California Fire And Life

31

Jack watches Pamela Vale walk around the house.

It's pretty eerie. He's sitting in an A-V room back at California Fire and Life, watching the video that Nicky had given him.

They had to scrape her off the springs.

Now here she is, Pamela Vale walking around the same room that's now full of cold, black ash. Where Jack saw her blood baked onto the melted bedsprings. Now she's looking into the camera and talking to him.

Very weird, almost voyeuristic. He's seen pictures of her charred, naked body – right down to the leg bones – and now she's walking around talking to him.

Young and very beautiful, is that how Nicky had put it? And no kidding, because Pam Vale is – was, Jack reminds himself, a very beautiful young woman.

It's sick. Jack thinks, because if you didn't keep yourself aware that this woman is dead, you'd befalling in love with her. She's wearing a print sundress that shows her body. She has black satin hair framing a heart-shaped face, but her eyes are what really get to you.

Purple.

Violet.

Some shade in there that he's never seen before.

They grab the camera, they grab your eyes and hold them.

And her voice.

Is pure sex.

Even narrating this inventory that Nicky's walking her through. He's holding the camera and whispering instructions. But it's not Nicky's voice softly telling her what to do, it's her voice describing, the television, the VCR, the paintings, the sculptures, the furniture, that gets to Jack. He expected it to be that high-pitched beach-girl trophy-wife kind of voice but it isn't. It's a woman's voice – a woman who was a wife and a mother of two kids and a manager of an expensive, complicated household – it's a voice with some real life experience behind it and it's deeper than he expected, and fuller. It's a mature woman's voice and it's pure sex.

Even in this video of Nicky's, basically saying Dig my possessions and this sexy woman is one of them.

She knows it. You can see in her eyes that she knows what he's about.

But she's above it.

How? Jack wonders.

Maybe it's the kids – she has the status as their mother and maybe that's enough. Or maybe she's just loaded, anesthetized into a pleasant zonk that gets her through the day. He decides the question is unanswerable and irrelevant and tries to concentrate on what she's saying.

And on the room.

The video is invaluable to Jack because it shows the room before the fire.

It's huge, of course, with high, peaked ceilings. There's the center beam and the rafters coming down off it. Highly polished pine flooring. The wallpaper is white and rich with gold pattern striping. It shouldn't work. Thick red draw curtains come over the sliders that lead onto the deck outside the bedroom. Oval, gilded mirrors and old English hunting prints in walnut frames complete the effect.

Jack rewinds the tape, takes out a notebook and stops and starts the tape as he jots down Pamela's narration. He has Nicky's inventory on his lap and he's trying to match the descriptions up with the listed items and prices.

Of Nicky's precious furniture.

She poses by a desk, gesturing with both hands. ("Show them what they'll win, Vanna.") At Nicky's prompting she says, "This is a George III mahogany pedestal desk, made in about 1775. It has fluted columns at the corners, and note the unusual carved scroll feet."

The camera pans down to the unusual carved scroll feet.

Jack scans the inventory and finds the desk.

Evaluated at $34,000.

Pam continues, "The mirror above it is a Kent mirror of carved gilded wood with a shell-backed neoclassical head. This piece was made in about 1830."

Jack thinks she sounds like Jackie Kennedy giving a tour of the White House.

The mirror's estimated at $28,000.

It goes on and on.

"This side table is circa 1730 and is clearly inspired by the Italian Renaissance with its carved gilded wood and gesso motifs. But also note that the carved acanthus leaves on the curved legs point toward the neoclassical."

$30,500.

"These are a pair of George I gilt chairs."

$25,000.

"This is a George I card table."

$28,000.

"This is one of our real treasures," Pamela says. "A rare bombe-based red-lacquered and japanned bureau-cabinet from about 1730. It has clawed and hairy paw feet. Also, serpentine-shaped corners with attenuated acanthus leaves. A very rare piece."

True enough, Jack thinks. Fifty-three grand worth of rare.

The camera lingers over the cabinet, and Jack has to admit that he admires the workmanship. It's all fine furniture, lovingly and carefully built.

To last.

The tour goes on.

A pair of mahogany George II armless chairs.

$10,000.

A 1785 Hepplewhite with Prince of Wales feathers.

$14,000.

A 1745 gilded Matthias Lock rococo console table.

$18,000.

Jack's scribbling notes and prices and he's also noting what he should find when he does the sift.

He should find, he thinks, handles from the cabinets. Maybe some remnants from the thickest part of the wood furniture – from the balled and clawed feet and bases. Some fragments should have survived and should be found in the deep char.

Back to the tape.

Georgian furniture, even in the bathroom.

A George II dressing table. A bargain at $20,000.

A George III silent valet. A gimmick for $1,500.

The cabinetry in and around the twin sinks done in walnut to match the period. Expensive tiled cabinet tops in mock marble. The freakin' towel racks done in scrolled acanthus walnut.

Then back to the bedroom for the piece de resistance.

The bed.

Outrageous.

Calling it a four-poster, Jack thinks, is like calling the Great Wall of China a fence. This bed has four posts all right, but each post has a gilded walnut base with royal-blue inlays. The bases support cylindrical posts of gilded mahogany leading up to rectangular walnut pedestals with carved angels on top. The top pedestals themselves are sheathed in heavy white silk with the coat of arms of what Jack figures had to be some duke or lord or something. The four posts support a frame from which hang two layers of heavy, draped gold fabric, very old and delicate. Judging from the video, there must have been supports across the top of the frame, because a cupola of sorts sits on top of the bed. The cupola is ringed with carved gilded eagles and topped off with a carved castle tower which grazes the ceiling. The bed canopy is tied off to each of the posts.

All of which, Jack thinks, would explain why the top part of Pam Vale's body wasn't burned in the fire. Doubtless the canopy burned early and dropped down on top of her, smothering the flames and protecting the top part of her body.

At the head of the bed is a panel painted with the coat of arms.

This is a very serious bed.

Pamela Vale describes it: "This is the pride of our collection, a neoclassical bed designed by Robert Adam in 1776. It is all the original piece – except for the mattress and box spring, because we need some creature comforts, you know – and some of the fabric, which has been replaced. This piece…"

Jack flips through the inventory to find the price.

$325,500.

For a bed which is now mostly char.

All that old wood, all that gilding, all that fabric…

… would go up like a torch.

Maybe it would blow a hole in the roof.

But it would also fill Pamela Vale's lungs full of smoke.

As would the rest of Nicky Vale's fine furniture. Even the stuff that's in the other two wings is going to be smoke- and maybe water-damaged, but right now Jack's interested in what's totally lost.

He punches the values of the destroyed items into the calculator.

$587,500.

And change.

Jack checks the date handwritten on the label: June 21, 1997.

On June 21, Jack thinks, Nicky Vale videotapes an inventory of all his precious belongings. Less than two months later they're all burned up.

Including his wife.

Who in terms of cold cash is worth another $250,000.

So before we even talk about the structure and the rest of the personal property, we're looking at $837,500. No wonder Nicky's in a hurry to settle his claim. We're talking major bucks here.