She pondered that for a moment.
“Sexual battery?” Mary said. “That’s what runs my vibrator.”
The cops ignored her and before she knew it, she was in a holding cell by herself.
She paced the small room. The metal bed frame attached to the wall. The stainless steel toilet. This was the second time in a matter of days she’d found herself in jail. This wasn’t a good thing. Not the kind of career trajectory she’d envisioned.
“I thought you told us you were a chubby chaser,” a voice said behind her. “Now you’re into old guys, too?”
Mary turned and saw Sergeant Davies leaning casually against the door to her cell. Jake was behind her.
“I prefer the phrase fully ripened,” Mary said. “Old is too pejorative.”
“Come on, Mary, don’t you get tired of this?” Jake asked.
“No, as I recall, you had a penchant for getting tired,” Mary said. “Is that still true, Sergeant?”
Jake turned and walked away.
“Ronald Clarey,” the Shark said.
“Never heard of him,” Mary responded.
“Claims he met you at a senior citizens center and you portrayed yourself as a financial planner,” she said, reading from a sheet of paper in her hand. “Says he invited you to his apartment where he says you forced yourself on him. He has submitted his clothes as evidence.”
“You sent his Depends to the lab for DNA tests?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Davies said.
“This is bullshit,” Mary said. “He was probably one of the Nixons — one of the old guys who attacked me. They couldn’t kill me so now they’re trying to keep me in jail.”
“We’re looking at the two cases as unrelated, for now,” Davies said.
Mary was about to answer when she heard the voice of Visa.
“Well, well, well,” it said. Mary looked and saw over Davies’ shoulder the tanned countenance of Whitney Braggs and the bright orange curls of attorney Joan Hessburg.
“Ms. Cooper, you’re free to come with me.” The attorney handed Davies a piece of paper.
“If you continue to harass my client by throwing her in jail every chance you get, you may find yourself locked up before too long,” the attorney said. “Consider it a fair warning.”
Davies didn’t flinch.
“Go to hell, Curly,” she said.
Chapter Sixty-Two
“Until this case is resolved, you have been granted temporary status as a registered sex offender,” Hessburg said to Mary once they’d gotten out of the jail building.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your…ah…offbeat proclivities?” Braggs said. “And more importantly how come I wasn’t one of your conquests?”
“I didn’t think you could handle it,” Mary said. This day couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Hessburg had a small folder in her hands, and read from the sheet on top of it. “Ms. Cooper, according to this, you are to not go within 100 feet of nursing homes, physical therapy offices, and other centers of the elderly,” said Hessburg.
“You forgot bingo parlors,” Braggs said.
“I’m not hearing this,” Mary said.
“My office will be in contact with you regarding your court date,” Hessburg said. “I’ll have an assistant gather the necessary information and paperwork so it should go smoothly. I believe this is a ridiculous charge designed to provide pressure to you in some manner. I’m confident it will be dropped quite quickly.”
“Did you say I couldn’t handle it?” Braggs said, his voice incredulous. “Let me tell you…”
Mary held up her hand.
“Lunch is moving from my stomach up toward my esophagus, Braggs,” Mary said. “I suggest you stop.”
He complied.
Chapter Sixty-Three
The names ran through Mary’s head like old news headlines of tragic stories. Ready Betty. Martin Gulinski. David Kenum. All eliminated, some of them quite literally, from the picture.
Only one name remained from the list she’d generated with the help of Brent’s old gang.
Marie Stevens. The old guys had said that she was buried at Forest Hills. And that Harvey Mitchell had paid for her burial. But Mitchell had said she was crazy and never mentioned where she was buried or if he had in fact paid for it.
The drive to Forest Hills didn’t take long, nor did finding the manager of the cemetery to the stars.
“I called a while back about a Marie Stevens,” Mary said to the manager, a highly effeminate older man wearing a conservative suit and sporting smokers’ teeth. “I recall you said there were two.”
“Yes, I recall that,” the man said, not offering anything more.
“Can you tell me where I can find their final resting places?”
Mr. Tidy whipped out a walking map of Forest Hills and a slim black pencil. He clicked on a desktop computer, typed in a few words, then circled two plots on opposite ends of the cemetery.
“This is where they are in repose,” he said. His eyebrows lifted on the word ‘repose.’
Mary took the map and walked to the farthest one first. It was a classic L.A. day — warm and sunny with a sense of foulness in the air.
She still couldn’t believe she’d been labeled a sexual predator — and that her prey was elderly men. She shook her head. What a low point in her life. And now here she was surrounded by dead people. Old men and dead people. That was the kind of company she’d been keeping lately.
It only took a brief glance at the first headstone of Marie Stevens to cross one off the list. Born in 1909, died in 1961. Her husband had followed her three years later. No way. Brent’s gang was in its heyday at the time, and long after she was dead, when the real Marie Stevens was partying with them.
A two minute walk to the second Marie Stevens also created a black checkmark on Mary’s suspect list.
Born in 1966. Died in 2001.
Too bad, Mary thought. Young.
On the way back to her car, Mary thought about her next steps. She could swing by a V.F.W. Hall and pick out a couple 80-year-old hotties and screw their brains out.
Or she could go back to her office and ransack her Internet resources for this Marie Stevens. Being a sexual predator and all, her first instinct was to go for the old guys. But her sense of duty to Uncle Brent and Aunt Alice led her to the right, and just, decision. Go back to her office and find out what happened to Marie Stevens.
Then go to the V.F.W. and invite some old men to her place for an orgy.
Chapter Sixty-Four
As much as she hated it, she excelled at meeting the organizational demands of her private investigation firm. Scheduling, filing, accounts payable, expenses. They were all nicely filed and collated.
So it took her no time to assemble the stacks of research she’d done this far on Brent’s case.
Mary brewed some coffee and turned on her office stereo, putting Prince’s CD Musicology on to play. As the stuttering rhythms filled the office, she dove back into the history of Brent Cooper and his supporting cast of cuckoos.
What came to her after nearly an hour of intense reading was that it seemed like Brent and Harvey Mitchell were really the founding fathers of the dysfunctional group. Whitney Braggs played a significant role, as well, but not quite as expansive as the other two.
It was those two who had the big house in Malibu that essentially became party headquarters. They had the first paying gigs — as writers on some long defunct variety show. And it was those two who had progressed the farthest and the fastest in terms of success; with Mitchell obviously eclipsing all of them by a huge margin.