Dream House Read online

  “Where are they going?” Bubbie G asked, searching my face with her once-bright blue eyes.

  “To see where the fire is.”

  Bubbie harrumphed. “Nahrishkeit.” Silliness.

  She pushed herself out of her chair and, using her cane, walked toward the family room. My nineteen-year-old sister, Liora, followed at a discreet distance to make sure she was all right. Bubbie doesn't like us to hover.

  My dad is fifty-six, but when it comes to sirens and fire engines in particular, he's as much of a kid as my brothers. So is my ex, Ron. I guess it's a guy thing. Norm, Mindy's husband, would probably be there. Zack's parents live on Poinsettia near Oakwood, seven blocks away from my parents. Maybe he'd heard the sirens, too, and followed them. I suppose that's why they call them sirens.

  Taking a napkin, I brushed challa crumbs off the white tablecloth into my cupped palm.

  “He's cute, isn't he?” my mom said, stacking plates.

  “Zack?”

  “Your dad. Zack, too.” A smile deepened the fine lines around her brown eyes. Even with the lines, she looks younger than her fifty-five years.

  I blushed. “Very cute. You picked a good one.”

  “I think so. Is Zack coming later?”

  “He didn't say.”

  Zack usually walks over Friday nights when I stay at my parents' home on Gardner (my Blackburn apartment is about a mile and a half away). We'd talked yesterday for over an hour. This morning he'd called to congratulate me on my story but had to hang up to prepare his Sabbath drash—his sermon. Fridays are his deadlines. Maybe making plans about walking over tonight had slipped his mind.

  “Could be he's tired, Molly. I wouldn't read into it.”

  “I'm not,” I lied.

  After clearing the table, I went into the family room. Bubbie G was sitting next to Liora, her thinning, short silvery hair a sharp contrast to Liora's thick, glossy dark brown mane; their ankle-length, A-line navy velour zip-up Sabbath robes striking against the tan leather of the sectional sofa. My mom and I were in robes, too. (My mom's was a sable brown; mine was black velour, part of my trousseau, but I didn't hold that against it.) It's always been our Friday night garb, and if you peek into Orthodox homes across the country, you'll probably find a number of women and girls similarly clothed, some of them in robes so elegant you could wear them to a banquet.

  Bubbie was listening raptly as Liora read aloud the week's Torah portion and commentary. Even large-print editions don't compensate for her failing vision. I sat at the end of the sofa's L and was engrossed in the local Jewish newspaper when the men returned.

  “It's a small one,” my brother Joey said, taking off his jacket and tossing it onto the couch. “Two trucks.”

  “Don't leave that there,” my mother chided gently. She's been asking Joey not to leave his clothes around for most of his twenty-two years. I would've given up by now. She turned to my dad. “Was anyone hurt, Steven?”

  He shook his head. “Norm said the place has been vacant for months.”

  “Thank God,” my mom said.

  “Baruch Hashem,” Liora echoed. She's the most pious in the family, and since her return in May from a post-high-school year at a Jerusalem girls' seminary, she's been sprinkling more of her conversation with Hebrew phrases.

  “I talked to some of the firemen,” Noah said. “They wouldn't say, but I think it was arson.”

  I put down the newspaper. “What makes you think that?” I asked, my tone sharper than I'd intended.

  “The living room window was shattered. And I heard a fireman say something about lighter fluid.” Noah is a third-year law student at UCLA and shares my interest in crime, though our reasons are different. “You're thinking this ties in with the other vandalisms in your story, huh?”

  It wasn't my first Times byline, but my dad had bought extra copies of the paper, and we'd talked about the HARP conflict after kiddush. My parents are anti-HARP, in case you're wondering.

  “Maybe you're prophetic,” Joey said.

  I scowled at him. “Don't say that!”

  He raised his hands in mock defense. “Hey, I was joking. Chill.”

  He was right. I was overreacting. “How do you know the house was vacant?” I asked my dad.

  “According to the neighbors, it's been for sale for some time. I don't know why it hasn't sold. It's a nice house, and Fuller is a great block.”

  Fuller. Fuller like the brush. I felt a knot in my stomach, the kind I get when I'm in a roller coaster a second before it begins its descent. “A two-story on the west side between First and Second?”

  “How did you know?” My dad was frowning.

  I told them about Professor Linney. “It doesn't fit the pattern,” I said, brooding aloud. “And the vandal already struck in Miracle Mile.”

  “Your pattern could be wrong,” Noah said, tentative. I could tell he didn't want to hurt my feelings.

  “Maybe.” I wondered how Amy Brod would react if my story was punched full of holes. But the pattern was there. Connors had seen it, too.

  I stood. “I'm going over there.”

  “What can you do tonight?” Liora said. “It's Shabbos.”

  I caught the brief eye contact between my parents and knew they were wondering the same thing. Since my return a few years ago to Orthodox Judaism, they've been tiptoeing around my religious observance, which is basically the same as theirs. But there are nuances, like this one.

  “I won't be long,” I said, not answering Liora's question, ignoring the inner voice that said she was right. I headed for the hall closet and my coat.

  “Go with Molly, Noah,” my dad said. “I don't want her walking alone at night.”

  “How come you didn't ask me?” Joey said.

  It was Margaret Reston's house.

  I'd never witnessed a fire. I'd written a book about a torched church and interviewed the surviving victims—some disfigured, all emotionally scarred. I'd seen news coverage of fires and their devastation and had found the scenes frightening. But news coverage doesn't transmit the awesome, mesmerizing power of the fire that had engulfed the Fuller house, or the ominous, crackling sounds, or the acrid smoke that made my throat burn and my eyes water. I raised the collar of my jacket over my nose and mouth.

  Neighbors were in the street, on the sidewalk. Some, like me, wore coats over their robes. I saw a few yarmulkes, a few women with scarves covering their heads. I looked around and found Tim Bolt. He was wearing a heavy black sweater and had covered his mouth with a black shawl.

  I left Noah talking to someone he knew and walked over to Tim. “Do they know what happened?”

  For a second he didn't recognize me. Then he did. “You drove Professor Linney here.”

  I nodded. “Molly Blume.”

  He returned his attention to the house. “A neighbor on the other side called it in. They think it may be arson. How did the bastard know no one was inside? Or that the fire wouldn't spread?” The glow of the fire illuminated his fierce glare and created a halo around his head.

  Fire has its own drama. We watched and listened in silence as firefighters directed wide arcs of water at the burning house. After half an hour the blaze seemed under control, although fugitive flames leapt here and there. Catch me if you can. Night made it hard to see the damage.

  “I'd better go,” Tim said with reluctance. “I told my wife I'd be a few minutes, and I've been here two hours.”

  Minutes later—it could have been ten, it could have been twenty—a fireman entered the house. A while later he emerged from the front entrance. He walked over to another fireman and pointed toward the house.

  The second fireman accompanied him back inside. A few minutes later they returned. The second man walked over to a firefighter standing near the fire engine cab. Now he pointed to the house and shook his head.

  I made my way to the fire engine.

  The man near the cab had a phone at his ear.

  I moved closer.

  “. . .
told by all the neighbors that the house was empty, and there was no sign anyone was inside,” he said into the phone. He paused, listening. “An old man.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Saturday, November 8. 5:53 P.M. 1800 block of Edgecliffe Drive. Two assailants approached the victim on foot. “Don't be a chump,” one of them said. “I know where you live. I'm gonna burn down your house.” (Northeast)

  THE TWIN FLAMES OF THE BRAIDED LAVENDER-AND-white havdalah candle became one and leapt to life. My dad handed me the candle, and raising a footed silver cup, he recited the blessing that separates the Sabbath from the rest of the week—“between the holy and the secular.”

  On a scale of “holy” I'd scored a five out of ten this Shabbat at best. Probably a four. Yes, I'd observed all the rules. Even when I'd bolted from Orthodox Judaism, I'd observed the rules at my parents' home out of respect for them. Yes, I'd prayed next to Liora this morning at shul, and I'd participated in the family discussion of the weekly Torah portion at lunch. But my mind had turned again and again to Oscar Linney and his death.

  My dad finished reciting the final havdalah blessing. I handed him the candle, and while Joey shut off the overhead kitchen light, my dad poured Glenlivet onto a plate and touched the candle to the liquor. Crowding near the counter, we watched tiny hot blue ghostly acrobats dance and leap along the alcohol trail, sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone, until the alcohol was consumed and all the acrobats took their final bows and disappeared.

  Today's Torah portion, in fact, had reminded me of the professor. Lech lecha. “Leave your country,” God had instructed Abraham. Abraham, who, the commentaries say, was thrown into a fiery furnace when he wouldn't bow down to idols. Abraham had survived a furnace. Oscar Linney hadn't.

  As a child I thought my dad was a magician, making fire dance on liquid. Sometimes he uses wine instead of liquor. When he does, he presses the torch into the shallow pool that has spilled onto the chalice's tray, and the flame sputters and hisses as it dies. I was grateful that tonight he'd used the Glenlivet. I'd had a restless night, imagining the old man trapped, hearing in my mind the sounds of his fiery death.

  Thinking about Oscar Linney wasn't the problem. The problem was that my preoccupation with Linney had marred the beauty and repose of Shabbat that I treasure. If I'd listened to Liora and stayed home, Linney would still be dead, but I wouldn't have been itching all day for the “holy” to end so that I could rush into the “secular” to find out the what and how of what had happened, the why.

  I'd been tempted to ask questions at the scene. I'd like to think I would have gone home with my questions unasked if Noah hadn't been there, but I'm not sure. And I envy people like my sister who are never tempted.

  My dad began singing “HaMavdil” in Hebrew, and I joined the others. Then Bubbie G, her voice thin and wavery but still beautiful, led us in the Yiddish “Gut voch.” A good week. A week filled with mazel, luck. I hoped so. I tried to stay in the moment, but my mind was on Fuller and the questions that had troubled me all day.

  “I still can't believe the Professor is dead,” Tim Bolt said. “I keep thinking, what if I'd told the firemen Linney might be inside? But I didn't see him arrive. None of us did. And there were no lights on in the house.”

  Bolt had been startled and a little uncomfortable to see me on his doorstep. After a slight hesitation he'd invited me into a living room done in tones of ocher and sand livened by a startling splash of blues and reds in the oil painting of a woman above the stone fireplace. The room was heavy with the smell of a floral air freshener—to cover the smoke, Tim had explained before I'd asked.

  I made myself comfortable on a taupe chenille sofa. “Did the police say what happened?”

  Friday night, prompted by my brother and my conscience, I'd left after overhearing the news. I still hadn't phoned Connors. Even if I'd dared bother him on a Saturday night, he wouldn't have information about a case outside his jurisdiction. Porter would know, but the odds of his talking to me were slimmer than Calista Flockhart.

  “The fire department is handling the investigation,” Tim said. “Hank told me they're pretty sure it's arson.”

  “He didn't know his father-in-law was missing?”

  “He was on an overnight business trip. The caregiver didn't show that morning, and Hank couldn't cancel, so he asked the housekeeper to stay until he returned Saturday. She claims the Professor told her Hank had phoned and said he was returning Friday afternoon. He'd seemed fine and insisted he'd be okay for the hour or so he'd be alone.”

  I wouldn't want to be in the housekeeper's shoes. “You seem close to the family.”

  “We've been neighbors since I was a kid. This was my parents' home.” He waved his hand around the room. “Peggy and I moved in after my parents died. When I was a teenager I mowed the Linneys' lawn, and the Professor helped me with my history papers. Mostly, he told me how terrible they were.” Tim's smile turned into a sigh.

  “Was Linney's daughter on the local HARP board?”

  Bolt gazed at me, curious. “I don't think so, no. The Professor was. He was quite involved. Why?”

  “An unusual number of homes have been vandalized lately in HARP districts, and the targeted homes seem to belong to HARP board members.”

  Tim frowned. “Really?”

  The first time one of my pieces ran in the Times, I'd been dismayed to find out that the entire world hadn't read it. I've learned better. “There was an article about it in yesterday's L.A. Times.”

  “I haven't read yesterday's paper yet. My wife hasn't been feeling well, and I've been playing nurse. Not very well, I'm afraid.” He smiled ruefully. “I'll go get it. What section is it in?”

  “‘Calendar.'” A while back it would have been in a separate section called “Southern California Living,” but the Times is always changing things around; don't ask me why.

  While he was gone, I stretched my legs and took a closer look at the lithograph and framed photos, one of a younger Tim with a pretty brown-haired woman, another of a little girl and boy who looked just like the couple.

  Tim came back into the room, paging through the newspaper as he walked.

  “Your children?” I pointed to the photos.

  “None yet,” he said with some sadness. “But we're hoping. That's me and Peggy. My wife. We were childhood sweethearts.”

  He sat on an oversize armchair and read the article. I returned to the couch and waited until he was done.

  “Molly Blume,” he said, and looked up. “That's you, right?” He scanned my article again. “So this guy is targeting HARP board members?”

  “I thought so. I guess I was wrong.” I tried again to console myself with the fact that Connors had made the same assumption. “If Margaret Reston—”

  “Linney,” Tim corrected. “Reston's her married name, but she kept her maiden name for most things.”

  Whatever. “If Margaret Linney was never on a HARP board, I don't understand why she was targeted.”

  “Maybe it was the Professor who was targeted,” Tim said. “It was his house.”

  I frowned. “He told me it was his daughter's house.”

  “It was, as of around six months ago. The Professor signed the house over to Margaret when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He wanted to put his affairs in order while he still had the mental sharpness to do it. He loved that house. So did Margaret. I don't think she wanted to move. Even if the new house is in Hancock Park.”

  What Linney had said, plus a measure of disdain. “Mr. Reston put the house up for sale?”

  “Three months ago, a month before the Muirfield house was finished. The Professor was devastated. He didn't want strangers living in his house. But of course, Hank couldn't let him live there alone, even with a caretaker. I promised the Professor I'd screen the buyers carefully. It's in my best interests. I want nice neighbors.” Bolt smiled.

  “You're with Central Realty?” That was the name I'd seen on the For Sale sign.

  He
nodded. “It's a beautiful house— Well, it was, before the fire. I've been keeping an eye on it, making sure the gardener does a good job, letting the housekeeper in to clean the place every week. It was in immaculate condition and everything was the original work—the tile, the fireplace, the hardware, the moldings. But it's a hard sell, because of Margaret's disappearance.”

  This was the sad story. I vaguely recalled reading about a woman's disappearance in a police report a while back, but the reports I get are sanitized and don't have names. And in a large city like L.A., people often disappear, often voluntarily. “I don't remember seeing media coverage about it.”

  “There were a few write-ups in the papers, and something on the local TV news. There would have been more, but a little girl went missing, so that took over. But by law we're required to tell potential buyers something like that, especially since it looks like Margaret was kidnapped from the house. At the first two open houses, most of the people who stopped by were from the neighborhood. They weren't interested in buying. They just wanted to snoop. Vultures.” Tim sniffed.

  “What happened to Margaret?”

  “One day I saw her working in her garden. The next morning she was gone. Just like that.” He was looking somewhere else, not at me, probably lost in the memory. “There were signs of a struggle in her bedroom. And the police found her car at a mall, and her blood.”

  “Did she seem different that day?”

  “I didn't think so at the time. That morning she dropped off a book I'd asked to borrow, and then I showed her a lithograph I just bought. She paints, so I value her opinion. She couldn't stay, though, because she had a busy day ahead of her. Later, when the police asked me, I realized she was tense. But I have no idea why.”

  “When did she disappear, exactly?”

  “It'll be five months this Wednesday, November twelfth. The police think she's dead, but her husband hired a detective. He told me he won't give up till he finds her. Dead or alive,” Tim added.

  “Where was he when Margaret disappeared?”

  “Out of town, on business.”