“Oh, you will.” He nodded and smiled a smug little smile.
“When I get the green light, not one minute before. I'm not trying to show anyone up. And this isn't a lark. You're probably aware that I've been threatened. I'd kinda like to know by whom.”
“Why don't you let us find out?”
“Like you found out who killed Aggie Lasher?” That just slipped out. “I'm sorry. That wasn't fair.”
He gazed at me as though I were a spider he was considering stomping on. “We don't need you interfering with this investigation, Blume.”
“How have I interfered? I've interviewed people. That's my right. I've advised them to talk to the police and turn in evidence, like the tape of Margaret Reston's phone call, and her planner. I'd call that helping.”
“And now your fingerprints are all over the planner and the tape. I'll ask the mayor to give you a medal.”
“Which is why I had my prints rolled after I talked to Detective Hernandez, so that you could eliminate them.”
“We did. But if you'd called us when you found the planner, instead of playing hot potato with it, we wouldn't be dealing with a dozen other fingerprints.”
“Look, I had no idea that the planner had been missing or that you guys hadn't seen it. The whole place was fingerprinted. I found the planner in the nightstand. Roger Modine took it from me. He handed it to Hank Reston. That's three, by the way, plus Margaret makes it four, not a dozen.” I shouldn't have added the last, but my mouth has a way of working independently of my brain.
“And the tape? When you found it you already suspected that Linney had been murdered. You must've figured no one else had seen it. But did you leave it for us to handle?” Porter snorted.
I had a retort all ready, but I swallowed it. Porter was right. I'd screwed up. “I'm sorry. I didn't know what was on it, but you're right.”
“Sorry doesn't mean shit, Blume. What's done is done.”
“I touched the plastic cassette, not the tape. Detective Hernandez said it was spliced. Did you find prints on the tape?”
“You two are such buddies, why don't you ask him?”
“I will. By the way, were Reston's prints on the cassette?”
“Like I said—”
“Come on, Porter. Tell me, and I'll give you something in return. Deal?”
“You already talked your heart out to Hernandez.”
“This is new.” I could see a flicker of indecision in his blue-blue eyes. “It's about Margaret's planner.”
“What about it?”
“First tell me about the prints.”
“I don't think so.”
I could tell he wasn't bluffing. I deliberated for about a second, then told him about the changes.
“The lab boys downtown have equipment that can probably make out what was there,” Porter said. “You can't remember what you read instead of the Sub-Zero thing?”
I shook my head. “I only saw it for a second. So about the cassette. Were Reston's prints on it?” For a moment I thought Porter wasn't going to answer.
Then he nodded. “He says Linney asked him to change the answering machine tape a few days before he died. So of course, his prints would be on it.”
“Of course.”
Porter's tone was bland, and I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. It was the answer I'd expected, but not the one I'd wanted.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
NOTHING HAD BEEN DONE TO THE FULLER HOUSE SINCE I'd been here a week ago. The plywood still covered the bottom half of the living room window. The front door was still ravaged, and the blackened stucco, more visible in the bright sunlight, made the house stiff competition for The Dungeon.
Oscar Linney would have cried.
The For Sale sign was gone, I noticed as I walked to the front door. Either Reston had removed it while the house underwent repairs, or he'd taken it off the market and planned to rebuild with the insurance money.
I slipped my hand through the gaping hole in the front door and turned the knob. This time I wasn't trespassing. I'd told Reston I planned to visit the house again, and he'd said, no problem.
The air still smelled of smoke, but I didn't feel as though I was choking. According to Hernandez, the fire had begun in the kitchen. I hadn't looked there before. I did now, but there wasn't much to see—just a black, sooty shell. I left quickly and headed for the stairs. Someone—probably one of Modine's men—had nailed plywood onto the two missing steps. With the bright light pouring in through the dining room windows and through the pane of glass above the front door, the steps looked less treacherous, but I had come directly from the funeral in two-inch Jimmy Choo heels and was careful with every tread.
I went directly to Linney's study, where a week's accumulation of ash had turned the dark wood furniture into a putty color. I searched through his desk drawers for anything I might have missed—letters, bank statements, correspondence about Skoll Investment. I hadn't really expected to find anything, but I felt a twinge of disappointment when I didn't. I had no better results in Linney's bedroom, and though I suspected I'd be equally unsuccessful in Margaret's room, I went there anyway.
The room smelled of lavender and jasmine. I sniffed the air. Perfume. The scent was strong.
Last week I'd assumed that the housekeeper had paid special attention to Margaret's room. Last week I'd believed that Reston was grieving for his missing wife, and speculated that he was keeping hope alive by preserving her room and her possessions.
But if Reston killed her? If he was contemplating razing the house, why would he send the housekeeper here?
I ran my finger across the top of Margaret's desk. There was only the faintest hint of ash.
Maybe it wasn't the housekeeper. Maybe Reston had been coming here. Every few days, daily. Dusting and perfuming, maintaining the room so that it looked as it had before Margaret disappeared.
Before she betrayed him?
I glanced at the bed. The white slippers were still there, waiting for Margaret to slip her feet into them.
Control, I thought, not love.
A husband who preserves the illusion of a perfect wife. A duke who veils the portrait of his late duchess, “looking as if she were alive,” so that no one else can view her.
I went into the dressing room. The perfume bottles were dusted, the lipsticks circled around the vanity set. The comb, the brush with the mother-of-pearl handle.
A new mirror, exactly like the one Modine had broken. The contractor had offered to repair the mirror, or replace it. Reston had turned down the offer, but maybe Modine had done it anyway.
I didn't like thinking about Modine, particularly in this narrow dressing room where he'd trussed me like a chicken. I left the room and was heading for the stairs when I heard a shout from outside Linney's old office.
The French windows were open. I walked over and looked down at the garage where Margaret kept her studio and the garden where Tim Bolt had last seen her. No one was there. Another shout drew my attention to the neighboring yard to the left and the father and son who were playing ball.
“No fair!” the dark-haired boy yelled as he raced after the ball, which had sailed over his head.
I stood there awhile, smiling as I watched them. I don't know what made me look up. I can't say I felt someone watching me, but it was something like that. When I did, I saw a woman at the third-story window of the charcoal gray house kitty-corner to Linney's.
Our eyes met for a brief moment. Then a curtain covered the window and she was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I HALF WALKED, HALF RAN TO SECOND STREET, THEN TO Martel, where I rounded the corner and continued down the block until I was almost in front of The Dungeon.
I was out of breath, more from excitement than exertion. I slowed my pace, but my heart was pumping double-time as I stepped onto a narrow, cracked concrete aisle between two rows of junglelike shrubs. Vines grabbed at me and caught my hair, and for a moment I flashed to the man-eating pl
ants in Little Shop of Horrors, a film that had truly terrified me. I pulled my hair free and pushed the vines away and finally arrived at the weathered black front door. I held my hand over the bell, and hesitated.
I knew I was being silly. It was daylight. People were nearby, some of whom had eyed me with curiosity as I'd galloped down the block in my designer heels. I'm twenty-nine years old, I don't believe in witches, but I felt as though I were seven again, whispering with my friends about the bad guys inside the dark house.
I rang the bell.
Charlene Coulter. She was the woman I'd just seen in the window of the three-story house on Martel, the only three-story in the neighborhood. The last time I'd stood in front of the French windows in Linney's office, night had been falling and I hadn't seen anything. I hadn't been looking. I'd been concentrating on sucking in fresh air to dispel the smoke that had been choking me.
I rang the bell again. I knew she was there. She couldn't have disappeared.
She was the author of the flyers. I was certain of it. “I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.” I'd looked that one up in my Bartlett's. It's from Psalms 102:7. She had seen something. She wanted to tell me about it, or why had she left the flyers?
“She steals little boys like me and turns them into bats!” said a young male voice.
I started and turned around too quickly, bending my right ankle in the process. Pain shot up my leg.
“You're being silly, Kevin,” a man said to a towheaded youngster perched on a bright green bike.
“It's true!”
“It's not true.” He turned to me and smiled. “Kids. She doesn't like people bothering her, though.”
I nodded. “I appreciate it. Thanks.”
He shrugged and walked on.
I rang the bell again and again. I don't know why, but I thought about poor, dead Oscar Linney, who had stood at the door to his dream house, ringing the bell, rapping on the door with his cane, begging his daughter to let him in.
Finally I gave up. I wrote my name and phone number on a piece of paper and slipped it under the black door.
According to the “Home” section in this morning's L.A. Times, Central Realty had numerous open houses this Sunday in Miracle Mile North. I'd jotted down the addresses before leaving for Linney's funeral. Now I drove to the nearest one, a two-story, red-tiled Spanish on Vista north of Beverly Boulevard.
The Realtor, a fortyish woman with blond hair and too-red lipstick, was in the dining room talking with a couple. I picked up a specs sheet, returned to the center hall, and walked up the stairs. A black couple was coming down the stairs. We exchanged smiles as we passed each other.
I love looking at houses, especially houses like this one that are well kept. I love taking in their character, imagining their secrets, exploring the nooks and crannies that make them special. I strolled through the rooms, sighed at the spacious closets, and walked down the stairs.
The Realtor was standing near the open front door with the first couple. “If you're interested, I'd make an offer. And I wouldn't wait. This is a beauty, and at the price, someone's going to grab it.”
The price, I'd seen from the prospectus, was $759,000.
The Realtor turned to me and treated me to a wide smile. “My name is Dawn. Did you look around? Can I answer any questions?”
The couple I'd passed on the stairs had reappeared. They stood a few feet away, waiting their turn.
“You listed a two-story on Fuller between First and Second,” I said. “I didn't see the sign when I drove by.”
Dawn was immediately subdued. “There was a terrible fire, and someone died.” Then, without a beat, “This house has an almost identical floor plan and several hundred more square feet. Did you see the bonus room upstairs?”
“It's lovely. Do you know whether that house will be for sale again?”
“Actually, the owner has taken it off the market permanently. He's rebuilding.”
“I understand that it was taken off the market once before. When did it go on the market the second time?”
She looked puzzled. “Why?”
“Just curious.”
“I don't know. I'd have to check at the office.”
“It was the middle of June,” said the woman who was waiting with her husband.
I turned to her.
“Jim and I loved that house,” she told me. “We made an offer the first time it was on the market, but someone outbid us. Then that deal fell through, and we heard the house wasn't for sale. But I kept checking. When I heard it was available again, we were ready to buy.”
“Why didn't you?”
She exchanged a glance with her husband. “He talked us out of it.”
I frowned. “The owner?”
“The Realtor. Bolt. He told us the owner's wife was kidnapped, maybe killed. He said they found her blood in the house.”
“That's the law,” Dawn said. “We're obligated to reveal information about any crime that has taken place on the property.”
The woman nodded. “We told him we didn't care. We figured that would lower the price. He kept telling us about other properties, how they were better for our needs. The fact that he lives next door had nothing to do with it, right?”
“Are you saying Mr. Bolt didn't want you to buy the house?” Dawn said. “Why would he do that?”
The black woman smiled. “Oh, I can't imagine.” She turned to her husband. “Can you, Jim?”
Zack was preparing for a speech he had to deliver this evening at a bar mitzvah reception, so I was on my own. I spent the rest of the afternoon straightening up my apartment and doing laundry. Then I visited Gitty and Judah and played with Yechiel, who is almost a year old and is starting to walk and talk.
I was too lazy to cook and didn't feel like eating out alone, though I've done it many times and usually don't mind. I was feeling a little blue because of the day. Linney's funeral in the morning, my visit to the Fuller house. Tim Bolt turning out to be a bigot.
I went to my parents'. Noah was out with his girlfriend, and Joey with his. Liora was on a date with a young man from Baltimore. So it was just the three of us, and it was nice. We ate leftovers and watched The Sopranos. There was one explicit scene where Tony was really going at it with one of his girlfriends. I was a little embarrassed having my dad in the room, and I think he was embarrassed, too. Fathers and daughters . . .
Then I went home. Isaac popped out of his door to tell me he'd been on the lookout and everything was “hunky-dory.” I checked the apartment anyway, my heart beating a little faster as I turned on the lights in every room and made sure nothing was out of place.
There were two messages on my answering machine. Zack had phoned from the bar mitzvah, “Just to say hi,” and asked me to call him back on his cell. I knew he wanted to make sure I was all right, and though I pride myself on being indepen-dent, I have to say I liked being worried about. The second message was from a woman who didn't identify herself, but didn't need to:
“Tomorrow night, nine o'clock. Be careful. The night has a thousand eyes.”
Whose eyes were watching me?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Monday, November 17. 10:02 A.M. 400 block of Holt Avenue. A woman received a phone call from a neighbor who threatened to blow up her house if she continued to run her air conditioner after 11:30 P.M. The suspect is described as a 30-year-old woman standing 5 feet 6 inches tall. (Wilshire)
THE HOUSEKEEPER, A SHORT, THIN WOMAN WITH coal-black eyes and a long black braid with glints of indigo and strands of silver, opened the door.
“Mr. Reston says to me you are coming at twelve,” she told me in a heavy Spanish accent when I was in the entry hall. “You want to see el profesor's room, yes?”
Reston had suggested that I come at noon, when he would meet me. The housekeeper's English wasn't great, he'd told me. I'd decided to come early.
“You're Louisa, right?” I smiled. “I'm Molly. Mr. Reston said it would be okay
for me to talk to you about Professor Linney and his daughter.”
“¡La pobrecita!” The woman sighed. “¿Ella esta muerta, verdad?”
I nodded. That much I understood: The poor woman. She is dead, true? Margaret's portrait, which I could see from where we were standing, seemed to belie that fact. I was taken again by the restless energy the artist had captured, the suggestion that Maggie wanted to leap off the mantel.
Louisa took me into the kitchen. We sat at the breakfast room table and I asked her what she remembered about the last days of Linney's life.
“No very much. He is no very different than always. Very sad, very angry. I no blame him. I feel sorry for him, you know?” She clucked.
“You knew him a long time? ¿Mucho tiempo?”
She nodded. “Sí. I am with the family twenty years, from when I am young girl. Very sad when Mrs. Roberta died. She is very nice lady.”
“You said Professor Linney was angry. Was he angry with anyone in particular? ¿Específico?” I added, when Louisa seemed perplexed.
Her eyes slid sideways, toward the open doorway. “No, no one.”
I'd assumed she wouldn't feel comfortable tattling on the man who paid her wages, but I had to try. “By the way, who was taking care of the old house, on Fuller?”
“Angelita, the daughter of my sister. She is going there every week before the fuego. The fire. But no more. Now she is looking for another job.” Louisa sighed.
I wasn't sure whether she was sighing about the torched house or the fact that her niece was out of a job. Maybe both. “What about after the fire?”
Louisa shook her head. “Mr. Reston, he tells her there is no need.”
I asked her about the day before Margaret disappeared.
“She is out of the house much of the day. When she comes back she is muy triste. Very sad. She is crying.”
“Not nervous? Nerviosa?”
Louisa hesitated. “Enojada.” Angry.
“¿Enojada?” I leaned toward her. “Why was she angry, Louisa? With whom? ¿Con quién?”
Dream House Page 25
