Laguna Heat

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “You’ve been guided a long way from home, pops.”

  “A few years from now, I’ll be gone and I’ll have left four miracles behind me. A church and a hospital, a wife and a son. I’m proud of that. I think it’s an honor to add something before you go.”

  Wade glanced at his watch and flicked off the track light.

  They returned to the dining room, where Shephard helped his father clear the table.

  Through the sliding glass door that led to the backyard, Shephard watched the sea heave steadily into Arch Bay. The surging blue was broken only by the bright dabs of color that were his father’s roses, a Wade passion for as long as he could remember. The rose bushes ran the entire length of the wide backyard. They had supplied Shephard with scores of gifts over the years. He remembered particularly a small bunch he had picked for Louise on the occasion of their first date, a mixed bouquet of reds and whites, which he augmented with bright yellow blossoms of sourgrass weed that grew unfettered in a far corner. She had been nearly ecstatic, and Shephard was moved by her reaction in a way that only a boy of sixteen can be. He thought back to that night as he set his wineglass in the sink. After going to bed he had mentally composed love poems to Louise, which he imagined turned into deep blue birds that flitted out of his room and winged through the night to her bedroom. And, too moved by emotion to sleep, he had left his room and gone into the backyard, where he faced in the direction of his beloved’s home and spread his arms to draw in the telepathic poem-birds that she was assuredly sending back to him. He had maintained this dramatic pose for a few long minutes, convinced that the world had never known a love so pure and powerful. Pudgy had sat idiotically in front of him, head cocked, waiting for something to happen.

  As he thought of Louise, he felt bad.

  Those early years had seemed endless, he thought, setting the plates and a coffee saucer into the familiar sink. They had seemed endless, and then they vanished.

  Wade filled the sink and began washing the dishes, and in automatic response to the years of teamwork that had made the Shephard house spotless, Tom took his time-honored position to his father’s left. He dried. The view through the kitchen window was pristine. A bank of clouds wandered across the sun, casting a momentary darkness over the day and turning the shiny water to a dark blue. Cobalt blue, Shephard noted, like the flecks in Larry Robbins’s microscope. He worked the Identikit sketch from his pocket and flattened it on the counter beside his father. Wade studied it, shook his head, looked again. “No.”

  “Did you know Tim Algernon?” Shephard asked.

  Wade handed him a plate and nodded. “Hard to live in this town for thirty years and not know Tim. We played a little tennis together at the Surfside back after the war. Never friends, just acquaintances.” His father’s voice suddenly found an edge. “I heard it was pretty bad.” He looked again at the sketch, then moved it aside.

  “He didn’t have a face. We had to run a dental on him just to make the identification.”

  Shephard purposefully offered his father little information; Wade’s line of questioning would reveal his own instincts on how to handle the case. There was a long silence as Wade rinsed the sink and doused it with cleanser. Then, as he had done a hundred times before, he wiped the counter once before swinging himself up onto the tiles, where he sat with his back to the ocean. Shephard dried the last of the silverware and hoisted himself likewise onto the opposite counter. His father’s face had lost its warmth.

  “Money?”

  “That was my first thought. Until I found over a thousand dollars in bills stuffed down his throat. There was more in the house, and plenty of hardware someone might want.” Shephard waited again.

  “Then what does that leave?”

  Shephard looked into the face of Wade the Cop. “An old detective friend of mine told me once that men get killed for four reasons. Money, a woman, silence, and revenge. Algernon didn’t have a woman.”

  Wade seemed to ponder the statement. Then: “Now do you understand why that old detective left that world for a better one?”

  “I think so. But there must be silence and revenge in your world, too.”

  His father grinned broadly. “We try to keep it to a minimum.”

  “Algernon was killed early Monday morning. On Wednesday, Hope Creeley had a visit from the same man. He held her down in the bathtub and cut off her eyelids before torching her, and everything—”

  “Cut off her eyelids?”

  “The only way I can figure it is that he wanted her to watch,” Shephard said.

  His father shook his head. “I guess that’s how I’d read it too,” he said quietly.

  “And the same guy did it. He sent Algernon a Bible with a threat written in it. The same for Creeley. The woman at Forest Avenue Books said the Identikit sketch matched her customer. She had him pegged for religion or self-help.”

  “An astute observation, I’d say.”

  “The connection between Algernon and Creeley is the Surfside Club. They were members at the same time, but it was a long time ago—”

  “One connection, maybe,” Wade interrupted. “I hope for your sake there’s more than just that.”

  “It’s all I’ve got. Maybe Joe Datilla can open some doors.”

  Wade’s face seemed torn between professions: the suspicion of the detective and the gentle disappointment of the reverend both registered. “Joe will do everything he can for you,” he said, and for a moment was lost in thought. “I can’t think of two more opposite types. Algernon, as I remember, was a quiet man, big and strong, an athlete. Hope Creeley was married to Burton Creeley, who was part-owner of the club. She was a vivacious, very social woman before he died. Of course after that, she just seemed to fade away. I’m sure that living there at the Surfside was more than she could handle.”

  “You knew about Helene?”

  “Everyone knew about Helene Lang.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Wade looked down at his feet as they dangled by the cupboard. “Like Hope Creeley,” he answered finally. “She just seemed to fade away. Left the club after a while, I think.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. I quit going there after your mother passed away and it was quite a while before I had the desire to play tennis with the old gang again. So I lost touch. Just as well, I think. I’ll tell you, after the war I came back from the Pacific, glad to be alive with a little peace in the world. A year or two later I met Colleen and I don’t have to tell you that that was the happiest time of my life. The whole world seemed to breathe a big sigh of relief. People moved west to Southern California; the factories that were building planes went back to building station wagons, and it was wonderful. A whole country full of teenagers is what it felt like. Then a long run of, well, call it bad luck if you want. A strange feeling it was, sitting in the Surfside Lounge after Colleen and Burton. I guess the dream had to end. It felt like … growing up, maybe. It sobered us. It aged us. It woke us up from a good sleep.” Wade reached down and wiped the counter once with the towel. “It’s still a hard time to talk about,” he added as he slid off the counter and checked his watch.

  “Thanks, pops,” Shephard said.

  “Hey.” When he looked up, his face was full and flushed, a dose of the Reverend Wade Shephard. “I’ve got a couple of young lovers to marry. And when you’re ready, I’ll do it for you, too.” He smiled broadly. “No charge.”

  THIRTEEN

  Shephard sped north on Coast Highway toward the Surfside Club, helping himself to the vacant fast lane and holding the Mustang to a mild eighty. An afternoon breeze had eased onto the coast, the first stirrings of a shift from low to high pressure. By evening the wind would hit seven knots, he guessed, frosting the sea with whitecaps and clearing the smog westward for a high-gloss sunset. He pictured himself sitting on the patio of the Hotel Laguna, working on a double Scotch in the company of Jane Algernon

  while the sun went down behi
nd Catalina Island. Unlikely daydreams, he thought. But as Jane Algernon’s sleeping figure passed across his mind he again felt that fluttering inside, the covey of quail gathering before flight. He savored the brief sensation, but forced his mind onto other things, telling himself not to surround molehills of emotion with mountains of meaning.

  The all-news station featured an interview with a university psychologist, an expert in law enforcement, who posited that “not all police are the cold-blooded killing machines that many people think them to be.” On the contrary, he told the interviewer, some undergo horrible traumas during and after fatal shootings. The nightmares, divorce, and eventual suicide of one such case were noted, and the summation was that people should have more compassion for the cop on the beat.

  The report yanked Shephard back to that freakishly drizzly night last August. He had responded to a call from an officer in distress and arrived at the residential street off Pico Boulevard to find a cop being held at bay by a man with a knife. The scene played itself out again: Shephard cutting the lights of the unmarked car, cautiously approaching the two men framed in the headlights of a black and white, moving closer to see that the officer’s hands were held out with the palms up. He could still hear the calm argument, something about whatever was wrong with the cockroaches didn’t require a knife and maybe jail. Then the cop dropping his hands and the man with the knife dropping his for a moment before he swung upward in a quick arc and the officer went for his gun: Shephard could never clearly remember who moved first. He saw the short trajectory of the blade outlined in the headlights. Then the jerking of his right shoulder and the muzzle flash of the Python .357. And the roaring in his ears as the cop went down and the man pitched over backward onto the wet grass, all in a warm drizzle that cast a spectral sheen over the scene. Then that endless moment of indecision while he felt the urine spreading down his pants, and moved closer to see the officer on his knees, bent over, cradling a handful of his own insides, and the young man with only his foot moving and his chest turning dark in the rain. Looking down on him, Shephard saw that he was just a boy.

  Shephard lit a cigarette to break the reverie, then pushed to a music station. The song was dreadful but helped to erase the vision of Morris Mumford from his mind. At night it was different. At night, Morris lived inside him and did as he pleased.

  The traffic thickened as he approached Corona del Mar. By the time he reached the first traffic light, the cars had coalesced into an unmoving mass of colors, shining chrome, puffs of exhaust. Children bustled up and down the sidewalks, across the crosswalks, through the stationary traffic. They carried the accoutrements of beach kids: boogie boards, swim fins, portable radios, skateboards, blankets. Shephard watched a thin, tan boy with a sunbleached mop of hair bob down the sidewalk in front of him, the Tom Shephard of another lifetime. He was carrying a pair of swim fins and a beach towel over his shoulder. Shephard called out over the door of the convertible: “Hey, how are the waves?”

  The boy turned without breaking stride, shot Shephard the thumbs-up signal, then turned back to the bright sidewalk before him. Walk it all the way to Alaska, Shephard thought. His own pale reflection in the rearview mirror, cigarette dangling from under the drooped mustache, was the face of someone who no longer bore relation to the waves at Corona or to the boy on the sidewalk, he thought. Closer to the corpse in the bathtub, or the one in the dirt of Tim Algernon’s driveway. Closer to cigarettes. Closer to death. Closer to the middle, closer to the end. Maybe it was he who should walk to Alaska.

  The light changed to green and the cars lurched forward to wait at the next one.

  Ten minutes later he had emerged from the Corona del Mar snarl, opened up his speed past Newport Center and the office of South Coast Investigators, and eased down the long slope of highway to the bay bridge. The Balboa Bay Club slipped by to his left.

  The first yellow apartments of the Surfside Club appeared to the west, dwarfed by high palm trees that tilted in the breeze. As he swung into the Surfside entrance and stopped at the guard house, Hope Creeley’s words found their way to his mind. Bad luck in the air at the Surfside. The guard was a trim man of about sixty, Shephard guessed. He stepped from the house with a humorless expression, a clipboard in his hand. Shephard smiled and noted that the guard’s holster was on his left hip but he held a pen in his right hand.

  “Thinking about a suite,” he said. “Like to have a look around.” The guard perched himself over the car, bent down to have a look inside, then made a brief study of Shephard. “Tom Johnston is the name.”

  “Appointment, Mr. Johnston?”

  “Lease lines were busy all morning. Drove in from L.A. anyway. The city is driving me crazy.”

  “Like that this time of year. Sign in, please.” He passed Shephard the clipboard, who registered with a bogus Beverly Hills address and phone number. The guard—Shephard saw that his name was Arthur Mink—read the information and pointed behind the guard house. “Guest lot around and to your right. Have a nice visit, Mr. Johnston. The leasing office is next to the lounge on A Dock.”

  Shephard followed the two-lane road around the guard house and along the flank of the Surfside convention room, where it opened onto a wide expanse of mostly empty parking spaces. The few cars there were clustered around the tennis courts. He put the Mustang between a Rolls-Royce Corniche and a black Seville, and as he swung open the door saw that all of the court marked 7 was taken up by Joe Datilla. The other courts around him were full and several patient players were waiting for their turn, but Datilla was on his alone, driving serves from a bucket of yellow balls at his feet. Shephard admired his precision: stoop for a ball, a breath and an arching of the back as he tossed up the target, a quick rotation of torso and arms as his legs straightened and the racquet rose to full extension, then snapped down. Follow through, return stance, a pleased nod as the ball screamed over the net and smacked into the far quadrant.

  Shephard stood at the chain-link fence and witnessed two more serves before Datilla looked over his shoulder. His scowl turned to a smile.

  “Tommy Shephard! I’ll be damned.” Racquet in hand, he came to the fence and swung open the gate. Datilla’s handshake was firm and warm, the kind of handshake that says you’re part of the team. “How’s that head doing? You were a little drugged when I saw you last.”

  “Just fine. That Scotch made it a little more palatable.”

  “The least I could do.” Datilla’s eyes searched Shephard’s face for a brief moment. Shephard noticed that he wasn’t sweating. “What brings you to the Surfside? Everything okay?”

  “I’m fine, but my city’s a little on the nervous side. Two murders in one week. Broke all records.”

  Datilla sighed. “All I can say is I’m glad I’m not in your business. Any good leads?”

  “Let’s talk a minute, Joe.”

  Datilla moved his racquet to the other hand and pointed to the bench by the fence. “You got it, Tom. Anything I can do.”

  They sat down, Datilla pulling a maroon windbreaker over his suntanned body, Shephard lighting a cigarette. Datilla looked like a man who could afford to be good to himself, Shephard thought, and was.

  “The victims are Tim Algernon and Hope Creeley,” Shephard began. “They used to play tennis here. Did you know them?”

  “Very well. Hope was married to my partner, Burton. Tim and his wife Margie were charter members. We opened just before the end of the war.”

  “Did they know each other?”

  “Oh sure. Small group then. Your father and mother were with us. Good times.”

  “Were they involved?”

  Datilla brushed a hand through his silver hair. His eyes were blue and perplexed when it came away.

  “In what?” he asked.

  “Each other.”

  The perplexity turned to relief. “No.” He smiled. “Not those two. Tim was dedicated to his wife. Straight shooter all the way. Hope was very much in love with Burton, too. They had their diffe
rences, but I don’t think Tim Algernon was one of them.”

  “Enemies, jealousies, rivals? Anyone who didn’t like them?”

  Datilla propped the racquet against the bench and slowly shook his head. “You know, Tom, after the war we got together here whenever we could. Hard play, hard drink, nothing but fun. Believe me, we’d earned it. Any rivalries we had were settled right on these courts. Skin-deep rivalries, nothing more than that. And forgotten in the lounge when the beer started flowing. Sorry, no.”

  Shephard was suddenly aware of the threadbare line of investigation that had led him to this point. Two dead people, each members of the same tennis club nearly thirty years ago. Datilla seemed to read his thoughts. He took up the racquet again, twirled it in his hand, waited for Shephard’s next question.

  “Whoever killed Algernon and Creeley didn’t do it for money. He’s left plenty of property behind in both houses. The killer threatened them both. He’s doing what he says he’ll do. Algernon was an older man who ran a stable and bet a little on the horses. Creeley was a civic-minded gal who stayed inside with a dog that couldn’t bark. Algernon tried to warn her. Called twenty-four times and got a machine. I don’t get it. Why would someone want to do that to an old woman like Hope Creeley?”

  Datilla stared at the cement. He zipped up the wind-breaker, then slowly unzipped it, his hand performing the action disconsolately, automatically. “I’ve been asking myself those same questions since I first heard about Tim.” Datilla’s eyes were moist. “Tommy, I can’t imagine a reason. The harder I try, the less I believe it’s happened. Maybe the killer picked out the two people who deserve it least. Is that a lead?” He smiled weakly and shook his head.

  Shephard stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray beside the bench and inquired casually if Datilla had any doubt that Burton Creeley had drowned.

  “Not after I saw him in the morgue,” he answered.

  “By accident, I mean,” Shephard corrected. “There was speculation in the papers, Joe, that it was more than an accident.”