Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 02 - Silver Lake (4 page)

“
Ah,” Julie and I said at once.

“
There wuh some older homes in Silver Lake, but there were also large areas of undeveloped land. I decided that I would buy as much of it as I could, and make my riches there.

“
Took me several yeahs of hahd work, of wheelin’ and dealin’, as they say. And I was able to take care of my mothah and sistahs during that time. I’m at least thankful for that.”

“
I’m guessing it wasn’t all milk and honey,” I offered.

“
You’re guessing right,” Mack answered. “Even back then, real estate investment was a shahk’s game. You had to be a step ahead, always. And although I tried to be as honest as possible, I had to be savvy. There was no one to look out for me but me.”

Mack sighed. I took advantage of the moment and hurried into the kitchen. It was now evening, and after gulping down the water, I saw no harm in opening a beer. I brought one for Julie, just in case.

“Thanks,” Julie said, setting the beer on a coaster on the coffee table. I knew from experience that Julie would let it rest there until it was warm, and then she wouldn’t want it anymore. It irritated me. How could people just let a drink sit there? A perfectly good beer?

Get over it,
I told myself silently.
Listen to Mack.

“
So, did you make it?” I asked. “I have a feeling you did. You said your son has taken after you.”

“
Yes, I ‘made it,’ as you put it, Pauline. I became very wealthy within a few yeahs. I left my buddy Pete behind. I made new friends. I hung with high society. Women—all kinds of women—were after me, and while I had my fair share of fun, I knew they were mostly after my money.

“
A decade went by. I became wealthier and wealthier. But I was also becoming disenchanted with high society. I started to bow out of pahties, and stay away from the bahs. I was only in my late twenties and I was getting burned out on life. That is, until something happened that changed my life forever.”

“
What was that?” Julie leaned forward, ignoring her beer. I leaned forward, taking a sip of mine.

Mack bowed his head, as if the very words were too painful to utter, but he finally answered, “I met the most beautiful, sweetest woman to evah walk the face of this earth. Garrett’s mothah.”

Chapter Seven

“I met her at a holiday pahty, one of those fancy hullabaloos for the very rich in Laurel Canyon. I didn’t much like the holidays. I would have rather spent them with my own family back east, but I had to wahk. It was why I attended the pahty in the fuhst place. I was making business connections.

“
Then
she
walked into the room, and everything else seemed to disappear. She was an angel, I knew it the moment I saw her. And I knew right then and there I would marry her someday.”

“
Love at first sight,” Julie commented, smiling at the romance.

Mack touched the remote for some juice and his ghost form brightened. He smiled back at Julie. “That’s just what it was. She was with a date that night, but not a serious one. She was really there for the same reason I was. She had her own business, and had come to the pahty to make an appearance.

“We talked all night, I remember. God, but she made me laugh! And from that night on, I decided to make her smile every single day.”

“
She had her own companies to manage and we were both hahd wahkers. But I wooed her the old-fashioned way, and within a yeah we were married.”

I’d never seen Mack look so happy, so serene, as he looked then. I enjoyed that smile—a smile I suspected was for his wife. “What was her name?” I asked him.

“Rose,” he answered. “My Rose. I gave her roses every day for yeahs. We took a three-month honeymoon, and traveled all over. I became connected with other tycoons—that’s what I had become, myself, a true business tycoon—and made smaht investments ovahseas. We went everywhere first class. And she was smaht, my Rose was. She enjoyed meeting people wherever we went, and she had a knack for knowing who to connect with. With her by my side, I was golden. It’s true what they say: behind every successful man is a good woman. We became very rich together.”

“
It sounds amazing,” I commented. I almost didn’t want to hear anymore. I could just feel something bad coming.

“
It was. We had four glorious yeahs together. It wasn’t until the mid-eighties that she became pregnant. When she told me the news, I think I was the happiest man on Earth.”

I tensed as Mack’s smile became bittersweet. But I didn’t say a word.

Mack’s tone changed, too, as he continued. “Being pregnant made Rose very sick. She couldn’t eat, but she threw up anyhow. She lost weight instead of gaining, and the doctors became concerned. My Rose was so happy to be having a baby, and I was, too. Except that I couldn’t stand the toll it was taking on her.”

“
She’d been ordered to stay on bed rest when her morning sickness didn’t go away by the fifth month. Although I’d hired the best care for her—which she objected to, stubborn woman that she was—I tried to stay with her as much as possible. But I still had to wahk sometimes.

“
One day, I came home to find that Rose was vomiting blood. She refused an ambulance, saying she didn’t want to attract attention. I drove her to the hospital. She was admitted, and the doctors ordered a battery of tests.”

Mack rose above us now, like he did when he needed some distance. Gone was his smile. I could feel his pain.

“She hated being in the hospital, but it took a week to find out what was wrong.”

“
What was it?” Julie whispered.

“
It was a rare form of cancer.” Mack’s voice was so quiet that Julie and I both held our breath. “Everyone thought she was sick because she was with child. Otherwise, the doctors might have caught it earlier. She couldn’t take chemo, or any other treatment, because of the baby. It was a race against time for the baby to be born, so the best doctors in the world could try to save my Rose.”

I lit a cigarette and, having finished my own beer, picked up Julie’s untouched bottle. I knew enough not to rush people’s stories. Especially Mack’s. There must be some reason he was telling me all this, but for now, I just wanted to let him get it all out.

He turned his back to us for a long moment. It was heartbreaking to see him this way, so very sad.

He faced me and Julie again. “I set up a mini-hospital at home. Put a bed in one of the brighter rooms, next to the windows that viewed her favorite garden. Being home helped a little, but God, you should have seen her! She smiled at me, and she still tried to make me laugh. But I could see the light fading from her. She grew more and more pale, almost like a ghost herself.

“Finally, Rose became so weak the doctors talked us into taking the baby by cesarean a few weeks early. It was a gamble, much more risky than it would have been these days. They said that she wouldn’t have been strong enough to have the baby naturally anyway, and so, the sooner the better.”

“
Oh, Mack.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“
Let me finish, woman.” But he took a moment again to steady himself, before finishing what I knew would be a tragic ending. “As I said, I had the best doctors possible. But the surgery was hahd on Rose. She lost a lot of blood. She pulled through it, but barely.”

“
And the baby?” Julie asked. “Is that Garrett?”

Mack nodded. “God, how she loved him. He was beautiful, I admit that. But it was…most difficult for me to love the boy. In my mind, he was what was killing the love of my life.”

I willed myself not to tear up. I could tell Mack felt guilty about his feelings for his new son.

“
Still and all,” he continued quietly, “Rose loved him. She was becoming weaker, and by then, I knew that not even chemo would save her. She was dying. My Rose was dying. And she spent every waking moment with Garrett. She loved him so.

“
Rose knew me better than anyone else. She understood my resentment, and made me promise to love him, no matter what happened. Of course I promised her. I would have moved heaven and earth for that woman.”

Silence. I knew this was taking a lot out of Mack. He’d been snatching up electricity for a while, but he was becoming faded, little more than a shimmer.

“Rose died a couple of days after I made that promise. She was holding little Garrett, and I was holding her. I knew she was near the end. With what strength she had, she smiled at me and squeezed my hand. And then she kissed Garrett on the forehead and closed her eyes for the last time.”

Chapter Eight

“
I did spend as much time as I could with my boy,” Mack continued, “but as he grew older, he made his own friends. I know that’s natural. But he didn’t need me as much. I found myself alone many nights.

“
I started dating. Nothing serious, at first. I rarely introduced any of my lady friends to Garrett. I didn’t have the heart to love any of them, and the relationships never lasted more than a few months.

“
Garrett graduated from high school, and he went off to college when he was eighteen—that would have been 2005, I believe. It’s a little foggy now. Anyhow, he’d been gone a couple of years when I met Bella. She was a beauty, and smaht, and she was easy to be around.”

“
That must have been nice, for a change,” Julie offered.

“
You would have thought so,” Mack said bitterly. “I thought as much myself at the time. Garrett would visit in the summers and holidays, and when I finally introduced them, she was kind enough to him. At first, he didn’t accept her, but when he saw that she made me at least a little happy, he tried his best to like her.”

“
Maybe he just wasn’t used to you being in a relationship,” I said.

Mack shook his head. “The boy sensed something about her that I didn’t. He was congenial, but I knew he didn’t truly trust her. I should have taken it as a warning, but it had been so long, and I was tired of being alone.

“So, I married her. We had a grand wedding, and after our honeymoon, I became more social. Bella was wealthy in her own right. She was from southern Europe, and she wanted me to help her establish herself in California society, both business and social.

“
When Garrett returned from college with a degree in finance and business, I was prepared to teach him what I knew about real estate investment. He had always admired me, and took an interest in my business affairs, and I wanted to see Garrett succeed as I had.”

“
That’s only natural,” I commented. I was still amazed that Mack was finally sharing his life. And what an interesting life it was.

“
That’s what I thought, too,” Mack reflected. “By then, Bella and I had joint ventures together, and we knew each other’s businesses well. We were, I thought at the time, real partners in everything.”

“
You thought…
at the time
?” Julie asked. “What does that mean?”

“
I’m getting to it,” Mack said, his voice a little grumpy. “Bella told me she didn’t think Garrett was responsible enough to handle his own business affairs. She suggested I coach him, but for the time being, keep everything in our names.”

Mack started hovering a little again. I could tell he was becoming anxious with talking about this part of his life. He floated down to get some juice from the remote, but then rose into the air once more.

“I thought Bella was trying to be a wise stepmother, even though Garrett didn’t see it that way. He wanted to be on his own, climb the ladder as I had done. But I consented, and I told him that with my expertise I could protect his assets until he had some experience under his belt.”

“
But your assets were her assets,” I concluded.

Mack’s eyes took on a dark, angry look. “Yes. If only I had seen it. At first, she made only small shifts in our finances, which was fine with me. She had an explanation for everything. Putting money here instead of there where it would earn more interest, she’d say. And she was right.

“It was then that I started feeling ill. I lost my appetite and lost weight. I was tired all of the time. I went to the doctor, who told me I wasn’t twenty anymore, and that I should reduce my level of stress.”

Julie and I were silent. I didn’t know if Julie saw it coming, but I did. I almost didn’t want to hear it.

“Of course, Bella offered to help. She said that was what married couples did, helped each other through rough spots, and of course, I agreed.”

“
Oh, Mack…” I started, but he waved his hand to silence me.

“
It happened pretty quickly. Bella appeared very upset when the doctors wouldn’t find anything wrong with me. She said her native food would do me good and flew in cooks from Europe. She got new doctors, ones she said she trusted. Garrett worked harder, trying to compensate for my absence from work. He visited less often, and when he did, he was more distant. He didn’t want to discuss business with me. He said he didn’t want to upset me. By then, I was mostly confined to my bed.”