Pretty soon the door opened on a chain and a plump brown face peered out at me-the Latina maid I’d spoken to on the phone. When I asked for Margaret Vorhees, she offered up the same “busy” message and started to close the door. My foot was in the way by then. I passed one of my cards through the opening and said through a grave professional smile, “Please take this to Mrs. Vorhees and tell her it’s urgent I speak with her on a matter involving her stolen necklace.”
The maid looked at me as if she didn’t quite comprehend the message. Or pretended she didn’t. So I repeated it in Spanish. My command of the language is passably good because Spanish is similar to Italian, which had been spoken in my home every day while I was growing up. The use of her native tongue did the trick. She nodded and said, “Espere por favor aqui,” in a more respectful tone, and on that obliging note I removed my foot and let her close the door.
The wait was maybe five minutes. A couple of cars drifted by on the street, the wind made rattling noises in the eucalyptus; otherwise the neighborhood seemed wrapped in stillness. Money can buy peace and quiet as well as luxury and privacy. Sometimes.
When the maid returned, the chain rattled and the door opened all the way to let me in. I followed her along a dark, terra-cotta hallway into an equally dark living room, where she asked me again in Spanish to please wait and then left me alone.
Thick patterned drapes were drawn over the windows; the only light came from a floor lamp set between a couple of heavy wood-framed couches set at right angles to each other. Against one wall was a massive, ornately carved sideboard on which an array of liquor bottles and crystal glasses gleamed on silver trays. The rest of the furniture was the same heavy, baroque Spanish style. No television set or other modern touches, just the collection of expensive antiques arranged on a dark-patterned carpet.
The only real color in the room was on the walls-half a dozen paintings, a rough-woven, blanket-like affair like an oversized serape-and what there was of it was in muted hues. The overall effect was one of oppressive gloom. Spend much time in here and you’d start to feel claustrophobic, maybe even a touch suicidal. If this was where Margaret Vorhees did most of her home-front drinking, as the booze on the sideboard indicated, then she must be a pretty depressed individual.
I was looking at one of the paintings, a court scene signed by Diego Velázquez that was probably a copy, or then again maybe not, when a swishing sound turned me around. She came sweeping in from the hallway, like a diva making an entrance-a diva who might have been in mourning, given the fact that she was wearing a loose black pantsuit that matched her coiled black hair. The only color on her was too much bright red lipstick, less than artfully applied, that made her mouth look like a bloody smear.
At a distance she had a slender, regal bearing, and a kind of pale, patrician beauty, but as she advanced toward me I could see the signs of dissipation. She was on the near side of forty, but already the skin on her high cheek-boned face had lost its firmness and you could see the beginnings of puffy folds under her chin. The regal bearing was an illusion, too; her movements were the stiff, careful ones of the practiced drunk intent on simulating sobriety. The too-red mouth had a kind of crooked laxity and it wasn’t smiling.
She stopped about three feet from where I stood. Her arms were down at her sides and she kept them there: no offer of a handshake. She looked me up and down for maybe fifteen seconds. Nothing changed in her expression, and it was too dark in there to read her eyes, but I had the impression she didn’t much like what she saw. The first words she spoke confirmed it.
“Private detective,” she said, the way you’d identify a large bug. Cold voice, careful enunciation without a trace of slur. “Who sent you?”
“No one sent me, Mrs. Vorhees.”
“I suppose it was Cory Beckett,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “That’s whom you’re working for, isn’t it?”
“Not any longer. I was retained by Ms. Beckett and her brother’s bail bondsman-”
“To do what? Help keep her brother from going to jail for stealing my necklace?”
“In a way, yes.”
“What way?”
“That’s privileged information.”
“Privileged,” she said, making it sound like a dirty word. Then she said, “That poor young fool. He didn’t steal the necklace, she did. She’s the one who should be facing a prison sentence.”
“If you know that for a fact,” I said, “then why are you pressing the charge against him? Why not just drop it?”
Fleeting smile, small and mean. “She’s the one who hid the necklace in his van, to save herself. And I intend to see that she pays for it, one way or another.”
“Why do you hate her so much?”
“That’s none of your business. You just go and tell her what I said.”
“There wouldn’t be any point in it. As I told you, Cory Beckett is no longer my client.”
“Then what are you doing here, bothering me?”
I took a breath before I said, “Candidly, Mrs. Vorhees, it’s because of an apparently legitimate concern for your welfare.”
“My welfare?” Long, dark stare. “Are you threatening me?”
“Of course not. Exactly the opposite.”
“The opposite of what? You’re not making sense.”
“Look, this isn’t easy for me. I’m trying to explain the best way I know how. My associates and I have uncovered certain credible information that leads us to believe your life may be in danger. We felt it our duty to make you aware of the threat.”
“… That’s a ridiculous statement.”
“No, ma’am. It isn’t.”
“For God’s sake! What information?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s hearsay and we have no proof as yet to back it up.”
“So you expect me to believe my life is in danger just because you say so? I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you.”
“I’ve been a detective for thirty years and my agency is considered one of the most reputable in the city. If you’d like a list of references-”
“Jesus,” she said.
Then, abruptly, she stepped around me and went straight to the sideboard. Glass clinked against glass, no small amount of liquid gurgled. Whatever it was she poured, she tossed it off in a single flip of her wrist and backward toss of her head. She refilled the glass before she turned to face me again-right up to the brim.
“In danger from whom?” she said, as if there had been no interruption in the conversation. “Not my husband, surely. He doesn’t have the balls.”
“I’m not in a position to tell you that.”
“The Beckett whore, if I don’t drop the charge against her brother?”
“I’m sorry-same answer.”
“Damn you. You stand there claiming somebody wants me dead, but you won’t say who or why.”
I could feel my face heating up. This was going badly. I should have known it would; I should have stayed the hell away. “Legally and ethically, I can’t make unsubstantiated accusations against anyone. All I can do-”
“Do you want money? Is that it?”
“No. All I can do is make you aware of the potential danger-”
“How much, goddamn you?”
“This isn’t about money, Mrs. Vorhees. I’m just trying-”
“Oh, yes, sure. Just trying to be a good Samaritan. Well, that’s a crock of you-know-what.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
She knocked back half of her second drink, then came toward me again. Her face was splotchy now, the lipstick smeared; even in the pale lamplight I could see the anger like pinpoints of firelight in her eyes.
“Who?” she said in low, strained tones. “Who wants me dead?”