He calls Tarlow again. Nothing. Gale knows the damned phone is deep in a lake or the ocean or maybe smashed to tiny pieces being picked over by the seagulls in a landfill.
Hope is cruel, he thinks. Desire for something you know you will never have.
The dining room has a large glass tabletop supported by wooden caissons. No dust on the table. Three candlesticks in crystal holders, never lit. Twelve black enamel chairs.
The kitchen is sleek and modern, with stainless-steel appliances and a black granite island. A black glass-top stove and a black built-in oven beside it.
“Place looks staged,” says Mendez. “Like it’s for sale.”
The black granite counter has four steel-backed barstools along one side and a large, glossy white bag sitting in the middle. There’s a red dragon on it. The handles look like bamboo and the bag says:
In smaller print below, Mendez reads the street address, phone number, and email.
A delivery slip lies on the counter beside the bag.
“The last supper,” says Mendez, taking up the slip. “Delivery dispatch time, six fourteen P.M. Driver is Amanda. Two number twenty-fives. Medium sake. Sixty-five dollars and seventy-five cents. Paid with a Mastercard, nothing on the tip line.”
“Tarlow liked cash,” says Gale, remembering the way he palmed the tip money on fight night at Caesars Palace.
Mendez sets the slip back on the counter and photographs it.
Two red place mats lie in front of two stools, but there’s a third stool between them with no place mat, as if whoever had last dined here were very large people.
Or maybe, Gale guesses, didn’t know each other well enough to sit closely side by side. White plastic chopsticks and their paper wrappers rest on napkins — one neatly folded and the other wadded into a loose ball.
“Choice place for fingerprints,” says Mendez. “Black everything. And white plastic chopsticks. The print techs will eat this room alive.”
Tarlow the engineer folding neatly, thinks Gale.
White Van, the wadder-upper.
Or maybe Vern.
Or someone else...
The detectives contemplate this gust of activity within the still, silent angles of the house.
Gale pulls the wastebasket from under the sink and sets it on the counter, noting four black Styrofoam containers, lids locked, and the emptied soy sauce packets. A metal, half-liter can of sake and a half-pint of cheap bourbon.
Tarlow and White Van, respectively? Gale wonders.
The two downstairs bedrooms have en suite baths, and, like the living and dining rooms, are unbothered by the details of everyday living.
The second-story master suite takes up the whole floor. Plaster walls with oversized windows and skylights to let in even more light, as if the windows might need help. A steel beam ceiling.
Mendez chooses one of three remote controllers from the neatly made bed and opens the skylights and some of the windows.
Hum of motors, a gust of fresh air.
“It’s not for sale, is it?” asks Mendez.
“Patti DiMeo would have mentioned that. No signs.”
“Why would an award-winning home builder live in such an ugly place?” she asks.
“Kind of a broad question, but maybe he’s scourging himself,” says Gale.
Mendez gives him a look, her hard face beveled in a slant of sunlight. “Scourging himself for what? His fortune? His cutesy looks? The way his family has usurped Indigenous land and Indians here for, what — a century and a half? Your ancestors among them?”
“My ancestors? Yes,” says Gale, remembering his great-grandmother’s tales of her mother’s long hours of labor at the Mission San Juan Capistrano, sewing the bedsheets slept on by the soldiers in the garrison. Mending their uniforms and emptying the officers’ bed pots.
Then off to Mass, morning and evening.
“Maybe he’s punishing himself for all his girlfriends,” says Gale.
“He doesn’t seem the type,” says Mendez. “Players aren’t wired for regret. Only good people are. In my experience.”
“Tarlow didn’t act like a player when I worked security for him,” Gale says. “He was very attentive to Norris. None of that ‘arm candy’ posturing.”
A skeptical look from Mendez, then a moment of silence in the hot glass cage of a bedroom.
“I didn’t mean to pry about your family and your Indian background, Lew. I read that Los Angeles Times article about you in Afghanistan. Dark stuff. But you came off as a man on the mend. A man who was paying up.”
“Me and my big mouth. I didn’t have to say all that to the Times.”
“Maybe you needed to,” says Mendez. “Good things grow with oxygen and light.”
“So does cancer.”
“Don’t let yourself go there.”
“Noted.”
“How do you pronounce that tribe of yours?”
“Ah-hawsh’amay.”
“Again, slower?” she asks, her face intent with concentration.
“Ah-hawsh’amay.”
“Ah-hawsh’amay.”
Then an awkward silence.
“Let’s get ourselves to Bamboo,” he says.
“Good. I’m starting to feel lucky.”
Bamboo is a glassy, well-lit restaurant on Coast Highway, minimally full with late-lunch customers.
Amanda Cho is at the register, slim, short, and smiling, with red streaks in her long black hair.
Her smile goes away when Mendez tells her why they’re here, and they show their badges. She says something in Chinese back into the kitchen, then leads the detectives to an empty table by the window.
“Tea or drink?” she asks.
They decline and Amanda sits. Looking from Gale to Mendez and back, she shakes her head, a cloud of suspicion passing behind her eyes.
Gale takes out his notebook and a pen.
“What you say to us is confidential and protected,” says Mendez. “You have nothing to fear.”
“Yes, okay,” she says. “Mr. Tarlow was kind man and very polite. What happened to him is tragedy. I couldn’t believe a mountain lion would do this. I delivered dinner to him the night before he was found in the mountains. I delivered to him once and sometimes twice a week when he was home. I know he was very rich and traveled a lot. Do you have a suspect, or an interesting person?”
“We’re close,” says Mendez. “Can you tell us the day and time you arrived at Mr. Tarlow’s home?”
“Thursday evening, a little after six. Mr. Tarlow buzzed me through the gate and I parked in the porte cochere.”
“Were there any vehicles parked there already?”
“Yes, Mr. Tarlow’s new blue SUV, and one old white van.”
Gale’s eardrums do that funny, good-news pulse.
Mendez smiles coolly.
“Describe the van,” says Gale.
“Old and big. A commercial van. Like for deliveries. No windows.”
“California plates?”
Amanda purses her lips. “I think so.”
“Did you see anything unusual or distinguishing about it?” asks Gale.
“No. Just old. I remember all this because I’d seen it there before. Maybe three or four times in the last month or two.”
A good heart flutter for Gale.
“Did you see rust on the van?” asks Gale.
“No.”
“A sticker on the bumper for the Bear Cave?”
“No. I didn’t look at it very hard.”
“But you saw it every other week?” asks Mendez.
“Yes, maybe approximately. I always thought it was a funny vehicle to be at Mr. Tarlow’s house. So plain, and everything about Mr. Tarlow so perfect.”