Paul Hartell, the general manager of the mortuary and cemetery, wore a black suit and tie, but he wasn’t by nature grim. When he realized that David Thorne wasn’t there to make funeral arrangements for a loved one, his decorous expression proved more plastic than it seemed, and a smile formed out of the solemn folds of flesh. When he recognized David and remembered seeing him match wits with a late-night talk-show host, his manner was not obsequious but comradely. He was delighted to serve as a guide through the cemetery’s security video archives, which could be accessed through the computer on his desk.
“Yes, I can see how flowers left at an unmarked stone, at an untenanted grave, would stir the imagination of a novelist.” The padded carpet, upholstered furniture, heavily lined draperies, and coffered ceiling soaked up his new boyish enthusiasm. His voice was rendered almost as hushed as if he had been sobbing in grief. “There must be a story in it.”
“So it seems to me,” David agreed.
Settling before his computer, Hartell said, “Twenty years ago, no one would have conceived of covering our memorial lawns with cameras. And we didn’t need a security guard on duty at every hour of the day and night. But the world has changed, hasn’t it? Even here in Newport, our little earthly paradise, so much has changed. But we’re always vigilant against the threat of vandalism. No need to worry about that, Mr. Thorne.”
“I have perfect confidence in your precautions,” David said.
“Here, come behind the desk. I’ve found the right camera.”
David went around the desk to stand beside Hartell’s chair.
On the screen, his two-plot grave site was identifiable among the many stones and plaques.
“You said sometime between noon and five p.m. last Saturday?” Hartell confirmed.
“As best I can figure, yes.”
Hartell fast-forwarded from dawn, returning to standard speed each time that a human form flickered onto the screen. The video was time-stamped.
Maddison Sutton entered the frame at 4:05 p.m. carrying a milk-glass vase containing calla lilies. She didn’t appear to search for the right headstone, but went directly to it, as though she had been there before.
In white slacks and a cornflower-blue blouse, she elicited from Paul Hartell an exclamation of approval: “What a lovely woman! Do you know her?”
On the screen, Maddison stooped to place the flowers in the vase sleeve in the base of the gravestone.
“No,” David lied. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“The plot thickens, doesn’t it? Not just a mystery woman, but a beautiful one! You certainly have a story here, Mr. Thorne.”
“Quite a story,” David agreed. “Is it possible to follow her back to her car?”
“We’ll have to move through maybe three more cameras, but it’s doable.”
In the golden afternoon sunshine, she seemed less to walk among the grave rows than float like a celestial being, and David half expected her to dissolve into the gilding light.
She had not come to the cemetery in the white Mercedes 450 SL, but in a beige Ford van that was parked in the shade of a tree. She wasn’t the driver. A man stood by the vehicle, waiting for her. Even in shadow, he was recognizable. When he stepped into sunlight, there could be no doubt that he was Patrick Michael Lynam Corley, who had died of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty-nine, seven years earlier.
| 33 |
Directly from the cemetery, David departed for Santa Barbara. Using phone numbers provided in the report by Lew Ross, the private detective hired by Isaac Eisenstein, he placed two calls before he crossed the Newport Beach city limits, made contact with both subjects, and arranged meetings with them.
Then he phoned the offices of Gilbert Gurion, expecting that the lawyer would decline to speak to him on the grounds that even deceased clients, whose estate he might still represent, deserved attorney-client privilege.
As it turned out, however, Gurion was an avid reader and aware of David’s novels. “May I assume, Mr. Thorne, you’re considering writing about these murders?”
Because anyone with experience of people in the media expected them to claim noble intentions and slather on flattery as thick as mayonnaise, while in fact being deceitful above all things, a blunt and obviously facetious response might disarm a man like Gurion. David said, “If I swear with seeming sincerity that all I want is justice for Ephraim and Renata Zabdi, and if I make an unsecured promise that I’ll write a book with nary a single salacious note, will that assure me of a meeting with you?”