Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (76 page)

“Luke has the keys.”

“You can’t stay here until the place is secure.”

Where could she go? Gordon had alienated most of her friends during their marriage. Lee was the only person she would dare to impose on this late at night. Despite what happened there earlier, Lee would welcome her with open arms. Piper wished now she had stayed and worked it out.

She called Lee on both lines. No answer. Not even voicemail. Lee had gone into shutdown mode. That was her way of handling a crisis.

Piper hung up and shook her head.

Emotionally exhausted after her adrenaline high, she felt completely drained. The thought of checking into in a motel room appealed to her even less than staying where she was, alone.

“I don’t think he’ll come back tonight. The door has a safety bolt in the floor. I’ll be okay here.”

“How’d I know you’d say that?” Jason Bower said. “All right, sit tight, I’ll be right back. Bolt it as soon as I go out.”

He left the house. Piper engaged the bolt.

In under three minutes he was back, winded from the run. He handed her a black gadget. “It’s a 2-way radio. I’ll be in my car around the corner. If you hear something or just get jumpy, press this button and start yelling. I’ll be right here.”

He placed a canister of mace on the counter and left.

She slid the safety bolt into place and then watched him walking down the driveway. He kept close to the wall, away from any prying eyes from the house next door. When he was out of sight the radio in her hand crackled. His voice came through loud and clear, “Are you there? Come in.”

She pressed the button. “I’m here.”

“Sleep tight. Over and out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

On January 12th, 1968, Norma Watson Knoller was murdered in her private room at The Triple Oaks Sanatorium by fellow inmate, Wanda Berganstoff. No reason or motive for the crime was given. The press flocked to the Hollywood hills house for comments regarding the murder of Sybil Squire’s daughter. They were turned away by the housekeeper with the words. “No comment. Not now, not ever.”

—Excerpt from the biography of
Sybil Squire: The Platinum Widow
by Russell Cassevantes

Piper did not sleep. The radio Jason Bower left with her beeped and blinked. She stuffed it under a pillow at the side of the Murphy bed, but still she couldn’t sleep. Her mind ran on and on, playing the events of the past weeks in a continuous loop.

These people were not typical in-and-out amateur scam artists. They were hard players prepared to go all the way, no matter how long it took or what extremes were necessary. She sensed the break-in was a warning to scare her, to get her to back off. How far would they go?

At six that morning, Jason called on the radio to check on her. He told he was going home to change and then to the precinct. They arranged to get together later in the day at the main house. Piper suggested he use the front entrance, which faced away from the Squire property.

The locksmith had changed the locks at the guesthouse and the main house and left by the time Jason arrived. He wore a charcoal-gray suit over a button-down shirt and a black tie. A butterfly bandage covered the cut above his eye. They sat in the living room.

“I ran a check on the two caregivers. Before nurse Avidon went to work at the clinic where Squire was treated for her burns, she was a registered nurse for an elderly man in Hancock Park. When he died, guess who was named beneficiary?”

“Avidon. Was there anything suspicious about his death?”

“No more suspicious than the housekeeper’s death. Her son has a rap sheet—assault and battery, drunk and disorderly—but has managed to stay out of prison. Arrests, but no convictions. He has at least half a dozen aliases. I suspect one or both of them are pretty savvy about computers, and good at forgery and falsifying whatever papers or certificates that they need. Shields too.”

“What about the other man? Ling? Where does he fit in?”

“Nothing on him.”

Jason paced. “I want to pay a visit to the clinic where Ms. Squire and Avidon were introduced. Avidon doesn’t have a criminal past—but she may have had problems on the job.”

He headed for the front door, paused, then turned. “Are you coming?”

#

At noon, in West Hollywood, they climbed the concrete steps of the main entrance of the hospital. At the nurse’s station, Jason showed his credentials to the doctor’s head nurse and asked about Judith Avidon. The nurse was reluctant to discuss Avidon’s records until she learned that someone she had recommended might soon be up on criminal charges. She motioned for them to join her at the end of the counter.

In a hushed tone, she said, “Nurse Avidon was only here a couple months before she went to work for Mrs. Squire. She was efficient, reliable, with a good bedside manner. When she heard that Dr. Lowdell was asking about a live-in nurse for the actress, she stepped right up. The doctor asked for recommendations and I gave him Judy’s name. Like I said, she was a stellar nurse. The patients seemed to like her.”

“Did she work in a clinic or hospital prior to coming here?” Jason asked.

The nurse excused herself and crossed the hall to an office. Minutes later she was back with a manila file folder. She opened it on the counter top. “Let’s see, her last two positions were in private practice. Patients now both deceased.”

“May we have their names?”

“I’m sorry. Because they were private positions, I’m afraid I can’t give you that information without a court order. I can only tell you she worked at County General and another private clinic.” She started to close the file.

“What other clinic?” Jason said.

She flipped the file open again. “It’s probably irrelevant. It was forty-odd years ago.”

Both Jason and Piper leaned in to get a better look.

“Triple Oaks. It was a sanitarium in Los Feliz,” the nurse said.

“She was a nurse there?” Piper asked, hardly able to get the words out. Her chest felt constricted.

“I believe so.”

They thanked her and left. When they reached the parking lot, Piper grabbed Jason’s arm and blurted out, “Triple Oaks is the sanitarium where Sybil Squire’s daughter was murdered. She’s left a trail that we can follow.”

“Let’s go,” Jason said.

On the way to Los Feliz and the Triple Oaks Clinic, no longer called a Sanitarium, they went over details of the case. Within the last five years, Judith Avidon had cared for two separate patients on a live-in basis. Both had died in her care. Were estates involved in both? It wasn’t a coincidence that Avidon and her cohorts had found Sybil Squire at a very vulnerable time in her life.

“I don’t think this nurse just happened to be working at the very hospital where they took Sybil Squire after the fire,” she said.

“What are you getting at?”

“I bet Avidon knew beforehand which hospital Sybil would be taken to, the one where her doctor practiced. Even if the paramedics had taken Sybil to another hospital, she more than likely would have transferred to the private clinic. That fire was no accident.”

“How do you know that?”

“While Sybil was in the hospital she told her housekeeper that someone had been in her house the night of the fire, a man. The morning of the fire she had visitors. I was there having coffee with her by the pool. I saw them come and go. Sybil was really shook up. That same day she went from bank to bank.”

“You saw the visitor?”

“I saw the car and someone was sitting in the passenger seat. I couldn’t see his or her face. There were two of them.”

“Interesting.”

“Also interesting is that this particular nurse was employed at two separate hospitals, where first the daughter, then the mother, happened to be patients.”

“You’d make a good investigator,” Jason said.

“It’s all those mystery stories. Who says you can’t learn from movies and TV?”

They pulled up to the rusty gates of Triple Oaks Clinic at 2:00 p.m. Although she’d never been here, Piper suspected it hadn’t changed much in the past forty years. A mission-style structure sitting on acres of rolling hills. She spotted only two oaks, one on each side of the sandstone gateposts. Jason spoke into the intercom and the gates opened. They drove through to the main building.

The grounds looked deserted. They parked in the visitor’s parking lot and entered through a side door. No patients or hospital staff loitered around. Walking down the musty corridor of the old building to the administrator’s office, she expected to see mental patients wandering aimlessly or sitting in a catatonic state, like in
The Snake Pit.
The scene where Olivia De Havilland sits on the cold brick floor in the psycho ward, inmates all around her. In a dazed stupor she looks upward, out of the chaos, the walls become round like a tunnel, the dark, dank tunnel of a snake pit. Up, up it rises until she is a mere speck at the bottom.

Piper rubbed her arms.

The corridor at Triple Oaks was empty and quiet.

In the administrator’s office, Jason informed an assistant they’d like to speak to the chief administrator.

“What does it pertain to?” the obese woman behind the desk asked.

“A homicide.”

“What homicide?” Her eyes widened in alarm.

“Norma Knoller.”

“My gawd, that happened ages ago.”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Langacino would know about it. She was here back then.”

“Would you please tell her we’d like to talk with her about it?”

She rose with effort, using the arms of the chair to assist her, and walked into the room behind her. Moments later, she was back.

“I’m sorry, but Mrs. Langacino refuses to discuss the incident.” She sank into the chair. “She suggested you get what you need elsewhere.”

Jason took Piper’s arm and led her around the desk to the administrator’s office. Without knocking, he opened the door and strode inside.

The woman behind the desk looked up in surprise.

“Mrs. Langacino, this is official business.” He held up his shield. “I’m Homicide Special Detective Jason Bower. This is Piper Lundberg. We were told that you were employed here at the time of the Knoller homicide.”

She came to her feet. “I told my assistant—”

“Your help in this matter is essential. Lives are in danger. Can we count on your cooperation? If not, I can get a subpoena.”

“Detective Bower, how on earth can the details of a forty-three-year-old incident possibly be useful to the police now?”

“That’s what we’re about to find out.”

She looked toward the door. When it was apparent no one was going to rush in and remove them, she rolled her eyes and waved a hand to the two chairs in front of her desk.

“Close the door, please.”

Jason closed it and took a seat next to Piper.

“Yes, I remember it. You don’t forget something that extreme. Creates an emotional scar for anyone even remotely close to something that horrific.”

They sat on wooden chairs facing her desk, an uncluttered desk with a large green blotter and matching pen and pencil set. Through the window behind Mrs. Langacino, Piper saw about a dozen men and women in yellow cotton tops and pants sitting in a circle on the lawn, holding hands.

“If you’d asked me about the incident thirty or forty years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to discuss it. It was so grisly. I’m still not comfortable talking about it.”

“We appreciate your cooperation,” Jason said.

“I was a student nurse in the ward next to the ward in question. What do you want to know?”

“Judith Avidon, was she a nurse here at that time?” Piper asked.

“Avidon? That’s familiar. Avidon. Yes, I remember the name, but you’re mistaken. I’m pretty certain that was the name of the guard who stopped the attack. Not the nurse’s name.”

Jason and Piper exchanged a look.

“Sorry, I don’t recall the nurse’s name.”

“She would have been about nineteen or twenty. Brown hair, brown eyes.”

“There was a young nurse on duty that day, in that ward. She was new to the hospital. Like me, a student nurse. She was the first person to come upon the attack and the one to alert the guard.” Mrs. Langacino stared off into a corner of the room; she massaged the loose skin under her chin. “I vaguely remember her being a mousy thing. Quiet and shy. I didn’t think she’d last one day in that ward, but she stuck it out. That is until that awful morning.”

“What happened to her? Do you know where she is now?”

“Oh, goodness, I have no idea. She quit that very day. I almost quit myself. It was horrific. All that blood. Only a completely deranged person could do that to another human being.”

“Who killed the inmate?” Jason asked. Piper was surprised by his question, surprised that he hadn’t heard the story until she realized he hadn’t been born when it happened. And not being obsessed with Sybil Squire like she was, he wouldn’t know the minute details of her life.

“Another inmate. Wanda Berganstoff. The woman had had previous episodes of violence, but nothing like what happened that day. She and Norma seemed to get along just fine. Norma Knoller was Sybil Squire’s daughter, you know? Sybil Squire, the actress.”