California Blood
a novel by
Pete Palamountain
Newspaperwoman Mattie Lee investigates a suicide
and two murders in a small Southern California town
California Blood
Readers Comments:
"Another can't-put-it-down book by Pete Palamountain. I have read all his books and enjoyed them immensely. Pete does a great job in making you want to turn the page. I will be waiting impatiently for his next offering."
Description of California Blood
Violence in Triplicate in Garvey, California, a small town at the foot of Mt. Baldy.
• Suicide of a wandering derelict who returns home after forty years.
• Murder of a wealthy matriarch at her estate in the hills above the San Gabriel Valley.
• Murder of a charismatic Catholic priest after conducting Monday morning Mass.
Is there a common factor? Are the three deaths related? Is there more violence to come?
Police Chief Duffield (Duffy) Lear and newspaperwoman Matricia (Mattie) Lee team up to find out.
And Egypt Rosen, Mattie’s P.I. friend from neighboring Covina, lends a hand.
Books by Pete Palamountain
Egypt and the Turncoat Senator
Show Me Your Face
Runaway Twins
California Blood
Copyright 2012 Pete Palamountain
California Blood
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
The past meets the present
and the result is danger
Table of Contents
Chapter 2—Suicide at the Ramada Inn
Chapter 7—Mattie’s Health Issues
Chapter 8—Violence in Triplicate
Chapter 9—The Mayor’s Decision
Chapter 10—Flowers for Lucy Zeller
Chapter 11—A Call from the President
Chapter 19—Identical Black Sombreros
Chapter 20—Perry and Gilda Lovejoy
Chapter 23—Questions and Answers
Chapter 25—Invasion of Privacy
Chapter 38—Death Closes a Door
Murder at Kalmia
The dogs were howling and Rosemary wondered what was upsetting them. There had been coyotes about lately, running in packs, out of the Coast Range foothills; and their scent had probably been detected by her caged German Shepherds. She knew that for safety’s sake she should have opened their cages and let them roam freely on the property. But with the servants off for the next three days, it meant she would have to round up the dogs herself in the morning, and at her age that was no simple task. The last time she tried it, it had taken half a day, and by the time she had the last dog caged, she was wasted.
She climbed out of bed and made her way to the window. One of the outside lights was not working, the other was dim and flickering, and the moon was a tiny sliver in the night sky. But even in the faint light, she thought she could see a moving shadow near the shrubbery to the left of the goldfish pond. Whatever was casting the shadow was hidden by the bushes and the low hedge and by the angle of the main house itself. From her vantage point on the second floor, she watched the shadow glide closer to the front entrance. She wished again that she had let the dogs out. They would have cut down any intruder—animal or human.
The moving shape must be a coyote or a wild dog, maybe even a mountain lion; but the shadow seemed long, representing a primary object of considerable height. Still, the night can deceive one’s eyes, especially if the eyes are seventy years old and were none too strong thirty years ago.
The shadow grew more distinct. Where was the background light coming from? The tiny moon had now disappeared completely behind the rolling clouds, and there were no visible stars to augment the one feeble spotlight. She shifted her gaze upward. The moon must be straining behind the thick clouds and forcing some light around their dark edges. And even though the inside lights were turned off, the house itself must be radiating heat and light.
Rosemary lowered her eyes once again to the shrubbery, but the angle was wrong now, and the shadow had dissolved behind the corner of the morning room.
In an instinctive gesture she gathered her nightgown closer to her neck. She made a quick decision. She was being silly, she knew, but better safe than sorry. She crossed the room swiftly and reached for the telephone beside her bed. It rang six times before it was answered, and even then she had to speak first.
“Hello, hello!”
“Garvey Police Department,” a sleepy voice finally responded. “Officer Ridgeway.”
“This is Rosemary Workman at Kalmia. I may have an intruder out here!”
The voice leapt to attention. “Mrs. Workman! Yes, ma’am! An intruder—have you seen him?”
“No, I’m not sure. But can you send someone?”
“Of course, right away. I’m certain there’s a car in the area. I’ll get on the radio. It won’t be long.”
“Thank you.” She replaced the receiver.
She returned to the window and looked toward the corner of the morning room to see if the shadow might have re-formed to begin moving in the opposite direction, away from the house. But there was nothing to be seen, and all along the hedge and beside the shrubs, there was only the dark grass.
She stood very still and listened carefully. She tried to remember if she had locked all of the downstairs doors and windows. It was not part of her normal nightly routine since the servants generally secured the house for the night, but she was certain she had taken proper care. She made a silent vow never again to allow the servants all to leave at the same time. It had seemed such a simple, organized way to handle their bonus days off; but now it seemed incredibly foolish.
The dogs had quieted down. Did that mean that the intruder had left the grounds, or was he inside the house? Or had the whole thing been the result of an old woman’s morbid imagination?
She turned from the window and stared toward the door of her bedroom. She was glad she had left it open. The sight of a slowly turning doorknob might be more than a weak heart could bear.
And now another breach in her security struck her. A household dog, even a nervous little poodle, would have told her if someone was inside. She made another vow. In the morning she would drive to L.A. and find the most anxious, fidgety little house dog available—one that would bark and yap at everyone, even the children when they came to visit. She didn’t wish to go through this again.
A stair board creaked, and then another. She gasped and with her left hand drew her nightgown even tighter to her throat. Irrationally, she wished she had on a robe. She thought about crossing to the closet on the far side of the room to get one, but she was too terrified to move.
Another creak, and another, and then no sound whatever.
Where were the police? Why weren’t they hurrying? Then she realized it had been only a few seconds since she called, and even if a cruiser were close to the Foothill Freeway intersection, it was at least fifteen minutes more up and down the intervening hills to Kalmia.
There were no additional sounds. The stairs and the hallway were silent. She crossed herself and ventured a tentative step, and then stopped to listen once again. Nothing. She moved forward, this time taking two steps; she stopped again and remained still for a full minute—perhaps two, she couldn’t be sure. No sound. She began to breathe more regularly. Agitated dogs, shadows outside, stairs creaking. She smiled at her excitability. A counterfeit crisis.
She walked swiftly forward now to verify her new confidence. The blackness beyond the doorway almost caused her to stop again, but she shrugged and burst through as if to say, see there—a counterfeit!
But once in the hallway she knew instantly she’d been wrong. She sensed another presence in the darkness behind her. She began to turn slowly, to confront the trespasser who had caused her so much trouble. She was not afraid. She would see just what this was all about. But when she had done a complete about-face, she felt the full force of her fear return. There was nothing there. She had been wrong about another presence. She looked back toward the stairs. Terror mixed with confusion.
And then the dark shape, which had been crouching low in the blackness and which she had overlooked, rose up behind her and grabbed her by the hair, twisting and jerking her head violently until her thin neck popped, once, twice—sending odd echoes down the dark stairs. She died instantly, without another thought. But as she lay on her back on the hardwood floor, her head at a crazy angle, the intruder knelt beside her. He pulled a long knife from his belt and plunged it deep into her right shoulder. He then yanked it free and drove it into her left shoulder—twisting, twisting, twisting.
He left the knife in place and sprang quickly to his feet. He sensed that his time was limited. She had obviously detected his approach since she had crept so carefully across her bedroom and into the hall. That might mean that she had called for help. If so, there was no time to lose. Ten minutes at the most, and he must be gone.
From his shirt pocket he withdrew a small slip of paper. He went straight to the bedroom closet and threw open the door. He entered, closed the door behind him, and turned on the light. The massive safe stood like a fortress at the far end of the closet.
2
I have taken Drano, and may God have mercy on me.
Matricia Lee continued to stare at the short suicide note. Drano? Couldn’t the old lady have used sleeping pills or something? Drano! How hideous and how painful. But Mattie supposed that when the old lady lay down to die, she wasn’t concerned with pain. Drano it was.
Without a doubt it was a front-page story. Gilda Lovejoy’s garden parties were front-page stories in the Garvey Weekly Times; but how should it be set up? Headlines? No, too macabre; and anyway there was the bond election. The local yokels would want to know how that turned out. School playgrounds no less. Didn’t they care about the Middle East…Washington? She shook her head. But that’s not really fair, she thought. They had television; and they could always pick up the San Gabriel Valley Tribune or the L.A. Times. They didn’t need her pitiful rag for world and national news. So the bond election it was…and the death of old Mrs. Zeller. Poor soul. Poor soul indeed.
Maybe a sidebar beneath the election results: FORMER GARVEY RESIDENT COMES HOME TO DIE. Yes, that was just right. She dragged the sidebar into place and began to compose the first few lines of the story.
Lucy Zeller, former resident of Garvey, California, came home Friday, apparently for the first time in over forty years. But her visit did not last long. After checking into the Ramada Inn Friday evening and pursuing private memories for a day and a half, she decided to take her own life. She was found Sunday afternoon, fully clothed, on her bed at the hotel. There was no indication of foul play. In a concise suicide note, which was found lying beside her on the bed, she explained that she had taken Drano and invoked the mercies of the Almighty. The Garvey Police Department has not yet decided on the disposition of the body. They have two choices: assign a local doctor to do the autopsy, or send the remains downtown where the resources of the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Office will be…
She stopped in mid-sentence, removed her fingers from the keyboard and stared at the page. Maybe she was selling this story short. Who was this old girl, Lucy Zeller, anyway? Why did she come home to die? Where had she been for the last forty years? And what had she done between Friday night and Sunday morning?
She looked at the suicide note again. When she’d borrowed it from Police Chief Duffy Lear, she’d toyed with the idea of reproducing it (torn edges and all) on the front page, next to the story. But twenty years with The New York Times had bred in her a reserve that made such a garish display repugnant. She wouldn’t change her style just because the only newspaper she’d been able to afford was a Southern California weekly. Let the locals upgrade their reading habits. Tomorrow’s edition of the Garvey Weekly Times would carry a description of the note, nothing more. She might be the owner of a rag, but it would be a dignified rag.
And it would be written with care and diligence, she thought, realizing that all of the information on the Lucy Zeller story had come to her secondhand. Chief Lear had told her about the hotel, Zeller’s past—everything. She hadn’t taken the time to interview anyone. If she had submitted such a story in New York, she’d have been out on her butt on Forty-third Street, looking for a job. Reporters are not supposed to parrot what they’re told by authorities. They’re supposed to dig out the information for themselves. And anyway, what kind of authority was Chief Lear in the first place? The man was a hick—born and raised—and here she was using him as her sole source for a news story. She should be defrocked. And to make matters worse, she was reasonably certain the beer-bellied moron was grunting romantic noises in her direction.
She looked up to see that her printer, Lorn Little, had walked into the room. He was coming from the press room and his apron was soaked in ink; however, it was impossible to tell if he’d been at the presses, since he was always covered in ink no matter what tasks he’d been performing. Even his sparse gray hair was laced with dark blue streaks. He sat down heavily on the edge of Mattie’s desk.
“Front page done?” he asked.
“Not yet, Lorn. I’ve been working on this story about Lucy Zeller’s suicide.”
Little nodded. “Sad thing.”
“Did you know her, Lorn? You’re about her age, I think.”
“A little older. Lucy must have been twenty-two or so when she took off. That’d make her…let’s see, sixty-two. I’m sixty-seven, Mrs. Lee. But I told you the truth when you bought the paper last year. Sixty-six, I said. No sense lying.” His voice had grown nervous.
“Relax, Lorn. I’m not going to retire you. You can work here until you’re ninety if you’re up to it and if we can survive the Internet. Just tell me about Lucy Zeller.”
“I didn’t really know her. I knew her husband Samuel a little—used to do some work for him. But I didn’t know him good. They was rich, you know. The Zellers was the richest in town.”
Mattie looked at her watch. Two-thirty. The paper was due on the street at 7:00 a.m.—a little over four hours. No chance to interview anyone at this hour. And she couldn’t use what Lorn was telling her either—no corroboration. The years could have clouded his memory. She’d have to talk to several sources to verify everything. She’d have to go with the short blurb she’d been writing. The meat of the story would have to wait until next week’s edition.
“Lorn, I’d like to talk to you some more about Lucy Zeller…after the paper’s out. But now we’d better get busy. I’ll have the front page for you in fifteen minutes.”
Little nodded and returned to the press room, rubbing an ink-stained hand across the back of his neck.
After her printer disappeared, Mattie finished composing the article on the Zeller suicide, and then formatted the rest of the front page, with heavy emphasis on the bond election. She was about to call out to Little to tell him it was time to get rolling when she felt a familiar numbness and swelling under her right arm. She examined the area thoroughly and then began to check her breasts and her left arm. When she’d completed her task, she thought of Police Chief Duffield “Duffy” Lear and wondered what kind of romantic inclinations the pushy cop would have if he knew the truth about her.
She found it difficult to resume her concentration, but before long she shrugged and leaned forward. She reexamined the work she had done previously and then called for Little. He responded promptly, appearing at the connecting door in a matter of seconds.
“Lorn, the front page is finished.”
Before the old man could answer, there was an insistent rapping on the glass outer door.
3
“It must be someone from the security outfit, letting us know they come around once in awhile,” Mattie said, but as she approached the door, she could see the large round face of Police Chief Lear staring through the glass. She opened the door and said, “Chief Lear, come in. Is this a social call? A bit late, isn’t it?” She left him standing in the open doorway and walked back toward her desk.
“No, not a social call,” he said, trotting after her. “But please call me Duffy. Chief Lear sounds so formal, and we’ve known each other over a year now, Mattie.”
“Hello, Duffy,” Lorn Little said, walking toward them.
“Hey, Lorn, how’s it going?”
Mattie frowned. “What is it you need, Duffy? I’ve got a newspaper to get out. More about Lucy Zeller’s suicide?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” he replied slowly. “We’ve got a murder on our hands. Rosemary Workman out at Kalmia. Looks like a burglar. Thought you’d like to hear about it before the paper comes out.”
“No! Rosemary Workman? When?”
“Just got back. Looks like she was killed a little after eleven.”
“Does the congressman know? And her other children?”
“Only Greg. Hard case. Took the news like he was getting the score on the Laker game. Congressman Workman’s supposed to be in L.A., but I couldn’t locate him. As for Winnie, who knows? She could be anywhere around here—if you know what I mean. No answer at her place, and the officer I sent over there tells me it’s locked up tight. Winnie’s not known for sleeping in her own bed. She—”
Mattie interrupted him. “How was Rosemary Workman killed?”
“Broken neck. Stabbed. We’ll need a good autopsy on this one. The sheriff’s forensic boys are already out there with Dr. Wertz. We’ll probably send the body to L.A.”
“A burglar you say?”
“Looks like it. The safe in her bedroom closet was standing wide open. A piece of paper with the combination written on it was lying on top of the safe. Looks like he forced it out of her before he killed her. We’ll probably find he tortured her with the knife. One thing though, the guy wasn’t satisfied with what he found in the safe. The drawers and cupboards all over the house were ransacked. The place’s a mess.”
She asked thoughtfully, “What else do we know so far?”
For the next few minutes, while Mattie took precise notes, the cooperative police chief explained about Rosemary Workman’s call for help, the servants’ days off, the caged German shepherds, and all of the other important aspects of the case. It was his belief, he said, that the citizens should know as much of the truth as possible, as quickly as possible, so that false and unhelpful rumors would not spread.
After Chief Lear was gone, Mattie brought up the image of the front page that she’d done earlier. She said to Lorn, “We’ll have to work fast!”
He nodded but said nothing.
She paused for a minute and considered her repugnancy toward sensationalism. Dignity and decorum were certainly important. Opinions, ideas, and news stories of substance and significance were the hallmarks of any respectable newspaper. Then she thought, nuts! This is not New York, and this is certainly not The New York Times. She quickly entered a bold forty-eight-point headline to run across the top of the front page that read: SUICIDE AT THE RAMADA INN; and below that in a very black seventy-two-point headline: ROSEMARY WORKMAN BRUTALLY MURDERED. She reread the Lucy Zeller story and decided it was okay as written. She positioned it at the left top of the page with a small sub-headline declaring: FORMER RESIDENT COMES HOME TO DIE. Next she began writing the Workman murder story, which she would place slightly lower and to the right, but with a larger sub-headline, and with twice the column space.
She began:
Murder used to be rare in Garvey, California, but times are changing…
4
An hour later Mattie sat in Duffy Lear’s office at City Hall watching a steady stream of Garvey’s leading citizens march in and out, shaking their sleepy heads in dismay over the tragedy in their midst. Most either totally ignored her or gave her a cursory nod. She knew they considered her an outsider, a pushy New Yorker, severe, uppity, aggressive. Small town California businessmen were a clannish lot. Assertive transplants (especially women) ranked very low on their totem of mutual back scratchers. She had heard that a good number of local merchants were considering dropping the Garvey Weekly Times altogether, even if it was the only newspaper in town. But she supposed it didn’t really matter much. The Internet was draining advertising dollars so fast she doubted she could stay afloat much longer anyway.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Officer Bobby Ridgeway, who leaned his head around the door to Chief Lear’s office.
“Chief, we finally tracked down Congressman Workman. He’s in Covina—at Edgar Brooks’s place. We haven’t told him anything. He’s on the phone. Line two.”
“Thanks, Bobby,” Duffy said. His face darkened, and Mattie could see he was reluctant to take the call.
“Hello, Jake. Duffy Lear. I’m afraid there’s terrible news here in Garvey....It’s your mother. She’s been murdered…out at Kalmia. Looks like an intruder….We’ve notified Greg. He’s on his way. We haven’t found Winnie yet. I’m sure we’ll turn her up soon. Jake, could you come right away? There’s a lot we need….No, nothing yet on who did it….Yes, Jake, terrible.”
He hung up the telephone, and said to Mattie, “Nasty business. The one part of this job I’ll never get used to.”
“Where’s he been?” she asked.
“Out talking politics. This Senate race, you know.
A few seconds later Officer Ridgeway stuck his head around the door once again. It was obvious he had been waiting for the telephone extension light to go out.
Duffy said, “Come on in, Bobby. Don’t stand out in the hall like a stepchild.”
Bobby Ridgeway nodded, and then inched his tall, slim body around the door very slowly and very reluctantly, as if the chief’s office were a sanctum off limits to ordinary mortals.
Mattie watched him, amused. The young policeman took the better part of half a minute to complete his passage through the door, all the while rolling his shoulders and jerking his long neck up and down.
“Sit down, Bobby,” Duffy said, “What’s on your mind?”
“I need to talk to you for a few minutes, Chief.” He sat down on the battered couch next to Mattie and spent some time tangling and untangling his legs.
Duffy said, “Long night, eh? Rosemary Workman. What a mess!”
Ridgeway looked uncomfortably toward Mattie. “I hoped we might talk alone.”
“Don’t worry about Mattie,” said Duffy. “She’s going to be part of the family…here in Garvey. Speak up.”
Mattie felt uncomfortable herself, and definitely not a part of the Garvey family, but she smiled reassuringly and tried to appear motherly.
The young man shrugged and said, “Chief, you’ve worked nights a lot. Nothing much happens around here at night—unless there’s an accident or some kids getting into trouble with booze or grass or just to have something to do. Well, I slept all day, but I was still sleepy before all this started. I might’ve drifted off once or twice. You know how it is around here at night.” His voice trailed off and Mattie thought that the young officer was on the verge of tears.
“Bobby,” said Duffy impatiently, “what is it?”
“Chief…I know I was sleeping earlier. It’s not a question of might’ve drifted off. I was sleeping, period! And I didn’t even need it. I slept all day—ten, eleven hours.” He stared at his feet as he spoke. Then he turned to Duffy, looked him directly in the eyes and said dramatically, “Chief what if Rosemary Workman tried to call us before? I think I heard the phone ring—somewhere in the back of my mind. I don’t think I answered it that time. I’m not sure, but I think I just let it ring. Later when I did answer, I sent Charlie out there. But what if she’d been trying to call and I didn’t answer because I was asleep. We might’ve got there in time. Maybe she died because I’m lazy!”
Duffy said carefully, “Son, did she say anything about calling earlier?”
Ridgeway shook his head.
“Then we’ll probably never know who was calling before—if someone did call. That’s a pretty loud phone out there. You would’ve gotten it if it really had rung. There’s what—three or four calls every night? You could’ve just imagined that it rang earlier—remembered it from another time.”
Ridgeway nodded, but it was obvious he was not satisfied.
Mattie stared at the nervous young officer and thought that in the future there would be no one more vigilant on the Garvey police force.
“Don’t think about it anymore, son,” Duffy said. “It won’t do any good. It’s over and done with.”
Their somber mood was broken by the turbulent entrance of Officer Charlie Swicegood. He in no way shared Ridgeway’s reluctance to intrude on the boss. He burst into the room like a great black Zulu prince, tossed his hat on Chief Lear’s desk, and stood, legs spread, as if he were about to issue marching orders.
“Not a thing on Winnie Workman!” he said, breathing deeply. “Can’t find her anywhere. Guess we’ll have to wait until morning. She’ll come stragglin’ in sometime, either to her place or over to the Ramada Inn where she eats breakfast.”
Duffy began, “Did you try—”
“We tried every place.”
Duffy said, “In the morning then. It’s a shame. We should tell her as soon as possible.”
“I got Perry Lovejoy out there in the waiting room,” Swicegood said. “He’s fuming. He’s ready for a lynch mob. But he’s got a lot of liquor in him—I think it’s just liquor; nowadays even these old guys are mixing dope and booze.”
Mattie and the three men left the office and walked through the main room toward the small receiving area near the front door. Officer Ridgeway peeked in to nod at Perry Lovejoy and then retired to his desk and the phone.