Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) (14 page)

The bartender was about to bring the beer over, but I motioned for him to stay put and went back to the almost deserted bar. "Let me pay the tab for Jim and me," I said.

He shook his bald head. He was portly, with lively brown eyes and healthy pink skin that pulled smooth over his layers of extra padding. "You don't have to do that, miss. Jim's in bad shape—but I guess you know that. I run a tab for him every night, and I'll collect later."

"Nice of you." I looked around at the few remaining patrons. "They go home early around here."

"They're mostly ranch hands; get up early, too."

"This seems to be a popular place with them. Who's Walt?"

"Me." He jerked a thumb at his chest. "Didn't I see you drive by this afternoon in a red MG?"

"Right. I saw you, too. I stopped in because the place reminds me of a bar I go to at home."

"Where's that?"

"San Francisco."

"You pick up strays there, too?" He motioned at the slumbering Jim Smith.

"Sometimes."

"And eavesdrop on other people's conversations?"

"I—
what
?"

"I've been watching you ever since you came in, lady. Made you the minute you sat down at the bar. You're not a cop—you're too subtle—but I'd wager you might be a PI."

It bothered me that he'd pegged me so easily, but I had to smile. I said, "What are you—a former cop, or a former PI?"

"Cop. San Jose." He grinned and extended a big hand across the bar. "Full name's Walt Griscom." When he released my hand, his smile faded. "I don't like things going on in my bar that I don't understand, so you'd better tell me why you're here, what's on your mind."

I hesitated. A former cop in a little town would probably know a great deal about his friends and neighbors. He also might be intrigued enough with the matter that had brought me down here to want to help. But he would have a vested interest in this community and not want a member of it to be annoyed or suspected.

Walt Griscom watched my face, then went and got himself a beer. He came around the bar and sat down on the stool next to mine. "Look," he said, "maybe I phrased that wrong. Let me tell you something about myself. This was my dad's bar—bought it back in the Depression when nobody in his right mind was opening small-town taverns. Made a go of it by giving credit to down-and-out ranchers and their hands. When things got better, they repaid him in patronage. I thought that kind of life wasn't good enough for me, so I moved to San Jose and became a cop. When the yuppies took over the department, I retired and came back home."

Griscom paused to swig beer and accept money from a couple who were leaving. He pocketed the bills and continued. "What I'm telling you is that I've got a lot of respect for the people in this valley. I like living here, and I don't want to see folks hassled. On the other hand, I've got a lot of respect for the law. I wouldn't want to see anything illegal going on—or anything that would make me wish I hadn't come back here. So if what you're looking into is something I should know, I'd appreciate your telling me about it."

He was a wily old devil, but I liked him. So I told him—everything, including my real name. It was a risk, but again my instincts proved right. Because when I finished,
he
had quite a story to tell
me
.

As I sat in wait for Frank Wilkonson's Ranchero to emerge from the west gate of the Burning Oak Ranch the next evening, I had plenty of time to think over what Walt Griscom had told me—as well as the information Rae had phoned in at eight-thirty that morning.

The phone had awakened me, and I'd spoken into it with a furred tongue—a consequence of brandies on top of more beers with the bar owner. Rae sounded peppy and cheerful, and for a moment I regretted having bolstered her confidence with the additional job responsibilities; in my present condition, I would have liked her a lot better if she'd sounded downtrodden.

She said, "What's wrong? You sound mean as a snake."

I ignored the question. "What have you got for me?"

"Well, don't bite my head off!"

"Sorry—I'm hung over."

"Having a hot time in Hollister, huh? Well, I got hold of Alissa Hernandez, and she pulled the info on Frank Wilkonson." Now Rae's tone became crisp. "Policy's his own, there's no record of employee coverage for Burning Oak Ranch."

Yet another strike against Wilkonson's veracity.

"The guy's a bad driver," Rae went on. "Or maybe he just gets rattled in unfamiliar territory. Nothing too major, but some fender benders in the past two years, and they're all in different locations."

I sat up and grabbed the pen and memo pad from the nightstand, then propped up the pillow behind me. "Give them to me—location and date."

She did. In August of the year before, there was one in Southern California—Orange County, specifically—and another in September. Later in September he'd had a minor accident in L.A. proper. In August of this year, he'd rear-ended another car on the Bayshore Freeway, some twenty miles south of San Francisco, and there was a more recent incident in the city itself.

I told Rae to hold on and went to get my checkbook from my purse. It had one of those calendars that cover a three-year period; I checked the dates against it. All the incidents had occurred on a Saturday or a Sunday.

I stared at the list, wondering if 1 should risk paying another call on Jane Wilkonson. I would like to ask her if she'd been with her husband on any of those dates. But I was willing to bet she hadn't.

"Sharon?" Rae said.

"I'm here. Thanks for the information. Were you able to get hold of Jack?"

"Yes. He was taking off for Yosemite—more rock climbing—but he gave me a copy of the will."

I smiled faintly. Rock climbing was what we at All Souls referred to as Jack's "sublimation activity." He wasn't very good at it, but his near obsessive enthusiasm more than made up for his lack of skill. Fortunately, he never got up very high. We were all sure he'd abandon the pursuit once he'd put a certain amount of distance between himself and his divorce. "Give me a summary, would you."

"It's kind of complicated. Most of the bequests are to organizations benefiting the homeless. There are provisions for the sale of his business, and all sorts of trusts set up, along with the details of who's to administer them and how. And then there's a small bequest to the guy who's supposed to have killed Goldring—Bob Choteau."

"How much?"

"Five thousand."

Wait until Ben Gallagher gets hold of that information, I thought. It wasn't much in terms of Rudy's entire estate, but to someone who was homeless…

"Anything more on Choteau?" I asked.

"There wasn't anything in the paper this morning."

"Good… go on."

"Why good?"

"I'll explain some other time."

There was a pause that told me Rae felt shut out, but she merely said, "Okay. The rest of the will is just two bequests, each in the amount of twenty-five thousand. One to an Irene Lasser, described as 'friend,' and the other to her daughter, Susan Lasser, to be placed in trust until she's eighteen."

Well, I thought, there's the connection.

I hadn't known her birth name, which was what the Lasser must be, but the first name Irene was not all that common. It had figured prominently, however, in the story that Walt Griscom had told me the night before.

Funny, though: he hadn't known about the daughter, Susan.

What Walt had told me explained Jane Wilkonson's statement that the Burning Oak Ranch was a sad place.

Seven years before, Harlan Johnstone's wife of thirty-one years had died after a long illness. Within months Johnstone had remarried, to a woman named Irene, who was a professor of horticulture at San Jose State. Just how Johnstone had met his much younger bride—she was thirty, he fifty-nine—wasn't clear to Walt, but he said that many of the local people were suspicious of her motives and hostile because Harlan had married again so soon. The bad feelings went away, however, when the new Mrs. Johnstone set about beautifying the ranchhouse's grounds with the elaborate terraced gardens I'd seen, as well as organizing classes for members of Hollister-area horticulture clubs. Her workshops for children were particularly effective, and Irene displayed a genuine affection for her young gardeners.

"She really seemed to love kids," Walt told me. "Which was a shame in a way, because none of us could see Harlan starting a second family at that stage in his life."

The first hint of trouble between the Johnstones came about two years later when Irene abruptly withdrew from her community activities. The excuse she gave was that she was needed at the ranch—and she had been known to help out in the office from time to time—but those who knew Harlan well felt that he had become jealous of her outside interests and had forced her to give them up. That viewpoint was reinforced by a marked deterioration in Irene herself: when she was seen around Tres Pinos or Hollister, she looked withdrawn and depressed, and she seemed to have lost more weight than was healthy. This went on for over two years, and then she snapped out of it, becoming the same attractive, vibrant woman whom Harlan had first brought to the Burning Oak.

"It was a real turnaround," Walt said. "People kept commenting on it. I remember talking with Hal Johnstone, who had just come back here after working someplace on the East Coast for several years. He hadn't seen her since his father's wedding and couldn't believe she'd ever been in such bad shape; he was impressed by his stepmother."

"And what happened then?"

"About six months later, she took off. Just up and left with no explanation, not even a note. Harlan was frantic; at first he thought maybe she'd been kidnapped—there's a lot of money in that ranch, you know. Then he thought she'd run away with another man and he put detectives on her trail. They had no luck tracing her. Finally, a little more than a year ago, the divorce papers, along with a waiver of her rights to her share in the community property, came from an L.A.-area lawyer."

After that, Harlan had given up. What he did was begin drinking—and he'd been drinking heavily ever since. In the past month or two, he'd refused to leave the ranchhouse, and his imbibing had reached monumental proportions. Hal, as the men I'd overheard at the bar had said, was holding things together at the ranch, but just barely. He'd been trained in veterinary science, not in the business end of cattle ranching, and even though Frank Wilkonson was a good manager, there were many things that required the attention of someone with Harlan's skills—and weren't getting it.

It explained a great deal, I thought, about Hal Johnstone's behavior when I'd visited the ranch: his sudden concern when I said I'd been ringing the bell and getting no answer; his quick trip upstairs to check on his "ill" father. It also explained the dirty, rundown condition of the house.

"They'd better take that place in hand pretty soon," I said. "The house is a disaster area, and it'll only be a matter of time before the gardens start showing neglect."

"Jane Wilkonson tries, bless her soul, but it's too much of a job for just one woman."

"You mean she cleans that big house?"

"Tries to. She's the only one Harlan will let inside. It isn't easy for Jane to find the time, what with all her kids. But she cared for Irene, and she knows how she would feel about the place going to hell."

I wanted to say that if Irene had been so concerned with the ranchhouse and its gardens, she should have stayed there and looked after them. But that wasn't fair; I had no idea what pressures had been operating on the woman.

I said, "Why do you suppose she left that way?"

Griscom shrugged. "Who's to say? I asked young Hal about it, but he didn't know. He'd been gone for three months before it happened—some job helping out a colleague with his practice, I think—and had only come back to the ranch a day or two before she took off. Was as surprised as the rest of us. I kind of thought the Johnstones had got things settled between them. Every marriage goes through a rocky period when the partners are trying to accommodate each other's conception of how it should be. The good ones survive, the Johnstone marriage didn't."

It made me think of Hank and Anne-Marie. Would their marriage also be one of those that didn't make it?

I said, "What about Frank Wilkonson?"

Walt's mouth tightened slightly. "What about him?"

"I heard some talk at the bar. One man seemed to dislike Wilkonson pretty strongly. All he would say was that he doesn't like what he's doing at the Burning O. But you, on the other hand, seem to think he's helping Hal Johnstone keep the ranch running."

Walt hesitated, and finally said, "Oh hell. You've been straight with me; I might as well return the favor. There was talk about Irene Johnstone and Wilkonson, back about the time she did her turnaround and came alive again."

"Ah."

"Wilkonson had just come to work on the ranch. Irene helped out in the office. Jane Wilkonson was pregnant and having a rough time of it. The kids were running wild."

"In short, the perfect set of circumstances to drive him into another woman's arms."

"Yes, but I for one don't believe it. Irene was terrific to Jane. She did her shopping, drove her to the doctor, and took those kids—all five of the little hellions—for days at a time." He grinned. "Must have driven Harlan crazy, having them in the house. Harlan loves his son, but the kid gave him a fair amount of trouble while he was growing up, and Harlan always used to say he was just as glad they couldn't have more than the one."

"His first wife couldn't conceive again?"

"There was some medical problem. She was always a sickly woman, I've heard. But like I was saying, if Irene had been having an affair with Frank, I doubt she would have cozied up to Jane that way."

For an ex-cop, Walt Griscom was remarkably innocent in certain respects, I thought. Irene's actions were perfectly compatible with having an affair, to my cynical way of thinking. She might have realized that the best coverup for carrying on with the husband is a friendship with the wife. And she also loved kids and probably knew that the quickest way to a father's heart is through his children. Or she might have genuinely cared for Jane and done the things she had out of guilt. The possibilities were numerous.