The Color of Fear

by Marcia Muller

  My stomach wrenched. I was used to Hy’s being summoned away at odd times, but given what was going on here, this was a particularly bad time.

  “Sorry, McCone,” he said when the conversation ended. “Hostage situation brewing in France—Syrians involved. I’ve got to get going.”

  “Can I drive you—?”

  “No, they’re sending a chopper to take me to the airport.” He was already dragging out the travel case he kept in his office closet, checking to see if he had his passport and various other government papers.

  I asked, “The chopper’s coming here?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll go up to the roof with you.”

  He dropped the bag, pulled me close, and tipped my face up to his. “No, McCone. The last thing I want to see today is you growing smaller and smaller on that roof.”

  He kissed me, then said, “I’ll call you,” and headed up the stairs. It wasn’t long before I heard the chopper’s noisy blades churning the air above the building.

  I dropped heavily down into my desk chair, wondering how long it would be before his customary promise, “I’ll call you,” would irrevocably be broken. Or how long before his customary warning to me—“You be careful out there”—would no longer be relevant.

  Enough torturing myself. Time to get back to work.

  I slipped my .38 into my purse for insurance before I left the office. I was in a spooky mood and if you have a carry permit these days, it’s always a good idea to protect yourself. There are too damn many unstable people out there packing loaded weapons that they shouldn’t have.

  2:02 p.m.

  The address Neditch had supplied for Dean Abbot was a small house on a hilltop that overlooked a good portion of the East Bay. White stucco with the obligatory red-tiled roof. Nothing outstanding about it, except that it was large and surrounded by a lot of land. I rang the bell; chimes sounded within. No answer. I rang again.

  And the door was opened by a human egg.

  The short man who stood before me had a perfectly ovoid shape. Even his hairless head, short arms, stubby legs, and small feet contributed to the Humpty Dumpty illusion.

  If he was surprised to see me, he managed to mask it. “Yes?” he said impatiently.

  “Dean Abbot, right?”

  “Yes. Who are you and what do you want?”

  “You know who I am. You were hiding in a supply closet at my offices on the twenty-first and scared the hell out of one of my employees.”

  He wasn’t at all embarrassed. “Oh, right. One of your people told me I was no longer welcome on the premises—just as you’re not welcome here.”

  “Just why were you on the premises?”

  His gaze shifted. “Uh, doing a favor for a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  No reply. Then, “A friend who’s interested in information on the high-tech security industry.”

  “And you thought you could gather some in the supply closet?”

  “It was a start. Now if you don’t mind…”

  “I do mind. I’m not ready to leave yet, not until we talk about the racist attack against my father.”

  The attempt to catch him off guard failed. “Why come to me? I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Your name’s been linked to two men—Rolle Ferguson and Jerzy Capp—who may have been involved.”

  Still no reaction, other than a cold stare. He said in a snotty tone, “I don’t believe that. I’ve never heard of either.”

  “Sure you have, Mr. Abbot. You’ve mentioned both on your blog.”

  “What blog?”

  “I should have said Michael Bonds’s blog.”

  “Michael mentions a lot of people on his blog. Most of them I don’t know personally.”

  “So Michael Bonds is who? Your alter ego?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Isn’t that dishonest?”

  “People can say anything they want or be anybody they want on the Internet.”

  “That’s true—until what they say catches up with them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know. I got your name from a company called TechWiz. They say you’re one of the best hackers in the state.”

  “I am not a hacker. But they’re right about me being the best at what I do.”

  “And just what is that?”

  “I’m a researcher. I can find out anything about anybody.”

  “Including me.”

  “Anybody. Nobody has better computer skills than I do.”

  “Could you breach a highly sophisticated home alarm system?”

  His gaze shifted, turned wary. “What kind of question is that?”

  “One I want an answer to. The system on my home was breached recently.”

  “And you think I did it? You’re crazy, lady. I’d never do anything like that. It’s illegal.”

  “So is hacking into private files.”

  “I told you, I’m not a hacker—”

  “Where were you last Saturday afternoon?”

  “Christmas shopping, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here in Piedmont.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Damn right I can, not that I have to. Quentin!” he called out over his shoulder.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. A second egg, taller and not quite as round, peered over his shoulder. My God, a matched set.

  Abbot said to me, “This is Quentin Zane, my roommate. Quent, tell this…person where I was and what I was doing on Saturday afternoon.”

  “Christmas shopping with me. Why?”

  “Satisfied, Ms. McCone?”

  No, I wasn’t. It was a prearranged alibi if I’d ever heard one.

  “What’s all this about, Dean?” Quentin Zane asked petulantly.

  “Nothing either of us needs to be concerned about.” Then, to me, “I have nothing more to say to you, Ms. McCone, now or ever.” And he shut the door in my face.

  3:16 p.m.

  As I walked back to my car I thought about Abbot’s being involved with Jerzy and Rolle and whoever their cohorts were. It worked for me. Also I had little doubt that Abbot was the one who had orchestrated the break-in at my home. The problem was in proving it. That was always the primary difficulty in dealing with technology: it was too amorphous. Individuals’ movements were too hard to trace, and anybody who had the skills to trick the system could put anything over on you.

  What about Quentin Zane? Was he involved in some way with that bunch too? In my car I called Derek at the office—Mick already had too much on his plate—and asked him for background checks on both Abbot and Zane.

  I sat slumped in the car for a time, my head tilted back. When did things get so damn complicated? I wondered. Then, after a few moments, I thought, Well, maybe they haven’t.

  When you got right down to it, people were much the same as they’d always been—their motivations, emotions, hopes, and dreams. Didn’t matter that they went about achieving them with new technologies, more speed, and more ease. The underlying desires were still there; they were what I should be tapping into.

  But how to do that?

  Take a long drive and think about it.

  4:00 p.m.

  Traffic was light during this post-Christmas week when many took time off work to travel or enjoy staycations. I coasted through the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza, made good time across the city, and was soon on Interstate 280 heading south.

  As I was passing the shopping mecca at Serramonte—Walmart, Toys “R” Us, Kmart, Home Depot, and dozens of their ilk—I received a call from Derek. He had no further information on Dean Abbot, but Quentin Zane, he said, was another computer nerd like his roommate; he had a good job with one of the software companies that had recently moved from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, and no apparent ties to white supremacists. So maybe he knew what his friend Dean was into, and maybe he didn’t.

&nbs
p; My drive took me all the way to San Jose, a tangle of freeways surrounded by high-rise office buildings and smaller manufacturing firms. It was once a sleepy town in the orange groves, but its population has swelled to over one million, making it the third most populous city in California and the tenth most populous in the United States. With such unchecked growth have come problems—smog, mainly. Today it was strong enough to clog my nostrils and make my eyes burn, so I got off at a downtown exit and drove back up the Peninsula.

  Several miles later I noticed the Trousdale Avenue exit off 280. On impulse I took it and then turned onto Hillway Drive. The weather was warm down here and I lowered my window. The familiar scent of dried grasses, pine, and oak leaves rushed in at me; although it was late in the year, the persistent drought of the past few years had increased the fire danger in these hills. They were still attractive despite the number of dead and dying trees, and the fragrant air brought memories of lazy summer days.

  I used to come here with a man—briefly my lover—who’d been a professor at nearby Stanford University. We’d spread our picnic blanket on the shore of man-made Searsville Lake and try to conjure up the ghosts of the small but thriving town that had been inundated in the late 1890s by the damming of a creek to create alternative sources of water. Some people claim you can still see shadowy images of the town in the water, but I never have.

  On other days we’d have our lunch near Frenchman’s Tower, a medieval-looking, silo-like structure containing a water tank and a library, erected in the 1870s by an eccentric Frenchman who used many aliases and refused to divulge his true identity—another of the Peninsula’s mysteries. He returned to France finally, after selling the tower to Leland Stanford, and it has stood ever since.

  As I passed the turnoffs that would take me to my former haunts, a sharp wind began to blow; it would bring in fog from the coast later. Now it whispered in the trees and carried the additional scents of turmeric and bay laurel. A white-tailed deer flashed across the road ahead, startling me. I saw no houses, but tall iron gates and the occasional peak of a roof indicated they were there.

  Atherton is one of the wealthiest communities in America, with an average per-household income approaching a million dollars. Homes go for much more, the average being upwards of six million. Long ago the citizens—all of them influential—opted to preserve the residential, rural feel of their open space, and by and large they’ve succeeded. I’d worked another case in this vicinity, and the tree-lined lanes that concealed mansions had struck me as somewhat sterile in spite of their beauty.

  I was now passing the notorious Wellands, a ninety-two-room manse built in the early nineteen hundreds by one of the heirs to a mother lode fortune. It has a strange history: many owners, all of whom only sporadically lived in it; two teenaged girls who had been raped, beaten, and left for dead on the grounds in 1989 by a vagrant posing as a security guard who lured them onto the premises with the promise of a tour. Some people who lived in the area spoke of the estate in low voices, as if afraid of awakening the ghosts who were said to inhabit it.

  I hoped the Ferguson estate—Bellefleur, Mick’s file had said it was called—contained no such entities, dead or alive.

  Probably it contained no one, period. I hadn’t been able to reach anybody there by phone, nor had Mick been able to contact any former staff members other than the housekeeper.

  A weathered sign that read BELLEFLEUR appeared at the foot of a driveway to my right. The tall iron gates were closed and padlocked. Across from them was a grove of pepper trees; I parked there and crossed to peer through the gates. There wasn’t much to see: a deeply rutted asphalt driveway, untamed trees and shrubbery, a couple of outbuildings that even from a distance looked to be in poor repair. Far down the driveway a steep slate roof missing many slabs protruded through the foliage, but from this angle I couldn’t make out the main house.

  I went back to my car and took note of my bearings. About a hundred yards from here the road looped in a large U and doubled back to the freeway and, fortunately for me, it passed by the Hoffman estate—the home of my former client. If I was in luck, I might be able to access the Bellefleur property from there.

  It struck me as an odd coincidence, but peculiar coincidences happen, or there wouldn’t be a word for them. And, for whatever reason, they abound in investigative work. This was one of the largest and most beneficial I’d experienced lately.

  5:45 p.m.

  The gates of the Hoffman estate stood open. As I drove in I spotted Suzy Cushing, the great-niece of Jane Hoffman, my former client, as well as a linguistics major with an emphasis on geopolitical physics at Stanford. Her job was to live with and look after her great-aunt, as well as to oversee the affairs of her great-uncle Van, who was currently—and probably forever—institutionalized.

  There’d been talk that Suzy had been given a minor fortune to care for her aunt Jane when her great-uncle was put away, which wasn’t true. All the assets, what there were of them, were in a trust; her aunt’s lawyer, not Suzy, was its administrator. And Suzy’s caretaking job wasn’t any easier than it was lucrative. Aunt Jane had turned into an unpleasant, querulous old woman, forever making demands and complaining when they weren’t met according to her exacting standards. However, when she wasn’t in classes or studying, Suzy, a gardening enthusiast, spent most of her spare time on the grounds surrounding the house or the greenhouse behind it. Today I found her out front digging in a bed that I recalled had contained spring flowers.

  She stood up as I stopped the car. Her short blonde hair was tousled and there was a smear of dirt on her forehead. When I got out of my car and she recognized me, a smile transformed her small, perky face and she jumped up and down like a cheerleader. “Texas cute,” Mick would call her.

  “Shar!”

  “Hi, Suzy. Good work on the house.”

  Up close, the old two-story French chateau style looked much better than the last time I’d seen it. A fresh, although thinly applied, coat of cream paint and new green shutters perked it up, and Suzy’s plantings would eventually round out the pleasant picture.

  She hugged me, shedding soil on my clothing. When she realized what she’d done, she tried to wipe it off, but I waved her away. “It’s great to see you!” she said.

  “You too. How are you?”

  “Pretty good. You?”

  “About the same. And your aunt Jane?”

  “Some days good, some days not so good. But she’s still a bitch. I’ll be moving her to a nursing home in a few days, and I doubt she’ll ever leave there.”

  “And your uncle Van?”

  “He died last summer.”

  “Oh? I didn’t see an obituary for him.”

  “There wasn’t one. I didn’t think it was proper, given his criminal past. At the end he was crazy as a bedbug. Whenever I’d go to see him in the nuthouse, he’d just sit there, and then all of a sudden he’d ask when we were going to South America.”

  “And you’d say?”

  “‘We’re waiting on the money.’”

  Hoffman had been an embezzler, but now the money he’d stolen was back where it belonged. However, some strange quirk in his brain had insisted the money was still his, since he was the one who’d taken it.

  Suzy said, “I’m so sorry about what happened to your father. I read about it in the paper, and I’ve been meaning to call. How is he?”

  “Mending nicely, thanks.”

  “Has whoever beat him been caught yet?”

  “Not yet, but we’re getting close. As a matter of fact, that’s why I’m here. A neighbor of yours may be involved.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Rolle Ferguson.”

  “Oh, shit. Let’s sit down.”

  We went to the front steps and planted ourselves side by side.

  “How well do you know Rolle?” I asked.

  “Not very. Just that he’s an asshole bigot with too much money, and a rabble-rouser. Always protesting things like gay marria
ge and civil rights issues. When he was in high school, he picketed the senior prom because the king and queen were an interracial couple.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Suzy picked up a little stick and began pushing it through the dirt at her feet. “When I think of him at all—which I try not to—I have this theory that he doesn’t really care about anything except calling attention to himself, making waves. A crazy megalomaniac in training.”

  “So it wouldn’t surprise you if he’s involved in the white supremacist movement?”

  “No. Nothing he does would surprise me.”

  “Does the name Jerzy Capp mean anything to you?”

  “No. Who’s he?

  “A cohort of Rolle’s, a racist thug. It’s possible Rolle may be bankrolling him.”

  “Uh-huh. Just the kind he’d hook up with. You think he and this Jerzy are the ones who attacked your father?”

  “Looks that way. We just have to prove it. Do you know if Rolle spends much time at Bellefleur?”

  “He didn’t after his parents were killed, but he’s been around recently.”

  “Alone or with others?”

  “With a bunch of guys the last time I saw him. Creepy types just like him.”

  “When was that?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “But they could have been back since without you noticing?”

  “Oh, sure. If they didn’t make a lot of noise.”

  “What were they doing over there?”

  “Partying, it sounded like. All night long. Why they’d want to party over there is beyond me. The place is a wreck—was starting to be even before Rolle’s parents died. The Fergusons weren’t what you’d call homebodies.”

  “How do you know it’s a wreck?”

  Suzy flushed. “You know how you can get an urge to explore odd places? Well, I had one after Rolle and his weird friends left.”

  “So you went exploring at Bellefleur.”

  “I did.” She spread her hands wide. “What can I say? I’m just naturally nosy.”