The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 23.

Before I could bitch Hitchens out for doing exactly what I was going to do, I saw Beverly Bartinelli standing a short distance behind him in the entry, so I put it on hold.

She was a pleasant-looking woman in her fifties with one of those faces that lacked guile and radiated warmth. Everything else about her was medium. Medium height, medium build, medium-blond hair.

After I stepped inside Hitch made the introductions. "Beverly Bartinelli, meet my partner, Shane Scully."

We shook hands and Beverly said, "Detective Hitchens was just asking me about 3151 Skyline Drive."

Hitch just shrugged at me. It was obvious to both of us that we were going to have to deal with this trust issue or our partnership was doomed.

"Can I get you some coffee?" Beverly asked and I shook my head. "Then why don't we sit in the living room? I'm sorry, but Christmas is still all over the place. I was at my daughters house all day yesterday and Todd and I haven't had a chance to straighten up yet."

We sat on a sofa grouping, moving some new quilts and a few pillows in boxes to make room.

"It's strange seeing that Skyline Drive house after all these years," she said once we were settled. "It's been all over the news."

"Beverly was just telling me she had that listing in 1982," Hitch said.

She nodded. "I haven't been in real estate for a few years. I'm in computer sales now. That was one of my first listings when I went to work for Prime Properties over twenty-five years ago."

Hitch and I exchanged a look. One of us had to take the lead on this interview. Since I was senior man and still out of sorts about getting here second, I leaned forward and began.

"We're looking for some background on the property. Anything that you might know that could affect the triple murder that happened there."

"I'm certain nothing I know could have anything to do with that dead movie producer and those two prostitutes," she began. "I mean, it was December of eighty-two when I finally closed escrow."

"You're probably right, but nonetheless, we have some questions about the history of the place," Hitch jumped in. "Rather than us leading you, why don't you just tell us what you know and then if we have questions, we'll ask them later."

I shot him a look. He just leaned back and showed me nothing.

"Start with when you first listed the house," I said.

"Actually, it sort of starts a few months before I listed the house. I sold it for the estate of the late Thomas Vulcuna and his family. You may remember that name if you were around L. A. in eighty-one."

She looked at us to see if we responded. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.

"He was the head of a very successful television studio called Eagles Nest Productions," she said.

Now Hitch and I traded startled looks.

"What happened to him and his family is one of those horrible L. A. stories," she continued. "If either of you were in town back then you must remember it."

"I was ten, living in South Central," Hitch told her. "The Crips moved onto my block in eighty-one so I spent most of that year hiding under my uncle's car."

"Why don't you tell us?" I said. "Start at the beginning."

"In 1981 Thomas Vulcuna had piled up a lot of debts at Eagle's Nest, a studio which he owned privately. I know a little about all this because his house on Skyline was actually put up as collateral on the Eagle's Nest bank loan. We had to untangle that mess before we could sell the property.

"Back then, Eagle's Nest had six TV series on the air, but the problem was they were spending more for each episode than the network gave them in licensing fees. Tom Vulcuna was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode, and with the production company making over a hundred episodes a year, despite his success in getting his shows programmed, he was quickly outrunning his bank loan and going broke."

I was vaguely beginning to remember this now. It had been a big TV and newspaper story. A murder-suicide if I recalled correctly.

"Tom Vulcuna had all these production company debts and his bank was about to foreclose on the loans," she went on. "Then on Christmas Eve 1981, he came home from a Christmas party at the studio. He was distraught, he'd had too much to drink, and the police thought he got into an argument with his eighteen-year-old daughter, Victoria. When his wife, Ellen, tried to break it up, apparently he just snapped. He picked up a ball-peen hammer that was lying around to hang Christmas wreaths and, in a frenzy, he beat both of them to death right there in the living room."

"I remember this now," I said. "He brought a handgun home from the studio or something. The police speculated he had already decided to commit suicide."

"That's right," Beverly said. "It was an old World War One Luger that he checked out of the studio prop department. Eagle's Nest was making a six-hour miniseries about Hitlers rise after World War One, and they had a bunch of those old Lugers for the SS officers to carry in the movie. They were props, but apparently the ones that weren't going to be fired didn't get altered by the prop master and still worked. He brought one of those home in his briefcase. After he killed his wife and daughter he went upstairs to the master bedroom, lay down on the bed, opened a copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy to a passage about death that he'd underlined, then he fired a shot into his head. When the maid arrived the next morning, she found them all dead."

"I remember," I said as my vague memory of it kicked in. "Big, big media case."

She nodded. "Because of the horrible, gory nature of the murders, the house was almost impossible for me to sell. Prime Properties assigned me the listing, but as soon as I took a client up there and they realized it was the Vulcuna house, any interest I had going evaporated."

"It's owned by the Dorothy White Foundation now," I said.

"I was the one who sold it to them," she said. "The foundation bought it at the Vulcuna estate sale less than a year later, in eighty-two. When we closed escrow, the Christmas tree with all their unopened presents was still in the living room. Last I heard, it was all still there."

"It is," I confirmed.

She gave us a weak, apologetic smile. "Anyway, it was quite a project selling that place. The production company owned the house. The bank had the production company in receivership. After the sale of all the studio's assets the bank only got twenty-five cents on the dollar and the sale eventually ended up in tax court.

"I finally got an offer from the Dorothy White Foundation. The easiest way for me to consummate the escrow was for the foundation to just buy the whole mess to pay back taxes. When escrow closed, they got the house and the defunct production studio along with some minimal tax loss carryforward."

"How much did they pay for it?"

"The house was a steal because of the murders. I think the end number was something like two point six million, but that's in eighty-two dollars. It would be worth a lot more today."

Hitch leaned forward. I could tell he had a question so I nodded for him to go ahead as if I actually had any control over him.

"Mrs. Bartinelli," he began, "it seems strange to us that a house worth that much money would stay vacant for over twenty-five years."

"Yes, it is, and it soon became apparent that the foundation had no intention of selling it either. Long after the stigma of the murders had passed, they were still turning down offers. We didn't represent the property any longer, but from time to time, people would be driving around up on Skyline and see it. We got our share of random inquiries.

"That mansion has the prime location right on the promontory point. People would want to buy it and fix it up to live in. I once submitted an offer for over seven million dollars to the Century City law firm that represents the foundation."

"Sheedy, Devine, and Lipscomb," Hitch said.

She nodded. "I dealt with one of the senior partners, Stender Sheedy. It didn't matter how good the deal was, he always said no. The place just wasn't for sale.

"After a while, none of the Realtors around here bothered to even submit offers to them. It's just been rotting up there empty and rundown with that old dust-covered tinsel tree and all those unopened presents sitting in the living room, waiting for the Vulcunas' ghosts to float down and open them." Then she added, "Somebody ought to make that into a movie, don't you think?"

Hitch just nodded and smiled.