Two months after her murder, Ashmore found the file and tried to use it too.
Greedy, despite his million-dollar grant.
I thought of the Ferris Dixon money. Way too much for what Ashmore claimed to be doing with it. Why had the largesse of a chemical
foundation extended ~o a man who criticized chemical companies? A foundation no one seemed to know much about, supposedly dedicated to life-science research, but its only other grantee was an economist.
The elusive Professor Zimberg... the sound-alike secretaries at his office and Ferris Dixon.
Some kind of game...
The waltz.
Maybe Ashmore and Herbert had worked dzfjerent angles.
He, leaning on Chuck Jones because he'd latched on to a financial scam.
She, trying to milk Chip and Cindy on the child-abuse secret.
Two blackmailers operating out of one lab?
I worked with it a while longer.
Money and death, dollars and science.
I couldn't get it to mesh.
The parking meter's red VIOLATION flag popped up like toast. I looked at my watch. Just after noon. Over two hours until my appointment with Cassie and mommy.
In the meantime, why not a visit with daddy?
I used a pay phone in the administration building to call West Valley Community College and get directions.
Forty-five-minute drive, if traffic was thin. leaving the campus and heading north, I turned west on Sunset and got onto the 405.
At the interchange I transferred to the Ventura Freeway, drove toward the western end of the Valley, and got off at Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
The northward cruise took me through a commercial crosssection: upscale shopping plazas still pretending trickle-down economics was working, shabby storefront businesses that had never believed it in the first place, insta-bilt strip malls without any ideological underpinnings.
Up above Nordhoff, the street turned residential and I was treated to a lean stretch of budget-box apartments and motor courts, condo complexes plastered with happy-talk banners. A few citrus groves and U-pick farms had resisted progress. Essences of manure, petroleum, and lemon leaves mingled, not quite masking the burntsupper smell of simmering dust.
I drove to the Santa Susanna Pass, but the road was closed for no apparent reason and blockaded by CalTrans barriers. I kept going to the end of Topanga, where a jumble of freeway overpasses butted up against the mountains. Off to the right a group of sleek women cantered on beautiful horses. Some of the riders wore fox- hunting garb; all looked content.
I found the I-18 on-ramp within the concrete pretzel, traveled west for a few miles, and got off on a brand- new exit marked COLLEGE ROAD.
West Valley C.C. was a half-mile up-the only thing in sight.
Nothing at all like the campus I'd just left. This one was announced by a huge, near-empty parking lot. Beyond that, a series of one-story prefab bungalows and trailers were distributed gracelessly over a ten-acre patchwork of concrete and dirt. The landscaping was tentative, unsuccessful in places. A sprinkling of students walked on plain-wrap concrete pathways.
I got our and made my way to the nearest trailer. The midday sun cast a tinfoil glare over the Valley and I had to squint. Most of the students were walking alone. Very little conversation filtered through the heat.
After a series of false starts, I managed to locate someone who could cell me where Sociology was. Bungalows 3A through 3F.
