Stein cut the embarrassment by exaggerating it. “I hope that was as much fun for you as it was for me.” And then to Mattingly. “So we have a lover’s quarrel… which the interested or disinterested parties will settle on their own. Bottles will be returned. No arrest warrants for Morty Greene. Everybody lives happily ever after and goes to the beach.” With a bow and a smile he turned to go, adding a courteous and firm, “Case closed.”
The hallway back toward the exit seemed endless. He wanted to be out of here and have this lathering chapter behind him. The security guard was still not at his desk. The TV still played to an empty room. Something caught Stein’s attention. A news crew was reporting live from Topanga Canyon where an explosion had demolished part of a home. No injuries or fatalities had been discovered. Luckily no one had been at home. The preliminary investigation put the cause as an outdoor gas line feeding a barbecue pit that had been clogged, leading to a gas buildup. The woman delivering the report had been instructed by her news chief to find some snide humor in this and she did her witless best.
Stein ran back to the car. Lila quickly ended a furtive phone call saying, “He’s coming. Tell everyone to stay,” and stuffed her phone back into her purse. The next moment Stein pulled the passenger side door open and shoved the keys into Lila’s hand. “Take the car. I’ve got to go.”
“WHAT?”
“You’re right.” He took the keys back. “I need the car. I’ll get you a cab.”
“Stein!”
He grabbed her cell phone and gave Yellow Cab specific directions and made sure there’d be a taxi here in less than five minutes. “Don’t say anything to Angie. I know you guys sometimes talk about me.”
“Stein. What is going on?”
His mind was already ten miles away at the top of Topanga Canyon. The photograph of the one known occupant of the demolished house shown on the TV screen had been unmistakable. Despite its having been taken several years ago, and despite the altered appearance caused by the young man’s wire-rim glasses and beard, there was not the slightest doubt that the missing occupant of the demolished house was Brian Goodpasture.
SIX
A long ribbon of headlights skirted the shoreline from its cinched waist at Santa Monica to its sexy outcropping of hip at Malibu. Stein wove through traffic on Pacific Coast Highway like he was running back a kickoff. He saw that he was doing seventy and willed himself to back off the pedal and breathe. The TV news report had said there had been no casualties. Was that the word they used? Casualties? No, that was too military. Injuries. Yes they must have said injuries. There were no injuries. That was good.
The news report surmised that the explosion had been caused by a clogged gas line to a barbecue. That “some bright [or not so bright] citizen” had kicked dirt over the intake valve while carelessly leaving the gas line open, thereby creating a critical mass that would have required only the slightest spark to combust. Stein knew that was crap. In the twenty minutes he had spent with Goodpasture, he knew that Brian was not a man to make careless mistakes. And anyone who had read Stein’s bible on cannabis horticulture, as Goodpasture had bragged that he had done, would grok that the barbecue grill was not there to roast weenies. He didn’t know what he could accomplish now that whatever had happened had already happened. He did know he might have prevented what happened had he listened to Nicholette Bradley when she said that Goodpasture was in danger.
He banked right off PCH into Topanga Canyon. For decades this had been a Serengeti of lost souls, a game preserve for old hippies, old bikers, old druggies, old acoustic string players. But lately, a new breed of lawyers and music executives had begun to change the ecology. They were the ones who stayed home from Woodstock and now made enough money to say they had been there. From the hot-tubbed patios of their new big houses that drove the natives back into the hills like coyotes, they gave their friends (one of whom was black) he black power salute, reminisced, delusional, about riding shotgun with Angela Davis at the Marin Country courthouse, leading street demonstrations in favor of The Chicago 7, for Bobby Seale and Bobby Kennedy, McCarthy and King.
The turn-off to Eden Rock Road was completely blocked off by police. Fire engines and TV news trucks orbited in tight rings around them. Lights were flashing all over the place and orange cones closed off the road. Stein drove past the cutoff with assumed disinterest, then parked on the side of the road under a clump of eucalyptus trees. The trudge back uphill had him puffing after very few steps. He would have to take himself in hand, he thought. Longevity was not in his bloodline.
Tucked away at the shank end of the media wall, behind all the sleek vans with their microwave towers, Stein found the converted dump truck that bore the hand-painted logo of NOOZ. COM. Molly Marbery was a complete one-woman crew. Barely five-feet tall and ninety pounds, she was strong as a roadie and lugged whatever equipment she needed on her hip. She was bright and tough, an actual investigative journalist. Of course she’d been off TV for ten years since committing the sin of turning forty.
“Stein?” she said, deliberately very out loud, “is that you lurking under the partial cover of overhanging foliage?”
“Luckily, I wasn’t trying to go unnoticed. How ya doing, Mol?”
Molly Marberry and Stein had passed cordially through each other’s lives one pretty summer’s evening a year or two back. “I like the new hairstyle,” he said as he sauntered toward her. “Is it called a pixie cut?”
“Only you would remember when things were called pixie cuts.”
“You’re still cute as a button.”
“Last time we spoke, you were going to find out exactly how cute a button was, and get back to me later that day. Shall I check my service?”
“I guess I owe you a call.”
“Worry not. I cancelled that debt long ago.”
“What’s going on up there?” he asked as if he had just noticed.
“Log on, sign in, and find out with the rest of my followers.”
“No residual privileges?”
“Middle of the road sex only gets you so far.” She loaded the last of her gear onto the truck and offered him a bone. “It looks like a domestic accident.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Your interest goes suspiciously beyond curiosity, Stein. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just trying to earn a day’s pay.”
She considered the possibility of that for half a second. “No you’re not.”
She cranked the diesel engine and ground the gears manually into first, stuck her head out the window. “Call me.”
“Really?”
“No.”
She slid into second and was gone.
It was pointless to try to get any closer to the scene without credentials. He scuffled back to where he had left his car and tried to put together what he knew, which was very little: There had been an explosion, possibly accidental. No injuries were reported so he had to deduce that Goodpasture had not been home at the time of the blast. Nor, obviously, had he returned. If it had been an accident, he or someone he knew would have to have seen the news by now. He surely would have come home to survey the damage. But he had not. And that was why Stein’s heart was racing.
He did not have to be there to know this was not just an innocent accident, that Nicholette’s fears had been founded. Just how valuable was that stolen crop of his? Could the thieves have wanted something more? Had they come here to get it? Had Goodpasture resisted, been taken? Or was it a signal to the absent horticulturalist that they-whoever they were-meant business?