Killer Commute (20 page)

“Actor, right. Should have known.” Joe shrugged a this-is-Southern-California shrug and rolled the toothpick over to the other side of his mouth. “You another cop?” He gestured toward Ed's tailored sweatsuit and spanking-new running shoes—like Amuller's and David Dalrymple's, none of which looked like they'd ever seen dirt, let alone sweat.

“I was a friend and neighbor of Jeremy Fiedler's, and I just wondered what you knew about him. Ed's a friend of mine.”

“Ed Esterhazie.” The two men shook hands, ignoring her.

“Concrete—Esterhazie Concrete?”

“That's right. Do you work on Porsches?”

Charlie looked around while they talked guy stuff. A TV up in one corner of the shop played Rudy Ferris's talk show without sound. If you had to watch Rudy, that was the way to do it. It must be a repeat—he was usually on later in the afternoon. He was standing in the audience aisle berating some poor guy on the stage. Rudy would have looked better in black and white. His thin hair was a sickly orange, his suit a bright blue, his shirt yellow, his bow tie a bright red, and his mustache brown. Why didn't he dye his mustache to match his dyed hair, or get a rug to match his mustache? A kid in overalls rolled out from under a fancy SUV, flashed gleaming teeth from a grimied face, and headed for the soda machine.

“Well, all I can tell you is what I told the cops. I came to the funny memorial service because I recognized the picture of the dead man in the paper. Worked on his Trailblazer and the Ferrari, too.”

“Did you get to know him well?” Charlie asked.

“Not at all. He didn't spend any time chatting. But I was real curious about him. Figured he was trouble, so I didn't ask questions.”

“That why you didn't get ahold of the police right away when you saw the picture?”

“Yeah, and the name was wrong. And the license plates changed a lot, and he always paid in cash.” He raised his eyebrows and grimaced so hard he broke the toothpick. “But I guess now that he's dead I don't have to worry about somebody coming after me if I talk about his business. What was his business?”

“He was a landscape architect, or so he said. What did you mean, his name was wrong? He wasn't Jeremy Fiedler to you?”

“Jonathan Phillips was the name he gave me. I'd show you his signature, but the cops took the few records I have on him. That's what was on his car registration, but if you can gin up false plates you can probably do it with the registration, too.”

“Hey Joe,” the kid with the soda can and grease-stained overalls said, “don't forget the limp.” And then he turned to Charlie. “You're Libby's mom, right? Somebody pointed you out at a football game last fall at Wilson. You were cheering the cheerleaders. You got the same eyes as her. I'm Pepe.”

Pepe, too, had noticed sometimes this Jonathan limped and sometimes he didn't.

“He was a jogger, had injuries,” Joe Manic said. “I can't understand people jogging but I sure can see how it would give them injuries. It's the two names and paying in cash for fixing a Ferrari, for chrissake, and different license plates with different numbers—now that's what's suspicious.”

*   *   *

Ed Esterhazie and Charlie were at the Esterhazie mansion being spoiled by Mrs. McDougal and waiting for Doug to get home from school. Libby had diner duty after school today and Charlie was pretty sure Lori Schantz had some kind of singing club practice. When the housekeeper learned Charlie and Ed had had no lunch, she put her hand to her chest and expressed an “oh my” without speaking. A bottle of red wine, a carafe of strong coffee, and a plate of orange segments and another of pâté with crackers appeared on the small patio table on the west lawn as they sat on lounges in the sun protected from the breeze by gorgeous plantings everywhere, and of course here the flowers in boxes and on bushes and in ground beds were splendiferous.

And if you'd come from Boulder or, even worse, New York, all this floral splendor in March seemed decadent somehow. Charlie was in Dockers and a jacket today but she took a sip of wine, turned her face to the sun, dipped a cracker in the pate, and sighed, lifting her glass to Ed Esterhazie Concrete. “Here's to decadence.”

“I'll drink to that. When do we start?”

“Start? Have you smelled that coffee?” Charlie poured herself a mug but inhaled the fumes before taking a sip. “How do you keep your figure?”

“Liposuction,” he answered. “Better go slow. Mrs. McDougal is not used to having anyone home for lunch on a weekday, and I saw that gleam in her eye when she saw you.”

“She didn't like Dorothy.” The coffee had a nutty flavor as deep as Ed's voice. The wine had a fruity flavor. The pâté was not, Charlie thought, goose-based. There was cucumber in it somewhere.

“Dorothy was controlling.”

“And I'm not?”

“You're not interested in controlling household matters.”

“I wouldn't be home for lunch on weekdays. Would have no time to interfere with anything.”

“You'd be too busy to care about what she cares about most. Charlie, I have a confession to make—”

“Oh, please don't. This is the first time in my vacation that I almost feel like I'm on vacation.”

“Okay. What did you have for breakfast today?”

“Half an onion bagel and one cup of coffee. Why?”

“Mrs. McDougal knows your weakness for eggs. I'm dating again, and you're the solution again. What do you say to that, Ms. Hollywood Agent?”

“Congratulations, and can I get a doggy box?”

*   *   *

Douglas Esterhazie was allowed to finish off the orange slices, pâté, and crackers plus an enormous sandwich and two glasses of milk before Charlie and his father led him to the study. Charlie's huge doggy box of creamed hard-boiled eggs with firm asparagus and pearl onions in a paper-thin pastry crust was tightly secured in the fridge for her to take home.

Charlie stood behind Doug with another cup of that wonderful coffee not understanding a thing she saw on the fast-changing computer screens as Doug smoothly moved from mouse to keyboard, often playing each with one hand at the same time.

Edward Esterhazie's study was a rectangular room that probably wouldn't fit in the first floor of Charlie's house even if you removed all the walls and added the patio. Two walls had French doors and mullioned windows interspersed with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and lighted art niches. The desk was in the center of the room where you could sit and look out at the lovely plantings and swimming pool, but there were no blinds and no bars—anybody could see you sitting in here, too. You couldn't pay Charlie to live in the open like this, and you couldn't pay Kate Gonzales to clean it.

“Do you have to hack into every brokerage firm to find somebody? How'd you find Betty Beesom?”

“There's a general listing of all investors and their preferences and amounts invested,” Doug said. The screen kept flashing “access denied,” “improper coding,” and “subscribe now.”

“Do you have to have a password or something?”

“They keep changing everything to keep people out who haven't paid up—brokerages and direct marketers and stuff. You just have to diddle around for a while and you can get through.”

“Doug, who taught you to do this?”

“I learned some from my friends and most on my own, just—”

“Diddling around.”

“Yeah, and computer games teach you more than you think—how systems work, stuff happens—you know. And if you know where to find them, there's places on the Web that can walk you through a lot of this. They come and go pretty quick, but the word gets out. Okay, here we go.”

There was no Jeremy Fiedler.

“Try Harry Fiedler.”

“Who's that?” Ed asked from one of the leather sofas where he'd been pretending not to be snoozing.

“I don't know, but Mrs. Beesom keeps talking about a Harry and I keep thinking she means Hairy Granger, the cat. But she knows something she's not sharing, with me anyway.”

“No Harry Fiedler.”

“Try Jonathan Phillips.” While Doug diddled around, Charlie lapsed into a fantasy of standing in a reception line after a garden wedding outside those windows and—

“Four of them—none in this area.”

“Try Harry Phillips.” And Charlie stood next to Libby, who wore a gorgeous wedding dress and no zits, and next to her was a handsome, rich Doug who'd grown into his bones and—

“Two in L.A., three in Sacramento, none in Orange County, one in Long Beach but not Belmont Shore.”

And this well-dressed woman took Libby's white-gloved hand and said, “And where is your father, dear?” And—

“There was a Fiedler Enterprises back there. Companies invest.”

“That's it.” Charlie said. “That's where Kate the cleaning lady got her checks from. And try Beach Enterprises, too.”

And Libby said, “Oh, I'm a bastard—and here's my mom.”

Ed and Charlie were both breathing down Doug's neck now.

“Out of business or bankruptcy or NA as of last Friday, both of them. I don't know what all these letters mean.”

“And Jeremy died that night.”

CHAPTER 28

CHARLIE
AND
ED Esterhazie were walking again, this time to Judy & Gym's Age Buster Health Club where no one had ever heard of or seen Jeremy Fiedler. Ed should never have bought those running shoes—they were like foot Viagra. Doug would pick up Ed at Charlie's house by six and deliver Charlie's precious doggy box. Ed promised to take his son to the diner for meatloaf if he promised not to touch the boiled egg and asparagus concoction.

“Do you really keep your trim figure by liposuction? I mean I can see laser surgery to get rid of eyeglasses—well, almost—but suck out fat?”

“Actually, I did it once on the gut and it wasn't that big a deal. Does that disgust you, Charlie? It did Mrs. McDougal.”

“Did I tell you my mom's got a boyfriend?” Charlie wished she hadn't gotten into this conversation.

“Edwina? Good for her. She's been alone too many years. Have you met him?”

“No, she just called and told me, no details yet. And she's not alone. She has a job—I mean a profession.”

“Poor Charlie, you still don't get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“When Libby leaves home—what if you lose your job? What if no one wants to hire you in your profession? All you'll have left is Mitch Hilsten, whom you claim not to want, and if that's true he'll have wandered off by then. What will you do with yourself?”

“Ed, I should worry? I'll be in prison for murdering Jeremy and won't be able to hear anybody coming up behind me.”

At Judy & Gym's Age Buster Club the wind met them at the door. You'd have to step outside to get away from it. Some of it had to be the music and the clapping. If one butterfly spreading its wings can cause a tornado somewhere around the globe, this place must be destroying whole planets in space. People rode bikes that went nowhere so fast their temple vessels bulged. Others kicked and boxed at air and jumped like maniacs bent on destroying evil and the rest of life as we know it. And all in sync with the music. Three incredibly pregnant women, butts elevated, bicycled their legs and breathed in and out with so much sweat you expected an infant to explode through the seams of the Spandex crotches.

Charlie, who was tone deaf and detested most music, started to cry when it disappeared.

Edward Esterhazie put an arm around her and she could feel him talking by his chest vibrations to the man who'd come up to them. Probably Gym. Charlie would not know what they discussed until Ed wrote it down for her at home. The walk there was silent and humbling.

Charlie knew how uncomfortable Ed must be, suddenly unable to communicate with someone he'd been talking to half the day. She would have felt the same had the situations been reversed. And she'd gone just as suddenly from a normal, functional, reasonably good-looking, vital, important, necessary, respected member of society (if you didn't listen to Detective J. S.) to a dependent, struck dumb and helpless, ugly lost soul of no use to anyone, a burden on friends and society. Someone she, as a busy important professional, would have pitied but shunned, because her patience and sympathy cup had long been drained.

Charlie's common uncommon sense was down in the dumps, too. It suggested she could survive by sneaking around LAX with a little written card that, because she was a deaf-mute and had no income, begged a dollar or five from travelers who looked like they came from the Midwest or the South or Texas.

*   *   *

Larry had picked up a whopping salad of greens, mixed sweet peppers, and fresh mushrooms at Salads R Us. And they toasted leftover garlic bread from last night to put the creamed egg and asparagus concoction on. It was a wonderful dinner even for a hearing-impaired, devastated ex-person.

Charlie's secretary reached across the table in the breakfast nook and stroked the back of her hand as she reached for her glass of milk. They both had tears in their eyes, which made him look wavy.

Larry mouthed, How about some tea for dessert?

She'd nodded before she realized she'd read his lips through tear-film. They'd communicated without even any crickets in her ears. Charlie finished her milk, cleaned the last of the creamed egg off her fork, and used her napkin to blow her nose. Still the tears kept coming. She hated being weak enough to cry.

Suddenly she was nose-to-nose with Libby's damned cat, who'd managed to do his top-of-the-refrigerator-to-the-top-of-the-table-fly-through-the-air-and-land act without overturning any plates or glasses. She couldn't hear him purr but she knew he did—he had all the power now. He sniffed her face, her tears, her mouth, and slid himself between her middle and the tabletop, and then under the table to curl up, warm and vibrating, on her lap.