‘Place comes with the furniture,’ the landlord said.
‘Yours?’
He nodded.
The second bedroom was completely empty, too, except for the lingering smell of much bleach.
We walked to the front door. ‘How much?’ I asked, because I remembered it was what potential buyers asked.
‘I’ll cut you a huge deal.’ Faint sweat had broken out on his forehead.
‘Throw in the car?’ I asked, again like I was joking. The car nagged. It shouldn’t have been left behind.
His face remained tight. ‘Like I said, it’ll be gone.’
We drove away at the same time. When he turned left, I turned right and doubled back. I wondered if he’d remember he’d been too nervous to give me a sale price.
‘What do you know about the guy who lived here?’ I asked the man in the back yard next door.
‘You ain’t interested in buying anything, are you?’
I pulled a fifty out of my wallet and handed it across the chain-link fence. ‘Just information.’
He took the fifty but kept it visible in his hand like the deal was still pending. ‘About what?’
‘Anything you know about the guy who lived here, Gary Halvorson.’
‘That his name? I don’ even know that and I been here a year. He wasn’t sociable.’
‘The landlord says he’s gone.’
‘He’s always gone. Salesman, maybe.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘I never seen him, but the guy who owned my house before me seen him once or twice a long time ago. He has bright red hair. There is something strange, though …’ He let the thought dangle, like bait.
I produced another fifty but held onto it.
It prompted more words. ‘A couple of weeks ago, about three in the morning, I hear glass breaking outside. I put on pants, a shirt, go out front. Next door, the front door is wide open and two kids, teenagers, are running down the street. I called the cops.’
‘Sounds like they didn’t stay inside long.’
‘From the time I heard the glass until I was out the front, seeing them running away, was only a couple minutes.’
‘Why break in only to run out so quickly?’
‘Maybe nothing there. Maybe not.’ He paused to let his eyes caress the fifty in my right hand.
‘Halvorson never came around, afterward?’ I asked, not ready to pony up more.
‘Just the owner. Next night, he’s there with mops, buckets, you name it.’
‘That was two weeks ago?’ The house must have been shut up tight ever since for the bleach to still smell that strong.
‘Then there’s that other thing …’ He let his voice taper away so I could focus harder on him eyeing the fifty in my hand.
I held tight.
‘The owner, after the break-in … real strange, you know?’ he said, coaxing.
I didn’t know, and wouldn’t, unless the second fifty changed hands. I handed it over.
He jammed the second bill into his jeans. ‘The owner, he’s in there for hours, but after all that cleaning he hauls out only two plastic garbage bags. And he don’ leave the bags at the curb, even though pick-up is the next morning. He puts them in his van to get rid of them elsewhere.’
‘He didn’t want someone poking through them?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
I had an inspiration. ‘Did the house go up for sale right after the break-in?’
He rubbed his right thumb against his first two fingers, looking for another fifty.
‘I gave you a hundred already,’ I reminded him.
He grinned; he’d tried. ‘Sign went up the next day.’
‘Without asking Halvorson?’
‘Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Maybe there’s no lease and it don’ matter.’
‘I might take one more look inside.’
He shrugged and bent back down to the wheel he was polishing; the hundred dollars I’d passed over would also buy blindness. I popped the back lock with a credit card and went inside.
I headed into the garage first. It smelled faintly of gasoline. The Impala’s driver’s door was unlocked. The inside dome light didn’t go on when I slid inside. The battery was dead.
The glove box contained nothing but a bill of sale dated almost twenty years before. The car was almost ten years old when Halvorson had bought it from a private party. I put the bill back.
I went back through the kitchen, into the master bedroom and turned on the light in the closet. Things can get forgotten in closets when not even a coat hanger is left behind. I felt along the top shelf and came away with dust. The landlord must have been in too much of a hurry, cleaning, to think of the shelf.
There was dust on the second bedroom’s closet shelf as well but the rest of that room had been scrubbed like all the others.
I went back to the kitchen. The fresh scratches on the base of the door could have come from anything. So, too, could the tiny reddish brown residue caught against the threshold beneath them. I ran my rental car key over it and came up with enough to tap onto the white counter. It could have been ketchup or a hundred other normal red-brown things.
I looked around the kitchen floor more closely. There were several other faint traces of the same brown or red residue along the cabinet baseboards.
Maybe if the next-door neighbor hadn’t said he’d never seen Halvorson. Maybe if the kids who’d broken in hadn’t run out almost right away. Maybe if the Impala hadn’t been left behind. Maybe if the landlord hadn’t been in such a hurry to scrub away whatever he’d found. Maybe if he hadn’t hauled away what little had been left behind, rather than leave it at the curb. Maybe if the dust wasn’t so thick on the closet shelves, as though it had been ages since anything had been placed on them.
Maybe if the next person on Rosamund’s list hadn’t just been blown up.
I looked again at the tiny speck on the counter.
I began opening cabinets. Unlike those in the closets, the kitchen shelves had been wiped down and smelled strongly of the bleach. Fortunately, one held a paper towel core with one last sheet stuck to it. I used it to pinch up the little clump of reddish brown material from the counter, folded it twice over and put it in my pocket.
Maybe I wouldn’t have, if it didn’t look so much like blood.
SEVEN
Despite the dozen Halvorson questions batting at my brain, and despite the aftershocks from the taco and two burrito grandes I’d just eaten at the tin-sided roadside stand, I felt tired enough to think I could sleep anywhere. The first motel I came to, a Valu-Lodge at the edge of Tucson International, looked good enough. Others certainly thought so. A dozen cars were parked there, though all were nudged up to the rooms in the back, away from the street.
The desk clerk, a kid of nineteen, asked for sixty dollars cash and no identification, then handed me a plastic key card.
For sure, he didn’t flinch at the thunder of what sounded like a jetliner descending onto the roof.
‘Things will quiet down?’ I shouted.
His face clouded, though that could have been caused by the shadow of the plane darkening the window. ‘No problem!’ he yelled.
Another plane roared over, low.
I was too tired to look for a room elsewhere. ‘Is mine the quietest room you have?’ I asked when I could.
He laughed. ‘There are none quieter.’
Even when I saw that my room was at the end of the building, right below where fuel would get dumped by a plane landing in crisis, I figured I’d sleep. Unlocking the unmarked door – a No Smoking sign would have been prudent, given the possibility of high-octane rain – I tossed my duffel on the king-sized bed and stretched out next to it, ready for oblivion.
A plane roared over, low. And another. And another.
Sleep didn’t come. Each thundering plane brought the possibility that a fatigued pilot might misjudge and leave a tire mark on my forehead. But more, I was agitated by the possibility that
Gary Halvorson, a recluse living a hidden life, might have been hunted down, leaving behind his car, his meager belongings and maybe enough of his blood to require gallons of bleach to scrub away. Killed, like David Arlin had just been out in Laguna Beach.
The thought triggered the queasy notion that Rosamund Reynolds, an anonymous operator, had sent me to Tucson not to report whatever I could learn quickly of Halvorson’s life, but rather to verify that he was dead.
EIGHT
At nine o’clock the next morning, fresh from three hours of intermittent sleep, I called the number Rosamund gave me. Likely it went to a burner phone that could be discarded once she’d finished playing her cagey game.
‘Did you tell anyone I hired you?’ she shouted, right off, hoarse and out of breath.
‘What’s happened—?’ A plane came in low.
‘No matter—!’
‘I’ve learned nothing, and perhaps a good deal more!’ I yelled quickly. Another plane was approaching.
‘Call me from a quieter—’
I showered, packed my duffel and stepped outside. Only three other cars were in the lot and they were parked down by the office. No one lingered, mornings, at the Valu-Lodge.
I dropped my duffel in the Prius and headed down to the office in search of alertness.
The coffee was on a small table next to a blue bowl containing four bruised yellow apples. I pumped a cup and silently conveyed sympathies to the wounded fruit; no doubt they’d been wounded being bounced about by the decibels thundering above. A middle-aged man stood behind the counter, chewing on his lip.
I told him I was leaving and that relaxed his face a little. I might have been the only guest that stayed the whole night, making him suspect I was Immigration or IRS.
He didn’t offer a receipt, nor did I ask for one. His was a cash operation, employing illegals to tend to trysting lovers. It was a way to get along in hard times. I understood hard times.
I called Rosamund back once I’d driven far enough north to escape the flight paths. ‘Gary Halvorson might have disappeared. He’s never been seen by his newest neighbor. He left behind his car and enough dust to make me wonder whether he ever used his closets. And he might have left behind blood that needed lots of bleach to get rid of.’ I paused and added, ‘He was living under the radar. I should poke around, see if I can find out the last name he used from utility bills and such. Or, if you like, I can see what the cops know about him.’
‘No idea where he might be?’
‘Halvorson’s landlord was evasive. I should question him again. Why did you ask if I’d told anyone you’d hired me?’
‘Go next to Laguna Beach, and quickly.’
She hung up before I could ask why speed mattered, since the man there was dead.
I would have also liked to press her about why she didn’t want me to try to learn more about Halvorson, but she was the client and she’d forked out over two thousand dollars. That was a good enough reason to take a drive.
I took I-10 north toward Phoenix, then west into a desert of beige rocks and brown rocks, some of which were big and some of which were small. It went that way, rock after rock, for almost four hundred miles, except for when a green glass-and-cement-block truck stop rose up like a shimmering mirage, a fantastical oasis offering gasoline, gristly hot dogs and hardened pastries set amid the never-ending landscape of rocks.
Oddly, close by on the other side of the interstate was a gathering of at least fifty mobile homes – more than would be needed to house workers at the truck stop. It was a ragged cluster, loose and asymmetrical, and I had the thought that the trailers had been dragged there by people pushing back against the stuff and clutter of their previous lives. Things were seductively simple out in the desert, there being only rocks to look at. When folks tired of a particular view they could simply tug their homes a few yards up the gulch and have entirely new rocks to enjoy until it was time to move another few yards again.
I got to the lush of Laguna Beach late in the afternoon. There were plenty of rocks there, too, but those glittered on the tanned hands steering the expensive Benzs, Bimmers and Bentleys cruising the South Coast Highway. All those rocks were big – several carats at least – and none were small.
Sparkling, too, were the enormous houses high on the hills to the east, their bronzed windows reflecting bright pinpoints of the waning sun. Everything seemed to glitter in Laguna Beach.
I thought of Amanda. The murder of her father, an immensely wealthy Chicago businessman, had drawn her into his world, a world of power and privilege and glitter very much the equal of Laguna Beach. She seemed to be faring well, this former writer of art history books, but the challenges she faced running his enormous conglomerate all seemed as big and unmovable as the largest of the rocks I’d just seen in the desert.
I came upon the Sun Coast Hotel, a genuine pink stucco throwback to California’s golden days of the mid-nineteen forties and fifties. More essential at that moment, the sky above it was blue and clear and free of planes. I parked next to a long black Audi and went in.
The office had two types of saltwater taffies in glass jars on the counter and two types of blondes behind them. One was tall and tanned. The other was short and tanned. The short one smiled first with teeth that naturally sparkled, it being Laguna Beach.
She said they offered three types of accommodations. ‘One faces the beach, the other the courtyard. Three hundred and two hundred, respectively.’
‘And the third type?’ I asked, taking a taffy from one of the jars. It was a perfect caramel color, as though it had spent time on the beach with the blondes.
She tried not to be obvious as she studied my wardrobe. Though I was wearing my best blue button-collared shirt and my best khakis, she’d probably seen better on the local homeless. She nodded, very slightly, and said, ‘One hundred and twenty per night, but it’s real close to the road.’
‘No planes, though?’ I asked, remembering my previous night at the Valu-Lodge.
‘Just the occasional private jet.’
‘Then it will be fine with me,’ I said, mindful of the dour Ms Reynolds’ wallet.
‘Here visiting friends?’ she asked, keying up her computer screen with my credit card number. Unlike the Valu-Lodge, there would be no cash changing palms, not in this joint.
‘David Arlin’s place?’
Her face softened with as much empathy as her guileless young life experience could summon up. ‘Be careful driving up,’ she said, giving me directions. ‘The explosion blew sand and dirt everywhere and it still washes onto the road after it rains.’
‘Have they found the cause of the explosion?’
She took the lid off the jar of the darkest, most mournful of the taffies and slid it closer to me. ‘It’s been less than a week. No one’s saying much of anything,’ she said.
NINE
The street followed the gentle curve of the hillside. The houses were expansive, California-perfect edifices of timber and glass, stucco and stone. Their bushes were tightly trimmed, their lawns relentlessly watered to attain unvarying shades of deep green. Only the mound of scorched wood and stones behind orange plastic link fencing marred the beauty of the street. The rubble was Arlin’s.
Grit crunched under my shoes when I got out of the car. It would take many more rains to wash the last of it from the pavement.
‘I called city hall three times but nobody will tell me when this mess will be removed.’
I turned. An elderly woman with a smear of lipstick that matched her red hair had walked up with a tiny dog on a leash.
‘They’re probably being cautious, still investigating,’ I said.
‘Well, they ought to find that man who asked me if this was the Arlin house.’
‘When was that?’
‘Night before the explosion.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
‘Of course I did. Creepy fellow. His car had dark windows and he powered them down only a little but I coul
d see him good enough. Red-headed man.’ She touched her own hair as she looked down at the pavement. ‘Poor David, blown to smithereens. The blast woke up the whole town. The thought that parts of him are still …’ She scraped a shoe on the pavement. ‘Horrible, horrible.’
She tugged at the dog’s leash, also a red affair with bits of glass sparkling along every inch. Then again, they might have been real gems, it being Laguna Beach where everything glittered.
I got directions off my phone and drove to the police department. The lieutenant in charge of the Arlin case met me in the foyer and led me back to a gray metal desk in a small office. He said his name was Beech. He was slender, pushing fifty, and had close-cut graying hair that almost matched the color of his desk.
‘Insurance, you say?’ He frowned as he studied my card.
‘I work for the smaller companies. I’m on an extended west coast trip and was asked to look into the Arlin matter. He was badly burned?’
‘Your insurance company can hold off until we complete our investigation, if that’s what you’re asking. That should make them happy, delaying payment.’ He leaned back in his chair and studied me. ‘Who is the beneficiary?’
‘You’re thinking the explosion wasn’t accidental?’
‘Too soon to suspect anything at all. Who was the beneficiary?’
‘A lady with a dog told me she talked to a stranger looking for Arlin the night before he was killed.’
‘Old lady, hair dyed fire-engine red, lipstick and dog leash to match?’
‘She said a red-haired man drove up the night before the explosion, asking where Arlin lived …’ I let my voice trail away, knowing what he was going to say.
He said it exactly as dismissively as I expected: ‘The woman sees red everywhere, right?’
‘Maybe,’ I allowed, thinking it wasn’t the time to mention red-haired Gary Halvorson.
‘So, who benefits, Elstrom?’
I put on one of my stupid faces, of which I have several. ‘They don’t tell me things like that. I’m just supposed to stop in, find out if there’s an investigation and, if so, how long it will take.’
Hidden Graves Page 3