Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (10 page)

“Sure. Sorry. Your sister got enemies?”

Laurel gave a chuckle, took a long sip of her coffee, swallowed, and chuckled again. “My sister’s always had enemies, and they all live in the same place.” She pointed to her head. “Upstairs. I mean, they’re real people. You see, Cynthia expects to be adored. If someone doesn’t kiss her feet, the only reason she can buy is that the person must be evil, which makes that somebody her mortal enemy.”

“Anybody in particular right now?”

“How should I know? I’m the last being on earth she’d confess to. It’s one reason Venus and I were delighted that Cynthia would join the society—it might eventually bond the three of us, at least bring the feud to a cease-fire.”

“That’d be swell. Take a guess, would you? Let’s say she has a particular enemy right now—maybe she let slip a curse or wicked look, or groaned somebody’s name in her sleep. If you can’t think of anybody, say the first words come to mind.”

Laurel drummed her fingers, chewed on her lip, roamed her eyes around the table as though inspecting the spices and place settings. “It could be the master. Because he was leading Emma down the mountain when the avalanche struck, she may blame him. Besides, according to her silly Catholicism, Pravinshandra took her mother to live in sin.”

“Yeah, and didn’t he swipe Venus away from your father?”

Laurel seemed to enlarge and harden as if a burst of air had pumped into her. She leaned back stiff against her chair. Her nostrils flared, lips dried instantly. She was damned mad at somebody, Hickey thought—at Venus, the master, her father, or him. “In a sense, he did,” she said coldly.

Time to knock her over the edge, Hickey decided, and he reached to the shelf beside him for the manila envelope. He rolled it backwards to flatten it better. Laurel folded her arms across her breasts and scowled at the envelope, then at the picture he slipped out and placed on the table in front of her. She studied, closed her eyes for a moment, opened them, and shoved the picture at him. She wet her lips and pressed them tightly together.

“Any idea who drew it, what the note at the bottom means?”

Laurel grabbed her cup and saucer off the table and carried them to the sink. As she rinsed and laid them on the counter, using one hand, her left hand brushed and patted the terry cloth against her hip, about the place where the Tree of Life tattooed on the woman on her back in the drawing would be.

She turned and leaned against the counter, watching him like a boxer who might jab any second. “Mister, Cynthia’s crazy. Without going into any stuff that’s nobody’s business except my sister’s and her conscience’s, I’ll tell you she has delusions. Here’s one—she used to dress in the simplest tunic, cut her hair, hack it off just below the ears, trying to look like Joan of Arc. I can’t count the times she’s accused me of plotting to kill her. My guess is, your picture’s something she drew during one of her spells.”

“She draws pretty well.”

“We grew up at Otherworld. All of us there learned how to draw. Joshua Bair taught us, the same style as in your picture. Notice the heavy lines and crisscrossed shading, the alternate light and dark blotches.”

“Yeah. So maybe any student of Bair’s could’ve drawn it. Why do you figure it’s Cynthia’s?”

“The writing is hers.”

“Ah.” Hickey remembered the writing in Cynthia’s book, the graceful flowing hand, while the note on the picture was more like block italic. “You sure?”

“Yes. Look, I have an appointment. Think I can sell a duplex today.” She glanced at the wall clock. “At nine.”

Hickey nodded, replaced the drawing in the envelope, picked up his hat, stood, and followed Laurel across the living room to the front door, which she held open for him. He stepped outside, put his hat on. “Say, I forgot to ask—who’s the Bitch?”

Laurel jerked back a couple inches, as though in all her life she’d never been affronted with such profanity. For an instant her upper teeth caught her lower lip, her gaze turned downward, and her shoulders hunched; she looked like a naughty girl. “I don’t know what you mean,” she muttered savagely.

Hickey lifted his eyebrows, gave her a wink. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He could feel her watching him cross the street. By the time he’d settled behind the wheel and looked her way, she’d closed the door. He drove off musing that he’d learned two things. Master Pravinshandra could be the guy Donny Katoulis would kill. And Laurel didn’t give a damn about her sister. She’d even failed to ask what kind of trouble Cynthia was in.

Chapter Eleven

About 9:00
A.M.
, at the booth outside the Piggly Wiggly market, Hickey made phone calls, the first to Leo Weiss. As their office phone rang, Hickey steeled his resolve to tell Leo he was deserting, giving up the detective racket. Leo didn’t answer. Relieved, Hickey left a message with their answering service, asking Leo to find Cynthia Moon and shadow her.

If Hickey had a gift, it was steady nerves, yet the phone receiver slipped in his sweaty hand while he dialed his home number. Elizabeth answered.

“Hi, kiddo. You okay?”

“Sure, dad,” she muttered somberly.

“Sorry about last night.”

“It’s okay.”

“You want to ask me anything?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll tell you. The only women for me are you and your mother. She there?”

“No, she went to the club.”

“Who with?”

“I’m not sure. I was throwing horseshoes on the beach with Evelyn. Mom left a note and took off.”

He could drive to the Del Mar Club, Hickey thought, but suppose he found her with Castillo. Suppose she made light of his solution, and his temper flared, and he punched somebody who got in the way, like Castillo. With everything at stake, working on zero sleep and a gallon of coffee, no telling what might occur.

“Babe, give her a message, would you? Tell her I’m through with the detective game. I’ll be working nights, staying home days, taking her to Paris if she gets the whim. Got it?”

He could see Elizabeth’s grin over the phone. “Dad, you’re a kick in the pants.”

“That’s me,” Hickey said.

Driving east, he swelled with the elation you feel when you burst through a dilemma and discover there’s life on the other side. Mornings he could lie in bed with Madeline, running his finger along the ridge of her hip, laying his head on her belly, admiring the smell of her skin, like the blossoms of winter oranges. He could marvel at the rough, adobe-colored flesh of her nipples, a whole little wilderness to explore. He could help paint her toenails, read lots of books, putter on the sailboat he was going to buy soon. When Elizabeth got home from school, they could wander the beaches on the oceanside. A while back she’d asked him to teach her the saxophone. He hadn’t played the damned thing in years. If he got the rust out, maybe some nights he could sit in with the band at Rudy’s, even talk Madeline into climbing up there with him, to sing. All kinds of happiness might befall them, as soon as he settled this business of Cynthia Moon’s and finished with Donny Katoulis.

The bells of the Saint Ambrose Home rang out “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” As though the priest were throwing a party, most parking spots on that side of the block were taken. Hickey found one in front of a barbershop, closed for Sunday. He checked his appearance in the barber’s window, took off his hat and used his fingers to neaten his scraggly hair, grimaced, and turned toward the rest home.

A hefty nun stood like a bouncer at the entrance. Hickey asked for Sister Johanna or Father McCullough, got informed they both were at mass, back through the grounds in the chapel. She led Hickey to the rose garden, where he waited on a concrete bench surrounded by gnarly stumps and the rosebushes that must’ve just gotten pruned, listening to “The First Noël,” thinking about the old woman called Donia who’d asked if he were the devil. Sister Johanna had explained that the old gal asked lots of men the same question, as if the devil’s primary characteristic was masculinity.

The bells switched from carols to a hymn he didn’t know. A procession began, from the chapel a couple hundred feet up the hillside, down the concrete trail between the hedges that fenced off the groves of loquat and mulberry on one side and olive trees on the other. Like a parade of mangled veterans in fifty-dollar suits, the old folks, many held upright by relatives or nuns, inched their way down the hill. Too late to hide, Hickey spotted Donia the accuser. She hobbled past him, concentrating on her tiny steps, chomping her false teeth every couple seconds, then opening wide as if to swallow flies. Sister Johanna was the wrangler at the rear of the herd, until she veered away and hustled around the jacaranda to Hickey, who stood and tipped his hat.

The sister’s rabbit nose quivered and she blinked her watery eyes. “You found Cynthia,” she said anxiously.

Hickey nodded. “I guess that means she hasn’t visited her old man.”

“No.” The sister bowed her head, crossed herself, looked up with a wan smile. “She’s safe.”

“Is she?”

“Tell me, please.”

“Looks that way,” Hickey said. “Any change in Henry?”

“Very little. He still won’t eat until he’s prodded, and then he only accepts a few bites. Yesterday I found him weeping.”

“What about?”

“Over his sins, perhaps?”

“Or somebody else’s,” Hickey muttered.

The nun touched his sleeve with one finger. “Sir, if Cynthia won’t visit, I’m certain he’ll perish before the New Year.”

“Yeah, and he’s not the only one.”

The sister’s hand jerked up and cupped the side of her face. “She’s in danger, then.”

“You bet. Look, I’ve got to ask Tucker something, in a hurry.”

Sister Johanna wagged her head stiffly. “He’s demanded to be left alone. Father promised.”

“Go get the father, will you?”

“He’s still in the chapel, conferring with Mrs. Gallager’s daughter, I believe.”

“Five bucks if you’ll interrupt, tell him it’s urgent.”

“Five…sir!”

“A joke,” Hickey said. “Please?”

Finally she nodded, eyed him dubiously, then walked around the jacaranda, turned up the hill. Every dozen or so steps she looked over her shoulder, checking on him. When she disappeared into the chapel, Hickey jumped up and double-timed across the patio, opened the heavy door to the rear ward. The air seemed to gust at him, dense and foul as if they’d cremated somebody and fumigated by tossing a crate of incense onto the fire. Halfway down the hall, a skeletal woman sat rigidly in a wheelchair, holding a broom, handle forward, like a medieval knight—the broom her lance, the wheelchair her steed—poised to charge.

He ducked into the third room, where Henry Tucker lay still, on his back, his eyes open but dull as if they’d gotten sanded and primered. Hickey watched for a blink, a twitch, any hint of life. At last the man sipped air, enough to fill a thimble.

“Tucker?”

The face stiffened as if suddenly doused with quick-drying glue. It turned a half inch or so, maddening Hickey, whose patience could endure plenty if he’d slept a full dose, gotten some peace and affection lately; otherwise.…Harshly, he said, “Before I’ve gotta tell somebody else, who’s sure going to snitch to the cops and get your daughter lots of years in San Quentin—who’s she trying to kill?”

The pitiful fellow Hickey’d pity no more lifted one bony arm across his body, the other straight up, reached for the side rail, gripped it in both hands, and pulled himself halfway to sitting with such fierce effort that it made him quake all over as if palsy had joined his afflictions. Through lips so parched they had blisters surrounding each scab, he gasped, “For Christ’s sake, let us be.” One hand then the other slipping from the rail, Cynthia’s daddy collapsed.

He lay sipping and spitting air while Hickey glared down on him and wiped his own brow. He’d known steam baths cooler than this dungeon—the effort of wiping his face made it wetter. “You sound like a preacher,” he growled, “asking Christ to help you kill somebody. Christ or nobody’s going to back me off, pal. See, I figure you put her up to it, but look, Tucker, Cynthia’s got all the tools, she can find her own way to wreck her life.” He caught his breath, then softly requested, “Why don’t you just tell me who you sent her to kill, then confess, and rest in peace?”

Tucker might have lapsed into a coma, from the way he looked before Hickey kicked the lower bed rail, turned, stomped out of the room. He rushed down the hall, threw the door open, sucked in a gallon of clean, tangy air before he spied Sister Johanna leading the priest down the pathway from the chapel. As they neared, he caught the sister snitching to Father McCullough, “…but he disobeyed me.” Head pushed forward so her wriggling nose led the way, she marched up to Hickey and hissed, “Shame.”

Hickey wheeled on the priest, to fend off a lecture. “We’ve gotta talk in private.”

The father dismissed Sister Johanna, nudged her when she didn’t hustle away. With a sour gaze and a wave of his hand, he motioned Hickey to take the lead crossing the patio. They paused at the office door while the priest stepped forward, pulling a large ring of keys from a pocket in his cassock.

The heavy door creaked open. Father McCullough threw it shut behind them, harder than he needed. “Urgent, is it?”

“Yeah, but first I’m wondering what’s the limit of your confidentiality, Padre? I mean, suppose I tell you something about one of your confessees. Can you make it extend far enough to keep her out of prison?”

“No,” the priest answered swiftly, but stood pondering a moment before he led Hickey across the anteroom to the carved mahogany door to the inner office. He slammed it harder than he had the first door, like a guy overwrought by constant intrusions. He motioned Hickey to the wing chair, made straight for his desk, and dug out the Irish whiskey. After pouring them each a half tumbler, he delivered Hickey’s, sat down, and leaned heavily on his desk, chin in his hands, then removed the arm he needed to lift his tumbler. He took a drink and rolled it around as though rinsing his mouth. “A confessor’s right to confidentiality is circumscribed. But…God forgives.”

“Which means?”

“In this case, I can break a promise.”

“Good for you,” Hickey muttered, and tasted the whiskey. “The girl’s trying to raise two grand to get somebody snuffed. She’s already met with the gunman.”

Father McCullough rose off the desk, sank into his chair, and started pounding his forehead with the palm side of his fist.

“See, if you didn’t clam up on Thursday, maybe I could’ve fixed things. What I mean is, don’t even sit there thinking what you ought to tell me and what you ought not. Just spill the whole deal.”

The priest leaned forward. So did Hickey. They aimed both cannons at each other, like opposing tackles across the scrimmage line. The father gave way first. Eyes dropping, he placed both hands on the desk top as though for push-ups. Finally, he slid the chair back, opened a drawer, and removed three red books. Ledgers, bound in red leather. “She gave me these to hold, one at a time, as she finished them, over the past several months. She asked me not to open them or even allow them out of my safe, unless she were to die.”

“But you read ’em.”

“I did.”

“So who’s she want to kill?”

“A number of people,” Father McCullough said darkly. “It’s a grisly story.”

“I got a preview.”

The priest skidded the books across the desk as though anxious to rid himself of them. “If you can return them to me, and not let her know you’ve seen them…I’d owe you.”

“Who knows?” Hickey said. “First I’ve gotta find her.”

“I thought you had.”

“That was yesterday. All right if I use the phone?”

Father McCullough shoved the phone at him, and Hickey dialed his office number, got the answering service, who gave him a message from Leo:

“Picked her up leaving the boarding house at nine
A.M.
She taxied to Otherworld. Spent an hour there. Next, breakfast in an Ocean Beach coffee shop and back home. Got her digs in sight from the Richfield station.”

“News?” the father asked.

“Yeah. My partner’s keeping an eye on her.”

“You’ll go to the police?”

Hickey grimaced, donned and straightened his hat. “It’d be nicer, don’t you think, if we could leave her with a future?”