turned east on Sunset, and headed for Hollywood.
I reached Beverly Hills within minutes and passed Whittier Drive
without slowing. Something on the opposite side of the boulevard
caught my eye: White Cutlass, coming from the east. It turned onto
Whittier and headed up the 900 block.
At the first break in the median, I hung a U. By the time I reached the
big Georgian house, the Olds was parked in the same place I’d seen it
yesterday and a black woman was stepping out on the driver’s side.
She was young-late twenties or early thirties-short and slim.
She had on a gray cotton turtleneck, black ankle-length skirt, and
black flats. In one hand was a Bullock’s bag; in the other, a brown
leather purse.
Probably the housekeeper. Out doing a department store errand for
Ashmore’s grieving widow.
As she turned toward the house she saw me. I smiled. She gave me a
quizzical look and began walking over slowly, with a short, light
step.
As she got closer I saw she was very pretty, her skin so dark it was
almost blue. Her face was round, bottomed by a square chin; her
features clean and broad like those of a Nubian mask. large, searching
eyes focused straight at me.
“Hello. Are you from the hospital?” British accent, publicschool
refined.
“Yes,” I said, surprised, then realized she was looking at the badge on
my lapel..
Her eyes blinked, then opened. Irises in two shades of brownmahogany
in the center, walnut rims.
Pink at the periphery. She’d been crying. Her mouth quivered a bit.
“It’s very kind of you to come,” she said.
Alex Delaware,” I said, extending my hand out the drivers window. She
put the shopping bag on the grass and took it. Her hand was narrow and
dry and very cold.
Anna Ashmore. I didn’t expect anyone so soon.”
Feeling stupid about my assumptions, I said, “I didn’t know Dr.
Ashmore personally, but I did want to pay my respects.”
She let her hand drop. Somewhere in the distance a lawn mower
belched.
“There’s no formal service. My husband wasn’t religious.”
She turned toward the big house. “Would you like to come in?”
The entry hall was two stories of cream plaster floored with black
marble. A beautiful brass banister and marble stairs twisted upward to
the second story. To the right, a large yellow dining room gleamed
with dark, fluid Art Nuuveau furniture that the real housekeeper was
polishing. Art filled the wall behind the stairs, too-a mix of
contemporary paintings and African batiks. Past the staircase, a short
foyer led to glass doors that framed a California postcard: green lawn,
blue pool sun-splashed silver, white cabanas behind a trellised
colonnade, hedges and flower beds under the fluctuating shade of more
specimen trees. Scrambling over the tiles of the cabana roof was a
splash of scarlet the bougainvillea I’d seen from the street.
The maid came out of the dining room and took Mrs. Ashmore’s bag.
Anna Ashmore thanked her, then pointed left, to a living room twice the
size of the dining room, sunk two steps down.
“Please,” she said, descending, and flipping a switch that ignited
several floor lamps.
A black grand piano claimed one corner. The east wall was mostly tall,
shuttered windows that let in knife-blades of light. The floors were
blond planks under black-and-rust Persian rugs. A coffered white
ceiling hovered over apricot plaster walls. More art: the same mix of
oils and fabric. I thought I spotted a Hockney over the granite
mantel.
The room was chilly and filled with furniture that looked straight out
of the Design Center. White Italian suede sofas, a black Breuer chair,
big, pockmarked post-Neanderthal stone tables, and a few smaller ones
fashioned of convoluted brass rods and topped with blue-tinted glass.
One of the stone tables fronted the largest of the sofas. Centered on
it was a rosewood bowl filled with apples and oranges.
Mrs. Ashmore said, “Please,” again, and I sat down directly behind the
fruit.
“Can I offer you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
She settled directly in front of me, straight and silent.
In the time it had taken to walk from the entry, her eyes had filled