Vertical Coffin

Chapter 36

Royal oaks manor turned out to be an upscale assisted-living facility. As I pulled up the drive I saw a large expanse of rolling lawns and neo-Spanish Colonial buildings. This wasn't your standard linoleum floor and vinyl couch old folks home. There were attractive, tile-roofed buildings separated by expensive floral landscaping. The residences all had their own two-car garages. There was a large medical facility off to the east side of the property, next to a tennis court and a large common patio. I pulled in and parked between a new red Mercedes and a black Lincoln Town Car, then walked up the manicured path to the main building. Inside the spacious contemporary lobby I found a house phone, dialed zero, and asked for Midge Kimble. A minute later I heard the familiar shouted greeting from her answering machine.

I hung up and went to the front desk. An elderly man working over some papers glanced up at me.

"I'm looking for Midge Kimble," I told him.

"Today is bridge day," he said. "She's out in the Culture Center Annex."

"Where's that?"

"Through the main lobby, down the corridor. It's the pavillion on the right."

I thanked him and made the trip. If you were stuck waiting for the Grim Reaper, this was certainly the place to do it. The windows offered views of beautiful trees and flowering bushes. Purple bougainvillea trellised off latticework set up in each of the small, landscaped areas. Outside the main sliding glass doors, Brown Jordan outdoor furniture sat on a large, pebbled, concrete patio, all of it washed clean, sparkling in the afternoon sunshine.

The Culture Center Annex was an art exhibit area off the main building. I walked into a high-ceilinged room filled with older, well-dressed men and women studiously playing bridge. There were at least ten card tables, all fully occupied, everybody bent forward, intent on their cards. For a room full of people, it was strangely quiet. I didn't quite know where to start. This place seemed so upscale, I couldn't just shout out Midge's name. Sensing my dilemma, a woman seated at the table nearest me reached out and touched my arm. I turned toward a pleasant octogenarian in a pink pillbox hat.

"You look lost," she said sweetly.

"I'm looking for Midge Kimble."

"In the blue dress over by the window." She smiled, so I smiled back. "Nice to have such fine young people come visit," she said.

Right then I didn't feel very fine or young, but I thanked her and walked over to the table and waited until the foursome finished a hand and started throwing their cards into the center.

"Excuse me, are you Midge Kimble?" I asked the woman in the blue dress.

"I am." Her voice was strong and didn't even resemble her shouted message on the answering machine. She was close to eighty, but there had been a time when she would have stopped traffic. The remnants of beauty still clung stubbornly to her strong, wrinkled face.

"I hate to interrupt your game, but I have a few questions."

"In that case, you have excellent timing," she said a bit too loudly.

"I do?"

"I'm the dummy."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's a bridge term," she said, smiling. "After the bid on the next hand I lay my cards down. Don't have to do anything after that. It's called being the dummy."

"Oh-I never played bridge."

I watched as the cards were dealt and a round of bidding started.

"Three spades," one of the women said.

"Four hearts," another answered.

"Four spades," a third said. It went on like that for a while until finally Midge said:

"Trump." Then she laid down her hand face up, rose, and accompanied me to an alcove in the adjoining room.

Midge Kimble was spry and athletic. She moved with authority and purpose. We sat down and she fixed a polite smile on her face, waiting for me to begin. She had inbred grace and refined social bearing.

"This is nice out here," I started, apropos of absolutely nothing. I hate to admit this, but, sometimes when I'm in the presence of money or culture my normal self-confidence can suddenly desert me. Another curse visited on me by my childhood. I had a sudden revealing thought: Did I become a cop so Yd have social authority and could use my badge to gain emotional status, and to build a wall between me and my insecurities?

"My husband was a developer," she was saying. "He actually put up two of these buildings when we moved out here. The Kimble Rec Center across from B unit was his. You can see it on the right when you drive out."

"So the school was just a hobby?" I said, putting the pieces together thinking, her husband had the gelt and she ran the country day school for kicks.

"Not a hobby-a treasured vocation," she said, fixing me with a stern look.

My smile felt hot on my face. I immediately pulled out my badge and showed it to her.

"Oh my goodness," she said. "I knew I shouldn't have borrowed Lillian's jewelry and not returned it."I'm sorry.''

She smiled. "I'm just fooling, Sergeant. When you get to my state in life, you need to take your laughs where you can find them." The same argument the humps in Devonshire had used.

But I liked her. Instantly I felt more at ease.

"This is about a young boy who I believe went to your school, named Vincent Smiley. It was around 'eighty-eight or 'eighty-nine. Do you remember him?"

"Yes." Her expression softened slightly, or maybe it saddened. "Vividly," she added.

"I was wondering if you could tell me a little about him?"

"It was one of the strangest things that ever happened during all the years I ran that school."

"Start at the beginning," I said, and whipped out my trusty notebook, clicked down my pen, then poised over a fresh page, all business now. Sergeant Scully on the case.

"The Smiley children first came to school in the sixth grade. Paul and Susan."

"Paul, not Vincent?"

"If you'll let me finish, I'm getting to that."

"Sorry."

I wrote down paul and susan smiley, underlined paul, then wrote kimble country day-'88.

"Paul was very bright and outgoing. His twin sister, Susan, was extremely shy. Almost never said anything."

So they were twins, I thought, writing that down.

Midge was saying, "They didn't get along, which seemed strange for twins, but they were both excellent students."

"Sixth grade-that made them about twelve."

"Yes. Twelve."

"At the end of seventh grade something very extraordinary happened."

"What was that?"

"Susan Smiley was in the girl's restroom when one of the other little girls happened to open the bathroom stall. Susan had forgotten to lock it and this other girl saw that Susan had a penis. She was standing up in her blonde ringlets and dress, urinating right into the toilet."

"Susan was a boy."

"Yes. It turned out that Susan was really Vincent. We took the child into the nurse's office and called his parents in. Stanley Smiley didn't come, but his mother Edna did. We forced an inspection in her presence so we could see for ourselves. Well, I must tell you, nobody was prepared for what happened next. Mrs. Smiley went into a white rage. I think she was a drinker and was maybe a little drunk at that meeting. She started shouting that she didn't care what I or anybody thought. She didn't want twin boys, always wanted a daughter. So she raised Vincent as Susan. She let his hair grow long and had been dressing him as a girl since he was an infant."

She sat back and looked at me, the sad memory of this rich on her face. "Once Mrs. Smiley told us that, it explained everything. Vincent's shy behavior when he was being Susan, the fact that the twins seemed to hate each other. It was an impossible situation. All over school the children were talking about it. We had to call a school assembly with everybody's parents to discuss the situation. Twelve is an awkward age, and sexuality becomes a growing concern. I knew that it would be a mistake to try and keep the Smiley boys at school. The school year was almost over, so I made arrangements for them to finish the grade work at home."

"And then they were homeschooled the following year?" I said.

"Yes. We called in Child Services. There was a major argument about taking the children away from the Smileys. But, since they weren't being physically abused, there was no way to remove them from the home, because, when you came down to it, they had only violated a school dress code. We signed an affidavit and the boys were homeschooled for the eighth grade. We supplied the curriculum, then the boys went off to Glendale High in ninth grade."

"As boys this time?"

"Yes. Vincent and Paul registered at Glendale High."

"Do you know about the car accident that killed their parents?" I asked.

"Strange you should mention that. When it happened I think the police suspected Vincent. They came and talked to me. Back then he was still a juvenile, around seventeen I believe."

"So the results of that investigation would be locked in his juvenile record," I said, making a note. This explained why the C. A. wouldn't release Vincent's file. She obviously had read all of his juvie records for Pasadena and Glendale and knew it would be used at the SWAT trial. Without a court order mandating its release, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.

"I think the police suspected Vincent of foul play," Midge was saying. "I know they picked him up and talked to him. The Smileys had moved to a house off Cliff View in Glendale. There was a steep incline that went down from their house. One evening, Stanley and Edna's brakes failed. They went over the cliff on the last turn. The car burned, so nothing much was left for the police to examine. Eventually, it just went into the records as an accident."

Fat chance, I thought.

"He was out of high school after that-in junior college." She went on. "That was the last I heard of him, until that shoot-out two weeks ago." She frowned. "That poor boy probably never had much of a chance, did he?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Kimble. You've been a huge help." I stood to go. "If you think of anything else call me at that number." I put down my card.

"You should try and get in touch with his brother Paul. I think he lives up in San Francisco. He might be able to tell you something."

"I can't," I said. "Paul's dead."