Smart House (11 page)

“How did Rich open the office door? Wasn’t it computer-locked the way the others were?”

Jake looked puzzled and slowly shook his head. “I didn’t give it a thought. Maybe it was, and it was programmed to open for him.”

Alexander said hurriedly. “It wasn’t. Gary said he was the only one who could go in. The program was being run by the computer in there. I couldn’t even get in.”

Jake looked more puzzled and shrugged. “I don’t know. He just opened it.”

Charlie nodded. “Okay.” He turned to Bruce, and said mildly, “You left Rich and went to the basement to talk to Alexander. Right?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said sullenly. “I wanted information. With Gary keeping out of sight, I thought he might be running things from his office, not the computer doing it all.” He turned his venomous glare toward Alexander, who squirmed unhappily.

“Gary warned me that Bruce would try to quiz me,” Alexander said in a rush. “He told me not to tell him anything. I was just doing what Gary told me.”

“He didn’t even want me in his fucking lab,” Bruce said furiously. “They were telling the others everything, but me they didn’t even want in the offices! He kept trying to hustle me out the door, down the hall. He even walked to the stairs with me, looking for Gary or Rich or someone to save him. It was ten to eleven and I knew Gary would be making his damn popcorn pretty soon, so I went on up to the kitchen to wait for him, but he was in there already getting the stuff together, the popcorn maker, popcorn, salt. He said how did I like his playhouse, and was I having fun, and stuff like that, and when I told him what I thought, he laughed and took the popcorn maker and stuff out, laughing.”

Charlie held up his hand. “You were in the basement at ten to eleven? And you used the stairs? Say another minute went by. How long did you and Gary talk?”

“Two minutes, three. We didn’t talk. He laughed at me, mocked me. That’s not talking. He was having the time of his life, a real birthday party.”

“What door did he leave by?”

“What the fuck difference does it make?” he yelled. He glanced at the others watching him stonily.

“It’d be nice to understand why no one else saw him that night,” Charlie mused. “That main hallway is like a fishbowl.”

“I got between him and the door to the main hall, and he laughed harder and walked out the other door to the back hall. He walked on his own two feet, under his own power!” With a visible effort he controlled himself and went on. “I decided to see what else my money had bought and I was looking around the kitchen when Mom came in to raise hell with me. By then I’d about had enough of the bullshit and I just left her there yelling, out the door to the back hall, to the elevator. I was ready to go to bed, but the fucking elevator didn’t come, and I went to the John by the dressing room, got a drink in the garden bar, and then…” He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know. The breakfast room. The library. Harry came in right after me. I didn’t want to talk and left again. TV room. Gary was laughing in the garden, and it went right through me. I said something to Beth and she ran out, and I couldn’t stand the stupid movie. The Beatles. I went back to the library. Milton was there, and Jake came in.” For the first time he looked at the sheet of paper covered with childish-looking handwriting, ran his finger down the page, and then tossed it down on the floor. “That’s it.”

Charlie nodded. “Thanks.”

Alexander was folding and refolding his sheet of paper, as if trying to see how small a package he could make of it. “Bruce came down,” he said, “and later on Harry came down, and I didn’t see anyone else and I didn’t go upstairs all night. I had too much work to do. I was in my lab all that night.”

“All night?” Charlie murmured. “But you went to the stairs with Bruce, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I didn’t go up. We stayed at the bottom of the stairs a few minutes. He wouldn’t go away and leave me alone. I had to go with him that far or he wasn’t going to get out of my lab. Then I went back and stayed there.” His paper had been reduced to the size of a flattened straw. In a few minutes he would start shredding it, Charlie thought, and turned his attention to Jake.

“Let’s back up. How long did you stay in the office after Rich left?”

Jake held up his paper. It had a single line of neat script. “It didn’t exactly overwork my brain to recall,” he said dryly. “I waited until the elevator door closed and I knew no one was around, a minute, maybe. I wasn’t paying much attention to the time. I went to my room for a while. I consulted the computer and learned that my new victim was Rich, and I decided to go hunting. I was just leaving my room when Beth came out of hers, and we went down the stairs together. She went to the television room and I headed for the library. When I heard Gary laughing, I figured Rich would be around somewhere, too, and the library was as good a place as any to start looking. I sat where I could keep an eye on the door figuring that he’d either come in or pass by eventually. He didn’t. I was still there when Maddie found his body.”

“Did you notice the time you went to the library?”

Jake nodded. “Eleven-fifteen. I looked at my watch and thought I’d give him until midnight and then go to bed if he didn’t show up.”

“Good,” Charlie said. “Nice and succinct. Milton, you took the elevator up with Rich on your way to find Laura. Right?”

Milton looked very much the somber attorney considering a worthy client. “Exactly right. I knew she had been watching the movies, and I went there to wait for her. It was ten-forty-five when I got her, and Rich was the witness. We retired to the library to record the kill. Rich left immediately afterward. I had the impression that he was in a hurry. Laura and I talked for a few seconds.” He cleared his throat and looked at Laura and said quietly, “We agreed to meet on the roof at eleven. I remained in the library until it was time to go up, and then used the stairs and met her going up. We talked on the roof for about ten minutes. The elevator was in use then and we walked back down. She went back to the television room and I returned to the library and remained there the rest of the evening.”

Laura looked incredibly bored. Harry watched her broodingly.

“Laura?” Charlie said.

She swept a contemptuous glance over him and shrugged. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Here and there all evening. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

Charlie regarded her without expression for another moment, then turned to Harry with raised eyebrows.

Harry unfolded the sheet of paper he had written on and read from it. “In our bedroom. Down the elevator to breakfast room. Couldn’t work. Maddie and Bruce fighting. Downstairs to Alexander’s lab, five minutes. Stairs to first floor, to garden for drink. Started back up to our room, saw Laura going up, and went to library instead. When Milton returned, I left, looked in TV room, then upstairs to our room and stayed.”

“Did you notice any times?”

“No.”

“How did you go up the last time, elevator? Stairs?”

“The elevator was tied up. I used the stairs.” His voice was so toneless it sounded mechanical.

“Did you hear Gary laughing?”

“No.”

If Charlie was disappointed by his dry account, he gave no sign of it; he turned to Beth, but before he could ask her to begin, Harry spoke again.

“I forgot. I was ready to come down when Beth came up. I pulled the door closed for a minute, and when I opened it again and actually went out, she had gone into her room.” He shrugged. “If it helps.”

Charlie nodded gravely. “Everything might help. Beth?”

“That’s who it was,” she said in a soft voice. “Charlie, you just don’t realize what it was like that night. Everyone ducking out of sight, doors opening and closing, people vanishing.”

“I’m beginning to get the picture,” he said. “You were in the TV room, and then what?”

She glanced at her paper; the words were scrawled so badly she could hardly read them. She recounted her night, watching the movies, up to her room, back down. She finished: “I was in the television room when Bruce came in and then we heard Gary laughing and smelled the popcorn and chlorine. I went to the kitchen for a drink of water and then back to the movies.”

Charlie looked around at the others. “Anyone else smell popcorn or chlorine in the television room, or the library? Anywhere?”

“You could smell it throughout the hall outside the atrium. You know how the odor of popcorn carries,” Jake said with an edge to his voice. “He made popcorn every night.”

“Milton, did you smell it?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. He left the door open to the garden, apparently. If it’s open even a minute the smell of chlorine drifts out, and that night it was mixed with popcorn.” He sounded a touch impatient, but then straightened in his chair, “It was after eleven—ten, fifteen after at least. I was back down in the library by then.” He looked at Charlie shrewdly. “That didn’t come out before.”

Charlie had already turned to Maddie. “You’re the last one,” he said kindly, “and then we can all get some rest.”

She shook her head. “Not until you find my son’s murderer. Then we can rest.” She had drawn herself up very straight and looked almost regal. “I won’t take long. I was lying down in my room for half an hour or so, and then went down on the elevator. I talked to Bruce in the kitchen. We certainly were not fighting or making loud noises.” She looked at Harry severely.

“I heard what he was calling you,” Harry said with a touch of anger. “Want me to repeat the conversation I caught before I got disgusted and left?”

She held her head a bit higher. “My mother said you cannot believe a word an eavesdropper reports. We were not fighting.” To Charlie, she said, “From the kitchen I returned to the television room to watch the movie. I became fatigued and decided to go to bed. And you know what I found when I summoned the elevator.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. Then very briskly he started to gather up papers. “Thank you all, and please let me have your notes. You may find that this discussion stimulates memories of other things you simply haven’t thought of before. If you do, please tell me. I’ll want to talk to you all again, of course, but singly from now on.”

Chapter 10

They straggled out, not
talking to each other now, avoiding each other’s eyes. Alexander vanished swiftly. Harry and Laura went up the stairs together, not speaking, not touching. No one took the elevator.

On the second floor, Charlie and Constance stopped to look down again at the atrium where the soft lights were glowing, the trees and blooming plants Eden-like, the pool glimmering with underwater lights in pale blue. The waterfall made a geyser, gleaming spray rising, flashing, settling without end. Milton appeared and vanished in the shadows behind the pool; in a moment the pool lights went off; he reappeared, glanced around, and left the atrium. Here and there dim lights remained on; the shadows deepened, but the room took on a new dimension, seemed to expand, to become what they called it—a garden. Charlie made a low noise in his throat and took Constance by the arm. They went on to their room.

Constance kicked off her shoes as Charlie added his papers to the ones he had already stacked on the desk. He frowned at the messy pile.

“Charlie?”

“Hm?”

“Why would anyone bother to steal one set of blueprints when there are so many of them altogether?”

“Don’t know.”

“Not fingerprints. Anyone might have handled them and left prints. A bloodstain or something like that?”

“Two bloodless deaths,” he said morosely. He picked up a chair and crossed the room with it, wedged it under the doorknob, and stepped back to regard it with an unhappy expression. “Know what I hate? Hotel rooms without locks on the doors.”

“I don’t like Smart House,” Constance said. She went to the sliding glass door to the balcony and made certain it was latched. There wasn’t a lock on it, but she knew that if anyone tried to force the latch, both she and Charlie would hear it in this abnormally quiet house. The building was so solidly constructed that no sound of the sea penetrated, and beyond the balcony the fog was so deep that nothing showed, no lights, nothing. She shivered, and turned to find Charlie at her side. He put his arm around her and drew her close.

“I’m still wide awake. How about you?”

She nodded. “What are you up to?”

“A little prowling. Let’s give them fifteen minutes to get settled first.”

During the next few minutes he sorted through the papers he was accumulating, studied the floor plans for several minutes, then gathered up most of the papers and put them in one of the suitcases. He locked it and returned it to the closet. Constance had put her shoes back on and found a penlight. Charlie arranged the remaining papers, most of them in a heap, a few scattered, and regarded them for a moment. With a sigh he turned to Constance and she meekly bowed her head. He plucked a single hair and went back to the desk with it and lifted the top sheet of paper, placed the pale hair on the next one, where it seemed to disappear, and covered it again with the top piece.

“Did you know polar bears have hollow hairs?” he asked then. “Transparent.”

“You should work with a polar bear,” she said agreeably.

He shook his head. “Too bad-tempered. And they can’t cook.”

He took the chair away from the door, flicked off the lights, and they stepped out into the wide hallway that curved away from them in both directions. Ahead, the glass wall of the atrium gleamed. He took her hand and positioned her next to the glass.

“I want to find out just how visible people are coming and going in there,” he said softly, nodding toward the pool, the atrium in general. “You watch while I prowl a little. Okay?”

He brushed her cheek with his lips and left her. He vanished around the curved hallway in a few steps, and then appeared again on the other side of the glass wall. He had entered the second level of the atrium. Almost instantly he was out of sight again.

Charlie ducked behind some kind of plant and then another. He could still see Constance, but from the way she was looking around, he could tell that she had lost him. He kept behind plants and trees and made his way down the broad stairs that looked like natural terracing. At the first level he paused again and no longer could see her through the glass wall. He went on to the bar and tables. The illusion of being in a jungle was nearly complete now. The dim lights were like moonlight filtered through a hazy cloud cover. He stepped behind another planter containing a banana plant with eight-foot-long leaves; he did not linger, but made his way to the pool, around it to the corridor that led to the Jacuzzi and the dressing rooms. The light control box was on the wall here. He turned on the pool lights, crossed to the Jacuzzi room and looked inside, recrossed the hall to glance inside the dressing room, then stepped out to walk around the pool to the exit nearest the elevator. He felt very exposed and vulnerable, bathed in the pale blue light that seemed brighter than he remembered. At the door he stopped and waved to her, motioned for her to join him. He could not be certain he was visible to her; he could see nothing through the glass wall.

Constance watched him appear and vanish, then appear again after the pool lights came on. When he waved to her to come down, she drew in a long breath and only then realized that she had been breathing guardedly, unwilling to make a sound. She left her place at the window and started down the hallway. When she reached the stairs she turned to descend without even considering the elevator at the far end of the hall.

Something, she was thinking. There was something…

Charlie walked toward her in the hall and she said under her breath, “Of course!”

When he reached her, he put his arms around her shoulders and could not account for the feeling of relief that washed through him. “Well?” he asked.

“Wait a minute. How did it seem to you?”

“Like you were watching my every movement. How much did you see?”

“That’s how they all felt during the game. As if every movement was being watched. And not just during the game. It’s this damn house,” she said, and waved her hand. “Right now, I feel as if a thousand eyes are on me.”

“Honey,” he said patiently, steering her into the kitchen, “tell me.” A dim light had been left on here. He found the switch and turned on brighter lights.

“Oh, that. Not much. I saw you at the bar, and again after the lights came on, when you walked along the edge of the pool and went to the door. But, Charlie, there’s something else…” Her thoughts raced as he pulled out chairs at the long oak work-table and seated her, then himself very close to her. He did not nudge, did not ask anything else. He waited, his gaze fixed on her.

“It has to do with Gary,” she said at last, her voice very low. “Even now, knowing the computer is off, listen to me,” she said with a wry smile. “There’s nearly an irresistible urge to whisper, to look around to make sure no one’s watching, listening. It’s this house. How big? Ten thousand square feet, more? And wide open. No privacy anywhere. You feel as if it’s watching you every minute, as if all the others can see everything you do. It’s all that glass, the arrangement of the rooms, everything about it. A giant fishbowl. And Gary was emotionally childlike. That’s what they all keep telling us, he was like a small boy with secrets, loving games and surprises and secrets. Charlie, he had the money to play with, he would have had a secret way to move around without being seen. I know he would!”

“The missing blueprints,” he breathed. He looked at her with an expression that was close to awe. “You’ve hit on it.”

“It might not have anything to do with the murders,” she said thoughtfully. “If he saw Rich carrying them around, he could have hidden them himself, to keep his secret until he was ready to reveal it.”

Charlie nodded. He was reconstructing Gary’s bedroom suite and his office. His mental maps were very accurate. Some people called it uncanny, his ability to reproduce drawings of buildings, rooms, halls, staircases, closets, electrical systems, everything about them, but he knew it was simply training. Exacting, painstaking training as a fireman had forced him to develop this skill, and he had used it for many years as an arson investigator in New York, before he quit that department to become a police detective. Now he was placing light fixtures and plumbing in Gary’s rooms, and he knew where the extra space had to be. He stood up.

“Let’s go have a look,” he said, his voice as soft as hers.

A few minutes later Constance stood out of the way while Charlie examined the walk-in closet in the room that had been Gary Elringer’s. A large sliding door opened to the closet, which was paneled with fragrant cedar; it was bare now, with only a few wooden hangers on one of the rods. There were shelves and drawers on one wall, two clothes rods, a ceiling light. Charlie was feeling the wood along the end wall. He finished inside, and examined the wall on the bedroom side just as minutely. He stepped back finally and nodded.

“Three by three,” he said, still speaking very softly. “Either a ladder or an elevator. My money’s on another elevator, side by side with the big one on the other side of that wall.”

“Can you open it?”

“Nope. I can’t even find the damn door, but it’s there. Probably computer-operated.” He took her arm. “Let’s trace it all the way. His office next.”

“Fruit cellar,” he murmured in Gary’s office, pacing off the space. Behind the wall was the refrigerator room, the bins for long storage of fruits and vegetables, and then the dumbwaiter. He measured it off and was left with three feet unaccounted for. He was humming under his breath. Again nothing showed to indicate a door; the office was paneled in a golden-hued wood, expensive wood, exotic. Although Charlie could not identify it, he nodded at it approvingly. “Onward,” he said at last. “First floor, pantry. We’ll save the roof for daylight.” He was very cheerful.

The dumbwaiter was next to a freezer in the pantry, and there was the same three feet of space tucked away between them and the big elevator. The paneling hid the door in the office; the sliding closet door masked it in the bedroom. On the first floor that wall had wainscoting, white and dark wood, perfect disguise again. He turned off the hall light and was ready now to find a snack and then go on to bed. Good night’s work, he thought; suddenly Constance’s fingers dug into his arm.

“
Shh,
” she whispered, and turned toward the atrium. The swimming pool lights illuminated this end of the area, leaving the rest in murky darkness with small pale spots here and there. Someone was there, moving about.

They froze in place, trying to see past the glass wall, past the pools of pale light. Cautiously, after a moment, Charlie edged closer to the main hallway. Too many exits from the atrium, he was thinking. Four or six on this level, at least four on the bedroom level. A shadow passed between him and one of the light spots.

“Keep an eye out for him,” he whispered. “And stay here.”

He raced back down the hall to the kitchen, through it to the dining room, and out into the main corridor again, this time at the foot of the wide stairs. He ran up the stairs and stopped at the top, hugging the wall. Here, too, a few lights had been left on, dim, unevenly spaced. He waited a moment to catch his breath, and then edged out into the hall, ducked in order not to eclipse a wall light, and stopped to peer down into the atrium, knowing no one there would be able to see him. At the same moment he caught a motion across the expanse of the atrium, on the far side of the upstairs hall, and he cursed under his breath. The other prowler had beat him upstairs. He trotted down the curved hall; empty. But someone had been there, probably had entered one of the two last rooms, or had gone down the front stairs. He kneeled at the door of the second to last room and put his ear against the door, listening. Nothing. He passed the front stairs to the foyer and listened at the last door just as futilely. He had one hand on the carpet in front of the door and slowly he raised it, examined his fingers, and then the carpet. Dirt. Potting soil. Soundlessly he drew out his wallet and extracted a stiff credit card and used it to scrape the soil together and lift it. There wasn’t much, a teaspoonful, moist, crumbly, with bits of grainy stuff, little pellets of planting medium. And now he could smell chlorine.

He found the door to the second floor of the atrium and slipped through, pulled the sliding door shut, and made his way down the broad stairs. He could not see Constance, and he thought she probably could not see him either. The cover of greenery was dense.

When Charlie emerged on the first level of the garden, approaching her, Constance left her position and joined him in the hall. “Did you get a glimpse of him?”

“Nope. You?”

“Just a glimpse. About halfway up. Not enough to tell anything. What do you have?”

“Dirt. Let’s see if we can find a plastic bag or something in the kitchen. And a couple of spoons maybe.”

They returned to the kitchen where Constance found the drawer that held plastic wrap, aluminum foil, plastic bags. Together they gazed at the soil before Charlie carefully slid it off the card into a bag and secured it with a fastener. He replaced his card and put the bag in his pocket. “Spoons,” he said.

Constance looked doubtful. “There are an awful lot of plants in containers in there.”

“I know,” he said unhappily. “If we don’t find something in a couple of minutes, we’ll let it go until tomorrow and have the gardener do his stuff. Let’s give it a try now, though.”

At the door to the garden, Constance paused again. “You know where the lights are for the whole place?”

He did. He went behind the pool to the light panel in the hallway and tried several switches before he found the one that turned on every light in the garden. It was like sunrise. His unhappiness increased. It was a damn jungle. There were pots and containers of every conceivable size and shape—some long troughs, some like half barrels, some simple round pots. Sphagnum moss was everywhere, in between the containers, piled on top the soil in them. At first he had thought it would be simple to find where the prowler had been digging, just by looking at the tops of the things, but he realized now that such was not the case.

“Well,” he said, “he dropped dirt upstairs, maybe he did it more than once.”