Wild Instinct

12

Bennet Tarlow III’s Laguna Beach cottage is on Wave Street, overlooking Shaws Cove.

Gale notes the small front yard, the white picket fence, the lawn, the orange tree in its middle. Birds-of-paradise blooming in beds, geranium and succulents in colorful Mexican pots. It’s early, and Gale hears the warning peeps of house wrens in the awnings.

“Nice view,” says Mendez. “I’m surprised a billionaire doesn’t have a grander place.”

“That’ll be Newport.”

He works on a pair of latex gloves, steps onto the porch, and picks the lock, an older, well-worn model that welcomes the tension tool and opens easily.

Mendez gloves up and collects the Times from the front patio pavers and yesterday’s mail from a box shaped and painted like a killer whale.

A small foyer with a rounded arch, a short entryway into the high-ceilinged living room. White plaster walls, dark wood floors, a floor-to-ceiling window framing the gnarled rocks and the surging blue water of Shaws Cove. Built-in bookshelves comfortably stocked with hardcovers, big art books in stands.

What catches Gale’s eye are the big framed photographs of birds hanging on the white walls. Many of the birds are exotic, to Gale at least. Magnificent feathers, intense faces, many of them caught in flight. He recognizes a band-tailed pigeon, handsome and common in the mountains near San Juan Capistrano.

All signed by Bennet Tarlow.

“Really likes his birds,” says Mendez. “Exotics. I don’t recognize any of them. Those owls Osaka sent were haunting. The way the owlets are almost as big as mom. Stuffed into that rickety nest. Those gigantic fuzzy heads. Yellow eyes.”

“Yeah, like mountain lions with wings,” says Gale, thinking Luis Verdad might say that.

There are classic Laguna plein air paintings on the walls, handsomely framed. Some photographic portraits and family pictures, too.

Gale slips his phone from his pocket and dials Tarlow’s cell number.

No ringtone, nothing.

Gale imagines this room on the afternoon and evening before Tarlow’s death. A Thursday.

Tarlow had worked in his office until 5:45 P.M. that evening, according to Bennet Tarlow II, his father, during Gale’s brief phone call, in which Tarlow II had refused to set up a meeting until later.

“I’m processing,” he said.

According to him, his son had ducked into his dad’s top-floor suite to say he was leaving. This was usual for him, Tarlow II said.

Even though they were talking over the phone, Gale heard the sudden choke in Tarlow II’s voice when he said he was glad he didn’t know this was the last time he’d see his son alive.

“Don’t know what I’d have done with that information,” he said. Added that after work, Ben often went to Muldoon’s, walking distance from the company building.

“I hope you kill this fuck,” he told Gale.

Gale asked if he could have his son’s calendar on hand for their interview the next day, but Tarlow II said his son took it home from work at night. His son never let his secretaries keep his physical calendar. He kept it to himself.

“He was private and disorganized,” Tarlow II said. “He mostly worked from home. Felt more creative there than in a high-rise office with distracting, million-dollar views in four directions.”

Gale had asked for Tarlow’s cell number and Tarlow II complied. Gale had thanked him, then rang off and called Muldoon’s and, after being passed along to three people, been told that Bennet Tarlow III had not been there on his last night.

Now, standing in Tarlow’s Laguna kitchen, Gale wonders if the man had eaten here the evening he was murdered.

The refrigerator is practically bare, just bottled olives and salsas, some coffee creamer. A still-sealed wheel of Gouda. Some greens, wilted. Carton of orange juice, unopened. Dishwasher with exactly one plate, a knife, a fork, and a spoon in it. A builder’s economy, thinks Gale. Measure twice and cut once. There’s a Trader Joe’s chicken cacciatore box and an empty tub of gelato in the under-sink wastebasket.

Mendez hovers, watching Gale work. “Wish I could read your mind,” she says.

“Probably put you to sleep. I’m just trying to figure out if he was here that evening.”

“The neighbors,” she says.

“Let them wake up. We’ll check his home office, find his calendar and his phone.”

“Yeah, I feel lucky, too,” says Mendez.

Tarlow’s home office is a cool, east-facing room looking out on the small backyard. A privacy row of Italian cypress, a large birdbath with a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in it, the fountain turned off.

The recessed ceiling lights are strong and Gale places himself in the rolling task chair, pretending he owns the place. As if he knows where everything is. Becoming the vic. Scans the desktop for Tarlow’s phone.

Plenty of room but nothing doing. The desk before him spans the better part of two converging walls. Mahogany, he sees, no dust. Plenty spacious enough for a large monitor, a printer/scanner, a desktop computer, neat stacks of papers, pictures in frames, reference books propped along the two walls.

But the heart of the room are two drafting tables in the middle, exactly centered on a deep red Persian carpet. Acjacheme Gale — an admirer of rugs, baskets, and bowls — sees that the rug is very old and valuable.

Mendez hits the switch and the overhead lights flood the tables. Gale hears her approaching the drafting tables.

“We just stubbed our toes on Tarlow’s calendar,” says Gale, smiling to himself at their easy luck.

“And a miniature model of Wildcoast,” says Mendez.

Gale looks down at Tarlow’s At-A-Glance monthly planner, sitting on the desk, to his right, in plain sight, as if the man had left it there for him.

It’s open to October.

October 4:

Concept Preview/realtors/7–10/dinner

October 6:

Four days before his murder, Tarlow has a noon with Kyle McNab of PacWest Mining. Based on John Velasquez’s memory, this was Tarlow’s second meeting with McNab inside a week, thinks Gale.

October 11:

The morning after his death, Tarlow has a Friday nine A.M. with Patti D/Moulin!! cafe in Laguna.

Gale notes Tarlow’s neat draftsman’s printing, and in the exclamation marks, feels the man’s giddy optimism.

Circles back.

October 1:

Norris/noon/Newport house

No exclamations.

But there she is, Gale thinks. Norris, from the championship heavyweight fight in Las Vegas three years back — the woman who had been easing in and out of Gale’s thoughts since Tarlow was identified as the apparent victim of a mountain lion attack.

October 7:

Dad lunch 1/Rothschild’s

Classy place, Gale thinks.

October 8:

Elder/office

Next comes the money shot — Thursday, October 10 — the day of his death:

Hair/Ong/4

Vern/6/Newport

Gale surmises that Bennet Tarlow got his wavy blond hair cut the day he was murdered by someone he very likely trusted. Jimmy Ong was a well-known hair stylist with a swank salon in Newport Center.

But it looks like “Vern” might well have been with Tarlow for at least part of the night he died. Vern, whom Gale doesn’t know and badly wants to.

He searches the calendar back through September, finding a September 27 entry that hadn’t caught his attention the first time through. There he is again, clear as day:

September 27:

Vern/Muldoon’s/10

“Wildcoast is really something,” says Mendez. “It reminds me of Stepford but I don’t know why.”

But Gale says nothing, lost in Bennet Tarlow’s last days.

He scans ahead through October, hoping for something to catch his eye, but nothing pops.

Back to September, he sees nothing unusual or repetitious.

Gale thinks how odd it is to compare a person’s plans before and after their life is over. How similar they are. Some identical. Rights and rituals. Friends and lovers. Why is that odd, though? Because of the grim irony that Tarlow had made every one of these entries in his own neat hand, and probably consulted this calendar pretty much every morning, watching his future line up to greet him day by day and week by week? Then a detour, accompanied by someone Tarlow trusted. At night. A very big owl photographed in a tree. Twenty-six exposures, then a sudden surprise.

Too sudden for fear, bitterness, or regret.

The same surprise he had sprung on nine men in Afghanistan, utterly unaware of their pasts or futures.

He rises and uses his phone to shoot all twelve months of the calendar’s year.

Standing beside Daniela now, he looks down on the brightly lit drafting table, which holds not drawings at all, but a miniaturized model of Wildcoast, complete with tiny adobe homes, handsome beam-and-stone retail buildings, and a city hall promenade and parking lot shaded by solar panels framed by drought-tolerant cacti and succulents. Beyond are groves of oranges and avocados. The streets are pale gray; the green street signs look hand-painted.

Gale is struck by the craftsmanship, the construction of this thing. The patience that went into it.

“All built by Tarlow’s own hand, I assume,” says Mendez. “Think of all the hours. I’m surprised he did his drafting and model building at home. Isn’t that what a high-rise office is for? All that good natural light?”

From a heavy black notebook chained to the model table, Gale reads the introductory text, lets his eyes roam the model town. Notes the wood-and-glass civic center on Main, the dozens of cul-de-sacs in the rolling hills studded with adobe houses, the fashionable Craftsman homes, the pale blue community pools, the solar-tile roofing on the industrial buildings, the big greenbelts left to native plants and grasses and trees — all faithfully created by hand, Gale thinks.

I build bows and arrows by hand, Gale thinks. Baskets. Bennet Tarlow builds a miniature city by hand. And is getting ready to build the real thing...

There’s even a centerpiece lake in a very large public park, marked by a pin in its center, which the heavy notebook tells him will be filled with on-site natural groundwater.

“Okay, Lew,” says Mendez. “It’s time for the Thursday calendar reveal.”

“A haircut and a guy named Vern,” he says.

An almost pitying look brushes Mendez’s hard, trim face. “Nothing with one of his hotties?”

“Unless her name is Vern,” Gale says.

“Vern sounds like a guy who drives an old white Econoline,” says Mendez.

A beat of silence.

“Some things you don’t put on your calendar,” says Gale. “You’re looking so forward to it, you don’t need to write it down. You’ve done it before. You wouldn’t forget.”

Tarlow’s computer comes to life when Gale hits the space bar. He’s surprised that a developer of multibillion projects is lax enough to leave his home computer asleep and password unprotected.

He reads Bennet Tarlow’s latest emails; calls up his printer history — nothing catches his interest; then scrolls down through Tarlow’s Google favorites: National Weather Service; Los Angeles Times and New York Times; Amazon; United Bank Swiss; Wells Fargo; Orangecounty.gov; California.gov; his district’s house representative; both California senators.

He shuts down the computer and peripherals, then loads them into his white take-home Explorer, bound for the OCSD property room.

The blinds in Tarlow’s master bedroom are open, and Gale looks out at the orange trees and the empty birdbaths and seed feeders and the bright hummingbird stations without sugar water. A few hummingbirds cruise the empty feeders. Two doves and a towhee peck the ground for spillage; finches on the spent seed feeders look annoyed.

Bennet Tarlow and his birds, thinks Gale.

Here in the bedroom, there’s a musty, sheets-might-need-to-be-washed scent. The bed is unmade and appears to have hosted a fitful sleeper. Or two?

Gale dials Tarlow’s cell number again but gets the same silence.

The en suite bath, open through a wide barn door, exhales the light of pale green tile inside.

Gale turns on the lights.

The detectives stand in the cool room, just looking.

Gale notes the nightstands on either side of the king bed: a clock on one, lamps and books on both, no cell phone.

He really wants the damned cell phone.

But he’s pretty sure the killer took it, because the killer is in that phone. Somewhere in all those bits and bytes, he’s in there. And he knows it.

There’s a robe thrown over a leather armchair and Gale checks the two deep, empty pockets.

He takes pictures. Macro shots, just to give him the general shape of things he might need to know later.

Mendez, too, video.

The high but narrow cedar dresser is dusty. Gale wonders why a billionaire doesn’t have a cleaning service.

No pictures on the dresser. Gale opens the drawers, top to bottom: socks top, underpants next, T-shirts, then sweaters.

The built-in closets have the suits, dress shirts, trousers, jeans, neckties, belts, outerwear, boots, and shoes. It seems like a modest enough wardrobe for a rich and single young man who likes the ladies.

The bathroom suite has dark blue tile walls with tropical birds in reds and yellows and greens. A big shower with nozzles at both ends and a black bath towel slung over the sliding door.

There’s a dated oak countertop and twin sinks.

Mendez opens the four under-sink cabinets one at a time, says nothing.

Gale smells the familiar, high-pitched scent of Irish Spring soap and notes the bar in the dish. His dad used it when Gale was a boy, probably still does. Gale wonders why a billionaire doesn’t have upscale soap. Hell, he thinks: Maybe he just likes Irish Spring.

One neighbor saw Tarlow getting into his new Suburban the last morning of his life, around seven. She was walking her dog. No, she’d never seen an old white Econoline van in Tarlow’s driveway or on the street by his house. This is just horrible. Do you have the suspect yet?

Another neighbor says he’d only seen Tarlow a few times since moving here, six months ago. The morning they met, Tarlow was out in his front yard in an Adirondack chair, reading a real paper newspaper, not his phone. Last time? Couldn’t say. White Econoline? Nope.

A third neighbor would see Tarlow coming and going now and then, early mornings and evenings. Not on the evening in question. No white Econoline van. This neighbor had thrown a Fourth of July party two years ago and “the developer” had come and stayed just long enough to watch the fireworks show off Main Beach. Tarlow was with a pretty redhead in a white dress and a white floppy hat. Didn’t introduce us.

Norris strikes again?

Gale still can’t remember her last name, if he ever knew it to begin with.

Maybe in the emails, he hopes.

“Let’s get our loot to the lab,” says Mendez. “Then we can ransack Tarlow’s Newport Beach palace.”