T. Parker - Laguna Heat

The year had started quietly. The first pages were neatly pasted with shots of New Year’s Eve parties, and long lists of attendees. Shephard found that Joe and Helene were the featured players, although Burton and Hope Creeley were pictured three times. The gala mood quickly gave way to the more trivial goings-on in the Surfside: wedding announcements, births, deaths, and scholarships awarded. These smaller events were contained in a modest members’ newsletter called Surfsiders. The editor was Helene Lang.

As spring arrived, so did the tennis season, and the scrapbook soon filled with tournament pictures, mostly clipped from the newsletter. The May edition announced the building of a new wing of suites on the club’s north shore, and contained a brief message from co-owner Joe Datilla, who was pictured smiling at the ground-breaking ceremony. Burton Creeley stood beside him, spade in hand, but it was apparent that the photographer’s interest was in robust Joe.

Shephard studied Burton Creeley’s face and posture. It was easy to imagine him falling for the charms of a woman like Helene, whom Shephard found nearly out of the frame, casting a warm smile in Creeley’s direction. He was small, almost hunched, and he looked uncomfortable in the dark suit. His smile was wan and forced. But as hungry as a man like him might have been for a sultry woman like Helene, Shephard thought, there was still something hesitant in his look. It was hard to imagine him cheating on his wife... and on his best friend.

The spring season gave way to a rash of summer parties: women in light, sheer dresses, men in strangely outdated casual wear. In one picture, apparently taken on the Surfside beach, Wade and Colleen Shephard posed with their newborn son, Tom. Well, Shephard thought, Helene’s trunk contains another surprise. Wade looked big-chested and proud, and Colleen’s lovely face was turned downward to his own. The cutline read: “Mr. and Mrs. Wade Shephard show off their new son, Thomas Wade. He was born four weeks ago and tipped the scales at six pounds and four ounces. Congratulations to members Wade and Colleen!”

On the next page he found a Register article on Burton Creeley, the “silent owner” of the prestigious Surfside Club of Newport Beach. It was Creeley’s contention that the club could soon blossom into a little city of its own, complete with roads, schools, shopping areas, and, most importantly of all, access for everyone to the golden bayfront property of the club. He spoke of the Surfside as his “vision” and “dream of tomorrow,” and in the accompanying photograph Creeley seemed physically enlarged with his own ideas. His smile was more relaxed, and there was a muscular tension to his face. The reporter had apparently asked if there was some disagreement in the upper levels of Surfside management as to what the future of the club would entail. “There is always a degree of give and take,” Burton had answered. “That’s what makes great ideas even greater. I can tell you that Joe and I see wonderful things ahead for this club.”

But the summer gaiety ended abruptly on September 9, when Surfside member Colleen Shephard was shot and killed by a man named Azul Mercante.

Shephard read the article again, the same one that Wade had shown him that evening before his first day of school. And just as it had done all those years ago, the picture of Colleen brought an overwhelming sense of violation to him, a sense of being intruded upon, penetrated, opened. He stared again, and felt again the loss of something he had never known, the itch in the phantom limb.

A Laguna Beach woman was fatally shot earlier today in her Arch Bay Heights home while her husband helplessly looked on.

Colleen Shephard, 22, wife of LBPD officer Wade Shephard, was shot once in the chest by a gunman who fled the scene. Police are now searching for the suspect.

According to Police Chief Donald Pantzar, Mrs. Shephard was apparently alone in her home when the gunman broke in and attempted to rape her. Her husband, returning home for lunch, found his wife being accosted in the living room. The suspect, whose name is being withheld on order of the chief, allegedly pulled a handgun and fired the fatal shot.

A fight for the gun ensued between Mr. Shephard and the man, who escaped on foot.

Mrs. Shephard was pronounced dead on arrival at Community Hospital in South Laguna Beach.

Police say that the murder weapon has been recovered and believe the motive for the break-in was rape.

The Shephards are four-year residents of the city. Earlier this year they had their first child, a son.

Shephard turned the page, relieved to find a full-page shot of fifty-four debutantes coming out at a Surfside-sponsored party. He studied their faces, trying to forget the story from the page before. Their cheery faces seemed to belong to a different world.

But two pages later he was plunged back into the murder of his mother, front page:

Laguna Beach Police yesterday arrested their prime suspect in Wednesday’s murder of Colleen Shephard.

Azul Mercante, 25, also of Laguna, was arrested in his Temple Hills Terrace home after a brief struggle, police reported.

LBPD Captain Lonny Wilcox said that a loaded shotgun was found in the suspect’s home.

Mercante was identified by the victim’s husband, Wade Shephard, as the man he found accosting his wife in their Arch Bay Heights home Wednesday around noon.

In a press conference held yesterday, LBPD Chief Donald Pantzar stated that Shephard, a LBPD officer, had attempted to subdue the man when a struggle ensued. According to Pantzar, Shephard lost his gun to the intruder, who then turned it on Colleen.

Shephard attempted to revive his dying wife while Mercante allegedly fled on foot.

The suspect barricaded himself in his home and held police at bay for an hour with a shotgun, Pantzar said. He surrendered at 2:30 P.M. and no shots were fired.

The District Attorney says no charges will be filed until the preliminary investigation is completed.

There was a dim photograph of the family’s Arch Bay Heights home beside the article, with the crude but informative caption: “Colleen Shephard, 22, was shot to death in this house Wednesday.” Shephard’s stomach had knotted, and sweat soaked his shirt. He stood up, set the volume on the director’s chair, and stared through the blinds to the green bay surging below him.

The news of Mercante’s arraignment was covered in a short article on the next page of the scrapbook. Assistant District Attorney Jim Peters was pictured beside the piece, as was the suspect, covering his face in his hands. Shephard knew that with formal charges brought a mere two days after the arrest, Peters must have considered his case a good one. An eyewitness was enough to make any D.A. drool. Peters was a middle-aged man with a thick, combative face and a nose like a heavyweight’s. Mercante retained a public defender by the name of Eugene Weingarten.

Another article on the same page told of Mercante’s outlandish behavior at the jail. After refusing food for two days, he gashed his head on the bars of his cell in a “sudden fury, while screaming his innocence.” The day after his arraignment, Mercante was removed to the criminal ward of the county hospital for “further examination and for his own protection.”

With the coming of fall, the Surfside quieted. The big event of October was an annual yacht race that originated at the club and terminated in Ensenada, Mexico. The local press failed to recognize the serious side of the event and referred to the annual beer-drenched race as “The Booze Cruise.” Surfside dockmaster Dick Evans was featured in a newsletter interview, trying to restore some sense of maritime drama to the race. “We like to think of it as a race for both the serious and the recreational yachtsman,” he said. Another newsletter photograph showed the foundations of the new wing of suites, which were framed against a Surfside sunset and looked like ruins more than beginnings.