The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven) (12 page)

“Where's Beckman?”

“Inside. I'll tell Anderson to meet you downstairs, and if you see someone crawling around your car, it's a mechanic from the city motor pool. Abramson is determined no more cars will blow up in our faces.”

Beckman was on the phone to his wife, explaining. It sometimes appeared to Masuto that the best part of Sy Beckman's life was spent on the telephone, explaining to his wife his whereabouts for the past twenty-four hours.

“No,” Beckman said patiently, “there is just no way I can get home in time to be a fourth for bridge. Where am I going? I'll tell you where I'm going. I'm going to dig up a cadaver.” He was not believed, and his explanations continued. Finally out of it, he said to Masuto, “Next time around, a Japanese girl. You don't get that from Kati.”

Masuto had heard it before. “Tell me about Santa Barbara.”

“Well, she doesn't actually live in Santa Barbara. She lives in Montecito. That's a community or neighborhood or whatever just on this side of Santa Barbara. Beautiful spot. You ever been there?”

Masuto nodded.

“You could be a thousand miles from anywhere. A dirt road, and then a house of cut stone, with a million roses, a tiled roof, a terrace of Mexican tiles—and this Jo Hardin. You say to yourself, Eve Mackenzie was a beauty, the sister must be a plain Jane. No, sir. Just as pretty as her sister. Supposed to be fifty-one. You'd never believe it. She could pass for thirty. Ever heard of a famous Western badman and outlaw, name of John Wesley Hardin? She claims to be a relative of his.”

“Did she agree to the autopsy?” Masuto demanded impatiently.

“No luck there. She claims there is no reason for it, that her sister suffered enough. I talked and argued, but she wouldn't give an inch.”

“But why? She knows her sister died a violent death. She might well have surmised that her sister was framed. Why shouldn't she agree to an autopsy?”

“I tried, Masao.”

“Did you make it plain to her that we're convinced that her sister was murdered?”

“I did. She just kept saying that she wanted to forget the whole thing.”

“What was her attitude? Did she appear to have an affection for her sister?”

“Not much. She's a pretty cold fish.”

“Does she live alone there?”

“As far as I could tell. Well, not absolutely alone.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, like I said, Masao, there's a dirt road leads up to the place. Pretty narrow, so if you're going to pass another car, you got to slow it down almost to a walk. Well, I was leaving there when I saw a car coming, and I had to slow it down, like I said, almost to a walk. So I had a good look at who was in the car. You want to take a guess?”

“Mark Geffner.”

Beckman's face fell. “How did you know?” he whispered.

“Did he see you?”

“Had to. What made you say Geffner?”

“A guess. And knowing you, Sy, you've gone into his background. What have you got?”

“Just what popped up on the computer. He's Mr. Clean. U.C.L.A., Stanford Law, Judge Advocate in Vietnam, and then the state. He's forty-six years old, divorced four years ago, and that's it.”

“No, only the beginning,” Masuto said.

Masuto, Beckman, and Anderson waited while the city mechanic went over their cars with a fine-tooth comb. Then Masuto decided that they would all go in Beckman's car. “You drive. I want to think,” Masuto told Beckman.

“I like to think while I'm driving,” Beckman said.

“Yes, that's one way. Another way is to empty your mind, stop your thoughts.”

“Then how're you thinking, if you'll forgive me, Sergeant?” Anderson asked.

“Well, you are, but in another way. You're letting something happen in your mind. In a way, it's what most people do. You try to remember something and it's impossible. Then you put it away, and then suddenly you have the answer, apparently out of nowhere. But your mind does it for you. Maybe it will do it for me. There must be some sanity, some logic, to this wretched business,”

“Why? We live in a world full of lunatics.”

Masuto shrugged, closed his eyes, and sank back in his seat while Beckman drove over Coldwater Canyon into the Valley below, where the smog lay like a heavy yellow blanket. Masuto finally opened his eyes as they left the Ventura Freeway and turned north on Barham.

“Got it?” Beckman asked him.

“Not a glimmer.”

“You think we can get this done before dark, Masao?”

“We'll try. It shouldn't take more than half an hour or so.”

“Are you nervous, kid?” Beckman asked Anderson.

“A little. I never did anything like this before. I asked to work with Officer Sweeney because I heard he's due to retire next year, but until now I've only taken prints off people who are alive.”

“Nothing to it. They don't pull away when they're dead.”

“But this one's been dead a long time. You think he's got a record, Sergeant?” he asked Masuto.

Masuto smiled and shook his head. “I don't know what to think. We'll see.”

It seemed there was always smog at the eastern side of the San Fernando Valley. Masuto could remember a time when there had been no smog in the Valley—but then so many other things had changed.

They turned into Forest Lawn Drive, and a few minutes later they were entering the cemetery, halted by a guard and then waved on to a chorus of alto voices singing an obviously specifically composed song about a host of angels welcoming the loved ones into the heavenly gates.

“Loudspeakers concealed in the ground,” Beckman explained.

At the cemetery office, which was built in a strange, Romanesque style, the cemetery director was waiting for them. He was appropriately a tall, thin, somber-looking man, and beside him, a man in black with a ministerial collar stood with his hands folded.

“I'm Detective Sergeant Masuto. This is Detective Beckman and Officer Anderson, who will take the fingerprints. Since it's almost seven o'clock, I think we should start immediately.”

“Yes—yes, indeed. You'll be pleased to know that after your Captain Wainwright telephoned me, I had the gravediggers open the grave.”

“Have they removed the coffin?” Masuto demanded, annoyed.

“No, sir—oh, no. No, indeed. But they set up the sacre-lift, our name for the mechanism we use to lower the coffin and the loved one, and that means reeving the canvas straps under the coffin. You can't just lift the coffin out of the grave—not a large bronze coffin that weighs a quarter of a ton.”

“Can we get on with it?”

“Certainly, certainly, Detective Masuto. Only one or two small matters. The gravediggers go off at four o'clock. That's union rules—nothing I can do about that. Which means double time, fourteen dollars an hour, and I'm afraid you must sign this acknowledgment and order before I let you go to Mr. Mackenzie's grave.” He held out a clipboard. Masuto scanned the paper, then signed it, wondering how Wainwright would respond to ninety dollars for the two gravediggers.

Beckman, standing behind Masuto and looking over his shoulder, answered the question. “He'll take our ass off, Masao.”

“We don't get double overtime,” Anderson said.

The director now removed the top contract from the clipboard and handed it back to Masuto.

“What's this?”

“The Reverend Peterson here,” nodding at the man next to him. “It's cemetery policy that no grave should be opened or closed without an accredited clergyman present. Reverend Peterson's fee is only thirty dollars, little enough when you consider he's been waiting since our normal closing time of four o'clock. And may I remind you that I am taking no fee for my extra hours, but acting out of a devotion to a civilized and law-abiding country.”

“For which we are grateful,” Masuto said, signing a bill in which the City of Beverly Hills was charged for thirty dollars for the services of Reverend Avril Peterson. “Now, if you would please lead us to the Mackenzie grave, we can get this over with.”

The director led the way, explaining that ordinarily, even with the judicial order, the close relatives would have to be notified. “We do not play dirty pool with the dearly beloved,” he said, choosing, Masuto decided, a very odd metaphor indeed. “But do you know, Sergeant, Mr. Mackenzie had no relatives—close or otherwise, that is—after the death of his wife. What a pity that a man should live that way. Don't you think so, Reverend Peterson?”

“Oh, yes. The family is the rock of hope,” Reverend Peterson said.

“All alone. No one. Do you know, I called the Fenwick Works. Lovely people. Such lovely, cooperative people. They put me through to the manager himself. There was no need for that. I simply asked for the personnel department, and they put me through to Mr. Soames.” He turned to Masuto, who had stopped short.

“You called Fenwick and spoke to Mr. Soames?” Masuto said icily.

“Oh, yes—yes, indeed.”

“And you told him why you were calling? That the Beverly Hills police were going to exhume the body?”

“Oh, yes. I didn't think it was a secret.”

“And when did you do this?”

“After your Captain Wainwright called me. An hour ago?”

“It would take them almost an hour to drive here,” Beckman said.

“You spoke to Soames?” Masuto reminded him. “What exactly did you say to him?”

“What I said, of course.”

“Would you please repeat what you said as exactly as you can.” They were in sight of the grave now, a metal frame around it, a pile of fresh-dug dirt alongside and two gravediggers waiting. From some hidden loudspeaker, a baritone voice, muted, told anyone listening that “seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, and my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys.”

“I don't see what that has to do with anything,” the director protested.

“Let's say out of your devotion to civilization, as you put it before. And isn't there any way to turn off that damned voice?”

“It will stop automatically, Sergeant Masuto, and I am not surprised that an Oriental does not respond to so intrinsically Western a thing as
The Lost Chord
.”

“Of course. We all have limitations. To get back to Mr. Soames.”

“If you wish. I told him that I was attempting to locate Some relative of Mr. Robert Mackenzie. He asked why—oh, very politely—and I told him that Captain Wainwright of the Beverly Hills police had called me and informed me that Sergeant Masuto would be coming out to exhume the body and take fingerprints and that I might have the grave opened, since it was late in the day.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“Mr. Soames?”

“Yes, Mr. Soames.”

“Oh, he said that as far as he knew, Mr. Mackenzie had no relatives other than his wife—no blood relatives at all.”

“And that's all?”

“Well, he did say that he was sorry I was being put to so much trouble.”

“Thoughtful of him,” Beckman said.

Now a great orange globe of a sun was sinking toward the hills that made the western wall of the San Fernando Valley, and Masuto said to Beckman, “Sy, get the coffin up and opened and get the prints and let's get out of here before dark.” He didn't add that Forest Lawn turned his stomach and offended every decent sensibility.

“Did Mr. Soames appear in any way disturbed?” he asked the cemetery director.

“I hardly think so.”

Which, again, made Masuto wonder as he stared at the emerging coffin. They all moved closer to the grave and stood in silence as the coffin rose smoothly, cranked up by a pair of winches, hand operated by the two gravediggers. Finally the coffin hung on a level with the ground, and the gravediggers slid it off the mechanism.

“I hope your Officer Anderson has a strong stomach. These things can be upsetting.”

“Open it,” Masuto said to the gravediggers.

It was a large, ornate bronze coffin. It had four bolts on each side, and when they were removed and the heavy cover lifted, the men standing around were braced for horror and disgust. But aside from a profusion of quilted white silk and velvet, the coffin was empty.