Her phone pinged a return text from Mindy, a string of happy emojis and a promise to arrange a drive-on for Dee at New Century Studios, where Duh! filmed.
Dee put her suitcase in the Honda trunk, then checked her cell phone again to see if Pria had responded. To her disappointment, she hadn’t.
Dee trotted Nugget over to Jeff’s cabin. After covering the care and feeding of the amiable mutt, and again assuring Jeff she’d be fine in Los Angeles, she hugged man and beast goodbye and set off on the five-hour road trip to La-La Land.
Dee began the journey with a stop at the All-in-One for snacks and beverages. “You want a treat for the road?” Elmira asked. She gestured to the bakery case like a spokesmodel. “I made brookies. They’re a brownie and a cookie.”
“Mmmm,” Dee responded, knowing both would taste equally inedible. “I’ll take a half dozen. I’ll share them with friends.”
“Spreading the word beyond Foundgold,” Elmira said with pride. “I like it.” She rang up the brookies, along with Dee’s more palatable snacks. “How’s the investigation into Michael’s murder going? Any good leads?”
“Not really,” Dee admitted. “That’s what I’m going to L.A. for, to see if I can find any links there.”
“Am I still a suspect?”
Dee turned to see Serena Finlay-Katz emerge from the baby aisle, stroller and baby sling in tow. The charcuterie artist failed to hide her hurt under the facetious tone.
“Serena!” Feeling guilty, Dee went overboard with delight at running into her. “I’m so sorry about that. I’d really like it if we could start over and be friends.”
“Okay.” Serena took a dog treat from the jar on the convenience store counter and fed it to the being in her baby sling, ID’ing the inhabitant as Oscar. “I heard you tell Elmira you’re going to Los Angeles. I’m doing a huge grazing board for a wedding at the casino in West Camp this weekend. My assistant in L.A. sourced a lot of the ingredients and they’re ready and waiting at Les Fromages in Beverly Hills. If you could pick them up for me, I’d be super grateful.”
“Sure. Happy to.” Shrewd move, Serena. Every time Dee was tempted to write the woman off as a vapid flake, she managed to defy expectations.
Dee left the store with her supply stash, which she placed on the passenger seat for easy snacking access. She felt her phone buzz in her back pocket and extracted it from her jeans. She was glad to see that Pria had gotten back to her, but with a message that generated a raised eyebrow: Happy 2 chat. U can burn his clothes.
So many questions, Dee mused. She texted back, confirming the date and time.
A scenic drive through the Sierra foothills eventually led to the 99 Freeway, which sliced through the flatlands of California’s Central Valley. The 99 dumped into the 5 Freeway, the merge doubling, tripling, and quadrupling the cars on the road. Dee transitioned from the 5 to the 170, which also answered to the grandiose name of the Hollywood Freeway. Dee exited at Riverside Boulevard, taking local streets to the family home in Studio City.
I so do not miss this, Dee thought while waiting at a stop sign and watching a woman walking a goldendoodle interrupt her cell phone call to scream at a man running the stop sign in the opposite direction from Dee.
She made a right onto a side street lined with palm trees and parked in front of a compact ranch house painted a comforting sea green with white trim. The street had once been lined with the small homes built as a postwar subdivision. Almost all were gone, victims of the Los Angeles teardown craze. In their place were McMansions, whose stratospheric price tags belied their cookie-cutter construction.
Dee parked in the narrow driveway behind her father’s twenty-five-year-old navy Volvo sedan. She retrieved her carry-on from the car trunk and walked up the driveway, stopping to pick up her father’s mail, which mostly consisted of WE BUY OLD HOUSES! flyers from rapacious real estate dealers looking to score the decades-old house for cheap. She continued to the home’s front porch, stopping to yank a WE BUY OLD CARS! flyer out from under the Volvo’s windshield wipers.
Dee gave the front door a gentle tap to alert Sam to her arrival. Then she opened the door, which her father refused to keep locked, even in the face of Los Angeles’s rising crime rate. She stepped into the living room and was immediately struck by the lingering scent of the 1970s citrusy perfume that was her mother’s favorite. The scent seemed baked into the walls and traditional furniture of the room. Tears welled up in Dee’s eyes.
Sam Stern glanced up from where he sat, straddled on the floor, surrounded by STOP THE NOISE! posters. Her father had thrown himself into convincing the local airport to rejigger the flight path it had arbitrarily changed without giving notice to local residents. Dee knew it was a quixotic quest, but at least it gave her dad something to focus on besides grieving his wife of over forty years.
Sam’s face lit up at the sight of his daughter. “Deedle Dee! My girl.” He clumsily rose to his feet. Dee extended a hand to help steady him and they hugged. She couldn’t help noticing how her father had aged since her mother’s death. He still had the salt-and-pepper hair that suited him and a well-defined bone structure to his face, which Dee regretted not inheriting. But his slim, fit frame, so suited to his five-nine height, felt boney. After years of being told how much younger he looked than his given age, Sam now wore every year of seventy-one on his face and body.
They broke apart. Sam eyed his daughter with approval. “You look good. More than good. Healthy. Rested. Even a little tan?”
“Yeah, the funeral pallor you get spending 24/7 in a writers’ room is gone,” Dee said with a grin. “How are you doing, Dad? You look good too.” She didn’t share her concern about his appearance, knowing he’d deflect it.
“I am jiminy jim-dandy,” Sam declared in the voice of Tweety Sweety, one of the legendary cartoon characters he’d acted. “I wish I could have dinner with you, but we have a Stop the Noise meeting at Art’s Deli. I can bring you home a sandwich. You can eat one of those for days. Won’t have to worry about another meal while you’re here.”
“Ha, so right. You know what, I’ll take you up on that. Turkey and bacon on rye, mayo, tomatoes, no lettuce.”
She went to take her wallet out of her backpack, but Sam stopped her. “Oh no you don’t,” he said in a gravelly voice with a heavy Southern accent. “The day I can’t buy my own daughtah a sandwich is the day I don’t deserve to be a fathuh.”
“Thanks, Colonel Cluck,” Dee said, recognizing the voice behind the character of an ad campaign for a local fast-food chicken chain.
An airplane roared by overhead. Sam clicked a clicker Dee didn’t realize he was holding in his left hand. He held it up triumphantly. “Tenth complaint registered in the last hour. We’re gonna win this thing.”
Dee left her father to his clicking and poster making. She exited the living room’s sliding door and walked through the spit of a backyard to the “she shed” Dee called home for the several months following her mother’s unexpected death. Sybil “Sibby” Stern had suffered a fatal heart attack in her sleep. Waking up next to the still body of his beloved wife was the only thing that ever silenced The Man of a Million Voices. Sam Stern barely spoke a word for weeks after Sibby’s traumatic and heartbreaking passing.
The she shed was a fully functional ADU, more studio apartment than shed. The furniture was IKEA utilitarian. The room’s most prominent feature was the large table, where Sibby and friends met weekly to do needlework and crafts while enjoying “wine o’clock.” The table was on wheels so it could be pushed out of the way when it was time to lower the Murphy bed disguised as a closet. A love seat upholstered in a fading black-and-white toile fabric backed up against the wall facing the small kitchen area.
Dee collapsed onto the couch and closed her eyes, worn out by the drive and the emotional strain of coming home. Her phone rang, startling her. She yelped. It fell out of her jeans pocket onto the carpeted floor. She retrieved it while maintaining her prone position.
“Jeff?”
“You know what’s extinct? The word ‘hello.’ ”
“Hello.”
“Howdy!”
Dee winced. “Uh-oh. Someone’s gone full-metal Goldsgonedian.”
“With good reason. You know how we can’t go to the memorial that’ll be packed with suspects? Well, I found something we can go to, and it’ll be much more fun. The Goldsgone Annual Howdy Hoedown. According to Elmira, it’s a fundraiser for local charities that’s basically a big square dance with a lot of potluck food. It’s happening tomorrow night. Everybody in both towns goes, along with tons of tourists. Sometimes there’s even a real-live barn building.” There was a long pause. “You’re not saying anything.”
“I was waiting for you to get to the fun part.”
“It beats a memorial, especially one for a jerk like Baker. There’s also an auction. We can donate a weekend at the Golden, along with some of our new swag to generate publicity, while we mingle and suss out clues to Baker’s murder.”
“You’re right. It’s a good event for us to attend.”
