Chapter 7
When Bardot and I returned home, Marisol, who was sitting on my front steps, greeted us.
“I have a restraining order, I swear,” I said as I sat down next to her.
“Who’s going to execute it, Augie?” She laughed.
The self-appointed “Mayor of Rose Avenue” loved to flaunt that she had the cops in her back pocket.
“You been over to that damn construction site?”
I felt around my clothes and hair, trying to find the bug she must have planted on me. When I came up empty, I started frisking Bardot.
“We talked to the developer, yes. But he wouldn’t let us see anything.”
“You got to go at night, when nobody’s around.”
“Have you done that?”
She shook her head, but I wasn’t convinced.
“So what have you found out about Mr. Bobby Snyder? And don’t tell me about what he says he’s doing, I’ve read the flyer.”
She looked to both sides to check if anyone else was listening.
Really?
“I told you he smokes, right?”
“So?”
“So he drops his goddamn butts out his car window onto the street.”
“He’s a pig, that’s all you’ve got?” This was going nowhere.
“For now,” she said, but she was grinning.
“Come on, Bardot. I actually have a job, and must get to work,” I said mostly to Marisol.
“I’ll know a lot more in a couple of days,” she added as I unlocked my front door.
“Spill,” I said, rejoining her on the stoop.
“I put one of those butts in a baggie and gave it to Augie. He’s running DNA on it.”
“How did you convince Augie to do it? You had better not have brought up my name in connection with this, I’m already in enough hot water as you saw last night.”
“You’re right, you’re in deep doo-doo.”
“I can’t image that he can have the lab run random tests for no reason.”
“I gotta go,” she said and disappeared.
I gotta lie down. . . .
* * *
It was time for me to start doing some research on the deed, Abigail Rose, and anything else I could think of to get me off the suspect list. I did a quick run through of my emails, returned a call from my Coast Guard client, who wants to add to their website (billable hours, yay!), and pulled out the cigar box. With what I had learned from Frederick about the deed and ring’s possible value, I was now hiding the tin in a moderately secret place. I need to find a safer alternative, I thought.
I delicately took out the yellowed document and laid it on my desk. It appeared to be on legal-sized paper and was being employed horizontally. There was printing and writing on both sides and it was scored accordion-style in four places. I didn’t attempt to fold it but imagined that when it was it would have fit nicely into a man’s inside jacket breast pocket.
The deed was issued by the West Republic Land & Title Company, which seemed like as good a place as any to start. The business is now defunct, but my search led me to the USC archives, where I was at least able to view similar documents from that company. This one was pretty much a match. But when I drilled down and added the name “Anderson Rose” to my search, I came up empty. It was time to set up a query script and let it do the work. While I was at it, I created one for Abigail Rose as well.
Just as I launched it, there was a knock on my office side door. I was going to ignore it and pack away my artifacts, but Bardot stood on her back legs at the window to the street and wagged her tail intensely. I peeked out behind her and saw Malcolm waiting by the door.
He seems harmless enough.
I tossed the jacket from the back of my chair over everything on my desk.
“Hello, I do hope that I’m not interrupting your work. I was heading to the gardens and remembered you telling me that this was your office,” he explained at the threshold.
“Not at all, come in.”
I saw him take a quick look over my shoulder to my computer screen.
“Would you like some water?” I asked, quickly ushering him toward the small kitchen at the opposite end of the room. When I looked back, the screen had thankfully gone into sleep mode.
He chose coconut water and then we sat at the conference table in the middle of the room. I made sure that his back was to my desk.
“I was fascinated by your talk the other day, but I wondered what got you started on the history of our little community? You’re so young; wouldn’t you rather be exploring the world?”
His cheeks went as orange as tungsten lightbulbs. “My family was among the first settlers in America and they go back all the way to the Mayflower. Eventually a few headed west, not so much for gold, but for land. My parents both died when I was young, drunk driver.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
He gave me a slight smile. “I was raised in a series of foster homes here in California, and it was only natural that I wanted to trace back my heritage. I started in the Bay Area, which is where I was born, and a series of discoveries has led me down to Southern California.”
“So you have no relatives nearby? What about on the East Coast?”
“None that are living, I’m afraid. So here I am, I get a stipend from the historical society, and I work as an archivist at UCLA.”
Still doesn’t explain the house....
I started to wonder why he was telling me all this and hoped he wasn’t getting the wrong idea. I had absolutely no interest in him personally. But Bardot seemed to like him and was sitting calmly, watching him. It may have been because she’d never seen a ginger before....
He checked himself as he started to turn around and look at my desk. I wasn’t ready to reveal my find to him just yet, even if Paula and Max endorsed him. After all, I’d just met them.
“You said that you are on your way to the gardens, do you have a plot up there?” I asked.
“Me? No, I would love to have one, I hope someday, but you must know how coveted they are. And you?”
“Funnily enough the Wine Club ladies procured one for my birthday. Someone knew someone who dated someone who heard about a lone patch that had been left unclaimed and unattended.” With those last words, I noticed his expression change ever so slightly.
“Look at the time,” he said suddenly. “It was lovely to visit with you and your dog, but I must be off. Thanks ever so for the water.”
With that he disappeared. Not quite as magical as Marisol but he was gone all the same. Bardot sniffed the chair he had been in and gave me a questioning look.
Just then my computer monitor came back to life meaning that one of my queries had come back with some information. I went back to my desk to take a look. Bardot went outside to nap in the lounge chair.
When I sat down, I saw that the return was for the Abigail Rose search. I’d set up some pretty strict parameters for this. Mostly I was interested in Abigail’s relatives, last known addresses, that sort of thing. I clicked on the link to Intelius, a good website resource for people searches, background checks, and such. The page that loaded offered three matches:
Christopher B. Rose, Bronxville, NY
Burton E. Macgregor, Palm Coast, FL
Michael P. Abernathy, San Francisco, CA
Could it be? I followed the links for the Abernathy listing. The site teases you just enough to tell you it has what you are looking for, but stops short of turning over that info until you choose one of their plans and request a report. For about three dollars I’d hoped I would find something I could use.
Boy, did I.
About two minutes later I received the report via email. I opened it and scrolled down through a litany of caveats, source references, and birth records. It seems that Michael, now deceased, was the grandson of one Abigail Rose of Mar Vista, CA. He never married and had one sibling, Charles, who had died in his late twenties.
Charles had to have been Malcolm’s father. Making Abigail his great-grandmother!