The Hanging Page 9

  Looking off toward the water, Jean-Paul said, “When I was in Paris I called on your grandmother.”

  “Yes, she emailed me.” I wasn’t going to tell him that my grand-mère said Jean-Paul looked sad and that what he needed was a good woman. Specifically, me.

  “Élodie wondered how Elizabeth felt about you getting to know your natural family,” he said. “She is very fond of Elizabeth.”

  “You can now report that you have seen for yourself that Mom is fine,” I said.

  He gave a little bow of acknowledgment.

  “I heard that you were the one to discover that unfortunate man last night. The temptation was to call you straightaway and offer you a sympathetic shoulder, but I wasn’t sure the call would be welcome.”

  “It would have been very welcome,” I said, leaning into him. “Very welcome.”

  He started to say something else, but sighed and didn’t. I waited for him, watching surfers work the breaking waves.

  We heard applause from inside the house.

  “I should get back, check on Mom,” I said. “This has been a big day for her. Besides, someone is sure to send out a search party for you pretty soon.”

  “Of course.” He took my arm and we started back.

  We talked about our children as we walked toward the house, both of us avoiding any mention of the two people who were gone from our lives. We were engrossed enough in our conversation that I started when a man appeared in front of us. I was vaguely annoyed by the interruption when I looked up.

  “I was told you would be here, Maggie.” Hiram Chin, Anacapa’s interim academic vice president, well turned out for the event in a spring-weight suit, holding a champagne flute in his left hand, intercepted us as we crossed the terrace. He seemed perfectly at ease in that setting, but seeing him at all was jarring to me.

  I introduced him to Jean-Paul.

  “Ah,” Jean-Paul said. “Of course, you are the neighbor. Madame Olivier, our hostess, mentioned that you know Miss MacGowen. How nice that you have come.”

  Every house I could see on Broad Beach, in both directions, was like this one, massive. I knew what college administrators earned, and knew there was grumbling on campus about the housing allowance paid to Chin, but that allowance might not even cover the rent for an apartment over someone’s garage in this neighborhood. Maybe, I thought, Chin, like Roger Tejeda, had married well.

  I had been distracted, thinking that through, instead of paying attention to what the men were saying to each other, when I heard Hiram say my name.

  “Terrible for you, Maggie, finding Park like that.”

  “Not pleasant,” I said; I did not want to talk about Park Holloway anymore.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did the coroner say?”

  “I never spoke with the coroner.”

  “All I can think is, it must have been an accident,” he said. “I just can’t imagine there’s any other explanation, can you?”

  I held up my palms. “I don’t know, Hiram.”

  “Of course. It’s just...” His gaze slipped away toward the ocean. “I said good-bye to him when I left for a meeting at about three. And he seemed fine. In good spirits, all things considered. I just can’t imagine that he would—”

  Jean-Paul’s question was aimed at me: “Take his own life?”

  “I don’t think there’s much question of that,” I said. “But, Hiram, truly I am not the right person to ask. If the detectives haven’t been in touch with you yet, you should call them. You can help them establish the time of death.”

  “Forgive me for bringing it up, Maggie,” Chin said. “This is certainly not the time or the place. This morning when I was told what happened, I called Madame Olivier to give my regrets, but she told me you were still coming, so I dropped by just to make sure that you are all right.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your concern.”

  “The television coverage has been wildly sensational,” he said. “I was hoping you could give me better information.”

  “Hiram,” I said. “If you and Park were close, I am sorry for your loss. But I do not know what happened to him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my mom.”

  Jean-Paul caught up with me as I strode across the terrace toward the house.

  “Very forward, that man,” was all he said.

  “Very worried,” I said. “He’s now in charge of the college.”

  Mom looked pale. This was her biggest outing since the knee surgery, the impact of which she was loath to accede to, coupled with much excellent food and wine, challenging conversation and sharing a bench with a handsome musician. It was time for her to get back into her coach and go as soon as the applause faded after the last piece. I took her hand and steadied her as she rose from her chair.

  “So soon?” Jean-Paul asked, taking Mom’s hand from mine.

  He handed her into the car and came around to say good-bye to me.

  “I’ll call you,” he said.

  “I hope you do.”

  With a sly little smile, he said, “I thought we might see how it goes between us without so many chaperons.”

  “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  We exchanged les bises, and I drove away.

  Mom was asleep before we turned off Pacific Coast Highway onto Malibu Canyon Road.

  I had some quiet time to think about what the cellist had said about Holloway’s disappearance from Washington: A lover? Or money? Or any number of other sins.

  The more I thought about it, the more I knew that Park Holloway would be a very interesting film topic. More so because of the nasty way he died.

  Chapter 10

  I drove Mom back to her apartment, helped her change and settle down for a nap, though, even as exhausted as she was, I doubted she would be able to close her eyes again—she had slept all the way home. When I left her, she was playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number 2 on her CD player, the piece her new friend would be performing with the Philharmonic that evening.

  It was late afternoon before I got home. The house Mike and I bought a few years before he got sick was near the top of a steep-sided canyon wall, part of a small enclave of houses that stuck like a thumb into the public holdings of Malibu Creek State Park, about halfway between the glitzy beaches of Malibu and the always jammed 101 freeway that bisects the San Fernando and Conejo Valleys, and a million miles from both.

  Clark Gable had once owned a hunting lodge across the street—a rustic but charming place—and Charlie Sheen had lived for a while in a huge and strange stucco bunker at the top of the ridge opposite ours. Our neighbors were TV and movie folk like me and our next-door neighbor Early Drummond, and old hippies who grew pot in the gullies on their properties, and various folks, like Mike, who wanted a refuge from the hurly-burly of the urban community from which they drew their livelihood.

  The road up into the canyon where I lived was narrow and full of wicked hairpin turns. Even though I knew every curve and pothole, I always had to be on the alert for random mudslides and boulders that could come crashing down the mountain toward me or had already blocked the road on the far side of a blind curve; the unstable Santa Monicas are always shedding debris.

  The concentration it took to navigate the road was almost like meditating, especially after a rainstorm when slides were not just common, they were the norm. I had to let go of everything that was on my mind and pay attention, to be ready for anything. For Mike and me, that short trip up into our canyon was like crossing a moat that kept the events of the world down below from invading the life we shared.

  Though the house still felt empty without Mike, I always felt a beautiful surge of well-being whenever I pulled up into our drive.

  First chore when I got home, after changing into old jeans and pulling on knee-high Wellies, was feeding the horses. We had three: Duke, Mike’s big gelding; Rover, my sturdy quarter horse; and Red, my neighbor Early’s
sorrel. They were all rescued pets. Times were tough, and horses are expensive to maintain, so there were plenty of them around in need of rescue.

  Not one of our beasts would win a beauty contest, but they were all loyal, easygoing mounts, and comedians, every one.

  We shared the rail-fenced horse enclosure with Early, a co-worker at the network that canceled my show. And we shared horse-tending duties. Because it worked for our schedules, Early usually took the morning shift, and I the later. But Early was out of town for the weekend, so I was doing double duty.

  The horses had plenty of room to roam in their half-acre enclosure, but they hadn’t been walked since the rain started on Monday. They were restless and needy and demanding of attention, and generally made pests of themselves while I did my chores.

  They had churned their enclosure into a giant, muddy pit. I led the horses out to the little lawn next to their feed and tack shed and left them there while I cleaned up their house.

  We kept a little John Deere Gator in the shed. I drove it out, attached a chain drag to the back and leveled out the worst of the holes and mounds in the enclosure so no one would get hurt. More rain was predicted for the week ahead, so I’d be doing this chore regularly for a while yet.

  Next I raked muck out of their stalls and raked fresh straw in. With the three of them kibitzing every step of the way, I filled their feeders and drained and refilled the old claw-foot bathtub we used as a trough.

  Each horse got hosed off, wiped down, and each got a quick brushing, which they loved. By the time I was finished, they were shiny and proud, and I was a muddy, sopping-wet mess.

  No one was around, so I left them pulling up dandelions in the lawn while I stripped off my wet shirt and wiped my arms and face with it. I was just pulling on a clean one I had stashed in the shed when a familiar sleek black Mercedes pulled into my driveway. Smoothing the shirt into the top of my jeans, I walked over to meet Jean-Paul.

  “What a nice surprise,” I said, tucking some damp hair behind my ear.

  “I should have called,” he said, emerging from his car wearing the same beautiful suit he had worn to the reception. “Forgive me.”

  I plucked at my wet, muddy jeans. “If I’d known...”

  He laughed softly. “I suppose you don’t get many drop-in guests.”

  “Not many, no,” I said. I was too filthy to offer cheeks to kiss or a hand to shake. “So, you were in the neighborhood?”

  “You told me how much you enjoyed the wine, and your mother remarked on the pâté,” he said. “There were some—how do I say this delicately—party leftovers. So I thought I might bring some to you.”

  He cocked his head and gave me a shy smile. “Since I was in the neighborhood.”

  He popped his trunk. I counted three cases of wine and a shrink-wrapped flat with a dozen tins of pâté.

  The horses were making a fuss—they wanted to go for a walk. I turned, raised a finger, and told them, “Later.”

  But horses don’t understand later. They were clean, they were fed, the sun was still shining, I was home, and they were ready to go for a ramble up into the Santa Monicas, drop-in company or not, right now.

  “Oh dear, I have interrupted something,” Jean-Paul said.

  “They’re expecting to go up on the trail.”

  He looked over my shoulder, where he could see the trail as it came around a bend along a green hillside speckled with flowers. “So beautiful.”

  Then he looked down at his suit with the same sort of ill-ease I felt standing there in my filthy Levis and rubber boots. He shrugged and raised both palms in a gesture that meant either too bad or oh damn.

  “Maybe another time, I could join you?” he said.

  “I hope you do. It’ll be muddy up on the mountain, but so beautiful after the rain.”

  He picked up a case of wine and asked where he should take it. I picked up a second case and led the way to the garage.

  Mike and I used a cupboard in the garage for wine storage because, with two floors above it and a canyon face abutting the wall behind it, the garage was always about the same temperature as the dungeon of a medieval castle, the room the experts had in mind when they advised storing wine at room temperature.

  I punched the code into the electronic lock and the garage door rolled open. Jean-Paul saw Mike’s big F250 pickup truck and his eyes grew wide.

  “Beautiful,” he said, running an appreciative hand along the top edge of the truck bed. “You have this for the horses, yes?”

  “It’s handy for picking up hay,” I said. “But that truck was my husband’s pride and joy. When he wasn’t driving a police car, he drove that truck.”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t mind if we took it for a little drive sometime?”

  “He wouldn’t mind at all.”

  The garage was full of Mike’s things. There were shelves stacked with boxes marked MIKE. His clothes, some mementoes, old notebooks, his corny country music, much of it on vinyl LPs. I didn’t know what to do with most of it. It seemed morbid to keep his personal things around the house where I would see them and touch them in the course of an ordinary day, so friends had helped me box it and store it down here. Most of it had been important only to Mike and had no real utility. Except his clothes. I had been intending to take his clothes to the VA, but just never could quite bring myself to do it. Silly, hanging on to things someone could make good use of. What would Comrade Dad say?

  “Jean-Paul,” I said, as we set the wine cases on a shelf in the cupboard, “if you would like to come for a ride today, I can find you the right clothes.”

  I knew he had noticed the boxes. He asked, “Your husband’s?”

  “Yes.”

  Because he hesitated, I added, “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”

  He gave a little toss of the head, smiled, which, because he was French, turned downward.

  “Then yes, of course.”

  When he was still healthy, Mike was bigger than Jean-Paul. But I found a box with jeans I had bought after his first round of chemo, lifted out a couple of pairs, and handed them to Jean-Paul. Next, out of other boxes, a T-shirt and a sweatshirt.

  I looked at his feet. “Mike wore a ten-and-a-half.”

  “The trainers I wear at the gym are in my car. Would they offend the horses?”

  “Around here, people ride barefoot wearing bikinis.”

  “Well then.”

  With just an hour of daylight left, we rode up Bulldog Trail, Jean-Paul in front on Duke, and me behind on Rover, leading Red on a line. The first quarter mile of the trail was a grueling uphill slog. Duke kept turning his head, as if trying to get a good look at the man in his saddle. Maybe he smelled Mike’s jeans, or maybe it was simply a new rider, a new weight, and new voice. But Jean-Paul knew how to handle a horse. He talked easily to Duke, used a light hand on the reins except when Duke tested him by suddenly dropping his head to snack on the spring flowers emerging between ruts in the trail. By the time we came out on top where the narrow trail opened onto a broad, flat meadow, Jean-Paul was clearly in charge of his mount and Duke was his happy companion.

  The early evening light was soft, full of lush pink tones. A doe and two fawns leaped out of a thicket to graze on the meadow. They looked up, saw us, and decided we were no threat. I pulled a little digital camera out of my pocket and stopped to take some pictures.

  Jean-Paul rode up beside me. Watching the deer, he said, “It is so wonderful here. We could be anywhere in the world, except Los Angeles.”

  I held up the camera, and asked, “May I?”

  He put his right hand flat on his chest and folded some sweatshirt over it, and with a properly serious expression on his face, posed like Napoleon. LAPD BUNCO-FORGERY ANNUAL STEAK-FRY was emblazoned across the front of his shirt.

  “Très débonnaire,” I said.

  When he relaxed his pose and laughed, I took another shot.

  We headed up a trail that wound around a knob and came out with a great view of the
valley below. There were estate-size homes along both sides of the narrow valley. One of the recent landscaping fads in the area was planting rows of trellised wine grapes, so the area looked very much like Provence.

  Jean-Paul surveyed the view and said, again, “Anywhere but Los Angeles.”

  “We should get back down before dark,” I said.

  Jean-Paul helped me get the horses rubbed down and settled for the night. We put the tack in the shed and changed out of the Wellies we slipped on for the clean-up. I looked at him as he sat on a bale of alfalfa hay to tie the laces of his trainers. He had mud on his chin. I wiped it off with a clean horse towel.

  He reached up for the towel and took my hand with it.

  “I planned to ask you to dinner,” he said as he spread our arms wide and assessed the mud we wore. “But...”

  “I stopped by the market on my way home and picked up some nice-looking sea bass,” I said. “How about, we get cleaned up and eat here?”

  He thought that was a fine idea. He got his gym bag from his car, some essentials, he said, and carried it upstairs to the guest room where he had changed earlier. Twenty minutes later, both of us showered and hair freshly brushed, we met in the kitchen. He wore his suit pants and a V-neck cashmere sweater over a white T-shirt. I had pulled on sweats and tube socks.

  The telephone rang. Caller ID listed Early, my neighbor, so I picked up.

  “Yes, Early.”

  “I just had a call from Ida,” he said, referring to the producer of the evening news broadcast where he worked as a technical director. “Thought I’d give you a heads-up.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “She wanted to know if I’d told you anything about Park Holloway.”

  “She wanted to know if I knew where you were. She said you weren’t answering your phone.”

  I glanced at the phone’s message light and saw that there had been ten calls made to the house between the time I went out to feed the horses until now, but no one left messages. I pushed the incoming call log button and two familiar numbers, each repeated several times, scrolled across the ID screen. Ida, from network news, and Lana Howard, my former executive producer—the network boss who had given me my walking papers—had taken turns trying to reach me for the last few hours. There were probably messages on my mobile phone as well; I had left it upstairs.