Wine, Dine and Christmas Crimes by Maria Swan (brene brown rising strong .txt) 📕

Dale would come to The Nest, pick up Ana, and take her to his condo where he would help her learn computer basics and better English. The goal was for her to be able to go back to China with useful skills to get a decent job.

In exchange, Ana cleaned for Dale Wolf and his live-in partner. She also did the laundry. Wolf kept track of her finances, and she was only months away from having enough to go back home. The Los Angeles Chinese Consulate was providing the paperwork she missed, having been smuggled into the States as a teen by a man who had promised her much R+R. Romance plus riches. Once in the States, he put her to work in one of his parents’ businesses, without pay as he wanted to be reimbursed for the smuggling fees. She was able to escape during an immigration raid.

It wasn’t that they spent the twenty minutes telling me all that. Some snippets were part of the conversation. I filled the gaps on my own while I felt like someone should whip me and whip me good, as the song went, for all the bad scenarios and imaginary sins I had created in my suspicious mind about those two good souls. And none of this explained Kay’s crying and Dale’s person of interest status.

After twenty minutes of listening to their personal info, I felt entitled to ask a few questions. By then Kay had run out of tears and tissues and Dale was calculating how much value the 14th-floor condo had lost due to the circumstances. And let’s not forget it was really on the 13th floor, so that was a double whammy. Kay and Wolf agreed—no superstitious soul in his right mind would touch such a tainted place, not even at half price.

All that while we still didn’t know how Ana Martin ended up in the rooftop pool in her underwear on a cold December night while a few floors down, her benefactor was having a lovely Christmas party catered by my own former aunt-in-law. One thing was clear, I totally understood why Kay didn’t like Dale Wolf’s real estate ethics. I also understood why he was a successful broker in this hard-to-crack town, while I was a newbie without much ambition or talent.

“I guess I’ll let myself out.” I stood. “Your place is lovely, Kay, and your Christmas tree is even better in person than in the photos you shared at the office.”

“Sit down,” Kay said. “What were those detectives asking regarding trash?”

“More than trash, the questions were in regard to Leta’s fingerprints on the ice machine and the garbage chute. There may have been more, but I left. They are trying to ‘work out a time sequence,’ or so said Detective Ross. Kay, I’m told the clothing I found on the floor of the 13th floor condo was actually Miss Martin’s work uniform. So, where did she keep her real clothes? I mean, shoes and stuff.”

She didn’t need to answer, her shaky hand searching for more tissues told the story. That’s why the cops had visited her condo, looking for the dead woman’s belongings. Ouch!

“Wait,” I said. “Now I get it. When I saw Mr. Wolf parking his Maserati, he was here to pick up Miss Martin.”

“You saw me parking my car? Where were you?”

“Hey, you think it’s funny? I know my Fiat is small, but the color makes up for the size. Next you’ll tell me you didn’t take a pic of my license plate.”

The horror on his face was no joke. He fumbled inside his suit pocket and pulled out his cell phone. More fumbling, then he slid the phone to the center of the table. “You mean that?”

I stretched to look. “Yep. All coming back to you now?” I may have hummed the last part. I know, I can be juvenile at times. He sat back, a pained look on his face, eyes closed, and for a nanosecond I thought he was getting sick.

“What else did I do?” he asked.

“How should I know? I drove out of there as fast as I could. That creepy Gold Buttons doorman wasn’t happy to see me.”

“Walter? He was there? What time was it? Do you remember?”

“I had just delivered the goods to Leta. We met at the service entrance.” I looked at Kay. This was screwed up. “I left and—made a wrong turn.” I had already told all that to the cops, and this guy claimed he didn’t remember? Ah, now the ‘person of interest’ made sense. Freaking liar. Or not? “You looked—sauced,” I said to the person of interest. “But not enough to not remember parking your Maserati and checking your back bumper. Just out of curiosity, where were you when they found Miss Martin in the pool? Wait, who found her?”

He got up and started to pace the room. I wanted to get up and run out of there. Something was totally wrong, and since I wasn’t lying, they must be.

“The bartender,” Kay whispered, “found her.”

Bartender?

This was getting weirder by the minute. I glanced at the man pacing like a maniac, at Kay quietly sobbing or pretending to, and I mentally calculated the distance to the front door. Would I make it? I would count to three and sprint. One, two—

And Kay’s doorbell rang. What now? The two of them exchanged glances, then looked at me. That was my cue.

“I’ll get it.” And I sprinted. Yanked the door wide open and found myself staring at Brenda and Leta. What?

“Tootsie, got yourself a new job?” Leta chided. My lips moved without a sound getting through, and my eyes were probably in danger of falling off my face as I tried to communicate to the two innocent women that we should all run.

Too late, Kay was suddenly behind me, grabbing my arm and moving me out of the way to –welcome the next victims? Mercy.

“Come in,” Kay said. “We need to talk.” Well, we outnumbered the enemy—three