The Adjal of Jimmy Temple

By Jaron Summers and Harold Livingston

Jimmy Temple is a private detective whose specialty is finding lost lovers for the romantically inclined in mobile Los Angeles. He is approached by Wanda Kincaid to solve the gruesome murder of her wealthy father Jack.

In trying to solve the case, Jimmy enters a strange, macabre world. Wanda confides that the secret of Jack’s fortune reaches back to his family’s decaying funeral home. There, in a bedroom above the wet room where bodies are embalmed, Kincaid could supposedly tap into psychic powers and foresee the precise moments of other people’s deaths.

Skeptical of the psychic reports, Jimmy spends the night above the wet room only to catch a glimpse of his own adjal (the moment of his death). If his newfound psychic ability is reliable, Jimmy has only two days to unravel the sweetest scam this side of Hell and avert his own death. Whatever happens, Jimmy cannot avoid the cataclysm of violence that contorts his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bev Editions
• Release date: Oct 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927789391

Jaron Summers

Jaron Summers has written numerous primetime television and radio programs, including those for HBO, CBS, ACCESS TV and CBC. He conceived the TV and Film Institute of Canada. Funded by the University of Alberta and ITV, Jaron ran the Institute for 12 years, donating his services for ten of those years. Summers mentored dozens of writers and continues to do so. He holds an MFA in TV writing/producing from UCLA and a BA in Communication & Business from Brigham-Young University, where he was editor-in-chief of their award-winning student newspaper The Daily Universe. He has written hundreds of articles, columns and editorials for daily and weekly newspapers and magazines. For a more comprehensive list of Jaron’s works, visit his website, which includes a weekly blog - a collection of short stories, humour pieces, essays and articles that have been published worldwide at http://www.jaronbs.com. Jaron and his wife, Kate, divided their time between Edmonton, Alberta and Bel Air, California.

Book preview

I was locking my office door when her perfume hit me. My back still to her, I said, "Chanel Five."

"Opium," she said.

Now I turned to her. Tall, early to mid twenties, black hair set in an aristocratic updo framing a face that could launch a thousand ships, and probably had. Eyes, emerald-green, the kind that could shred a man's soul. The voice, low and sultry and filled with self-assurance, was a perfect match.

I drove here all the way from Malibu. I'd appreciate a few minutes of your time.

To Bel Air, all the way from Malibu is at worst a journey of some twenty miles, so right away I knew I was dealing with someone not exactly moored to reality. I unlocked the door and gestured her in. It was after seven on a hot July Friday and I had turned off the air conditioner for the weekend. The room was so quiet you could hear a heart break. Broken hearts are my specialty.

My agency finds lost lovers. He, or she, for whatever reason has slipped out of your life. You haven't forgotten, you never will. That's where I, Jimmy Temple, come in. You give me two hundred dollars and if the lost light of your life is in California I'll find him or her. Out-of-state, I charge five hundred. Seven-fifty for those of the same sex, only because their closets are occasionally so tight. I call my agency Soul Mate Search Inc. I'm in the Yellow Pages, and on dozens of Google references, and on Facebook. I take Visa and MasterCard.

My office is on the second floor of a two-story wood frame building that houses a pet groomer, a drycleaner, a coffee house, and some half dozen boutique enterprises. The parking lot, between my building and Bel Air Foods, is usually filled with late model Mercedes, BMWs, and Jags. Today, as though to deliberately make those pricey cars look ordinary, there was also a Lamborghini GTR. It was carmine red and had Malibu tags.

I walked over to the redwood picnic table I use as a desk, sat down, and waited for her to join me. She had followed me in but then, as though having second thoughts, abruptly stopped. She stood there in the middle of the room, her to-die-for body silhouetted against the white California clouds in the blue sky behind her. The sun flashed silver off her watch band, which with a small solitaire ring and tiny pearl earrings was her only jewelry and which to me spelled taste, capital T.

Please, I said, pointing to my genuine pine Captain's Chair, a forty buck garage sale item, estate sale as it's called in Brentwood. After a moment's hesitation, she sat, and for yet another moment remained silent as we briefly studied each other, she with a level, almost challenging gaze that I suppose was meant to arouse my curiosity. Arouse something. Those emerald eyes were like banked fires.

My name is Wanda Kincaid.

I nodded politely.

Does the name mean anything?

Should it?

Jack Kincaid was my father.

The memory button buzzed. A construction magnate. Rich and ruthless. They threw him an emperor's funeral, one that I'm sure was attended by every last CEO in that business.

I'm sorry for your loss, I said. A little a while ago, wasn't it?

One month, one week, and three days, she said.

Yes, I remember reading about the accident.

He was murdered.

Her not being moored to reality now seemed an understatement, not to mention that I had to wonder what, if anything, this had to do with finding a lost boy friend or whoever she wanted to find. I leaned back and made a steeple with my fingers, the bland pose that I like to think makes me look cynical, like Bogart or Dick Powell in their great old private eye movies.

I saw an interview with your mother on television --

-- my mother died when I was a child. Trish is my stepmother.

In the interview, I continued patiently, I don't recall ever hearing the word 'murder.'

Trish killed him. Trish killed Daddy.

Little red alarm lights flashed in the back of my mind. California is home to strange people. Drugs or fame can make you strange but what makes you the strangest is money. Too much of it. And the strangest of all are the spoiled children of rich parents. Jack Kincaid was no doubt a man who made time for every deal but not a nanosecond for family. Wanda had probably displaced her resentment onto her stepmother, who probably was a blue-ribbon bitch, as the second wives of wealthy men often are. God only knew what the stepmother thought of Wanda. What a tragedy. But then California is filled with tragedy. Earthquakes, mudslides, fires, gyrating real estate, sub prime mortgages and beautiful young women like Wanda.

I need your help, Mr. Temple, she said.

And in what way, Miss Kincaid, might I provide that?

Prove that she killed my father.

I am a man with all too many weaknesses — one being beautiful young women like Wanda Kincaid — and therefore knew that if I dallied too long, or at all, I'd find myself involved in something far beyond my expertise. I also knew that the best way to handle this was to end it right here and now, clean and fast.

I said, Miss Kincaid, I'm sorry, but this is not in my line of work. I got up and walked to the door, opened it, and stood waiting for her. She remained seated, those emerald eyes fixed angrily on me. This was a lady unaccustomed to rejection. Finally she got up and stepped past me and out into the corridor. She faced me. In her high heels we were almost at eye level, and I'm an even five ten. I like tall women, especially those proud of their tallness.

Are you always this impolite?

I'm the wrong person for you, Miss Kincaid, I said, listening to two voices in my head, one that said a number like this comes around maybe once in a lifetime, the other telling me that this once-in-a-lifetime number spelled trouble. The second voice won.

I pulled the door shut and relocked it. I would walk her to the parking lot, bid her a pleasant goodbye, then stroll the quarter mile or so to my studio apartment, shake off my clothes and pour myself a shot of Crown Royal. Drink it slowly, then do laps in the pool until sunset, which would be in about forty minutes. Later, I would watch television. And, no doubt, think about a girl like Wanda.

You're the right person, she said. I know you are.

I dropped the key into my pocket and looked at her. A bit more carefully now. She was a knockout, no question. And she knew how to dress, a plain white silk blouse and black linen skirt that on her was the height of elegance. Gentility was the word. And those heels made her legs seem to go on forever, lithe legs that could crack me like a walnut.

This means everything to me, Mr. Temple. I can pay whatever you ask.

Miss Kincaid, I'm sure you could buy Catalina Island with change left over. I find old boyfriends for old girlfriends and vice versa, nice and romantic. And if I think a client is going to harm an old lover, I pass. Incidentally, how did you happen to pick me out? Close your eyes and jab your finger on the yellow pages?

"I read an article about you in L.A. Magazine. It said you cared about your clients."

That article didn't say anything about my doing homicide. You should go to the police.

They'd never listen to me.

I glanced across the rooftops at the sky, the white clouds. We were supposed to have rain, heavy stuff, but so far not a sign of it. They certainly wouldn't listen to me, either, I said.

They would if we could prove she did it.

We, I thought, and liked the sound of it. "Miss Kincaid, you need someone who specializes in homicide, and I am definitely not that someone. I do not like blood, bullets, toe tags or the smell of formaldehyde. But I do like your perfume, Opium, is it?"

I won't take no for an answer, Mr. Temple.

You already did, Miss Kincaid.

I gestured her to go ahead of me down the stairs and followed her down, and into the parking lot. I headed for Bel Air Foods to pick up one of those La Brea Bakery seeded sourdough rolls that I'm addicted to, and watched her walk to the red Lamborghini Diablo. She opened the Diablo's door and then, as I walked past, abruptly closed it and side-stepped to stand in front of me, blocking me.

You have to help me.

Why, Wanda — if I may call you that — why do I 'have' to help you? Where is that written? And while we're at it, if it means 'everything' to you, why did you wait one month, one week, and three days to do anything about it?

I wasn't sure about what to do until now.

And what makes you so sure now?

Later, she said. I'll explain it all later.

She made later sound a promise of all the riches of the western world. I took another long look at her. She looked as good from the side as she did from the front. The loose white silk blouse actually, somehow, highlighted a pair of superb breasts.

There are dozens of agencies in this city, I said. Any one of them will take your case, and do a much better job than I ever could.

I need someone psychic.

Rich and strange and, of course, into the paranormal. Maybe next she'd tell me she'd been abducted by aliens. Well, again, you dialed a wrong number. I'm not psychic.

Yes, you are, she said. You just don't know it.

I studied her, trying not to train my eyes on the inviting swell of those world-class breasts. And you, of course, are?

I am, yes.

And with this psychic gift, you have divined that your stepmother killed your father?

Please take me seriously, Mr. Temple.

I do not believe in psychic phenomena, telepathy or predestination. I don't even believe much in luck.

She smiled. Perfect teeth, the kind that breaks an orthodontist's heart. You want to believe, but you can't, said those fine white teeth that I wanted to nibble me.

You're an attractive woman. I like the way you smell and walk and hold yourself. I like your teeth. But I'm going home. Over her shoulder in the passenger's seat of one of the world's most expensive cars I could see a neatly folded white Burberry trench coat, one of the world's most expensive casual coats. Drive your Lamborghini back to Malibu and watch the sunset. Enjoy something you can't buy.

I know I can't buy you. Fair enough. But I'll give you a thousand dollars to have dinner with me.

Now this was original, not to mention one of those offers you can't refuse, or shouldn't. You'll give me a thousand dollars to have dinner with you. What's the catch?

It's worth a thousand dollars to me to prove to you that I am psychic, and I can do that by telling you exactly what you're thinking about as we stand here.

Okay, get it right, we have dinner and I get a grand. What am I thinking about?

Great tits, she said.

Chapter Two

An hour later we were sitting facing each other at a select corner table in Thornburi, a quaint Thai restaurant on not so quaint Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, and always crowded. No problem for me. I had known the owner, Kim, from the day he opened the place, when it was a hole-in-the-wall. But Kim had the business savvy to now and then comp a temporarily broke writer, actor — or struggling PI — thereby creating a constantly loyal clientele.

I watched Wanda do the impossible, which was to slurp soup elegantly. Then she'd take a long pull on her ice-cold Thai beer. She drank straight from a bottle, which should have been too big for her to wrap her slender fingers around, but she knew how to hold it. I watched her fingers caress the bottle. She probably knew how to hold a lot of things.

A word that came reluctantly to mind was trunkable. A term I learned from an old homicide detective during my seven-year stint in U.S. Navy Intelligence. He used it to describe women who are both vulnerable and dangerous, women he said who sometimes end up at the bottom of wells or mountain gullies or in trunks.

Wanda's green eyes studied me in the candlelight. In your office I saw a complete leather-bound set of Raymond Chandler's novels, she said. An expensive way to collect a pulp writer.

I'd hardly call him a pulp writer, I said.

I didn't mean that in a pejorative sense. Pulp fiction is an art form all its own. I happen to be a fan of it myself. Chandler in particular, his world of hard, honorable men and loose, dangerous women.

To say I was impressed is an understatement, not to mention surprised. The cynical bourbon-boozing writer didn't seem the type to appeal to a rich girl. She talked intelligently about Chandler's work, even quoting lines where he explained what makes a great detective. Something about a man having to go down mean streets while keeping from being mean himself.

By the time we finished the main course and Kim had served us his house specialty, green tea ice cream, the Thai Beer had done its work. Wanda was laughing happily and giving me that marvelous smile. On another woman I would have found it too much but I liked the feeling I had that she was honestly interested in me as a person, and I certainly liked the way a couple of the guys at other tables looked at me as if to say, How come a bum like you ends up with a woman like her?

Wanda finished her third bottle of beer and said, Are you ready now to hear about how my stepmother killed my father, Jimmy?

Jimmy, first time she ever called me Jimmy, the magic of that Thai beer. On the other hand, not enough magic for her mind to wander too far. Wanda too far, I thought. That's what I was doing and, despite those voices in my head (now down to an annoying whisper), enjoying it. I said, Your father died at a construction site in Los Angeles. Your stepmother has what we in the business call an alibi. She was, at the time, flying from New York to London.

Wanda waited patiently for me to finish. She seemed almost pleased at my awareness of all this and that I obviously had remembered her stepmother making a point of it in the television interview.

I can tell you how she killed my father.

Yeah, while she was on a plane five or six thousand miles away.

Oh, there's no question that's where she was.

So what are you telling me? Your stepmother hired someone to kill your father?

No.

Your stepmother didn't hire anybody to kill your father, and she herself didn't do it, yet you want her nailed for it. Makes sense.

The sarcasm didn't bother her. She was like a pit bull with his jaws clamped to your ankle. Shortly before my father's 'accident,' my stepmother talked him into buying a fifty million dollar life insurance policy.

That's a motive, but you're still six thousand miles away from any proof, I said. And how do you know she talked him into it?

He told me. Daddy and I were very close.

I suppose there was some kind of pre-nup agreement. His umpteen hundred million dollar estate goes to some foundation or whatever. She gets the house in Aspen, forty or fifty grand a month for life, the yacht, and two cars.

Something like that, said Wanda.

A fifty million dollar payoff is a nice motive, I said. But I'm sure you weren't left out in the cold, so I hope your alibi is as good.

That's a cruel thing to say,

That's the detective in me speaking, I said, watching her beautiful face tighten briefly, then relax like a teacher trying to patiently reason with a stubborn, dumb pupil.

The insurance money hasn't been paid yet, she said, and not without a little edge of pleasure in her voice. And won't be until the estate is settled. Until the lawyers stop fighting.

And you want to nail her before that happens, I said. "But nail her for what?"

Jimmy, there are two types of crimes. Commission and omission. If you saw me stepping into traffic and did nothing to stop me, you could be charged with a crime of omission, of failure to act.

When I said she was like a pit bull at your ankle, I was being kind. She was like an alligator, probably the same one that was now her $2,500 Prada satchel purse. Your stepmother knew your father was going to be killed and never warned him. Is that it?

Yes.

The way I remember it, he fell down an elevator shaft when he was inspecting one of his buildings.

Just then — and to my relief because I really was trying to get something out of Wanda that would put even a little credence in her stepmother-killer notion — Kim brought us some chocolate mints and the bill. I reached for the check. Wanda let me pick it up. After all, the night had already cost her a thousand dollar commitment. Moreover, we had come in her car. My ’02 Chevy Camaro was in the shop for a transmission rebuild, the price of same I didn't even want to think of. When I had asked the boss mechanic how much, he said, You don't want to know.

Wanda's Lamborghini took the curves on Mulholland like airport runways and a few minutes later we skidded to a stop in front of my apartment. The air was perfect. Dry and mellow, just enough to almost evaporate the sweat on my forehead, sweat that came from hot Thai food and the lime and Opium closeness of Wanda.

She turned off the motor. Can I come up for a nightcap?

Are you always this shy? I asked.

We walked across the street. I punched the security gate buttons and Wanda, after glancing at my name on the mailbox, headed unerringly up the stairs to my apartment. There were some forty apartments set in a hollow square, a swimming pool in the middle, overlooking Hoag Canyon. Filled with brambles and bushes, the canyon stretched to the ocean and was inhabited by rattlesnakes, coyotes and deer in what must have been one of the century's most uneasy balances of nature. Heaven help any pet that wandered down there. Although lovely to look at, the canyon was deadly, reminded me of the lawyers offices in Century City.

I followed Wanda up the stairs to my door where she was waiting, leaning against the railing, her eyes closed, drinking in the night air, arching her back, thinking who knows what. I unlocked and opened the door and gestured her in. My apartment is clean and functional. The kitchen has a double range, which I seldom use. Bachelors either eat food raw or nuke it. Adjoining the kitchen is a counter for serving drinks or snacks. Between the kitchen and the front door is a fair-sized main room containing two lounge chairs and a sofa that turns into a bed, thereby giving you a large bedroom and a fair-sized living room, just not at the same time. Beyond the kitchen is a compact bathroom. There is indirect lighting and art that I like. I'm partial to Roy Lichtenstein, his comic book approach to the world appeals to me. Knock-offs of his work cover most of my walls, along with some Edward Hopper urban realism. An old girl friend once wisecracked that my taste in art was a perfect reflection of my personality. Enigmatic, she said. I certainly can't say the same about her. She found, and married, one of those Silicon Valley boy millionaires.

I found the Crown Royal, and two glasses. Wanda watched me pour a small shot for each of us. She was standing against the far Lichtenstein, a blowup of a Wonder Woman comic. She looked like she was stepping out of the art. I had the feeling that Wonder Woman really had blasted into my living room.

I hope Crown Royal is okay, I said, handing the glass to her.

Love it, she said, drinking the whiskey slowly and deliberately all the way down. She looked at the sofa. Does that turn into a bed?

Yes.

Show me.

Before I could say a word, she had set down her empty glass, flicked off the lamp and insinuated herself into my arms. She was warm and soft, knew all the right moves and it took her exactly eight seconds to convince me that I was going to be the luckiest guy in the world.

Is your pool heated? she asked, and before I could reply that yes it was heated and at the same time wondering how in the hell she could be thinking of a pool at a time like this, she had opened the door and moved out into the hallway, saying, Let's go for a swim.

I don't have a suit for you.

Good, she said, and vanished into the darkness.

I got up, woozy from the booze and near sex. I made it to the door just in time to see her disappear down the stairs and sprint through dappled shadows to the pool. Naked, she entered the water without a sound and moved through the slack surface like an Olympic champ. I looked at my watch. It was almost one a.m. I grabbed two towels and crept down the stairs, kept to the shadows and made it to the pool. Twice, in my bare feet, I stepped on small needle-sharp rocks but clamped my mouth shut. All I needed was for the manager to see what was going on in his pool. Eviction papers would follow the next day. I didn't care.

The instant Wanda found me in the water, her lips were all over me again. I want to make love with you, Jimmy, but first I have to show you something.

Sweet girl, I said, I have something to show you, too.

I'll take care of you, she said. Trust me?

I nodded, yes, with not the slightest idea of