If You Really Loved Me (21 page)

Still there were clouds over her bliss. Even though she was thrilled about her pregnancy, the final months were difficult for Linda Brown. She felt fat and awkward in the heat of a southern California summer. She wore smocks and shorts with elastic panels and her feet swelled. That same summer, her sister Patti, who had the perfect figure that only a well-endowed sixteen-year-old can have, looked exquisite in shorts and halter tops.

For the first time, Patti's obvious crush on David niggled at Linda. She wasn't a kid anymore, and Linda's patience was wearing thin. Patti was so transparent in the way she looked at David. He could do no wrong in her eyes, and Linda felt a shiver of fear as she watched Patti's adolescent attempts at being seductive. She had been there herself— with David—and not so long ago.

Linda was used to going everywhere with David, and he had always bragged, "I won't go to work without Linda." Now, there were days that David
did
go to work without Linda; sometimes, he even took Patti with him. He was training Alan in The Process too, since the baby would require so much of Linda's time. She couldn't feel bad about that; it was her idea. Even so, Linda felt her closeness with David evaporating.

Friends who spoke to Linda on the phone that July recall that she sounded depressed and unhappy. Her mother, Ethel, knew that Linda wanted Patti to move back home. Linda mentioned it to her several times, but David always refused to let Patti leave.

Linda and Patti seemed to be getting along better by the time Linda gave birth to Krystal Marie on July 20, 1984. Everybody loved that baby and took turns taking care of her. After Krystal's birth, Linda had a lovely baby shower. Even Brenda attended, and Linda seemed happy and thrilled about her baby.

David was just crazy about Krystal and didn't mind at all that he hadn't had a son. He played with the baby and rocked her and tickled her. He would brag later, "That little girl loves me. I had her laughing from the day she was born." He took pictures of Linda and their new baby and hung them in his office.

Linda put her jealousy over Patti down to plain old pregnancy blues. Now, as far as anyone could tell, everything was fine with the family. If problems remained, Linda never mentioned them. Only a few weeks before she died, she had stopped over in Riverside at Mary and Rick Bailey's house after visiting a friend. She had both Patti and Cinnamon with her, and Mary saw nothing but harmony.

Brenda Brown Sands, however, saw things that troubled her. "I wanted to have Cinnamon baptized and David said no. He said he'd drag her out of the church if I did that. I needed her birth certificate, and it was in David's safe. Linda said she'd look for it while David was gone. She said, 'I'm scared—but I'll do it.' Well, she had the safe open and I heard her gasp and say, 'Oh, my God, he's coming in the door!' Believe me, she was afraid of him!"

A few weeks later, Brenda saw Linda and Patti at the Department of Motor Vehicles and noticed how sad and tired Linda looked. "I wanted to just go over and tell her,
'Leave
him—things are not right.'"

When school started in September 1984, Cinnamon moved back into her father's house. Linda explained to Mary Bailey, "I took her aside before any decision was made. I told her, This will be the last time, Cinnamon. No more moving in and out. If you want to live with us, that's fine—but you'll have to go by our family's rules.' She took it just fine."

Cinnamon had no problem with that. She moved in with David and Linda in time to start school at Bolsa Grande High in Garden Grove. She and Patti both went there. And Patti shared her room with Cinnamon. Patti had the white iron daybed next to the wall, and Cinny slept on the trundle bed that pulled out.

Neither of the girls had many friends among their peers. Patti sometimes talked to a girl who lived across the street, and they both liked Betsy Stubbs, whose father, Al, was David's insurance agent. Betsy was plain and not the smartest girl in the world, but Cinnamon thought she was a riot because she coined original phrases that sent Cinny into gales of laughter. "Neat things like calling people 'Sheep Dip' or she'd yell, "Oh, you rowdy poopster!' " Patti could never see the humor in it, but Betsy broke Cinnamon up. They saw Betsy quite a bit because David had a lot of insurance business, and the girls often rode along with him. David didn't care for most of their friends, but he liked Betsy.

Still, basically, David had only his family. Just David and four females: Linda, Patti, Cinnamon, and now, Krystal. Later, one of David Brown's detractors would liken his living situation to "his own little fiefdom." In a sense, the characterization was apt: "an estate in land held from a lord on condition of homage and service."

Everyone danced to David's tunes.

Even with all of them living so close together, sharing meals, sharing evenings in front of the television, sharing outings up to the Calico Mountains, and working in Data Recovery together, there were a number of secrets in the Brown household in Garden Grove. Cinnamon stumbled across one of them in late January 1985.

The family stopped at a K mart to make a purchase. David, Patti, and Cinnamon went in to shop, leaving Linda with Krystal in the van; Krystal needed a diaper change, and Linda told them to go on in to shop without her. She arranged a blanket on the tailgate so she could change the baby.

Cinny headed for the stereo tapes, vaguely aware of her father and Patti as they walked toward the clothing department. When she found the tape she wanted, she hurried to find them. Cinnamon turned the corner around a rack of dresses, then stopped, feeling icy shock wash over her. Here, back in a far corner of the sprawling store, her father was
kissing
Patti. Not a friendly kiss or a fatherly kiss, but an intimate, passionate kiss. Cinnamon watched, her feet frozen to the spot where she stood, unable to believe what she saw.

"I stared. ... I couldn't breathe that well. I was in shock. ... I was all—oh, no, something's wrong here! . . . They were holding each other ... I thought I was going crazy or something.

"Then my father turned quickly, and he looked at me," Cinnamon remembered. "I ran across the store and he chased me. He goes, 'Cinny, Cinny! What's wrong? What's wrong?' And I said, 'I saw you!' And he goes, 'What did you see?' and I told him, 'I saw you kissing Patti.' And he goes, 'I'm sorry you had to see that. Kissing Patti was an accident.' "

Cinnamon's head buzzed. How could he have kissed Patti by accident? She darted a look at the parking lot and was relieved to see Linda was still standing out by the van. Stunned and confused, she began to cry. "Are you trying to drive me crazy?" she asked. "I don't understand." Her father was asking her to forgive him, but she didn't want to talk to him. She ran away and huddled, shaking, at a counter where he couldn't see her.

After a long time, Linda found her and was alarmed at how distraught Cinnamon looked. "What's
wrong
with you?" she asked.

"Nothing," Cinnamon lied, "I'll be all right."

Cinnamon was silent as they paid for their purchases. She couldn't tell Linda what she had seen. "At the time I was scared of my father. Otherwise I would have been assertive and told Linda."

It made her feel especially bad because Linda was so concerned about
her.
She moved back in the van to sit by Cinnamon and tried to find out why she was so upset. Linda seemed to think that Cinnamon had wanted to buy something and hadn't had money. Cinnamon turned her face to the window and shook her head. Linda had no idea how bad it really was.

"When we got home, my father stopped me by the front door and he goes, 'Don't tell anybody about what you saw in the store. It's very important to me.' "

She promised him she would say nothing.

"Okay, fine. I'll respect that," David said.

Cinnamon ran out to the little trailer in the backyard. She didn't want supper, and she certainly didn't want to talk to her father. "I didn't know how to deal with him." But David came out and pounded on the door until she let him in. He tried to explain to her that what she had seen wasn't anything special. "Sometimes, these things happen."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"It wasn't anything, Cinnamon."

"I don't want to talk about it."

But she
thought
about it. All night long. It made her sick to her stomach and she didn't want to eat, although Linda came and tapped on the trailer door and tried to coax her into the house for supper.

How could her daddy kiss someone almost as young as she was like that? How could he do that to Linda? She didn't care what he said. It wasn't supposed to be like that. And she didn't believe it was an accident. Thinking about it just made her more confused.

Cinnamon finally fell asleep in the trailer, but she had nightmares, seeing her father and Patti kissing over and over.

17

H
aving temporarily exhausted his list of relatives, ex-relatives, ex-wives, and acquaintances who had things to say about David Arnold Brown, Jay Newell took another tack. As any other private citizen could have done had he been curious, he began to keep track of Brown by checking public records. It wasn't easy. The usual paper trail left when people move—mail forwarding, disconnection of gas, electricity, and water—was no help.

After David Brown moved out of the rental on Breckenridge, Newell lost the scent. All refunds and mail had been directed to Arthur Brown's Carson address. But that house seemed shuttered and empty, as if David's parents were gone too. Newell was sure that Brown was still in the Orange County area—but where?

Because he had a relative in the real estate business, Newell was more savvy than most in checking property transfers. He found one item that fascinated him. Within three weeks of Cinnamon Brown's murder conviction, David Brown had purchased a new home. Real estate transaction records in the courthouse indicated that David Arnold Brown had purchased a home on August 30, 1985. He had received a grant deed—
paid in full
—on a house selling for $330,000.

Newell went looking for it and found it easily. And what a house it was—in a most exclusive area of Orange County: Anaheim Hills. Brown had purchased one of the most lavish houses in the new subdivision called Summit View. All the homes there are set along hilly, curving streets—most of them with names ending in
ridge.
The name was apt; at the top of Summitridge Lane, the view of the Santiago Canyon far below is breathtaking.

The street was so new in 1985 that all its trees were staked and spindly, but begonias, petunias, gerbera daisies, and the fragrant wild plum with its tiny five-petaled white-star flowerets had already taken hold in most yards. All utilities were discreetly underground. Ironically, four huge high-powered electrical towers perched almost malevolently at the very top of the hill. The surging power beneath the ground had to come from somewhere, and a dozen high tension wires hummed as they stretched from tower to tower along the hill's spine.

The house at 3823 Summitridge Lane was clearly that of a rich man, a 1980s version of what an "olde English country manor" might look like if it were relocated from Stratford-on-Avon to Orange County. Fieldstone and stucco with crossbeams, shake roof, leaded windows, a recessed entry-way with massive double doors.

A dream house on a dream street.

Each house on Summitridge Lane was grander than the next; every lawn manicured and boasting a huge stone or brick planter that matched the house's facade. Housing codes obviously dictated that even the
mailboxes
were to be enclosed in stone or brick stanchions, and each also matched its house perfectly.

Of course the house on Summitridge Lane had a triple garage. The balconies in the rear of Brown's new house overlooked the azure swimming pool, and the attached hot tub. Twin hexagonal, two-story towers abutted the pool. There were
two
weathered-brick barbecues, and the fence surrounding the backyard was of the same brick and wrought iron.

Since the back door opened onto a stone patio that led directly to the unfenced pool, the layout of the new house seemed an unsafe choice for a man alone with a baby. Krystal Brown could crawl so easily toward the pool.

By visiting Summitridge Lane whenever he could, Jay Newell quickly saw the reason for the empty house in Carson. Brown had moved his parents in with him. There would be Manuela and Arthur to help keep an eye on Krystal. And then, Jay Newell saw Patti Bailey in the car with David Brown as they drove away. Patti had apparently made the move to Summitridge Lane too.

Newell could not know at the time, not from his solely exterior vantage point, but this was not a happy house. Manuela Brown complained to her husband about Patti's continuing place in the family. Why didn't the girl go home with her own family now? She had no business being with David any longer. Arthur agreed; he felt privately that Patti wasn't good for David, that she might even be a bad influence. But he was never a man who told his son what to do.

The house on Ocean Breeze Drive had been a nice, cozy run-of-the-mill bungalow. David had leapfrogged to the similar rental on Breckenridge, then to
this
house, this near-mansion that bespoke quiet elegance, understated wealth.

It was the sort of place where David had always pictured himself, even way back in the years when he and Brenda were living hand-to-mouth with minimum-wage jobs and welfare. Well, Brenda should have had more faith. He was well on his way to being a millionaire now, and Anaheim Hills suited him. He was sure Brenda was jealous, and that pleased him.

Despite the tension that never quite left him, David felt that, all in all, things were turning out well. Krystal rarely cried for her mother any longer; she had Manuela to rock her, and she had Patti to carry her around. The memory of her mother evaporated so rapidly from her baby mind. Linda had had only eight months with her baby girl.

For those who had known Linda, especially for those who had loved her, the sight of Patti wearing Linda's things was an icy jolt. Like seeing a ghost. They had looked so much alike, so
very
much alike.

The only difference was that Patti was younger.

Sitting beside his pool on his patio, sipping a soft drink and smoking his fiftieth cigarette of the day, David Brown spent many evenings reflecting upon his life. He was in complete control of his world again and his sex life was great—if a little tricky with his parents living with him. He still managed to keep his private life untouched. As tragic as it was, Linda was gone. The past had buried the past, as it was meant to do. Life was for the living, and he was going to wring all the juice out of it he could.

David's business continued to boom with rising computer use. He no longer had Linda to help him. He taught bits and pieces of The Process to new employees—mostly family. Arthur helped out, and Patti.

Alan and David had apparently settled their differences because Linda's twin was back on the payroll. Larry Bailey, whom David had never trusted, was, nevertheless, brought into the business. Odd—since David had once suggested to Fred McLean that he suspected Larry might have crept into his home and shot Linda. Larry had been in jail just before her murder, and David told McLean that Larry was furious when Linda wouldn't bail him out. The police had checked that theory and found it without merit; it appeared to be only one more of Brown's attempts to divert suspicion from Cinnamon.

Arthur Brown didn't really understand how they retrieved data from the computer disks, and he didn't care to. His son was the brilliant one. Arthur often went down to Randomex in Long Beach and picked up damaged disks and brought them back to David to evaluate. If David spelled it out to him step by step, Arthur could follow his directions. But that was it. He couldn't begin to try it on his own. All the elder Brown really knew was that David worked for the government and for a lot of big, important corporations. His son had told him that.

One of David Brown's favorite claims about his burgeoning business enterprise was that he had to be available to his clients to reassure them that he would save their lost data. He could explain what had happened and why—and tell them just enough about how he would bring the damaged disks back to life again. He liked to tell his clients that they had been lucky enough to find the one man in America who could help them—that his expertise was highly technical and uniquely his own.

It wasn't a total scam. He
did
know his stuff. He might make his skill sound a bit more miraculous than it was—but hell, he was a businessman in a competitive field and a little razzle-dazzle helped.

Executives at Randomex would dispute Brown's claims that he had invented The Process, stating that the data retrieval techniques David used were actually refined by several experts at Randomex. And in the beginning, David rarely, if ever, talked to clients. However, as the years passed, David wasn't averse to making Randomex's clients
his
clients.

David was so adept at diagnosing the problem with a disk that he could quote a fee to retrieve data before he ever got into the disk. He usually required the money up front before he began. With bigger corporations, he could quote a bid for a major job that usually came in on a dime.

Linda's twin, Alan, was impressed with David and a good audience for a recitation of his ambitions. David assured him that one day he would build his own towering office building, own his own company jet. The way David's income had jumped year after year, Alan had little doubt that David would accomplish just what he said he would.

With all his new business success, with his pleasure in his luxurious new home, David Brown appeared to move through the period of mourning for his murdered wife with remarkable ease. And if he felt low, he was surrounded by people who cared about him, some to the point of adulation, some because they feared him.

It wasn't that David Brown was physically threatening; he was an admitted coward who ran from fights. It was because David always seemed to know secret things, to refer obliquely to some nameless danger that awaited anyone who crossed him. Among his handpicked associates, his devoted family, David
was
power.

He was in control and meant to keep it that way.

David Arnold Brown, of course, had trouble he was not yet aware of. When he walked, he did not walk alone. When he cruised the streets and freeways of Orange County in one of his expensive new cars, he had company. Jay Newell was often just behind him, his tape recorder and notebook filling up with every change in David's life, every move, every new acquisition. Newell didn't know himself where all this information was going to lead—maybe nowhere.

Newell had checked every county in California by computer to see what properties David Arnold Brown might have purchased. It would have been easier if Brown's name had been rarer; Newell got dozens of Browns back, but he also got some hits on the man he wanted. Every time David Brown bought a lot or a house, Newell knew about it.

It was the same with cars. Tedious computer checks spit out volumes on David's car purchases. The guy was spending money as if he had found a lost gold mine. David had the Bronco and the Chevy Monte Carlo when Linda was murdered. Almost immediately after her funeral, he bought a Nissan 300ZX Turbo, 1985, a sleekly expensive sports car. He ordered vanity plates, reading "Data Rec."

Between August 1985 and the spring of 1988, Brown changed cars almost as frequently as the seasons changed. He bought:

A Chevrolet Suburban station wagon, 1985

A Honda Accord LX, 1985

A Dodge D-50 1986 truck (with camper)

A 560 two-door convertible Mercedes, which bore the license plate "Phoenix" (Estimated cost: $70,000)

A 190E Mercedes (Estimated cost: $25,000)

A Ford Bronco, 1986 or 1987

A Ford station wagon, 1986 or 1987

Two identical Nissan Sentras, 1987

A third Nissan Sentra, 1987 (orange)

A Ford Bronco, 1988

A completely equipped motor home, 1988 (Estimated cost: $60,000)

A Ford station wagon, 1988

A Ford Escort, 1988

Fifteen
expensive vehicles in three years . . .

David had not had the Nissan sports car long when he and Patti were driving on Katella Street in Orange on November 22, 1985—shortly after ten
P.M
. on that Tuesday night. David, behind the wheel of his new 300ZX, was stopped in the left turn lane when the car was struck from behind by a small Renault Alliance. Patti screamed and cried and grasped at her neck. She was soon hysterical. As her sobs and screaming grew louder, David explained to the Orange Fire Department medics who worked over her that she had been through a great deal of tragedy recently. "Her sister was murdered only a few months ago—she was my wife. I don't know what this is going to do to her. How much are we expected to take?"

Not all that much, it would seem. The "accident" was scarcely more than a nudge. California highway patrolmen investigated the incident. The other driver admitted that it was his fault. "I was slowing down, maybe going ten miles an hour, when my foot slipped off the brake pedal and hit the accelerator." The impact had been enough to knock David's shiny black car forward. The CHPS investigator noticed the Renault driver was wearing cowboy boots—that could account for his foot's slipping.

There was no damage at all to the Renault and only a number of minor scratches to the rear bumper of David Brown's car. But neck injuries—"whiplash"—are tricky, and virtually impossible to diagnose. They are the bane of the insurance industry. Patti Bailey was now complaining of increasingly severe neck pains and a terrible headache. She was treated at the scene and rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital by ambulance.

David and Patti had both been visiting a chiropractor frequently
before
the accident, including the afternoon before Linda died. With these new injuries, they saw the chiropractor even more often.