Smart House (18 page)

“What did you find?” she asked as soon as they were in the hall.

“
Shh
. Outside.”

On the verandah she tried again. “What are you up to?”

“I want Dwight Ericson to get his ass up here and get his men to work for me.”

“Charlie.”

“I looked at the popcorn popper. It’s exactly like our old one that Jessica stole when she went to school.”

He had never forgotten that their daughter had taken the popcorn maker away with her when she left for college. Having a new one come into their house had done nothing to dim the memory, the feeling of being suddenly bereft that he had complained bitterly about. Constance dug him in the ribs with her elbow. “Charlie!”

“And I found out that Mrs. Ramos had two sheets on every single bed in that house. She thought I was insane to ask.”

“Ah. Well. You should have known.”

He chuckled and put his arm about her shoulders and steered her toward the cliff. They went down the trail to meet Dwight at the bottom. He looked disgusted and tired. Seeing him next to Charlie gave Constance a little jolt as she realized that this was how she and Charlie must appear to others: one tall and lean and very, very blond, the other chunkier and shorter and very dark. She liked the way it presented itself to her mind’s eye.

“Nothing,” Dwight said, responding to Charlie’s question.

“Not even a sheet?” When Charlie sounded that innocent, Constance always feared that someone might hit him.

“What now?” Dwight asked.

Charlie told him. “So one missing sheet. Maybe the gun’s wrapped up in it and they’re both at the bottom of the ocean.”

Dwight chewed his lip scowling at the horizon. “You think he was killed in his room?”

“Maybe. The bed was funny, prints wiped off too many things. Maybe.”

“And was wrapped in a sheet and moved to the cliff? Jesus Christ!”

“Maybe. If I had a crew of men, I’d have them search for bloodstains, and a burn mark maybe.”

“Burn?”

“Picture the ashtray,” Charlie said dreamily. “Half-smoked cigar, and a smidgen of ash. Where was the rest of it? Suppose Milton was smoking it when he was gonged. It would fall, obviously. Not in wet grass or weeds, or it would have gone out, and in that fog just about everything was good and wet, but the cigar was still lighted when it was put down in the ashtray. You could see the dead ash on the end where it burned itself out. And that means it was still lighted when it was picked up and replaced there, and that could mean a burn mark. Or someone relighted it, and somehow that sounds too damn macabre even for this bunch.”

“Damn it, Charlie, that’s reaching too far. He could have partly smoked that cigar anytime, anyplace that evening and put it down to let it burn out.”

“And when did someone wipe the prints off the ashtray? Picture it. You’ve got a half-smoked cigar, and you have to get your prints off the ashtray for God knows what reason. You put the cigar down on the edge of the table or something and clean the ashtray and put the cigar back and let it burn without disturbing it again. That’s one scenario. Another one is that Milton got bashed somewhere other than in his room, dropped the cigar, and the killer tidily returned it to its proper resting place after wiping off fingerprints. So a little ash is in the ashtray and there’s dead ash on the end of the thing. Undisturbed until the police move it.”

“In that case, why mess around with the fingerprints?”

“I wish to God I knew.”

Dwight was very gloomy now. “You know what’s going on over in Jordan Valley? Three, four hundred miles away from here, near the Nevada border, a rancher got beaten to death last night. That’s the sort of thing I usually get called in to see about. Round up his work crew, the foreman, ask a few questions, maybe start the search for a poacher, get it over with pretty damn fast. Sheriff could do it, but chances are he’s got cousins or brothers or sons working for the rancher; might be biased, they say.” He was watching his men scrambling out of the way of fast-moving waves; the tide was rushing in. “Well, this is a bust.” He grimaced. “The last time I asked a few questions about the carts, the wheelbarrows, and then found out no body had been moved. This time I didn’t bother. God almighty, what a mess.”

They walked up the beach after Dwight and his men left. “Not bad,” Constance said, patting Charlie’s arm. She did not mean the scenery, as he well understood.

“They haven’t proved anything yet,” he said.

She waved her hand, dismissing that. “They will.” She told him about the reversed Turing test and the voice prints. “I’m getting a better picture of what Gary was actually pulling off,” she said slowly. “I think that computer must have been able to understand anything said to it and respond exactly the way a person might. It’s scary.”

“
Hmf
” he said, the grunt more eloquent than anything else he might have thought of at the moment. “How about
I’m buffaloed
? Think it would get that?”

She nodded gravely. “
Or fly by night.
”

“
Chinese boat drill.
”

She laughed. “
Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
”

“Wow!” he said, stopping. A particularly large wave crashed against the cliffs ahead of them. The rocks that reached into the sea at the northern end of the crescent were being covered rapidly by the encroaching tide. Waves smashed into them, sending spray and foam high into the air. “When the tide comes in here, it doesn’t fool around,” he muttered, and they started to walk again.

“It’s damn hard to move a dead body,” he said after a moment. “That expression
deadweight
came from the real world. Why kill him and then push his body off the cliff? Why wipe the prints? It’s true, anyone might have been in and out of that room earlier. The killer could have bluffed it out. Why shoot him in the head after he was a goner?”

“Maybe he wanted to make certain that no one even pretended to believe this one was an accidental death.”

Charlie came to an abrupt stop, his fingers hard on her arm. “Jesus! That’s it!”

Startled, she turned to see him staring fixedly at the waves smashing into the black rocks.

He came back. “Enough walking. Walking, running, bad for the joints, bad for the knees. Let’s go.”

They returned briskly; now and then Charlie muttered something under his breath, and in between he hummed almost inaudibly. They had a never-stated rule in their house that anyone was allowed to mutter without interruption. Sometimes, when it was not entirely clear if it was a mutter or merely conversation too low to catch, it was permissible to ask, “Are you muttering?” Constance recognized what he was doing now very definitely as a mutter; she did not interrupt.

They met Beth on the red tile verandah. “Hi,” Constance said. “No bridge game yet?”

Beth shuffled her feet. “Maddie doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, and I can’t seem to concentrate on cards today. They’re searching again. We can’t even go to our rooms now. What are they doing?”

Before Constance could speak, Charlie’s fingers tightened briefly on her arm, then withdrew. “I’ll see if I can find out,” he said. “Good-bye, ladies.” He sauntered off.

“Of course it would be hard to concentrate now,” Constance said. “I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess whose parents both died quite suddenly and left her an orphan.” She ignored Beth’s incredulous stare and said with a smile, “Sorry, but that’s how these stories always start: They get right down to the point without any shilly-shallying. So the princess’s fairy godmother came to the grieving girl and said, ‘You must go live with your eldest uncle until you come of age.’ Thus it was that the girl went to live with her uncle.”

As she continued the story, Constance appeared unaware of Beth’s disbelief and even alarm, as if Beth was convinced that she was in the company of a madwoman.

“From the first day the uncle beat the girl if she was too noisy, or too quiet. If she wept, or did not weep for her parents. If she ate too much or too little. And gradually she came to know what he expected, and always did that before he could beat her. When her fairy godmother came to see how she was, she found the child cowering in a corner watching her uncle, trying to anticipate what might arouse his wrath next. And the fairy godmother spirited the child from that house and took her to the second eldest uncle instead. ‘Here you must remain until you come of age,’ she said, as before, and left her there.

“This uncle was married to a woman who said on seeing the child, ‘Oh, you are so young and strong, and I am old and weak and soon I must die.’ When the girl laughed, her aunt said, ‘Oh, you are happy and gay, and I am careworn and sad and soon I must die.’ When the girl ran, she said, ‘Oh, you are straight and full of life, and I am tired and in pain and soon I must die.’ This time when the fairy godmother returned, she found the girl with her hair tied in a tight knot, and wearing a voluminous gown that concealed her young limbs, walking with a bent, hunched position, rubbing her eyes often to make them red and watery. Of course, she removed her at once.”

Beth found herself strolling the length of the verandah with Constance, listening to the silly story, strangely unwilling now to pull away and run inside.

“In the next house, her aunt wept bitterly when the girl erred. ‘How you wound me who loves you with such complete love.’ And in the next, her uncle found her so pleasing that he could not bear to be apart from her for even a moment, and when she walked, he walked also, and became red in the face and held his heart and drew in long, choking breaths, but never complained. And when she ate a sweet, he ate the same, and suffered spasms of the chest and stomach, but never complained.

“In the next house her aunt promised every day that if she did well, then tomorrow she might have this or that, and tomorrow was as long in coming as the sun on a gray winter day.”

They had walked the length of the verandah two times when Beth stopped. “The story doesn’t have an ending, does it?”

“Each listener determines when it should end,” Constance said.

“You left out duty and shame and love and a few other things.”

“Not left out, just not reached yet.”

“It’s a very good story. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I think I’ll see if I can find out what Charlie’s up to.”

For another moment they faced each other gravely, and then Beth nodded. “A good story. I’ll see you later.” She walked away.

Charlie was at the table in the breakfast room watching Dwight Ericson take Bruce Elringer over the house inventory item by item. They had finished the dinnerware and were on pictures, statuary. Bruce was sullen and mean, his face flushed dark. Dwight was being extremely patient. And he might as well be, Charlie thought, since it was taking his men forever to make their new search. This was the part of police work he had hated when he was a New York cop, he remembered: detail work, searching, looking for one particular straw in a broom factory. He sympathized with Bruce when he considered the amounts of money that Gary had spent on Smart House: seventeen thousand for china, another three thousand for porcelain, nine thousand for silverware, on and on. Four dozen sheets at twenty bucks a piece. He shook his head and listened.

“Okay, okay,” Dwight was saying. “The original inventory shows fifteen pictures, and there are still fifteen. Pass on. The statues in the foyer. None’s missing, right?”

“Not yet,” Bruce snapped.

“Okay, Mr. Elringer. You weren’t able to update your inventory in the bedrooms, so I guess that about does it. I’d like a copy of what you have there.”

Bruce clutched his notebook.

“Howie, go with Mr. Elringer to the basement office and get copies of what he has,” Dwight said, still patient, but it was wearing thin.

“I’ll make the copies,” Bruce said quickly. “He can watch if he wants.”

“He wants,” Dwight said.

“Bruce,” Charlie asked. “Exactly why did you start your own inventory? You did it last May, didn’t you?”

“You know it. Because I don’t trust the one Rich put together. Don’t trust the people who’ve been free to come and go in this place. Five-hundred-dollar ashtrays, three-hundred-dollar lamps, thousand-dollar knickknacks! Someone’s got to keep a list, keep track.”

He stood up, still clutching his notebook. “You know how much has walked out already? Thousands! My money, and it just walks out the door!”

“Yes. So you said before. But exactly what walked out the door? I mean, was there something specific, or just a general suspicion?”

Bruce leaned forward and nearly spat the words. “A blue malachite whale, about this long.” He held out his hands to indicate ten or twelve inches. “Seven hundred dollars! What the fuck for? Who needs stuff like that in bedrooms?”

“When was it gone?” Charlie asked. “How did you know it was missing already last May?”

Bruce glared at him, then at Dwight. “You fuckers, you’ll try to pin that on me, too, won’t you? It won’t work! That’s why I began the inventory, to prove that someone here has sticky fingers. It was in my room in May when we first came here, and I looked at it and looked at the price on the inventory and I knew the sucker would tempt someone. So I started the list. Every fucking room has something like that. Portable, pricey, tempting. What the fuck for?”

“When did you realize it was gone?” Charlie asked again, as patient as Dwight, but with an edge to his voice also.

“How the fuck do I know? June, July. When I came back in the summer sometime. It’s gone, all right. Who the fuck knows what else is missing by now?”

“And did you update your inventory back then when you returned?”

“You bet your ass I did! And again this time!”

“Wonderful,” Charlie murmured and relaxed back in his chair, finished.

One of Dwight Ericson’s men entered the room as Bruce and Howie left. The newcomer was another of the earnest uniformed officers. He saluted, and Dwight glanced at Charlie with a look of embarrassment.

“I think we might have found the burn mark,” the young officer said, and Dwight and Charlie both stood up fast. “At least, there’s a burn up on the balcony, and it might be fresh. No way of knowing, I guess.”