“Let’s see, what do we have here?” He turned the book over to find the bar code and read, The Basics of Toilet Training. He swiped the decoder gun over it. “Check.” He reached for the next. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Check.” He picked up another. “The Trials of Menopause. Check.” He looked quizzically at Milo. “Eclectic choices. Are these for you?”
Milo didn’t like the nerd’s haughty attitude. “I like a lot of different stuff,” he huffed defensively. “Just hurry up.”
Milo left the store with two full bags and transferred them to the extra boxes in his car. When he shut the trunk, he was all set to impress the boss. Recovering the missing books and CDs would remind him that he could always count on Milo. He could just imagine the praise his boss would heap on him and wished he could call Mr. Merriam right then and there to tell him he was on his way, but phone calls to the boss’s office or personal cell phone were strictly forbidden. Milo would have to wait for his adulation.
MR. MERRIAM WANTED TO see the park that Milo had told him about. It sounded like the ideal place to bury a few incriminating articles. Like a safe.
Keeping the safe in his office was borrowing trouble. He kept it hidden, but he worried that one day a cop would come in with a warrant and find it. He needed to get rid of it as soon as possible, and the more he worried about it, the more nervous he became. He sent Charlie and Stack out to buy a tarp, a couple of boxes of Clorox Wipes, and rubber gloves.
“Make sure you get three pairs of leather gloves, too.”
When they returned to the office, Charlie put the tarp on the floor while Stack locked the door. It took the strength of all three men to move the safe to the middle of the tarp, and then Charlie and Stack put on the rubber gloves and started wiping it down.
Charlie backed his van to the service door, and they changed into their black leather gloves to carry the safe downstairs. Grunting like hogs, they lifted it into the van.
Paraiso Park was a dream come true for Mr. Merriam. He was so happy about it, the smell didn’t bother him at all.
“Drive around to the back side of that hill in case someone comes in behind us to dump. It looks like there’s more garbage here in front. Guess people don’t want to take the time to drive around.” A few minutes later, he said. “Will you look at that. A bunch of flowers found a way to grow in this cesspool. Go ahead and park. We’ll dump the safe behind that heap on the other side of the flowers.”
When they got out of the van, they looked all around while they put on their leather gloves.
“Now remember,” Mr. Merriam said, “try not to let your clothes rub against the safe and leave fibers on it. I don’t want anything to lead back to us.”
They shuffled like old men as they carried the safe across the little garden, trampling the flowers as they went. They reached a tall pile of trash with a torn and stained mattress lying on top.
“Okay, drop it here, but watch your feet.”
After getting the safe to the ground, they pulled the mattress over it.
Mr. Merriam strutted back to the van peeling off his gloves. He looked up at the blue sky and let the sun’s rays wash over his face as he smiled with relief. Glancing back, he made sure the safe wasn’t visible amid all the other junk surrounding it. No one would ever know it was there.
Better yet, no one could connect it to him.
THIRTY-FIVE
SAM AND LYRA WERE ON THEIR WAY TO THE PARK WHEN LYRA got a call from her apartment manager. He had some bad news to report.
“Someone vandalized your car,” he began. “Broke every window in your SUV, even the back one. Glass everywhere,” he added. “I think whoever did it used a hammer. Dented your doors, too.”
After thanking him for the call, Lyra dropped the phone in her lap. “We have to turn around.”
Sam noticed her frown. “What’s wrong?”
After she explained what the call was about, she said, “I guess I’ll need a tow service.”
“You’ll need to file a police report, and you should get photos for your insurance company. O’Malley will want to take a look at it first, though. We’ve got to let him know.”
Depressed, Lyra rode to her apartment in silence. When they reached the parking lot, Sam parked a good distance away from her SUV and told her to wait in the car.
Tears of anger flooded her eyes when she saw her shattered SUV. She was seething. “I’m getting real impatient with these creeps.”
Lyra nervously tapped her feet on the floor as she watched Sam walk around the car and bend down to look underneath. What if he touched it and, boom, the car exploded? He’d be blown to bits.
She jumped out of the car. “Sam, let the bomb squad do that.”
“Get back in the car, Lyra.”
“Damn it,” she muttered. “If you get blown up, I’m going to be seriously mad.”
Sam finished examining the exterior, careful not to touch it and smear any fingerprints. He carefully reached inside the driver’s window and pulled on the handle to open the door. Brushing aside the broken glass, he leaned in. He found a pair of sunglasses in a pink case under the driver’s seat and a CD wedged between the seat and the armrest. Under the passenger’s seat was a DVD, and in the back cargo area he pulled out a thin book of poetry. He carried the loot to Lyra.
“Oh, there are my sunglasses. I’ve been looking for those. What’s this?” She looked at the book first and then at the DVD and CD. Finally recognizing them, she said, “These are from the yard sale. Everything in my car went flying when I swerved on the freeway, and these must have landed under the seat. I missed them when I boxed everything up for the ranch.” She looked at the CD and didn’t recognize the singer’s name. Holding up the DVD, she said, “The African Queen. I’ve never seen it, and I love Humphrey Bogart. Want to watch a movie tonight?”
“Sounds good,” he said. “I guess these vandals weren’t the creeps after your yard sale finds. Do you have your car keys? We’ll drop them with the apartment manager for the tow service.”
After making the necessary calls, they were finally ready to drive to the park. Unfortunately, it was rush hour, and rush hour in Los Angeles was like running with the bulls. If you didn’t keep up, you got crushed. The speed limit on the 405 was 65 miles per hour, but most drivers thought that was just a suggestion. The bumper huggers and the lane changers usually made Lyra so tense, her hands were welded to the steering wheel by the time she pulled off the freeway. Sam didn’t seem bothered by the traffic. Now that she thought about it, he was rarely bothered by anything. She envisioned him knocking people down on the rugby field. The image was such a contradiction, it made her smile.
Lyra exchanged the camera equipment at the park while Sam stood watch, his hand resting on his gun the entire time. No one came or went while they were there. In fact, there was an almost eerie silence as the wind blew through the trash, picking up papers and tossing them from one heap to another. Once they were away from the park, Sam relaxed.
They arrived back at the duplex around seven with two pizzas from one of Lyra’s favorite pizza shops. It was a buy-one-get-one-free night and each came with a large bottle of Diet Coke. They had enough food to feed an army. Lyra put the boxes on the kitchen table, thought about making salads, and changed her mind.
“Would you like to watch a film while we eat?”
“Sure.”
They moved the food to the coffee table in the living room. Sam leaned back on the sofa ready for her to put the DVD of The African Queen in the player, but instead, she sat down next to him with her laptop and inserted the latest memory card.
“I have thousands of pictures,” she explained, “but what’s great is that I can zip through them until I see a car or a person. Then I slow it down. I’ve had two memory cards without a single person in any frame. Do you mind if I take a look before we watch the movie?”
“No, go ahead.” He put his arm on the back of the sofa and waited.
Lyra tilted the screen back so both of them could see, inserted the memory card, and sped through the slide show of pictures. When she saw a van, she quickly paused it, then backed up to watch the sequence of photos again.
“Do you suppose that’s someone coming to tend the garden?” he asked.
“I’ll bet you that van is loaded with junk they want to get rid of,” she said. “We’ll know in a few seconds.”
She reached for two slices of pizza and handed one to him. They both propped their feet on the coffee table and leaned back on the sofa, their shoulders touching. She felt comfortable with him, and sitting close like this seemed so right, as though they were a couple who had been together for years settling in for the evening.
So that she wouldn’t forget this was temporary, Lyra had to ruin the moment.
“Are you leaving tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” he said. “I talked to Alec, and he has another bodyguard to replace me. He’ll be here early.”
Deep calming breath, she told herself. “Okay.”
She started the pictures again. The shots showed three men coming out of the van. They put on gloves, which made sense considering where they were. One of them wore a suit and topcoat, which seemed out of place considering the eighty-degree temperature. In a couple of photos, the men seemed to be looking around with anxious expressions on their faces.
“They sure look nervous,” Lyra commented. “Maybe they’re going to change their minds.”
Then the safe came out. The three men looked strained as they carried it away from the van. When the shots of them shuffling across the garden and trampling the flowers came on the screen, Lyra sat up. “They couldn’t bother to walk around the flowers?” she said indignantly.
“They’re illegally dumping,” Sam reminded her. “They don’t care about flowers.”
He had a point, but she was still angry. “I hope they get caught.”
They watched the men leave the safe under an old mattress. In the next picture, they were heading back in the direction of the van, and the man in the topcoat had stopped and looked upward. The camera got a straight shot of his face. The photos that followed showed them getting into the van and the van pulling away.
“Back up,” Sam said. “I want to see the license plate number.”
Lyra reversed the photos, cheered by the thought that they might get arrested.
Sam grabbed a pen and wrote the number on one of the pizza boxes. “Mind if I make a copy of your card? I’d like to e-mail some of these pictures.”
“Not at all.”
After Lyra and he finished watching the rest of the slide show, he took the memory card to copy onto his laptop. She inserted another card and viewed the entire thing, but there wasn’t anything interesting there. She couldn’t understand why the person tending the little garden hadn’t come back. Where was he or she?
She filed the memory cards in her metal box, and while Sam worked on his computer, she worked on her script. She liked what she had so far. She added a sentence to the narration she would use at the beginning and completed a list of the segments she wanted to shoot, hoping she could get enough footage of the children to fit into her plan. When she looked at the clock, she was shocked. She’d been sitting there for two and a half hours. Sam was still at the table, focused on his computer screen. She didn’t want to bother him, so she put her laptop in her backpack and set it in the corner. The case with The African Queen DVD still lay on top of the television waiting to be played, but it was late, and she knew there was no way she could stay awake through a movie now. So, without a word of farewell, she quietly went upstairs. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she put on a robe and walked into the bedroom. She had determined she wouldn’t have sex with Sam again, but she left the door open. Perhaps it was a subconscious hope.
She fell into bed exhausted. The worry and tension from all the craziness surrounding her was slowly chipping away at her nerves and making her jittery. She had more than enough angst in her life right now. She didn’t need her feelings for Sam to add to it. Getting involved with him had been a mistake. Her only consolation was that he would be gone tomorrow.
Her cell phone, charging on the table next to her, vibrated, signaling a text. Thinking it might be Sidney, she picked it up. There were two texts: one from her mother and one from her father. Her mother was letting her know that she and Lyra’s father had decided to sell Gigi’s house in San Diego. They planned to have an appraisal made the following weekend. The next text from her father confirmed what her mother had told her. He offered more. They expected to get close to eight hundred thousand dollars and would put it in their account for safekeeping. Gigi would either live at the ranch or come and live with them in La Jolla. Lyra’s parents must have gotten a new lawyer, and they were making another play for Gigi’s money and property.
Lyra sent a four word text back: Gigi doesn’t own it.
Yawning, she rolled onto her stomach. She fell asleep wondering how those people were going to take the news. She hoped badly.
THIRTY-SIX
LYRA WAS SOUND ASLEEP WHEN SAM GOT INTO BED WITH HER. She must have felt his nearness because she scooted up against him. He kissed her shoulder, put his arm around her waist, and went to sleep.
He heard a knock on the door at six a.m. He picked up his jeans and stumbled into them as he grabbed his gun. Quietly shutting her door, he went downstairs.
The new bodyguard was holding up identification. Sam opened the door, took one look, and muttered, “Oh, hell no.”
Alec had sent Mr. Chippendale. How could a stripper protect Lyra from a bullet? Gyrate around her? The man was dressed in a button-down shirt and pressed navy slacks, but he looked as though he belonged on a stage surrounded by screaming women thrusting dollar bills at his underwear. Bet there’s Velcro holding those pants on, Sam thought. He couldn’t care less what the bodyguard’s credentials were or how much experience he’d had in the security business. Lyra didn’t need some muscle-bound pretty boy hovering around her. No, this one had to go, too.
Sam was nice to the guy and told him he’d make sure he was paid for his time, but he turned him around and suggested he go back to the dance floor.
After closing the door, Sam went into the kitchen, gulped down his orange juice, and went back upstairs to undress and get into bed. He fell asleep almost instantly.
Lyra woke up at eight. She opened one eye and looked at the clock inches from her face. Rolling over, she opened both eyes and saw Sam. Not again! How much torment could one person take? Twice now she’d prepared herself for him to leave, and twice he didn’t. She thought about poking him to find out what had happened, but he was naked, and so was she … and she knew how that would end. Instead, she put her robe on and went downstairs. She decided she would wait until he came down—fully clothed, she hoped—before she returned to her room to dress.
