South Central Noir

In short order, he was living the life of a free man of independent means he had always dreamed of. He dropped out of school, shedding any pretense of requiring employable skills anytime in the near future, and began to enjoy himself and his parents’ money. He developed an appreciation for expensive cars and women who loved to gamble. Greg was no ladies’ man, never had been, but he learned to date and date well, only driving the Porsche or the Corvette out to Vegas alone if that was his preference. Sometimes he came back with the same woman and sometimes he came back with a new one; in either case, he usually returned to Los Angeles a poorer man than he had been at the start.

As the months, then years, went by, two things happened that took Greg completely by surprise.

The first was the realization of how little he wanted things to change between himself and Darrel. He knew he loved his little brother on some level — what kind of monster wouldn’t? — but he hadn’t counted on loving him to the extent that he would still want him around even after their mother’s passing. All those years of faithfully shadowing the boy around like a Siamese twin, it seemed, had left him with more affection for Darrel than resentment. In portraying his little brother’s great protector, he had unwittingly become his great protector, so that now he had no desire to ship Darrel off to some assisted-living facility somewhere and forget about him, as he had always thought he would the moment the opportunity presented itself. Instead, by choice, he maintained much the same life with his brother they had always shared; the only difference now was the price tag of the car Greg drove to take his brother to the park, or to the movies, or — where else? — the Watts Towers.

The second surprising thing Greg discovered after his mother died, and which proved much more alarming than the first, was how fast he was able to burn through the $1.4 million he’d inherited. Within two years, he had whittled that figure down to the point that Annette Thomas — his accountant and financial advisor — was strongly recommending that he slow down, go back to school, and start thinking about working for a living. Of course, Greg just thought Thomas was being an alarmist, but she soon enough proved to be prophetic. The numbers she eventually showed him didn’t lie: Greg was staring down the barrel of impending insolvency.

If he could have found a way to dip into Darrel’s trust for the cash he needed to reverse his fortunes, he would have done it. But Thomas would not allow it. Greg had made the crucial error of hiring the same money manager to watch over his own financial affairs who had for years watched over his mother’s, and Thomas’s loyalties to Carol McNeil’s sons — both her sons — were nearly the equal to those she’d demonstrated for the woman herself. Under Thomas’s eagle eye, Darrel’s trust fund was as safe from Greg as the paintings in the Louvre.

In a desperate, last-minute attempt to avoid financial ruin, Greg throttled back on his spending and began liquidating assets. But it was too little, too late. The day soon came that what he owed and what he could pay were less than equal, and some of the people his gambling activities had put him in debt to were inclined to do him harm. He was in over his head.

He went back to Thomas again. Was there anything besides his parents’ home left to sell? Something he could turn into cash fast?

“Well, there’s your mother’s jewelry,” Thomas said.

“Her what?”

This was the first Greg had ever heard of any jewelry. He was a small boy when his mother had last been healthy enough to go out socially, with or without his father, so jewelry was something he had no memory of seeing Carol McNeil wear. According to the fine print in Thomas’s books, however, an heirloom collection of fine rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces that Greg’s mother had inherited from her own mother was included in the McNeil estate, valued at just over seventy thousand dollars.

Greg couldn’t believe his ears. His problems were solved, at least temporarily.

Except for one small thing: Thomas had no idea where this jewelry was.

It had been fourteen years since the collection was last assessed, and Thomas had never laid eyes on it. As far as she knew, it was locked up in one of Carol McNeil’s safety deposit boxes, but Greg had already gone through those and found only personal documents and stock certificates, the latter of which he’d cashed out months ago. Had his mother sold the jewelry before she died without documenting the sale? That seemed unlikely. She would have had little reason to do such a thing, and even if she had, the proceeds would have surely gone toward something tangible and easily identified.

No. This jewelry had to be somewhere, Greg decided. Hidden away in the house where only Carol McNeil had known where to find it.