Dream House

by Rochelle Krich

  The rain was stronger, slapping the window, demanding entry. I flipped through the stapled sheets Reston had given me and found the page with Maggie's last entries. Cyndi's. Granite. Kitchen flooring. Check out Sub-Zero. Golden Vista!!

  “Who's Cyndi?” I asked.

  Hank turned around. “Who?”

  I held up the page. He came back to the table and looked at the name.

  “I don't— Oh, Cyndi. I think that's her hairdresser. I don't remember where she works, but you can check the pages at the back of the planner. I photocopied the index with names, addresses, and phone numbers.”

  “What about Golden Vista?” I pointed to the entry.

  “Yeah, I saw that last night. I figure it's a resort. We were talking about getting away for a few days, and Maggie was checking into a couple of places.”

  I debated telling him that it was the name of an assisted living facility and decided not to, though I'm not sure why. “Did Maggie have close friends?”

  He slumped into the chair—a risky movement for a man of his girth, but the chair held. “Not really. I guess you could say her father was her best friend, until I came along.”

  A shy smile softened the planes of his rugged face, and I could see why Margaret had found him attractive.

  “Well, she had a couple of women she'd go to concerts with, or operas or museums,” Hank said. “Stuff I tried to like but couldn't get into, and Maggie finally gave up asking me to come along.” Another wry smile flitted across his face. “I wouldn't call them friends, though,” he said, all seriousness now. “Maggie and I liked spending time together, just the two of us. We didn't need friends.”

  When Ron and I were newlyweds, we'd done the nesting thing, too. But the nest had become crowded. “Do you know if the police talked to these women?”

  Hank shrugged. “I gave the cops their names. I don't think Maggie saw them the day she disappeared, though. There's nothing in her planner that said she did.”

  “She may have talked to them.”

  “Maybe.” He nodded. “But they weren't people she'd confide in. And even if she did, how would that help unless the guy who kidnapped her knew her?”

  Which was a strong possibility, one Reston seemed to have trouble accepting. “Did she quarrel with anyone in the days before she disappeared?”

  “Not that I know of, and she would've told me.” He took a long sip of coffee. “Everybody loved Maggie. She was interested in what you had to say and was easy to get along with. And she was real soft-spoken. Me, I'm the yeller.”

  His expression was almost mischievous, disarming. I wondered again if what I was seeing was the real Hank Reston or the person he wanted to portray.

  “You mentioned headaches with the construction,” I said. “Did Maggie have arguments with a subcontractor or worker?”

  “You're asking everything the cops did.” There was approval in his voice and his nod. “She had a problem with one of the tile setters. Karl Linz. A Czech guy. Maggie didn't like his work, and he got angry and rude when she told him, so she fired him.”

  “When was that?”

  “When?” Hank squinted, concentrating. “Around two weeks before Maggie disappeared. He made some noise about making her sorry, but we thought he was just mouthing off. The cops checked him out. His sister says he was home with her that night. But she could be trying to protect him.”

  “I'd like to talk to him. Who did the construction on the house, by the way? Roger Modine?”

  “That's right.” He gave me a warning look that said, What of it? “Roger's a little rough around the edges. I hope he didn't hurt you. He was just protecting the house from snoopers.”

  “No scars,” I said, making light of the incident. “Did he and Maggie get along?”

  Reston frowned. “You're barking up the wrong tree. Roger wouldn't lay a finger on Maggie. He knows I'd kill anyone who hurt her,” he said simply, as though he were talking about swatting a fly.

  He hadn't really answered my question. I asked Hank to get me Linz's phone number and paged backwards through the photocopied pages while he was out of the room. Maggie had written Tiler on the next-to-last page. With two exclamation points.

  Something about that bothered me, but I couldn't figure it out. Something bothered me about the other pages, too, but Reston was back before I could mull it through.

  “Who's the last person Maggie spoke to before she disappeared?” I asked.

  “Aside from her dad, you mean.” He handed me a slip of paper with Linz's phone number. “I called her around ten, but she was getting Oscar to bed. He had a rough day, so of course, Maggie did, too. She said she'd call back, and when I didn't hear from her, I figured she was painting. She does that when she wants to relax. I didn't want to bother her, so I went to the casino and played the tables and found out later she'd called. By then it was late and I didn't want to wake her.”

  “You were in Vegas?”

  “On business. I was in San Bernardino earlier in the day.”

  The cops had checked the phone records, he told me. Except for a 10:30 call to the hotel, Maggie hadn't made any long-distance calls that night—not on the house phone, not on her cell phone.

  I looked at the page again. “Maggie wrote about a meeting with Dr. E, and on the same page, V and D.”

  “D is the Professor. V would be Ned Vaughan. He's a family friend and very close to Oscar, although I would have thought she'd write Ned. The doc is his internist. El-something.” Hank remained standing, his hands locked on the scrolled iron back of his chair.

  “She didn't have any friends or colleagues with a first or last name that starts with D?”

  He shook his head. He was shifting his weight from one foot to another, a sprinter waiting for the starting shot. His restlessness was making me nervous.

  I thumbed back a page. “What about pb? Would that be plumber?”

  “Sounds right.” He picked up his mug, took a sip, and made a face. “This is cold. You want a refill?”

  I covered the top of my mug with my hand. “I'm good, thanks.”

  He dumped the coffee into the sink. I flipped back several pages and waited for him to return with his refilled mug. “A week before Maggie disappeared, she wrote something about bank and help. Any idea what that is?”

  “Banking is hell, everyone needs help,” he said, unsmiling. “I don't know. Sorry.”

  I showed him the notation about the MS, but he had no idea whether or not Linney had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “Maggie took care of all that,” he told me.

  I looked at the following page again. Lighting. Pool tile. Call pb?! Tiler!! I must have been frowning because he asked me what was wrong.

  “Just thinking,” I said. “When are the police coming to pick up the planner?”

  “I haven't told them about it yet.” The color in his face deepened. “To tell you the truth, I hate the thought of giving it up. When I hold it or read it, I can see Maggie sitting on the bed writing in it, her legs crossed under her. Or in the car.” He paused. “I guess I'll call the detective this morning.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I ASKED TO SEE PROFESSOR LINNEY'S ROOM. I WAS prepared to answer Reston's “Why?” with some vague explanation that would avoid any intimation that the old man had been killed (I didn't want to piss off Porter or Hernandez more than I already had by seeing the planner and Linney's room before they did), but Reston didn't ask.

  The old man's ground-floor bedroom, carpeted in taupe, its walls painted ecru, was larger than his room in the Fuller house. Someone had filled it with the basics. A maple sleigh bed, nightstand, dresser, a desk with a book-filled hutch. His Columbia

  undergraduate degree hung next to a plaque from the University of Southern California. On the desk were a black ceramic cup with pens and pencils, a pad of lined paper, and a tape recorder.

  “The Professor used it for department meetings, and to record notes for his book,” Hank said when I asked him about the rec
order. “He wasn't into computers.” He looked around the room and sighed. “I haven't been in here since the old guy died. It's strange, not seeing him.”

  “When did you last talk to him?”

  “Friday morning, just before I left. He asked me when I'd be back. He didn't usually give a damn, but at the time I didn't give it any thought.”

  “I understand that the housekeeper left him alone in the house.”

  Hank frowned. “He told Louisa I said it was okay 'cause I'd be home within the hour. He seemed real clearheaded that morning, so I can see how she'd buy it.” His tone indicated other wise.

  “I'd like to talk to her.”

  “She'll be back tomorrow. But like I told you, the police talked to her. She didn't know anything about Maggie's disappearance.”

  The housekeeper had probably been nervous talking to police and might be more open with me. I also wanted to ask her what Linney had been like in the days before he died.

  “And the caregiver?” I asked. “She didn't show?”

  “Can you believe it?” He rolled his eyes. “I have half a mind to sue.”

  I'd heard Reston mention the agency's name when he was talking to the black-suited woman at the meeting and dug it out of my memory bank. First Aid. “What's the caregiver's name?” Maria something, Fennel had said.

  Reston hesitated. “I don't want you talking to her just yet. In case I do decide to sue. I want to check with the lawyers. Anyway, she wasn't with the Professor when Maggie disappeared.”

  But Linney might have said something to her about Margaret. “Can I take a look at Professor Linney's papers? He may have made some reference to your wife's plans, written down something she said.” I wondered if my explanation sounded as lame to him as it did to me.

  “The police asked. Oscar didn't hear anything that night, didn't know anything. But go ahead and look, if you want. Knock yourself out.” Hank checked his watch. “I have a few calls to make. I'll be in my office if you need me.”

  That was fine with me. I'd assumed that Reston would oversee my search, and I wondered if he'd left me alone to show that he trusted me or that he had nothing to hide. Or, my suspicious self suggested, because he'd already removed anything incriminating.

  Sitting at Linney's desk, I pressed the EJECT button on the tape recorder, but there was no cassette inside. The desk's center drawer was filled with odds and ends: paper clips, pens, a gold bookmark. No address book, which was disappointing.

  In the bottom of the two drawers on the right I found his USC material—class roll books, curriculum sheets for various architectural courses, typed minutes of department meetings, an assortment of cassettes labeled with the day and date of department meetings. The second drawer yielded several accordion folders: two with architectural sketches, one with photos of homes (many black-and-white, some full color), and the last with two loose pages filled with tiny, cramped handwriting and a cassette labeled TREASURES. I played the tape and heard his whiny voice announce the date, February of this year, and the title. Then nothing.

  I glanced at the top page, dated almost a year ago. Treasures of Yesterday and Tomorrow: Preserving the Architectural History of Los Angeles. Linney's book—or what would have been his book if the Alzheimer's hadn't aborted the project. The photos were filed into pockets of the folder labeled with neighborhood names, arranged in alphabetical order: Angelino Heights, Carthay Circle, Melrose Hill, Miracle Mile . . . all the HARP areas I'd been reading about.

  At the back of the drawer I found a manila folder with bank statements and correspondence from Skoll Investment, Incorporated, based in Denver. I thumbed through the pages and noted that Linney had invested over forty thousand dollars with them in property. Not a small sum. I checked the dates. April of this year. Around the time he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, according to Tim Bolt. I copied down the names listed on the correspondence and the company's address and phone number.

  Thinking of phone numbers reminded me about the call Fennel had overheard. I walked to the answering machine on Linney's nightstand, pressed REWIND, then PLAY.

  Nothing but the whirr of a blank tape. Either Linney had erased Margaret's message, or someone else had.

  I checked the old man's dresser but found nothing of interest. On top of the dresser were photos. A duplicate of the formal wedding portrait I'd seen in Linney's Fuller bedroom. Linney with Margaret, from infancy through chubby-cheeked childhood. The professor and an adolescent Margaret with braces on her teeth, her face slimmer, his gaunt; both subdued, presumably by the loss of wife and mother. A smiling Margaret in black cap and gown, clasping a rolled diploma. Margaret seated in front of a grand piano, her slender hands poised on the ivories.

  There were no photos of Margaret as bride, none of her groom. That was telling, I thought, but not surprising.

  Returning to the desk, I checked the drawers again, not knowing what I was looking for. Then I took down Linney's books, and behind a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright I found an unlabeled tape cassette.

  “Expect nothing,” Alice Walker tells us in a poem of the same name, so I tried not to but of course I did, because why would Linney have hidden the tape if it weren't important, at least to him?

  I was tempted to slip the cassette into my purse, but that would be theft, and possibly obstruction of justice. So I inserted it into the recorder and pressed PLAY.

  A few seconds of lead, then, “Professor, it's Ned. Sorry you couldn't make the meeting last night. Hank said you weren't up to it, and I guess he told you about the excitement. Hope you're feeling better. I'll call again.”

  The HARP meeting, I thought.

  “This is Dr. Elbogen's office reminding you that you have an appointment . . .”

  “. . . come by tomorrow, if that's okay, Oscar.” Fennel's squeaky voice. “Want to make sure you're not getting into too much trouble.”

  “What's that you're listening to?”

  I stopped the tape and turned toward the doorway and Hank. “I found this behind Professor Linney's books,” I told him. “I thought maybe he'd recorded something about Margaret,” I lied. “But it's just messages.”

  “Go on,” he instructed, approaching the desk. “Play the rest.”

  So I did. I rewound a second or so and pressed PLAY.

  “. . . make sure you're not getting into too much trouble.”

  “Fennel,” Hank said. “The Professor's friend.”

  “Mr. Linney, this is Joan Eggers returning your call. I'll be here till five today.”

  “Professor, Tim Bolt. Just checking to see if you're feeling better. I wanted you to know that the gardener added seed and fertilizer and trimmed the bushes, so everything's looking fine, just the way you like it.”

  There was a caller who left no message. We listened to a long stretch of taped silence, and then another beep.

  Hank sighed. “I guess that's—”

  “This is Margaret. Meet me at the house Friday at four. I'm afraid. Don't tell anyone.”

  A soft moan escaped Reston's lips. He grabbed the edge of the desk to steady himself, a giant oak about to be felled by a storm.

  “Play it again,” he ordered.

  I rewound the tape and did as he asked.

  “Again,” he said.

  I think we listened to it about five times before he told me he'd heard enough.

  “It's Maggie's voice,” he said, his voice hushed with wonder and anguish and a strangled joy. “I can't—” He stopped, and I watched hurt and bewilderment cross his face. “But why didn't she call me?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “SO WHAT BRINGS YOU TO WILSHIRE, ASIDE FROM YOUR column?” Rico Hernandez asked.

  Several other detectives were in the large room—some standing and talking to each other; some at their desks, writing or on the phone. A few had seemed to follow me with their eyes as I'd made my way to Hernandez's desk. Maybe it was my hair. The rain had stopped, but the air was still full of moisture that had given my natural curls
a wild voluminous look much like Madeleine Kahn's electrified “do” after she's done the deed with the monster in Young Frankenstein. Or maybe I'm just self- conscious at Wilshire where, as I mentioned, my questions about my best friend Aggie's unsolved murder make me as welcome as herpes.

  I usually do my Crime Sheet data collection on Mondays, but yesterday I'd been otherwise occupied. Today I'd made Wilshire my first stop. It's the division closest to Reston's Muirfield house. More important, I wanted to talk to Hernandez without Porter around. Lucky for me, Hernandez was in and willing to see me. Luckier still, Porter was out. Well, not luck. I'd listened while Hank phoned Porter, who had promised he'd be right over to pick up the answering machine tape and planner. So I was feeling a little pleased with myself.

  “I was hoping you could tell me what you've learned about Professor Linney's death,” I said, eyeing the “blue books” on Hernandez's dauntingly neat desk. I didn't recognize the names on the labeled spines of the three books standing upright, and the spines of two others were facing away from me. I wondered if one of the latter held reports and photos from the Linney case. If in fact there was a case, I cautioned myself.

  “And I was hoping you'd had a change of heart about your notes.” The corners of Hernandez's mouth were turned up in amusement. “What's your interest in Professor Linney's death, Miss Blume?”

  I took that as encouragement and settled onto my chair. “Please call me Molly. The truth? I feel somewhat connected. First of all, I gave Professor Linney a ride the other day. And I think someone lured him to the Fuller house and made the arson look like another one of the HARP-related vandalisms I wrote about in my Times piece.”

  “So you're feeling used.”

  “And somewhat responsible.” The way he said it made me sound self-centered, which I guess was partly true. “So naturally, I'd like to find out how he died.”

  “I see.”

  No further comment from Hernandez. I suppose I'd been hoping for a comforting statement like the one Connors had offered. “Do you have the autopsy results, Detective?”