A Death in California

by Barthel, Joan;

“How many telephone calls did she receive on Tuesday?”

  “A man called about ten times, but I don’t know who he was.”

  “Does the name Mr. Webb mean anything?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Does the name Troy mean anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever hear Mrs. Masters call Bill’s friend by his name?”

  “Yes, but I don’t remember his name.”

  “Does the name Lionel sound like it?”

  “No. I don’t remember.”

  “How about the name Tyler, or Taylor?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Detective Tucker asked Martha, then, whether Hope had told her she’d been raped.

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Martha answered. “The only thing I saw was that she was ill or weak, and her eyes were sad and she seemed upset and without any strength. She wanted to be resting and lying down.”

  “Did Mrs. Masters act as if she was afraid for her life?”

  “She was nervous. I don’t know why. She was looking for her pills for her nerves.”

  “Does Mrs. Masters smoke a lot? Take pills? Drink liquor? Or smoke marijuana?”

  “She drank a lot with Bill. But when she came back from outings—going out with Bill—her eyes looked like she could have been smoking marijuana. She took medication and pills, but I don’t know which kind.”

  “Was there anything that Bill’s friend brought to the house?”

  “He brought several suitcases. Many. There were three black ones, and they were still in the closet. I saw them there yesterday. I think they are the same ones. The rest he took with him.”

  Martha’s sister had little to say, except that she’d stayed overnight with her sister at Hope’s house, sharing the small bedroom off the kitchen. When she left the next morning, a little after 7:00 A.M., she saw two cars in the driveway, a yellow car and a white car.

  Taylor called Mary Bowyer once more, at ten minutes to five.

  “Did you get through to Van?”

  “No,” Mary said. “I called, but was told about the same thing you were told.”

  “They are probably on their way back now,” Taylor said. “Will they go to Van’s?”

  “I think so,” Mary told him. “Why don’t you call there?”

  “No, I will call Ned Nelsen,” Taylor said. “That will probably help.”

  “You mentioned an affidavit,” Mary reminded him. “What are you going to do with it? It won’t help anyone as long as only you have it. Why don’t you read it to me? Or send me a copy?”

  “Yes, I have a four-page affidavit,” Taylor said. “Perhaps I’ll get it to Nelsen.”

  “Well, get it to someone so it can do some good,” Mary said sharply. “It’s doing no good in your hands. Please call the family at home tonight. They need your help so badly.”

  “Stop worrying,” Taylor said. “Everything will work out all right. I am sure Hope is with her family now and will be okay.”

  Mary Bowyer was angered at his cheery tone. “Our talking has accomplished nothing,” she said. “Call them at home tonight.”

  “Stop worrying, stop worrying,” Taylor said. “I’ve made about twenty phone calls today on this and I’ll be making more before it’s over. But I’ll do it my way.”

  At Coco’s Coffee Shop in Long Beach, Fran Ashlock said Bill had never made trouble for anyone and was not a violent person. Fran described Bill as such a gentle person that sometimes she would lose her temper because he would never lose his temper. Fran said that although she and Bill had been separated for some time, she saw him nearly every week, and she was aware of his female friends, including Hope Masters. She said that Bill had discussed that relationship with her and had indicated he might not be able to handle “the fast living situation.”

  At Junior’s Coffee Shop in Altadena, Sandi said Bill was a mild-mannered person, a man who avoided distasteful situations, and she could think of no one at all who would possibly harm him for any personal reason. Sandi was upset as she talked, but the detectives felt she was trying to cooperate. She said that just before Christmas, two months earlier, Bill had told her he’d moved in with Hope Masters, but Sandi told the detectives that nobody was jealous of anybody else, and she and Bill had continued to see each other from time to time.

  Sandi told the detectives she didn’t know any of Hope Masters’s friends, only that Bill had talked about some of the expensive parties he and Mrs. Masters attended, and about the wealth and social position of Hope’s family. Sandi said Bill had described Hope as a demanding type of person who would become highly outraged if any given situation was not up to her expectations.

  As Parker and Brown probed into Bill’s background, they learned he’d been married before he married Fran. When he was 24, starting out in the air force, he’d married a girl he met while stationed in Arizona. They’d been married four and a half years, and had one daughter.

  Hope hadn’t known that.

  Taylor called that weekend. Gene Tinch had attached a recording device to the phone and, with the recorder and people listening in on the four extensions, and people giving instructions and advice in the background, it was sometimes difficult to hear Taylor clearly. But Gene was excited; this was a chance to pick up clues about this elusive, mysterious man.

  Taylor asked for Hope, but she wasn’t home. Honey told him Hope had been taken away for questioning.

  “Who took her?” Taylor asked, sounding concerned. “Where can I reach her?”

  “Her lawyer and another man,” Honey said.

  “Then she knew him, so that’s all right,” Taylor said, sounding relieved.

  “Oh, Taylor,” Honey said, “she has been charged with first-degree murder. They weren’t even going to let her out on bail.”

  “I know that,” Taylor said.

  When he called back, Hope was home. “How are you?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer he said, “I know you’re very bad. I will stick around and see you out of this whole mess.”

  “Oh, please do,” Hope moaned. She was desperately grateful to hear his voice. “There are three private people who will meet you anywhere.” She gave him Gene’s home phone number.

  Taylor talked about the contract. “It was bought through Chicago,” he said.

  “Oh, God, I can’t believe who would do that to me,” Hope said, feeling dazed. She paused. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Why are you worried about me?” Taylor asked.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said. “You know that.”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” he said briskly. “I must enjoy what I’m doing. You take for so many years, and all of a sudden it’s your turn to give.”

  Hope did not know what to say. “Can you call me later?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Taylor said brightly. “Take care of yourself. Good-bye.”

  Taylor called Gene Tinch very soon thereafter. “Hope asked me to call you,” he said. “What has she told you so far?” Gene gave him a résumé of Hope’s story about the Mafia contract and the intruder, the man with the goatee. “That is substantially correct,” Taylor said. “However, there are a lot of loose ends.”

  “Can you tie them down for me?” Gene asked.

  “The original contract was on Hope and her two older children,” Taylor explained. “The original contractor was sent out from Cleveland, but he spent the money and did not do his job. So he was eliminated in a grubby motel, Room 7, on Sunset Boulevard, about two weeks ago. He was killed with the same gun that was used at the ranch, and the slugs should match.”

  A murder in a motel, thought Tinch. That’s something we can check. “Can you tell me about what took place at the ranch?” he asked.

  Taylor rambled on for a while, saying he’d moved Bill’s body and had freed Hope, then brought her back to Los Angeles. “My people have found out that the tape was bought in a small drugstore across from Sears in Porterville,” he told Gen
e. He paused. “I was in Porterville too, on the day of the arraignment, but I talked to two of the detectives there, and I know what’s going on.”

  “I’d like to get together with you and discuss this,” Gene said. “If you have talked to detectives and you know what’s happening, you know you are important to Hope’s defense.”

  “We will probably never meet in person,” Taylor replied. “However, I will have a cassette tape delivered to you with my statement.” He ended with a reassurance. “Please call Hope and assure her I will stay around and see her through this. I know her father has had to put up fifty thousand dollars bail, and if she needs money, my people will see that she gets it. Please assure her I will keep in touch.”

  Gene immediately called a man he knew at LAPD and, pretty soon, he got a call back. A homicide had been reported on Friday, February 23, at the Hollywood Hills Motel on West Sunset Boulevard. The victim had been identified as Richard Orin Crane, an unemployed engineer from the state of Washington, who had checked into Room 8 at the motel under his true name at 1:10 P.M. the day before. He had arrived alone, driving an eight-year-old Rambler station wagon. Richard Crane was a big man—six feet, two hundred pounds, thirty-two years old. When he did not check out on Friday, the manager used a passkey and found Mr. Crane slumped over the bed, with a gunshot wound in his head.

  The men at LAPD had not been particularly stirred by the case, and neither had the newspapers. The murder had not been written up anywhere, and the LAPD investigators had filed it under “Miscellaneous Crime Report.” But Gene Tinch was stirred. It was now clear that Taylor, whoever he was, was a formidable factor in this case. To say the least.

  Taylor was right: Hope was “very bad.” She ached all over, with heavy vaginal bleeding and cramps. Honey had tried to make her eat, but Hope said she would throw up if she did. Honey had called her gynecologist, explaining the situation at the house and the danger. So when Dr. Frances Holmes came to examine Hope, she came in golf clothes, carrying her medical gear in a brown paper grocery bag.

  Dr. Holmes put Hope on Sustagen, a liquid food, a teaspoonful at a time. “Don’t try to take a whole glassful, and don’t worry,” Dr. Holmes said. “You’re going to be all right.” Hope felt better, then; she trusted Dr. Holmes, whom she’d known half her life, and she felt she cared. Hope remembered how Dr. Holmes had insisted she stop nursing, when she had begun losing weight a lot. “I know your babies tend to have colic, but you have to stop,” Dr. Holmes had said, and Hope had followed her orders.

  When Dr. Holmes had gone and the house was dark, Hope lay wide awake in her mother’s guest room. The bed was king-size, and all three children slept with her, partly because in this multimillion-dollar, two-bedroom house, there was no place else for them to sleep, and partly because since she’d arrived home, the children wouldn’t let her out of their sight. They kept clutching at her, climbing over her, grasping at her, especially K.C. and Hope Elizabeth, with what seemed something like terror, desperation. Keith had the far side of the bed, with K.C. between him and Hope; her daughter was on the other side. Every night Hope Elizabeth fell asleep with her hand clenching her mother’s so tightly that Hope could compare it only to a person dangling over the side of a cliff, clinging to a rope.

  Hope was scared about so many things she could hardly sort them out in her head: a bomb under the house, someone waiting, watching, somewhere, with a telescopic rifle. She kept hearing footsteps up and down, up and down, pacing, beyond the wide window—maybe Gene Tinch, maybe a policeman, maybe not.

  Several nights after she came home she couldn’t stand it any longer. She crept out of bed, disentangling herself from the sleeping children, and slipped through the guest bathroom into Honey’s room beyond.

  “I have to talk to you,” Hope whispered.

  Honey awoke instantly, reached for her robe, and followed Hope through the bathroom, through the guest room, and into the den. Hope closed the den door and switched on a dim light. “I have to talk to you,” she said again. She sat on the sofa; Honey sat next to her.

  “Don’t get upset,” Hope said. “Don’t say anything to Van or anybody. But I have to tell you, because if I am killed, there has to be somebody who knows. There has to be somebody who knows the truth.”

  Honey stared at Hope, her face pinched with tension.

  Hope stared straight ahead for a moment, at the dark wall of the den, then she turned and grasped Honey’s hands.

  “It’s Taylor,” Hope said, her voice sounding urgent, like a hiss. “Taylor is the one who came into the bedroom. Taylor is the one who killed Bill.”

  Honey twisted her hands out of Hope’s grasp and clenched them around her daughter’s hands. Then she drew them back into her lap and held them tightly together, to keep them still.

  “All right, Hopie,” she said.

  But still Hope lay awake at night, night after night. She was drained by her fear; she was so fearful that she had not yet let the children out of the house. The days were filled with commotion and chaos, the children squabbling, the phone ringing, Van and Hope quarreling, with Honey often stepping in, weeping. Disagreements lurched into discord, anxieties into anger. In this house throbbing with people—three children and three adults full time, other people in and out constantly—Hope felt emotionally stranded. Especially at night, lying in the darkness, she yearned, she ached, for someone she could talk to, someone who would truly understand.

  She thought about Bill.

  She thought about Lionel.

  She thought about Taylor.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “How are we going to tell him we’re not getting anywhere?” Gene Parker asked Jim Brown as they drove over to see Lieutenant Barnes.

  Brown shook his head glumly. Throughout the long drive up from L.A., since they’d been summoned back up north to give a report, he’d been wondering that himself. Neither of them was afraid of the lieutenant; he was the kind of person you called “lieutenant” or “sir” on duty, but whom you could be casual with, call him by his nickname, other times. Because of his silver-streaked hair, Forrest Barnes’s nickname was “Frosty.”

  Besides liking him, Jim Brown had had special respect for Lieutenant Barnes since Jim’s beginnings on the force, when Barnes had said something Jim had never forgotten. Simple, but very meaningful to Jim. “As a law enforcement officer, don’t ever take anything for granted,” Barnes told Jim Brown. “Don’t ever assume anything. When a police officer says, ‘I assume,’ this is what happens.” Barnes took a piece of paper and printed the word ASSUME. Then he printed it again, splitting the word with hyphens: ASS-U-ME. “When you assume something, it makes an ass out of you and me.”

  Still, it was not going to be easy to tell Barnes that they were getting nowhere fast. Getting nowhere partly, they felt, because they didn’t have an overall picture of what was going on in the case; they’d noticed that Sergeant Babcock almost never made a phone call in their presence, and they felt that in a way, Babcock was making their job harder. They’d heard that when Babcock had first interviewed the young officers at the Beverly Hills station, he’d read them their rights and made them sign a waiver. For a police officer to advise other police officers of their rights was, even for Babcock, really, really badge-heavy.

  And partly they were frustrated because, for all their hours of driving around and talking, for all their pages of notes and reports, they had yet to come up with anything remotely resembling a motive for the murder of Bill Ashlock. They had not heard of one single person who didn’t think Bill Ashlock was a really super guy. A nice man, very quiet, very well-liked—so unanimously well-liked that he’d ended up on a slab in the cold room at Myers Chapel with a bullet shattered throughout his brain.

  “What are we going to tell Barnes?” Parker asked Brown.

  “Well, shoot, we’re just going to have to tell him the truth,” Brown said. “He’s going to catch on, anyway.” So that is what they were telling Forrest Barnes in his office Monday morning, Marc
h 5, when he got the call, long distance from Chicago.

  Hope used the phone in the bedroom, when she had a moment’s privacy. She couldn’t make the call she’d been wanting to make since the weekend at the ranch—to call Fran to tell her, personally, about Bill, so that Fran could pass on Hope’s feelings to the little girls. With Bill dead over a week now, and the whole mess in the newspapers, and with the word she’d had of Fran’s plan to file a civil suit against Hope—deprivation of income, wrongful death—obviously it was too late for that call. So she called Bill’s office.

  “I can’t talk long,” Hope told Helen Linley. “I’m not supposed to make phone calls, and I don’t know if the phone is tapped.” She paused, then continued quickly.

  “I’d like you to give Fran Ashlock a message, please. I’m sorry I can’t deliver it myself, but I can’t.

  “I want you to tell—to tell Fran how happy Bill was, all the way up to the ranch, and how lucky he was. He had no problems with his wife, she was a very understanding person, and he could see his children whenever he wished, and he loved his job and the people he worked with, and he loved me and my children.”

  Helen Linley took notes as she listened.

  “He probably never could have known what happened,” Hope said.

  She went on to say that Bill didn’t believe in God, but she did, and she had been trying to convert him, and one day after he had gone with her to the Self-Realization Garden, or maybe it was a temple, on Sunset, he had been impressed and had said he wanted to go back again sometime.

  Hope asked Helen Linley about the funeral service, because her family wanted to do what they could. Helen Linley said the services were private, and it was all over. Hope asked how they’d learned of Bill’s death; Mrs. Linley told Hope her father had called.

  “I never thought I would be blamed,” Hope said.

  There was a brief silence.

  “I will pass the message along to Mrs. Ashlock,” Helen said.

  “And tell her I’ve been praying for Bill.”

  Helen Linley told Cliff Einstein about the call and, the next day, Cliff discussed it with Parker and Brown.