Diamond in the Buff

by Susan Dunlap

  “No. No. No, the reason for my call is to, uh, inform you that Mr. and Mrs. Mouskavachi, the parents, contacted my associates in Kathmandu. The news is bad. They were very distressed about their son’s death—” His voice didn’t drop as it would at the end of a sentence; he simply discontinued speaking.

  I waited.

  I could hear him taking a breath. “As I said, the news is bad, for you. They are on their way to Berkeley. They are due to arrive tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you for informing me. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Mouskavachi, but it is always helpful to hold an interview in person. So it won’t be all bad.” I realized I had fallen into his formal pattern of speech. How had he described the woman? “Like a beggar whining for baksheesh.”

  There was another pause. “That’s good. Because the Mouskavachis have no friends or relations in the city and, of course, very little money. From the airport they are planning to come directly to your police station and they are planning to stay there.”

  16

  I DROVE EAST TO Panoramic Way more quickly than I might have, had I not been thinking about the imminent descent of the elder Mouskavachis. I recalled Kris’s description of them sitting around the Kathmandu pie shop hour after hour, day after day, waffling about their half-baked plans to go to Delhi. I recalled stories of families in India who had camped in hospital lobbies for the entire stay of their infirm relatives, and others who had lived in railway stations for generations. It didn’t take a vivid imagination to picture the Mouskavachis settling between the curving staircases in the lobby of the Berkeley Police Station, prepared to set up housekeeping with the same paraphernalia with which they had debarked on the Indian subcontinent twenty years ago. And it took no leap of thought to imagine the heat I would get from Inspector Doyle, and the heat he and the chief would get from the newspapers, television stations, city council, and one or more contingents of outraged citizens if we tried to remove forcibly the impoverished and grieving parents of a young man murdered after only six weeks in our city. Even in the great pasture of Berkeley, this would be the carnival of the decade. I squeezed my eyes shut momentarily against the building fatigue, and reminded myself I had slept some last night, albeit in a chair.

  I stepped harder on the gas.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when I crossed Telegraph Avenue. Unlike yesterday there were no halter-clad strollers glancing at tables of tie-dyed fabric. The tables were there, all right, but the students who hurried past them were clad in down jackets. And the sun that had steamed the sidewalks yesterday was hidden above a canopy of mustardy fog, which gave the city a two-dimensional look. The Berkeley Hills were a quarter of a mile away; I couldn’t see them. That odd flash of heat was gone, and the Bay Area was back to normal summer—fog covering the city till eleven or twelve, sun till four when the afternoon winds pushed the fog back in.

  I drove on through the uncrowded streets, past the fraternity houses and the football stadium, and turned right by the carriage house at the entrance to Panoramic Way.

  The street was clear of patrol cars by now. Martinez and Raksen had gone. The yellow plastic “ropes” had been untied and rolled back up. And Hasbrouck Diamond’s deck looked almost normal, if you ignored the broken railing on the side where the eucalyptus branch had hit, and the skid marks by the gateway Kris’s chaise lounge had sailed through. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Hasbrouck Diamond sunning himself or, considering the weather, fogging himself in a deck chair. I would have been pleased to find him there, ready to tell me, truthfully for a change, not why Leila Sandoval had spent a thousand dollars to bring a strange boy to this country—after Herman Ott’s recitation I could guess that—but why he had decided to take under his wing a boy who could testify to Bev Zagoya’s fatal mismanagement on the last expedition she led. Had Diamond assumed he could subvert Kris? Had he, indeed, been able to?

  But Diamond was not on his deck. And a couple of rings on the doorbell told me he wasn’t home at all. And neither was Bev Zagoya.

  “Damn!” I muttered. Where could Diamond be? Depressed as he had seemed hours ago, I couldn’t picture him tooling off to Safeway to restock the larder. Nothing suggested he had friends he would turn to for comfort. He could have gone out for brunch, but with Bev’s planned reception at the house he must have had food for an army inside. If he were depressed … Then I recalled Orchard Lane, the Italianate stairway he had described as a three-minute vacation in Florence.

  It was a good description. I had come across Orchard Lane a couple of years ago when I’d been making my way down Panoramic from a walk on one of the fire trails that cut through the dry hillside grass above. How Orchard Lane had gotten its unsuitable name was a question I had never found the right person to ask. It is not a lane but one of the many steep hillside staircases or gently inclining paths that cut through long city blocks. It joins two levels of Panoramic Way. Age-cracked cement railings supported by urn-shaped posts run down beside the wide stairs. Tertiary staircases lead off to the side, narrow, and disappear into vine-covered paths between Italianate cottages. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Gypsy violin music or to see a figure in a Pierrot costume vanishing behind one of those heavy oaken doors.

  I walked down twenty steps to a plateau, down another twenty steps to a second and a third, to a cement alcove that must have been the backdrop of a statue. The statue was gone now, but a bench stood beside the empty spot. And on the bench, statuelike himself, sat Hasbrouck Diamond.

  Sitting there, clad in brown corduroy slacks and a thick black sweater, head hanging as always, he didn’t seem out of place the way he did on his own deck. His deck was a spot for the young, muscular, well-oiled, tanned stars of the movie company in which he had invested. But Orchard Lane, with the fog weighing down the thick spatulate leaves of loquat trees, and rectangles of yellow light in the house windows serving only to make the lane grayer and colder and more suitable to the solitary griever, here Hasbrouck Diamond seemed at home.

  I sat next to him on the bench and without preamble said, “Three people died on the last expedition Bev Zagoya led.”

  His eyes closed.

  “Kris knew that, right?”

  Slowly, he nodded.

  “What would that do to Bev’s trying to get funding for her new expedition?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What?” I insisted.

  He shrugged.

  “Answer me!”

  “I don’t know, dammit. Bev’s the one who knows the ins and outs of fund raising.”

  “We’re talking about the woman you are ‘very fond and very, very proud’ of. Don’t tell me you haven’t given this threat any thought.”

  “Listen, it’s not that big a thing. Probably it wouldn’t make any difference at all. The story’s not new. No one in the climbing community is going to be shocked. Climbers are willing to sign on. Climbers love the thrill. And there’s no thrill without danger.”

  That was what Bev had said earlier this morning. Still, that conclusion didn’t satisfy me. “There’s danger and there’s danger. I can believe climbers want to try virgin mountains, that they’re willing to face sub-zero temperatures, avalanches, and the knowledge that the climb may be twice as hard and twice as dangerous as they had any right to expect. But I also believe that climbers who survive do as much as possible to shift the odds in their favor. They don’t sign on with leaders who are incompetent.”

  Diamond jerked up. His thin, pale hair flapped against his head. “Incompetent! Beverly is hardly incompetent. Look, what happened to that climber and those Sherpas could have happened to anyone. The Sherpas climb for a living; they live in the Himalaya, for Chrissakes. Bev assumed they’d be careful.”

  “She put them in a position where they had no choice,” I said, hoping that Herman Ott’s information was accurate. It always had been. And in his bad position with me, he wouldn’t have dared to offer me a rotten lead.

  “On a climb like that everyone has a
choice. You don’t follow orders when the price is your life.” Someone not looking for new signs of unease would have missed the slight quiver in Diamond’s voice as he started to respond.

  “But if your choice is between freezing overnight or chancing an avalanche?” I prodded.

  “Then you time the slides and make your move. There’s a rhythm to slides. A good climber has to figure it.”

  That had the ring of a response Diamond had either used or heard used before. And as he gave it he sounded like a climber, an insider—the mark of success for a groupie. I said, “But Bev still needs backing.”

  Diamond sat up straight. “Look, backers only care about ‘now.’ If they can back a California expedition that puts a woman leader on the top of Everest, they don’t care if half the Sherpas in Nepal died the last time. When pictures of Bev standing on top of Everest with the state flag flapping behind her Evergreen parka hit the front pages, people will flock to Evergreen outlets. And they’re not going to be asking who died on the previous expedition. Besides,” he said, turning to face me, “why are you asking about this? Why aren’t you trying to find that lunatic woman who tried to kill me?”

  “Because I have found her. And, Dr. Diamond, I don’t think she was trying to kill you at all. I think the killer knew exactly who was on that chaise lounge.” I watched for his reaction. Through his tan, his face turned an unpleasant shade of brick. He sputtered, and the sputters led to coughs. “You lied to me, Dr. Diamond.”

  He was still dealing with the aftermath of the coughs.

  “You told me you brought Kris over here. You didn’t, and you knew it was Leila Sandoval who paid Kris’s air fare. And you could make a good guess just why. The bees she ordered to disrupt Bev’s presentation were a poor replacement for Kris telling about the three deaths—that they were caused by Bev’s incompetence.”

  “You’re as crazy as she is. I know my rights, I’ll call—”

  “Inspector Doyle again? It’s gone way beyond that.”

  “I don’t have to put up with this.” He pushed himself up.

  “You do. Sit down. You think that you can do an end run around me, manipulate the newspapers, and create a hassle for the department. But not this time. Murder makes a difference in the way the public views stories. The public was willing to be entertained by your antics over the eucalyptus. They wanted a laugh. They’re not going to be laughing about a teenage boy who’s dead. This is murder. You are a suspect. No one is impressed by murder suspects kicking up a fuss. It only makes them look suspicious.”

  He sat.

  I continued, “Now tell me about Leila paying to bring him over here.”

  “Ask her.”

  “I’m asking you why you accepted Kris as a house guest when she brought him to this country.”

  The twitch at the side of his mouth was probably a small smile, but it was hard to tell at the angle his head was hanging. “Kris was a charming boy. He could have been a great asset at receptions like the one we had planned for today. Bev, well, Bev can be abrupt; she doesn’t have the social sense Kris did.”

  “How did Kris come to stay with you? Or let me rephrase that, Dr. Diamond. What did you offer him to lure him away from Leila Sandoval?”

  There was definitely a smile now. “The boy had good taste. It was my house, my lifestyle he wanted to fit into. And, I like to think, he had a certain fondness for me.”

  “The lure? Specifically, Dr. Diamond?”

  That smile vanished. “A loan for college,” he muttered.

  “College costs ten thousand dollars a year. You couldn’t pay that.”

  “Once we got the backing …”

  Sleazier and sleazier. Duping the backers? Promising Kris money that might never materialize? But at the same time making damned sure Kris didn’t interfere with the fund raising. But Kris was not a kid to be swayed by sleazy pipe dreams. “And what else did you offer him?”

  To his navel, he muttered, “Introductions to the CEO of Evergreen equipment.”

  I almost laughed. Poor Kris, so ruthless and yet so naive. Out of his league with the well-seasoned feuders of Panoramic Way. I glanced at Diamond. Hasbrouck Diamond didn’t look like someone who’d been one-upped. He looked smug. “And how were you planning to use Kris to get back at Leila?”

  “I didn’t know. I figured the perfect move would come to me.”

  “Like a phone call to CAMP?”

  He didn’t reply, but his smile returned.

  In Sandoval’s mind Diamond was probably responsible for her divorce and penury. He had undermined her massage business, forced her out of her home with it, and in all probability had now turned her in on drug charges for renting the land which she might well feel she had to rent because Diamond had so impoverished her. With all that, her pushing Diamond off the deck didn’t seem so unbelievable. Pushing Kris off after he turned traitor was suddenly not so out of the question, either.

  I left Diamond with instructions to have Bev Zagoya call me. As I walked back up those cement steps, it struck me that the picture Hasbrouck Diamond had presented me here was not unlike Orchard Lane itself, at once real and the stuff of fantasies, and damned hard to figure which is which.

  It also struck me that it was nearly noon, that the Humboldt County Sheriff would be arriving with Sandoval in an hour, and that I had sixty minutes to make an appearance in Mr. Kepple’s hospital room and get something for lunch. Maybe Mr. Kepple would have an idea where Cypress might stay. When the Humboldt guy brought Leila Sandoval in, it would be a good thing to have something to give him in return.

  17

  A MORE COMPASSIONATE PERSON would have visited Mr. Kepple first. A less hungry, more compassionate person. But as soon as I got in the car, hunger grabbed me, and shook me so that I felt that panicky-must-eat feeling. The need for ice cream. Half a pint of Chocolate Marzipan Swirl, or Chocolate Grand Marnier, or a double scoop of Double Dark Chocolate Double Espresso in a chocolate sugar cone—dipped. I stopped at Ortmann’s on Solano. And I did consider getting a pint and two dishes and sneaking it into the hospital. About a year into my tenancy, Mr. Kepple and I had discovered our mutual fondness for ice cream (that is, his occasional pleasure in a dish, and my untamed passion). We had sat on the step to my porch-cum-apartment and shared a couple of containers. But the drawbacks were quickly apparent. The sight of the yard was never appealing, and the smell would have inhibited a lesser appetite. And the conversation … Even when what went into Mr. Kepple’s mouth was Marshmallow Mocha Mint, what came out was a monologue on manure, mulch, and mealy bugs.

  I wandered up Solano, licking my Double Double cone, feeling guilty about not getting ice cream for Mr. Kepple, feeling annoyed that I felt guilty—annoyed that in the middle of a murder case I felt obligated to visit my former landlord, and guilty about being annoyed. The ice cream ran down the side of the cone. With one great swath of tongue I caught it. It dripped out of the bottom. Onto my slacks.

  It was one-thirty when I walked into Mr. Kepple’s room. I shivered, remembering my fear that he had had a stroke. He didn’t look like he had any residual damage. Thirty-six hours ago he had been the color of mashed potatoes. Now he was sitting up in bed, pushing a mound of them around his plate with his fork, while using the other hand to flick the remote control as the television picture jumped from station to station. An I.V. tube still threaded into his arm; his leg, under the sheet, was in a cast. Still, he could have had a stroke, a small stroke. Something had caused him to fall in a yard that he knew better than most people know their living rooms.

  Looking at him now, I noted that his round face was surprisingly ruddy for a hospitalized patient, and his gray hair was combed instead of poking out in clumps as it did when he was digging or mowing or just standing in the yard running dirt-encrusted fingers through it.

  “Jill,” he said, finger still pressing the remote control. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Kepple.”

  “They say t
hey’re running tests to find out why I fell. I don’t have time for tests. I have—”

  I put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I watered the garden.”

  “I have to … Oh. Did you get the zinnias? What about the cosmos, they shrivel in this kind of heat. Is it as hot as it was yesterday? I can’t find the danged weather report on the TV.”

  “The plants are okay. It’s not hot today. Look outside at the fog. Tell me how it is you fell.”

  “But they still need watering.”

  “Howard’s watering. At this very moment he’s in your yard with a hose. About your fall—”

  “Howard? The big one with all that red hair? He doesn’t know plants.”

  “Mr. Kepple, Howard’s doing you a favor!” I almost added, “Any moron can hold a hose.” But I caught myself and thus saved fifteen minutes of didacticism on the varying rates of moisture absorption of our local flora.

  “The cineraria, are they—”

  “Mr. Kepple, it’s been less than two days since you were out there,” I said before it became obvious that I had no idea which plants the cineraria were. “Now tell me about falling.”

  I watched him as he considered my question. I knew that expression; he was gauging whether to go on pressing me for more botanical reassurance. And I was assessing him. Were his eyes moving normally? Was he hesitating too long? What were the signs of a small stroke anyway? And what was the prognosis? Would he be a candidate for a bigger one? Would he have to avoid bending over, having the blood rushing to his head? Not lift fifty-pound garden sacks? And did it mean that someone would have to keep an eye on him? “Mr. Kepple, how did you feel just before you fell? Lightheaded? Dizzy? Did everything go black?”

  He gave me such a puzzled look that I wondered if he was following the conversation. “It was just a fall. I didn’t see it and I fell.”

  Night blindness? A sudden blackout? What did that indicate. “Didn’t see what?”