Little Dog Laughed (2 page)

“He wasn’t that close,” Chrissie said. “Don’t exaggerate. Tell about the word processor.”

“I’m a computer freak.” The boy gulped more soda. “Have been since I was five. And I made fun of those typewriters. I said he could work faster and turn out more stuff if he had a word processor. And he said, ‘Will you teach me how to use it, Dan’l?’ That’s really my name—Dan’l. And I told him I’d try, only maybe he was too old to learn.” Dan’l barked a laugh at himself. “Hell, he caught on in about half an hour. He was sharp.”

“For an old guy,” Dave said.

Dan’l’s acne grew redder. He stared large-eyed at Dave and his larynx bobbed. “Oh, hell. I keep putting my foot in my mouth.”

“He was only forty-two,” Dave said. “It happens fast. And it happens to everybody. Even you.”

“Not forty-three,” Chrissie said softly. “Not to Adam.”

“What was he working on?” Dave said. “Or was he coasting for a while on that big check from the cable people?”

Chrissie groped out toward the table. Dan’l sat forward on his skinny butt, reached the second soda can for her, and put it carefully into her hand. The fingers of her other hand explored the wet top of the can to find the opening. She drank. “He was working,” she told Dave. “He didn’t know how to stop. He was as bad about that as Brenda is about drinking. I think one caused the other. But I don’t know who started first. Him, probably. She hated for him to go away all the time, and he kept promising her he wouldn’t but he kept going anyway.”

“Working on what?” Dave said.

“Something about Central America. He was speaking a lot of Spanish lately. On the phone. Central America’s where the action is, right now. Like Dan’l said, that’s what he always worked on. The trouble spots.”

“Nicaragua?” Dave said. “El Salvador?”

Chrissie shook her head and frowned. “Another one. Los Inocentes? That’s the one. It’s a funny name for a whole country—Los Inocentes. The innocent ones?”

“It was discovered by Balboa in 1513,” Dave said, “on a religious holiday—the Feast of the Holy Innocents. He claimed it for Spain. That’s what he named it when he planted the flag on the beach. That’s why.”

“You sure you don’t want to get married?”

“I’m too old for you,” Dave said. “Your father didn’t tell you anything about his Inocentes story?”

“There are rebels.” Dan’l sucked soda from the can and wiped his chin. “Communists. They’re trying to take over the government. The government sends out death squads and murders people in villages for helping the rebels. And if the villagers don’t help the rebels, the rebels kill them. I saw it on TV.”

Chrissie coaxed Dave, “I’m going to be very rich.”

“That’s nice, but I’m all right for money. I inherited stock in a very big insurance company.”

“The one you’re here for?” She was surprised. “Banner?”

“Not that one,” he said. “Medallion. My father built it. Anyway, I wouldn’t marry you for your money. What do you think I am?”

“A very nice man,” she said, “and very intelligent.”

“And old enough to be your grandfather,” he said. “I almost never travel. I rarely stand on my head, except figuratively. And if I tried to ride a skateboard I’d break my neck. For whom was he writing this piece on Los Inocentes?”

Chrissie had a mouthful of soda. She shook her head and swallowed quickly. “He hadn’t sold it. He didn’t want anyone to know about it. Not yet. There was one thing he still had to confirm. When he had that, it would be the hottest story of the decade. That’s what he told me.” Her voice caught, and tears ran out from under the dark glasses again. “That was the last thing he said to me.”

“Don’t cry, Chrissie.” Dan’l came around the table to her on his knees, and wiped her tears with clumsy fingers. “It won’t bring him back.”

She pushed his hands away. “It’s not that. Brenda’s going to get me, Dan’l. He can’t stop her now. Gandy can’t. Nobody can.”

Dave stood up. “I’d like a look at his workroom, if that’s all right.”

“We can run away,” Dan’l said. “His car’s still here.”

She laughed. It was a doleful sound. She groped out and stroked his hair. “Aw, Dan’l—they’d put me in jail for child stealing.” She located her cane and stood up quickly. “Come on, Mr. Brandstetter.” Swinging the red tip of the cane from side to side, inches above the carpet, she moved off toward the staircase.

T
HE WORKROOM WAS UP
two flights, at the rear of the house, so its French doors overlooked the patio with the swimming pool. The furnishings here were mostly Middle Eastern—lots of mother-of-pearl inlay and pierced brass. The carpet was Persian, in rich wine reds. He crossed it, among low tables and cabinets, one of which housed a television set, to stand at the doors. Outside, a small balcony was crowded with plants in pots. Two pots had fallen off the flat rail and broken. Plants in pots hung by bristly macramé cords from overhead rafter ends. Across the patio, beyond the panes of French doors like these, a fluffy orange cat lay on a bed and stared out at the fine day with big golden eyes.

“That’s the Gernsbach place over there,” Dave said.

“Nice people,” Chrissie said. “They’ve gone on a trip.”

“Not the cat,” Dave said.

“She’s a terrorist,” Dan’l said. “She’d hijack the plane.”

This place and the Gernsbach place were the only ones that opened on the patio. The other walls were blank, one of them climbed by a vine with hot red flowers. Dave turned to look at Adam Streeter’s workroom—file cabinets, bookshelves, a long desk on which sat a word processor with a blank gray screen. A square white printer squatted beside it. Chrissie leaned back against the desk, absently thumbing the corner of a thick annual reference book that lay there. Bits of paper stuck out of the book, marking pages. Dave asked her, “When did they leave?”

“He was already gone when I found Adam dead.” Chrissie sounded numb. “He was the first person I thought of, the nearest, the kindest. But when I got there, Lily said he’d left on a trip, and she was going to join him.”

“Mr. Gernsbach,” Dave said.

“Harry,” she said. “Lily phoned the police for me. I didn’t know what to do.” She laughed sadly. “I still don’t.”

“Stop worrying.” Dave touched her shoulder. “I know Judge Farmer. I’ll speak to him.”

“Will you?” she said. “I can look after myself here.”

Dave wondered why no papers lay on the desk. The house was beautifully kept. Was Streeter just as compulsively neat about his workplace? Dave opened desk drawers. Passports, plane ticket envelopes, bills, receipts, canceled checks lay in one; pens, paper clips, postage stamps, rubber bands, scissors, staple gun cluttered another. But not a page of manuscript, not a scribbled note. No cassettes, no diskettes. He checked out the file cabinets. Clippings in folders, manuscripts of old stories, copies of papers and magazines that had printed them. But nothing on Los Inocentes. He pushed the file drawer shut. Dan’l leaned loosely in the doorway. Dave said to him, “Journalists use notebooks, and if they don’t, they use cassette recorders. I don’t see one. I don’t see any cassettes.”

Surprised, Dan’l came into the room a few steps and peered around puzzledly. “He had a couple recorders. Little ones, good ones.” The boy crouched and opened a Turkish cabinet. The lacy hanging pulls of its double doors rattled. Except for a stack of books, it was empty. The books were in identical shiny jackets. Dan’l said, “Geez, I guess the police took the cassettes and stuff. This was so full, junk fell out of it every time he opened it.” He held out one of the shiny books. “He wrote this. You want a copy? There’s plenty.”

“Thank you.” Dave accepted the book scarcely noticing. The report he had read at LAPD this morning had made no mention of Streeter’s papers, files, cassettes. Dave said, “What about storage disks? Did he keep those in there too?”

Dan’l nodded. “That’s right.” He closed the cabinet, remained crouching, staring at it for a moment, then snapped his fingers and stood up smiling. “I know. He packed them. He was going to take them with him.” Dan’l jogged out of the workroom and along a gallery to a room at the front. It was a bedroom. And on the bed lay pieces of soft leather luggage, lids open, half-packed. Curtains were closed across the windows. Dan’l found a pushbutton, a small motor sang, and the curtains parted on a wide blue sky over a narrow blue marina where white pleasure-craft waited under blue wraps, with gulls perching on their mast-tops. While Dan’l ran his hands among the folded clothes in the grips, Dave asked Chrissie:

“This room has a better view. Why didn’t he work here?”

“It kept reminding him the world was wide,” she said. “And he hadn’t seen half of it yet. It made him want to buy a boat and sail around the world. He couldn’t sit and put words on paper, looking at this view.” Her face was turned toward the light, and she smiled a little wistful smile. “The way he described it, I could almost see it.”

Dave looked at it for her. Condominiums not unlike these stood on the marina’s far side, and more moored boats. Then there rose green hills, soon to be tawny in the dry heat of summer. On the hills, toy-size at this distance, shone the white Spanish-style buildings of a college. Farther away still, jet liners rose silent from the airport and made wide, lazy curves out over the ocean.

Chrissie said, “I heard him come in, about three.” She moved to the bed, sat on a corner of it. “He’d said he might not make it back, might sleep in a motel. It was a long drive.”

“To where?” Dave said.

She gave her head a mournful shake. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said it would be better if I didn’t know. For my own safety. We were out by his car. It was then that he said this could be the biggest story of the decade.”

“There’s no cassette recorder here,” Dan’l said. “None of the junk from the cabinet.”

“Since he’d come in so late,” Chrissie said, “I didn’t bring him coffee right away in the morning. I had my own breakfast first. Then I tapped on the door here, and listened. I have good hearing, and I didn’t hear him breathing. So I tiptoed in and touched the bed, and all that was on it was luggage. Which I knew wasn’t there when he’d driven off.”

“Maybe he bought that plane.” Dan’l looked at Dave. “He was talking about having his own plane to fly where he wanted himself instead of on airlines. More mobility, easier access to places they don’t let reporters into.” He gestured at the pathetic grips. “Maybe he was going to fly to Los Inocentes.”

“Poor Adam,” Chrissie said softly, and raised her face to Dave. “Anyway, I wondered why he wasn’t sleeping. And I thought maybe he’d got the part of the story he needed, and he was so excited he couldn’t sleep. It happened sometimes—he’d work all night. So I went to the workroom. The door was closed. I never bothered him in there, but I was worried. I didn’t hear a sound inside. I knocked and called him, but he didn’t answer. So I went in. I missed him with my cane, and I tripped over him. He was lying on the floor. When I touched him, he was cold. It was no use calling him, shaking him.” Her voice went thin and small. “He was dead.”

“You hadn’t heard anyone else in the house?”

“Not even the gun going off.”

“That was because of the silencer,” Dave said. “He didn’t tell you who he was driving so far to see that day? You don’t remember any names from the story he was working on, not one?”

“Two. I overheard him talking to Rue Glendenning—a boy just out of UCLA. A journalism major. They come to Adam sometimes for career advice. And one of the names was Cortez-Ortiz. The other was really strange.” Her clear forehead wrinkled, and she nibbled at her lower lip. She took a deep breath and spoke the word slowly—“Tegucigalpa. Is that right?”

Dan’l laughed. “Sounds like what a turkey says.”

Dave said, “The curtains are open on the French doors in the workroom now. Would you know if they were open when you found your father’s body?”

“I know,” she said, “because I went to them to shout for Harry. The curtains were open, so were the doors. But not across the patio. Mostly they’re closed. To keep the cat in. Trinket. She’s never allowed out. I realized that after a moment. The Gernsbachs couldn’t hear me.”

“This trip of theirs,” Dave said. “Where did Mrs. Gernsbach tell you they were going?”

“She didn’t. Only that it was a very sudden decision. He left first, so I guess it was on business.”

“What business would that be?” Dave said.

“Savings and loans,” she said. “He’s operations manager for one of them. Pacific Sphere? Some name like that.”

“He’s got a great computer setup over there,” Dan’l said. “Interfaced with the ones at his offices.”

Chrissie went on, “See, Lily’d been over in Altadena with her mother for a few days. And when she got home, here was this note from Harry. She was awfully upset. Lily hates having to rush.”

“Maybe it was to Washington,” Dave said. “Congress is investigating savings and loan operations these days. I’d like to talk to them.”

“Me, too.” Chrissie sighed. “I wish they hadn’t gone.”

“Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras,” Dave said. “I don’t know what Cortez-Ortiz is. Or who.”

“No,” Chrissie said absently. Then she stood up. “I know who’ll have his papers and things. Mike Underhill.”

Dan’l made a sour mouth and groaned. “That creep. I wouldn’t trust him with anything of mine.”

Dave wouldn’t either. It took him a moment, but then he attached the name. Underhill was a flashy journalist who, a few years back, had written a biography short on facts and long on fantasy of a reclusive Texas billionaire, had lived high on a big publisher’s advance in Ischia and Saint-Tropez, and then had been jailed for a year on fraud. The book was scrapped, and Underhill was made to repay the publisher’s half million. Had he done it? Was he still trying? Who would give him a job, a paycheck?

“Adam trusted him,” Chrissie said. “He said somebody had to. Mike had had a rotten break, was all. Those kinds of books are always half made up. Who cared? But Mike wasn’t Truman Capote or Norman Mailer. He didn’t have a big name. And instead of some crazy murderer, he chose the richest man in the world, and of course he got the shaft. Adam said it wasn’t fair.”

“And he had Underhill working for him?” Dave said.