“She was worried that her husband, whom the killer said had hired him, had taken K.C. out and might not have brought him home. She only wanted to go home. So I took her home, and shortly after we arrived the killer telephoned, wanting to know who the man was who had brought her home.” He bowed his head slightly, in acknowledgment. “And he told her again that if she notified the police, she and her children would never be safe. Never.” He looked at Hope. “Not for the rest of their lives.”
Hope stood up quickly and sat back down. “And if the police were notified, she must not identify him or she would be killed.”
“Is there really such an organization of professional killers?” Honey asked. “Is it the Mafia?”
“Don’t interrupt him,” Hope said. “Just listen. Let him talk.”
Taylor looked very serious. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together.
“In Los Angeles it isn’t called the Mafia; it’s called the organization. But I assure you they are very, very real. I know it is difficult for you to understand because they have never touched your lives or your way of life, but there are organizations, there are professional killers. They kill because it is a business with them. They are just doing a job, like any other job, that they are paid to do.”
Honey stared at him.
“How do I know you aren’t one of them?”
“You don’t,” Taylor said calmly. “But if I were, would I have brought your daughter home and guarded her day and night? Would I have sat up by the window all night with a gun so she and her children could sleep?
“In fact,” he went on rather grumpily, “I am very tired because I have gone without sleep so I could sit by her living room window with my rifle. That sliding glass door in Hope’s living room has been deliberately jammed so it can’t be locked. They probably did that when they got the floor plan of the house.”
“I looked through Taylor’s rifle,” Hope chimed in. “You wouldn’t believe how far away you can see with that telescope on it.”
“She has been in terrible danger,” Taylor continued. “You are all in terrible danger. I am sure there is someone on the roof of the house across the street right now with a telescopic rifle aimed right at your front door.”
“But aren’t your people out there?” Honey wondered.
“Not anymore. I waved them off when I arrived here. But there may even be a bomb under your house right now, a bomb set to go off if you call the police. Haven’t you noticed some suspicious-looking people around here lately?”
Honey had. She told Taylor that when she followed Hope to the Beverly Hills Hotel, she had noticed two men in overalls standing by a truck in front of the house across the street. They were still there when she and Hope returned. A black woman had been sitting on the doorstep of the house next door to Honey’s. And she remembered the incident the day before, on Monday, when a man she’d never seen before had walked right across her patio, right up to the sliding glass door into the living room. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he had peered into the room. When he saw Honey, he turned, walked across the patio onto the lawn and over to the garage; he went in, came out with a hoe, and began to work. Honey had assumed he was a new man hired by their regular gardener.
Taylor nodded knowingly. “With all the glass windows and doors you have around here, there isn’t a room in the house where you couldn’t be shot by someone with a telescopic rifle.
“This killer has been very clever. He has always arranged to have one child away from Hope at all times. That way Hope could never contact the police, because one child was always in danger. But I have never left her unprotected. Any time I have had to leave her, I have had my people protecting her. One of my people was up there posing as a gardener.”
“But when can we call the police?” Honey asked.
“Not until the contract has been canceled. I have talked with my people in Chicago, and from all they can ascertain, the contract is still out on Hope and her children and”—he paused again—“probably on you and your husband too, now that Hope has come here.”
“You keep bringing up your people,” Honey said. “Who are your people? Are you CIA or FBI or what?”
Taylor laughed. “I think the less you know about me and my people, the better,” he said gently.
Two or three times during the afternoon, Honey went to the phone and picked it up to call her husband, in spite of Taylor’s warning. But each time, Hope stopped her. “Mother, Mother, please listen to Taylor and do what he says.” She stressed the word Mother, though Hope had not called Honey “Mother” for twenty-five years. So each time, feeling she was being warned of something even more sinister than the situation they were now in, Honey replaced the phone.
Taylor was explaining, too, why she mustn’t call. “You know, they have people in the police department, too. How do you know one of them won’t take your call? They have people all over. All over! Lawyers. Doctors. Police. Even in high places in government.”
Honey was trying to straighten things out in her mind. “When you got back to Los Angeles and got the children, why didn’t you drive to the police station then?”
“Because I am not an American national.”
Honey said she did not understand.
“I am not an American citizen,” he said patiently, “and this kind of thing could cause me all kinds of trouble with my passport.”
Honey was annoyed. “I can’t understand, under these circumstances, what possible difference that would make.”
Taylor still spoke patiently. “I have moved a dead body and removed a material witness from the scene of a crime and disturbed the evidence of a crime. I could be in all kinds of trouble.”
“Surely you could explain why you did all that,” Honey said crossly. “You should have taken her right to the police. I can understand why Hopie wanted to get home to make sure her children were safe, and obviously she was too hysterical to use good judgment, but you seem like a mature, intelligent person, and you should have known to go straight to the police.”
“It was too dangerous,” Taylor repeated. “And I could have been in all kinds of trouble. What I need to do is see a lawyer, give a deposition, and take the next plane out of the country. In fact”—he stood up—“I think I will leave now.”
“Oh, Taylor,” Honey pleaded, no longer cross, “you rescued Hopie from the ranch. You saved her. The killer might have come back if you hadn’t taken her away. And you have protected her ever since. Surely you aren’t going to leave now, when you are her only witness? The police will need every detail of what you have done so they can find and identify the killer. Please, please stay.”
Taylor looked at Hope and smiled.
“I’ll stay.” He sat down and lighted his pipe.
“Let’s change the subject,” he said smoothly. “Did you know that your daughter picks up filthy little babies and wipes their runny noses?”
He didn’t explain, and Honey didn’t ask him to explain.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Honey replied. “She is the little mother of the world. Every person with a problem seems to come to her for help. Our dentist thinks it’s extraordinary that she keeps bringing her Mexican maids to him to have their teeth fixed but she never comes to have him take care of hers. She has always helped people, and Bill Ashlock helped her. Bill was wonderfully helpful, and he enjoyed the children so.”
Taylor abruptly set his pipe down on the table and stood up. Hope remembered he did not like to talk about Bill. “Would you believe Taylor is fifty-one years old?” she asked, her voice shrill.
“My goodness, fifty-one,” Honey marveled. “Well, you certainly don’t look it.”
“And I have grandchildren,” Taylor said. He no longer seemed upset; he sat down and picked up his pipe.
“I wonder what the killer’s next move will be,” he mused. “I wonder if he will ask for money. Perhaps that is why he let Hope come here, because he knows that you are the source of her money. Oh, he knows
that; he knows all about you. He knows that your husband has had two heart attacks, and he has even been down to your husband’s new office in the Arco Towers.”
“My husband has often told me he would never pay a penny on a kidnap threat,” Honey said, “and I’m sure he would feel the same way about this.”
“Who would benefit if you were all killed except K.C?” Taylor asked.
“If we were all killed, then all of my separate property would go to K.C. and then, of course, Tom Masters would have control of it.”
Taylor looked thoughtful.
“Is it possible,” Honey asked, “for someone to take out a policy on Hopie’s life without her knowing it?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Taylor said, “but the premiums would be very high.”
He puffed meditatively on his pipe, and Honey brought up some things she’d been thinking about.
“How was Bill shot?”
“He was shot through the back of the head,” Taylor said. “He probably never even knew what was happening.”
“I wonder why Hopie didn’t hear the shot,” Honey said.
“Oh, he probably used a silencer.” Taylor demonstrated with his hands how Bill must have been shot. “Like in The Day of the Jackal. Have you read it?” Honey was so startled she did not reply. She had just read the book on vacation, and its deadly details were vivid in her mind. The Jackal. A man who slipped in and out of other people’s identities and other people’s lives. A cultivated man who dressed in custom clothes and burnished leather shoes, a man who relished fine food and who was at ease in fine hotels. A man adept at disguise: sometimes he put a Band-Aid on his cheek. Sometimes he wore dark wraparound glasses.
Once, when the phone rang, it was the ranch foreman, Jim Webb. He told Honey that Hope’s car was still at the ranch but he hadn’t seen her around and he wondered if anything was wrong.
Honey covered the phone with her hand and told Taylor it was Jim Webb. “Can I tell him?” she asked.
“No,” Taylor said.
“Hope is here with me, Jim,” Honey said. “But there has been a terrible tragedy at the ranch. I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Please don’t go into the house.”
Honey hung up and turned to Taylor. “Terry Webb goes into the ranch house on Mondays to clean up after the weekend, and change the linens. She probably hasn’t gone in because Hopie’s car is still there. Isn’t it too bad she didn’t go in as usual, because then she would have called the police and they would have gone right to Hopie’s house, looking for her.”
“You are all just very lucky that they didn’t go to Hope’s house,” Taylor said in a severe tone. “I told you that if the police had gone up there, everyone would have been killed.”
“But if our phone is tapped and if they heard that conversation,” Honey said anxiously, “then they must know that the word will soon be out. Can’t I call the police now?”
“No, no,” Taylor repeated. “You have to wait until Hope gets word that it is all right to call the police.” He paused, then nodded slightly. “You’re right, though. He certainly knows that time is running out.”
Van came home a little before seven o’clock. “Darling, we have something very upsetting to tell you,” Honey said, “but you should sit down and have a drink first and be prepared for terrible news. And perhaps you should get your pills, in case you need them.”
She introduced Van to Taylor. “Would you like a drink?” Van asked the visitor. Taylor asked for sherry.
Van went to the alcove bar, which was fitted with a refrigerator, a sink, and folding doors. He brought drinks around to the sofa and the four of them sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping. Taylor was puffing calmly on his pipe.
Hope could hardly sit still. Her hands were clammy and she felt lightheaded. After Kazue had gone to her Berlitz class at six o’clock, Hope had put the children to bed, all three of them in the one big bed in the second bedroom, the room that had been Hope’s when she was a teen-ager. Hope knew the room well; she kept thinking of the long window across one entire wall of the room, overlooking the back garden. The draperies were closed, but Hope remembered what Taylor had said about the people who were outside, and how nobody was safe in a house with so much glass. She felt sick to her stomach, and so agitated that she suddenly burst into her story, trying to tell Van. Honey began to talk, too, with Hope interrupting her. When Taylor cut in, both women stopped talking.
Van listened as Taylor told the story, the same story that he and Hope had, separately, told Honey—that Bill was murdered, that an intruder at the ranch had hurt Hope and tied her up and warned her about a contract on her life, that she and everyone in her family were in danger. Taylor described his rescue of Hope and his efforts at guarding her, back at her house. He added some details that Honey hadn’t heard, about threatening phone calls that had come on Hope’s phone during the two days he’d spent there. “Isn’t that right, Hope?” he asked, watching her closely.
“Uh-huh,” Hope said, afraid that if she didn’t agree about the threatening calls, he would pull out his gun and simply shoot them all. Honey had not seen Taylor’s gun, but periodically, during the afternoon, Hope had seen him flick open his jacket several times, just long enough for her to see a part of the gun tucked into his waistband, and she felt he was warning her.
Van set his drink on the coffee table and stood up. “I’m going to call the police,” he said decisively.
“You can’t call the police,” Taylor explained. “Your phone is tapped, and if the police are called, everyone in this house will be killed.”
“I don’t care,” Van said. “I’m sixty-three years old and I’ve never broken the law in my life. I’m calling the police.”
He walked toward the telephone on the game table across the living room. Hope screamed and ran to the phone, just ahead of him. She turned and faced Van, standing between him and the phone.
“What about my children?” Hope cried. “You’re not just risking your own life. You’re condemning my children, and they haven’t even had a chance to live!”
Van stared at Hope. He looked back at Taylor, then he began to pace up and down the room.
“My foreman and his wife are in danger up there,” Van said.
“What about the safety of your own family right here?” Taylor demanded. “Your foreman isn’t in any danger from a dead body.”
The antagonism between the men mounted as Van paced. Taylor talked again of a possible bomb beneath the house, set to go off if the police were called, and about a possible sniper in a tree. Van kept shaking his head, insisting that the police had to be notified at once. Hope seemed near collapse.
Taylor spoke calmly. “Do you know a lawyer, or do you have a friend in the D.A.’s office, whom you could call and ask to come here?” he asked Van.
Van whirled and glared at Taylor. “That’s a hell of a thing to do to a friend,” he snapped. “Ask them to come here and maybe get shot on our doorstep.”
Then Taylor began to agree with Van about calling the authorities; he seemed to be trying to calm Van down. Eventually the debate simmered down to the question of whom to call.
“You can’t just call anyone at the police station,” Taylor said. “I suggest you call a criminal attorney first and get his advice.” Again Van refused, saying that anyone who came to the house might be in danger.
As the conversation went on, Hope could see that Van intended to call the local police at the Beverly Hills station, two blocks from the house. “Call the FBI or somebody important,” she begged Van. “If I’m going to talk to somebody, I want to talk to somebody with some experience and intelligence and the capability to deal with this whole awful situation. I don’t want to talk to some four hundred dollar-a-month desk clerk.”
She felt Van was ignoring her. “I’ll call the police here,” he repeated. “They’ll know what to do. I’ll go outside and call from somewhere else and ask them to send plainclothesmen in an unmarked car.”
Taylor stood up. “It’s better if I go out and call,” he said. “I’ve been seen coming and going from this house, so it won’t look strange if I leave.” He sketched his plan: he would go to the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, order a drink so as not to create suspicion, then after a few minutes he would get up casually and go to the men’s room, where he would call the police from the pay phone there.
“You’ll come back then, won’t you?” Honey asked in a pleading voice. Taylor said he would return. He stood up, gave a little wave toward Hope, then he was gone.
Van strode down the hall to the bedroom and came back with two guns, a rifle and an automatic revolver. He laid them carefully on the game table in the living room.
Hope stared at the guns. “I’ve never made a will,” she said shakily. “I want to write out a will.” She made a pleading gesture toward Van. “Will you show me how to do it?”
“Just write it on a piece of paper and sign it,” Van said, “and be sure to date it.”
Honey got a piece of Van’s business stationery from the telephone shelf in the kitchen and handed it to Hope.
She wrote:
2-27-73
In the event of my death, please allow my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Pierce, to have custody of my three children. Tom Masters has arranged to have us all killed and my first husband shows no interest and is not able to care for them properly. Please keep the children together, as they are a little family within themselves and need each other. Please let whoever has the children have whatever money or property that I own.
Hope Masters
Sgt. Billy Ray Smith at the Beverly Hills station took Taylor’s call at nine o’clock. It was a quiet night at the station, like any other quiet Tuesday night, when the few calls that came in seemed to involve dogs without leashes, maybe a burglar alarm going off in the neighborhood, probably by mistake. The caller told Sergeant Smith that he was calling from a phone booth on behalf of someone else, about a young woman who had been “involved in a killing” in northern California. Sergeant Smith didn’t notice anything special about the voice—no drawl, no foreign accent—only that he seemed excited. The caller said that this young woman had witnessed a killing, and that the person who was dead had been killed by a member of the Mafia. He gave Honey and Van’s address and asked that a plainclothes unit be sent there right away.
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