Christietown (11 page)

Agatha Christie had the utmost respect for women of a cer
tain age. Then again, she’d never met my mother.

I peeked over toward the offices.

“Anybody here?”

No answer.

I plopped down on the sofa and flipped through the latest issue of the
Antelope Valley News
. Then I went through
Good Housekeeping
. I ripped out a recipe for “Easy Beef Bourguignon” and pocketed it. Gambino loved red meat.

“Hello?” I called out. “Ian?”

Still no answer.

I went back to
Good Housekeeping
and read an article about the dangers of childhood vaccinations and another about orga
nizing your closets. I hadn’t realized that all my problems could be solved with boot sleeves. Sounded like something a pirate would wear. Then I meandered back up to the reception desk. Ian’s assistant had left her handbag in full view. Louis Vuitton. Pretty pricey for an assistant. I poked at it. Felt like she had bricks in there. I walked around to the other side of the desk, opened the bottom drawer, and put the purse inside for safe
keeping. Then I took a seat in her chair. Nice. Ergonomic. Nobody was going to get carpal tunnel syndrome in a chair like this. I spun around a couple of times, then idly plucked a piece of paper from her printer and read it. Ah. A memo to the wayward Christietownspeople: all window coverings vis
ible from the exterior of any and all houses
must
be white or off-white in color upon pain of death.

Control freaks.

I was putting the paper back in the printer when I first heard the yelling. I leapt back to my spot on the couch. Not my business. I put my nose back where it belonged, in the clas
sified section of the
Antelope Valley News
. Cars, motorcycles, jobs, lost pets.

You really couldn’t help listening, they were so loud. The voices were male, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Suddenly, I was overcome by a burning desire to stretch my legs. I started walking in the direction of the offices.

“Idiot! I trusted you to . . .”

Lost the rest of that sentence. I tiptoed farther on. By now, I was standing right outside the door.

“You think they are going to . . .”

“Cumulative-stress bullshit . . .”

“Far enough . . .”

“I suppose we’ll have to . . .”

“Fine!”

I jumped back as Ian threw open the door and walked out with a life-size cardboard cutout of the Christietown logo (old lady wielding a bloody hatchet) under his arm.

“Cece!” he said, dropping the murderous biddy to the floor.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I sputtered, bending down to help him. The fall had bent the biddy’s elbow back at an unnatural angle.

“What are you doing standing here at the door?” he asked. “Surely you weren’t eavesdropping?”

I turned beet red. “I didn’t hear a word of what you were saying. That’s good, solid construction for you.” I pounded on the wall, praying it wouldn’t fall down on our heads.

Dov Pick came slamming out of the office next. He glared at Ian and elbowed past me without saying a word. Ian didn’t pay him much mind. He was busying himself with the old lady. He unbent her elbow, stood her up next to the assistant’s desk, then, frowning, moved her in front of the scale model of Phase 2.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

He broke into a freakish smile. “Since you ask, it couldn’t be better!”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, that Dov,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “Don’t give him another thought. He’s such a dramatist. My goodness, how he makes a fuss. He’s upset about some con
tracts with Browning McDuff. They want to charge us over
time for something they should’ve finished ages ago. It’s noth
ing at all. Codswallop.”

“Codswallop?”

“Nonsense. Cece, dear, I need your discerning eye. Do you like this over here?” He moved the biddy next to the potted palm at the entrance and stepped back to appraise his handi
work.

“Looks good,” I said. Then, “What exactly ‘couldn’t be better?’”

Ian wheeled around to face me, hands on hips. “Sales, you ninny!”

“Sales?”

“Yes, sales. They’re through the roof.”

“They are?” I asked. “Despite what’s happened?”

“Because
of what’s happened.”

“But—“

“Dear Liz Berman. I will forever be grateful. It’s as if she sacrificed herself so Christietown could flourish.”

“My god, Ian!”

“Of course I’m sorry she’s dead, where are my manners? Tsk, tsk. But the publicity has been amazing. The hordes are flocking to Murdertown. They come like vultures to feast on the poor woman’s remains, and I reel them in. It’s perfect.”

He raced over to the front desk and pulled out a stack of papers.

“These are contracts, Cece. I’ve signed seventeen in the last four hours. Yesterday, before the police had even removed the crime-scene tape, I sold eleven Sittaford Two residences. The ones with the double garages!”

Ian handed me my check and I walked back out to the car in a daze.

He’d struck me as so benign, with his rashes and his splotches and his codswallop. But he was hardly that.

I suddenly wondered how far he’d go to make Christietown a success.

It’s not every girl who has an adept in the black art of high

finance on speed dial.

I had my accountant, Mr. Keshigian.

His big blonde of a secretary answered the phone with a kit
tenish hello. When she realized it was me, however, she turned cool, pleading ignorance about her employer’s whereabouts. I knew, of course, that he was sitting on the other side of the wall, playing fast and loose with the tax code. She just wanted to keep her boss out of harm’s way—though anyone could see it was actually the other way around. I bullied her into putting him on.

Before I could say a word, Mr. Keshigian delivered the news that the assets of any person serving prison time are frozen. “Not that it matters in your case,” he finished, “there not being any assets to speak of.”

“Hold your horses,” I said. “I’m not going to prison. I’m just a witness. Not even.”

“Look, my job is to make the information available, that’s all. You know I’m a big advocate of planning.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that. But that’s not why I’m calling you. I need to know everything you can tell me about Ian Christie— with whom
you
got
me
involved, remember?”

“Ian Christie, Ian Christie,” he mused, ignoring the last part of my question. “Well, this is his first big project, this Christietown. And he was very impressive at the symposium, very impassioned. Talked a lot about his illustrious ancestor.

She was made dame commander of the British Empire in 1971. Her books have been translated into over a hundred languages, and have sold in the billions. Billions! Like McDonald’s ham
burgers! Lots and lots of money there.” Mr. Keshigian’s voice quieted to a hush.

“Do you think he’s really related to Agatha Christie?” I asked.

“Who knows and who cares? He’s funded for the next couple of years, and that’s what counts.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

“I’m all ears.”

“What happens to Ian Christie if nobody buys his houses?” How desperate was he? That was my real question.

“It depends on how the deal was structured. If he got the money up front, which he probably did, nothing happens except that he doesn’t get any more.”

“What about the developer, Dov Pick?”

“Don’t mess with the Icepick.”

“Oh, come on.”

He sighed. “Dov Pick and his partner have a lot at stake. They’ve already shelled out the money to the builders, to the architect, the city, the permits, the lawyers, the water experts, the structural engineers. They’re in to the tune of millions. They’re the ones who really need to get their money out.”

“Is there any reason to think they won’t?”

“Hey, why don’t you develop some land and see if you can sell five hundred houses? It ain’t that easy.”

“What I mean is, have you heard of any business-related issues they might be having?”

“Nope.”

“Personal crises?”

“Nope.”

I swear the big blonde was giggling in the background. They were conspiring against me. Mr. Keshigian put his hand over the receiver for a minute, then came back, saying, “Listen, everybody’s got problems. It’s a rule of thumb. If you look hard enough, you’re going to find ’em. I suggest you go through the business section of the
Times
with a fine-toothed comb.”

“Great.”

“Hey, I’m just an accountant. A lowly toiler. You’re the one with the creative gifts.”

I expect the guys at the IRS would find Mr. K. a tad disin
genuous.

C
HAPTER
1
5

hen I got home, I made a pot of coffee and headed out
to the office to do some research. I was looking for any
thing that might qualify as a red flag: bankruptcies, criminal investigations, mysterious fires, big insurance payouts, missing wives with family money. I didn’t need a conviction and/or hard time. Murky circumstances would be just fine.

I shooed the cat off the top of the monitor and opened Google.

First up was Ian Christie.

Turned out there were lots of those guys.

One Ian Christie was a film scholar in Australia with a par
ticular interest in Peruvian cinema.

Another was a life coach whose advice about mentoring struck me as extremely sound.

Yet another Ian Christie lived in Milwaukee and hosted a local talk show entitled “Christie for the Mill,” which had been canceled recently. That Ian Christie had a blog and a vast number of hobbies.

There were also MP3 downloads of several Ian Christie videos, sadly unavailable. The musical Ian Christie was an oboist and the surviving half of a pair of brothers from Manchester, England. I thought I’d hit pay dirt with him, but realized after reading his bio that he was too old by at least thirty years.

My Ian Christie was a slippery devil.

For a while there it looked like he’d managed to fly in under the radar, not counting all the Christietown hoo-ha, which relayed nothing compromising about the project and nothing
whatsoever
about its creator’s background, only the official party line that he was “very distantly related” to the lady in question (ha)—that, and a mention of his name among the attendees of the world Hemingway Conference in Cuba in 1999. I was pretty much ready to pack it in when something jumped out at me: an Ian Christie listed in the index of
They Fly Through the Air
, published in Britain in the 1970s.

It was a history of the circus.

I chewed on that one for a minute.

Yes, I could imagine my Ian in a clown suit, with big red shoes. Or with a handlebar mustache, corralling folks over to see the bearded lady. I did a more detailed search. The author of
They Fly Through the Air
was a former ringmaster of a small traveling circus from Cheltenham, and for more than a decade, one Ian Christie had been his right-hand man. The latter was described as “jolly and ruddy and excellent at wringing a quid out of the balkiest granny.”

It had to be the same one.

My Ian was no murderer.

My Ian was an old-fashioned hustler.

Dov Pick was next. No, I’d save the best for last. Next was Dov’s silent partner, Avi Semel.

Avi Semel migrated to Los Angeles in the early eighties. After reading an article citing the five most successful businesses to be in, he opened his first dry cleaner’s, Stars and Stripes, on Hollywood Boulevard. He hooked up with his wife—a cus
tomer, as well as an actress who played the sexy mom in a run of teen films—when he asked if he could post her head shot above the cash register. Four shops followed in quick succes
sion, then he sold the lot of them when he partnered with Dov to form the SP Group, an “integrated, full-service real estate investor with in-house acquisition, development, finance, leas
ing, and management capabilities” (as per their Web site). No mention of any Mossad background. No intelligence collection and no paramilitary actions, unless you counted the divorce from the actress, the multimillion-dollar settlement, and the second marriage to the nanny. The last time he was quoted in the
Los Angeles Times
, Avi said that his adopted country had been good to him.