Gravedigger (5 page)

“You can go without asking me,” Dave said, “but I wish you’d tell me first where you think Lyle has gone.”

“He didn’t say he was going anywhere,” she said. “If he had, I wouldn’t have left my instruments here, would I? The others took theirs, violin, cello. I had a score-copying job that wouldn’t leave me time to practice. We were set up to meet here again Friday. No one was home. We couldn’t understand it. Lyle was the one who set it up.”

“Would they know where he went—violin, cello?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “They didn’t say so. And they hadn’t known him long. Not like I have.”

“Would he have gone with his father?”

She made a face. “He was here because he has a very strong sense of responsibility, and he owed his father, or thought he did, for all his father had done for him financially to see that he got a first-class musical education and all that. But he was just being dutiful. He’d lost all respect for his father after his father…” She eyed Dave nearsightedly through the thick lenses. “You know what his father did? You know he went to prison?”

“I know,” Dave said.

“I don’t mean Lyle said anything. He wouldn’t. But you could tell how he felt—he never smiled at his father, all he said was yes and no, okay? I guess he felt sorry for him, in a way, but he really didn’t”—she moved those big, square shoulders inside the Mexican pullover—“well, have any use for him. He was in—despair over him, all right?”

“There has to be love behind that,” Dave said.

“He was here, wasn’t he?” she said. “But he wouldn’t run away with him—from the man’s honest debts? Nothing like that.”

“Do you know Howie O’Rourke?” Dave said.

“That creep,” she said. “He used to hang around in here at night, pretending to listen to us, smoking grass, drinking wine. Red hair, long sideburns, and this dead white skin, you know? Fish-belly white? He thought he was God’s gift to women. He didn’t want to hear us play. He just wanted to have sex. With Jennifer, or Kimberly—even with me.” She smiled wryly. “Can you believe that? He’d sprawl there on the couch with his legs stretched out, feeling himself up and leering at us. Really. Leering. Finally, Lyle told his father to keep him out of here.”

“They were writing a book together,” Dave said.

“Mr. Westover was writing it. Howie couldn’t write his own name. He was telling Mr. Westover all his garbage about being a con artist.” She snorted contempt. “Howie couldn’t be a con artist. Howie couldn’t be anything. Oh, maybe a worm—if he practiced a lot.” She lifted music from one of the racks, made a thick roll of it, stuck the roll into the pouch pocket, and picked up the instrument cases from the harpsichord. She started off, then turned back. “If they went together, why are both cars gone?” She shook her head hard, and with certainty. Strands of the straw-color hair fell across her face. “They wouldn’t go together.” She stuck out her lower lip and blew at the fallen hair. “No way would they go together.”

“Take this.” Dave held out a card. “And if you get any ideas about where Lyle might be, telephone me, will you? Maybe something he said will come back to you, or something Mr. Westover said. I’ll be grateful.”

She tucked the flute case under her arm, took the card, glanced at it, stashed it away with the music, the wallet. “You know what I never thought? When I telephoned, and rang the doorbell and all that and no one answered? That they could be in trouble. I was the only one I thought about—getting my instruments.” The hair flopped across her face again when she shook her head in disgust at herself. “I wasn’t even worried about them. I should have told the police or someone that something was wrong here.” Her crossed, magnified eyes apologized to Dave. “I’m not much of a human being, am I?”

“If you weren’t,” Dave said, “you wouldn’t be worried about it. Is Lyle a close friend?”

“I’ve been in love with him since the first time we met. At Buenos Vientos, right? The music camp? We both had scholarships. It’s for gifted kids, master classes, a good conductor. Summers. He was all alone in this empty practice cabin—they’re just boards and two-by-fours, no glass in the windows. He was playing the piano. The sun was shining on him. He’s very beautiful.”

“He has a speech defect,” Dave said.

“You don’t notice that,” she said, “not after while. It doesn’t matter.”

“Does he know you’re in love with him?”

“Do you know any geniuses? He wouldn’t notice. All he notices is music.” Her laugh was sad.

“Can you be insensitive and be a good musician?”

“I’m fat, cross-eyed, and I have a bad skin,” she said. “He doesn’t know how I feel because I haven’t told him. What would it be—just embarrassing for both of us, wouldn’t it? He’s not insensitive—just the opposite. You’ll see. He’s not childish—he’s very intelligent and complicated, but there’s something about him like a little boy, vulnerable. As soon as you meet him, you start to worry about him, wanting to shelter him, you know? Not when he’s playing—he’s fine then, strong. But the rest of the time, you can see things hurt him, see the pain in his eyes. And you want to keep the pain away.” She made a helpless little circle in the air with a plump hand. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain it exactly. He looks so—fragile.”

“Does he ever mention his sister?”

“Does he have a sister? Where is she?”

“Suppose he heard that she was dead, murdered,” Dave said. “What would that do to him?”

She stared. She dropped the instrument cases on a long, low couch. They sank into deep brown velvet cushions. “Insurance,” she said again. Her tongue touched her lips as if they were dry. “That’s why you’re here.”

He told her what he knew. “What’s your impression of Charles Westover?”

“Not that he’d do anything like that. He’s like a ghost, gray, sad, kind of—shrunken. Oh, you can see just sometimes what he must have been like, charming, funny. But mostly—I don’t know—like he was—well, beaten.”

“Did he know Lyle was fragile? Would he have told him that he thought Azrael had killed his sister?”

As if her legs wouldn’t hold her, Trio dropped onto the couch. The instrument cases clunked together against her porky thigh. She sat hunched up, knees tight together, hands clutched tight in her lap. She stared at nothing. She said, almost to herself, “If he did, that’s why Lyle isn’t here. He ran away once before. He told me. I’d forgotten. It was before I knew him. When his father got caught. Lyle just left, disappeared. His mother had the police searching for him. It was in the papers, on TV—‘Teen-age musical genius vanishes.’ Then he came back. One day his mother walked in the door here, and he was taking a shower, just as if he’d never been gone.”

“Did he tell you where he’d been?”

“No. It’s not that he’s secretive. That sounds sly, you know, and he’s not sly, he’s open as a child, as a flower. I guess it’s just that it’s so hard for him to make himself understood that, after while, he decided trying wasn’t worth it. Not if you can play.”

“Maybe he’s gone back to New York,” Dave said. “I’ll phone Juilliard in the morning. It’s possible they’ll know some friend he’s staying with there.”

“Maybe he could fly on credit cards.” She didn’t sound as if she believed it. “But he didn’t have any money. He turned it all over to his father.” She rose and picked up the cases again. “As fast as the union sent him his checks.”

“What kind of car does he have?” Dave said. “Would it get him to New York?”

“It wouldn’t get him to Nevada.” She went through the lamp shadows toward the entryway. “It’s a beat-up old Gremlin. Junk.” She turned back one more time. “Serenity? That’s his sister’s name? Ironical, isn’t it?”

“‘Trio’ made you a musician,” Dave said. “Maybe her name saved her. Serenity can survive a lot.”

She winced a little smile and went away. He listened for the hum of the garage-door springs. When he heard it, he switched off the lamps in the harpsichord room and went back to see what else he could find in Charles Westover’s den.

T
HE TRIUMPH JOLTED OVER
the hump from Horseshoe Canyon Trail and dropped sharply down into the brick-paved yard of his house. Only the head lamps lighted the yard. Amanda had installed ground spots in the shrubbery, but the rains of February had brought rushing mudslides down from the hills behind the place. Mud two feet deep had uprooted the lights and swept them off down the canyon with other debris—brush, trees, automobiles, parts of houses. Dave had got off lightly—warped floors, waterlogged furniture, soaked and swollen books. And the ground lights. He’d ordered replacements, but the contractor’s waiting list was long.

The lights of the Triumph jittered, reflected in the square panes of the french doors that crossed the front of the building. They also showed him a vehicle he did not know—a new custom van, glossily painted with rearward streaking flames. He wheeled the Triumph in beside it, checked his watch—it was four-forty in the morning—shut off the engine, and climbed wearily out of the car. Who did he have to meet now? He wanted to sleep. The van’s license frame named a Sacramento dealer. With the penlight, Dave probed inside the van through the windows. Nothing showed who owned it. A new road map lay on the seat.

He switched off the penlight, dropped it into the pocket of the sheepskin coat, and walked around the end of the building into the bricked center court where a big old live-oak loomed up blacker than the surrounding blackness. A wooden bench had been built around the thick trunk of the tree. Plants stood on most of the bench, but there was space to sit down. The brickwork on which the bench was footed was uneven, and the props of the bench clunked when it was sat on or stood up from. The props clunked now. Dave halted and groped for the penlight again.

“I guess you don’t need me,” a voice said, “not staying out till practically sunrise. You been in some warm bed, and it wasn’t mine.”

Dave found the penlight and poked its narrow beam at the sound of the voice. The beam showed him a tall, skinny young black in a leather cap, corduroy car coat with wooden peg fastenings, driving gloves. His name was Cecil Harris, and he stood with shoulders hunched, looking cold. His eyes were large in his thin face, and they expressed reproach.

Dave said, “I haven’t been in a warm bed. I’ve been working. You know the kind of hours I have to keep.” He put away the light, crossed the uneven bricks, took the boy in his arms and kissed him. They stood holding each other tight “It’s good to see you. How did you ever find me?”

“If you were on the moon,” the boy said, “I would find you. You know that. Don’t you know that?”

“I know it now.” In Dave’s arms, the boy shivered. “Let’s get you inside. How long have you been waiting? Why didn’t you telephone?”

“I wanted to surprise you.” Cecil chuckled though his teeth were chattering. “You know me and surprises.”

“The last time”—Dave took his arm and walked him away from the tree—“you were also waiting in the dark. In my motel room at La Caleta. I thought you were a mugger. Nearly broke your arm with a wine bottle. Only that time you were naked.”

Cecil shuddered audibly. “No way am I going to get naked in this weather. Not out here.”

Dave unlocked a door—not to the front building, the one with the row of french windows. To a back building. This property was odd. Two stables it may have been once, each a single enormous room, and over yonder a cookshack. Amanda had redesigned them all, building here a roomy loft for sleeping, unfinished pine to match the original walls. Dave reached inside for a switch that lit a pair of lamps. The big room was chilly and still held a faint smell of damp and mud. Dave crouched to light, with a gas pilot jet, kindling and logs in a wide, used-brick fireplace, another of Amanda’s improvements. When he rose, Cecil had not moved from inside the door. Dave said, “You’re old enough so your brother couldn’t stop you coming to me, so that means you’re old enough for a drink. Brandy is warming. Would you like some brandy?”

Pulling off the driving gloves, Cecil came to the fireplace. He held his hands out to the logs that as yet were doing less flaming than smoking. “I was thinking,” he said, “of another way to get warm. It’s in the Boy Scout manual, you know? Rub two bodies together till you get a spark?” He raised his eyes to the shadowed loft under its canted rafters. “That where the bed is?”

“It won’t go away,” Dave said. “I need a brandy, if you don’t. It will make everything go better.”

“No way we could go better,” Cecil said. “We go the very best. I never forgot. I think about it every day, every night. Especially every night. I thought those eighteen months would never go by.” A couch, pine frame, corduroy cushions, faced the fireplace. He dropped lankily onto it. “I went to your old digs, on Robertston, above the art gallery. This is strange, but that was stranger. You know how strange it was—all those big empty rooms?”

“Emptier than you think,” Dave said.

“Christian was there, looking like he’d just barbecued Captain Cook. He wanted me out of my bulky winter clothes and into his hammock under the banyan tree.”

“Where was Doug?” Dave said. He meant Doug Sawyer, with whom he had lived for a few years before the advent of Christian. Doug was a painter, but made his living from the gallery he owned. Christian ran a Polynesian restaurant across the street, the Bamboo Raft.

“Luckily, he came up the stairs before my virtue got violated. That is one big tropical fruit, that Christian. And Doug—he told me about this place. It took some finding. Hey, thank you.” Dave had put into his long fingers a glass globe with two inches of Courvoisier in the bottom. The firelight glinted red in the brandy. Cecil studied it. “Pretty,” he said, and tasted it. “Whoo-ee.” He grinned up at Dave. “I see what you mean.”

“What have you been doing?” Dave dropped onto the couch beside him, tasted his own brandy, lit a cigarette. “You got into television, right?” When Dave had met him, Cecil was a trainee from a local college, getting on-the-job experience at a mountaintop station above a small city up the coast. “That’s a nifty van. The pay must be good.”

“Not in back of the camera,” Cecil said. “Up Sacramento way. I wanted to come here, but you know my big brother, the jailer, who thinks gayness is something you outgrow. Shit, if I grow anymore, the basketball scouts won’t leave me alone. No, the pay for behind the camera—typing up your tapes of highway-commission meetings—is not like the pay for looking pretty and mispronouncing words in front of the camera. No, I was gifted with some bread on my twenty-first birthday. That is how I come to have the van. I bought it yesterday.” He checked a new watch studded with stops on his lean wrist. “Excuse me—day before yesterday.”