A Checklist for Murder (11 page)

She could have picked from a number of attorneys to consult about a possible divorce action. Saugus is a small town
in the high desert outside Los Angeles, but it’s plenty big enough to offer an array of choices to anybody shopping for a lawyer. Claire can no longer reveal why she chose the little law office in a single-story mall on Soledad Canyon Road. It may have been a referral from a friend. Or maybe she just wanted to discuss the private, painful issues with another woman—seeking the first female lawyer she came across.

Or perhaps Claire just needed all the psychic energy she could muster. She was about to confront this forceful man with the knowledge that she wanted to divide their property and claim her half of the small fortune he had amassed through a relentless campaign she had not supported. And for that reason she may have taken strength from the very sound of the name out on the shingle:

VICTORIA W. DOOM—ATTORNEY AT LAW
.

Certainly as Claire kept her appointment for the initial consultation, she had no way of knowing she was taking a step that would shatter the attorney’s law practice and bring her to the brink of financial ruin, in addition to placing Victoria Doom’s name on a killer’s hit list.

And so on November 13, a few days after the initial consultation, Claire returned some financial papers to Victoria Doom’s office for use in determining property settlements. She paid a retainer.

The divorce was finally under way.

Two days after that, on November 15, in an unexplainable twist of premonition, Claire took out a State Farm life insurance policy on herself for $10,000, payable to her daughter Natasha. She called her longtime friend Louise, who had been at the pool party where Claire and Robert met twenty years before, and told her she was finally initiating a divorce. She expressed her fears that Robert might try to kill her, but vowed that she was resolved to make the leap she had dreaded for so long. She never mentioned her new life insurance policy to Louise. But whether it was a specific premonition
or just a general sense of dread that caused her to buy the policy, she could never have imagined how ironic the eventual use of that policy’s funds would turn out to be.

For the time being, despite Claire’s best intentions that day, her actions did not set her on the road to freedom; they put her on a highspeed collision course toward a dead-end wall.

And they changed Victoria Doom’s life forever.

CHAPTER

7

S
ometime after 8:00
A.M.
on the same morning that Claire’s life ended on the dead-end road, Patty was dressed and ready for a round of job applications, fully prepared to drag Tasha out of bed if she had to. As she drove through the cool morning air she felt determined to straighten out whatever had gone wrong with their plans for the night before and then get on with the day they had planned.

Yesterday afternoon both young women had agreed that even after going to Magic Mountain and staying out late they would get up early and look for work together this morning. The six weeks since graduation had been a lot of fun for both of them, but neither had the funds to take an entire summer off.

Patty knew that Tasha was interested in seeing what kind of a future she could make for herself in the design world. Tasha had already persuaded Claire to hit her father up for a couple of thousand dollars toward the fashion-design college she was enrolled in for the fall. Claire chipped in some more herself, but Tasha was going to have to work in order to get together her book money and commuting expenses. So whatever had gone wrong the night before, Patty approached her friend’s house feeling sure that Tasha would be ready now despite the early hour. Nevertheless she was still in the grip of the uneasy feeling that had followed her home last night.

When Patty pulled her car a stop in front of the Peernock residence, what she saw there didn’t do anything to make
her feel better. Both of Mr. Peernock’s cars were gone, but Claire’s car was still in the driveway. She wondered who could have taken his big Cadillac. The Peernocks were not a married couple who exchanged cars. She couldn’t remember having seen Tasha or her mother ever drive the Cadillac; Mr. Peernock would have had a fit at the thought of either of them taking off in his pride and joy.

When Patty got out of her car she noticed that the front left tire on Claire’s car had gone flat. For a moment she wondered if this could explain things. Would Mr. Peernock drive off in his Cadillac in that case, leaving his Datsun for Claire to use? But that still didn’t seem right. These were two people who avoided talking to each other unless they had to; they could hardly be civil. No, if Claire’s car was out of commission, she would have had to call a friend for help.

And so at least one of Robert Peernock’s cars should still be in the driveway.

The lawn hadn’t been mowed, but that didn’t tell Patty much. Tasha had always been a night owl who stayed up late, sleeping in whenever her schedule would allow it. Even if Tasha had come back home after whatever had taken place the night before, Patty knew her friend wouldn’t get up early to do yard work before going out to hunt for a job. That would be a little too much reality for a midsummer day.

Patty hesitated at the front door. Now that Mr. Peernock was gone, if either of the women was at home the door ought to be unlocked. Claire and Tasha never locked it during the daytime if anyone was there. Patty put her ear to the door—there wasn’t a sound. But when she reached out and tried the handle, it wouldn’t move.

Now the same bad feeling from the night before came over her again. More than any of the strange facts or unusual circumstances, it was this feeling that convinced her of trouble. The feeling was clearer than it had been last night, as if
by sitting in the back of her mind through the hours since then it had somehow penetrated her rational defenses and probed deeper into her inner fears.

As during the night before, something told her to leave this place. And, again she felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. But her need to find out what was going on with Tasha had grown strong. So she turned to the front window, which looked so solid but which the girls had learned to pop open with ease. She got down on her knees, ready to get inside the house and look for clues. Patricia was resolved not to leave the neighborhood until she found out what had happened to her best friend.

She was about to get her wish.

Just as she’d begun to pull the window open a woman’s voice yelled out her name. Even before Patty turned around, the tone of the voice plugged right into the creepy feeling that had settled into her spine.

“Patty! Get away from there, right now! Get away!”

She looked around to see Danielle, one of the neighbor women and a longtime friend of Claire and Tasha’s. Danielle was running toward her. Patty stood slowly, taking in the woman’s expression as she reached the sidewalk near the house and stopped there pointedly, without setting a foot on the property.

“Come away from there! Come on! Right now!”

Patty’s heart began to pound as she hurried out to meet the woman, who appeared distraught and near panic. She immediately threw her arm around Patty and turned her away from the house, walking her up the street toward her own place.

“What’s going on?” Patty began, but the neighbor leapt on the question as she rushed Patty along the sidewalk.

“Just wait. Wait till we get back inside!”

A few seconds later they were in her house, the door shut
and locked. Danielle spun from the door with tears streaming down her face.

A sick feeling of dread began to pound inside Patty.

“Patty.” she began, “Claire … she’s … the police came by early this morning and …”

“What is it?” Patty asked, the fear rising in her throat. “What happened?”

“There was … an accident last night and she and Natasha were in Robert’s Cadillac and there was a car wreck. Claire’s gone. She was killed. And Tasha’s in the hospital.”

“
What
?” Patty blurted. “Which hospital? How bad is it? How is she? I want to go see her!” Her mind was already full of the images that had haunted her all night long, images that now lurched into much sharper focus.

“We don’t know about Natasha yet,” she answered. “But it’s serious. She’s in intensive care right now. They won’t let anyone visit her.”

“I’m going down there.” Patty started for the door. But the neighbor held her back.

“You can’t see her. They promised to call us as soon as they know anything, but—”

“Wait a minute!” Patty shouted abruptly, disbelief suddenly overpowering her shock. “Claire and Tasha
together
? They never go anywhere together. Come on, this is a bunch of—You know how independent Tasha is! And in her father’s Cadillac?”

“I know. I’ve never seen Claire drive that car, or Tasha either. But now they’re—”

“No
way
! I don’t believe it! Claire never drives at night. Her eyes are, you know, she’s got that thing like in her retina and so she can’t see at night—”

“I know, but—”

“And besides, she hates driving anyway. She drives with two feet, one on the brake and one on the gas—”

“I know, but—”

“And she’s so safe, she drives the speed limit and follows the laws to the point that it’s
ridiculous
, I mean it takes forever to get anywhere with her, I always tease her about it and—and besides,” she added, finally taking a breath, “Claire would never take Robert’s car.”

Patty finished her loud objections softly. Almost in a whisper.

“He’d kill her.”

The first and last time that Claire was ever seen by Accident Investigator Mark Warschaw was on the morning of the crimes. She had already died. He tried to speak briefly to Natasha before they loaded her gurney into the ambulance, but she was too badly injured to be of much help. All she could do was mumble a few words in response to his question about the identity of the other passenger. He hadn’t told Natasha that the other passenger, the one Natasha named as Patty, had died. Warschaw had been an accident investigator for the Valley Traffic Division for over eight years and had been at thousands of accident sites; he could see that Natasha was fighting for her life. He would just have to hope that the paramedics could get her stabilized and give the doctors a chance to save her.

Hours later, just before noon, Warschaw stopped by the hospital to check on Natasha and learned that she had passed the crisis point but was still in the intensive care unit. He was pleased to receive permission to talk to her for a few minutes; the hours since the accident had only produced more mystery.

Warschaw had been cautioned that she wasn’t responding to questions well. She was fading in and out, giving erratic statements. With his first glance he could tell that he wasn’t going to be able to press her at all. She lay semiconscious, pin-cushioned with lines fed by IV bags. The doctors were still assessing her head wounds and working to stabilize her
condition before putting her under anesthesia and beginning to operate. Warschaw moved in close to her bedside and quietly introduced himself, but she seemed barely aware of his presence.

Warschaw didn’t know if her condition was the result of medications or just the product of her severe head injuries. But with a possible homicide investigation developing, he had to learn anything he could. Especially if she didn’t make it through surgery. This was, he realized, probably the only person in the world who might tell him the truth about what had happened; whoever had inflicted the blows had plenty of cause to lie.

Warschaw began his questions. He worked slowly and gently, but his interview subject faded in and out of consciousness as he tried to coax her forward. The quality of most of her responses was hardly better than the fragmented monologue that Paramedic Clyde Piephoff had heard from her as he and his crew loaded her into the ambulance.

But gradually, one tiny step after another, she managed to give out one or two meaningful words at a time through her broken teeth until a rough story came out in bits and pieces. Natasha gave the last name of her companion Patty, but wasn’t sure of the spelling. She recalled dimly that they had left Patty’s house on the day the crimes began, estimating at about 7:30 or 8:00
P.M.
when they went to Natasha’s house. She said that they then left Natasha’s at about 10:30
P.M.
and went to meet “some guys.”

She murmured that this was the last thing she could remember before waking up at the hospital.

Warschaw wasn’t sure if Natasha meant that she and Patty had intended to meet some guys or if they already had met them, but he had seen many victims of head injuries. No one had to tell him that severe blows to the head can scramble memories, thoughts, perceptions. The young woman seemed to be giving her best recollection of the night before, but she
clearly wasn’t going to be of much help for now. Mark Warschaw didn’t know who this Patty person might be, but he knew that the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office had already identified the dead woman as Natasha’s mother.

At that point the X rays came back from the lab, showing multiple skull fractures. There was no time to question her further; interview subject Natasha Peernock was going to have to face surgery right away to avoid possible brain hemorrhage.

With nothing else left to do, Mark Warschaw silently wished her luck and left her side for the last time. He had, as always, a long list of accidents in need of investigation.

“Patty, I’m
telling
you, the police found them together. This morning at about four o’clock. It was some kind of terrible wreck. Claire died instantly.”

Patty turned slowly toward the empty Peernock house. She looked in that direction for a long moment. “Something’s wrong about all this.”

“I know there is,” Danielle replied. “But you can’t go near that house again. Promise me you’ll stay away from there. I mean it!”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll stay away. Listen, what did Mr. Peernock say about this? I
know
he was there last night.”