Gravedigger (13 page)

“Trio’s driving me,” Lyle said, “and she goes very slowly when it rains. Rain scares her to death. She didn’t get here as soon as she promised. I better go.”

“Just get the address book,” Dave said, “and put it in the mailbox. I’ll pick it up tonight.”

“All right. The union canceled those checks and made me out a new one so that’s okay,” Lyle said.

“Glad to hear it,” Dave said. “When will you be back?”

“Three or four days,” Lyle said, “unless something else comes up, unless I get more work.”

“Good luck,” Dave told him, and hung up. Now he could finish his meal. But he wasn’t on the chair again before the phone rang. He sighed and lifted down the receiver. “Hello—Brandstetter.”

“I’m in the Valley,” Cecil said. “You wouldn’t believe how wet it is out here.” A siren moaned behind his voice. “I’m on this assignment. It’s a hostage situation. This crazy brother is in this supermarket with thirty customers and clerks and one of those little machine guns made in Israel, and nobody knows when it will be over. One thing is clear to me. If only one reporter from channel three stays, that reporter is going to be me. So when I see you will be when I see you, right?”

“Better sooner than later,” Dave said. “Try not to get shot, all right? I’ll be staking out Westover’s place again—unless there’s a Yucca Canyon street number in his address book. Lyle’s leaving his address book for me. So it looks like a late night for both of us.”

“Not together,” Cecil said.

“Whose fault is that?” Dave said.

“Don’t start on me,” Cecil said. “I’m already feeling bad enough.” A voice roared through a bullhorn. Dave didn’t catch the words. Cecil said, “I mean, it is going to be Noah’s ark or nothing before this night is done.”

“Try to keep dry,” Dave said. “Thanks for calling.”

“I don’t think you should follow him alone.”

“It’s a hard rain,” Dave said. “Maybe he won’t show.”

He finished his supper, poured another glass of wine, recorked the bottle, and stowed it away. He drank the wine while he washed the dishes and cleaned up the grille. He wanted that address book now, but he was too tired. He needed sleep. The book would be there at midnight. A few more hours wouldn’t matter. He’d be a menace on the road, the way he felt. Stunned was the word for it. He ached with weariness.

He picked up the sheepskin coat, switched off the cookshack light, and ran across the courtyard to the back building, key in hand. He went through the high-raftered dark of the place without bothering to turn on a light. It was cold and damp but he couldn’t be bothered to clean the grate and build a fire. He dropped the coat on a chair and climbed the stairs to the loft and the wide bed. In bed, he’d get warm. To ensure that, he kept his sweater on. He shed the rest of his clothes, slid between the sheets, and touched someone.

A voice said, “Welcome. I thought you’d never get here.” A naked arm pinned him down, a naked leg. A naked body crowded against him, a mouth covered his, a bearded mouth. He jerked his head away, freed an arm, groped out in the cold for the lamp and missed. He tried to get out of bed, but arms held him. The owner of the arms was laughing. Dave’s hand met the lamp and switched it on. Miles Edwards sat up in the bed, brushing hair out of his eyes and grinning. “The pictures didn’t seem to do it,” he said. “I decided on a personal appearance.”

Dave was on his feet, kicking into his corduroys. “Get the hell out of that bed and put your clothes on.”

“You’re joking.” Edwards threw back the sheets and blankets. He sat cross-legged. He was more beautiful now than he’d been in his teens when those pictures were taken. Still lean, but with better definition, harder. He held his hands open. “You don’t want this?”

“Whether I want it or not is beside the point. You are, for Christ sake, marrying Amanda. And whether you give a damn about her or not, I do. How the hell could you imagine I’d do this to her?”

“What’s Amanda got to do with it? Amanda and I are all right, we’re fine. This is something separate and apart. Good God, you’re old enough to know that.”

“It’s not a matter of age,” Dave said, “it’s a matter of cynicism. Obviously. But even if I did ‘know that’—I don’t think Amanda does know it. And I don’t want her to have to learn. Not from you and me.”

“She wouldn’t. What would be the point? Oh, come on.” Edwards got to his knees. Scoffing, but anxious. “You’re not going to tell her? What for, for Christ sake?”

Dave turned away, found cigarettes on the stand under the lamp, lit one. “There’s not going to be anything to tell.” He leaned on the loft rail, gazing down into the dark. “We are going to forget it. And you are just very quietly going to slide out of her life, doing your best not even to leave a ripple of regret.”

“Why? Because I go both ways? What do you expect me to do—change how I am? Can you?” The bed moved. Under his feet Dave felt the loft planks tremble. Edwards’s arms came around him again. Edwards pressed against his back. “Come on,” he pleaded. “You know you want to. I’ve been dying for you. I thought if you saw those pictures—”

Dave shrugged him off. “I don’t think you’re right in the head.” Edwards’s clothes lay on a chair at the far side of the bed. “If you want somebody, you don’t aggravate him by everything you do.” He grabbed up Edwards’s briefs and held them out to him. “I haven’t liked five minutes of the time I’ve spent with you, and I never will. Put these on, God damn it.” He pushed the briefs into Edwards’s hands. “And get your ass out of here. How the hell did you get in, in the first place?”

“You don’t really want me to go.” Edwards drew the little white knit shorts up his dark legs but not all the way. “You don’t really want me to cover this up.” Dave leaned on the rail and looked down into the dark again. Edwards said, “Amanda has keys, remember?”

“Jesus,” Dave said. He turned. Edwards was sulkily flapping into his shirt. Dave said, “What about Cecil? I doubt that someone with your moral capacity can understand this, but what I wouldn’t do to Amanda, I wouldn’t do to Cecil, either.”

Shaking his head in disgusted disbelief, Edwards sat on the bed and pulled on his socks. “I know how old you are,” he said, “but you don’t have to act like it. I never thought you would.” He stood, and his glance pitied Dave. “True love?” he sneered, kicking into his pants. “Two hearts that beat as one?” He zipped up the pants, reached for his vest, his tie. “Please. That is not how human life is lived.” He didn’t button the vest. He draped the tie loose around his neck. He got into his jacket. “You deal with people all the time. You know that’s all bullshit. People do what they want, they do what they have to.” He remembered his shoes, and sat down again to put them on and tie them. “We all do.”

“All right,” Dave said. “What I have to do is throw you out of here, because what I want is not you. What I want is Cecil. And what I also want is for you not to give Amanda pain. She’s had enough of that.”

Edwards brushed past him without looking at him. He rattled down the stairs. Below, a ghost shape flapped white in the shadows. He’d brought a raincoat, of course. His heels tapped away. “Believe me,” he shouted, “we’re fine. We’ll stay fine because she’ll never know. Not from me.” The door opened. Rain pattered outside in puddles on the bricks. “So, if you don’t want her to have any pain, you just keep out of it, old man.” The door slammed.

Dave went downstairs and bolted it.

T
WO STEPS FROM WHERE
Dave sat in the Triumph, a cliff dropped to the beach. He couldn’t see the ocean. It was midnight and the rain still fell. But he could feel it thud against the cliff, and hear it hiss among rocks when it pulled back to strike again. The rain rustled on the car’s cloth top and sifted against the glass. Charles Westover’s five-by-eight address book Dave held propped open on the steering wheel. He read it by the beam of the penlight. He had passed the letter
M
and still found no mention of Yucca Canyon.

He had left the little car’s parking lights on, its taillights, in case one of those juggernaut trucks decided to lay by on this patch of ground. Now headlights glared in the door mirror to his left. But what rolled up beside him was small and toy fire-engine red. A pickup truck. He had a blank second, then remembered. The door of the pickup slammed. Around its front, through the stab of its headlights, Scotty Dekker came at a jog, the rain turning his hair to taffy strings. He bent at Dave’s window. Dave rolled the glass down.

“Are you all right?” Scotty shouted it so as to be heard above the crashing of the surf. “I recognized your car.” He peered. “You aren’t sick or anything?”

“Just old,” Dave said with a smile. He took off his glasses. “I’ve been reading. What have you been doing? Surfing?”

Scotty laughed, looked up at the rain. “Even I’m not that crazy. No, I’ve been up at my aunt’s in Pismo. I’m just getting home. Good surf up there.”

“That’s why you didn’t call to tell me about Lyle.”

“Did he come back?” Scotty looked stricken. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry, Mr. Brandstetter.” He wiped rain off his face with a square clean hand. “Is he all right?”

“He’s all right,” Dave said, “but he doesn’t know what’s happened to his father.” He reached across to open the door on the passenger side. “If we’re going to talk, you better get in out of the rain.”

“I have to go. My folks were expecting me at six. They’ll be worried.”

“It’s a bit after six,” Dave said, and shut the door again. “Just one question. Did you ever hear Charles Westover mention Yucca Canyon—anybody he knew up there, any time he spent up there, anything at all?”

Scotty ran hands over his wet hair and shook his hands and made a face. “No. No, I don’t think so. No, I’m pretty sure not. Yucca Canyon? What would somebody like Mr. Westover want up there? I mean, that’s pretty raunchy, shacks and hippies and grow-your-own marijuana. It’s all weirdos up there. Isn’t it?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Dave said. “Thanks, Scotty. You better go before it gets any later.”

“Right.” Scotty smiled, slapped the window ledge, straightened. He said, “I just wanted to be sure you were okay.” He bent again, blinking. “Reading? It’s a funny place to read.”

“It’s an interesting book.” Dave put his glasses on again.

“I guess so.” Scotty stood erect again, looked around at the night, the windblown rain, peered in the direction of the pounding surf. He raised baffled eyebrows at Dave. Dave kept a straight face. Scotty gave a little wondering shake to his head, shrugged, said, “Okay, so long,” and ran back through the headlight beams and climbed into the truck. The door slammed again. The horn beeped. The truck rolled away.

Dave grinned and went on checking addresses.

Yucca Canyon didn’t appear in the book, and Dave drove back to Sandpiper Lane. The Rolls arrived earlier this morning. The rain had quit, the cloud cover was breaking up. He sighted stars through the windshield. The wind grew colder. He checked his watch. Two-ten. And the big, dark car slid past, showing nothing but its taillights. It halted at the curb in front of the dark Dekker house. The same slight man got out of it who had got out of it yesterday morning. Dave worked the lever of his door. The door opened three inches and struck the curb. He cursed. He ought to have known better than to park on the wrong side of the street. He shouted, “Charles Westover? Hold it, please.”

The face that jerked in his direction was no more than a pale, featureless blur. The man turned, slipped on the wet paving, came down on one hand, one knee, regained his footing, and lunged inside the Rolls. The next second, it was on its way up the street. Dave yanked his own door shut, started the Triumph, and went after the Rolls. The big car skidded on the street bends. Over the noise of the Triumph’s little engine, Dave could hear the squeal of the big tires. The Triumph hugged the curves, so that he gained on the Rolls, until it reached the straight strip of road that sloped down to the coast, when the Rolls pulled away.

It didn’t stop, didn’t even slow, when it reached the highway. It swung onto the highway in a wide arc, tires throwing fans of water. The turn took it clear across the far traffic lane. It looked as if it almost scraped the crash rail there. It lurched and swerved for a few seconds on the slick paving, then straightened out and settled down to gain speed. Dave checked his own meter. The needle jiggled past seventy, to seventy-five. The red taillights of the Rolls still pulled away. Dave argued the Triumph up to eighty, eighty-five. The Rolls must have been cruising at a hundred. Searching ahead for other traffic, scared that one of those giant trucks would appear, he noticed in the rearview mirror a pair of headlights behind him.

The canyon road was no good for speed, too many jogs, too many potholes, bigger tonight from the work of the new rains than they’d been last night, deeper, more of them. A good many times, the wheels of the Triumph jounced so hard in them he feared he’d break an axle. The bottom of the car scraped the paving. He was keeping the Rolls in sight, when trees, curves, thrusts of rock didn’t interfere, but he judged the Rolls was going to lose him. Then he saw the headlights back of him again, and felt cold in the pit of his stomach. They were dogging him. They were following with intent. No one simply driving home would keep the speed he and the Rolls were keeping, not on roads like this, not when those roads were wet.

He wanted to get out of the way but he was on a long stretch here without the option of turnoffs, one of those places where the road had been cut into a cliff that rose sheer on the left and where the canyon yawned black and deep on the right. He risked a little more speed, but had to brake right away. There were too many bends. The lights behind him drew closer, shone harshly in the rearview mirror. For a second, he had the crazy thought that it must be Cecil. But the set of the lights was wrong for a van. Then the lights were upon him. There was a jar that snapped his head back, a crunch of metal, the shattering of glass. The Triumph leaped ahead. He pressed the throttle because there seemed nothing to do but try to get away. He didn’t get away. The car following him swerved to the left, came alongside, veered into him. The lights of the Triumph streaked out over treetops shiny with rain. Dave yanked the door lever. The Triumph soared off the road. Dave threw himself into space.