Smart House (6 page)

“But weren’t you named his primary heir?”

Beth looked at Constance, puzzled, then nodded. “I don’t get the shares, that’s the point. They have to pay me their value, and they don’t have enough money. I think the courts will force a sale, or something of that sort. That’s my motive, according to Bruce.” She no longer seemed able to get from that to the reason she had found for Bruce to have done it. She frowned in thought.

Charlie slowed down and clicked on the turn signal. He glanced at Constance; she grinned back, her look telling him she had known all along that he knew perfectly well where a good restaurant was. He parked and they all got out in front of Ray’s Clam Chowder and Other Fine Food restaurant. Charlie took a deep breath of the cool, misty sea air. Back home it was closing in on a hundred degrees, he thought with satisfaction.

The restaurant was small, with only two other parties in booths. They seated themselves in a booth overlooking the parking lot and consulted the menu, and suddenly Beth said, “Oh, yes. That’s it.”

“First we order,” Charlie said firmly. “You two can have the other fine food. I want chowder.”

They all did, and as soon as the waiter left them alone, Beth said, “If he can convict me of murder, I can’t inherit. The stock still goes back to the company, but he and his mother will inherit the estate. They will be owed for the shares. He’ll make Maddie accept a deferred payment plan, and he will too, and the company won’t have to raise millions of dollars to pay for Gary’s shares. And the company won’t be under the cloud, either, of having a crazy computer that kills people.” She nodded. “That’s his motive.”

“Is the company really broke?” Charlie asked.

“Practically. A cash flow problem, as they say. I guess there’s operating money, money due on back orders, and so on, but nothing more than that. Gary sank every cent he got his hands on into Smart House. If they can clear the Smart House computer, they have a new gold mine, of course. God alone knows how much they’ll make when they start selling the advanced programming, the computer systems, everything to do with Smart House.”

Charlie was studying her thoughtfully. “It seems to me that if there is a human killer, he cut his own throat by casting suspicion on the computer. Everyone there is involved with the company, even if you do say ‘they’ when you talk about it.”

She blushed and ducked her head. “I guess I never thought of any of it as having anything real to do with me,” she mumbled. “It was always Gary’s, and theirs, not mine.”

“How long were you married to him?” Constance asked, and although that was not the question Charlie would have put to her then, he leaned back to see where Constance was heading now.

“Ten years,” Beth said in a low voice.

“You were both children,” Constance said, also softly, with great sympathy.

“Yes. We were nineteen when we met. He was getting his doctorate already, and he was so shy and funny looking and awkward. I was the only girl he ever went out with. And I didn’t have any social life either, until he came along. In my own way I was just as funny looking and awkward and shy. Two misfits. We got along somehow. No one understood what either of us saw in the other, and now I don’t either, but then… All those years, for the first seven years, I did exactly what he wanted. He was hardworking, determined to make his mark in the world of computers, full of ideas, some of them wild, some simply wonderful, and he made his mark. He really did. He wanted to redesign the architecture of the machine so that he could develop half a dozen software packages that would be totally compatible and require a minimum of available memory. He did it, too.”

The waiter came with their chowder. His frank appraisal of Beth was oddly reassuring. He was young, probably younger than she was, but interested. She was oblivious. Constance watched her eat a few bites, and as soon as she seemed to lose interest in the food, Constance asked, “You could work with him on computers at that depth? I’m awed. All I know about computers is that you plug them in, insert a program, and hope for the best.”

Beth laughed politely. “Actually I only worked with him for the first few years. I took my degree then, and four years ago I told him I wanted to go back for my master’s in English. For the first year that I was back in school, I kept working with him, but it was too much and gradually I gave it up. Three years ago I moved all the way out to go to Berkeley. I had an apartment, and after that I saw very little of him. I don’t know how far he moved during those four years; pretty far, I guess.”

“Did he object?” Charlie asked. “Did you fight over leaving him for school?”

She pushed her spoon around with one finger and shook her head. “We never fought,” she said. “Never. He said at first that going back to school was a good idea, and later he said he didn’t really have time for me anyway, not then. He was too immersed in the work on Smart House. He agreed to help me financially, of course, until the money ran out anyway. We never were separated the way people thought we were. We just weren’t together. He believed right up to the end that one day I’d be fed up with trying to support myself, and I’d be back.”

“And you? Did you think that?” Charlie asked, baffled by her in a way he could not fathom. Didn’t she know she was a damn good looking young woman? And smart as hell?

She looked at him candidly and sighed. “I don’t know. Probably I would have gone back eventually, if he insisted. Once he said that he knew computers would do anything you wanted them to—the trick was to find the right language, the right method and sequence of commands to tell them what you wanted. He believed that about people, too. And he was right, at least about people. They always did exactly what he wanted them to. Always.”

Charlie shook his head at her gravely. “One of them didn’t, Beth. Either a computer or a person did not do exactly what he wanted at the end.”

Chapter 6

“Dessert,” Charlie announced,
“is loganberry pie, and I intend to have it. Ladies?” They both shook their heads. “Good. I eat. You, Beth, talk. Thumbnail sketches of the players at Smart House.”

She looked toward Constance, as if for help, and got only an encouraging smile. Did this mean they trusted her, or that they were testing her? She felt her confusion rise and shook her head, but Charlie was motioning the waiter over, and Constance was watching him. He finished with the waiter and turned expectantly to Beth.

“First, the brother, Bruce,” he prompted, when she did not speak immediately.

“Bruce,” she said after a lengthy pause, “seems to equate genius with insanity, but he’s acting. Gary wasn’t crazy,” she added hurriedly, not certain why she was defending him even now. She stopped in confusion, then said carefully, “He wasn’t aware of what he did to the rest of us… them.” She had to stop again, because that wasn’t right, either. Charlie made a noncommittal noise, and Constance simply waited; Beth tried again. “His priorities were different,” she said finally. “Anything to do with problems, puzzles, games, anything intellectual, I guess, came first, people second.” She thought a moment, then nodded. “Look, it wasn’t that he was unaware of people, it was rather that he had a way of delegating importance that left them behind other things. Once,” she hurried, wondering again why she was trying so hard to make them understand Gary, since it no longer mattered, “when Jake was still married, his wife gave him an ultimatum. He could keep working eighteen-hour days forever, or he could be married to her, but he couldn’t do both. Gary understood exactly what was happening, and he gave Jake even more work. He tested him. In full awareness of the consequences, the cost to Jake, his wife. It was another problem, nothing more than that. He had a good understanding of human problems, but he filed them under a different category than most people.”

The waiter brought coffee, and they were silent until he left again. Then Charlie said, “Harry.”

Beth blinked and regathered her thoughts, tried to encapsulate Harry. “He’s driven,” she said slowly. “It’s as if he got a glimpse of something he never used to believe was attainable, and suddenly began to believe he could have it. Like a mountain peak,” she added, and looked from Charlie to Constance. “You know, he climbs mountains. I mean, almost obsessively.” Charlie nodded. “Sometimes I get the feeling that he’s climbing a mountain all the time, even if he’s on level ground just like the rest of us. I wouldn’t want to get in his way. He’d push anyone out of his way, and if you fell over the side, tough.”

“Even Gary?”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Gary was at the peak already, urging him on, encouraging him. He was the role model, the goal. Probably no one admired him more than Harry did.”

“Poor Gary,” Constance murmured, when Beth lapsed into silence again. “Didn’t anyone care for him as a person?”

Beth flushed and ducked her head, watched her spoon whip the coffee in her cup into a whirlpool. “Maddie did, of course, and I did, a long time ago. Jake cared for him.”

The vortex in her cup spun higher and higher until it reached the rim and sloshed over the side in a torrent. She was remembering the day of Gary’s funeral. They had all gone back to Maddie’s house to find it full of people, curious people, friends, strangers, some malicious, some caring, some huddled, held together by whispers, some wanting to touch, to pat, soothe, feel. She had fled upstairs to Maddie’s tiny office where she stood with her back to the room, head bowed, both hands pressed hard against the door as if the mourners might follow and try to gain admittance.

She stiffened at a touch on her shoulder, spun around, and found herself being gathered into the arms of Jake Kluge. He held her and stroked her hair as if she were a child, and she had been overcome by guilt, guilt at not feeling bereaved, at not suffering, at not caring; guilt that she was alive and Gary dead and maybe she was even glad he was dead; guilt because she did not know what she should be feeling and was as empty as the guests downstairs, as cold as ice. Jake murmured nonsense words and she wept, not for Gary, but for herself and the ruins of her life. The guilt doubled, redoubled, until she shoved Jake away, unable to bear his touch. He was wearing his glasses, so thick they distorted his pale eyes but did not hide the reddened eyelids. His very real grief made her more ashamed.

She had run from him, all the way out of the house, to her car, had driven for hours. After that, when he called, she had listened to his voice on her machine and turned it off, turned him off. She had understood that he wanted to share her grief, assuage their mutual grief, and she had none, unless for the girl she had been ages ago.

She looked up from the mess in her saucer, and now on the tabletop as well, and put her spoon down. “They’ll be wondering where I am,” she said quietly. “We should go now.”

When they drove back to Smart House, Charlie had Beth show him where she had stopped to wait at the massive bronze gates, which were standing open now. He drove on, and waited for her to go through the motions she had gone through the day of her arrival. He looked for the camera eyes just as she had done that day, and with as much effect. They were hidden too well.

He rang the bell then and the four clear notes of the Bellringer Company sounded. Seconds later the ornate door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped aside.

“This is Mr. Meiklejohn and Ms. Leidl,” Beth said. “Mrs. Ramos.”

She was a handsome, sturdily built woman, graying hair in a soft chignon, no makeup, no jewelry, not even a watch. Charlie remembered that she and her husband had been on a long-distance call from a few minutes after eleven until nearly eleven-thirty the night of the deaths. Mrs. Ramos was a new grandmother. She inclined her head fractionally. “I will show you to your room. Do you have bags? If you will please leave your car keys, we will bring up your bags and park the car in the garage. Mr. Sweetwater asked to be notified on your arrival.” Her voice was very pleasant, musical even; she had no trace of an accent.

Beth said, “If I see Milton, I’ll tell him. See you later.” She waved and went around them, through the spacious foyer.

“Would you like to take the elevator up?” Mrs. Ramos asked.

“Yes indeed,” Charlie said, and she led them into the wide corridor with the glass wall of the atrium. Charlie whistled.

“We can go that way,” Mrs. Ramos said. “Most people do. It’s the shortest way through the house.”

They examined the garden, the pool, the arrangements of chairs, tables, the bar, the way the room was built up to resemble a rocky hill covered with jungle greenery. The air was heavy.

“You know why we’re here?” Charlie asked, pausing to study the rock wall where the water plunged down into the pool.

“They told me.”

“I feel like I’m in some damn pasha’s palace,” he said, and started to walk again. “Will you be here all weekend? We’ll want to talk to you at some point. You and your husband.”

“Of course,” she said. “We are in a cottage on the property. Whenever it’s convenient.”

The unflusterable, perfect housekeeper, Charlie thought, and wondered what lay behind the serenity of her expression, the wise black eyes. She stopped again almost immediately on leaving the atrium.

“The elevator,” she said.

The elevator was at the end of the corridor, with a narrower hallway leading directly away from the pool area. The doors to the elevator were bifold, open. They stepped inside. On the wall next to the doors the control panel was a music staff with notes, the controls flush with the wall. Gold metal strips divided the walls into random sections, each a different pastel—blue, green, yellow…. Rich burgundy carpeting underfoot seemed almost too deep. The ceiling was ivory colored, luminescent, the light source. The cage was eleven feet deep, five feet wide, with a ceiling eight feet high, Charlie knew from the reports he had read.

“Where’s the automatic vacuum?” he asked Mrs. Ramos.

“The center panel on the rear wall,” she said, nodding toward it. “I can’t show you on this floor. It only operates on the basement level. These are the floor indicators,” she said then and touched one of the notes. “The first one shuts the doors,” she said. The doors closed soundlessly. “The next one opens them, and of course the rising notes are for the floors. We’re on one, and your room is on two.” She touched another note. There was no sensation of motion. “When the computer is operating, there’s no need to remember to press any buttons, you just tell it what you want. It’s automatic.”

She led them into the hallway on the second floor, the glass wall on one side, the bedroom doors on the other between long expanses of wall with very nice art, each picture illuminated with its own light above it. They passed several closed doors before she stopped and opened one. She did not enter, but held the door for them. “I hope you will be comfortable. Number six on the phone rings in the kitchen, if you want anything. And I’ll make certain that Mr. Sweetwater knows you have arrived.”

Throughout the minitour and minilectures Constance had remained silent and watchful. Now she asked, “Did you work for Gary Elringer?”

“No. I work for the company. Sometimes he was here, sometimes not; I work in the house for the company.”

“Do you like it, Mrs. Ramos? Smart House, I mean, the computer controlling things?”

For an instant there was something other than the pleasant well-trained-housekeeper face, an expression stony and cold; it was so fleeting it might not have been noticeable if Constance had not been watching closely.

“The computer is turned off; it isn’t running anything anymore.” She glanced inside the room in a professional way, then turned and left them.

While Constance crossed the room to open the drapes, Charlie examined the door lock and the numbered panel on the outside and tried to fathom how the thing worked when the computer was operating. He could not understand it, he decided, and closed the door, looked for a lock that he did understand, and failed to find that, too.

“This isn’t a house!” Constance exclaimed, standing at the wall of windows. There was an ocean view, misty and gray and beautiful. The room was decorated in orchid, lavender, and navy blue, with exquisite cloisonné objects here and there—lamps, a statuette of a crane, an ashtray. “This is like one of the four-star hotels you read about.”

Twin beds, a desk with a computer, a television, chests of drawers, large closet, extravagantly fitted bathroom, like an expensive hotel, Charlie agreed, after looking through it all. Except there was no way to lock the door. He knew he would use the old chair-under-the-doorknob trick.

When they left their room, it was to find Beth in the corridor. “I’ll take you to the living room,” she said. “Milton’s waiting for you. And Bruce and a couple of the others.” She looked gloomy as she motioned down the hall. “No elevator. I wouldn’t get near that thing again.” She led them down the back stairs.

“You really need a guide,” Constance said.

“They handed out floor plans last time. There must be some around still. Milton will know.”

They entered the living room and she introduced them: Alexander Randall looked nervous and uncertain of what to do with his hands. Milton nodded to them. He was carrying a large manila envelope. Maddie Elringer nodded to them both and did not speak. Her makeup was a mess: too much lipstick not very well applied, and her mascara had run and had not been repaired; as if she had not looked at herself in a mirror since morning. She was holding a tall drink and every sign said that it was not her first although it was then only four in the afternoon.

As soon as the introductions were over Milton Sweetwater held out the envelope to Charlie. “I managed to get everything you asked for, and Alexander here worked on the house from the start. Anything you want to ask about the place, he should be able to fill in.”

“Thanks.” Charlie tucked the envelope under his arm.

From behind him a new voice demanded harshly, “What did you give him? Dossiers on all of us?”

“That’s Bruce,” Beth said wearily.

“And that’s not an answer,” Bruce said in a truculent tone. He joined the group near the window, looking over Charlie, ignoring Constance. “I know who you are. What I want to know is what he told you we hired you to do.”

“Bruce, you’re making a fool of yourself,” Milton snapped. “I told him exactly what we discussed at our last meeting, and I supplied him with the forensic reports, the police reports, the articles of incorporation, the terms of Gary’s will, a summary of the company’s financial statement of the past year, a floor plan of the house, and perhaps one or two other documents, a list of which I can and will supply at our next meeting.”

Constance was watching with an interest that was nearly clinical. Maddie’s hands had started to shake so hard she had to put down her glass, and now each hand gripped the other so tightly that the ends of her fingers were scarlet, the knuckles white. Alexander was edging toward the door, ready to bolt.

“I already told them what you’re accusing me of!” Beth said coldly, looking at Bruce with icy disdain.

He made a grab for her arm and she twisted out of reach.

“Don’t you touch me!” Her voice was choked with fury.

“Stay and listen to me tell it. I don’t want you accusing me of saying anything behind your back. I was watching her,” he said to Charlie. “We heard Gary laughing. I was watching her. She heard it, just like I did. And she got up and went out after him. She’d been trying to get him to talk to her all day, and that was her chance, while everyone else was watching the movie. He was going to make her work for some of the dough he was shelling out on her, and she wanted a divorce and a fat settlement. I know the signs, by God! That night I saw her go after him. Who else would he let anywhere near him in the Jacuzzi? Who else could turn off the computer so it wouldn’t track them into the Jacuzzi? He was mad because she didn’t show any interest in his new toys. He would have shown it to her; he wanted to show off to her. He turned them both off the tracking program and said he’d talk to her and they went into the Jacuzzi. She got her hands on it.” He raised his voice to a falsetto and went on, “Oh, Gary, let me see it. How clever of you.”