Voices in the Wardrobe (31 page)

Charlie and her mother, who'd decided to stay until Libby's graduation rather than fly home and then back in a few days, would have delivery and doze in front of the TV. Charlie was getting stronger. Luella Ridgeway had been released from the hospital. Maggie was due home tomorrow and Charlie hoped to get to the office at least part of the day. She needed a little of the crazy normalcy there, the familiarity, the chaos, to convince herself life really could get back to normal as she knew it.

Charlie's first inkling of what was happening was when she went to work and opened an e-mail from Detective Gordon Solomon, recovering at home and wanting to know what Charlie knew about the reporter, Jerry Parks. He left a phone number and she called him.

“All I know is he decided he was the father of Dr. Judy's granddaughter and he found out Judd ordered her daughter to have nothing to do with him or her father, Warren VanZant, or forfeit a huge inheritance. The daughter obeyed. He told me he killed Judith Judd because of it.”

“Charlie, do you know where he is?”

“Yeah, he's dead. Caroline shot him too. And I'm glad—he was seconds away from raping me. Didn't they find his body with all the others?”

“I don't know. I was half dead when I left and no one's allowed back at the moment.”

“Well, when I got there, I counted four dead Feds at least, and then there was Warren VanZant. Caroline shot Jerry because he put her son in Luella's car with Luella and Maggie and sent it over the edge. Luella says she pushed Maggie out and went out after her, but Dashiell was in the front seat and he went over. She says Caroline rescued them and hid them but she was too drugged up to remember much else.”

“You know how I got out of there?”

“You, Deputy Saucier, and Luella Ridgeway went out on the first ambulance. They wanted me to go out too but I had to look for Maggie and my daughter and—”

“Your daughter was up there?”

“Oh yeah, Mitch Hilsten and Kenneth Cooper and Brodie Caulfield and Keegan Monroe—I lose count. They all got there after you left. Gordy, someone planned to hush this all up somehow, huh? I haven't heard a word and no one's come to question me. Was there a lot of evidence destroyed by a major explosion on that promontory? The ambulances were told not to enter the Spa grounds. They waited in the parking lot. The
Union-Tribune
says Jerry Parks has left to work elsewhere but will give no more information.”

“You know more than I do. So who killed Howard?”

“Jerry Parks. He was on a spree and very angry that the Institute would lead him on. Says he confronted Grant Howard about it and Howard admitted it. Blamed me for pointing out the exploitation of hopeful screenwriters and for being helpful by bringing Maggie to the Islandia and she'd already tried to confess to killing Dr. Judy, sooo—”

“Thanks. You've explained a lot. But you should have stayed away, like I told you to.”

“If I had, you'd be dead. I can't help wonder how many dead there are up there. How their deaths will be explained away to families and colleagues. If the government investigation was so overpowered by personal problems at the Spa that it was an embarrassment as well as that these powerful people were so easily done away with by a grieving, angry, gray-haired mother with no prior criminal record. Of course one could be made up I suppose. How is Deputy Saucier?”

“Fine. Took the drugging and the recovery better than I did. How's Margaret Stutzman and who drove her back to the Spa from the Islandia?”

“She's recovering and according to Jerry Parks, Dashiell Hammett drove her back, driver's license or no. Says she was fed up with everything and went willingly. So, do I wait for a knock on the door and an arrest for whatever?”

“I suspect there are too many people who know what you do and that they've spread it around enough it would be difficult to hush up everything by now. The grieving, angry, gray-haired mother thing won't sit well. She may end up missing or something.”

“She won't care, she was betrayed once too often. What worries me is that my identification and Maggie's and Luella's are still up there somewhere. The earth shook as we were driving away—we got out just before paratroopers started dropping and then had to get our cars. We left in the second ambulance.”

“Paratroopers? Charlie, are you sure all the drugs had worn off yet?”

“Kenny and Mitch stood there and watched it with me and they weren't drugged and people in the neighborhoods came out in their yards to watch it too. No way they can cover this up. There were cameras rolling even. It has to be on the Internet by now even if it isn't in the papers.”

“You can spin the Internet stuff as being faked, like by people who believe in alien invasions and everything. My guess is there's some kind of lid put on it locally from Washington while it's under investigation.”

“How many people did the San Diego County Sheriff's Department lose, do you think?”

“I can't say and don't really know. I'm suddenly out of the loop because of my ‘mental health after injuries sustained in the line of duty.' So is Lydia. We're just trying to figure out what's going on and what went on. If we speak up, our ‘mental health' may be questioned.”

Charlie wanted to tell him that the facts were very likely due to air anyway soon and he and Deputy Saucier needn't worry. But she couldn't be sure he wasn't recording this conversation for at least county officials if not federal as well.

Forty-Two

“The secret's Campbell's Cream of Celery Soup,” Betty Beesom said of her famous hot dish at the compound's potluck to welcome Maggie Stutzman home from the hospital. As if that should be news—it was always the same dish and these gatherings nearly always in Charlie's kitchen breakfast nook—a high-backed wooden booth arrangement with a window that let in the sunlight and the awesome scent of the lemon tree.

Unless they met for brunch when it was Sara Lee Cinnamon Rolls, Betty always explained the secret of tuna noodle casserole was Campbell's. Only the crispy potato chip topping and chopped celery saved the watery canned tuna and mushy canned peas. Truth be known, Betty Beesom pretty much repeated everything these days. Charlie, Maggie, and Edwina exchanged looks—Charlie and Maggie smiled extra nice at Jacob Forney. He was a great baker and his onion-dill bread saved the day.

Charlie kicked Libby under the table when she made fun of his sparse beard and hair and mouthed, “We're going to need him,” nodding in Betty's direction.

“What I don't understand,” Jacob said seriously, with no apparent clue what all the nodding at the table was about, “is how this whole thing was kept a secret for so long and why?” He picked up the folded
Los Angeles Times
and pointed to the headline story which had originally appeared in the
New York Times
.

“Because my client, Kenneth Cooper, is a very savvy investigative reporter, was actually at the scene of most of it and able to sell it to New York while no one was looking, and the local papers were kept in the dark or somehow convinced to play it down while the Feds tried to figure out what had happened and get the right spin on it or hope it would just go away, or something less embarrassing would come along to overshadow it. And unfortunately for them there was a lull in the carnage abroad, weather disasters, and terrorism, soooo—And as Gordy Solomon said, the CIA hated the FBI who hated the IRS and everybody hated the San Diego Sheriff's Department. Ee-eye-ee-eye-oh.”

“I just find it hard to believe the VanZants and this Jerry Parks could have outwitted and overpowered the local and federal authorities that way. None of the three were professionals.” Jacob Forney was an accountant and of an orderly mind set. Just exactly what this tiny settlement needed.

“Like Kenny said, the Feds wouldn't cooperate with each other and were too busy trying to track people by their cell phone signals to watch their backsides. Three different agencies not cooperating, competing with each other while everybody but the dead and unconscious were busy coordinating by cell. I expect that the local sheriff's department would have taken a lot of the heat if Kenny hadn't exposed how they'd been sidelined by a higher authority.”

Kenny was the only person involved who would sit for a TV interview. Mitch had corroborated the story through a publicist and the video and stills from the Spa's neighbors below the crest. No government spokesmen would comment on the charges of a coverup except to make a blanket statement that the information in the article was being looked into and was no doubt blown out of proportion if there was any truth to it at all. One can compose pictures of anything these days, videos too can be “especially prepared.” Such as faked footage of flying saucers and it was derisively suggested that Mr. Cooper might be better adapted to writing fiction.

“Why were people running around with boxes of paper and disks?” Libby wanted to know.

“Luella thinks the IRS was looking into colossal payments by pharmaceutical companies to get endorsements on Dr. Judy's TV show without being in a commercial. Concealing taxable money from them.”

“Why? Everybody does it,” Jacob snorted. “Rich people, corporations, CEOs, officers of the New York Stock Exchange, mutual fund execs. That's the way business is done.” Jacob had been demoralized and embittered by the venality of those in high places. He'd blown the whistle on his superiors in a well known accounting agency and of course lost his job. He now worked as a personal tax accountant for individuals and home businesses out of his house. Charlie, so benumbed by the book cooking in the entertainment industry, couldn't see what the fuss was all about. No, it wasn't right nor fair, but it certainly wasn't new.

In another conversation with Luella Ridgeway, Charlie learned that Ruth Ann Singer and Sue Rippon had finally revolted at the carnage and tried to stop Caroline but Ruth Ann had been shot. She did not survive the trip to the hospital. She'd worked her way up from sound engineer to Judith Judd's manager and was the one who'd done the mixing, at Caroline's command, of conversations on Dashiell's little recording devices long after he was dead with conversations recorded later. All this to flush Warren so his wife could shoot him too. Luella had the impression that the recorded voices could be activated from a console in the control room. Warren must die because he had helped Jerry send Dashiell over the cliff in Luella's car.

“All I remember of that was being in the grass with Luella's hand over my mouth watching a car roll down the hill and brake lights go on and off like someone was trying to stop it. But it was too late and it went over the cliff. Luella told me to lie real still. Next I knew, I was on a bed in a room and the room kept going around and around.” Maggie was pale, colorless, droopy, tired, but alive. Charlie liked to think she saw occasional sparks of hope in her friend's eyes. Between what Parks had told Charlie—she wasn't sure she remembered it right—and what Luella had learned from Sue Rippon and Dr. Judy's lawyer, it appeared that Jerry Parks killed Dr. Judy because her daughter had broken off their engagement. Judith Judd threatened to disinherit her altogether if she didn't find a more suitable father figure for Judy's granddaughter.

After meeting her daughter, Parks had met the doctor several times trying to find a story there and discovered her fabulous wealth. He wanted to do an exposé on the money to be made at what she did, but he didn't realize how much more of her wealth came from payments under the table offering exposure to pharmaceutical companies than from her PBS appearances. He'd planned to call it, “The TV Doc Documentary.”

Still, his real yearning was to be a successful screenwriter and Judy's daughter had plenty of money from her mother so he wouldn't have to work anymore—could concentrate on making it writing screenplays until he became successful. Not to mention she would inherit a fortune from her mother someday.

And then Judith Judd declared him off limits and her daughter's father as well, so both men had it in for Dr. Judy. Warren had also had it in for the unlovable Dashiell and somehow the two men got together to blame Judd's murder on him. “But good old Maggie offered herself up so—”

“I really wasn't sure I hadn't done it. I just sort of wanted to hurt myself,” Maggie said, eyes tearing up.

“He also killed Grant Howard to blame it on Maggie to further the questioning of her questionable morality and sanity and to vent his anger on the man who admitted he had no intention of reading any of the filmscript submissions, claimed he'd done his part by bringing the aspiring together with professionals in the business.”

Had Raoul died because he suspected the two of killing the doctor or was it an accident? He had a heart attack in the water. His body was full of prescription drugs, not very carefully mixed. Dr. Judy and the Spa were practically smothered with them by drug companies trying to gain her approval.

Warren VanZant had met Jerry when the reporter was snooping around Judy and the spa for his story.

Luella suspected what was going on to build this fortune. It was perfectly legal but kept quiet because it might not sit right in a country where the silent majority was getting royally sick of getting royally soaked in the name of commerce.

The plan had been to put Dashiell's drugged body behind the wheel of Luella's car and send it over the cliff. They didn't want Luella talking to the Feds either so she could go along and Maggie too, to put an end to any investigation. Jerry, in his snooping around the place, had come across the stash of medications as well as all the places to hide in the narrowed halls in the walls and dead ends.

Charlie still didn't know if there had been a meth lab on the promontory or what might be left of the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, or what had caused the earth to quake and the explosion. It could have been something dropped from the helicopters or some of the paraphernalia the paratroopers had worn on the way down.