Not A Girl Detective (2 page)

“Technically, that’s true.”

“Dena was the one who told me there was no Santa

Claus,” Victoria whispered.

“A number of different people wrote the Nancy

Drew books,” I continued, “based on detailed outlines they were given by the publishing syndicate that originated the character. The Stratemeyer Syndicate was an actual writing mill. They put out the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, dozens of children’s series. Anyway,

the real identities of the writers they hired were unknown for decades. Everybody took oaths of secrecy. It was pretty cloak-and-dagger. Carolyn Keene was just a made-up name.”

“So you’re writing a biography of a pseudonym?”

Victoria asked.

It did sound perverse when you put it that way.

“Look, why don’t we show Cece what we’ve got,

okay?”

“Good idea, Dena. I don’t want to keep you.” There’s

your sister’s ego to crush and marzipan bananas to finish and it’s already four in the afternoon.

She pointed me toward a rickety glass-fronted book-

case in the corner of the room. “We don’t usually handle children’s books. We had a beautiful first edition of
Robinson Crusoe
that sat here collecting dust for years.”

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“Well, you did scare off that buyer from Baltimore,

remember?”

Dena glared at her twin. “He was a big phony.”

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

As they continued bickering, I opened the cabinet

and reached for the white dust jacket. I ran my finger over the familiar emblem on the spine, a tiny silhouette of the blond sleuth from River Heights, looking

through a magnifying glass, a scarf thrown jauntily

around her neck. The girl could definitely wear clothes.

The Mystery of the Ivory Charm
. If I remembered correctly,
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm
featured a strange woman who was trying to deny a rajah his

throne. She could go into a hypnotic trance at the drop of a hat, but Nancy saw through her, of course.

I pulled the book off the shelf and turned to the front cover. There she was, Nancy Drew, looking typically

surreptitious. She was inside an old shed, sneaking

some yellowed documents out of a coffeepot and trying not to get caught. The bad guy was just outside the open door. You knew he was the bad guy because he was going after a mangy hound dog with his leather whip. In Nancy Drew books—as in life, I suppose—you can always identify evildoers because they’re the ones who

mistreat animals.

Most of the dust jackets I’d seen were tattered, missing bits and pieces. This one was in perfect condition. I ran my fingers over the pages. They felt rough. This was definitely wartime paper, which meant it couldn’t be a first edition. The other tip-off was the silhouette, which didn’t appear on the spines until 1941, with the second N O T

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printing of number 18, and subsequent reprintings of

numbers 1 to 17.

Dating and assigning valuations to these books was

tricky. The first Nancy Drew mystery,
The Secret of the
Old Clock,
has been reprinted more than one hundred and fifty times since its original appearance in 1930, with minute variations each time—different paper

stocks, boards, endpapers, frontispieces, etc. You’d

have to be obsessive-compulsive to keep track of all the details. I’d love to be obsessive-compulsive but I’m too lazy. Still, I was pleased that some of my research had stuck.

“Do you have a buyer already?”

Victoria took the book out of my hands. “Yes, some-

one local. He wants everything we can get, first edition or not.”

“Sticky fingers!” reprimanded Dena.

“You’ve eaten more candy than I have,” Victoria said

with a sniff. She turned toward me. “This would be a

great thing to own, wouldn’t it? A piece of American

history! The first role model for teenage girls, ever!”

It seemed churlish to mention Joan of Arc.

“Say, Cece, why don’t you deliver it for us?”

“Did you forget to pay the courier service again,

Victoria?”

Victoria ignored her sister and started wrapping the

book in brown paper. “I bet he’d love to hear about your research. And it would give you a chance to see his collection. It’s amazing. I believe he has the only complete set of Nancy Drew first printings in the world!”

How interesting that it would be a man. “I’d be happy to deliver the book.”

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“Hold your horses,” Dena said, squinting at me sus-

piciously. “Are you bonded?”

This time, it was me who ignored her.

Tucking
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm
under my coat, I stepped out into paradise. Double rainbows

streaked across the sky. A soft wind caressed my

cheeks. The Bodhisattva Café was packed, the laughter of hemp-clad sybarites filling the air. It was as if the rainstorm had never happened. As if it were a bad

dream some colon hydrotherapy had dissolved. This is

why people move to Los Angeles. You can live in a permanent state of denial here. Except when it comes to

meter maids. They are the hardiest of all urban tribes and one of them was eyeing my Camry. Once her pen

touched paper it would be too late. I ran toward her, screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Back off, sweetie,” she said, putting her pad back

into her pocket. “You made it.” Then she shook her

tightly coiffed head. “You got enough trouble with

those sorry-ass boots.”

I was blessed, I think. But there was only one way to know for sure. I held my breath, got in, and turned the key in the ignition. It wheezed and spat and quaked and shook, but my car was alive. Alive! I knew I should

probably drive straight to the dealership on Hollywood Boulevard, but I had so much to take care of, and that would be the end of my day. Once those guys get you in their clutches they just keep on talking. No, I’d take the car home and go to the dealer first thing in the morning.

They’d probably need a few days to whip it into shape, which was fine. It gave me a perfect excuse to rent a car for the weekend.

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A convertible.

I could see it now.

Me and Lael and Bridget, gunning down the 10 to-

ward Palm Springs, the wind whipping through our big

hair. We all had big hair. Maybe we’d put the top up if it got too windy. Wind strips the hair of moisture. I guess we could wear scarves.

The three of us were taking a business trip. Well, at least for me it was business. I’d been asked to deliver the keynote address at the annual Nancy Drew fan convention. Some persons in my life had found the very

idea amusing. Like my daughter, Annie, and her hus-

band, Vincent, who about choked on their Kombucha

mushroom tea when I told them. And a certain Detec-

tive Peter Gambino of the LAPD, whom I might have

mentioned earlier. But Mr. Keshigian had nodded,

pleased. I was to deduct everything.

It was a paycheck, for god’s sake. When you write bi-

ographies of dead mystery writers for a living, you

need as many of those as you can get. And it would be great publicity for the new book, which was almost finished. But I was nervous. Those fans knew a hell of a lot, and they’d probably love to catch me in a mistake, like not knowing that the spine silhouette for number 24 was missing the scarf. Or that early printings of

number 18,
The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion,
made reference to the forthcoming volume as
The

Quest of the Telltale Map
when it was actually printed as
The Quest of the
Missing
Map
.

Fan is short for fanatic.

Bridget was going to take the opportunity to raid the Palm Springs thrift shops, hoping to find a couple of 10

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Bob Hope’s wife’s discarded Adolfo suits, maybe

something with a mink collar and jeweled buttons. Or a Galanos caftan, very Nancy Reagan on holiday. Bridget owned On the Bias, L.A.’s top vintage clothing shop.

Lael was a master pastry chef and oblivious to

clothes, vintage or otherwise, but she didn’t have any gigs until late next week, and her children’s fathers (that would be four for four) were taking the kids for spring break, so she was coming, too.

Not for Nancy Drew. My lusty friend had no patience

for professional virgins.

Not for the sunshine. Lael was a Norwegian blonde

who freckled like crazy.

I think she wanted an adventure.

Me, too.

We should have remembered that when it rains, it

pours.

2

I’m the sort ofperson who’s always looking for

signs. And when you’re the sort of person who’s always looking for signs, you tend to find them. When I was a kid, for example, I had a knothole on the floor of my bedroom that looked exactly like Abraham Lincoln. I

was sure this meant I was destined for greatness. Then, one day, my mother announced her intention of in-stalling shag carpeting throughout the house. I begged her not to—or at least to spare this particular spot. I didn’t see why the carpet guys couldn’t cut a hole

around our sixteenth president’s head. It was in the corner. Who would notice? After regaling my brothers

with the tale, however, she went ahead with her plans for wall-to-wall respectability, thereby dooming me to an ordinary life. But that’s another story.

This morning, I had a sign. Several, actually. The

first materialized at Hollywood Toyota. A more un-

likely spot you could hardly imagine. And things kept getting unlikelier by the minute.

First of all there was the service manager’s de-

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meanor, which went from aloof to abashed after one

look under my hood. It seemed my crack mechanic

had forgotten to put the oil cap back on when he’d serviced my car two weeks ago, which didn’t sound like

such a big deal until Maynard explained the gravity of the error.

Over the course of the subsequent fourteen days,

nearly three quarts of motor oil had bubbled up, coating the outside instead of the inside of my engine and

nearly locking up the pistons in the process. Maynard took my hand as he broke the news. My car had had a

coronary. But there was no need to panic. He’d get his best guy to fix it up, wash it down, relube everything, and replace the cup holder and tape deck, too. And because this mess was their fault, he’d be providing me with a loaner, free of charge, one from his own collection—a real classic. Before I could say boo, he wheeled me around and pointed toward a baby-blue Cadillac.

A convertible.

My jaw dropped. He beamed. I went starry-eyed. He

turned red. There was a dent on the passenger side, a missing rear taillight, and a vanity plate that read

SMUTHE, but I’d still call that car one hell of a sign.

“Maynard, are you sure?” This couldn’t be happen-

ing.

“Ms. Caruso,” he said, “a pretty lady like you

shouldn’t worry so much.”

He was smuthe all right.

“Here’s the long and short of it. I’m selling the car. A guy is coming down from Merced the first of next

month. You know where Merced is, right?”

“Right.” Wrong.

“And, maybe you noticed, I don’t know, but there’s a

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little touch-up work I have to take care of. Nineteen sixty-nine wasn’t yesterday. But I got time, you’re a good customer, what the hey.” He ran his thick fingers over a nick on the hood. “That one I’m not touching,”

he said. “It adds to the patina, right?”

“Right.” Wrong.

He tossed me the keys. “Don’t do anything I

wouldn’t do.”

I wouldn’t have loaned me the car, which I think

gave me a lot of leeway.

I had to show somebody. My daughter and son-in-

law lived too far away. Lael was probably busy getting the kids’ things packed up for their vacations. Gambino was in Buffalo for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniver-sary. That left Bridget. Her shop was sort of on my

way home.

I started up the engine and backed out of the drive-

way. Maynard gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I re-

ciprocated and narrowly avoided plowing into a Chevy

Nova parked at the curb. Good thing I had fast reflexes.

After that, it was smooth sailing. I’d never been so

far away from my front bumper. The world felt liquid.

Captain Cece Caruso.

New perspectives engender new insights. The farther

west I ventured, for example, the thinner the pedestrians and the thicker the foliage. Had to be a money

thing. Not that there were many pedestrians. Another

money thing. Not that I’m getting into that. It’s just that I was heading to Bridget’s, where clothes are sold, and I’m addicted to clothes, which cost money, which is a sore spot for me. The money thing. But I’m not getting into that.

Fifteen minutes later, I’d arrived at the brick building 14

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on Burton Way in Beverly Hills. There was a space in

front, but the jacarandas were in bloom and I was wary of their blossoms. They might stain the tan upholstery.

Worse yet, my zebra-striped wrap dress (Diane von

Furstenberg, 1977). Also, there really wasn’t enough

room. I docked by a hydrant. I’d only be a second.

The bell on the celadon-and-gold door jingle-

jangled. Bridget’s new intern jumped to his feet. He had been sitting on her Louis XIV desk. Even though it was a reproduction and he looked like a rock star, this did not bode well. He said the boss was in back, sorting