Time Bomb (19 page)

“What did she have to say about the latest illustrious alumna?”

“Holly was a very
dull
student—
wholly
unmemorable. A strange girl—the whole family was strange. Clannish, unfriendly, no pride of ownership in their house. The fact that no one really knows what Burden Senior does for a living bugs her. She kept asking
me
about it, didn’t believe me when I told her I had no idea what New Frontiers Tech was all about. This is a lady who mainlines conformity, Alex. Sounds like the Burdens broke too many rules.”

“Behavioral niggers,” I said.

He paused. “You always did know how to turn a phrase.”

“In what way was Holly strange?”

“Didn’t go to school, didn’t work, rarely left the house except to take walks at night—skulking, Ferguson called it. Said she saw her a few times when she was out trimming her flowers. Holly was skulking along, staring at the sidewalk.”

“Old Esme trims her flowers at night?”

“Twice a day. That tell you something about
her
?”

“Did Holly always skulk alone?”

“Far as she knows.”

“What about the boyfriend?”

“Sounds as if she was overstating, calling him a boyfriend. Just a
colored boy
she saw Holly talking to a few times. In old Esme’s world view, that implies fornication, but since we know Holly was a virgin, the two of them might actually have just talked. Or anything in between. Esme said the boy had worked at the local grocery last year but she hadn’t seen him in a while. Bag boy and deliveries. She always felt nervous about letting him into her home—guess why. She didn’t know much about him, just that he was Very Big And Black. But people tend to exaggerate what they’re afraid of, so I wouldn’t put heavy money on ‘big.’”

I said, “Perceptual vigilance. Learned about it in social psych.”

“
I
learned it interviewing eyewitnesses. Anyway, I couldn’t even get a full name out of her. She
thought
his first name was Isaac or Jacob but wasn’t sure. Something Jewish-sounding. She found it amusing that a
colored boy
would have a
Jewish
name. That launched her into an-other what’s-this-world-coming-to speech. I kept waiting for her to segue to faggots, but she just droned on about stupid stuff until I found myself staring at the poodles.”

“Sounds like a lonely lady.”

“Three times divorced; men are beasts. She probably
talks
to the goddam poodles. I finally got out of there and stopped by the grocers—place called Dinwiddie’s—to see if I could learn anything more about the boy, but the store was closed.”

“Planning on going back?”

“Eventually.”

“How about today?”

“Sure, why not? Not that it’s likely to lead to anything earth-shattering. But Rick’s out doing good works at the Free Clinic. If I stick around I’ll end up doing laundry.”

Or drinking too much.

I said, “An hour, lunch on me?”

“Hour it is. But forget lunch. While we’re at the market I can palm an apple, just like Pat O’Brien walking the beat. Always wanted to do that. Be a real cop.”

Despite his pessimism, Milo arrived dressed for work: gray suit, white shirt, red tie, note pad in pocket. He directed me to a street named Abundancia Drive, which ran through the center of Ocean Heights and ended at a small town square, built around a treeless circular patch of lawn. A hand-lettered sign—the kind you see in the small parks of Mayfair in London—designated the patch as Ocean Heights Plaza. The grass was bare except for a white Lutyens-style garden bench chain-bolted to the ground next to a
NO DOGS, NO BICYCLES
warning.

Ringing the patch were business establishments. The most prominent was a one-story red brick bank done in retro-Colonial, complete with pillars, pediments, and limestone planters brimming with geraniums. The rest of the shops were also red brick. Red brick and gingerbread cute enough for a theme park.

I found a parking spot in front of a dry cleaner’s. Gold-leaf Gothic lettering was
de rigueur
for the storefronts. Welcome to the home of mixed metaphors. Ficus trees pruned low and trimmed to look like mushrooms grew from circular metal grilles embedded in the sidewalk, spaced so the plantings fronted every other store.

The shops were a classic village mix. Haberdasheries for both sexes, each with a soft spot for Ralph Lauren. Ye Olde Gift Emporium and Card Shoppe. Alvin’s Apothecary complete with a stone mortar and pestle over Dutch doors. A medical building that could have passed for Santa’s Workshop. Arno’s Old World Jeweler/Watchmaker. Janeway’s European Bakery. Steuben’s Imported Sausage and Charcuterie. The Ocean Café.

Dinwiddie’s Fine Grocers and Purveyors was a double-width enterprise with forest-green wainscoting and a cream-colored oval sign over the entry that read
EST.
. 1961.

California antiquity.

The picture window was framed with green molding and dominated by a straw cornucopia, out of which tumbled a contrived flow of gleaming, oversized produce. More fruit was displayed in wooden crates slathered with old-fashioned painted labels. Each apple, pear, orange, and grapefruit had been polished to a high gloss and was individually cradled in damson-blue crepe.

“Looks like you picked the right place to palm,” I said.

Inside, the place was bustling and spotless, cooled by wooden fly fans, serenaded by Muzak. G
OURMET FOODS
at the front. A liquor section big enough to intoxicate the entire neighborhood. Foodstuffs stacked to the rafters, everything neatly ordered, the wide aisles marked by overhead wooden signs painted that same dark green.

A pair of green-aproned women worked steadily at antique brass cash registers hooked up to computerized scanners. Three or four shoppers waited in each line. No one talked. Milo walked up to one of the registers and said, “Hi. Where’s the owner?”

The cashier was young, chubby, and fair. Without looking up, she said, “In the back.”

We made our way past
PASTA
and
BREADSTUFFS
. Next to the
DAIRY
case was a green wooden panel door with a brass lock dangling from an open hasp. Milo pushed it open and we stepped into a short, dark hall, cold as a refrigerator, rank with an old lettuce smell, and filled with generator noise. At the end was another door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
.

Milo knocked and opened it, revealing a small windowless office paneled in imitation knotty pine and furnished with an old mahogany desk and three red Naugahyde chairs. The desk was crowded with papers. A brass balance scale served as a paperweight for an inch-thick stack. An assortment of commercial calendars hung on the walls, along with a couple of faded hunting prints and a framed photo of a pleasant-looking, slightly overweight brunette woman kneeling next to two white-haired, ruddy boys of preschool age. A pine-ridged expanse of lake was in the background. The boys struggled to hold on to a fishing rod from which a healthy-looking trout dangled.

The obvious genetic source of the children’s pigmentation sat behind the desk. Early thirties, pink-skinned, with thin, near-albino hair cut short and parted on the right. He had broad, beefy shoulders, a nub of a broken nose above a bushy mustache the color and consistency of old hay. His eyes were large, colored a curious tan-gray, and had a basset droop. He wore a blue broadcloth button-down shirt and red-and-blue rep tie under a green apron. The shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows. His forearms were pale, hairless, Popeye-thick.

He put down a hand calculator, looked up from a pile of invoices, and gave a weary smile. “Weights and Mea-sures? We passed just Last week, gentlemen.”

Milo showed him his police ID. The blond man’s smile faded and he blinked several times, as if forcing himself awake.

“Oh.” He stood and extended his hand. “Ted Dinwiddie. What can I do for you?”

Milo said, “We’re here to talk about the sniping at Hale Elementary, Mr. Dinwiddie.”

“Oh, that. Horrible.” His wince seemed involuntary and sincere. He blinked a couple more times. “Thank God no one was hurt.”

“No one except Holly Burden.”

“Oh, yes. Sure. Of course.” He winced again, sat down, and pushed aside his paperwork.

“Poor Holly,” he said. “It’s hard to believe she’d go and do something like that.”

“How well did you know her?”

“As well as anyone, I guess. Which means not much at all. She used to come in here, with her dad. I’m talking years ago, when she was just a little girl. Just after her mom died. Back when
my
dad was alive.” He paused and touched the balance scale. “I used to bag and check after school and on Saturdays. Holly used to stand behind her dad’s legs and peek out, then draw back. Really shy. She always was kind of a nervous kid. Quiet, as if she was in her own little world. I’d try to talk to her—she never answered back. Once in a while she’d take a free candy, if her dad would let her. Most of the time she ignored me when I offered. Still, there was nothing . . .”

He looked up at us. “Sorry. Please, sit down. Can I get you some coffee? We’ve got a new European roast brewing out in front in the sample pot.”

“No thanks,” said Milo.

We sat in the red chairs.

Milo said, “Any more recent impressions of her?”

“Not really,” said Dinwiddie. “I didn’t see much of her. They were usually delivery customers. The couple of times I did see her wandering around the streets, she looked kind of . . . detached.”

“Detached from what?”

“Her surroundings. The external world. Not paying attention to what was going on. The kind of thing you see in creative people. I’ve got a sister who’s a writer—very successful screenwriter. She’s getting into producing. Emily was always like that, fantasizing, off in her own world. We used to kid her, call her Space Cadet. Holly was spacey but in her case I don’t think it was creativity.”

“Why’s that?”

The grocer shifted in his chair. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but basically, Holly wasn’t very bright. Some of the kids used to call her retarded—which she probably wasn’t. Just dull, a little below average. But in her family that had to be especially tough—the rest of the Burdens were all pretty intellectual. Her dad’s downright bril-liant—used to work for the government as some kind of high-level scientist or mathematician. The mom did, too, I think. And Howard—her brother—he was a scholastic ace.”

“Sounds like you knew the family pretty well.”

“No, not really. Mostly I’d just deliver the groceries or go over there for tutoring. From Howard. He was a math whiz, totally brilliant with numbers. We were in the same class but he could have taught it. Lots of kids went to him for help. Everything came easy for him, but he really had a thing for math.” He gave a wistful look. “He actually stuck with what he loved, became some sort of statistician. Has a great position with an insurance firm out in the Valley.”

Milo said, “When you say you and he were in the same class, was that at Nathan Hale?”

Dinwiddie nodded. “All the kids went to Hale back in those days. Things were different.” He fussed with the knot of his tie. “Not necessarily better, mind you. Just different.”

I said, “How so?”

He fidgeted some more and lowered his voice. “Listen, I work here, live here, lived here all my life—it’s a great neighborhood in many ways, great place to raise kids. But the people here pretend nothing will ever change. That nothing
should
ever change. And that’s not too realistic, is it?” Pause. “Standing behind the register, or making a delivery, or coaching Little League, kind of gives you the chance to observe—you hear all sorts of things—ugly things from people you thought were decent, people your kids play with and your wife has coffee with.”

“Racial comments?” Milo said.

Dinwiddie gave a pained look. “That’s not to say it’s any worse here than anywhere else—racism’s fairly en-demic in our society, isn’t it? But when it’s your own neighborhood . . . you’d just like it to be better.”

Fairly endemic in our society.

It sounded like a phrase out of a textbook.

Milo said, “Do you think any of that—the local racial attitudes—are related to the sniping?”

“No, I don’t,” Dinwiddie said quickly. “Maybe if it had been someone else, you could make the connection. But I can’t see Holly being racist. I mean, to be racist you’d have to be political, at least to some degree, wouldn’t you? And she wasn’t. Least as far as I knew. Like I said, she wasn’t too in touch with her surroundings.”

“What kind of political attitudes did her family have?”

“No idea if they had any,” he said quickly. His hand flew to his tie again, and he blinked several times in succession. I wondered if something about the discussion was putting him on edge.

“Really, gentlemen, I just can’t see any political connec-tion,” he said. “I truly believe whatever Holly did came from inside her—her own problem. Something intrapsychic.”

“Mental problems?” said Milo.

“She’d
have
to be crazy to do something like that, wouldn’t you say?”

I said, “Besides being ‘spacey,’ did she ever show signs of other mental problems?”

“That I couldn’t tell you,” said Dinwiddie. “Like I said, I haven’t seen her in a long time. I was just talking theoretically.”

Milo said, “When you saw her walking around the neighborhood, was this at night or during the day?”

“Day. I’m only talking a couple of times. I’d be on my way to make a delivery and she’d be making her way down the street, kind of a loose shuffle, staring down at the sidewalk. That’s what I meant by spacey.”

“Anything else you can tell us about the family that might relate to the shooting?”

Dinwiddie thought. “Not really, Detective. They were never real social. Marched to their own drummer, but basically they were decent people. You can tell a person’s character when you check their groceries. When he was alive, my dad had a system for classifying folks—Grumblers, Skinflints, Nitpickers, Tomato Squeezers.” A sheepish smile spread under the mustache. “Kind of an us-them thing. Happens in every profession, right? Don’t let on to my customers or I’d be out of business.”