Chapter 1

“Uncle Ted was murdered,” said Bosco.

I blocked the doorway with my body. “We don’t have an Uncle Ted.”

“Okay, it was a courtesy title,” Bosco amended. “But he’s dead.”

“Sorry to hear that. It still doesn’t explain what you’re doing on my front porch, with…” I counted silently, “six pieces of matching Gucci luggage.”

“I told you, I’m here to investigate his death.” Bosco lowered his voice, as if the Pakistani cab driver who was hovering behind him could understand what he was saying.

“Investigate? What do you mean, investigate? Like a reporter? All of a sudden you’re a reporter? When did you get that job? You’ve never had a job. And even if you did get a job, why in hell would you assume you could stay with me while you’re doing it?”

“You’re my sister…” he began.

“Half-sister,” I interrupted. The cabbie had picked up on my tone of voice and was starting to look anxious.

“All right, half-sister. Now, would you mind just paying the nice gentleman, so we can continue this discussion inside?” Bosco moved forward.

“Forty-eight dollars!” The cabbie waved his arms. I ducked behind the door and yelled through the crack. “Yes, I would mind, I don’t have forty-eight bucks to throw away.”

“Fifty-three bucks,” Bosco corrected me. “You have to tip the guy, Fifi.”

The cabbie raised his voice. “You pay me! You pay me!” A neighbor, walking by with a wiener dog on a leash, turned to look.

“Bosco Dorff, you get right back in that cab,” I ordered.

“And go where?”

“I don’t care. Go anywhere. Go back to New York.”

“I’m not going back to New York. It’s almost November. They’re expecting snow.”

“Then go stay with Mother in the Valley.”

“Mom and I are not speaking, as you well know.”

“I’m not speaking to you either. You ruined my graduation from college? Remember that?”

“Oh come on, I didn’t ruin it.” Bosco put a hand on the door and pushed, forcing it open a few more inches. “And that was eight years ago. Give it a rest.”

“Five years ago.” I propped my shoulder against the door. “It was only five years ago. And I’ll never live down the humiliation. Not in a hundred years. You hit on my Spanish professor, and you stole the limousine.” Memories of that un-avenged insult gave me extra strength. The door closed an inch.

“Miss Gomez wanted to go to the beach, Fifi. What was I supposed to do? She had bazongas out to here.” “Get back in the cab. Get back in that cab right now.” I leaned harder, putting some bootie into it. Bosco pushed back. The cabbie abandoned English and screeched at the top of his lungs in some Pakistani dialect. Two more neighbors paused on the sidewalk to enjoy the show.

“Be reasonable, Fifi. You owe it to Aunt Angela.”

“Who the hell is Aunt Angela?”

“Uncle Ted’s widow.”

“I don’t remember Uncle Ted. I don’t remember Aunt Angela. I don’t owe anyone anything.”

“Just let me in.”

“It’s really not convenient.”

“Fifi, I need a place to stay. I’m your brother.”

“Half-brother.”

“Family is family, Fifi. Anyway, your dad left you this huge house and you live by yourself. And you’re probably lonely. You don’t date a lot, do you? It’ll be good for you to have some company.”

“I like living alone, and I get plenty of dates.” The first part of that statement was mostly accurate. The second part, not really. I’m short and skinny. I’m ethnically ambiguous. I have a big nose and hair that sticks out like a windsock in a hurricane. Black eyebrows that make me look like I’m perpetually annoyed, which, by the way, is close to the truth.

“You’re a mooch,” I told him. “You always think you can get by on your looks.”

“Well, I’m a handsome guy, Feef.”

“I’m not paying for your taxi.” I braced my knees to get better leverage.

“I said I’d pay you back.” Bosco countered my knees with his shoulder. He had eighty pounds on me. I couldn’t hold out much longer. I was going to have to let him in. But not without a fight.

“Pay me with what? You don’t have any money, and you don’t have a job.”

“I do have a job, Fifi. Uncle Ted’s firm retained me to investigate his death. It was a very mysterious death. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He gave a final shove, and the door swung wide.

The cabby’s audience had grown to include seven neighbors: the original woman with the dachshund, two elderly gay men, three youngish women, and a hard-body marathon type who had paused in his jog to see what the commotion was about. “They no pay, they no pay, I drive alla way from LAX—teeny, windy roads alla way up here. I no get lost! I good driver! They no pay!”

The phalanx of neighbors glared in my direction.

I stalked off to the kitchen, got my purse from the counter, and counted out fifty-three dollars in crumpled fives and ones. The taxi driver didn’t seem impressed with his tip, but he left, allowing the mini-crowd to disperse. Bosco gave me a big hug, like that would make up for everything. stared past him, at the pile of luggage. “You can stay for three days. Three days, that’s it.”

“Fifi, it’s going to take longer than three days. At least I hope it is—I’m getting paid by the hour. That’s two hundred dollars an hour. Can you give me a hand with the bags? I hurt my back in Vail last week.”

“You don’t ski.”

“Of course I don’t ski. I like the indoor sports. And Jenna, this really hot girl I met…”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” I muttered, grabbing the medium-sized bag. He followed me in, empty-handed. “Shit,” he remarked looking around. “You don’t have much in the way of furniture, do you?”

“Sore subject,” I warned him. “Mother cleaned me out.” Bosco gave me an inquiring look as I struggled with the suit bag.

“Pop left me the house,” I explained, “but according to our Mutual Mother, he did not leave me the contents.”

“What’s that got to do with Mom? They were divorced.”

“Not exactly. Pop bought the house after he and Mother separated, just two months before he died.” I cleared my throat. If Mother was a sore subject, Pop dying was the sorest subject ever. “An aneurysm they said. Mother was superpissed. She had been really looking forward to taking him for everything he had.”

“She couldn’t take the house, though?”

“Just everything in it.”

“That’s so Mom.” Bosco snort-laughed.

“It’s not funny, Bosco.”

He patted me on the head as he looked around the spacious, darkly paneled living room, and up at the box beam ceiling. The house was a stone-and-shingle Craftsman, perched at the top of Mt. Washington, a canyon-creased old LA neighborhood, one hill over the freeway from Dodger Stadium. I couldn’t even afford the property taxes. I should have put it on the market and sold out. That would have been the smart thing to do.

“Damn, she really did take everything. There’s really nothing left here at all.” Bosco gestured.

“There’s a desk,” I pointed with my chin toward a card table I had set up in the dining room, on which my p.c. precariously sat. “And a table and a chair in the kitchen.”

“So where’s the TV?” Bosco asked.

“I don’t have a TV, Bosco.”

Bosco squeaked. “How are we going to watch TV?”

I thought about it. “I guess we’re not,” I replied.

This news kept Bosco silent for fifteen seconds. “Don’t you think you ought to buy a TV? I could go with you, make sure you got a real good deal.”

“Bosco, look. I work freelance out of my house. I’m an independent insurance adjustor. I handle car dents and fall downs. I don’t make a ton of money.”

“I thought you had a good job with a big insurance company?”

“It didn’t work out. We had different goals.”

“You got fired?”

I nodded.

“Race related?” he asked. “If it was, you could sue.”

“I’d like to say so, but from what I got at the exit interview, they hated everything about me. Except this one guy. He liked me okay, and sends me a few jobs. Or maybe,” I considered, “maybe he doesn’t like me. He only sends me crappy jobs in terrible parts of town that he couldn’t get his own guys to do, not even for extra doughnuts. But the thing is, I have bills to pay, like electricity and water. And my property taxes come due in three weeks. I’m going to owe like twenty-two hundred dollars. I sleep on a futon, and you’re going to be sleeping on a pool raft.”

“Fifi, I can’t sleep on a pool raft. My back.” Bosco gave me his patented dimples-forward smile.

That damn smile.


* * *


I spent the rest of the afternoon working at my desk, comparing pictures and witness reports of accident scenes with repair estimates and writing up reports. Found one charge for a door-ding repair where the accident photos clearly showed a rear-ender.

I also got two telephone calls. One wrong number and one for Bosco. He was pretty quick, giving out this number, I thought as I yelled up the stairs for him to come down and take the call.

“Don’t you have a cell phone?” I groused.

Bosco placed his hand over the mouthpiece. “If you will excuse me, I’ll take this in the other room. Very important call concerning the investigation.” Oh sure. Like I wanted to listen in. Like I cared about some dead guy who wasn’t really my uncle.

Around seven, Bosco came into the dining room.

“When’s dinner? This detecting is hard work.”

“Who was that on the phone?” I asked. “If you’re hungry, look in the refrigerator.”

“Nobody you know. I did look in the refrigerator and there’s nothing to eat.”

”Fine, I don’t care who was on the phone. If you have some money, we can go get cheap Chinese.”

“I don’t have a lot of money,” Bosco admitted—big surprise. “But I do have a credit card.”

I eyed him suspiciously.

“It’s my Dad’s,” he explained. “He let me use it for the trip.”

I was happy to believe that. Mr. Dorff was unaccountably fond of his only son.