Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 02 (6 page)

“Spell.”

“V-I-D-A-L. She’s not listed. And call Thrapp or somebody, tell him we got a missing person. File a report, then wheedle him into getting a warrant and escorting you into the Tucker house. Three-sixty-six Wisteria Court. Got it?”

“Yep.”

“Snoop around in there. Look for stuff on the mother, Venus. She might go by Tucker or a different name. She lives in Dunsmuir, near Mount Shasta. I’m on my way up there.” Madeline padded in, barefoot, tying her red silk bathrobe. “I’ll call you tomorrow at breakfasttime. Bye.”

He hung up and kissed his wife on the forehead and dry lips. Her hair smelled like a jungle in the rain. He glanced into her wide brown eyes and smiled, thinking how animated they always looked, as if besides being part of somebody, they had lives all their own. She backed off a step, folded her arms.

“Mount Shasta?”

“Yeah. I’m going for a drive. I got a feeling.”

“Oh. What feeling’s that?”

“Like the girl’s too screwy to be running around the state with a loaded gun.”

Madeline’s cheeks puffed out slowly as if they were filling with words she could spit at him. “Day after tomorrow, wasn’t it, we were taking the train to L.A.? The Beverly Wilshire, you remember?”

“Maybe I’ll get back in time. If not, we can go next Saturday, or during the week.”

“Fine.” With a bitter smile, she turned and padded into the kitchen. “You want me to be a good little wife, pack you a bag of sandwiches for the trip?”

As long as you don’t lace them with rat poison, he wanted to say. But she’d made a comeback. He’d retaliate and finally leave her with some crack he’d regret. It was the damnedest thing, how words always were riskiest with the people you loved.

He followed her into the kitchen, where she’d picked the photo of Cynthia and the drawing out of their manila envelope. He stepped closer to intercept her if she started tearing them into confetti.

Elizabeth threw open the back door from the sun deck, ran through the sleeping porch and living room. She’d been out in the boat; you could tell by the way her hair kinked and glistened with mist, by her parched lips and rosy cheeks.

At fourteen she looked like a woman—a starlet, the way her mom used to. A couple inches taller than Madeline, otherwise the same figure. High, modest breasts. A waist made tiny by the swell of her hips. Long, thin legs and long, narrow feet. Walking like a dancer, she tiptoed up to Hickey and kissed him on the nose.

“Daddy, my friends are going to the Cove Theater tomorrow night. Could you drop me there and pick me up at Gwen’s house on your way home? I don’t care if it’s late. Gwen’s folks will let us stay up. Please. Mom won’t let me ride with the kids after dark.”

“I won’t be here, babe. I’m going up north on business.”

“Oh.” She sighed, then an idea twinkled her eyes. “San Francisco?”

“Nope. To Mount Shasta, up past Sacramento.”

“There’s snow, huh? Daddy, can I go? We could take the toboggan and…”

“Forget it, Lizzie,” Madeline snapped.

Hickey petted his daughter’s hair. “It wouldn’t be much fun, kiddo. Mostly driving; I’m not staying long.”

“Jesus, Tom, you don’t need to talk her out of it. She’s just not going anyplace where you or anybody is carrying a gun.”

With a sneer at her mother, Elizabeth rushed off to her bedroom. Something heavy smacked the ground. “Got your temper,” Madeline said.

“Why don’t you pack a few things, go along for the ride?” Hickey offered. “There’s a ski resort at Mount Lassen. I could drop you two there. If things work out, on the way home we swing over to the coast, finish the weekend in San Francisco.”

“Aw, Tom, listen to yourself. ‘If things work out.’ When did they ever?” She turned to the sinkboard, where the pictures she’d taken out of the manila envelope lay, picked Cynthia Moon’s publicity photo, and held it out in front of him. “You think Lizzie and I want to hold your hand while you’re chasing this slut all over the state?”

“Slut? You think that’s what she is?”

“You bet she is.” Madeline laid down the photo, picked up the drawing, and displayed it before Hickey’s eyes. “Exhibit number two.”

“It’s not her, Madeline. Look at the dark hair.”

“Oh, she drew it of somebody else?”

“I don’t know, babe,” Hickey sighed. “I’m going to find out.”

“It’s Cynthia. Look, she’s as big as the man.”

“What if it is? You think I oughta only work for somebody if they’re a virgin?”

“Who’s paying you to work for her?”

“Every man that walks into Rudy’s.”

Madeline wheeled, grabbed the water faucet and cranked it on full, snatched up a drumstick and scrubbed it viciously. Hickey went to their bedroom and bath, packed a few things and stepped into Elizabeth’s room to say good-bye. She lay on her bed, propped against the headboard, her lips in a pout, shoulders hunched. There was a pencil in her hand and a drawing pad on her lap. In a few minutes she’d already sketched pine trees and the outline of a horse pulling a sleigh.

“You’re tops,” Hickey said. He got out his billfold and handed her a ten. “Your mom’ll probably let you go meet your friends in a taxi.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” It took a minute for her to fashion a smile. “Be careful,” she said, urgently as if he were shipping off to war.

Chapter Six

The sky above Pacific Coast Highway was blue-black with patches of gray where the fog thinned enough to let traces of moonlight through. On the bluff north of La Jolla, Hickey pulled in to a clearing beside a stand of wind-bent pines, got out, and used a pocketknife to scrape the brown paint off the top of his headlamps.

Relieved of having to peel his eyes at every inch of road, he flipped on the radio, tuned in “Dreamland,” the L.A. show that was Cynthia’s favorite. There were few vehicles on the two-lane highway. Now and then some bigshot in a V-12 sedan would blast by, highballing down from L.A. Hickey whooshed along about seventy mph, wondering if he could stay awake the whole fifteen-or-so-hour drive. Every few miles he’d catch up with a military convoy, a quarter mile of trucks, and have to lie behind until they got to a mile-long straightaway. On empty stretches, he yanked the hand throttle and whizzed along the sea cliffs, his elbow out the window, listening to a run of Basie and Duke Ellington tunes, and to Justine Brell, a new singer with Charley Wayne’s Orchestra, who sounded eerily like Madeline used to.

Les Butterfield had discovered Madeline, not long after Hickey had joined Butterfield’s band on alto sax. They played the L.A. ballrooms, weekend and summer resorts on the coast and in the mountains around Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear. When Butterfield gave up music to concentrate on liquor and Hickey took over as bandleader, he booked them jobs from San Francisco to Agua Caliente across the border. With Madeline singing, they got all the work they could use. Her phrasing, gestures, and the passion in her eyes, as though she were on a quest, muddled Hickey’s brain, moistened his eyes, made him want to comfort her, protect her, give her the universe. She married him in Reno, June of 1926.

For a couple years Tom Hickey felt like king of the mountain. He’d risen from shoe-shine kid and street punk to bandleader and won the girl. Everybody’s darling. Like Cynthia Moon was now.

That was the thorn pricking Madeline’s jealousy. She didn’t worry about Hickey’s faithfulness. Sixteen years she’d been his only lover. But she hated Cynthia, for getting what they both wanted most—to sing and be adored.

When she’d given up singing, she’d only meant to be gone long enough to get her shape back and nurse Elizabeth. A year or so. But the stock market crashed, and there came to be plenty more work for cops than for musicians. All but a few of the nightclubs closed, the resorts that didn’t fold only booked cheap local bands. The Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman—guys like that kept their orchestras working. Hickey wasn’t one of them.

Highway 101 carried him past miles of orange groves and strawberry fields, through Whittier, across the dry San Gabriel River, past the municipal golf course and into East L.A. where even after 9:00
P.M.
trucks rumbled out of warehouses, and machines whacked and clanged, barely muffled by the factory walls. Whittier Boulevard took him past City Hall and dozens of bars and movie houses where servicemen and working girls huddled outside the doorways in lines or bunches. Then Highway 101 cut left on Sunset Boulevard, ran alongside the parks—Elysian, Silver Lake, Griffith, and swung left again onto Hollywood Boulevard.

The farmer’s market, the theaters, the aroma of eucalyptus, tainted by soot, drifting on the sea breeze—every sight and scent aroused Hickey’s memory. Thirty years he’d spent around L.A. First on a cattle ranch near Long Beach, before his dad ran off and his mother got religion—Hickey couldn’t remember which happened before, and might’ve caused, the other. The ranch got sold, the money vanished. With his mother and younger sister, Florence, he moved to a cottage at the foot of the Hollywood hills, a mile from the intersection where he sat this moment. When the light changed, he gunned the motor, accidentally screeched rubber trying to leave behind the smell of Hollywood: the sea air blending with dust from the hills and canyons, burning gasoline and the scents of imported trees like cedar and redwood, dry and brittle. He stared at people in cars, ones who paced sidewalks and remembered how they were. A few bigshots, the rest scavengers, prowling to be the first to spot and grab a dollar when it fell. Hickey’s family were scavengers. His mother, named Harriet, became a seamstress. All she could do—besides torment her son, curse his father, praise God and the prophet Mary Baker Eddy—was sew, cook, and clean. Hickey shined shoes and stole things until he got his saxophone. A year later he was blowing with combos at parties and school functions. The saxophone and football would’ve gotten him through USC, except that his sister caught rheumatic fever. In 1925, aged nineteen, he signed on with the LAPD, the first time.

The memories that made him damned glad when he’d dropped into the valley, passed the Hollywood Bowl, and was speeding toward the mountains beyond San Fernando as if he’d escaped from jail were the same ones that plagued most everybody who spent longer than a weekend in Hollywood. Failures. Dreams that proved greater than you were. Superficial memories that kept him distracted from the real nightmares. He was almost to the Grapevine before he dwelt for more than a second on his mother. The saint. This moment she’d be sitting on a hard chair with her nose in the Bible or
Science and Health
, looking for something she hadn’t gleaned in the first thousand readings, anything that would make her feel more hallowed. She lived in the mansion Florence’s husband built, a mile up the hill from their old cottage. Hickey wondered who she was fondling these days. The reason Florence gave for remaining childless was that a baby would irritate Mom. Florence was subtle, diplomatic. Hickey knew what she really meant.

On the grade, Hickey ate tuna sandwiches, smoked his pipe, and watched the scattering clouds, the clusters of stars, and the big slice of moon. He crossed the Grapevine an hour before midnight, coasting fast down the zigzag highway toward the San Joaquin Valley. He loved driving, ranked it directly behind his family, his work—the day job—and music. He didn’t long for a swanky house or wardrobe, a yacht or trips to Rio, like Madeline. The bayside cottage, a half closet of tailored coats, slacks, shirts, and a dozen hand-painted ties, a good hat and a rowboat, plus the dream of one day buying a sloop or ketch, suited him fine. But every few years he got a new car. Not a monster or showboat. Something responsive, tight without rattles, so you trust it’ll turn like you mean it to, and if you goose the throttle, it goes zoom. So every twitch it gave was under his control. And a good radio.

He’d lost “Dreamland” when he’d crossed the divide. There wouldn’t be much radio in the middle of the night through this valley. He settled in for the long run, four hundred flat, weary miles. He tried to contemplate and solve some problems, like how to please Madeline; the whereabouts of Cynthia Tucker; whether Phil the maître d’, whom Hickey’d put in charge of Rudy’s, could pacify LeDuc the chef without a fistfight; whether LeDuc would keep his fingers off the cigarette girls’ behinds. But as the night got heavier, those subjects taxed his mind, so his mind refused them and chose a trancelike stupor. He sailed through patches of fog, past vineyards, almond groves, musky ranches, stockyards, endless farms. Even at 2:00
A.M.
there were tractors plowing and bin trucks at the silos loading. Grub for the war. In Fresno, beside a bin truck loaded with fertilizer and a couple stakebeds hauling wetbacks and Okies, Hickey gassed up and bought a thermos of coffee.

A hundred miles vanished. Sacramento flashed by. Everything lightened. A band of dawn appeared above the Sierra Nevada and spilled over like a flood of syrup. Rivers of mauve and fern green ran down the snowy mountainsides. The best part of driving all night was dawn, Hickey mused. The clouds made angel patterns. Piles of fallen leaves sparkled in the orchards like heaps of gold and jewels. Out of a checkerboard of rice fields, white cranes and snow geese flew up and away.

Hickey made Redding before 8:00
A.M.
At a truck stop alongside the Sacramento River, he filled his tank and thermos, bought a half pound of coffee cake and bribed the cashier—who either had a sixteen-year-old figure and the face of a crone, or Hickey was demented with fatigue—to let him use the phone. He reached Leo, who hadn’t found the girl or got into the Tucker house yet.

A few miles up the road, the valley dead-ended into a mountain range. The road narrowed, got icy, weaved beside the arroyos of churning streams, beneath cutaway red dirt hillsides, across bridges and around the bays of Shasta Lake, into dense pine forests. A sign proclaimed
CHAINS REQUIRED
. Hickey didn’t have any. He tightened his grip on the wheel and skidded for a long spell without much chance to admire the landscape until, at the crest of the Trinity Alps, Mount Shasta appeared.

Like unsuspectingly opening a door and colliding with a giant—suddenly the mountain was the whole panorama, a great white pyramid that stood alone without foothills leading to it, as if it had dropped in one piece out of the sky. Hickey marveled at the sight while he skidded down the grade and into Dunsmuir.

A strangely dark town, crouching in the shadow of the Trinity Alps as though it had reasons to hide from the sun. The one main street led off the highway. A mix of gravel and slush. Along it, in the mile before it disappeared into forest, there were ten or so buildings, half of them built of stone, chunks of dark granite wedged together and mortared. The rest were made of stacked logs. There was a Texaco station and garage, a hardware-grocery, a café that doubled as bus depot and post office. The Outpost. One of the log buildings. A few old pickups sat out front. Hickey pulled in beside them. He slid out of his Chevy, stretched, whiffed the pines. When he started shivering, he walked inside.

Left of the counter was a wall of postal boxes. Hickey stepped over there for a look. They were tagged by name. No Tucker. Right of the counter, in a cramped, dimly lit area, were three tables with checked tablecloths and flowered napkins. At the first one sat two young farmers. Three of the town’s old watchdogs, none under seventy, had the farthest table. They’d probably finished breakfast an hour ago, would digest for another hour, then wander outside, take a seat in the sun, and rest until nap time. They’d know Venus and everybody else in town.

Hickey took the middle table, sat watching the cook and waitress. The cook had a lion and an eagle tattooed on one arm and the tattooed face of a woman peeking out from his collar. The waitress was a little plump, a lot buxom. She had a schoolgirl face, blanched complexion, dimples, frizzy blond hair.
SUE LYNN
stitched onto her blouse. After a couple minutes she turned from gabbing with the cook and smiled at Hickey.

Her voice was a quavery drawl. She took Hickey’s order, a country omelet, corned-beef hash, milk. Her hips swished free and easy, going to the counter and back with his milk and water. Hickey asked about a motel.

“Well, you’re gonna have to stay at the Castle Crag, ’cause it’s all there is. I hear it’s elegant. Where you from? Don’t tell me. Las Angeleez.”

“San Dago.”

“Watcha doin’ way up here? Running from a gal?”

“Hunting for one.”

“I’ll be.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “Got a particular type in mind?”

“Yep. Name’s Cynthia Tucker.”

“Uh-huh.” Sue Lynn gazed coolly around, nodded to one of the watchdogs who flagged her. “Pardon.” She swished off and made a turn around the room with the coffee pot, then fetched Hickey’s order and brought it over. “Bone apeteet.”

“Yeah,” Hickey said. “Listen. You know somebody named Venus that lives around here?”

The farmers, the watchdogs, the cook, and Sue Lynn dropped their other occupations and stared at him. Not with glee. Finally Sue Lynn nodded. “Sure, everybody knows Venus. She’s one of them Netsocks that’re buying up the town.”

Hickey set down his fork, his eyes widening. The waitress eased into the rickety chair across from him. “Netsocks call theirselves a society, but they ain’t no society, a church is what they are. Everybody knows that. Well, they ain’t exactly a church either, in a Christian sense. What they are, according to Pastor, is a gang of loonies. Know what he says? They believe there’s a tribe of goblins-like that’re living inside the mountain, right smack in the middle of Mount Shasta.” She broke off for a hearty giggle. “They’re all the time up there, searching for some tunnel where they can sneak inside. You going up there?”

“Where’s that?”

“Their place. You go to the end of the road then keep going until you see this big sign, says Black Forest Lodge. You go up there, promise you come back and tell me about ’em?”

Hickey nodded. “What’d you mean, buying up the town?”

“Just like it sounds. This past year or so, most every parcel that’s offered, she’s plucked it up. But they ain’t selling to her no more. Least if anybody does, they’re gonna get whooped. How’d you like your town getting took over by a gang of loonies?”

Hickey smiled. “My town already has.”

“That so?”

He picked up his fork and started nibbling, let Sue Lynn get back to her work. The omelet was too cheesy, the hash like military surplus. It cost almost a dollar. He gave Sue Lynn a four-dollar tip, enough to make her chirp when she saw it.

Outside, two of the watchdogs leaned against the bed of a pickup, admiring Hickey’s Chevy. A stone-bald fellow, who looked too frail to stand as straight as he did, pointed at the car. “She a fast one?”

“Yep,” Hickey said. “Six cylinders is plenty, car this small. Want to give her a spin?”

The old guy cackled. “Hell no. Maybe I’d wreck her and you’d skin my ass.”

Hickey shrugged. “I bet you know Venus.”

“I seen her around. One of them Nuthawks. Maybe not just
one
of ’em either. I hear she’s the top dog.”

“Hell she is,” the other fellow growled. He was short, box-shaped, hidden in a bundle of clothes, a jacket and overcoat, hat pulled down to his eyes. “Top bitch maybe. Top dog’s that nigra.”

“Who’s that?”

“The swami. Sissy boy. You ain’t looking to join up with ’em.”

“Naw. I’m looking for Venus’ daughter, Cynthia.”