by Daniel Hecht
Mo could hear the clatter of a computer keyboard, Gus taking notes.
"What else?" Gus asked.
"The whereabouts of this Royce Hoffmann. Supposedly was leaving the country from New York on or around December fifth. I'd like to know where he is, what his travel plans are. Where he has been during the last year. Could use commercial flights, but might go by corporate or private planes—the best way might be to check when his passport has been in or out."
"Tell me what you want, skip the advice."
"Sorry. If you can put together a profile on his lifestyle—where he stays when he travels, how much he spends, that'd be great. He's supposed to be rich as shit. I'd like to know for sure. Especially if there've been any changes in his spending habits in the last year or so."
"What else?"
"Look into this guy Gus Grisbach for me. Supposed to be a computer wizard somewhere in Manhattan. Completely crazy, but a legend in his own time. Let me know how he's doing, how's his health. That kind of thing."
"Fuck you, Ford," Grisbach said.
The line went dead. Gus didn't ask when Mo needed the info. If you'd resorted to calling Gus, ASAP was a given.
54
IT'S BEGINNING TO come together," Mo said. "We're no longer chasing wild geese. The ends are starting to tie up, the lines converge. You are going to love this." His last comment seemed directed to Lia.
They were in the smoking room, Paul and Lia sitting in the big wingback chairs, Mo pacing back and forth. He had that light about him, Paul decided, the same as Lia's when she got excited about something. The hunter on the trail. Lia watched him, captivated by his intensity. From the basement they could hear muffled hammering as Becker's crew dismantled the old furnaces. Through the smoking-room window, Paul could see Becker's van and a huge pickup truck in the driveway.
"I've made a lot of progress since we last talked. Friday, I went down to the Lewisboro town offices, then the courthouse in White Plains. Did some research into this property. Turns out your aunt isn't the owner of Highwood, Paul."
"What!"
"That's right. Your cousin is. Transmitted to Royce Hoffmann earlier this year from the Hoffmann Trust, which got it from Erik Hoffmann II at his death in 1985, subject to provisions of divorce proceedings, Hoffmann v. Hoffmann, 1952."
"So how does Vivien live here?" Lia asked. "Under what auspices?"
"Your aunt lives here as the result of a property division resulting from the divorce settlement. She apparently got a chunk of money and generous alimony. But the property ownership stayed with Hoffmann. Vivien got what they call a life estate—the right to live here for the rest of her life. It must have been a hell of a divorce, every inch of ground fought over, because her life estate was restricted by certain provisos."
Lia turned to Paul. "He's really enjoying this, isn't he? Keep us in suspense, feed us tidbits one by one." She grinned at Mo. "That's my cue to ask what kind of provisos, right?"
"Yep." Mo returned her smile. "And the answer is, continuous occupancy. Hoffmann was a canny old buzzard. If Vivien should retain the right to continue to live at Highwood because of a 'deep emotional attachment' to the premises, as she claimed in her settlement arguments, then she'd have to continue to demonstrate that attachment. Vacations, normal short-term absences would be fine, but if she leaves here and establishes a primary residence elsewhere for a period of six months, she loses her right to live here."
Mo waited, letting the ramifications of that settle in.
"And of course if the place is really beat to shit, she can't live here," Paul said. "And if she doesn't live here for that time, she loses it. Presumably the property would go to Royce."
"Beautiful," Lia said. "Royce wanting the place for himself would explain two things we've wondered about. One, why such extreme damage? Answer: because he'd need to guarantee that it would be uninhabitable for a long enough time to trigger the continuous occupancy clause. Two, why not just burn the place down? Answer: because ifRoyce is doing this to get his hands on the money value of the place, he doesn't want to destroy the house. It's got to be worth a couple of million—intact. Also why Royce would try so hard to bribe Paul away from the job. But he wasn't counting on a family member, somebody who'd stick by his commitments, contracting to do the work."
"Which Vivien may have anticipated," Mo said. "Possibly the reason she initiated the contact with Paul in the first place. This whole thing could be part of an old, old chess match between mother and son."
Paul thought about it. "Royce mentioned to me that he often wheels and deals well beyond his own liquidity. Maybe he's pressed for cash now—he'd like to sell this property, but he can't do it with Vivien's life estate in place. And I'll bet there's a clause specifying that nobody can borrow against its equity value as long as Vivien is in possession."
Mo nodded, impressed. "Correct. Because default on a loan against the property would endanger a prior contract—Vivien's life estate—neither Royce nor his father were allowed to borrow against it while she was in residence. Well, you both get an A in deduction—I came to the same conclusions."
"Thanks, teacher." Lia reached out a foot to kick him softly in the calf, smiling. Mo obviously savored the gesture.
"But what was the Hoffmann Trust?" Paul asked. "If ownership was going to come just to Royce anyway, why did Hoffmann Senior bother with the intermediary entity—the trust?"
Mo shrugged. "Keeps it out of Royce's hands until he's of a certain age? Tax dodge? If you really think it matters, I can look into it." He took another turn on the rug and stopped, facing them. "But I've got another juicy one for you. I've been saving the best for last."
Lia shot a glance at Paul. "Let's not encourage him," she said.
"Paul, I took your question seriously—the question oihow. Frankly, it's been bugging me too. So I went to see Bazal at a martial-arts demonstration. He's into some exotic Eastern fighting techniques, and he's good, Paul. He's one of these guys who breaks boards with their bare hands. Probably there's nothing here he couldn't have done. Suppose he works for his millionaire friend Royce in his off hours."
"I propose a toast," Lia said. "Mo, you're a genius. You're a great detective and you're a great storyteller. You oughta be on Broadway." She raised her coffee cup in salute.
Mo turned his head away, Paul noticed, to hide his pleasure. He's doing this for Lia, he realized. This is the cop equivalent of bringing her a bouquet.
Lia and Mo chattered on excitedly, but Paul tuned them out, his thoughts spiraling in on what he'd learned. Rizal was into Eastern martial arts. Was there more to it than Mo knew—maybe a tie to the KKK, the Katipunan, after all? But why wreck Highwood? That boy was positively steeped in every sort of nonsense from his ancestral islands—secret societies, native superstitions, the injured self-righteousness of the victims of colonialism, Vivien had said. Maybe it wasn't all nonsense. Maybe it wasn't as simple as vandalism for hire.
And Vivien: When had she gone to California? And how did her impending return tie in with the continuous occupancy clause? It had to be nearly six months ago that she'd left Highwood—if she wanted to keep the place, she had to be getting nervous by now. Which upped the pressure on Paul to get the repairs done. Would she pay him the rest of his fee if he fell behind schedule and cost her the lodge? Fat fucking chance.
And the Hoffmann Trust. When Hoffmann died, Royce would have been thirty-five—why not just leave it to Royce? Why create the trust, which was the owner of record for nine years after Hoffmann's death? Was the Hoffmann Trust Royce alone, or Royce and someone else? And what had caused the trust to revert entirely to Royce?
Patterns: Mo had found a pretty neat case against Royce. Paul realized he'd felt a pattern emerging too, even before Mo came, pieces of the puzzle shifting, aligning. It confirmed what he'd been suspecting for several days: that his own ability to track patterns had been changing since he quit haloperidol. There was new clarity, an ability to assimilate details and connect the dots. Y
es, the parts had begun to fit. Paul could almost see it, feel it. The only problem was, it didn't look anything like the pattern Mo had assembled. Or maybe Mo's was part of it—part of a bigger picture, bigger and stranger.
It was something like the discovery of the planet Pluto, Paul thought. Long before the planet was seen through telescopes, scientists were puzzling over disturbances in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Something was out there, an invisible force in the scheme of the solar system. Once astronomers had calculated the quirks in the other planets' orbits, they knew where to look, and sure enough, there was the dark ninth planet.
That's how this situation felt. A hidden presence. Something they could sense, could feel, but couldn't see. Not just yet, anyway.
55
MONDAY AFTERNOON MO CONTINUED down hlS checklist, feeling energized after his meeting with Paul and Lia. It was only three o'clock, and a worn-out-looking janitor was polishing the hall floors with a machine that stank up the air with cleaning solvent fumes, like a goddamned bus station. You had to wonder why they couldn't wait until after hours. He got up and shut the door to cut the noise.
Feeling a familiar trepidation, he dialed the Masons' number. As usual, the phone rang four times and was answered by the machine:
"You have reached the Mason residence. I'm sorry, but . . ."
"This is Morgan Ford, calling again from—" Mo began. He was cut off when the machine squealed suddenly and clicked off.
"Hello, Mr. Ford."
"Mrs. Mason, thank you for answering. I'm sorry to be calling again, but—"
"Yes, I'm sorry you're calling again too." Her voice was flat, empty of emotion.
"Listen, Mrs. Mason. You know why I'm calling. I need your help. I need Heather's help."
"Yes, I know exactly why you're calling. And no, we can't help you, Mr. Ford." Her voice was absolutely toneless. It was hard to imagine such a voice coming from the deep-eyed, sincere woman he'd met. "But—"
"You can go to helll" she cried suddenly. "You can go to hell and leave us alone!" In the background, Mo heard a man's solicitous, cautioning voice: "Honey . . ." "You can stop calling us now. Because you'll never talk to Heather. Because my daughter is dead, Mr. Ford. Is that good enough? Are you satisfied?" She was suddenly crying, keening.
"What happened, Mrs. Mason?"
"My daughter committed suicide. My only child left, my beautiful daughter cut open her wrists and let her life run out of her and down the tub drain like water, like sewage. Oh, God! Leave us alone!"
Mo sat down, almost missing the edge of his chair.
"Mr. Ford?" The husband's voice, a man struggling to maintain any control at all. "My wife can't talk to you now. I can't. We've . . . it's all we can. . . . Don't call us again. Please."
Mo listened to the dial tone for a full minute, Then he fumbled the receiver back onto its cradle. Five things worse than dying.
It took him a few minutes before he'd recovered enough to ask around about Heather Mason's death. One of the risks of being out of the office so much, dodging your colleagues: You got left out of the loop.
He got the details from Joe Matarini, who'd gotten the case. Matarini was smart, an experienced investigator. Suicide, nothing but. Heather's shrink, Dr. Kurtz, had sorrowfully agreed it was entirely in line with her mental state. Mrs. Mason had found her on Sunday afternoon in the bathtub naked, her inner thighs and wrists slashed. A single-edged razor blade was still in her hand, and the M.E.'s report stated that it was compatible with the many cuts drawn deftly along the length of her arteries. She hadn't left a note other than the sheaf of lined paper, torn from spiral notebooks, covered with meaningless lines of waves and loops, which sat on the edge of the tub. Her story. With the title that explained everything.
Mo thought: This job is the pits. The absolute pits. Numb, he got his mail and headed back to his private utility closet.
Where, looking through the assorted letters and junk mail, he got another shock. With a Jewish mother, Jewish aunts and uncles, he hadn't been brought up with a lot of faith in the idea of resurrection. Even if their household had embraced his father's lapsed Catholicism, Mo's own philosophical inclinations were that when you died you were dead, gone, gone, gone and probably glad of it. But in his hand was a feminine, lavender-tinted envelope addressed to him in ballpoint pen.
From Heather Mason.
Inside was a ragged-edged page from Heather's spiral notebook. Checking quickly, he found that the envelope was postmarked Saturday, the day before she died. He'd have to give a copy to Matarini, part of the file on Heather, the story of her ending that would get closed and submerged in a sea of other wretched paperwork in an obscure cubbyhole somewhere, the exhaustively chronicled history of misery in Westchester County, and everywhere.
/ wasn't kidding, she'd written. Do you believe me now?
56
"I KNOW ABOUT YOU AND Ben, Vivien," Paul said. "I know you X were lovers." When she didn't speak, his anger rose. "Vivien? Did you hear me?"
"What is it, exactly," she said, "that you want me to say? How, precisely, do you wish me to respond?"
It was a fair question. What had he hoped for? Denial? Apology? Against her weariness and resignation, his anger seemed suddenly trivial. Paul stood in the cold kitchen at Highwood. Lia was in the carriage house, cleaning herself up before they took a couple of hours off to go to dinner at the Corrigans'. After the revelations of the last few days, he'd felt a growing pressure inside: Vivien had a lot of explaining to do. He'd called her impulsively, determined to put an end to the mystery.
When he didn't answer, she rallied. "So you have discovered some of your father's letters. And you're angry with me. What would you have had me do, Paulie? Announce it to you beforehand?"
"Did you ever tell Aster?"
"Don't be absurd! What—I went to her on the eve of her husband's suicide and told her that he'd not only killed himself, he'd betrayed her? Do you know, I believe you are asking me something else entirely. You want to know if my telling Aster, or threatening to, drove him over the cliff. It sounds to me as if you are looking for a scapegoat for your mother's, your family's, unhappiness. Well, for that I will accept no blame. To my knowledge, she never knew. She and I both had enough to suffer with."
Her insightfulness stopped him. Yes, it would have been nice to pin the blame neatly on someone. Vivien, or anyone.
"There's something else, Vivien. I know you don't own Highwood. I know about Royce, that you've got a life estate and that he comes into ownership if you don't move back in here soon. Why didn't you tell me that?"
She was wordless again. He heard her breath come erratically, as if she were struggling with her feelings. At last she spoke: "Must I trumpet everything to all and sundry? No, I am not proud that my residence in the house I have lived in for forty-five years is contingent upon conditions and strictures and the whims of others. No, I do not like to recall the very, very difficult period of my separation from my husband. And yes, though I am sometimes ambivalent as to whether I ought to resume residence, yes, I am concerned that I will lose my home if I do not return. I'd have preferred to make my personal choices without duress." Her voice had been rising, her breath coming harsh and fast. "But is this another confession I was somehow obligated to make to Paulie Skoglund because I hired him to repair my house? Have I no right to keep anything at all to myself, just because my house has been destroyed? Having been violated once, must I therefore be violated again? Frankly, your intrusion offends me. If I were not, as you so tactfully pointed out, rather desperate at this time, I'd fire you."
He couldn't find a reason to contradict her. If he were in her shoes, he'd react the same way. In comparison to the injuries she'd suffered, his earlier pique seemed petty.
He made one last sally: "I only ask because the destruction of the house seems to implicate Royce. If he's doing this to force you out of here, why don't you want to do something about it? Why not accuse Royce?"
"You're assuming
I agree with you—that Royce was responsible."
"Why don't you think so?"
She got quiet, as if searching for an answer that would make sense to him. "I have no doubt that Royce would be quite happy to come into possession of Highwood. And I know that there is nothing Royce wouldn't do to accomplish his ends—nothing. But he would never let his desires be so obvious. I would of course see his hand in things and be, frankly, rather flattered by his attention. And I assure you he would never permit that. So," she went on witheringly, "I am afraid you will have to look elsewhere in your little detective games."
How well the two of them understood each other, Paul thought. He had no reply.
To his surprise, when she spoke again it was in the husky, hushed tone she took on when the hunger for intimacy came upon her. "You have learned some very private things about me, Paulie. My weakness, my vulnerability. Do you know, you are the only living person who knows these things about me?"
"Look—"
"Tell me something private in return, Paulie. You have changed your medication, haven't you? I would hke to know how you are finding it—sailing forth into the unknown waters of your own mind. So much promise there, yes, Paulie? And so many perils."
"I've made a habit of not discussing my—"
"Then break your habits! What are you afraid of?"
He was relieved when Lia came into the kitchen, dressed in clean blue jeans, her hair brushed and tied back. She gestured with her thumb: toward the door.
"I've got to go now. It'll have to wait until you come out, Vivien."
"I'll look forward to it, then," she said. Her voice was full of insinuation, as if they'd agreed to a lot more than Paul intended.
