Jonathan Kellerman - Devil's Waltz

“Despite the slump?”

He frowned, tugged on his beard, and said, “Yes, I think so. The population can only go one way.” Smile. “Or at least that’s what my demographer friends tell me.”

He turned toward the students, who were staring at us, and held up a hand. “Do you know how to get to the house from here?”

“Approximately.”

“Let me tell you exactly. Just get back on the freeway — on the One-eighteen — and get off at the seventh exit. After that you can’t miss it.”

“Great. I won’t keep you,” I said.

He looked at me but seemed to be somewhere else.

“Thanks,” he said. Another backward glance. “This is what keeps me sane — gives me the illusion of freedom. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“Absolutely.”

“Well,” he said, “I’d better be getting back. Love to my ladies.”

The ride to the house wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, leaving forty-five to go before my two-thirty with Cassie.

Remembering Cindy’s odd resistance to my coming out any earlier, I decided to head over there right now. Do things on my terms, for a change.

Each exit on the 118 took me farther into the isolation of brown mountains, deforested by five years of drought. The seventh was marked Westview, and it deposited me on a gently curving road of red clay darkened by the mountain’s hulk. A few minutes later the clay turned to twin lanes of new asphalt, and red pennants on high metal poles began appearing at fifty-foot intervals. A yellow backhoe was parked on a turnoff. No other vehicles were in sight. Baked hillside and blue sky filled my eyes. The pennant poles flashed by like jail bars.

The asphalt tabled at a hundred square feet of brick, shaded by olive trees. High metal gates were rolled wide open. A big wooden sign to the left of the aperture read WESTVIEW ESTATES in red block letters. Below the legend was an artist’s rendition of a spreading pastel-hued housing development set into too-green alps.

I rolled close enough to the sign to read it. A timetable beneath the painting listed six construction phases, each with “twenty to a hundred custom estate homesites, 1/2 to 5 acres.” According to the dates, three phases should have been completed. When I looked through the gates I saw a sprinkle of rooftops, lots of brown. Chip’s comments about population growth, a few minutes ago, seemed a bit of wishful thinking.

I drove past an untended guardhouse whose windows still bore masking-tape Xs, into a completely empty parking lot fringed with yellow gazania. The exit from the lot fed to a wide, empty street named Sequoia Lane. The sidewalks were so new they looked whitewashed.

The left side of the street was an ivy-covered embankment. A half-block in, to the right, sat the first houses, a quartet of big, bright, creatively windowed structures, but unmistakably a tract.

Mock Tudor, mock hacienda, mock Regency, mock Ponderosa Ranch, all fronted by sod lawns crosscut with beds of succulents and more gazania. Tennis court tarp backed the Tudor house; peacock-blue pool water glimmered behind the open lots of the others. Signs on the doors of all four read MODEL. Business hours were posted on a small billboard on the lawn of the Regency, along with the phone number of a real estate company in Agoura. More red pennants. All four doors were closed and the windows were dark.

I kept going, looking for Dunbar Court. The side streets were all “Courts” — wide, squat strips ending in cul-de-sacs, and ribbing eastward from Sequoia. Very few cars were parked along curbs and in driveways. I saw a bicycle on its side in the center of a half-dead lawn, a garden hose that lay unfurled like a somnolent snake — but no people. A momentary breeze produced sound but no relief from the heat.

Dunbar was the sixth Court. The Jones house was at the mouth of the dead end, a wide, one-story ranch, white stucco trimmed with used-brick. In the center of the front yard a wagon wheel leaned against a young birch tree too thin to support it. Flower beds edged the facade. The windows sparkled. The loom of mountains behind the house made it look like something constructed from a child’s kit. The air smelled of grass pollen.

A gray-blue Plymouth Voyager van was parked in the driveway. A brown pickup-truck with a bed full of hoses, nets, and plastic bottles was idling in the driveway of the house next door. The sign on the door said VALLEYBRITE POOL SERVICE. Just as I pulled up to the curb the truck shot out. The driver saw me and stopped short. I waved him on. A young, shirtless, ponytailed man stuck his head out and stared. Then he grinned suddenly and gave me the thumb-up, instant buddy sign. Dropping a bronze arm over the driver’s door, he finished backing up and was off.

I walked to the front door. Cindy opened it before I had a chance to knock, brushing hair out of her face and glancing at her Swatch.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice sounded choked, as if she’d just caught her breath.

“Hi.” I smiled. “Traffic was better than I thought.”

“Oh... sure. C’mon in.” The hair was unbraided but still waved by constriction. She wore a black T-shirt and very short white shorts. Her legs were smooth and pale, a little skinny but well-shaped above narrow bare feet. The sleeves of the T-shirt were cut high and on the bias, revealing lots of slender arm and a bit of shoulder. The bottom hem of her shirt barely reached her waist. As she held the door open she hugged herself and looked uncomfortable. Showing more skin than she’d intended for me, I supposed.

I walked in and she closed the door after me, taking care not to slam it. A modest entry hall ended at ten feet of wall papered in a teal-blue miniprint and hung with at least a dozen framed photographs. Cindy and Chip and Cassie, posed and candid, and a couple of a pretty, dark-haired baby in blue.

Smiling baby boy. I looked away from him and let my eyes settle on an enlarged snapshot of Cindy and an older woman. Cindy appeared around eighteen. She wore a white bare-midriff blouse and tight jeans tucked into white boots, and her hair was a wide, windblown fan. The older woman was leathery-looking, thin but wide-hipped, and had on a red-and-white striped sleeveless knit top over white stretch pants and white shoes. Her hair was dark-gray and cut very short, her lips so skinny they were nearly invisible. Both she and Cindy wore sunglasses; both were smiling. The older woman’s smile said No Nonsense. Boat masts and gray-green water backgrounded the shot.

“That’s my Aunt Harriet,” said Cindy.

Remembering she’d grown up in Ventura, I said, “Where is this, Oxnard Harbor?”

“Uh-huh. Channel Islands. We used to go there for lunch, on her days off...” Another look at her watch. “Cassie’s still sleeping. She takes her nap around now.”

“Back to routine pretty quickly.” I smiled. “That’s good.”

“She’s a good girl... I guess she’ll be up soon.”

She sounded edgy again.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she said, moving away from the picture wall. “There’s iced tea in the fridge.”

“Sure, thanks.”

I followed her through a generously dimensioned living room lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves and furnished with oxblood leather couches and club chairs that looked new. The shelves were full of hardcovers. A brown afghan was draped over one of the chairs. The fourth wall had two curtained windows and was papered in a black-and-green plaid that darkened the room further and gave it a clubby look, unmistakably masculine.

Chip’s dominance? Or indifference to interior decorating on her part? I trailed slightly behind her, watching her bare feet sink into brown plush carpet. A grass stain spotted one buttock of her shorts. She had a stiff stride and held her arms pressed to her sides.