When he arrived back at North Torrey, he was surprised and annoyed to find a metallic red Lincoln Continental parked in his driveway. He drew into the kerb, climbed out of his BMW, and cautiously approached the Lincoln across the lawn, jingling his car-keys in his hand.
As he came closer, he saw that a balding man of about sixty-five was sitting in the driver’s seat, and next to him was sitting a white-rinsed woman in a purple-and-white blouse and more gold necklaces and bangles and brooches than Nefertiti. Lloyd tapped with his knuckle on the window, and both of them beamed at him.
‘Hi there! You must be Otto,’ the white-haired man greeted him, letting down his window. He held out his hand, still beaming.
Lloyd said. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I think you have the wrong house. This is 4884 North Torrey.’
The man frowned, and unfolded a pair of heavy-rimmed spectacles. He fished a well-folded letter out of his shirt pocket, and examined it closely. ‘That’s right. That’s the address I’m looking for. 4884 North Torrey.’
‘Well, I’m afraid there’s no Otto here,’ Lloyd told him. ‘Never has been, to my knowledge.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the man answered. ‘We weren’t actually looking for Otto. We were looking for Celia—Celia Williams?’
‘You’re friends of hers?’ asked Lloyd.
The man laughed, and the woman joined in. ‘You could say that. Do you happen to know where we might find her? We’ve driven all the way from San Clemente this morning, and we’ve been waiting here for almost an hour.’
Lloyd rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’m afraid I have some pretty bad news for you.’
‘Don’t tell me she’s gone off on one of her lecture tours?’ said the woman. ‘Oh, Wayne . . . I told you to call first.’
‘What kind of surprise would it have been if I’d called first?’ the man demanded.
‘It would have saved us two hours on the freeway, for goodness’ sake.’
The woman gave Lloyd a fixed grin, and asked, ‘Do you happen to know if she’s going to be away for very long?’
‘Ma’am,’ said Lloyd, and he couldn’t stop his throat from tightening nor the tears from prickling his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to tell you that Celia died yesterday.’
The man and the woman stared at him with their mouths open. At last, the man managed to blurt out, ‘She died?’
‘How could she die?’ the woman asked.
Lloyd took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. There was an accident, she was burned. Nobody really knows what happened.’
‘Oh my God,’ said the woman. Her hair was white, her face was white. ‘Oh my God, tell me it’s not true.’
The man climbed out of the car and stood next to Lloyd. He was short, bulky-chested and large-headed, but still quite handsome for his age.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I don’t even know who you are. It seems like Celia hasn’t been giving us the whole picture. I’m sorry.’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘Lloyd Denman. Celia and I were going to be married. This house here . . . well, we were joint owners.’
‘This is quite a shock,’ the man replied. ‘We didn’t even know that Celia was seeing anybody, let alone planning to marry. Oh, by the way, I’m Wayne . . . this is Vela.’
‘Do you want to come in?’ Lloyd asked them. ‘I’ve just been down to the mortuary. I could use a drink.’
‘Thank you,’ said Wayne. He walked around the car and opened the passenger door so that Vela could climb out. ‘Burned, you say? How did that happen? Was it an auto accident?’
‘Come on inside, and I’ll tell you,’ said Lloyd.
He led them into the house. The two of them jostled against each other as they looked around the white-painted living-room, as if they were out-of-town tourists in a smart La Jolla art gallery.
‘The lemon picture,’ said Vela, suddenly. ‘That used to be mine, the lemon picture. Who’ll Buy My Lemons?’
‘Please, have a seat,’ Lloyd told them. ‘Do you want a drink? Or coffee maybe?’
‘Do you have a diet soda of any kind?’ asked Wayne.
‘Nothing for me, thank you,’ said Vela.
‘Please, sit down,’ Lloyd insisted, as he walked through to the kitchen, but still they wouldn’t sit.
‘We’d really like to know what happened,’ said Wayne.
Lloyd came back with a can of diet 7-Up, popped the top, filled a heavy-bottomed Boda glass, and handed it over to Wayne. Then he poured himself a large Wild Turkey.
‘It seems that she took her own life,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Vela.
‘It seems that she committed suicide.’
‘But why? She was so happy! I never knew her so happy! Her career at the opera was going so well . . . she had so many friends. And she was going to be married, which we didn’t even know. Why, in heaven’s name, should she commit suicide?’
Lloyd stared at the carpet. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have any idea.’
‘She didn’t leave a note?’ asked Wayne, his voice trembling.
‘Nothing. No clues at all. The police have asked me to try and think of some reason why she might have done it, but I can’t.’
Vela was shaking her head and sobbing, her wrinkled red-fingernailed hands slowly clawing at each other in anguish.
‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.’
Lloyd said, ‘Maybe you can think of some reason. You obviously knew her pretty well.’
Wayne’s crumpled-up expression unfolded like origami in reverse. ‘Pardon me? Of course we knew her pretty well. I thought you understood. We’re her parents.’
Lloyd stared at Wayne, then at Vela, and then back at Wayne. “You’re her parents? Her real parents? She told me that both her parents were dead.’
Wayne at last sat down, and laid his arm around Vela’s shaking shoulders. ‘Lloyd,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what the blazes has been going on here. But whatever it is, I think Vela could use a doctor right now. Her heart’s not too good, and this is just about as much shock as she can take.’
Lloyd nodded. ‘I’ll call Dr Meyer. He’s one of the university doctors. He can usually come out directly.’
‘Oh, my darling, my little darling,’ Vela wept. ‘Oh, Wayne, what are we going to do?’
Dr Meyer arrived in his Porsche sunglasses and his golfing shoes and gave Vela a light sedative. ‘I’ll call by tomorrow morning, just to check she’s okay,’ he assured Lloyd, climbing into his gleaming charcoal Seville. ‘If you want me this afternoon, I’m out at Whispering Palms, playing with Bill Manzo. Ball therapy.’ He showed his teeth.
Vela slept in the spare bedroom for most of the afternoon. Lloyd and Wayne stayed in the living-room and talked.
Most of the life-story that Celia had told Lloyd turned out to be true, but there were occasional inexplicable discrepancies, not the least of which was her almost fanatical interest in religion and life after death. She had never spoken to Lloyd about religion, and when he had asked her if she believed in God, she had laughed and answered, ‘Whose God? Not mine, my darling!’
Since Vela was far too shocked and distraught to be driven back to San Clemente tonight, Wayne graduated from diet 7-up to Four Roses. He lit a cigar, too, and took off his shoes. Usually, Lloyd found cigar-smoking offensive, not to mention old men’s sports socks, but tonight he didn’t object at all. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the evening here in the house alone, with nobody for company but Celia’s haunting, incommunicative photograph.
Wayne said, ‘Celia started getting serious about religion when her grandma died. That was when Celia was . . . oh, I don’t know, fifteen or sixteen. Sixteen I think. She adored her grandma. They were so close, those two, such affection, such understanding. Peas in a pod. Vela used to be jealous sometimes, although there was never any need. But Celia was hit real hard when her grandma finally went. I don’t think that she could believe it, you know? She used to say, “Why couldn’t grandma live for ever?” She said that over and over, and she used to say, “I’m going to live for ever. I’m going to live for ever and ever.” I used to tease her about it, she said it so often. But she always sounded totally serious, wouldn’t be teased. I used to call her The Immortal Celia, or The Everlasting Girl. She used to smile and say nothing.’
He paused, and lowered his head. Then he took a large swallow of whisky, and mouthwashed it around his teeth. ‘That’s why it’s so hard to believe that she could have taken her own life.’
Lloyd suggested, ‘I guess she could have come to believe that death is a way of living forever. You know . . .”they shall grow not old, as we who are left grow old.”’
Wayne set down his empty glass. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any kind of sense at all. Particularly the way she told you that she didn’t have any parents. I mean—she was going to marry you and not invite us?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Williams. I can’t figure it out.’
They sat in depressed silence for five or ten minutes, and then Lloyd asked, ‘You said that she was obsessed with religion. Do you happen to know what kind of religion? She wasn’t in with a cult or anything, was she? Like the Moonies, maybe? Or the Bhagwan?’
Wayne made a face. ‘I’m not sure. She started off at the Episcopalian church at San Clemente. She went to Bible meetings and church socials and all that kind of thing. Then about three months after they gave her a place with the San Diego Opera, she met this guy Otto—the guy I thought was you. She always talked about Otto like the sun shone out of his—well, like she thought a whole lot of him, you know? Otto had this group that was all into communicating with the world beyond, all that crap, if you’ll excuse my French.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Lloyd got up and poured both of them another large drink. ‘You don’t happen to know the name of this group? Where they hang out? What they’re into?’
Wayne shook his head. ‘All Celia ever talked about was how much she enjoyed the group, the group was brilliant, and Otto was brilliant, she thought Otto was wonderful. God, practically.’
‘You never met Otto?’
‘We only came down to see the opera once. Personally I can take it or leave it, opera. I don’t know where Celia got her interest from. Especially that goddamned Wagner. After she met Otto, it was Wagner this and Wagner that, and when she came home weekends she played this real loud heavy stuff with screaming women. I used to take the dog for a walk. That Wagner music, Jesus. It sounded like somebody dropping an A-bomb on an afternoon session of weight-watchers.’
Wayne paused, cleared his throat, and then continued, ‘Barbershop, that’s more my style. “In The Good Old Summertime”.’ There were tears in his eyes.
Lloyd sank back into the sofa and toyed with his glass. Wayne puffed at his cigar and blew smoke-rings up to the ceiling. He was quite drunk now, which was probably just as well. The full impact of his daughter’s death wouldn’t hit him until he woke up tomorrow morning with a cement-truck hangover.
Twenty minutes later, Wayne’s eyes drooped and he dozed off. Lloyd gave him a moment or two to fall more heavily asleep. Then he walked softly across and removed the half-burned cigar from Wayne’s lifeless fingers.
He went through to the kitchen, picked up the telephone and dialled Sylvia Cuddy’s number. While he waited for Sylvia to answer, he switched on the portable television next to the spice-rack, and watched a Wrigley’s Doublemint commercial with the sound turned down to gnat-in-a-jam-jar level.
Sylvia answered. There was opera in the background, Verdi, played at devastating volume.
‘Sylvia? This is Lloyd.’
‘Oh, Lloyd! I’ve been waiting for your call! I was just about to go out.’
‘Don’t let me keep you.’
‘Oh, not at all. Wait, just let me turn this down. I can’t hear myself think. Leonard Katzmann’s taking me to Mario’s for dinner, as if I haven’t had enough opera for one day. Or enough of Leonard, come to that. How are you, my dear? Was it terrible today?’
Terrible? How could he possibly put into words the sheer grisly horror of those gaping Lon Chaney nostrils, those stretched-back lips, that incinerated hair? That beautiful face that had been turned into a grinning blackened voodoo death-mask?
‘Well,’ he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, ‘it was pretty difficult, to be honest with you. It was just about the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in the whole of my life.’
‘Lloyd, my love, I’m so sorry. You don’t know how badly everybody feels for you.’
‘Thanks, Sylvia. Listen . . . I’ll talk to you tomorrow about the funeral and all that kind of thing. The medical examiner hasn’t released her body to the morticians yet. Apparently it’s a rule that they always have to carry out an autopsy after a suicide.’
‘Take your time, Lloyd. I’ll call around tomorrow, if you like.’
‘Sure, I’d like that. There’s just one thing I wanted to ask you.’
‘Anything. Go ahead.’
‘Well . . . do you happen to know anybody at the opera called Otto?’
There was a pause. ‘Otto? Not that I know of. Do you happen to know his second name?’
‘Otto, that’s all I’ve got. Maybe he’s not exactly a member of the opera company, but just knows some of the people there. He’s involved with some kind of religious study group.’
‘I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of any Otto. But I’ll ask around, if you like. Maybe Don knows him.’
She hesitated, and then she said, ‘Is it something you want for yourself? I know a marvellous priest you could talk to, Father Bernard.’
‘No, no, it’s just . . . just somebody that Celia happened to mention. I guessed I ought to tell him what happened.’
‘Oh, sure. Well, I’ll ask. You don’t know anything else about him?’
‘Just that Celia thought he was something between Jesus Christ and Robert Redford.’
‘Did she? Well, knowing how critical Celia was, he sounds like just the kind of man I’d like to get my hands on. I’ll ask around, okay? Goodnight, Lloyd, and take care of yourself.’
Lloyd recradled the receiver. As he did so, the seven o’clock news came on to the television. Immediately, he saw the unsteady hand-held image of a blackened, burned-out bus, out in the desert. The same bus that Sergeant Houk had been sent to investigate. Lloyd pressed the remote-control, and caught the reporter in mid-sentence.
‘. . . this afternoon by two Highway Patrol officers on a routine journey through the Anza Borrego State Park . . .’
Lloyd watched as the TV news cameras circled around the skeletal wreck of the bus.
‘. . . only known witness was a blind Indian boy who claims to have heard voices in the vicinity of the bus immediately prior to its burning, but . . .’
The camera pulled back to show three ambulances parked on the edge of the highway, and a row of body bags lying on the ground. The reporter said, ‘Only two of the victims have so far been positively identified. One was Mr Ronald Korshaw, a carpet salesman from Escondido. The other was Ms Marianna Gomes, a scenic designer for the San Diego Opera Company . . .’
Lloyd stared at the television with a tight feeling of fright and elation. So there’s no connection between the deaths of all of these people in a burned-out bus in the Anza Borrego State Park and Celia’s suicide on Rosecrans Avenue, is there, Sergeant Houk? But what do you think are the odds that two girls from the San Diego Opera Company should burn themselves to death on successive days? A zillion to one?
Lloyd had once met Marianna Gomes. He remembered a vivacious, dark-skinned girl in a flouncy red blouse. Red lips, black eyes, hips that swayed to a silent salsa. Hardly the suicidal type—any more than Celia had been.
He recalled Celia talking to him about Marianna, too. ‘She’s so bright and so talented, and she has the craziest sense of humour.’ Several times, when Celia had returned home late, she had told him that she and Marianna had been ‘working on something’ together, and that they had ‘lost track of time’.
Was this what they had both been working on? Their mutual suicide by fire?
Lloyd swallowed the rest of his drink. His mind was clamorous with images, possibilities, snatches of remembered conversation.
‘Marianna and I have been working on this idea together . . . I guess we just got carried away . . .’
He could picture her now, in her sheepskin jacket, turning around as she closed the front door.
‘We were talking about what you could do if you had all the time in the world.’
When had she said that? He could distinctly remember her saying it: ‘. . . all the time in the world’.
Maybe both Celia and Marianna had been attending religious discussions with this mysterious Otto character? Maybe they had been working out their self-immolation with him? Because—think about it—how had Celia managed to get to Rosecrans Avenue with that yellow petrol can, if she hadn’t had somebody to take her there? She hadn’t been seen on the bus, no taxi-driver had reported taking her, and there were no vehicles in the area that were unaccounted for.
Lloyd picked up the phone again, and redialled Sylvia’s number, but Sylvia must have left for her dinner at Mario’s. He went back into the living-room, collecting the Wild Turkey bottle from the table. He hadn’t bothered to refill the decanter. Wayne was still dozing, his head thrown back and his mouth open, purring deep like a cat.
Lloyd opened his desk-drawer, and lifted out a thick yellow legal pad. Writing in firm italics, in dark purple ink, he set down the title CELIA JANE WILLIAMS and then underneath he wrote June 15, the day of her death.
He had no real evidence; nothing to go on but speculation and fear. But he was sure now that Celia’s decision to set herself alight hadn’t been done spontaneously or rashly, nor had she done it in a moment of irrationality. She had planned it, maybe for weeks, maybe for months.
Whether Otto and his religious study group had anything to do with it, he didn’t yet know. But he was determined to find out.
OTTO, he wrote on his pad, and then filled in the two Os with two eyes and a smile. Have a nice day.
He hadn’t been brought up as a fighter, not in the physical sense, anyway. His father had always said that it was crazy people who demanded an eye for an eye. Survival was more dignified than trying to do to others what they had done unto you. But now Lloyd found himself consumed with a feeling of revenge that was like nothing he had ever experienced in his life. It was almost like being on fire himself. He couldn’t sit still, he could scarcely breathe. He was going to find out who had taken Celia away from him, no matter how long it took, no matter how much it cost, and he would get even.