Santiago shrugged. “I din’t catch his name. Kinda plain looking, older. Maybe in his sixties? Anyway, don’t trip out. I watched his ass, made sure he didn’t take nothing that didn’t belong to him. When he couldn’t find no LP, he thanked me and took off.”
“What…guy? Who was the guy?”
“Sorry, dude—I didn’t ask for ID. I figured if you’da borrowed his wax, you wouldn’t be all that pissed about giving it back.”
I shot Santiago a grim look, but he just laughed. He’d seen it all and done it all twice. But it bugged me for the rest of the night. I didn’t own any LPs—except for one test pressing hiding in the trunk of my car.
20
After a light sleep, I headed out in the morning, planted the LP on Fry’s boat, and took Pacific Coast south, across the Orange Curtain, exiting onto a steep, two-lane road up a beachside mountain. The sky was blue with puffy clouds, and the sea breeze made past and future seem like twin illusions. About an hour in, the Fountain Grove Estates came into view. High hedges surrounded the place, like a movie studio or an insane asylum. The lady in the tollbooth was a seventy-plus gum-chewing Black woman with purple and red beads in her gray cornrows. She looked over the dusty Jetta and said, “You’re gonna need to let me take a picture of your license.”
“For real?”
“These are the rules, baby. I don’t make ’em.”
I handed it over. She snapped it with a smile, handed it back, and said, “Now—just head on down to the right. Park in the green spaces, but not the green ones that are for electric cars.”
“Gotcha.”
She got out of her booth and slapped a yellow sticker on the driver’s side window. “This is a seven-hour pass. Eleven p.m. I boot the car and you spend the night.”
The thick boom bar lifted and I cruised a much smaller, winding path down to the first foothill, turning into the parking area with the green painted lines. One whole row was lined up with nothing but expensive vintage vehicles—a white ’55 Bel-Air, a Citroën, a purple Galaxie, a coffee-colored 1980 Datsun with simulated wood paneling, a convertible Mustang, a super-rare Cortina, and a cream ’37 Rolls 25/30 with spotless whitewalls—seven rides, all cherry. Who drove them? Maybe they were like golf carts for the grounds.
I got out and stood for a moment in the breeze coming off the water, gazing down a walking path toward a cluster of Spanish bungalows surrounding a courtyard fountain. The grounds sprawled out, tropical and pastoral, a landscaper’s masterpiece painted in green, stretching to a white-fenced cliff and a sweep of ocean blue below. This was not just some dude ranch to get your massage on. This was a theme park for dying, a kind of pre-cemetery where you could skip the hard part and go straight to heaven. Too bad I didn’t put Herschel in a place like this. A few elderly couples in shorts were hiking up ahead. Two old guys sat on one of the benches outside the fountain having a relaxed discussion. Another older woman with a wide straw hat took photos of some rosebushes throbbing with color in the beachy sun. Not a soul under eighty.
I started walking, making my way along the path, past unlit tiki torches and posh grass-topped pagodas, groomed overgrowth and twisted banyan trees, benches carved from polished driftwood and little ponds, their waterfalls bleeding into a curving creek. About halfway down, gentle music piped in through the bushes. “…but it’s much too late for goodbyes….” The song faded into “Over the Hills and Far Away,” Zeppelin, but soft.
As I got closer to the courtyard, a few elderly heads turned. I approached the men on the bench.
“Sorry to interrupt—do you know where Treehouse 32 is?”
They eyed me mistrustfully, like nudist colony members might stare down a man in a three-piece suit.
Then one of them said, “You see where the path forks? Take a left past the salmon building.”
I thanked them and kept walking.
The rushing, man-made creek led around a little moat over which you crossed a dark wooden bridge to one of those ornate beaux-arts Hawaiian Island two-stories, guarded by short palms. “Two Tickets to Paradise” played softly in the distance. Through the arch, I could see several old-timers side by side on the bench in the lobby, probably there for the air conditioning. I kept walking the back road until a little wooden sign came into view: Treehouse Cottages. They weren’t really treehouses, of course—but the handsome cabins staggered up a foothill, wrapped in thick vines, as if getting tugged back into nature.
At Treehouse 32, I scrambled up the rickety wooden stairs and tapped on the door. No answer.
“Mr. Gladstone?”
Still no answer, but I heard a television.
I turned the knob and peered right into a plain suburban living room—clean avocado carpets, an old light-brown couch, and a great big dark brown EZ chair, its back to me, with The Twilight Zone playing on a big TV. On the screen, a hot and sweaty-looking brunette with big eyes was painting a canvas in dark gray splotches.
“Mr. Gladstone?” I said.
A grumble. “Yeah, yeah, one second.”
The man in the chair reached for the remote and turned off the television.
The EZ chair spun around slow—the man in it looked me over like he was used to interruptions. And it was him—the guy I saw arguing with Hawley. Up close, he was skinny, beaky like me, with comical, sensitive eyes and a less-than-full head of gray that didn’t want to behave. His jaw trembled with frustration. “I didn’t order the Salisbury.”
I smiled. “Nothing like that. Actually, Mr. Gladstone, my name’s Adam Zantz.”
Now he looked puzzled, a little frightened.
“I’m studying to be a detective,” I said, stepping in, “and I was wondering if I could take a minute of your time to talk about one of your cases.” I closed the door gently behind me.
At this, Gladstone’s big eyes did a little skip-action like he had the urge to flee, but his body wouldn’t take him. “One of my cases?”
“That’s right, a recent one.”
“How the hell did you get on the property?”
“Well,” I said, moving to the center of the room with a shrug, “I told ’em you were my uncle.”
“Get the hell out of here before I call security.”
“Oh no, you don’t need to do that, Mr. Gladstone.” I raised hands with a smile, moved to the orange couch beside him and took a gentle seat. “I’m harmless. Just a student—at Antioch. Studying to be an investigator.”
“Well, I can’t help you.” He wrapped his hand around a gold-topped cane that had been resting on the side of the EZ chair.
“But…I think you can. See, I’m looking into a cold case, involving an old musical group.”
“And that brought you to me?”
“It did. One of the band members was Devon Hawley—I believe he was one of your last clients.”
No reaction.
I angled for a soft connection of the eyes. “And Devon Hawley was murdered last week.”
Gladstone took this with a frozen frown and stared down the blank TV screen like he hoped it would turn back on. Then he looked back to me. “Murdered?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I barely knew him,” he blurted. “And I don’t know about any band.”
“But…he did hire you.”
“Yeah, so?”
