Little Dog Laughed (17 page)

“Which was already cut when he got there?” Dave said.

“Way he tells it. He crawled through, and after that he doesn’t remember anything. Somebody knocked him on the head. Doctor confirmed that. A hard bang.”

“But not so hard it broke the skin or gave him a concussion,” Dave said. “Not so hard that when he came to and didn’t see anyone, he didn’t follow orders and go right on to Streeter’s door, let himself in with Brenda Streeter’s key, sneak up those spiral stairs, and find Adam Streeter dead on the floor of his workroom with a gun in his hand.”

“It was four in the morning,” Leppard said.

“And you’ve located a witness who saw Brenda Streeter parked in the red Seville in the dark on the far side of the water?” Dave lit a cigarette. “Waiting for him?”

“A surfer kid,” Leppard said, “impatient for morning. He saw Kastouros come out of the water. Told us about the rip in the wet suit. She handed him a beach towel to wrap himself in before he got into the car.”

“And Brenda says—?” Dave asked.

“Nothing. She’s got a lawyer. Albright.”

“The one with the funny voice?” Dave said.

“Dead-sounding—yeah.”

“But he represented Adam Streeter in the divorce. He despises her. Why would she choose him?”

Leppard shrugged, smiled faintly. “He won, didn’t he?”

“Right.” Dave sighed and stood up. “So, is the District Attorney interested?”

“Fascinated.” Leppard yawned again. “Jesus, I’m tired.”

“Is he going to let Underhill go? And Hunsinger, and Fleur? Everybody can’t be guilty.”

Leppard laughed briefly, shook his head, pushed heavily to his feet. “You’re right, and I think he’s feeling—what word do I want?” Leppard scratched his head, delicately again, with a little finger, just above the white stripe in his hair. “Bewildered?” The ghost of a chuckle came and went. “I wouldn’t advise you to bring up your midnight commandos to him right now. We might have to drag him off kicking and screaming.”

“I don’t know where they fit,” Dave said.

“They’re a sidebar.” Leppard took his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it. “I told you what it had to be—simple murder for money. Better than that—a family affair.” He touched Dave’s shoulder and moved past him to open his office door. The busy noises of the detective squad room flooded in. “Alcoholic wife, opportunistic boyfriend, overinsured husband. The old, old story.” He left the room. “Neat.”

Dave followed him. “Too neat. If the commandos didn’t kill Streeter, they sure as hell killed his contact, Rafael.”

“Hunsinger lied to you,” Leppard said, “why not Porfirio?”

“For what reason? Look, think about the timing. Why should Brenda have picked that particular night to send Kastouros to kill her ex-husband? The night when he’d given Mike Underhill the cash to buy that plane? The night of the day when Adam Streeter had driven off to get the final facts he needed to break the hottest story of the decade? Why not the night before, or the night after?”

“Coincidence.” Leppard pushed out into a corridor and made for the elevators, Dave following him. Leppard said, “I don’t know.” He pressed a button to summon an elevator. “Only two things do I know at this moment.” He read his watch. “I haven’t slept for a day and a night and I need to do that.” An electronic ping sounded. A red, down-pointing arrow lit up above the elevator doors. “And you will figure it out all by yourself.” The elevator doors slid open. Two plainclothes officers stepped out. Leppard and Dave stepped in. Leppard asked, “You’ve got the girl at your house? Pretty. Shame she’s blind.”

“It’s a shame somebody killed her father,” Dave said.

The elevator doors closed. The elevator started down.

“If the mother is indicted, and she’s the guardian—”

“It’s temporary,” Dave said. “By default. Only living relative. She lost custody at the time of the divorce—you know that. She’s a drunk and a chemical dependent.”

“The County will want custody of the girl,” Leppard said.

“I’m more interested in what she wants,” Dave said. “She loved her father. She’s bearing up, so far. But I think there’s a limit to how much more she can take. She hasn’t done anything to deserve being in anybody’s custody.”

“I’ll speak to the DA,” Leppard said. The elevator eased to a stop. The doors opened. “Tomorrow.”

Cecil’s flame-painted van was not in its place on the bricks of the brush-shadowed yard between the road and the front building. Dave slid the Jaguar into place, switched off its engine, frowned at his watch. Had he forgotten the day of the week? Were they supposed to meet at Romano’s for dinner? He didn’t think so. He opened the car door, stepped out, drew a deep breath, and moved his shoulders to ease their tenseness—he’d fought miles of heavy traffic from downtown. The car door fell closed with heavy gentleness. He locked it, and moved through the gathering dusk around the end of the front building. Grumpy. They’d kept Cecil working late again.

Then he remembered Chrissie. She’d be here, anyway. He smiled, sorted a key from other keys in the packet, and turned the lock in the front door, a broad door of thick glass panes clinched in wood. It swung inward, he stepped in, but big as the room was, he knew before his eyes could search the shadows that no one was here. He pulled the door shut, glanced for lights at the cookshack. No lights, but Chrissie didn’t need lights, did she? She lived in the dark. He put his head in at the cookshack door. Again no one. He pulled this door shut and crossed under the trailing vine to unlock and open the door of the rear building. He stepped inside and didn’t see her.

“Chrissie?” His voice went up to the loft where she might be—the new room. But she didn’t answer, didn’t show herself. He lightly rapped the bathroom door. No response. He opened it a crack. Empty. He called into the high raftered silence of the place once more. “Chrissie?” She wasn’t here. Cecil must have taken her with him to his workplace at Channel Three. The room had stored up heat from the sun on its shake roof all day. It smelled of pine sap and, underlying that, the faint recollection of horse, from the days when it was a stable. He opened windows, outside which untrimmed branches crowded. He let the door stand open, shed the light windbreaker he’d worn, went to the bar, and put together a pitcher of martinis.

He poured one over ice into a deep glass, stowed the pitcher in the small refrigerator back of the bar, and took drink and cigarettes out onto the patio. A broad bench of redwood planks surrounded the trunk of the oak. He set on the bricks three potted plants to make a place for himself, brushed away with a hand dried leaves and fern fronds, sat down, leaned back against the tree trunk with a sigh, and tasted the martini. He lit a cigarette, watched a light breeze take the smoke, and gazed up through the gnarled branches of the oak where the sky was changing colors from blue to green, from pink to flame, from lavender to smoky purple. Before he had finished the martini, the sky was black, and stars showed. He went to the rear building, switched on the lamps there, poured another drink for himself, then crossed to the cookshack.

He thought about London in 1945, the only time he’d been there, how long the days held on in summer, until almost ten at night. Of course, that winter with Duke Summers in Berlin, night had come at three in the afternoon when snow was threatening. And morning had been morning only according to clocks and watches. Pitch dark, and bone cold. He sliced mushrooms at the sink, melted butter in a small pan to sauté them, heated the grill to make an omelet in which to fold the mushrooms. He tore up crisp lettuce, chopped a tomato, poured oil and vinegar over these on a small plate. Sliced chunks of French bread from a long loaf. Set the table. He had just begun to eat when the phone rang.

“Mr. Brandstetter, Trinket’s out.”

“Dan’l?” Dave said. “What do you mean?”

“The Gernsbachs’ cat. I knew Mr. De Lis would never let her get away from him. It had to be Harry. He’s the one she can always trick.”

“You mean the Gernsbachs have come home?”

“Their boat’s back. I thought you’d want to know.”

Dave’s heart thumped. “Have you seen them, talked to them?”

“I tried to return Trinket,” Dan’l said. “I went around and rang their doorbell, but nobody came. I didn’t see any lights. But if Trinket’s out, they’re there.”

“Don’t try again,” Dave said. “Let me handle it.”

“You coming?” Dan’l sounded excited.

“Right away. Twenty minutes at the longest. Sit tight.”

“Ouch,” Dan’l said. “Trinket, damn it, that hurts.”

Dan’l waited for him at the gates. Clara in her starchy uniform, her bulldog jaw set, her bright green knitting needles clicking ferociously, only glanced with her grandmotherly gray eyes at Dave, a look of disapproval, but she worked the switch to set the gates parting, and Dave with cheery thanks drove through. Dan’l got into the Jaguar. He didn’t have Trinket with him.

“She’s locked in our bathroom,” Dan’l said. “Last time I found her out and put her in there she had toilet paper all over. The whole roll unrolled. Kleenex torn out of the box. All the medicine chest stuff out, piled in the sink, towels on the floor. She’s a demon.”

Dave parked the Jaguar and they both got out. The night breeze rustled the dark water beyond the ground lights of the place. On the far side, the lights of other condominium windows wavered yellow in the water. The boats rocked at their moorings, the metal clips on ropes clinking against the metal of masts. Dave followed Dan’l along narrow outdoor passages to the Gernsbach place. Dan’l’s Nikes made no sound, nor did Dave’s plimsols. He put a hand on Dan’l’s bony chest to stop the boy in shadow away from the door. He stepped up to the door, put his ear to it, and listened. All was quiet. He used a slip of metal from his wallet to work the lock. It opened as easily for him as had the Streeter lock the other night. The door swung softly inward. Dave raised a cautioning hand to Dan’l, who was a pale thin shape among shadowy shrubs, slipped inside the Gernsbach place, and soundlessly closed the door behind him.

The layout was a mirror image of the Streeter place. Here too light came in through French doors from the swimming-pool patio. Its wavering glow showed Dave French provincial furniture and eighteenth-century carpets. But the spiral staircase was the same. He went and stood at its foot, looking up into darkness, straining to hear. Maybe he imagined it, but it seemed to him faint sounds came from up there—soft electronic beeps and clicks. He slipped off the plimsols, left them, and cautiously climbed the stairs. On the first gallery level he paused, looking for light at the edge of doors. Nothing. But the sounds were clearer here, and he went up on to the third level, and there light thin as a knife blade shone under a door. He opened the door.

A big, fiftyish man in rumpled denim pants and jacket, a captain’s cap pushed back on thinning crinkly gray hair, sat at a computer. Except around the eyes, his face was deeply, painfully sunburned. So were the big hands that flew up from the keyboard in surprise and fright. He stood up, and the small typist’s chair he’d sat in wheeled backward and fell over. The man held his hands up as if Dave had a gun trained on him. The hands trembled. The man’s eyes bulged.

“Who are you? Are you one of them? I swear I saw—”

“I’m Dave Brandstetter. And you’re Harry Gernsbach, yes?”

“You are trespassing.” There was the ghost of an accent. Germany, that concentration camp, were long ago. “Get out.”

Dave showed him a business card, but Gernsbach only goggled at it. Dave said, “I’m a death-claims investigator for insurance companies. I’m looking into the death of your neighbor, Adam Streeter. I’ve been waiting for you to come home, so I could ask you—”

“That’s all settled,” Gernsbach said. “Mike Underhill murdered him. It has been on television, time and again.”

“But it’s not true, is it?” Dave said. “If it was Mike Underhill you saw kill Adam Streeter, you’d have phoned the police. You wouldn’t have run away to sea without telling anybody. You wouldn’t have stayed in hiding for days.”

“Hiding? Hiding?” Gernsbach tried bluster, but not ably. “I have been sailing. Fishing. With my wife.”

“What brought you back?” Dave said.

“It is only temporary. Month-end business.” He made a half gesture at the computer. “I am a savings and loan director. It was necessary to review certain accounts.” He broke off. “How did you know I was here?”

“You let the cat out,” Dave said, “when you came in. A neighbor saw her, and gave me a phone call.”

“
Scheisse!
” Gernsbach picked the chair up and slammed it down on its casters. He stuck out a white-bristled chin at Dave. “I can tell you nothing. Go now. I must work. Then we go to sea again. A long cruise. To the South Pacific.”

“Uh-huh. They saw you, didn’t they?” Dave said. “That figured. It was the only explanation. The curtains were open in your bedroom, you woke up, and saw them across the way—men in combat gear, crossing the roof, swing down on a rope to the balcony of Streeter’s workroom. You got up and went to the French doors to see better, right? And you saw them shoot him, heard the gun. And before you could duck out of sight, they saw you. That’s why you ran away, and why you’re going away again, for a long time, until Mike Underhill is convicted of that murder—and the real killers know they’re safe.”

“Streeter courted danger,” Gernsbach said. “He should not have been living here among quiet people. He hungered for violence.” Gernsbach snorted. “What did he know? Had he lived under the Nazis? So—he brought it here. Terrorism.” He found a bottle and glasses in a file cabinet. He rattled them and pushed a long amber drink at Dave with a shaky hand. “In Marina del Rey.” He wagged his head and drank deeply. “The world is turning ugly again. As in Hitler’s time.” He eyed Dave bleakly. “Who are they? Where do they come from?”

“I’m not sure.” Dave tried the drink—Wild Turkey. “It had to do with a story on Los Inocentes he was writing.”

Gernsbach snorted. “This government can’t keep out of there, and neither could Adam. I warned him. ‘Political fanatics are all alike; you will end up dead. Then what will become of Chrissie?’ He only grinned at me.”