I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason (4 page)

Tommy murmured, “Oh, man…”

Annie shot me a dagger look.

I didn't dare speak.

Even the baby was silent. Not a peep.

“Oh, calm down, everyone,” Lael said with her usual aplomb. “It was just a trial run. The wedding's not for two whole weeks.”

T
he next morning I woke at dawn. I was in a funk. My daughter was ruining her life and I had a date with a convicted murderer. Perhaps it was time for a run. People keep telling me exercise is beneficial. It gets the something flowing. Pheromones? Adrenaline? Something.

I pulled on my ratty blue leggings and a
Testament
T-shirt Annie had given me featuring the star of the show, the lion-hearted Fleet Commander Gow. My sneakers, however, were nowhere to be found. I thought they might be in the car, so I traipsed across the sopping wet lawn and soaked my socks, only to remember that I had taken them off at my desk the day before yesterday.

I tromped back through the house and out the back door, into the garage that, in a moment of madness, I'd had a couple of Lael's handyman buddies convert into my office. The guys didn't exactly get the glitter garden theme—Lucite desk, floors painted apple green and walls hot pink, old Pucci pillows on my whopper of an easy chair—but they pulled it off in seven weeks, built-in bookshelves and all. Still, I wouldn't
want to be back there during an earthquake. Which meant that working at my computer always felt vaguely life-threatening. Maybe that was a good thing, I don't know.

The shoes were there. So was Mimi the cat, draped across the keyboard like an odalisque. I shooed her off, surely to suffer for it later, and checked my e-mail. There was a message from my editor, Sally, inquiring about my progress. Sly, but not that sly. The woman was obviously starting to shake in her boots. What was she, clairvoyant? For all Sally knew, everything was going fine, just fine. A month ago, she'd read the first twelve chapters and hadn't had any complaints. In fact, she'd raved about the section on Temecula.

Gardner had bought a ranch and settled in Temecula after selling his Hollywood residence in 1936. It was a hunting, fishing, and animals-everywhere kind of place, an outdoorsman's paradise. There was even a pet coyote named Bravo that ESG's buddy Raymond Chandler had been especially fond of. But my editor was allergic to furry things. I think the part that riveted her was Gardner's story about how whenever fellow writers down on their luck showed up in Temecula to borrow money the animals were delighted, but editors, well, when they showed up, the dogs knew to bite them.

I suppose a lot can change in a month. I put Sally's e-mail in my drafts folder, which is where I put everything I don't want to deal with. I keep hoping those messages will simply disappear. Or succumb to bit rot, which sounds so slow and painful.

In my neighborhood, you don't need a Walkman when you go running. A clean outfit is good. A business card, better. In the course of pursuing the ever-elusive goal of physical fitness, I have made the acquaintance of decorators, podiatrists, portrait photographers, and other potentially
serviceable types conveniently located within a five-mile radius of my house. But today I kept my head down. And besides, it was barely six
A.M.
West Hollywood is not a town of early risers. Everyone is either retired, an aspiring actor/singer/model working the dinner shift, or self-employed. No one emerges until around ten, when the streets become clogged with people heading gamely to the gym, or on their cell phones, cleaning up after their dogs.

I started perspiring after half a mile. Not a good sign. Twenty minutes more and I was sweating like a pig. I turned down a tree-lined street. Rapture. It was shady, almost dark. There was no one around, so I did the unthinkable. I stopped to catch my breath. A lone car cruised down the other side of the street, witness to my shame. The guy inside gave me the eye. I didn't think much of it until he swung a U-turn at the corner and started driving slowly alongside me. Unnerved, I started running again. He stayed with me. I turned at the next corner. He turned, too. Great. Where was everyone? Man, these people were lazy. Home was only two blocks away, but I didn't want him to see where I lived. Alone. And I had left the door unlocked, as usual.

I kept running. Past my house, past my neighbor's house, onto King's Road. He kept following. This was crazy. I was seriously out of breath now. I had a stitch in my side. He was just trying to scare me, I knew that. But it was working. I didn't know what to do. I had no idea. I was afraid to glance his way. Maybe he'd take it as encouragement. There were no alleys to duck into, and all the underground garages along King's had electronic gates that were shut, shut, shut. Finally, I couldn't stop myself. I turned my head. He didn't say a thing. He just gave me a long, lazy smile.

Screw him. There was a minimall half a block away with a Starbucks in it. They'd be open by now. I ran up to Santa Monica, clutching my sides, then crossed against the light. He was stuck on red, but as soon as the light changed, he followed, pulling his beat-up blue Camaro into the parking lot just behind me. I sat down at a table in the corner and watched him get out of the car and come inside. This wasn't happening. He walked right up to me.

“I'm calling the police,” I said.

He didn't answer. He went up to the counter and ordered a small cup of coffee. When the girl handed it to him, he mumbled something about changing his mind. He turned to leave, bumping his arm against me on the way out. Hard. That spot would be black and blue by tonight. And no one had noticed a thing. Just another morning in the city of the angels. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I sat there for a while, thinking how easy it is to feel safe when you've never been hurt. Then I picked up a paper someone had left behind and read the comics until I felt a little better, or at least too tired to think anymore, which amounted to the same thing.

I went home and showered until the hot water ran out. I wanted to stay in there, but I had an appointment to keep. It had to be today. Well, it was going to be fine. No one had promised me a walk in the park, but it would be fine.

I considered my wardrobe. According to the visitor handbook I'd downloaded from the Web, conservative attire was recommended. No clothing that in any combination of shades resembled California-issue inmate garb. No law-enforcement or military-type forest green or camouflage-patterned items. No spaghetti straps. No sheer garments. No hats, wigs, or
hairpieces, except with prior written approval of the visiting sergeant. No clothing that exposed the chest, genitals, or buttocks. Party poopers.

I wondered what Joseph Albacco would be wearing. Prison blues aren't necessarily blue. I knew. I'd read up on it. They come in orange, red, or white, according to the unit in which the particular prisoner is housed. It helps correctional officers determine if a serial killer, say, isn't where he's supposed to be. That was the principle behind stripes as well, which were worn by convicts well into the first half of the twentieth century. The types of stripes (vertical or horizontal) and their combinations (horizontal on pants, vertical on shirts) likewise signified things like crime committed or time served. It was kind of the reverse of the old saying that clothes make the man.

After mulling it over for a while, I dropped my towel on the floor and put on something that made me feel strong—a brown velvet Chanel suit with lots of white braid trim. I had snagged it from my mother's cousin Drena, who'd bought it at a rummage sale, only to decide it made her look like a three-star general.

She had underestimated the genius of Coco Chanel. That made two of us. I looked less like Patton than a Hostess cupcake, something a convicted felon could polish off in a single bite. Thinking about the creep in the Camaro, I squeezed some gelatinous goo into my hands and slicked my hair into a sadistic ballet-mistress updo. Better. Forbidding. You wouldn't want to mangle a plié within ten yards of me.

Enough with the metaphors. Joseph Albacco, Prisoner #C-36789, currently serving thirty-five to life for murder in the first degree, was waiting. For me.

I
knew the court transcript like the back of my hand.

December 13, 1957. It was a Friday. The forecast had predicted rain, but little on that day happened according to plan. By noon, the early-morning clouds had dissipated and the sun was shining. Jean Albacco spent most of the day answering the phone, typing letters, and filing correspondence at the insurance offices of Gilbert, Finster, and Johnson on lower State Street in downtown Ventura, where she had been employed since graduating from high school a year and a half earlier. On December 13, she worked through lunch, having asked her employer, Mr. Douglas Gilbert, if she could leave one hour earlier that evening. It was her first wedding anniversary, and she was preparing a surprise for her husband, Joe.

Jean's coworker and best friend, Miss Madeleine Seaton, remembered Jean being somewhat edgy all day, but that wouldn't have been unusual. Jean was known for being high-strung and particular about things. Miss Seaton recalled her spilling a cup of coffee on a stack of unmailed letters early
that morning, and accidentally disconnecting Mr. Gilbert's wife, who had called at 11:00
A.M.
to remind her husband about a dentist appointment that afternoon. Perhaps, Miss Seaton speculated, it was just that Jean had errands to do after work and was worried about everything getting done before her husband came home. Joe was expected at approximately 7:15
P.M.

It was only later that everyone realized the day Jean Albacco was murdered had been Friday the thirteenth.

Joseph Albacco Jr. (Class of '55, Ventura City High) worked as a linotype operator at the
Ventura Press,
the area's major weekly. Joe's boss,
Ventura Press
editor and publisher Mr. Anson Burke, remembered December 13 well because he had been preoccupied all day about the looming possibility of a strike. He had meetings with union officials in the morning and an unusual number of phone calls to juggle, as his secretary, Miss Mildred Rose, was out sick. Joe, one of his forty-nine employees, had merited scarcely a thought.

Arriving well before 8:00
A.M.
, Joe shared a breakfast of doughnuts and coffee with several coworkers. He joked about a baseball game over which he had lost ten dollars the previous night, and complained about an old back injury that seemed to be flaring up. No one at work knew December 13 was his wedding anniversary until reading about it in the paper the following day.

Mr. Thomas Malone, who had known Joe since grade school, worked on the city desk. He and Joe usually bought lunch at the Italian deli on Main and walked through the alley to eat in the park across the street from the San Buenaventura Mission, under the old fig tree. December 13 had been no different. That day they talked about the weather,
Mr. Malone's ailing mother, and the military's increased presence in the county. They also discussed the new freeway, the U.S. 101, which would run from the Conejo Grade to Camarillo, cutting the trip to Los Angeles from five hours to just over two. The paper had been running a series of editorials complaining about how the elevated sections proposed for Ventura proper would block out views and access to the beach in the downtown area.

After lunch, Joe stopped at a phone booth to make a call. It lasted no more than three or four minutes. But, according to Mr. Malone, this was unusual for Joe. There was shouting, and Joe seemed agitated during the short walk back to the office. Despite Mr. Malone's inquiries, Joe wouldn't reveal to whom he had been speaking or the subject of their conversation.

Jean left work at 4:15
P.M.
on the dot. On her way out, she wished Miss Seaton a nice weekend and told her that she might have a surprise for her very soon. Miss Seaton testified at trial that Jean's manner was coy, which surprised her, given that Jean was normally a serious sort of girl.

At approximately 4:20
P.M.
, complaining of a headache, Joe went to see the company nurse, Mrs. Bianca Adair. She gave him two aspirins and sent him home to rest, no follow-up required.

At 4:30
P.M.
, Jean stopped in at C&M Locksmiths at the corner of Main and Santa Clara. She picked up a set of house keys, explaining that her husband had lost his, and asked after two other keys that weren't yet ready. She chatted amiably with the proprietor, Mr. Lorenzo Calabro, but bustled out when she caught sight of the clock, clearly in a hurry. At approximately 4:40
P.M.
, she went into the used
bookshop on Valdez Alley, browsed in the California section, and purchased a two-volume history of Ventura County. A present for her husband, she explained to Mr. Roger Sorenson, the store manager. On her way to the market on Thompson Boulevard, Jean stopped to chat a moment with a friend, Miss Diana Crisp, who worked at the Be Mine Hair Salon next door. Diana complimented Jean on her suit. Jean laughed and said that she had hidden the receipt from Joe since it wasn't on sale and they were supposed to be saving for a house on a better street. At the market, Jean paid cash for her groceries (a roast, some baking potatoes, and a head of iceberg lettuce), though she had opened a house account just the week before.

At 4:30
P.M.
, Joe was seen driving above Register Street, heading west, just beyond the county courthouse.

At 5:30
P.M.
, Jean's neighbor, Mr. Josiah McGruder, a retired plumber, saw Jean approach her house, stop abruptly for a few moments, as if lost in thought, and then go inside. She was loaded down with packages.

At 6:30
P.M.
, Mr. McGruder thought he heard the screen door swing open at the Albaccos'. He looked out the window and saw a person, whom he could not positively identify, enter the Albacco residence.

At 7:15
P.M.
, smelling something burning on the stove, Mr. McGruder knocked on the Albaccos' front door. When he got no response, he went around to the back door. He called out and, still getting no response, entered the premises, where he saw the body of Mrs. Albacco on the kitchen floor.

At 7:30
P.M.
, the police arrived.

At 7:45
P.M.
, Joseph Albacco came home, with a pack of cigarettes in his hand and dried blood on the cuff of his
shirt. He was taken in for questioning, held overnight, and charged, the following morning, with murder in the first degree.

The trial was brief. The cause of death was determined to be blunt trauma to the head. The murder weapon was never found. But that didn't stop the prosecutor. There was trouble in the marriage. Talk of another woman. Joe had left work early for no real reason. That looked bad. There was no sign of forced entry. That looked bad, too. The blood on his shirt tested AB positive—his wife's type. And he had no alibi. No explanation whatsoever of where he had been. It added up. At least, the jury saw it that way. But it was hardly an open-and-shut case.

Sitting in the prison parking lot, too nervous to do anything except pick at the tassels on my suit, I went over the details in my mind again and yet again. Any way you looked at it, there were dozens of lingering questions. What had that frantic phone call been about? If it had been Albacco at the door at 6:30
P.M.
that evening, as the prosecution had contended, why had his neighbor been unable to make a positive ID, especially since it wasn't even dark out? And if Albacco had indeed killed his wife, wouldn't he have changed his bloodstained shirt before appearing back at his house at 7:45
P.M.
? Why had he been carrying cigarettes when neither he nor Jean was a smoker? Most curious of all was the missing murder weapon. Where was it? I stopped myself short. It was hardly my business. Any of it. Erle Stanley Gardner was my business, and all this case meant to me, all it could ever mean to me, was a chance to get the real dope on an old pro.

Right.