Mary, Mary (11 page)
ARMED SECURITY STOPPED ME
at the gate to the Lowenstein-Bell property in the Bel Air section of Beverly Hills. Two more private guards in the upper part of the driveway rechecked my ID. Finally, I was permitted to approach the house, which was on a winding road not far from the Bel Air Hotel, which I’d visited once, and found to be one of the most serene and beautiful spots I’d ever seen.
When I rang, Michael Bell himself answered. The house was more glass than anything, and I saw him coming well before he reached me. His slow shuffle spoke volumes.
It’s always a balancing act with family members left behind by a murder. The time you need the most information is the time they least want to talk about what has happened. I’ve never found a method that feels very good to me, or probably to the person I was there to interview.
Mr. Bell didn’t look particularly Beverly Hills with his bushy blond beard, jeans, sandals, and faded plaid shirt. I could almost see him as a lumberjack, or an ex-member of Nirvana or Pearl Jam, if not for the ultramodern setting. I knew from the file that he and his wife had built their house just a few years ago.
Michael Bell’s manner and voice had the dulled quality of someone in the early stages of grief, but he politely welcomed me inside. “Can I offer you anything?” he asked. “I know we have iced tea. Some sun tea, Agent Cross?”
“Nothing, thanks,” I said.
A middle-aged housekeeper / nanny stood nearby, waiting to help if she could. I imagined this was Lupe San Remo, who had found the body in the swimming pool.
“Nada, Lupe, gracias,” Mr. Bell told her. “Quisiéramos cenar a las siete, por favor.”
I followed him past an open gallery where three blond pixies were clustered onto one oversized armchair. Cassie, Anna, and Zoey, ages five, seven, and eight, according to the file. An image from
Finding Nemo
was frozen in pause on the huge plasma television.
I had interrupted, and I felt bad about that, too. I wondered if “Mary Smith” really had feelings for the victims’ children. And if she did—why? What could possibly be this crazy person’s motive? Why kill the mother of these small children?
“Girls, I’ll be in the living room for a few minutes. You can go ahead without me.” He pushed a button on a remote control and turned up the volume as the movie started again. I recognized Ellen DeGeneres’s voice on the sound track, probably because I’d seen
Nemo
a dozen times with Jannie. She loved Dorry to death.
“We can talk in here,” Mr. Bell said as we entered a vaulted living room. Three stories of glass wall looked out to a stunning coastal view and, closer in, the swimming pool where his wife, Marti, had been found. Michael Bell sat with his back to the pool on a cream-colored velvet couch.
“I used to love that view,” he said in a quiet voice. “Marti did, too.”
“Would you prefer to meet somewhere else?” I asked him straightaway.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m trying to move around as normally as possible. For the girls. For my own sanity. It’s fine. You have some questions?”
“I know you’re being questioned by the LAPD. I know they’ve cleared you, so I’ll try to keep this as short as I possibly can.”
“I appreciate it. Whatever it takes,” he said. “Please. Go ahead. I want to help find the person who did this. I need to feel like I’m helping, doing something.”
I sat on a matching couch. A huge block of polished marble was the table between us. “I’m sorry, but I have to start with the obvious. Did your wife have any enemies that you’re aware of? Anyone who’s crossed your mind since this happened?”
He ran his hands over his beard, then back and forth across his eyes. “Believe me, I’ve thought about that. It’s part of what’s so ironic. Marti’s one of the most popular people in town. Everyone loved her, which is so rare out here. You can check.”
He stopped, and his face contorted. He was very close to losing it, and I believed that I could see his thought.
Everyone loved her. Past tense.
His shoulders drooped. He wiped his eyes with a closed fist. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking that what’s happened has sunk in, but it really hasn’t.”
“Take your time,” I told him.
I wanted to say more; I wanted to tell him that I knew what this felt like. Not just to lose a wife, but to lose her in this way. A while back, I’d been pretty much where he was right now. If his experience was anything like mine with Maria, there was no comfort to be had anywhere, much less from a stranger, a policeman. Anything personal I could tell him at this point would only be for my own sake, though, so I didn’t talk about Maria and how she was murdered.
“Dad?”
Zoey, the oldest daughter, stood in the high arch between the living room and hallway. She looked frightened, tiny, and very alone in the doorway.
“It’s okay, hon,” he said. “I’m okay. Come here for a sec.” He opened his arms, and she went to him, taking the long way around the couch to avoid walking next to me.
She fell into his hug, and then both of them began to cry. I wondered if she had seen her father cry before. “It’s okay,” he said again, smoothing her hair. “It’s okay, Zoey. I love you so much. You’re such a good girl.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Zoey whispered.
“We’ll do this later,” I said softly. “Another time. I’ve got your statement on file. I don’t need much more anyway.”
He looked at me appreciatively, the side of his face pressed against Zoey’s head. She had softened her posture now and curled to meet the shape of his hug. I could tell that they were close, and I thought of Jannie.
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said. “I do want to help.”
“If I could just take a quick walk through the house, it would be useful for me,” I said.
“Of course.”
I turned to go, but then stopped and spoke again, only because I couldn’t help myself. “You’re doing exactly the right thing,” I told him. “Your children will get you through this. Keep them close.”
“I will. They’re all I have now. Thank you. You’re very considerate.”
I left it at that, and if I had to guess, I’d say he knew it wasn’t just a cop’s advice I was offering. It was a father’s, and a husband’s. Suddenly I didn’t want to be at this house any longer than I had to be.
AS A DETECTIVE,
I would have liked to have spent hours in the Lowenstein-Bell house, to soak up all the details. Under the circumstances, I gave myself fifteen to twenty minutes.
I started by the pretty pool and stood at the deep end, staring down at the royal-blue racing lines painted on the bottom. Estimates were that Mary Smith had shot Marti Lowenstein-Bell from this position, a single bullet to the top of the head. Then she’d pulled the body over to her with a long-handled pool net.
The killer calmly stood right here and did the knife work without ever taking the body out of the water. The cuts on the victim’s face had been sloppy and quick, dozens of overlapping slashes.
As though she were erasing her.
It was evocative of what people sometimes do to photographs, the way they symbolically get rid of someone by Xing out the face. And in fact, Mary Smith had also destroyed several family photos in the office upstairs in the house.
I looked up to where I imagined the office would be, based on file diagrams.
The logical path from here to there went through the living room, then up the limestone staircase in the main entry hall.
The killer had visited the home before the day of the murder. How exactly had that occurred? At what time? And—why? How was Mary Smith evolving?
When I passed through the house again, Michael Bell was sitting with his three small daughters, all of them blankly watching their movie. They didn’t even look up as I went by, and I didn’t want to interrupt them again if I could help it. For some reason, I remembered hugging Jannie and Day right after what happened with Little Alex in Seattle.
The upstairs hallway was a suspended bridge of wood and glass that bisected the house. I followed Mary Smith’s likely path up there, then down to an enclosed wing where Marti’s office was easy enough to find.
It was the only room with a closed door.
Inside, the office wall had conspicuous blank spots where I imagined family photos had hung. Everything else looked to be intact.
The killer is getting braver, taking more risks, but the obsession with families remains strong. The killer’s focus is powerful
.
My attention went to a high-backed leather chair in front of a twenty-one-inch vertical monitor. This was the victim’s workspace and, presumably, the place where Mary Smith sat to send the e-mail to Arnold Griner at the
L.A. Times
.
The office also had a view of the terrace and pool below. Mary Smith could have watched Marti’s body floating facedown while she typed away. Did it repulse her? Put her into a rage? Or was she feeling gross satisfaction as she sat here looking down on her victim?
Something clicked for me. The destroyed photos here. The recent close call at the coffee house. Something Professor Papadakis had said about “avoidance.” Something else I had been thinking about that morning.
Mary Smith didn’t like what she was seeing at the murder sites, did she?
The longer this went on, the more it reflected some powerful image from the past that disturbed her. Some part of herself she didn’t want to see was becoming clearer. Her response was to devolve. I hated to think about it, but she was probably losing control.
Then I corrected myself—the killer
was
losing control.
I LAY FLAT ON MY BACK
on the hotel bed that night, my head spinning in different directions, none of them worth a damn as far as I was concerned.
Mary Smith. Her pathology. Inconsistencies. Possible motivation for the murders. Nothing there so far.
Jamilla. Don’t go there either. You’re not even close to solving that.
My family back in D.C. Was I ever messing that up.
Christine and Alex Junior. Saddest of all.
I was aware that no part of my life was getting the attention it deserved lately. Everything was starting to feel like an effort. I had helped other people deal with this kind of depression, just never myself, and it seemed to me that nobody’s very good at self-analysis.
True to her word, Monnie Donnelley had already delivered some material on James Truscott. Very simply, he checked out. He was ambitious, could be considered ruthless at times, but he was a respected member of the Fourth Estate. He didn’t appear to have any connection to the Mary Smith murders.
I looked at my watch, muttered a curse, then dialed home, hoping to catch Jannie and Damon before they went off to bed.
“Hello, Cross residence. Jannie Cross speaking.”
I found myself smiling. “Is this the hugs-and-kisses store? I’d like to place an order, please.”
“Hi, Daddy. I knew you’d call.”
“Am I that predictable? Never mind. You two getting ready for bed, I hope? Ask Damon to get on the other line.”
“I’m already on. I figured it was you, Dad. You are kind of predictable. That’s a
good
thing.”
I caught up with the kids briefly. Damon tried to wheedle me into letting him buy a CD with a parental advisory label. No sale there, and still no word from him on the mystery girlfriend. Jannie was gearing up for her first science fair and wanted to know if I could hook her friends up to a polygraph. “Sure thing. Right after we hook up you and Damon.”
Then Jannie told me something that bothered me a lot. “That writer was here again. Nana chased him off. She gave him a good tongue-lashing, called him a ‘disgrace to his profession.’”
After I finished with the kids, I talked to Nana, and then I ordered room service. Finally, I called Jamilla in San Francisco. I was making the calls in reverse stress order, I knew, leaving the hard ones for last. Of course, there was also the issue of time zones to consider.
“This whole Mary Smith thing has gone national in a hurry,” Jamilla said. “Word up here is the LAPD isn’t even close to catching her.”
“Let’s talk about something besides work,” I said. “That okay with you?”
“Actually, I have to leave, Alex. I’m meeting a friend . . . just a friend,” she added a little too quickly. “Don’t worry about it.” But that sounded to me like code for
worry about it
.
“Sure, go,” I said.
“Talk to you tomorrow?” she asked. “Sorry. I have to run. Tomorrow, Alex?”
I promised, and then hung up.
Just a friend,
I thought. Well, two calls down, one to go. The really hard one. I picked up the phone again and punched in numbers I knew by heart.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Alex.”
Christine paused—another undecipherable response. “Hi,” she finally said.
“Could I talk to Alex?”
“Of course. Hang on, I’ll get him. He just finished his dinner. He’s in the playroom.”
I heard a rustling and then Christine’s muted voice. “It’s Daddy.” The word gave me a strange pang—warm and regretful at the same time.
“Hi, Daddy.” A whole lot of mixed feelings intensified at the excited sound of his voice, but mostly, I just missed him like crazy. I could see his small face, his smile.
“Hey, pup. What’s new?”
Like any three-year-old, Little Alex wasn’t quite up to speed on the whole phone thing. It was a quick conversation, unfortunately. After a particularly long pause, I heard Christine again in the background.
“Say bye-bye.”
“Bye-bye.”
“See you soon,” I told him. “I love you, buddy.”
“Love
you,
Daddy.”
Then Little Alex hung up the phone on me. With a dismissive
click,
I was back in my room, alone with the Mary Smith case, missing all the people I loved more than life itself. That was the exact thought in my head—but what did it mean?
MARY SMITH SAT
on a park bench while her darling little Ashley monkeyed her way around the playground. Good deal. The exercise was just enough to tire her out before Mary had to pick up Brendan and Adam from their playdates; hopefully it was enough time to let Mary’s brain cool down from another impossible day.
She looked at the brand-new diary on her lap, admired its nice heavy paper and the beautiful linen cover.
Journals were the one big splurge in her life. She tried to write a little every day. Maybe later, the kids would read these pages and know who she really was, besides Cook, Maid, and Chauffeur. Meanwhile, even the journal had conspired against her. Without thinking, she had written
tomatoes, baby carrots, cereal, juice, diapers
on the first page. Shoot!
That just wouldn’t do. She carefully tore it out. Maybe it was silly, but she thought this book as a sacred place, not somewhere you wanted to put a shopping list.
She suddenly realized Ashley was gone!
Oh my God, where is she?
She was right there a second ago, and now she was gone.
Had it been just a second? She tensed. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it was longer than a few seconds.
“Ashley? Sweetie?”
Her eyes quickly scanned the small, crowded playground. Several blonde mop tops on swings or running around, but no Ashley. The whole place was enclosed with a wrought-iron fence.
How far could she have gotten?
She headed toward the gate.
“Excuse me, have you seen a little girl? Blond hair, jeans, a red T-shirt?”
No one had, though.
Oh, dear God, not this. No. No.
Just then Mary spotted her. Her heart nearly burst. Ashley was tucked behind a tree near the corner of the playground. She coughed out a little laugh, embarrassed with herself for getting this nervous so quickly.
God, what is wrong with me?
She walked over to her. “What are you doing over here, sweetness?”
“Playing hide and seek,” she said. “Just playing, Mommy.”
“With who, for gosh sake?” She fought to keep her tone in check. People were starting to stare.
“With you.” She smiled so sweetly Mary could barely stand it.
She bent low and whispered against her soft cheek. “Ashley, you cannot run off like that. Do you understand? If you can’t see me, then I can’t see you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good, now why don’t you go and try the jungle gym?”
Mary settled down on another bench away from the gathering storm of disapproving stares. A young mother reading the
L.A. Times
smiled over at her. “Hello.”
“You must not be from around here,” Mary said, giving her a quick once-over.
The woman’s voice was slightly defensive. “Why do you say that?”
“First of all, no one around here is that friendly,” Mary answered, then smiled. “Second of all, it takes an outsider to know one. I’m a Vermonter, myself.”
The other woman looked relieved. “Baltimore,” she said with a hand to her chest. “I heard everyone was friendly out here in California. They stop their cars and let you cross the street, right? You don’t see that in Baltimore.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“Of course, you don’t see this, either.” She held up the front page of the
Times
.
HOLLYWOOD MURDER INVESTIGATION CONTINUES
“Have you heard about this?” the woman asked. “I guess you must have.”
“It’s hard to miss these days.”
“It just makes me so sad. I know I should be afraid, too, but really, I’m just so sorry for those families.”
Mary nodded solemnly. “I know. So am I, so am I. Isn’t it awful? Those poor, poor children. It just makes you want to cry your eyes out.”