I said, “So it’s a good group?”
“Sterling. Older demographic, mostly survivors and relatives. They’ve been extremely generous and once they give money they’re not pushy about how to spend it. So the police think something happened at their party?”
“They do.”
“Wow, I was there,” said Giacomo. “Now that you mention it, Jane did seem upset toward the end of the evening. I didn’t push it. Golden goose and all that. Let me try her personal email.”
“I really appreciate it.”
“No prob, I live on the 500 block of Roxbury. Not a hop-skip but close enough to give my wife and daughters serious creeps.”
—
Three minutes later, a 310 number flashed on my phone screen.
A throaty voice said, “Dr. Alex Delaware, this is Mrs. Jane Leavitt. Dr. Giacomo informs me you wish to talk about our last fundraiser.”
“That and Candace Kierstead.”
“You bet, sir. Four p.m. You darn wellbet.”
—
The house was a half-timbered, fieldstone-faced, slate-roofed Tudor on the 800 block of North Camden Drive in the Beverly Hills flats. The English gentry thing was thrown awry by a dense palm forest out front. L.A. improvisation, part of what makes the city great.
A pearl-gray Lexus LX was parked in an impeccably clean driveway. A bumper sticker readKill Cancer!
Before I got to the front door a woman opened it. Seventy or so and tiny—five feet tall, ninety pounds after gorging. A narrow, powdered face was topped by a stiff, black bouffant that swelled like a turban. She wore a pale-blue sweater set, pink quilted Chanel flats, and silver lorgnette opera glasses suspended from a seed-pearl chain.
“Dr. Delaware, Jane.” Quick once-over. Sly smile. “You’re so young. And handsome!” A bird-hand grasped mine and shook with astonishing vigor. Maintaining her grip, she swung me toward the entrance.
As I stepped in, Jane Leavitt’s arm slipped through mine. Chanel perfume. Lots of it.
She half pulled, half pushed me through a foyer with niches holding urns, then down three steps to a sunken living room that looked out to a walled garden crammed with more palms.
Expensive interior decades ago, now charmingly dated: hand-scored, peg-and-groove pecan floors, walls covered in linenfold pickled oak, a coffered ceiling of the same wood. Chairs and sofas were upholstered in velvet, paisley, and bright florals. A Chagall fiddler painting looked real, as did a Warhol soup can, a Lichtenstein comic strip send-up, and a massive Frank Stella chevron.
Candace Kierstead had set out graham crackers and coffee. Jane Leavitt had turbocharged the concept of hospitality.
A silver-and-glass coffee table was laden with bone china plates of croissants, raisin bread, sesame flatbread, and brioche rolls. A tub of soft butter sat next to a tub of strawberry preserves. Gigantic purple grapes were presented in triads dangling from stems, haloing slices of cheese arranged like the folds of a geisha’s fan. In addition to all that, bowls of nuts and dried fruits and pink meat sliced tissue-thin.
“Parma ham, Doctor, if you’re a protein person.”
All that food but nothing to drink. Then a hefty, middle-aged blond maid in a black, white-lace-trimmed uniform appeared carrying a flute-edged gilt tray.
“The Blue, ma’am.”
Jane Leavitt said, “Thank you, Sophie. Cream and sugar, Doctor?”
“Black’s fine, thanks.”
“A man of discretion and taste,” said Jane Leavitt, advertising first-rate bridgework. “With the finest coffee there’s no need for dilution. This is the highest grade of Blue Mountain. My husband, rest his soul, was in the coffee and tea business. I can still obtain anything.”
I smiled. The maid poured. Jane Leavitt raised her cup and I did the same.
We sipped. She purred. Put her cup down. “Try the grapes, Doctor. They’re from a sustainable farm in Chile and they’re fabulous.”
No sense bucking authority. I plucked and tasted. “Delicious.”
