by Joanne Pence
He showed her to the door.
o0o
“If” ghosts were real, Angie told herself, and if someone were murdered and the police gave up looking for his or her killer, that dead person could be plenty angry, perhaps angry enough to stick around this mortal coil in a non-corporeal form.
But ghosts weren’t real.
The only real people in this scenario were the two who were dead, and whoever killed them.
Suddenly Angie realized what had been troubling her. It had nothing to do with ghosts at all, but with her far too active imagination. People told her she fantasized too much.
Now, she made up wild stories and came up with ludicrous ideas because she didn’t have all the facts. All she had to do was fill-in the details—which surely were far more mundane than knickknacks flying through the perfumed air, or sad ghosts trapped in a house seeking vengeance or justice. Once she did that, her worries about spirits would vanish into thin air.
Angie headed over to the San Francisco Chronicle’s “morgue” of old newspapers and did a search on Eric and Natalie Fleming’s deaths. The Chronicle loved to fill news stories with personal details. Also, if there had been anything odd about the deaths the Chronicle would have covered them in gory detail.
She was right.
For the first time, she saw what Eric and Natalie Fleming looked like.
Eric was a very late 1970’s to early 1980’s looking guy with curly brown hair that hung below his ears and a broad mustache. He was also handsome enough to have been a rock star. His cheekbones were pronounced, his nose high and straight, his mouth pleasant, but his eyes most captivated her. They were remarkable, with beautifully shaped eyebrows over heavy-lidded hazel eyes. Bedroomy. Being haunted by this guy didn’t seem like such a horrible proposition.
Natalie was surprisingly thin and lacking in curves. Her pale blond hair looked silky as it flowed in soft waves to her shoulders. In sharp contrast to Eric’s casual jeans-clad appearance, in the newspaper photo she wore an expensive looking dress with simple yet tasteful gold and diamond jewelry.
The type of woman Joy perfume would appeal to.
Angie pushed thoughts about perfume from her mind and returned to the news articles.
Eric came from a middle class family, studied computer programing at UC Berkeley, and became one of many new “Silicon Valley millionaires” of that era.
The Chronicle had called Natalie an “heiress.” She had been born Natalie Parker, and raised in Connecticut. Her parents had been killed when their yacht capsized in a storm off the Bahamas. Natalie, their only child, inherited their money. Family arguments over the money caused Natalie to turn her back on the remaining Parker clan and move to the West Coast.
Their bodies had been found when a neighbor’s beagle ran off and refused to come back. The neighbor had no choice but to cross the Flemings’ unfenced back yard to get to the dog. They might have lain there even longer had he not found them since neither Eric nor Natalie worked or had appointments that would have caused someone to look for them. Angie suspected that in those pre-cell phone, pre-text message days, unanswered calls weren’t cause for immediate concern.
When the owner of the home that the Flemings rented unlocked it for the police, they found two half-empty martini glasses on the bar between the kitchen and dining area. Also, two uncooked pork chops were rotting on the countertop next to a frying pan and bottle of canola oil, and lettuce, carrots, and onion lay on the countertop beside a salad bowl. Easy listening music played on KSFO, the “The Sound of the City” station.
Everything suggested that the Flemings had been interrupted while having before-dinner drinks. It didn’t look at all like the kitchen of a couple fighting so bitterly that they would soon both be dead.
The biggest mystery, the thing that most caused the police to question the murder-suicide scenario, was that the couple’s car was missing.
Eric Fleming drove a Mercedes 350-SL, a two-seater. Angie had learned from Paavo that the car turned up a year later in Sonoma County. She searched the newspapers to learn more about its discovery, but apparently the news editors had lost interest in the case by then. No one bothered to report that the car had been found.
In fact, only one follow-up story had been written about the deaths. It was about Natalie’s small dog and how it spent every day out on the cliff as if waiting for Natalie to return. People tried to take it home and make it their own, but the dog would always find a way to escape and go back to the cliff. The paper told a brief but heartwarming story of how the neighbors worked together to assure it had food, water, and shelter from the rain.
Angie made photocopies of the most fact-filled newspaper stories.
She then went to the county assessor’s office to find the history of ownership of the house on Clover Lane. A couple named Donald and Mary Steed built in the 1950’s. Their son, Edward, inherited it in 1970, upon his widowed mother’s death. He died in 1978, and ownership transferred to his wife, Carol. Angie could find no change in ownership after that.
Angie had found out quite a bit about Eric and Natalie’s life and death, but she still had no idea why they died, or who could possibly have been responsible.
o0o
Paavo and Yosh returned to Wyndom’s apartment to go through her personal and financial papers to see if any red flags jumped out at him. Her death and Bedford’s had to be connected, but how? Normally, the first person they suspected was the wronged wife, but Larina Bedford seemed to care so little about Taylor they couldn’t imagine her having enough feeling about him to kill him. She seemed more the type to file for divorce and enjoy taking him for every penny he had.
Scouring Gaia’s tax papers, Paavo discovered she owned property in a small town on the Pacific coast highway called Jenner, some thirty miles from Healdsburg. With that, things began to click.
While Yosh went off to Zygog to follow a thin lead on Taylor, Paavo drove back to the motel in Healdsburg. He showed the desk manager he’d spoken to earlier a photo of Gaia Wyndom.
“Yes,” the manager said. “That’s the woman. She would pick Mr. Bedford up. I’m sorry to hear he’s dead. His wife has a nice smile.”
Paavo drove out to Jenner to see Gaia’s house. He found it in a heavily forested spot among a row of similar cabins about a quarter mile from the beach.
The cabin was small but well maintained, brown in color, with white window frames and a red door.
No one answered his knock. Paavo went to a similar home next door where an elderly man stood outside raking leaves.
Ray Larson owned the cabin and lived there year round. Paavo asked him about the owners of the house next door.
“A single lady named Gaia Wyndom owns it,” Larson said. “Met her when I bought this place some eight years ago. Guess she inherited it from her parents quite a few years back. I had the impression it didn’t mean much to her. She rarely used to show up. Once a year at most. The last few months, though, her twin sister and her husband have been coming here just about every weekend.”
“Her twin sister?” Paavo had found no indication anywhere that Gaia had any living relative, let alone a twin.
“Marilee, her name is. Gave me a start when I saw her. Spitting image of Gaia. Husband’s name is Trevor. Nice couple. Good to see middle-aged folks in love that way.”
“So, had Gaia ever mentioned having a twin or any sibling before you met her?” Paavo asked.
“Not a word.” Larson seemed lost in thought a moment, then gave a little chuckle. “It was eerie, the more I think about it. Sometimes I called her Gaia by mistake, and she always answered. She said identical twins get used to that. But when you look close, you see a difference. Not physically, but in the eyes, the light from the eyes. Gaia is a serious, quiet woman with dull eyes. Marilee laughs and talks a lot. Her eyes are so bright if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was downright pretty.” His cheeks reddened at that. “Oh, sorry. I guess that isn’t nice to say, but any fellow knows those ga
ls weren’t ones to turn a man’s head, kinda plain and chubby, to my way of thinking. Still, at times, I felt sorry for Gaia. Marilee is the person she should have been.”
“Do you happen to know Marilee and Trevor’s last names?”
He thought a minute. “You know, I don’t think they ever said. We’re pretty much all on a first name basis out here, and they never got any mail or anything. The only mail that ever showed up was for Gaia, and Marilee said she’d give it to her.”
“So, Marilee and Trevor lived in San Francisco?”
“I suppose. Or the two gals saw each other a lot.”
“You said Marilee and Trevor showed up here every weekend?”
“They’d arrive Friday night, and leave Sunday. Not every week through. In fact, I figured out their pattern—guess I got too much time on my hands.” Larson’s eyes twinkled as he gave his information. “Three weekends here, one weekend not. Oh—and on the first and third weekend, they’d arrive separately, in separate cars on Friday. On the middle weekend, they’d arrive together.”
Paavo nodded. That middle weekend was when Gaia picked Taylor up in Healdsburg. “When did you last see them?”
“That’s easy, weekend before this past one. In fact, come to think of it, something odd happened. They left on Saturday, not Sunday like usual.”
Paavo opened the folder he carried and took out a photo of Taylor Bedford. “Is this Trevor?”
The neighbor needed no time to respond. “Yes! That’s him. Why do you have his picture? Can you tell me what this is about?”
Paavo hesitated only a moment. “I’m investigating his murder. His, and Gaia Wyndom’s.” Just to be sure, he showed Larson Gaia’s photo. “That’s her, right?”
“Yes, of course.” Larson’s bushy eyebrows rose as he looked up at Paavo. “But what about Marilee? My god, is she all right?”
“We’ll check into it,” Paavo said. “One question—did you ever see Gaia and Marilee together?”
“Well…no, but I’m sure there are two of them, if that’s what you’re thinking. No one could be that good an actress.”
“Thank you.” Paavo handed Larson his card. “If anyone at all shows up here please call me immediately any time of the day or night.”
“I’m sorry to hear they’re dead,” Larson said as he took the card. “Doesn’t make much sense that it would be Gaia who was killed with Trevor and not Marilee.”
“That’s true,” Paavo agreed. “It’s all quite strange, in fact.”
Ray Larson nodded, and then faced the trees, his eyes growing misty. “Gaia was a nice person.”
“So everyone says.”
Chapter 14
PAAVO IMMEDIATELY CONTACTED Yosh with the news that Gaia either had a twin sister, or used the name Marilee to hide her relationship with Taylor Bedford. Yosh included questions about Gaia possibly having a sister to his list as he spoke with co-workers of both Taylor and Gaia.
Paavo headed back to homicide where he searched under the name “Marilee Wyndom.” No one by that name appeared in any database. He tried various spellings such as “Mary Lee,” “Merilee,” even “Merry Lee” but nothing worked.
He then returned to Gaia’s home and canvassed her neighbors to ask if any of them ever saw or heard of a sister. He basically wanted to assure himself that no sister, identical or otherwise, existed. He suspected Gaia had made up the name, just as Taylor called himself Trevor. It made sense that the two used false names to cover up their affair. Between Taylor’s marriage and possible workplace non-fraternization issues, they decided to keep the relationship a secret.
To his surprise, a neighbor said she once saw the two women together, well over a year ago, and they looked almost identical except for hairstyle and that one seemed prettier than the other, perhaps because she wore some make-up and styled her hair better. Paavo tried to shake her belief in what she might have seen, but could not. The neighbor was in her thirties, a stay-at-home mother, and her vision seemed to be a solid twenty-twenty. Paavo could find, however, no one to corroborate her sighting.
So, the question was, should he believe Ray Larson and that one neighbor…or not?
o0o
Angie got a call from her sister Maria who wanted to know why Angie had asked their mother about ghosts and spirits. Angie listened to her with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Maria had also talked to Caterina and learned Angie was house-hunting, which was something else she wanted to hear about.
Maria then invited her to lunch at the Rose Tattoo restaurant on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach district.
Angie almost said “no,” but that made her feel guilty, so she agreed.
Maria was the sister she got along with the least. Well, no, that wasn’t exactly true. She probably got along least well with Frannie who was just a little older than her. They used to fight all the time growing up, and continued to fight into adulthood. But then she also didn’t get along all that well with Caterina until she went to Italy with her and the two of them had several heart-to-hearts. Come to think of it, the only one she never fought with was Bianca, the oldest of the lot, and the most motherly. Despite all that, she loved her sisters dearly, and was always ready to defend them if needed.
She changed into an Emilio Pucci silk dress, and drove to the restaurant.
She knew why Maria was interested. Maria thought of herself as having “a spiritual nature.” Angie thought of her as downright spooky. When Maria was a teenager, everyone in the family assumed she would become a nun. But then she met a jazz trumpet player, Dominic Klee, and married him after a whirlwind courtship. A stranger couple, Angie had never come across...unless she considered Frannie and Seth who should have gotten divorced ten times over by now. Caterina and Bianca’s marriages were fine—but those sisters were both older and set in their ways. Angie couldn’t imagine either of them even looking at another man. They were both nauseatingly comfortable with their spouses—sort of like not throwing away favorite slippers just because you found a new pair on sale.
In her opinion, she and Paavo were the perfect couple.
Angie gave a sad sigh for her sisters that none of them had managed to find anyone half as simultaneously cool and hot as Paavo. It seemed to take forever for her to convince him that they could be a couple, let alone get married, and yet he still made her toes tingle, her pulse quicken and her heart thrum. They came from very different backgrounds; she had a large and loving family, and he had no one but an elderly Finnish gentleman who raised him. The love he received from Aulis Kokkonen never took away the loneliness or sense of abandonment he had experienced as a child. Angie vowed he would never feel lonely or abandoned again—not as long as she had a breath left in her.
Maria stood on the sidewalk waiting for her. She was the ‘exotic’ Amalfi sister, with long, straight black hair, olive skin, and dark brown eyes. She liked to dress in deeply colored, gauzy clothes, and enjoyed turquoise and silver jewelry. Paavo once said—to Angie’s irritation—that Maria was exceptionally beautiful. Men’s taste could be quite mysterious.
After the two finished with small talk and gave their orders to the waitress, Maria took a sip of her cabernet sauvignon and then turned her nearly black eyes on Angie. “Okay, little sister, I know you didn’t talk to Mamma about ghosts because you’ve developed an interest in the afterlife. What crazy thing is going on with you this time?”
Angie bit her tongue to avoid giving the answer the tone of that question deserved. Angie sipped some merlot because biting her tongue hadn’t helped. Finally, she said, “I found a house that Paavo and I both love and can afford, but it sometimes has a strange ambiance to it. And I just found out it hasn’t been lived in for thirty years.”
Maria gawked at her. “Thirty years? You’re joking! I wouldn’t want to buy a house that no one has lived in that long. It could be infested with rats and heaven only knows what else. Where is this dump?”
“The Sea Cliff.”
“No way!
It must be falling apart because of an earthquake or something.”
“Not according to Cat. The former owner maintained it well, and now her daughter wants her to sell it.”
Maria gave a toss of the head. “There’s your first problem: believing anything Cat says where money is involved.” Maria then contorted her face into one of those piously angelic expressions that made Angie want to hit her with a cream pie as she added, “She knows nothing about what is truly valuable in the world.”
“That’s Cat for you,” Angie said.
“Did she show you any other houses?”
“About a hundred.” Angie stopped talking as the waitress brought them orders of spinach, mushroom, ricotta cheese frittata, and a chicken Caesar salad, which they proceeded to split between them.
After a few bites of the frittata, Angie continued, “Aside from all that, whenever anyone tries to buy the house I like, they back out of the deal for one reason or another.”
Maria’s brows rose at this. “Cut to the chase, Angie. What’s going on?”
“The last people who lived there—tenants not owners—were murdered.” At Maria’s horrified expression, she quickly added, “Not in the house, but near it. It looked like the husband shot his wife and then himself. The police questioned that conclusion, but could find no evidence that both had been murdered. Questions remained, including their car being stolen and not found for a year miles from San Francisco. The case remains unresolved to this day.”
Angie then told Maria all she had learned about the deceased occupants. At the end of her tale, Maria sat silently for a moment, then exclaimed, “You’ve got to show me this house right now!”
o0o
Angie insisted that Maria not tell Cat about Angie’s key to the house. Maria agreed; she would have agreed to just about anything to get inside it.
Even as she opened the door, Angie thought this was not a good idea.
Maria remained on the front porch and made the sign of the cross before stepping across the threshold into the house.
“Ooooh,” she said, as she slowly moved to the center of the living room, her arms wide and her hands raised as if she were holding a beach ball on her head. “It feels cold in here. Very, very cold.”