Authors: Jerrilyn Farmer
T
he morning sunlight picked at the golden highlights in his hair as Dex stood there, looking down at me. His expression was friendly, if a little subdued. “You’ve caught me off guard, Madeline. I didn’t think I’d get to see you again. I’ve been leaving you messages, but when you didn’t call me back, I pretty much knew where we stood.”
“Dex…”
“You don’t need to explain. You didn’t want me bothering you anymore. I knew.”
“That’s not it,” I said, feeling incredibly awkward. I had been so attracted to Dexter Wyatt that I don’t think the analytical centers of my brain had registered just how physically handsome he was. No wonder I had fallen under his spell. So much beauty is kind of dangerous. “Look, I haven’t been fair to you, Dex. I’ve had a lot of things going on that have nothing to do with us. But still, they kind of took over my life. You know how that can happen.”
“I know.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“No. You don’t have to be sorry. Look, I watch the news. I get it. Anyway, I’ve been worried about you. Say, come in.” He suddenly remembered we were just standing in his open
doorway. I followed him to his living room, the glass walls presenting their magnificent canyon views.
Dex waited for me to begin talking, but when I couldn’t get started, he took the lead like an accomplished host. “That woman who interrupted us the other night. She’s the one who was killed at Wesley’s house, wasn’t she? Shit, Madeline. A cop.”
“I know.” We both shook our heads.
“The police were out here twice with questions. I tried to remember all I could about that night she was trespassing. They seemed pretty pissed off I never filed any sort of report about it, but who the hell knew she was so off her rocker?”
“You couldn’t have known.”
Dex shook his head, still working it through. “You were totally wigged out that night, which was completely understandable, but even when you thought you recognized her, I wasn’t sure. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“That’s okay. The whole thing was too weird, wasn’t it?”
Dex grinned. “It seemed more likely she was some old lady here in the hills who got a little cranked up over my love life, such as it is.”
Dex had a way of defusing my tension like no one else. “On the contrary. By now I’ll bet all your neighbors have bought themselves binoculars and telescopes. Bet they can’t wait until Dex Wyatt brings home a date.” I meant to laugh at myself and lighten up the mood. But he was serious now.
“I’m so sorry for everything, Madeline. That’s all I can say. I’m sorry.”
“I know. So am I.”
“And that woman was your cop boyfriend’s
wife,
it turns out. I can’t get over it. Usually
I’m
the one with the messedup lovers. Kind of a relief for me that it was all about you, this time.”
I smiled in a rueful way, acknowledging his efforts to joke me out of my mood. He could be very sweet, could Dexter Wyatt.
“The reason I’m here,” I said, “is I’m suddenly positive your brother-in-law, Bill, is planning to damage you. I’m afraid he’s planning to trade secrets with the cops to save his own skin. Maybe he can deal down the indictment on insurance fraud if he gives them evidence for a robbery conviction, I don’t know, but I’m sure it is bad bad news for you, Dex.”
“What are you talking about, Madeline? What robbery? The etchings three years ago?”
“Maybe. But I’m also worried about the Woodburn’s Mark VI.”
“The sax Bill bought at the auction,” Dex said, just catching on.
“Well, he never paid for it. But I do think he stole it.”
I spent five minutes reviewing all my suspicions with Dexter and he followed it all. He was surprised to learn that Bill had been behind the call he got from Zenya, begging Dex to drop everything and find this poor, lost party planner in big, bad downtown L.A. He was angered to hear that Bill had gone out later that night, leaving Zenya alone to, according to my theory, hide the stolen saxophone.
“We have to search your house,” I told him. “Then we can call the police. Bill has made you his fall guy, Dex. If Bill gets to them first with a clever story, and leads them to where ‘you’ hid the stolen goods, you could wind up in jail doing your brother-in-law’s time.”
“Well, it was no big trick getting into my house,” Dex said, furious. “Zenya has a copy of my front-door key. If Bill took it, she’d never have known.” He stood up with the kind of energy a man has when he’d like to punch someone. “Where do you think we should look?”
“You know your house,” I said. “Is there any storage area that you don’t use very often? A location you might be expected to ignore?”
“No. I can’t…” As he spoke, Dexter’s expression changed. “Wait a minute. I have a wine cellar. Down a flight of stairs, built into the rock foundation. I’ve never used it and one day last winter I realized the key doesn’t even work in the lock anymore. I was meaning to get the lock replaced, but since I don’t collect wine, it wasn’t much of a priority.”
“Where is it?” I was sure he must be right. Bill had Dexter’s house key. Perhaps Bill had the locks replaced sometime when Dex was out of town. If the wine room was in a location that was out of the way, Dex might never have noticed.
Dex led me through his kitchen. At the far end was the pantry, and inside of the pantry was a small door. Dex opened it and showed me a short flight of cement steps that led down.
“This is it. There’s a small room at the bottom of the steps. But the key that used to work when I first bought this house doesn’t unlock the door anymore. It’s kind of a shame, because the previous owner told me he had the room specially climate-controlled to preserve fine wine.”
“Dex. We have to get in there. Do you have an ax?”
“An ax?” He looked at me, startled. “Well, I’ve got a small ax out in the garage. I use it for firewood.”
One of Dexter’s self-admitted best qualities, I recalled, was his ability to start a wood fire. I smiled at the unlikely Boy Scout and encouraged him to go get his ax.
In a few minutes, he came back and descended the staircase to the wine-cellar room below. He swung the ax at the wooden door and splinters began to fly. It was only a few minutes before he’d hacked the frame and door to something that looked like it had been attacked by a grizzly, but the
metal lock still held. I waited as he continued his assault. Five minutes more and the job was complete.
Dexter brushed away the shredded door frame and pushed open the door. I rushed down the steps to join him.
The small room was lined with shelves. It was cool and dry, which I suspected was due to the separate climate system and air conditioner, which we could hear humming away. On the floor in front of us sat a lovely basket covered in pink toile fabric, white satin, and rose-colored grosgrain ribbons. In it was a long bulky bundle wrapped up and completely covered in a pink-and-white velvet baby blanket. I stepped into the small room, careful to avoid all the wood splinters, and lifted the corner of the blanket.
“Now that’s a beautiful baby,” Dex said.
We stared at the world’s most perfect silver tenor saxophone.
But that was not all we found in the wine cellar. On the shelves were three large works of art. The missing etchings. The three pieces that had been stolen from the Knights’ home three years back.
“That bastard was going to turn me in to the cops,” Dex said, his voice hoarse. “He was planning this all along. He set me up. I’ll bet he was behind the rash of ‘false’ alarms three years ago, setting the stage so he could arrange to have me stay at his house that night. I’m sure he told Zenya to call me and insist I take those concert tickets, too. And he probably encouraged her to help me buy this house, just to make me look good and guilty. And to seal the deal, he planted the stolen art in my cellar.”
“He was only after the insurance money,” I said. “He didn’t care about the art at all. It was more useful for him to use it to frame you. Just in case he needed it.”
Dexter grabbed me and for a moment I thought he was going
to kiss me. He looked deeply into my eyes and then recovered himself and let me go. “I’ve got to call the police.”
“That’s good.”
“But what if they don’t believe me?” he asked.
“They can find out who changed the lock on this door. Maybe the locksmith can identify Bill.”
Dex knelt down and found the door lock amid the pile of wood shavings on the floor. “This is a common lock, Maddie. Something he could have bought at Home Depot. Bill may have changed it himself.”
“We’ll think of something,” I said. And then I did actually think of something. “Come on,” I told him, grabbing him by the hand. “Come with me.”
Dexter drove as I used my cell phone to get the right location. We pulled up to a small parking lot on Sunset. Jon David Realtors. They were one of the most successful brokers in Los Angeles. This office mostly served the Hollywood Hills and West Hollywood.
“You!” Caroline Rochette sat in her work cubicle. Her voice carried the edge of such honest alarm that several other agents sitting nearby looked up to see what could possibly have caused one of their own to express a true feeling.
“I want to list my house for sale,” I said loudly, causing the other workers to settle down and mind their own business. I noticed them turn back to their phones and their PC monitors.
“Is this some sort of joke?” she asked me, but her eyes were now on Dexter. “I’m sorry,” she said, batting heavy lashes, her mood and tone of voice changing. “We haven’t met. I’m Caroline Rochette.” She had a business card in Dex’s hand before he had a chance to know what had hit him. “Can I help you?”
“I’m serious,” I said to Caroline. “If you want my home’s listing, there’s a price.”
She dragged her eyes back to me for an instant. A new listing or a gorgeous young man. It was really the acid test for Caroline. Her eyes came back to rest on me.
“What do I have to do?”
“Tell me about the theft of the etchings from Bill Knight’s house.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about!” Caroline stood up and picked up her purse, a cunning little black lizard bag. “Come outside, won’t you?” she asked in an overly pleasant tone, more for the cube farm, I imagined, than just Dex and me. We followed her out a side exit and stood in the parking lot.
“Look,” she hissed at me. “I am telling you this because I don’t want to have any part of any of this ever again.”
“Good,” I said.
“But you were telling the truth? You want me to sell your house?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then this is what you are waiting to hear.”
Dexter looked at me and then back at the little blonde who was pulling a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it.
“Albert needed a favor. His daughter, Gracie, wanted to work at the White House as an intern before that was a dirty word. But Al just didn’t have contacts high enough up. I think Bill Knight knew someone. Anyway, Gracie got her job. So when Bill asked Albert to do him a favor back, of course Al wanted to show his gratitude.”
She took a long puff of the cigarette and exhaled smoke as she talked.
“Bill told Albert to go to his house in Beverly Hills and pick up a few art pieces, then hold on to them until Bill got back with his family from Maui. You know what happened.
It made the papers that there had been a theft. Albert got nervous, naturally. He wasn’t sure what was going on. Bill had sent him the door key. He’d assured Al there wouldn’t be an alarm set, so Al would have no trouble doing the favor. Al was set to go to the police and explain the mistake, but Bill called him from Hawaii. He told Al not to worry, Bill would take care of the cops. When he got back to town, Bill came and picked up the pieces. That’s all Al ever knew about it.”
“So Albert never called the police and told them?”
“No. As time went on, Al figured out what must have happened. But by then, he was afraid he might be arrested for the theft himself, if Bill didn’t back up his story. And the police were more likely to believe Bill. He could be a charming bastard when he wanted to be. Just ask me.”
“So Grasso said
nothing
?” Dex was pissed.
I was, too. “Even though it was Albert’s half brother who was taking the fall with the insurance company?” I asked. After all, Grasso had to know his brother would lose a lot of clout if one of the policies he had sold ended up costing the insurance companies millions and millions in settlement money.
“I think that was the part that Albert actually liked,” Caroline said, taking another deep drag on her cigarette. “Anyway, no one ever came around to Al to ask about it. It all just died down. And now that he’s dead, poor man, I don’t ever want any of this to be dragged up again.”
“Think again, lady,” Dexter said. “We’re all going to the police right now.”
“What? No,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “No, I won’t go.”
Dexter caught the look I was throwing him and changed his approach. “Caroline,” he said, pulling her a step away from me. “How did an attractive woman like you ever get mixed up with difficult men like them, anyway?”
“Rotten, rotten luck,” Caroline said with feeling.
“You deserve better than that,” he said, looking deeply into her thickly fringed eyes. “I know you want to do the right thing.”
When Dexter Wyatt fixes a woman with his undivided attention, she feels it down to her designer T-straps. Take my word for it. I could see Ms. Rochette melting right before my eyes.
“Hell!” Caroline said. “I want to do the right thing.”
She threw down her cigarette, and before she could make a move, I put my own boot down and stomped it out.
I
joined the rest of the audience in the Tager Auditorium in applause. All around me people were coming to their feet, giving a standing ovation to the seventeen young musicians of the Woodburn Jazz Band after their hard-swinging version of Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower.”
Each soloist got a chance to take a separate bow. Ryan Hutson, newly promoted to the rank of tenor sax player, stepped forward, beaming. Hanging from a thick strap around his neck was his shiny silver horn, the exquisite Selmer Mark VI, which had been returned to the Hutson family in due course. This boy had done a fine job on his solos, improvising like a champ. Ryan bowed to the cheering audience and then stepped back.
Another boy took his turn in the spotlight, and soon Kirby Knight stepped forward. Met by applause, he smiled shyly out to the crowd. I admired this young man, the night’s star performer, for carrying on despite his family’s turmoil. Dark and raw emotions seemed to shine through his music. Artists are lucky that way. They have an outlet for their feelings, even the painful ones.
My eyes searched the audience for the hot spot from which the loudest burst of applause could be heard. There, across the aisle and several rows closer to the stage, I saw
Zenya Knight and her little girl. And right beside them was Dexter, clapping away for Kirby.
I was thankful that Kirby’s father wasn’t present. Bill Knight was awaiting trial on several new and serious charges. He wouldn’t be able to avoid jail time on all they had against him, or so I’d been told. Zenya had already taken steps to get her life back. She’d filed for divorce and put their Beverly Hills house on the market. With just a little prompting from her brother, Zenya had decided to use Caroline Rochette to handle the sale. I’d heard they had already received a purchase offer. So it goes.
“You ready to go?” my date for the evening asked.
I looked up at Honnett and nodded.
“This was great, Maddie.”
“Talented kids amaze me,” I said. “Where does musical genius come from?”
“I wonder if they realize how lucky they are,” Honnett said, “to have this school and parents that support them.”
“Are you kidding? They’re teenagers.”
Many of those in the audience had ties to the young folks in the band, and so they milled about the lobby, talking excitedly, waiting for their sons, siblings, nieces, or other loved ones to be allowed to leave after the concert. Honnett and I walked toward the parking garage alone.
Honnett smiled. “You know, I want to thank you for inviting me tonight. This was inspiring.”
“I’m glad you could come,” I said. “I was afraid you might not be comfortable sitting for so long.”
“I’m doing fine.” He’d stayed in the hospital for only a week and then had spent several more on pain meds resting at home. Honnett had proven remarkably resilient. He’d taken to punishing workouts, pushing his physical therapist to a frazzle, seeing improvement every week.
At the elevator to the parking structure under the Woodburn,
Honnett turned to me. “Please, Maddie. Can we stop and talk? I’ve got something I’d like to say to you.”
“Wait until we’re downstairs,” I said. I was so lame.
In all the weeks that had passed since I had been attacked and he had been shot and his wife had been killed, Chuck and I had not been able to talk about what had happened. When I first visited him in the hospital, with his tubes and IV lines dangling, I didn’t want to worry him any more than he obviously was. Then later, after he’d been released from the hospital, I kept in the background. I cooked him a dozen gourmet dinners but always managed to get Holly or Wes to deliver them. Honnett called me, of course, but I let the phone machine collect his thank yous. The few times we talked, I cut the conversations very short. Eventually he stopped bringing it up, this painful event we had between us.
Over the past few weeks, instead of dealing with Honnett, I kept busy working out, catching up with friends, straightening up my disordered life. I put a lot of time into the business, throwing myself into a dozen parties. We got an official wedding date from Holly and Donald, on top of everything else, so we were hip-deep in planning-a-wedding details. This spoke volumes about the success of Donald and Holly weathering their long time apart and even more about the restorative powers of a climactic reunion. We were so relieved to have some good news upon which to focus, we let the wedding discussions take up a lot of our free time. In addition, the construction on the upstairs of my house was almost complete and the remodel looked fabulous. Soon I would have to decide whether I could bear to move back in or whether Caroline Rochette would earn another commission.
And then last week, Honnett began leaving messages asking if we could get together. I was as confused as ever, but I knew he couldn’t be put off much longer. It was so hard to
separate what I felt about the man from the disaster that had been brought into our lives by Sherrie.
I looked over at Honnett as we rode down the elevator in the parking garage in silence. He had driven to the Tager Auditorium in his own car and I’d met him there, having borrowed Wesley’s Jag. Our cars were parked side by side on the lowest level. Down there, the air had the acrid odor of gas fumes, so I tried not to breathe in too much of it as we made our way to our cars.
“Maddie…” Honnett began, sounding very serious.
“Did you hear that I’m getting a reward?” I asked him, keeping the conversation anything but personal. “The companies that insured the Knights’ etchings pay a ten percent finder’s fee to anyone who recovers stolen objects. So anyway, they estimate that the true value of the Dürer and the other etchings are close to four million dollars, can you believe that? So they are offering Dexter Wyatt and me four hundred thousand. Of course, they will only pay us if they can recover the money they paid out to Bill Knight, and that means Zenya will lose any chance of getting a decent settlement in her divorce, so it’s not all roses and chips. But I thought it was kind of hilarious, you know, in a sick sort of way—”
“Maddie,” Honnett said, interrupting, “are you going to let me tell you that I love you?”
I stopped talking, of course.
“It isn’t going to change your mind about me. I know that. I just needed to say it to you. I needed for you to hear it. Think of this as your way of relieving a guy of a terrible burden, okay? No need to answer. There.”
You’d have thought it would melt my heart to hear those sweet words from this man about whom I cared so much. But I couldn’t let myself melt. Maybe the reason for all my nightmares and sleepless nights and avoiding his calls was
this: I suspected, deep down, Honnett and I were relieved his wife was finally out of the picture now. How vile was that? To be relieved a woman was dead.
I turned to Honnett. “You really can’t know how you feel. Neither can I. There has been such a lot of extreme stress and anxiety. We need time to let things settle down.”
“
I
don’t.”
“But Sherrie—”
“This isn’t about Sherrie,” he said. “I’ve loved you for almost as long as I’ve known you. But I didn’t have any right. I knew that.”
“Oh, Honnett.”
“When I told you at the beginning that I was too old for you, you laughed at me. Remember that? You thought I was putting you off. Like I thought you were too young for me to take seriously.”
“I’m not that young. You’re not that old.” His age had never mattered to me.
“I just meant I was old enough to know better. I’d lived enough life to know I had screwed mine up. I had problems at home. How could I abandon my own mess and start with someone as bright and new as you were? Life doesn’t work like that. You just don’t get a free pass to start over that easily.”
“I didn’t understand.”
Honnett nodded. “Before I met you, Sherrie was getting out of control, more and more. The department asked her to take a medical leave, but they were more concerned about her state of mind than any other health issues. Her behavior…I was worried about her, but I was angry, too. We’d never been the greatest match, Sherrie and I, but now nothing she did or said made any sense. We split up, which was the direction we were heading in all along, and she just got worse.”
I put my hand on Chuck’s arm and he paused, his eyes meeting mine. “When she came to me after I’d been moved
out for a year and told me she had cancer, I didn’t know what to think anymore. Maybe her suicidal moods were due to the chemotherapy or maybe just the cancer itself, working on her nerves, making her act crazy. I saw her moods were getting worse. When she told me she needed me back, that she wanted us to start seeing a therapist together, I knew it was the right thing to do. It was the only way to get Sherrie to see someone who could help her. Of course, I should have known better than to believe anything she told me. Hell, she never listened to the shrink. She didn’t have cancer. The chemo was just a made-up story. More of her lies and games.”
“I know.”
“That’s why I had to leave you, Maddie. I had to go back and try. I wanted to do things right, to see if I could help her get squared away. I couldn’t move forward with you and me until I had.”
“But you never told me,” I said. “How could I understand what you were going through if you were keeping all these secrets? We had this relationship going, but you didn’t trust me. You didn’t want me to know the truth. Or to really know you.”
He thought it over and I could tell he didn’t like what he was thinking. “Maybe you’re right.” He shook his head. “At the time, I wanted to protect you.”
I sighed.
“It really worked well, didn’t it?” he asked, his voice almost light. “Instead of keeping you safe, I brought unholy hell down on top of you. I put you in danger. I caused you unbelievable pain, Maddie. That’s what damned good my love is to you.”
We had been standing by our cars, and I asked if Honnett wanted to sit down in Wesley’s S-Type so we could get out of the musty air. He shook his head and said he should be going, anyway.
“Then just give me one more minute and hear this,” I said. “I don’t hold you responsible for anything that happened. I don’t even blame Sherrie, really. Maybe it’s natural to hate the people who try to hurt us, but that’s not how it works with me. After all these weeks and all this thinking, I don’t have any anger left in me. I just feel very sorry about how much pain Sherrie was in. And very sorry for what she must have put you through. So really, Honnett, you may as well give up this guilt you are carrying around. I don’t blame you at all.”
“Maddie.” Honnett looked at me for another long moment, and then said, “I better get going.”
I met his clear blue eyes, not sure there was any more we could say, and nodded.
“I guess I should I leave you alone for a while,” he said.
“Or not,” I said softly.
“Sure. Then I’ll call you.” He smiled then, a regular Honnett-style smile. “And thanks for bringing me here tonight. It was the perfect evening out for a man feeling his age while he’s recovering from surgery, all those kids blowing their horns, full of talent and life. I love jazz. It’s cool you remembered that.”
Standing in the parking garage, watching Honnett climb into his Mustang and lower the convertible top, I realized I had become a different person since the day the two of us met. I don’t know if the changes are good or bad, but given enough time and bumps, I suppose growth is inevitable. Can’t stay in Neverland forever. Damn it.
Honnett waved at me as he pulled away. I stared after him as more families now entered the parking structure. He was a different man in my eyes as well. Maybe a little less the iconic hero, a little more human. Sherrie had been right. He was an honorable man.
I drove off and thought again about Honnett and me and
the difficult subject of how his life with Sherrie had hurt us. Can we ever escape the past lives of the person we get involved with? I sped over to my old house and parked the Jag S-Type on Whitley, stopping to pick up my mail before heading back to Hancock Park. As I stepped out of the car, I saw two familiar friends out walking in the evening.
“Hi, Teuksbury,” I said, bending to scratch the weimaraner on the head. “Hi, Nelson.”
“Well, hello, Maddie. We see the construction crew is gone. So is your house finally done?”
“Just about. There’s some finish work needed inside, but they have done an incredible job. And how are you and Miss Teuks?”
“We’re doing pretty well,” the old man said, bending to pat her on the side.
“I just came by to pick up my mail.”
“Oh, Maddie,” Nelson Piffer said diffidently. “I have a little confession to make. I’ve been meaning to tell you but…”
“But what?” I looked at my elderly neighbor and wondered whatever could he be talking about.
“It’s about your old car. You know, the old Jeep. This is a very indelicate subject to bring up, so I hate to be the one to tell you this.”
I was more than intrigued. “Tell me.”
“Teuksbury and I were taking a walk a couple of months ago. It was a dark night, but right here in the middle of Whitley, we could see a bitch was getting it on with a stray, a Dobie mix, looked like.”
“Dogs? Dogs
making love
?” I covered my smile, as I could tell Nelson took such subjects a little more seriously than I ever could.
“Yes. It was the little lurcher from two houses down. Trixie. God only knows what she was doing running out in
the street, but when those bitches are in season, it’s a good job keeping them in.”
“I would imagine,” I answered, a little too circumspectly considering my own intemperate past.
“The point is, it is also a good job trying to separate a breeding pair once they’re in the act.”
Poor Trixie. I could relate.
“And I knew Ms. Fellows would go mental if she found her little Trixie knocked up by some rogue stray. Well, this is a long way around, Maddie, but the point is I did finally detach the rascals. Of course, then the male was quite aggressive.”
I could well imagine.
“I had to think fast. Your car was unlocked, so I put my Teuksbury and Trixie in the backseat of your Jeep, just to keep them out of harm’s way until I could chase off the Dobie mix.”