THREE

I was at my desk, packing up my things, when the phone rang.

“Max Hailey.”

“Yeah, this is Dexter,” came a man’s voice. “I’m at your house.”

I frowned. “I think you have the wrong number.”

“We had an appointment,” he said, annoyed. “I’m here to inspect your roof.”

“Shit! Sorry, I forgot. Any way we can reschedule?”

“Can’t come back for at least ten days,” he said. “You know there’s a storm coming on Thursday, right? The whole city will be underwater.”

I cursed under my breath, then glanced at my watch. Four-fifteen. Getting to my house in Laurel Canyon would take twenty minutes without traffic, but I didn’t know how long the roof inspection would take. If it went past six, I would be late getting to the show in Echo Park.

“Stay there,” I said. “I’m leaving my office right now.”

I made good time, and when I pulled up in front of my house, I saw a beat-up blue pickup truck blocking the drive. I parked behind it, then climbed out of my car and walked up the drive.

“Sorry I’m late,” I called.

The man standing on my footpath turned and shrugged. “Look, we charge by the hour,” he said. “I’ve already been here for an hour, and I could technically charge you for that, but I’m not going to.”

“Thanks,” I said, slightly suspicious. “Why not?”

“I can tell you’re going to be a valuable customer,” he said, then reached up and tugged on a clump of morning glory. “Your roof has completely gone to shit.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “Look, I don’t need a new roof,” I said. “I really just called about the hole in the kitchen ceiling.”

“You ever go to the dentist for a cleaning and leave with a root canal?”

“Come inside,” I said. “Let’s talk in there.”

The house had belonged to my grandmother. It was designed as a sloping Alsatian cottage, the type you might see in a forest after losing the path. A witch might live inside, or a band of elves. Every single Halloween, I got the most trick-or-treaters out of anyone in my neighborhood, because the nearby dwellings were, on one side, a boring house of glass and concrete and on the other, a squat row of ’70s flats made out of cheap stained wood.

If I weren’t nostalgic, I would sell my property and cash in early. My gran had bought the place with cash in the 1940s; back then, land was affordable and houses had a way of getting vacated without notice. Theater troupes would blow in from out of town, stay for a week or a few months, then depart, usually leaving half their things behind. Stars had more money than sense, and when film studios made the transition from silent movies to talking pictures, a whole rash of silent gods went bankrupt. Gran bought the place from one of these silent divas who went broke on opium and alcohol; the actress had purchased it from the man who built it, who was a set designer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

It had never been a completely solid house, even when I lived there with Gran. With every rain, a spate of leaks would open up throughout the house. We had a special collection of thrift store pots and pans stashed away in a box for storms, and at the first sign of cloudy skies, we’d break out the box and position our cache in all the usual spots.

I’d been working so much lately that I hadn’t had a chance to fix the roof, but the week before, a great big hole had opened up in the kitchen ceiling. I hadn’t realized that there were holes in the main roof until sunshine came streaming through, and tendrils of morning glory started to poke down among the cabinets. I could almost hear a mental cash register chinging away in Dexter’s mind as I led him through the house.

“All right,” Dexter said, as we moved into the kitchen. He looked up through the hole in the ceiling, which had grown at least three inches in the last few days. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Just one problem?”

“You’re going to have to replace the entire roof,” he said.

His words didn’t register right away.

“It’s just a little hole. Can’t we throw some duct tape and shingles on it?”

“I’d say the problem’s at least a decade old,” he said. “You’ve got dry rot and a whole dynasty of termites living in your roof.”

“Shit. How much does a roof cost these days?”

“We can talk about that,” he said. “The roof is separate from the ceiling, of course, and you’ll have to replace that, too. How do you reach the attic?”

“I used to use the stairs, but now we just need a ladder,” I said, gesturing to the hole in the ceiling. “I’ll give you a leg up, you can hoist yourself the rest of the way.”

“You think this is funny?”

“No, of course not.” My smile evaporated. “This way.”

It was hard not to feel a certain amount of pride in the house, even as Dexter went looking for problems. First-time visitors usually got a kick out of the uneven gingerbread portholes, the sloping walls and the hardwood floors inlaid with little mother-of-pearl diamonds. Bookcases were built into at least one wall in every room, and the stairs leading up to the attic were a particular point of pride. The original owner had stashed the staircase behind a small rounded door in the library, the type Snow White’s dwarves might have departed through each day.

Dexter didn’t find it cute. “You expect me to fit through there?”

“It’s the only way up.”

“For the love of God,” he muttered, getting on his knees. “If I find out this is some kind of practical joke, I swear to you—”

After ten minutes of awkward maneuvering, Dexter and I emerged in the attic. A blotchy constellation of light shone through pinprick holes in the roof, and I sighed, looking down at the floor. I could see termite damage left and right, and tried to remember the last time I had come up here.

“You’d better not step anywhere,” I said.

“I realize that. You’re going to have to find some way to get all this stuff down, and soon, or it’s going to fall through.” He narrowed his eyes at a set of trunks in the corner. “Those boxes heavy?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s go back down,” he said. “I’ll give you a quote.”

Once we were standing back in the kitchen, Dexter took out a notepad. I discreetly glanced at my phone and saw that it was almost six o’clock.

“I have to go soon,” I said. “Any idea what it might cost to fix this?”

“We’re looking at about fourteen grand,” he said. “Of course, that only covers the damage to the infrastructure. You want someone to come and fix this little gingerbread cottage roof, it’s probably going to be another five.”

“Jesus.”

“Can you afford that?”

“Not even close,” I said.

“Might be cheaper to tear the place down and sell it,” he said.

“I grew up here,” I said quickly.

“Well, you could consider taking out a second mortgage,” he said.

“It’s already got a second mortgage.”

Dexter sighed and tore off the sheet of paper, then handed it to me. “You don’t have many options,” he said. “If you wait for a miracle, you’re going to lose the entire house. Give me a call when you’ve had a chance to think about it.”

---

Echo Park wasn’t too far away, but traffic in Los Angeles was unpredictable, and there was no telling how long it might take me to find a parking space. The venue would undoubtedly have an overpriced valet service, but it was a point of pride for me that I almost never paid for parking.

I made it in twenty minutes, then found the venue and started the parking search. Since it was Friday, the neighborhood was hopping, and most of the streets were packed. People walked in pairs and threesomes down the sidewalk, laughing and leaning against each other, gearing up for a night out.

A parking spot appeared on the block ahead of me, and I headed toward it and hit my turn signal. I was starting to reverse into it when a motorcycle swooped in.

“Hey! Asshole!” I jammed on the horn, but the motorcyclist pretended to ignore me, then climbed off his bike and started to remove his helmet. Hitting my emergency blinkers, I put my car in park and climbed out. Cars honked as they passed me, because I was blocking the street, but I was too indignant to care.

“Hey!”

I walked toward the motorcyclist, but the man dug in his pocket for something, pretending not to see me.

“I’m talking to you,” I said. “That was my spot!”

“Oh, was it? Did you put your little beach chair next to the curb to indicate that it was yours?”

“I see how it is,” I said. “You’re one of those entitled biker assholes who splits lanes and sticks his dick into every non-permitted bit of curb. Congratulations on being superior to everyone else in the city.”

He gave me a pitying smile. “Well done, guy. You’ve figured me out.”

All through high school, I’d managed to stay under the radar and avoid fights by being smarter than the other boys. I didn’t have too much trouble, since my high school was filled with stoners and the children of hippies, but on the few occasions when someone did try to start shit with me, I’d cut him down to size with a few acidic remarks. It had never failed, but now I was out of practice, and I couldn’t help feeling lame sparring with the motorcyclist.

“Move your bike,” I said.

“Enjoy your night,” he replied. Plenty of paid parking around here.”

He started to walk away.

“How do you know I won’t do something to your bike once you’re gone?” I called after him, and I was pleased to see that this stopped him. He turned around and started walking back toward me, taking his phone out of his pocket. He moved past me and bent in front of my car, then took a picture of my license plate.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said, patting me on the shoulder as he walked past.

Traffic had started to pile up behind me, and the air was filled with the sound of honking. I was so pissed off when I climbed back in my car that I almost reversed over the man’s bike, but since he had a picture of my license plate, it was no longer an option. I gave myself a moment to breathe, then started my car up again and continued looking for parking.

The man’s remarks stayed with me as I scanned the streets, too distracted to even think about heading to the show and working that night. I was starting to feel like I was out of touch with the rest of Los Angeles, the bearded hipsters with leather jackets and worn-in denim shirts; the artisanal coffee drinkers and people who could afford overpriced yoga and stand-up comedy classes. What made it worse was that I wasn’t yet thirty and already committed to a house that was falling apart. I couldn’t afford to fix it, couldn’t bear to part with it, and now I was virtually stuck in a career track that was starting to feel a lot like dancing for an idiotic royal regime while wearing bells on my ankles.

I was so distracted that I turned a corner and nearly slammed into the back of an SUV. I stomped on the brakes and sat there for a moment, gathering my wits. Before I could change my mind, I hit my turn signal and flipped my car around. I wasn’t going to make it to the show that night, Brian’s wrath be damned.

I crested a hill and headed toward the freeway leading away from Echo Park. I felt a thrill down my spine as I saw the city glittering in the distance, freeways streaming in and out like arteries of some black heart. There were glowing lights and ribbons of road, buildings and towers like dark cathedrals. It was intoxicating and beautiful, the cars slipping in and out of lanes beside me like darting fish. It was my city. I still felt the same thrill of possibility that I had felt when I was a kid, driving out of the valley in the nighttime.

Beneath the freeway, all the houses winked and bowed their heads and disappeared into nothing, a swirl of gray and black. Traffic was light heading north, since it was well past rush hour. I took the Vermont Street exit, then turned onto Beverly Boulevard. Seven fifty-two. I was definitely going to miss the Rigor Mormon show. I could only hope that the band had enough decently filmed YouTube videos for me to half-ass an article to go along with Marty’s photographs. Rigor Fucking Mormon, I thought to myself. Only in Los Angeles.

Outside my window, expensive designer brick-and-mortars yielded to apartments, then cute bungalows with small gardens. The houses suddenly evolved into mansions, austere mock Tudors and Spanish colonials fringed by palm trees and perfect lawns. I drove up to a stoplight across from the Beverly Hills Hotel, then the light changed and I drove across Sunset, up into one of the wealthiest and strangest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

It’s notoriously difficult to trespass in Beverly Hills, unless you’re a marathon walker or an ace on roller skates: “No Parking” signs are posted every ten feet for almost two square miles, which makes unexpected visitors extremely unlikely. Nobody who lives in this part of Los Angeles needs to leave their car on the street, anyway: they’ve all got long, luxurious driveways and three-car garages hidden behind thick hedges.

There are five parking spots—I’m not kidding, and you can believe I’ve done my research—where you won’t be ticketed, towed, or bullied by the neighbors. Three of them are next to a little public park that’s smaller than my yard, and the other two are on a dead-end lane guarded by a big weeping willow. Those two spots are a ten-minute walk from Windhall, and since I couldn’t park anywhere near the great house itself, I had parked under the tree whenever I wanted to see Theo’s house.

I was in luck: the dark little lane was empty, and I parked, then switched my phone to silent and tucked it in my pocket.

It was easier to sneak into Windhall over the back wall, but this time, I didn’t want to risk running into the man with the Southern accent, on the off chance that he had come back. I was going to have to risk going over the front wall.

The wall was topped with a row of gothic iron spikes, but the vines had grown over them in sections, making it possible to surmount the wall without stabbing a hand or leg in the process. I found a thick branch in one of the sections of ivy, then hoisted myself up slowly, grabbing other branches as I went. I reached the top of the wall and swung a leg over, and was nearly across when my leg caught and I felt an awful scrape. There was a tear and then a feeling of wet warmth, and then I fell headlong over the wall, into the garden.

I lay there for a moment, praying that I hadn’t broken a limb in the process, then gingerly patted myself down and decided that everything was fine. When I sat up, I realized that I was lying next to a pale statue of a young woman, who gazed down in blind consternation. Six inches to the left, and I might have paralyzed myself by falling on her. Sobered slightly by this fact, I sat up and took inventory of my surroundings.

The main house crouched in the garden as though it knew that I was coming. It was a sprawling, curious thing, with windows for eyes. I had landed just behind the gardener’s cottage, which was seated at the base of the drive, and just beyond it, I could see the three-car garage. The apartment above the garage had once held Theo’s household staff before he let them all go.

I started walking across the grounds, keeping my eyes on Windhall. The upper gables loomed against the night sky, a staggering dark form. The house looked the same as it did in the nightmares I used to have; the towers of Theo’s castle piercing a wounded sky, the leering doors, the broken paths. I imagined the night of the party, all those years ago, all the Hollywood royalty gathered beneath one roof, spilling out into the gardens below, toasting to their shared successes and never dreaming that one of their own would die before morning.

As I crossed the garden, I started to feel the tingling anticipation I always felt right before I sneaked into an abandoned property. The grounds had gone wild in the decades of solitude. Foxtails grew up to my chest, strange wild things that belonged on a foreign planet. Deep holes marred the ground around the path from the gardener’s cottage, as though someone had dug in, actually believing that Theo kept buried gold in his yard. It was one of the many rumors that had come out around the trial, adding to the public’s convictions against him. Windhall was one of the few places in Los Angeles that didn’t change every few years, which was a nice bit of relief in a constantly shifting city.

Beyond the carriage house lay the garage, which I could barely make out in the deepening gloom. It looked too austere to hold anything but ghosts, and I pictured a chauffeur rolling up the doors to let out an expensive car. When Theo still lived at Windhall, all the staff had worn crisp, customized uniforms; I had seen pictures from some of their gatherings. They always lurked in the background, hands folded in their laps or at their sides, mouths turned down in the suggestion of unease and propriety.

I lingered in the garden for a moment to make sure that nobody was watching me, then made my way toward the main house.

The front door was carved with the faces of angels, but the sun had done its damage, and their eyes had faded into blank, staring orbs. The wood bore deep gouges, as though someone had slashed the door repeatedly. They had wanted to draw blood. I thought of all the dazzling gods and starlets who had made their way across the threshold all those years before.

I made my way around the side of the house, through the weeds and bracken, toward the kitchen. The path was made of broken cobblestones, and I nearly tripped a few times before catching myself.

Last time I visited Windhall, I had sneaked into the house through a servant’s entrance, which stood at the end of the cobbled pathway. Besides the path, an overgrown kitchen garden had gone ragged in the abandoned decades, and only scraggly weeds remained in the dirt. The original stone perimeters were still in place, and I could see that the garden must have been large enough to feed a Victorian family of a modest size. I suddenly remembered that Windhall had been built as a rehabilitation facility for young women recovering from tuberculosis, a few years before Theo bought it and converted it into a dwelling.

I put my hand on the kitchen doorknob, expecting to find resistance, but it was unlocked. I stood there for a moment, contemplating all the implications of an open door. I thought of the man outside Windhall who had told me and Madeleine to leave. There was a chance that I would find someone waiting in the house for me. But that thought wasn’t enough to bar my entrance.

I opened the door and paused, then stepped inside.

A gust of warm air washed out. I coughed on the smell of mold and slow decay, then blinked into the dimness. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and passed it around the room. Last time I had visited, the cups and saucers had all been in their individual cupboards, hidden behind dusty panes of glass. Stacks of white plates had stood against the back counter, as though waiting for a Sunday afternoon lunch that would never come.

Now, however, I could see that changes had been made. All the dishes had been packed away in boxes, some of which sat on the floor and counters, flaps open. The dust had resettled. Someone has been here, and recently, too.

I lingered in the kitchen for a moment, wondering if the packed plates were a sign that I should leave.

I had once pored over a glowing editorial in Architectural Digest, published a year after Theo had first moved into the house and started to renovate. The article showed a dozen or more photographs of the host and his house, accompanied by staccato praise and flowery sentiments: Windhall’s grand foyer welcomes guests into Theodore Langley’s updated California Victorian, one caption read, while according to another, The ballroom summons up images of bejeweled maidens lingering at the edge of the room, waiting for a dance with their handsome beaux.

Unable to tear myself away, I moved forward, through a set of swinging doors that led into a long room lined with windows. Had it been daytime, the windows would have shown the garden, toward Westwood and Brentwood, and beyond that, out of sight, the ocean. This was the dining room.

The dining room had also been lavished with high praise, and photographs showed the long antique table holding court over the stately room. In the pictures, high-backed chairs stood at attention, carved from mahogany or some other dark wood. The room was illuminated from the west and north by banks of windows.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, and I could immediately see that someone had been in this room, too. The chairs were set on the side of the room, and the great table had been cleaned with furniture polish. Last time I had visited, some poor creature had crawled atop the table and died, wearing its own collapsed skin like a mantle. The creature and its bones had been summarily cleared away, however, and all signs of death in the room had vanished.

I was about to move on when I noticed a stack of papers on a small bench at the edge of the room. The papers did not interest me as much as what sat atop them, and I let my eyes adjust to the gloom once more to be sure of what I saw. I was looking at a slim black iPhone. Whoever owned that phone was probably still inside the house.

A gust of wind rattled the windowpanes, and I jumped. The sounds of wind and branches prevented me from hearing anything else, but I hadn’t sensed that anyone else was inside the house. It was possible that whoever had cleaned up had simply forgotten their phone, but seeing the purged state of the kitchen and the dining room made me think twice. A change had happened, and for the first time in a long time, I felt afraid.

I waited for a few minutes to see if I could hear anyone moving around, but there were no voices or creaking floorboards. After deciding that I was alone, I crossed the room and picked up the iPhone. The battery was low but still had juice, low enough that it was possible that the man had left the phone the previous night. The phone was password protected, and the lock screen image was a generic photo of bamboo. I stuck the phone in my pocket and left the dining room.

Next to the dining room was the fabled grand foyer, and beyond that, a small, empty room. I pushed open the door and walked through a hallway that split off into three different directions, choosing to go down the path on the right. I shone my flashlight through the room to illuminate walls lined with bookshelves. I was in the library. The floorboards were still in good condition, but a thick green rug had been tossed aside and lay in a heap at the edge of the room. Discarded skin.

The light from my flashlight flickered over walls shot through with cracks, over the gilded ceiling and the furniture. Faces peered out of the woodwork, and seeing them gave me a nasty shock. They were carved into the mantel of the fireplace, their sunken eyes seeming to beg me to go no further. I stumbled over the carpet and then regained my footing, and shone the light across the crumbling silk curtains.

I stopped when I saw a painting resting against one of the shelves. I wouldn’t have recognized it if it weren’t for my grandmother, because she had always loved the painter. It was a Paul de Longpré print, roses sketched against a brown background. I had seen it before, because she had had a print hanging in her kitchen, and it was one of the things that I had kept when she gave me the house. I had always liked it because it looked like a work in progress, less refined than some of his other works, and yet still so effortless. I liked to imagine that Longpré had sat down to breakfast one morning and started etching something, and beauty came so naturally to him that the roses had simply bloomed out of his fingertips.

The painting was small, and before I could second-guess what I was doing, I tucked it inside my satchel. If the house was getting cleaned up to be sold, I wanted to claim a piece of it for myself.

The house still had a pulse, even after all this time. I could almost hear voices echoing down the hallway, laughing and moaning softly by turns. There was a round window on the stair landing, and panes of glass were missing. The night sky was trapped in the window spokes. Starlight spilled onto the walls and the floor, painting everything blue gold. Skeleton moon, devil moon. I see you.

I made my way upstairs, to the second floor, and followed the feeble light of my cell phone through the second-story hallway. The light illuminated the peeling wallpaper, dazzling and strange; twirling flowers against a red background. A door leaned open at the end of the hallway, and I headed toward it. After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped forward and pushed the door open.

As soon as I stepped through, I felt like I was falling through empty space. A small light glowed in the corner of the room, and two silhouettes crouched beside it. I had been right in thinking that someone else was in the house, someone who had left the kitchen door open and forgotten their cell phone downstairs.

A brief moment collapsed in which it was still possible to turn and erase my steps, charge headlong back down the hallway, and crash out of the house before they realized that I had ever been there, but I hesitated. One of the figures turned, and then it was too late.

“Max Hailey,” he said, then stood and stretched his arms. “I thought you might come back.”

It was the man with the Southern accent. A freestanding plastic lantern stood on the floor of the room, projecting light against the wall. I could see now that they were working to patch up the fading wallpaper.

“Hello,” I said, hoping a confident voice would hide my trembling hands.

The other man stood from his position by the wall, then stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced between us. He was average height, somewhere in his late fifties, with the salt-and-pepper dark hair to prove it. His sweater looked expensive, maybe cashmere or angora.

“Who’s this?” he said to his companion.

“It’s a journalist,” said the man from the South. “He came here with his friend last night.”

It took me a moment to catch his meaning. He knew that I was a journalist: he had investigated me after our encounter the previous evening. I wasn’t too hard to find online, because some of my articles for the Lens had gone quasi-viral. I wondered how many Google pages he had gone through; if he had discovered my arrest record. Even though the light in the room wasn’t great, I had a much better view of his face than I had the night before. He had light eyes and a square nose, and the corners of his mouth turned up a little bit, as though he was on the verge of smiling.

“Call the police.” This was from the man with the dark hair. He cocked his head and looked at me. “You’re aware that you’re trespassing, aren’t you? Of course you are. The gates and doors were locked.”

“Someone forgot to lock the door downstairs.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Let’s not be pedantic, though. Who are you?”

The man gave me an indulgent smile. “Leland, where’s your phone?”

The Southern gentleman patted his pockets. “I must have left it downstairs,” he said.

I realized that the phone in my pocket belonged to the Southern gentleman, who now had a name. Leland.

“Look, Ben, I don’t think it’s necessary,” Leland went on. “I’m sure that Mr. Hailey was just leaving.”

I should have taken the opening, but I couldn’t resist. “I’ll leave when I’m good and ready,” I said. “Tell me what you’re doing here. Are you going to tear this place down and turn it into a tacky apartment complex?”

Ben frowned at my satchel. “What do you have there?” he said.

I remembered the Longpré painting from the library with a sick little jolt. “My bag is my business,” I said.

“No, let me see that,” he said, crossing the distance between us.

“It’s nothing,” I said, stepping backward, even as Ben reached for my satchel. Clouds of dust rose up into the light from the lamp on the floor, and our shadows made crazy dancers against the wall.

Before I could stop him, Ben deftly reached into my open satchel and snatched the painting. His eyes narrowed when he saw what he was holding.

“This belongs to Windhall,” he said. “I’m calling the police.”

“Ben, wait,” Leland said. “We don’t need to make a big fuss over this. We’ve got the painting now, and there’s been no other harm done.”

“We don’t know that,” Ben said. “He should be arrested for breaking and entering.”

“Think about the press. Police reports mean journalists. We’re not ready to sell yet, and we could use the extra time.”

Ben gripped the painting, and I could see him deliberating over his choices.

“How do we know that he won’t talk?” he said, keeping his eyes on me.

“Mr. Hailey already has a criminal record,” Leland said. “A fire, wasn’t it, Mr. Hailey? I can’t remember all the details, but it was somewhere in Covina.”

My jaw was tight. I hoped my face didn’t give anything away.

“Judges in Los Angeles have long memories,” Leland went on. “I’m sure you don’t want to come face-to-face with the same judge on a charge of breaking and entering. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hailey?”

I mulled over what he was saying.

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t say anything. I’m not entirely sure what I’m keeping secret, though.”

“It’s simple,” Leland said, giving me an easy smile. “Just don’t say anything at all.”

---

Leland escorted me all the way to the end of the drive, then unlocked the chains linking the gates together. He nodded his head as I slung my satchel over my shoulder and made an unhappy exodus down the drive.

Before I had reached the street, he called out to me.

“Mr. Hailey,” he said. “Don’t ever come back to Windhall. You’ve had two friendly warnings, but you won’t get a third.”

And with that, he withdrew behind the gates and locked the chain once more.