The Innocents Club

“It’s kind of a hassle. It involves running over to the Courier Express distribution center in Falls Church. If you don’t have time for this, I want you to tell me, okay?”

“No problem. What’s the deal?”

“They tried to deliver a letter to my house this morning, but I’d already left for the airport. Apparently, it had to be signed for, so they couldn’t leave it. I called Courier Express and they said I could sign a release allowing a third party to collect it. There’s an office just down the street from my hotel. I was going to stop in on my way out of here and do the paperwork. I wanted to give them your name, if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” he said. “What’s this about?”

“It’s from my father’s old agent, Chap Korman.”

“Korman,” he repeated, and Mariah had the impression he was writing down the name. “You want me to hold the letter till you get back, or ship it to you out there?”

“I was going to ask you to send it with Lindsay, but now that I think about it, I’d rather you open the envelope as soon as you get it. I want to know what the hell’s inside.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

She exhaled heavily. “Chap Korman sent me a copy of a letter he received from some professor at UCLA who’s working on a biography of my father. Apparently, this guy’s come up with some kind of cockamamy theory that this manuscript I found—” She paused. “Maybe you didn’t hear about that? I came upon an unpublished novel and some other personal papers of my father’s a couple of months ago.”

“Yeah, I read about it in the paper.”

Mariah felt a tremor of guilt at the thought of Frank getting his news of her out of the newspaper. And seeing her photographed on Paul Chaney’s arm. Damn. “Right,” she said. “Anyway, this professor is apparently of the view that the manuscript was something my father stole. And it gets weirder. He’s also suggesting Ben was murdered.”

She expected derision or blunt dismissal of such an obviously stupid claim. A few pointed questions, at least. But all Frank said was, “I’ll check it out.”

“I just want to know where he’s coming from before I see him while I’m out here. I’m sorry to be such a nuisance.”

“You’re not. I’m glad you called.”

She’d called because there was no one else she trusted more, Mariah thought, struck by the realization of how much she’d missed Frank these past months. The line went quiet again, but this time it was one of those comfortable silences between kindred spirits, like an easy hand on the shoulder—more like the way things used to be before everything had gone so sour for them both.

She wished he weren’t so far away and she weren’t so pressed for time. Now that they’d reconnected, she wanted to talk—about a lot of things, including the worst part of this assignment Jack Geist had dumped in her lap—the possibility that it would bring her face-to-face with her father’s old lover. But that, too, was a long story, and she had to get going to the museum. It was enough for now to know Frank was there.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said. “I knew I could count on you.”

His reply was almost inaudible. “Always.”

Chap Korman had a fourteen-carat heart and a steel-trap mind, even at the ripe old age of seventy-seven. But his knees seemed made of pure chalk, screeching when he hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet. Wincing, he leaned against the low brick wall between his front courtyard and his neighbor’s, and he waited for the pain to pass.

Since Mariah’s call, he’d been busy planting a border of colorful impatiens along the wall. Thick, green gardener’s pads Velcro-strapped over his khaki trousers helped a little to relieve the agony of working on his knees, but getting up again was another matter. There was no escaping that gravity works, and that his old joints just didn’t support the weight of his body as well as they once had.

When he could finally move again, he knocked his trowel against the brick wall to dislodge clumps of loam, then slapped the dirt off his hands, viewing his handiwork with satisfaction. It was worth a few aches and pains. Emma’s garden was looking good again. He’d never really appreciated how much work it took to keep it up.

Seventeen years ago, when they’d first moved out from New York, it was the location of this property that had appealed to them. The two-story clapboard house fronted on Newport Harbor, with only a pedestrian walkway between the front yard and the boat slips opposite running the length of the peninsula. The view was of anchored sailboats, Balboa Island and the rolling hills of mainland Orange County beyond, rising above the masts.

Automobile access for the houses was via a nondescript lane at the back, a canyon of ugly garages at street level. But even that side of the house had had its secret potential—a spacious flat roof over the garage with a pristine and uninterrupted view west toward the Pacific Ocean, only a couple of blocks away. Just the place to add a deck to sit on in the evening and watch the setting sun.

The house had been run-down after years of hard use by summer renters, the front courtyard an arid wasteland of dead plants and broken flagstones. Chap and Emma had had the interior remodeled, consolidating two of the four bedrooms to provide a large library/office for Chap’s wheeling and dealing on behalf of his clients. They’d also had a spa and gazebo added to the new back deck off the master bedroom.

Em, meantime, had single-handedly transformed the courtyard into a lush and brilliant oasis. It had been her greatest pleasure, a work-in-progress right to the end of her life. Chap, a night owl, would wake each day at midmorning to the soothing sound of her off-key humming under the window and know she’d been at it since sunup. In the end, it was the wilting garden, not the doctors, that told him how sick she really was.

At first, after she died, he’d let the yard go. When weeds threatened to overtake her beloved roses, and the blue Cape plumbago grew so leggy it started pushing over the low picket fence along the front walkway, he hired somebody to bring it under control and keep it tidy. But the day he came home to find Emma’s roses butchered, Chap fired the gardener, dragged Em’s tools out of the garage and took over the job himself. Lately, he was enjoying it more and more, despite his arthritic knees. He even found himself humming Sinatra as he worked, just as Em had done—although he liked to flatter himself that his pitch was better.

“Hey, Chap! Looking good,” a voice behind him called.

Chap turned to see his neighbor being dragged out his front gate by a fat basset hound. At the other end of the leash, Kermit’s big feet scrabbled under his saggy, low-slung body, tripping over his necktie ears, following his massive nose in headlong pursuit of whatever thrilling quarry it was he’d scented this time.

Chap grinned as he lifted the trowel in a wave. “’lo, Doug! See Kermit’s taking you for your daily constitutional.”

Doug Porter grimaced. “No kidding.” He paused to wipe a fine sheen of sweat that was already forming on his bare scalp, close-shorn on the sides, bullet-smooth on top. “Listen, Chap, I’m glad I caught you out here. I was going to ask if your roses could be pruned back where they’re coming through the fence.”

Chap peered over. Sure enough, the climbers were beginning to wend their way into his yard. “Sorry about that. I never even noticed it,” he said, reaching for the pruning shears hooked over his back pocket. “I’ll cut ‘em back right now.”

“I hate to be a nuisance—”

“It’s no trouble.”

Chap started to reach over, but the hound rammed the gate and snorted his way through with a happy, basso profundo “Woof!” Chap turned and gave Kermit’s tricolor head a pat, while Porter strained to keep him from climbing up the old man’s frame. In his mid-forties, Porter was tanned and extremely fit, but the basset’s powerful leg muscles and low center of gravity made the daily contest between them an uneven match that the dog inevitably won.

“Your friends arrive yet?” Porter asked breathlessly. He was dressed in his habitual black silk shirt and black pants—his signature look, Chap thought, though it seemed a ridiculous outfit for dog-walking on a hot day.

“Mariah did. She’s up in L.A. Her daughter’s coming behind. They should both be here tomorrow.”

“So, what do you think? Would they like to come along and watch the fireworks from offshore?”

Porter had moved in a couple of months earlier, and this was the third or fourth time he’d held out an invitation to join him on his sloop, anchored in the harbor. Up to now, Chap had always found reasons to decline. Felt guilty about it, though. He had a sneaking suspicion his single neighbor was gay, and while his personal philosophy was a liberal live-and-let-live, a little knee-jerk anxiety always kicked in at the prospect of finding himself alone on a boat with the guy. But what did he think? That an overweight, arthritic senior citizen was in danger of being cast as a boy-toy du jour?

Porter seemed like a good guy, a gregarious architect who entertained all kinds of interesting people, from what Chap had seen. It would probably be a nice evening out there on the water, and Lindsay might get a real kick out of seeing the fireworks from that vantage point.

“I haven’t had a chance to put it to them yet,” he said. “I just talked to Mariah a while ago, but to be honest, I forgot to mention it. I hate to keep you on hold.”

“It’s no problem. I have to confess, I’d really love to meet them. I’m a huge Ben Bolt fan.”

Chap paused, momentarily taken aback at that bit of news. A curious offshoot of the Ben Bolt legacy was the almost cultlike following inside the gay community, despite Ben’s solid reputation as a ladies’ man. Sounded like Porter was one of those devotees.

“I have to tell you,” Chap said, “Mariah’s not—a fan, I mean. She was only seven years old when Ben walked out on the family. Doesn’t make for a lot of warm fuzzy memories on her part.”

The dog had turned back toward the gate, and his claws scratched the sidewalk in his anxiety to move on. “Kermit, sit, dammit!” Porter commanded.

A waste of breath if ever there was. The dog seemed deaf as well as single-minded. The tug-of-war continued.

“Incorrigible mutt. Thanks for the warning, Chap. I’d have spent the whole evening blathering on like some star-struck teenager if you hadn’t told me. I’d still love to have you all on board, though.”

“It sounds like something they might enjoy,” Chap admitted. “Can I ask them and get back to you?”

“You bet.” The other man finally conceded defeat and gave the scrabbling mutt his head. “Catch you later!” he called over his shoulder, breaking into a loping jog.

Chap waved after them, grinning, then turned back to the roses and started pruning the few that were encroaching on the Zen-like tidiness of Porter’s courtyard. He grunted as his short arms reached over the top of the pickets. If he had any brains, he’d walk around to the other side of the fence to do this, but he was tired, and he wanted to pack it in.

“Ouch! Damn!” he bellowed, nearly losing his balance as his bare fingers closed on a stem full of thorns. Now he knew why Em had always worn gardening gloves. He’d always thought it was just to protect her manicure.