City Of Mirrors: A Diana Poole Thriller Part 3

G.o.d, I'd forgotten. "I'll be there in a half hour."

"Just ask at the reception desk," she said, cheerfully helpful.

I hung up, sat down on the edge of the bed, and buried my face in my hands.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The smog hadn't yet killed the swans at the Bel Air Hotel. They floated regally down the little stream that ran under the bridge that took you into the lobby. I've always loved the swans. As a girl I would hang out with them while mother had drinks with Jeff, Jake, or Jack. The swans had a feathery elegance and arrogant disdain for the guests. For all of us.

Warm and expensively una.s.suming, the lobby was a Southern California dream of upper-crust country: teatime and T-shirts. I stopped at the front desk and adjusted my sungla.s.ses.

"I'm here to pick up my mother," I said to a young shiny woman who looked as if she'd been polished with a can of Pledge.

"I'll call her. What room is she in?"

I took a deep breath, fighting back the now familiar urge to break out in hysterical laughter or hysterical tears. Or both. Controlling myself, I said, "I'm sorry, I'm Diana Poole. You have a ... package ... for me."

She suddenly looked stricken. "Oh, yes." Her voice turned somber and now she spoke in a hushed tone. "They told me to expect you. I'll be right back."

Disappearing, she soon returned holding a regular brown shipping box. I don't know what I had expected, but it wasn't UPS.

"Our condolences." She shoved the box toward me. "I so admired her."

"Do you have some scissors?"

"Of course." She plucked a pair from a drawer.

As she watched uneasily, I took the edge of one of the blades and sliced across the tape binding the box. I flipped open the lids and there was Mother's urn. The one I had chosen. Her name was engraved on a sterling silver nameplate. I lifted it out of the box; it was heavy and handmade of cherry wood. As the funeral director had explained, "The grain of each wood urn is as individual in character as the life being mourned." He sold me.

"Thank you." I walked out of the hotel and waited for the valet to bring my car around. I strapped Mother into the pa.s.senger seat, then tipped the valet who discreetly pretended not to notice what I'd done. Mother and I sailed down Stone Canyon Road together for the last time.

I worked my way though the heavy traffic to Jenny Parson's condominium complex just down from the Four Seasons Hotel on Beverly Drive. I drove around the block twice before finding a place to park the Jag. I attempted to lock the car, but like the air conditioning, nothing was working. I contemplated putting the urn in my trunk but I somehow couldn't do it. So I carried Mother with me.

Inside the lobby, a doorman outfitted in a maroon-colored jacket decorated with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, gold braid, and looking like a banana-republic general peered out from the thick double gla.s.s doors as I approached. He opened them for me. The white marble lobby was upscale and austere. Black leather chrome benches were precisely placed near exotic potted palms.

"I'm here to see Jenny Parson. My name is Diana Poole," I informed him.

He looked at some papers on a clipboard. "Take the elevator up to 302, she's expecting you."

Good, I thought, she had left my name. Maybe she actually wanted to be an actress.

Reaching the third floor, the elevator door opened, and the lingering smell of cooking hit me. No matter how expensive the condominium, there is always an odor of food in the hallway strong enough to turn you into an anorexic.

Jenny's door was at the end. I pressed the doorbell and waited. I tried the bell again-I could hear it ringing inside her condo. When there was still no answer, I knocked loudly.

Finally I gave up and went back down to the lobby. The doorman raised his spa.r.s.e eyebrows when he saw me.

"I guess Jenny went out. Have you seen her?" I asked.

"No. But she can take the elevator down to the underground garage without going through the lobby."

"If you mean Jenny Parson, her car's here," announced a woman, eyes surgically stretched and tilted toward the heavens. Holding a quivering Chihuahua outfitted in a pink turtleneck sweater, she unlocked one of the bra.s.s mailboxes that lined the wall near the concierge's desk. "I just drove in and saw it. Brand-new Audi." She peered in the box. It was empty. The dog licked her ear.

"If her car is here then she should answer the door," I said.

The doorman shrugged.

"Well, thank you again." I started toward the entrance, then stopped. Maybe it was holding my mother's ashes that brought out my unexpected maternal feelings for Jenny Parson. I turned around and asked, "What time did she leave my name?"

The doorman rechecked his list. "Six P.M. yesterday."

That was soon after I'd talked to her. So I had made some kind of impact. Jenny wasn't capricious; if anything she was very direct. But she was struggling. Still, she had told me she was going clubbing last night. Maybe she'd had too much to drink and was sleeping it off, or she stayed overnight with a friend-or a boyfriend. Go home, Diana, I told myself. Instead I eyed the doorman. He sucked in his stomach and eyed me back. He was an immovable object. Improvise, Diana.

Glancing down at the urn, I said, "This is her mother's ashes. Jenny's expecting me to bring them to her."

"You can leave them at the desk," he said.

"How would you like to pick up your mother's ashes in a lobby as if she was some package dropped off by UPS?"

"I ... I ..." He knew he was trapped.

The woman with the dog gaped at him as if he had just maligned her own mother. Even the Chihuahua raised a disgusted lip showing a tiny fang.

"I hope you wouldn't treat my mother that way," she said to him.

He flushed.

"Please," I said quickly. "I'll just leave them in her living room with a little note."

"All right," he relented. "But I can't let you go in there alone. I'll take you."

We rode up in the elevator, ignoring one another.

He unlocked the door to 302 and stepped in first. "Ms. Parson?"

I slipped past and walked into the living room. "Jenny? It's Diana."

Her corner condo was meagerly furnished, giving the impression comfort didn't matter much to her. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out to the hills above Sunset and down across the vast gray sprawl that was the city.

"Jenny?" I walked down a hall into a bedroom.

"I think you should just leave the ashes ... urn ... ." The doorman was close on my heels.

The queen-size bed was made. A giant flat screen TV dominated a dresser. Her closet door had been left open displaying an array of designer clothes. I peered into a beautifully appointed bathroom-the towels were neatly folded on bra.s.s bars.

If I were a young girl who had been out clubbing the night before, there would be clothes strewn on the floor and a bed messed up. Some signs of a life in disarray-the way my apartment had looked when I was her age. Maybe she hadn't come home last night. On the other hand, her car was in the garage. But a friend or a boyfriend could have picked her up here. The plain truth was that Jenny was a no-show. What a waste-and what was going to happen to the movie?

The doorman cleared his throat, trying to hurry me along. "I'll tell Ms. Parson you were here."

Back in the living room, I asked, "Is there any other place she could be in the building? Maybe the laundry room?"

He crossed to the kitchen and opened a door, proudly displaying a washer and dryer. "Not many condos have the s.p.a.ce for these appliances. All of ours do."

I felt a warm wind ruffle the back of my hair. Turning, I saw a small window off the dining area had been opened. At the same time, I could hear the sound of a large engine. I looked out the window and down to an alley that ran alongside the building. A truck from the sanitation department was emptying large blue bins.

"They're late again," the doorman announced.

I turned to him. "Thanks for your help."

"Aren't you going to leave her mother's ashes?" He gestured at the urn in my arms, then frowned. "Her father didn't say anything about her mother being ill. He's very protective of his daughter." Suspicious, he stabbed an accusing finger at the urn. "That nameplate says 'Nora Poole.'"

But I was looking out the window again. I realized I had just seen a flash of silver as one of the dumpsters was being loaded onto the truck. There was something about it ...

The doorman was still talking. "I didn't know Nora Poole was Jenny's mother." He was trying to reason it out. "Wait, I know you. You're Diana Poole. What's going on here?"

Ignoring him, I stared at the shiny object that now jutted out from a large black garbage bag. The blade of a knife? I felt a chill. It was the high heel of a shoe. Silver, like Mercury's wing, like Jenny's beautiful high heels I had admired yesterday in her trailer.

"Stop!" I screamed down at the two men. "Stop!"

They continued working since they couldn't hear me over the grinding noise of the truck's motor. The doorman had taken a step back and was gaping at me.

"Come here," I ordered. "Keep shouting at them to stop. Jenny's in there!"

His face blanched. "What you talking about?"

"Her shoe!" I hurried past him. "And call 911!"

Clutching the urn, I ran down the hallway and kept slamming the elevator's down b.u.t.ton until it arrived. Bolting through the lobby and out the front doors, I flew down the sidewalk to the alley. I rushed at the garbage truck with its two operators, yelling at the top of my lungs. The bin was on the lift, tilting dangerously into the maw of the truck.

"There's someone in there." I pointed to the garbage bag on top as it rolled to the edge. "A woman is in there!"

One of the men pointed to his ear protectors, meaning he couldn't hear me.

Stepping forward, I yanked one of them away from his ear. "Stop it!" I yelled.

He glowered at me but pushed down on a lever. The bin froze in midair. I leaned over, gasping for breath.

"Que paso?" He took off his ear protectors.

I pointed up to the bin. "Shoe. Check the bag, por favor."

"You lose shoe?"

"Yes. A shoe!" Please, G.o.d, let it be just a shoe.

Commanding his partner in Spanish, the bin slowly descended to the ground. Then he got up on the lift. "This bag?" He pointed.

I nodded. My heart pounded.

Shaking his head, he pulled himself up into the bin and ripped open the bag. His mouth fell open and he lurched backward crossing himself, saying a prayer in Spanish. The doorman loped down the alley, epaulets flapping, waving his cell in the air. "I called 911. The police are coming."

As he scrambled down, I stood on my toes trying to see into the bin. I glimpsed blood-matted auburn hair and one green milky eye looking directly at me. I wish I hadn't.

Staggering back, I slumped against the building's white marble wall. It felt warm on my back from the sun. I slid down it into a sitting position and leaned my forehead against my mother's urn.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

I've always thought it odd that people sometimes refer to a moment in life as if it were a scene in a movie. Real life doesn't have a camera, lights, and a boom mike hovering around you. It doesn't have a time limit defined by the length of the dialogue. It doesn't have a corpse leaping to her feet after the director calls "Cut!" and asking "How did I do?" And it doesn't have the set laughing at her unintentionally funny question.

Mother would always remind me that in acting, reality was no excuse. "Only the hack," she explained, "says 'But that's how it happens in real life.'"

Yet when the black-and-white patrol cars arrived, rooftop beacons flashing in the twilight, the unnecessary ambulance parked beside the truck, and the yellow crime-scene tape encircled the area, it did look like a movie. And I was beginning to think reality was no longer an excuse in my own life.

Detective Dusty Spangler introduced herself in a voice as flat as Kansas: "I know, it sounds like a stripper's name."

I had the feeling she used this line to put people at ease or gain more information. Her pale hair was pulled back into a stub of a ponytail. She wore almost exactly what her male partner wore. Blue blazer, a shirt, and gray slacks. Her sizable belly hung over her belt and leather hip holster. I wondered how she reached her weapon in an emergency.

After I'd told her exactly what had happened, she checked her notes and said, "So you used your mother's urn to get into the condo. You're a very resourceful woman." She made it sound like one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

I asked her if I could leave, explaining that I didn't want to deal with the media. I knew that once they found out Jenny and I were both in the same movie, it would turn into a circus. She let me go with the a.s.surance that I would give her my complete statement at the West Los Angeles Station.

Now I drove up the long driveway to Zaitlin's house. I had called him at the crime scene to tell him what had happened. Beyond upset, he had wanted to see me immediately.

Zaitlin and his family lived in a grand French chateau, always referred to without irony as "the farm house," atop a hill in Brentwood. Three stories high, with a steeply pitched slate roof, dormers, turrets, and four useless towers, the stone mansion had spectacular views west from the Pacific Ocean all the way east to the San Bernardino Mountains, which towered over Pasadena.

When I arrived at the crest, expensive cars were parked in a driveway built to hold many expensive cars. I pulled up to the front entrance, and a valet appeared and opened my door. Rap music pounded viciously from the side yard.

I leaned my head back against the seat and remembered tonight was the birthday party for Robert and Gwyn's son. I closed my eyes. A party was the last thing I needed. Then I grabbed the urn and let the valet help me out.

"I won't be long," I told him.

The two-story foyer was empty except for a security guard in a black suit standing in front of a ma.s.sive carved-wood door. A round marble table filled the center area of the limestone floor.