We left the office and crossed the street. I asked him about Ojo Negro local government.
He said, “No mayor, no city council, we just rely on the county. Basically our issues are county issues, we’re kind of a stepchild to Los Alamos or anyone else who’ll have us.”
“How many residents?”
“Sign says a thousand but it’s much less. I’d guess two hundred, tops. The way we’re going, soon there’ll be nothing left – okay, here we are.”
He’d stopped in front of one of the boarded storefronts. Original pink stucco peeked through the flaking cocoa-brown repaint, patchy and florid, like a skin disease.
“Who owns it?”
“Condemned by the county, county never got around to auctioning it, no one seems to want it.”
A key lock slotted the doorknob. Cardenas turned the knob and the door swung open.
I said, “It’s never locked?”
“Sure it is,” he said. “But it’s not much of a lock. I got it open this morning with a nail file. Go ahead in.”
What remained of Stylish Lady was vacant space walled in warped panels of fake rosewood tongue-and-groove, darkened by the plywood window and filthy oilcloth shades concealing a high rear window.
Cardenas stayed in front, propping the door open with his body. “Otherwise it shuts and you’re in a cave.”
I thanked him and explored. Below the high window, the back door was hollow and flimsy. My footsteps were soft pads. Concrete floors created a great sound baffle. I thought of two woman savaged, their cries unheard.
In bad movies, detective savants learn volumes revisiting long-dormant crime scenes. This was dim, dead space and I wasn’t producing a single syllable.
“Where does the back door lead?”
“Kind of an alley. Go look.”
Behind the shop was a ribbon of rocky dirt that paralleled Ojo Negro Avenue, barely wide enough for one car. Dead end to the south, exit to the north.
I went back inside and returned to Cardenas. “The assumption was that Leonora had closed for the day, was cleaning up.”
“Makes sense,” he said.
“With the town being so quiet, she’d have no reason to lock up until she left.”
“People still don’t lock up, Doctor. Last year, right after I got here, a bobcat waltzed right into Mrs. Wembley’s house, managed to get in her fridge and ate a whole bunch of tuna salad. She’s eighty-nine, try changing her.”
“She the lady with the coyote?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Met your sister driving in. She’d just released a coyote trapped on an eighty-nine-year-old woman’s property.”
“Where’d Ricki release the darn thing?”
“Couple of miles out of town.”
“Meaning it’ll come right back.” He shrugged. “Up to me, I’d shoot it. Ricki’s one of those animal rights activists. Yeah, that’s Mrs. Wembley. Critters like her ’cause she’s always got open food around.”
“Is she one of the people you talked to this morning?”
“Nope, she was napping on her porch when I came by to get the trap and that woman can sleep. We can go over to her place, if you like. Lady’s got opinions on just about everything.”
“My kind of gal.”
“My ex was like that,” he said. “First you think it’s challenging. Then you get tired of being challenged.”
I laughed.
He said, “Ricki and I got divorced three months apart. Our parents split up when we were nine and now our younger brother’s making sounds like he’s about had it. Guess marrying’s not our talent – if there’s nothing else, I’m gonna close up, Doctor.”
We got into his Bronco; he U-turned and headed up the road his sister had taken past the town’s center. We came to a scatter of residences, mostly prefabs and trailers set on blocks.
No one in sight but Cardenas drove slowly, looking everywhere, the way cops do.
“So,” he said, “any ideas from seeing the scene?”
“Just how easy it would’ve been, especially after dark.”
“How so?”
“The killer could’ve come in through either door and gone out the back. Anyone develop a theory about who the main target was?”
“You mean Bright versus Tranh? Not that I heard. I’ve been assuming it was Bright, because the stranger was white, not Asian, and most nuts kill within their race. But maybe that’s limited thinking.”
“Any idea why Vicki moved here?”
He smiled. “You mean of all the godforsaken places how’d she find Ojo Negro? I couldn’t tell you. We do get immigrants from time to time, mostly Spanish. With all the surrounding ranches and vineyards, it’s kind of perfect for someone who wants to work hard and doesn’t want to be looked at too closely.”
“By who?”
“The INS, for one. Take the Ramirezes. When they got here, they barely spoke English but is anyone checking their El Salvador visas or whichever? They cut hair real well, everyone’s happy they’re here.” Cupping smooth, bronze cranial skin. “Not that I’m an expert.”
He turned the wheel easily, drove up a packed-earth driveway, pointed to a double-wide set well back from the road and preceded by an acre of weeds. “This is Mrs. Wembley’s place – and there she is, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
The trailer was shaded by an aluminum awning. As we rolled forward, a rotund pink form in an armchair looked up. At ten feet away, a mouth opened in a strawberry-pudding face and a magazine waved.
“Put some speed on, George. You’re the law, no one’s going to cite you.”
Cardenas said, “Don’t want to churn up your dirt, Mrs. Wembley.”
“Churn away,” she said. “Maybe something’ll grow.”
We parked, made our way through dead brush. Mrs. Wembley remained in her chair. A pink
Las Vegas: Fun Fun Fun!!!
sweatshirt matched her complexion. Gray sweatpants strained to package her thighs. Her feet dangled an inch above the porch boards. The rest of her body overflowed the confines of the chair.
As Cardenas began the introductions, she broke in, flashing a denture grin. “I’m Mavis, Missus was my mother-in-law and we don’t want to remember her with anything but unpleasantness.”
Pudgy fingers gripped mine and squeezed hard.
She said, “You’re a cute one.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“George is cute, too. That’s why I make sure critters visit, so I get to see my knight in khaki armor – this time you sent your sister, George. Is it my breath?”
“Ricki had some time-”
“Just kidding, Galahad. So serious. So tell me, that ca-yote was something, huh? Vicious teeth. Where’d she let it go?”
“Far enough.”
“I think she resents me for calling you all the time.”
She smoothed pleated white hair, tweaked a bulbous nose. Her cheeks glowed, smooth as a child’s. Fat’s a great wrinkle filler.
Cardenas said, “Of course she doesn’t.”
Mavis Wembley said, “She most
certainly
does,” and massaged an arm of her throne. The chair was slip-covered in blue-and-white duck cloth, like something from a Hamptons pictorial. Everything else on the porch was tubular aluminum and plastic straps.
“New upholstery?” said Cardenas.
Mavis Wembley slapped her magazine against a dimpled knee. “Like it?”
“Very pretty.”
“Pottery Barn, George. Love those catalogs, the whole world opens up to you. Especially suited for living in a metropolis like this one.”
Another slap of the magazine.
The New Yorker.
Cardenas said, “Didn’t know you subscribe.”
“I don’t,” she said. “They sent me one of those special offers. Four free months and then you can cancel, no charge. I figured to cancel but now I’m not sure. They tend to go on too long – don’t you be like that when you write your book, George, the key is to communicate not to pontificate. But they do have some interesting tidbits. This one has a story about a New York Jew who sews fur coats for those Negro rappers. All those agitators screaming about cruelty to critters but this Jew keeps making ermine sweatshirts and the like. A man with
backbone.
”
Cardenas said, “Keep leaving food out, Mavis, and we can send him a bunch of skins.”
“Nice little ca-yote coat for the rappers.” She cackled. “Wouldn’t that be cute. Who’s your cute friend? Another policeman or another writer?”
“He’s a psychologist, Mavis.”
She gazed up at me. “I’ve known some people who could use one of those. As in mother-in-laws. What brings you here?”
“I’m looking into the murders of Leonora Bright and Vicki-”
“Tranh. Well, you came to the right place because I know who did it.”
Cardenas hitched his trousers. His holstered gun wobbled. “Really.”
“Really, George. And I told that to Wendell Salmey right in the beginning. Not that he did a darn thing about it.” To me: “Chronic depression, that one. And lazier than a welfare cheat. Always in a low mood, walking with his eyes down, like anything worth discovering was on the ground.”
She fanned herself with the magazine. “After that son of his got drunk and smashed himself up on the highway, he got even worse, just sat around all day doing nothing. Before I got married, I did some teaching and Wendell was one of my students. One of those who’d rather coast than drive. Only reason he took the sheriff job was he figured there’d be nothing to do – no offense, George.” More denture display. “One advantage to being ninety is you say what you want and get away with it.”
“Didn’t know you had a birthday, Mavis.”
“So I’m pushing it a little. The big day’s next month, on the sixteenth in case you intend to send me flowers, George. Wendell Salmey died young. Bleeding ulcer at fifty-nine. By the way, what’s a psychologist got to do with Leonora and the Oriental girl?”
“Their murders might be related to a current case in L.A.”
“Doesn’t answer my question.”
“I sometimes consult to the police.”
“One of those mind readers, like on TV?”
“Not really-”
“I’m kidding. I know what a psychologist does. Geez, everyone in this generation’s so doggone
serious.
So, he killed someone else, huh?”
“Who?”
“Leonora’s brother. Half brother. That’s who killed her and the nail girl. George, would you be real nice and get me a Fresca and a slice of American cheese from the kitchen? Make it two slices, got the packet laid out on the counter along with a cute little cutting tool from The Sharper Image.”
Cardenas went to fill the order.
I pulled up a chair.
Mavis Wembley nibbled her cheese and swigged from the can of soda. Handing the empty to Cardenas, she wiped her mouth and looked out at her weedy plot with satisfaction. “I know the brother did it because Leonora confided in me a few weeks before that she was deathly afraid of him. They had different mothers but the same father and it was the father who had money and he died a few months before she confided in me that she was scared.”
I said, “Worried about an inheritance conflict?”
“Not worried, scared. That’s the word she used.”
“What’s the brother’s name?” said Cardenas.
“Don’t know, she never mentioned it, always referred to him as ‘my half brother.’ Emphasis on
half.
Making it clear there was no closeness there.”
I said, “How’d the topic come up?”
“She was color-rinsing me and kept dropping stuff, real butterfingered. Which wasn’t like Leonora, she’d always been a real coordinated girl. Magic hands, I used to call her. Sometimes she’d toss in a neck-and-scalp massage and that was better than… anyway, when she moved here from Frisco, all the gals were happy because of her skills. Before that we had Sarah Burkhardt who grew up here, borderline retarded if you ask me, taught herself from books, about as stylish as roadkill. We put up with her because she was all we had. Thank God she married a truck driver and moved away and we got Leonora. Who learned her trade in Frisco from a top homosexual stylist.”
“Magic hands,” I said, “but not that day.”
“Fumbly fingers. I asked her what was wrong. She said nothing. I said, Come on, don’t be holding back, there’s no one else here. Which there wasn’t. Just me and Leonora in the salon. She was good but there wasn’t that much call for her services, our local females believing they could do just as well with a box of Toni. If you saw them, you’d find that laughable.”
She asked Cardenas for another soda.
When he returned to the house, she said, “We’ll wait for George. So I don’t have to repeat myself.”
“Sure. I appreciate this.”
“So you think it’s a good clue – the brother?”
“Best we’ve got so far.”
Cardenas came back and popped the top.
“Thank you, George. Back to Leonora that day. I could tell she really wanted to talk so I pushed her until she did. She said her father had left a sizable estate, her mother was already dead, and her stepmother was sick. So the money was going to be split two ways between her and her half brother, which was fine with her, there was enough for everyone. But she knew
he
wouldn’t be satisfied with just half. I said, What, he’s a selfish type? That’s when she broke down and cried. Said, Oh, Mavis, if you only knew. He comes across the nicest person, always wanting to do favors for people, feeds the homeless, smiles at little kids and gives ’em candy but it’s a façade. Down deep, it’s all about him, always was, I just know he’s going to cause me serious troubles over that money and it scares me.”
She sipped. Soda dribbled onto her chin and she wiped it quickly. “I said, What kind of serious troubles? She said, I don’t know, that’s what scares me, you don’t know what he’s capable of. I told her if she was scared to call the police. She said they’d laugh at her because she had no evidence, just feelings. I said, At least talk to a lawyer. You pay them upfront, they won’t laugh. But it was like she wasn’t hearing me, just kept going on about how this half brother was going to start troubles, no one knew what he was really like. Finally I said, If you’re going to accuse, at least tell me what you mean. She said, You don’t want to know, Mavis. I said if I didn’t I wouldn’t ask.”
She handed Cardenas the second soda can. “Now I’m full. You can spill that out, George, or finish it yourself.” Merriment tugged at her eyes. “Don’t worry, I don’t have cooties.”
Cardenas said, “I’m not leaving again, Mavis. This story’s too good.”
“It’s not a story, George. It’s a factual account.”
“Even better.”
“It’s going to get way better once I tell you what she said. She said he taught himself to pick locks, she just knew it was to break in somewhere. Top of that, he tortured and killed animals. First bugs, then little critters, then who-knows-what. Had been doing that kind of nastiness since he was little. Leonora loved animals. Had two little Bichon Freezes or whatever you call them, would do anything for those dogs. After she was killed, they
disappeared.
So you tell me.”
I said, “Did she keep them in the shop with her?”
“Sometimes she brought them, sometimes she left them at home. But the point is, no one saw them again. I brought that up with Wendell when it was clear he wasn’t taking me seriously. That’s what I mean by lazy. Woman gets butchered up and she’s got dogs and they’re not in the house, wouldn’t that make you curious, George?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wendell lacked a shred of curiosity. Depression does that, right, Doctor?”
I nodded.
She said, “I know curiosity can kill cats, maybe even dogs. But satisfaction can also bring ’em all back. Wendell just didn’t care and neither did that Santa Barbara detective they sent down.”
“Donald Bragen,” I said.
“Him,” she said. “All macho, like Broderick Crawford on
Highway Patrol –
before both your times. ‘Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am,’ writing everything down in a little notebook. But Broderick listened. Bragen was an idiot, didn’t have time for anyone. You tell me: a prime suspect with a money motive who tortures animals and two dogs go missing. What would you think?”
“What, indeed,” I said.
Mavis Wembley placed a hand on my knee. “I like your style.”
Cardenas and I stayed with her for another half an hour and I did most of the talking, trying to tease out additional details about Leonora Bright’s dreaded half brother.
What I got was thin soup: either older or younger than Leonora and probably from San Francisco “because that’s where Leonora hailed from and she never said he didn’t.”
I thanked her and got up to leave.
She said, “Nice meeting you,” and took hold of Cardenas’s sleeve. “George, last night, I heard raccoons scratching out back near the garbage. Let’s set out some traps for them, as well.”
“She’s something, no?” said Cardenas, backing out the dirt driveway. “Shuffling cards is her idea of aerobics but she’s never sick. Claims her mother lived to a hundred and four.”
“Good DNA,” I said. “The rest of us jog and pretend.”
“You’ve got that right. Think the brother angle’s worth pursuing?”
“It’s all we’ve got.”
“What she said about Wendell does conform to what other people have told me. Didn’t want to get into that out of respect for the dead.”
“No reason. He’s not the issue.”
“So where are you heading now?”
“Back to L.A. unless you’ve got a suggestion.”
“Sorry, no. Want me to do anything?”
“If you’ve got the time to run background on Leonora’s addresses in San Francisco, that would be great.”
“Sure,” he said. “I was also thinking we should try to find the father’s death certificate, see if the brother’s name appears anywhere. Leonora being scared of an inheritance mess right before she died probably narrows the time frame on his passing.”
“Good point. An obituary search might be the easiest way to go. Was Bright her maiden name?”
“Think so.” He sat up straighter and pressed down on the gas. “This is different.”
“How so?”
“I’m working.”