by Lois Greiman
So, cranking up my courage, I stepped carefully into the bushes. From the half shadows, I studied the surrounding neighborhood again. The sprinklers whirred. A dog barked somewhere toward the rugged darkness of the San Gabriel Mountains. Besides that, nothing.
I swallowed my bile and went to work. I had read somewhere that over seventy-five percent of Americans keep a key hidden near their front door, but I wasn’t relying on that general assurance. Instead, I had spent a nauseating amount of time recalling everything I could about Solberg—every bray-infested conversation, every idiotic come-on—and sometime before retching I had remembered a sloppily delivered invitation.
He’d been drunk off his ass and precariously seated on a bar stool at the Warthog, where I had worked for a couple lifetimes.
“Anytime you need a little geek lovin’, babykins, I’ll leave the front door open.”
“Not worried about some cocktail waitress murdering you in your sleep, Solberg?” I had asked.
He’d given me his donkey imitation. It was always good, but when combined with six Jack Daniel’s and a Sex on the Beach, it was damned near perfect. I’d refrained from drowning him in his whiskey. “I’m a techno genius, Chrissy babe. Got me a security system could rule the world. Don’t matter how many keys I leave inside fake rocks, nobody gets past my HomeSafe.”
Okay. I stood sweating like a bucking bull on his front walk. True, that conversation had taken place a lifetime and half a continent ago, but according to old wives’ tales, leopards don’t change their spots. I was willing to bet vertically challenged techno dweebs didn’t either.
One more glance around assured me I was alone. But I still scanned the shadows as I dropped to my knees.
Despite the security lights, it was pretty dark in the shrubbery. And prickly. I tugged a barberry thorn impatiently out of my bra and patted around the lava rocks that surrounded his bushes. Nothing.
Shuffling forward on hands and knees, I continued my search, starting near the house and working my way out. I squeezed between two indistinguishable mounds of foliage, making my way toward the street, and there, tucked beneath a tenaciously blossoming camellia, was a rock the size of my fist.
Breath held, I picked it up, and sure enough . . . it was hollow. I hunkered back on my heels and tried to control my breathing.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I reminded myself. Hell, I was doing a friend a favor. In fact, I was doing the police a favor—doing their work. If I was discovered, I’d let them know they didn’t have to thank me.
But apparently my respiratory system didn’t agree with my philanthropic state of mind, because I was panting like a fat man at a pie-eating contest.
I waited a moment. My hands almost quit shaking. Chrissy McMullen, bold adventurer.
The rubber stopper at the bottom of the faux rock popped out easily. A key lay inside. I dumped it onto my palm and felt a flush of victory. But it passed quickly, followed by a cold sweat.
There was still the much-lauded security system to bypass. But it hadn’t been that long ago that I had hauled the little geek out of his azaleas, where he’d just deposited a half gallon of predigested alcohol. His voice had been slurred when he’d given me his security code. But it had been memorable. Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six.
I pushed the key into the lock and tried not to think what it meant that I still remembered the numbers. Freud would have had a field day—but then, Freud had coined the phrase “penis envy.” Freud was a nut job—like I wanted one more droopy body part to worry about.
The door creaked open. It sounded like the prelude to a horror flick, and even though the interior lights were bright enough to illuminate Dodger Stadium, I couldn’t help glancing nervously around again. Still no lecherous murderers or adulterous geeks waiting to do me in. I took a deep breath, closed the door, and punched in the inappropriate numbers.
I found I was chanting Jesus’ name under my breath. He didn’t appear to save me, but after an interminable second or two, a green light blinked on. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I wilted against the wall, muttering thanks until I felt strong enough to wander into the bowels of the manse.
I considered switching the lights off, but the idea of tottering around in the dark made my teeth go numb. So I turned unsteadily and pattered farther inside.
I crept through the house as if it were land-mined. The kitchen lay off to my left, tiled in something that looked like Italian marble, though I’m not very well educated in the nationalities of rocks. A great room lay dead-ahead. The far end of the yawning chamber was occupied by a television the approximate size of my garage. Wow. If I were a burglar . . . and had brought a crane . . . that would be the first thing I’d lift.
But I wasn’t a burglar. I repeated that three times in my mind, hoping to make it sound convincing in case the police showed up.
Through a hallway the size of a semi, I saw another room. It seemed, at first glance, to be the only chamber with actual doors. I tiptoed in that direction and stepped inside. It was like entering a techno geek’s wet dream. Every gadget known to mankind was in there. And several that I was pretty sure were unknown to everyone, extraterrestrials included.
A silver disk that looked like a miniature spaceship blinked a blue light from the ceiling. A multiarmed thing made of neon green plastic groped from the desk, and a keyboard imprinted with strange symbols was propped against the wall. But it was the photos that snagged my attention.
There were dozens of them. Outside the office, the walls had sported modern art, neatly framed in sparkling chrome. But in here it was different. Devoid of any decorator’s glacial touch, there were pictures everywhere. Unframed and raw, they were stuck to the walls, leaned against electronic devices, and taped to furniture.
And every one of them was of Elaine.
On the one hand, it made me feel better. After all, it seemed highly unlikely that Solberg had fallen for someone else when Elaine was staring at him from every possible surface. On the other hand, some of the pictures were of the two of them together. And that was just unnerving. It was like seeing a shark and a puppy cuddled up on the couch. It just wasn’t right.
Snapping my mind from the jarring wrongness of the photos, I began searching his desktop for God knew what. All the clutter that had eluded the rest of his house had congregated in his office. I searched one paper at a time.
Under an unusually tidy pile, I found a stainless-steel answering machine that looked like it might have aspirations of being a spaceship. The top was a dome of polished silver. I fiddled with it for a minute and it popped open, revealing enough buttons to operate Sputnik. Several of them seemed to deal with different languages. I pressed “English” and was miraculously rewarded with his messages. There were two from Elaine asking if he had been delayed, one from a guy offering to clean his carpets, one from his mother, and one from Hilary.
I froze as she announced herself. “Yeah, Solberg, this is Pershing. I just wanted to tell you that this ain’t over. You got that? This is going to turn around and bite you on the ass.”
I played it again. Not surprisingly, it was the same message. But what did it mean? And when was it recorded? The tinny voice that announced time and date said it had been received on April twenty-ninth, which was approximately six months ago. But then, it had said that Elaine had called about the same time. Which probably meant that even Solberg wasn’t geeky enough to figure out an answering machine.
I searched on. Unfortunately for me, there was no little black book in which to search. Neither was there a daily planner. Whatever notes Solberg had jotted down concerning his schedule were gone.
Unless he kept them on his computer.
Once I thought of it, all other possibilities seemed as outdated as last year’s yogurt. So after a quick search of his desk, I sat down in his chair and clicked on his PC. It hummed to intelligent life—the Lamborghini of the electronics world. A picture of Elaine popped onto the screen. She was sitting on a porch swing.
The sunlight hit her hair at an oblique angle and her smile was little-girl perfect. I sighed and proceeded.
But as it turned out, switching on the system was about all I could manage. Psychological analysis doesn’t exactly thrive in the techno world. I’d learned very little since the computer craze struck a couple decades earlier. But I did find what looked like a calendar and clicked over to that screen. October popped up. There were several notations, lunches, appointments, and flights, all of them seeming perfectly innocent—and boring.
I traveled over to November. It wasn’t much more intriguing than last month had been, except for the message written on the thirtieth. It said “Combot” and was bracketed with two dollar signs on each side.
I sat and stared at the screen. What the hell did that mean? And where had the little rat gone? Maybe his e-mails will give me insight, I thought, so I concentrated on finding them. But once I got to the password thing, my bag of tricks was pretty much empty.
I did some more staring. The screen told me it was 2:44 in the morning on November fourteenth. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d had a cigarette. Did that mean I had gone over to the dark side of sanity? Or maybe . . .
Apparently, I sat there longer than I realized, because the screen switched over to a running display of photos. Once again, each featured Elaine.
I controlled my gag reflex. True, it might be nice to have someone adore me with such stomach-turning intensity, but only if he were human and . . .
That was it! His password. It had to have something to do with Elaine.
I touched a key. The screen zoomed back to business. I typed in “Elaine.” It was rejected. As was “Butterfield,” Laney’s birthday, and “babekins.” I tried sickeningly gooshy words like “love” and “amore” and “forever.” Still nothing.
And then, on the blinding edge of a brainstorm, I typed in “Angel,” and suddenly I was welcomed into the inner sanctum.
There were forty-seven messages. I scowled at the number. If I left my computer unattended for a couple weeks I would have had approximately nine thousand. Of course, someone was obsessed with sending me ads about penile enlargement, and since, contrary to Freud’s assertions, I don’t want a penis, I consider them spam. Still, even if Solberg had a top-flight spam blocker, he would have more than forty-seven messages. Wouldn’t he? He was the Geek God. He probably ordered his Big Macs online.
I didn’t know what all this meant, but it seemed likely that he had read his e-mails fairly recently. I checked the right-hand column and found that the oldest message was dated October thirtieth—the day he had been scheduled to return to L.A. I read each and every e-mail. Two of them were from Elaine. I skimmed the contents, feeling itchy about invading her privacy, but there was nothing that could be misconstrued as a clue. The other messages were beyond boring. Nevertheless, I made a list of all the addresses and the authors’ names. Then I tucked it into my purse, did a cursory search of the rest of the room, and exited into the hall.
The majority of the lower level didn’t seem worth searching, but I gave it a once-over anyway.
Not surprisingly, the kitchen was the most interesting, but only because I discovered a package of Oreos in the cupboard. Poor Elaine. There wasn’t a bottle of aloe gunk to be found. In fact, there wasn’t anything to suggest Laney had actually been here. Not a grain of health food, not a leftover movie script.
I stood back and gave the situation some sagacious consideration. Could it be that she’d never even been to Solberg’s house? And if so, why not?
I sampled another Oreo and pondered.
Maybe Solberg didn’t trust himself enough to bring Elaine to his domicile. I mean, according to Laney, he’d never propositioned her, and what were the chances he could be in his lair with a woman like Elaine and not fire up one of his dumb-ass come-ons?
I checked the fridge for some milk, but there was only Coke and a couple cans of Red Bull. I’d rather drink battery acid, so I took another cookie and munched as I continued my search.
A few minutes later, I headed up the stairs. They creaked under my weight, but the Oreos had amped up my courage and I no longer imagined boogeymen around every corner.
The layout of the house was pretty much as I remembered it. The bottom floor was ginormous, but the upper level was somewhat truncated and perched at the top of the stairs to survey the remainder of the house from a bird’s-eye view.
I started with the room closest to me. As big as a vege-table garden, it boasted a whirlpool, a shower, and a heated floor—in case that doomsday prediction came true and hell really did freeze over, I suppose. The towel drawer didn’t reveal much . . . except towels and a deplorable lack of color creativity. The gray tones were beginning to put me in a catatonic state.
The medicine cabinet, however, woke me up by suggesting Solberg had several problems other than the obvious ones.
In an effort to live out my Nancy Drew fantasies, I snagged two of the prescription bottles from the shelf and shoved them into my purse. Who knew? Maybe I would end up questioning his pharmacist. Or maybe I’d someday change my mind about that penis thing and want a really gigantic erection.
Freaked out by my own thoughts, I shook my head and wandered on.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to find an exercise room. I mean, of course a guy like Solberg would want to be attractive to the ladies.
I wandered past the sleek equipment. I’m no Richard Simmons, but it looked pretty state-of-the-art to me. The bench press was set at fifty pounds. I almost felt sorry for the little gnome as I moved on to the bedroom.
It was as tidy as Granny’s silver chest. The white silk coverlet was stretched so tight you could have bounced a penny on it. I resisted trying, not wanting to lose a penny . . . or touch his blankets.
His closet was in perfect order. He had eight pairs of shoes, aligned just so against the back wall. It seemed like a lot for a guy—but then, Solberg wasn’t really a guy, was he? His drawers were orderly. I shuffled garments aside until I got to his underwear. It would take a court order and the promise of a steamy night with Russell Crowe to convince me to touch those.
Finally, I stood in the middle of the room and surveyed it with my best Agatha Christie eye. If this had been a television series, I was pretty sure that by now I would have found a safe hidden behind a picture. Inside there would be a note that told me Solberg’s whereabouts and why the hell he hadn’t returned home.
There was only one picture in the room. I checked, but the wall behind was notably devoid of safes . . . and notes.
I pushed the drapes aside. They were floor-length, and if I was any judge, they, too, were made of worsted silk. But there was no safe behind them, either. Instead, there was a deck. I peered outside, through the French doors, and what a deck it was. It ran off toward the side of the house, with stairs that spiraled toward another deck, then down again to the endless lawn. Unfortunately, I saw no clues whatsoever as to Solberg’s whereabouts. Of course, there was no reason to think there would be. If I couldn’t find anything in his office, where he obviously spent the majority of his geekmaster time . . .
But wait a minute, if his ideas were so precious, why hadn’t he locked his office? Most Americans are paranoid by nature, and Los Angelites habitually border on the psychotic. Surely a man with a couple mil in the bank had to have something to hide. But where would a truncated little über dweeb be sure no one would look if he wanted to hide that something?
My gaze fell automatically to his underwear drawer. I winced, but I was already trudging through the ankle-deep carpet to his dresser.
He wore whitey tighties. I grimaced, pushed a pile aside, then another, and there, hidden against the back of the drawer, was a CD.
I pulled it slowly into the light and stared at it. Scrawled in bloodred on the silvery disk was the word “Combot.”
Well, the tricky little—
My thoughts crashed to a halt in mid-insult.
Had I h
eard a noise?
I froze like a startled bunny. Fumbling the disk into my purse, I cut my eyes toward the hallway.
Had I locked the front door?
Of course I had. Only a moron would break into someone’s house and forget to lock the door.
Damn it! I’d forgotten to lock the door.
Down on the first floor, something creaked.
I almost screamed as I jerked toward the hall. I could see the opposite wall of the lower level, but not much more.
I heard an object click against something solid. A gun barrel against a wall? A knife blade against a banister? A grenade against . . . ?
My imaginings shrieked to a halt. I didn’t have to analyze the situation. I had to hide. But where? I looked around, taking in the possible options. Behind the curtains. Beside the door. Under the bed!
I bolted across the floor and dove beneath the mattress. It didn’t occur to me until that moment that I was absolutely, certifiably insane. Under the bed? Why under the bed? The closet was bigger. And if the intruder turned out to be Solberg, returning home from a fortnight of debauchery, I could simply pop out and scare him to death instead of beating him senseless as I had planned. Or—
I heard what sounded like footsteps squishing quietly on tile. Was he in the kitchen? That would mean he was nearly at the staircase.
I glanced wildly toward the door, hit my head on the mattress boards, then wriggled madly out from under the bed, dragging my purse behind me.
I goose-stepped across the floor. I had left the folding closet doors partway open. I dove inside. The strap of my purse caught on the door handle and my heart thumped like a gavel against my ribs. I jerked my gaze to the doorway. Nothing. One yank. My handbag fell into the closet with enough commotion to wake the dead. I held my breath. Don’t think about death. Don’t think about . . .
I knew the moment he entered the room. Some people say they feel things in their bones. I feel them in my feet. A tingling along the arch. I curled my toes and held my breath. There was a rustle of noise, like fabric against an immobile object.