Free Dream House by Rochelle Krich Page A

house
is
in Hancock Park.”
    What Linney had said, plus a measure of disdain. “Mr. Reston put the house up for sale?”
    “Three months ago, a month before the Muirfield house was finished. The Professor was devastated. He didn't want strangers living in his house. But of course, Hank couldn't let him live there alone, even with a caretaker. I promised the Professor I'd screen the buyers carefully. It's in my best interests. I want nice neighbors.” Bolt smiled.
    “You're with Central Realty?” That was the name I'd seen on the For Sale sign.
    He nodded. “It's a beautiful house— Well, it was, before the fire. I've been keeping an eye on it, making sure the gardener does a good job, letting the housekeeper in to clean the place every week. It was in immaculate condition and everything was the original work—the tile, the fireplace, the hardware, the moldings. But it's a hard sell, because of Margaret's disappearance.”
    This was the sad story. I vaguely recalled reading about a woman's disappearance in a police report a while back, but the reports I get are sanitized and don't have names. And in a large city like L.A., people often disappear, often voluntarily. “I don't remember seeing media coverage about it.”
    “There were a few write-ups in the papers, and something on the local TV news. There would have been more, but a little girl went missing, so that took over. But by law we're required to tell potential buyers something like that, especially since it looks like Margaret was kidnapped from the house. At the first two open houses, most of the people who stopped by were from the neighborhood. They weren't interested in buying. They just wanted to snoop. Vultures.” Tim sniffed.
    “What happened to Margaret?”
    “One day I saw her working in her garden. The next morning she was gone. Just like that.” He was looking somewhere else, not at me, probably lost in the memory. “There were signs of a struggle in her bedroom. And the police found her car at a mall, and her blood.”
    “Did she seem different that day?”
    “I didn't think so at the time. That morning she dropped off a book I'd asked to borrow, and then I showed her a lithograph I just bought. She paints, so I value her opinion. She couldn't stay, though, because she had a busy day ahead of her. Later, when the police asked me, I realized she was tense. But I have no idea why.”
    “When did she disappear, exactly?”
    “It'll be five months this Wednesday, November twelfth. The police think she's dead, but her husband hired a detective. He told me he won't give up till he finds her. Dead
or
alive,” Tim added.
    “Where was he when Margaret disappeared?”
    “Out of town, on business.”
    A flicker of disapproval flitted across his face so quickly that I almost missed it. Reston had been out of town Friday night, too. I wondered if the police would find that as interesting as I did. I flashed to Scott Peterson, who had beseeched the public to help him find his missing eight-months-pregnant wife, Laci, and was now awaiting trial for her murder.
    “What about Professor Linney?”
    “He was asleep for the night, and in the morning, Margaret was gone. He blamed himself.” Tim sighed. “I kept telling him he couldn't have saved her. And if he'd tried, he probably would've been killed.”
    And now he was dead anyway. When trouble comes, Bubbie G says, it often doesn't come alone. “Who reported her missing?”
    “I did,” Bolt said, somber. “The Professor pounded on my door at six in the morning. He couldn't find Margaret, her room was a mess, he was afraid something had happened to her. He wasn't making sense, and I thought she'd run to the market or something. But then I saw the bedroom.” He grimaced, as though he were reliving the discovery.
    “No one on the block heard anything? No one saw any strange people or cars that didn't belong?”
    Tim shook his head. “It happened in the middle of the night. Margaret kept her car