The Third Rule of Ten Page 7

  “No,” she said. “I need you.”

  I was back at Mac’s compound in half an hour. I pressed the intercom, and a phone rang somewhere inside. Someone picked up.

  Silence. Then a familiar, nine-year-old voice whispered, “Ten. Is that you?”

  “Yes. It’s me, Melissa, but what in the world are you … ?”

  The gate swung open.

  Melissa was already in the driveway, bouncing from foot to foot. Her hair was a cascade of red, tumbling down her back, and she wore jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with sequined butterflies.

  “Melissa, do your parents know you’ve figured out how to open the front gate?”

  She threw her arms around me. “I knew you’d come! I just knew it!” she said, and without another word raced up the hill toward a grove of swaying Monterey cypress. I followed, my feelings mixed. She veered right around the sentinel of trees and halted. As I reached her side, I spotted a tiny outbuilding surrounded by a miniature white picket fence. I gaped. I was guessing this was a child’s playhouse, but it was also an architectural jewel, a light blue, Victorian-era structure of scalloped wood, complete with a wraparound porch, stained glass, and window boxes bursting with blooming geraniums—real ones.

  Melissa tugged me over to the door.

  “Shall I push the doorbell or use the brass knocker?” I asked, but Melissa had already run inside. I ducked in after her and was no less impressed, if that’s the right word, by the interior. The curtains matched the upholstery, and the patterned walls had been sponge-painted. There was even a fireplace—and a baby grand piano, as in a grand piano for a baby-sized person. I calculated that the price tag for this playhouse was the equivalent of enough dana, or donated room and board, to sponsor 200 monks for a full year of study at Dorje Yidam.

  I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, the only way I could fit, as Melissa dove behind the little sofa. “I found something today,” her muffled voice announced. She reappeared, rolling a small steamer trunk behind her. “I hardly ever play here anymore, but I was feeling sad because of Mommy, and Maggie being gone to her other Mommy’s, so I decided to have a pretend tea party. But I couldn’t find the teapot anywhere, so I looked inside this.”

  She parked the trunk at my feet, her face solemn. “I didn’t take it out, or anything.”

  “Take what out?”

  Melissa’s eyes filled. “I’m a little scared,” she said.

  “Do you want me to open this?”

  “I don’t know. I only turned nine a month ago. You decide.”

  “I tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t I take a look, and then we can decide what to do next.”

  I lifted the lid. Inside, a black nylon backpack was half-hidden beneath a pile of crocheted baby blankets. A small TSA lock, the kind you would use on a suitcase, secured the zipper.

  “Is this yours, Melissa?”

  Melissa shook her head. “It’s Sofia’s,” she whispered. “She always brings it to work with her. I heard Mommy telling Daddy that Sofia’s gone away. Mommy sounded mad. I really like Sofia. And … and I didn’t touch it this time, I promise! I just found it! Mommy said to never, ever touch Sofia’s backpack again, and so I didn’t! Anyway, I only took it before because I needed it for my adventure, like Dora the Explorer!” Melissa’s eyes filled with tears as she relived the unfairness of her life.

  “I understand,” I said. “You did the right thing by calling me. Excellent detective work.” I picked up the backpack. “May I?”

  She nodded, her mouth now fully occupied by four fingers.

  It took me about 30 seconds to pick the lock, using the small blade on my pocketknife. Melissa stared, a little too fascinated, as I dug the blade into the opening on one side and alternately pressed and turned hard until the lock popped open. If travelers knew how easy picking was, they wouldn’t bother locking.

  A steel padlock, on the other hand, is a different story. That can take at least three minutes to break open.

  I set the lock aside.

  “Mommy says I shouldn’t be a snoop,” Melissa said. “She says snooping leads to trouble.”

  “How about you close your eyes and I’ll tell you when to open them, okay?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  I unzipped the backpack. Well, well, well. Mommy was right. The pack was crammed with quart-sized Ziploc bags, each loaded with smaller packets of prescription drugs of various types. I recognized many of the pills from my years on the force. There looked to be maybe 100 of each: Oxycontin, Ecstasy, Vicodin, Rohypnol, as well as Fentanyl patches and the skinny white elongated pills known as Xanax bars. I zipped the backpack closed.

  “You can open your eyes now.”

  “What’s in there?”

  I considered what to say. She didn’t seem like the kind of person one should lie to, even to protect her feelings. Finally I said, “Medicine.”

  “What kind of medicine?” She moved on to her thumbnail.

  I decided it was time to deflect. “I notice you bite your nails, Melissa. Do you wish you could stop?”

  She shoved her hands into her pockets. “Can’t. I tried. Neither can Daddy.”

  “I can show you a secret way to do it. I learned it in the monastery. It helped me stop biting my nails when I was your age.”

  “You bited your nails?”

  “Yes. It’s a habit I got into at a time in my life when I felt kind of lonely. Want me to show you how I stopped?”

  “Okay,” she said. “But Mommy already painted bad-tasting stuff on my fingers and it didn’t work.”

  “No, this is something you do with your mind,” I said. “You …”

  But now that I had taken charge of Melissa’s secret, she was done with any more talking. She let out a squeal of delight and pounced on an old-fashioned, doll-sized perambulator tucked in the corner of the living room.

  “My baby carriage! I have to go get Baby Baby and take her for a walk!”

  She raced outside. The play door slammed behind her, just like a real one would.

  I hefted the backpack in my hands, thinking. If Sofia was involved with a prescription drugs scam, then maybe Clara was as well, and that changed everything about my case. I had a lot of thinking to do. But first, I had to figure out what to do with the evidence.

  Call Mac?

  Call Bill?

  Call the Malibu Police Department?

  I wasn’t ready to call the police yet. It might mean a world of trouble for me, but I finally had a lead. I needed time to determine how to parlay it into some answers. I made a snap decision. I would take temporary custody of the backpack. I certainly couldn’t think of any good that would come from introducing a pharmacy’s worth of pills to Mac Gannon’s shaky sobriety, much less what such a discovery might do to the electoral hopes of one Bets McMurtry, should this somehow trace back to her.

  Okay, it was tempting, but no.

  Melissa charged back inside, clutching a baby doll with red hair and freckles. She deposited the doll in the baby carriage and wheeled it to face the door.

  “Melissa?” I moved to her side and knelt so we were face to face. “I’m going to take this backpack and lock it in my car for now. I need some time to figure out what to do next. But you won’t get in trouble, no matter what. And as soon as I can, I’ll explain everything to your Dad.”

  She cocked her head. “Is this a shake kind of thing?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  We shook. I could see in the back of her eyes a look that said, You better not let me down. The trust of a child is like no other. Sometimes it’s the only thing they have to call their own.

  “No trouble. I promise,” I said.

  I carried the backpack to my car. The ’65 Shelby Mustang doesn’t have a trunk, so I tucked it just behind the driver’s seat and covered it with my windbreaker. The Gannon house stood silent, the grounds empty of people, and I was spared the hassle of any further explanations. As I drove off, I saw Melissa wheeling her b
aby carriage around the circular driveway, her jaw working a mile a minute, which made me smile.

  To President of the United States or leader of a criminal enterprise I added, Melissa Gannon, Private Detective extraordinaire.

  CHAPTER 7

  I made a beeline for Langer’s. I didn’t care if it was out of my way, I was not to be denied a moment longer. I parked in Langer’s lot, off Langer’s Square, and grabbed the backpack. I jogged around the corner, past a closed auto title loan office, Ana’s Newsstand, and a couple of facilities for check-cashing fast. Inside Langer’s, the blaring neon yellow, orange, and maroon stripes behind the food counter almost took away my appetite. Almost. I spotted my favorite—and currently harried—waitress, Jean, hustling to a crowded table by the front window, her arms lined with full plates. I took a small booth for hungry loners, smack in the middle of Jean’s loading and unloading zone; the little brass circle imbedded in the wood let me know I was seated at table number 8.

  “Ten-zing! You’re back!” Jean’s face was flushed with effort, but her blue eyes twinkled. “Did you miss me too much?” Her bobbed gray-blonde hair was shoved back from her forehead with a neon-green plastic band decorated with tiny kitten faces. Somehow, it suited her. Her other new accessory was an equally green compression bandage, wrapped around her right forearm.

  “What’s this?” I pointed.

  “Oh, I know! Can you believe it? I have carpal tunnel syndrome. Too many years juggling plates of food.” Jean’s eyes darted around the room, as if checking for spies. Nineteen years with the Scientology organization, before finally breaking free, had trained Jean to be on the lookout for eavesdroppers and betrayers. Satisfied that all enemy eyes and ears were focused elsewhere, she leaned close to me. “They gave me a prescription for Oxycodone,” she said, her flat nasal Arizona accent seasoned with a dash of reverence. “All my normy friends and even some of my recovery buddies told me to fill it. Oh, Ten-zing, I was tempted. If you’re in recovery and under a doctor’s supervision, you get to treat pain medication as a freelapse—a high that doesn’t count as a slip.”

  My skin prickled, as I thought of the stash on the seat next to me. It was all I could do not to snatch up the backpack and run.

  “So did you fill your prescription?”

  Jean shook her head so fiercely that her hair band slid over her forehead and she had to shove it back up. “Oh, no. Not me. No way, José. You might as well just shoot me up with heroin and put me back on the street in hot pants and stilettos. That’s where one pill of oxy takes a girl like me. It’s Advil or nothing for poor little Jean.”

  Her antenna must have registered someone watching. She straightened up with a jerk, all business.

  “What are you eating today? Egg salad on whole wheat toast?”

  I took a breath. “Number nineteen, please.” I was aiming for casual.

  Jean stared. “Ten-zing,” she said, her own voice stern. “I have a very important question for you. I want you to think really hard before you answer.”

  I braced myself.

  “Do you want a dill pickle with that?”

  I laughed out loud, drawing a satisfied smile from Jean.

  “Why not?” I said.

  She bustled away.

  I stared blindly at the windows facing Seventh Street, thinking about what Jean had just said about oxy. Something about it triggered an idea, but it slithered away. I idly noticed a fancy set of wheels, a Mercedes four-door, gliding by outside, slow and elegant as a black swan. Car lovers like me notice things like that. The luxury sedan was incongruous in this neighborhood of mostly secondhand clunkers.

  Jean slid a plate in front of me. I gazed at the contents in awe. I had done my research. Crusty twice-baked rye bread, warm hand-sliced pastrami, melted Swiss cheese, and fresh coleslaw. It was time. I compressed half a sandwich between my two hands, lifted the warm concoction to my mouth, sent a quick chant of gratitude to the cow that made this possible, and took a bite.

  Oh. My. Goodness.

  Jean hadn’t moved. I saluted her with my sandwich and took a second, huge bite.

  “If you come back on June fifteenth, you can have a number nineteen for free,” Jean said. “Langer’s is turning sixty-five this year. So am I, if this job doesn’t kill me first.”

  I was entering a deep state of pastrami samadhi. “I just might have to come back.”

  A small frown creased Jean’s forehead. “I know it’s none of my business, my friend, but does Potato-latke-extra-applesauce-no-sour-cream-because-sorry-I’m-a-vee-gan approve?”

  Jean never forgot an order.

  “Heather? I haven’t told her yet.”

  “Well, I predict she’s not going to be happy about this. In my experience, vee-gans can be very judgmental. You ask me, that other one, the chef, sounded like a winner. I’ll bet she ate everything. You should never have dumped her.”

  Like Bill and Martha, Jean was never going to let me hear the end of my blown romance with Martha’s younger sister, Julia.

  “I’m pretty sure she dumped me.”

  “Dumping is as dumping does,” Jean announced, mysteriously. “Ten-zing, I’m not joking. Tell that to Heather soon.”

  “I will. Soon.”

  “Because, well, you know what they say, don’t you, Ten-zing?”

  “No, Jean. What do ‘they’ say?”

  “Jean!” An older man gestured by the take-out area, his deep, unpleasant voice overriding the din like a Tibetan long horn. He ducked his double chin and barked something into a small mouthpiece clipped to his shirt, his eyes darting about like a Secret Service agent’s. Deli orders were serious business. He signaled to Jean again, frowning. Jean leaned close. “That’s one of the people I have to pray for daily,” she said. She started to leave.

  “Wait a second, Jean. You never finished your thought. What do ‘they’ say?”

  She loomed over me, her blue eyes laser-beaming into my conscience.

  “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” And off she went, my personal oracle, artfully disguised as a waitress at Langer’s.

  I stopped at Whole Foods, loaded up on groceries, and drove home, still floating on a cloud of smoked beef on rye. As I parked the glinting Shelby next to my trusty beater car, I experienced a brief flare of absolute contentment. Two cars outside, one cat inside—my little family was complete again. I’d been trained for over half my life that attachment to material things is a major source of suffering, but some things … well, they still gave me moments like this, of pure and simple joy. The trick lay in realizing these moments are fleeting, not in denying oneself the joy of experiencing them.

  I decided to leave the backpack where it was for now. No one but me ever went into my garage. I did lock the side door, in deference to the pharmaceutical bonanza inside my car. I lugged four shopping bags of supplies into the kitchen and unloaded. Heather and I would have some decent food and wine to help us get through tonight, or I would, if the talk went badly and I ended the evening alone.

  My nerves amped upward into high-anxiety range as I considered the conversation that lay ahead. I needed a run in the worst way—it had been more than three days, and even with a full stomach, my body was starting to emit sparks of tension.

  I tried calling Mac first, but I was sent straight to voice mail and a new message: “This is Mac. I’m on location for a few days. I’ll call you from the other side.”

  I wasn’t unhappy.

  “Ten Norbu. Call me when you can, please,” I said. “I have some interesting news.”

  Tank deigned to come out from wherever he’d been hiding, and I deigned to feed him actual wet cat food—the dry kibble lay untouched in his bowl. As I dumped the pellets into the trash, I noticed a familiar glass container peeking out from under a wad of paper towels. The peanut butter jar, so recently full, was wiped clean, as empty of content as the Buddha’s mind.

  One mystery solved, only to be replaced by another one.

  I changed, made su
re that the Guard-on was awake and doing its macho thing—thousands of dollars’ worth of pills now occupied my garage—and started off in a slow jog toward Topanga State Park, my phone clipped to the waistband of my running shorts, my feet decked out in my brand-new, super-expensive, biometric running shoes, manufactured somewhere in Denmark. A run would clear my head, so I could focus on what to do next with this baffling case.

  Halfway up Musch Trail I was buckled over, having faced two immutable truths regarding Langer’s number 19: One, hot pastrami, Swiss cheese, and coleslaw are an inspired combination. Two, hot pastrami, Swiss cheese, coleslaw, and high-speed sprints are a recipe for intestinal disaster.

  My phone buzzed against my waist. I grabbed it, squinting through the forehead sweat dripping into my eyes. Mike was calling.

  “You’re up early,” I huffed.

  “Your perimeter just got breached.”

  “Ah. That explains it. Wasn’t me, promise. I’m taking a run in the park, or trying to.”

  “Good. Listen up. This one’s for real, boss. Some creep is sniffing around your house.”

  My heartbeat quickened. “Can you see who it is?”

  “Sort of. The image is a little blurry. Skinny guy, I’m thinking maybe Hispanic, wearing a dark hoodie. Not skinny like ordinary skinny; skinny like a growing teenager, with big feet.” Mike’s voice rose up a notch. “Okay, okay, he’s on the back deck now and looking in the back door, doing something to it. Now he’s moved over to the kitchen window.”

  I started to jog down the path, the phone pressed to my ear.

  “Now he’s coming back down the steps and, uh, sprinting, I guess you could say, toward the perimeter. And … he’s gone.”

  “Sprinting?”

  “Well, more like hunched over and flailing his arms.”

  That description was too close to my own recent running endeavor for comfort.

  “I wonder if it’s Hector, the kid who comes around now and then to see if I want my cars washed.”

  “Can’t help you there, my man.”

  “He usually pedals up on a bike, though.”

  “You can check it out when you get back to the house. Need any extra muscle?”