X

  “How did Pete know about you?”

  “He did a background check on Ned and my name came up. These days anything you do ends up in the public record.”

  “Why did he call?”

  “That’s what I asked him. He told me he had a theory that women who crossed paths with Ned Lowe didn’t always fare so well. He asked about my marriage. I said, ‘What business is that of yours?’ I have to give the man credit. I unloaded a lot of guff on him and he took it all in stride. He said all he wanted was to make sure I was okay. I thought that was kind of sweet.”

  “Did he have reason to think you might not be okay?”

  “He must have, or why would he have phrased it that way? I assured him I was fine and dandy as long as I never crossed paths with Ned again. God, I hate that man.”

  “Do you mind if I ask a couple of questions?”

  A flicker of silence, but in the main, she was loosening up. “I divorced Ned Lowe years ago. Good riddance to bad rubbish and that’s the end of it as far as I’m concerned.”

  I gave her a brief rundown, “brief” being a relative term. I told her about Taryn Sizemore’s lawsuit, how the mailing pouch meant for April had fallen into my hands, and summed up the few facts I’d picked up in Burning Oaks. I also told her about Pete’s death, which was really the starting point of my investigation.

  At the end of my summary she said, “How recently did you see April?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s fine, married to an orthodontist and expecting her first child.”

  “Well, tell her I said hello. I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of her. She was nine when I left. Talk about a lost lamb.”

  “Actually, she was under the impression the marriage broke up because of her.”

  “Because of her? Where’d she get that idea?”

  “She thought playing mother to a seven-year-old wasn’t your cup of tea.”

  “Bet you that was Ned’s claim, the son of a bitch. It had nothing to do with April, which he damn well knew.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Two years, which was two years too long. The man was impossible. Clinging and needy. Then he’d do a complete about-face and be suspicious, controlling, and paranoid. I’d say manic-depressive, but it was more like Jekyll and Hyde. The change wasn’t quite that literal, but I could see it come over him and I knew enough to get out of his way. I thought of it as his seasonal affective disorder because it happened in the spring, like an allergy.”

  “Sounds charming. What do you think it was?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he had a secret life. In the end, I didn’t care if he had an entire family on the side; I just wanted out. I’d have stuck with him for April’s sake, but I had to save myself while I could.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  “Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? You think I haven’t beat myself up over that dumb move? Not that this is any excuse, but I was newly divorced, unemployed, overweight, and I’d developed some sort of nervous condition that made my hair fall out in clumps. He could see how vulnerable I was and knew I’d be easy to manipulate. Which, I’m ashamed to say, I was.

  “I’ll tell you one more thing, and this is embarrassing. I don’t even know why I’m ’fessing up except I’m sure I wasn’t the first or the last woman he tried this on. We sometimes smoked a little dope back then just for the hell of it. We’d get high and hit the sack. He had this trick . . . this choking thing he did. He told me he learned it in high school. He’d take me just to the point of passing out and he’d bring me to orgasm. I’d never experienced that before and I was . . . I couldn’t help it. I’m ashamed to admit sex had such a hold on me when Ned himself was so disgusting.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Anyway, I gotta get off the line. This is a business number. I run an accounting service out of my home and I’m expecting a call.”

  “I’ll let you go, then. I appreciate your time.”

  “You need anything more, feel free to call. Nothing I’d like better than horsing up his life the way he did mine.”

  As soon as I hung up, I checked my scratch pad for Taryn’s office number and put in a call to her. When she picked up, I identified myself and said, “We need to talk.”

  “Sure thing. When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Hang on.” She must have been checking her appointment book because when she came back on, she said, “My last client will be gone by six. I’ve got paperwork to catch up on, so I’ll be here for at least an hour after that. Come when you can.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I hung up and the phone rang almost immediately. “Millhone Investigations.”

  “Kinsey? Spencer Nash here with the information I promised. Let me know when you have a pen and paper and I’ll give you his home address.”

  “Doesn’t he have an office?”

  “You’re catching him on the fly. He’s here a couple more days and then he’s off on his honeymoon. He asked if there was any way possible you could meet with him today.”

  I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after five. “What time?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Oh, why not? As long as I said I’d go, what difference does it make? Might as well get it over with.”

  “Love the sentiment.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll behave myself,” I said, and made a note of the address and phone number when he recited it. I took my sweet time closing up, and made a detour to the post office as I drove through town so I could drop the outgoing mail in the box.

  • • •

  I should have known the property would have walls like a fort. These were six feet tall and constructed of hand-hewn stone. A gatehouse had been erected at the entrance and a uniformed security guard emerged as I pulled up. I rolled down the window on the passenger side and gave him my name. I told him I had an appointment with Mr. Xanakis, then waited while he consulted his clipboard.

  “I don’t see your name on my list.”

  “What would you suggest I do?”

  “You can use the call button to ring the house.”

  I inched forward to a point where I could push the call button on the keypad. I sat, engine idling, until a hollow-voiced stranger acknowledged me on the intercom. Before I had a chance to identify myself, the gates swung open and one of Ari’s white panel trucks with the XLNT logo passed me on its way out. I eased through the open gate and continued toward the house. The cobblestone driveway was a long slow curve, landscaped so the house was shielded from view until I made the final turn. This was for the wow factor.

  When I saw it, I said, “Wow.”

  The mansion was done in the French Country style, a term I picked up in a book about local architecture, where the house was featured prominently among others of its kind. The estate was built in 1904, so at least the aged stone facade and weathered gray shutters represented a genuine pedigree. The tall, steeply hipped roof featured overlapping slate tiles. Pairs of chimneys flanked the structure, appearing as mirror images where they peeked above the roofline. The windows were tall and narrow, and those on the first and second floors were aligned in perfect symmetry. Over the years, rambling additions had been laid end-on, like children’s wooden blocks, though in perfect keeping with the original elegance. There was something Disneyesque about it. I half expected an arc of fireworks and a swelling chorus of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

  I parked and made my way to the front door, which was standing open. I rang the bell, which I could hear sounding inside in the sort of soft chime that suggests the intermission is over and we should all return to our seats. While I waited, I listened to the birdies chirp. The air smelled of lavender and pine
. I was wearing my usual jeans, tennis shoes, and a turtleneck that was ever so faintly stretched out of shape. No sign of my fairy godmother, so Ari would have to take me as I was.

  When no one appeared after a suitable interval, I peered in. The marble-tiled hallway ran the width of the house and it was currently so crowded with furniture, they might have been preparing for a liquidation sale. Most of the pieces were antiques or very good reproductions: chairs, side tables, armoires, a chest of drawers with ornate bronze drawer pulls. A woman in a white uniform applied wax to a handsome mahogany tallboy inlaid with a lighter wood.

  I took one step in, thinking someone would notice me. At the far end of the hall to my left, the elevator door stood open and two men in coveralls coaxed a rolling pallet into the hall; framed works of art were stacked against the end panel at a slant. Their progress was supervised by a gaunt woman wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. I was hoping to catch her attention, but no one seemed aware of me. There were other paintings leaning against the wall on either side of the corridor. I leaned around the door and rang the bell again. This time when the chime sounded, the gaunt woman in jeans looked in my direction. She broke away from the two workmen and moved to the front door.

  I handed her a business card. “I have a meeting with Mr. Xanakis.”

  She gave the card a quick read and stepped back, which I took as permission to enter. She turned and walked down the hall. There was no hint of her place in the household. She might have been Ari’s new bride, his daughter, his housekeeper, or the woman who watered his houseplants and walked his dogs. In the warm air that wafted from somewhere in the back of the house, I picked up the scent of roasting chicken.

  Two women stood near the double doors that opened to the dining room. One was rail-thin, blond, late thirties, wearing a black velour lounging outfit that consisted of pants and a matching zippered jacket with something sparkly underneath. The other woman was also rail-thin and blond, in a snug black power suit and spike heels.

  The portion of the room I could see had unadorned walls padded with a pale green silk. There were fifteen oversize squares and rectangles of darker fabric where paintings had once hung, protecting the fabric from fading. In the center of each was a recessed receptacle that contained an electrical outlet. That way picture lights could be affixed to the frame without a length of unsightly electrical wire hanging down to the baseboards. In my Aunt Gin’s trailer when I was growing up, she’d sometimes have power strips hosting double and triple adapters with eight brown cords trailing from a single socket like piglets nursing at a sow. I thought all sockets looked like that.

  The two women studied the room and the woman in the power suit said, “That’s all going to have to come out.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Quick fix? Get all that fabric out of there and paint the walls charcoal gray. That’ll hide some of the flaws.”

  The woman in black velour looked at me sharply. “Who’s this?”

  The woman who’d answered the door said, “She has a meeting with Mr. Xanakis. I was going to show her to the gym.”

  The woman looked annoyed, but resumed her conversation without further reference to me. That one had to be the wife.

  I followed my fearless leader through an enormous kitchen where a young woman in a white double-breasted chef’s jacket and striped pants stood at the white granite counter chopping onions. A middle-aged man in a tuxedo vest and a dazzling white shirt sat at the kitchen table polishing silver sconces. Through a doorway I could see the laundry room. A Hispanic woman in a white uniform looked up at me as she took a damp white linen napkin from a clothes basket. She gave the seams a sharp snap, laid the napkin on the ironing board, and took up her iron.

  When we arrived at the French doors along the back wall, my companion opened one and pointed. Outside, an ocean of lush grass covered the shallow hill to the swimming pool. The gym was apparently located in the pool house, a structure identical to the main house, only in miniature.

  I said, “Thanks.”

  I took a stone path down the hill, past the koi pond, past an orchard of plum and apricot trees. Sprinklers came to life and shot out fans of water that created a rainbow against the cloudless sky. Had anybody heard about the drought in this part of town?

  At the pool house below, I could see Ari Xanakis in the doorway in shorts, a tank top, tennis socks, and running shoes. I put him in his midfifties; short and barrel-chested, but otherwise trim. A lacy bib of dark chest hair spread out under his tank top. He had a pug nose, bright brown eyes, and a nice smile that showed faintly crooked teeth.

  “I spend half my life down here. House is like a zoo these days. This is the only place I get any peace and quiet,” he said. “Come on in.”

  “Are you moving?”

  “We’ve leased out the house for a year, so we’re clearing storage space. That’s what the mess in the hall is about. Lot of that stuff I’m donating to a charity auction.”

  I followed him to the gym and watched as he returned to his treadmill, which he’d put on pause. Over his shoulder, he said, “You can forget antiques, anything with a pedigree. Stella’s big on contemporary everything. Houses, furniture, modern art. Actually she doesn’t much like art of any kind.”

  The home gym was square and had to be thirty feet on a side. The walls were mirrored and the interior was crowded with free weights and Universal machines—two treadmills, an elliptical trainer, a stationary bike, and a recumbent bike—all of it doubled and tripled in reflection. Ari mopped his face on a white terry-cloth bar towel he’d hung around his neck and set the treadmill in motion with the push of a button.

  The start was slow, but picked up rapidly until he was pounding in place. He cranked up the incline and increased the speed. He was already sweating heavily, but he wasn’t out of breath. His shoulders and arms had a rosy cast from exertion. I watched the belt’s relentless forward motion, the seam coming around again and again. Our conversation unfolded against the mechanical grinding of the treadmill and the sole-slapping of his running shoes.

  “Thanks for coming, by the way,” he said. “Detective Nash says you’re a busy lady, so I appreciate your taking the time to drive out. You meet the bride?”

  “Not formally.”

  He shook his head once. “Might have made a mistake on that one. Jury’s still out.”

  It wasn’t clear whether he was referring to his wife or the interior designer, but I could have sworn it was the wife. “I understand you’re about to leave on your honeymoon?”

  “No worry on that score. I wouldn’t file until we got back. She might turn out to be a keeper, and think of all the dough I’d save. Did Nash tell you the story?”

  “He didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll hear it sooner or later, so you might as well hear it from me. I have no complaints coming because I got what I deserved. Stella’s husband dropped dead on the job. He was the architect on the condominium remodel I was doing at the time. Talented guy. Forty-eight years old. Heart attack. Boom. The four of us knew each other socially. So he dies, Stella’s at loose ends, and I stepped into the breach. Teddy was in LA, so I had dinner with Stella one night at the club, just being nice, and one thing led to another. Didn’t mean anything to me, but right away I realized my mistake. Teddy’s down at some seminar and I didn’t see how she could possibly find out. She gets home and some pal of hers calls and rats me out. She filed for divorce the same week.”

  “She doesn’t waste any time, does she?”

  “Knocked me for a loop. I wasn’t serious about Stella until Teddy booted me out, and then what choice did I have? When we hashed out the settlement, Teddy got the condominium where the poor guy died. How’s that for irony?”

  “Not good.”

  “Everything’s gone downhill since then. Naturally, Teddy didn’t want the place, so she d
ecided to sell. Forty-six hundred square feet and the real estate agent told her it was worth a million or more, because of the location.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Downtown Santa Teresa. The penthouse suite in a brand-new office building. Eighteen months it sat. Teddy was living in Bel Air by then and she got the bright idea we should get the place spiffed up, have a brochure printed, and promote the listing with real estate agents in Beverly Hills. Sure enough, a hotshot actor came along and paid full freight. This was a month ago. Ten-day escrow, all cash, and no contingencies. Close of sale I knew she’d whip in there and take everything that wasn’t nailed down, so I emptied the place before she could. She ended with a million in cash. You know what I got? Only the stuff I managed to sneak out from under her nose. Real estate goes in her column, used furniture in mine.”

  He waited for my reaction, hoping for sympathy, which he clearly felt was warranted. I made a noncommittal mouth noise. These were not problems I could readily relate to.

  33

  I tried another subject, thinking a change in category might lighten the mood. “Do you and Teddy have children?”

  “Not her. I have three with my first wife. The kids adored Teddy, but don’t have much use for this new one. They can’t believe I messed up. They’re barely speaking to me. Anyway, enough of that.”

  I thought he meant he’d talked enough about Teddy and we were moving on to something else. But he said, “How did you meet her?”

  “Who?”

  “Teddy. I asked Nash and he said you’d tell me.”

  “She called my office and said she needed help with a personal matter. The address she gave was the Clipper estate, so that’s where we met.”

  I told him about “Hallie Bettancourt” and her sob story about the baby she gave up for adoption. “I assumed it was all true. She said her father was an architect who tore down the original mansion and designed the contemporary residence that’s up there now. Sounded right to me, and the setup was so elaborate, it never dawned on me the scene was arranged for my benefit.”