Welcome to book fourteen in the Operation Quickline series. When old evidence is uncovered in the long-unsolved murder of Sid’s mother, he and Lisa end up mired in one of the messiest cases of their careers. You can read the first chapter here, or check out the other chapters here.
(Lisa’s Voice)
I was so glad that Neil had decided to pick up Darby from school that Friday afternoon. When Sid got back from lunch with Van Blinn and fighting his way through Friday afternoon traffic on the 405, he was beat.
He said that lunch itself was pretty boring. However, his meeting with the Wanzycks and Earline Spinner Wilson was pretty strange.
“She said I reminded her of Sheila.” Sid winced. “That part wasn’t so bad. It’s just that I got this weird feeling that Earline didn’t like Sheila or something.”
“Maybe she was jealous of Sheila. What did Van Blinn say about it?”
Sid rolled his eyes. “Nothing. He just went on another rapturous screed on how wonderful Sheila was. Something tells me this guy did not get Sheila at all.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I scrunched my face up. “He’s been living with these memories for a long time. It’s always possible he’s created a better memory than what actually existed.”
“I suppose.”
There weren’t any more conclusions to be drawn. I’d called Hannah Davis and had left a couple of messages on her answering machine. I could because Sid and I do not have our phone numbers listed in any public directory, and even if they were, we’ve got them set up so that they’re not connected to our addresses.
The next morning, after our usual run, I got dressed and went to teach confirmation class. Sid made good on his word to teach Nick how to shave around the cleft in his chin.
To Breanna, 11/20/2000
Topic of the Day: Being angry
Okay. I guess it’s time to work on my anger toward my first mom. Like you say, being angry at her doesn’t mean I didn’t/don’t love her. It just means that it’s complicated. Which it is.
The hardest part is getting past the guilt that I was so much happier when Dad and Mom Two took custody of me after Mom One died. But here’s the weird thing. Mom One and Grandma always said that I was the best thing that had ever happened to them, only it never really felt like they meant it. It was more like they thought that if they said it enough, they might really feel like I was.
Dad and Mom Two, on the other hand, had never wanted to be parents, nor expected to, but were glad that they were. I remember when Dad taught me how to shave. It was a Saturday morning, and we’d already tried earlier in the week, which hadn’t gone well. Shaving that dimple in my chin is not easy.
“I think I got it,” I said after scraping away for the fourth time. “Look. No blood.”
“Good job.” Dad grinned. He was leaning on the bathroom counter next to me. “Just don’t get discouraged when you cut yourself again. Shaving that cleft takes a lot of practice. Stella used to say that she was surprised I had a chin left.”
“She teach you?”
“Uh, no. I had to feel my way around. That’s why I’m happy to teach you.”
And he was, too. I could see him grinning in the mirror.
“It looks like you’re having a lot of fun with this,” I said, washing off my face.
“That’s because I am.”
It just kind of hit me then. “Really? I mean, you didn’t want a kid when I showed up.”
“I most certainly did not.”
I watched him. “Then why did you give me a chance?”
“Your second mom.” He laughed a little, then winced. “She knew that I didn’t feel all that wanted growing up, and totally leveraged that against me when you arrived on our doorstep.”
“But Stella wanted you. A lot.”
“I know that now. I just didn’t know that growing up.” He sighed. “It’s always been hard for Stella to express her love for me. She never learned how from her parents. She had a rough time growing up. Her father beat up her mother and her brother and molested her sister. Stella got put down or ignored. That I’m able to express love happened because of your mom, who taught me how, as did Janey, and your Aunt Mae and Uncle Neil, and the rest of the kids. Let’s face it, Nick. You and I are insanely lucky in that we found the right kind of people. But we were also smart enough to learn from them. It’s a real testament to your mother’s love for us that she married me and adopted you. She wanted us to be a legal family enough that even though she didn’t want to be a wife and mother, she became one anyway. And it’s why I’m able to be here, getting a kick out of watching you learn how not to scrape your chin to pieces.” He reached over and hugged me. “And I am so glad that I am.”
Hmm. I wonder if the reason I’m so angry now is that I pushed it back so often, trying to cut Mom One some slack.
Sid and I try not to work on Saturdays and Sundays. It doesn’t always work out that way. In the spy biz, you work when things are happening, never mind whether or not it’s a weekend.
Most Saturdays during the school year, I teach a class on confirmation, the sacrament most kids receive in their early to mid-teens to affirm that they truly want to be Catholic (never mind that almost all of them are just going through the motions). In our parish, we confirm kids at age fifteen. With Nick’s birthday being so early in the year (February), he’d gone through the program the year before, never mind that most kids get confirmed in their sophomore year of high school. So he wasn’t with me that Saturday afternoon.
After class, I went over to Esther and Frank’s duplex in West Hollywood to put in a shift watching Van Blinn not go anywhere.
Esther sat with me in the back room of the three-bedroom unit. The whole place has a frowzy bachelor pad feel. Even though the monitoring equipment was state-of-the-art and probably pretty expensive, it sat on a beat-up wooden table with two creaky metal office chairs in front of it.
“They have four cars, you know,” Esther told me.
“I know. I did the DMV search yesterday,” I said, shaking my head. “Three Caddies and a Range Rover.”
“Where are they getting the money?” Esther asked, agape.
“According to the article I read a few months ago, it’s all from their ministry. He preaches the prosperity gospel. Believe in God and get rich.”
Esther snorted. “Hasn’t worked for me yet.”
“Oh, wait. You have to believe in their version of religion and give them money.”
“Maybe I ought to start a new religion.”
I laughed.
“Hey. When are we going to do our retreat?” Esther asked.
Almost three years before, the Ladies’ Night Out poker party had started as one of the parties before my wedding. But we’d all had so much fun that it had continued and even grown. The annual retreat was actually a trip to Las Vegas, but most of us did some praying, and not just at the tables or slot machines.
“I don’t know.” I made a face. “It’s too late to go this month.”
“I told you we should have planned this before Christmas.”
“Given this stupid job, it’s just as well that we didn’t.” I glared at the monitor.
Esther looked like she was about to ask, but then realized it wouldn’t have done any good. It’s how things go with what we do, and at that moment, I was glad. It was getting close to four p.m. when I got a page from Sid to call him at Stella’s music school. I called from Esther’s secure line, and he asked me to meet him there. He’d seen something that had him… Not happy, I guess.
I told Esther not to worry about Van Blinn for the rest of the night. Truth be told, I was pretty fed up with the whole business and didn’t care what the old man was up to. Minutes later, I was in my little dark blue Datsun pickup truck and headed east.
Stella had founded the Sylvester School of Music back in the late ‘70s in Florida, where she was from. The point of the school was to provide advanced music education to kids who otherwise couldn’t afford that kind of training, never mind how much they deserved it. However, in ‘86, Stella had moved the school to Los Angeles to be closer to Nick and Sid. It was located on Pico, in Mid-City, which made it as accessible as it could be.
Why Sid was there on a Saturday, I did not know. He only taught there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Stella was usually there on Saturdays. She mostly oversaw the college kids who had come to get some experience teaching in the real world, but she had a couple of students of her own.
I saw what had Sid so concerned as soon as I parked my truck on the street about half a block down from the school. The Cadillac was dark blue, and while I couldn’t see who was sitting behind the wheel, someone was. I debated bringing my purse into the school with me, but didn’t think I could get away with drawing my Smith and Wesson Model Thirteen revolver. So I dropped the purse behind the driver’s seat in the truck’s expanded cab.
Sid paced in the front room of the school, which was crowded with four baby grand pianos, music stands and chairs, and a huge bin of sheet music. The college kids had already gone for the day.
“That car across the street?” I asked him softly after a warm hello and a kiss.
“Sy says it’s been there all afternoon.” Sid adjusted the back waistband of his dark, tight jeans.
He also had on a heather blue sweater with several cable stitches running up and down it over a white dress shirt. Something about the way he hitched his jeans told me that he had his 9 mm automatic in the back waistband holster.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Mm-hmm.” Sid looked around. Stella was working with her last student in the back, and Sy was somewhere else in the building. “Sy called me.”
“Did either of you get the license plate?”
Sid shook his head. “Neither of us can get close enough without it being obvious that we’re looking. The one time I tried, I didn’t get across the street before it took off. Then it came right back. Sy said the same thing happened to him.”
“That’s interesting.”
“You said it,” said Sid. “I was going to come by anyway and see what I could do to beef up security around here. She won’t even lock the doors.”
I patted his arm. “We’ll convince her to do it.”
A young boy, about eleven or so and black-haired, came running out from the back, a stack of sheet music in his hands. His mother followed, talking quietly with Stella.
“Well, the most important thing will be to get Nacho a piano so that he can practice at home,” Stella told Nacho’s mother.
“Oh, Stella,” the woman sighed. “We couldn’t. Pianos are so expensive.”
Stella snorted. “You wouldn’t know that from the way people keep dumping them on me. I barely have room in here as it is. In fact, I have a nice little upright that I can loan you for the time being.”
“A loan?” The woman smiled. “That would be nice. I will bring my uncle and his truck. When?”
“How about next weekend?” Stella smiled. “We’ll have to get it tuned, though.”
Sid shook his head but smiled. “I’ll take care of it. Maybe bring Darby with me. He needs some practice working on a piano.”
Nacho and his mother thanked Stella several times over, then hurried from the school.
“Well, finally,” Stella growled. “Time to close. I tell you, it has been a week.”
“Stella.” Sy appeared from the office. “You asked me to remind you…”
“About what?”
“Thanking Sid.”
“Oh.” Stella sighed. She looked over at her nephew. “Thank you for volunteering, Sid.”
Sid’s eyebrow lifted. “You’re very welcome, Stella. Now. We need to think about making this place safer for you. And for your students.”
“And why are you assuming that someone is gunning for me?” Stella’s blue eyes fixed on him.
“I’m not,” Sid growled back. “But you’ve had problems before. Now, there’s the possibility that you’ve asked the wrong questions of the wrong person. And there is that car outside.”
Stella’s glare swept over Sy. “You two are worrying about nothing!”
She strode over to the front door and opened it, then waved.
I heard the revving of the engine before I saw the dark car zooming down Pico toward the school. Sid and I glimpsed the barrel in the driver’s side window only seconds before the shots cracked. Being closer to the door, I grabbed Stella and pulled her inside. I fell onto the floor with her on top of me. Sid slammed back first into the doorjamb, then rolled, his automatic in his hands. But the car had gone before he could get a shot off, and given how busy the street was, I knew Sid didn’t want to risk hitting somebody innocent.
Stella cursed as she tried to roll herself free of my arms and get up. I have no idea how the windows didn’t get hit, but I hadn’t heard any glass breaking.
“Sy?” Sid called anxiously.
I got Stella straightened out, then rolled over. Sy slowly got to his feet.
“I am untouched,” he said, gasping a little. “Stella?”
“I’m fine,” she growled, then groaned and cursed some more as she tried to get upright.
I got up and helped her to her feet. She looked at me.
“Are you alright?” she asked me.
I winced, then stretched my back. “I’m okay. Whew! That was scary.”
“Yes.” Stella blinked, then took a deep breath. “I must concede points to your side.” But then she stopped, and her eyes grew wide as she saw the gun in Sid’s hand. “What is that?”
Sid holstered the automatic. “My sidearm.”
“You are carrying a gun. A deadly weapon!”
“Yeah!” Sid glared her down. “We had someone shooting at us.”
“I raised you to be a pacifist.” Stella shook in her fury.
“Which went out the window when people started shooting at me!” Sid flat out yelled. “Sorry if I wanted to stay alive.”
Stella gaped, then looked at Sy for help.
“My darling,” Sy said softly. “He did go to war.”
“But…” Stella looked at me, then again at Sid.
“Stella,” Sid said, his face creased in pain. “I do not want to be shooting people. I hate it. But I don’t want to die either.” His eyes squeezed shut, then he opened them. “And I don’t want you to die. It is that serious. We just got shot at.”
“It doesn’t mean it was related to anyone I spoke to.” Stella crossed her arms and stared at Sid.
“It’s more than likely,” Sid snarled, not cowed in the least.
“Even if it was. I would like to think that you still have some respect for the values I taught you!”
“You taught me kindness and respect for all people.” Sid began pacing. “Values that, by the way, I am trying to transmit to my son.”
Stella huffed. “I did not teach you to carry a gun.”
“No. The army taught me that.” Sid shuddered. “And you’re right. It was the worst mistake of my life. I still feel it. And I hate carrying a gun. But if carrying is going to help keep you alive, then damn it, I am carrying it. Because the greater value for me is you and taking care of you and being there for you. Because you were there for me when I was a kid!”
“Oh.” Stella’s eyes softened as she looked at him with a bewildered frown. “I can’t condone violence, Sid. Even to protect me.”
“I understand that,” Sid said softly. “And if it were just about me, I might feel the same way. But it’s not just about me. It’s about you, Sy, Lisa, and Nick. And Darby. And all your students.”
Stella took a deep breath. “The one thing I can’t argue with.” She shook her head. “Very well, Sid. You do what you have to do. I can’t condone it, but I can’t tell you not to, either.”
“Fine.” Sid blinked and looked away, then back at her. “I won’t tell you to carry a gun or ask Sy to. Sy, if you want to, that’s up to you. I’ll be happy to train you. But I’m not going to ask you to. That being said, Stella, will you please be more careful? Make sure this place is locked up at night. And I’d also like to have Esther Nguyen install a security system here. You’ll be able to get help faster if something bad does happen, and with the right kind of video surveillance, no one will be able to blame one of your kids.”
“I do not want to spy on people.” Stella crossed her arms again. “And anything I have here belongs to the people, anyway. There’s no reason to lock up. Anyone is welcome to take what they want.”
“But, Stella, the issue is not about who can take what,” Sid said. “The issue is about keeping you and everyone here safe. And no more leaving the number here when you’re calling one of the people attached to your sister’s case. It makes it too easy for someone to find you who shouldn’t. If you have to leave a message…” Sid looked at me, and I nodded. “Use our office phone. It’s not listed anywhere, so it will be almost impossible to track it to our house.”
Stella huffed again, then looked at Sy.
“My dearest,” he said. “I am in complete agreement with Sid. Not with carrying a gun. But I think a security system is an excellent idea, and using his phone number is an even better one.”
“Stella, please?” Sid walked over to her. “For me?”
“Oh, Sid.” Stella reached over and held him. “How the hell am I supposed to say no to that?”
Sid’s grin took on a slightly evil cast. “You’re not.” He hugged her back. “I love you, Stella.”
“You mean the world to me, too,” she said.
It was kind of sad that Stella still couldn’t tell Sid that she loved him. But it was part of her dysfunctional background, and there was only so much we could do about that.
Thank you for reading. For more information about the Operation Quickline series, click here.
Please check out the Fiction page for the latest on all my novels. Or look me up at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Vroman’s, in Pasadena, California.