaching in the east when I was back on Freeway 5, driving north on cruise control and fully automatic navigation.
 

Dancing along on the road in front of me was the face of Phoebe Eastman, her blue tongue pulled further out of her mouth than I had never thought possible with a human.

I STOOD BEFORE Mundy in the light of the morning sun, a girl dressed in black, urine-soiled trousers, stained t-shirt, blue lips of shock and puffy thick eyes from crying without tears. He was standing there, fully dressed, so much for proper alibis, with a concerned look behind his thick glasses. He caught me gallantly when I broke down in his doorframe.

I did everything like a machine ready to be switched off, shutting down my functions one by one. The last thing I felt was the warmth when Mundy handed me a pill, pushed a hot water bottle under the blanket and pulled the curtains closed. Everything went dark, alas, no dreams.

Dancing over my eyes, a single sunray found its way through a crack in the curtains covering Mundy’s bedroom window and the sunlight on my face finally woke me in the late afternoon. I felt serene, as if nothing had happened at all and I had just spent a day in bed out of pure luxury, something I did now and then. But the bad thoughts and memories came back, bit-by-bit, vision-by-vision, and I pulled the blanket over my face for a few minutes because the room started to spin around me and I began hyperventilating again. I was safe here; it was warm and cozy, sheets smelling of Mundy, my knight in armor—in certain situations.
 

Finally, I stretched loudly and looked down to check on my level of decency. I wore an old Berkeley College T-Shirt and a pair of baggy grey jogging pants. Nothing else, and I mean, nothing else. Did I have reasons to be embarrassed? The state I had been in came back to me a flash. I could always check Mundy for red ears. Just as I decided to get up, the door opened silently and he popped his head in. Mundy had probably checked on me every hour for the last 12 hours, on the hour, what a sweetie.
 

“Hey,” he said quietly in a soft voice. “How are you this, eh…
 
afternoon?” He sat down on the bed beside me and patted my hand like a grandmother.

“What happened to the shop?” It was the first normal world thing that came into my mind.

Mundy rolled his eyes as if he had expected this massive avoidance of the core subject. “Fine. I managed to talk to Mrs. Otis after her jealous husband threatened to rip off certain parts of my anatomy because he suspected that I had an affair with her. I told her that you had suddenly fell sick and that she was supposed to put out a sign at the store and otherwise remain home. Was that OK?”

“You are a dear, Mundy.”

He looked at me seriously. “Cal? Would you like to tell me what went down in Newport? You looked and smelled terrible, you were in a state of shock and I actually thought about calling the doctor.”

“Which you didn’t do, I hope.”

“No, of course not. I helped you get cleaned up and I tucked you in,” Mundy said.

“I hope it wasn’t too embarrassing for either of us?”

Mundy’s ears got a little red. “I swear to God, I looked away when necessary.”

I took Mundy’s hand. “I know you did. Thank you very much. Can we get something to eat? I haven’t had anything to eat for nearly 24 hours.”

He glanced at his watch. “I figure you are in for Mundy steak therapy! What about the Outback behind Del Amo Fashion Mall?”

“The lady likes it raw. Can you fetch me something to wear?”

I took a quick shower, dressed in some borrowed jeans, shirt and jacket from Mundy, together with some sexy male underwear and cheap tube socks. Mundy drove us to the restaurant where he had called ahead and reserved us a table in the back. To Mundy’s delight, the bumpy bouncy teenage waitress rotated her hips unbelievably, as she led the way to our table.
 

“What is that you are carrying with you?” I asked and pointed at the folder in Mundy’s hand. I hadn’t noticed it before.

He placed it in front of me and opened it. “I took the liberty and printed out the pictures from your digital camera. Came out really good. Very interesting read.”

There they were, the other articles in the set of Maximilian Jewels, the Native American’s gift to the new emperor.
 

I rubbed my eyes. “Unfortunately, the best stuff is missing. Drawings, detail descriptions and all.”

“Where did you find it?” Mundy asked.

The waitress came and we ordered immediately without even glancing at the menu. Mundy ordered two porterhouse steaks that could feed a third world country.

“Where did you find it?” Mundy asked again after the waitress had left.

I went through the events of last night. The empty-handed search of Phoebe Eastman’s apartment in La Jolla and the findings in Altward’s weekend residence in Newport. Mundy’s reporter self was close to interrupting me several times, but the friend in him let me tell my story.

After I had finished with my disgraceful exit from Altward’s home, he ordered an emergency Scotch, waited until it came running and downed it with one big gulp. Then the waitress brought the two cows.

“How come you always run into these things?” He finally asks, pronouncing every word. “Shit, you stumble over the dead father and now over the dead daughter. Both murdered. And both murdered on Altward’s properties.”

I didn’t say anything. I had already done the math, too.

Mundy said it anyway, “If I was the police and I knew all this, I’d concentrate on two suspects, Andrew Altward and Calendar Moonstone.”

I wolfed down my steak. “I hope the police don’t look too closely at the balcony door and notice my drill marks when they find her.”

“Oh, you of the optimist tribe. When do you think they will find her? Don’t you think you should call the police?” Mundy pointed his fork at me.

I shook my head. “I don’t think that is an excellent idea. They will trace it back, record my voice and play it to the lead detective, namely Ron, and the shit will hit the fan. The cleaning lady will find her, or Altward himself.”

“What will you do with the Maximilian Jewelry information?”

“Another tricky subject,” I said. “Most of the information I got is from public sources. I could pass that on to Ron; mention that I got word from sources about them being on sale on the black market or some such. But this… ” I tapped on the folder on the table. “… of course, is taboo until I find a different legit source.”

“You still have Benito Salanca’s material. You could tell Ron of the possible value of the Maximilian Jewels based on your own estimation. Nice money motive, he will like that. Plus, tell him about your suspicion that Phoebe had been wearing one of the Maximilian Jewels when the two of you interviewed her last week. Maybe it will make Ron look at her more closely. And then he stumbles over the body.”

Over coffee, Mundy asked the question of questions. “Who do you think killed Phoebe?”

I played with leftover sugar packets. “Difficult to say. First to my mind comes Billy Bounce. He fits the bill, in search of the jewels, very brutal crime with high shock value. The choking thing seems to be this year’s model.” I told Mundy about the cat incident.
 

He just said, “You drive home!” and raised his hand for another emergency Scotch.
 

“Thomas seems desperate enough to force his hands to get his fingers on the jewels. And Billy Bounce is such a brute that the killing could have been accidental. His way of ‘Oops, did I press too hard?’”

“I have my money on Andrew Altward,” Mundy disagreed. “He finds out that Phoebe had been involved in the theft, emotions go high and he kills her. Intentionally or accidentally. Wraps her in plastic to store her for a few days until he has some idea what to do with her.” Mundy nibbled on one of the Italian cookies. “While I said that, it already sounds like a serial killer TV-script that HBO rejected.”