Brenda: I will not, repeat, not be scared off. The fact of the matter is, I have received private e-mail far more threatening than anything I’ve seen here. These people will stop at nothing to gain their nefarious ends.
Adolfwax: Who have you gotten threats from?
Brenda: It would be unwise to say.
The last sheet was from someone whose signature identified him as the mailing lists moderator. Will you all please take this off-line? It’s getting too close to flaming, and the group doesn’t want to hear about it.
I looked up. “Flaming?”
“When people get into nasty personal discussions in a public forum. They start yelling and—”
“How can you yell on a piece of paper?”
“You type in all caps. Its very obnoxious.”
“The whole thing is very obnoxious. Too much technology.” I wagged the sheets in the air. “But now we know someone threatened Brenda. All we have to do is download that threatening e-mail she got and—”
Gina was giving me that pitying look she gets when one of my eight-tracks self-destructs.
“What?”
“I can’t just download Brenda’s private e-mail. That’s why it’s called private.”
“Oh. Makes sense, I guess. Would she still have it on her computer?”
“If she didn’t delete it. And I know if I got threatening e-mail I wouldn’t delete it.” She saw the look on my face. “No.”
“Why not? I’ve still got the keys.”
“What if the police are watching the place? The-killer-always-returns-to-the-scene-of-the-crime kind of thing.”
“We have every right to be there,” I said. “We’re coming to feed the birds.”
“The birds probably aren’t even there. Weren’t they going to take them off to the SPCA or something?”
“For all we know, they’re starving to death. Balling off the weakest and eating them.” I got up. “Put on some clothes.”
“Right now? You want to go sneaking through Brenda’s house at one in the morning?” “You got a better time?”
We took Gina’s car, stopped back at my place to pick up the keys, and reached Brenda’s a little before two. We parked half a block beyond the house and walked stiffly back, jumping at the tiniest noise. There wasn’t any crime-scene tape to avoid as we slunk up to the front door. I unlocked it, we slipped in, I closed it behind us.
“It’s pitch dark in here,” Gina said.
“Let me turn on a light.” I reached for the switch.
“No.” She punched me in the side.
“Ow.”
“Sorry. I was trying to grab your arm. People would wonder why a dead woman had the lights on.”
“Which people? Everyone’s asleep.”
“Not Mrs. Kwiatkowski. She has insomnia. She told me when I used her shower. She also has arthritis, severe heartburn, and loose—”
“Spare me. Why don’t you go out to the car for a flashlight?”
“Why don’t you go out to the car? Anyway, I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a flashlight in their car.”
“Not me.”
We felt our way into the bedroom, and Gina turned on the computer. It gave off enough light to check the bird cage, which was deserted.
Soon she was mousing away A screen showing a photo of the Madagascar thorn forest quickly gave way to a more computerish one. “Her e-mail,” Gina said.
She poked around for a few minutes, viewing all the saved messages. I was too antsy to look and figured she’d let me know if she came across anything. I paced. I stuck my head in the corridor to greet the cops, who were sure to burst in on us. I went to the bathroom, pointedly avoiding looking at the tub, even though it was too dark to see anything that might be in there. When I came out, hoping my aim had been true, Gina was muttering. The thorn forest reappeared. “Its not there.”
“How about something on the striped milii?”
“No, although…”
“What?”
“Ssh. Let me think.” She did, then said, “Maybe she archived it. She could have moved the threats out of the e-mail program. She doesn’t seem to have kept anything older than a month or two.”
“Can you find them?”
“Given time, but they could be anywhere on her hard disk.”
“We’ve got time. We’ve got till morning at least.” To emphasize my point I made myself comfortable on the bed.
“Yeah, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”
“That’s what makes it fun.”
Somebody was shaking me. “Joe, wake up.” I burrowed into the bed. “Get up now.” Go away.
“There’s a hive full of wasps in the room.”
I was on my feet instantly, flailing like I’d never flailed before. Several fun seconds later I realized Brenda’s bedroom was stinger-free.
“That was really nasty,” I said. “Being cooped up with a bunch of wasps is my worst nightmare.”
“It was the only thing that would get you up. I found them.”
“You found what?”
“Will you wake up? I found the old e-mail messages.”
“You did? What do they say?”
“I didn’t look yet. I wanted you to be there for the discovery.” She sat back down at the keyboard, and I knelt beside her. She clicked the mouse, and a file glimmered into life. We paged down through what appeared to be every e-mail from the previous year that Brenda’s seen fit to hide away. Things she’d said in confidence about other members of her department. A very steamy missive from somebody named Conner. Nothing the least bit threatening showed up until, in the middle of October, You’d better stop or else popped into view on the last line of the screen. The subject line of a message. Gina reached out a finger to bring the accompanying text into view. The doorbell rang.
Gina’s finger froze in midair. We stared at each other like Hansel and Gretel when the witch showed up. “Ignore it,” I said. “They’ll go away.”
They didn’t. Instead, they rang the bell again.
“They don’t know anybody’s here,” I said.
“Why else would anyone ring the doorbell at three in the morning? I doubt it’s a kid selling candy.”
“I’ll go look.” I stumbled to the living room, parted the drapes, peered outside.
Someone was out there, but it was too dark to see who. They pressed the doorbell again. I jumped, crashed into a bookshelf, and made a terrible racket.
“Who is that in there?” inquired the inharmonious voice of Mrs. Kwiatkowski.
I felt my way to the door and swept it open. “It’s me, Mrs. K.—Joey the Cactus Boy.”
“Joey? What are you doing here at this time of the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep, Mrs. K. And then I thought maybe the police had forgotten about Brenda’s canaries, so I decided to come over and check on them. How did you know I was here?”
“I saw the TV in the bedroom, that’s how. Why do you have the TV on?”
“Its not the TV, its the computer. The lights don’t work in the bedroom, so I turned it on so I could see.”
“The lights don’t work?” Before I could stop her she’d swept her hand across the wall switch. Three lamps sprang to life, “The lights work in here.” Mrs. Kwiatkowski’s plump face was crowned with an assemblage of curlers that could have brought in Alpha Centauri. She wore a chartreuse robe that said QVC all over it.
“I’m sure it’s just the bulb,” I said. “Anyway, it turns out the birds aren’t here, so we can just go—”
“Where’s your truck?”
“My truck?”
“Your truck. Your white truck.”
“I walked, Mrs. K.”
“Who walks at three in the morning?”
“I do. Whenever I can’t sleep I go for a walk. And now if you’ll just—”
“Hello?”
Mrs. Kwiatkowski and I turned in unison to see who stood in the doorway It was Officer Benton. When he ste
pped aside, Officer Jones stood revealed.
“Not to be disrespectful,” Officer Benton said, with his hand lurking not terribly far from his gun. “But what are you two doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I said.
“It’s our job,” he said. “Finding lights on at dead peoples houses at strange hours.”
“Well, I came over to feed the birds, and Mrs. Kwiatkowski here came over to see what the ruckus was about.”
“You made a ruckus feeding birds? Wait minute. There aren’t any birds. We took ’em to the SPCA: We told you we’d take good care of them.”
“Yes, well, I forgot.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“I have the key.”
“Maybe we should take you down to the station.”
“Look, Officer Benton, I’d really rather not. I’ve been down to the station twice on suspicion of murder, and I hated every minute of it, so why would I do anything that would get me brought down there again?”
“I don’t know…”
Officer Jones spoke up for the first time. “Come on, Marlon, he’s harmless.”
Benton nodded slowly. “All right then. But you’ll have to leave.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving right this minute.”
“And since you know the birds are in good hands, I won’t expect to see you here again.”
The four of us walked out, and I locked up. Benton and Jones drove off in their patrol car, Mrs. Kwiatkowski toddled off to her place, and I crept away down the street. I circumnavigated the block until I spotted Gina skulking back to her car. I caught up without giving her more than a small fright. “That was a waste of time,” I said.
“Not really.” She held up a computer disk.
“I don’t get it.”
“I dumped all Brenda’s old e-mails onto it while you were partying with Mrs. K.”
You’re a genius.
“Any moderately accomplished computer user could have done the same. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
We drove back to Gina’s condo. We started her computer up and stuck the disk in and found out what we had. Which was nothing.
16
THE LITTLE BOX ON THE COMPUTER SCREEN SAID SOME-thing about a fatal disk error. And interesting choice of terms, I thought.
“I cannot goddamned believe it,” Gina said.
“But it worked in Brenda’s computer.”
“Sometimes this happens. You put a file on a diskette and go back to read it and you can’t. But usually I have another copy on my hard disk, so it’s no big deal.”
“So we go back and get another disk.”
“You go back. Hiding in the haunted bathroom when the cops came was quite enough excitement for one evening.”
“But this could be our big break.”
She made a show of taking the disk over to her kitchen sink and dropping it into the garbage can underneath. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “You’re exhausted. If we go back we’ll get caught again.”
“Maybe we can just sneak in, take the computer, and have at it at our leisure.”
“I believe they call that burglary.”
“Oh, yeah.” I was fresh out of clever ideas, and trying to think of them hurt my head. “I’m going home to get some rest.”
“You could stay here.”
“I hate sleeping on your couch. It’s too sturdy.”
“I could sleep on the couch.”
“Gina, I’m not kicking you out of your bed.”
“We could both sleep in the bed.”
“I don’t think we should both sleep in the same bed.”
“Why? What could happen?”
“Nothing. That’s one reason I don’t want to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have no idea. Look, like you said, I’m exhausted. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m going to go home and get some sleep.”
Outside, the world was beginning to light up. It took The Who Live at Leeds, loud, to keep me awake long enough to get home.
I was dreaming of Amanda Belinski. She lay in Brenda’s bathtub, wrapped in a lamba, trying out various positions, asking me over and over, “Is this how you found her?”
The telephone rang. I groped for it, thinking it was Amanda, calling to ask why I hadn’t shown up last night. Just as I found the phone I realized that couldn’t be the case, because our appointment was on Saturday night and Saturday had just begun.
It was Lyle Tillis. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I’ve been up for hours.”
“Good, good. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. It’s just been kind of crazy up here, with Dick’s getting killed.”
“No need to apologize. I probably shouldn’t even have bothered you.” I got my hand around the alarm clock, twisted it so I could see it. Nine-fifteen. I’d had three hours’ sleep.
“Yeah, well, life goes on. Damn, I miss him already.”
“Me too.” I didn’t, though eventually I might. “Look, I thought of something yesterday that I wanted to bring to your attention. Brenda was the president of CCCC and Dick was vice president.”
“Right.”
“So somebody might be making their way down the list of officers.”
“Wow.” I heard braying in the background. Was Merlin inside the house? “So that would put me next.”
“No, it would put me next.”
“No, no, treasurers next.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Treasurer’s more important. No offense.”
“No, you’re right, but I think on the list in the newsletter I’m next. Isn’t that how they usually do it? Secretary’s always listed before treasurer. Let me go find a newsletter.” I jumped out of bed, dragging the phone with me.
“I have one right here. Hey, you’re right. You’re next.”
“But you bring up a good point. Would they be going in the listed order or in order of importance? Assuming there is a they and, if there is, that they’re going in any order at all.” It was too overwhelming to think about on three hours’ sleep. “When did you hear about Dick?” I asked.
“Hope called last night.”
“How’s she holding up?”
“Fair. Magda and I are helping her out as much as we can with the funeral and all. Well, not really a funeral; he’s going to be cremated after the cops are done with him, and there’ll be a private service. Although we’re talking about having a memorial on Monday. Anyway, were headed down there in a little while to see Hope, so I’d better get going.”
“You be careful, okay? Just in case somebody really is after one of us.”
“Will do. See you.”
“Okay. Hey, wait a minute. What I called about yesterday—”
“Right, striped milii. No, I never heard of anything like that. Would be pretty weird though. Probably could sell a lot of them.”
After we said good-bye I continued standing in the bedroom, holding the phone, because I couldn’t get it together enough to do anything else. I had that gnawing feeling in my stomach from lack of sleep, and I thought I had to pee but wasn’t sure. Also, someone had stuffed cotton batting in my mouth.
The phone rang, startling me, and I dropped it noisily to the floor. When I picked it up I heard a tinny Austin Rich-man saying, “You there, man?”
I fumbled the handpiece to my face. “Yeah. How are you?”
“Fine, man. You still want those books? You could come and get them now if you want.”
I wanted. I could run up there and check on Sams stuff on my way back. I did my greenhouse tour and showered and gobbled some shredded wheat. When I opened the door to leave, I found Detective Hector Casillas on my doorstep.
He’s been talking to the uniforms, I thought. He knows I was poking around at Brenda’s last night, and he’s come to arrest me for trespassing in the first degree. “Hector,” I said, none too cleverly, “to what
do I owe this visit?”
“Why didn’t you tell me your father was a hood?”
“I don’t think hood is quite the appropriate word.”
“He went to prison for murder. What would you call it?”
“My father is a fine man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Even I realized how lame that sounded. “And anyway, even if he was the Hillside Strangler, what’s that got to do with me?”
“Life father, like son, I always say.”
“Do you, now? What did your father do for a living?” He was a cop.
So much for that clever ploy. “Yeah, well, just because you followed in your father’s footsteps doesn’t mean I did. Listen, get this straight. I didn’t kill Brenda. Or Dick. I’m trying to help you guys figure out who did, because they were friends of mine.”
“Yeah, well, just stay out of our way, why don’t you.”
“Yeah, well, go work on your body-dump case, why don’t you. Or do you suspect me of that too?”
“Smartass. We’ve got an eye on you. As soon as you make a mistake …” He raised the back of his suit jacket and showed me his handcuffs.
“Very impressive,” I said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.” I stepped out, locked the door, and brushed past. Halfway to the curb I stopped and turned. “By the way, tell the guy you’ve got tailing me I like his car.” I left Casillas standing there with his mouth hanging open.
I took Pacific Coast Highway and turned up Topanga Canyon Boulevard. It’s an odd road to call a boulevard, a winding two-lane highway that zigzags up through a rocky cleft in the mountains. After a few miles it passes through the loose assemblage of buildings that’s the village of Topanga, eventually reaching the dreaded San Fernando Valley thirteen miles or so from where it started.
Topangans like to view their community as a place the nineties haven’t yet reached, perhaps not the eighties, and on a good day not even the seventies. A countercultural refuge where the hippies never went straight and where, if you squint, you can imagine you’re living off the country. They’re fooling themselves, I think; it’s only a matter of time before Starbucks shows up.
The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) Page 13