by Alton Gansky
I kicked off my pumps and stepped over the edge.
The water engulfed me in cold fingers, and I felt the surface crash over my head. The water blurred my vision. I pushed off the bottom and toward the floating chauffeur, coming up on his left side. Reaching across his torso, I took hold of his arm and pulled, rolling him onto his back.
He stared at the sky with open, unblinking eyes.
There was a small hole in the side of his head.
I stifled my own scream and pushed away from the dead man.
I was too late.
Much, much too late.
Chapter 4
The wind was picking up, blowing in from the ocean and tormenting me through my wet clothing. One of the firemen, who had been first on the scene, had given me a wool blanket. I clung to it like it was a life preserver. I was shaking, more from shock than from the chilling breeze—swimming with a dead man unsettled me.
Catherine stood at my side, her fair skin pale, and her eyes afloat in tears. I heard her sniff several times and knew her dam had just developed a new crack. She hovered so close our shoulders touched. I wanted to put my arm around her, but my wet arm would only chill her more. Together we stood next to one of the stone terrace walls. The wall was four feet tall and marked off a stretch of planter. Like the rest of the lot, the landscaping here was incomplete. Several plants waited for workers to remove them from the plastic pots and nestle them into the ground. Leaning against the wall were several tools: two shovels, trowels, and a short pickax.
Her backyard was abuzz with activity. Several firemen, draped in heavy yellow Nomex coats and equally yellow helmets, stood to one side. Their job was done. Once released by the police or the county coroner’s office, they would climb back on their pumper and return to the fire station. With nothing to do, paramedics packed their kits. The hole in Ed Lowe’s head had convinced them heroic efforts were useless.
Two uniformed police officers stood to the side of the pool and watched as a dark-haired man in a snappy blue suit and white latex gloves hunched near the body. His hair was black and his eyes dark. When he stood erect, that anthracite hair hovered six feet two inches above the ground. His eyes were keen and kind, and when he smiled he showed teeth that shamed pearls. Detective Judson West is the darling of the Santa Rita police and the only detective that works homicide. I counted him a friend.
He arrived ten minutes after the fire department and five minutes after the paramedics declared the chauffeur dead. When he stepped through the rear door, he saw me and shook his head.
West rose and addressed the two uniformed officers. “Tape it off. In fact, tape off the whole lot.”
“Front yard too?” one of the policemen asked.
“The killer didn’t parachute in. For now, we assume the bad guy came up the drive, so I want it all cordoned off.”
The men began to move. West approached the fire captain and said something to him. The captain nodded and motioned for his men to leave.
West turned to me. I shivered. He made me feel uncomfortable in the most wonderful way, and I was compelled to fight it.
He looked me over, then smiled. “Swimming fully clothed can be . . . awkward.”
“You should try it in pantyhose,” I said.
“No thanks.” He paused. “Are you all right?”
“Shaken,” I admitted. I looked at the body of Ed Lowe lying on the stone rim of the pool, right where the firemen had left him. The scene was too bizarre to believe, but no amount of denial would change the situation or erase the image branded on my brain. To avoid thinking, I resorted to courtesy. “Catherine, this is Detective Judson West. Detective West, this is Catherine Anderson. This is her home, her pool, and . . . her chauffeur.”
West smiled. “I saw your movie. Let’s go inside.”
I had dealt with West often enough over the last year and a half and knew he was thinking of more than just my comfort. He didn’t want us contaminating his crime scene more than we already had. We followed his lead and entered the house. As we crossed the back threshold the front door opened. A man and a woman, both in their early thirties, stepped in. They wore olive green Windbreakers with patches over their left pockets that read Santa Rita County Sheriff’s Department.
The two looked at West then Catherine then me. Their eyes lingered longer on my wet form. They identified themselves as field investigators from the county crime lab. West had called them. Santa Rita, like many cities, was too small to fund its own crime lab. We have a contract with the county for scientific investigations.
“GSW to the head. He was found in the pool. The fire department removed the body from the water about fifteen minutes ago. I need a full workup including prints in the house.”
“Got it,” the woman said. “ME?”
“Medical Examiner is on the way and should be here in the next ten minutes.”
“Does the deceased have a name?” the woman asked.
“Ed Lowe,” Catherine whispered.
“Ed . . . Hey, aren’t you—”
“Yes, she is,” West interrupted. “The body is in back.”
They got the hint and moved through the house.
“Thank you, Detective.”
“Don’t mention it.” He gave her one of his patented smiles. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask some questions.”
“I understand,” Catherine said. She looked like a china doll that had been rolled down a rocky slope.
“Perhaps you should start from the beginning.”
I spoke up. “I drove Catherine home from—”
West raised a hand. “Excuse me, Mayor, but as you said, this is Ms. Anderson’s home, Ms. Anderson’s pool, and Ms. Anderson’s chauffeur. I would like to hear from her first.”
“I was just trying—”
“Just trying to help. I know.” He turned back to Catherine and raised an eyebrow.
She cleared her throat and told West how I had met her at her rehearsal, how she had tried to reach Mr. Lowe, and how I had driven her home. That part flowed easily enough, but when she got to the part about seeing the body in the pool, a tear slipped down her smooth cheek. She told it anyway.
“I can’t see the pool from here,” West said. “How could you see the body?”
“I was on the stairs. Maddy had just opened the drapes. With the drapes open you can see the whole backyard, even the lower areas.”
“Then what?”
“Maddy told me to call 9–1–1 and I did. I gave the operator all the information, then ran after Maddy. When I got there she had pulled Ed . . . the body, to the side of the pool. I helped her crawl out.”
West looked at me. “You jumped in?”
I nodded. “I thought I saw the man move. I thought maybe he had fallen in and hit his head. When I got to him, I saw how wrong I was.”
“But you still had the presence of mind to pull him to the side of the pool.”
“I guess. I wasn’t doing a lot of thinking at the time. I was just acting on instinct.”
Turning back to Catherine, West asked, “How long have you known Mr. Lowe?”
“About a year. He drove for me during the filming of my first movie. We did a lot of shooting in Southern California.”
“So he’s your regular chauffeur?”
“He’s not my chauffeur. I mean, I don’t pay him. The studio does. After we finish shooting this movie, I’ll be on my own again. Thankfully. I hate being driven around.”
I watched West bite his lower lip. Any other place than a murder scene, I might have thought it cute and endearing. He studied Catherine for a moment, then asked, “What was your relationship to Mr. Lowe?”
“My relationship?” Catherine tilted her head to the side.
“Was he ever more than a chauffeur?”
“Judson West!” I snapped.
“Excuse me?” Catherine replied.
“Let me clear something up here,” West said. “There has been a murder and I am a homicide detective. That mean
s I have to ask questions and some of those are going to be unpleasant. That’s my job.” He looked at me. “You of all people should know that, Mayor. We’ve been through enough together for you to know how this works.”
He was right, of course, and I almost hated him for it.
“He was my chauffeur and nothing else, Detective. Ed was kind, polite, and always the gentleman.” She stared him hard in the eyes. “Is that clear enough? He was old enough to be my father.”
“What did you do after you helped Mayor Glenn out of the pool?”
“I came back in the house and made another call,” Catherine said.
“To whom?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“I’ll decide that, Ms. Anderson. Whom did you call?”
“Frank Zambonelli—Franco, actually. He’s my publicist.”
“Your publicist?”
She rubbed her forehead. “I know it sounds petty and shallow, but it’s not what it seems. I haven’t been in the business very long and I’ve only made one movie, but I’ve learned enough to know that the movie biz is cutthroat. For some, the only way to the top is to climb over their competition. I wanted the producers to know what happened so they wouldn’t be caught off guard by the media.”
“Why not call them directly?” West pressed.
“Who? The producer?” Catherine looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Franco came to mind first.”
West peered out the window wall. I followed his gaze. The two field investigators were taking photos of everything. They moved quickly, perhaps goaded on by the setting sun, which was now amber and painting the clouds salmon pink.
“Ms. Anderson, did Mr. Lowe act differently today? Tense? Worried? Anything like that?”
“No. He picked me up at ten o’clock and drove me to the Curtain Call, then left. He was going to get the car cleaned and run a few errands for his boss. Then he was supposed to pick me up after rehearsal.”
“She’s starring in a play at the dinner theater,” I added.
“Where does Mr. Lowe spend his evenings? Does he drive back to Hollywood for the evening? Does he stay here?”
Catherine frowned. It was an unnatural expression for a face used to smiling. “He doesn’t stay here, Detective. Look around. There’s no furniture except what is in my bedroom, and no one stays there but me.” Her words were getting warmer as the shock gave way to the indignity of being questioned in her own home.
“So if he didn’t stay here, where did he stay?”
“I don’t know. I recall him saying he had a condo in Glendale. That’s north of Hollywood.”
“I know where—”
“I just remembered something.” She furrowed her brow. “Ed said something about being put up in a room, a hotel. He said it was someplace near the shore.”
“You don’t recall the name of the hotel?” West pressed.
“No. I had just gotten off the plane in Burbank. He picked me up at the airport. It’s a bit of a drive from Burbank to Santa Rita. I used the time to go over my lines for the play.”
“You flew into Southern California.”
“I still have an apartment in New York,” Catherine said. “I attended a party the night before, stayed up too late, then caught an early flight out the next morning.”
West seemed thoughtful, like a man trying to place a piece of a jigsaw puzzle in the right place. “Why would Mr. Lowe wait for you here, a place with almost no furniture, I assume no television, when he had a hotel room to go to?”
“There’s a television in my bedroom, but I doubt he would have watched it,” Catherine said. “But that doesn’t matter. As you can tell, the house is brand new. Have you ever had a house built for you, Detective?”
“No, I’m a buy-what’s-there guy.”
“It’s a pain,” Catherine said. “The carpet layers can’t lay carpet until the painters are done, but they can’t paint until the finish carpenters are done, which they can’t do until the drywall people tidy up, which they can’t do until inspectors pass on the electrical and so on. You get the idea. And when the work is done, it’s often done incorrectly. I was having a problem with the electrical in this room. Ed offered to stay at the house until the electrician came and made things right.”
“Did the electrician come?”
“I assume so. When I left this morning the automated drapes and blinds didn’t work. Now they do.”
“Automated . . . Never mind. I’m going to need the name of the person responsible for hiring Mr. Lowe.”
“That would be Stewart Rockwood. He’s the executive producer.” She recited his phone number from memory. She also gave him the address.
“You have all that memorized?” West said. “I’m impressed.”
Catherine shrugged. “It’s what actors do, memorize.”
“Do you know if Mr. Lowe had family?”
Her face clouded. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
It took me a second to realize that she wasn’t apologizing for not having an answer but for not bothering to have asked Ed Lowe. Catherine was always a sensitive spirit.
“Just so that you know, Ms. Anderson, people are going to be in and out of here for quite a few hours. Do you have a place you can stay tonight?”
“She’s staying with me, Detective,” I said before Catherine could answer. “You know where I live and you have my private number.”
He let slip a little knowing chuckle. “That I do, Maddy . . . Mayor.”
Catherine gave me a confused look, then asked West, “May I pack a few things?”
“I’ll have to go with you,” he said.
“You shouldn’t treat her like a suspect,” I snapped. “She’s a victim.”
“I’m not a treating her like a suspect, but I’m not going to change my procedure to preserve your feelings. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch the killer, and when he or she goes to trial I don’t want some public defender raking me over the coals for not preserving the evidentiary quality of the crime scene. I’m trying to protect the evidence, the scene, and you two.”
I struggled for a sharp retort but came up empty.
“This way, please,” Catherine said. She started up the stairs.
West paused partway up the treads and looked out the windows as if checking our story. I could see him looking down toward the pool. A second later, he was up the stairs and following Catherine to her bedroom.
I walked to the open doors and pretended to watch the field investigators do their work. Within a minute, the medical examiner arrived, and I pointed him to the backyard. No matter how difficult my job became, it would never be as taxing as what these guys did day in and day out.
At least I hoped it never would.
Chapter 5
Catherine’s cell phone rang four times from the time we left her house and drove to my home. The trip took only half an hour, the traffic being thinner southbound than the reverse. Still, it was a taxing drive.
The first call had been her publicist. I couldn’t hear what he said, but her side of the conversation gave me enough to know that he was asking about her health and mental state. She ended that conversation with, “Okay, Franco, I’ll see you then.” That call was followed with one from Stewart Rockwood, the producer; one from a Patty Holt, Rockwood’s aide; and another call from Franco the publicist—again.
“Kind of makes you want to turn that thing off, doesn’t it?”
“They’re worried about me. They didn’t say so, but I think they’re also worried about fallout.”
“Fallout?” I pulled down my street and up the driveway, then paused while I waited for the garage door to rise.
“Publicity is a two-edged sword. Bad press can make or break a movie.”
“Bad press can make a movie?”
“Sometimes.”
“It’s a shame that’s not true in politics.”
I guided the car into the garage and exited. Catherine did the same, dragging a designer duffel bag with her. She
held it to her chest like it was a teddy bear and she was a frightened eight-year-old. We walked through the door that joined the garage with the house. I had been gone for a week, and it felt good to be home.
My house is more than a home; it is my cocoon, the place I return each night and lock out the world. My husband, who grew up buried to his neck in comic books, called the place his Fortress of Solitude. If Superman could have a Fortress of Solitude, why couldn’t Peter? But Peter wasn’t Superman, a fact made clear the night I received a phone call from the Los Angeles police telling me my husband had been killed during a carjacking. The thugs got the BMW, and my husband got a bullet.
That was almost ten years ago—plenty of time to get over the violent tragedy. I wasn’t over it. Not a day goes by when I don’t see his face when my eyes close; not a week passes when I don’t catch a whiff of his aftershave.
I live alone in three thousand square feet of house. The exterior walls wore diagonal cedar siding proudly. The floor plan is open on the first floor with one room flowing into the next. The kitchen and dining room run the length of the back, and a large living room dominates the rest of the floor. I have a guest room on the lower floor and several bedrooms on the second. Also on the second floor is my office. I converted it from the rec room that had been one of my husband’s favorite places. On both floors, large windows face the ocean, small windows face the street.
I grew up in a much smaller home, a saltbox design. My parents still live there and I have dinner with them once a week. Our house was small but I never experienced poverty. My father still teaches history at the University of Santa Barbara, and Mother is a retired music teacher. They earned good money but never enough to buy a house on the beach.
My husband’s family is different. Peter’s father owns a commercial flooring company: Glenn Structural Materials. Anyone who’s walked into a bank, high-rise, or large commercial building in any of the western states has probably walked on Peter’s flooring. He was on a sales trip in Los Angeles when he was murdered.
Peter’s life insurance policy allowed me to pay off the house. I don’t make enough money as mayor to pay for the home I live in. Peter’s father continues to pay his salary as if his son were still alive. For months I told him he didn’t need to do that, but he convinced me he did. “Twice a month, when I sign his paycheck, I feel as if he’s still here.” I never argued the point again.
