"Where are you going?"
"To Vanessa's house. I don't think I feel comfortable with the cops seeing that diary before we do."
"Let me know what you find."
Stone headed for the door.
Chapter 54
Stone drove slowly up Vanessa's street and down again, making sure that nobody from the police or fire departments was at the site. Satisfied, he parked across the street and got out of the car.
The house was a sad shell, with most of the roof gone and with large gaps in the walls. He ducked under the yellow police tape and stepped through one of the gaps into what had been the living room. The acrid smell of burned dwelling filled his nostrils, and with a shudder, he thought he detected a faint whiff of seared meat. A few charred sticks of what had been furniture remained in the room and the remains the sofa were recognizable. He recalled that he and Vanessa had sat there, sipping their drinks and talking, no more than an hour before she had died.
He walked on a runner of plastic sheeting that had been placed there like a sidewalk by the fire department investigators, to avoid disturbing evidence. As he moved through the rooms he noticed that the ash around him had a smooth surface, and telltale marks showed that the debris had been raked, in search of evidence. If anything were left of Vanessa's diary, which he doubted, then the investigators would surely have found it. His trip here had been for naught. Her purse and the diary had probably been in the kitchen, and there was no longer a kitchen.
Then he turned and saw something he hadn't seen before: the garage. He hadn't seen it, because on his last visit, the house had been in the way, but now he could look through a giant, charred hole and see the little building. It seemed older than the house, or maybe it had just not been updated over the years, the way the house had been. It looked like something out of the twenties, a meager, clapboard structure with two doors, the old-fashioned kind that featured a brass handle in the middle of the door. One turned the handle, lifted, and the door rose. Surely electric openers would have been added by this time.
He tried the doors. The first didn't move, but the second operated as it had been designed to. It took some effort, but he got the door halfway open and stepped under it. He tried a light switch on the wall, but nothing happened. The power had either been interrupted by the fire or turned off by the fire department.
A single car, a Mazda Miata, was in the garage. It was red, small, and cute, and he reflected that Vanessa would have looked good in it, her hair blowing in the wind. The top was up, and he tried the passenger door: locked. He walked around the car and tried the drivers door, with success. He found the trunk release and popped the lid. There was a spare, flat, and the jack, and an old pair of sneakers-nothing else.
He went back to the driver's door and tried to sit in the seat, but found himself jammed, until he could locate the release and move the seat backward. The courtesy lights illuminated the interior, and he looked around.
Women made a terrible mess of cars, he thought. The most fastidious woman seemed unable to avoid the buildup of used Kleenex, fast-food wrappers, and old paper cups in her automobile. He checked the tiny glove compartment, which held only a couple of parking tickets and a lipstick tube. There were some road maps in a door pocket, and nothing behind the sun visors. He got out of the car, and as he did moved the driver's seat forward and checked behind it. Nothing there. He reached across and felt behind the passenger seat, and he came in contact with something made of canvas.
He reached over, unlocked the passenger door from the inside, then walked around the car and opened the door. He moved the seat forward and extracted a beat-up canvas carryall bearing the logo of a bookstore chain. He set it on top of the car and checked its contents. Inside was a thick book on interior design, a wrinkled bikini, a bottle of suntan lotion, and a leather-covered book with a binding flap that ended in a brass tip secured by a tiny lock. Stamped on the front of the book, in gilded letters, was "My Diary." If the cops had thought to search the car, they had done a lousy job, Stone thought. He tried opening it, but the lock held.
He put the carryall back where he had found it, closed the car doors, returned the garage door to its original position, and walked back to his car. He was tempted to try to open the diary here, but he decided it might be best to do it elsewhere. He drove back to Marc Blumberg's building.
He walked into Marc's office, smiling, holding up the leather diary.
Marc took it and turned it over in his hands. "It's not burned at all," he said.
"It wasn't in the house," Stone replied. "I found it in her car, in the garage."
"Can you pick a lock, or shall I pry it open?" Marc asked.
"Hang on a minute; what's our legal position? I took this from her car with nobody's permission. Given that, do we want to break into it?"
"We can open it with the permission of her executor," Marc said.
"Do you know who he is?"
Marc grinned. "You're looking at him. Here's a paper clip."
Stone straightened the wire and began probing the lock. It was simple; one turn and it was open. He set the diary on Marc's desk and began flipping pages, while the two of them bent over it.
"Funny, I don't recognize any names," Marc said. "We knew a lot of the same people."
"Maybe she's giving people code names; if somebody got into the diary, it might save embarrassment."
"Let's start at the end and work backward," Marc said. They began reading; Vanessa had written in a small, but very legible, hand.
"Look, in the last entry she says she's going to Palm Springs to 'Herbert's' house. I wonder why she called me Herbert?"
"I guess you just look like a Herbert, Marc."
"Yeah." He flipped back further in the book. "There's mention here of a Hilda, quite often. Think that could be Beverly?"