operated to give more effective silencing.
The house doors had all been locked—that was done by a single switch—and there'd been no forced entry. But a reasonably agile gunman would have had no trouble getting in through the window, which had been open. A moment's discomfort—the insect screen had been electronic—but no actual difficulty. Climb the encina oak in the side yard, walk out on a massive limb, then step off on the first-floor roof and walk to Ashkenazi's bedroom window.
I talked to the servants, a middle-aged Hispanic couple whose English was more fluent than my Spanish. At about 5:20, Mr. Ashkenazi had told Mrs. Ruiz he was going to eat supper out, something he did occasionally, but almost never without giving her a lot longer notice. He'd seemed quite cheerful. 'Mr. Ashkenazi was a very nice man,' she added. Then her face crumpled, and I waited till she'd had a brief cry. He'd left the house about 5:30 and returned at 7:28; she'd looked at the clock when she heard him come in.
'Did you notice if he seemed well?'
'Well? I don' know. I didn' actually see him. But I heard him talkin' to his
I made two working assumptions. One, that the supper date had somehow been connected with Ashkenazi's death. And two, that the date had been arranged very shortly before he told Mrs. Ruiz.
When she calmed down again, I asked: 'Did he have any company today?'
It was Mr. Ruiz who answered this time. 'No sir. He didn' have no visitors since you the other day.'
That made the supper date doubly suspicious. He must have eaten somewhere fairly near, though, to have left at 5:30 and gotten back at 7:28. But there are a lot of restaurants between, say, Santa Barbara and Ventura.
After a few more questions, we left. As we drove back to Santa Barbara, I found my attention going to two people: Veronica Ashley and Donald Pasco, two unlikely suspects. Presumably Veronica was more or less Ashkenazi's age, and I couldn't imagine a woman of, say 55 or 60 years climbing that encina. As far as that was concerned, I couldn't picture Pasco doing it either, and anyway he'd been in jail by then. Following that line of reasoning, the gunman must have been a hired professional, and it occurred to me the supper date might have been to get the gunman onto the property.
But that really didn't make sense, and anyway it
I decided I'd better sleep on it.
11
I woke up the next morning knowing what I had to do. Not
Meanwhile there was the matter of breakfast. The night before, when I'd arrived back at the Larchmont Station, I'd stopped at a Nielsen's, bought a half gallon of butter brickle, went home and binged out. So to partly make up for it, I had fat-free cottage cheese for breakfast, with Rye Krisp, carrot sticks, and black coffee. My low- fat, high-protein penance. Then, having halfway atoned for the binge, I went to the office and accessed the state's data on Veronica Ashley.
It started with her current address and phone number, then got into more personal stuff. She'd been born Veronica Sue Pipolli, on 10 November 1950, in Culver City. An Angelena all the way. Married Eldon Robert Ashley on 21 March 1972, received her BS in biology
Her father had died in an auto accident in October '75, her mother in the Great Flu in December '99.
She had memberships in Phi Kappa Phi, which given her scholastic record was no surprise. And the Church of God in Science, which Ashkenazi had already told me.
And Veronica Ashley had a criminal record! Not much of a record—a misdemeanor: disturbing the peace. Specifically, blocking the entrance of a church and interfering with worship during a demonstration outside a Church of the New Gnosis in West L.A., in June 2006. The New Gnus were supposedly into psychic practices. In August '09 she'd been detained, then released without charge, after allegedly throwing rotten eggs at windows and doors of the Hollywood Hilton, and at security officers, during a demonstration against an International Conference of Parapsychologists.
So Veronica was not only a COGS. She was an activist member. Whatever malice she may have felt for her brother-in-law earlier, his new astrology must have pushed her buttons pretty hard.
I figured to go talk to her, and to Eldon if he seemed mentally functional. But just now she'd be at work, so it was time to follow up on the only real lead I had, thin though it seemed. Data Center got me the record of the previous day's phone traffic to and from Ashkenazi's residence. There almost wasn't any: Two calls received through his answering service, and one on the direct line. That one was made from a Dairy Delite in Ventura, at 5:14 p.m. The timing fitted perfectly, though Dairy Delites weren't the kind of place at which I pictured Ashkenazi eating.
I keyed directory assistance, and a page came onto my screen. There was only one Dairy Delite in Ventura, the cursor flashing beside it. The number didn't match the one on the list of phones, but that was no surprise. The call to Ashkenazi would have been from their pay phone.
I memorized the address without trying, a matter of simply intending to remember. It's a knack I have that's a lot handier than writing everything down. Next, accessing the Data Center again, I got color copies of the photos from Veronica's and Ashkenazi's driver's licenses. Finally I called the Ventura Dairy Delite number, which got me an order girl, as I'd expected. I asked her who worked the cash register weekdays at suppertime. The manager did, she told me. He came in at noon and usually stayed till 9 or 10.
Carlos had looked in while I was on the line to Ventura, so I went to see what he wanted. He'd had a call from an Inspector Zebriski in Sacramento, Sergeant Luciano's big boss. The DNA print from the semen was Pasco's. The district attorney said they had an ironclad case. The inspector was very happy with Prudential, which of course could mean future business for us, and reflected back on me. I could have that. I didn't plan to be a junior investigator all my life.
