“I’m surprised someone like Monica would marry an older man like that, especially one so obese.”
“He used to be skinny, and he was famous locally. She liked that. Then, too, there was the cachet of living in Newport Beach and belonging to the Barracuda Bay Club. I think she came from somewhere inland, nowhere fancy. But after they’d been married a year or so, Haiden began to put on weight, and the rows started. Now, he’s as big as a house.”
“I don’t get the connection,” said Tosca.
“It was sweet, when you think about it. He did all the cooking, he really got into it. Wish I could say the same for my husband. The professor went out and bought the best kitchen equipment and gadgets he could find and even asked my opinion of food processors. When his cousin and her husband came down from Northern California, Monica invited us over, and Haiden cooked the whole meal.”
“Why did he do all the cooking?”
Arlene shrugged. “Monica wasn’t the domestic type. Maybe he liked fixing romantic dinners.”
“The professor is a premier composer, I hear,” said Tosca.
“Not any more. My brother-in-law told me his last piano concerto was an awful embarrassment.”
Tosca wondered how the professor handled the humiliation. Then she took another tack.
“So the professor has a cousin?”
“Yes,” said Arlene. “Betty Garrison and her husband, Frank, are both dentists at their clinic in San Francisco, but I only saw them here that one time about three years ago. They were attending a dental convention in Newport Beach, so naturally they spent a few days with the Whittakers on the island.”
“Did you spend any time with the Garrisons?”
“No. Monica had us over to the house once for cocktails, and there was the dinner, of course, and one day when Frank went off to join a deep-sea fishing party, I took Betty to the Barracuda Bay Club for a fashion show. I should take you to our next one.”
Not my cup of tea, thought Tosca. “Thanks, but I am often working. I’m a reporter, you know.”
“Yes, I heard you were some kind of writer.”
Arlene suddenly scampered over to the oven and pulled down the door. The aroma of baking cookies filled the kitchen. She peered at them as closely as a squirrel would inspect a prize cache of acorns, nodded once and closed the door. Returning to her coffee, she said, “You’re a gossip columnist, I think J.J. told me. Well, there’s plenty of gossip here on the island.”
“Actually, I’m working on a criminal case right now.”
Arlene’s head bobbed up. “Criminal case? Here?” She laughed. “Oh, you mean one of those white collar frauds, a Ponzi scheme?”
“No, but I can’t discuss it. Confidential, you know. It could involve some bones. And yes, here on the island. “
“My goodness! Well, you know what? Talking of bones reminds me of something that Betty told me, something really weird and to my mind cruel, if not criminal.”
“Oh?”
“We were talking about where we went to school and where we were raised. I was telling her how great it was that my parents lived at the beach. She said she lived on a ranch, and the Whittaker family spent summers there for a few years. I asked Betty about the professor’s talent, if it was evident as a young boy. She said they all recognized his gift when he was five years old.
“Five! As young as that?”
“Yes. Betty said that most of the time there he sat for hours at the piano. But one summer her dad discovered Haiden had mutilated a dead rabbit, chopped off its paws and stuck them inside his Play-Doh. Said they were ornaments. After that, Betty told me, Haiden wasn’t allowed to visit any more.” Arlene shivered. “Imagine, he was just a child!”
“Takes all kinds, if you’ll forgive the cliché,” said Tosca. “Uh, Arlene, I think the cookies are burning.”
Arlene opened the oven. A cloud of gray smoke poured out. She shrugged, slid the burnt cookies onto a plate and put the cookie sheet in the sink, ignoring the smell.
“Happens all the time,” she said. “I really should set the timer.”
Tosca gestured toward Arlene’s garden outside the front window. “I’ve been admiring your delphiniums. I’m amazed at the many flowers you can grow here, especially during the winter. What was the previous owners’ garden like, before Haiden bought the house?” She slid off the barstool, unable to bear its discomfort.
“Hmm, well, they had a couple of pink and white oleander bushes in the front. Marcia loved those, but they got some kind of disease and died. Maybe it was a bug.”
“How about that corner area that’s built up into a rock garden? She must have been loath to leave it.”
“Oh, no. The Steiners didn’t put that there. Aside from the oleanders Marcia wasn’t much for gardening. Jerry, though, he was handy with tools. He liked to do woodwork. After he died and the house was sold to the professor, I was surprised that she left all of her husband’s tools in the garage. He was always sharpening some blade or another. As for the rock garden, Haiden built it himself. We all admired its beauty. It was unusual to see one like that because our yards are so small, but he did a very nice job. The last couple of years he’s neglected it, though.”
Well, well, thought Tosca. He lied to me. Good. I just knew something was fishy. She thanked her neighbor for the coffee, said goodbye and returned home. In her bedroom she searched through the several dozen music CDs she’d brought from England and picked out Virgil Thomson’s “Four Saints in Three Acts.” She disliked the opera’s religious music but had great respect for Gertrude Stein’s surreal libretto.
Leaving the house again, she walked over to the professor’s home and rang the doorbell. She knew he was there because the leather chair was occupied. As usual, his head was buried in the newspaper, a half-eaten sandwich on a side table nearby. A late lunch, observed Tosca.
After a few moments the front door opened. “Ah! Haiden! I’ve brought you a CD. The music is quite uncommon, and I thought it would be charming to listen to it together.”
“Menotti’s ‘The Telephone?’“ he asked sarcastically.
“Bravo,” she said. “You know that little comic opera. No, no, this is a decade or so older. Umm, may I come in?”
“I’m about to go out.”
“Quite all right. I’ll come back later.”
Aiming somewhere at his expansive middle, Tosca thrust the CD at him, and he instinctively raised a hand to grasp it. She walked quickly away. At the gate Tosca turned to give him a sweet smile, but the professor had already closed the door.
Whittaker unfolded his stocky frame from the piano bench and ambled to the den, a room at the rear of the house, the refuge that had served him so well during his marriage to Monica. Ah, Monica.
Funny how the time between the two deaths seemed so short. Those intervening five years had not been happy for him, although they seemed to have been for her, he reflected. Their relationship deteriorated rapidly after what happened to Paul Holloway, his favorite student. He never forgave her for that, although they didn’t speak of it again until those final moments when he took his revenge. Sure, he knew of her infidelities, and he’d caught her many times, eyeing his students when they came to study with him at home, but after Paul she was very careful not to linger.
“What time is your next student arriving?” she’d ask every Tuesday and Thursday evening.
“Don’t be tiresome, Monica. You know very well that they always arrive on the hour or a few minutes before,” he’d say, his answer always the same.
“I’ll stay out of your way then. I’ll be at the club courts,” she’d answer, flouncing off dressed in her latest designer tennis outfit. It was an exchange they had each week, and he’d grown tired of the charade. He didn’t even bother to comment when she frequently left her favorite tennis racket behind. Eventually, he rented a small studio for the classes. Only Paul continued to come to the house for lessons.
Since that terrible night it was inevitable, he supposed, that he and Monica would change, he with his creativity stifled and Monica out partying with friends later than ever. He’d been unable to produce even the semblance of a new composition despite sitting at the piano week after week, month after month. For several years he’d happily composed music for dance and theater productions at the university, appreciating how it advanced his career; but lately he’d failed miserably. Each piece he offered was received in silence and remained unused. It was her fault, of course.
Monica was almost out of control, he saw. She drank constantly, her youthful looks gaining a harshness. She lost weight, and the thinness of her face emphasized encroaching wrinkles. When she wasn’t around for meals, he’d taken to grilling a steak and microwaving frozen fries, or else he brought home fast food. Then there were the social and fundraising dinners to which he was occasionally invited. The result was all too obvious, he thought, patting his bulging belly. Quite the opposite outcome to his wife’s, he chuckled.
He never should have married her in the first place. It was a freak incident. She had caught him at a vulnerable time when he was lionized locally and in ever-widening artistic circles for his talent. His music scores were selling well, and he was a guest pianist at many of the most prestigious concert venues. The success went to his head, he admitted now, and he was ripe for plucking. When he first met Monica at the Barracuda Bay Club where he was accepting yet another award, he felt like a conqueror. People were fawning over him, as usual, wanting to talk or listen, martinis in hand. He sensed he could have his pick of the women there, at least the older ones and maybe one or two of the married ones. Then he’d heard a soft, girlish voice whispering in his ear.
“Professor Whittaker, you truly are a genius. May I speak to you for a moment?”
She’d sidled up to his table where he was sitting with some of his colleagues from UCI. He figured she had her eye on John, opposite him, or Bill at his left; but as she continued to focus her entire attention on him Whittaker realized this buxom young blonde in the blue dress and diamond necklace really did want to talk to him.
“Of course. I’m afraid there are no empty seats,” the professor said, turning to her and rising from his chair, “but perhaps we could talk afterwards.”
She’d given him a flirty glance, shaken her curls and said, “I’ll make sure I’m waiting for you. In the bar.”
She’d been cunning, he granted her that. Obviously knowing his reputation, she began by asking about his latest composition. As it happened, he had just completed one that very afternoon, an hour before the banquet, so he was delighted to talk to her about it, saying she was the first person to hear its title. Monica claimed she’d sung in light opera, performing most often in
Yeoman of the Guard.
She and the professor launched into a spirited discussion, albeit one-way, of the state of the current crop of classical compositions with him doing all the talking, he recalled. He asked if she’d like to hear some of his own music at his home.
The romance progressed rapidly. He grimaced at the remembrance, especially after she visited his bay front house and saw his neighbors’ yachts tied up at their private docks. Before he knew it, he’d proposed. Her true taste in music, he soon learned, was hard rock, although he once found her listening to Shostakovich’s “Song of the Forest,” which he conceded was classical but still as gaudy as the Las Vegas wedding chapel where she’d insisted they exchange vows. He discovered, too, that she was no daughter of wealthy parents who lived in Portugal, as she claimed, but had been brought up in a foster family. When the flirtations and arguments began, he asked her why she married him. After all, she was only twenty-five at the time. Surely many men had sought her out.
“They were smarter than you,” she replied, her candor shocking him. “I made the right moves, but the rich guys I met took the trouble to check me out.” She readily admitted her delight that it never occurred to the professor, his head in the clouds, to do the same. Suddenly he was a married man.
Now, as he recalled Tosca’s visit and their conversation about the rock garden, Whittaker picked up his cell phone and dialed.
“I’m ready to sell the collection.”
He hung up and went into the den. Three of its walls were lined with shelves, overflowing with musical scores, librettos, arrangements, books, CDs and tapes, like the living room. The east wall was dominated by an oil painting. Opposite, a large, freestanding vault occupied an alcove. It had been installed at Monica’s suggestion, although the jewelry she kept in it was worthless, he always thought.
After his wife left for a week to visit her Aunt Ginny in Denver, Whittaker arranged for his own small safe to be built into the east wall, hidden behind DelRossi’s spectacular “Cameo Cascade.” Painted in the early 1900s, it glowed with the rosy light of a river of sparkling cameo-pink diamonds tumbling over a gorge, sunlight striking every facet, sending up a shower of stars. Whittaker appreciated its significance, but diamonds weren’t his passion. What started out as a teenage hobby after a neighbor gave him some World War II Japanese coins had grown into a secret obsession over the years, providing the perfect counterpoint to his music.
Swinging the painting to one side on its hinges, he opened the safe and removed four long steel trays. He placed them on his desk and gently unwrapped the velvet pouches they held. Inside the pouches were one hundred two-inch by two-inch cellophane envelopes, protection for the gold, silver and copper coins they contained. Stapled to each envelope was a small index card with the date, condition and identification of each piece.
“Come along, my beauties,” he murmured. “It’s time to find you a new home. Monica was going to turn you over to the police after discovering your hiding place. What a tragedy that would have been.”
Whittaker knew it wouldn’t be easy to locate a collector willing to buy these pieces at short notice, because several had been stolen from the world’s top museums. It had taken Whittaker more than two decades to accumulate the treasures, negotiating through second, third and fourth parties, a few of them thieves, most greedy businessmen, others desperate for cash.