I got out of my car and walked around to the right, my footsteps making no sound on the pale rosy bricks. In the rear, I could see the outline of a swimming pool and for the first time, I felt something chill and out of place. The pool had been filled to the brim with dirt and trash. An aluminum lawn chair was half-sunk in the sod, weeds growing through the rungs. The diving board extended now over an irregular surface of grass clippings and dead leaves, as though the water had thickened and congealed. A set of steps with handholds disappeared into the depths and the surrounding concrete apron was riddled with dark splotches.
I found myself approaching with uneasiness and I was startled out of my concentration by the sound of malicious hissing. Waddling toward me with remarkable speed were two huge white geese, their heads thrust forward, mouths open like snakes with their tongues protruding, emitting a terrifying sound. I gave a low involuntary cry and began to backtrack toward my car, afraid to take my eyes off them. They covered the ground between us at a pace that forced me into a run. I barely reached my car before they caught up with me. I wrenched the door open and slammed it again with a panic I hadn’t felt in years. I locked both doors, half expecting the viperous birds to batter at my windows until they gave way. For a moment they balanced, half lifted, wings flapping, black eyes bright with ill-will, their hissing faces even with mine. And then they lost interest and waddled off, honking and hissing, pecking savagely at the grass. Until that moment, it had never even occurred to me to include crazed geese among my fears, but they had suddenly shot straight to the top of the list along with worms and water bugs.
Nikki’s car pulled in behind mine. She got out with perfect composure and approached as I rolled my window down. The two geese appeared again around the corner of the house, making their flat-footed beeline for the flesh of her calves. She gave them an idle glance and then laughed. Both raised up again, short wings flopping ineffectually, their manner suddenly benign. Nikki had a bread bag in her hand and she tossed them some crumbs.
“What the hell are those things?” I eased out of the car cautiously but neither paid the slightest attention to me.
“That’s Hansel and Gretel,” she said amicably. “They’re Embden geese.”
“The geese part I could tell. What happened? Did somebody train them to kill?”
“It keeps little kids off the property,” she said. “Come on in.” She inserted a key in the lock and the front door swung open. Nikki stooped to pick up some junk mail that had been pushed through the slot. “The mailman gives them saltines,” she said as an afterthought. “They’ll eat anything.”
“Who else had keys to this place?” I asked. I noticed an alarm-system panel, which was apparently turned off.
She shrugged. “Laurence and me. Greg and Diane. I can’t think of anyone else.”
“Gardener? Maid?”
“Both have keys now but I don’t think they did at the time. We did have a housekeeper. Mrs. Voss. She probably had one.”
“Did you have a security system then?”
“We do now but that’s only been in the last four years. I should have sold the place years ago but I didn’t want to make decisions like that when I was in prison.”
“It must be worth a lot.”
“Oh sure. Real-estate values have tripled and we paid seven hundred and fifty thousand at the time. He picked it out. Put it in my name for business reasons, but it never did appeal to me much.”
“Who did the decorating?” I asked.
Nikki smiled sheepishly. “I did. I don’t think Laurence knew any better, but I took a subtle revenge. He insisted that we buy the place so I left all the color out.”
The rooms were large, ceilings high, and plenty of light came in. The floors were dark-stained tongue and groove. The layout was very conventional: living room to the right, dining room to the left, with the kitchen behind. There was a sitting room beyond the living room and a long glassed-in porch along that side, running the length of the house. There was a curious air to the house, which I assumed was because no one had lived there for years, like a department-store display of especially elegant appointments. The furniture was still in place and there was no sign of dust. There were no plants and no magazines, no evidence of ongoing activity. Even the silence had a hollow tone, barren and lifeless.
The whole interior was done in neutral tones: grays and oyster whites, hazel and cinnamon. The couches and chairs were soft upholstered pieces with rounded arms and thick cushions, a sort of art deco look without any attempt at flash. There was a nice blend of modern and antique and it was clear that Nikki knew what she was doing even when she didn’t care.
Upstairs, there were five bedrooms, all with fireplaces, all with bathrooms of remarkable size, deep closets, dressing rooms, the whole of it carpeted in thick fawn-colored wall-to-wall wool shag.
“This is the master suite?”
Nikki nodded. I followed her into the bathroom. Fat chocolate towels were stacked near the sink. There was a sunken tub, the surrounding ceramic tile a pale tobacco shade. There was a separate glassed-in shower that had been outfitted as a steam room. Soap, toilet paper, Kleenex.
“Do you stay here?” I asked as we came down the stairs.
“I haven’t as yet, but I may. I have someone come in every two weeks to clean and of course there’s a gardener on the premises all the time. I’ve been staying at the beach.”
“You have another house out there?”
“Yes. Laurence’s mother left it to me.”
“Why you and not him?”
She smiled slightly. “Laurence and his mother didn’t get along. Would you like some tea?”
“I thought you had to hit the road.”
“I have time.”
I followed her out to the kitchen. There was a cooking island in the center of the room with a big copper hood above the burners, a wide expanse of chopping block counter, and all manner of pans, baskets, and kitchen implements hanging on a circular metal rack that extended from the ceiling. All of the other counters were white ceramic tile; a double stainless-steel sink was sunk into one. There was a regular oven, a convection oven, a microwave, a refrigerator, two freezers, and impressive storage space.
Nikki put some water on to boil and perched herself on a wooden stool. I took up a stool across from her, the two of us sitting in the center of the room, which looked as much like a chem lab as a cook’s dream.
“Who have you talked to so far?” she asked.
I told her about my conversation with Charlie Scorsoni.
“They seem like an odd pair of friends to me,” I said. “My recollection of Laurence is a little hazy, but he always struck me as very elegant and cerebral. Scorsoni’s very physical. He reminds me of a guy in an ad for chain saws.”
“Oh Charlie’s a real scrapper. From what I hear, he came up the hard way, bulldozing his way past all obstacles. Kind of like the blurb on a paperback: ‘stepping over the bodies of those he loved . . .’ Maybe Laurence liked that. He always talked about Charlie with grudging respect. Laurence had everything handed to him. Of course Charlie thought Laurence could do no wrong.”
“That seemed clear enough,” I said. “I don’t suppose he had any motive for murder. Did you ever think he might have had a hand in it?”
Nikki smiled, getting up to take out cups, saucers, and tea bags. “At one time or another, I’ve considered everyone, but Charlie seems unlikely to me. He certainly didn’t benefit financially or professionally . . .” She poured boiling water into both cups.
“As far as the eye can see,” I said, dunking my tea bag.
“Well yes, that’s true. I suppose there might have been some kind of hidden dividend, but surely that would have come to light at some point in the last eight years.”
“One would think.” I went on to tell her about my interview with Gwen. Nikki’s cheeks went ever so faintly pink.
“I feel bad about her,” she said. “By the time they divorced, Laurence really hated h
er and I tended to fan the flames a bit. He never could take any responsibility for the failure of that marriage and as a result, he had to blame her and punish her. I didn’t help. At first I really believed what he was saying about her. I mean, I personally thought she seemed like a capable person and I knew Laurence had been very dependent on her but it was safer to wean him away by feeding his bad feelings. You know what I mean? In some ways, his hating her so strongly was no different from his loving her, but it made me feel more secure to widen the breach. I’m ashamed of that now. When I fell out of love with him myself and he began to turn on me, I suddenly recognized the process.”
“But I thought you were the downfall of that relationship,” I said, looking at her carefully through the steam rising from my teacup.
Nikki ran both hands into her hair, lifting it away from her head and letting it fall again, giving her head a slight toss. “Oh no,” she said, “I was his revenge. Never mind the fact that he’d been screwing around on her for years. He found out she was having an affair so he had me. Nice, huh? I didn’t realize all this until much later, but that’s how it was.”
“Wait a minute. Let me see if I got this straight,” I said. “He found out she was involved with someone, so he gets involved with you and then divorces her. From what I understand she got reamed.”
“Oh yes. That’s exactly what he did. The affair with me was his way of proving he didn’t care. Taking the kids and the money was her punishment. He was very vindictive. It was one reason he made such a good attorney. He identified passionately with anyone who’d been wronged. He’d whip himself into a frenzy over the least little thing and then he’d use that as a driving force until he’d ground the opposition down. He was merciless. Absolutely merciless.”
“Who did Gwen have the affair with?”
“You’d have to ask her that. I’m not sure I ever knew. It was certainly something he never talked about.”
I asked her about the night Laurence died and she filled me in on those details.
“What was he allergic to?”
“Animal hair. Mostly dogs but cat dander too. For a long time he wouldn’t tolerate pets in the house but then when Colin was two, someone suggested that we get him a dog.”
“I understand Colin’s deaf.”
“He was born deaf. They test newborns’ hearing so we knew right away, but nothing could be done for him. Apparently I had a mild case of German measles before I even realized I was pregnant. Fortunately that was the only damage he seemed to suffer. We were lucky to that extent.”
“And the dog was for him? Like a guard dog or something?”
“Something like that. You can’t watch a kid night and day. That’s why we had the pool filled in. Bruno was a big help too.”
“A German shepherd.”
“Yes,” Nikki said and then hesitated slightly. “He’s dead now. He got hit by a car right out there on the road, but he was a great dog. Very smart, very loving, very protective of Colin. Anyway, Laurence could see what it did for him, having a dog like Bruno, so he went back on the allergy medication. He really did love Colin. Whatever his faults, and he had lots of them, believe me, he did love that little boy.”
Her smile faded and her face went through an odd alteration. She was suddenly gone, disengaged. Her eyes were blank and the look she gave me was empty of emotion.
“I’m sorry, Nikki. I wish we didn’t have to go into all of this.”
We finished our tea and then got up. She removed the cups and saucers, tucking them into the dishwasher. When she looked back at me, her eyes were that flat gun-metal gray again. “I hope you find out who killed him. I’ll never be happy until I know.”
The tone of her voice made my hands numb. There was a flash in her eyes like the one I’d seen in the eyes of the geese: malevolent, unreasoning. It was just a flicker and it quickly disappeared.
“You wouldn’t try to get even, would you?” I asked.
She glanced away from me. “No. I used to think about that in prison a lot but now that I’m out, it doesn’t seem that important to me. Right now, all I want is to have my son back. And I want to lie on the beach and drink Perrier and wear my own clothes. And eat in restaurants and when I’m not doing that, I want to cook. And sleep late and take bubble baths . . .” She stopped and laughed at herself and then took a deep breath. “So. No, I don’t want to risk my freedom.”
Her eyes met mine and I smiled in response. “You better hit the road,” I said.
7
I stopped off at the Montebello Pharmacy while I was in the neighborhood. The pharmacist, whose name tag said “Carroll Sims,” was in his fifties, medium height, with mild brown eyes behind mild tortoiseshell frames. He was in the midst of explaining to quite an old woman exactly what her medication was and how it should be taken. She was both puzzled and exasperated by the explanation but Sims was tactful, answering her flustered inquiries with a benign goodwill. I could imagine people showing him their warts and cat bites, describing chest pains and urinary symptoms across the counter. When it was my turn, I wished I had some little ill I could tell him about. Instead, I showed him my I.D.
“What can I do for you?”
“Did you happen to work here eight years ago when Laurence Fife was murdered?”
“Well I sure did. I own the place. Are you a friend of his?”
“No,” I said, “I’ve been hired to look into the whole case again. I thought this was a logical place to start.”
“I don’t think I can be much help. I can tell you the medication he was taking, dosage, number of refills, the doctor who prescribed it, but I can’t tell you how the switch was made. Well, I can tell you that. I just can’t tell you who did it.”
Most of the information Sims gave me I already knew. Laurence was taking an antihistamine called HistaDril, which he’d been on for years. He consulted an allergist about once a year and the rest of the time the refill on the medication was automatically okayed. The only thing Sims told me that I hadn’t known was that HistaDril had recently been taken off the market because of possible carcinogenic side-effects.
“In other words, if Fife had just taken the medication for a few more years, he might have gotten cancer and died anyway.”
“Maybe,” the pharmacist said. We stared at one another for a moment.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea who killed him,” I said.
“Nope.”
“Well, I guess that’s that. Did you see any of the trial?”
“Just when I testified. I identified the pill bottle as one of ours. It had been pretty recently refilled but Fife himself had done that and we’d chitchatted at the time. He’d been taking HistaDril for so long we hardly needed to talk about that.”
“Do you remember what you did talk about?”
“Oh, the usual thing. I think there was a fire burning across the backside of the city about that time and we talked about that. A lot of people with allergies were bothered by the increase in air pollution.”
“Was it bothering him?”
“It bothered everyone a little bit but I don’t remember him being any worse off than anyone else.”
“Well,” I said, “I thank you for your time. If you think of anything else, will you give me a buzz? I’m in the book.”
“Sure, if I think of anything,” he said.
It was midafternoon and I wasn’t meeting Gwen again until 6:00. I felt restless and out of sorts. Bit by bit, I was putting together background information, but nothing was really happening yet, and as far as I knew nothing might ever come of it. As far as the state of California was concerned, justice had been served and only Nikki Fife stood in contradiction of this. Nikki and the nameless, faceless killer of Laurence Fife who had enjoyed eight years of immunity from prosecution, eight years of freedom that I was now being hired to violate. At some point, I was bound to tread on someone’s toes and that someone was not going to be happy with me.
I decided to go spy on Marcia T
hreadgill. At the time she tripped on that crack in the sidewalk, she had just come from the craft shop, having purchased items necessary to make one of those wooden purses covered with assorted shells. I imagined her decoupaging orange crates, making clever hanging ornaments out of egg cartons festooned with plastic sprigs of lily of the valley. Marcia Threadgill was twenty-six years old and she suffered from bad taste. The owner of the craft shop had filled me in on the projects she had done and every bit of it reminded me of my aunt. Marcia Threadgill was cheap at heart. She turned common trash into Christmas gifts. This is the mentality, in my opinion, that leads to cheating insurance companies and other sly ruses. This is the kind of person who would write to the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant claiming to have found a mouse hair in her drink, trying to net herself a free case of soda.
I parked a few doors down from her apartment and got out my binoculars. I slouched, focusing on her patio, and then sat up. “Well I’ll be damned,” I breathed.
In place of the nasty brown withered fern was a hanging plant of mammoth proportions, which must have weighed twenty pounds. Now how had she lifted that up to attach to a hook high above her head? A neighbor? A boyfriend? Had she done it herself perchance? I could even see the price tag stuck to one side of the pot. She’d bought it at a Gateway supermarket for $29.95, which was quite a price considering that it was probably full of fruit flies.
“Shit,” I said. Where was I when she hoisted that mama up? Twenty pounds of glossy plant and moist soil on a chain at shoulder height. Had she stood on a chair? I drove straight over to the nearby Gateway supermarket and headed back to the produce department. There were five or six such plants—Dumbo ears or elephant tongues, whatever the damn things are called. I lifted one. Oh my God. It was worse than I had thought. Awkward and heavy, impossible to manage without help. I picked up some film in the Ten Items or Less, No Checks line and loaded my camera. “Marcia, you little sweetheart,” I cooed, “I’m gonna nail your ass.”