The Postcard Killers

    Jacob sat in his car for a moment studying the surroundings. While he had been cruising the streets of Montecito, he realized that this whole area was a playground for the wealthy and famous. Many of the houses were showy mansions built in a faux Mediterranean-style, with ornate gates and colorful bougainvillea.

    This one was different, though.

    The walls were several feet high, unwelcoming, granite gray. They stretched as far as he could see up toward the hills. They protected the house and grounds so well that he had no idea what might be on the other side. The Mansion, my ass. More like the Fortress. To protect what secrets?

    He got out of the car and went up to the phone to the left of the gate.

“Sн?” a crackling voice said.

    So it wasn’t entirely uninhabited.

“Hola,” Jacob said. “Speak English?” He had many good qualities, but a talent for languages wasn’t one of them.

    “Sн. Yes.”

    “Jacob Kanon, NYPD. New York City police. I’d like to ask a few questions about the Rudolph family. It’s important that I speak to someone.”

    “Can you hold your ID up to the camera beside the phone?”

    Opening his wallet, Jacob pulled out his badge and held it up to the camera.

    “Come in!” the crackling voice said, and the tall gates started to glide apart.

   A small Tudor-style gatekeeper’s lodge was situated some fifty yards in on the left. The door opened and an elderly man limped out onto the drive. Jacob stopped the car again and climbed out.

    “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting,” the man said, holding his hand out and saying that he was Carlos Rodrнguez.

    “What for?” Jacob said, surprised.

    The man hastily crossed himself. “The killing of Mr. Simon and Mrs. Helen has been unsolved for too long! It is like a heavy weight I carry.”

    “So you knew the Rudolphs?” Jacob asked.

    “Knew?” Carlos Rodrнguez exclaimed. “I’ve been the gardener here for more than thirty years. I was here the night it happened. I called the police.”

Chapter 104

    CARLOS RODRНGUEZ AND HIS wife, Carmela, had lived in the small gatekeeper’s lodge at the Mansion ever since he returned from the Vietnam War in the spring of 1975. Both of their children had grown up there.

    “Children are the future,” Rodrнguez said. “Do you have children?”

    “No,” Jacob said, putting his ID back in his wallet. “But I’m interested in the Rudolphs’ children. What happened to them after the murder?”

    The gardener sucked his teeth.

    “The twins were looked after by Seсor Blython,” he said. “He took them down to Los Angeles, to the big house he bought in Beverly Hills.”

    The man moved closer to Jacob and lowered his voice, as if someone might overhear him.

    “Seсorita and Junior didn’t really want to move,” he said. “They wanted to stay in their house here, but it was up to Seсor Blython to decide. He was their legal guardian, after all.”

    “Who owns this place these days?” Jacob asked.

    He remembered that Lyndon said it had been in the hands of a bankruptcy agency.

    Rodrнguez’s face darkened.

    “The children inherited it, along with everything else: paintings, jewelry, stock shares, and small businesses. Seсor Blython was charged with managing these assets until the children were twenty-one. But when that day came, the money was gone.”

    Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Their guardian defrauded them?”

    “He took every last penny. The house was sold at an executive auction. The company that bought it was going to turn it into a conference center. But they went bankrupt in the financial crisis.”

    “What did Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph say about what happened?”

    The man’s gaze wavered.

    “They couldn’t stay on at UCLA. There was no money, not even for the fees. So they had to get jobs. But they managed,” he said. “They’re very resourceful.”

    Jacob’s jaw tightened. If the old man only knew.

    “When did you last see them?” he asked.

    Carlos Rodrнguez didn’t need to think about the answer. “The weekend before the house was sold at auction,” he said. “They came to collect a few mementos, photo albums and things like that.”

    “They were both here?”

    “And Sandra,” the gardener said. “Sandra Schulman, Sylvia’s best friend. They only stayed a few hours on that last visit, and then they left, in the middle of the night…”

    “And then Seсor Blython was murdered,” Jacob said.

    Carlos Rodrнguez snorted.

    “If you hang around with putas in Los Angeles…,” he said. Jacob nodded and let the subject drop. The gardener had told him more than he had expected.

    “The main building,” he said, “is it still here?”

    Carlos Rodrнguez’s face broke into a smile again.

    “Pero claro que sн! I’m not formally employed anymore, of course. I get a little from the bank. Mostly we live on my pension. But I look after the Mansion.”

    “Could you show me around?” Jacob asked.

    “Sн, claro! Of course I can.”

Chapter 105

    LYNDON WAS RIGHT.