Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (16 page)

Callie
located Waterston Evers's phone number in the directory, along with his address
in La Canada Flintridge. With that in hand, we drove north on Highway 2,
exiting up into the foothills, and wound our way around an elegant old
neighborhood with houses that looked more midwestern than Californian, pulling
up in front of a three-story stone-built Tudor. An elderly silver-haired man
with a pear-shaped body answered our ring and admitted to being Waterston
Evers. I introduced Callie and myself.

"You
are the most gorgeous woman I believe I've ever laid eyes on," Mr. Evers
said, missile-locked on Callie's frame. "That hair. Is it natural?"

I
realized again what a knockout Callie was to the uninitiated.

"Yes,
it is," Callie replied sweetly.

"Waterston
Evers is just one step short of plopping down on his ass and howling," I
said like a ventriloquist, never moving my lips.

"We
wondered if you might have information about this cuneiform fragment,"
Callie asked as I produced the stone from my pocket.

Mr.
Evers looked at the fragment as one might a dog that one had given up for
missing, only to have it reappear years later. "It's the death stone I
sold to a Mr. Frank Anthony and his people."

He
stepped back to allow us inside his foyer. We followed his large derriere, like
imprinted ducklings, to an overstuffed study that my nose told me was in dire
need of dusting.

"Least
important pieces in my collection," Mr. Evers said, lowering his sizeable
frame into a well-worn leather armchair liberally stained with numerous
liquids, the origins of which I did not wish to contemplate.

"You
heard Mr. Anthony died," I said.

He
paused. "No, I had no idea. Are you investigators or some such?"

"We're
writers," I said.

"I
never speak with the press." Mr. Evers tried to rise in indignation, but
his was not a chassis that could swiftly throw us out.

"We're
not press, we're screenwriters. A friend of ours—you met her, Barrett
Silvers—was attacked recently and is in the hospital badly burned. We're trying
to help find out who was responsible."

A
mangy little dog snarffled into the room, clawing at the rugs as if grubbing
for worms, and then deposited its body in the center of the floor and
scratched. There were spots on its balding hide where it had made itself bleed,
and I wanted to suggest a vet but then decided I was already interfering in
enough lives without taking on Mr. Evers's psoriasis-ridden mixed-breed.

"Nice
man. I'm sorry to hear of his death, and about Miss Silvers. Mr. Anthony was a
knowledgeable man with a great appreciation for Egyptian antiquities. Knew more
about them than most, I would say."

"You
said 'Mr. Anthony and his people.' Did Frank Anthony have someone else with him
the day he visited you?" I asked.

"Yes,
Ms. Silvers, of course, and a man and woman not at all interested in
antiquities. Mr. Anthony sat right here at this table and examined the stones
with a glass while I gave his three guests a tour of the grounds. Fuji hated
the man. Yeah-yus." Mr. Evers dissolved into baby talk at the mere mention
of the little rat-dog's name and bent to scratch its head. "And Fuji was
terrified of the woman. Don't know why. She never spoke a word, but Fuji just
has a sense about people."

"Do
you, by any chance, remember their names?" Callie asked.

He
got up slowly and went over to a rolltop desk whose top had not been lowered in
decades, if one could judge by the papers, envelopes, books, and receipts
jutting out of every cubicle. He rummaged for a while as Callie and I rolled
our eyes at one another over Fuji, who was blithely peeing on the Oriental rug
as if that were where she routinely went. From the smell of the room, I
suspected it was.

"Ah,
here it is...knew I'd written it down. The two other people with him were Mr.
Caruthers and a Ramona Mathers."

My
eyes lit up. "Would you happen to know what the writing on the death stone
means?"

"Sanskrit
or Egyptian word. I looked it up when I purchased them years ago. Let me
double-check to make certain before I say." He shuffled over to the
bookshelf and stood on tiptoe to pull down several dusty volumes. Holding the
stone in his left hand, he opened the largest volume with his right. His eyes
moved back and forth from stone to book, book to stone, for what seemed like an
eternity.

"Cloth,"
he announced soundly. "Like bathing cloth," he elaborated.

"This
hot piece of evidence contains the word
washcloth?"
I asked.

"Well,
that's the modern equivalent, I guess." He smiled for the first time.
"What is it you were looking for?" he inquired.

"A
list of names," I said.

"Well,
I'm afraid it's not a phone book," he chortled.

Mr.
Evers offered us tea, and before I could stop her, Callie accepted. I shot her
a look that said she must be mad.

"I
have an overpowering desire for tea," she whispered. "I follow my
urges."

He
led the way to a moldy, formal dining room, whose red velvet curtains, if
shaken, would have given off enough dirt and sand to make Lawrence of Arabia
feel at home. He offered us a seat at the end of a long, dark, mahogany
dining-room table and poured the tea. I crossed my eyes at Callie, letting her
know that pausing for a tea party was making me nuts. Callie asked Mr. Evers
about his work, and he launched into a dissertation on the carbon dating of
Egyptian antiquities that sent me into an alpha state.

"I'm
a medical doctor, but I haven't practiced in years. My father wanted me to be a
doctor, so I did it to oblige him. After his death, I returned to archeology,
my first love." He elongated the word love while staring at Callie, and I
realized we were invited to tea because he apparently had a crush on her.

Callie
asked if he knew anything about muscle relaxants.

"Are
you asking if I know how to relax muscles?" he purred. I could feel my
blood pressure rising. We were moving into the dirty old man arena, where every
phrase would be repeated and given a sexual meaning.

I
jumped in. "She means do you have any expertise, as a physician, with
muscle relaxants. Barrett Silvers collapsed in a restaurant while eating lunch,
eyes frozen open, all bodily function shut down. The hospital said one of the
possible causes could be an overdose of muscle relaxants."

He
hated that I'd interfered with his game, but answered my question
professionally. "Tubocurare, of course, is the most common, but it doesn't
sound like that's what it was." Everston went to a shelf and retrieved a
large reference book with some papers tucked in it. "Interesting you
should bring that up. I was looking at South American tribes and their burial
rites, and I came across an article on a substance the natives refer to as
Batuki Tatungawa. It's a poison made from various chondodendron vines and laced
with snake venom, but the piece de resistance, so the natives believe, is
marinating it in poisonous toad venom. Exceptionally poisonous toads in those
parts, big as sewer rats. The resulting serum in high doses, fired from a blowgun,
could flatten a full-grown tapir." Evers pushed the article in Callie's
direction and said he was going to the kitchen for some teacakes and would be right
back.

"What's
a tapir?" Callie whispered.

"In
Hollywood, it's the opposite of film her. In South America I think it's a big
hairy animal with hooves."

"Very
funny," Callie replied, distracted by the pages she was skimming. She
whispered excitedly, "Suppose I put a deadly ampoule of this stuff in a
vial between my teeth, kissed you, used my tongue to force the plunger in, and
shot this stuff into your neck?"

"If
you did, you'd have the most agile set of lips and tongue on the planet,"
I purred in imitation of our host.

"Look
at this picture. The bulb's back in his jaw, then he transfers it to the front
between his teeth, and he uses his tongue to release the poison."

"Maybe
that's why the man in the parking garage was trying to get his mouth on my
neck, and why he was breathing heavily through his nose. He had something in
his mouth!"

Mr.
Evers was back with the tiny little squares of cake covered in almond icing.
Fuji scratched endlessly beneath my feet, hurtling an infestation of fleas into
my socks, or so I imagined. Infused with the idea of escaping, I downed a few
gulps of tea, suddenly rose, thanked the man profusely for the information, and
towed Callie to the door. Waterston Evers looked mildly distressed at losing
his fantasy woman, but I was sure he'd have his pear-bottom back in the sagging
leather chair in the study before I had the key in the ignition. I groused all
the way to the car that I hated sexual innuendo from the unkempt.

Callie
waved off my complaints, far more interested in the fact that it sounded like
Barrett Silvers's attacker was South American, if one could judge from the
poison.

"Who
are you calling now?" Callie asked as I dialed.

"Ramona
Mathers," I said, having dug her phone number out of my wallet.

She
answered almost immediately. "Ramona, this is Teague Richfield. We met at
Frank Anthony's home right after he died,"

"You're
the reporter with the glorious green eyes whom I tried to take to dinner,"
she said smoothly. "But you turned me down."

"Not
for lack of wanting." I smiled. "You knew of course that Barrett
Silvers was nearly killed, and I wondered if you could help me out as it
relates to that?"

She
sighed in mock petulance. "I hate it when the object of my fantasies turns
out to be just another person wanting something from me. I have no idea why
anyone would harm Ms. Silvers. In fact, Frank and I offered Barrett Silvers a
job. She was complaining about the tawdry assignments she'd been given
recently, something about procuring girls. At any rate, Frank, who was a very
kind and generous man, told her to move back to Oklahoma and go to work for
him."

"Doing
what?" I asked.

"Frank
had dozens of companies."

"Who
do you suppose had the death stone delivered to Barrett Silvers?" I asked.

"Delivered?
Frank gave it to her himself, right after we left Waterston Evers's house. He
told Silvers that the word on the rock meant
towel
and joked that maybe
it was really an ancient country club chit that gentlemen had to present to get
into the baths. He said, 'Carry this as a reminder to wipe off the
bullshit.'"

I
sat frozen in thought. Frank Anthony gave the death stone to Barrett right
after Frank purchased it.

"Are
we through talking for now?" she asked. "Because I'm having a
massage."

"Yes,
yes, thanks so much." I hung up. "There must have been two," I
blurted out and dialed Waterston Evers, asking him about the possibility of two
stones.

"Didn't
I mention that? Yes, two identical. He bought them both."

I
thanked him and hung up.

"Two
stones," I said to Callie. "And Caruthers and Mathers knew there were
two stones."

"So
if the stone delivered to Barrett at Orca's belonged to Frank Anthony, where
the hell's the stone Frank gave Barrett at Waterston Evers's house? Maybe
Caruthers and Mathers want to know that too."

"And
why didn't Barrett tell us she had another stone?" Callie asked.

"Because
she's got the stone that counts," I said, wheeling the car around and
heading for Los Feliz.

We
pulled up in front of Barrett's house in Los Feliz. I checked my watch. It was
early enough that her housekeeper would still be on duty. In fact, I surmised
she was probably staying there to care for Barrett's dogs while Barrett was in
the hospital. We climbed the steep steps to the entrance of her beautifully
landscaped, fifties deco home overlooking the hills. Callie rang the bell.
Merika, a pretty, slender Japanese lady, answered the door.

"Miss
Tee-kee!" Her face broke into a wide grin. "Oh." Her face turned
grave. "Ms. Seebers in hose-pee-tal."

"How
do you know her housekeeper? Have you spent the night here?" Callie
whispered.

"Just
visited.. .a party, I think, one time," I lied.

I
told Merika I'd come over to pick out a few things for her to take up to the
hospital for Barrett. Signaling Callie to keep Merika busy, I flew through
Barrett's bedroom at warp speed checking dresser drawers, pants pockets,
jewelry boxes, attaches, and anything else that might contain the stone.
Nothing. I collected myself for a moment and began again, lifting the mattress
to check under the edges, checking the rim of the platform bed, looking behind
books and inside the medicine cabinet. After twenty minutes, I could hear
Callie approaching loudly in order to give me warning.

"Merika,
I'm feeling like I would like a drink. Would it be all right if I got myself
something?" Callie asked.

Merika
took Callie into the kitchen. "Soda pop? Water with lemon? Coffee,
tea—"