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.I was at my daughters house all day yesterday and Todd and I haven't had a chance to straighten up yet."We sat on a sofa grouping, moving some new quilts and a few pillows in boxes to make room."It's strange seeing that Skyline Drive house after all these years," she said once we were settled."It's been all over the news.""Beverly was just telling me she had that listing in 1982," Hitch said.She nodded."I haven't been in real estate for a few years.I'm in computer sales now.That was one of my first listings when I went to work for Prime Properties over twenty-five years ago."Hitch and I exchanged a look.One of us had to take the lead on this interview.Since I was senior man and still out of sorts about getting here second, I leaned forward and began."We're looking for some background on the property.Anything that you might know that could affect the triple murder that happened there.""I'm certain nothing I know could have anything to do with that dead movie producer and those two prostitutes," she began."I mean, it was December of eighty-two when I finally closed escrow.""You're probably right, but nonetheless, we have some questions about the history of the place," Hitch jumped in."Rather than us leading you, why don't you just tell us what you know and then if we have questions, we'll ask them later."I shot him a look.He just leaned back and showed me nothing."Start with when you first listed the house," I said."Actually, it sort of starts a few months before I listed the house.I sold it for the estate of the late Thomas Vulcuna and his family.You may remember that name if you were around L.A.in eighty-one."She looked at us to see if we responded.The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it."He was the head of a very successful television studio called Eagles Nest Productions," she said.Now Hitch and I traded startled looks."What happened to him and his family is one of those horrible L.A.stories," she continued."If either of you were in town back then you must remember it.""I was ten, living in South Central," Hitch told her."The Crips moved onto my block in eighty-one so I spent most of that year hiding under my uncle's car.""Why don't you tell us?" I said."Start at the beginning.""In 1981 Thomas Vulcuna had piled up a lot of debts at Eagle's Nest, a studio which he owned privately.I know a little about all this because his house on Skyline was actually put up as collateral on the Eagle's Nest bank loan.We had to untangle that mess before we could sell the property."Back then, Eagle's Nest had six TV series on the air, but the problem was they were spending more for each episode than the network gave them in licensing fees.Tom Vulcuna was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode, and with the production company making over a hundred episodes a year, despite his success in getting his shows programmed, he was quickly outrunning his bank loan and going broke."I was vaguely beginning to remember this now.It had been a big TV and newspaper story.A murder-suicide if I recalled correctly."Tom Vulcuna had all these production company debts and his bank was about to foreclose on the loans," she went on."Then on Christmas Eve 1981, he came home from a Christmas party at the studio.He was distraught, he'd had too much to drink, and the police thought he got into an argument with his eighteen-year-old daughter, Victoria.When his wife, Ellen, tried to break it up, apparently he just snapped.He picked up a ball-peen hammer that was lying around to hang Christmas wreaths and, in a frenzy, he beat both of them to death right there in the living room.""I remember this now," I said."He brought a handgun home from the studio or something.The police speculated he had already decided to commit suicide.""That's right," Beverly said."It was an old World War One Luger that he checked out of the studio prop department.Eagle's Nest was making a six-hour miniseries about Hitlers rise after World War One, and they had a bunch of those old Lugers for the SS officers to carry in the movie.They were props, but apparently the ones that weren't going to be fired didn't get altered by the prop master and still worked.He brought one of those home in his briefcase.After he killed his wife and daughter he went upstairs to the master bedroom, lay down on the bed, opened a copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy to a passage about death that he'd underlined, then he fired a shot into his head.When the maid arrived the next morning, she found them all dead [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]