Chapter Four
RAVEN
By the time we walked into the office forty-five minutes later, I was exhausted. We’d stopped at a specialty market which always had a great salad bar and made ourselves something light and healthy to eat. Dolly had promised to have a big pan of veggie lasagna for our dinner. I’d never asked her to cook for us, but she took it upon herself to make sure Nana got at least one hot meal every day. She always made extra for us. God love the woman, but she was bad for my waistline as well as my cholesterol. Miguel and I had begun running an extra mile every morning just to combat the carb overload she’d injected into our diet.
Judy smiled at us when we walked in. She held out a hand to indicate two very colorful men sitting there, and I was immediately surprised when the older one jumped up from his chair. “This is Mr. Leopard. He’s the gentleman you left a message for earlier, Miguel.”
The man was flamboyant as all hell. He was on the short side, with a lion’s mane of curls which appeared to have been teased within an inch of their life. He reminded me of James Brown, and I was reminded of Miguel’s earlier comment of wanting to return Mr. Lion’s phone call. I had to bite my lip to keep from poking him in the ribs because he’d actually been spot on.
Dressed in skin-tight, apple green, satin pants which outlined an average-sized penis, and a boldly patterned silk shirt in the same tones open all the way to his navel, he was a horror to look at. He had thick tufts of wiry, brown hair poking through the gap of his shirt, and his neck was draped with more gold chains than I could count. So many, in fact, that I was surprised he could hold his head up. Taking pride of place between both nipples was a giant jewel encrusted pendant in the shape of a letter B. The jewels appeared to be diamonds.
“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, rushing over to us. “Mr. Huerta?”
Miguel nodded. “That’s me…Mr. Leopard?”
“Yes!” He reached for Miguel’s hand with both of his, and Miguel shook.
“It’s nice to meet you, sir,” he said. “This is my partner, Raven Mathis.”
I smiled at him and also got a double handshake. “Nice to meet you.” I glanced at the second man who rose daintily from his chair. He was what I would have called a club kid. Whereas Brian Leopard was easily in his mid-fifties, the younger man was barely legal. He was dressed a little less flamboyantly, but his clothing still screamed “out there.” His white, denim short-shorts could politely be described as Daisy Dukes or cutoffs. He wore a tight, pink tee which didn’t quite reach his waistband, revealing a sparkling diamond bellybutton ring.
The twink wore a variety of rings on his hands, one on every finger, in fact. Most were jewel encrusted. His eyebrows were plucked to within an inch of their life, and even at his young age, it appeared he’d had some work done. He had overly plump lips, and I suspected he had cheek implants as well. Electrolysis ensured that he didn’t have a beard, or for that matter, a single hair on his smooth face or belly. I had no doubt they were a couple.
“This is my boy, Trevor,” Leopard said, turning to look at the youngster.
The boy held out a hand manicured with sparkly, pink polish, looking bored. “Trevor.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand.
He offered it to Miguel next. “You’re hot.”
I wanted to laugh at the expression on Miguel’s face.
“Thanks.”
“Won’t you please come back to our office?” I said, holding out a hand.
“Thank you!” Leopard boomed.
“Daddy,” Trevor said, “you’re being too loud.” He sounded like he needed some sleep, had a hangover, or both.
“I’m so sorry, precious,” Leopard replied, draping an arm over the young man’s shoulder as they followed Miguel back to our office while I took up the rear. Leopard kept talking as we walked down the hall, saying something about them being out late at a club whose name was familiar to me. If there’d ever been any question that they were a gay couple, that removed all doubt.
“Sorry, I was going to ask if either of you would like some coffee or a soft drink?”
The boy scoffed but Leopard smiled sweetly. “I don’t suppose you have any Perrier? If not, I’ll take a bottled water.”
“Let me get that for you. Please…have a seat,” Miguel said, pointing to the chairs in front of our desks. He practically ran out of the room, leaving me alone with the couple. They sat in front of my desk and Leopard immediately took his boy’s hand. I sat down behind the desk and Leopard leaned forward, smiling kindly.
“First, let me ask for your forgiveness. Mr. Huerta was kind enough to call me back, but I couldn’t get out of my yoganidrasana pose fast enough. I decided the matter we need to discuss couldn’t wait for an appointment.”
I was about to ask what the hell the yogan thingy was, when Miguel walked back into the room, holding two bottles of water. He handed one to each of them before sitting down at his own desk. I noticed Leopard smile at him while Trevor stared at the label of the generic water in his hand. He sniffed in disgust and set it on my desk, before pulling his phone out of a miniscule fanny pack he wore and began scrolling. Apparently, the Walmart brand of water wasn’t his cup of tea.
“Mr. Leopard was just telling me he was sorry he missed your call,” I said to Miguel.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Miguel said. “We’ve been out all afternoon. I was about to call you back.”
“I’m so sorry about that,” Mr. Leopard rushed to apologize. “It’s just that you called while we were in yoga and well, anyway, I was in this incredibly hard pose and—”
“They don’t care about your stupid yoga, Daddy,” Trevor chided, rolling his eyes.
Mr. Leopard colored, looking embarrassed. I felt sorry for the guy. But then again, I’d never understood why so many older guys thought the only way to feel relevant was to shack up with young twinks, showering them with money, and spoiling them rotten. I glanced over at Miguel, who had an unreadable expression on his face. I was pretty sure he was thinking the very same thing.
Mr. Leopard cleared his throat.
“I’m so sorry for just dropping in on you like this but as soon as I learned there was someone out there looking for poor Tawny’s ruby, I just had to call you.”
“Tawny Flores?” Miguel asked.
“Yes! Her husband, Benedict—oh, my poor, poor Benedict—was a dear friend of mine and when he passed away, well, you have to know, I was bereft… bereft I tell you!”
“Yes, it is sad,” Miguel said, somehow keeping a straight face.
Mr. Leopard nodded. “Terrible, just terrible. Who knew poor old Benedict had a bad heart? It just popped. I didn’t know a heart could just pop!”
Neither did I but what did I know . “So, was that why you called? To find out some information about our recovery of Tawny Flores’ ruby?”
“Oh, no! I must confess, I am intrigued by what you two gentlemen do.” He waved a hand between us. “But I’m here because I also had a gorgeous diamond pin stolen from my house…before I could even have it reset in platinum. The diamonds are nearly flawless. But you see, those beautiful stones are set in gold which is very dark. And well, as soon as I heard that dear, sweet Tawny hired someone to get her ruby back, I knew I needed to call you the instant I had the chance.” He had his hand on his bare chest as he leaned toward me. “You can help find it, can’t you? Like you’re doing for poor, sweet Tawny?”
The guy talked so fast, it was hard to follow. He was definitely excitable. “Yes, I—”
“Because it’s worth a lot of money…which I’m not short of, mind you…but still, to think that some fiend violated my house just like that, makes me sick to my stomach! Oh, I know my damned insurance company has someone working on the recovery, but I can truly say, the man is odious. I don’t think he could find his way out of a paper bag.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“The company is Brown, Butterfield, and Spaulding Insurance and the recovery agent is Tomlinson…Rick Tomlinson,” he said, waving at my desk. “Please feel free to write it down.”
I picked up a pen and wrote it down, though, I didn’t need to. When I glanced up again, Leopard was wrinkling his nose, looking a little sick to his stomach. “He’s a terrible man—revolting, I tell you—and I don’t think he’s doing anything to find my sweet little pin which is why I decided to come to you and ask for your help…since you’re already working on Tawny’s recovery.” He was nodding and practically bouncing in his chair. “Maybe her jewelry and my little pin were stolen by the same hooligans who broke into my house…oh, my dear little house.”
I somehow doubted the man had a sweet little house.
“Daddy…don’t get so upset,” Trevor whined, batting his eyes up at Leopard. “It’s terrible for your blood pressure.”
I hadn’t noticed until then that the boy was wearing false eyelashes.
Leopard finally went quiet as he reached for his boy’s knee, patting it, while smiling adoringly at him. I was glad for the reprieve. “Thank you, love.” He leaned forward and pursed his lips. Trevor got the message and put his phone in his lap as he pecked Leopard on the lips.
“How much longer are you gonna be, Daddy?”
“Almost done, precious.” He looked between us before leaning forward again. “Do you think you can help me, Mr. Mathis?” He glanced at Miguel. “Mr. Huerta, I’d be ever so grateful if you could help me.”
“Sure,” Miguel said. “Our office manager, Judy, will have a contract drawn up to retain our services.” He stood up, glancing over at me with glittering eyes before looking back at Leopard. “Raven will take down your details and that of the missing pin while I go and have her prepare that for you.” He hightailed it out of the room before I could even protest… coward .
Both men turned to eye up Miguel’s ass as he walked out of the room before turning back to us with stars in their eyes.
“Beautiful man,” Leopard said. He waved his hand at me. “I should say that you’re both gorgeous…absolutely stunning men.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you lovers? Tawny said you’re a couple and as soon as she told me that, I knew I needed to retain your services immediately.” He bounced in his chair again.
I smiled. “Yes, we are.”
He clasped both hands, wringing them. “Oh, how lovely. You make a beautiful twosome…and you work together too…lovely, just lovely.” He smiled. “I’ll refer all my friends.” He leaned forward again. “Tell me…do you recover other things? I mean, besides jewelry? I have a friend who—” Trevor let out an aggrieved moan. “Oh, yes, anyway, what do you need from me?”
He really was a very nice man. “I don’t suppose you have a picture of the missing pin, Mr. Leopard?” I asked.
“Oh, of course. Silly me.” He chuckled and then stood up, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and passing me a picture, the same one I’d seen in Tomlinson’s file folder. He pointed at it. “As you can see, it’s in a terribly ugly setting.” He wrinkled his nose. “The gold is just so dark. I’m sure it’s not fourteen karats.” He laughed nervously, looking up at me. “I’m not even sure it’s gold to be honest.”
Miguel walked back into the room. I stood and passed him the picture as he took his seat. He looked at it before passing it back. “Nice pin.”
“Yes!” Leopard exclaimed, then glanced at Trevor who just rolled his eyes. “Sorry, precious. I just can’t wait until they find the pin. I told you I want to make it into a ring for you.”
I glanced at the kid’s hands again. Where’s he gonna put it?
“Would you please give us some details on the theft, Mr. Leopard?” I asked. “You said it was in your house?”
He sat forward. “Yes! Someone broke in and stole it!”
I scribbled notes while he talked. “Where did you keep it before it was stolen?”
He nodded. “In my jewelry box which is located in our bedroom…on my dresser. I keep all my casual jewelry in there. I don’t keep many fine jewelry items there, since as you can see, the really good stuff is with me most of the time.” He lifted the mass of chains including the giant jewel encrusted B, holding them out to show me, just in case I’d missed them. “I had just made an appointment to have it reset at my favorite jeweler. In all honestly, I had nearly forgotten about the appointment which is why I hadn’t even bothered to look for the pin. But when the break-in happened, I instantly went looking for it. It was gone! Hooligans!”
Trevor sighed again.
He glanced at him. “Almost done, precious.” He turned back to us. “I’d taken my dear, sweet boy out for a little dancing that night.” He glanced over at him and patted his knee again, smiling. “My boy loves to dance, and I just love watching him with his friends.”
Miguel cleared his throat. “The break-in, sir. What can you tell us about that? Was anything else taken?”
“Yes…well, almost nothing. Like I said, I kept the pin in the box on my dresser. They seemed to want that and nothing else. Of course, if they had seen all this—” He held up the pendant again. “I know the fiends would have taken my jewelry as well. Thank God we weren’t home at the time!”
“Yes, sir,” Miguel said, patiently. “So, what else was taken?”
“Oh, I have a collection of rare books, and they took a couple of those, including one I bought the same night as the pin…oh, maybe you can find that too!”
“Of course,” I said. “Where did you buy the pin, Mr. Leopard?”
He bounced and pointed to the notepad I’d been writing on. “At a private auction. The book was a first edition Herman Melville’s Moby Dick .”
Trevor snickered. He was smiling at Leopard and shrugged. “Moby Dick. It’s funny, that’s all.”
Leopard smiled back, patting his knee indulgently. He turned back to me. “Youth is wasted on the young, don’t you agree?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, giving up and simply smiling. I was pretty sure good old Trevor had never read a book in his life. I finally went with, “You were saying that you also lost the Melville in the burglary?”
“Yes, that and a first edition Grapes of Wrath , the one by John Steinbeck.” He nodded furiously.
I blinked, wondering if there was a different Grapes of Wrath , but I let it go, smiling as I remembered the Grapes of Wraith by Miles Stanford, the horror of literary fiction I’d reviewed as Nightcrawler. “Okay.” I went back to scribbling. “Did you keep the books in your bedroom also?”
“Yes!” He sat forward. “Is that significant?”
“Perhaps,” Miguel said. “Was anything else in the house touched?”
Leopard said, “No, and the LAPD looked all over. They searched every room.”
“So, it looks like the thieves went directly to the bedroom?”
“Well, yes. At least, that’s what the police told us.”
“We’d like to get a copy of that police report, Mr. Leopard,” I said. “Do you have a copy?”
“No, but two patrolmen came out to take the police report. I’m sure that awful Mr. Tomlinson has a copy, but I certainly don’t have one.”
“Do you have the officers’ names?” Miguel asked.
“Yes!” Leopard stood again, taking out his wallet and pulling out a card. He handed it to me, and I read the names before passing the card to Miguel. He passed it back and I wrote down the two officers’ names to give to Cassidy and Mike. They’d no doubt get us a copy of the police report. “May I make a copy of the card and the picture for our file?”
“Yes, of course.”
Miguel stood and I held them out to him. “I’ll be right back. I want to have Judy amend the contract to mention the books and just make a quick copy.”
“Of course. Of course,” Leopard said. Both men swiveled to stare at his ass as he left the room. They both turned back to me with starry eyes again. I was going to kill my boyfriend for leaving me alone with these two. “Is there anything else?”
“One last thing. You said you got our names from Tawny Flores. You knew her husband, Benedict.”
Leopard’s eyes got sad. “Yes, Benedict and I were business partners.”
Miguel walked back into the room and returned the card and picture to Mr. Leopard as Trevor looked up from his phone and leered at my lover’s groin.
I was getting annoyed at all the ogling, so I cleared my throat. “You were telling me how you knew Tawny.”
“Yes, poor, dear sweet Tawny.”
Miguel sat back down and glanced at the couple. “How did you meet?”
“I was telling your gracious partner that I knew Tawny through her husband, my dear friend, Benedict. He and I were business partners.”
“In the casino business?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’m Native American. Benedict and I have…we had that in common. When he told me he was going to open a casino and some card rooms, he came to me because he knew I had capital of my own and the connections to help him gather other investors to finance the business. It takes a lot of money to do that, you know.”
“I’ve no doubt,” I said.
“We’re members of the same tribe and were friends for decades, so when he decided to go into gambling, he came to me. He knew I was trustworthy, so it only made good business sense.”
“You were a financial backer?” Miguel asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“Yes. Originally, we had other interested investors. But, during the project, they backed out when we got the usual pushback from the city council. I knew we could overcome their objections, but they really weren’t cut out for the risk associated with tangling with a miniscule, little city council. You see, most investors like to keep their names out of the paper, and as soon as a few reporters caught on, they were out.”
“Then how did you get the project off the ground?” I asked.
“Well, I was already invested you see. I saw the future profit in partnering with my best friend, so when Benedict asked me to front him all the money for a 51 percent stake in the business, I agreed to it. The investment was a wildly successful venture and after Benedict had returned my initial capital, the casino and card rooms became a fifty-fifty venture. I am a lot wealthier than poor, poor Benedict ever was. He and I grew up together and made our fortunes together.”
“I don’t want to be crass, but I have to ask, did you have family money, or earn it in some other fashion, Mr. Leopard?” Miguel asked.
“Oh, no, in my youth, I was the youngest hedge fund manager on Wall Street.” He chuckled and looked down at his own attire. “I know, I must look different to you now, but when I was working on Wall Street, I was the buttoned up, suit wearing, stick up my ass type.”
Trevor snickered, and Leopard turned to smile at him, patting his knee before glancing back.
“Anyway, while I worked on Wall Street, Benedict asked me to invest his capital. As I said, he trusted me. I’d been at it a long time, so I simply had more money…and your question wasn’t crass at all, Mr. Huerta. You need to know this if it’ll help you find my diamond pin.”
I nodded. “It does, thank you. So, you collect books?”
“Yes. I do. Benedict collected art and I collect books.”
“Just one more question and then I promise I’ll let you and Trevor go,” Miguel said.
Trevor abandoned his phone and turned dreamy eyes on my partner as Mr. Leopard nodded frantically.
“Anything.”
“You said you bought the book and the pin at auction. What can you tell us about that?” I asked.
He nodded furiously, back to bouncing in his seat. “I bought them both at a private auction. Benedict had recently purchased the gorgeous ruby at a private auction and said he’d also seen a number of first editions up for bid. When he told me that, I naturally asked him for an introduction to his contact so that I could attend one as well. I’m passionate about my books, the same as he is… was , about his art, you see.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “Can you tell me the name of your contact for that auction?”
“Certainly. She’s a beautiful woman by the name of Rosina…Rosina Cassanova…lovely woman. I don’t have her number with me, but I will call you with it when I get home.”
I glanced at Miguel, who met my gaze. He cleared his throat and then addressed Leopard. “That’s okay. We already have her name, thank you, Mr. Leopard.”
Leopard smiled. “Oh, good. Lovely woman. Italian, I think. Lovely woman.”
“Well, I think that gives us somewhere to start,” I said, standing up. Miguel also stood. “Let’s go see if Judy has those contracts ready for you.”
“Lovely,” Mr. Leopard said, standing. “Come along, precious. Thank you for being so patient.”
Trevor sighed and stood, turning and practically poking his ass out to make sure Miguel got the invitation, before swaying out of the room. I glanced at Miguel and then back at Mr. Leopard who was watching his boy’s ass.
He turned back to us, wearing a smirk. “What can I say? He’s a total charmer and he’s probably cheating on me, but it doesn’t matter. I tolerate his indiscretions and I shower him with gifts and money every time he gives me that beautiful ass. It works for us both.”
I came around the desk and put my hand on his shoulder. “I know that’s not true at all. You’re a very nice man.”
He covered my hand with his own. “Thank you for saying that.” He smiled at me and then Miguel. “You should come out with us some evening. We go to all the gay clubs. It’s a lot of fun.”
“We’ll do that, Mr. Leopard,” I said.
He got a teasing glint in his eye. “Of course, anytime you’d like to join us for a night of debauchery, we’d love to have you, Mr. Mathis.” He winked, and I just chuckled.
“We’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Leopard,” Miguel said gruffly before we followed our new client to the outer office.