Early Graves (6 page)

“And night before last?” Dave said.

She shivered, hugged herself, turned away to face the window. “It’s cold, isn’t it, this rain? I wish the rain would stop.” She turned, brushed past him, reached into the closet, and lifted down the raincoat. She flapped into it, cinched the belt at her chunky waist. “He tried to come.”

“Tried?” Dave said.

“He parked on the street. His car is still over there.” She was dull-eyed now, spoke tonelessly. “He crossed the street. But he didn’t make it up the stairs. He died, down below, stabbed, like Art. When I got home from the hospice, I found his body in my parking space. Beside Art’s and his Kawasakis.” She smiled bleakly. “Drew bought those. They were not very good riders. They just drove them to the bars, you know? Those bars where they make believe they are tough hombres, all right? Biker bars, leather bars. Only, of course, it is all fantasy.” Her laugh was mournful.

“And it was you who brought him to my house,” Dave said. “That was a mistake, Carmen. A very bad mistake. You should have called the police.” She didn’t answer. She looked stubborn. Dave asked, “Why did you pick me?”

“Because you are smart and you figure out stuff when the cops can’t. I seen you on television. We all did, one night last fall. A discussion show. And Drew said you were gay. Somebody told him. Art bet you were not.”

“Art lost,” Dave said.

“Everything,” she said bitterly. “But I forgot about you till I found Drew’s body, and your card was in his hand. And I thought, somebody has to stop this. The cops don’t care. They will never do nothing. Maybe you would care. Maybe you would stop it. I put him in my car and drove to Laurel Canyon. It was hard to find your place in the dark. How did you know it was me? I thought no one would ever know.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I forgot how smart everybody says you are. I was shook to find you at my door.”

“I got lucky,” Dave said. “Where did he get my card?”

“He couldn’t tell me, could he?” she said. “I never meant to leave it there. I just dropped it.” She half reached out to him. “You won’t tell the cops?”

“They’ll want to see the place where he was killed,” Dave said. “They may find a clue that will lead them to the one who’s doing this.”

Her mouth turned down scornfully. “They will not. They will arrest me.”

“No. They were killed at night. You work at night.”

“They will arrest me for moving the body, then they will lock me up and make me prove I was not the killer. You must not let them do that. I am needed at the hospice. There’s not enough of us now. People quit. It gets to them.”

“If you want me to track down this killer,” Dave said, “I have to keep my license. If I conceal what you’ve told me, I’ll lose it.”

“I see.” She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t made up yet. It showed sheets bought at a bargain someplace, different patterns for the upper and lower, different patterns still for the pillow slips. All florals, faded from many washings. She said, “Well, I’m not sick, not dying. So I can’t complain, can I, no matter what? But the blows keep falling.” She smiled up at him, bravery in the smile, but no happiness. “I lost Anita, I lost Art, and because I would not let him die cold and starving in the streets, I lost my mother and father too. AIDS was God’s punishment on Art, and because I took him in, God has damned me too, right, and they don’t speak to me no more.” Her laugh was sad. “But that would have happened, anyway. They are going to guess the truth at last—that I’m gay too.” She raised her eyes to Dave’s again. “That I will never give them grandchildren. That the girl I shared this apartment with was my lover.”

“Was?” Dave said. “What happened to her?”

“When Art came, he was very weak. We had to carry him up the stairs. He had an accident. Diarrhea. He couldn’t help it. Then he told us he had AIDS, and Anita took her stuff and split. I mean, while I was cleaning him up in the bathroom, twenty minutes. She didn’t even say goodbye. She ran. I went to see her where she works, where we used to work together, and she wouldn’t come out of the factory yard. I had to talk to her through the fence. She stood way back, afraid I’d breathe on her. I tried to give her stuff to read, so she’d see there was no danger to her. She wouldn’t take it. We loved each other a lot. But she was too scared.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “Tell me—do you think Art knew somebody was out to kill him?”

“He didn’t say nothing like that.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t have gone out, would he?” Her shoulders sagged. “I wish he was here. It gets very lonesome. I miss Anita.”

Dave touched her hair. “Where’s your phone?”

She stood up quickly. “You aren’t going to call the cops?”

“Abe Greenglass,” Dave said. “My lawyer. We’ll want him here first. Then the cops. There’s no way around it, Carmen.”

“But you will stay too?” Her eyes pleaded.

“If you want me to,” Dave said.

S
OMEONE HAD TURNED ON
the ground lights, a thing he often forgot to do. The rain sparkled in the lights, danced on the old brick paving of the yard. Amanda—it was her car that stood in the place usually filled by Cecil’s van. She had been out of touch for a time. Or he had. He smiled at the notion of finding her here. He hated coming home to an empty place. He was growing tired of it, growing tired of living alone, growing tired, to be honest about it, of living. It was why he kept taking on jobs not worth his time. To kill the time. To keep busy. He swung the heavy Jaguar in beside the little, cloth-topped Bugatti.

The windows of the cookshack glowed a cheerful yellow through the rain. He ran across the courtyard, splashing through puddles, and bolted into wonderful, welcome warmth and cooking smells. Amanda was small and neatly put together, her hair a dark, shiny helmet. She laughed, as he hung up his coat. “There you are. I was afraid I’d have to eat all this myself.” He went and kissed the top of her head, dragged out a chair at the table, sat and pulled off his shoes. She said, “Where have you been?”

“Downtown, Hall of Justice, helping keep a young woman out of jail. What’s to drink?”

“You tell me.” She wore a red wraparound apron. The color brought out a rosy flush in her cheeks. She was very young. Still. His father’s ninth wife and final widow. Carl Brandstetter had died racing his Bentley along a midnight freeway—how many years ago now, six, seven? He’d had a heart attack, not his first. It had taken Dave a long time to get used to his death, but at last he’d settled for the idea that the old boy would have wanted it that way, sudden, no hospitals, no hanging on, no turning into a feeble wreck of himself. He’d been a big, bluff, handsome Viking of a man, with an outsize appetite for life and all the best things in life, including a hefty share of those that were far from free. Amanda had loved him—it was hard not to love him—and had missed him when he died. She’d wandered around the huge rooms of that Beverly Hills mansion desolate for weeks, until Dave took her in hand, and set her to remodeling this place for him. From that, she’d gone on to other jobs for friends and strangers, then set up shop on Rodeo Drive and prospered. She said, “I decided it’s bourbon weather, but I couldn’t decide if that meant a Manhattan or an Old-Fashioned.”

“How about a Manhattan in a tall glass,” Dave said.

“Ah, a Sundowner,” she said, and went to snorting through the double stand of bottles on the counter. “And exactly who is this young woman, and why would anyone want to put her in jail?”

“She moved the body of a murdered man,” Dave said, watching Amanda locate a thick, squat Swedish crystal pitcher, take a fistful of ice cubes from the big oak refrigerator, and measure Old Crow and sweet vermouth over the ice. She was carefree with the booze, letting it brim over the top of the jigger. She licked her fingers appreciatively before she reclosed the bottles. She uncapped a little paper-wrapped bottle of Angostura bitters, shook drops from this into the mixture in the pitcher, then began turning the ice in the pitcher slowly round and round with a glass rod. “There’s been a series of stabbings,” Dave said. “The police haven’t found the killer yet. One of the victims was Art Lopez, this young woman’s brother. A homosexual. An AIDS victim. Like all the others.” Amanda turned and stared at him. “Carmen wants the killing to stop. This one took place in her garage. The dead man was a friend of Art’s. And hers. He had my business card in his hand. She knew a few things about me. She thought since the police weren’t getting anywhere, I ought to try. She brought him here and left him for me to find. Out there. On the bench under the oak.”

“Good Lord,” Amanda whispered. She turned soberly away, reached glasses down from a cupboard, put ice into these, poured the glowing deep-red mixture from the pitcher over the ice. She set the pitcher in the refrigerator, and took the glasses to the table. After she’d set them down, she drew out a chair and sat herself down. “And are you going to try? It all sounds hideous.”

“The police have dozens of men on the case,” Dave said. “I doubt that one more would make a difference. Carmen’s not too clear in her thinking. You can’t blame her.” Dave tasted the drink, grinned, lifted the glass to her. “Just right,” he said, set the glass down, lit a cigarette, frowned. “She figured because I’m homosexual I’d work harder and get more results than the LAPD. Her idea is that cops despise gays and don’t care that they’re being slaughtered—especially gays sick with AIDS.”

“Is she right?” Amanda tried her own “drink.”

Dave shrugged. “About common police attitudes—yes. That they don’t want to catch the killer—no.”

“So you’re not going to help.” Amanda” was disappointed.

“I’ve already done that. I went out to Drew Dodge’s bailiwick and found a connection between him and Art Lopez, and found the place where Dodge was killed, and telephoned the police. They found his BMW parked on the street, matted with yellow blossoms brought down from the trees by the rain. They found a neighbor who saw a tall, skinny stranger hanging around about midnight, a street kid in rags, long blond hair, a bandanna for a headband. I helped. What’s wrong?”

She was staring. “Did you say Drew Dodge?”

Dave nodded. “A young, slick-talking developer in Rancho Vientos. Wife, kids, showy house, country club, all the conventional trappings of success. Who used to have quickie sex with one of his construction worker hard hats in the office at noon. Art Lopez, right? And spend the nights on motorcycles, visiting the gay bars with him in LA.”

“And he had AIDS too?” Amanda asked softly.

Dave said, “Did you know him? Don’t tell me you knew him.”

“I’d met him.” She nodded slowly, troubled. “Radiant. A real charmer. What a shame.” She shivered, and her look at Dave was mournful. “Met him at a party at Madge’s, last autumn. He was building a shopping mall. Tom Owens was there. He was the architect. Madge was to do the wallpapers for the boutiques, the fabrics for the offices—working with Lloyd Noonan. Lloyd designed the interiors.”

“Small world,” Dave said. “Did Dodge tell you he was in trouble and needed the services of a private investigator? Did you give him my card?”

“I never saw anyone who looked less troubled in my life. He was sitting on top of the world. He simply glowed.”

“Maybe Madge gave it to him.” Dave stretched an arm up to bring down from the end of a cabinet the receiver of a yellow telephone. He’ punched a familiar number. Madge Dunstan was one of his oldest friends. They went back to the 1940s, just after Dave had returned from the rubble of Germany, where he’d been a very young intelligence officer, trying to sort the Nazis from the good guys after the war. Dave had been introduced to Madge in the dark-paneled, leather-padded little bar of Max Romano’s restaurant by Rod Fleming, a novice interior decorator Dave had set up house with. Rod was twenty years dead now, but Madge was vitally alive, working better than ever. The phone rang in the vast white rooms of her seaside house, but no one picked it up. He pressed the cutoff button. Maybe Tom Owens had given Dodge that card. Years ago, Dave had saved the architect from death. They’d been friends ever since. Not seeing a lot of each other, but friends. He punched Owens’s number. He too lived at the beach, in a place he had designed in the dunes, that looked a little like the wreckage of a ship, all prows and planks. No one answered at Tom Owens’s, either. He sighed and hung the receiver up. Amanda had gone to the stove.

“Drink your drink,” she said. “Supper’s almost ready.”

“It’s kind of you to do this.” Dave worked on the drink, put out his cigarette, lit another. “But I’m puzzled. You haven’t been around since New Year’s. You realize that?”

She bent, opened the oven door. Heat rushed out. Dave felt it. She used big quilted mitts to lift a casserole out and set it on a counter. She closed the oven door. “I realize that. I’ve missed you. I’ve just been terribly, terribly busy. The oil millionaires are leaving Beverly Hills, going home to Abu Dhabi and all those romantic places, to their camels, their endless cups of syrupy coffee. The yuppies are moving in. No deep carpets for them, no velvets, no cushions, no purple and maroon and gilt. They want nouvelle interiors, all sleek and white and bare and bright. And Amanda Brandstetter aims to please.”

“And in the midst of all this,” Dave said, “pity for the loneliness of her elderly son-in-law transforms her for a night into a happy little homebody?”

She lifted down plates from a cupboard. “You got it.”

“I don’t think so. What do you want?”

She turned and blinked hard at him, her face more flushed than before, and not just from the heat of the oven. “You’re terrible, do you know that? What a way to talk.” She turned away again, and pulled a spatula from a drawer. “Do you know how rude that sounds?”

“I guess it does.” He put out the cigarette. The smell of the tobacco was interfering with the glorious aromas drifting to him from the casserole. “I’m sorry about that. I’m glad to see you, regardless. Okay?” He heard a familiar noise through the wash of the rain on roof and bricks outside. He got up and went to the cookshack door and pulled it open. He stood there in the cold, damp air, waiting, while behind him Amanda made sounds, laying the table with mats and flatware and glasses. Cecil came into Dave’s line of sight, lit by the outdoor spots under the eaves of the long buildings. He came jumping puddles, shoulders hunched, jacket pulled up to cover his head. Dave pushed open the screen door for him. He wiped his feet in long Nikes on the sisal mat outside, and came in, laughing.