Early Graves (17 page)

“Did you save my life?” Owens put the BMW keys in Dave’s hand. “Do you think I’ve forgotten?”

Owens opened the door into the chapel. Dave caught the door, stepped after him into a wash of organ music, sat in a rear pew. Kathy Dodge, Gerda Nilson, and two children sat in the front pew. No one else was here. In a small town to live respectably was not enough—you had to die respectably, and Dodge’s respectability had ended with his life, when his secrets were no longer secret. That was why nobody with a choice was here. Who was the dead man, anyway? No one Rancho Vientos had known. Tom Owens walked down the aisle, paused and bent to murmur a few words to Kathy Dodge, then crossed the chancel to a rear door, stepped out, and closed the door quietly behind him.

Dave sat staring at the casket on its trestle. Flowers blanketed the casket. Only one other floral piece stood by, gladioli in a white wicker basket, probably from Owens. Dave scowled to himself. Secrets? Not all of them were out. What was the third, the one Dodge had been on his way to tell Dave when death intervened? Did others besides the long-haired skinny boy who kept raging after Dave know that one? Was the boy acting on his own? Or was someone paying him?

The engine of the Jaguar rumbled to life outside. Dave waited, heart beating fast. Then a second engine started, and he smiled to himself. With a finger, he pushed back a jacket cuff, and watched the sweep hand of his watch tick past all the numbers. A gray-haired man in a turned-around collar and a black suit came out the door Owens had left by. A prayer book was in the man’s hand. He spread the book open on a lectern, looked at Kathy Dodge, Gerda Nilson, and the children, raised his eyes and looked at Dave. Dave got up and left the church.

The curved street lay quiet in the morning sunlight. The sprawling, low-slung houses might have been vacant under their long ramps of shake roofing. Here and there, automatic sprinkler systems sprayed lawns and flower beds as if it hadn’t rained for weeks. A square little Postal Service jeep, white with blue and red trim, puttered toward him, stopping at each curbside mailbox. There was no other traffic. If people drove to work here, if they drove their kids to school, that was finished for today.

He parked Owens’s BMW on the street, and crunched up the white gravel of the drive. He made his way alongside the Dodge house to the rear. A tall gate in a grapestake fence let him into a spacious backyard, where an oval swimming pool mirrored the blue of the sky. Flowering shrubs and vines, clumps of quick-growing trees edged the yard. Wooden lawn furniture faced a brick barbecue in a far corner. A screened lanai had been added to the back of the house. Its aluminum door opened for him. He crossed the lanai among glass-topped tables and directors’ chairs, tried the house back door, found it unlocked, and stepped inside.

He passed a washer and dryer, storage cupboards that gave off smells of soap, disinfectants, rubber gloves. A door stood open on a small bathroom—toilet, basin, shower. Then he was in the kitchen, a broad room with rough, crooked beams, rustic cupboards, hanging copper-bottomed pans. Dishes lay in the sink. The air smelled of the morning’s coffee and of cinnamon. A serving window showed him a generous dining room. He wanted the den. If Dodge picked and chose the paperwork he let Judith Ober handle for him, then maybe the rest came home here.

Dave opened doors on two neat guest bedrooms before he found the den. It had a brick fireplace, a handful of shiny sports trophies on the mantel. The furniture was oak, imitation nineteenth-century American, rolltop desk, file cabinet, swivel chair, a small table that held a gleaming white late-model typewriter. Leather wing chairs faced the fireplace, a table between them holding a brass student lamp with a green glass shade. A tufted easy chair in rich brown leather dozed in a corner.

Dust lay on everything. No one had been in here for days. Which meant Leppard hadn’t bothered. Not yet. Dave was getting first crack. At what? He opened a file drawer and wished he had more time. Funerals and graveside ceremonies didn’t take long. He’d have to hurry. He drew back curtains on leaded windows, put on his reading glasses, and went to work. He skimmed files of letters, making mental notes of names and dates. Two letters startled him, and he folded them, tucked them into an inside jacket pocket. Other files held newspaper clippings. Most dealt with squabbles between the city council and land developers, Drew Dodge among them, with angry licks from private householders against both sides. One clipping stopped him. It noticed an LA television talk show on which Drew Dodge appeared only days before his death. Dave pocketed this too. He put back the contents of drawer one, shut the drawer, opened drawer two, transferred its contents to the desk, shuffled through it, scowling. He read his watch and began to sweat. Time was running out.

What he had here were cancelled checks, back statements, mortgage and tax payment receipts, and stacks of bills, mostly unpaid. Apart from a receipt for the purchase of a Browning 9mm pistol at a Santa Barbara gun shop dated the day after the television show, the jumble told him little he didn’t already know. He dumped it back into drawer two, and rifled drawer three. Sitting down in the twanging swivel chair to sort this out, he realized his head ached. From tension, or eyestrain? He switched on a desk lamp. And out of the corner of his eye saw a square of paper that had fallen to the rug. He leaned, stretched, picked it up. Rain-wrinkled. Handwritten. Gritty. He began to smooth it out in the light of the lamp.

And heard someone pass outside. Breathing. Footfalls. He poked the letter into the side pocket of his jacket, swept up the piles of stuff from the desk, returned them to the third drawer. The lanai screen door rattled. Dave pushed the file drawer shut. The door from the lanai closed. Dave drew the window curtains, switched off the desk lamp, left the den for the living room. The curtains here were closed so he doubted he could be seen by the short, stout man who came down the hallway past the guest room doors and, plainly knowing right where it was, went into the den. The floor of the hallway was polished broad hardwood boards, but the soles of Dave’s shoes were soft and he moved to the den door soundlessly and put his ear to it.

A file drawer opened. Papers rustled. Dave heard splashes of paper, as if the man were flinging the files out of the drawers in a tearing hurry. The drawer slammed shut, another slid open. More papers were thrown. Dave opened the den door. The small man jerked around to stare at him. He was clean-shaven, with a big nose, eyes set close together. He was around fifty, and wore plaid trousers, a green cardigan sweater, a golf cap. “Who the hell are you?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s no way to treat a man’s files,” Dave said.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t I know you from someplace? Insurance?”

“If you’re Murray Berman, you do,” Dave said. “I know one reason you’re here—the family’s at church. What’s the other reason?”

“I’m looking for something of mine Drew had and I have to have back. It’s no use to him now. And I don’t want to have to hassle with lawyers to get it.” He pushed his hands into the file drawer again.

Dave said, “Forget it, Murray. It’s not in there.” Dave bent to pick up file folders, spread sheets, manila envelopes from the floor. “Where you know me from is San Pedro, twenty years ago. An alleged warehouse robbery on the docks that turned out to be insurance fraud by a Chinatown importer. Remember? You sold the policy. I was the investigator—on loan to one of your Hartford companies from my company, Medallion.”

“Right.” Berman nodded, started to smile, changed his mind. “What do you mean, it’s not here?”

Dave laid a stack of files, envelopes, papers in the short man’s arms. “Put those back, will you?” Mutely, Berman did as he was told. Dave crouched to gather up more of the litter. “You were located in Long Beach in those days. Now you’re in Thousand Oaks, right?” Dave laid his gleanings on the desk to straighten them. “Head of your own agency.” He put the stack into Berman’s hands. “Doing well, are you?”

“Close to half a million last year,” Berman said. “Investigator. I see.” He nodded, frowning to himself. “You been checking up on me. Why?”

“Matter of fact, I only began this morning.” Dave was down on hands and knees now, reaching under the desk for papers that had slithered there. “Will you help me pick up this mess, please? You made it.”

Berman stood where he was. “You’ve got the letter.”

“I’ve got it.” Shoulder hurting, Dave backed out from under the desk with the papers, climbed to his feet, handed the papers to Berman. “And I’ve read it.”

“Oh, hell.” Disgusted, Berman let the papers slip loosely from his hands into the drawer. He slammed the drawer shut. He stood, facing nothing for a minute, then drew breath and faced Dave. “Look, it doesn’t mean what it says. I was panicky. I shouldn’t have mailed it. I wouldn’t have except he was always out, never returned my calls.” Berman held out small, plump, begging hands. “Give it back. Forget it. Why do you want to make trouble for me?”

“What kind of trouble?” Dave said. “You think if the police read it, they’d arrest you for Dodge’s murder?”

Berman went pale. “I didn’t threaten to kill him. Where’s the letter? Let me show you.”

“What you threatened,” Dave said, “was to tell all his investors something you alone had found out—that Sears-Roebuck and Safeway supermarkets weren’t coming into the shopping mall. The two biggest tenants Dodge had promised you all when he conned your money out of you had changed their minds. And without them, the mall would never earn you back a thin dime—none of you.”

“I just wanted my part back,” Berman said. “Drew was short of funds. Contractors and suppliers hadn’t been paid in months. Drew had been sick in the hospital. The project was collapsing. I only wanted what was mine while the getting was good, before he could pull a chapter eleven on us, go bankrupt.” Tears came to Berman’s eyes. “Give me the letter.” He fumbled to bring a checkbook from a hip pocket. “I’ll pay you. Name your price.”

“You’re a real mensch, Murray,” Dave said. “What did you care what happened to the other little guys like you, shopkeepers, automobile dealers, veterinarians, doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers? Just so long as you got yours.”

Berman didn’t hear him. He dropped onto the swivel chair, switched on the desk lamp, opened the green leather checkbook folder, pulled the cap off a pen. He peered up at Dave, forehead wrinkled. “Ten thousand?”

“I don’t want money,” Dave said, “I want the truth.”

“Wh-what about?” Berman stammered.

“Begin with what happened after Dodge got your letter.”

“He phoned me to come see him.” Berman held up the checkbook to Dave and looked pitiable. “Fifteen thousand?”

“Put it away,” Dave said. “You came to see him, right? And he gave you a lot of sweet talk, didn’t he?”

“He looked awful—I hardly recognized him.” Berman glumly pushed the pen into its slot in the folder, closed the folder, pushed it back into his hip pocket. “Thin and pale. And weak? Even his voice was weak. Yeah, we talked. Right in this room.”

“He asked you to wait,” Dave said. “He just knew he could turn Sears and Safeway around if you gave him time, right? Or did he say he’d hooked Montgomery Ward and Von’s instead? What did he say, Murray?”

“How do you know so much?” Berman said.

“People have told me how he operated,” Dave said.

“Yeah, well, I knew him too, by then. And I wasn’t buying. I wanted my money. I got real ugly with him, and he said he’d get it for me. He knew somebody he could hit up for it. He didn’t say who.”

“I think I know,” Dave said. “Did he say when?”

“He tried leaving it vague,” Berman said, “but I gave him a deadline.”

“The night he was killed,” Dave said.

Berman looked sick. “Who told you that?”

Dave inched him a smile. “I learned it just now, down on my hands and knees. Tell me how it went. You came at the appointed time. Here?”

Berman nodded. “By the back way. But not at the appointed time. Early. I didn’t trust him.”

“And you were right, yes? He was driving away, wasn’t he? He wasn’t going to be there when you arrived.”

Berman gaped. “You were following me.”

Dave shook his head. “This is the first time you’ve worn those shoes since that night, isn’t it?”

“What?” Berman peered at the shoes, frowned up at Dave. “Yeah, I guess it is. What about it?”

“There are flowers stuck to them,” Dave said. “Yellow once, brown now. From the trees on the street where Dodge was killed. You were sore, and you followed him—sixty miles down the freeway, and clear into East Hollywood. You parked behind him on the street, and braced him for your money.”

“He didn’t have it, but he had a gun. And I wasn’t getting shot. Not for all the money in the world.”

“So you ran back to your car and drove off? You didn’t see a skinny teenager confront Dodge in the parking space under the apartments across the street?”

“My back was turned. I heard the gun go off, and I saw this kid running away. Didn’t see Drew anyplace. Figured he’d scared the kid like he scared me. Why did he go there?”

“He had a friend in those apartments,” Dave said. “The kid—you didn’t know him? Never saw him before?”

“What? You mean here, in the valley? His kind don’t show up out here. No, I never saw him before.”

“What color was his car, did you notice?”

“Dark—blue, brown?” Berman shrugged. “It was an old wreck from the sixties—Chevette or something.”

“License number?” Dave said.

“It was too dark,” Berman said. “Anyway, who cared?”

Tires crunched the gravel of the drive out front. Berman jumped up. “That’s the family home from the funeral.” Car doors slammed. Women’s voices broke the morning stillness. Shrill. Arguing. “I’m out of here,” Berman said, yanked the den door open, vanished down the hallway. Dave moved after him, taking his time.

“You are too going,” Kathy Dodge cried.

“I’m not, and that’s that,” said Gerda Nilson. “I’m not deserting my child when she’s sick and dying.”

“Mother, you can’t save me.” The house door burst open. The voices were clearer now. “We’ve been all over this. Look at the clock. You’ll miss the plane.”