Serpentine

Chapter 22

San Marino Fish Market was a sparkling storefront on a busy intersection. The city’s genteel with an older demographic, and that shaped the driving. Steady but civilized traffic created a constant low thunder.

Plenty of free parking was available near the entrance. Milo slid in next to a chocolate-brown Mercedes 500 with a miniature horseshoe hanging from the rearview mirror. Chocolate-colored cowgirl hat on the backseat. He rubbed his face, like washing without water. Edginess kicked up several notches.

Inside the restaurant were four round tables covered in white butcher paper and backed by a small refrigerated case featuring treasures from the briny. On the wall was what you’d expect in an old-school seafood joint: coiled ropes and nets, wood-and-brass captain’s wheels, a deep-sea diver mask, an illustrated chart featuring sketches of finned and shelled creatures.

Three tables were occupied by groups of white-haired people. The one closest to the door was set with three chairs, one of them filled amply by a large, poodle-coiffed woman wearing a blue denim, pearl-snap western shirt. Diet Coke and a basket of sourdough in front of her. Jaws working on the bread.

Milo said, “Mrs. Gaines?”

She chewed some more then swallowed, all the while studying us. “Brilliant deduction, you must be a detective. Who’s this?”

“Alex Delaware.”

“My son’s named Alex. He’s an actuary. I ordered for myself, it’s probably too early for you.”

“We’re fine.” He began to sit down.

“Uh-uh, at the counter,” said Winifred Gaines, pointing. “You pick out your victim, they cook it and bring it to you.”

“The fish are live?”

“No, dead. Like your victims.”

When we got back to the table, Winifred Gaines said, “What did you order?”

Milo said, “Shrimp-crab combo with fries, grilled halibut and fries for him.”

“Grilled. That’s why he’s skinny and we’re not. I got the same as you. Don’t read too much into it.”

A young, smiling waitress brought Milo’s iced coffee and my water and said, “More Diet Coke, Mrs. Gaines?”

“Sure.” Glancing at me. “Water? Tasteless. Way too much virtue, Slim. So what do you want to know about poor Arlette and why after all these years?”

“We’re looking into a thirty-six-year-old murder that may or may not be related to her.”

“That’s around the same time as Arlette.”

“One year after.”

“Someone else was taken in by his charms?”

“Dr. Des Barres?”

“That’s who we’re talking about, right?”

“You didn’t like him.”

“I judge people by how they treat animals. When he thought no one was watching, he kicked his mounts way too hard. One day, Robert the Bruce — my biggest, strongest stallion — got fed up and gave him a good rock and roll, nearly threw him. Tony was lucky he didn’t get brained.”

“He called himself Tony.”

“Everyone did.”

“He’s got a son named Tony.”

“That one was called Junior. Handsome kid, very bright. They both were, there were two sons. The little girl was much younger. Quiet. They all deserved better than Tony.”

“Not a great dad.”

Winifred Gaines snorted. Hard not to hear it as equine.

I said, “Sounds like you knew the family pretty well.”

“Just from a business perspective. Arlette was British. She grew up with horses, learned to use the Western saddle, really got into our way of life. She got two beauties from me and boarded them with me. Sometimes she’d ride with Junior or the other one — forget his name. She wasn’t the boys’ real mother, you know. He was a widow when they met but she raised those kids as if they were hers. The baby was hers. That one didn’t ride, rarely came to the stables. When she did, she sat in the office and drew pictures.”

“The boys and Tony rode.”

“More the boys, once in a while him. When Arlette brought the kids, she’d ride Butter, a lovely pinto, and Junior would ride Bramble, the other one I sold her, a black beauty. The younger boy — Bill, that’s what it was — would take a rental. When it was just two of them, both their mounts got ridden. The time he almost got thrown, he showed up late and Junior was already on Bramble.”

Her eyes flashed. “Not only did he kick too hard, he’d dig his heels into their flanks and grind.” Scowling, she twisted a fist to demonstrate. “He had these fancy cowboy boots with big heels he bought in Beverly Hills of all places. Rodeo Drive — did you know they named it that because in the old days you could ride horses up and down? Now it’s traffic and tourists.”

Another snort. “World’s going this way fast.” She aimed a fist downward and let it plummet.

Milo said, “The day Arlette died—”

“She was riding Bramble because I thought Butter had a touch of white line disease. Turned out it was just some superficial gunk, but I needed the vet to see her. Either way, it made no sense, her being thrown. Both horses were gentle and Arlette knew how to ride.”

I said, “Could Bramble have gotten spooked by a forest animal?”

“Could the sky fall? Anything’s possible, there’s cah-yotes out there, high-strung deer, even a bear or a puma once in a blue. But if it was a puma, believe me, it would’ve taken advantage, they wouldn’t have found Arlette intact. And Bramble wouldn’t be standing a few yards away whimpering. Besides, they were followed.”

Milo and I sat forward.

Winifred Gaines’s smile was smug — an oracle entrusted with a sacred truth. “You didn’t know, huh?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Figures,” she said. “I told those clowns, they couldn’t care less.”

“Tell us,” said Milo.

The smile turned wicked. “Guess I will if you behave yourselves — here’s our dinner.”

When Milo’s anxious and is presented with food, he either gorges or abstains. This time he just watched in admiration as Winifred Gaines began a frontal assault on her food.

Four thirty was early. I had no appetite, either.

Two chew-and-swallows, a breather, one more mouthful, then: “What’s your problem? Can’t handle fish before dark?”

He picked up his fork and knife, excised a tiny piece of shrimp.

“Hmph. What about you, Slim?”

I ingested a french fry.

She shook her head. Loss of faith in humanity.

A minute or so later, she put down her utensils and grinned. “Keeping you in suspense? Yeah, I’m a coldhearted biddy. Learned about delay of gratification from being married.”

I said, “Your delay or your husband’s?”

She glowered at me, then her lips worked as she fought laughter. Finally, losing the battle, she let out a belch of guffaw. Her chest heaved. A pearl snap came loose. “Slim’s a comedian. Well, I’m taking the Fifth on that.”

She swigged Diet Coke and sat back.

“Okay, I won’t torture you anymore. Strictly speaking, Arlette wasn’t followed. But someone rode into the forest soon after her.”

Milo said, “How soon?”

“A few minutes — three, four, five. I didn’t think much of it until I heard what happened to her.”

Milo said, “Who’d you see?”

“Can’t swear to it but my impression was a woman, from the size and the way she moved in the saddle. Women have wider pelvises, sometimes they shift around a bit until they get a firm grip. That’s what this one was doing.”

I said, “Maybe someone without much experience?”

“You and your maybes. Yeah, could be that, but even experienced females sometimes jiggle around. My daughter was a dressage champ and when she’d first get on, she’d be this and that and back to this before she settled down.”

Milo said, “What did this person look like?”

“No idea, it was far away, a hundred yards give or take. Maybe it was like you said, Slim. A rookie rider, female or some small guy. All I can tell you is the horse was brown and not one of mine. There were two other rental ranches near me, one north, one south. Clip joints, anyone could waltz in and pay for an hour ride. Their animals were old and tired, more chance dropping on the trail than going wild and throwing anyone. I told the rangers all this. They looked at me like I was nuts.”

“Are either of the other ranches still in business?” said Milo.

“Nah, it’s all strip malls and apartments. You obviously haven’t taken the time to look.”

“You’re our first stop, ma’am.”

“Am I supposed to be flattered?” Her fist did another swan dive. “Strip malls.”

I said, “Did you see the person who followed Arlette emerge from the forest?”

“Nope,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have, by then a ranger had found the body, it was a hubbub, all sorts of official vehicles. So I was pretty distracted.”

Milo said, “So someone could have come out without being noticed.”

“Absolutely,” said Winifred Gaines, “and there are also other trails that would lead you north or south of where Arlette started.”

Milo pulled out his pad. “Just to be thorough, what were the names of the other ranches?”

“Clip Joint One was Open Trails, Clip Joint Two was River Ridge, which made no sense ’cause there’s no river anywhere nearby.”

“Do you happen to recall who ran them?”

She put down her fork. “Open Trails were some Armenians from Glendale, River Ridge was this woman from Tujunga, real scatterbrain, had no clue. Neither of them lasted — maybe a year after Arlette died. That’s when the Armenians started selling off land and the whole development thing started. Now you answer my question: Why so gung ho after all this time?”

“Just what I told you, ma’am. We’re looking into a thirty—”

“Six-year-old murder. You’re thinking he did it to Arlette and then to someone else?”

“I can’t really get into—”

“Ha. Your eyes just got shifty, there’s my answer. Well, makes sense. Do you have any idea what he got up to after Arlette died?”

“We’ve been told he had women living with him at his house.”

“Bimbos coming in and out,” said Winifred Gaines. “Like he was that Playboy character... Hefner. It was common knowledge. Not a wholesome environment for the kids, especially the little one. He even changed the way he looked.”

“How so?”

“Before then he was this engineer-businessman type. Suits, ties, little Walter Pidgeon mustache.” She wiggled a finger under her nose. “Coke-bottle eyeglasses, the whole Mr. Wizard thing. Next time I saw him — we ran into each other at Huntington Gardens — he was with the little girl, had a total switcheroo.”

Another sub-nose wiggle was followed by a four-finger fan under her chin. “Now he had one of those goatee beards. Dyed it black, as believable as a campaign promise. And he was wearing those bell-bottoms. And one of those shirts.”

She stuck out her tongue, retrieved her fork, ate four shrimp.

I said, “Tasteless shirt?”

“Shiny silk,” she said, as if that settled it. “Shiny fake-diamond buttons, puffy sleeves — sissy sleeves. Paisley in crazy colors. Probably got it along with the boots on Rodeo Drive. I heard he went there for entertainment, too.”

“What kind of entertainment?”

“Some tacky nightclub. My husband told me. Jack was a lawyer with Skinner Thorndike downtown, avoided the Westside like a plague but had to take a deposition in Beverly Hills. Some movie producer who’d cheated someone, big surprise. The crook kept Jack waiting, he got stuck there until evening. He was walking to his car and guess who he spotted going into some club on Rodeo.”

“The new Dr. Des Barres.”

“New and not improved,” said Winifred Gaines. “When Jack came home he was laughing. ‘Honey, you’ll never guess who turned all hippie-dippie.’ ”

Milo said, “Did Jack tell you the name of the club?”

“I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell. Like I said, he steered clear of anything west of Spring Street.”

“Was Dr. Des Barres with anyone?”

“Jack didn’t say, so he probably wasn’t. I’m sure all the company he needed was inside.” She snorted. “Beverly Hills. Place hasn’t been classy for a long time. Last year my granddaughter insisted we go there, there’s a store she likes on Beverly Drive, it was her birthday. You should’ve seen it. Hordes of Orientals, they’re dying their hair blue and yellow and whatnot, you’d think you were in Tokyo.”

Milo said, “So Dr. Des Barres made a lifestyle change. Anything else you can tell us about him or his family?”

“We didn’t socialize, they were just clients — Arlette was.”

I said, “What kind of person was she?”

“Sweet, soft-spoken, nice British accent. When we chitchatted it was about the horses. She knew her stuff. That’s why I can’t see her taking a tumble from a sweet thing like Bramble. So you suspect Tony of being a really bad guy. Even so, why bother? He’s dead, it’s all ancient history.”

Milo said, “Doing my job, ma’am. Trying to do it well.”

Her lips pursed and her brows arced.

“Well,” she said, “guess you can’t ask more than that from anyone.” New voice. Soft, unguarded. “Don’t mean to give you grief, you’re just catching me at a bad time. Yesterday was the anniversary of Jack’s death.”

“Sorry about that, ma’am.”

“Yeah, it’s been a laugh a minute.”

He said, “How long has he been gone?”

I figured that might elicit a sharp retort. Winifred Gaines sighed.

“Four years. Year after that, Alex moved away, six months later, Melinda. Can’t blame them, they’ve got great jobs, I’m grateful they’re not wastrels. When the area turned into a construction zone, the riding business dried up. I finally sold everything at auction. Except the horses, those I personally made sure were adopted by good people.”

She shook her head. “Now it’s just me and the house, which is too darn big. But I can’t bring myself to sell it. Bridget?”

The waitress came over. “What can I get you, Mrs. Gaines?”

“A beer. I know I said I was watching the calories but to heck with that.”

“Sure, Mrs. Gaines. Sam Adams like always?”

“Anything as long as it’s not some poor-excuse light. I want to feel full.” She looked at our plates. “Obviously you don’t. Bridget, set them up with to-go bags.”

Milo said, “That’s okay.”

“Waste,” said Winifred Gaines, “is not okay. You don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

Milo and I drank good robusto coffee as she nursed a tall glass of lager. When she’d emptied it, she called for the check.

He said, “On us, ma’am.”

“No chance. I pay my own way.”

But when Bridget came over and he was ready with enough cash to evoke a grinning “Thank you, sir!” Winifred Gaines made no attempt to stop the transaction.

The three of us got up from the table and she picked up the to-go bag containing our uneaten food. Her walk aimed for confidence but there was slight unsteadiness in her step.

I held the door open for her. “Thanks, Slim.”

She made her way to the brown Mercedes. She’d left the car unlocked, opened the rear door and placed the bag on the seat.

Milo said, “Anything else you want to tell us, ma’am?”

“Just thanks for dinner. I noticed you paid with legal tender. Maybe there’s hope.”

We stood by as Winifred Gaines backed heedlessly into traffic, setting off tire squeals but no honks or road rage. She sped off, gray smoke belching from the Mercedes’s rear exhaust.

Milo said, “No one flipped her off. Place is a bastion of etiquette.”

I said, “Unlike that nest of barbarians, Beverly Hills.”

He laughed, studied the sky, turned serious. “The club she was talking about is probably The Azalea, only place I know of on Rodeo. Foil paper walls, disco ball, drinks with parasols, bad Chinese food. And perfect for a guy like Tony Des Barres two point oh.”

“Older guys and younger girls?”

“Members-only if you were male. The girls were a perk.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“Who knows?”

We got in the unmarked.

I said, “Sounds like you were inside. When was it active?”

“Before my time but not before Dr. Silverman’s.”

Rick was four years older than us. I did the math. It didn’t add up.

Splotches of pink had formed beneath his ears. I decided to let it ride.

He inserted the key but didn’t turn it. “Strictly speaking, also before Rick’s time. He wasn’t legal to drink — barely seventeen, junior at Harvard-Westlake, but even then he had the mustache. He got taken there by a school benefactor — some finance honcho who’d seen Rick play varsity b-ball and wanted to ‘counsel’ him about a scholarship to an Ivy. Rick was figuring a steak dinner, instead they end up walking through an unmarked door and into all that merriment.”

I said, “Older guys and younger girls? How’d taking Rick there figure in?”

“There was also a room upstairs where the perks weren’t girls.” Deep breath. “Lavender foil, fake-fur seating, Aubrey Beardsley prints. Subtle, huh? When the letch went to the john, Rick got the hell out of there and took a cab home. No further communication from the guy and no more scholarship talk. His parents couldn’t afford the Ivies so he went to the U., undergrad and med school. You know the rest — chief resident, the job at Cedars. When he gets home tonight, I’ll ask him what else he remembers about the place. If no one died in the E.R. and his mood’s okay.”

He waited for a lull in the traffic and backed out more smoothly than usual. As if compensating for Winifred Gaines’s heedless shotgun entry.

At the first opportunity, he swung a U on Huntington. “Any thoughts about what we just heard?”

I said, “Someone riding into the forest a few minutes after Arlette doesn’t mean much by itself. But with one staged accident we know about and two others that could also be setups, it is interesting.”

“Hate that word,” he said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get fascinating.”

Two options for getting back to the Westside: Arroyo Seco Parkway to the Pasadena Freeway and through the downtown interchange, or reversing our trip on the 210. Both featured sections of red on Waze, creating online peppermint sticks. The 210 would deposit us closer to Beverly Glen.

At this hour, the on-ramp was metered and we idled in a queue of commuters, mostly people driving alone.

Milo said, “For argument’s sake, let’s say ol’ Winnie was right about a woman following Arlette and that it actually means something. That take you anywhere?”

I said, “A love rival.”

“That’s where my head went. Arlette died a year before Dorothy showed up. What if Des Barres started playing around while he was still married? Before he went all harem. He hooks up with a young lovely, she gets Dollar Sign Fever and sets her sights on being Wife Number Three. Only problem is, Number Two’s alive and kicking, so Dreaming Girl decides to clear the deck.”

“If so, it didn’t work. Des Barres never married again. But maybe she settled for a position in the harem, figuring it was temporary. Especially if it was a prime slot.”

“Meaning?”

“Top girl. What Tony Junior felt Dorothy was aiming for.”

He smiled sourly. “A pecking order.”

“There always is,” I said.

“Among women?”

“Among people.”

“Ah. Don’t tell the internet I just asked that.”

“I don’t know, man, you’re making me feel kind of uncomfortable.”

I flashed jazz hands. He flashed a new flavor of smile. Weak around the edges — preoccupied.

A few minutes later, he said, “Arlette’s in the way of Dreamy’s aspirations so she saddles up and takes action. Ride in, act nonchalant, strike up a conversation, and shove or yank Arlette off. She’s waiting for the marriage proposal but ol’ Tony Senior goes in a whole new directions and now there’s serious competition in the form of Dorothy. One fake accident worked, why not another. Now all I have to do is I.D. Ms. Maleficent.”

The auto queue opened suddenly and stayed that way. Muttering, “The Red Sea parts,” he eased onto the freeway and merged.

I said, “The scenario fits Dorothy’s murder but I can’t see any tie-in to P. J. Seeger’s motorcycle crash or Stan Barker’s tumble.”

“Why not? The same thing we’ve suggested all along. They both got too close to the truth.”

“Femme fatale clearing the decks years later? And years apart? As far as we know neither Barker or Seeger — anyone for that matter — made a connection to a woman living in the mansion. Du Galoway came the closest, and he didn’t suspect anyone but Des Barres.”

“Which, now that you mentioned it, could be righteous, Alex.”

“Des Barres collaborated on both murders.”

“Guy had enough charisma and dough to corral a harem. So what the hell do I do now?”

“More archaeology.”

As we passed into Glendale, he said, “All the time it’s taking, maybe we shoulda eaten.”

Before I could answer, his phone tooted horrific abuse of Handel’s Messiah. He glanced at the screen. “Martz. She’s been bugging me for a progress report. You’d think my ignoring her would be enough.”

Placing the phone between us on the bench seat, he speed-dialed and switched to speaker.

A male voice said, “Deputy Chief Martz’s office.”

“Lieutenant Sturgis returning her call.”

Throat clear. “Three calls according to my records, Lieutenant.”

“And you are?”

“Sergeant Schifter.”

“Glad you keep good records. She in?”

“Not at this moment.”

“Tell her I called with a regress report.”

“Pardon?”

“Regress, Sergeant. It’s the opposite of progress.”

Click. Wolf-grin.

I said, “You must’ve been fun to teach in grade school.”

“Actually, I was the soul of obedience and conformity.”

I laughed.

“No, really. By grade four I knew I was different but didn’t really understand it and figured I should keep my mouth shut. I was so quiet the teachers told my parents I needed to be ‘brought out.’ How’s that for irony? What about you? Model kid?”

“I liked school.”

“Big shock. Straight A’s, why not.”

“More than that,” I said. “It was safe. Then I’d go home.”