Medusa's Web (26 page)

Ariel rolled her eyes. “You lived here how long? Yes, that's north.”

“San Francisco is north of us,” he said.

Ariel visibly smothered a sarcastic rejoinder and just nodded.

“The place I was at was that way,” he said, pointing away from the door at the windows, “south, and not far from here.” He dabbed at his lips and chin with the tissue. “I sure didn't recognize the neighborhood, but I want to go check it anyway.”

“You're probably a bit wobbly to be riding your bike,” said Ariel. “And I still haven't heard back from the cops about my car. Maddy, you up for a drive?”

“Sure. Won't your guys from yesterday follow us?”

“I bet they don't know about the back driveway. Nobody's used it in forever.” She smiled brightly. “We can have lunch somewhere—no use trying to do anything today in the kitchen here. Let's meet in your room in half an hour.”

WHEN THEY STEPPED OUTSIDE,
Ariel glanced at Scott in the gray daylight, and she pointed at a rosemary bush beside the driveway. “There's a gun in that bush,” she said. “Grab it, would you?”

He gave her an uncertain smile, but shuffled across the asphalt and bent over. The revolver she had taken away from Claimayne two days ago was suspended in the aromatic branches, and he tugged it free and carefully tucked it into the right-hand pocket of his jacket. He straightened up with an effort.

“Would you rather do this later?” Ariel asked. “How long do you think you'll be able to sense where the thing is? Or was?”

“Hours, at least,” he said, starting forward toward Madeline's car. “But let's do it now.”

“Hello, Louise,” said Madeline, and Scott wheeled around.

He could make out the figure of Louise Odell leaning against the wall beside the kitchen door, dressed in woolen trousers and a dark blue quilted jacket. Her short blond hair looked as if she'd just run her fingers through it, and sunglasses hid her eyes.

“Hi, Maddy,” Louise said. Then she faced Scott. “I need to get to the bank and pull all my money out,” she said, her voice quavering. “I drove here, and I'm parked by those trucks in your driveway—
but they're
following
me. They may even have some kind of tracker attached to my car!”

“Who's following you?” asked Ariel.

Louise shook her head. “Damn it, it's Scott's fault, he
talked
to them on Thursday, on my phone, so they can't use me as a, a
spy
anymore. I've got a friend in—well, never mind where, but I can hide out at her place till they're done with all this—if I can
get away from them
.” She snatched off her sunglasses and blinked at Scott. “You've got guys doing work on the place? Pay one of them to sneak me into their truck, rolled up in a carpet or something.”

“Is one of your
them
a guy named Ferdalisi?” asked Ariel.

“I don't know any of their names. Scott, you owe me—”

Ariel went on, “Bald, with a beard but no mustache, so his face looks upside-down? He seems to be their field man.”

Louise looked dismayed. “That's the one I've met.”

“The workmen here were hired by our cousin,” said Ariel, “and they might want to get his okay on your girl-in-a-carpet stunt, and I'm pretty sure he's in touch with Ferdalisi. It might be Ferdalisi that'd unroll the carpet.”

Louise moaned faintly and stamped her foot.

Ariel went on, “Do your friends know about the back easement down to Gower?” When Louise gave her an uncomprehending look, she clarified, “A driveway from the uphill garages that leads down to the next street east.”

“I guess not. I didn't know about it. Yesterday I came right up the main driveway from Vista Del Mar. And they're not my—”

“Let's go,” said Scott. “Everybody in Madeline's car. Close the doors quietly.”

“I'm abandoning my car here,” said Louise. “Sorry.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “And I don't dare keep this either,” she added, dropping it onto the cement.

Madeline tossed some papers and clothing from the backseat of her car into the trunk, and then opened the driver's-side door and
slid behind the wheel. Scott got in on the passenger side, and Ariel and Louise folded themselves into the backseat.

“I figure north and then west,” Madeline said. “Basically up Gower and then out through the bendy streets like Primrose to Cahuenga, and get on the 101 from there.”

“And south on that,” agreed Scott as she started the car and clicked the console gearshift into reverse. He pulled the seat belt across himself and clicked the tongue into the buckle; Claimayne's gun was pressing against his ribs.

“Uh,” said Ariel, “don't back down the driveway to where the garage road branches off. You'd be visible from the street. Drive straight across the lawn and catch the garage road up here.”

“There's logs bordering the road,” said Madeline.

“Scott can roll one of the logs out of the way.”

“No problem,” said Scott, privately dreading the effort of using his aching muscles.

Madeline clicked the gearshift down to drive, steered the car off the cement onto the grass, and set out slowly across the west lawn. Scott peered nervously past her profile in the direction of Vista Del Mar, but all he saw from this high up the slope were the rooftops of buildings on the other side of the street; Madeline's Datsun wouldn't be visible from pavement level.

Scott hiked around in his seat when Ariel said to Louise, “What can you tell us about the people you were spying for?”

Louise looked down at her hands. “The guy with the beard started talking to me at a Starbucks and said I could make some money by getting back in touch with Scott and you all—find out what you know about your dead aunt and the spiders. I owe a fortune in student loans, and after I got my degree in education and tried to apply it, I caught on that the emperor had no clothes—”

“Who?” interrupted Madeline. The logs bordering the garage road were visible now between the widely spaced palm trees, and she was slowing down.

“Who what?” said Louise.

“Who had no clothes? When was this?”

“The emperor,” said Louise impatiently. “Like in the kids' story.”

“That's in a kids' story? What did he do? The naked guy, this emperor.”

The car had come to a stop on the grass, and Scott had his hand on the door lever.

Louise whispered, “For God's sake.”

“You were going to tell us,” said Ariel, “about the people you took money from, to spy on us.”

“The emperor just went home,” Scott told Madeline, “after everybody laughed at him.”

“Some story.”

“Wait till I get back in,” Scott said then, opening the door and swinging his legs out. When he straightened up, wincing, he saw that Ariel had got out too. The two of them walked across the damp grass to the log, and with one of them at each end of it, it rolled easily back from the garage-road pavement, and then they both pushed at one end until it had rolled aside.

“Thanks,” said Scott quietly, wiping his hands on his shirt as they walked back to the car.

“I know how it is.”

When they had got back in, Madeline drove over the groove in the dirt where the log had been and steered right, up the hill.

“The bald guy is the only one I met,” said Louise, “and I've only met him three times. Each time he gave me money. He wanted—”

“How much?” asked Madeline.

“I don't think that's relevant.”

“Back down the hill, Madeline,” said Ariel. “All the way to the street.”

“A thousand dollars each time,” Louise said quickly.

Madeline had taken her foot off the accelerator, but now pressed
it again, and the old Datsun surged on up the hill. Scott turned his head to see Louise.

She went on, “He wanted me to . . . renew my relationship with Scott, but I told him I wouldn't do that, I'm not—” She sighed shakily. “He wanted me to find spiders. There's one he's very interested in, that belonged to your aunt, and he was going to give me a ten-thousand-dollar bonus if I could lead him to that.” She glared at Scott. “But after you told him
don't send old girlfriends around,
he told me he's got a better informant and doesn't need me, and now he won't answer his phone when I call, and I think—I think they don't like it that I know so much about what they want.”

Ariel turned away and smiled out the window. “Do they strike you as the sort of people who would commit murder to keep their secrets?”

“I'm not sure they're not, and I can't risk—”

“But you'd help such people get at our family.”

Madeline had crested the rise; the treetops up here were bending in the breeze. The row of garages where Scott had found Louise yesterday morning was on the right as Madeline angled left and kept driving, downhill now.

“I was
protecting
Scott, and all of you,” Louise said flatly. “I was going to tell you all about it. His new informant won't.”

“Would you like us to drop you off somewhere?” asked Scott as Madeline carefully nosed the car down the narrow, curving strip of asphalt between walls overhung with bougainvillea and glossy banana leaves.

“Where are you all going?”

“On an errand,” Scott said.

“Can I come along?” When Scott gave her a puzzled frown, Louise went on, “I might be able to help. I heard Ariel ask you how long you'll be able to sense where
the thing
is. That's what led you to that parking lot on Alvarado on Thursday, isn't it? Where Taylor was killed in 1922?”

“You're still hoping for that ten-thousand-dollar bonus,” said Ariel.

“No! But I do know about the man with the beard, and what his group wants, how they work.” She was speaking rapidly. “He told me a lot of things, like about the other group, the guy in the Chevy Blazer. This thing goes way back in L.A. history—for instance, did you know your aunt's office on Sunset is right where an old actress named Nazimova lived? Upstairs and everything, the exact same spot.”

“We know about Nazimova,” said Scott. “And other people too.”

“Did you know that this spider they're after killed a famous movie director on William Randolph Hearst's yacht, in 1924? A whole lot of famous people were on the yacht when it happened, Charlie Chaplin and everybody, but afterward none of them even admitted they'd been aboard.”

“The director's name was Thomas Ince,” said Scott. “Yes.”

Louise exhaled through clenched teeth. “Do you know how to avoid drawing the attention of wheelbugs?”

“The beardy guy told you how to avoid that?” asked Madeline, her eyes on the pavement ahead.

“Yes, he . . .” Her voice trailed off.

The engine roared steadily along in low gear, the mutter of the exhaust sounding loud between the close walls. Low-hanging branches bumped along the roof of the car.

“You said he first approached you on Tuesday,” he said, without turning around. “Was that the first time you looked at a spider?”

Madeline steered around one last curve and turned left on the scarcely wider pavement of Gower Street.

“Yes,” said Louise dully. “He showed me one, out in his car. I didn't know what it was. It was a clean one, and he tore it up afterward, but—”

“How many have you done since?” asked Ariel.

“I don't know, half a dozen. He gave me a pad of them, but I only have a few left—obviously I can't get any more, from him—I tried reusing one, and afterward I felt like I got beat up—”

“Take a picture of one with your phone, and e-mail it to yourself,” said Ariel, “and then print it out. It'll be clean; the continuity of the image is broken when it's converted to digital. You can use the same spider forever, that way. Don't try photocopiers, though; they don't break the continuity.”

Scott heard Louise shift around on the seat. “E-mail? Are you sure?”

“
Oh
yeah,” said Ariel.

Scott thought of the tremor in Louise's hands, and the new lines in her face, and the broken vein in her eye, and he remembered her radiant health all those years ago, when they had hiked in the canyons and body-surfed at Laguna Beach and made love in his apartment, until she had left him in 2004. “So now you don't need to come with us,” he said, more flatly than he had meant to.

“He showed me the spider before we talked about anything,” said Louise, “okay? And I want to get my money out of the bank and get away from them, but—I do want to help you, too.”

“So how do you avoid wheelbugs' attention?” asked Ariel. “Hang a left there, sweetie,” she told Madeline.

“I know,” said Madeline.

“Well, for one thing,” said Louise, “you shouldn't be wearing that gyroscope pendant, Ariel. The guy said spider users sometimes spontaneously lose their depth perception, their view goes flat, and then they like to have some very three-dimensional thing handy that they can feel the shape of while they look at it. It snaps them back to seeing volume quicker. Sometimes it's a little ball in a cage, or a miniature Rubik's Cube, or a chain bracelet. They're all likely to catch the attention of wheelbugs.”

Scott and his sister exchanged a brief glance. And Claimayne's gold DNA coil, too, Scott thought. I could have used something like that myself, on Alvarado yesterday.

After a pause, Louise went on, “Act like somebody who's
not
afraid of losing depth perception at any moment—jaywalk in traffic, weave around any pillars or trees or parking meters, go up or down stairs fast. Go over and under things—step over curbs, duck under branches. As much of that stuff as you can manage. Wheelbugs pay attention to young-looking people who seem to move too carefully.

“Another reason to act agile is because people who use dirty spiders get bad joints, bad backs, loose teeth, from their body being so often combined with other bodies. They get blue stains on their skin from overlapping with people who had tattoos. And they lose their hair—if that happens, wear a wig. Scott, it's good you haven't shaved in a couple of days.”

Scott thought of the contents of the trunk he'd seen in the spider vision this morning. “Noted,” he said. “Is Ferdalisi's beard real? He's bald on top.”

Louise shook her head. “How would I know.”

“Was there anything else?” Scott asked her.

Louise was sitting lower in the backseat now, peering out the side window at the tops of phone poles and palm trees. “Well, there's websites,” she said, “and shops that sell stuff to keep you from accidentally seeing spiders, like crazy glasses with big ripples in the lenses. You don't have anything to do with any of that stuff, of course.”