Foolproof (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 4) Page 7

  Bridget looked at Kip with annoyance. “We’re taking the firm public.”

  “You’re doomed to failure,” T. Duke said. “In my humble opinion. I’ve offered you a parachute and you’re about to let it slip through your fingers.”

  Bridget laced her fingers on the table. “T. Duke, you yourself told me that if you want to run with the big dogs, you have to lift a leg.”

  “I’m full of old sayings. Here’s another one: There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  “You’re not getting my company, T. Duke,” Bridget said with finality.

  “So this is your company now,” Kip said. “I’m the one writing code all night long and now it’s your company.”

  “Ma’am, I always get what I want,” T. Duke said. “I’d advise you to take my offer now. It will be best for you and your husband in the long run.”

  “Is that some sort of a threat?”

  “Of course not.”

  Bridget stood. “You’ve got twenty percent of Pandora and that’s all you’re going to get unless you buy more stock after we go public.”

  “Dear heart, that’s one of the great misconceptions about life. Everything’s for sale. All you have to do is determine the price.”

  Bridget hoisted her briefcase from the floor onto the table, slipped her notebook and pen inside, and snapped the lid shut. Kip closed the personal computer and zipped its case closed.

  T. Duke walked to Bridget with his hand extended. She reluctantly took it. “I so enjoyed our meeting. Thanks for stopping by. We’ll be in touch.”

  Iris stood and took a last look at the fresco on the ceiling. She now had a better view and could see that the irregularly shaped cloud disguised the vague outline of another cherub. T. Duke had apparently had the image of someone painted over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  From Pacific Coast Highway, Iris sharply turned the Triumph and ascended Casa Marina Drive. The road was steep and narrow and its asphalt was cracked and sunken in places, revealing rows of wood piles that supported it. A sign at the base of the hill warned that the streets of Casa Marina were so fragile, passage was reserved for residents and guests only.

  “Thanks for taking me to pick up Brianna and giving me a lift from T. Duke’s,” Bridget said.

  “That was a hell of a thing for Kip to do,” Iris said. “Just take off and leave you standing there.”

  Bridget stared through the Triumph’s windshield.

  Iris patted her leg. “Things are gonna get better.”

  Bridget gave her a wan smile.

  Iris frowned sympathetically. “Poor you. Squeezed between Kip and T. Duke. Two bullheaded men.”

  “I felt T. Duke was making me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Bridget glanced at her daughter, who was sitting on the shelf behind the TR’s two seats, singing along with a song playing on the radio. “T. Duke said the Sawyer Company owns other computer-games firms. Do you know who they are?”

  “I don’t recall. They have such a mishmash of holdings. Wait a minute… What about 3-D Dimensions?” Iris squeezed the TR close to the side of the narrow road to allow an approaching car to pass. “Do they produce games?”

  Bridget nodded. “I didn’t know they’d been bought out by Sawyer. Kip was friendly with one of the guys who built the company. I think his name was Harry Hagopian. He was a computer geek, like Kip. A few years ago, they put out a hunt-or-be-hunted game called Fate that was very state-of-the-art. Kip and I were impressed.”

  “Have they put out anything since they were bought by Sawyer?”

  “There was a second version, Fate Two.”

  “Be interesting to talk to Hagopian and see why he decided to sell to T. Duke and how he’s found the experience.”

  “He’s dead. Flipped his car one night in the Mojave desert near Baker, I think about a year ago.” Bridget scraped her hair back with both hands and turned her face toward the sun. They were driving with the TR’s top down.

  The news chilled Iris. “That’s weird.”

  Bridget looked at her friend skeptically. “You can’t possibly think T. Duke had anything to do with it.”

  “I told you about the Las Vegas prostitute who ended up…” Iris glanced at Brianna. “You know.”

  “And his son was found guilty. Iris, T. Duke’s a businessman, not a gangster.”

  “Are we going home?” Brianna asked.

  “We’re going to see Aunt Iris’s new house, then we’re going home,” Bridget answered.

  Iris said, “I must have been nuts to buy in this neighborhood. I had every intention of buying closer to downtown. Where do I end up? Casa Marina, five miles from my old, quaked-out condo on an even more fragile piece of property. The quakes shake harder here. Streets and houses get regularly washed down the hill in floods.” She maneuvered the TR around a hairpin turn constructed to circumvent a section of the hillside that had washed away. “And let’s not forget all this natural vegetation the residents love that regularly goes up in flames.”

  “C’mon, Iris,” Bridget chided. “You like living on the edge. That’s why I knew this house was perfect for you when I first saw it. Plus we can be neighbors again.”

  “Now I’ll be literally living on the edge. The backyard has lost ten feet in the last six years to erosion. That’s why I got the house as cheaply as I did. The previous owners were glad to unload it before it slid down the hill.”

  Bridget scoffed at her friend’s concern. “You had all the geological tests done. Just have the backyard shored up and it’ll be fine.”

  “You’re ruining all my fun. I just got my mother worked up into a near frenzy over the possibility that I might perish in a mudslide.”

  “We’d be lucky to see any rain this year. This has been the driest winter I can remember in a long time. They’re already talking water rationing.”

  “I wish these hot winds would stop.”

  Casa Marina Drive, where Iris’s new house was located, was one of three streets that circled the large hill, dividing it like a wedding cake. Capri Road was the street above Casa Marina Drive, and above that was Cielo Way, which circled the crest. Two narrow, almost vertical lanes—Capri Court and Cielo Court—connected the three streets. The streets were also linked by steep cement stairways, constructed in the 1920s. At the bottom of the bluff below Casa Marina Drive was the Pacific Coast Highway. A cement bridge spanned its four, constantly busy lanes. On the other side of the bridge, a spiral staircase led down to the sand of Casa Marina Beach.

  “How is your mom?” Bridget asked.

  “Good,” Iris curtly responded.

  “She must be happy about you and Garland.”

  “She doesn’t know about me and Garland. And she won’t know until I’m reasonably certain the relationship will stick. So don’t tell her.”

  “Does she still pester you about getting married?”

  Iris looked blankly at her friend.

  “Mom still needs to get a life, huh?”

  “An understatement,” Iris said. “You’d think my sister, her three teenagers, and her ongoing marital discord with my brother-in-law would keep my mom occupied. But she still finds plenty of time to butt her little nose into my affairs.”

  “What about Garland? Is he marriage-minded?”

  “I don’t know. He was only divorced two years ago. He’s got two kids, one in college, the other still in high school. We haven’t broached the issue yet.”

  “Are you?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Will miracles never cease!”

  “Shaddup.”

  The street wended past houses that were scattered haphazardly across the face of the bluff, wherever the land appeared sturdy enough to support a structure. In between were native sycamore trees, scrub oak, cactus, sage, bougainvillea, wild mustard, and wheat. The thick chaparral was home to lizards, gophers, an occasional rattlesnake, and several camps of homeless people.

  Casa Marina’s houses were all shapes and si
zes. There were tiny wood-framed bungalows from the 1920s built well back from the street with large front lawns, neat flowerbeds, and white picket fences, alongside huge, brand-new homes in minimalist designs with glass blocks and staggered terraces that consumed all available space on their lots, their front doors almost on the street. There were a few old mansions left—most of them built in the 1930s by motion picture people. Kip and Bridget’s house was one—a turquoise and white Spanish gothic manse built in 1932 by a blonde bombshell of the era. It was the sole house on the crest of the hill.

  The backyards of most of the homes were terraced down the face of the bluff. Some residents had reinforced their chunk of hill with steel and concrete supports and had bravely installed swimming pools, patios, and expensive landscaping. These same enhancements sometimes created tourist photo opportunities when the shifting earth scattered the pools and patios across the hillside, leaving the broken edges seemingly suspended in air.

  Iris stopped the Triumph in the middle of the street near a clearing that gave a view of the coast. The wind-blown sky was rendered blue-white by the bright sun that speckled the calm ocean. “Wow.”

  “What a beautiful day.”

  “You can see all the way from Point Dume to Palos Verdes,” Brianna piped from behind them.

  “That’s right, sweetheart,” Bridget said. “And what’s that shadow out there in the ocean?”

  “Santa Catalina Island. It’s thirty miles away.”

  Bridget turned and squeezed Brianna’s leg. “That’s very good.”

  Iris drank in the scene. “It does something for me, being able to see the horizon and the curve of the earth. Calms me. I never get tired of it.”

  “It makes me happy to share this with you since things in my own house are in disarray.”

  “What’s disarray, Mommy?”

  “Messy, sweetheart.”

  “Because Summer’s leaving, we don’t have anyone to clean the house?”

  “Yes.” Bridget winked at Iris. “But we’ll find someone.”

  “I’m going to miss Summer,” Brianna said. “She was fun. Why does she have to go?”

  “It was time for Summer to leave,” Bridget said.

  Iris let the clutch out too fast and stalled the Triumph. “Darn.” She turned the key in the ignition. It just clicked in response. She tried it again, and again it clicked.

  “What’s wrong?” Bridget asked.

  “The starter’s been acting up.” Iris tried a few more times before the engine finally turned over. She put the car into first gear and headed down the street.

  “You’d better get that fixed before you get stuck somewhere.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Iris leaned close to Bridget and asked in a voice too low for Brianna to hear, “So it’s hasta la vista, Summer?”

  Bridget leaned close to respond. “She was moving out at a snail’s pace this morning. If she’s not gone by the time I get home tonight, I’m throwing the rest of her stuff on the street. You should get a load of the attitude. Hell hath no fury like a bimbo scorned. She’s not the only one who’s making an exit. I told Kip to fire Toni Burton.”

  “You’re making him do it?”

  “I think it’s appropriate.”

  “Do I see a little vengeance showing?”

  Bridget tweaked her lips into a sly smile.

  Iris pulled into the driveway of a tiny yellow bungalow and cut the engine.

  “Is this your new house, Aunt Iris?” Brianna scrambled from the TR, kicking her hard-soled shoes against the finish.

  Iris gritted her teeth.

  Brianna ran to the front door and pressed the doorbell. “You already have mail, Aunt Iris,” she shouted as she pulled a handful of junk mail from the box. She ran to hand it to Iris, then skipped after a butterfly that was floating across the lawn.

  “Thank you, honey.” Iris got out of the Triumph.

  Bridget also got out and arched her back. “After I finally figured out what was going on between Kip and Toni, Toni approached me about it. She was very sorry, embarrassed, et cetera.”

  “You believe her?”

  Bridget shrugged. “She told me she did it because she admired me so much.”

  “Weird way of showing it.”

  “I thought so. Anyway, she was concerned about losing her job.”

  “She any good?”

  “She works hard, has a lot of enthusiasm, but she’s not as smart or talented as she thinks she is. I made it known that I’m recruiting a VP of marketing. She pitched herself for the job, but I had to honestly tell her I didn’t think she had what it takes. Anyway, both Kip and Toni swore the affair was over. But last night, they were just too cutesy with one another, and it pissed me off. Enough is enough. But I’m putting myself in a bad position by getting rid of both Toni and Summer. I need all the hands I can get at Pandora right now, and someone has to stay with Brianna.”

  “And you’re still going to divorce Kip?”

  Bridget nodded.

  Iris sighed as she watched Brianna, who had caged the butterfly on the grass between her hands.

  “Iris, he hit me last night. He crossed a line and there’s no going back.”

  “You’re right,” Iris said with resignation. “I can’t believe he’d hit you…that it’s come to that. Maybe if you talked to someone…”

  “You know how Kip is. I could never get him to a marriage counselor. If it’s not something that can be logically laid out in black and white, he thinks it’s witchcraft. Kip was never good with change. It’s ironic because he loves staying on top of new developments in high technology, but in his personal life, he craves stability. I was his only girlfriend before we got married.”

  “I think he would have had every meal by himself his entire college career if you hadn’t approached him in the dorm cafeteria.” Iris watched Brianna release the butterfly into the air. “You saw a side to him that no one else did. And you were right. He was playful, funny—even a hunk in an unkempt, Tarzan kind of way. At first, the girls on the floor thought you were nuts for going out with him, then we were all jealous.”

  Bridget put her hands in the pockets of her slacks. “I love Kip—I always will. But I’m not in love with him anymore, if you know what I mean.”

  “Do you guys still own that gun?”

  “It’s around somewhere. Why? Afraid I’ll use it on him?” Bridget asked jokingly.

  “I fear it might be the other way around.”

  “That’s what Alexa was afraid of, too.” Bridget closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “That detective who interviewed you called me today about Alexa. Apparently, they don’t have much to go on. I’m afraid they’ll never find out who did it. You read about so many murders in L.A. going unsolved.”

  “It’s a nightmare. And I was the one who felt I was being watched.”

  “You did? When?”

  Bridget pursed her lips. “It was probably nothing.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what happened?”

  “It was nothing, really. A noise in the Pandora parking lot. A shadow on the patio. My imagination on overtime, is what it was.” Bridget sighed and changed the subject. “Anyway, Jim told me that Alexa wanted to be cremated, but didn’t leave any instructions about the disposition of the ashes. He and Alexa’s mother are now engaged in a war. She wants the ashes interred in the family cemetery. He wants to shoot them into space, like Timothy Leary did with some of his.”

  Iris rolled her eyes.

  “They might end up dividing the ashes between them.”

  “Oh, ick.”

  Bridget looked at her daughter, who was standing at the edge of the lawn with her hands on her hips, gazing at the hillside across from Iris’s house. “What are you looking at, honey?”

  “I don’t like that house. It’s spooky.” Brianna pointed at a large, abandoned house built on Capri Road, the street above Iris’s. The back door hung open from a single hinge. The walls were cracked and the chim
ney had fallen through the roof.

  “What’s the story with that house, anyway?” Iris asked.

  “It was damaged in the Northridge quake, and from what I heard, the owners walked away from it. I don’t know why the bank doesn’t tear it down. Homeless people live in it. I’m afraid they’re going to set it on fire one night.” Bridget turned toward Iris’s house. “Now, let’s have a look around, Miss Homeowner.”

  The small two-bedroom, one-bath, wood-framed bungalow was built in 1922 and had been lovingly maintained. It was painted pale yellow with white trim. Half-circles carved with rays resembling sunbursts were set atop each window. A large sunburst was visible beneath the eaves of the attic.

  A brick path lined with flowerbeds led to the front door which opened directly into the sun-washed living room. All the rooms except the kitchen and bathroom were floored in narrow-planked hardwood. To the right of the living room, beyond an arched entryway was the dining room. This led to the kitchen which had been updated with frosted glass-paneled cabinets, tiled counter tops and floor. Off the kitchen was a laundry room and a back door. A guest bedroom was down the narrow hallway off the living room. The recently remodeled bathroom was next to that. At the end of the hallway was the master bedroom. French doors on the outside wall opened onto a hardwood deck that ran the width of the house.

  “Do people live in houses this small, Mommy?”

  “Brianna, our house is much bigger than what most people live in.” Bridget looked apologetically at Iris. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

  Iris shrugged. “It is a small house. But—location, location, location.”

  Brianna pulled open a French door off the master bedroom and bounced across the deck and down to the flower-trimmed yard. A short chain-link fence separated the yard from the steep bluff just beyond.

  Iris stood in the bedroom in the spot where she’d decided to place her bed and looked at the view. “Every morning, the first thing I see will be the ocean.” She spread her arms as if to encompass it.

  “This house is really cute. I’m so happy for you!”