for a midnight prowl?
A white Oakland police cruiser stood in front of the Kleiner Mansion, its roof lights flashing.
Lindsey parked his Hyundai beside the cruiser and scampered up the front steps of the mansion, patting his pockets to make sure that he had his notebook and pencil with him.
The Kleiner Mansion had a broad Victorian veranda. A uniformed Oakland police officer was talking with a man and two women, asking them questions and jotting down their responses.
When Lindsey approached, the cop turned. “Who are you?”
Lindsey introduced himself, handed each of the others his business card.
The cop studied the card, then Lindsey, then the card once more. Lindsey was wearing a heavy sweater over a cotton shirt and slacks. He hadn’t changed before leaving Walnut Creek. Maybe he should have, he thought, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
“Okay, Mr. Lindsey. Your company carries the policy on the Duesenberg?”
Lindsey nodded. The cop had a tan, Hispanic face with high cheekbones, dark liquid eyes, heavy black eyebrows and a thick handlebar moustache. His speech was unaccented.
“You can get a copy of the police report sometime Monday, but I don’t suppose you want to wait that long to get involved, do you?”
Lindsey shook his head.
“Okay. This is Ms. Smith. She’s the resident manager of the Kleiner Mansion. And Mr. and Mrs. van Arndt, of the New California Smart Set. I’m headed out of here. And you might as well have one of mine.” He handed Lindsey a business card. It read, Oscar Gutiérrez, Oakland Police Department, and it had a phone number on it.
Lindsey slid the card into his pocket organizer and looked up to see the police cruiser pull out of the Kleiner Mansion driveway. Gutiérrez was gone.
“Mr. van Arndt, Mrs. van Arndt, Ms. Smith—maybe we should step inside and you can give me some facts.”
“Don’t you want to look at the scene first?” van Arndt spoke. He was a tall man, taller than Lindsey by several inches. He wore an old-fashioned tuxedo with silken lapels and a wing-collar shirt and a bow tie that looked as if he’d tied it himself. His hair was parted just off center, slicked back with a glossy substance that shimmered in the lights that surrounded Lake Merritt. His upper lip bore a pencil-thin moustache. He looked a little bit like Mandrake the Magician.
“Look at the scene?”
“The scene of the crime! Come on, man, don’t you realize what’s happened?”
Lindsey was taken aback. “Of course I realize what’s happened. You car was stolen.”
“Not exactly my car. I drive a 1946 Ford Sportsman. But yes, the Dusie was stolen from right there. Wasn’t it, Wally m’dear?” He pointed to a spot near Lindsey’s Hyundai, managing to turn his head simultaneously toward the woman who stood beside him.
She was several inches shorter than her husband, even in heels. She wore her light brown hair short, a band circling her forehead and a feather rising from behind her head. Her dress was clasped at both shoulders and was draped in champagne colored folds—at least as far as Lindsey could tell by the lights on the mansion’s veranda.
“We’ve been over the ground, Ollie darling.”
Lindsey noticed that she was swaying slightly, and held a half-empty martini glass in one hand. She wore rings on several fingers, and they did not have the look of costume jewelry.
Still, it might be a good idea, and it couldn’t hurt. “Would you show me, Mrs. van Arndt?”
The woman giggled and took Lindsey’s hand. She swayed against him, making her way down the steps of the mansion. She led him to a spot on the gravelled driveway. It swung in a U-shaped loop off Lakeside Drive. There wasn’t much traffic on the drive, this time of night, but a pair of headlights swept past every so often, glaring like the eyes of a great supernatural beast.
The air was chilly and moist. Lindsey’s breath—and Mrs. van Arndt’s—clouded before them. Beyond the mansion, a low bank of fog hung just above the surface of the lake.
“I don’t see anything,” Lindsey said. The driveway was covered with a thick layer of gravel. It would show tire tracks, to a certain extent, but it would hold little if any detail. “Do you know what time the car was taken?”
“What time is it now?” Can you see my little watch, Mr. Lincoln?”
“Lindsey.”
“Can you?” She stood close to him, her shoulders pulled back and chest pushed forward so he could see the old-fashioned timepiece pinned to her bodice. Her hands hung at her sides, one of them holding the martini glass. A few drops splashed on the gravel.
“Wally? Yoo-hoo, Wallis!”
“That’s me,” Mrs. van Arndt giggled. “Ollie must be getting anxious. Have you seen enough, Mr. Lipton?”
“Not much to see here. Let’s go back.”
She took his hand and pulled him along toward the mansion. “Ollie isn’t really so jealous, he just likes to keep an eye on me. We have the same birthday, you know. That’s how we met. I mean, we met at Antibes, have you ever been to Antibes?”
Lindsey hadn’t.
“Well, don’t bother, it’s ruined now. But it used to be wonderful. Ollie and I were both there on vacation and we discovered that we had the same birthday, even the same year. It seemed we were fated for each other. Our parents even named us for famous people. He’s named for Oliver Wendell Holmes. My name was Wallis Warfield Simpson Stanley. Now we’re Ollie and Wally van Arndt.”
She swayed up the steps, still dragging Lindsey by the hand. He was happy to transfer custody back to her husband. They went inside the mansion. The entrance featured a cloak room the size of Lindsey’s house. They passed through it into a huge, high-ceilinged room lighted by electrified chandeliers. The furnishings looked more Victorian than Art Deco. A handful of men and women stood around in period costumes, looking like refugees from a stage production of The Great Gatsby. One exception to the tuxedo-and-gown set was a black man in a World War II era uniform. He sat slouched in a period chair, the sleeves of his olive drab Ike jacket marked with a tech sergeant’s chevrons. A row of service ribbons were pinned above the jacket pocket. He appeared to be dozing.
A white-covered table bearing the decimated remains of a buffet meal stood at one end of the of the room; a deserted bandstand, at the other.
“This was our annual 1929 gala,” van Arndt said.
“Where did everybody go?”
“When the Dusie was stolen—well, a few wanted to keep the party rolling, but it just put such a damper on, it fizzled.”
“Did anyone see the car taken?”
“Joe Roberts did.”
“He still here?”
“No. He was too upset to stay. He’s our youngest member, too.
