A Death in California

by Barthel, Joan;

  Sunday/18th … 11:30 P.M.

  Yes, I did say Albuquerque, for the International Hot Air Balloon Races. Which really were not much, so to speak. You put out much more hot air across a hospital bed than they did across forty miles of countryside. But then, they do go, and thus far you have been no-go, therefore, one must assume you are equally exciting.…

  I am about ready to dash out to an all-night gas station and see if someone is awaiting me. At least that seems to be the game plan in the Chicagoland area—who knows about Albuquerque?

  I don’t expect too much from this town. It looks dull and not to my liking. However, the hotel is very nice and dinner was not all that bad.

  For some reason I have been having nagging thoughts about you all this day. I was really turned off over the telephone with you yesterday—perhaps it was me and net you. I wait and wait and wait to call you, and then when I get you on the line I have all these dreams of what we are going to talk about, only to discover they are never mentioned. Perhaps I am guilty of not taking the situation as seriously as you do, therefore, I am more on a lark and you are struggling to keep your head above the level of what is respectable. I could give a shit less what happens or does not happen, I suspect.

  Already I have had enough kicks to keep me going for five more years, if they snag me tonight.…

  But they did not.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “If someone wants to hurt you,” Officer Stien told Hope when she was booked at the Beverly Hills station, “this is the safest place you could be.” But she didn’t feel safe, lying on the narrow bed in her cell, listening to the night rain. She was afraid for the children; they had lost Bill, and when they woke up in the morning, they would find her gone, too. Or maybe they wouldn’t wake up; she felt sure Taylor wouldn’t kill them, but a bomb under the house … Or maybe her parents would be shot, and the children would wake up to find a living room scattered with dead bodies.

  And she was afraid for herself. She was the only prisoner on the women’s floor, and she clearly remembered Taylor’s warning that “they” are all over, even in police departments and doctors’ offices, even in prisons. So at one o’clock in the morning, when her door was suddenly unlocked and someone said, “Your attorney is here,” she was instantly tense. She had never seen the man before in her life.

  But when the tall, distinguished-looking, gray-haired man began to talk, she felt more confident. He didn’t say much, because in his experience, he’d found that jailhouse conversations were not as private as a compact, six-by-eight-foot room would lead one to believe. He told her briefly who he was; he listened briefly to what she had to say. He told her to make no more statements to the police; he told her to get some sleep and that everything would be taken care of in the morning. Thank God, somebody’s been brought in who knows what the hell’s he’s doing, Hope thought as she crawled back under the blanket.

  Ned Nelsen had a solid reputation for knowing what he was doing. He had practiced criminal law in Los Angeles for more than twenty years, starting with a murder case when he was fresh out of the University of Southern California law school and working as a protégé of the famous trial lawyer, Grant Cooper. He’d won that case and, in the two decades since, no one Ned Nelsen defended had ever been convicted of murder, not even the man he’d defended shortly before he met Hope, a man who’d killed his brother-in-law by shooting him right between the eyes with a .38 at a distance of three feet. Even though the dead man had been unarmed, and the man with the gun knew he was unarmed, Ned’s client pleaded self-defense and the jury had acquitted him.

  Not long after Hope went away with the police, Van had reached Ned Nelsen at home. The attorney listened to Van and Honey and agreed to talk with Hope. Ned Nelsen seldom declined to defend anyone, although sometimes, as he pointed out, “when I explain the fee structure, they decide to seek representation elsewhere.” His fee structure was not difficult to explain: a twenty-five thousand dollar retainer and one thousand dollars a day for the services of Nelsen and his young associate, Tom Breslin; or six hundred dollars a day for Breslin alone.

  Van didn’t know Ned Nelsen personally, but he knew his professional and social credentials. Ned lived in a gracious old house in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles, with his beautiful wife and their beautiful teen-age daughters, where he presided with urbane charm at gourmet dinners he cooked himself. He was a dedicated hunter—as mementos of a recent safari in Kenya, he carried an elephantskin briefcase, and the seven-foot tusks were mounted above the double doors of his dining room. As a chef, his specialty was venison chili. He’d once cooked a dinner of wild Canadian goose for seventy people. At the time he met Hope, he was making final preparations for an annual charity dinner at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, an invitational, black-tie affair which, as chairman, he orchestrated through nine courses and half a dozen wines. There would be champagne with pâté of pheasant and smoked wild mallard duck; consommé with sherry; Montana trout poached with bay shrimps and served with Chardonnay; grouse with wild rice and Pinot Noir; sherbet; saddle of venison; artichokes stuffed with chestnut purée, Cabernet Sauvignon; fruit, Brie, and port. In his quiet, paneled office, Ned Nelsen had a big glass jar containing a million dollars, shredded.

  Ned Nelsen was not as sanguine, though, as he’d sounded when he visited Hope. Although he didn’t think she had killed Bill Ashlock—she had no motive, he pointed out, and while prosecutors didn’t need to show motive, things usually didn’t hang together without one—he was concerned about the two days she had spent at her house with the man named Taylor, giving him backrubs, making no overt attempt to escape or to call the police or her parents or to call for any assistance at all. He had to tell Honey and Van there was evidence implicating Hope and that if Taylor didn’t turn up, she would be in enormous trouble. Most of all, Ned Nelsen wished he had been summoned earlier, before Hope had rambled on to the police for two-and-a-half hours about an intruder. “I would have had a heart-to-heart talk with her about just exactly who this stranger was,” Ned said with wry understatement.

  Even with the unusual activity surrounding the arrest of a female murder suspect in the middle of the night, the Beverly Hills police station was hushed, compared with the scene up north. All over Tulare County, it seemed, detectives and deputies were being roused from their beds by shrieking telephones.

  Sgt. Henry Babcock and Detective Ralph Tucker left Porterville shortly after midnight, heading down the freeway to Los Angeles. At the ranch house, ablaze with light, Deputy Michael Scott was making two continuous chalk lines outlining the trail from the living room, through the kitchen, to the victim’s body in the bedroom. He dusted for prints and was able to produce and lift latent fingerprints in different areas of the house, from different items. He collected a number of things and tagged them as evidence, including a balled-up piece of white adhesive tape found in a yellow trash can in the kitchen, about halfway down in the can. He saw a Band-Aid stuck inside the ball, with what appeared to be hairs.

  At 3:20 A.M., Detective Jack Flores, who had been standing by the door of the bedroom where the body lay, for more than three hours, was relieved of that duty. He left the house and walked across the orange grove to talk with Jim Webb. The Webbs were still up, and Flores asked Jim to relate, in his own words, what he knew about all this.

  Jim Webb started with Friday night when, he said, he and Teresa and the kids had come home late, around 11:30. They’d seen a car parked at the big house and some dim lights on inside, but nobody moving around.

  Early Saturday morning, Jim said, when he left for work around six o’clock, he saw another car parked at the house, a late model Lincoln, white, with either a dark blue or a black top.

  After work on Saturday, Jim went by his mother’s house on Cottage Street in Porterville to visit with his brother, Junior Edward, who was up from Ventura with his wife Betty and her sister Sharon, and Junior Edward’s oldest boy and Sharon’s girl, and his other brother Gerald from Fresno. Ge
rald and Ed told Jim they’d been up at the ranch looking at the cattle and some people there had asked the Webbs to saddle a horse for them. When he heard that, Jim drove on up to the ranch with one of his brothers and talked with a young woman he knew as Hope—he didn’t know her married name. He said she told him that a man there from the Los Angeles Times wanted to take pictures and they needed a saddle for the horse. When Jim couldn’t find the key to the tack room, he called Teresa, down at his mother’s, to ask if she knew where the key was.

  Teresa said she didn’t know, so Jim called Hope to tell her he couldn’t find the key and could it wait till the next day. She said no, that the fellow from the Times had to go back that afternoon and he wouldn’t be there the next day. Hope told Jim her mother had given her a key to the tack room, and she asked him to come over and take a look to see if it was among the keys she had. Jim said he’d gone over and knocked on the door and was introduced to two men. One fellow was introduced as a photographer from the Los Angeles Times. Jim didn’t remember his name; tall, six feet, maybe six one or six two, kind of dark brown hair, maybe sandy brown, well-dressed, wearing a dark leather coat. The other fellow was shorter, with curly dark brown hair, about twenty-five to thirty years old. His name was Bill.

  Jim said those two men, and Hope, were the only three people he saw at the ranch all weekend.

  Jim and his brother went around to look at the cattle and when they came back, about forty-five minutes later, the horse was tied up in front of the house and the people weren’t around. Jim put the horse back to pasture, then the Webbs left to go down to his mother’s house in Porterville to look at slides of Jim’s vacation, and as they were driving out, they met the Lincoln that Jim said he’d seen early that morning, coming up the drive toward them. Jim backed up and let it pass. He saw three people in the car, but he couldn’t say for sure who they were.

  When Jim and Teresa and the kids got home about nine Saturday night, they saw both cars parked by the house, the Vega and the white Lincoln, and lights on in the big house.

  When Jim left for work early Sunday morning, around 6:00, both cars were still there, and when he got home around 7:30 that evening, the Lincoln was gone. Same thing all day Monday: the Vega parked by the side of the house, one light on, no sign of anybody. Same thing Tuesday morning. Same thing Tuesday evening, when he came home from work, and by then, Jim said he was getting concerned, because it was pretty unusual not to see anybody around once in a while. He asked his wife if she’d seen anybody around. She said no. He asked the kids. They said no. He tried the buzzer between his house and the main house, but no one answered. He dialed the ranch number on the regular phone, let it ring six or seven times, but no one answered.

  He walked over to the house and knocked, but no one answered. He said he’d peered into the house, whether it was right or not he didn’t know, but anyway, he peered through the window and noticed a blanket laying on the couch, kind of a spread or something. There was some sort of a dim light on; he thought it was a bathroom light.

  He went home, got his flashlight, came back, and shone it in a couple of windows—the living room window, the corner front bedroom, and the side door into the kitchen—but he didn’t see anything.

  He said he didn’t really want to call Hope’s father because he’d heard he’d had a heart attack, but he felt that by this time he should. So he called Information and got his number and gave him a call. Hope’s mother answered. He asked if she’d heard from her daughter. He said Hope’s mother replied, “She just walked in.” Jim told her he was concerned about the car sitting in one spot all the while, and nobody around. He said Hope’s mother told him there’d been a terrible tragedy and she would call him back.

  Almost as soon as he hung up the phone, Jim said, his other phone rang. It was Mr. Nick Doughty, one of the other owners, who kind of ran the ranch, and who Jim guessed was his boss. Jim said Mr. Doughty was calling to see how things were with Jim.

  Jim told him about his conversation with Hope’s mother. Mr. Doughty told him to hang on, that he would call him back. When he called back, he said he had talked to Honey and Van and they had a problem. Jim said Mr. Doughty told him it was not the ranch’s problem and it was not Jim’s problem and he advised Jim to take the wife and kids and go someplace for the night. Jim said that sounded good to him, he was sure ready to leave, but Hope’s mother had said she would call him back. Jim told Mr. Doughty he would lock all the doors and stay inside his own house.

  Jim said at 9:30 Van called to say his daughter had told him there had been an intruder in the house and someone had been shot and it was a Mafia sort of thing, and the whole family had been threatened. Van said he was going to call the Beverly Hills police. Jim and Van talked about whether to call the Porterville police or the Porterville sheriff’s office, and finally Jim called the sheriff’s office himself.

  “That’s about all I can say up to now,” Jim Webb told Detective Flores. Later he said more.

  Hope woke early, hearing someone walking in the hall outside her cell.

  “Hello,” she called.

  A man came to the door. “Are you starting up so early?” he yelled.

  “Well, the officer last night said if I needed anything to just call out,” Hope explained.

  “What do you need?”

  “I’d like a match,” Hope said.

  The man brought a pack of matches. “Don’t throw cigarettes on the floor,” he warned.

  “I am not accustomed to throwing cigarettes on the floor,” Hope replied, in a tone her mother would have recognized. “Furthermore, you don’t know who I am or why I am here.”

  After the matches, he brought her a breakfast tray of dry corn flakes with no milk, and black coffee in a metal cup so hot she couldn’t pick it up.

  Downstairs, Sergeant Babcock and Detective Tucker, who had arrived from Tulare County around 4:00 A.M., were talking with Officers Stien and DeMond and their boss, Lieutenant Mann. The young officers had listed three subjects in the case:

  Subj. #1: MASTERS, Hope, WF, 31 years

  Subj. #2: TAYLOR, Tyler

  Subj. #3: WM, 6’0, 185, brn hair shoulder length and straight, mustache or goatee

  Stien and DeMond told the story that Subject #1 had told them about a Mafia killer who had killed the victim and was supposed to have killed her and her children. All the officers discussed why a hired killer who had been hired to kill her, her children, and the victim would have let her live after killing the victim. They also discussed, at length, the fact that Subject #1, who was a witness to the alleged crime, had left the scene and had not reported the crime for approximately two days. Stien and DeMond said Subject was vague on the male who had been driving a Lincoln Continental and had driven her back to L.A., and could say only that his name was Taylor or Tyler and that he was a reporter or photographer for the Los Angeles Times. They said her parents “cannot or will not” identify the subject driving the Lincoln. The Beverly Hills men also told the Tulare men that Masters’s attorney had been there to talk to her.

  Sergeant Babcock telephoned Van and asked if he would come down to the station to make a formal statement. Van agreed, and he arrived quickly, just before 6:00 A.M., still crisply dressed in the suit he’d worn when he arrived home from the office the evening before, so businesslike and imposing that Babcock called him “sir,” which Babcock did not always do when discussing a homicide.

  “Are you agreeable to tell us what you know about the incident, sir?”

  “I’m agreeable to telling you what I know about the incident,” Van said carefully, “but you should know that the only things I know about the actual incident involving the death of a man, I got from my daughter.”

  Babcock nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

  Van told how he had arrived home from work the evening before, to find his wife, and Hope, and a man whose name was Taylor, gathered in the living room. He described Taylor as a white man, around for
ty-five years old, about six feet tall, 185 pounds, with reddish-blond hair.

  “Is he a friend of your daughter?” Babcock asked.

  “No, he is not a friend of my daughter,” Van replied. “In fact, I do not believe my daughter had ever met the man until he arrived at the ranch after the incident.”

  “Do you know what this man does for a living?”

  “I can give you that only by what he said. It’s my understanding that he writes articles, I suppose for either newspapers or magazines.”

  “Do you know why he arrived at the ranch if your daughter didn’t know him?”

  Van said the writer had gone up to the ranch to do a story about Bill.

  Babcock frowned slightly. “This gentleman, Bill—I presume he’s the deceased—was he a noteworthy person, famous, did he do something that would be newsworthy?”

  “No, Bill himself was not noteworthy, as I recollect, but he was engaged in a line of business that involved motion pictures or theatrical business.”

  “That would be easy to find out,” Babcock said. “All right, sir, going back now to what you were told about this incident by your daughter?”

  Van drew a deep breath. “Well, the story that my daughter told, since she was in a considerable state of agitation still, was an extraordinarily lengthy story, but let me just give you the extreme highlights, and then you can ask me to fill in if you want.

  “As I understand it, my daughter and Bill got to the ranch on Friday. She said nothing to me of what they did on Saturday during the day, but she did say that she lay down in one of the bedrooms to take a nap on Saturday afternoon. And she requested him to wake her up in time to play a card game.”

  Babcock interrupted. “This was told to you by your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Personally?”

  “Yes.”

  Babcock nodded. “All right. Go ahead, sir.”

  “To play a card game, or something of that nature,” Van continued. “She did go to sleep, but she was awakened, not by Bill, but by the—this individual—the intruder—let me call him the intruder—who was pawing at her and grabbing at her. And she was able to squirm out of his grasp, and she called for Bill. She ran into the living room, which adjoins the bedroom. This is a very small house we’re talking about. She ran into the living room and saw Bill lying on the couch, ran over to him, and, calling his name, took him by the shoulders and shook him. And she said she noticed his head wobbling as she shook him, and while she was shaking him, the intruder was either coming up behind her, or started to, and he said to her, ‘No, he can’t help you. He’s dead.’