One Grave Too Many (2 page)

“Yes, and it’s not the kind of damage an earthquake would do. An earthquake doesn’t slit sofa cushions or take pictures out of their frames.”

“He own the house?”

“No, he’s renting.”

“Did you ask the landlord if he knew anything?”

Gay stopped opposite a marble Venus. “The landlord lives out in Pasadena someplace. Besides I don’t want him seeing the inside of the cottage until I get a chance to clean up.”

“You don’t think there was a fight there, some kind of struggle?”

She ran her hand along the Venus’ marble arm. “I don’t think so, Mr. Easy. There was no blood or anything. If that’s what you mean.” She poked a finger into the Venus’ marble navel. “Isn’t this a dumb statue?”

“You could have it carted away, or sliced up into table tops.”

“Gary wouldn’t like that. He’s very sentimental about all these things.”

“This is your family home?”

“Not exactly,” the dark girl answered. “That statue over there is even dumber. Cupid with a fish. I even thought it was godawful when I was a little girl.”

“This isn’t your family home, but you grew up here?”

“Oh.” She turned her back to him, resumed walking. “It was our family home and then it wasn’t. My husband, my ex-husband, bought it back for me as a wedding present. I don’t actually know why I ever agreed to live here again. It should have Arabs peeking out the windows or Zorro hopping around on the roof. Taste in LA has never been … but none of this has anything to do with Gary and what’s happened to him.”

Easy followed her onto an arched wooden bridge which spanned a large oval fishpond. “Who have you asked about your brother?”

“I talked to Sandy Feller, his partner,” she said as she halted at the bridge rail. “A few of his other friends. No one knows anything, or so they claim. I even phoned our Aunt Theresa, who lives down near Palm Springs with her companion. Gary visits there now and then because she … never mind.”

“Because she what?”

Resting her elbows on the rail, the dark girl looked down at the green water. “Oh, another one’s dead,” she said, pointing at a shining goldfish which was floating on its back. “I have terrible luck with fish. I suppose it’s because you can’t really express affection to a fish or any kind of …”

“Why would your brother go see your aunt?”

“She took in most of our father’s effects after he died. Gary is more sentimental than I am. It’s not really important.”

“Who was your father?”

She turned to face him. “His name was Vincent Marquetti,” she said, watching Easy’s weatherbeaten face. “He’s been dead since 1967 and really has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Anyway, no one has seen or heard from Gary since Monday afternoon.”

“You told my secretary you think your brother’s been seeing someone. Have you talked to her?”

“He wouldn’t be there,” replied Gay. “I believe she has a husband who keeps too close an eye on her for anything to go on for two whole days.” She walked on, over the bridge and onto a path of white gravel.

“Who is she?”

“I’m not sure who she is now,” she said. “I only know who she used to be.”

E
VERYTHING WAS ON THE
floor. A gutted electric clock, a shattered porcelain lamp, a week of newspapers, six pairs of socks, fifty-some sleeveless phonograph records, tumbles of books, the boards and bricks which had once been a bookcase. All of it snowed over with pillow stuffing.

Easy made his way across the hot afternoon living room. He went into the bedroom.

Gay Holland stayed on the porch of her brother’s cottage for a moment, the key clutched tight in her hand. Then she came into the living room, asking, “Where are you, Mr. Easy?”

“Bedroom.” After checking out all the room’s closets, Easy knelt and looked under the bed. Puffs of dust, last month’s
Playboy
and a glossy photo were under there. He fished out the picture, stood up. The picture showed a pair of woman’s hands.

“Did you think perhaps …?”

“Yeah, I want to make sure he’s not here,” he said. “Though it’s unlikely.” He dropped the picture on the torn-up bed.

The tall dark-haired girl followed him as he worked through the debris to the long narrow bathroom. “Why unlikely?”

“If he’d been dead here for two days you’d notice.” A long wardrobe, with mirrored doors, stood against the bathroom wall. Easy tugged the doors open. “They were pretty thorough.” All the clothes were on the floor, pulled off their hangers.

“There’s no reason to believe Gary’s dead.” She noticed her image in one of the mirrors, bent slightly to smooth her skirt.

“There’s no reason to believe anything at this point.” He went back into the bedroom, glanced up at the ceiling. “No attic of any kind, and there was only a carport outside.” He stepped over a stray bureau drawer and a wad of neckties, heading for the kitchen.

Gay said, “I don’t have any idea what anyone could have been looking for.”

A couple days accumulation of dirty dishes had been lifted out of the sink and dropped on the floor. “Something small,” he told her. He opened the pantry door. All the cereal boxes had been slit and shaken. The linoleum floor cracked underfoot. “Someone should have heard all this frumus.”

“People get used to noise in a neighborhood this close to campus,” said the missing man’s sister. “And the couple in the house next door are on vacation. The fellow on the other side was out of town Monday and Tuesday. I’ve already asked him if he knew anything about Gary.”

Back in the living room Easy, eyes narrowed, surveyed the devastation. He crossed to the wall near the bedroom doorway, touched at an indentation in the plaster board. Then sniffed at it. “Somebody got knocked into the wall,” he said. “Fairly recently.”

“You mean you think there was some kind of fight?”

“Not a fight maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone may have worked your brother over.” He turned to face her. “You really don’t know what they were looking for?”

“No, I don’t have any idea, as I just told you. Simply because my …” She closed her mouth, turning away from him.

Easy waited a few seconds before returning to the bedroom. He circled the bed, gathering up two other photos. They, like the picture of the hands, had been pulled out of their frames. The black frames, making lopsided diamond shapes now, were tangled on top of a swirl of T-shirts and shorts. “This one your father?” asked Easy, holding up a tinted photo of a chunky bald man.

“Yes,” she answered from the threshold. “Gary kept it on his bureau. I think that other one will be of more use to you, though.”

The second photo was a color blowup of a snapshot. It had been taken at some kind of Western ghost town; false front buildings showed in the background. In the foreground stood four young people, smiling into the sun. “You had a sad smile then,” said Easy.

“Yes, that’s me on the end.” She came to stand close beside him. “A long time ago, almost ten years. How hopeful and innocent we all look … except for Danny.”

Easy touched the photo. “Is this Danny, the red-haired girl?”

“Danny Lansky, yes,” Gay answered “How’d you know … Danny isn’t a usual girl’s name.”

“You wouldn’t have sounded that way if you were talking about a guy,” he said. “Danny the one your brother’s been seeing again?”

“Yes.”

“Which one of these guys is your brother, the short dark kid here?”

“Yes, that’s Gary, the short one. Then he was still hoping he’d grow a few more inches.”

“Was Danny his girl?”

“No … well, she wasn’t supposed to be. She was engaged to Bill. That’s Bill standing between Danny and me. He had that sort of clumsy but lovable style some tall men have. Bill Goffman.”

“Danny’s present husband wouldn’t be this Goffman?”

Gay took the photo from him, studying it. After a moment she said, “No, Bill’s long gone. Most of us figure he took off for Canada around 1965, a pioneer draft dodger. Nobody’s heard from him since. He and Danny had some kind of big quarrel, I think, and he just took off. Some of the people, most of them really, that I knew back then I never think about … but Bill I wonder about now and then.”

Gently, Easy retrieved the photo. “Where was this picture taken?”

“The Thorpe Ranch. You know, they used to shoot a lot of Western TV shows there, over in the San Fernando Valley,” she said. “My father owned it once. Bill worked there summers and weekends, and the rest of us hung around there quite a bit.”

“Is your brother likely to have gone there?”

“Now? I don’t see why.” She lowered herself down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Gary’s not particularly nostalgic about the Thorpe Ranch.”

Easy reached across her tan legs for the photo he’d found earlier. “And why was he sentimental about this?” The picture showed a woman’s hands spreading a pat of margarine on a steaming muffin.

Gay shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing that before. It’s probably just something from a TV commercial he and Sandy worked on.”

“Would he be likely to keep advertising mementos in his bedroom? I don’t see anything else like that around.”

“I really don’t know.”

Easy unfastened a button on his shirt. “I’ll borrow these pictures.”

“You don’t need the one of my father,” she said, rising.

“Even so.” Easy slid them under his shirt. “Okay now, Gay, you’re absolutely sure you don’t know what happened here?”

“Gary and I are very close; we see each other a good deal, Mr. Easy,” she said. “He never told me he was in any kind of trouble.”

“Adultery can be trouble,” said Easy. “How long has he been seeing Danny?”

“A few months,” she said. “Gary mentioned to me when he ran into her again, said she was married now. He didn’t give me any more details. I do know, though, he’s been dating her since then, quite a bit.” She walked into the living room of the cottage. “Would it be all right if I cleaned it up now?”

“You don’t want the police in?”

“No.”

“Then there’s nobody else to show this mess to.” He watched her as she knelt and began gathering up a spill of hardcover books. Absently he read the titles.
Digging Up the Past
,
Archeology From the Earth
,
Ur of the Chaldees
,
Still Digging
,
The Mountains of Pharaoh.
“Is archeology a hobby of your brother’s?”

“No, my father. Gary likes to keep a few of them around.” When she picked up one of the books the pages fell free of the cover. “Someone tore this apart.”

Squatting next to her Easy quickly went through several piles of books. “Looks like they paid special attention to the ones on archeology. That suggest anything to you?”

“No, nothing.” She lowered her buttocks until she was sitting on the mat rug. “I think I’ll put off cleaning up till tomorrow. It’s funny, I was only the other day telling Gary I should be getting over here to help him houseclean.” She let the broken book slide from her hands. She began, very quietly, to cry.

Easy put his hand on her shoulder. “Two days isn’t a very long time.”

“They can kill you in a minute,” she said. “Someone … someone vicious did all this. No matter what they were searching for, they didn’t have to be this destructive.”

“They may have been mad at your brother.”

“He never told me about anyone … hating him.”

“Could he have taken something from Danny’s husband?”

“No, he’s not the kind of person who could steal anything.”

“Suppose he took Danny herself?”

“Gary’s not impulsive, Mr. Easy. He’s worked six years building up Marks & Feller, using his own money. He wouldn’t run off and throw it all away for the likes of Danny,” she said. “I just don’t know where he is.”

“Okay,” said Easy, “I’ll find out.”

A
N OLD LADY ON
a motorcycle gave Easy the finger.

He ignored it and took the parking space anyway, after having cut around the chubby gray-haired woman.

“Schmuck,” she said before roaring off up Cherokee.

Easy eased out of his dusty black Volkswagen, commenced walking through the hazy afternoon.

Two platinum blonde hookers were arguing in front of a narrow store which sold used appliances. Both wore chartreuse body shirts, white Levis and crimson clogs.

“Dumb cunt,” accused one.

“Dumb cunt,” replied the other.

A retired character actor went by, wearing an overcoat and muffler, carrying a chihuahua dog in a brown shopping bag.

Easy turned down the alley that showed up now on his right. There was a large brownstone warehouse at the alley’s end. In the middle of its highly polished oaken door was a small brass nameplate saying:
Hagopian.
Easy knocked.

The door opened, letting out a gnashing grinding sound. “John Easy,” said Hagopian. “Enter, enter.” He was a dark-haired man, the hair tight-curling. His nose was hooked, his eyes underscored with shadowed half circles. In two months he’d be forty.

“Having some dental work done?”

Hagopian led him over to the cluster of Victorian furniture and rugs which made a sort of parlor in the midst of the huge high-ceilinged warehouse. Everything beyond was high rows of green metal filing cabinets. “I’m into a whole new way of life,” he said.

“That makes six so far this year.”

“Is that fair, John?” said the
TV Look
writer. “In a town so full of flux I am, by contrast, as steadfast as a … well, I can’t think of anything steadfast, but nevertheless I am.” He walked over to the waist-high refrigerator on the edge of the Oriental carpet. Atop it an oblong white mechanism was whirring and chuffing. From a nozzle, a purplish liquid was sputtering into a glass measuring cup. “I have become a juicer.” He fondly patted the juice maker before snapping the off switch. “Do you realize all the enzymes you miss by not drinking raw vegetable juice? And do you have any idea what enzymes can do for you?”

Easy sat down in a bentwood rocker facing his friend. “New girl, huh?”

Hagopian smiled, causing curving wrinkles to join those already occupying his high forehead. “As a matter of fact, yes. This girl is really terrific, John, and impossibly healthy. Do you know you can even change the color of your nipples through diet. You ought to see Melody’s tits. Know what color her nipples are?”