Diamond in the Buff by Susan Dunlap Page B

thought of Kris Mouskavachi, the charming Kathmandu wheeler-dealer. “What did you talk about with Kris?”
    “Nothing. I was going to bed. He clearly wasn’t.”
    “Do you know what time he did go to bed?”
    All four fingers now tapped. “How would I? My bedroom’s upstairs. I wouldn’t hear him walk out onto the deck.”
    “So he slept on the deck,” I prompted.
    “Always,” he snapped. “He always slept on the deck.”
    “Why?”
    “He liked it. I gave him a room upstairs. My best guest room. He said it was bigger than his family’s living room. He said he loved it. But he never slept up there. He said he liked sleeping outside. Said it reminded him of being on an expedition.” His fingers knotted into a fist.
    “Dr. Diamond, had Kris gotten any threatening calls, or even any odd calls? Did he have any friends who might have—”
    He slammed his fist into his thigh and glared directly at me. “Why do you waste your time asking about Kris? It’s me she tried to kill!”

11
    I DIDN’T HAVE TO ask who the “she” was Diamond was accusing of trying to murder him.
    I did ask, of course. According to him, Leila Sandoval must have seen a figure sleeping under a blanket on the chaise lounge, the very chaise on which Diamond habitually sat. Naturally assuming the body was his, she had opened the gate and given the chaise a shove. Diamond said that he was in the habit of keeping a blanket next to him on the chaise lounge, in case the sun went in. He could get cold, he had reminded me. And recalling his epidermal state when sunbathing, I couldn’t help but agree.
    There were nights, after parties, he went on, when he had fallen asleep out there. Recalling Pereira’s description of those parties (the social equivalent of Mr. Kepple’s mower, blower, and electric seed sower?) and the neighbors’ complaints, I could imagine Diamond falling asleep, or more likely passing out on the chaise. According to him, he had only ceased sleeping there when Kris took over the spot. And that, he added, was not something Leila Sandoval was likely to notice, particularly since, as even I must have realized, Sandoval hadn’t been home much lately. He had actually raised his head to watch my reaction when he added that Leila Sandoval wouldn’t have minded if she had failed to kill him, as long as she managed to make him a laughing stock and ruin Bev Zagoya’s reception this morning. “Which she did!” he had concluded with a grisly sort of triumph.
    I sat a moment looking across the thick carpet, then said, “Let me see Kris’s room.”
    Diamond pushed himself up, a slow awkward movement more suited to his posture than his age or his interests. He shuffled across the carpet and up the stairs to the second floor. The staircase bisected the house and, I noted, continued on up to the roof. To the west of it was one large room—Diamond’s, he indicated—with windows from which on a fogless day he might have seen the Golden Gate Bridge and the Farallon Islands beyond. The east half was divided unevenly into two rooms, and the bedroom he indicated as Kris’s was nearly twice the size of the other. Like everything else it was white, with a white quilted double bed, and white lacquered desk, chair, and dresser. Two Himalayan posters decorated one wall, and an antique-looking Tibetan Thangka, a vividly colored cloth depiction of the Tibetan deities, hung across from it. On a shelf was a large statue of the Hindu god Siva, dancing in a ring of fire. I checked the desk, dresser, and closet. The clothes there were basic: a spare pair of jeans and two shirts, a couple of changes of underwear. The adjoining bathroom held minimal supplies. It could have been a hotel room. A carefully decorated hotel room.
    “There’s nothing personal here,” I said.
    Diamond leaned against the doorjamb. It was a moment before he said, “He was on a budget.”
    And in that moment I could see the stab that my words had been. Nothing personal.