Smart House (16 page)

It was the damnable house, she realized, making her want to go home, back to the heat, the awful cats, everything that meant home, and no chlorine smell permeating everything all the time, no cloying gardenias and orange trees…

“Well, this must be where the party is,” Laura said then in a too loud voice. She walked to the bar. “If there’s a way to turn on some music, I’ll furnish the quarter.”

“And we,” Charlie said, “are heading for the beach. I’ve been trying to get in a walk since morning. Maybe now.” He held up his glass and surveyed the contents. “This goes with me. Ready?” He stood up and extended his hand for Constance.

“Yes indeed.” She glanced at Maddie. “We won’t be here for dinner, by the way. I guess we’d better stop by the kitchen and tell Mrs. Ramos.”

“I’ll tell her,” Maddie said in her new old voice.

“You’ll need sweaters,” Laura called after them as they left the atrium. “Oregon summer! Hah!”

When they left the trail down to the beach they saw Beth and Jake walking toward them slowly. Beth’s head was bowed, her hands in her pockets; Jake was several feet from her on the ocean side, kicking at froth and ocean detritus as he moved. He looked up and waved first, and then Beth waved and picked up her pace a bit.

“Relax,” Charlie said as they drew near. “We’re out for a walk, nothing more exciting than that.” He looked around approvingly. “Nice down here.” They all pretended not to notice that two men were still searching the jumbled rocks as the retreating tide uncovered them more and more.

Jake nodded. “About a mile to the next rock pile. Run up there and back and you’ve put in your two miles, a good workout for the day.”

“I should hope so,” Charlie said with a slight shudder. “I think we’ll dawdle and poke.” He had the firm conviction that an adult should run away from a menace, or run to a treasure, and walk in between. Children ran simply because they could.

“We’ve been finding agates,” Beth said almost awkwardly. “But there aren’t that many in the summer. It’s best after a winter storm.” She looked embarrassed, and said briskly, “Well, I need a shower. I’m gritty all over.”

She and Jake started to walk again, then he stopped to say, “If you go past the rocks, keep an eye on the tide or you could be stranded. It comes in pretty fast.”

“Thanks,” Constance said. “We’ll be careful. See you later.” She and Charlie headed on up the coast.

“A mile,” he said dubiously. “Doesn’t look that far, does it?”

The cove was a perfect crescent between the two rocky arms that stretched into the sea and ended in twin jumbles of broken rock fingers. Now, with the tide still running out, the beach was two or even three hundred feet wide at the center of the curve, but the high-water mark indicated that most of it vanished when the tide was high. Against the mass of the cliff there were piles and heaps of water-borne, water-discarded logs, some of them over seventy feet long, three or four feet thick. Charlie regarded them with respect. A log that size tumbling in the surf would be a killer. An entire tree, skeleton-white, rose from the sand with the root mass higher than the branches that remained. The spread of the roots was twelve feet high, each root ending in a water-sharpened daggerlike tip.

They walked slowly and stopped now and again to pick up something for closer examination, then return it to the sand. More and more tide pools came into existence, each with its busy inhabitants, each needing study—purple starfish, gaudy anemones that closed with a disapproving snap at their approach, darting fish, and mixed-up crabs scurrying through life sideways. They covered the mile quickly after all and clambered up on the rocky outcrop to survey the next cove, identical to this one, just as isolated, just as protected. The rocks continued out to sea with waves breaking over them, foaming, crashing with eruptions of spray, like miniature rainstorms. They did not go farther.

There were the cliffs, sandstone with black basalt exposed like the substructure of the earth itself, the pale sand that looked silver in the fog shroud, the ocean silver and gray and foaming white. On top of the cliff was a black fringe of trees, and nowhere another person. Charlie slipped his arm about Constance’s waist as they walked back; her arm slipped around him and they matched their steps.

“Know what I’d change about my life, if I could do it over?” he said after a few moments.

“Tell me.”

“I’d marry you earlier. Think of all those years we weren’t married. Wasted. Just wasted.”

“Charlie, we were practically children when we got married, just out of school!”

“You might have been too young,” he said judiciously, “but I was a mature, responsible, horny male.” He ignored her chuckle and added, “Beth and Jake look good together, don’t they? Something going on there?”

“If there is, they haven’t got used to the idea yet. They looked like kids caught in a back seat.” She tightened her arm about his waist and asked in a lower voice, “What’s wrong? What did you hear or see or do or think?”

He stopped walking and stood still, facing the ocean, and told her about the conversation between Bruce and Harry that both he and Jake had overheard in the garden.

A shiver ran through her, and this time his arm tightened. Finally she said, “Harry sent Laura here to find out what Gary was up to, didn’t he? Now this…”

“Doubt that either of them would admit it,” he said, “but I’d bet on it. They’re playing real-life chess, using each other, mating…”

She nodded. “That explains something else. She was so bitter, remember, because Gary talked about divorce and then so obviously sent her packing. He must have known what she was up to; he was playing their game, too.”

“I think it’s a miracle that he lived to reach his thirtieth birthday,” Charlie said. They started to walk again. After a moment, he said aggrievedly, “You know, when they talk computers, I don’t understand a thing they’re saying. And they’re not even really talking nuts and bolts computers, but the business end, the wheeling and dealing part, and even that is like a foreign language. I take it they’re planning to get the government to force them to accept development money. Damn, I should have made notes so I can get in the money line myself someday.”

When they got back to their room, Constance said she was gritty and salty and went into the shower, where Charlie joined her. She pointed out that there was time for two showers, and he pointed out that he had other things on his mind, and by the time Dwight Ericson arrived to pick them up, they were both fragrant and moist and shiny eyed.

The restaurant Dwight took them to was too elegant Charlie decided after they were seated and the waiter confided that his name was George and implied that he had been born to serve them and make their dinner a happy occasion. Charlie sighed and looked at Constance, who was studiously absorbed in the elaborate menu, her mouth twitching with either hunger or amusement. He looked over the menu and thought with regret of the buckets of steamed clams he and Constance had shared the last time they had been on the Oregon coast. Here the food was overpriced, overwhelmed with sauces, and served by George.

When the drinks came, perfectly composed, perfectly chilled, he felt considerably more cheerful. They ordered their dinners, and then Charlie looked severely at the young waiter.

“George,” he said, “I am a cranky old man, very, very set in my ways. In exactly twenty minutes, I want another Gibson exactly like this one to appear on this table, unaccompanied by conversation. And she will have another daiquiri at that time, and he will have another Scotch and water. And meanwhile I do not want any food to appear, nothing. No salads. No bread. Nothing. Got that?”

George looked more frightened than offended; he ducked his head and scurried away. Charlie sipped his drink appreciatively, then said to Dwight, “We may have twenty minutes of peace and quiet. Anything?”

“Something,” Dwight said, and leaned forward. “And it makes about as much sense as anything else in this cockeyed affair. The preliminary report has it that Sweetwater was killed by the fall. He was plenty smashed up, cause of death a head injury. Also he was shot in the head, but the wound didn’t bleed. He was already dead. Charlie, it looks like someone followed him down to the rocks and shot him after he took the tumble. Or else, someone hit him with a rock or something and then shot him and pushed him over the cliff. It doesn’t make any sense either way.”

“Good Christ!” Charlie drank the rest of his Gibson and thought he had been premature in saying the next one should appear after such a long time.

“Yeah,” Dwight said with a bit too much satisfaction. “The only way I can make it work is that he was out there with someone and they argued. The other person picked up a rock and let him have it, one of those smooth, decorator rocks up there, and then he took Sweetwater’s gun and shot him, thinking, I guess, that he might not be dead yet. That explains why there’s so little blood on the cliff. Sometimes the good old-fashioned blunt instrument does the job without a lot of blood being spilled. Then the killer rolled him over the edge and threw the gun out as far as he could. Low tide’s at six-forty in the morning. I have a couple of divers lined up to search for that damn gun. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a goddamn mess,” Charlie said glumly.

“But the tide was in,” Constance said then. “It really doesn’t make any sense. He was dead, but even if the killer didn’t know that for certain, he was surely not moving, obviously unconscious. There couldn’t have been any doubt about that part. Why not just roll him off the cliff and let the ocean finish it? It might even have passed for an accidental death that way. A man walking in the fog slips, falls into the surf among those dangerous rocks. At least, no one could have proved murder in that situation.”

“I know,” Dwight said with a deep sigh. “I know.”

No one spoke for the next few minutes. George appeared with a new tray of drinks and timidly removed glasses, replaced them, stole away again without a sound. Dwight lifted his and stared into it.

“I’ll tell you what else I think,” he said with a touch of anger. “They’re all lying in their teeth, protecting each other, protecting Bruce Elringer, protecting the company. Sweetwater finally came to his senses, brought you in, threatened to blow the whistle—that’s why he had to be taken care of. And now they think they can close ranks again the way they did before.”

“Bruce?” Charlie murmured thoughtfully.

“Bruce.” His face was grim now. “I’ve known since spring that he killed his brother and Rich Schoen, and I couldn’t put together a shred of proof because they’re all lying up and down the line. If there’s any way to tie him to that gun, I’ve got him this time.”

Chapter 15

Their food arrived and
as they ate, Dwight talked. “The key for me was Rich Schoen,” he said. “Why kill him? I can see why they’d all want to get Gary off their backs. From all indications he was a real monster, controlled his family and everyone at work with some kind of insane power that they all bowed to. Everyone who knew him must have had a motive to kill Gary Elringer at one time or another, while that bunch up there hardly even knew Rich Schoen. But who had the
most
cause to commit murder? Bruce Elringer. His brother had made life hell for him apparently, and he’s in debt that makes the federal deficit look reasonable. His ex-wife took him to the cleaners, and it’s been downhill since. So he had a real motive. Now
he
controls the women in the family, and they control the stock and the money, and he makes out okay. And who else had a real motive? Rich Schoen.”

George sneaked up to the table and asked hesitantly if everything was all right. Dwight looked down at his plate as if he had to remind himself and then said, “Fine, fine.” Charlie nodded. “Fine, just not clams.” Constance laughed and coughed at the same time and had to drink wine to keep from choking.

Dwight looked from her to Charlie in bewilderment and she said, “Never mind. Go on.” George tiptoed away again.

“Okay. You know about the setup at the house, Smart House? It’s some kind of miracle, to hear them tell it. And Rich Schoen’s job was finished. He wanted to start showing it, to be the head honcho of the next step, raking in the dough. And Gary wanted to play genius inventor or something. They were split down the middle about it, I guess. And the company was going broke. So Rich and Bruce huddle and decide to get Gary out of the picture. Maybe it was Bruce’s idea, maybe Rich’s. Maybe Bruce will tell us one of these days. Anyway, it would take two to get Gary to the Jacuzzi, hold him under long enough to drown. We looked for bruises, anything to indicate he went in unconscious, that he was slugged first, or doped, and nothing. Hardly enough alcohol to measure. Nothing else. It’s not easy to hold a grown man under water if he’s conscious. He fights. I think they both were in the Jacuzzi, stripped, and got him in and held him, and when it was done, they got out and dressed, covered the pool, turned up the heat to confuse the picture, and got the hell out of there.”

“That’s pretty damn impressive,” Charlie said when Dwight paused. “I never thought of that.”

“I’ve been on it a long time,” Dwight said, pleased. He took several more bites while they considered his scenario.

Finally Charlie asked, “And you figured out how he killed Rich in the elevator?”

“Yeah. You know there was a big to-do in the greenhouse, poison released, things smashed, water and dirt everywhere. I kept coming back to that. What in hell was that all about? Then I saw those big plastic bags the gardeners use to shovel bark mulch in, dirt for the atrium plants, all kinds of things. And I realized that that kind of bag would work just like a thin plastic film bag, better even. Bruce could get hold of one without any trouble—folded up they don’t take much room, and there are three different sizes they use in the greenhouse. So he gets Rich in the elevator and pulls the plastic bag down over his head. It wouldn’t take long, Charlie,” he said soberly. “And the reflexive reaction would be to grab at the bag, not the one holding it. Too tough for him to break, or even scrape his fingernails in and leave a trace. A couple of minutes and he’s out cold, another minute or two and he’s dead. Bruce probably put the mesh bag on him to hide any possible mark he left. There were a couple of very small bruises on one cheek, actually. Then he had to get rid of the plastic bag he had used, so he staged the mayhem in the greenhouse and ditched it when everyone was milling about.” He stopped and leaned back in his chair watching Charlie.

Charlie was deep in thought as he finished his dinner and then was surprised to find everything gone. “Not bad,” he said almost grudgingly. “Coffee?” He didn’t have to raise his finger to get George, who appeared and deftly began to clear the table without a word.

“Coffee for three,” Charlie said absently. “And please bring a pot.”

George looked startled, but he said, “Yes sir,” and was quickly gone again. It seemed only seconds until he was back with a coffee pot and cups, poured for them all, and retreated once more.

Now Charlie regarded Dwight and nodded. “You’ve covered the bases. Why didn’t you go after him?”

“That goddamn computer security printout,” Dwight said with poorly concealed fury. “They snowed me, all of them. Alexander demonstrated it and we tried to get around it and couldn’t. It tracked every step and kept a record, and no one peeped about the hand-held controls, or about the little elevator that let him get around without anyone seeing him. Not a single peep.”

“And you think the others would lie to protect Bruce?”

Dwight shook his head. “They hate him, maybe even more than they hated Gary. But they’d sure lie to protect that company. And when that didn’t work, and the company kept on the slippery slide, they decided they had to end it, even if it meant Bruce’s skin. Sweetwater must have realized it, being a lawyer you’d think he’d have known it from the start, but anyway, eventually he did. Maybe he even had the proof and confronted Bruce with it last night. Plead insanity, something like that probably would have been his pitch. Get the company off the hook, let them go back to making money, but by then Bruce was off on his own course. He wants the company for himself. Charlie, that company is big bucks, really big bucks. Multimillion neighborhood.”

Charlie poured more coffee for them all.

“Dwight,” Constance asked, “isn’t there a test you can make to see if anyone has fired a gun recently?”

“We did it. Nothing. But we found a pair of gardener’s gloves tossed in the shrubbery under the balcony. Under Bruce’s window, in fact. We’re running the test on them. Want to make a bet he wore them when he shot Sweetwater?”

“I never bet,” she said. “But that makes it more complicated, doesn’t it? I mean, he either planned it and took the gloves with him and knew the gun would be on Milton, or else he hit him with the rock and went back for the gun and gloves, and that is truly insane. Isn’t it?”

“Maybe he’s a nut,” Dwight said slowly. “That might be his best plea. And if they all decide to go along, they’ll provide anecdotal evidence to support such a plea. So could I,” he added, “because he is a nut.”

Constance looked at Charlie who raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Could be,” he said. “I sure as hell can’t come up with anything better.”

There was another long pause, then Charlie said, “It’s circumstantial as hell. I don’t think you can tie him to the first two in a way that’ll satisfy a jury.”

“I don’t need to. If I get him for Milton Sweetwater, I’ll be satisfied. One murder, or three, he’ll be out of circulation a long time.” His voice flattened and his face hardened as he added, “I’m afraid you’ll have to appear as material witness.”

Charlie sighed. “I thought you were being pretty free with information. Let’s see. The gadget in the flower pot. What else?”

“You heard him admit he knew about the gadgets in the first place, while everyone else was still denying any knowledge of them. And he’s the one who brought up the subject of a gun. It was on his mind, obviously. The dirt outside his door, before he had a chance to get it on his shoes in front of a witness. I may think of another question or two before we’re done here. Tomorrow we use divers and see if we can’t locate that damn gun.”

“What if you don’t find it?” Constance asked.

“It’s there someplace, if not in the water, then on the grounds. No one’s taken it anywhere. We’ll hold them all until it turns up.”

“It’s a big beach,” Charlie said thoughtfully, remembering the heaps and piles of mammoth driftwood, all the crannies and crevices among the logs, the arm of rocks at the northern end of the beach, with more beach north and south, on and on and on. He shook his head. “I don’t envy you the search.”

“I don’t think we have to pay much attention to the beach,” Dwight said with a touch of triumph. “I thought of that, and had the guys look over the various bedrooms, the clothes in the closets, to see who had tracked in sand. You know you can’t go to the beach and not track in sand, no matter how careful you are. Even if you take off your shoes, sand seems to cling to you somewhere, to your clothes. Most of them were down there, but not him. Not Maddie Elringer, either, but somehow I just can’t see her committing murder.”

Constance was looking at him with admiration. “You’ve been very thorough. I’m really impressed. If the gun doesn’t turn up, maybe you should consider the possibility that he got one of the others to hide it up the beach for him. I mean, if he got Rich to help get rid of Gary, that’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Dwight said dubiously, “considering how they all feel about him, I don’t think it’s likely.”

As he continued to explain why he did not accept that theory, Constance watched him in rapt attention, and Charlie ducked his head and began to fumble among his credit cards. When they left the restaurant a minute or two later, Dwight was in the lead looking pleased, Constance in the middle, and Charlie last. Charlie pinched his wife, who jumped, but did not look back at him, and George watched them all from a distance.

Back at Smart House, they stood on the verandah as the lights of Dwight’s car turned into a hazy red glow, and then a patch of pink in the fog, and then vanished. “Dinner was very good,” Constance said. “And that was a mean trick you pulled on the poor guy.”

She laughed softly.

“Don’t giggle about it. It was mean.”

“Charlie, he was trying so hard to impress you I felt sorry for him. One of us had to be impressed. And I don’t giggle.”

He opened the door and they entered. “You giggled very distinctly. I heard you. Want to bet the gun doesn’t turn up under the cliff?”

“How much and which side do you want?”

“It’s my bet. I say it won’t turn up. Ten bucks.”

“That’s the side I’d want, that is if I gambled at all.”

They were in the spacious foyer where they could hear Bruce’s braying laughter from one of the closer rooms. Charlie scowled and motioned toward the stairs, and they went up and to their own room.

“Paperwork,” Charlie said in a disgruntled way. “I’ve barely even skimmed the stuff Milton put together for us. Okay?”

She nodded. “I want to make a timetable of sorts before I lose it all.”

Together they cleared the table and pulled chairs closer to it, then seated themselves, Charlie to start reading the material that made a considerable stack by now, and Constance to try to decipher the various notes people had made about their movements the night Gary Elringer and Rich Schoen had been murdered.

When Charlie looked up again, she was staring at nothing in particular, a slight frown on her face. “What?” he asked.

She slid the sheet of paper she had been working on in his direction. “The timetable,” she said with a sigh. “They keep turning up together all evening. But also, at least four of them tried to use the elevator after Maddie went down at about eleven, and it was busy each time. Or locked in place somewhere.”

“That’s one of my good questions,” he said, scanning her timetable. “Why didn’t it come when it was called?”

“Ghost or no ghost,” she murmured.

Charlie groaned. “Rich could have been aboard, dead, or alive and chatting with a killer, or a chair could have propped it open, or a computer glitch could have done the same. Or they’re all lying and alibiing each other like crazy.”

“But if they aren’t all lying, and if those men were both killed after eleven-fifteen, there are only two real suspects in this group, or else an outsider got in somehow,” she added slowly.

“Right. Tell me something. Harry says he tossed his water gun out into the ocean, and Laura says that Milton picked up a water gun on the roof that night. What the hell does that mean? Would she try to implicate Harry on purpose?”

Constance looked troubled; slowly she shook her head. “I really don’t think so. It’s a relationship that most people would reject, but in a way they are mutually dependent. Each protects the other. There’s real need in a relationship like theirs. If it was his water gun that Milton found, what difference does it make? Oh, he would have been lying about going to the roof that night.” She paused, and asked again, “But what difference does
that
make?”

He shrugged. “I wish I knew. Let’s go to bed. I feel like suddenly I’m on West Coast time and it’s bedtime.” It kept coming back to the same problem, he thought grumpily. At least two of them had the opportunity, and probably all of them the motive. But how the devil had anyone managed to kill two vigorous, strong men without a hell of a fight?

She began to stack the papers again as he got up and stretched, then pulled the bedspread off the bed and tossed it on a chair. He was unbuttoning his shirt when she whispered, “That’s it!”

“That’s what?”

She was eyeing the bed narrowly. “I knew there was something else wrong in Milton’s room, more than just all that shiny copper stuff. Look at what you just did.” She pointed to the spread. “That’s the normal way to get a bed ready for use. Pull the spread off, or fold it down and take it off if you’re fairly neat. But Milton’s spread was still in place, turned down with the blanket and sheet. Remember how white his pajamas looked against the spread? Why were they even there? How do you get ready for bed?”

He blinked. “I give up.”

“Your robe is still in the closet and even if you had got it out, you wouldn’t lay it out neatly on top of the bedspread because that has to come off. Maybe in the winter in a really cold room you would leave the spread on, but not in this house, not in summer, not with a blanket on the bed. It would be stifling. And Milton was too neat, too orderly to have left his pajamas and robe out on the bed all day. I don’t think he would have got them out until he was ready to put them on, and, remember, he didn’t put a chair under his doorknob, or secure the door in any way. He must not have had time. The killer must have gone to his room, or he must have left it almost instantly. I don’t think he would have turned down the bed with the spread in place. I think he would have folded it very neatly and put it on the chair, if he had had time to do it at all. Charlie, someone else turned down that bed, not Milton.”