Slow Squeeze (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “You think so?”

  “Sure. Or maybe it was someone we don’t even know about. Who else did Barbie rip off?”

  Iris stared at him. “You went straight home after you dropped me off on Friday, didn’t you?”

  Art raised his upper lip indignantly. “What do you think? Straight home to my apartment. Didn’t talk to anyone. What about you?”

  “I went home, took a bath, didn’t see or talk to anyone either.”

  “That proves we’re in the clear. Two smart people like us would have at least lined up alibis if we were going to murder somebody.”

  “Sorry, Art. I just…I don’t know.”

  “Like you said, we have to stand together on this.” He rubbed her back. “It’s okay. So, after we saw Barbie, we drove back to the office. That’s weird. Why drive all the way from downtown to Marina del Rey to say good-bye, then all the way back?”

  “It was a nice day and we felt like playing hooky.”

  “Okay. We both went straight home, watched television, and went to bed. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Iris said. “What if Lorraine did do it? She didn’t like us too much either. Kind of gives me the creeps, thinking of her on the loose.”

  “Does she know where you live?”

  “No. Barbie never brought her by, thank goodness. Of course my phone number’s listed but my address isn’t.”

  “Same here. Don’t worry about it. She probably went home to Salt Lake City. What did that Greenwood guy sound like to you?”

  “Like a big cowboy.”

  “That’s what I thought. Great. He probably hates Mexicans.”

  Iris returned to the office first. Art waited a few minutes, then followed.

  A couple of hours later, Greenwood called Iris from his car phone while he was on the road to L.A. and asked more questions about Barbie, Lorraine, and Art. Iris didn’t mention the money and was relieved when Greenwood didn’t ask her if she had any idea why someone would want to kill Barbie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  After work, Iris headed home on the westbound Ten, driving at a moderate speed and in a modest style. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She was conscious only of forward motion. After ten miles, she realized another vehicle was tailgating her. It was a power play. She tried to ignore it. The other vehicle was a pickup truck with two long-haired guys, both wearing baseball caps turned backward. The machismo level in a pickup truck with two guys exceeds that of a pickup truck with a single guy by a factor much greater than two.

  Iris, exasperated, held up her hands, looked in her rearview mirror, and yelled, “Can’t we just cruise in this city?”

  They thought she was flirting with them and pulled next to her. She ignored them in a way befitting an ice princess. Having a Generation X short attention span, they soon tired of her and moved on.

  In the garage of her condominium complex, Iris opened the Triumph’s trunk to take out its canvas cover. In it she saw the purple silk blouse twisted together with other garments headed for the dry cleaners, its color segregating itself ostentatiously from the polite grays, pinks, and blues of her work clothes.

  She grabbed a corner of the blouse, yanked it from the bundle, walked to the driver’s door, opened it, and pulled hard on the hood release cable. With the blouse gathered in her left hand, she walked to the front of the car, freed the hood latch with her right index finger, pulled the hood open, and fixed it in the air with a steel pole. She pulled out the oil dipstick and dragged it across the blouse, replaced the dipstick, pulled it out again, and checked the oil level.

  She clasped the blouse over the cap covering the brake fluid, twisted off the cap, and checked the level. She checked the clutch fluid as well, then gently closed the Triumph’s hood, which clicked back into place with a small snap. She walked to a large Dumpster, pushed up the lid, tossed in the blouse, and let the lid drop with a bang.

  Inside her condo, she dropped a pile of mail onto the small table in the entry, put her briefcase on the floor next to it and her purse on top, then walked through the living room, her pump heels clicking when they connected with the hardwood floor, muted when she walked over the Oriental rug. She opened one of the French doors that led out onto her terrace, rattling the string of brass bells. A brisk breeze blew through the condo. She walked outside. The ocean churned troubled blue-gray waves in anticipation of the storm.

  There were five messages on her phone machine. She listened to them as she moved through the kitchen. The first message was from her mother, checking in. Iris took a hunk of cheese from the refrigerator and a carton of crackers from the cupboard. The second call was a hang-up. The third call was from Billy Drye.

  “Have any news from Garland Hughes, Iris? No one rushed to rescue the two poor little girls?”

  “Asshole,” Iris snapped.

  The fourth call was a hang-up. So was the fifth, but there was an angry noise as if someone had cried out and slammed the phone down.

  “That’s lovely. Very nice.”

  Iris finished making a plate of cheese and crackers and distractedly put the cheese away in the cupboard and the crackers in the refrigerator. She grabbed a wineglass and opened the refrigerator again. She saw the crackers and opened the cupboard to put them away when she saw the cheese.

  “You’re losin’ it, girl.”

  In her bedroom, she furiously tore off the pantyhose that she’d been wearing for thirteen hours, balling the legs inside one another and throwing them into the pile in the corner of the closet. She took off the rest of her clothes and hung them up.

  “There’s no purple in this closet!” Iris slammed the hangers onto the rod. “And no Barbie.” She jerked a blouse off, put it on, and buttoned it. Her hands trembled. She tore a pair of jeans from their hanger. “Darlin’, sugar, honey-pie. Liar!” After struggling, she managed to pull the jeans on but couldn’t zip them up.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  She threw them into a corner of the closet. She looked down at her belly. She grabbed a handful of flesh. She clutched her rear end. It seemed to go on forever.

  “Dammit!”

  She pulled another pair of jeans from their hanger.

  “The faithful fat jeans.”

  To her dismay, they fit perfectly. She looked at the plate of cheese that she’d set on the bed and the glass of wine on the dresser.

  “Oh, hell.”

  She took them with her into the living room.

  “Okay, girl. Calm down. Relax. Deep breaths.”

  She sat on the sofa with her hands calmly folded in her lap and deeply inhaled and exhaled a few times. She clicked on the television. The programming took a news break and the shadowy, badly focused video of the black motorist being beaten by the baton-wielding policemen came on.

  “Good God.”

  She clicked off the power.

  The phone rang. It was the intercom downstairs; the police had arrived. She released the lock on the main door, put the plate and the wineglass in the refrigerator, smoothed her hair with her hands, and opened the door.

  Two big men were standing there.

  “Hello, Ms. Thorne. I’m Charles Greenwood.” He held out his hand.

  Iris took it. It was big, soft, and warm and the skin felt dry. Her nerves got the better of her and she giggled.

  Greenwood looked at her curiously.

  She giggled more. “Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

  “Something wrong?”

  She covered her face, still laughing, and tried to compose herself.

  Greenwood exchanged a bemused look with the other man and said, “Sometimes people tell me I intimidate them, but I’ve never had anyone respond to me quite like this before.”

  “I’m so embarrassed.” Iris wiped tears from her eyes. “I’m really nervous and upset and… you don’t look anything like I imagined.” A couple of giggles escaped. “I apologize. How rude of me.”

  “It’s okay,” Greenwood said. “Cops affect people funny sometimes.”
/>   “I’m glad you’re being so nice about it.”

  “I save my tough side for the hardened criminals in Las Pumas. You know, the speeders out on the One-oh-one.” He winked at her. “Let me introduce Detective Tom Wilkin of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  Wilkin was a lanky man who had adopted a spread-legged stance to bring him down closer to the rest of the world. He had blond hair and pale eyebrows and eyelashes on freckled skin. The same pale hair covered the backs of his wrists.

  Iris shook his bony hand. She invited them in and offered refreshments. Greenwood accepted a glass of water. When she came back into the living room, they were casually roaming around. She knew they weren’t looking for anything in particular, they were just looking. John Somers did the same thing when he entered an unfamiliar room.

  She seated them on the raw silk couch and herself on the more commanding wingback chair. She bounced her legs on her toes, then caught herself in the nervous gesture. She crossed her legs, dropped her hands in her lap, and slouched down a little in order to appear relaxed.

  Greenwood took a small spiral-bound notebook and a pen from his inside jacket pocket, turned over some of the notebook’s pages, and reviewed the facts gleaned from his two phone conversations with her. He occasionally took notes as she clarified a few points. Wilkin sat quietly with his long legs apart and his clasped hands dropped between them.

  When Iris had finished her story, she let out a long breath. Her shoulders dropped.

  Greenwood flipped back and forth through the notebook pages without speaking. He rubbed his face with his hand, the ample skin bulging through his fingers. Wilkin leaned back on the couch and waited.

  Greenwood finally spoke. “Ms. Thorne, you said that when you first met Ms. Stringfellow, you wondered whether she was for real, but you were good friends at the time of her death. What made you change your mind about her?”

  Iris pulled at a strand of loose skin on her finger. “I developed the business relationship because I needed her dough. She encouraged the friendship.”

  “Did you suspect her motives for doing this?”

  “No. She’d just got into town and I was one of the only people she knew.” She shrugged. “I met her at a time in my life when I needed a friend. She was a friend. I needed fun. She was fun. When Lorraine showed up, I started to reflect on my first impressions and wonder if they weren’t right. Barbie seemed nervous after Lorraine arrived. I couldn’t quite get a handle on their relationship but I think they were lovers. A few days later, they were both gone.”

  “You didn’t know that Ms. Stringfellow had moved everything out of her apartment?” Greenwood asked.

  “No.” Iris hated lying to him.

  Wilkin leaned forward with his elbows on his long legs. “A woman comes out of nowhere, enters your life, then leaves.”

  “Right.”

  “Why?”

  “I only know what she told me.”

  Wilkin scratched his forehead. “Ms. Thorne, can you think of anything you said on the Susie Santé show that would make Ms. Stringfellow want to contact you?”

  Iris’s shoulders tensed. “Barbie just said she was impressed with me.”

  “Were you asked about the McKinney Alitzer murders?”

  “Of course. That was the real reason they invited me. I have a videotape of the show I can lend you, if you’re interested.”

  “Did they talk about the money that was never accounted for, the money that people accuse you of having?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think Ms. Stringfellow might have thought you had the money or could lead her to it?”

  “I don’t follow this line of questioning, Detective Wilkin,” Iris said brusquely. “Barbie Stringfellow was my client. She gave me money to invest.”

  Greenwood intervened. “Ms. Thorne, Barbie Stringfellow looks as if she could have been a con artist. We know she’s not who she claimed to be. There was a Hal Stringfellow in Atlanta and he did own a restaurant and he did die last year, but he was a lifelong bachelor. One of Hal’s employees, Jack Goins, bought the place after Hal died. He remembered a woman fitting Ms. Stringfellow’s description working at Hal’s for a brief time as a waitress a couple of years ago but she went by a different name. She left without warning one day and was never heard from again.

  “A couple of years later, she shows up in L.A. as Barbie Stringfellow. She flashes lots of cash, cultivates a friendship with you and Art Silva, and is everything a good friend is supposed to be. I think she was biding her time until the right moment to strike. Question is, what was her plan?”

  Iris shrugged.

  “Did she ask you to invest in a business opportunity with her?”

  Iris shook her head.

  “What about the McKinney Alitzer million that’s missing?”

  “She asked me about that, but so does everyone.”

  Greenwood took notes. “What about Art Silva? Did she ask him to invest in anything?”

  Iris looked down. “You’ll have to ask him about that.”

  “You don’t know or you don’t want to tell us?” Wilkin asked.

  Iris met his eyes. “I don’t know everything that went on between Art and Barbie.”

  Greenwood flipped through his notebook.

  Wilkin stood. “Can you come to the station tomorrow and help an artist do a likeness of Lorraine?”

  “Sure. But I can help you out there. She looked like me. People said we could have been sisters.”

  Greenwood looked at Wilkin.

  “It was uncanny,” Iris added.

  “Did Barbie ever come on to you?” Wilkin asked.

  “Barbie came on to everyone.”

  Wilkin continued. “Did you have a physical relationship with her?”

  “No.”

  “But Art Silva did.”

  “I suspect so.”

  “You have no idea where Lorraine is?” Greenwood asked. “She hasn’t contacted you?”

  “Happily, no.”

  Greenwood chuckled and closed his notebook. “One more thing.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small white cardboard box. He opened it, pulled off a square of cotton, and showed the contents to Iris. It held several small pieces of jewelry. “Recognize any of these?”

  She picked up an enameled brooch in the shape of an iris bloom. “This is mine.”

  “Did you give it to Ms. Stringfellow?”

  “No. She must have stolen it.”

  “Do you recognize anything else?”

  Iris picked up a man’s class ring. “This looks like Art’s.” She looked closer. “These are his initials.” She put the jewelry back into the box. “I guess I can’t take my pin back.”

  “I’m sorry,” Greenwood said. “I’ll send it back to you once the case is closed.” He took a card from his jacket pocket and wrote a number on the back. “Here’s my home number. Call me if you think of anything or if Lorraine contacts you.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  She walked both of them to the door.

  “One last thing,” Greenwood said. “We have to ask you not to leave town for the next few weeks or to keep us apprised of your plans. We may have more questions or—”

  “No problem,” Iris interrupted. “Unfortunately, I’ve been through this before.”

  The storm rolled in during the night. The rain pounded against the windows in waves of greater and lesser intensity as the wind kicked up, then died down.

  Iris lay in bed and listened to it. She couldn’t sleep. She’d tried reading something dry. She’d drunk herbal tea, warm milk, then a shooter of Scotch. She’d turned the clock to the wall so she couldn’t watch the illuminated display mark the minutes and hours of her insomnia. She finally got out of bed and pulled open a drawer of her jewelry box. Inside were the tablets that Lorraine had given her. Their polished surface shone a bright robin’s egg blue, like mysterious gems. She broke one in half and held the powdery edge to her lips, tasting its bitter
ness with her tongue. She hesitated, then put it back next to the other bijoux.

  She lay in bed another hour before getting up again and swallowing the broken pill half. Soon, she was sound asleep and slept until the phone rang.

  “Bitch. Goddamn fucking bitch.”

  Iris struggled to clear the drug-induced sleep from her head. “What? Who is this?”

  “Take a guess. Take a wild guess.”

  “Lorraine?”

  “Who’d you think it was? Barbie?” Lorraine spat out the name.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m on the road. In a phone booth. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Are you going to Salt Lake?”

  “What do you care? Barbie’s dead. You must be happy now.”

  “That doesn’t make me happy.”

  “Right. You fucked up everything between Barbie and me. If it wasn’t for you, we’d be fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You think I’m stupid or something? I know the score.”

  “What’s the score?”

  “Hello!” Lorraine shouted.

  Iris heard banging as if Lorraine was hitting the phone receiver against the phone booth.

  “Hello! Earth to Iris.” Lorraine banged the phone again. “Hello!” She laughed hysterically. “You think everyone’s stupid except you. You need a good spanking, that’s what you need.”

  “Lorraine, I’m hanging up now.”

  The line went dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The day after Charlie Greenwood got back from L.A. in the wee hours, he rose later than usual. The marine layer that rolled in from the ocean each night still hung in the air, thick and white, filling the spaces between the pine and eucalyptus trees and settling in the streets and between the buildings of Las Pumas. Most Las Pumas mornings began this way. People spoke in subdued tones, stepped lightly, and moved slowly until the thick mist burned off around ten o’clock.

  Greenwood drove to the Las Pumas police station. He turned onto Olivos Avenue, lost in thought, then suddenly punched the accelerator and pulled into the parking lot of Bowen’s Hardware with squealing tires and brakes, surprising a group of teenage boys who were tagging the store’s wall with cans of spray paint. They scattered when Greenwood jumped out of the car, but he managed to grab one, subduing the boy in his bearlike grasp and twisting the can of paint out of his hand.