Gravedigger (9 page)

“All right, sure.” Lyle looked at the door. It had opened. Trio filled the frame in her bulging jeans and striped Mexican pullover. Lyle smiled at her. She lifted her flute. It glinted in the pale, rainy light.

“Music?” she said.

I
T WASN’T YET TWO
in the afternoon, but Horseshoe Canyon was gloomy with the threat of rain when he passed the woman with the dog and swung the Triumph into the brick yard. He ached from the long, cold drive in the cramped little car back up the coast. It was stiff work getting out of the car. The woman came down the steep tilt of the drive toward him, looking worried. The dog was small and ragged and brown. Its hair fell into its eyes. The leash which it kept taut, darting this way and that, was red. Dave stretched and gave the woman a small enquiring smile.

“Mr. Brandstetter, isn’t it?” she asked. He nodded, and she said, “I’m Hilda Vosper. I live just up the road.” A triangle of plastic was tied over her gray hair. She wore a raincoat cinched tight at the waist. Jeans showed under the raincoat. Plastic covered her shoes. She wasn’t young but she was handsome. Her blue eyes took in the front building. “Haven’t you made this place attractive? Really rustic instead of just shacky the way it was before.”

He didn’t say he had liked it well enough the way it was before. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Vosper?”

“You’re in insurance,” she said, “somebody told me. I’ve been wondering why the checks haven’t come for the mudslide damage. Did you get yours?”

“Yes. You mean you haven’t received any checks?”

“The first ones, yes. But there should be others.”

“All I know about insurance is death claims,” Dave said. “I’m sorry. I’d like to help, but I can’t.”

“Yes, well, I just thought I’d ask,” she said bleakly. “They don’t answer letters. No one on the telephone knows anything.” The dog had wrapped the leash around her legs. “Thank you,” she said, turning to unwind the leash.

“Nice to meet you,” Dave said.

The big wooden rear building was cold, no fire in the grate, and he kept the sheepskin coat on while he rang Salazar to tell him about Howie O’Rourke. Salazar’s flu sounded worse. Dave splashed brandy into a snifter, tasted it, shed the coat, and headed for the bathroom. He cranked the Hot tap in the shower stall and, when steam began to billow out, shed his clothes. He swallowed brandy again, used the Cold tap to tame the heat of the spray, and was about to step under the spray when Cecil put his head in at the bathroom door.

“Where were you last night?” Dave said. “I phoned at midnight.”

“They put me right to work.” Cecil wore the big stiff white robe. He came into the steam and shut the door. “Night shift. I go in at four-thirty, get off at midnight. I was here by twelve-thirty.” He dropped the robe. “No way for me to let you know, was there?” He drank some of the brandy. “Mmm-mmm! I could easily get hooked on that stuff.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded at the shower. “Are we going to get in there? Or let all that gorgeous hot water run down to the sea?”

“Come on,” Dave said. It was a big enough shower. For almost anything. Almost anything was what they did. They even got clean. They rubbed each other dry with tent-size towels. Dave said, “I’d rather have you around nights. What about dinners by candlelight? What about plays and operas and ballets? Even movies? Even, God save us all, television?”

“You can applaud me”—Cecil flapped into the robe again—“on the eleven o’clock news.” He opened the door, gasped, shuddered. “Shit, man, we’re on a fucking ice floe. I got to put on clothes.” His feet thumped on the stairs up to the loft. Dave put on his own bathrobe and followed. Rain pattered steadily now on the slope of roof just above them. Quivering with cold, Cecil whipped into undershorts, T-shirt, bulky white sweater, warm wool pants. He sat on the broad, unmade bed, to pull on thick white socks. “Maybe I won’t have that shift too long. If I’m as dazzling as I think I am.” He bent to tie his shoes.

“I hope you’re right.” Dave opened drawers and got out clothes for himself. “Damn Edwards, anyway.”

“You’re not thinking,” Cecil said. “How many plays, operas, and ballets did you see last night? You were working, right? And the night before? Working.” He jumped up from the bed and ran downstairs. “I am going to start a fire, warm this place up.”

Dave dressed, listening to the rattle of kindling in the fireplace grate, the whoosh of the gas jet, the snap and crackle of green wood. He smelled the smoke. He went down the stairs. “My days begin early too,” he said, and stood and watched the flames curl around the sticks, hungry to grow. “Cecil, we’ll almost never see each other—not this way. Forget this kept-boy nonsense, and go with me where I go and when I go, and stay with me when I stay.”

Cecil had been kneeling. He got to his feet, brushed his hands, set the fire screen in place. “Let’s try it for a while,” he said. “For my sake. Make me feel decent, okay?” He laid his hands on Dave’s shoulders and put a kiss on Dave’s mouth. “I want to be with you just as much as you want to be with me.” He managed a wan little smile, and a little rise of his wide, bony shoulders. “Who knows how long I can stand it? Did you think of that?”

“No, but now that you’ve said it, I’ll probably bring it up fairly often.” Dave smiled. “All right. No dinners by candlelight. How about lunches? Starting today, now.”

Cecil looked at that daunting watch. “Too late. All the chairs will be up on the tables by now. Waiters shooing out the last expense-accounters.” He went to the door. “What we are going to do is open cans. I’ve checked out your cupboards. Mrs. Snow’s clam chowder, with an extra can of clams, cream, butter, white pepper.” He turned at the door. “Did you find him?” He opened the door.

“He doesn’t have the answer.” Dave stepped out and Cecil shut the door. They trotted, heads down under the heavy drops that fell from the matted brown vine on the arbor, across to the cookshack. “If we make this quick”—Dave lifted down a deep saucepan—“you can go with me to see a man who may have the answer.”

Dave had been here before, years ago, with Rod Fleming, a decorator he’d lived with for twenty years, until Rod had died of cancer. But if Dave had heard Don Gaillard’s name at that time, he’d long since forgotten. The shop was not, as Lyle Westover remembered it, in a basement, but on a side street just off La Cienega. Two-story, living quarters up an outside staircase, the building was grubby white stucco. Rain made runnels in the dirt on the plate glass, through which gleamed faintly the pale curves of carved chair arms and sofa backs, awaiting stain and varnish. A mahogany table glowed dark red.

The street door stuck at the bottom and had to be kicked to make it open. There were fresh-cut wood smells inside, smells of hot animal glue, the ether smell of shellac. No one was among the unfinished pieces in the front room, but a power-saw snarled in the back of the shop, beyond a plywood partition in which a doorway showed light. And when Dave looked through the doorway, he remembered Don Gaillard’s round, snub-nosed face. The hair above it had been dark and thick when he’d last seen it. Now it was gray and thin on a pink scalp. But the man still had boyishly rosy cheeks and blue eyes that were a little too gentle. He switched off the saw when he noticed Dave and Cecil, and came through a snowfall of sawdust toward them. His eyes flicked quickly over Cecil, obviously pleased with what they saw. He held out his hand. Its grip was firm.

“It’s not about furniture.” Dave handed over his card. “It’s about Charles Westover.”

“Insurance?” Gaillard looked puzzled.

Dave explained about the claim on Serenity’s policy.

“Oh, no!” Gaillard was shaken and the color left his face. “Surely not. She was such a lovely little girl. Oh dear, oh dear.”

“The insurance people aren’t sure it’s true,” Dave said. “Charles Westover is in big financial trouble, and they think this was a try at getting a little money.”

“No.” Gaillard tried to look and sound firm. “Charles would never do a thing like that.”

“You know he served a term in prison?” Dave asked.

Gaillard snorted. “The kind of scum involved in that case always arrange for someone else to take the punishment.”

“He didn’t bribe witnesses?” Dave said. “He didn’t stand by while men were murdered?”

Gaillard said impatiently, “Just why are you here?”

“Westover’s disappeared. I’m trying to find him. He borrowed twenty thousand dollars from you the day before he vanished. I thought you might know where he is.”

A door at the back of the shop opened. Damp air came in, the rattle of rain outside on trash barrels in an alley. The rosy, snub-nosed woman who entered was in her sixties, damp scarf over her hair, old raincoat, scuffed shoes. From under her coat she took a brown paper sack. “Soup,” she said. “Eat it while it’s hot.” She set the bag on a workbench, turned, and was startled to see Dave and Cecil. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

Gaillard stood as rigid as something he’d put together out of wood with pegs and glue. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t make introductions. Between clenched teeth, he said, “Good-bye, mother.” When she had gone back into the dismal alley and pulled shut the heavy, metal-covered door after her, Gaillard glanced over his shoulder at it, then asked Dave in an indignant whisper, “Who says I lent him twenty thousand dollars?”

“Lyle,” Dave said. “You remember Lyle?”

Gaillard’s testiness melted in a sentimental smile. “When he and Serenity were young, we had wonderful times together—Disneyland, Sea World,
The Sound of Music.” He
shook his head fondly and laughed. His teeth needed looking after. “I loved being with those children. I guess I never grew up, myself.” He sobered. “I miss them.”

“They miss you,” Dave said. “Lyle does. He never understood why you stopped coming around. What happened?”

Gaillard looked away. “It’s not relevant.”

Cecil said, “His parents found out you were gay—right?”

“What?” Gaillard grew red in the face. “What did you say?” His eyes narrowed. “How dare you come into my shop and say such things to me.” He closed big fists and took a step. “Get out of here.”

Cecil backed, hands up, laughing shakily. “Hey, man, it was a friendly question.”

Dave caught Gaillard’s arm. “Easy. Think. How would he guess that? How would I?”

Gaillard blinked, dropped his arms, stared at the two of them for a second, smiled a sickly little smile. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

“But there’s more, isn’t there? The reason you gave Westover that money when he turned up after ten long years was that you were in love with him, and you never stopped loving him, not when he got married, not when he finally told you to go away.”

“He never did!” Gaillard cried. “It was Anna—that wife of his. She was the one who forced him to stop seeing me.” Tears blurred his eyes, his voice broke. “What harm were we doing her? What harm? For ten years, she never knew, and then she stumbled on us together, and her life was ruined. Ridiculous.” His mouth twisted in contempt. “It had never made the slightest difference between them. She hadn’t the vaguest. He was a loving husband and a wonderful provider. We saw each other alone once a week—oh, sometimes twice. She never guessed.” His thick fingers wiped at his tears. He took a deep breath. “All right. He was in trouble, and I helped him. He’d have done it for me.”

“You really believe that?” Dave said.

Gaillard swelled up. “Absolutely. I know him better than anyone in this world.”

“Then you won’t be surprised to learn what happened to the money you lent him.” Dave told the story as Lyle had told it to him. Gaillard sagged a little, but he kept a straight face. No surprise showed, no disappointment. When Dave stopped talking, what showed was charity:

“Poor Chass. What rotten luck. On top of all his other troubles. And Lyle left him alone? At a time like that? I’m surprised. He always seemed so sensitive.”

“He still is,” Dave said. “He tried to kill himself. Luckily, there weren’t enough pills.”

“Kill himself!” Gaillard’s hand splayed open against his big chest “Whatever for?”

“Out of shame for how his father used you.”

“But—I was happy to have the chance to help Chass. Surely Lyle must have known that.”

“He knew,” Dave said. “That only made his father’s taking advantage of you more humiliating. Charles didn’t come back here afterward and apologize, now, did he?”

“Doesn’t Anna know where he is?”

“I asked her for the names of friends he might have gone to. She didn’t mention yours.”

Gaillard’s laugh was brief and sour. “No, I imagine not.” He looked straight and deliberately into Dave’s eyes. “I haven’t any idea where he’s gone. But I’m sorry that he didn’t feel he could come back to me.”

“You’re not sorry about the twenty thousand dollars?”

“I’m sorry that it didn’t save him,” Gaillard said.

“Call me if you hear from him, will you?” Dave said.

“You’re mistaken if you think he tried to cheat your insurance company,” Gaillard said. “He’s not like that.”

“He’s changed,” Dave said. “You didn’t notice?”

“He will always be the same to me,” Gaillard said.

Outside, angling their long legs into the Triumph and out of the rain, slamming the doors, Dave starting the engine, Cecil lighting cigarettes for them both, they looked at each other. Cecil passed Dave a cigarette.

“He’s lying about something,” he said.

Dave let the handbrake go, and rolled the little car to the corner to wait for a speeding stream of rain-glazed cars to splash past. On that long midnight drive back from El Segundo in the Rolls, had Lyle, without guessing it, actually managed to make his father see himself for what he had become? “You think Westover came back here, begging forgiveness for wasting Gaillard’s money, and Gaillard smashed his skull in with a Queen Anne leg?”

“Why wasn’t it his life savings?” Cecil said. “No way did he want his mama to know about it. And he was not telling us everything, man. Something he knows we aren’t ever going to know, you know? And maybe that was it.”

“Uncle Don.” Dave jammed the stubby shift stick into low, and the Triumph shot across La Cienega, on its way to the television studios, where Cecil had to be at work in twenty minutes. “Lyle called him ‘the kindest man.’”