The street followed the gentle curve of the hillside. The houses were expansive, California-perfect edifices of timber and glass, stucco and stone. Their bushes were tightly trimmed, their lawns relentlessly watered to attain unvarying shades of deep green. Only the mound of scorched wood and stones behind orange plastic link fencing marred the beauty of the street. The rubble was Arlin’s.
Grit crunched under my shoes when I got out of the car. It would take many more rains to wash the last of it from the pavement.
‘I called city hall three times but nobody will tell me when this mess will be removed.’
I turned. An elderly woman with a smear of lipstick that matched her red hair had walked up with a tiny dog on a leash.
‘They’re probably being cautious, still investigating,’ I said.
‘Well, they ought to find that man who asked me if this was the Arlin house.’
‘When was that?’
‘Night before the explosion.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
‘Of course I did. Creepy fellow. His car had dark windows and he powered them down only a little but I could see him good enough. Red-headed man.’ She touched her own hair as she looked down at the pavement. ‘Poor David, blown to smithereens. The blast woke up the whole town. The thought that parts of him are still …’ She scraped a shoe on the pavement. ‘Horrible, horrible.’
She tugged at the dog’s leash, also a red affair with bits of glass sparkling along every inch. Then again, they might have been real gems, it being Laguna Beach where everything glittered.
I got directions off my phone and drove to the police department. The lieutenant in charge of the Arlin case met me in the foyer and led me back to a gray metal desk in a small office. He said his name was Beech. He was slender, pushing fifty, and had close-cut graying hair that almost matched the color of his desk.
‘Insurance, you say?’ He frowned as he studied my card.
‘I work for the smaller companies. I’m on an extended west coast trip and was asked to look into the Arlin matter. He was badly burned?’
‘Your insurance company can hold off until we complete our investigation, if that’s what you’re asking. That should make them happy, delaying payment.’ He leaned back in his chair and studied me. ‘Who is the beneficiary?’
‘You’re thinking the explosion wasn’t accidental?’
‘Too soon to suspect anything at all. Who was the beneficiary?’
‘A lady with a dog told me she talked to a stranger looking for Arlin the night before he was killed.’
‘Old lady, hair dyed fire-engine red, lipstick and dog leash to match?’
‘She said a red-haired man drove up the night before the explosion, asking where Arlin lived …’ I let my voice trail away, knowing what he was going to say.
He said it exactly as dismissively as I expected: ‘The woman sees red everywhere, right?’
‘Maybe,’ I allowed, thinking it wasn’t the time to mention red-haired Gary Halvorson.
‘So, who benefits, Elstrom?’
I put on one of my stupid faces, of which I have several. ‘They don’t tell me things like that. I’m just supposed to stop in, find out if there’s an investigation and, if so, how long it will take.’
The dumb face worked. He let it go. ‘Arlin was divorced two years ago, no children,’ he said. ‘His ex-wife moved back east, free of his financial mess. He got stuck with the mortgage on the house, which is upside down by eight hundred thousand, and business debts. He was a kitchen and bath hardware distributor. The last housing downturn stuck him with inventory he couldn’t sell.’
‘No sign of a wrench near a loose gas fitting?’
‘You’re asking whether Arlin blew up his house to get out from under that mortgage and accidentally blew himself up as well?’
‘It happens.’
‘Call your employer; get back to me with the beneficiary on his life insurance.’
‘You wouldn’t want to know that unless you’re thinking this was no accident.’
‘I expect to hear from you within forty-eight hours.’
Outside, the setting sun was beginning to gild the waves in the ocean. I found a Whole Foods grocery, got a vegetable salad and a tuna sandwich on seven-grain bread because they were healthy, and a box of chocolate-dipped butter cookies because they were necessary, and drove back to the Sun Coast Hotel.
And then I sat, in the Prius, in the parking lot, wondering whether Rosamund Reynolds was gaming me by sending me off to learn information she already knew. What I couldn’t figure out was why.
Calling her, I got her voicemail. ‘I’ve just visited David Arlin’s house, or rather what’s left of it and, I suppose, of him. The cops are playing things close to the vest, saying only that they’re investigating. I’m thinking you know more than they do, just as you must know more than I could learn about Gary Halvorson. Call me with truths before I waste more of your money.’
I leaned back behind the wheel and shut my eyes, hoping to be calmed by the sound of the surf, but all the water did was pound in my ears, one wave after another. I waited fifteen minutes, then fifteen minutes more. There was no call. There was no calm.
The same short blonde looked up when I entered the office. ‘I’d like to upgrade to a room on the beach,’ I said.
‘A water view would triple your rate,’ she said, casting a new glance at my old clothes.
‘Excellent,’ I said, sticking my hand into the jar of the more lightly tanned taffies.
She gave me a quizzical look and a key to a room that overlooked rocks, some of which were big and some of which were small. But these had an ocean beyond them and a big-dollar veranda from which to enjoy them, all at the expense of the wily Rosamund Reynolds. Upgrading seemed such a perfectly petty gesture.
By now, the sun was almost gone. I slid open the door and stepped outside. The surf had softened. Little silver lines shimmered in the shallows along the beach.
‘Nothing is as it appears,’ a voice said.
A man stood on the next veranda, smoking a cigarette and looking down at the water. ‘Bioluminescence,’ he went on. ‘Microorganisms. Phosphorescence. Things you can’t see, moving beneath the surface. That’s what’s making those silver lines.’
‘Couldn’t prove it by me,’ I said.
‘Some things can’t be proved by anybody,’ he said and went back into his room.
It sounded like a California sort of attitude. I ate the salad, the tuna sandwich and three of the cookies as I watched the last sliver of the sun disappear. Then I took my cell phone down to the beach to walk among the silver lines shimmering even brighter in the moonlight. I thought of Amanda in Chicago and the moonlit beaches we’d shared and were working toward sharing again. And I thought of Jenny Galecki, so much closer up in San Francisco yet now so much farther away, and of the beaches that likely would never be. Jenny and I had come together at a time when Amanda and I were so very far apart. But then a better professional opportunity came for her and Jenny, ever the vigilant newswoman, left Chicago television for San Francisco. We’d stayed loosely in touch, thinking we’d become closer in mind should times change.
I got cold. I went up to bed, hoping the surf would pound loud enough to drown out everything I didn’t know.