I hated driving on the freeway at night. The glare made my head spin. But I made it home safely by keeping two hands on the wheel at all times and turning off the part of my brain consecrated to the Albaccos. The remainder of the evening was spent with The Case of the Sunbather’s Diary, which turned out to have a surprise ending I loved. Energized, I tromped outside for a late-night session with my flashlight, handpicking snails off the last of my tomato plants. Javier had instructed me to crunch them under my heel, but I took pity and tossed them over the fence. They made a nice gift for my neighbor, who had recently complained to Animal Control about Buster’s “obsessive” barking.
I woke up late the next morning, around eleven. Breakfast consisted of leftover ahi tuna with a tapenade crust (one of my specialties, though very pricey), washed down with black coffee since I was out of half-and-half. Following the meal, I returned queasily to bed.
I left a message for Annie, who seemed to have gone AWOL. I resisted my god-given right to worry and flipped back and forth for a while between a Perry Mason rerun and All My Children (the yin and yang of duty and pleasure). Then the phone rang. It was Meredith Allan’s son, Burnett Fowlkes, asking me out on a date. At least I think it was a date. The man had to be five years younger than I was, at least. He was working on a house in my neighborhood and thought I might like to see it. He’d be over in half an hour.
I snapped out of my lassitude. A choice had to be made: my house, or me. Piece of cake. But I had to do something about the living room. I surveyed the carnage. There were bits of paper everywhere. In a fury, I had cut up a stack of index cards last week while agonizing over the sociosexual implications of Della Street’s seamed stockings. The broom was god knows where, so I picked up the offending pieces by hand. As is their wont, the dust bunnies had congregated under the stained-glass window, which offered a view to the great green beyond. I returned those guys to their friends and relatives under the couch. Then I grabbed the carry-on bag that had taken up residence in the entry hall after my trip to New York six months ago, shooed Mimi out, and crammed today’s dismembered newspaper in and threw the thing into the powder room, which I prayed Burnett would not need to visit.
While the hot water warmed up, I flung open my closet door. Mimi knew it was showtime and settled herself on the bed.
I could go for something very un-me, like blue jeans, maybe with my embroidered top from Mexico and my beaded Filipino slides with the high wooden heels. I get the latter in bulk for $16.99 a pair from one of my favorite stores. It’s in Los Feliz, next door to the Joe Blasco Makeup Academy, and filled to bursting with wildly colored plastic icons and sheer white baptismal shirts just right for the tropics. And they always throw in a complimentary Imelda Marcos doll. But who was I kidding? I didn’t want to look like one of those forty-year-olds who reads Seventeen. I like my crow’s-feet. Well, I don’t hate them. Did Burnett even have any? Mimi purred with satisfaction when I pulled out my favorite old Agnès B. black dress, the one with the cap sleeves and full skirt. It was ladylike with a twist. The twist was the zipper that ran all the way down the front and said, “Maybe, maybe not.” It had worked before.
I had just decided on a pale mouth and dark eyes when the doorbell rang.
Burnett was holding a bouquet of tiny, velvety-looking flowers. They were a deep shade of brown.
It was definitely a date.
“Smell them,” he said, smiling.
“Chicken mole?”
He laughed. His eyes were the crinkly kind. “Close. They’re chocolate cosmos. I thought you’d like them.”
“I love them. I’ll put them in water, and we can go.”
“Absolutely.” He followed me in and, gentleman that he was, fixed his gaze somewhere above my waist. You can feel those things, even when your back is turned.
“Great moldings,” he said. I put the flowers in a small glass vase and stepped into the dining room, nodding. “Great everything, actually.” I think he was nervous, too.
“Yeah, looking for this place was heart-wrenching. Sort of like looking for love in the personals. Then I found it: ‘New X. Spanish charmer. Emotional.’ I fell hard.”
“Isn’t that the way. Then you’ve got to pick up the pieces.”
“Which is where you come in—professionally, I mean.”
“I got that.”
“Oh.”
“Shall we?”
He opened the front door, and the knob pulled off in his hand.
“Whoops,” he said.
I laughed. “It looks like you’re holding a disembodied limb.”
“Aunt Martha!”
“You’re gruesome.”
“Takes one to know one. I’d suggest a trip to Liz’s Antique Hardware on La Brea.”
“I know the place. The guy who installed my French doors was in love with Liz.”
“It’s a rite of passage.”
We hopped into his dented white Range Rover. He had just washed it. I knew because the front bumper was still a little wet.
“The house is just a few blocks from here, but since this is L.A., I thought we’d drive.”
“This is L.A. Don’t think so much.”
Sitting that close to someone that handsome was disturbing. He was freshly shaven and smelled like pine trees. I’m not sure what possessed me. I leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He took my chin in his hand and looked into my eyes for a good, long while. Then he kissed me back for a good, long while, and that was that, for the moment.
We pulled up in front of a house that was demented. Well, that wasn’t fair. It was magnificently demented. The lot was small, maybe the size of mine. I could make out a perfectly nice stucco box a reasonable person could have loved, hidden in there behind the latticed facade with its towering double doors soaring heavenward. These were topped by a pediment with a niche holding a plaster bust of Apollo. There were finials, too, at the edges of the stucco. Did I mention the row of eugenia shrubs trimmed in the shape of perfume bottles?
“Wow,” I said.
“It gets better inside.”
The ceiling was low, and the chandelier in the entry hall dripped crystals on my head. There was a trip of a wet bar, decorated with small Doric pilasters, and the most enormous Lucite coffee table I’d ever seen, resting on a zebra-skin rug. Curved glass walls wrapped around a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the back. Behind the pool was a draped pavilion, perfect for a bored housewife nursing a tumbler of vodka.
“It’s a Home Depot take on the Hollywood Regency style,” he said. “Amazing.”
“The Hollywood what style?”
“You’ve seen them all over West Hollywood. Sloping mansard roofs, false fronts like stage sets, oversize carriage lamps? With a little know-how, you, too, could’ve transformed your Spanish Colonial Revival into a Second Empire townhouse.”
“If only I’d thought of it.”
“Dozens were done in the fifties and sixties. This remodel was a strictly DIY affair. The son inherited it last year and has a thing for camp. He wants to use the place as a backdrop for photo shoots, that kind of thing.”
Said son appeared. He had a goatee and was chewing green apple bubble gum. He ushered Burnett into the pavilion to take some measurements.
“I’ll just be a second.”
“Great.”
I took the opportunity to fix my lipstick. Luckily, there were mirrors everwhere. I sat down on the sofa, which was hard as a rock, and found myself face-to-face with a gold Buddha. Under its watchful gaze, I thumbed through an old copy of Beverly Hills People.
I looked up when I heard the swoosh of the sliding glass doors. Burnett introduced us. The guy’s name seemed to be Barry White. I assumed that was some sort of joke. Barry said hello, and that he liked my dress.
“You know, architecture is just like fashion. Both are species of sexual fetishism. All buildings have erogenous zones, zones of pleasure. Burnett can tell you all about it,” he said with a wink. Or a tic. It was hard to tell.
Burnett looked embarassed, but a client is a client.
“In my fantabulous house, for example, all the orifices—the windows, doors, chimneys, mail slots—are overarticulated. Also the protuberances, you know, the things that can be fondled—door knockers, handles, balustrades, carriage lamps. Please touch, I always tell my guests!”
We decided to go out for a coffee after that. Burnett had a headache. He put four packets of sugar into his tiny espresso.
“I would’ve asked for sugar for my raspberry iced tea yesterday, but your mother intimidated me.”
“The woman has a gift. So tell me more about your work.”
We talked for a long time. He ordered another espresso, and I had another cappuccino. His head felt better. Memories of Barry White receded into the distance. I told him about my writing, about how much I loved it, puzzling over people, finding them in their books, finding myself in them, too.
“Did you ever want to write a mystery yourself?”
“No, not really. I’ve thought about it, of course, but I’m more of a forensic pathologist than a killer. I mean, I don’t want to do the deed, I want to pick apart the corpse. Does that make sense?”
“Even your metaphors are morbid,” he said jokingly. “But I get it. It’s sort of the same reason I became a restoration architect.”
“How so?”
“Well, I was always the kid who wouldn’t let the other kids knock down the tower of blocks. I didn’t build the tower of blocks, I just protected it.”
I laughed.
“I remember my mother taking me to Venice when I was about thirteen or fourteen. The most romantic city in the world. She wanted to show me the Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Cathedral. The poor woman was devastated to discover they were covered in scaffolding, part of a restoration effort that was going to take years. But I was thrilled. I spent days watching the guys working up there. I sketched the metal framework, the jacks, poles, and brackets, the geometric patterns they formed. Everyone thought I was nuts.”
“No, just perverse.”
“Is that wishful thinking?”
“Don’t get fresh with me, Burnett.”
“Give me a reason.”
It was quiet for a moment.
“So, why’d you kiss me like that?” he asked.
“Why’d you kiss me back?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
“I thought I was morbid.”
“Speaking of morbid, what’s up with that old murder case you talked to my mother about?”
I told him about finding Joseph Albacco’s letter to ESG, and about my visit to Tehachapi. I told him about Theresa Flynn, leaving out the part about the scrap of paper with his mother’s name on it. That seemed the politic thing to do. Mostly, though, I found myself talking about Jean. A girl who had gotten in over her head. What exactly had happened to her that night in that small Ventura bungalow?
It was her first wedding anniversary, hers and Joe’s. She was peeling potatoes. Everything had to be perfect. It was mid-December and strangely hot. The sweat dripped down her forehead and stung her eyes. She walked into the living room and wiped her hands onto her apron. She cracked open a window. She studied her neighbor’s wilted pansies. She watched a cat scurry by, looking for a bird to kill. She had a roast to kill. But Joe was late. Again. She went back into the kitchen and turned on the oven. Then she heard the screen door slam. It didn’t take long after that. Did she even have time to scream?
“Whoa! Are you sure you don’t want to be a mystery writer?” Burnett asked.
Red as a beet, I shook my head. For heaven’s sake, who did I think I was, Erle Stanley Gardner? More like Daphne du Maurier. Talk about your gothic romances. Someone save me from my lurid imagination. I finished my cappuccino and tried to change the subject. Back to Burnett, Burnett and his mother, Burnett and architecture, anything. But he kept turning the conversation back to me—my family, my daughter, even my divorce. Not many men are willing to hear you complain about old mistakes. Or are sweet and sexy enough to make you want to forget about them. I thought I could get used to that.
Later, when he kissed me good-bye, I thought I could get used to that, too.