Smart House (17 page)

“And then wiped off fingerprints from everything in the bedroom. Laura?”

“Why would she? She didn’t seem to care who knew what she did before.”

“Harry, to protect her? Maybe. Beth? Her room is next to his and she says she didn’t hear a sound. Beth?”

She had no answer. A few minutes later, he watched her fold down the bedspread on the second twin bed and remove it in a neat bundle, the way she did every night.

Chapter 16

From the top of the
cliff Charlie watched the men below swarming over the rocks, and Dwight Ericson prowling at the edge of the black jumble, where erratic waves now and again splashed on him. The tide was lower than Charlie had yet seen it. The morning was cool and still; the sun in the east had not cleared the cliff behind Smart House.

Jake Kluge appeared on the trail, coming up from the beach, wearing running shorts and a sleeveless shirt. He was very muscular and fit, and his loose-jointedness seemed appropriate now. He was not breathing hard after his run and the climb up from the beach. He waved but continued on to the house. Only a moment ago, Harry had gone down to start his morning run.

Charlie thought about how much he disliked men who showed off muscular legs in shorts, who made a ritual of running at dawn. At last he turned to the house again and saw Constance on the wide verandah waiting for him. He walked to her with dignified, sedate moderation as befitting his position in life, and they entered to have breakfast.

Bruce was standing at the door of the breakfast room glowering at Alexander. He yelled, “I don’t give a fuck about that! I want that list! I have a right!”

“I’ll make another copy for you,” Alexander said. “I’ll make copies for everyone. After breakfast.”

“Be sure you do!” Bruce stamped out and slammed the door.

Alexander began to inch toward the door after him; he looked terrified, more of Charlie than of Bruce.

“Well, the boy’s in a snit this morning,” Charlie said cheerfully and drew out a chair for Constance, another for himself. “Sit down, Alexander.”

Miserably he perched on the edge of a chair.

“This thing you will copy for him, what is it?”

“It’s nothing, really. A list of things the police took from Milton’s room, that’s all. But Bruce is trying to make an inventory of the house, the contents. Afraid someone’s stealing stuff.”

If he looked any guiltier, they’d haul him away and hang him, Charlie thought.

Constance said, “I’ll copy it for him.” Alexander hesitated in confusion; she held out her hand and said firmly, “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

His indecision, while brief, was painful to watch. Finally he drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. He looked instantly relieved. “How long will they keep all of us? What are they waiting for?”

Charlie shrugged. “They’re looking for the gun. As soon as they find it, they’ll probably release everyone.”

“If they don’t let us go soon… ,” Alexander started, then shook his head. “They have to let us go. They don’t realize the strain, the tension, tempers. We all have work to do. They don’t understand.”

“Oh, I think they do,” Charlie said dryly. “I’m sure they do.”

“Alexander, how well do you people know each other? Off the job, I mean?” Constance asked idly.

“Some more than others,” he mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“Does anyone here know any of the martial arts, do you suppose?”

He stared at her as if she had uttered an obscenity, or was speaking Swahili. Charlie found that his patience with this skittish young man was wearing very thin. Alexander shook his head and mumbled something inaudible; he got up and sidled toward the door. Neither of them tried to stop him this time, and, close to the door, he turned from them and darted out.

“We can probably find out,” Charlie said thoughtfully, “but why?”

“I was thinking of Gary. I could put someone in that whirlpool, winded, without a bruise. I wonder if anyone else here could.”

Upstairs at that moment Beth was leaning against the frame of the sliding glass door in Maddie’s room. She felt heavy, leaden all over, even her brain; she could not seem to comprehend what it was that Mad-die was suggesting. All night she had twisted and turned and stared into darkness, and twice had started upright, holding her breath, listening. Finally she had turned on the light in her bathroom and left the door open a crack, and then she had been able to doze off, but fitfully.

Maddie had started out by asking if the detective intended to drag them all through the mud over the stupid game, but she had left that very quickly, and what she was saying now made no sense to Beth.

Maddie’s eyes were red, her lids swollen, her face puffy. She kept looking past Beth, out the glass at the sea below, lifting and putting down her cup repeatedly without drinking from it. Her breakfast was on the table before her, untouched.

“You owe us something,” she said. “You could have prevented all of it. All of it. He needed you always, and you knew that. You destroyed him and now you’ll wreck Bruce’s life, too, and mine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You do. You do. You drove him to that woman! He despised her. He told me over and over, and you drove him to her. And now you’ll have the money and Bruce will be ruined. You owe us something!”

“What do you want from me?” Beth demanded, determined not to cry, not to scream at this woman who appeared insane to her now.

“You come home with me. Bruce is coming with me, too. We’ll be a family again, the three of us. Bruce needs someone he can trust, someone to help him now. There will be enough money; you don’t need it all, no one does. Not the money Gary made out of nothing. You owe us…”

“Stop it! Just stop it! I don’t owe you anything! Not you, not Bruce. My God, he would have me hanged if he could!”

Maddie apparently had not even heard her. “He wanted a family. I know he did, a real family with you, children, a real home. He would have been happy then, contented. You took that away from him, from me. How can you be so heartless now? There’s enough money. You don’t have to destroy Bruce, too. How can you do it? Be nicer to us, Beth. Please don’t hurt us any more.”

Beth jammed her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to this! Maddie, you know what it was like, living with Gary. You do know, goddamn it!”

“How he worked,” Maddie said, and started to weep again. “All his life, just work, and you. The only two things—”

With an inarticulate cry, Beth ran to the door and out, to stand shaking in the wide corridor. She was startled by the sound of Jake’s voice calling her.

“Are you all right?” he asked, approaching her with a worried expression.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ve been talking to Maddie. Before breakfast yet. That’s a mistake.”

“I knocked on your door,” he said, and suddenly he sounded awkward. “I thought we might have breakfast together. But after yesterday, maybe you’d rather not. Beth, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dumped on you. Me yesterday, now Maddie.”

“But you didn’t,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t what I’d call dumping.” And now, she realized, she sounded just as awkward as he did. She took a deep breath and attempted a smile. “Anyway, I’m glad you talked to me a little.”

“A little! Just my life history.”

They walked to the stairs where he stopped her with his hand on her arm, and now he looked at her steadily. “Listen, Beth, you let everyone take advantage of you. Me included. Now Maddie. Whatever it is she wants, she isn’t your worry. She doesn’t need to tie you in knots. Any more than I do. Last night, a bad night,” he added grimly, “I kept thinking how I went on about Gary yesterday, and about my hopes, my plans, my concerns, and I realized all at once that that’s how we all treat you and always have. I used to come over to your place, yours and Gary’s, and watch you now and then and wonder how and why you put up with him and his pettiness, his constant demands, and last night I realized that I had put you in exactly that same position. I’m sorry.” Suddenly he grinned and took her arm, started to propel her down the stairs. “There. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to get through that, and I rehearsed it over and over when I was running this morning.”

As Constance and Charlie ate ham and eggs and biscuits, Constance glanced over the list of items the police had taken for laboratory examination. She started to speak, then handed the list over instead, pointing to one of the items. “That’s strange.”

He read the line:
3 sheets, 2 blankets, 2 bedspreads.
The door started to open and hastily he folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Beth and Jake entered the breakfast room.

Beth looked from Charlie to Constance and blurted, “Have you talked to the police yet about—you know?”

“No, I don’t,” Charlie said.

And Constance said, “Oh, you mean the game?”

“Yes. Have you? Maddie thinks you have, and I was sure you wouldn’t, not without telling us. Have you?”

“Why does she think we have?”

“Something Bruce said to her. The police accused him of keeping something back, lying to them. That captain practically accused all of us of lying.”

“We haven’t mentioned it, Beth,” Charlie said. “But, Jesus, he has a point. All of you have been lying to him.”

She bit her lip and looked down at the coffee cup at her place, moved the cup around on the saucer until it scritched like fingernails on a blackboard. Jake took her hand from it. “I told Maddie I’d try to find out for her. We should tell them, shouldn’t we?” she whispered, not yet looking up. “Maybe it would help their investigation if we tell them.”

“Has it helped you, Charlie?” Jake asked.

“Don’t know yet. But, Beth, if it seems necessary to tell them, I will. You do understand that, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“How stable is Maddie right now?” Charlie asked.

“She’s not going to pieces, but she’s close,” Beth said. She glanced at Jake, who nodded. “I think she’s had just about all she can handle. Why?”

“What would it do to her if they accuse Bruce of murder? Could she handle that?”

“Oh, God! Are they going to?”

“I think they might. In any case—” He stopped when Mrs. Ramos appeared with a tray and watched her until she finished and went back through the doorway. Suddenly he stood up. “Excuse me. Right back.” He followed Mrs. Ramos to the kitchen.

Beth stared after him, then turned bewildered eyes to Constance, who shrugged. Slowly Beth started to eat, but after only a bite she put her fork down again. “She’ll take it really hard,” she said soberly. “She thinks she failed Bruce over the years, and he knows it and reinforces that feeling every chance he gets. Last night, it was just awful. He kept laughing the way Gary always did, and she kept shaking. It was awful.”

“Did he always try to mimic his brother?”

“Not really. I think this is part of the reversed Turing test they were playing with several years ago. He’s perfected his imitation since then.”

Constance shook her head, smiling. “Would you mind backing up a bit? What’s a reversed Turning test?”

“Turing,” Jake said. “After the mathematician. He came up with the original test. The subject sits at a computer terminal and types in questions and tries to determine which answers come from a computer, which from a person in another room. It’s a forerunner of the research going on now with artificial intelligence. Gary’s idea was to make voice prints and program the computer with them, plus pertinent data about each person being used, and then try to perfect it to the point where even a professional mimic couldn’t fool the computer. So, a reversed Turing test, trying to fool the computer instead of a person.” He added dryly, “The computer never misses any more.”

“My goodness,” Constance said softly. “People do all the time, don’t they? You hear a voice and think it’s someone you know and turn around to see a stranger. Can it pick out voices in a crowd? I’d think the intelligence services would be after it.”

Suddenly the silence was strained as Beth and Jake exchanged glances. Constance felt as if she had stumbled onto forbidden territory.

“That’s one of the reasons for the isolation of this place,” Jake said after a moment. “Gary wanted complete secrecy until he was ready to disclose the entire package he was developing. I wormed that much out of Alexander finally.”

“Good heavens,” Constance said then. “If it was tracking people by voice the night Gary and Rich were killed, it must have overheard the killer with them.” She realized with a chill that she was talking about it as if it were a person.

“It wasn’t a tape recorder,” Jake protested.

“But it was,” Beth said quickly. “Remember the first program Bruce wrote that was successful? It was a music program,” she explained to Constance. “He could synthesize music, any instrument, and play back a complete symphony, every instrument with its own part, every instrument unique. That’s how they could work with voices, any number of voices treated as instruments, to be played back.”

And that explained Bruce’s appreciation of Alexander’s accomplishments as a programmer, Constance thought suddenly; Bruce would recognize exactly what it was that Alexander was doing, what it meant.

“Bruce… ,” Beth whispered then. “If Maddie thinks she’s likely to lose him—”

Jake took her hand. “Beth,” he said firmly, “remember what we were saying? They aren’t your problem, none of them.” He was gazing at her steadily, with concentration, as if trying to force her away from her thoughts. He did not relax until she finally nodded and lifted her fork again. “After breakfast, let’s take a walk and then drop in on Maddie and see how she’s doing. She likes to play bridge. We’ll get Laura to play, too. Maybe it would help all of us to play cards for a while today.”

Constance watched him with great interest. He could have gone into counseling, or the ministry, or anything having to do with an intense dialogue. He had the gift of focusing that was one of the requirements. She felt that during this short interlude he had forgotten her altogether. Now that the moment had passed, he once again could include her, and, in fact, did include her, invited her to play bridge with them in a polite way that meant her refusal was taken for granted. She refused.

When Charlie returned only a minute or two later, Constance was surprised that neither Beth nor Jake reacted to the new charge in the air. She could feel it almost like an electric current. She pushed her plate back slightly and stood up. “I think it’s time for our walk,” she said. He nodded and she joined him at the door. “See you later,” she said over her shoulder and went out with Charlie.