“Bitchin’!” he said, shoving one in his mouth, then picking the milk carton back up and glugging half of it down.
“Back to the car,” I said. “If you see it again, try to get the license number, even a partial.”
“So you believe I’m not nuts?” He chugged the rest of the milk.
“You know what they say. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”
“Who says that?”
I sighed. “Woody Allen.” I have no idea whether Woody Allen actually ever said that or not, but it was the first name that jumped into my head, and it sounded like the sort of thing he’d say. “The point is, you need to be careful.”
“How do I do that?”
“Take streets you wouldn’t ordinarily take. If someone is tailing you, don’t let them figure out your regular routine, or else the next time they’ll be waiting for you.” Maybe with a gun, I thought, but decided to spare him. Then I changed the subject. “Since you’re here, Alan, you mind if I ask a question or two?”
“Shoot.”
“This is about the boys, Burton and Taylor.”
“Whoever they are.”
“Yes, assuming that you’re right and that the twins I met are not your real sons. Before I can do anything, even go to the police with this story, I need to try and find out what might have happened to Ricky and Bobby. Outside of you and Nora, was there anyone else familiar with your sons?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, scratching his beard and sitting down on a chair. “I was out of the picture before they started going to school, so I wouldn’t know any of their school friends. Oh, wait, sure, there’s Nora’s mom, Natalie. She used to see the boys fairly often.”
“Natalie Strange,” I said, “and she’s dead, too.” Another dead end, pardon the pun.
“Natalie’s maid, too,” Kleinbach said. “She used to play with the boys while Nat and Nora talked.”
Finally, a lead! “Do you remember her name?”
Kleinbach screwed his face up in thought, and said, “Naw, sorry. This was a long time ago.”
“Okay, but please, if you happen to think of it or run across it, let me know.”
“Yeah, all right. I’m going now.”
“Remember what I said, Alan, be careful.”
He grabbed the remaining Hydrox cookies and shoved them in his pocket, handed the nearly-empty milk carton to me, gave me a peculiar salute, then without another word spun around and walked out of the apartment. I closed the door behind him and then went into the kitchen, but a moment later heard a knock on the door. Maybe it was the fact that I had just been misquoting Woody Allen about paranoia that made me so wary, but I approached the door cautiously. “Who is it?” I called loudly, standing to once side of the door, so that if someone did want to fire shots through the wood, they would miss me.
“It’s Alan,” Kleinbach’s voice said. I opened the door and he said, “Katy.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s the name of the Natalie’s maid, Katy.”
It sounded like he was saying “catty,” and I repeated the word, hoping he would clarify it.
“Katy Gutiérrez,” Kleinbach said, looking proud that he had remembered.
“Oh, do you mean K-A-T-Y, like Katy Jurado, the Mexican actress?”
“I don’t know any Katy Jurado, but Katy Gutiérrez was Mexican.”
“You don’t know where she is now, do you?”
“Hey, I’m doing good to remember her name.”
“All right, thank you.” I started to close the door, but he held his hand out to stop it.
“One other thing,” Kleinbach said. “You don’t have kids, do you?”
“No, I’ve never been married. Why?”
“If I found out that someone had put my sons in a porno movie, I’d find him and rip his lungs out. I guess it’s a good thing those two aren’t really my sons. But if you find out who their father really is, you might find your killer.” Letting his hand drop, he turned around and strode down the hallway.
After closing the door, I went to the window and watched him lope over to a parked motorcycle, get on, and then pull away without bothering to put on a helmet. No car materialized to follow him. Maybe he was simply paranoid. But paranoid or not, at least I had a bona fide lead.
Grabbing my laptop, I carried it to my small dining table, which I used more as an office desk than for dining, and started a data base search for Katy Gutiérrez, expected to find dozens of them. To my delight there was only one that seemed to apply: a Katerina S. Gutiérrez living in Culver City. Had I been seeking a Maria Gutiérrez, however, I’d be in serious trouble, since there must have been a hundred of them. Jotting down the address, I powered the computer down and decided to pay her a visit.
Even though Hollywood has always gotten the credit, a large number of the most notable movies and television shows in history have been shot in Culver City, which is about fifteen miles to the southwest, and was once home to the studios of MGM, Hal Roach, and David O. Selznick. Skull Island, Zenda, Tara, the Land of Oz, Mayberry, Stalag 13, the street where Gene Kelly sang in the rain, and a thousand other lands of make-believe were all at one time or other to be found within a few square miles within Culver City. All that is gone, though, most of it torn down for redevelopment, and the city’s remaining classic architecture now dukes it out with ultra-modern structures on the same streets. The ghosts of the Golden Age still haunt the city, though only through such subdivision streets as Garland Drive, Astaire Avenue and Hepburn Circle.
Katerina S. Gutiérrez lived in one of the older residential neighborhoods of the city, in a modest looking Spanish home. After double-checking the address, I pulled up to the curb and got out. Going to her front door, I rang the bell.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice called from the other side.
“Are you Katy Gutiérrez?”
“Yes,” the voice replied. “Who are you?”
“My name is Dave Beauchamp and I’d like to talk to you about Natalie Strange.”
The door cracked ajar, prevented from opening all the way by a chain. “You’re not one of those writers, are you?” She spoke with a faint accent.
“No, ma’am, I’m a private investigator.”
“Can you prove that?”
She was smart. But unfortunately, I wasn’t. I had given out all my business cards and had not bothered to replenish my wallet. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gutiérrez, but I’m out of cards. If you have a Yellow Page phone book, you can look up my listing and dial the number, and you’ll hear my voice on the answering machine.”
“Let me see your driver’s license,” she said, and I took it out and slid it through the crack in the doorway. She examined it and then said, “All right, come on in, Mr. Beauchamp.” She undid the chain and opened the door.
“Thank you,” I said, stepping inside. “I appreciate your talking to me.”
“I don’t have anything else to do today,” Katy Gutiérrez said, closing the door behind me. “I don’t work anymore.” She was petite, had very carefully coiffed dark hair, and wore a simple blouse and slacks. Her age could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, it was impossible to tell. The inside of her house was magazine-photo neat and tidy, and there was a prominent picture of Jesus on one wall, under which were about a dozen school pictures showing the same two kids, a boy and a girl, growing up under the watchful eye of Christ. “Please, sit down.”
She sat in an overstuffed chair while I seated myself on the couch, nearly sinking to the floor in the marshmallow cushion. “Are those your children?” I asked, pointing to the pictures on the wall.
“Yes, Carly and Rafael. They’re grown now. She’s a nurse and he’s a firefighter. My husband passed away three years ago. Now, why are you investigating Mrs. Cousins?”
“You mean Natalie Strange?”
“I always called her Mrs. Cousins. What are you looking to find out about her? Book writers, they come
around here sometimes and ask me questions about her, and they want me to tell the secrets, but I won’t. I won’t do anything to hurt her memory.”
“Like I said, Mrs. Gutiérrez, I’m not a book writer. I was a fan of both Natalie Strange and Steve Cousins, so I have no desire whatsoever to hurt their reputations. I’m actually investigating Natalie’s grandsons, Taylor and Burton.”
She eyed me warily. “Her grandsons were named Robert and Richard.”
“I know, but their mother called them by their middle names.”
Katy Gutiérrez’s face darkened. “Their mother,” she practically spat. “How such a miserable woman could have been raised by people as fine as Mr. and Mrs. Cousins, I do not know. I felt so sorry for those two boys, having a mother like that, and that father. They were two little golden angels.”
“What did their father do to them?” I asked.
“He did not take them away from her. Alan was his name. The mother tried to claim that he was abusive, but he wasn’t. He was just weak. But she said he abused them during their divorce, and he stood there and took it, and said nothing to defend himself. He never abused those boys, but he never stood up for them either. He ran away and drank. Mrs. Cousins took care of them more than he did, until the day.…” Her voice trailed off, and I finished the sentence for her: “She died.”
Katy Gutiérrez nodded. Clearly the death of Natalie Strange still affected her.
“Mrs. Gutiérrez, are you aware that Nora Frost is dead?”
“What?” she said, looking shocked. “No, I did not know.”
“She was murdered.”
“Santa Maria!” She folded her hands and bowed her head in a brief prayer. “I pray for her soul. Even with the love of the Blessed Virgin she is going to need all the help she can get. I wish I could feel more sorry about this.”
“The boys, Taylor and…I mean, Richard and Robert…when was the last time you saw them?”
She appeared to age ten years before my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she uttered.
“Mrs. Gutiérrez, did something happen to them?”
“You are a book writer, aren’t you? You’ve come here to blacken the memory of a fine woman just because she made a terrible mistake!”
“I promise you, I am not writing a book, a magazine article, a newspaper story, or anything else. Besides, these days, being a lesbian is not considered a mistake.”
A strange, inscrutable look crossed her face and she began spouting something in Spanish, which I had no hope of catching. Finally she said, “You are here to talk about her…her bed life? How dare you pry into her private life?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Let me tell you something, young man. She and Mr. Cousins loved each other. They did! Yes, there were others. He had his men, and she…I did not agree with their actions, but it was not my place to judge. It was between them and their Maker, and it is up to Him to judge. So, they were…what is the word they use now? Jolly?”
“Gay,” I said, making a mental note to put another entry in my notebook: Rumors aside, if you want to discover the truth about anybody, ask the housekeeper.
“Yes, so they were gay, but they were also the two finest people I knew. They loved each other.” Her face suddenly broke into a smile. “One time…oh, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“I won’t object, Mrs. Gutiérrez,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone else.”
She smiled again, and shook her head. “Jesu, forgive me. On the morning of their fortieth anniversary I was going to clean the master bathroom in their house. I thought someone had left the shower running. I went in and pulled the curtain back and they were both there, in the shower. At that moment, they were not gay. They were more like two young people in love. They could not stop laughing at being discovered, and it was their fortieth anniversary! I wanted to crawl away, I was so embarrassed, but later they both kissed me on the cheek and made a joke that made me blush, and got me to laugh with them. They loved each other, young man. They always loved each other, no matter what. I loved both of them.” She paused and then leveled a forefinger at me. “But not in that way!”
“I understand, Mrs. Gutiérrez. But what I am really trying to do here is find the boys.”
“Find them?”
“They have disappeared.”
“Gone? Where could they have gone?”
“We don’t know, but the police are looking for them. They will be found.”
She put her head in her hands and shook it back and forth. “Dios ayúdame! They are free of her. Finally, I can speak.”
I leaned forward. “Speak about what, Mrs. Gutiérrez?”
“You are certain that Nora is dead?”
“Positive. Why?”
“Because now she can no longer threaten me.”
“Why was she threatening you?”
“Because I knew what she had done.”
“Mrs. Gutiérrez, tell me what Nora did.”
The woman looked at me with an expression of bottomless sadness, fatigue, and maybe a trace of fear. “She killed her own mother,” she said.
EIGHTEEN
It took a minute or so before I could say anything. Finally I got out: “Are you saying Nora Frost murdered Natalie Strange?”
“She might as well have plunged a dagger through her heart,” Katy Gutiérrez replied. “Dios, after six years I can finally say things out loud, but I don’t know if I should.”
“Please, Mrs. Gutiérrez, anything you can offer might help me find the twins.”
“Those poor boys,” she shook her head again. “Nora was a demon in woman’s skin! She kept trying to get the boys into pictures and television, but they had a problem.”
“What problem?”
“Robert was very good. He was a natural, even at four years old. Bobby had such an outgoing personality. But Richard was the opposite. He was shy and quiet, and hated being photographed. She would force him to be on camera, but he hated it, and it showed. The two of them would be hired to play one part, because they were identical, but only Bobby’s scenes would be usable. The directors would become so frustrated with the situation, they did not want to hire them.”
“So, you couldn’t tell them apart on camera, except for the way they acted?”
“They were identical in every way but personality. That was the only way to tell them apart.”
So Alan was right after all…but where did that leave me? Or the Kleinbach twins? “What does the talent level of the boys have to do with Nora’s killing Natalie?” I asked.
“Nora would take Ricky over to Mrs. Cousins’ house and demand that she teach him how to act,” Katy Gutiérrez said. “Mr. Cousins was already dead by this time, so I was there quite a bit, helping Mrs. Cousins out. Nora would try to drop Ricky off and take Bobby with her, but Mrs. Cousins would insist that both of the boys stayed. She hated the way Nora judged Ricky, saying he wasn’t good enough in front of him and his brother. Mrs. Cousins always tried to treat them exactly the same. There were arguments with Nora, such terrible arguments.”
She stopped, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. I had known Nora just long enough to realize that she treated everybody like an employee, even her own mother.
“Did Nora fly into a rage and attack Natalie?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly. “One day Nora dropped the boys off and an argument started. Whenever Nora started yelling at Mrs. Cousins the boys would run away and try to hide until it was over, but this argument was the worst one. Nora was high on some drug, I think, and Mrs. Cousins started talking about taking Ricky and Bobby away from her. It was just awful…awful…it seemed to go on for an hour. I nearly called the police. I was afraid Nora was going to become violent and start hitting Mrs. Cousins, but instead she started calling her names, using words that I could not believe I was hearing. Then Nora stormed through the house demanding the boys come to her. She was going to take them and leave, you see. I ran out to be with Mrs. Cous
ins, who was crying and shaking. Then we heard a scream coming from her bedroom.”
“What happened?”
Katy Gutiérrez shuddered. “We rushed in and I saw the boys lying on the floor, like they were sleeping. One of them was holding a pill in his hand. ‘Oh, my God, my pills!’ Mrs. Cousins shouted. She had been counting them earlier to see how many she had, and had left them laying out on her nightstand. They looked like candy, so the boys ate them.”
“What were they?” I asked.
“Clonazepam.”
“I’m not familiar with that.”
“It’s a drug for people who have anxiety problems. Mrs. Cousins had become increasingly agitated since the death of Mr. Cousins. She could not sleep half the time. She took these pills to relax her. The pills knocked the boys unconscious. I dialed 911 and an ambulance came for them, and took them to the hospital. Mrs. Cousins just sat there, weeping.”
“Where was the twins’ father at this point?”
“I don’t know. Gone, I think.”
“What about Randall Frost?”
“Who?”
“Nora’s second husband.”
“I don’t know anything about him. I never saw the boys again after that day. Mrs. Cousins tried to call Nora to find out how they were, but she could not get her own daughter to pick up the phone. Finally, a week or so later, Nora showed up and accused her mother of trying to kill the boys. It was horrible. She claimed Mrs. Cousins had done it on purpose because she was jealous of them, which was loco. She told her mother that if she wanted to kill someone so badly, why didn’t she kill herself? She said she was useless and old and senile…Mrs. Cousins was getting a little absentminded, but she was not senile…but Nora wouldn’t stop. She called her those names again. Mrs. Cousins already felt so badly about making the boys sick, that she could not even look Nora in the face. Finally I ordered Nora out of the house. I picked up a candlestick and threatened to swing it at her head if she didn’t leave, Dios ayúdame.” She crossed herself quickly and then wiped her eyes again. “Within a month, Mrs. Cousins was dead,” she said. “She never recovered from that argument with Nora, and when she got a new supply of pills…”
Kill the Mother! Page 18