Killer Commute (11 page)

Back at the compound Mary Maggie drove her squad car into Jeremy's space and got out.

“You going to spend the night?”

“Charlie, I want you to come see something.” The officer took Charlie's arm and walked her down the driveway and turned her around. “I want you to tell me what you see.”

“I see unchecked access to my home and to Maggie's and Mrs. Beesom's, and to our cars—we're wide open.”

“Now I want you to look down the street both ways and then I want you to turn around and check out the houses across the street.”

It was dark, but streetlights lit up some things. Most things Charlie knew from memory anyway by coming and going twice a day. “I see houses and trees and lighted windows and parked cars—what you'd normally see in a neighborhood. What I've been seeing for five years.”

“No, what you haven't been seeing for five years. Describe what's right across the street.”

“A car parked at the curb, a palm tree like mine, a sidewalk. A house with flower boxes on the porch. A car in the driveway, flat roof—what?”

“You still don't see it. People nowadays really astonish me. Tell me what's not there that's here.”

“No signs of explosion. The sidewalk leads right to the front door like here. Look, I'm tired. Get to the point.”

“The point, Ms. Charlie Greene, is that there's no gate to blow up. Never was. No walls with razor wire on top. Do you see anything on this street as fortified as your house and fellow condos were? No. Christ, this is Belmont Shore, the safest part of town.”

“But they're all single-family. Apartment and condominium units have security gates. Whole subdivisions in the newer parts of Long Beach are gated. There is nothing unusual about security gates in Southern California. We even have an alarm system.” Charlie pointed out the little sign on the front yard that boasted,
DOG ALARM SYSTEM
. “Hey, they haven't shown up yet.”

“They'll get around to it if they're still in business. They know we'll have been and left by the time they do. And, Charlie, two or three blocks north of here there's an apartment complex that's not gated. What I'm saying is this place stands out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood. Mrs. Beesom told me that the walls between the houses were part of the original development. But the razor wire, the gates that needed locking, the alarm system were all Jeremy Fiedler's idea, and the new widow felt very vulnerable. And he paid for it all and she was grateful.”

Charlie looked at Mary Maggie Mason long and hard. “I think you should be heading up this investigation. And maybe, like Betty, we all didn't want to doubt or question Jeremy Fiedler because we appreciated the convenience and safety we felt he provided living among us.”

“Looks to me like you were all wrong about the safety part.” Officer Mason ran a hand over the obelisk. It was bent over like the neck of a grazing giraffe.

Charlie walked back to the center of the compound and did a full circle here, too. She decided she preferred Jeremy's excessive security system, especially now that she might lose her ability to hear.

Swallowing back the terror that thought brought up, she told the cop, “I can't believe Jeremy could have owned a home in this city without having an identity. I can maybe see driving an unregistered car hoping no one would stop you, but you'd have to renew license plates somehow. He must have owned things under a different name. If we could find that name, we could trace the Ferrari and find out more about him. Maybe Jeremy had a bunch of names.”

“Don't know about the Ferrari or even the Trailblazer yet, but his house is officially owned by a trust administered for one Elizabeth Ruth Beesom. The trust pays all the bills.”

“Electronically? Did Betty know about this?”

“Apparently not. Doesn't seem possible, but it's being investigated. We're trying to get the IRS interested in this but their computer systems are in a worse mess than ours. City started to upgrade a few years ago.”

“Jeremy must have lived here what, ten years—long before electronic banking. What's the name of this trust?”

“Beach Enterprises. You know how many businesses in Long Beach use
beach
in their names? Can't trace it any farther. All computer data seems to have been lost in cyberspace.”

“That information has to be backed up somewhere.”

“That's the problem—
somewhere.
Too much
somewhere.
Not enough people and time to track it down. And you honestly never saw anything strange about this mysterious guy?”

“I thought he was something of an oddball, but he was so dependable. Hell, this is Southern California. My life's full of oddballs.” Mitch Hilsten even believed in UFOs. “I really don't think Jeremy was ever on anything, but sometimes he'd forget he'd asked you the same question a day or two before. But stress plays havoc with short-term memory for all of us.”

A car engine started somewhere up the alley and headlights suddenly revealed Tuxedo hunkered down, sniffing a wrapped bouquet of flowers leaning against the back gate this time.

“Cover your ears,” Officer Mason yelled and yanked Charlie down behind her squad car, just as Libby's Wrangler pulled in from the street.

CHAPTER 15

“I
DON'T BELIEVE
I ever met Mr. Fiedler,” Ed Esterhazie told Charlie. “Doug mentioned him once or twice. They had any response from the ad in the
P-T?
”

They sat on Charlie's picnic table, watching the bomb squad disperse. The wrapped floral arrangement had been just flowers this time.

“If they have, they haven't told me. But then Betty and I were the only suspects in the compound when he died.”

“With your history, Mrs. Beesom doesn't seem the likely candidate.”

“Her stock must have gone up some when they discovered Jeremy's house had been her's all along. Since they can't find anybody else who knows him, they don't have anyplace else to look.”

“I think your idea of an enraged father makes sense. Anybody working that hard to hide his identity must have had enemies he needed to hide from. And I don't think it's possible to own a house and not know it. Not unless it was an all-cash deal and no bank was involved.”

“Jeremy did pay cash for it. Betty figured he'd sold a bigger house and put it all in this one. And all this new computerization and constant upgrading doesn't leave people time to learn one software before they have to learn the next because the first will ‘no longer be supported.' An awful lot of stuff can fall through the cracks. And if it's being purposely manipulated by someone who knows how to do it…”

“Yeah, we just changed over to a whole new system at Esterhazie Concrete and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. I'm told it's going to be worth it, but you have to trust the people doing the installing and the training. Kind of a helpless feeling. Speaking of which, do the doctors think your hearing has returned for good?”

“The doctors don't know it's returned at all. No more vacations for me, that's one sure thing. Too stressful.”

Ed had come in shortly after Libby and before the bomb squad arrived. He'd brought some flowers and a bottle of single-malt scotch, which tasted kind of good with water and a little lemon in it.

“Remember when Doug and Libby served us dinner out here?” Doug's father said.

“Yeah, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from the box and Dom Perignon. And Doug served it in a sport coat and shorts with my dirty dishtowel over his arm.”

“And they told me you would slit your throat if I didn't come to dinner. I expected you'd been cooking all day, wore aprons or something.”

“And I came home from work, dead tired, to find a strange man in a dinner jacket on my patio.”

“And me with no idea I was competing with the likes of Mitch Hilsten.”

“Oh, Ed, I hadn't even met him then. And Mitch and I are really not an item. No matter what the tabloids say. Just friends. I know it's none of my business, but what happened to you and Dorothy?”

“She wanted to change everything, run everything. Me, Doug, Mrs. McDougal—even the house. I'm happy with the way I am. I'm not going to change myself for someone else.”

“The saddest words in the English language: ‘I thought I could change him.'”

“My fault. I'm old enough to know better than get involved with someone that close to my own age. Women over forty are set in their ways and know what they want, so if they can't find it they try to mold a man into the desired shape.” Ed used to wear dark-rimmed glasses that Charlie thought made him look even more distinguished, but he'd had that laser surgery and didn't wear them now. He motioned to the concrete courtyard emptied of official cars and vans. “Looks like there'll be no protection tonight.”

“I'm going to miss Jeremy and his electrified gates. It felt safe here. It doesn't now.”

“I have a security system, but I don't have gates. I keep things well lit, but if somebody's out to get you … all that protection didn't keep someone from murdering Jeremy Fiedler.” And Ed and Doug lived in a mansion worth breaking into with only their housekeeper, Mrs. McDougal.

In the light cast by the bulb over Mrs. Beesom's kitchen door, they watched Hairy Granger insinuate his fluffy self through the gate from the alley and disappear in night shadow, only to reappear around the end of a stone flower box on Charlie's patio. “It's okay, Hairy, our enemy's inside with his mistress.”

She introduced them, and the cat joined them on the table while she told Ed about finding Hairy in the Trailblazer with a dead Jeremy.

“Dorothy had several cats who enjoyed riding in the car. He may have jumped in the open door hoping for a ride.”

“Or maybe to get away from Tuxedo. They fight constantly.”

“Maybe the door was open,” Ed said, emptying his glass, “while the murderer stuffed Jeremy into the car.”

“Maybe the murderer opened the car door and stabbed Jeremy sitting behind the wheel and Tuxedo scared Hairy and he jumped in and the murderer slammed the door shut and I came home and the murderer hid someplace until I went in with the groceries and then got out one of the gates without getting shocked.”

“Maybe there're ways of getting in and out without getting shocked Jeremy didn't want you to know about.”

“Maybe you only get the shock trying to get in, but don't trying to go out.”

Ed went in to refill their drinks and Libby came out in sweats and slippers. “I can't sleep. Can I come out and help you guys ‘maybe'? Sounds like a lot more fun than lying awake.”

“Okay, but watch for Tuxedo. Hairy's out here and we don't want them waking up Mrs. Beesom.”

“I can't sleep, either.” Betty walked around the parked cars from her patio to Charlie's. “Can I help ‘maybe,' too?”

And being Betty, who could rarely drop in without bearing gifts, she carried a tray with a teakettle, cups, and packets of hot chocolate. So the four of them sat in chairs around the table drinking hot chocolate. Hairy perched on the table and kept a careful eye out for Tuxedo, who Charlie knew would explode from somewhere and ruin everything at any minute, and Hairy probably did, too.

“I couldn't believe it when that police lady told me I'd owned Jeremy's house all this time,” Betty said. “He was such a nice man. Except once in a while.”

“Except once in a while what?” Ed asked. He was having a sip of scotch and a sip of cocoa. So was Charlie, and it tasted good for no good reason.

“He could be mean. Didn't happen often, but—”

“Like how?” Charlie wanted to know.

“Like when he threw rocks at Tux and old hairball here,” Libby said. “Rocks from that square patch under the pot with the fern plant where we keep the key to the back gate.” She chucked Hairy under the chin and he lifted it to the night sky so she could reach it better.

“Well, they
was
fighting and screaming, Libby dear. But those are expensive decorator rocks. And I saw him throw them at a gull on top of his roof one day. And then next day he was putting out the fish scraps from his garbage on his picnic table. He come over to mine and we watched that gull swoop down and clean it up nice and quick as you please. ‘Now that, Mrs. Beesom,' he says, ‘is recycling at it's proper best.'”

“Did you ask him why he threw rocks at the gull one day and fed it the next?” Ed asked.

“Well, no. I wanted to, but he was always hinting around that I was a nosy neighbor, so I just didn't. But most of the time he was a perfectly reasonable man.”

Charlie thought it odd that once one of them remembered something unusual about their murdered neighbor, the rest of them began to come up with a few examples, too. Sort of like ignoring the flaws in a parent because you want them to be stable and not a worry so that you could lead your own life without that complication. Until you're a teenager, of course, and then you pick at those imperfections, real and imagined, until something bleeds.

Things happened then, and so fast Charlie would never be able to sort out in what order. Tuxedo's predictable attack startled them all, anyway. When he hit the tabletop, Hairy leapt onto Ed. Ed dropped both his glass and his cup. The teakettle and two more cups hit the hard patio tile, which was suddenly awash in cocoa, hot water, scotch, broken glass, and pottery.

And the shadow of a woman, in a long coat that reminded Charlie of Detective Amuller's raincoat, detached itself from the deep shadow of a post holding up Jeremy and Maggie's parking cover. It was, like Charlie and Betty's, meant more for sun protection than rain, a series of logs with latticework meant to hold flowering vines that had never seemed to take.

Windshields often spotted when it rained, and the ancient Olds 88 had faded patches in spots all over the roof and hood because it had to be parked in pretty much the same spot if Charlie was to park and be able to open her car doors, too.