The Third Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery Read online

  I lowered my window and pushed the intercom button.

  A voice crackled. “Name?”

  “Tenzing Norbu. I have a ten o’clock appointment with Mr. Gannon.”

  “Sorry, son, I don’t see anything here for a Ten at ten. I do, however, see an appointment for an Eleven at eleven.”

  “Um.”

  “I’m just playing with you! Get your butt up here, Norbu! I’ve missed you something awful!”

  Mac Gannon: Mr. Charm.

  The gate swung open, and I entered a sensory banquet of beauty. Lush tropical plants and flowering shrubs lined both sides of the driveway and spilled over the rolling hills of the estate. The last time I was here, I’d spotted a lizard the emerald color of my favorite goddess, Green Tara. This time, a majestic African Grey parrot squawked in greeting from a palmetto tree as I passed. The main house lay ahead on my right, a sprawling one-story, adobe-style hacienda with jutting wings. Several smaller buildings, each with its own architectural stamp, dotted the grounds nearby.

  Up the hill, the tip of a steeple marked Mac’s personal Catholic chapel, used by him for daily private prayer and mostly hidden behind a scrubby phalanx of bushes. After I’d returned the wayward Maggie, Mac had insisted on bringing the whole family, plus me and a hastily robed priest-in-residence, into the chapel for an improvised group blessing. At least I assumed it was a blessing—the words were in Latin. For all I know the priest might have been begging their God to convert this Buddhist heathen before it was too late.

  I parked the Tesla along the circular gravel driveway, taking note of a gleaming black Mercedes S-Class sedan and a couple of lesser cars, the kind that peons like me tend to drive. I stretched, stealing a moment to drink in the beautiful surroundings. Maintaining paradise was no doubt an expensive megahassle, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate its wonders.

  “Ten! Ten!”

  A skinny twig of a girl barreled up to me on roller blades, wheels flashing. She skidded to a halt.

  “Melissa!”

  “Daddy said you were coming! Did you bring Tank?”

  On my last visit here, Melissa had wheedled out of me the fact that I had a Persian Blue pet with green eyes, along with a vague promise that someday she and he would meet. I could now see that Melissa was going to hold me to that promise—for the rest of my life, if need be.

  I smacked my forehead.

  “Not this time, Melissa,” I said. “Sorry. I’m here for work, and Tank doesn’t travel unless it’s for play. He loves to play. Just like someone else I know….”

  “Me!” Melissa’s grin illuminated her freckled face. Her hair had been wrestled into a single long, thick braid, but numerous wisps had made their escape. The red-gold strands glowed like live wires in the sunlight. The child was irresistible, her innate magnetism a direct inheritance from a charismatic father.

  “Is your dad inside?”

  I gestured toward Mac’s office, a spectacular Balinese-style structure with pagodas and a lot of burnished wood. Mac had told me to meet him there.

  Melissa’s face abruptly clenched into a fierce scowl. She usually cycled through several weather systems per minute. “They’re taking pictures,” she said. “I’m not allowed.”

  She started to gnaw on a thumbnail. I saw that the other nails were bitten to the quick, and my heart broke a little. Nine was too young to be doing that.

  A voice boomed out behind us. “You wearin’ Ten out again, Missy?”

  Melissa pirouetted on her blades, shrieking with joy as she narrowly escaped her father’s mock lunge. She took off up the driveway, a blur of wheels and elbows.

  I smiled. “She’s a bright light, isn’t she?”

  “That she is,” Mac said. “Missy will either grow up to be the President of the United States, or the leader of some vast criminal enterprise. I don’t think there’s any middle ground with her. Good to see you again, Ten.”

  I needn’t have bothered with my blazer. Mac was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a blue denim shirt, tails untucked to hide a thickening waist.

  “Likewise,” I smiled. On an impulse, I glanced at Mac’s hands. His fingernails were chewed down even farther than Melissa’s. Kids inherit the bad along with the good.

  “That your Tesla?” Mac squinted.

  “No. Loaner.”

  As he strolled over to take a look—anything else in Southern California was a serious breach of etiquette—I was once again reminded how short Mac was, several inches south of my five foot ten. His personality was anything but small, however, and somehow over the months he’d elongated in my imagination.

  Mac straightened up and shot me a loose, happy grin. He looked great, years younger than his actual 49. I squinted at his tan, glowing face: what had happened to the spider web of wrinkles caused by his lifelong two-pack-a-day habit? Then I realized: Mac was wearing make-up.

  “How’s Maggie doing,” I asked, as he ambled back to my side.

  “Beats the shit out of me,” he answered. The vein on his left temple started to throb.

  I said nothing.

  “This is her mother’s month, which means I’m persona non grata. Unless and until they need something from me, of course. You’d think, after that last stunt she pulled …” Mac patted his upper left pocket, where a pack of cigarettes should be. “Goddammit, I’d kill for a smoke.” He caught my look and shrugged. “Don’t mind me. Time to put on a new patch.”

  “How’s that going for you?” He’d been trying to stop smoking the last time I was here.

  “Ask me in a week. Quitting’s a bitch. Hell, I’ll probably die from the little fuckers either way. They say smoking takes ten years off your life, but they don’t tell you the really nasty part—it takes it out of the middle. Half the time I wake up feeling like an old man.” He sent a clump of gravel flying with the tip of his boot.

  “Sounds rough,” I said.

  He seemed to remember himself, and just like that, he was as amiable as a laughing Buddha.

  “No worries,” he said. “Follow me, my friend. They’re inside.”

  “They?”

  “In my office. Won’t take long. Let’s go.”

  He ushered me into his office, and I paused to appreciate the wild, exotic feel of the room: the carved wooden totem sculptures lining the walls, the dark tropical-hardwood floor polished to a high gloss.

  “I love this space,” I said.

  “Want to know a secret?”

  “Sure,” I said. There’s not a metal nail in the whole building.

  “There’s not a metal nail in the whole building.”

  “Amazing,” I said, as I had the first time he told me, and the second. Mac had his patter down.

  “Mac!” a husky voice called out. “You didn’t tell me your man was good-looking! Come over here, honey. I do believe you’re my first encounter with a Tibetan holy man.”

  A forty-something woman in a tight black skirt and a bright pink jacket, topped by a gleaming helmet of light brown hair, flashed a toothy smile at me, like a piranha about to meet a very tasty minnow. She was perched on a stool, a hand towel draped around her neck. Her calves were muscular, her feet arched inside very high heels. She looked vaguely familiar. A large pair of sunglasses hung from her blouse. She tipped her face, as a young black girl applied a final coat of what looked like tan shellac to the woman’s cheeks. As I watched, the woman scratched her forearm a few times. Her nails were curved claws, the same pink as her jacket.

  A poker-faced man, buttoned inside a pinstriped suit, stood guard to her left. His dark brown hair was slicked back, and I was guessing he was somewhere in his thirties. Not a grin in sight—his stare was unblinking. I thought for a moment he might be the woman’s bodyguard, but a closer look at his well-cut clothes changed my mind. With my new breed of clients, I had become somewhat of an expert on these things. Security guys don’t usually troop around in spotless $3,000 suits.

  Mac took my elbow and ushered me over.

&nbs
p; “This is Tenzing Norbu, Bets. Ten, this is my high school sweetheart, Bets McMurtry.”

  “That’s State Representative McMurtry to you, Gannon.” She reached out from under the towel, took my hand, and gave it a squeeze.

  That’s why she was familiar. Assemblywoman Elizabeth “Bets” McMurtry was up for reelection this November, representing some area north of here. I knew this because of a recent spread in the Sunday L. A. Times that Heather had read out loud to me. Heather was a political junkie, as well as a diehard liberal, and she made sure I kept up with such things. According to the article, three years ago, McMurtry, a recently widowed, self-made businesswoman, had come out of seemingly nowhere to run for office. She was a highly unlikely, highly conservative challenger for her district’s seat. Within a few months, the dark horse had created a horse race, and by summer, polls showed she was not only a sure bet to win her party’s nomination but likely to unseat the Democratic incumbent. Sure enough, come November, she’d beaten her opponent handily and was expected to win reelection by a landslide this year. Heather had shown me a photograph of McMurtry standing by an American flag: same pink jacket, same toothy smile. Heather positively loathed the Bets McMurtrys of this world: pro-life, anti-everything-else women, she said, who should know better.

  Heather had read on, her voice tight with disapproval. Bets McMurtry was now not only the new darling of the Tea Party crowd but also the recipient of a large infusion of cash from a Super PAC called New Americans for Freedom.

  “The actual identities of these New Americans stay safely anonymous, of course,” Heather had grumbled, tossing the paper aside. “Fucking SCOTUS and their Citizens United fiasco.” The 2010 decision by the Supreme Court to remove the ban on corporate donors had infuriated Heather at the time: she told me more than once that she had predicted the resulting flood of PAC money committed to extreme political agendas while hiding behind generic patriotic names.

  Whoever these new Americans were, they were desperately hoping Bets McMurtry could breathe life into the Republican Party and, who knows, maybe even claim the governor’s seat in 2016.

  I sighed inside. Heather was not going to be pleased if Assemblywoman Elizabeth “Bets” McMurtry was, in fact, my mystery client. Oh, well. Add that to the pile, Norbu.

  Bets canted her head to one side, studying me. She had not let go of my hand. Her hazel irises were ringed with gold. Her eyes bored into mine. “He’ll do,” she said to Mac. She blinked the slow, sexy blink of a sleepy tigress. I pulled my hand away.

  I haven’t been around many politicians, but I’ve been around plenty of con artists. They love to project a peculiar brand of sexual essence to their audience, even if it’s an audience of one, the cop who’s busting them. Good detectives can smell a con a mile away, and my detective sniffer concluded that Bets McMurtry most definitely exuded that raw scent.

  She flashed another smile. “Look at this boy! I could eat him up. He makes me feel forty again.”

  I noticed that the man in the suit didn’t soften his thin-lipped expression. His gaze tried to be menacing, but I got the sense that he was working a little too hard at it.

  Bets followed my glance and waved a hand at him. “Tenzing, this is my main man, Mark Goodhue. I run for office. He runs my life.”

  Goodhue’s grip was quick and not quite hard enough. I made a mental note to find out what the official label is for “running my life.” Campaign manager? P.R. person? Boy-toy?

  Goodhue glanced at his watch. “Shall we get going here?” He scooped up Bets’s sunglasses, motioned, and a photographer stepped forward as the make-up girl scurried over to Mac and gave his forehead a quick dusting.

  I never cease to be amazed by the tendency of the super-rich to insist on absolute promptness from others, while having no problem making everybody else wait. My teeth clenched. I aimed a couple of deep breaths at the tight muscles, wiggling my jaw back and forth. Better.

  “Mind giving me some direction?” Mac said to Goodhue. His voice was affable, but his gaze was sharp, as he sized Goodhue up. For Mac, any male was competition.

  Goodhue shrugged. “All you need to do is put your arm around Assemblywoman McMurtry and act natural. These are for our website. No biggy.”

  “Okay,” Mac said, his voice tightening. “So, am I supposed to play it like Bets and I have stayed good buddies over the years? Or is this some kind of spontaneous surprise reunion?”

  Having to ask questions like that is one of many reasons I would never make it in the acting profession. Halfway in and my head would explode.

  Goodhue’s shrug was curt. “You’re good buddies. ‘This is my good buddy, Bets.’ That’s what people will want to think, so that’s the way to play it.”

  Twenty minutes later, the photographs had been snapped; the photographer and make-up girl had packed up and gone.

  Mac and Bets exchanged a wordless glance.

  “Mark,” Bets said. “Can you give us a few minutes, please?”

  Goodhue’s mouth pursed with disapproval, but he picked up his leather computer bag and walked out, his spine rigid.

  Mac’s eyes flashed. “That pal of yours has a broom permanently jammed up his you-know-what. You should hire him to clean your house.”

  Rather than laugh, Bets teared up.

  “Ah, shit, Bets,” Mac said. “Don’t mind me. Just trying to lighten things up around here.” Mac motioned us both to a rattan loveseat and armchair around a glass coffee table at the far end of the room. Bets lowered herself onto the loveseat. She scratched her other arm, caught me noticing, and folded her hands in her lap. I took the armchair. Mac wheeled a high-backed, chrome-and-leather desk chair across the floor, positioning it next to Bets. He plopped onto the seat and spun around a few times before coming to a halt, facing frontward.

  I waited.

  Mac and Bets exchanged a second silent glance, and my pulse quickened. I had absolutely no idea what was coming next. I liked the feeling.

  Bets straightened her shoulders. Any whiff of con artistry had fled the premises. She looked genuinely worried, and for the first time, I found her appealing.

  “I guess I should start at the beginning,” she said, her cat eyes troubled.

  CHAPTER 4

  Bets reached to her right and patted Mac’s hand. “We go back a ways, don’t we, Mac?”

  She turned to me. “Mac tells me you’re a long way from home.”

  “You could say that,” I told her.

  She nodded. “Fish out of water. Me, too. Never felt like I fit in, even when I was little. Only child, boo-hoo, and all that. And then, when I was about fifteen, I experienced the trauma of downsizing—long before it was popular, mind you. In my case, I wound up on the wrong side of Beverly Hills. I guess you could say I was one of the original kids-from-a-broken-home—at least that’s how it felt to me. My parents got divorced when nobody else’s parents did. My father split, and my mother had to work when nobody else’s mother did. Mom went from Beverly Hills matron to overworked real-estate agent. I went from living in a mansion to living in a two-bedroom bungalow in the flats, just in time for high school. But you know what? I was finally okay. At school I had Mac, and at home I had Clara.”

  “Clara?” I said.

  “Clara Fuentes. Our housekeeper, from Guatemala. She came to live with us right after my father left. She was so young—more like an older sister, really. Her English was broken, and my Spanish was worse, but she still let me know I was special. She loved me, and that attention was the anchor that kept me from floating away.”

  Bets glanced at Mac. “And as for Mac here, well, let’s just say having Mac Gannon for your first boyfriend meant even the bitchiest bitches overlooked any other issues.”

  “Damn straight,” Mac said.

  “We were that ninth-grade couple everyone else wanted to be,” Bets said. “Then my mother up and married her real estate-developer boss, and my life blew up one more time. We moved to Antelope Valley, and I was the odd kid out all o
ver again, only this time with a broken heart.” Bets nudged Mac. “I’m dry as a prairie dog’s fart, Mac. You got anything to drink?”

  “Bets,” Mac warned.

  “I’m talking about iced tea. Cool your cojones, will you?” Bets may have been born in Beverly Hills, but her years in Antelope Valley had given her the down-home drawl of a homegrown Texan.

  Mac pressed an intercom. “Mrs. O’Malley, can you bring us three iced teas, please?”

  I glanced at my watch. I was an hour into this visit and still no closer to knowing why I was here.

  “So,” I said. “Antelope Valley?”

  Bets swallowed. “Well, I got into a bit of hot water there. All of a sudden, I had way too much time on my hands, not to mention money. Clara tried her best to rein me in, but I was a hell-raiser, no two ways about it. Damn near died once or twice. Until I was rescued yet again.”

  “Another boyfriend?”

  “Not exactly. More like a best friend for life.” Her hazel eyes flashed. “I found Jesus, Mr. Norbu. Or maybe I should say, He found me.”

  There was a quiet knock at the door.

  The name “Mrs. O’Malley” had conjured up a tiny, grey-haired Irish lady in a plaid dress and sensible shoes. Let’s just say my mind conjured wrong. Mrs. O’Malley was a young, stunning ash blonde with world-class architecture. Piercing turquoise eyes winked from behind wire-rimmed glasses. She balanced three tall glasses and a pitcher of amber liquid on a rattan tray that matched the furniture.

  She nodded to Bets and arched her eyebrows at me.

  “This is Tenzing Norbu,” Mac said to her. “And you remember my friend, Bets.”

  I pushed to my feet.

  “Constance O’Malley,” she said, “and please, sit down!” Mac was beaming like a proud father. At least I got the Irish part right. I could hear faint traces of Dublin lilt.

  She set the tray down on the coffee table, filled the glasses, and exited. We each claimed a frosty glass. I took a long, grateful pull and tasted mint and lemongrass.

  “She’s new,” Bets said. “You boning her?”

  I spluttered into my glass.