It wasn’t.
“And her phone?”
“In her back pocket.”
I glanced at the floor by the nightstand. There was a power strip and two empty slots that I assumed were for her chargers. That indicated some element of planning.
“Do you have the names of her friends I could talk to?”
She answered with the names of her friends, not her daughter’s.
“Oh, and the Mexican boy,” she added. “Nelson something.”
“Is that her boyfriend?” I asked.
“She’s not her boyfriend,” she chuckled. She riffled through the desk drawer and pulled out a photo of Jeanette and a young, dark-skinned boy with foppish hair and chubby cheeks. At least in this photo Jeanette was smiling.
“Can I keep this?” I asked and got a nod for approval. “Is it possible to speak to your husband?”
“Ex-husband,” she corrected. “You can speak to him any time you want.”
“Anyone else in the house that might have some information that would be useful?”
“Are you asking if there is another man?”
“Actually, I was thinking of a housekeeper.”
The frost returned to the room. She bounced to her feet and made for the door. “I have an appointment. Please show yourself out when you are finished.”
I pawed around the room a bit more but gave up after not finding anything of much value. I went back down the hall towards the foyer. Hector wasn’t there. He was either in the bathroom or perhaps helping himself to whatever was in the fridge.
I heard the key rattle in the door behind me. I first assumed it was Hector. Then, I thought of Jeanette and the fortune of being here when she returned home. I eagerly awaited her and the hundred thousand dollar bounty. Neither stepped through the threshold.
It was a man in his thirties, casually dressed in jeans and a flowy shirt open to the chest in order to showcase ten to twenty straggling hairs. He wore an unkempt Van Dyke beard and John Lennon frames. He was equally comfortable in the Schwartzman residence as he was in my personal space.
“Welcome,” he breathed into my face, “it’s good to see you.”
“You too,” I said, leaning back for a more comfortable distance between us. His breath was slightly sour, like fermented black bread.
“Meredith has spoken a lot about you.”
“That’s nice of her,” although I didn’t know how since I had just met her. “All good things, I hope.”
“Yes, wonderful things.” He had the penetrating stare of a cannibal. I detected an accent but couldn’t place it. “We need to set aside some time for just you and me, yes?”
“If you think it’s worth it,” I replied only because I had no idea what he was talking about. He stared at me far longer than the three seconds allotted for strangers to lock eyes. I badly wanted to crawl out from under his gaze.
“There’s something here,” he said and pointed to his heart. “Something unique and…powerful. It just needs to be released.” I couldn’t tell if the power was in his heart or mine. I nodded along with him. “I apologize but I have another session,” he said with regret. The calls of a prior commitment broke his fixation on me. His body immediately relaxed and he thankfully took a step back. “But we need time to share.”
“I look forward to it,” I lied.
He looked very pleased. I anticipated the phase: “My work is done here.” Instead I got St. Francis of Assisi with both palms opened towards the heavens.
“With light and love,” he bade me goodbye.
“Sure thing,” I said and scrambled out of the house.
THE WEST SIDE
“I don’t know what all the commotion is about,” Jeff Schwartzman told me as we crossed the reception area in his office. “I spoke to her yesterday.”
“You did?”
“She only calls me when she has a fight with her mom.” He paused, suddenly realizing something. “She usually stays with me when they fight.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
“No, she didn’t say and I didn’t think to ask her.” I watched a growing sense of unease be washed away with a sweeping hand gesture. “She’s fine,” he told himself. “She’s done this before.”
“How many times?”
“Too many.”
I followed him into a modest office crammed with museum catalogues and art books. The décor was appropriately contemporary with a desk made of glass and chrome but nothing looked particularly expensive. Conspicuously absent was any form of window with a view to remind you that you were on the expensive section of Wilshire Boulevard. It was not the office you’d expect for the director of a major art foundation.
“Those two are always bickering,” he said, sitting behind his desk. He motioned for me to pull a chair over. As I sat down opposite him, I couldn’t help but notice the giant black and white photograph of a male nude looming over him. The model’s instrument, magnified multiple times over, was strategically placed off Jeff’s right shoulder. “My wife is not the easiest person to get along with.”
“How long have you been separated?”
“Probably a week after we got married,” he laughed. “Let’s just say that kind of money and lifestyle aren’t made for guys like you and me.” Apparently he missed the memo about my offshore bank accounts. “Look, I married into one of the wealthiest families in Los Angeles but I still drive a Honda,” he told me as proof of his humble desires, but it sounded like, if he had a choice, he’d be driving something much more luxurious. “You can take the kid out of Northridge but you can’t take Northridge out of the kid.”
The kid from the Valley was an appropriately succinct description. Jeff was an unremarkable man in several ways, from his appearance in an off-the-rack collared shirt to his pedestrian personality. I tried to rationalize this image of an ordinary man sitting opposite me and the one of the fitness-obsessed heiress I met earlier in the day. Theirs was a curious partnership despite the fact that it may have only existed for a flash. Somewhere in that flash, however, a little girl came into this world.
“You’re studying me like you’re trying to figure out if it’s true.”
“What’s true, Mr. Schwartzman?”
“All the things the old man said about me.” He tried to remain above it all but his insecurity was palpable. “Did he mention the incident in Santa Barbara?” I didn’t answer, hoping he would answer for me. “Of course he did. He never misses a chance to bring it up.”
“What’s your side of it?”
“Let me ask you, is it theft to steal from someone who stole from you first?”
“Maybe not,” I replied.
He rambled through a convoluted story about a crooked art dealer and unpaid wages and some minor impressionist watercolor he borrowed as collateral until he got the money owed him. After the fourth time he told me that he was never officially charged with any crime, I decided to put his mind at ease.
“Sounds reasonable to me,” I told him.
“Right? Tell that to the old man. You know on my promotion to director, he introduced me as a ‘former art thief’ who has come a long way. He’s a piece of work,” he laughed, suddenly more at ease with me, but more importantly with my standing as a member of the commoners. “It’s a Maplethorpe,” he told me.
“What is?” I asked.
“The giant naked man behind me,” he said thumbing at the photograph. “I apologize. It’s hard not to get distracted by it.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I don’t know anything about art,” I told him.
“It’s junk,” he scoffed. Sensing my confusion on why it was hanging in his office if he had such a low opinion of it, he explained, “Although I am director of the foundation, the old man retains the final say on which pieces go where. This is his idea of a joke. Hilarious, isn’t it?” I gave him a look of shared commiseration. “When I courted the local archdiocese in the fight against the museum, he had an icon of Christ smeared in human feces installed in the conference room where we met. Try explaining that to a Cardinal.”