Death Was the Other Woman (16 page)

DESPITE OUR RAGGED INTRODUCTION
, Calvin seemed to be a nice kid. He was rougher around the edges than his big sister. I decided that a few years of living in the city had polished Bakersfield right out of Brucie. But once the gun was safely tucked away and he had some coffee in him, Calvin relaxed somewhat and proved himself to be bright and engaging and deeply concerned about his sister. More: he was determined to find her. I didn't even know where to begin, but Calvin had some ideas.

“In her letter, she didn't tell me exactly what she saw, but she let me know it was bad. The letter was funny though. Like she'd been afraid of someone else reading it. It was written in a sort of code. One only she and I would understand.”

She'd used the patois of their family, he told me, the inner language it seems every family but mine always has. It also made some references to things that only Brucie and Calvin would have known about. An incident when they were young, for instance, something that had happened with some of the town kids that had frightened both of them as children. Something that had seemed so awful to them at the time that Calvin wouldn't fully explain it to me even now.

“In the letter she told me that the day Ned was killed she saw something she shouldn't oughta. Something she wished she hadn't seen. And now she's gotta lay low; that's what she said. She even told me she was thinking of coming back to Bakersfield for a while.”

“What do you think she saw, Calvin? Did she give you any hints?” We were sitting at my desk—I behind it in my usual seat, Calvin across from me with one of the waiting room chairs pulled up. I'd brought thick slices of buttered bread for my lunch that day, with a slab of Marjorie's good banana loaf as a sweet. We had these between us with the coffee on the desk. It was nowhere near lunchtime, but Calvin looked as though he could use a meal and I didn't mind sharing.

“I've been thinking about that a lot, Miss Pangborn.” He broke off another bit of bread, chewed it thoughtfully, and then washed it down with a mouthful of coffee before he spoke again. “I reckon it must have had something to do with that husband of hers.”

I looked at Cal sharply. I'd heard Ned Jergens spoken of with love—by Brucie—and with respect—by Mustard and Dex—but here I heard something a little different.

“I gather you didn't like him very much,” I prompted.

“Well, I know it ain't right to speak ill of the dead—” he paused, but I could tell he was contemplating doing exactly that “—and he was good enough to Brucie and all. Didn't hit her none or nuthin' so far as I could see. But he was . . . well, he was flash. Show-offy, you know? And he acted like he was better ‘n everyone.”

“What did he say he did for a living?”

“Oh, we knew what he was, all right. We knew what he did. He might have hid it from us, but Brucie liked to brag about it. That her husband was a torpedo.”

I stopped him at that. “But he wasn't, was he? I thought Ned was Chummy McGee's right-hand man, not a gunsel.”

Calvin looked at me like I was a child. “How far is one of those from the other?” he asked. “Sure, Ned might have had some kind
of seniority.”
Calvin spat the word out like it tasted bad. Like he couldn't get it out of his mouth fast enough. “But that don't change what he was. And, yeah, it meant he could give my sister a nice house and pretty things, but what's the balance? Look at her now—her husband's dead, and she's either hiding somewhere or ...” His voice trailed off pathetically, but even though he left the words unsaid, they hung in the air between us. Considering everything, we both knew there was a good chance that Brucie was dead.

WHEN I TRIED
Mustard's line and still didn't get an answer, I started to get even more worried. Mustard had business concerns, mysterious as they might sometimes be to me. When he didn't answer the phone, he always left someone in place to answer for him. But not today. Today the phone just rang and rang.

With Mustard and Brucie both missing in action, it seemed to spell an even darker vision of doom. I wished Dex wasn't out of town. Even hanging around with private detectives for a while, I didn't actually know how to
detect
anything on my own. Not really. I could have used a dose of Dex's confidence and knowledge right then. But it wasn't an option.

Even with a couple of cups of my good strong coffee inside him, Calvin was asleep on his feet. I told him he could curl up in Dex's office chair for a while and get some shut-eye. I knew he'd feel clearer with a bit of sleep, and I felt as though I needed a half hour of quiet in order to think things through. Someone somewhere knew something about Brucie. And I had no idea of where to start looking.

While Calvin slept, I took the envelope with Harrison Dempsey's fingerprints out of my handbag and locked them in the safe in Dex's office. That done, I called a locksmith. His shop was just a few blocks away, and on the phone he sounded just as hungry as a lot of businesses had gotten to be. He said he'd be around to fix the lock in a quarter hour.

After I hung up the phone, I sat at my desk, finally taking the half hour alone I'd promised myself to think things through. When that didn't produce any big results, I got lucky: I got a break.

That break came in the form of the mailman, who entered just as the locksmith was leaving. Our postman was a polite little man called Murphy—I wasn't sure if it was his front or last name, he'd never explained—who dropped off the mail every day at eleven o'clock sharp. On this day, he came in with his usual cheerful greeting and dropped the normal stack of mail on my desk. “You got a postcard from Italy,” he informed me. “Sounds like your friends are having a great time.”

Murphy went on his way, and I tried to think who might be sending us a postcard from Italy even while I rifled through the short stack of mail. And then there it was: a gondola on the Grand Canal. I turned the card over hungrily. I recognized Mustard's handwriting at once: the extreme left slope to the letters, the ink so dark a blue it was almost purple. Indigo, you would have said. And applied firmly, as by the hand of someone who didn't mess around much.

Dear Dex and Kitty,

The Grand Canal is wonderful, just as we remembered it when we were here last. The water is inviting, but we ‘ve resisted the urge so far. Linnie and I wish you were here so very much. If you came, you'd have to be careful. It's a long journey and some of it is perilous, but we think it's worth the trip.

Miss you and wish you were here,

M&B

M & B.
Who could that be but Mustard and Brucie? The Linnie part I didn't get at all. And I was sure that, like the message Brucie had sent to her brother, in this postcard they were addressing us in some kind of code.
From Italy?
That seemed improbable. They hadn't even had time to get there, much less enjoy the Grand Canal. They'd only been missing for a couple of days. To get to Italy from Los Angeles would take a couple of weeks by ocean liner, if they got lucky and made all the right connections.

I turned the card over and studied the image, looking for a further clue, but there was none. A very typical Venice shot. A hand-painted photograph of a gondolier on the Grand Canal looking utterly content moving his boat through the water, as though he had been born to the job. Behind him, the unmistakable architecture of the most famous of Italian cities.

Flipping the card back over, I looked at the stamp, then furrowed my brow in concentration. An American stamp. From Italy. That made no sense. Then I looked at the postmark and a light dawned.

I knew where they were.

IT WAS FOURTEEN MILES
from Dex's office downtown to our destination. In a car we'd have managed the trip in an hour. The Red Car went there, but it took over two. I chafed at the delay. This was one day that, if I could have gotten my mitts on a car, I'd have done it. But with Dex out of town and Mustard out of sight, that wasn't an option. So I tried to curb my impatience. The whole experience gave me a better insight into how Dex must sometimes feel. I couldn't decide if that was a good thing. Or not.

We got off the Red Car at what had once been the Grand Lagoon. It was still marked as such, but the lagoon itself had long ago been filled in. Still, it remained the center of the amusement park and it seemed a good place to start.

I'd probably been barely into my teens the last time I'd been to Venice—perhaps 1922 or 1923, certainly no later than 1925. I was a little dismayed by the changes I found. When I had been there last, Venice had been a declining dowager. A shadow of the grand vision its creator, Abbot Kinney, had around the turn of the century, but still an enjoyable place to spend an afternoon. To ride the roller coasters, get frightened in the fun house, indulge in the indoor saltwater plunge, or even meander along the boardwalk.

The vestiges of all these things were still in place, but to everything there was an air of neglect and decay. The Race Thru the Clouds roller coaster was as I remembered, but it looked ill-kept, and it would have taken a braver thrill seeker than I've ever been to try it. The short lines waiting to ride made me think I wasn't alone in this. The Rapids, which I remembered as an exciting ride up a light-studded, manmade mountain before plummeting down in a tiny car, wasn't running at all. Worst of all was the smell. It wasn't overpowering, but it permeated the entire area. It was difficult to place. Then I realized it wasn't one thing, but a melange of several—the ever-present oil smell combined with human waste and perhaps worse.

“Why are we here?” Calvin asked, for perhaps the sixth time.

“I told you. I'm following a hunch. Please. Indulge me. It's not like you've got anything else to do.”

I'd thought about leaving him back at the office, but it had seemed a good idea to bring him along. I really didn't know what we were going to find, and at least he had a gun.

I took the postcard out of my handbag, confirming what I'd read.
Linnie.
That's what it said. And if I wasn't mistaken . . .

I led Calvin to the faded visitor's map that still stood at the far end of the filled-in Grand Lagoon. The map was beautifully done but old-fashioned, rendered with the artistry and whimsy typical of the early 1900s. One of the corners had rotted away, and the paint was flaking off in places, but near the center, not far from the place where we stood, I saw it: Linnie Canal. In the illustration it looked as though it fed right into the Grand Lagoon. It wouldn't do so now, of course—not with the lagoon filled in—but it meant we weren't far from our destination. I smiled, suddenly sure I'd read things right, and led Calvin off to find it.

Closest to the Grand Lagoon, the Linnie Canal was part of the amusement park, though some of the amusements were now abandoned. As we followed along the banks of the canal, the amusements gave way to the vacation bungalows that had been built when Venice of America was a new and shiny dream. Now most of them were derelict. The stench and decay all around us wouldn't have been anyone's idea of a grand vacation.

“It would help if you told me what we were looking for,”

Calvin groused, as we trudged along the bank. I didn't reply. After all, I didn't know myself, so I really didn't have anything to tell him.

Aside from a few pathetic ducks that paddled in the water of the canal, we didn't see any signs of life. I felt certain there would be rats scurrying everywhere. I didn't see any, but the lack of visual evidence didn't make me feel any better. You just knew that they were there somewhere, probably waiting for dark.

After a while an old woman came out of one of the small houses on the other side of the canal and trundled along the bank. And though I kept a sharp eye out, we didn't spy anything else of note.

We followed the canal until we couldn't anymore; then carefully crossed a rickety bridge to the other bank and started to head back toward the Grand Lagoon.

As we passed the house where I'd spotted the old woman, I heard my name.

“Kitty.” It was more of a hiss than a word. It was quiet, that hiss, and sounded as though it had come from a bit of a distance.

I turned quickly—we both did—but there was nothing there besides an abandoned bungalow. But suddenly, with an eerie confidence, I knew.

Checking both ways, up and down the canal, we could still see the lonesome ducks, but there were no human forms in sight. I grabbed Calvin by the arm and wordlessly pulled him into a small unkempt yard in front of one of the derelict bungalows. Then, with an assurance I didn't entirely feel, I led him up the front steps and right into the house. Calvin looked confused, but he followed me without protest and with the air of someone who had resigned himself.

As soon as I closed the front door behind us, we heard a voice. “Who's the pup?” It sounded just like Mustard, but it looked like the old woman we'd seen walking next to the canal. She wasn't bent over now, or walking painfully as she had been when we'd first seen her. At close range I could see that Mustard's disguise hadn't been very thorough—a head scarf, an old coat, a woman's old-fashioned lace-up shoes. I gathered that the view from a distance had been all that mattered.

“That's quite the getup,” I said, my mirth at the sight of him almost overpowering my nervousness. “Are you going for the prize of world's ugliest woman?”

“Cal!” My head shot up at the female voice, and my heart brightened as Brucie flew into the room and into her brother's arms. Her shoulder was bandaged, but other than that she looked right as rain.

“So are you going to tell me why you're playing dress-up,” I said to Mustard, “or is this what you do on your days off? Come down to Venice and don an old woman's clothes?”

“You're right,” Mustard said, straight-faced. “This is what I do for fun.” He was shedding his ridiculous costume as he spoke. I was relieved to see everyday Mustard emerge within a few seconds. “And Venice is just the place for it... no one around to see. I'll ask it again though: Who's the pup?” His expression was neutral, but I could tell he wasn't excited about seeing Calvin, who was now in a corner, speaking urgently and quietly with Brucie.

“It's her brother,” I said, noting the small look of relief I saw wash over Mustard's face as he digested what I'd said. “He showed up at the office this morning.”

“Where's Dex?”

“Back in Frisco. It's a long story and I don't feel like telling it right now. You got anything like tea around here?”

“There's a kitchen,” he replied, leading the way. “Come on.”

Mustard put a kettle on a stove so ancient, I was surprised to see it still worked. The little house was tidy, however, and well stocked. The only place the cottage looked derelict was from the outside. I wanted to ask about it, but I had so many questions I didn't even know where to start. Mustard saved me the trouble.

“I don't really dress up in old women's clothes for fun, you know.”

“I guessed that,” I said with a smile.

“I mailed the card yesterday, so I figured you'd show up today—though I thought it would be you and Dex. Or even just Dex. So I put on this getup and kept an eye out for you.”

“But we saw you a while ago. Well, we saw you being
her.
You didn't say anything. Or wave.”

“I wanted to be sure you weren't followed.”

“And we weren't?”

“Didn't look that way. Did you see anyone?”

“Just some ducks,” I said. “Since we left the Grand Lagoon. You two been holed up here the whole time?”

Mustard nodded. “Yeah. Turns out it wasn't Dex those torpedoes were gunning for. It was Brucie.”

“I figured that out by myself.”

“Yeah? I figured it at the hospital. I went to see Brucie the day after the shooting. When I got there a couple of gunsels were hanging around outside her room. I figured they were waiting for a quiet moment.” He made a slashing movement across his throat with the tips of his fingers.

I gulped. “You figured they were there to kill her?”

“I'm sure of it. So I just bundled her up and got her out of there. The doctors kicked up a bit of a fuss. Said she wasn't ready to go home. And they were probably right, but I figured if I left her there she'd be leaving feet first.”

“You didn't just up and walk her out.” It wasn't a question.

He grinned, a little rakishly, I thought. “No, you're right. I didn't just waltz her out. But we fooled those torpedoes pretty good, me and Brucie. They're probably still wondering what happened to her.”

I digested this. Clearly, Mustard wasn't going to illuminate the details, but I'd caught the gist of the thing and that was important: Brucie had been in danger and now she was not.

“She looks fine now,” I said after a while.

“She does, doesn't she?”

“She does what?” Brucie said, entering the kitchen with her brother in tow.

“I was just saying you look well. Mustard said he hustled you out of the hospital before the doctors said you were ready.”

“Oh, silly,” she said, smiling at Mustard fondly. “He was jumping at shadows. I came with him just to shut him up.”

“Huh,” Mustard said, pouring boiling water into a teapot. “Some shadows. You'd have been pushing up daisies by now, sister.”

“But, Mustard,” I said, “why here? I would have thought you'd head for the country or something.”

“That's easy. This is my place. I don't get here very often, but it's here for me when I need it. Hidden in plain sight.”

“Dex knows about it,” I said, suddenly understanding the postcard. The little code was probably something they'd worked out.

“Sure he does. But just him and no one else. Well, now the three of you.”

Calvin piped up. “Four,” he said.

“And the disguise . . . ?” I asked.

Mustard nodded. “I've used it before.”

“You really think all this was necessary?” I asked, with a gesture that indicated Brucie, the little house, the discarded scarf.

“It was the only way,” Mustard said. “At first I thought stashing her at your place was enough.”

“Maybe it would have been,” I said, perhaps more sternly than I'd intended, “if you hadn't paraded her around the Town House Hotel in a gold lame dress.”

“Now, Kitty,” Brucie said, “don't take that tone. Mustard didn't really know.”

“She don't like to be called Kitty,” Calvin interjected.

“What didn't Mustard know?” I asked.

I saw the two of them exchange glances, but I didn't think to wonder about it in that moment.

“I saw ... I saw Ned killed,” Brucie said haltingly.

“I'm not sure,” I said, “but I think I knew that.”

“I saw him die,” Brucie replied. “But I didn't tell you I saw who killed him.”