Smart House (15 page)

“I asked them to stay in the dining room until we’ve made a search for the gun. They aren’t happy, but they’re staying put for the moment. All hell’s going to break loose when the reporters start popping in.”

“Right. You sure as God don’t have to be clairvoyant to see the headlines: Smart House Claims Third Victim.” Charlie finished his coffee and leaned back to brood at the sparkly ocean and the approaching fog.

“Did your people find any fingerprints on the little computers or the blueprints?” Constance asked, but without hope. The people in Smart House were also smart, too smart to leave prints. She felt something that refused to be more than a stir of uneasiness.

“Clean as a whistle,” Ericson said.

“And that means that neither Gary nor Rich put them there, more than likely,” she murmured, wishing the stir would come back with some definition the next time. Dwight Ericson was looking at her with a question in his eyes and she added, “Either of them had a reason to handle the blueprints and the computers, but the killer didn’t, so he had to get rid of all prints in order to be able to deny he knew about the secret way to get around, or about the way to erase his record from the main computer.”

“If your guys are finished with the little elevator, I’d like to have a look at it,” Charlie said.

Ericson nodded, drank his coffee too fast, and stood up. “Me too.”

In Gary’s office a young officer saluted snappily and stepped aside for Charlie and Dwight Ericson to approach the elevator.

“I made measurements, sir,” he said, looking at Charlie. He sounded like an adolescent at summer camp. “Two and a half by two and a half and seven feet high. But there’s ventilation holes in the roof, and the doors don’t really make a seal—the inside doors don’t. I figured he might have suffocated in there and got moved, but it’s too big, and too ventilated… , sir,” he added and blushed furiously. He set his face deadpan and looked past Ericson who regarded him sourly for a moment, then continued on to the elevator.

“Thank you, Howie,” Ericson said. “Go get a sandwich in the kitchen.”

The young officer nearly raced from the room. Ericson glanced at Charlie and said, “We’ve all heard of you, apparently.”

But Charlie was paying no attention. He stood in the elevator and looked at it, turning slowly to examine each wall; they looked like quilted aluminum. Both doors were made of the same material, to keep the weight down, he imagined. He reached out to touch the wall and nodded. Cold. The fruit cellar/refrigerator room was on the other side. This wall was backed up by the dumbwaiter, and the second door that was still closed was on the wall in the fruit cellar, the space where the carts were stored. Satisfied, he nodded again, and turned to examine the open door more closely. The young officer had been right; it did not make a seal at the bottom, nor did the other one. There was a crack less than an eighth of an inch, but there it was. He sighed and looked upward. The ventilation holes were very small, but there was a ventilation fan in the light fixture. But, he reminded himself, Rich had died in the big elevator, so it didn’t matter. He sighed more deeply.

A small handle on each door, the control buttons, up, down, open door, close door, none of it held him much longer. The second door did not budge when he tried the handle. Locked because there was no rear exit on this floor. He moved out and let Ericson enter and stood with his hands in his pockets scowling at the elevator that had become nothing more than the repository for the hand-held computers and the blueprints.

“Let’s try one more thing,” he said when Ericson finished his examination of the space. “How does the light come on? And the fan?”

“The computer’s turned off,” Ericson said. “Maybe it won’t work without it.”

“The computer opened it,” Charlie reminded him. “But what are the buttons for if you can’t run it manually?”

“Go ahead,” Ericson said.

Charlie tried the buttons without effect until he closed the door, and then the ceiling light came on. On the other side of the door Constance gasped when the wall slid back into place and the elevator vanished. Ericson stifled a curse and moved in to examine the wall that appeared completely intact. There was a slight noise from behind it, and then it started to move again, and in a moment the door was visible and then swung open. Charlie looked strained.

“Claustrophobic,” he said. “The fan must come on when it’s in motion.”

“My turn,” Ericson said. “Meet you on the first floor, back door.”

This time Charlie watched the wall slide into place silently, and just as silently he led the way from the office, down the corridor to the main elevator, and entered with Constance at his side. They listened for a sound from the small elevator next to this one, but there was nothing. On the first floor they hurried around to the back of the house; when they got to the rear of the main elevator, Ericson was already there, the elevator door opened behind him. Here they were in the narrow hallway that ended at the back of the large walk-in freezer in the pantry.

“The front door doesn’t open on this floor,” Ericson said. “I’ll get back in and let you see how the wall works, and then I’ll watch it.”

Now Constance said, “You can both watch. I’ll push buttons this time. And then what, on up to the bedroom suite?”

“Might as well,” Charlie said glumly.

As soon as she closed the door, she wished she had not volunteered. The elevator was cold and she shivered, but also she had a feeling she did not identify, uneasy. Claustrophobia? Perhaps. The ride was very smooth, starting and stopping without a bump, the fan operating without a sound, and the feeling intensified until she could identify it. Dread. As soon as the motion ceased, she hit the button to open the door; when nothing happened, the dread threatened to become panic. She remembered that on this floor the other door opened and she quickly turned and hit the button on that side. The door opened as silently as all the other mechanisms. She left the cage exactly as Dwight Ericson had done on the first floor, unwilling to spend even a second in there that was not necessary.

It took Charlie and Dwight at least a minute to reach the bedroom. By then she was breathing normally. Obligingly she stepped back inside once more and closed the door to let them see it work here, and then went to the roof. By the time she left the cage and breathed in the good cool sea air, she knew she would never willingly ride in that thing again. This time she had to wait a bit longer for Charlie and Dwight Ericson to catch up with her.

Charlie looked as strained as he had when he had been the one inside, and she thought, of course; if she was uneasy, so was he. It just worked out that way.

“Try one more thing?” he asked her, his arm around her shoulders.

“Or a dozen,” she said, managing a light tone, wanting to ease that tightness in his face now.

“Just one,” he said. “Promise. I’d like to know if you can hear people talk if they’re inside. Dwight?”

The captain nodded and Charlie and Constance stepped inside one more time. It was a tight squeeze. He closed the door and put his arms around her, kissed her, and then drew back and said in a normal conversational tone, “You are my good and true friend. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She laughed and opened the door and they faced Dwight, who was shaking his head. “Nothing. Not a single sound.”

“Now to see how you close it when no one’s inside,” Charlie said then and surveyed the open door, the redwood siding that had moved out of the way. “Here goes.” He pushed the door to and felt it click into place, and at the same moment the siding began to move. It was so well constructed that by the time it was restored there was no sign that a section could move.

Dwight was looking sour again. “It blows to smithereens the alibis the computer record gave them,” he said. “Whoever knew about that could go anywhere he wanted a damn sight faster than anyone on the main elevator or stairs and not leave a trace.” He glanced at his watch and got in the big elevator. “Enough fun and games; back to searches and missing guns and noises in the night.”

Chapter 14

Charlie and Constance
walked the grounds, the garden area behind the house, where the stone wall rose straight up like a fortress. Charlie regarded it with brooding eyes. “Maddie thinks a burglar scaled the wall to gain entrance,” he muttered. “Fat chance.”

“She doesn’t really think it,” Constance reminded him. “She’ll probably make up a story about how Milton was out for a stroll and came across the same burglar, with a gun this time. It’s comforting to her.”

“I know.” He linked arms with her and they continued to walk among the rhododendrons. The back garden was too shaded, with the house wall on the west and the cliff on the east, for much sunlight to penetrate. It was pleasantly cool and moist. The paths were bark mulch.

“You couldn’t get a cart through here and into the house without some of it clinging to the wheels, leaving tracks,” Constance said, finishing the thought he had abandoned. “Of course, if they both died where they were found, it wouldn’t matter anyway.” She paused and he looked at her expectantly. “I want one of those garden carts,” she said with a nod, thinking of their apple harvest. “You can haul really heavy stuff in them easily.”

He took her arm in a firm grasp and steered her around the front of the house. The vista there was of tennis courts, and a formal flower garden with masses of roses and lilies and flowers he never had seen before. Men were searching among them. The fog had moved in closer, lower, truncating the cliffs to the north and south; the sun looked pale and deformed already. Soon it would be completely obscured and this would become another foggy, misty day on the coast.

“Let’s take a walk on the beach,” Charlie said, and they veered seaward, only to stop again at the top of the cliff where Dwight Ericson joined them. Several men were gathered above the high-water mark, waiting for the tide to run out all the way. Two men were clinging to the basalt formation where Milton’s body had come to rest.

At Charlie’s questioning look, Dwight shrugged. “Nothing. They’re using metal detectors on the potted plants in the house. But it’s a big ocean. A good toss can get rid of a lot of stuff out there. Especially heavy stuff.”

They watched in silence as one of the men searching among the rocks slipped and caught himself and did not move again for a time. When he did, Constance exhaled.

“You’re sure Harry Westerman didn’t have a chance to pick it up?” Dwight asked.

“Sure. Or put anything down, either. I was watching.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m holding them here as material witnesses until we get a prelim on the death and time, through the rest of today, at least. But I can’t keep holding them longer than that.”

One of his men appeared and spoke quietly to him. He nodded. “Maybe that’s the preliminary report on Sweetwater. See you later.”

Neither Constance nor Charlie mentioned the walk on the beach now, as they continued to watch the men on the treacherous rocks below. Even in retreat the ocean hissed and crashed; the men were getting soaked. The fog had completely covered the sky, the temperature dropped, and Charlie shivered and found himself thinking longingly of the hot sunshine at home. Jake and Beth appeared then.

Beth looked very tired and pale, and Jake was still too tight, too tense.

“They said we can go anywhere we want as long as we don’t leave the grounds, or go down on the beach, or into the atrium, or—” Beth stopped as her voice became shrill. She looked down at the men on the rocks, then let her gaze go beyond them to the visible ocean, all gray and foamy white. “They’re still looking for the gun? They’ll never find it.”

“You’re probably right,” Charlie agreed unhappily. He glanced at Jake, who was watching the men below. “How smart is Bruce, would you say?”

Jake appeared startled by the question. “Plenty damn smart,” he said after a moment. “I know he hasn’t been showing it, but he was a hair’s breadth behind Gary, that’s all.” Beth started to say something; he took her hand and held it. “Wait a minute. This needs saying. Gary made mental or emotional cripples out of everyone he came in contact with.” Beth pulled her hand but he continued to hold it. “I observed you with him all those years,” he said. “I’m not blind. He turned Maddie into a slavering idiot. Maddie’s smart, too, you know. Her husband worked on ENIAC years ago, and she worked with him. She’s kept up, but Gary turned her into a
Saturday Evening Post
mom with flour on her cheeks and apple pie in the oven. That was the mother he wanted; that’s what she became for him. Rich, Alexander? They worked on Smart House for Gary, not really with him. We all worked for him. And we’re all pretty much okay, but, Charlie, he was a genius, a bona fide genius, and we all knew it. We stayed.”

Beth had been tugging at her hand. Jake turned to look at her directly, and the expression on his face was no longer tight and frozen in tension, but rather puzzled, even hurt; a muscle twitched in his cheek. “Why didn’t you leave him? Really leave him, divorce him?”

Abruptly she stopped trying to free her hand. Confusion crossed her face as she stared back at him. He released her and jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.” He glanced at Charlie and then turned to look out over the ocean. “The point is that I did know what was going on, we all did, and no one left. No one could leave. One way or another he held each of us. Sometimes, being with him was like being caught in a blizzard of ideas, a white-out of ideas. Not pie-in-the-sky spitballing, but things that would work, that you could see happening, and you knew that never in a million years would you have thought of them. That was the attraction for some of us. He was stimulating and challenging and he made us be more than we are, more than we thought we could be. But no matter how good we were, he was so far out in front, we knew we’d never catch up—and that was the attraction, just knowing we were in the same circle, that big things were happening, bigger things would happen. He made us do the impossible, and by God, that was the attraction! And if he wrecked our lives along the way, we let him.”

His words had started out measured and calm but they began to tumble and his voice became low with intensity. He was nearly whispering now. “If I ever met another man like him, I’d run like hell away from him. If Gary came back to life today, knowing the dreams he had, the plans he had, the ideas he hadn’t even started to work out—” He was facing out to sea, his face bleak and haggard when he stopped talking abruptly. “We’d all be exactly where we were before,” he finished in a flat voice.

“Right back in the dream,” Beth whispered.

He shook himself and looked at her, then nodded. “Right back in the dream, and loving and hating every minute of it. Let’s take that walk.”

She nodded, and silently, without glancing again at Constance or Charlie, they walked away, side by side but not touching.

“Well, well,” Charlie said, then fell silent as a uniformed officer approached them. It was Howie, the one who had reported to Charlie in the office earlier.

He started to salute, blushed, and stopped the motion before it was completed. “The captain said I should tell you we’re going to shoot in a couple of minutes and see if anyone inside can hear the noise.” Almost unwillingly, he finished, “sir.”

Charlie nodded gravely, and Constance suppressed her smile, and hand in hand they walked back to Smart House.

“What I thought we might do,” Dwight Ericson said when they entered, “is have people in several different rooms and see what happens. With the draperies closed, doors closed, as much like last night as possible. Okay?” He did not wait for an okay. “I already told them what we’ll be doing. They were supposed to leave their doors open.”

Charlie ended up in Laura and Harry’s room. He glanced inside the bathroom; it was almost identical to the one he and Constance had, but the bedroom was quite different. There were the two beds, and a desk, and comfortable chairs, but also a bookcase with very nice books inside, and crystal bookends. A crystal ashtray held paperclips and two cigarette butts. Laura’s, he knew; Harry wouldn’t risk his health that way. The usual clutter of hairbrushes and toilet articles, and two fine crystal-based lamps, were on the dressing table. It looked rich. His and Constance’s room had articles in cloisonné, a bird, an ashtray, lamps. Each room had been decorated with care, with handsome accessories, apparently all different. Black hole, he thought. The term was taking on more and more meaning. He checked the sliding glass door, pulled the drapes together the final inch or so, and waited for the sound of a gunshot. A minute later he heard a tap on the door and when Constance entered, they both shook their heads.

She glanced about the room, nodded her approval, and they went out to the corridor to wait for Dwight Ericson. He looked disgusted when he joined them.

“Anything taken from Milton’s room yet?” Charlie asked.

“No. Want a look?” He led the way down the corridor to the room numbered three, beside Beth’s room, which was next to the stairs. On the other side of the stairs was Gary’s suite. They entered the room; a uniformed officer rose from a straight chair and looked at Dwight Ericson for orders. Dwight waved him back down. This room was different again, the walls ivory, rich dark mahogany touches here and there, forest green carpeting, paler green bedspreads on the two beds. The accessories were gleaming copper. One bed had been turned down; white silk pajamas and a matching dressing gown were precisely arranged at the foot of it. The white fabric gleamed against the green spread. A briefcase was on the other bed, and papers were on the table. In the midst of them sat a copper ashtray with a half-smoked cigar and ashes in it. A glass with half an inch of what looked like water was also on the table, and an assortment of pens and pencils. Some papers were in neat stacks, others spread out as if Milton had been going back and forth among them. An almost military neatness was displayed by two brushes and a comb carefully lined up on the dressing table; the same neatness was repeated in the bathroom, the closet. A fastidious, precise man who had treated his possessions with respect, who liked order, smoked little, drank little, looked like a movie star and knew it, and died too young. Charlie sighed.

“How I felt when I was done with it,” Dwight said with a last glance around. “Exactly nothing. He hadn’t gone to bed yet, was working, and went outside to get himself shot and tossed into the ocean. Someone must have tapped on his door, or maybe someone was taken by surprise on the cliff by his late-night walk, or maybe he had a date out there. But why the edge of the cliff?”

“How did you get in? He said he intended to secure his door. I used a chair in our room.”

“Never got around to it, I guess. We just walked in. You’re assuming he went out through the balcony door?”

“At this moment, I don’t think I’m assuming a damn thing,” Charlie muttered. He could feel Constance’s invisible fingers between his shoulder blades, and he looked at her. She was standing at the door, out of reach, but that didn’t matter; he had felt her touch.

She shook her head slightly, bothered as he was by something not quite right but not immediately identifiable either. “Have you taken fingerprints in here?” she asked slowly.

“What for?” Dwight Ericson asked. “Even if we found prints, what would that mean? They could have trooped in and out of each other’s rooms all day.”

“Things look too clean,” Constance said. “Cleaner even than our room. Would he have been likely to go around and shine things? What if there aren’t any fingerprints at all?”

Dwight motioned to the officer stationed in the room. “Get Petey up here.” As soon as the man was gone, he asked Constance, “What makes you think there might not be any?” He glared at the room as if it offended him.

“I don’t know,” Constance said. “It just looks obsessively neat, and I didn’t think Milton Sweetwater was an obsessive man. I could be altogether wrong, of course. About the room. About him.”

Half an hour later Dwight was regarding Constance with something like awe, and Charlie with resignation. “That couldn’t have been just a guess,” Dwight said.

No fingerprints had been found on the desk or the dressing table, on the lamps or light switch or any of the shiny copper accessories. The glass had yielded good prints, as had various surfaces in the bathroom.

“Get pictures first and then strip it,” Dwight said to the technicians at work searching for fingerprints. “Everything portable to the lab. You can leave the furniture here. Come on,” he said to Charlie and Constance.

In the wide hall outside the room, Charlie held up his hand. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I intend to head for the bar and get a drink.”

“Wish I could,” Dwight said in a growly way. “Later.”

“Speaking of later,” Charlie said, “are you going back to Portland when you wrap it up here?”

“My office is there, but I’m setting up shop for a couple of days in Coos Bay. Why?”

“Dinner. We pump you. You pump us. The company pays. Deal?”

“Sure sounds like it might beat McDonald’s.” He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “Seven-thirty? I’ll pick you up.”

Apparently the police had finished their search of the atrium garden. When Charlie and Constance entered, Bruce waved at them from the bar, and Maddie nodded. A tray of cheese, tiny sausages, and crackers was on the bar. Charlie headed for the bar and motioned Constance to the table.

“I’ll be waiter,” he said cheerfully. “What’ll it be, lady?”

“Wine, please. Are they letting people down on the beach yet?” she asked Maddie, who held a martini but seemed not to be drinking it; she merely touched the glass to her lips and put it down again.

“I think so.” Maddie’s voice was that of a very old woman, throaty, rough, quavering. “They didn’t find anything, according to Harry. I think they’re still on the grounds somewhere.”

Charlie brought the wine and a plate of snacks, took a sausage, and returned to the bar. Constance helped herself to cheese, a very good creamy Brie that she spread on a wheat cracker. “Good,” she said, and to her surprise she found herself thinking of one of their cats, Brutus. He had come in off the streets in New York City and was a street-smart beast. His favorite food was Brie, or any other cheese that Charlie had. For years she had tried to break Charlie of the habit of leaving a plate of cheese in the living room. In New York it was an invitation to untold millions of uninvited guests, and she had got in the habit of picking up his plate and taking it to the kitchen herself. Then Brutus came into their lives and within a week Charlie was retrained.