Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (5 page)

Chapter Five

While the bells played songs about Christ, Hickey sat out front in his Chevy, sorting through what he’d learned, trying to give it some order, maybe draw a hypothesis or two.

Every day for months Cynthia Tucker Moon had ridden the bus out here to visit her father, dressed in the business suits Dolores Ganguish thought she wore to a job with an attorney. Hickey wondered about the lies, why Cynthia had told nobody at Rudy’s or the Ganguish house about her family. She could be a pathological liar; she might want mystery to become part of her image; or there were family matters she didn’t care to reveal. Because the priest wouldn’t spill all he knew, Hickey would bet on the last choice. Dark secrets.

It seemed her mother and father, who used to be Theosophists, had split apart and the mother gone to live up north. The older daughter, Laurel, who might be living at Tucker’s home in North Park, was probably on Venus’ side, while Cynthia doted on the father. An attractive woman named Emma Vidal—the Miss V in Cynthia’s book?—had visited Henry Tucker through the summer, then stopped. About a month ago Henry Tucker received in the mail a ring, maybe from Venus—or Emma Vidal?—which Tucker petitioned Father McCullough to hide from Cynthia and to place on his wedding-ring finger when they laid him away. A couple weeks later he suffered a relapse. On account of the ring? Because Cynthia disappeared? Or told him something before she left?

Or Cynthia might’ve run off because of his relapse, fled to the mother for solace or to bring the mother back in a desperate attempt to resurrect Henry Tucker’s spirit. If Venus didn’t want to come back, if Cynthia loved her daddy as much as it appeared, with only a little strain Hickey could imagine her cornering whichever woman Henry Tucker needed—Cynthia might be wild enough with passion and fear for Daddy, deranged enough to persuade the woman with a gun.

Aggravated because his theory was nothing but guesswork that might lead him nowhere but astray, he drove off in the middle of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” to look for Laurel Tucker.

He passed the college, rows of cafés, hardware stores, crowded motels, a half dozen tracts where carpenters pounded together cheap bungalows. Farther west along El Cajon Boulevard, about every fourth retail space—a car lot, appliance outlet, furniture shop—was boarded up or makeshifted into a recruiting office or a thrift store. The factories were thriving on war production. Nobody made cars, vacuum cleaners, or sofas anymore.

The Tucker house was on Wisteria Court, a cul-de-sac that dead-ended overlooking a canyon out of which spiked giant eucalyptus, their shadows waving over the small homes on cramped lots, identical except in color. The Tucker house was faded Mexican turquoise, stucco with a tile roof and several dead prickly pear cactus in pots along the half wall that enclosed the front porch. Hickey wondered how many months of neglect it took to murder a cactus.

On the porch, about a dozen newspapers lay in a heap. Hickey rapped on the door and waited. He noticed two old women staring from across the street, one on each side of a rose garden that separated their yards. The older of the two, hardly over four feet tall, gripped a trickling hose. She turned it away from the roses, pointed it in Hickey’s direction like a rifle in position for a hip shot. He knocked again, waited a few seconds, then squatted beside the newspapers and shuffled through them. The oldest, on the bottom, headlined
STALINGRAD OFFENSIVE KILLS
169,000
GERMANS
. 74,500
PRISONERS
, was dated December 10. The day after Cynthia’s last night at Rudy’s.

A heavy blue curtain was drawn over the porch window. Peering along the side, Hickey saw envelopes and handbills lying on the entryway floor where they’d been dropped through the frontdoor mail slot. He wanted a look at that mail. Maybe there’d be a card from Cynthia or Venus.

The old dames still gaped at him, and a man came limping to join them. He used a cane and wore a cowboy hat folded up rakishly on one side. As soon as Hickey started jimmying the lock or snooping around back for a window to crawl through, one of those vigilantes would hobble to her phone, the others would memorize his license plate number.

He crossed the street, pulling out his billfold and unfolding the photostat of his investigator’s license. He greeted them cheerily, gave his name, passed the license to the first outreached hand, which belonged to the dame with the hose. The others squinted over her shoulder.

“I’m looking for Laurel Tucker, or Cynthia.”

The one with the hose asked, “They in a mess?” Her voice sounded filtered through a whistle.

“Could be. Cynthia’s missing.”

The taller, younger woman with dyed black hair and scarlet rouge made a humming noise. The older one laid down her hose at the base of a rosebush, adjusted her spectacles.

“Cindy ain’t been around since June,” the man croaked.

“Cindy,” Hickey muttered. “How about Laurel? When’d you see her last?”

“Week or so. Zoomed off in that DeSoto, missed an inch from squashing the butcher’s dog. Red tick hound.”

“Tell me about Laurel?”

“A looker,” the man said, and reached a few inches over his head. “This tall.”

“Gadabout,” the black-haired lady added. “She comes home maybe half the time. Goes on long trips. She had men in to stay the night, a couple of sailors.”

The man waved his hands to cancel her statement. “One sailor, and a marine. Can’t you tell a marine?”

“Laurel got a job?” Hickey asked.

“You bet. Thinks she’s the queen of real estate. Got one of them signs on the side of Henry’s DeSoto. Somebody and Associates.”

“Murphy,” the small lady whistled.

“And Associates.”

Hickey dealt them each a business card, asked for a phone call if either of the sisters showed, and drove off. At Fortieth and University, he stopped in the Piggly Wiggly market for gum, a sack of peanuts and to use the phone booth. No Emma Vidal was listed by the directory or information line. The only Vidal was Joaquin, and he didn’t answer his phone. Murphy and Associates was listed, with an address less than a mile away, on the 3600 block of Adams Avenue.

Dark clouds were massing over the coast like the shield of a devilish army. Airplanes swarmed in and out of them. The atmosphere and traffic got Hickey distracted. He passed Murphy and Associates, parked down the street, and walked back. The office window was papered with photos of houses, estates, farms, hotels, bank buildings, each priced about triple what they might’ve asked last year. Most of them bought and sold by investors, Hickey knew. It wasn’t a time for working people to buy a piece of earth and settle down. Everybody had gotten upturned by the war. Some fought. Many worked two jobs, volunteered with the Red Cross or YMCA giving comfort to the GIs and sailors. Others, plenty of them—hookers, realtors, and opportunists like Tom Hickey—found their angle and raked in loot.

A few of the properties, the ones priced shockingly low, were located up north, from Redding to the coast and north into Oregon. Seaside or pine forest lots with log or stone cabins, trout streams or salmon fishing nearby, five hundred dollars or so. Summers before the war, Hickey and family used to drive north, rent a cabin, fish, hike, and ride horses until their spirits got refueled and they could tackle another year. If he had to chase Cynthia in that direction, he could keep a lookout, maybe buy a couple acres, now that he possessed Ben Franklins enough to toss one in the air if he felt like checking the wind.

As he stepped into the office, a bell attached to the door clanged, yet the receptionist didn’t look up from her dime romance until Hickey’d gazed around at the gray walls blighted with diplomas and plaques, and at the four steel desks cluttered as if a bomb scare had chased everybody else away, and drummed his fingers on the counter for a minute.

Like somebody too busy carousing to sleep except daytimes on weekends, she creaked out of the chair, stretched her puffy eyes open. Her legs were short, hips sprawling as though molded to fit the chair. On the way to the counter she smeared on lipstick, smooched it around, and gave a smile she might’ve learned at gunpoint.

“You’re an investor, I bet.”

“Yep,” Hickey said. “You’re a broker?”

“Naw, Mr. Murphy’s the broker. I like your tie.”

“Be nice, I’ll buy you one like it for Christmas. Murphy in?” He gave her a business card from Rudy’s.

“I’ll go see.” She swished between the desks to a rear office, poked her head in, and delivered the card, then stepped out and beckoned Hickey with a finger. As she blockaded half the doorway, he had to brush her arm and skirt to get by. The door shut and left Hickey facing a blond man aged thirty or less, whose bulky shoulders, in a tan woolen suit coat, slumped as if they each carried a bag of cement. He was behind an oak desk, sitting in a wheelchair.

Hickey reached across the desk. The man either grimaced or smiled. Everything about him looked woeful. His firm handshake seemed to require mighty effort. “Chet Murphy.” He plucked off his tortoiseshell glasses and set them atop a stack of legal papers. “This morning’s been a rush. We’ve taken on several new properties.” He didn’t talk with the brash prattle of most salesmen. His pitch seemed to imply: buy something, see if you can make me less miserable. “We have some exquisite harbor view lots in the South Bay and Coronado.”

Hickey decided to play along, see if it got him more than the truth had gleaned from the Catholics. “I’m looking farther north. A lake, a river, mountains. Tahoe. Maybe Shasta.”

“I can help you there.”

“Tell you what. I got a referral to Laurel Tucker.”

Murphy’s eyes narrowed and his hands rose stiffly from his lap to splay out flat on the desk. “Laurel,” he snapped, “is bright, competent. Unfortunately, she’s out of town, on business.”

Hickey would’ve bet his share of Rudy’s against an ice-cream pushcart that this fellow’s grudge against Laurel cut far deeper than professional jealousy. “She up north?”

Murphy’s hands folded around a pencil, as though to squeeze the lead out. “You’re looking for a resort? Residence? Development property?”

“I’m a skeptic,” Hickey said. “I figure, when you’re in the market for something like stocks or land and you aren’t that familiar with the territory, you gotta trust your agent. You know Laurel Tucker long?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, you’re family?”

“We were both raised at Otherworld. Mr. Hickey, I could show you our listings. When Laurel returns, if you’d rather be in her hands, fine.”

“Otherworld. You a Theosophist?”

“Not any longer. Excuse me, I’ll call Mary to bring us the upstate listings.”

“Whoa,” Hickey said. “I’m not in a hurry. Let me ask—where I got the referral to Laurel was from her sister, Cynthia. She sings at my nightclub. I guess you know her, too.”

Only his paralysis kept Murphy in the chair. It looked like he’d suddenly bound over the desk and bash walls or people to splinters. Even his ears were crimson, and he spoke with an accent on every word. “I know the whole family, but I’m not going to talk about them, Mr. Hickey, except to assure you that Laurel is a good agent. You can trust her with your money. Personally…to speak of Laurel, her family, or Otherworld revives memories I’m in no mood for. Especially not now. A dear friend has died.”

“Sorry,” Hickey mumbled, honestly grieved to be pestering the man.

“You didn’t know better.” Murphy loosed his hands and wiped them on opposite sleeves, watching Hickey rise.

“Sorry anyway. One question, though. I might find Laurel around Mount Shasta?”

“Dunsmuir.”

“With her mother?”

“Yes.”

As Hickey weaved between the desks past the receptionist, lost in her novel, he brooded on the apparent coincidence that today he’d found, in the vicinity of Cynthia and the Tuckers, two strong men who’d both lived at Otherworld, both been Theosophists, and both gotten broken so cruelly it’d take an age full of miracles to fix them.

He followed Adams Avenue through Hillcrest and down off the mesa. Harbor mist and smoke from the Consolidated Aircraft factory blended into a haze that turned the sun cherry red and shot rosy streaks at the new moon. He turned off the Coast Highway into Pacific Beach hoping to get home and find a message waiting, from Clyde or Leo, about the girl turning up. Otherwise, he’d be driving all night. Which seemed painless compared to telling Madeline he had to leave.

He turned in to the alley and parked in the carport, noting that he should feel lucky the carport wasn’t inhabited by Castillo’s El Dorado or the sports coupe of some rich kid Elizabeth had met. He wasn’t keen on Madeline’s allowing boys to hang around. Though Elizabeth looked and acted older, she was only fourteen, until January. Going beyond your age could get dangerous, like it might’ve for Cynthia Tucker Moon. The couple times he and Madeline had argued about Elizabeth’s boyfriends, she’d patronized him, left him feeling like a doting wretch afraid to let his precious fly out of the nest.

He walked in through the kitchen door. A half dozen chicken drumsticks wrapped in butcher paper lay on the sinkboard. The shower was spraying, not loud enough to cover Madeline’s song. A number she used to sing with the orchestra Hickey led, years ago, about a guy who says he’s busy, but she thinks he’s out making whoopee.

He lay the manila envelope on the counter beside the drumsticks and stepped into the living room. The phone was on the coffee table. He sat and called Leo at home, where you could always reach him around suppertime.

“Weiss here.”

“Leonardo. What’d you learn?”

“That Bobby Wisdom’s a hophead, for one thing. You ever go to that flophouse of his, wear your gas mask.”

“Anything about Cynthia?”

“All he knows about her is what he saw one night at Rudy’s. Why’d you let the bum through the door? Only issue he’d address is which part of her he’d nibble first, given the opportunity. The other guy, the old painter, he’s never heard of anybody named Moon.”

“The girl’s real name’s Tucker,” Hickey said. “I found her daddy in a rest home. He’s not talking, but I got an idea where she went. I’ll be gone a day or two. A couple things you could do for me. See if you can locate an Emma Vidal.”