Sweet Dreams, Irene (12 page)

W
HEN
P
ETE CALLED ME
that afternoon, I was working on two different versions of the election story. In one, Montgomery won; in the other, Henderson. I left a couple of open paragraphs at the beginning for victory or concession speeches, vote tallies, and quotes. But the rest of each article would capsulize what had been written about the race in the last few months: background on the candidates, highlights of the campaigns, analysis of their areas of support.

“Got the registration on that limo,” Pete said. “Our boys were interested in this too. It belongs to Malcolm Gannet Enterprises. Carlson will not be thrilled if he finds out I told you that.”

“Malcolm Gannet. Well, what do you know.” Gannet was a real estate developer. His group had changed the skyline along Shoreline Boulevard, and he had made a mint doing it. Mrs. Fremont had been actively antidevelopment, fighting a largely hopeless battle to preserve some of the examples of the 1920s and 1930s architecture of downtown Las Piernas.

“Something else, Irene.”

“What?”

“I talked to Hernandez about the little door prize you got last night.”

I braced myself. Dr. Carlos Hernandez was the coroner. “And?”

“And it’s definitely a human heart. Human blood, too.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I knew it would be.”

“Sure. But the logical conclusion is, whoever it belongs to ain’t doing so hot right now. So until we figure out who put it on your doorstep, you better watch out. Are you listening to me, Irene?”

“I’ve heard every word.”

“Yeah, but I know you. Hearing is not enough. Listen, for once. I know you want to get nosy about this, Irene, but it just isn’t smart. We can handle it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Look, you don’t see me walking down there and trying to be a reporter. So don’t you go trying to be a cop, okay?”

“They’re just trying to scare me, Pete.”

“So be scared, would you?”

“It makes me angry.”

“Crimeny. You got anger? Go see a shrink. And while you’re there, ask him why you don’t have the sense God gave a rabbit!”

“Via, non t’arrabbiare.
Did I say that right?”

“Pronunciation needs some work,” he said grumpily. “So you want it in Italian?
Ti sto avvertendo!
—I’m warning you!”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Shit. I’m wasting my breath.”

“Probably.”

“Shit.”

“Bye, Pete. I’ll be careful.”

I went back to my stories. Stacee and I also put a piece together on GOTV or “get out the vote” workers. Those folks who call you two dozen times on election night to make sure you voted. We were covering the system, from the professional campaign consultants to the leagues of volunteers who do everything from going door to door over a precinct or two to driving people to their polling places. We filed that story in the late afternoon.

I had some time to kill before going down to Cliffside, so I tracked down our real estate editor, Murray Plummer. Murray is the Clark Kent of real estate writers. With his baby face and oversized glasses, he looks like he just got out of a high school physics class. But he always manages to keep up with—if not one step ahead of—the wild and woolly world of commercial real estate in our town. He has published stories about deals before the principals have finished reading each other’s faxes. I’ve often wondered how well his abilities could be used in other kinds of reporting, but he will have none of it. He loves his work.

His section comes out three times a week, so when I found him, he was finishing up material that would run in Thursday’s paper.

“Hello, Irene. Where’ve you been lately?”

“Election time, Murray. You know where I’ve been.”

“I guess I do, and I don’t envy you. Take a look at this copy—what do you think? We’re featuring the Sheffield Project on Thursday.”

“That’s the one someone wants to put up over by the cliffs? Where the old Sheffield Estate used to be?”

“Yes, they plan a luxury hotel.”

“Is it a done deal?”

“Not by a long shot. There will be a hue and cry that will keep City Hall busy for a couple of years and make certain lawyers and consultants very rich.”

“I’ll want to read it. Listen—what can you tell me about Malcolm Gannet?”

His eyebrows went up behind the rim of his glasses. “Malcolm putting some money behind someone? He may be a gambler, but he’s usually pretty sure of his prospects when it comes to city council influence.”

“Maybe,” I said, realizing he assumed I was investigating a political story.

“Well, let’s see. You know what he’s done downtown, and he certainly doesn’t need to worry about what he can get approved there, so you’re probably more interested in the Lower Shore Project. I hope they come up with a better name for it, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, bluffing along.

“Okay, so from the boardwalk to the pier, he’s been buying up properties. Life will be easier for him now that poor Althea Fremont is gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, she fought him like a tiger on the Planning Commission. He was able to get past her on downtown, but when it came to the beach properties, she really organized her neighbors. Lots of people down there think it’s too crowded as it is, and they didn’t want to be looking at Gannet’s high-rise condos where they now have an ocean view. And a lot of beachgoers like things as they are.

“But you know, even if she had lost every vote, she still had old Gannet over a barrel. Her husband, John Fremont, bought up all kinds of beach property ages ago, when it could be taken for a song. Even after John died, she never let go of an inch of it. It’s in a patchwork with the Gannet properties, so between her and some of the others, he can’t get a large enough parcel together to build like he wants to.”

“So why did he keep on trying?”

Murray laughed. “You don’t know Malcolm Gannet. He believes in getting his way. It was a standoff. Two old buzzards waiting to see who’d go first. I guess it was Althea, which is too damn bad. Not that I’d blame whomever she’s passed it on to for selling out to Malcolm. You could retire on what five percent of that property is worth now.”

“Strange thing is, I saw Gannet—well, I saw his limo—at Althea Fremont’s funeral today.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was odd. He didn’t seem to want anyone to know he was there. I mean, he wasn’t exactly hiding, but he didn’t come out of the car for the graveside service.”

“Ah, that’s Malcolm all over. Mr. Mysterious. I know very little about him personally. Just the odd rumor, probably spread about by some of his vanquished rivals.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Oh, nothing of importance. Petty, really. I was told he gets around in the limo because he doesn’t know how to drive. Spends a tremendous amount of time on a yacht, when he doesn’t know how to swim or sail. He has an able crew around him, though, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. Same is true in business. He knows how to use the talents of others to get where he’s going.” He frowned for a moment, then shrugged. “As for the funeral, who knows? Maybe he was there to gloat.”

“Over a murder victim?”

“Hmm. No, you’re right. Well, sorry, I can’t help you out there.”

“Well, I’ve learned a lot anyway. Thanks, Murray.”

As I turned to leave, I heard him chuckle softly.

“I knew they’d never keep your nose out of crime stories.”

I turned back to face him. “Murray, please—”

He crossed his heart and put a finger to his lips. But this was a newspaper after all, full of people who couldn’t resist telling the news about one another as much as anything else. I walked off feeling certain that John Walters would be chewing me out by the next morning.

I made my way down to the lobby. Outside in the darkness, rain was beginning to fall again. Voter turnout was bound to be low. I wasn’t sure who that would help out—Montgomery, probably.

By the time I drove over to Cliffside Hotel, it was pouring. I realized I had left my umbrella in the Karmann Ghia. By the time I made the dash into the hotel, I was fairly drenched. Frank was standing in the lobby, equally wet. We took one look at each other and started laughing.

“Well, at least we know
you’re
no witch. You didn’t melt.”

“We witches fool everybody with that old trick, Frank.”

“Are you hungry?”

“And curious.”

“So what’s new. I’ll tell you about the will over dinner.”

The Cliffside has a classy restaurant. We ate in a candlelit room overlooking the ocean. The room was paneled in beautiful dark wood, and the chairs were comfy and high-backed. It was too dark and rainy to make much of the view that night, but it was still a romantic place to share a meal. There was a big fireplace at one end of the room, and espying our wet hair, the maître’d seated us near it. We ordered a scotch for Frank and a Myers’s and o. j. for me, which arrived posthaste, and we settled back to admire one another for a while.

“So tell me what happened after I left,” I said.

He shifted around in his chair a little. “Mrs. Fremont changed her will about a month ago. The lawyer was not subtle about his unhappiness with the new one. She gave a lot of money to the foundation that supports the shelter and other charities. She left Paul enough to finish college. She gave Jack all of her beach properties, and she gave me some mountain property—a cabin and some land with a couple of weekend rentals on it.”

“Jack got all of the beach property?”

“Yeah, I suppose she figured Paul would get it someday and that in the meantime Jack would fight against getting it developed.”

“Pete tell you about Malcolm Gannet?”

“Yeah, something’s not right there. I don’t know. Something’s not right about any of it. It bothers me. I wish Bredloe would let me in on it.”

“It sounds like Pete’s keeping you informed.”

“But he gets everything secondhand, so by the time it gets to me, I can’t ask the questions I want to ask.”

“Such as?”

He took a long sip of scotch, then sat forward. “Okay. Why no signs of forced entry? No struggle? Beyond finding the pentagram and the drawing on the door, why blame a cult? I think about what happened at your house last night, and
that
seems like something Satanists would do. You’ve been nosing around about someone who might have been in a satanic group, or who at least might have knowledge of one. And they leave a calling card—a human heart. But when Mrs. Fremont was killed, it was fairly straightforward, as murders go. Just one blow to the head. And why would Mrs. Fremont be a target for Satanists?”

“She was connected to the shelter,” I said. “Maybe she knew as much as Sammy. Or suspected something. Maybe they didn’t have time to do more at Mrs. Fremont’s house. Maybe something scared them off. Maybe they heard us drive up.”

“Maybe. But how did they get inside in the first place?”

“Don’t you think the people assigned to the case will ask those questions?”

“Yeah.” He stared into the fire.

“So tell me about this mountain property.”

“Huh? Oh. Well, it’s up near Pine Valley Lake, off by itself. A place called Pine Summit. Overlooks the valley and the lake. Very peaceful. She used to give me the keys and tell me to go up there whenever the job was getting to me.”

“Are you happy about it?”

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t want anything from her. Must make her family feel bad.”

“Did Jack or Paul seem upset?”

“Not at all. They were very gracious about it. Paul said he had some things up at one of the rentals and I told him to take his time picking them up. I’ve never used the rentals, so I don’t care if he uses one of them.” He drained the last of his scotch. “It was still damned awkward.”

I took his hand. “It was a place she knew was special to you. She didn’t know this was going to happen this way. She was in good health. She thought of you and wanted to give you a place where you could be happy.”

He shrugged.

The waiter arrived again and took our order, and we accepted his offer to bring us another round. Frank sat looking into the fire. When dinner came, he looked over at me and gave a little smile.

“Quit worrying about me,” he said. “I’m just trying to sort things out.”

“Can’t help but worry about you, Detective Harriman.”

“‘Mister’ or ‘sir’ will do. And I’m okay.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I could get used to the sound of that.”

“It would be a shame if you did, because it would mean you’d found another woman.”

“Don’t want one. Got all I can handle now.”

We chatted about lighter subjects through dinner, which was excellent. When the last plate was taken away, he ordered a couple of brandies.

“Hey, take it easy. I’m not driving for a while, but I am working.”

“Mind if I hang around again tonight?”

“No, so long as you promise not to flirt with Stacee.”

I should have known that would get a laugh from him.

“Easiest promise I’ve ever had to make.”

“We’ll see.”

The brandy came and we raised a silent toast to one another. It was smooth stuff.

“Irene?”

“Hmm.”

“Move in with me.”

“What?” Smooth stuff or no, I choked on it.

“Live with me.”

“In sin?”

He laughed. “What would the Pope have to say about what we’ve been doing so far?”

“Easy thing for an Episcopalian to ask.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know, Frank.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just always been able to go back to some place of my own if I needed to. And as I recall, you wanted your key back from me not forty-eight hours ago.”

He looked down. “I recall being told I was a lousy liar—even at the time, you knew I didn’t mean that. I want to be with you.”

“What if you change your mind about that?”

“You think I’m not committed to you? That I’m not serious?”

“No. It’s not that.”

“So?”

“You are persistent.”

“You want to keep living where you are now?”

Throughout the day, in idle moments at work, I had been thinking about this a lot. “No, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to feel safe there again. It makes me madder than hell that it’s come to this, but when I think of being there by myself for even a few minutes—well, anyway, no, I don’t. I’m probably giving up too easily. But it’s just something I don’t want to struggle with. I need to feel safe in my own home.”