by A. D. Miller
“Why?”
“He didn’t really seem like the type of guy who could hold onto her. Not for very long, at least.”
“What kind of guy was he?”
“Oh, he was all right. Kind of a young-executive type. Not real interesting to talk to.”
“Do you know where they are now?”
Chris gestured in a vague direction. “Whatever town he was from—I can’t remember the name. He came from a lot of money, which of course is why she married him.”
“She told you that?”
“She didn’t need to tell me. A woman who looked like her—she wouldn’t be with a guy like that unless he had money.”
“Maybe they were in love.”
Chris smiled. “You don’t strike me as the naïve type.”
“I cultivate a little naivety. For my health.”
“Is it working?”
“Not at the moment. What about the fiancé? Do you remember his name?”
Drawing on the joint, he held the smoke for a moment, then let it escape through his nostrils. “Tyler, I think it was.”
“That was his first name or his last name?”
“His first. I don’t remember the last. I don’t know if he ever told me the last. It was an unusual arrangement, their living here.”
“How so?”
It had been a sublet, Chris said. “The guy who had the lease was a student at Pacifica. He left to do a semester abroad and Bridget came in to use it while he was gone, which was only a few months. After a while the fiancé starting living with her.”
“Bridget was a student too?”
“She said she had some kind of business, but I never saw her do much work. Mostly she sat out by the pool. Used to wear a little green-and-white bikini that drove the guys nuts.”
“She was attractive?”
He nodded. “A real California type. Blonde and curvy. Tall. I figured she was an actress, but she claimed she was a social worker or something.”
“Claimed?”
“Well, someone tells you something, you never know how much to believe. You say you’re not a cop, but you ask questions like one. You’re sure you don’t want to smoke?”
“I’m sure.”
“What about a drink? I can fix you something.”
“No thanks.”
Chris smiled, but there was no happiness in it. “All business?”
“Today at least.”
“It’s all right. Thing is, when I took this job, I never figured how lonely it would be, just staying home all day. When you go to an office, you at least get to talk to people.”
“Unless it’s a one-person office.”
“Is that what you have? Just yourself?”
“Just myself.”
“So you know what it’s like to be lonely.”
Nyman asked him for the third time if he knew where Bridget had gone after she’d moved out.
He let more smoke dribble from his nostrils. “Somewhere with her fiancé, like I said. I think maybe they bought a house. He was from a town up north.”
“In L.A.?”
“No, farther than that. Up toward Ventura.”
“Vista Hills, maybe?”
“Could’ve been. Who knows?”
“And you can’t remember his last name?”
“No.” And then, as a thought occurred to him, he said: “But Victor might. The handyman. He’s been here as long as I have.”
He pushed himself out of the chair and moved toward the door. Nyman followed him back across the courtyard and out to the front of the building, where a pot-bellied man was removing the cardboard frame from the window-screen.
Chris pointed a thumb at Nyman. “This guy’s looking for Bridget Becker. You remember her?”
Victor nodded. “Blonde, right?”
“She used to sit by the pool,” Chris said, brushing ash from his shirt. “Remember?”
“I remember.”
“In a green-and-white bathing suit.”
“I don’t remember the bathing suit.”
“What about her fiancé’s last name? This guy’s trying to find them both.”
“Collins,” Victor said, tossing the frame aside and climbing the first two steps of the ladder. “Last name was Collins. He used to give me a few bucks for taking care their plants.”
Chris looked at Nyman with a smile. “There you go. Tyler Collins.”
Nyman took out his notebook and turned rapidly to the page on which he’d made his first note of the case. He looked up at Victor and said:
“Was the last name Collins, or Collinson?”
Victor paused in his climb; he tipped his head to one side and frowned. “Could’ve been Collinson, I guess. Sounds right.”
Nyman put away the notebook and took the keys from his pocket.
Chris watched him. In full sunshine, the branching veins along his cheekbones stood out beneath the pallor of his skin.
“Got what you wanted?”
“Yes. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure you don’t want to stay for that drink?”
“I don’t really have the time.”
Chris looked up at the man on the ladder. “What about you, Vic? You want to have a drink with me?”
“Sorry, man. Too much work to do.”
Still smiling, Chris nodded. “Oh well. Maybe next time.”
He walked back into the building alone.
Chapter 44
Nyman drove back into Vista Hills the same way he’d driven into it five days earlier, passing shopping malls and office parks. The roses had been torn up and replanted in the median where Alana’s body had been found. Apart from the fresh earth beneath them, there was no sign of what had happened.
He parked beside the Spanish Colonial house. Walking to the gate and pressing the intercom button, he saw that the flowers of the jacaranda had started to fall from the limbs, melting into a dark ooze on the concrete.
After a burst of static, a woman’s voice said: “Yes?”
Nyman told her his name and occupation. “I came here a few days ago to ask you about Alana Bell. You told me you didn’t know her.”
The static crackled in the quiet air. Finally the woman said: “Sorry—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, Bridget. It’s time you and I had a talk.”
The static crackled on, then stopped. Nyman was reaching again for the button when a motor whirred and the gate rolled aside.
He walked up the driveway to a colonnaded porch on which a blonde woman in her thirties was waiting. She wore white shorts and a baggy t-shirt streaked with fresh paint. Without offering Nyman her hand, she asked him how he’d known that she was Bridget Collinson.
“I didn’t know. Mostly it was a guess.”
“You’re a good guesser.”
“It’s an advantage in my line of work.”
“You’re really a detective?”
He showed her the copy of his license. Reading it, her tanned face became paler. “Well, I guess you’d better come in.”
They walked together into the entry hall. The woman’s feet, in leather espadrilles, slapped on terra cotta tiles as she led him to a room that had been made to serve as a painter’s studio. In front of the window stood a canvas and easel and brushes.
She’d been painting a view of the foothills. The layers of brown and gold paint were thick and impressionistic; a sliver of robin’s-egg sky stretched across the top of the canvas. Nyman said that he liked her work.
She shrugged. “On the good days it’s not too bad, I guess.”
“Today is a good day?”
“It was until you came.”
Nyman nodded. “I tend to have that effect.”
She stood for a moment in front of the painting, looking at it with eyes narrowed in self-criticism. Then, shaking her head and turning away, she said:
“So you’re here about the dead woman.”
“And the dead man.”
“Man?”
One was black and one was white, Bridget said, “and they’re both mine, not my husband’s. He moved out a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You shouldn’t be. He made it very clear that it was better for both of us, in the long run. But you didn’t come here to talk about that.”
“No, I didn’t,” Nyman said. “I’m more interested in Meridian Resources. Are you still the director?”
She picked up a brush and ran her fingers through the bristles. “That was never a very accurate job title,” she said. “The only employee I ever had was myself, and I wasn’t what you’d call diligent.”
“Your former landlord says you spent most of your time by the pool.”
She looked up in surprise. “You mean the place on Gossett? I guess I probably did spend a lot of time at the pool. It’s amazing how you forget things.”
Nyman said that he’d also visited her old shop on Whitlock Terrace. “No one remembered you there.”
“No, they wouldn’t have. I was a kid in those days. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
“You’d been a student at Pacifica?”
She nodded. “A master’s student. Studying with Michael Freed, as I’m sure you know.”
“Was Meridian his idea?”
“Michael’s? Oh no. It wasn’t even an idea, really: just a way to spend some money my parents had given me. I had a lot of big plans, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I printed up some letterhead and came up with a website and that was about it. When Tyler came along I gave it up and assumed my natural role.”
“Which is what?”
She gestured to the walls of the house. “Showpiece wife. Pretty and vacuous. Unfortunately I screwed that up too.”
“You don’t seem vacuous to me.”
“There are different kinds of vacuity. In any case, Meridian was a total failure.”
“Grace Salas,” Nyman said, “seems to think it was worth a twenty-thousand-dollar donation.”
From somewhere nearby came the sounds of conversation and the whirring of a kitchen appliance. Bridget walked to the window and looked out at the dry gold hills.
“You know about everything, then.”
“Not everything,” Nyman said. “Ethan Kovac gave you money, too, but I don’t know how much. I’m assuming it was also twenty thousand.”
“Does it really matter?”
“I’m just trying to get it all straight. The scam itself seems simple enough, but the details are complicated.”
“And what’s the scam, as you see it?
A quid pro quo, Nyman said. “Grace Salas convinced the city council to give a favorable development deal to Koda and Savannah Group, both of which had contributed heavily to her campaign. When people started to object, she and the developers went to Freed to help them hide the fact that it was a bad deal for the taxpayers.”
“You make it sound so sordid.”
“Wasn’t it?”
She turned to face him. “You’ll be going to the police with all this?”
“I’ve already gone to them with some of it. I’ll take the rest to them when I have it.”
“And what will you tell them about me?”
“Everything I know,” Nyman said. “So you might as well start with the truth.”
She nodded and leaned back against the windowsill. Calmly, she said: “The development would’ve gone ahead either way, no matter what Michael did. Even if his report had said it was a terrible deal, Salas would’ve gotten someone else to say it was wonderful. It would’ve been a minor bump in the road.”
“Then why the donations to Meridian?”
She shrugged. “Because of Alana Bell, basically. She’d gotten into Michael’s head. Convinced him that the homeless people in the Merchant District were some kind of moral crusade. She got him to write a scathing analysis, which he turned around and submitted to Salas.”
Nyman said that Salas couldn’t have liked that.
“That’s putting it mildly. She told him that any deal this big was going to involve some back-scratching, and there was no reason to make the perfect the enemy of the good. She said he owed it to the city to rewrite the report.”
“Which he did.”
“Yes. He turned in the second version just before he left for Vegas.”
“Where he knew Savannah Group owned the Kasbah casino.”
“Maybe—I don’t know the details. All I know is he went to Vegas, won some money, and told Alana he’d turned in a revised report. Which is when she went through the roof. She thought the money he’d won in the casino was a bribe, and she said she was going to expose him.”
“Was it a bribe?”
“Honestly, I don’t think even Michael knew what it was. Salas had told him that Savannah and Koda would be grateful for the revised report, but I don’t think she promised him anything explicit. Michael would’ve refused an outright bribe.”
“And the donations to your company?”
She lifted her paint-stained hands. “Same thing. Michael told Salas that one of his students had a charity worth supporting, but I don’t think he ever asked for money directly. When I got the check from Koda, I didn’t know what the hell it was. I’d never even heard of Koda. And pretty soon there was another check from C.D. 16.”
“What’d you do with the money?”
After a pause, Bridget said: “I don’t see any reason why I should answer that.”
“Obviously you gave the money to Freed.”
“Why obviously?”
He repeated her gesture to the walls of the house. “Forty thousand dollars wouldn’t mean much to someone like you, Mrs. Collinson. To someone like Freed, it would make a difference.”
“You really think I’d be that generous?”
“Yes. Particularly if you were in love with him.”
“With Michael? That’s absurd. He’s a married man.”
“With a history of seducing his students.”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. He’s been a mentor to me and a friend. That’s all.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
She flushed. “It’s been months.”
“Then how do you know so much about his business?”
“We talk on the phone. Like all friends do.”
“Soon,” Nyman said, “there are going to be cops here asking you these same questions. You’re going to have to find a better way to answer them.”
The flush extended to her hairline. “Infidelity isn’t a crime, you know. I don’t have to answer questions about my friendship with Michael. To you or anyone else.”
“Murder is a crime, Mrs. Collinson.”
“Thank you—I’m aware of that. And I’m not a murderer.”
“What about Freed?”
“Michael could never do something like that. Never. Neither of us had anything to do with that girl’s death.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then why,” Nyman said, “did she come all the way up here to die?”
Chapter 45
Her reply was cut short by a knock at the door. Leaning into the room, a man in khaki work clothes said that lunch was almost ready. “They’re setting it up for you in the conservatory.”
Bridget nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be there in a second.”
The man stepped out of the room and shut the door.
Turning to Nyman, she said: “I don’t suppose you’d let me answer your questions another time?”
“It’s your choice. But it would be easier to get it over with.”
Her gaze went to the clock on the wall. “Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Neither am I, but it’ll hurt their feelings if I don’t come.”
“Is it a special occasion?”
“If you can believe it,” she said, walking to a chair in the corner of the room, “today’s my birthday.”
Draped over the back of the chair was a change of clothes. Laying them across her arm, she said that he was welcome to join her for lunch. “But I need to change first.”
He waited for her in the hall. She came out a few minutes later dressed in dark jeans and a trimly cut blazer. Her face was still without makeup and her hands, long-fingered and as large as Nyman’s, were still flecked with paint. On the third finger of her left hand was a diamond wedding ring.
He followed her through the house to a glass-walled conservatory filled with tropical flowers. She led him in among the flowers and over to a table where the man in khaki was waiting beside two women who were, judging by their clothes, a cook and a maid.
On the table were several covered dishes and a cupcake with a candle in it. The man, seeing Nyman, slipped behind a wall of ferns and came back carrying a second chair.
Bridget said: “You shouldn’t have done all this. It’s so beautiful.”
She blew out the candle, opened the card they’d given her, opened the gift, and gave each of them a hug. When they were gone, she let out her breath in a long exhalation and sat down at the table, motioning for Nyman to do the same.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said. “You probably think I’m ridiculous.”
“It’s all right. I have to do the same thing with my servants.”
She took the candle out of the cupcake. “For the record, I never wanted servants in the first place. Tyler’s the one who hired them.”
“They seem fond of you.”
“They do, don’t they? I’m not sure why. I’m grateful to have them, though. They’re almost the only friends I have left.”
“What happened to your other friends?”
“You don’t really care, do you?”
“I’m curious.”
She cut the cupcake in half with her knife. “Well, Tyler grew up in Vista Hills, so after we got married, I sort of moved into his social set. My old friends drifted away and his friends became my friends.”
“And now you’re separated.”
“Right. Which leaves me having birthdays with the hired help and the guy who wants to put me in jail.”
Nyman said that the only person he wanted to put in jail was the person who’d killed Alana Bell and Eric Trujillo.
