Early Graves (16 page)

“You remember Elmo Sands, the contractor?” Owens put a glass into Dave’s hand. “The one who built this place for me?” Dave nodded, and Owens said, “He lost his wife to cancer. Gail married him. He’s nothing like me—maybe that’s why they’re happy together.” He perched on a draftsman’s stool.”

Dave sat at one of the computer desks and asked, “Would Sands by any chance be the contractor on the Rancho Vientos shopping mall?”

Owens blinked. “Matter of fact, yes. My suggestion.”

“Right. I want to talk to him. I want to talk to everybody involved with Drew Dodge.”

“The funeral’s tomorrow morning,” Owens said. “I expect most of them will be there. Drew was a winning kid.” Owens tasted his whiskey. “Everybody loved him.”

“Not quite everybody,” Dave said. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll get a motel room down the road, and we can go to the funeral together.”

“Stay here,” Owens said. “There are plenty of guest rooms. Call Cecil. Get him to come down here too.”

Dave shook his head. “He works at night. And I’d put you in danger, staying here.” He didn’t answer Owens’s puzzled look. He worked on the whisky, and said, “You understand, Dodge’s wasn’t one of the serial killings. It only looked that way. Somebody else stabbed him.”

“The blackmailer didn’t get what he wanted?” Owens said. “Drew couldn’t come up with the money, time ran out, and he killed him?” Owens cocked his head, an eyebrow raised. “Am I guessing right?”

“Guesses don’t often help,” Dave said. “Was the blackmailer a tall, skinny kid around twenty, with long blond hair held back by a narrow bandanna headband? Ragged jeans, tanktop, dirty tennis shoes?”

Owens shook his head, swallowed whiskey. “Drew didn’t describe him. Is that what he looked like?”

“A witness saw him on the street where Dodge was killed on the night he was killed. I saw him myself, later.”

Owens frowned. “Was he the one who jumped you, the one who cut your shoulder?”

Dave nodded. “And you figure Dodge had had sexual relations with him, and he was threatening to expose him?”

“Why else come to me?” Owens said. “Drew had been here, met Larry, seen what we were to each other. That night, he apologized for bothering me, but I was the only one he could turn to. Didn’t that mean because we were both gay?”

“Had he ever told you he was gay?”

Owens’s laugh was short and wry. “I see where you’re coming from. No, he hadn’t. I assumed he knew I knew.”

“Why didn’t he pay, and get it over with?”

“He didn’t have the money. He’d been in the hospital, a long stay, with pneumonia. He was broke, needed time to get back on his feet. And this bastard wanted big bucks. Drew grabbed at your card. He was scared.”

“What scares us isn’t necessarily what kills us.” Dave got to his feet. “And blackmail’s a lousy motive for murder. You can’t get money from a dead man.” He studied glassed drawings on the wall. Only the shapes of the buildings were familiar, not the lawns, walks, landscaping. “Somebody else is scared now—the kid who tried to kill me. Which is why I won’t stay here tonight.” Lettering below the drawings read:
SHOPPING MALL, RANCHO VIENTOS
, 1987. “Handsome,” Dave said.

“There’ll be more trees,” Owens said. “The city council is sore about the oaks we took down. They’re making us replace them with twice the number.”

Dave said, “So—Larry hung on, did he? You’re still together? I didn’t know for sure. You haven’t talked about him, and I didn’t like to ask. You never know when you’re going to give pain with that question.”

“We’re together,” Owens said. “I never thought I’d be so lucky, but it happened, and it’s wonderful. He tried to learn drafting so he could work with me.” Owens gave a sorry laugh and shook his head. “The math sank him. But he’s turned into a pretty fair artist—commercial, freelance. It lets him earn his own money, and that’s important to him. And he can work at home. And that’s more important to him, not ever to have to leave here.” Owens gestured to indicate ocean, rocks, dunes, the house. “The only arguments we have are when I ask him to go out with me—to a restaurant, the music center, the museum. He’d rather stay home. Worse than that, he’d rather I stayed home, never went anyplace.”

“That’s why he never came with you to my house,” Dave said. “Well, there had to be something.” Through a rainy window, he watched breakers crash on rocks for a moment; “The interpretation you put on Dodge’s visit—could it have got in the way of your remembering anything he said or did?”

“I suppose, but I don’t think so. It’s hard to forget opening the door at midnight to a man you only know in a business way, and hardly recognize, disheveled, soaked with rain, at his wit’s end, begging for your help.”

“I’m told the shopping mall is in deep trouble. He didn’t mention that?”

“Elmo Sands keeps mentioning it. But, no, Drew didn’t talk about it. He’d have known how to handle that, young Drew would. Extortion he didn’t know how to handle.”

Dave mused, working on his drink. “You didn’t advise him to buy a gun?”

“Good God, no.” Owens peered at Dave. “What made you think that? I told you—I gave him your card. I had a time finding it. Rummaged it out of a drawer in here, at last. Couldn’t remember where the hell I’d put it. I only parted with it because he seemed to need you as badly as I once did. May I have another?”

Dave took out his wallet, slid a card from it, passed the card to Owens. To reach across the table made his shoulder hurt. “But don’t get into trouble.” He pushed the wallet away. “I’m retiring.”

Owens stared. “You’re joking.”

“No, I’m fed up with hospitals. The world is getting meaner by the week. And I’m not quick enough anymore.” Dave told him about the shooting at Haven House. “I don’t want to die on some rainy sidewalk. I want to die in bed. With Cecil holding on to me.”

“How is he?” Owens said. “I missed him at the hospital.”

“He’s living with a young lady, these days,” Dave said. “I’m waiting for the situation to resolve itself. It’s taking longer than I like. Longer than I’ve got to spare for it.” The subject troubled him, and he lit a cigarette. “Sorry.” He held the cigarette up. “Is this all right?”

“With fifty million Americans,” Owens said. “It’s a death-wish thing, you know. Slow suicide.”

Dave laughed. “A simple yes or no will do.”

“Yes, of course,” Owens said. And frowned, remembering. “I just can’t bring this skinny twenty-year-old kid of yours into true with what Drew said. He said the blackmailer came from long ago and far away. Wouldn’t that mean he’d have to be older, Drew’s contemporary? He said, ‘I thought I’d left all that behind forever. I wasn’t even the same person then.’ What do you suppose that meant?”

“Where did he hail from?” Dave said.

“I don’t know.” Owens found on the drawing table a high-sided blue glass dish of pushpins and paper clips. He emptied these into a drawer, and handed the dish to Dave for an ashtray. “I met with him pretty often while I was designing the buildings, but those were work sessions. A few times socially, mostly at parties. We never had an intimate conversation.”

“Not till the night before he was killed.”

“Not till then. And then he was holding back a lot.”

“Oh? What made you think that?”

“The way he couldn’t sit still, kept jumping up and pacing. He wanted to tell me all about it. I could sense that, the whole story wanting to be told. But he couldn’t work up his nerve.”

“Which is why you suggested me,” Dave said.

“He jumped at that. I could see the relief in his face. You’d be a stranger, right? He could tell you on a professional basis, no fear of a friend’s disapproval—if that’s what I was, a friend. No fear it might go farther—back to his wife, say. Or his business associates.”

“Did he tell you he had AIDS?”

Owens bleakly shook his head. “Not that, either.”

“He never mentioned his childhood to you—South, Midwest, New England? Farm, city? Did he name a college?”

Owens moved his bony shoulders. “I’m sorry. If he did, I don’t remember. He seemed—well, so rooted in California. It never occurred to me he might come from someplace else. Funny. Most of us do, don’t we? Don’t you?”

Dave laughed, shook his head. “Pasadena,” he said.

Larry Johns appeared in the doorway, hair bleached by the sun, skin toasted by the sun, eyes bright blue. He was no longer a willowy boy. He’d thickened. His voice had got deeper. Nor was he pretty anymore. Still, his face had a pleasant, open look to it. “Hi, Mr. Brandstetter.” He came in and held out his hand. He brought a tang of the kitchen with him, onions, cheeses, peppers. Dave shook the hand. Johns said, “Nice to see you again. Been catching a lot of killers lately?”

“Not the one I want,” Dave said. “You look fine.”

“I had long hair and a moustache when we met.” Johns laughed. “How long has it been? Ten years, right?”

“Tom says twelve,” Dave said.

Johns looked at Owens. “Lunch will be ready in twenty minutes. I’ve got time to have a drink with you.”

“Well planned.” Owens smiled, gave him a quick hug and kiss, got off the stool, took Dave’s glass to the cabinet with his own, and this time made three drinks. Dave lit another cigarette. He missed Cecil.

Seated at a shelf facing rainy glass that looked out on the ocean from high up in the house, they ate the guacamole, enchiladas, refritos Larry had cooked, washing them down with Mexican beer. Dave liked this tower room, shelves of books, tapes, records. An armatured lamp bent over a drawing table. Pinned to the plank walls were nice loose watercolors of the dunes, the sharp rocks in the surf, the house. A pine cabinet held art supplies, another one games. They rotated bouts of chess, played to a time clock. Dave left at four.

But when he rumbled the Jaguar out onto the rock-strewn coast road, an unmarked police car waited for him. He pulled up beside it, tapped his horn, triggered a switch to lower the window on the passenger side. The leathery Dugan was in the car, slouched down behind the wheel, hat tilted forward over his eyes. But not asleep. He sat straight, pushed the hat back, winced at Dave, rolled down his window.

Dave said, “I’ll sleep here tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll drive to Drew Dodge’s funeral in Rancho Vientos.”

“Sure you will,” Dugan said.

“Can I bring you coffee from the house? A sandwich?”

“I’m okay.” Dugan held up a thermos bottle for a second. “What you could do for me is go home and stay there.”

“You don’t enjoy the beach?” Dave said.

Dugan gave a sour snort, rolled up his window, pulled the hat over his eyes, and slouched behind the wheel again.

T
HE STORM BLEW ON
inland overnight. The morning sky was the scrubbed shiny blue of Dutch tiles. The hills to the right of the coast road were napped in fresh spring green. All this corner of the continent needed was a little rain, and the grass sprang up. To the left, the breakers crashed, foam ran up the dark, sleek sand. Trailers and campers parked along that sand. Kids and dogs ran around them. A young couple unhitched bicycles from racks. Wind flapped the hat brims of an old couple fishing from canvas chairs.

After an hour, Dave cut back through the hills, and the valley he dropped down into was also green in the morning light. Quiet still held the main street of Rancho Vientos, dew sparkling on the roofs of a few cars at the curbs. Passing the hardware store, Dave wondered if Drew Dodge had bought a handgun there. Tom Owens’s black BMW didn’t turn off toward the residential section in the hills, but led Dave on out the highway, northwestward. The church stood in a wide meadow. Newly built to an old design. Frame. Steeple. Gray with white trim.

A blacktop parking area lay to the east of the building, the white bias lines painted on it still fresh, the shrubs and trees surrounding it still new, fragile. Owens parked. Dave put the Jaguar into the slot beside the BMW. A detective with a moustache parked an unmarked LAPD car near the lot entrance. And stayed seated in the car, steadfastly looking at nothing. Dave and Owens got out into the fresh country morning air. Their car doors closing sounded noisy in the quiet. Far off a meadowlark sang. Crows cawed. Dave read his watch, and looked a question at Owens.

“Maybe I got the time wrong,” Owens said.

Dave doubted it, but he walked to the rear of the church. In cold shadow there stood a black stretch limousine and a hearse with curtained windows, its rear door open, a frame on rollers projecting slightly, waiting to receive a coffin. A third car was parked back here, a car he’d last seen covered with twigs, leaves, yellow blossoms on the street in LA where Art Lopez used to live. It was a sand-color late-model Mercedes four-door, the Dodge family automobile. Luggage was in the rear seat, a stuffed panda, a plastic robot. Organ music reached Dave. He read his watch and touched Owens’s arm. “You weren’t wrong about the time,” he said. “We’d better go inside.”

Owens made a face. “I hate these things, under the best of circumstances.” Tense and unhappy, he walked beside Dave. He stopped, looked around at the empty parking lot, looked at Dave. “It’s because he was gay, right? Because he had AIDS. Jesus, the man had five hundred friends. Now look.”

“Forget it,” Dave said. “It can’t hurt him now.”

“Who’s the Mexican?” Owens nodded at the police car, “What’s he doing here? I never saw him before.”

“He’s a police officer. He’s guarding me.” Dave eyed the man for a minute, and chewed his lower lip. Then he took Owens’s elbow. “Come on, let’s get inside.” The damp perfume of cut flowers hung in the church vestibule. Dave halted there, took off his hat, set it on Owens’s head, and painfully shed his trenchcoat. “I need your help. Put this on.” Owens blinked bewilderment, but he did as Dave asked. “The keys to my car are in the right-hand pocket.”

Owens felt the pocket, nodded, straightened the hat.

“Now, what I want you to do is go through the chancel and out the back door of the church, get into my car, and drive it away. Not toward town. North. Understand?”

“But the funeral—” Owens began.

“You can come back for that. All I need is five minutes with my watchdog out of the way. I’ll take your car. Give me the keys. Or don’t you want to do it?”