Perfect Sax (9 page)

“A plane guy?”

“Yep. His daddy owned a furniture warehouse in San Antonio, I believe. Anyway, we hadn’t had any kids. She didn’t want any, she told me. I tried to change her mind about the plane guy, but…” He smiled and shook his head. “I was young then. Maybe about your age.”

“Shut up.”

“Some time went by and I moved to Los Angeles, and a couple years later I met Sherrie. She worked for the LAPD, too.”

I looked up, surprised. “She’s a cop?”

He nodded. “She’s a cop. Anyway, she had just gone
through a rough divorce herself. We hooked up and just sort of fell together. I figured she was more my kind of person, you know? She loved being a cop and she was proud of how well I was doing, moving up, that sort of thing. We got married and thought we’d have a family.”

“You have kids?”

“We weren’t successful. Sherrie wanted to do the fertility things. We spent a lot of money and she really suffered, taking hormones and whatnot, trying to get pregnant.”

“Well, now you’ve done it,” I said. “Now you’ve managed to get me feeling sorry for this wife of yours. Thanks.”

“Anyway, we were not successful in other ways. We had grown apart. She and I had never had that much magic. I began to realize how it really was with Sherrie. She was more interested in having a kid and being someone’s mom than in being my wife.”

“Oh.”

“So we separated. This was maybe two years back. We should have gotten the whole divorce thing settled, but I couldn’t afford it and she knew it. I’d used up all of my savings on fertility clinics and things like that. We’d even signed up for private adoption and that cost money, too.”

“So why did you go back to her?” I asked. “Why did you leave me?”

“I am still tied to this woman, Maddie. I still care for her. I still feel guilty I wasn’t committed enough to our marriage to make it work.”

“Guilt!” I was tired of the concept, tired of its grasp. I knew it well. Hadn’t I just insisted that some poor, overworked girl rearrange her evening so she could drive my filthy old car home? Hadn’t that led to her death? I buried my head in my hands.

“Sherrie called me out of the blue. I honestly hadn’t heard a word from her in several months, Maddie. She called me
to say she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.” I stared at him as he drove in the dark night. “She was scared to go through it alone.”

“But your marriage was over…”

“She made promises that we could go to see a counselor together. She wanted me to move back into our old house and…and to take care of her while she went through the chemo.”

I shook my head. No words would come.

He drove on, waiting for me to catch up.

“Do you still love her?”

He took a while to answer. “Maddie, it’s complicated.”

What had I expected? An unequivocal no? He was still attached to his ailing wife. And really, in the light of this other woman’s anguish, how could I think he wouldn’t be? I was ashamed of myself. “Of course you should help her, Chuck. Of course.”

“This isn’t the way I wanted to tell you,” he said, sounded frustrated.

“Honnett,” I said, “I can’t think anymore about you and me. Not tonight. I’m just not—”

“Shh. That’s okay,” he said. “You have every right to hate me, Maddie. I know it.”

We turned onto Hudson and traveled silently to Wesley’s block. I showed Honnett where to pull over. He helped me carry my luggage and carton up the drive. Wesley’s new project was a large two-story English stone manor house, currently deep in the demolition stage. There was a Porta Potti out at the curb for the construction crew, and a large Dumpster next to the driveway, filled with debris.

“How are you going to stay here?” Honnett asked, looking at the state of the place.

“Wesley is living out back in the guest house. He’s leaving it alone until he finishes up restoring the front house. I’ll
stay with him back there.” I led Honnett along a path that wound around and behind the three-car garage.

“Is his guest house going to be big enough?”

We crossed the patio behind the garage and then the lawn that led up to the pool. The sky seemed to be lightening from black to navy blue.

“That’s where you’re staying?” Honnett asked, taking in the perfect miniature mansion beyond the pool. “It’s larger than my condo.”

“It’s got two bedrooms. Wes has been using the second bedroom for storage, but I guess we’ll figure it all out. I just don’t want to think about any of this right now.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, putting down my things and putting his hands on my head, brushing back my hair. “I know you are completely wasted. I won’t try to kiss you again or anything.”

“Oh, really?” It must just the perverseness of my nature that I couldn’t let him leave like that. At the door of the guest house, I leaned into Honnett’s arms and lifted my face.

As he bent down and gave me a tentative kiss, the door opened and Holly and Wesley started screaming with relief.

For better or worse, I was home.

I
staggered to the love seat in the living room of Wesley’s charming guest house and just sighed. “I am too tired to talk, too tired to stand, too tired to…itch,” I said, collapsing onto the down-filled cushions. The white linen slipcover made an almost noiseless whoosh.

“Of course you are!” Holly took my heavy suitcase and the rest of my things and disappeared into the second bedroom. I closed my eyelids and felt my tired eyes burn, and then gently the tension began to ease. When I opened them again, Holly popped out of the bedroom on tiptoe.

“She’s still awake,” Wes whispered to Holly, ever alert to the flicker of my lids.

“We cleaned out the extra room,” Holly whispered to me.

“I moved in that old Philadelphia spindle bed, the one you love,” Wes whispered to me.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to smile through my grogginess.

“Want to go to bed?” Holly asked, still talking low.

“I do,” I said, but didn’t budge. They waited. A few moments more and I had to ask, “Something smells wonderful. What did you bake?”

“Mandelbrot,” Wes said. “I know you don’t want to eat. I just needed to get it out of my system.”

“Did you use my auntie Evelyn’s recipe?” I closed my
eyes again, breathing in the warm scent of bitter orange and walnuts and sugar. I knew he had. Wes loves authentic ethnic cuisine and had miraculously seduced several well-kept family secrets out of my eighty-year-old great-aunt. Mandelbrot is a dry, semisweet cookie, sort of like Jewish biscotti. My mother was Polish Jewish, my dad was Italian English. It makes for a schizoid culinary heritage.

“Yes, I did, but don’t feel like you are obliged to taste them right now. You know they will keep. Do you want to go to bed?”

“I don’t know,” I announced, and then opened my eyes once more. “I seem to be stuck.” There sat my two best friends, so concerned about me that they were willing to leave all questions and curiosity and worries about the events of the past evening for later.

“Just say the first thing that comes into your mind,” Holly advised. “Maybe you don’t know what you want, but something will pop out.”

“Shower.”

“See, there!” Holly chirped. “I should have my own cable show. It works.”

Wesley’s guest house has only one bathroom, but it was huge. Built in the thirties as a sort of folly, the guest house has ridiculously grand twelve-foot ceilings, which not only add a slightly surreal touch to the dimensions of the cottage, but also permit the extensive use of large crystal chandeliers—even in the loo. The vintage bathroom was tiled in the style of its Art Deco period, all sea-foam green six-inch squares on the floor and about eight feet up the walls. Border tiles were of forest green and here and there were Art Deco accent tiles featuring geometrical pink lilies with dark leaves on a sea-foam ground. All the porcelain fixtures, the toilet, sink, and tub, were a matching shade of pale green.

It was like stepping back in time as I stepped into the
green tub, turned the hot and cold faucets until I got the right mix, and pulled the lever to switch on the shower. Under sharp spikes of hot water, I just drifted away to a time where none of the present evening’s troubles could intrude. Steam filled the room as I stood there, thinking of nothing more disturbing than which of the five trendy shampoos Wes had neatly lined up on the built-in tile shelf might work for my tangle of wet curls.

When I emerged from the bathroom, clean and warm, with a pale green towel wrapped around my head, I was wearing a freshly pressed pair of Wesley’s pajamas, soft white cotton, which he had kindly left out for me on the small chair in the bathroom. I had rolled up the waistband, and was doing the same with the long sleeves, but I felt so much better I almost couldn’t believe it.

It is funny how tired you can be one minute, and then somehow you get that extra energy, that second wind. I know I missed an entire night of sleep, but I can do that sometimes, and just keep going.

“You look pretty good,” Holly said, checking me out.

“I brewed you some tea,” Wes said, also checking me out. “Darjeeling.”

“I put it in the bedroom,” Holly said, “on a tray with some mandelbrot.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I asked, leading the way. “Wesley, bring that cardboard box. We have a lot to talk over.”

Holly went to fetch extra teacups and then we all settled on the high bed Wes had made up for me in the guest room, each finding a comfortable perch. I started combing through my long hair, gently detangling it, and began to talk it out.

“Look, you guys. You are being so patient with me. But this evening—last night—is hard for me to deal with. So much has happened…And I have this feeling I’m missing
some important connections. Like some of the answers are right here in front of me, but I haven’t put it all together yet.” I rubbed my head where my comb had pulled too hard. “Only I don’t know which parts go together. It’s like sorting through a pile of jigsaw-puzzle pieces and suspecting you may have a few pieces from another puzzle mixed into the wrong box. But you can’t tell which belongs to which. And the whole pile is overwhelming.” I looked up at my friends.

“Just start wherever you want,” Wes said calmly. “We can help you sort.”

“It’s hard to start,” I said, “because every time I think it over, I feel like I’m getting it wrong. Like it really must have started earlier. And then when I go back, it seems like it started even earlier.”

“Then don’t start at what happened at your house,” Holly suggested gently. “Start earlier. Like right after the party tonight?”

I shook my head. “Earlier. Remember the rubbish I found outside my house yesterday? I thought it was just a case of teenage vandalism or littering. Then, when I glanced at the stuff, I began to see the papers made sense—they belonged to a man and it didn’t seem like he would want to lose all that stuff.”

“Right,” Wes agreed.

“But then I discovered that the man, Albert Grasso, was at the party last night. And he and his woman friend were livid. Remember, Holly? They were angry at me because they thought I’d stolen those papers. So what really happened? Maybe there was a crime up on Iris Circle yesterday and maybe those papers were taken from Grasso’s office. Not by me, of course. But maybe they were stolen. As to why they were then dumped on our doorstep, I have no idea.”

“I’m going to take notes,” Holly said, and then left to find
her notebook. She returned a few minutes later as Wes and I tried to make sense out of it all, and frankly couldn’t.

“That’s the first crime,” I said to Holly, and she marked it down in her notebook.

“Saturday morning or early afternoon. Private papers taken from Grasso office on Iris Circle. Saturday afternoon. Private papers dumped one block below on Whitley. Saturday night. Albert Grasso learns his papers have been found and goes ballistic,” she read. “That right?”

“Yes. So then there is that tenor saxophone from the Woodburn. You guys may not have heard, but—”

“We know!” said Holly. “We were there when they called 911. One of the auction chairladies nearly fainted.”

“The cops showed up and searched the hall,” Wes added. “Whoever took it left the sax case. They were fingerprinting and such.”

“I hoped maybe it had just been misplaced or something,” I said, remembering Bill Knight’s rage. “You know Zenya Knight’s husband won the sax in the auction and he was convinced that another Woodburn dad took it out of spite. But I thought he was just venting. He didn’t have any proof. What do the cops think really happened?”

They filled me in. The Selmer saxophone case, along with all the other items, had been left in an unsecured storeroom right off the stage, where items were kept both before and after the auction. Lots of people had been milling about near the storeroom, and certainly several fund-raising volunteers had nipped in and out during the closing minutes of the auction, but with all that activity and so many people hustling here and there, no one saw anything out of the ordinary.

“I have to say, this maybe fits in with what Bill Knight was suggesting. I mean, how could this have been a premeditated crime?” I asked. “I realize a lot of people had knowledge
that the Selmer had been donated to the Woodburn auction, so I get how it might have been the target of a theft, but who could have anticipated having any privacy in that storage area? Not even somebody with insider knowledge—”

“Like someone who worked on the auction committee!” Holly suggested.

“Right, someone on the committee might know there were no plans for armed guards, or locks or anything, but they
still
couldn’t predict in a crowd of hundreds of people that they could get to the sax and not be observed.”

“That’s true,” Wes said. “And if it
was
someone working as a volunteer, it would have been easier to steal the sax sometime before the ball. Fewer witnesses.”

“So you’re saying,” Holly said, picking up Wes’s line of thought, “it must have been done on impulse. Someone must have seen a few seconds of opportunity and pounced.”

We all thought it over. I couldn’t buy that some wealthy dad would risk his reputation in order to get his hands on that sax. It wasn’t as if his son could ever play it in public, after this. What would be the point? Whoever stole the sax didn’t give a damn that the Woodburn would end up losing a hundred-thousand-dollar donation, and Dave Hutson’s wife was the chairwoman of the whole freaking auction committee. It made no sense.

“What sort of person would be likely to do it?” I asked.

“A crime like that. It takes real balls.” Holly Nichols, criminal profiler.

Wes said, “Holly has been into a whole ‘balls’ theme this evening. Don’t ask.”

“But it’s true,” Holly said, defending her point. “They had to unlock the case when no one was looking, grab the horn, and just waltz out—who could have managed that?”

Wes picked up the heavy pot of tea and began to pour. “It’s
like one of those old locked-room mysteries where you’d swear it couldn’t have happened. There were dozens of helpers milling about. Even if a disgruntled bidder suddenly went insane and was seized with an overpowering urge to snatch his rival’s prize, how the heck could he get it out? Believe me, no one left the storeroom with a bulky, heavy, shiny, curvy, three-foot-long, fully engraved, sterling-silver tenor saxophone under his dinner jacket.
That
would have been noticed.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Holly said thoughtfully. “But maybe no one realized what was going on. Just wait. Someone will remember something. Or no! I bet somebody saw something and just isn’t talking.”

We both eyed Holly, considering this.

I nibbled on the crunchy, crispy mandelbrot and tasted the fine tea, which was incredibly mellow and flavorful. Wesley had become a student of the subtle art of tea brewing and was a connoisseur of estate-grown Indian teas. Of course.

Holly took a piece of mandelbrot and considered motivations. “These Woodburn dads can get nuts.”

“It’s like they are secretly insane,” I agreed, taking my second piece of mandelbrot.

“It’s like Darwin,” Wes suggested. “In more primitive times, these two dads would be clubbing each other to get dominance over their tribe. Today, they use their checkbooks to clobber their sons’ musical competition.”

Holly finished scribbling notes and then read: “Saturday night. Ten-thirty, tenor sax sold at auction for one hundred thousand dollars. Midnight, B. Knight goes to pay and finds the case is empty. Lots of witnesses report they saw nothing suspicious near the storeroom. Stolen sax may have been taken by D. Hutson out of primitive urge.”

We shared a what-a-world, what-a-world look as we each sipped our tea. “This is fantastic,” I said, breathing in the steam.

“Darjeeling, of course,” Wes explained, our font of all things arcane. “Grown in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northeastern India between Nepal and Bhutan.”

“I knew that,” Holly said.

We looked at her.

“Sort of.”

Wes smiled. “You can tell, Hol, by its characteristic dryness and muscat overtones.” He gazed into the rich golden amber liquid in his cup. “The Champagne of Teas, it’s called.”

“First flush?” I inquired nonchalantly.

Wes looked at me.

I took another small sip. I like to keep Wesley on his toes by throwing out the odd esoteric fact.

“Naturally.” He raised an eyebrow in deference to my knowledge.

“What’s
first flush
mean?” Holly asked, playing right into my hands.

“Tea plants hibernate during the winter months, Hol,” I explained. “As March approaches, the warm sun stimulates the growth of the leaves, but the cool temperatures keep the growth rate slow. This first new growth of leaves is full of flavor and it’s referred to as the
first flush.
It’s considered the ideal time to pluck the classic ‘two leaves and a bud.’”

“Wow.” Holly looked into her cup.

I smiled. I had read all about it when I was working temporarily as a writer on a culinary game show. Who says TV rots one’s mind?

“Chamling Estate?” I asked Wes. I knew I was pushing my luck, but whenever else would this sort of trivia come up in conversation?

“It’s Thurbo Estate, actually.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“The Thurbo Tea Estate is located in the Mirik Valley of Darjeeling at an altitude ranging from 980 meters to 2,440 meters. It has a planted area of 485.11 hectares and produces 263,600 kilograms of tea per year.”

“You are good,” I said. You had to hand it to Wesley. He knew his stuff. “Too bad I’m not still working on
Food Freak.
I could have used all that.”

Somehow, the camaraderie of my pals and this tea break had brought me back to myself. After all, with Holly taking notes, and Wes to puzzle it through, we had already gotten somewhere. I was fortified to deliver the rest of my story.

I approached the next part gingerly. I explained to Wes and Holly how I had been practically hijacked in Bill Knight’s Hummer and raced around the streets and abandoned downtown and the hour it took me to finally find civilization. Naturally, I expected a reaction from my best friends. I got it.