I remember watching a newscast not long ago about Ward Weaver, an Oregon City man who allegedly buried two young girls right on his property, and no one knew until he led police to them. The remains of one girl were found in a shed. The remains of the other girl were discovered days later in a barrel under a freshly poured cement slab. I couldn't begin to imagine the grief of those girls' parents, but I suppose they'd rather know than wonder.
Maybe I should go back to Adriana Caselotti's well, drop in a few coins, and wish for some answers.
I looked through my stacks of papers. Crime Sheet data. Notes on everyone I'd interviewed about Linney and Margaret. More notes for my L.A. Times article. All the HARP material, all the vandalisms that had intrigued me in the first place. Highland, Larchmont, Arden, McCadden, Hudson, Schumacher . . . Pumpkins, eggs, shattered windows, damaged driveways and gates. Lemons.
A damaged brick patio on an elevated concrete slab.
But the patio had been vandalized a few weeks ago, not five months ago.
I looked at my notes. “The homeowners cut down the tree and built the patio practically overnight.”
I reached my dad on his cell.
“What's up, sweetie?” he asked. “Everything okay?”
“Everything's fine.” I could hear sawing in the background. “Is there a way to find out when a job involving concrete was done?”
“The concrete batch plants keep computerized logs, Molly. The name of the driver, time loaded, time out on road, weight of load, volume of load, water added to mixture, type of concrete mix and any additives.”
More than I needed to know, but my dad gives thorough answers. We tease him about it. “I'm surprised they need all those details.”
“The information's critical depending on the usage. Also, they need a record in case the test cylinder fails or in the event of a court case due to failure of the structure resulting in a lawsuit or loss of life. What's this for?”
“I'm just checking into something. Can you get a cement truck to pour the stuff at night?”
“Concrete truck. And you place concrete, Molly. You don't pour it. In L.A. you can get it delivered twenty-four/seven. Of course, it might cost you more, but if you're in a rush, the extra money might be worth it.”
And maybe someone had been in a rush. “If you were building a patio, Dad, how deep would you dig a trench under the concrete?”
“Ground level or elevated?”
I pictured the yard at the back of the Arden house. The two men laying the bricks. “Elevated, about two feet.”
“The heavier the load, the more support you want. If I were doing it, I'd dig about six to eight inches and put footings around the perimeter.”
“If I give you an address, can you find out for me when a job was done, say five months ago?”
There was a beat of silence. “What's going on, Molly?”
I told him what I was thinking.
“I can check into it, but I won't have an answer today. Maybe tomorrow. Will that do?”
“Sure.” I tried not to sound disappointed, but as I said, I'm not a good waiter. I thanked my dad and hung up.
The phone rang. I let the answering machine pick up and heard Hank Reston's drawl.
“I'm sorry about yesterday, Molly. I'd like to talk to you and explain a few things. Call me.”
For my Larchmont tour guide, absence hadn't made the heart grow fonder.
“It's you,” she said.
At least she'd opened the door. It was almost five o'clock, dark and chilly. I considered asking her if I could come in, but decided not to press my luck.
“I'm really sorry to bother you,” I said. “I have a few questions about the patio that was vandalized on Arden. The property where they cut down the lemon tree?”
“I've told you everything I know.” She closed the door an inch.
“I'm curious about a few details. When did they build the patio, do you remember?”
“When? I'd say about half a year ago. June or July.”
There was a huge difference. “Is there a way you could find out exactly?”
She cocked her head. “Why do you need to know all this? Your article already ran in the paper. It was interesting,” she added, throwing me a bone.
“Thank you.” I take 'em where I get 'em. “I'm thinking of doing a follow-up.”
“Well,” she said after a moment, “it was the day after the police threatened to arrest those protestors. There was a story in the Chronicle with a picture of the tree.”
“By any chance do you have a copy of that article?”
“No.”
That would have been too easy. I would check the Chronicle archives online when I got home.
“But my friend might,” she said. “She lives next door to the house with the tree.”
“Would you mind asking her?”
“Now?”
This was like pulling splinters with a clothespin. “That would be great.” I smiled.
She sighed to show me she was going out of her way. “Well, hold on.”
Still no invitation to come in. I hugged my arms against the cold air while I waited. A few minutes later she was back in the doorway.
“The police came on June eleventh,” she said. “The homeowners cut down the tree and built the patio the night of the twelfth. Well, except for the concrete. They did that the next morning. Does that help?”
That helped a great deal. What were the odds? I thought. My chest tightened, but I cautioned myself not to rush to conclusions. “You mentioned that they built the patio practically overnight.” I'd noticed that when I reread my notes. “What did you mean by that?”
“Just what I said. The police threatened to arrest the protestors, and they finally left. But the homeowners worried that there would be more protests and more delays and the job would never get done. So they had the contractor cut down the tree the next night and dig the trench. The protestors heard about it. They were outside the house, holding a vigil. It was on local television.”
“How deep was it? The trench, I mean.”
“I don't know.” The look she gave me said she doubted my sanity. “Anyway, around four-thirty in the morning they poured the concrete. Can you imagine waking up to the noise of a concrete mixer at four-thirty in the morning!”
“Not something I'd be happy about,” I agreed.
“My friend told them to stop. She finally called the police. They showed up almost an hour later and ticketed the contractor and the driver of the concrete truck and made them wait until seven. That's when the city says you can start.” Her sniff indicated what she thought about that city regulation.
“I think you said the contractor was very upset when the patio was vandalized a few weeks ago.”
She nodded. “He pounded on my friend's door, wanted to know if she saw who did it. His face was so red she thought he was having a heart attack. But in the end they didn't have to tear up the whole patio. They filled the cracks. They did lose all the brick, and brick's expensive. I don't blame the contractor for being upset, and the homeowners. But they never should have cut down that tree.”
I phoned Hernandez and told him what I'd learned.
“So even though the police made Modine stop, by that time he'd already covered up anything that was there.”
“Very interesting,” Hernandez said. “Unfortunately, your hunch, strong as it is, doesn't give me enough to warrant demolishing the patio and digging under it.”
I reined in my impatience. “It's more than a hunch, Detective. Maggie disappeared a little after one on June thirteenth. The concrete was poured hours later.”
“It's not enough.”
I was incredulous. “What if Margaret Linney's body is there? Don't you want to exhume it?”
“What if it's not? Do you have any idea how expensive it is to rip up a patio, and redo it, which is what the city would have to do after we were done? And I can guarantee you the homeowners wouldn't be happy with the results.”
He was right about that. I've seen examples of the city's repair jobs. They aren't featured in Architectural Digest.
“And you're assuming that the homeowners would give us permission to do all this,” Hernandez continued. “They don't have to, without a search warrant.”
“Which you can get.”
“Not with what you've told me. I'm sorry, Molly.”
Sorry, as Porter had so eloquently told me on Sunday, doesn't mean anything. “So you're not going to do anything?”
“If you had a soil sample that would indicate the presence of human remains, that would be something conclusive that I could take to my captain.”
“If I'm right, the body is under a concrete slab, so I can't very well get a soil sample. So you can't do anything?” I repeated.
“Not unless you can convince the homeowners to dig up their patio, or pay someone else to do it.”
“Someone like who?”
“I have no idea. But it won't be the police or the city.”
So I phoned Hank Reston.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Wednesday, November 19. 9:12 A.M. 100 block of South Orlando Avenue. A man and a woman were arguing when he told her, “The next time you call the police, you will be dead before they get here.” The suspect is described as a 50-year-old Asian man standing 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 175 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. (Wilshire)
I COULD HEAR THE JACKHAMMERS FROM HALFWAY DOWN the block.
It was a beautiful November day with the weather in the low seventies. Sprinklers shooting graceful arcs of water anointed me as I walked to the Arden house. I recognized the dark maroon Chevy Hernandez and Porter had parked in front of my apartment, and Connors's gray Cutlass. There was a Dumpster in the driveway, and a truck. Sunrise Construction. I wondered if Reston had told Modine.
He'd been happy to hear from me. Or so he'd said.
“It's about Linney's home equity line of credit,” he told me. “Roger and I were having problems with some of our properties in HARP areas, as you know. We needed cash to tide us over until we sold two of the properties. So I borrowed the money from Linney's account, fully intending to pay it back, of course. But it's not something I wanted to tell you or the police.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“Technically, the house belonged to Maggie and me, Molly.” He was defensive now. “Linney signed the Grant Deed to Maggie, and she and I had reciprocal powers of attorney. So there was nothing wrong in my borrowing the money. Anyway, I could tell you thought something wasn't kosher, and I didn't want you to get the wrong idea. That's why I'm telling you all this now.”
And because the police will find out, if they haven't already. “What about Ned Vaughan? Why is he so nervous about Modine? And don't tell me it's about the survey.”
Reston didn't answer right away. “It is about the survey.”
I exaggerated a sigh. “If you don't want to—”
“Let me finish. But you can't tell anyone. Agreed?”
“Scout's honor.” Since I've never been a scout, I figured it wasn't a real pledge.
“Roger wanted to make sure the survey was anti-HARP. So he asked Ned to help him out, and Ned said he'd try, but in the end the survey was pro-HARP. So Roger felt screwed.”
I nodded. “And Ned would do it because . . . ?”
“Roger did him a few favors. You know Ned's been restoring his house, right? Roger got him material at cost, and a couple of times he had some of his guys do some basic stuff. Drywall, electrical wiring, plumbing.”
“I still don't see why Ned is so nervous.”
“Ned hasn't paid him for the material or the work. He told me he thought Roger was being generous, but Roger says Ned understood that it was . . . well, you know.”
“A bribe.”
Reston sighed. “So now Roger's threatening to tell the company Ned works for, and maybe the people at USC. I told him he'll make himself look bad, but he said he doesn't care. I've been talking to him, and I think he's calming down. Look, you really can't tell anyone about this. So have I cleared everything up?”
“All except one thing. Why did you change the entries in your wife's planner?”
“Why did I what?”
I have to say Reston played dumfounded well. “Erasing the fact that Modine was dropping off HARP papers at the house. Changing HELC into HELP.”
There was a moment of silence. “Okay.” Reston sighed again. “I didn't want all this stuff to distract you from what's important. Finding Maggie. I don't care about anything else. You can believe that or not.”
“I think I may have found her.”
You could have covered a football field with the silence.
“What do you mean?” Hank said, his voice choked.
I told him about the lemon tree and the patio and the homeowners' rush to build it. “I may be totally wrong, but I suspect that your wife's body is under that patio. The timing is too coincidental.”
“You're saying she's been there all this time?”
I have to say he sounded anguished. “I could be wrong.”
“Did you tell the police?” he asked.
“Five minutes ago. But they won't dig up the patio.” I repeated what Hernandez had told me. “Maybe you can approach the homeowners and ask them for permission to do it. Of course, you'd have to pay for everything, including rebuilding the patio the way it was.”
To be honest, I didn't see how Hank could say no. If he hadn't killed Maggie, he'd jump at the chance to find her and bring resolution to his life. That's what he'd told me he wanted more than anything. If he rejected my suggestion—well, he'd be looking awfully suspicious.
He said yes. Quickly, without a second's hesitation. Either he was innocent, or he was one step ahead of me.
“By the way,” I said. “There's one thing I forgot to mention. Your partner, Roger, was the contractor.”
I hung up and called Hernandez. I couldn't tell from his voice whether he was amused or annoyed or impressed. Maybe a little of each. I phoned him again early this morning after Reston informed me that the wrecking crew would start at seven. The Arden house owners had been angry when he'd approached them, then reluctant, and finally eager to exhume the body, if there was one.
“I figured you'd want to know,” I'd told the detective.
And then I'd called Connors.
The wrought iron fence had been expertly repaired. The jackhammer's rat-tat-tat-tat-tat drummed in my ears and grew louder as I walked up the driveway and through the gate to the backyard. Reston was standing on the far side of the patio, which had been stripped of its brick layer. His hands were stuffed into his black Dockers, and his face was as rigid as the patio's concrete slab. Connors, Hernandez, and Porter were across from Reston and had their backs to me. They were all watching the man working the jackhammer and the two other men swinging sledgehammers in a syncopated rhythm that reminded me of figures in a music box.
The place looked like the aftermath of an earthquake. Piles of brick and chunks of concrete filled a wheelbarrow and littered the green lawn, though only a small section of the concrete had been removed.
I walked over to Connors. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He nodded but didn't take his eyes off the man dancing with the jackhammer.
A half hour passed, then another. The three men took a break, during which they drank water from cups and splashed it over their grimy, sweaty faces. The demolition was going much more slowly than I'd expected. I was thinking how hard it is to break up concrete when there was another stop in the jackhammer's music. A sledgehammer clanked against the slab. The sound reverberated in the air. The man removed another chunk and tossed it onto the wheelbarrow. Then he crouched, his hands on his muscular thighs, and peered into the crack he'd created. He covered his nose with his hand and drew back so quickly he almost lost his balance.
“Jeez!” He stood and backed away.
I didn't think Reston could have been any
stiffer, but he was.
Hernandez, dapper in a navy sports jacket and gray slacks, jumped onto the concrete slab. He walked over to where the man had been working the sledgehammer. With his hand cupped around his nose, he crouched and gazed into the crack.
A moment later he stood and brushed off his slacks.
“All right, we're stopping,” he said.
A breeze came my way. And then I smelled it, too.
Connors told me it would take a few hours, maybe more, for the city to send equipment and men. I was hungry, so I drove to the Coffee Bean on Larchmont for a sandwich. While I was there I checked my home phone messages.
Gordon Tiler had returned my call and left his number.
I phoned him back, talked to his secretary, and a moment later I was actually on the line with the attorney.
“What's so important?” he asked.
I told him who I was and that I knew Maggie Reston had met with him the day before she'd disappeared. I told him I'd be grateful if he told me why. Of course, he wouldn't.
“Call Joan Eggers,” he said. “Maybe she'll talk to you.” He gave me a business number and hung up.
The 212 prefix told me she was in Manhattan. Her name sounded familiar and I wondered why. I tried the number and listened to her recording. Her voice sounded familiar, too.
I reached Connors on his cell phone. The equipment hadn't arrived yet. I asked him to let me know when I should return. Then I drove home and worked for a few hours on my Crime Sheet column. It was tedious, but it kept my mind off Arden and the smell coming from under the patio.
The title company officer phoned. Reston and Maggie had signed reciprocal powers of attorney on May 29. Two weeks before she disappeared. In less than two weeks from now the title company could have chosen not to honor the paper Maggie had signed. Not that it mattered, now that Reston had taken the house off the market.
It was after four when I returned to Arden. Two black-and-whites and a vehicle marked SID were parked in front. Scientific Investigation Division. No coroner's van, so they hadn't found anything yet.
A uniformed cop was guarding the gate. Most L.A. cops are cute and trim, and he was no exception.
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