by Gina Cresse
Pamela opened her mouth to speak, but Bradley cut her off. “No. It was completely unrelated. Can we change the subject? Talking about it’s giving me heartburn,” he said.
Pamela patted his hand. “Certainly, sweetie.” She sat back down in her seat and leaned over toward me. “It was from his late wife’s insurance policy,” she whispered, loud enough for all of us to hear.
I jumped when Bradley dropped his fork on his plate and stood up. He didn’t touch another bite of his newly warmed dinner. He picked up his brandy. “I’m done. If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do,” he said and stormed out of the dining room.
“Don’t you want some cake, sweetie?” Pamela asked.
He didn’t reply. We watched him disappear into his home office. Pamela turned to us. “I’m sorry about that. He’s not usually like this, but I think all the talk about the lawsuit and his late wife must have upset him. You knew his first wife died?”
“He told us. How did it happen?” I asked.
“She fell of a cliff or drowned or something. He never talks about it,” Pamela said. She started clearing the dinner plates from the table. “You ready for some cake?” she asked.
Craig stretched back and patted his stomach. “I’m stuffed, but in a little while you’ll have to hold me back from attacking that cake.”
“Me, too. How about that tour of the house you promised, then I’ll help you with these dishes. By then, I’ll be ready for cake,” I said.
Craig took my empty plate and placed it on top of his. He stood and helped Pamela clear the table. “The two of you will not touch a dirty dish tonight. A rule of the house I grew up in said the one who cooks the meal doesn’t wash up afterwards. Besides, you have wedding business to take care of. You go tour the house. I’ll do the dishes.”
Pamela looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Is this the same man you argued with over the phone at the restaurant today?”
I failed to fill Craig in on that particular detail of how I’d managed to work my way into Bradley Parker’s life, but he seemed to catch on.
I winked at him. “Actually, it turns out he had been trying to reach me all morning, but I hadn’t turned my phone on. I owe him a huge apology. It was totally my fault,” I said, looking very remorseful.
“No. I’m sure it was my fault,” Craig responded, trying to say the right thing.
“No. Believe me, honey, it was my fault,” I said, hoping he’d quit trying to accept responsibility for the make-believe argument he knew nothing about.
“Okay. Whatever you say,” he said, smiling at me. “You have an apron, Pamela?”
Pamela handed him an apron and showed him where the scrubber brush was, then she led me off on the rest of the tour.
The house had four bedrooms plus the office, four bathrooms, a family room and living room, formal dining room and breakfast nook adjoining the kitchen. The laundry room was just off the three-car garage. The master bedroom was enormous. I entered and my eyes immediately fixed on a gorgeous solid oak roll-top desk in the corner. “What a beautiful desk,” I said, running my hand along the smooth wood.
Pamela frowned. “It was Diane’s. He gave it to her for one of their wedding anniversaries. I’d like to move it out of here—bad memories, you know. He finally did allow me to pack up some of the clothes she left here when she moved out. I need to find a place to take it.”
I nodded with acknowledgment, then glanced around the room and spotted a huge Jacuzzi tub through the door to the master bathroom. I entered the room and admired the marble tub. Frosted glass windows surrounded it. The fixtures were polished brass and matched the double sinks’ faucets. “I’m afraid I’d never leave that tub once I got in,” I said.
“I know. It’s really relaxing,” she replied.
My eyes stopped on the open door to an enormous walk-in closet. I stepped through the door and was mesmerized by the size of it. “My God, you could hold a dance in here,” I said.
“Isn’t it great? There’s room for everything,” she said.
Two large plastic bags were piled in the corner, stuffed full of women’s clothes. Those must have been the things Pamela said she’d packed up. I studied the boxes on the shelves. The one that caught my attention was a simple computer-paper box with big bold letters printed on the side: “Diane’s things.”
I brushed past Pamela back into the bedroom, then sat down at the roll-top desk and stroked the smooth wood. “I’ve been wanting to get a wedding gift for Craig. He’d love this desk. If you think Bradley would be willing to part with it, I would like to buy it.”
“That would solve my problem of wanting it out of here,” Pamela noted.
“That’s sort of what I was thinking,” I said.
“I’ll ask him,” she said. She thought for a moment, then continued. “But not tonight. We don’t want to discuss it in front of Craig. I’ll call you tomorrow. Are you ready for some cake?”
“Definitely,” I replied.
Pamela started out of the bedroom.
“I’ll be right there. I just need to use your restroom,” I said.
“Okay,” she replied over her shoulder as she strolled down the hall.
I watched her until she disappeared around the corner, then slipped into the closet and switched on the light. The box was on a high shelf, but it wasn’t out of my reach. I pulled it down, careful not to spill the contents on my head. I sat it in the middle of the floor and started removing the items stored inside. An assortment of bud vases, a paperweight, a framed diploma from UCLA with Diane’s maiden name printed on it, a small spiral notebook, and a videotape labeled, “Science Project.” I stuffed everything but the notebook and video into the box and hoisted it back on its shelf. I inspected my attire—a pair of khaki shorts and a striped cotton T-shirt with three-quarter length sleeves. No place to tuck anything this bulky. I glanced around the closet. My eyes stopped on the two plastic bags. I quickly stuffed the video and notebook in one of them, under several layers of clothing, then opened the door and slipped back out of the closet. Bradley Parker stood in the middle of the bedroom with his arms folded across his chest and scrutinized me. I hoped I didn’t have the same expression I used to get when my mom caught me eating spoonfuls of brown sugar out of the box. My heart skipped a beat, but I didn’t blink. I smiled at him.
“I can’t believe the size of that closet. I just had to get another look at it. What are the dimensions?” I asked, trying to sound as relaxed as I could even though my heart was racing and about to pound its way out of my chest.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I can get a tape measure,” he offered in a tone that made it clear it would be a huge inconvenience for him.
“Oh, no. That’s okay. I was just curious.”
Bradley, Pamela, Craig and I sat around the dining table and devoured the cake in silence. Whether it was my imagination or not, I felt Bradley’s stare and was sure he was suspicious of me. I was uncomfortable and wanted to leave. Finally, Bradley shoved his chair out from the table and stood up, leaving his dirty plate for someone else to pick up.
“That was great, Pam. I’m going back to my office to finish up some work.” He turned his attention to Craig and me. “Goodnight. It’s been a pleasure,” he said, with all the sincerity of a snake.
“Goodnight,” I replied, resisting an urge to jump across the table and knock him up side the head with his dirty dessert plate.
Craig stood and shook his hand one more time. “It was good to meet you,” Craig said. Then he picked up all the dessert dishes and headed for the kitchen.
While Craig finished up the dishes, Pamela and I sat down at the table and went over her guest list. I gathered up all the names and slipped the list in my purse, then checked my watch. “You know, I have to drop off a bunch of stuff at the Goodwill station in the morning. I could take that stuff you’ve packed up and save you a trip,” I offered.
Pamela smiled. “Would you? I’d really like to get it out of here so I can h
ave room to put my things.”
Craig helped me load the two large bags in the car. Pamela waved as we backed out of the driveway and headed toward home. Bradley never came out of his office to see us off. He had no idea we’d left his house with Diane’s things.
Chapter Nine
Craig set himself to the task of repairing my VCR, which had gone on the blink more than a month ago. I sat cross-legged on the sofa in the main salon of the Plan C and paged through the notebook I’d liberated from Bradley Parker’s dancehall-sized closet. Diane’s notes were sketchy and cryptic. She did manage to date the top of each page. The first few pages seemed to refer to a school-board meeting she must have covered. References to PTA and irate teachers were my biggest clue.
I gathered from the references to border collies, poodles, and basset hounds that the next few pages were about a dog show held at Dog Park last year.
She had five pages of notes regarding the grand opening of the new skateboard park south of La Jolla.
She also dedicated quite a lot of space to notes about new cameras recently installed at certain intersections to catch red-light runners. The cameras would photograph any cars running red lights and citations would be mailed to the registered owners of the vehicles in the photos. San Diego had installed quite a few of these cameras, much to the dismay of many of the lesser-skilled drivers in the crowded community.
The last page with any entries was dated May seventh. I rummaged through the stack of newspaper articles I’d printed regarding the discovery of Diane’s body. May seventh was a Friday. The coroner estimated the date of her death to be May eighth. I studied her notebook again. The words on the page read: “Where did they get it? Where could they get it? SONGS?”
“You have a smaller screwdriver?” Craig asked.
His question brought me out of a semi-trance. “What? Oh, yeah. In the bathroom drawer, next to the toothpaste,” I replied.
“Bathroom?”
“When you live on a boat, you find new and innovative ways to store things. I’ve tried several locations, and believe me, it’s the most efficient place for it.”
“I’m sure it is,” he said, heading for the bathroom.
“Does the word songs mean anything to you?” I asked as he returned with the small Phillips screwdriver.
“Songs? Let’s see. Yeah,” he said, then began singing in a voice I’d never heard before. “You are so beautiful, to me…,” he crooned as he continued working on the VCR.
I gazed at him. I’d never heard him sing before. His voice was magical. How could I not know this about him? Here I was only a few weeks away from marrying him, and didn’t even know he had the voice of an angel. “Where’d you learn to sing like that?” I asked.
“My mom’s Aretha Franklin.”
I laughed at his matter-of-fact delivery and tossed a pillow at him. “She is not. Is that thing fixed yet?”
“Yep. Just let me put the cover back on.”
“You missed your calling, you know,” I said.
“What, as a TV repair man?”
“No. A singer. You’ve got a great voice.”
“Gee, thanks, but I think I’ll stick to medicine. I’m a little old to change careers now.”
“Okay, but promise me you’ll sing for me once in a while?”
“It’s a deal.” He snapped the cover back on the VCR and set it back in its original position on top of my TV. “There you go. Good as new, I hope.”
I put the notebook down and picked up the videotape, then slipped it into the VCR and pressed the PLAY button.
The video opened on a close-up of a blackboard with the chalked words:
Josh and Jeremy Lawerence
Science Project
Mr. Clayton
Applied Science
Lincoln High.
“Wow. It really works,” Craig said.
“You seem surprised. I never doubted your ability.”
“You should have. I’ve never seen the inside of a VCR before. But I couldn’t have you thinking you’re marrying a man who’s totally useless around the house. Luckily, there was a broken piece of videotape stuck in it. Anyone could have figured it out.”
“Well, you’re my hero. Shh. Let’s watch.”
The camera focused on two boys standing behind a table in a garage or workshop. The boys looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old. One was thin and pale—a goth. His face was ivory-white, his long, stringy hair dyed coal-black. He wore tight black pants and a black turtleneck with some sort of silver symbol hanging from a chain around his neck. The other boy was equally as thin, but more colorful. His spiky hair stood straight up and was dyed a rainbow of colors. He had pierced his eyebrow and a small gold ring hung just over the corner of his right eye. He had a tattoo of a lizard wrapped around his upper left arm. He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and baggy pants that hung two inches lower than the top of his boxer shorts.
On the table in front of the boys was a strange cylindrical object. It was about the size of a large fire extinguisher and sort of resembled one. When the gothic boy began speaking, I turned up the volume on my television. He proceeded to explain that the device was a bomb he and his brother had built. I sat up straight and adjusted the volume again. They were very proud of themselves. They had gotten all the information they needed to build the bomb from the Internet. It was easy, they boasted. The rainbow-haired boy then began explaining the chain of events in a nuclear reaction.
“Nuclear?” I whispered, afraid of what I was witnessing. Craig’s concerned eyes met mine.
The gothic boy continued by explaining that the twenty pounds of plutonium they’d used for the bomb could result in a thirty-five kiloton blast, equivalent to seventy million pounds of TNT. I tried to fathom seventy million pounds of anything, let alone TNT.
The boys concluded their presentation with a request to their teacher: “Hope we get an ‘A’ Mr. Clayton.”
Craig made me promise I’d take the tape to Sam Wright. I assured him I would. He held me and looked straight into my eyes. “I mean it. This is getting a little too weird. I’m worried about you. Give the tape to Detective Wright and let him handle it.”
I smiled up at him and closed my eyes. “I’ll give him the tape. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
I stood in the office of Lincoln High School and waited for the woman to give me directions to Mr. Clayton’s classroom. She explained that he had a first-period class, and I’d have to wait until the bell rang before I could interrupt him.
I stood outside the door marked “7” in the science building and waited for the bell to ring. When it did, fifty teenagers blasted through the door, nearly knocking me down. When it appeared safe to proceed, I entered the classroom. Mr. Clayton was busy cleaning the chalkboard.
“Mr. Clayton?” I asked.
Surprised, he turned. “Yes? Can I help you?” he replied.
“I have a video made by a couple of your students. I wonder if you could take a look at it and give me your thoughts?” I asked.
He checked his watch. “I don’t have a class this period. I guess I have time. Is it long?”
“About twenty minutes,” I said.
Baxter Clayton was visibly disturbed by what he’d seen. When the tape concluded, he pressed the REWIND button and shook his head. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
“You mean you’ve never seen it?”
“Are you kidding? Those boys would be expelled, or better yet, locked up, if I’d ever seen it.”
“It was in the personal items of a reporter for the Union Tribune,” I explained.
“Where’d he get it?” Clayton asked.
“She isn’t around to tell. She’s deceased.”
Clayton’s face grew pale. He looked like he wanted to be sick.
“In your opinion, is this bomb for real? Do you think these boys have really built a nuclear device?” I asked, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.
“Josh and Jeremy
Lawerence are extremely bright boys. Everything they explained in the video was correct and complete. If they really have the plutonium, then there’s no doubt they have a full-scale nuclear bomb,” he answered.
“But how realistic is it that they could get their hands on plutonium? I mean, it’s not something you can get at your local hardware store.”
“I would hope they couldn’t acquire it,” he said.
“Even if they did, where could they have gotten it,” I asked.
“Only place that comes to mind is San Onofre,” he replied.
“San Onofre?”
“Yeah. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. You know. SONGS,” he explained.
I snapped my fingers. “Of course! SONGS. It’s an acronym.”
I explained to Baxter Clayton that I was going to turn the videotape over to the police but I wanted the boys’ parents to view the video first. He was reluctant to give me the Lawrence family’s address and would only give it to the police. I let Clayton use my cell phone to call the number for the San Diego police department. When he got through, I took the phone from him and asked to speak to Sam Wright. I explained to Sam that another clue had, in his own words, “miraculously landed in my lap,” and that Baxter Clayton, a teacher at Lincoln High, was going to give him the address where he could pick it up.
“What are you talking about?” Sam demanded.
I ignored his request. “Here. This is Mr. Clayton. He’s a science teacher,” I said, then handed the phone to Baxter. “Just give him the address,” I instructed.
Baxter put the phone to his ear. He read the address from a paper he’d pulled from a file in his desk. I wrote it down as he read. He handed the phone back to me.
“Did you get that?” I asked.
“Yeah. What’s this about?” he demanded again.
“I’ll call you back in a little while with the details. Can you meet me there tonight? Six-thirty?”
I visualized the color of his face in my mind. By now, I’m sure it was deep red, with his jaw clenched so tight a crowbar couldn’t pry it open. “You are on thin ice, you know,” he hissed into the phone.