Point Deception

by Marcia Muller

  “So Chrys is gone too,” she said. “Damn! This life, you know, it really stinks sometimes.”

  Rho nodded. “What can you tell me about the Ackermans? Start with Judith.”

  Sandy Viera set her fork down and pushed her half-eaten salad away. “Jude, she liked to be called. From the way she talked, I could tell that she used to think she was pretty hot stuff. Wild, a poet. But the disease caught her in her mid-thirties and progressed fast. When she came to Better Care she was worn out and bitter. Angry, too, but that’s natural. And she lied a lot.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, for one thing, she said her husband was a big-deal musician before he died, but I knew about Leo Ackerman on account of my brother working the Strip. Leo was a fourth-rate guitar player who got canned by every crummy room in town and finally OD’d on bad smack. Jude also said she’d published her poems in fancy magazines and had a book of them coming out, but Chrys told me her only poems were in the binder she kept in her nightstand. Sometimes I’d see Jude reading them, but she wouldn’t show them to anybody. There were other lies, lots of them, all told to impress people, but we saw right through them.”

  “Okay, what about Chrystal? What kind of relationship did she have with her mother?”

  “Love-hate, like it is with mothers and daughters sometimes. They argued a lot. Jude didn’t like Chrys’s line of work, and Chrys would tell her to quit ragging on her because it was her earnings supplementing Jude’s Medicare. Jude would lay into her for being an ungrateful kid and complain that she always cared more for Leo—he was only a stepfather—than for her. Jude… Well, the complaints were endless.”

  “She must’ve been difficult to deal with.”

  Sandy Viera smiled wearily. “My job, everything’s difficult to deal with. Anyway, don’t get me wrong. Jude and Chrys didn’t argue all the time. Sometimes they’d be kinda nice to each other. Chrys’d get out this pretty silk scarf she bought her mother—must of cost a couple hundred bucks—and tie it around her neck. And then she’d brush her hair. Jude had long red hair, and even though it’d turned brittle and thin and washed out, she wouldn’t let us cut it. Chrys gave her one of her drawings, too—hung it on the wall by her bed. Jude loved it, was always staring at it, and Chrys kept asking her why. She said it wasn’t her best, so why did her mom want it?”

  “Why did she?”

  Sandy Viera shrugged. “She never would say. Just smiled kinda sad-like and said Chrys had great talent if only she’d develop it.”

  “When was the last time Chrystal visited her mother?”

  The nurse considered. “I’d say last Monday. The Saturday before Jude had a bad seizure. Came out of it really weakened and asked for Chrys. That night they talked for a long time with the curtain pulled around the bed. When Chrys left she was kinda dazed, like Jude’d given her some bad news. But when she came back that last time, she was different. Kinda hyped, if you know what I mean. She shut the curtains again and stayed till the end of visiting hours. Walked out of there without saying a word to any of us. Never visited her mother again.”

  “The Bartlow kid was lying about at least two things,” Guy said.

  He and Rhoda were seated at a window table in a bar atop the Hotel Franconia, a small, elegant establishment a few blocks off the Strip, where he’d stayed on previous visits to the city. On the way back from Sean Bartlow’s expensive apartment on the northwest side—not all that far from Better Care, but light-years in terms of luxury—he’d attempted to amuse her by driving her past some of the more outrageous casinos. Dusk was falling, and the neon glitter was coming into its own: The Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas seemed nearly the genuine article; the Statue of Liberty at New York–New York—which, as a native of that city, he found hilarious—stood in gauche relief against the signature skyscrapers and red, looping roller coaster. But the spectacle had had an adverse effect on Rhoda’s mood, and finally he’d brought her to this oasis of civility.

  The dazzle of the Strip was still with them, however, and all around the city the desert lay dark and implacable. A silent warning that this land had once been barren and could be rendered so again. Surely would be, Guy thought, if it continued to grow at the current rate of nearly four thousand people per month. Water supplies were not limitless, air quality could not last. Another L.A. in the making? Or would it simply implode someday in one frightening flare of light that left the survivors scrambling back to wherever they’d come from?

  Rhoda hadn’t responded to his statement about Bartlow. She slumped in her chair, staring out the window. There were weary lines at the corners of her mouth and her lips drooped. When the waiter set their drinks on the table, she straightened and sighed.

  “Guess I’m just a country girl at heart,” she said.

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Isn’t there? All this”—she motioned at the window—“makes me feel insignificant. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. Yet somehow I feel I should.”

  No way to talk her out of her depression, so he wouldn’t try. Instead he repeated his comment about Bartlow, adding, “His first lie was about not knowing what business Chrystal had in Soledad County. She told him at least part of it, and he was interested enough to loan her his car in exchange for being cut in on the deal, but apprehensive enough to switch the plates and remove the registration papers.”

  “He said he didn’t know where the plates came from.”

  “His second lie. Bartlow probably has a collection of plates, because he’s dealing drugs in an amateurish fashion.”

  “How do you conclude that?”

  “He claims his father keeps him on a tight financial leash, but that apartment and its furnishings are expensive, as are calls to Dial-a-Pal and services such as Chrystal provided him. He answered the phone five times in the forty minutes we were there, rather than let the machine pick up. Each conversation had a surreptitious tone, ending with a promise to let the caller know later where he’d meet him. And after each call he acted nervous.”

  “Okay on the dealing, but where do you get the amateurish fashion?”

  “Because, until he loaned it to Chrystal, he made his deliveries in a classic car, thinking that switching its plates would conceal his identity in case someone was running a surveillance. Mr. Bartlow’s not too bright, and I hope he doesn’t tangle with the real pros, or someday he’ll be nothing but picked bones in the desert.”

  Rhoda shook her head. “You got all that from sitting in on my interview with him? I ought to study your methods. I learned nothing useful.”

  Guy started to preen, but anticipated Diana’s reproving voice. “Well, I’ve had a lot of practice,” he said, and thought he heard the faint words False modesty. “So what do you make of Jude Ackerman’s photo album?”

  Rhoda picked it up and paged through it, then handed it to him. “Those first pictures of the three of them were taken at the cabin on the ridge. The rest are with the families in the canyon. Given the number of photos, I’d say they were close friends. I recognize everybody in them except for this man.” Her finger tapped a tall, lanky man who posed with Devon Wynne, his arm around her shoulders.

  “Devon’s boyfriend.” He explained what Gregory Cordova had told him about the man who had left the canyon two weeks before the killings.

  “Odd,” she said. “We had no idea he’d ever been there. And another thing that’s odd is that all the pictures in this album were taken during the time the Ackermans spent in Soledad County. Didn’t Jude have other photographs?”

  “Maybe that time was special to her, and that’s why she brought this particular album to the nursing home.”

  “Maybe.” Rhoda picked up the loose-leaf binder and paged through it. “Each of these poems is dated. The first was written in December the year before the murders, the last in January three years after.”

  Guy checked his watch. “We’d better get over to the airport. We’ll read the collected works of Jude Ackerman on the pla
ne.”

  “Interesting.”

  Rho looked up from the sheaf of scribbled pages. “What?”

  “There’re plenty more blank pages in this binder. Did she just quit writing?”

  “Probably. And from what I’ve read so far, it’s a good thing. She had no sense of what a poem really is.”

  “I didn’t know you were a literary critic.”

  “And I suppose you are?”

  “No. I don’t know the slightest thing about poetry. But I do know emotion when I see it. If it’s part of the poetic process, Jude should at least get an A for attempt.”

  She looked down at the page she’d been reading, ashamed of her hasty judgment. She’d allowed the barely readable scrawl and awkward phrasing to obscure what he’d seen.

  Guy added, “It’s the emotion that makes me wonder why she stopped writing. People who’re passionate about a pursuit don’t usually abandon it, even if they’re not very good.”

  “Unless something happened to take away the passion. Like Virge Scurlock when she gave up on all her interests.”

  “Could have.” He looked down at the portion of the pages she’d given him. “Since each poem’s dated, I think we can construct a psychological history of Jude during the time she was writing. Perhaps a factual history as well. That might tell us why her daughter went to the canyon a few days after they had two long private chats.”

  Rho nodded. She’d been wise to bring Guy along, wise to involve him in the investigation. Since he was relatively new to the subject of the murders, his viewpoint was fresher and he discerned things that she had allowed the passage of time to obscure.

  “Listen to this poem,” she said. “It’s dated five months before the murders. ‘I walk beside the pond where the deer lay still… Going to the place that is my spiritual home… Going to the people who are my spiritual family… Who love my child as much as their own.’”

  Guy shuffled pages. “It’s similar to the very last poem. ‘I walk through the canyon under the pines… The sea breeze stirs their boughs… There are no screams or shots, not now… I nod to the ghosts of well remembered family as they pass, at peace.’”

  “So maybe the reason she quit writing is that she came to terms with what happened. Maybe she was using the poetry to work out her feelings about the killings. Some of the ones she wrote shortly after the murders are quite violent.” She selected a page and handed it to him.

  He skimmed it, frowning. “Six months after. ‘Blood streams down the face of betrayal and blinds its lying eyes… The knife strips away the flesh to expose the false heart… Screams rise to the trees where the hawks live… The hawks who wait for fresh prey… The hawks will feast on the torn bodies of the people I love.’ I think she confused hawks with vultures. And what’s this about a knife? Nobody was knifed.”

  “Have you ever heard of poetic license?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of it! And some of them shouldn’t be licensed.”

  Rho smiled. Guy obviously disliked having his creative powers challenged, and her catching him being literal-minded had stung.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “make fun of me. I suppose now you’re going to tell me you studied poetry writing in college.”

  “English lit, with a dual major in early childhood education. And I did write poetry. Even won a couple of prizes. Sometimes when I get bored on patrol I make up poems in my head, but I forget them before I can write them down.”

  “What kind of poems?”

  Rho looked away, sorry she’d mentioned them.

  “Rhoda?”

  “… Actually, some of them were pretty violent. Others were sad. I guess I’ve been working something out, like Jude Ackerman.”

  “And have you? Worked it out?”

  “Close to.”

  “Then you ought to be able to reconstruct what was going on with Jude.” He exchanged the pages he held for hers. “Read on, and then let’s see what we can come up with.”

  Guy tried to concentrate on the scrawled poetry, but he found himself repeatedly stealing glances at Rhoda. She read with intensity, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Occasionally she’d make a note on a folded piece of paper.

  The day before, she’d taken him to the canyon out of what he sensed was a need to make him understand the murders and what she’d been through. He didn’t flatter himself that her doing so or asking him along on this trip was for personal reasons; she’d been attempting to influence his treatment of the crime in his book, and today he was here to act as a sensor when her powers of observation failed. But moments ago she’d opened up to him and for the first time allowed him into her emotional space. He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that.

  Since Diana died there had been women—not many and all on a short-term basis—but none had touched him where he lived. Rhoda Swift was different, however. From the night he’d met her he’d sensed pain, and now he knew it was as great in its way as any he’d experienced. They’d both seen their lives changed by violence, and such commonality often drew unlikely people together. But Guy had learned not to trust the viability of such entanglements, and now he warned himself against becoming closer to this woman. She was as different from him as possible.

  East Coast, West Coast. Big city, small town.

  Both truth-seekers by profession, though.

  No. He: interpreter of hard facts. She: poet, even though she only wrote in her mind.

  He: sophisticate, world traveler. She: impressionable, had seldom left her native state.

  A loner, not family oriented. A woman with strong community ties and a love of children.

  A man who shunned pets. A dog lover.

  No way. Absolutely not.

  He turned his attention back to Jude Ackerman’s poetry. Its initial charm now eluded him. Rhoda’s criticism was right on the nose, he decided. Jude hadn’t known a poem from a posthole digger.

  “So what do you think?” Rhoda asked.

  “I think I can’t take much more of this stuff.”

  “Well, I’ve read it all, and here’s my conclusion: In the beginning Jude was in love with the canyon. She’d found a beautiful place and people who accepted and cared for her and her family. I don’t think many people had cared for Jude till then. But three-quarters through the year something changed. The poems start to talk about betrayal and lies. After the murders they grow violent, then depressed. It took almost three years for those feelings to turn into peace and acceptance.”

  He nodded. “There’s one upbeat note throughout the time the Ackermans spent in the canyon, though. She apparently formed a close friendship with Susan Wynne.” He shuffled through the pages he’d read and selected one. “‘My friend Susan offers coffee and her most precious secret… She shares, but I’ve got nothing to give in return… She says it doesn’t matter, friendship is everything… She wants me to know where her treasure is in case I need it.’”

  Rhoda snatched the page from his hand and examined it, her lips moving, face suddenly animated.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The reason Chrystal went to the canyon. It’s right here, and I nearly missed it.”

  Guy’s expression was almost comical, Rho thought. She could practically see his overlarge ego deflating like a pinpricked balloon. “You couldn’t have known this,” she reassured him. “I’m basing it on something we never revealed to the public.”

  “And that is?”

  “Five weeks before the murders Susan Wynne made a substantial cash withdrawal from her trust fund—a quarter of a million dollars. The trust officer at the bank in San Francisco thought it was unusual at first, until Susan explained that they were planning to make some major improvements on the property, and that most people up there like to deal in cash if at all possible.”

  “Hide their income from the IRS, you mean.”

  Rho shrugged. “Most of them are barely getting by as is, without turning a chunk of it over to a government that does very little to provide r
elief to poor people. Anyway, no improvements were ever made in Cascada Canyon, and the money was never recovered. We were afraid that if the information was made public we’d have an invasion of treasure-hunters on the property.”

  “So the money might’ve been hidden there in a place that Susan told Jude about.”

  “Right.”

  “Then why didn’t Jude claim it long ago? And why wait till she was dying to tell her daughter?”

  “Well, at first she and Leo were scared—terrified, actually. They ran the night of the murders and probably kept running for a long time. If they ever did try to go back for the money, they’d’ve found the place guarded. But I’ll bet they never went near the canyon again. That kind of latter-day hippie doesn’t really care about money, not if putting their hands on it involves a serious risk.”

  Guy frowned. “Then why did Jude start caring after all these years?”

  “She wanted it for Chrystal? Or maybe she wanted out of the home.”

  “Anyone would. But still, how did she know the situation with the guards had changed?”

  Rho couldn’t help allowing herself the luxury of a triumphant smile. “There was a reporter in town some months back. From one of those sleazy true-crime magazines. The angle of his story was that it would soon be thirteen years—bad luck, you know—since the killings. He was very interested that the property was unguarded but still nobody ever went there. That magazine we saw in the drawer of Jude’s nightstand was the publication he was writing for, and I’ll bet it’s the issue with his article.”

  One look at Guy’s face told her she’d finally succeeded in impressing him. She tilted her seat back, stretched out her legs, and basked in the glow.

  Chrystal: Before

  Friday, October 6

  12:29 P.M.

  Jesus, that creeps me! This place was stuck in the back of my mind even though I didn’t remember it. Didn’t remember, and all the time I’m drawing it in charcoal.