He was turning to leave when he noticed that two slats of the blind on the gatehouse window had been parted and a pair of eyes was staring at him. They were small and dark and liquid, like drops of strong coffee.
“Hello,” Aragon said. “Are you in charge here?”
“Nobody in charge. Nobody home. All gone, gone away.” The man’s accent sounded Mexican but there were Oriental inflections in his voice. “Maybe you are in charge?”
“No. I just want to see Mrs. Shaw.”
“Me too. I need my truck.”
“Mrs. Shaw took your truck?”
“You bet not. I have the keys. How could the Missus take my truck?”
“All right, let’s start over. And it might make it easier if we didn’t have to talk through the window. Why don’t you come out?”
“Sure.” The door of the gatehouse opened and a tiny man stepped out, moving briskly in spite of his age. He was so shriveled and hairless that he looked as though he’d fallen into a tanning vat and emerged a leather doll. “See, I can go in and out, out and in, easy for me. But for my truck to go in and out, out and in, I need to use the gate, and it won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It is an electric gate and there is no electric.”
“Why is there no electric?”
“Missus forgot to pay, I guess. A man came and shut it off. I said you can’t do that, Missus is important rich lady. He said, the hell I can’t. And he did.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Very bad, yes. He wouldn’t wait for me to get my truck onto the driveway, so it is still up there behind the garage with all my tools in it. I can’t earn a living without my truck and tools. Here, see who I am.” The old man showed Aragon his business card, so dirty
and dilapidated that the printing was scarcely legible: Mitsu Hippollomia, Tree Care, Clean Up, Hauling, Reasonable Rates. “I can’t leave without my truck, so I stay here in the
gatehouse waiting for the electric and keeping my eye out for truck thieves.”
“How long have you been living in the gatehouse?”
Hippollomia, having no clock or calendar, didn’t know for sure. Nor did he care much. He was enjoying the closest thing to a holiday he’d ever had, with plenty of rest and food.
He went to bed when it was dark and got up when it was light. He ate the avocados and persimmons that were ripening on the trees, and tomatoes reddening on the vines. From the storage room beside the main kitchen he had canned goods and preserves off the shelves, and melted ice cream out of the freezer. Besides such physical luxuries, he had the satisfaction of knowing he was doing an important job, protecting his livelihood.
Aragon said, “Do you mind if I come in and take a look around the property?”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“I work for Mrs. Shaw’s attorney. There are some papers for her to sign and he hasn’t been able to get in touch with her.”
“She’s not here.”
“Have you been inside the house?”
“Not so much.”
“How much is that?”
“Only in the storage room off the kitchen. I take a little food now and then.”
“How do you get in?”
“There are a whole bunch of keys on nails in the garage,” the old man said. “But I didn’t need any of them. Missus isn’t too careful about locking the house because the electric gate keeps strangers out.”
“You found the back door open, Mr. Hippollomia?”
“Not open, unlocked.”
“And it’s unlocked now?”
“Yes.”
“Would you have any objection to my going in?”
“It’s not my house. I have no say-so.”
“You’re the only one on the premises,” Aragon said. “That more or less puts you in charge.”
The old man’s shoulders twitched inside his oversized work shirt. “You go when you want, you do whatever, I’m out of it. I wait here.”
“I’d like to make sure Mrs. Shaw left the house of her own free will. By the way, do you work for her on a regular basis?”
“Yes.”
“Every day?”
“No. Twice a week I clip hedges and mow the lawn and haul away clippings.”
“Are there live-in servants?”
“No more. The fat lady who cooks, the college girl who vacuums and cleans, the handyman living in the room over the garage, I don’t see them for a long time. What do you think?”
“I think,” Aragon said, “Missus forgot to pay.”
The size and beauty of the place made its neglect more apparent. There was a sixty-foot white-tiled pool with a Jacuzzi at one end, but the water had turned green with algae and the weir was clogged with leaves and a dead gopher. Across a corner of the patio a dripping faucet had left a trail of rust like last year’s blood. A marble birdbath was filled with the needles and sheathed pods of cypress. Pollen from the jellicoe trees had sifted the flour over the glass-topped tables and latticed chairs.
Inside, the house was dusty but very neat. Two living rooms, a library and a formal dining room all had fireplaces scrubbed as clean as the ovens in the kitchen. Upstairs there was a sitting room and half a dozen bedrooms, the largest of which was obviously Miranda Shaw’s. It was here that Aragon found the only disorder in the house. The covers of the canopy bed had been pulled up over the pillows but the blue velvet spread was still draped across a matching chaise. Clothes were bulging out of one of the sliding doors of the closet. Beside the picture window a plant that looked like a refined cousin of marijuana was dying from lack of water. Some of its leaves had turned black and were curled up like charred Christmas ribbons.
In the adjoining bathroom used towels had been thrown into the pink porcelain tub. The chrome toothbrush holder was empty. So was the monogrammed silver tray made to hold a conventional hairbrush-comb-hand-mirror set.
Hippollomia was waiting at the kitchen door where Aragon had left him.
“Missus has taken a trip?”
“It looks that way.”
“I hope she comes back soon and pays the electric. I want to go home. All the ice cream is gone.”
“When I get back to my office I’ll call the company and see if I can arrange to have your truck released.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel that an injustice was done, probably due to a misunderstanding between you and the man who—”
“Misunderstanding,” Hippollomia said. “I laugh. Ha ha.”
It was noon when Aragon returned to the office. Smedler was busy on the phone, so Aragon made his report to Smedler’s secretary, Charity Nelson.
She didn’t like it. “What do you mean Mrs. Shaw went away?”
“Like in sayonara, auf Wiedersehen, adios.”
“Where did you get your information?”
“Various sources. First, a kid told me.”
“A what?”
“A child,” Aragon said. “And an old man, a Filipino, I think.”
Charity leaned back in her swivel chair, so that her orange-colored wig slid forward on her head and she had to peer out at Aragon through a fringe of bangs that looked like shredded pumpkin. “Smedler’s not going to like this, one of his attorneys prying information out of children and old men.”
“I didn’t pry and it wasn’t an ordinary child. It wasn’t an ordinary old man either. He’s waiting to get his truck out of Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. I promised to help him, so if you don’t mind I’d like to use your phone.”
“I mind.”
“Don’t you want to help an old man?”
“How old?”
“About seventy or seventy-five.”
“Sorry, I don’t help anyone under eighty,” Charity said pleasantly. “It’s one of my rules.”
Smedler came out of his office straightening his tie and smoothing his hair like a man who’d just been in a scuffle. He stared at Aragon the way he usually did, as though he wasn’t quite sure of his identity. “Did you arrange for Mrs. Shaw to come in and sign the papers?”
“No, sir. I couldn’t find her.”
“Why not?”
“She wasn’t where I looked.”
“That answer will be stricken from the record as frivolous and non-responsive. Better try again.”
Aragon tried again. “She left town.”
“Go after her.”
“I’m not even sure which direction she went, let alone—”
“Mrs. Shaw is not one of these modern flyaway women you find hanging around bars in San Francisco or blackjack tables in Las Vegas. If she left town she’s probably visiting some elderly relative in Pasadena. Miss Nelson, check and see if Mrs. Shaw has an elderly relative in Pasadena or thereabouts.”
“She ran off with a lifeguard,” Aragon said.
“This seems to be your day for making funnies . . . It is a funny, of course?
“No, sir. His name’s Grady and he’s broke. That’s about all I can tell you. I’m not even sure whether Grady’s a first or last name.”
“Find out and go after him.”
“The staff at the Penguin Club aren’t eager to give out information, especially the girl in the front office.”
“So make yourself charming.”
“That wasn’t part of my contract with you, Mr. Smedler.”
“It is now,” Smedler said and went back into his office.
The conversation, which seemed to depress Smedler, had the opposite effect on his secretary. Her normally flat eyes looked round as marbles.
“A lifeguard yet,” Charity said. “I wonder if she had to fake a drowning in order to make contact.”
“Probably not. Lifeguards are usually quite accessible.”
“Were you ever a lifeguard, Aragon?”
“No.”
“Too bad. I bet you’d look cute in one of those teeny-weeny Mark Spitz numbers.”
“Irresistible.”
“What a shame you’re married. I could arrange marvelous little office romances. I could anyway, of course, since your wife lives in San Francisco and you live here. That’s a terribly funny arrangement, by the way.”
“I’m glad it amuses you.”
“Don’t you get, well, you know?”
“I get you know,” Aragon said. “But San Francisco is where my wife was offered a residency in pediatrics and she took it like a nice sensible girl. Like a nice sensible guy I approved.”
Charity frowned. “I hate all that much sense. Takes the fun out of life . . . This Grady, I suppose he’s years younger that Miranda Shaw. She’s over fifty and there aren’t many fifty-year-old lifeguards around. By that time they’re gone on to better things.”
“Or worse.”
“Whatever. Actually, Mrs. Shaw looks marvelous for her age. In a nice dark restaurant she could pass for thirty-five. It can be done if you’ve got the money, the time, the motivation, the right doctor and lots of luck.”
“That’s a heap of ifs.”
“I know. I’ve only got one of them, motivation. But I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting around dark restaurants anyway.” Charity glanced toward Smedler’s door as if to confirm that it was closed. “I heard a rumor about Miranda Shaw which I would like to repeat, I really would.”
“Force yourself.”
“Okay. I heard she gets injections made from the glands of unborn goats.”
“Where does she get these injections?”
“In the butt, probably.”
“No, no. I meant, does she go to a local doctor, a hospital, a clinic?”
“The rumor didn’t cover details, but it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you could have done locally. Santa Felicia is a conservative city. Unborn goats get born, not injected.”
“Where did you hear this about Mrs. Shaw?”
“Smedler. His wife picked it up at the country club. The injections are supposed to start working right away. You know, I wouldn’t mind having a face lift if it didn’t hurt too much and the results were guaranteed. But goat glands, that’s positively obscene. Though if I had to keep up with a young lifeguard, maybe I wouldn’t think so.” Charity was sixty. In a nice dark restaurant she could pass for fifty-nine. “What’s your opinion?”
“My opinion,” Aragon said, “is that you are a fund of information and I’d like to take you to lunch.”
Her eyebrows climbed up and hid briefly under her bangs. “Yeah? When?”
“Now.”
“Have you flipped? You can’t afford it on your salary.”
“We can go to some simple little place. Do you like chili burgers?”
“No.”
“Tacos? Burritos? Enchiladas?”
“No, no and no. I’m not a fun date at lunch anyway,” Charity added. “I have an ulcer.”
From his shoebox-sized office in the basement Aragon called the electric company and arranged to have Hippollomia’s truck released. Then he phoned the Penguin Club and was told Ellen Brewster had gone into town on an errand and was expected back about two o’clock. He didn’t leave a name, number or message; anticipating another visit from him probably wouldn’t improve Miss Brewster’s attitude.
He picked up a burger and fries at a fast food and ate them on his way to the public library.
The young woman on duty at the reference desk looked surprised when he asked for material on current methods of rejuvenation. “Starting early, aren’t you?”
“A stitch in time.”
“If we don’t have the information you need, you might try the medical library at Castle Hospital.”
“I just want a general idea of what’s being done in the field.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
She disappeared in the stacks and emerged a few minutes later carrying a magazine. “You’re in luck. The subject was researched a couple of months ago by one of the women’s magazines. It’s sketchy but it looks like the straight dope.”
“Thanks.”
“I get paid.”
“Not enough.”
“Now how did you know that?”
“A wild guess,” Aragon said, wondering if he would ever meet anyone who admitted being paid enough.
During the next half-hour he learned some of the hard facts and fiction about growing old and how to prevent it.
At the Institute of Geriatrics in Bucharest a drug called KH-3 was administered to cure heart disease, arthritis, impotence, wrinkles and grey hair.
In Switzerland injections of live lamb embryo glands were available to revitalize the body and prevent disease by slowing down the aging process.
A villa outside Rome offered tours of the countryside alternating with periods of deep sleep induced by a narcotic banned in the United States.
A Viennese clinic guaranteed loss of ugly cellulite, and not so ugly money, by means of hypnotherapy and massive doses of vitamins.
In the Bahamas the Center for Study and Application of Revitalization Therapies promised to help the mature individual counteract the pressures of contemporary life, and overcome sleeplessness, fatigue, loss of vigor, frigidity, impotence, poor muscle and skin tone, problems of weight, anxiety and premature aging. Many different techniques were used, including lamb-cell therapy, but here the cells were freeze-dried.
At an experimental lab in New York volunteer patients underwent plasmapheresis, a process in which a quantity of their blood was removed, the plasma taken out and the blood put back. The fresh new plasma which the body then created was the stuff of youth and supposed to make the patients look better, feel stronger and
heal faster.
Nowhere in the article was there any mention of goats.
Aragon called Charity Nelson from the pay phone beside the checkout desk.
She wasn’t thrilled. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Listen, that rumor you heard about Mrs. Shaw, are you sure it was goats?”
“It was goats. What difference does it make? Where are you, anyway?”
“The library.”
“Wise up. You’re not going to find Mrs. Shaw at any library. She’s not the type.”
“I’m working on a hunch.”
“Well, don’t tell Smedler. He lost two grand playing one last week. Hunches won’t be popular around here until he figures out a way to deduct it from his income tax.”
“Will he?”
“Bet on it, junior.”
He reached the parking lot of the Penguin Club as Ellen Brewster was getting out of her car. It was a fairly new Volkswagen but it already had a couple of body dents that were beginning to rust in the sea air.
She didn’t notice, or at least acknowledge, his presence until he spoke.
“I see you got your car started.”
“Yes. The garage man came out and charged the battery.”
“Good.”
“Yes.”
“It could have been something more serious.”
“I suppose.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead with an impatient gesture. She had nice features. He wondered why they didn’t add up to make her a pretty woman. “Are you coming or going, Mr. Aragon?”
“A question I often ask myself.”
“Try answering.”
“I’m arriving. Is that all right with you, Miss Brewster?”
“It depends on what you want. If it’s the same thing you wanted this morning, I really can’t help you now any more than I could then. Really I can’t.”
“That’s one too many reallys.”
The Murder of Miranda Page 7
