Call me crazy, but I had a feeling Jean’s lockbox should not remain on the premises if I wanted to keep breathing, which I did. But I needed help. The thing was small but heavy. I called Yellow Cab and asked them to send some muscle. I had a safe-deposit box at the Bank of America on Santa Monica Boulevard near Crescent Heights that was empty except for the deed to my house and some floppy disks so old they should probably go to the Smithsonian. It was the perfect hiding place. Public and inviolable. I’d tip the cabdriver, and he’d haul it in.
Ahmed was a peach, and no one said boo. I raced home. I had to change and meet Annie in less than an hour, and the setting warranted a hat.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is located in Pasadena, the oldest of Los Angeles’s old-money enclaves. It’s a stone’s throw from Caltech (home of the Mars Rover and many bespectacled earthquake pundits) but immune to the siren call of intellectual panic that echoes there. At the Huntington, the air is warm, but not thin. At the Huntington, all is luxe, calme, et volupté.
It’s not often that a railroad magnate decides he has to have 150 acres of gardens, filled with the world’s rarest and most beautiful blooms. And grottoes and tempiettos and a Zen rock garden and a Gutenberg Bible and Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Lawrence’s Pinky and an English tearoom that serves scones with real clotted cream. The old guy wasn’t responsible for the scones, of course. But back in 1903, Henry Edwards Huntington had had the vision to buy a working ranch in San Marino (it came with a dairy herd, a bunch of chickens, orange and avocado groves) and turn it into a landmark. Inside the museum was a portrait of Henry’s wife, Arabella, which I studied every time I visited. Arabella wore dark-rimmed glasses and looked fierce. I suspected she provided Henry with additional impetus.
The last time Annie and I had been at the Huntington was back in May, for their annual plant sale. The theme was “Weird and Wonderful Magical and Mystical Plants,” and we went determined to put together a black garden. Burnett was right. I was morbid, and I’d infected my only child early on. But what was I supposed to do? Was it my fault she found Miss Marple more compelling than Winnie the Pooh? Her kindergarten teacher certainly thought so.
Anyway, we’d had Lael’s red Radio Flyer wagon that day, and we’d piled a fabulous assortment of plants into it, plants that were not truly black but superdark shades of purple and maroon: black-flowered hollyhock, a dark ajuga called “Chocolate Chip,” a dianthus named “Sooty,” a cordalis with dark purple leaves, a strange columbine named “Chocolate Soldier,” the camellia “Midnight Magic,” and the doomed black mondo grass I’d have to deal with on Thursday with Javier.
“There’s nothing like the enthusiasm of a new convert,” the smiling docent had said to me at the checkout area, cracking my hard-won veneer of sophistication with a single blow. You can take the girl out of New Jersey, blah, blah, blah. My whole problem was I didn’t want to accept that. That wasn’t my whole problem, actually.
Today, Annie was waiting for me in front of the galleries. Arm in arm, we walked inside. We ogled a Hepplewhite desk with turquoise tile inlays that I’m sure would have helped me write my book faster. We marveled over the shelves and shelves of first editions under glass, like pheasants, and the miniatures in pearl-or diamond-encrusted frames. Anything except talk to each other. In a dimly lit room we stopped in front of a seventeenth-century painting that depicted a little girl reading the palm of a boy about her age. He was looking out at the viewer as if to confide that he knew he was being scammed but didn’t mind. The painting was a perfect metaphor for the way men patronize women, which made it all the more alarming that I found it so cute.
“I don’t like it, Mom,” Annie said.
“Good for you. It sends a bad message.”
“I’m not talking about the painting, Mom. I’m talking about the creepy stuff you’re into lately. It’s like you think you’re in one of your Perry Mason mysteries. It’s not healthy.”
“Annie, you don’t need to worry about me. Let me worry about you. That’s how it’s supposed to go.”
“Everything’s fine with me,” Annie said as we stepped outside into the sunlight. It was quiet except for the steady hum of lawn mowers.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about. Annie, there’s something about Vincent I need to tell you.”
“Well, don’t be so melodramatic. I said I was fine with all of it.”
“I saw Vincent at the farmer’s market on Sunday, with Lael.”
“What was he doing with Lael?”
“No, I was with Lael. He was with somebody else.”
“With Alexander, his son? And Roxana?”
I was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I’ve spoken to Vincent, Mom. He told me he had gotten in touch with them. It’s wonderful, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes, of course. But how do you really feel?”
Annie laughed. She seemed to have not a care in the world. It was unnatural.
“Look at all these heat lamps, Mom. In the middle of a desert garden. It’s so funny.”
We sat down on a bench in front of a field of small cacti as round and white as snowballs. They were surrounded by some orange plants that resembled huge pumpkins. I was riveted by the six-foot phallic plumes. They were pointy all over and reminded me of Annie’s father. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nada.
“Well, San Marino isn’t Madagascar, sweetie. That’s where these babies came from.”
“I guess it can get cold here in winter.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to help Vincent do what’s right.”
“But what about what you want?”
“That doesn’t matter anymore, Mom.”
“Are you saying that you want him back? Because he wants you back.”
“He needs to be with his son. And if he can make it work with Roxana, that’s how it should be. Do you really expect me to get in the way? It would be selfish.”
Annie was anything but selfish. And I was as proud of her as I was devastated for her.
We strolled past the towering stalks of bamboo and the lily ponds stuffed with carp, past the herb garden, where the docents ordered us to pinch and sniff. By that time the sweat was pooling under the brim of my hat and I’d had enough. Even the lemon verbena couldn’t tempt me.
On my way out to the car, I noticed the morning-glory vines trailing across the tops of some Italian cypresses. It made me feel better that the Huntington had morning-glory troubles, too. Bloodsuckers, Javier called them. Got to pull them up the minute you see them, or they’ll take over and eventually everything will die. It was hard. They were so pretty.
We said good-bye in the parking lot, and I gave Annie an extra hug.
“Mom, don’t freak out on me,” she called out of her car window, waving.
“Do I ever?” I called back. She didn’t reply. She must’ve been too far away to hear me.
So I had a little problem on the 134 going home. Someone was following me. Again. It was when I peered into the rearview mirror to check my makeup that I first noticed the car. Also, that the Mango-a-Go-Go had bled into the little bitty lines around my mouth. I reapplied my lipstick and forgot about the whole thing, but there it was, fifteen minutes later, that same car, a dark SUV, right behind me. I sped up and changed lanes a couple of times, but there seemed to be no getting away.
I tried to remember the tricks of the trade, how to lose a tail and all, but since investigating murders past and present wasn’t really my trade, I found myself at a loss. But I didn’t fall apart. In fact, I was surprised at how calm I was. And why shouldn’t I be? It was still light out, I was in a Camry that had seen me through worse days, and I’d suddenly remembered that the best thing to do when you thought you were being followed was to drive straight to the police station. So I got off the freeway at the Forest Lawn Cemetery exit, which I hoped wasn’t prophetic, and headed straight to the only precinct house in L.A. whose address and phone number I knew by heart.