Mendez gloves up and collects the Times from the front patio pavers and yesterday’s mail from a box shaped and painted like a killer whale.
A small foyer with a rounded arch, a short entryway into the high-ceilinged living room. White plaster walls, dark wood floors, a floor-to-ceiling window framing the gnarled rocks and the surging blue water of Shaws Cove. Built-in bookshelves comfortably stocked with hardcovers, big art books in stands.
What catches Gale’s eye are the big framed photographs of birds hanging on the white walls. Many of the birds are exotic, to Gale at least. Magnificent feathers, intense faces, many of them caught in flight. He recognizes a band-tailed pigeon, handsome and common in the mountains near San Juan Capistrano.
All signed by Bennet Tarlow.
“Really likes his birds,” says Mendez. “Exotics. I don’t recognize any of them. Those owls Osaka sent were haunting. The way the owlets are almost as big as mom. Stuffed into that rickety nest. Those gigantic fuzzy heads. Yellow eyes.”
“Yeah, like mountain lions with wings,” says Gale, thinking Luis Verdad might say that.
There are classic Laguna plein air paintings on the walls, handsomely framed. Some photographic portraits and family pictures, too.
Gale slips his phone from his pocket and dials Tarlow’s cell number.
No ringtone, nothing.
Gale imagines this room on the afternoon and evening before Tarlow’s death. A Thursday.
Tarlow had worked in his office until 5:45 P.M. that evening, according to Bennet Tarlow II, his father, during Gale’s brief phone call, in which Tarlow II had refused to set up a meeting until later.
“I’m processing,” he said.
According to him, his son had ducked into his dad’s top-floor suite to say he was leaving. This was usual for him, Tarlow II said.
Even though they were talking over the phone, Gale heard the sudden choke in Tarlow II’s voice when he said he was glad he didn’t know this was the last time he’d see his son alive.
“Don’t know what I’d have done with that information,” he said. Added that after work, Ben often went to Muldoon’s, walking distance from the company building.
“I hope you kill this fuck,” he told Gale.
Gale asked if he could have his son’s calendar on hand for their interview the next day, but Tarlow II said his son took it home from work at night. His son never let his secretaries keep his physical calendar. He kept it to himself.
“He was private and disorganized,” Tarlow II said. “He mostly worked from home. Felt more creative there than in a high-rise office with distracting, million-dollar views in four directions.”
Gale had asked for Tarlow’s cell number and Tarlow II complied. Gale had thanked him, then rang off and called Muldoon’s and, after being passed along to three people, been told that Bennet Tarlow III had not been there on his last night.
Now, standing in Tarlow’s Laguna kitchen, Gale wonders if the man had eaten here the evening he was murdered.
The refrigerator is practically bare, just bottled olives and salsas, some coffee creamer. A still-sealed wheel of Gouda. Some greens, wilted. Carton of orange juice, unopened. Dishwasher with exactly one plate, a knife, a fork, and a spoon in it. A builder’s economy, thinks Gale. Measure twice and cut once. There’s a Trader Joe’s chicken cacciatore box and an empty tub of gelato in the under-sink wastebasket.
Mendez hovers, watching Gale work. “Wish I could read your mind,” she says.
“Probably put you to sleep. I’m just trying to figure out if he was here that evening.”
“The neighbors,” she says.
“Let them wake up. We’ll check his home office, find his calendar and his phone.”
“Yeah, I feel lucky, too,” says Mendez.
Tarlow’s home office is a cool, east-facing room looking out on the small backyard. A privacy row of Italian cypress, a large birdbath with a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in it, the fountain turned off.
The recessed ceiling lights are strong and Gale places himself in the rolling task chair, pretending he owns the place. As if he knows where everything is. Becoming the vic. Scans the desktop for Tarlow’s phone.
Plenty of room but nothing doing. The desk before him spans the better part of two converging walls. Mahogany, he sees, no dust. Plenty spacious enough for a large monitor, a printer/scanner, a desktop computer, neat stacks of papers, pictures in frames, reference books propped along the two walls.
But the heart of the room are two drafting tables in the middle, exactly centered on a deep red Persian carpet. Acjacheme Gale — an admirer of rugs, baskets, and bowls — sees that the rug is very old and valuable.
Mendez hits the switch and the overhead lights flood the tables. Gale hears her approaching the drafting tables.
“We just stubbed our toes on Tarlow’s calendar,” says Gale, smiling to himself at their easy luck.
“And a miniature model of Wildcoast,” says Mendez.
Gale looks down at Tarlow’s At-A-Glance monthly planner, sitting on the desk, to his right, in plain sight, as if the man had left it there for him.
It’s open to October.
October 4:
Concept Preview/realtors/7–10/dinner
October 6:
Four days before his murder, Tarlow has a noon with Kyle McNab of PacWest Mining. Based on John Velasquez’s memory, this was Tarlow’s second meeting with McNab inside a week, thinks Gale.
October 11:
The morning after his death, Tarlow has a Friday nine A.M. with Patti D/Moulin!! cafe in Laguna.
Gale notes Tarlow’s neat draftsman’s printing, and in the exclamation marks, feels the man’s giddy optimism.
Circles back.
October 1:
Norris/noon/Newport house
No exclamations.
But there she is, Gale thinks. Norris, from the championship heavyweight fight in Las Vegas three years back — the woman who had been easing in and out of Gale’s thoughts since Tarlow was identified as the apparent victim of a mountain lion attack.
October 7:
Dad lunch 1/Rothschild’s
Classy place, Gale thinks.
October 8:
Elder/office
Next comes the money shot — Thursday, October 10 — the day of his death:
Hair/Ong/4
Vern/6/Newport
Gale surmises that Bennet Tarlow got his wavy blond hair cut the day he was murdered by someone he very likely trusted. Jimmy Ong was a well-known hair stylist with a swank salon in Newport Center.
But it looks like “Vern” might well have been with Tarlow for at least part of the night he died. Vern, whom Gale doesn’t know and badly wants to.
He searches the calendar back through September, finding a September 27 entry that hadn’t caught his attention the first time through. There he is again, clear as day:
September 27:
Vern/Muldoon’s/10
“Wildcoast is really something,” says Mendez. “It reminds me of Stepford but I don’t know why.”
But Gale says nothing, lost in Bennet Tarlow’s last days.
He scans ahead through October, hoping for something to catch his eye, but nothing pops.
Back to September, he sees nothing unusual or repetitious.
Gale thinks how odd it is to compare a person’s plans before and after their life is over. How similar they are. Some identical. Rights and rituals. Friends and lovers. Why is that odd, though? Because of the grim irony that Tarlow had made every one of these entries in his own neat hand, and probably consulted this calendar pretty much every morning, watching his future line up to greet him day by day and week by week? Then a detour, accompanied by someone Tarlow trusted. At night. A very big owl photographed in a tree. Twenty-six exposures, then a sudden surprise.