Chapter 60
OCEAN
“Well, that was a disaster,” Ocean said, driving away from the DeYoung house.
“An invigorating disaster!” Mrs. B checked her lipstick in the sun visor mirror. “And look on the bright side.”
“What’s the bright side?”
“There’s plenty of daylight left.”
Ocean tapped the brake at the end of the drive. “For what?”
“For the massage therapist.”
“What, Pax? Now you want to talk to him? You ignored him when he was hanging around the Cottages.”
“Well, I didn’t want to interfere.”
She gave a bark of laughter. “Didn’t want to interfere? You’ve never seen a chance to meddle that you didn’t want to kiss behind the bleachers.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I want to speak with Pax, that’s all.” Mrs. B flashed a sudden, mischievous smile. “I’m telling you, Ocean, I feel younger than I have in years. Having a hobby is positively rejuvenating.”
“Poor Karina,” she said, following the winding road past the golf course. “She just lost her husband and then you show up.”
“She’s handling her grief by planning a renovation so extensive that she needs permission from the Coastal Commission.”
“People mourn in different ways, Golda. You told me that once.”
“What a tedious cliché. She’s trying to frame CJ!”
Ocean side-eyed her. “Now framing people is wrong?”
“Framing innocent people is wrong. Are you … How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“With CJ.”
“I know what you meant. I’m fine, I promise. We went out a few times, we weren’t even dating.”
“Yes, but aren’t lesbians known for yoohooing?”
“What?”
“Yoohooing. You told me about it! Getting too serious too soon.”
“First, let’s never say that again. Second, you mean U-Hauling, and don’t say that either.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not upset. I know after your ex-wife…” She trailed off. “Well! In any case, I doubt Pax is grieving, though I never really got a sense of him. We’ll stop at his house on the way home.”
“What are you going to do? Pretend you’re a city planning consultant?”
“I’m an old person who needs a massage. That’s what he does.”
“Oh, true. We don’t have his address, though.”
“Lily-Ann does.” After a few silent minutes of pecking at her phone, Mrs. B announced, “He lives back behind the Riviera, Mission Canyon, around there. She gave me a link to click for directions.”
“So we’re definitely going, are we?”
Mrs. B showed her a smug smile. “I knew I could count on you.”
She grumbled, but Mrs. B was happy, and frankly that was all that mattered. Nothing like bullying a rich widow to put a spring in one’s step.
The Mission Canyon area confused Ocean. Too many long windy roads, too many hillsides with looming eucalyptuses and live oaks.
Still, she followed the directions on Mrs. B’s phone past the reservoir toward the outer fringes of Montecito.
The homes tucked into the foothills probably cost three or four million, which raised the question of how a bodyworker, even one who charged three hundred bucks an hour, could afford to live there.
The question was answered when she discovered Pax’s residence was a mobile home on a property that must’ve burned during the Tea Fire.
The building’s remaining walls were a smudged blue, and flowering hibiscuses in large clay pots flanked the drive as if to compensate for the fire damage.
To the right of the mobile home, a semicircle of Adirondack chairs faced downhill, and Ocean caught sight of a trampoline around the corner.
“That’s got to be his,” she said. “I’ve never seen a place that looked more like a massage therapist’s house. Who else could live here?”
“A palm reader,” Mrs. B said.
She parked on the road and escorted Mrs. B to the front door. She knew better than to ask about a plan, so she just knocked and waited.
“We should look inside,” Mrs. B said, when nobody answered.
“Why?”
“Maybe he’s got a Trader Joe’s bag of cash on the kitchen counter.”
“Or a client on a massage table. Golda, you’ve seen enough nudes today.”
“You’re such a prude.” She stepped backward to eye the mobile home, either looking for the best place to peek inside or the best place to break a window.
“Well, this was a waste of time,” Ocean said, as they returned to the car.
“Only because you’re afraid to break and enter.”
“You’ve spent enough time in jail, Golda. Maybe we should ask Pax to meet for coffee, like normal humans?”
“That sounds boring,” she said, “but effective.”
Ocean drove them past one of the entrances to Parma Park, freshly planted with native grasses and shrubs, and got halfway to the reservoir before Mrs. B’s phone buzzed.
“Oh!” she said. “Lily-Ann wants us to make a stop on the way home.”
“Where?”
Mrs. B squinted at her phone. “A mile from here. Two miles? Hold on, where’s the … three minutes away. At VivX. Sunny Wheeler’s bankrupt business.”
“His life-extension place is back here?”
“Three minutes away.” She shuddered. “Can you imagine wanting to live forever?”
“Don’t you?”
“Goodness, no. On the other hand, I can imagine never wanting to die.”
“Let’s focus on doing that, then.” Ocean followed the road around a gentle curve. “Hamilton told me the life-extension people get organ transplants and inject blood proteins. Or, like, spinal fluid? I don’t know. What does Lily-Ann think we’re going to find at a defunct lab?”
“I’ve no idea. Maybe we can interview the grizzled caretaker and he’ll tell us all about Sunny’s scandal. Or there’s a real estate motive? Like there was with poor Gregory Ybarra.”
“Poor Gregory Ybarra tried to blackmail you and steal the Cottages,” Ocean reminded her.
“Which is how he ended up dead,” she said. “It’s okay to feel remorse, Ocean.”
“Fine, but do it silently,” she said. “We can’t keep talking about how we covered up two murders.”
Mrs. B checked her phone. “It’s up here on the right.”
Ocean pulled into a graded clearing outside a building with white walls and a red roof, which reminded her of a prefab house with four bedrooms and a two-car garage.
Even though it was five times the size of her cottage, it was humbler than she’d expected from VivX Life Extension Incorporated.
It was clearly out of business, with mounds of dried leaves in the lot and dusty windows.
The only sign of recent activity was a car with a fancy front grille in the corner of the lot.
No doubt a day hiker taking advantage of free parking for access to the Santa Ynez Mountains.
“No grizzled caretaker,” Mrs. B said, as she climbed out of the car and peered at the clearly vacant building.
“Does that mean we can go?”
“Let’s look in the windows first.”
“That’ll crack the case,” Ocean said.
Still, she led Mrs. B in a slow circuit around the building.
They looked in the windows and discovered a waiting room with a counter and vaguely inspirational prints on the walls.
Like a not-quite-doctor’s office. The windows on the side of the building were blocked by blinds, though Ocean got the impression of empty offices within.
Around back a flagstone deck was strewn with windblown leaves and empty beer cans and chip packages.
“Feh,” Mrs. B said.
“What?”
“I’d hoped immortality would look more glamorous.”
Ocean laughed. “All done here?”
“All done,” Mrs. B agreed.
She walked her back to the car and opened the passenger door.
When she headed around to the driver’s side, her gaze brushed the parked car in the corner of the lot.
From this angle, she saw dust and pollen on the hood, which made her think it wasn’t a day hiker.
Also, the shadows in the window on the driver’s side looked wrong. Too dark. Was someone sitting inside?
She walked closer, gravel crunching under her sneakers. The air smelled of sunbaked sage. The sun warmed the back of her neck, and yeah, the shadows definitely looked wrong.
They weren’t shadows.
They were splotches, like fluid had splattered across the inside of the window. Ocean’s first thought was that someone had spilled a milkshake, because when Riley was five, she’d decided to shake her milkshake from Chubbies and a chocolate mess had erupted across the car.
Except that was just Ocean’s brain trying to make sense of what she was seeing, before her body tensed with horror.
Someone was inside. Motionless. The air no longer smelled of sage.
The windows were sealed but something stank, so rancid that Ocean covered her mouth and nose.
She edged sideways, trying to see through the rear windows of the car.
The logo on the back said GENESIS. She felt a hiccup of hysterical amusement—a “genesis” in the parking lot of a life-extension business—until she recognized shapes inside.
She saw an arm in a sleeve, a bent elbow and a white hand. Not titanium white, a white with more blue. Streaked or marbled. The fingers reminded her of knotted twists of paper and that’s when she realized.
“Gah!” she said, and scrambled toward her own car.
“What’s wrong?” Mrs. B asked through the window.
She licked her lips. “There’s a body in that car.”
“Why didn’t you ask them any questions?”
“A body, Golda. Behind the steering wheel. A corpse.”