He shook his head. Hair swung and settled over both eyes. He brushed it away furiously. “I’m an idiot.”
Milo looked at me.
I ran a finger across my lips.
We sat there as Doug March squinted and grimaced and finished his beer. Lifting the bottle high over his head, he flung it at the fireplace. Stiff, clumsy throw. It bounced, rolled, and came to a stop near a five-foot andiron.
“Can’t even do that,” he said. “Can’t even do fucking that.”
Chapter 10
We waited for Doug March to compose himself. That didn’t happen; instead he sank into inertia and stared at his lap.
Milo said, “You’re going through incredible stress, Doug.”
A muffled, “So what?”
“So it’s best that you go easy on yourself.”
March’s head snapped up, face pinched with anger.
“Go easy? What, I’m a snowflake? Feeling unsafe? Give me a break.”
He began to stand, tottered, made it to his feet and left. When he returned, he was marching stiffly. Swinging beer number two at his side. Already down by half.
Plopping down heavily, he said, “Now what?”
“If you’re okay with it,” said Milo, “we’d like to ask you a few more questions about Meagin and yourself.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Let’s start with how you met.”
March said, “Can’t see how that’s relevant but no sense prolonging this. We met by accident at the Waldorf bar. I’d finished a business meeting, wanted to go over some paperwork.”
He held up the bottle.
“I took a quiet table. Meagin was with some friends nearby. A table of women. The rest of them ignored me. She didn’t. I saw her looking at me. Looked at her and smiled. She smiled back. So I bought drinks for the table. Pretty smooth, huh? First time I’d done it. First time a woman had noticed me in a bar. Before that it was girls in college and grad school, then meeting women in the real estate world — way too much assertiveness.”
“Meagin wasn’t assertive.”
“Meagin was self-confident so she didn’t need to be assertive,” said March. “Meagin was soft-spoken and gorgeous. Why did she notice me?” He shrugged. “She said she’d always gone for older men and that hadn’t turned out so well. She thought I was younger than I actually was.” The blotches deepened. “What she told me later was, ‘I was going through a dry patch, Dougie, figured why not try the cougar thing?’ ”
His eyes hardened. “And no, it wasn’t about money. She also figured I was some kind of gofer or assistant right out of school. Actually, I was right out of school. Two years after my M.B.A.”
“But not an assistant.”
March said, “No, not that.”
He drank beer, waved a limp hand around the room. “It wasn’t this house, either, because I didn’t live here, I had a one-bedroom apartment in the Palisades. I owned the building but no great shakes. This place I bought right after we got married. Got it from the heirs of a former client. Mint condition, fully furnished, the sale benefited their asset division, for me it was the deal of the century. When Meagin saw it, she said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ and laughed. She was always laughing about it. Making size-matters jokes. So it wasn’t about the money, not at all. Not one bit.”
His voice had begun to rise at the end of each sentence. Straining to convince himself.
Another bottle drained. March looked toward the exit, fidgeted, remained in place.
“So if things were so great, why did she cheat? Good question. Maybe you’ll detect the reason.”
He placed the bottle on the floor. “The Italian, was he some kind of Mafia lowlife? Didn’t know you had them in L.A. Thought your old boss back in the fifties, what was his name... Parker. Thought Parker got rid of them and they never came back big-time.”
Milo said, “Before my time, Doug.”
“Not before mine,” said March. “I get to know every city I invest in from stem to stern. Not just the market history, the social and political history, the zeitgeist — overall atmosphere. When I came to S.C. to do the M.B.A., I thought L.A. was insane. Not a real city, more like a sprawling piece of... intentions.”
I said, “You used to invest here.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“The apartment in the Palisades.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Nothing big, I leveraged a few apartments, made my profit, dumped them. Too much hassle, oppressive rent control. I’d actually been considering moving out of state. Then I met Meagin and she liked it here, so... why does any of this matter?”
I said, “Where was Meagin from?”
“The Midwest,” he said. “And since you’re obviously going to ask, I’m from Tuxedo Park. That’s New York.”
“The women Meagin was with the night you met her. Are they still her friends?”
“No idea.”
“Who else did she socialize with?”
The wax turned florid. As if combusting from within.
March said, “What’s the deal here? He’s all sympathetic and you ask pointless questions? Why the hell do her friends matter? They didn’t kill her, some Mafia scumbag probably did!”
Milo said, “The more we know about Meagin, Doug, the likelier we are to find out who murdered her.”
“That,” said Douglass March, “sounds random. If I ran my business that way, I’d be broke.”
We remained silent.
March took another look at his exit route. The color in his face had begun to fade but he looked queasy, gripping the arms of the chair.
“You okay, Doug?”
“Not really. I feel like throwing up.”
Milo said, “Whatever you need to do.”
“I didn’t mean that literally. I meant the whole thing is utterly sickening. My wife’s gone and I have to wonder about why she cheated on me and did that lead to... what happened.”
Milo nodded.
I said, “You mentioned her art.”
“She painted, okay? But unless you’re going to tell me someone poisoned her paints, I don’t see... forget it, what’s the use, you’ve got a playbook to follow.”
Milo said, “Did she keep a studio, here?”
“Upstairs,” said March.
“Would it be okay if we had a look at it? At any of her personal space that you think might be relevant.”
“I think none of it’s relevant. What if I say no?”
“Your right but we’d wonder why, Doug.”
March’s fingers drummed the chair arms. “Fine. I keep saying that. Nothing’s fine. Everything’s for shit.”
He bent low, covered his face with his hands, and wept.
It took a while for him to stop snuffling. When his shoulders ceased heaving, he looked up, tear-streaked, smiling crookedly.
“Guess you’re still here. Guess you’re set on doing your job. So few people are, I appreciate your making the effort so I’ll stop being an asshole. The studio is her only personal space, unless you count clothes in her walk-in closet. Whatever you want to paw through, I’ve got nothing to hide.”
He stood. “This place isn’t really a home, anyway. Just a stopover.”
We climbed the left-hand staircase to the window-backed landing. Another broad, circular disk surrounded by curving walls. Polished walnut inlaid with a marquetry star. Antique demilune tables tucked snugly at strategic points. High, broad, carved walnut doors punctuated the space. Eight upstairs rooms.
Doug March pointed at the inlay. “Lone Star. The family was from Houston, big in oil, they redid the house when they moved in thirty years ago.”
The windows offered a full view of the property. Seen from above, it looked vast. All the doors were open, offering peeks inside. On the right, large, carpeted bedrooms, each with canopy beds. At the end, a home gym. The mechanical severity of exercise machines stood out against carved, gilt-edged furniture so ornate I imagined Louis XIV begging for simplicity.