Diamond in the Buff

by Susan Dunlap

  “Because the branch fell?”

  “Because,” he said in obvious exasperation, “she knows I can’t sue.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed.

  “Detective, I obeyed the law!” He glared at me. “I went through the whole process, the way the ordinance instructs. She fought me every step. Of course we couldn’t settle the question of those damned trees between the two of us. That woman couldn’t agree to walk across the street. So we go to a mediator. Took me six months to find a mediator she’d agree to. Both parties have to agree on the mediator; that’s what the ordinance says. This mediator handled the public employees’ strike the year before, you remember that. He dealt with the county bureaucracy; he handled ten thousand public employees; but he couldn’t put up with Leila Sandoval! He said it was the worst case he’d ever tried. I believe him. The woman’s a lunatic!”

  Sweat dripped down his shiny face. Wiping a hand across his forehead, he continued. “So we went to binding arbitration. The lunatic agreed to include all five eucalypts in the dispute. The arbitrator’s report on the trees said to top ’em. Then, Detective, she chose the tree trimmer—that’s the law, the tree owner chooses the trimmer, the complainant okays the decision and pays for the work. So she chose her trimmer, and probably told him to charge an arm and a leg since I had to pay. And she must have had him weaken this branch.”

  I wiped a hand across my own sweaty forehead. “Dr. Diamond, what does all this have to do with her not being able to resist attacking you with a eucalyptus branch and your not being able to sue?”

  Diamond leaned over the railing, his face suddenly pale as a deck passenger’s at the height of a hurricane. “I had to indemnify her for the cutting. The ordinance says, ‘The Complaining Party shall indemnify and hold harmless the Tree Owner with respect to any damages or liability incurred by said owner, arising out of the performance of any work at the behest of the Complaining Party.’ So, Detective, if her tree falls on me, I’m the one who’s liable.”

  4

  HASBROUCK DIAMOND HAD NOT dealt with the question of how his neighbor could have engineered the eucalyptus branch to fall at the precise moment he was sitting under it. To him that was a peripheral issue, and after several attempts, all of which led him to new descriptions of his neighbor’s villainous character and dearth of sanity, I gave up. I checked out the wound on his left thigh. It was a fairly deep scrape, but hardly of the type that keeps morticians in business. Diamond already had a written report from his doctor. I sent him to get it and his other houseguest, Bev Zagoya’s associate.

  The man Diamond sent out looked to be about twenty. Despite the heat he wore a long-sleeved rugby shirt and acid-washed jeans. His sun-bleached hair hung an inch below his ears as if he had compromised between the short stylish look, and the long old-Berkeley look. His skin was olive-y enough to have acquired the kind of tan I had spent months working for in the days before the sun had turned into a killer. And his eyes were the pale blue of morning, eyes that foster the illusion of being windows to the soul; they neither moved nervously as Raksen’s did, nor did they bulge like Diamond’s. What they seemed to be doing was lying back in their wide-apart sockets waiting for another clue to the situation. It took me a moment to realize that he was the blond who’d come into the back of the lecture hall last night at the time Bev Zagoya started rushing her talk.

  “Brouck said you wanted to see me,” he said. “I’m Kris Mouskavachi. Kris with a K.” Hesitantly he extended a hand. On his wrist was a gold watch with a map of Switzerland on its face. The watch was too small for him. It looked more like a woman’s watch.

  I shook his hand. It was moist. The boy was perspiring, as would be anyone dressed as inappropriately as he.

  “Is Kris short for Kristopher? I’ll need your full name and address.”

  Now those eyes narrowed momentarily. “Krishna,” he muttered. “Krishna Das Mouskavachi. My address here?”

  “And your permanent address.”

  “I don’t have a permanent address. My parents are in Kathmandu.”

  “Trekking?” Probably ten percent of Berkeley had been to India at one time or another. Maybe a third of those had included Kathmandu, Nepal, in their journeys, some to begin treks through the Himalaya, some to smoke dope unhindered by the exigencies of reality. “Trekking?” I repeated.

  Now the boy laughed. All the wariness vanished, and half of his twenty or so years seemed to evaporate. He pulled up the lime-colored chair and plunked himself on the arm. “Trekking! Going to the post office is an expedition for them. And then half the time they forget why they went. They spend days getting ready to go to market, or one of them wanders down five times in an afternoon because their whims change. Trekking!” He laughed again, but there was no bitterness. “You know some of the holy men up there and in Tibet talk about finding pockets in time.”

  I nodded. I’d heard that before, from the same friend who’d told me about the Buddhist pasture story. A pocket in time was an idea with a lot of appeal. If I had one, I could slide into it, find an apartment, and slide out without losing a minute on this case.

  “Well, my parents left here, the States, that is, in 1970. I guess the hippie era, their era, was closing down here then. But they took it with them. And when they got to Kathmandu they didn’t just find a pocket in time, they found a pocket with a hole in it. For them it will always be 1970.”

  “How do they live?”

  “Sara, my mother—Sarasvati, but that’s not her real name, of course—she inherited some money, and she gets a check every month. There really isn’t work in Kathmandu, not for foreigners.”

  “None? Not in trading or translating?” I asked. I was getting off the track, but there was something about the boy that interested me. Something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t have enough information yet to figure out what it was.

  “Traders bring their own people. And there are enough Nepalis who speak good enough English. No one needs resident hippies in the middle. Drive and reliability aren’t qualities that come to mind when they think of people who’ve lived in the pocket for twenty years, or grown up in it. You have to be pushy to convince trekkers that they need an intermediary, and that you can do the job.” He grinned smugly.

  “And you’re pushy?”

  “Right. I’ve gone on a few treks with Europeans—over there ‘European’ includes American. I knew the Nepali porters—not well. Europeans, even hippie Europeans”—he grinned again, but now there was a bitterness in it—“especially hippie Europeans, are always outsiders. The Nepalis have to work like crazy just to survive. There aren’t many jobs and they really get riled at the idea of a rich foreigner taking a job that should be theirs. So I could only get on treks where I knew some of the porters and it was clear to them that I wasn’t going to be taking the tsampa out of their mouths.”

  Sweat was dripping down my back. Time to rein in my wandering curiosity and get back to the point. “How do you know Bev Zagoya?”

  “I was a sort of go-between with the porters on her last expedition.”

  I eyed him skeptically. I knew the story of Bev Zagoya’s last expedition. It was the first mixed-sex assault on one of the Himalayan peaks—I couldn’t recall which—to be led by a woman. There had been a lot of fund raising, a lot of celebrating when Bev and some of the others reached the peak. It was over five miles high, in air too thin to support Western lungs. Three climbers—one woman from Minnesota and two Sherpas—had been killed in an avalanche, but that was not uncommon. Climbing was a dangerous sport.

  Bev Zagoya had led expeditions before that. She’d had a lot of experience climbing. And in her lecture last night, she had certainly given the impression that she could take care of herself. Novice trekkers might be convinced they needed a resident American teenager as a go-between to deal with the porters, but I couldn’t imagine she would have.

  I said as much.

  A momentary breeze ruffled Kris’s blond hair. He leaned closer and lo
wered his voice. “She should have known, but she was just kind of flustered what with hiring the porters and dealing with the Sherpas, trying to buy enough rice and tsampa for everyone and trying to figure out how much gear to give the Sherpas in the beginning and how much to hold back for the time they balk and refuse to go any farther up the mountain unless they get more. They do that. Negotiating from a position of strength, right?” He grinned. “They say that the last climbers gave their Sherpas heavier sweaters, better boots, more cigarettes. There’s big confrontation. Lots of drama. I love it. I told Bev I knew the real facts on the last few expeditions. Hiring me was a good decision for her; it probably saved her a couple hundred dollars in gear.” He shrugged, but there had been a moment of hesitation before the movement, a moment of consideration. I wondered how conscious Krishna Mouskavachi’s charm was.

  He wiped a hand across his forehead. “Hot,” he muttered. “Want some coffee? There’s some iced espresso in the fridge and I can whiz up some milk in the espresso machine. I just love doing it.”

  On another case I might have hesitated. But now, having foregone breakfast and even my morning coffee, I was hot and tired, too. “Sure.”

  I followed Kris through Hasbrouck Diamond’s glass doors. The living room was wonderfully cool, and white as the Himalaya: white shag carpet, white sofas, white walls, the latter decorated with poster-size photos of white Himalayas, and of views down from those Himalayas onto the variegated green and brown plateaus miles below.

  “That’s Bev,” Kris said, pointing to the tiny red figure at the peak of a summit. “Great photo, isn’t it? You can really see the thrill of mountaineering, looking down on the world like a god, standing where no man or at least not many have ever been.” He stood staring at the photo. It was, I realized, the first time he had not been watching me, gauging my reaction, and, I was willing to bet, planning his own. He turned back to me, shook his head, and smiled. “Climbers are weird, though. I mean what kind of person risks his life to scale an ice-covered rock? One in ten of them die, you know. That’s the average. I’ve talked to them, the guys I went with and the ones I just saw in the pie shop in Kathmandu—and they’ll tell you that there’s no high like pitting yourself against the best of nature and coming out on top, no feeling like coming off that exhaustion, still alive even if it’s with fingers black with frostbite, your ribs broken, and your toes ready for the amputator’s ax. They’ll go on and on … you get it, don’t you?”

  “A touch of ego?”

  Kris laughed. “More than a touch. A Himalayan share of ego.”

  “And Bev?”

  “The women are no shrinking violets, either, Bev least of all.” He made his way around one of the huge white couches. “The kitchen’s this way.”

  I followed him to the street side of the house, into a kitchen that would have made the owners of The Palace take notice. It was long, narrow, and almost as big as my entire former flat on Mr. Kepple’s back porch. Its long white counters held every appliance I’d seen and a number whose function I couldn’t have guessed. (I’m on the list for every catalog known to man, kitchenware ones included, a testimony to just how indiscriminate mass mailing is.) There was an espresso machine in The Palace, of course, but I had never had time to figure out how to work it. Kris, on the other hand, handled this one like a pro.

  “I love Berkeley,” he said. “Everyone’s so friendly, especially when they find out I grew up in Kathmandu.” He pulled a pitcher of coffee out of the refrigerator. The strong coffee aroma filled the room. The pitcher was white, of course. Was Hasbrouck Diamond obsessed with snowy vistas, or was he the least secure home decorator in Berkeley? Carefully, Kris poured the foamy milk atop my coffee. “I know it’s not me they’re interested in; it could be anyone who’d lived over there. But what the hell, why not enjoy it, right?”

  “Don’t be so sure it’s not you,” I said, leaning back against one of the counters. “You’re a likable guy.” He was. Someone not observing his veneer of bonhomie with a detective’s eye might not have noted the moments when he shrank back to check that it was in place. But even watching for the cracks, I couldn’t help but like him.

  “How’d you end up here, with Dr. Diamond?” I asked as I accepted the proffered glass. I took a drink and felt a jolt of alertness before the coffee hit my stomach.

  “Bev told him about me and he offered. He’s going to help me with college. I start at Cal in September. I’ve got a provisional acceptance. They’re still trying to evaluate my credits.” He flashed a happy grin. “My education hasn’t been the most standard. But what he gives me will be a loan,” he added quickly. “I’ll pay him back when I finish graduate school.”

  “You’re very ambitious,” I said, meaning it.

  “Compared to my parents? Yeah, I’m the white sheep, all right. Their worst nightmare come true. Their only son leaves the hovel to become a banker, or worse yet the CEO of a Pacific Rim Corporation, and have a house like this.”

  Hoping to catch him unawares, I said, “And you saw the eucalyptus branch fall on Dr. Diamond?”

  Kris poured the steamed milk into his glass with what seemed to be excessive care. “I heard him scream. I was in the TV room, upstairs, so it took me a minute to get down. But the branch was still on top of his leg. He’s got a scrape, you know.”

  I nodded. “How did he seem to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Emotionally, at that moment?” I meant “Stunned? In shock?” but I didn’t want to put words in Kris’s mouth.

  Now his pale blue eyes, eyes that were clearly not a window to his banker’s soul, did move off to one side. I recalled reading somewhere that people do that when they are puzzling something out. He shook his head. “Maybe he was stunned. I’ve seen people when they’ve had bad falls. They don’t scream and holler right away. It’s like the pain hasn’t made its way inside yet. Brouck looked like that. He was just sitting there, and he was smiling.”

  But I had seen that scrape. It wasn’t akin to a broken leg in the Himalaya. And I doubted Diamond’s smile was due to physical shock. If Leila Sandoval had aimed that branch at him, she had missed. She might even have given him grounds to reverse the decision of the tree arbitrator. I could picture Hasbrouck Diamond smiling as he planned his revenge. To Kris, I said, “Do you know his neighbor Leila Sandoval?”

  He glanced through the door into the living room. I followed suit, but there was no telltale sign of Diamond, or anyone else. “Bev introduced me,” he said, speaking in even a lower tone. I was bending forward trying to hear him. “But don’t tell Brouck. He’d toss me out if he knew.”

  “How come?” I asked, wanting to get his assessment of the Diamond-Sandoval situation.

  He took a long swallow of coffee. “Well, I guess you know about the problem Leila has caused Brouck.”

  “And Mr. Diamond seems worried about her?” I offered.

  He glanced at the doorway and back. “Brouck’s a worrier. Sometimes I think Brouck has those flags flying from the roof to ward off Leila, like people do for demons.” Kris grinned. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but then you probably already know it. Brouck’s a little obsessed with the idea that Leila’s out to get him. He thinks she sits up nights hatching plots.”

  “And when the tree fell on him?” I prompted.

  “It reinforced all his suspicions.” Kris hesitated, then put down his glass and leaned toward me. “This is going to sound bizarre. Maybe Brouck’s spent too much time with climbers. He can be as weird as they are. The thing is this lecture tomorrow is vital to Bev’s expedition. Brouck’s invited a lot of Hollywood types with money. He’s counting on their support. An American woman leading an Everest climb. It’s Hollywood, isn’t it?” He grinned.

  “So what’s Brouck afraid of?”

  “He’s scared stiff that Leila’s off plotting her ultimate revenge, something that will happen in the middle of Bev’s lecture.”

  “What?”

  Kris shoo
k his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Something like whatever unnerved her at last night’s lecture?”

  His eyes narrowed; for a moment he looked like a little boy who had failed. And despite the unusual ease he’d shown with a homicide detective, now he seemed no more mature than any other teenager. He glanced out the dinette window, then back at me. Motioning me into the dinette, he whispered, “It’s not fantasy. I was in Leila’s house. Brouck doesn’t know that. I’d be in trouble if he did. But while I was there she got a call from a beekeeper.” He paused, watching for my reaction, clearly expecting more than he got. “Leila had placed an order with the beekeeper for delivery tomorrow.” He paused again, and when I didn’t respond, he said, “The order, it wasn’t for honey.”

  I shook my head. In normal life this accusation would be too ludicrous to be true. But as an addendum to the eucalyptus attack and the cougar-howling story, it might fit. I could picture Bev’s lecture guests swatting bees and stampeding off the deck. And the reporters Diamond would have been sure to invite, writing up the event for laughs. Even so something wasn’t right about this story. “And the bees arrive tomorrow?”

  Kris grinned smugly. “Not anymore, they won’t. I called and canceled the order.”

  Despite that grin there was still a wariness to his expression. I kept my face unresponsive. Could Leila have been sure a swarm of bees would head from her porch across the deck to Diamond’s living room? Even if she had crept onto the deck the middle of the night before and spread honey over it? What would have kept those bees from finding something more appealing uphill?

  Kris stood, arms akimbo, watching me.

  I shook my head. “Dr. Diamond and his neighbor are pros at getting at each other. I don’t believe Ms. Sandoval would go with this bee thing—it’s too iffy. Tell me the truth, Kris.”

  His face tightened, but only momentarily. “Okay,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have told if you hadn’t guessed. I didn’t think you would. I guess real cops are smarter than the ones in the movies. Okay, maybe all the bees wouldn’t have come this way. Maybe only a few would have gotten inside the living room. But the thing is, Bev’s allergic to bee stings. Anaphylactic shock. She could swell up and die if someone didn’t give her a shot of adrenaline. If she’d spotted a bee, she’d have been out of here in a flash.”