Текст книги "Night Night, Sleep Tight"

Автор книги: Hallie Ephron

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter 24

Missing something?” Deirdre reached across the kitchen table for her mother’s hand and dropped two of the beads she’d found among the ashes on the floor of her father’s garage office into Gloria’s upturned palm. “Three guesses where I found them.”

Her mother’s eyes snapped open, but she didn’t say anything.

“You weren’t late because you had car trouble. You were here yesterday. It was you I saw up there in the window before the fire, wasn’t it?”

Gloria pursed her lips and rubbed her fingers together. “Along the road to truth, there are only two mistakes you can make. Not starting. And not going all the way.”

Serenity could be so irritating. “Did you set the fire?”

Gloria reared back as if she’d been slapped. “Of course I did not set the goddamn fire. Do you think I’d have been up in your father’s office if I had?”

That, at least, made some sense. “Then what were you doing up there? And why didn’t you come in? You could have at least—” What? Shown up? Said hello? Been there for Deirdre and Henry?

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—” Gloria moved to embrace her.

“Sorry?” Deirdre sobbed and pushed her away. “You never think of anyone but yourself.”

Her mother held up her hands and backed off. “Okay. Fair enough. You have every right to be angry. Let me try to explain. I got back yesterday.” She swallowed. “And actually I did call. I called because I wanted to be sure you and Henry weren’t going to be here when I arrived.”

Deirdre felt her jaw drop. “Because?”

“Because . . .” Tension drained from her mother’s face. “Deirdre, I knew you’d be going through your father’s papers. I was trying to protect you and your brother from what you might find.”

“I don’t need protecting. And Henry certainly doesn’t. And why now? How long’s it been since I’ve seen you? Months? And then only because I drove to Twentynine Palms.” Her mother flinched, but Deirdre kept going. “Besides, if you were trying to protect us, that train left the station a good long time ago.”

“Deirdre, Deirdre. Don’t.” Her mother gave her a long, mournful look. “Holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal.”

“Spare me the bumper stickers. Why were you up in his office?”

“Deirdre, your father never meant to hurt you.”

“What were you looking for? His creepy snapshots?”

Gloria blinked. “Snapshots?”

“You didn’t know? He was bringing young women, some of them just teenagers, up to his office and taking their pictures. And I can only imagine what else.”

“Teenagers?” Creases deepened between her mother’s eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“The photographs got destroyed in the fire, but I saved one of them.” Deirdre went into the laundry room and got the Polaroid she’d left on the shelf. She slammed it down on the kitchen table.

Her mother recoiled. “Oh my.” She stared at the photograph for a moment, then across at Deirdre. “Joelen Nichol.”

“She’s the only one I recognized.” Deirdre turned the picture over to show her the asterisks written on the back. “He even rated them. See?”

“And you think your father would . . . with your best friend? You can’t seriously believe that.” Gloria took the picture from Deirdre and held Joelen’s face under the light. “She was a beautiful girl, wasn’t she? And I don’t doubt that she was”—she paused for a moment—“precocious, in some respects. Frankly, I wasn’t thrilled that you and she were such close friends. But I had no idea that anything like this was going on.” She put the picture down on the table and looked hard at Deirdre. “I don’t know everything that your father was getting up to. I didn’t want to know because I was leaving him, and it would have been just one more thing to be furious about, and I knew enough already. It would have been like drinking poison and wanting him to die.” Realizing what she’d said, Gloria shook her head. “I don’t mean that literally, of course. I’d never have wanted him to . . . I mean . . . I just meant that metaphorically. But here’s the thing. Joelen was still a teenager when this picture was taken. And whatever else Arthur may have been, he was not a pedophile.”

Chapter 25

I’m back.” At the sound of Henry’s voice, Gloria shot up from the kitchen table. The dogs tumbled into the room and swarmed at her feet. She reached over to the counter for two pieces of raw soy bacon. They’d barely hit the floor before the dogs had scarfed them up.

“Is the insurance adjuster done out there?” Gloria asked Henry.

“She’s done with the garage downstairs. Other than the bikes and the car, there wasn’t a whole lot more to claim. Now she’s upstairs, working on the office.” Henry helped himself to a piece of fake bacon. Sniffed. Took a bite. Chewed. Pulled a face. “What is this?”

“It’s healthy,” Deirdre said. “Mom brought it.”

“It’s weird,” he said, snagging a second piece.

“When your brother was a toddler, he ate carpet backing,” Gloria said. “A real connoisseur of kapok.”

“Ah! So that’s what this tastes like,” Henry said, popping the last piece into his mouth. “Sondra says they won’t be able to begin processing the claim without a copy of the official incident report. One of us has to go to City Hall and request it. Even with that, the bureaucracy can take weeks to spit out the report . . . unless it’s goosed along by someone on the inside.” Henry eyed Deirdre. “Know anyone who might be able to help?”

“I do not know”—Deirdre drew quote marks in the air—“Tyler Corrigan.”

“Tyler?” Gloria said. “The boy who lived across the street?”

“Used to show off for Deirdre,” Henry said. “He was kind of a prick.”

“He was a nice boy,” her mother said. “Delivered our newspaper for a while.”

“He’s the city’s lead arson investigator,” Henry said, “and Sondra says he’s the one who signs off on cases.”

“So now we’re a case?” Deirdre said. Henry’s fixation on Tyler was starting to annoy her. “How is Sondra doing?”

“She’s up there,” Henry said, “literally picking the place apart. Talking into a cassette recorder and making an inventory of everything that got damaged, from the carpet to the toilet paper dispenser. It’s like watching an autopsy. Slow. Painstaking. Messy.”

“I’ll bet,” Deirdre said, sniffing at her own fingers. She didn’t know if that was the soy bacon or barbecued prayer beads that she smelled.

“She’s got rubber gloves and baggies that go over her boots. The smell and the heat got to me right away, but she’s oblivious. Girl knows how to travel—she’s got water in her backpack and a very long straw.” Henry poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the table. “So what were you two talking about?”

“Those photographs that were stuck in the Players Directories that Dad wanted you to throw away? There’s only one that didn’t get incinerated.” Deirdre turned it over so he could see Joelen’s face.

For a few moments, the only sounds in the room were Baby’s claws clicking across the floor and a chuffing as she sniffed, ever hopeful, at the floor where bacon had landed. Deirdre waited until she couldn’t any longer. “Recognize her?”

Henry raised his eyebrows and smirked, allowing that he did.

Deirdre turned the picture over to show him the asterisks. “Mom says Dad didn’t write those.”

Henry picked up the snapshot. “Really?” He and Gloria exchanged a look.

“What?” Deirdre said.

“What what?” Henry said.

“Don’t give me that. I’m not blind. What’s up with you two?”

Gloria said, “Henry, your sister thinks your father was responsible for that.” She pointed to the photograph.

“And the others like it,” Deirdre said.

“He was responsible.” Henry stared impassively at Gloria. “A regular trailblazer.”

“Henry—” Gloria started.

“And what do you know about it?” Henry said, cutting her off. “You were on the path.” The path was the term that their mother used for her cleansing journey to what she called self-awakening. It had started long before she left Arthur, and even though Deirdre knew Gloria had needed to do something to preserve her own sanity, like Henry she resented the way Gloria had spun herself a protective cocoon.

Gloria reared back. “And look what you were on your way to, Henry.” She spread her arms and looked around. “Still living with your father in a house that’s literally falling down around you.”

“It wasn’t my fault that I got thrown out of school. My roommate—”

“Right. He’s the one who made you stop going to classes. Did he make you give up music and wreck your car, too?”

“Oh, remind me again, how much did you pay for that car?”

Deirdre knew from experience that they were just getting warmed up. “Stop it!” she said, standing so fast that her chair tipped over backward. She snatched the photograph from Henry, nabbed her crutch, walked her plate to the sink, and dropped it in with a clatter. Across the room, her messenger bag hung from a hook by the back door. She grabbed it. It was still damp and weighed almost nothing. All that was in it was her keys and wallet. She slipped the photograph in, too, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Gloria asked.

“Out.”

“Go to City Hall, why don’t you,” Henry said, “and file the request for the form we need.”

The last thing Deirdre felt like doing at that moment was agreeing with Henry, but it was actually a good suggestion. She paused, the door open. “What’s it called?”

“An incident report,” Henry said. “And remember to charm Tyler, won’t you?”

Deirdre stepped outside and slammed the door behind her. She clumped down the back steps, out the driveway, and into the street to her car. She’d started the engine when she realized a ticket was stuck to her windshield. She got out and snagged it. Overnight parking was checked. There was an envelope for remitting her twenty-five-dollar fine. Damn. She got back into the car, jammed the ticket in her glove compartment, and took off.

Charm Tyler. She glanced at her reflection in her rearview mirror. Eyes wild. Skin blotchy. Hair a rat’s nest. On top of that, her outfit—those ridiculous boots and her father’s shirt—made her look as if she were on her way to a Halloween party. She needed to pull herself together if she was going to get anywhere in the charm department.

It had been many years since Deirdre had shopped for clothes or gotten her hair cut in Beverly Hills. She parked in the lot behind the stores on Little Santa Monica near Beverly Drive and fed some coins into the meter. Across the street was the park where she used to stand and wave at trains that rode through. If she was lucky, someone hanging out of the last car, a real red caboose, would wave back at her. That was even better than getting a semi on the freeway to toot its air horn at you.

Walking along Little Santa Monica, feeling as if she were throwing a dart at a map, she stopped in front of Latour’s Hair Salon. A small WALK-INS WELCOME sign was in the window. She pushed open the heavy wood door and stepped inside.

A spectrally thin young woman in a black turtleneck and fringed leather vest stood at the front desk, talking on the phone. Her gaze flickered over Deirdre and then away. It was the same dismissive look the clerk at Jax had given her when she was in high school and ventured into the elegant store where the popular girls at school bought their straight skirts and shells and matching Geistex sweaters. Back then, Deirdre had turned tail and fled. Didn’t matter that she had saved up enough from babysitting to pay for any of their outfits.

Now she held her ground. Behind the counter, stations on facing walls were half-full of customers and the air was laden with the sewer-gas smell of perms.

Finally the receptionist got off the phone. She gave Deirdre a brittle smile. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Do I need one? I’d like to get my hair cut.” Quite deliberately Deirdre laid her crutch on the desk.

The woman looked startled for a moment, then turned and buried her nose in an appointment ledger. “Cut? Blow-dry?”

“Please.”

An hour later, Deirdre emerged from the salon, her hair cut short and layered, just framing her face, the bangs poufy and saucily blown to the side. She caught glimpses of her new self reflected in store windows as she continued to Rodeo Drive. For so many years she’d cursed her curls and now they were in style. The chambray shirt and boots, on the other hand, had to go.

She entered a new shopping complex with a glass atrium. She couldn’t remember what had been at that address when she was growing up—maybe Uncle Bernie’s, the toy store with a lemonade tree in the back. Now it was home to Gucci, Giorgio, and Chanel. They made Jax look like J.J. Newberry.

Farther down the street Deirdre passed boutique after boutique. Finally she entered a dancewear store and bought a dark purple scoop-necked leotard, black leggings, and a flowy white silk shirt that grazed her knees. She passed on the slouchy pink leg warmers the Jennifer Beals–look-alike salesgirl tried to foist on her.

Next door, among Indian bedspreads, Moroccan leather handbags, and feathered earrings, she found a suede belt with a brightly enameled buckle and a long Indian scarf in reds and pinks. A few doors down was a consignment shop with a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS, LOST OUR LEASE sign. There Deirdre found a whole row of what looked like brand-new Keds. She bought two pairs in white—she always had to buy two pairs of shoes because one foot was now two sizes smaller than the other.

She ducked into the consignment shop’s makeshift dressing room—sheets hung from a clothesline in a back corner of the store—and stripped off her clothes, then assembled her new outfit. She fluffed her newly shorn hair with her fingers, cocked her hip, and examined her reflection in the mirror. Locked and loaded.

She was ready to find Tyler Corrigan.

Chapter 26

City Hall was nearby, but just a little too far for Deirdre to walk there and back with her bad leg. So she drove the few blocks over and parked in a handicapped spot in front. This time no news crews were there filming.

She climbed the long, broad front staircase, though there was probably a handicapped entrance at ground level. She caught her reflection in the glass of the door just before she pushed it open. The hair was cute and bouncy, the shirt elegant and casual, the sneakers a hint that she wasn’t taking herself too seriously.

Cool air oozed out as she stepped into the lobby, a magnificent Spanish Renaissance two-story entryway with terrazzo floors, white marble walls, and a coffered ceiling. The vast space hummed with a steady flow of uniformed officers, men and the occasional woman in business suits carrying thick briefcases, and lost-looking citizens who were probably there to file for tax abatements, report for jury duty, or, like her, request a copy of an official document.

It was past noon, and the soy bacon and eggs seemed a long time ago. Deirdre bought a granola bar from a newsstand tucked incongruously in the corner under a massive California state flag and wolfed it down. She chased it with a stick of Dentyne, hoping to dispel the miasma of perfumed conditioner and hair gel that felt as if it were floating in a thick cloud around her head.

She had no desire to run into Detective Martinez, so she made her way quickly down the hall, following the signs to Public Records. The room had linoleum, not terrazzo, on the floor, and its walls were painted mustard yellow. Six rows of folding chairs took up half the space, most of the seats taken. A man wearing a bright green golf shirt and sunglasses on top of his bald head brushed past her on his way to the door. “Good luck,” he said. “Effing incompetence. An hour and a half wasted.”

The number 110 flashed over a counter with a bank of clerk’s stations. Deirdre took a number from the feeder—142. She found the Request for Records form on one of the shelves, stood in the back, and started to fill it out. Her name. Address. She checked the box beside “Incident Report,” then wrote in the date and time of the fire, the address, and a description. When she finished, the number counter had crept up to 112. Two harried clerks seemed to be actually serving customers. Several others were on phones, another hunched over his desk, all of them studiously avoiding eye contact with the thirty-plus impatient citizens sitting and standing beyond the safe barrier of the counter.

Clearly, she had plenty of time to kill. Tyler had said his office was next to some kind of lab in the basement. Deirdre left the waiting area and wandered back through the hall to the atrium lobby. There she found the elevators, their outer sliding doors elaborate wrought-iron grillwork. She stepped inside one and pressed B. The elevator descended two floors and slid open to reveal a basement hallway.

Paint the color of wet sand peeled on the walls. Two rows of Wanted posters—all men—hung on the bulletin board across the hall. The air was cooler and clammier than on the main floor, and Deirdre wondered if that was a whiff of formaldehyde under a layer of Pine-Sol. Signs pointed one way to Maintenance and the elevator, the other way to the restrooms, Arson Investigation, Crime Lab, and Records Storage.

Deirdre followed the sign pointing toward Arson Investigation, continuing to a door with a pebbled glass inset stenciled with the words ARSON UNIT. She was about to reach for the knob when the door opened. A man she didn’t recognize came out. He held the door for her.

The Arson Unit was a single room, mostly bare with a half-dozen desks crowded in, surrounded by shelves and file cabinets. A folding table against a wall was loaded with pamphlets. On the side wall was pinned a massive gray-and-green topographic map with colored pushpins stuck in it.

Tyler was sitting at a desk under a high window by the back wall. He was engrossed in some typewritten pages, switching between writing in pen and highlighting with a yellow marker. Deirdre headed his way. When she was within reaching distance, she said, “Tyler?”

He looked up. “Deirdre!” He shoved the papers he’d been working on into a file folder and stood, grazing his head on one of the pipes that ran overhead. “Hey. I was just thinking about you.” His eyes widened. “You look . . . different.”

Deirdre felt a flush creep up her neck. “I hope it’s an okay different.”

“Very okay. I was”—he shot a guilty look at the closed file folder—“just working on your case. Report’s almost finished.”

“I thought it takes weeks.”

“Who told you that?”

“Our claims adjuster.”

“I guess it can take that long to get processed once I file it. But the analysis—well, we know pretty much what we’re dealing with. Most of the time, anyway.”

“As in now?”

He nodded.

“So? Tell me. You can tell me, can’t you? What started the fire?”

Tyler sat. Deirdre could feel herself trembling as she waited for his answer.

“I can tell you what we know,” he said. “The fire started right where we originally thought it did. In a bag of potting mix.”

“Right. Probably left over from years ago when Mom was still living there.”

Tyler gave her an uneasy look. “You said your mother grew geraniums?”

“Scented geraniums,” Deirdre said, wondering where this was going.

“The thing is, the concentration of ammonium nitrate in that potting mix is much too high. It would have burned the roots of her plants. Even amateur horticulturists know that. Maybe your father bought it?”

“Not likely,” Deirdre said. There was only one way her father messed around with potting mix. “Were there any cigarette butts in it?”

“There were. But they’re not what started the fire.”

Deirdre took a deep breath. “So what are you saying?”

“It looks like someone tried to make it appear as if the fire was caused by careless disposal of smoking materials. So we’d find the cigarette butts and stop looking for what really fueled the fire.”

“Which was?”

“Good old-fashioned kerosene.” Tyler gave her a long, somber look.

Arson. Deirdre dropped into the chair opposite his desk. It wasn’t unexpected, but still the certainty of the verdict knocked the air out of her. Someone had set fire to her father’s garage. Someone had killed her father. “Who? Why?”

“Those are questions for the police.”

Deirdre tried to put it together. Cigarette butts stuck into kerosene-laced potting mix that her mother never would have purchased. Whoever did that knew her father was a smoker who stubbed out his cigarettes wherever happened to be convenient. “Could it have been set up in advance?” she asked.

“Probably was. It would be simple. Lace the mix with kerosene. Wait till there’s no one around, sneak in, and put the bag in the garage. Poke a few burning cigarettes into it and let nature take its course. Might have taken a few minutes or a few hours to really get going, but it was a pretty sure bet that eventually it would.”

Only whoever it was had miscalculated. The house might have been empty, but their mother was in the garage’s second-floor office. While Deirdre was pulling the alarm, Gloria must have bolted and then tried to hide the fact that she’d been there. Deirdre never would have known if she hadn’t found the prayer beads.

“So there’s no way it could have been an accident?” Deirdre said. She knew she was grasping at straws.

“An accidental kerosene spill at just the right moment? How likely is that?” Tyler paused. “You can be sure that the insurance company will bring in a professional investigator to see if the fire was set for financial gain.”

Deirdre groaned. “Here we go. They’ll think one of us did it.”

“Maybe. But fire damage doesn’t add value to a property you’re about to sell. So what would you have stood to gain?”

Deirdre thought about it. If the fire wasn’t set for financial gain, then why? Pure malice? Why target just the garage? Unless that was the point, maybe to destroy what was in the garage, including whatever her mother was up there trying to keep Deirdre and Henry from finding.

“Well, thank you for telling me,” Deirdre said. She started to get up.

“Deirdre, there’s more. I found your accident report.” Tyler’s solemn tone and grave expression dropped her back into the chair. She swallowed hard and waited for him to go on.

“The records from 1963 are all on microfiche, so it should have been easy to find. And it would have been . . . if the accident had been in Beverly Hills. But it wasn’t.”

Not in Beverly Hills. That meant that her father hadn’t been driving her home from Joelen’s house. He’d been driving . . . where? Deirdre sat back and took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Once I was sure the report wasn’t in our records, I called a buddy over at the LAPD. They’ve got a huge repository. Good thing there’s not many Austin-Healey convertibles out there to get into traffic accidents. He found it and sent me a copy.” He opened his desk drawer, drew out two grainy faxes, and laid them on the desk in front of Deirdre.

She leaned forward. Across the top in capital letters were the words POLICE INCIDENT REPORT. Below that:

Crash investigator: TROOPER MITCHELL

Vehicle # [1] Year [1957] Make [AUHE] Model [CV]

Deirdre ran her fingers across the letters. This was the footprint she’d been sure she’d never find.

Then she read the next line.

Driver [DEIRDRE UNGER] [F] [15] of [BEVERLY HILLS, CA]

It felt as if the floor had opened up under her and she was in free fall. There had to be some mistake. “This has my name as the driver.” When Tyler just nodded, she said, “But how could that be? I remember riding in the passenger seat. The top was down. I was thrown from the car. It was cold. I . . . I can remember all kinds of details.”

“You thought you were in Beverly Hills.”

“I did . . . and I didn’t. I wanted to believe that, but it never made any sense. Even with a detour in the wrong direction, it just wasn’t right. But this? This is completely insane.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you expected.”

Deirdre gripped the arm of the chair. She’d driven the car off the road. Not her father. “I’m just trying to understand.”

For a minute, Tyler didn’t say anything, giving her time to absorb the shock. Then he said, “You wanted to know where it happened.” He turned to the second stapled sheet and pointed to a paragraph in the middle of the page.

Deirdre pulled the faxed sheets closer and read.

Narrative: V1 driver was driving east on Mulholland. V1 crashed into a guardrail located at approximately 10536 Mulholland Drive. Driver ejected from the car. Driver transported to Northridge Hospital. The crash remains under investigation and charges are pending.

Deirdre shook her head, and then shook it again. Mulholland Drive? It was at least five miles from the Nichols’ house, and in the opposite direction from home.

Tyler went over to the map on the wall. He stuck a white pushpin at a curve on a road highlighted in yellow, a road that snaked along the crest of the finely drawn, crenellated landscape that was the Santa Monica Mountains. “You’re not the only one who’s wiped out there. There’s a reason they call that spot Suicide Bend.”

Deirdre read aloud the final line of the report. “ ‘The crash remains under investigation and charges are pending.’ What does that mean?”

“You were never charged?”

“I don’t remembering being charged. But I don’t remember driving, either.” Maybe this was what Sy had meant when he said he’d kept her out of trouble then. No charges.

She walked up to the map and stared at the white pushpin. She hadn’t driven that stretch in many years, but she knew it well. After she’d mastered driving in the flats between Santa Monica and Sunset, her father had taken her into the canyons for serious driving lessons. There, she’d learned to start from a dead stop on a steep incline without rolling backward. To take curves, downshifting first, judging how well the road was banked to determine how much to decelerate going in and how fast she could accelerate coming out. Always, always, her father reminded her, stay in control and stay in your goddamned lane.

Driving Mulholland was the ultimate test. In her mind’s eye Deirdre could run the curves and straightaways of the infamous road that was known as “the snake,” catching glimpses of the vast and usually smog-skimmed San Fernando Valley unfurling to the northwest.

With her finger she traced the yellow-highlighted road. She tried to envision the spot, right at a sharp elbow. Was this where her father had always cautioned her to respect the signage and slow the hell down? Where he’d once made her pull over and hike twenty minutes down a steep embankment until they reached a Dodge Dart lying in the scrub, its blue paint nearly rusted away? Nearby, in a dry streambed, a red Porsche had lain on its back, looking like the empty carapace of a stranded beetle. Deirdre had peered into the car through the broken windshield, fully expecting to find a skeleton sitting at the wheel. But the car’s interior had been stripped, filled only with a tangle of vines and what she later realized was poison oak. Surely her father had been trying to convey a lesson about the dire consequences of reckless driving, but what stayed with Deirdre, even now, was the brutal beauty of the landscape and the power of time.

Maybe she’d been going too fast that night. Maybe she’d been blinded by oncoming headlights. Swerved to avoid another driver? Skidded on a gravel spill?

But why had she been there at all, and where on earth had she thought she was going?