Smart House (10 page)

Minute by minute, encounter by encounter, he took them through the day. Now and then he stopped someone to ask a question, but for most of it, he simply listened. When Beth mentioned the blueprints she had seen at Rich Schoen’s elbow on Saturday, he stopped her.

“I guess Rich carried the foam club rolled up in them,” she said. “That’s the weapon he used on Gary later.”

“Where are the blueprints now?”

They all glanced at each other, and then Milton Sweetwater shrugged. “In one of the offices, presumably.”

“Rich brought them up from the Palo Alto office,” Alexander said. “He was going to show them at the meeting on Monday. Usually they’d be down there, not in Smart House any longer. I don’t know where they are.”

Charlie nodded and let them continue describing the afternoon.

He stopped them again later. “So far no one has reported an encounter with Gary. Would that have been normal? It’s nearly three in the afternoon.”

Beth nodded. “He stayed up most of the night and never got up before twelve or one, and he liked being alone then for breakfast. I didn’t give it a thought not to see him around.”

“That’s why we eat dinner at seven,” Laura said with a malicious smile. “Gary wanted it over and done with by nine so he could go to work.”

They went on recounting their adventures as killers and victims up to the time they gathered for cocktails, when Charlie stopped them.

“Let’s call it a day,” he said. “Papers, please, if you have any notes of times, observations, anything else. We’ll finish this tomorrow.” It was nearly midnight.

Chapter 9

Beth stared at him in
dismay. Leave it now? She looked around at the others. Jake and Milton were in a huddle whispering. Bruce hovered nearby as Charlie gathered up the loose sheets of paper. Laura had started to go out, apparently realized that no one else was leaving, and was now standing near Harry at the sideboard. Harry looked so tightly wound that a touch would make him explode; Laura did not get close enough to touch him.

Charlie glanced at them all and shuffled papers. Constance had not moved from her chair.

Abruptly Jake and Milton finished their dialogue and approached Charlie. Milton spoke in a commanding voice. “Charlie, it’s obvious, to me at least, that you’ve decided murder was committed; those two deaths weren’t accidental.” No one else moved. “If you’re up to continuing tonight, I strongly urge that we do so. If anything is going to come out of all this, it would be better to have it out tonight. If we have a murderer here, and if anyone did see him do anything suspicious, that person may be in danger. I, for one, intend to secure my door somehow tonight.”

“I agree absolutely,” Jake said. “You’ve managed to scare some of us to death,” he said levelly. “I’m not willing to leave it here.”

Charlie held up his hands. “Fine with me. Objections anyone?” No one moved. “Let’s take a break, say twenty minutes. We could use some fresh coffee, maybe some sandwiches. During the break maybe you could all just jot down the next game killings, who the victim was, the weapon, witness, the next victim, time, whatever is appropriate. It will save time. And meanwhile, Alexander, would you mind showing us where Rich Schoen worked here? Did he have his own office?”

Alexander jumped up, evidently relieved to be able to do something. Before he could speak, Harry said, “We all know damn well that Rich wouldn’t have let himself be suffocated in that elevator. And this surprise that one of us might be a murderer, bullshit! We’ve known that too. We’ve always known it,” he said harshly, “and we chose to pretend not to.” He scowled at Jake with bitterness. “But there is a place where the air can be exhausted in seconds. Those growing chambers in the greenhouse. They were designed airtight, with an exhaust system, a gas-pumping system.”

“I thought of that,” Jake said with disgust. “It’s the same problem. Why would Rich stay there while someone went over and turned the knob, or punched keys in the computer, or any other damn thing? He designed it! He knew what it could do!”

“But if the killer had the hand-held computer, he could have controlled everything in the greenhouse, too. A push of a button would have done it,” Harry said. “Remember, later that night a pesticide was released in there. Things got smashed up. I think the killer did that to cover his trail. Maybe Rich did struggle and something got broke earlier. No one could have known after things got so messed up.” Charlie turned to Alexander. The young man nodded unhappily. “It could have been programmed to do anything like that,” he said, and then added almost pleadingly, “But it would take time. Time to learn the system, the language, the program for that function. It wouldn’t be like turning a light on or off.”

Softly Harry said, “For Gary it would have been exactly like that. Who had more time than he to program whatever he wanted into it? Who else would Rich have gone into the chamber for?”

“Oh, God!” Beth whispered. “Gary? Why?”

“I don’t know why. But who else could have set things up in advance? Just one of those three, Rich, Gary, or Alexander.”

Alexander looked helplessly from Harry to Charlie. His face crinkled as if he might burst into tears. He shook his head. “We didn’t. Wreck our one dream? Ruin everything we planned for?” He shook his head harder.

“And then our heroic, athletic Gary picked up Rich and moved him to the house, down the hall, hoping all the time that no one noticed that he was carrying a hundred-ninety-pound dead man, of course,” Jake said with heavy sarcasm. “He put him in the elevator, and went to the Jacuzzi and threw himself in out of remorse, and conveniently covered it so the sight would not be offensive to anyone. And somewhere along the way, he disposed of the little computers, just to muddy the issue.” He started to move toward the door. “I volunteer to make coffee and sandwiches, but I want a witness, to make sure I don’t add arsenic to the sugar bowl.”

“That’s not funny!” Laura screamed at him. “Do you have a better idea of what happened? At least Harry’s trying.”

Harry didn’t even look at her when he snapped, “Just shut the fuck up!”

Charlie motioned toward the door and Constance got up and walked out with him and Alexander.

“This is awful,” Alexander said glumly. “Worse than I thought it could get.”

“You think so?” Charlie asked in surprise. “I thought it was going pretty well myself.” He was grinning.

Alexander looked at him in shocked disapproval. So young, Constance thought. So bright and so ignorant.

“I’ll help with coffee,” Beth said. “If we can find it.”

“I’ll go, too,” Laura said. “I know where it is.”

“I think you know too much about Smart House,” Bruce said suddenly. “You did last spring, too. You’d been here before, hadn’t you? You finally got around to Gary, didn’t you?”

The look Laura gave him was venomous. Before she could respond, Milton took her arm, not very gently, and turned her away from Bruce. “I want a word with you,” he said.

Beth found herself studying Harry; he looked metallic. Even his eyes. He did that where Laura was concerned, she thought with a chill. Somehow he made himself absent; he became iron or some other cold dark metal that reflected nothing of what he was feeling. Bruce glared at Laura and Milton, swung around as if seeking a new target for his anger, and Harry turned his granite face toward him. Bruce stopped all movements and, after a moment, stalked silently from the living room. Again Beth examined Harry and knew that if he looked at her with that expression she would flee also. It wasn’t even that he looked particularly threatening, she thought; it was worse than that. He looked inhuman.

Beth realized in surprise that she felt sorry for Harry. She had never liked him—he had always seemed too brusque, too single-minded—but now she sympathized. No one should be forced into inhumanity. She found herself wondering what he was like when he was happy, when he was nearing the peak of a new mountain, maybe, and knew he had won. She never had seen that side of him.

Then Jake touched her arm, and she went out with him.

“A lot of unpleasant things are going to be brought up the next day or so,” Jake said in a low voice as they drew near the kitchen. “I understand the necessity, and it has to be, I suppose, but I’m sorry that came out like that.”

She shook her head. “It’s all right. I knew.” She had known, just not the details, like when it started or how long it lasted. But she had known. Then she said, “You’re right, though. Things will come out now. We’ll all remember things we’d forgotten, see them in a new light. Charlie is a bit scary, isn’t he?”

“Smart. He knows what he’s doing.”

They had stopped outside the kitchen door. She glanced at him and said almost apologetically, “While we were recalling the game, I remembered how angry with you I was, not that you killed me, but that you were enjoying the game.”

He looked somber and troubled now. “You were right about it. You, Maddie, even Harry. That night, when we met in the upstairs hall and went down together, I was as tongue-tied as a junior-high school boy. I thought you were still sore with me, and I was full to bursting with excitement about the house, having fun with the game.”

She smiled faintly, also remembering how stilted and awkward that brief encounter had been, how relieved she had been when he left her in the wide corridor near the television room.

“And then Gary laughed,” he said in a harsher voice. “Come on, let’s get coffee and stuff.”

“Talk about Rich,” Charlie had said to Alexander on the way to Rich’s office. It had been painful, but eventually Alexander told them a little, in stumbling, halting, even agonized phrases. He told them about the team within a team that Gary had started to assemble more than five years ago. Constance glanced at him sharply and he shrugged. “I was still in school,” he said. “Anyway, Gary had this vision of Smart House, an integrated system using both kinds of computers—”

“No more computer talk,” Charlie interrupted. “He put together a team. Go on.”

“Okay. But that’s the basic idea… Okay. Rich was a leading developer of a particular CAD—a computer-assisted drawing and drafting program for architects,” he added hastily. “He was written up in the journals. So Gary gave him a call and they met and talked, and Rich joined the team. Gary even gave him a percentage of his shares because he knew the money would get tight down the road, and he wanted to make certain Rich was in to stay if things got rough. That wasn’t even necessary, but Gary did things like that. He gave me shares when I came in. He told me it was because when the others knew what he was up to, they might try to oust us, the team, and this way they really couldn’t.”

“Right. So now the house was about finished, Rich’s work about done. What was he going to do next?”

Alexander’s pain increased. His voice dropped to a near mumble. “That was a problem.” He led them through the basement, past the garish arcade games, the pool table, toys. His hand trailed over the glossy surfaces as he passed them, but he did not give any of them a glance. “At first the plan was to build Smart House and start showing it to hotel people, resort people, developers, building management people. They could buy the whole system, or just a part of it. Rich was going to manage all that, package the separate programs, or integrate them, whatever. But Gary kept changing things. He hated the idea of having groups come for demonstrations. He decided Beth could be the hostess for demonstrations, when it came to that. He hated people he didn’t know, and didn’t want any part of that aspect. But he liked working here with his own projects. He seemed to think he could keep doing that and just avoid everyone.”

“And you? You were after the artificial intelligence aspect of it, too, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. Gary and me.” He waved toward a door. “That’s where Rich had his office.”

They went inside. It was another spacious room complete with several computers, drawing tables, deep shelves for blueprints, vertical bins for drafting materials. One of the biggest printers Constance had ever seen was hooked up to one of the computers. Everything was scrupulously neat, as if it had not been touched in months, as was probably the case, Constance thought, surveying it. There was nothing of Rich’s visible, nothing human visible. It might be a display room itself, the perfect work place for an architect. She glanced at Charlie. “I’ll start over there,” she said, indicating the right wall covered with many shelves of neatly stacked graph paper.

Alexander looked bewildered for a moment, then nodded. “You’re looking for the blueprints?”

“You got it,” Charlie said.

“I don’t think they’re in here.”

“Neither do I. But why don’t you?”

“A lawyer came for his things. You know, to settle the estate. If the blueprints had been in here, I would have found them. They would have got sent back to Palo Alto, the main office where the other blueprints are kept. We didn’t find them. Of course, we weren’t looking for them specifically. I never gave them a thought. I mean, who needs blueprints after the house is built? Besides, there must be a dozen copies.”

“Good point,” Charlie said, and took Alexander’s arm, steered him back to the door. “Thanks again for guiding us, and now you go on back up. Okay? We’ll be up in a few minutes.” He did not actually say “run along now,” but the inflection was there. Alexander flushed and left quickly. As soon as the door was closed after him, Charlie took Constance into his arms and nuzzled her fragrant hair. “Missed you,” he said. “Get anything out of Mom?”

She laughed softly and pushed him away. “Dirty, scheming old man. I thought that was a show of affection.”

He drew her to him again and kissed her. “Who said love and business don’t mix? He lied. Tell me.”

She grinned. “As we say in the trade, right.”

When they got back to the living room, there was a platter of sandwiches on a low table, the coffee urn filled again. Charlie surveyed the various guests of Smart House. Maddie had returned. She was pale, her face scrubbed, but she was composed and watchful. Most of the others were helping themselves to the food, coffee, or booze. He waited until they were settled once more.

His voice was brisk when he spoke. “Okay. It’s cocktail time Saturday evening. What next?” No one volunteered. He said, “Safety in numbers. Right. So on through dinner. Then what?”

Bruce cleared his throat. He looked more disheveled than he had earlier, as if he had purposely tousled his curly hair to make it stand out wildly; his sweater sleeves were stretched out at the cuffs, one pulled above his elbow, the other down to his fingertips. His mouth was pouty. “I was probably next,” he muttered. “Rich got me with a poison snake in the ice bucket in the garden bar. Milton was the witness.”

“Time?”

“About ten,” Milton said. “We recorded it, and I went on to the library.”

Charlie turned to Bruce. “You stayed there with Rich?”

“For a few minutes. Then he left, I assumed to go to his room to check out his next victim, and then get another weapon. I finished my drink, went down to talk to Alexander in the basement awhile, and then went to the kitchen.”

“Next,” Charlie said.

“Me, I suppose,” Milton said after a brief pause. “I took the elevator to the basement to get a weapon at ten after ten. I heard Rich and Jake, and the door to Gary’s office closed when I got near it. I went on past the door to the showroom, and when I went back out, Rich was at the elevator door. I looked in to make sure no one else was there, and we went up together.”

Charlie looked at Jake. “And where did you go then?”

Jake glanced at the notes he had made, then spoke briskly. “I waited until they were both on their way up, and then I left and went up the stairs to my room. I realized that Milton must have been getting a weapon and I didn’t even know who my next victim was supposed to be.” He spread his hands expressively and said, “It turned out to be Rich.”