“What are his plans?”
A little shrug, head canted a bit to the side, a who-can-fathom-the-mysteries-of-the-human-heart gesture.
“If Dom does well enough on his exams to get into one of the grandes écoles, then that’s what he will do. If not? Well, then the possibilities are as vast as the world is wide, yes?”
I asked. “If he goes to university in France, will you go home?”
He laughed softly as he gave my hand a little squeeze. “If I did, it would be for my own reasons, not because my son needs me to watch after him. Dom made that quite clear last week.”
My daughter, Casey, living in a dorm at UCLA, wasn’t as far away from me as Jean-Paul’s son, though she might as well have been. I saw her on holidays and when she wanted feeding or wanted to take a friend riding in the mountains around our house. She called regularly, but she seemed to find her friends and campus activities to be more interesting at the moment than her mother.
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.