Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  JQ had been a very lonely man, prisoner to his own hermitage, fifty years old and twenty years a widower, when Elena and her brothers came to Highlandville. Elena was about twenty-five, very pretty and vivacious—a real Latin knockout, I guess—well educated, but a bit old-worldly in her moral outlook.

  JQ became smitten with Elena, and he proposed marriage shortly after she entered his employ. She declined, but apparently had a fondness for the older man and remained close and supportive until TJ, JQ's son, came home from his latest abortive attempt at college.

  I believe, but am not certain, that Terry Kalinsky and TJ were on the same campus at the same time; it is probably not terribly important to the story whether or not they first became acquainted during that period.

  TJ and Elena hit it off rather well, rather quickly, and it seems that this bothered JQ—whether from jealousy or whatever. Perhaps it was just because he knew, or had some reason to believe, that any union between the two would be an unhappy one.

  He ordered TJ to stay away from Elena.

  Elena then threatened to leave.

  JQ relented.

  TJ and Elena were married in an intimate ceremony at the mansion three months after his return from school.

  I get the definite feeling that this marriage was never consummated. Elena began to fade and apparently fell into a deep depression during that first year of marriage.

  JQ hired a live-in psychologist to counsel her. She recovered, and there then ensued a renewed camaraderie with JQ. They became intimate and Elena became pregnant.

  I do not know what TJ was doing during this period or how he felt about any of it; indeed, TJ appears as little more than a wraith throughout this story—apparently a very solitary and troubled individual, more or less lost in the confines of his own confused reality.

  But I do know how JQ felt about it all. He was horrified by Elena's pregnancy, renounced their covert relationship, withdrew from her completely ... forever.

  Even before Karen's birth, Elena's depression returned and deepened. She was in and out of Institutions for the rest of her troubled and haunted life, reviving somewhat to some accommodation of her reality only after JQ's death.

  Meanwhile, JQ himself showered upon Karen all the love and open affection that he could not or would not bestow upon Karen's mother.

  There appears to be no hint that Karen's early life was anything less than happy and healthy. Her troubles began when TJ and Elena perished together on a burning boat, but that was only the beginning of troubles—nothing more remarkable than the trauma that may be experienced by any young girl who awakens one day to find herself alone in the world without family except for two uncles who may not be self-sufficient, themselves, in an open society.

  It seems that the real troubles—the hardball kind of troubles—began for Karen only after a certain house physician was added to the staff at Highlandville, and this was some six to seven years following the unfortunate incident with the boat.

  The coming of Carl U. Powell—CUP, for short- marked the true beginning of the trouble with Karen.

  I have not decided, not even at this writing, if Powell was an evil man, a weak man, or simply an inept and stupid man. I do know, and I know this unequivocally, that he was a terribly destructive influence in Karen's life.

  The hypnotherapy was inaugurated within the first few weeks of his arrival at Highlandville. The sessions continued on a twice-weekly basis throughout the following five years.

  No wonder(!) that Karen was, by this time, such a remarkably good subject. The conditioning was complete. She could respond to audible triggers, visual triggers, even time triggers—even if these were mixed together in patterns spaced seconds apart. I could touch my left ear and put her in deep trance, touch the right and she is instantly back; wink my left eye to sit her down, the right to start her dancing. Go to sleep at eight, Karen, and wake up at six. Pee at ten and take a nude dip in the pool at eleven.

  He had used her as a guinea pig! As a research subject for his own enlightenment and amusement! The notes, I believe, were for a book he intended to write one day.

  Pissed, yeah, I knew a lot of pissed during this investigation. But Powell was not the only culprit, nor necessarily the worst, and apparently he had at last begun to see the damage he had done through his inept tampering with a human soul.

  Whether by accidental clumsiness or by design, he had this girl's mind pretty badly scrambled, though, and it was going to take more than one Sunday morning session to put it all back together again in a fully integrated and coherent personality.

  And then, of course, there are those "other" entities. I frankly do not know. My jury is still out on this one. I saw things and experienced things that are patently outside the paradigm that guides most of us in our apprehension of reality, but reality is primarily a mental construct, anyway. It does not really matter—or maybe it does, depending on what you are after. If some proof of life after death is what you happen to be after, okay, it matters, and I leave it to you to make your own conclusions.

  I was having trouble enough with the instant world, and my troubles were not yet resolved there.

  I remembered that Marcia had set up a poolside brunch for twelve-thirty. I called Kalinsky at twelve sharp to make sure that he would be present for that, then I prepared Karen for a final dramatic performance, this latter requiring all of ten minutes working in deep trance with PH triggers.

  I figured, what the hell—sauce for the goose, as our old friend Doc Powell had told me some fourteen hours earlier, is also plenty sauce enough for the gander.

  We were going to spread some around.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Sauce

  Karen looked positively devastating in a white wraparound skirt over the yellow bikini, sandals, a white carnation in her burgundy hair. She walked with a lively bounce and held my hand as we giggled our way across the patio to join the Kalinskys at brunch.

  It was a beautiful autumn day, temperature just right, hardly any smog, sun playing peekaboo among fleecy clouds.

  Marcia watched us all the way. As we were seating ourselves at the poolside table, she remarked, a bit archly, "Well, aren't we the young lovers. Karen, honey, you look absolutely smashing."

  Karen smiled prettily and replied, "Thanks. I'm feeling great. Better than I've felt in my whole life."

  "Not to put a damper on anything," Kalinsky half growled, "but all this gaiety is a little out of keeping with the moment, isn't it?" He gave me a mildly irritated flash of eyes and added, "Or is that the whole idea?"

  "It is," I replied. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, cry too much and your cheeks will rust."

  Karen giggled. Marcia seemed a bit offended, but kept her thoughts to herself.

  Kalinsky signaled the waiter and said, sarcastically, "Yeah, that's the spirit."

  I showed him a level stare and inquired, "What do you want? Sackcloth and ashes, for God's sake?"

  He dropped his gaze, replied, "You're right. Guess I'm just envious. Can't seem to bring myself to that level." He forced a smile, swept it toward Karen, said, "You do look great, honey. I'm glad. Stay that way. We're going to put this whole mess behind us very soon, now."

  She said, brightly, "It's already there, TK."

  He stared at her for a sober moment, then flashed another smile and said, "That's great."

  I scratched my nose with my left hand.

  Karen brought a sandaled foot up to rest on the tabletop, fixed Kalinsky with a direct gaze, and asked him, "What's the situation in Addis Ababa?"

  He stared at her rather stupidly for a moment before replying, "I guess it's okay."

  "What do you mean, it's okay? It'd damn well better be better than okay!"

  I could count the confusions in his eyes. He told her, "Well, yes, I think it is. We got out before the damage was done."

  I scratched my nose with the other hand.

  Karen's foot came down. She leaned toward Marcia and sweetly confided, "I found the yellow b
ikini. It was right where we left it."

  Marcia was looking at it. She said, "So I see. But I saw it on you last night, too, just before dinner."

  I scratched the top of my left hand.

  Karen scowled at Marcia as she replied, in a harsh tone, "Damned lucky for you that you did, too, but no thanks to your buddy. He fucked my mind, Marcia. He really fucked it over."

  Marcia's shocked gaze fled to me, than to Kalinsky, back to Karen. "What?" she managed in a weak voice.

  Kalinsky scraped his chair back and growled, "What the hell is going on here?"

  I scratched the other hand.

  "Shut up!" Karen loudly commanded him. She pushed away a waiter who was trying to transfer food from a serving cart, returned her foot to the table, and told Kalinsky, "On balance, you've done a pretty good job, TK, but you're getting just a little out of hand, don't you think? Don't ever forget where you were and what you were before you came here." She pointed an accusing finger at Marcia and continued, "You too, honey. You're getting to be just a bit too much the whore, don't you think?"

  Marcia's chin dropped. She gasped, "Oh my God!"

  Kalinsky leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, "What the hell is this, Ash? It's Karen's voice, but it's pure JQ coming through."

  I just shook my head and scratched my nose.

  Karen stood up and gave the hapless waiter a dazzling smile, said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Charlie—go ahead, please," then did a little pirouette beside Marcia and sang out, "Oh, God, I'm so happy!"

  Marcia got to her own feet and embraced Karen a bit awkwardly, gave Kalinsky a baffled look, sat back down, lit a cigarette, looked at me with something approaching anger, said, softly, "Jesus."

  I kept it going for another ten minutes or so, totally destroying the brunch while moving Karen alternately across the range of personalities—JQ, Elena, Karen—with rapid-fire changes. A disconcerting array, to say the least—even for me, and I knew the game, though the lines were all spontaneously Karen's, or through Karen, at any rate.

  It was destroying Kalinsky too. He had sat unmov- ing, hunched forward in his chair, staring fixedly at Karen for several minutes.

  Marcia, on the other hand, seemed to be paying more attention to me than to Karen—and that was the giveaway—it was what I was looking for. And I had seen enough.

  I put a hand on Karen's and said a single word, softly: "Marcia."

  Karen turned on her with a fury that surprised even me, crying "Bitch! You rotten bitch! You did that to me!"

  Marcia staggered to her feet, wary eyes moving rapidly between Karen and me, finally settling on me as she croaked, "Cute, really cute." She jerked an earlobe and scratched her nose at the same time in a rather discoordinated fashion, then lurched away as Kalinsky came unglued from his chair.

  He tried to get a hand on Marcia, but she jerked away and flung herself across the patio, almost colliding with the serving cart at which Charlie, the waiter, had been trying valiantly, amid all that uproar, to prepare a flambé dish. He had just lit the flame when Marcia brushed him.

  I will not say that I absolutely saw a tiny energy pulse hit that dish—but I would almost bet my immortality on it. All I can say for sure is that the whole thing exploded at just that moment, sending Charlie sprawling into the pool, wreathing Marcia and the umbrella above the cart in flames.

  I did not hear a sound from Marcia. I doubt that she even knew what hit her. The flaming umbrella immediately collapsed and wrapped itself around her. Kalinsky and I both suffered a few minor burns trying to beat the flames out. We finally pushed the whole blazing pyre into the pool, but it was too late, entirely too late.

  I left Kalinsky weeping in the pool, and led a zombied young lady to the Maserati, where then and only then I brought her back to her own true self and took her away from that terribly unhappy place.

  Karen's nightmare had ended.

  And, though it may sound a bit harsh, some sort of cosmic justice had been served.

  Epilog: Casefile Wrapup

  Ashes to ashes, eh?

  Well, maybe so.

  And maybe not.

  You may recall that I reminded you, somewhere during the early going, here, that real life is not a movie script, that things are not always all that cause-and-effect-related in the obvious sense. That was one of the problems I had throughout this case, looking for textures and trying to fit it all, somehow, into a coherent pattern.

  But let me assure you that I laid out this case to you exactly as it laid out for me. I kept no secrets, not deliberately—none that matter, anyway—and what you know about the case, right now, is what I knew on that Sunday afternoon when I drove Karen to my place at Malibu.

  Be assured, also, that I was as bothered then as you may be, now, about various loose ends that were still flapping in the breeze. I tried to pull it all together before it drove me nuts—I talked to Kalinsky by telephone later that same day, and I went down to Marina Del Rey the next day to talk to the forensics people who investigated the boat disaster that killed TJ and Elena Highland. I did some leisurely snooping in Doc Powell's study, though quite a bit later, and I had some rather exhaustive and sometimes interesting interviews with everyone I could find who had worked at the Highland estate over the past quarter century.

  Even after all that, though, I still had to leap the mind every now and then to fit a pattern around all the circumstances of this case. I do not know how well I have done that, but at least I finally satisfied myself that I had all the truth worth knowing. I offer that to you here, then, for what it may be worth to you.

  First, regarding Marcia: She married young and naive, expecting glamour and excitement in a millionaire's playground, but found instead boredom and lack of purpose in a virtual monastery ruled by an iron-handed, irascible old man who doted on his granddaughter but seemed to despise virtually everyone else. There were no weekend parties in those days, hardly any mingling whatever with the outside world, and it must have been a grim existence for a young woman of high spirit and sociable ways.

  Even after JQ died, there seemed to be little relief in that situation. TJ was even more antisocial and reclusive than his father had been, a strange man with strange habits, and his wife was hardly more than an invalid, emerging only now and then for brief periods from her darkened apartment and even then tending to be withdrawn and unapproachable.

  A reasonable person may ask, why didn't Marcia simply leave, get out of there, start a new life in a happier environment? Many of us, in that situation, would do exactly that. But consider what you would be giving up. Life at the top, access to billions of dollars, the wildest fantasies imaginable. And only two miserable, pathetic adults standing between you and all that.

  Marcia had two active options: to leave, and change her life elsewhere, or to stay, and change her life where she was. I believe that she exercised one of those options. I believe that she went down to Marina Del Rey one sunny morning and tampered with the gas tank on TJ's boat.

  After that, she became lady of the house. She opened it up, brought some life inside, and I believe that she actually tried to become a mother figure to Karen. Perhaps she even convinced herself that she had performed a noble service for the teenager, rescuing her from the gloomy and depressing influence of her parents and opening the world to her. There is evidence to suggest this.

  It is a sad and tragic web that we weave, though, once we cross the line into nefarious plots and stealthy deceits. It is as though somehow the very soul becomes imprinted with these crimes, the personality changes, and the next time out is always a shade easier.

  Marcia got into a lot of dumb shit across those years. Among other things, she had an affair with the operations manager and, with him, succeeded in diverting several hundred thousand dollars to a Hong Kong bank account. This occurred before Karen's twentieth birthday, but did not come out until after Marcia's death. There were various other thieveries, as well, but none quite so immaculate and ambitious as the opportunity that presented i
tself via Carl Powell and his hypnotic tampering with the heiress to billions.

  This was to be her grand slam—and, again, maybe she told herself that no one would even miss a few lousy million out of all those riches. Marcia had been earning ten thousand a year when she met and married Terry Kalinsky. TK, developing his business mind at JQ's shoulder, so to speak, made her sign a premarital agreement limiting her community property share of joint income to that same ten grand per year plus a "raise" of one percent annually. She'd married young, remember, and she may have later reflected bitterly on that financial state of affairs—especially when it became apparent that her husband was becoming a multi-millionaire in his own right.

  At any rate, Marcia—with the help of her new lover, Carl Powell, found a way to get even, a way that was just too slick to pass up.

  TK found all this a bit hard to swallow. If you believe the guy, and I do, his wife never once complained to him about the financial arrangements.

  "If she had," he said miserably, "I would have torn up the damned premarital agreement and burned it in a candlelight and wine ceremony. Hell, I just never thought about it. I doubt that it could have withstood a legal challenge, anyway, especially after all these years."

  You hear a lot about the value of good communications between husband and wife. So there you go ... a case in point. TK had really, deeply, been in love with his wife all those years. He just had a hard time showing it.

  Marcia's remains were cremated on Monday, completing the grim task that had begun beside the pool on Sunday. There was a brief service at a Beverly Hills chapel on Tuesday, which Karen and I both attended, and we had coffee with TK after the service at a private club on Wilshire. He was distraught. His eyes watered a lot and his lower lip quivered occasionally as he told us about Marcia's "indiscretions."

  It was during this conversation that I learned about the episode with the bank in Hong Kong. But there was more, quite a bit more, and the revelations were being directed primarily at Karen—perhaps as an apology, but also almost as a confessional in which TK was assuming most of the blame for all that had gone wrong.