Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) (23 page)

There was a long pause. "Oh, that's great, Megan. Listen, can I call you back? From my own phone?"

"Sure."

"… Oh, you're not at home? Okay, give me the number."

I repeated the number of the print shop and hung up, mystified. It was a full five minutes before the phone rang. I snatched the receiver up.

"Sharon?" Lindy said. "I'm sorry it took so long. I had to make an excuse to Dad and get over here to my room. I just hope he doesn't pick up the extension."

"Are you okay?"

"Sort of."

"What's going on?"

"Oh…" Her voice broke. "Oh, everything's terrible, and… I don't know. Something awful must have happened this afternoon, because Rina didn't pick us up at school, and she never forgets. Finally we caught the Muni home, and Mom was hysterical and Dad was furious, and Rina… she's gone.
Gone
."

The hollowness and misery in her voice made me ache for her. "Do you mean gone for good? Did she take Susan with her?"

"She took Susan. I don't know if it's for good or what. Dad won't talk about it, and Mom's in their bedroom screaming again. Dad fixed us dinner and now he's watching TV with Betsy and acting like nothing's wrong. Daddy scares me, Sharon. He really makes me afraid."

I noted that she'd slipped into a little-girl vernacular—not at all the sophisticated, semicynical talk of the kid I'd met outside of the Abbott School. She added, "He's different tonight. It's like… he just watches the TV and smiles this funny little smile. It's all so… oh…"

"Lindy—"

She began to cry. "Will you come and get us out of here? Please take Betsy and me away from here?"

"Lindy! Stop crying!"

Her sobs cut off abruptly. Then she snuffled.

The poor kid, I thought. She's seen so much in her short life, and she's probably had to fend for both herself and her little sister. It's made her capable of turning off her emotions like tap water.

I said more gently, "Lindy, I'm not angry at you for crying. I just want you to calm down, because something needs to be done. I want to talk with your dad."

"No! If he finds out I lied about Megan calling—"

"It'll be all right. Please do this for me. Go back to the other castle and ask him to pick up the extension."

There was a long silence. "Can you help us?"

I didn't know, but for her sake I lied. "Yes, I can help. I promise."

"Don't hang up." There was a scuffling noise, and then dead air for about two minutes.

While I waited, I thought some more about Gerry: his acting as if nothing was wrong while his wife screamed in her bedroom; his refusal to explain about Irene and Susan's absence; his "funny little smile." Something was drastically wrong at The Castles, but I didn't think Gerry would hurt his children. If anything, he'd go to great lengths to spare them whatever further horrors awaited. On the other hand, if I went there, he might do something to hurt me. By the time his voice came on the line, I'd decided what course of action to follow.

He said, "Hello. Is this Sharon McCone?"

"Yes."

"Lindy didn't know your last name."

"Well, we weren't formally introduced. Gerry, I need to talk with you."

"Come on up. We'll have a drink."

"No, I don't think that's a good idea." I wanted to meet him on neutral—and safer—ground. I told him I was at the print shop on Stanyan Street and gave him the address. "Can you meet me here?"

"I can't leave the girls. Our nanny is away, and Vicky's—"

"I know." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Charlie emerge from behind the offset press—inkstained and sweaty and irate, as I had expected. "Bring the girls with you. My friend here is about to go home, and he'll take charge of them for a while." Charlie and Daphne always have room for one or two more at their flat—be it adult or child. Betsy and Lindy would be safe there until this matter was resolved.

"I don't know if I should leave Vicky alone."

"Gerry, take a good look at your daughters. Those kids
need
to get out of there. I need to talk with you. And as near as I can tell, you're not doing Vicky any good by staying at home."

In the silence that followed, I was afraid I'd angered him. But the appeal on the basis of the girls' well-being seemed to have worked. He said, "I'll be there. Give us fifteen or twenty minutes."

After I'd explained to Charlie about the Cushman girls— saying that their mother was in bad emotional shape, but omitting the fact that their father might be involved in two murders—I went back to the phone and called Walt Griscom at his tavern in Tres Pinos. Against a background of revelry, Walt told me what he'd been able to find out from his contacts at the San Benito County Sheriff's Department.

"Like I suspected, the gun was a twenty-two. That doesn't do much to narrow the range of suspects. Every ranch in the area and half of the households have at least one on hand."

And, I thought, so would a great many of the households in San Francisco, where Wilkonson had disappeared. "How long had he been dead?"

"Nothing official on that yet—they don't get autopsies performed any faster down here than in San Jose or San Francisco. But the man I talked to is a long-time veteran of the department. He says at least forty-eight hours before the body was discovered, maybe more."

That would make the probable time of death Sunday morning—or even Saturday night. "I take it he wasn't killed where he was found?"

"Nope. Lividity indicates he'd lain on his right side for quite some time. He was found lying on his face."

"That area around the reservoir is pretty much deserted?"

"This time of year it is."

"So he could have been dumped either at night or during the day?"

"Yeah."

"But it's not a place that only area residents would know about?"

"Hell, no. Anybody with a map or a Triple-A guide could find it easily enough."

Like the caliber of the gun, the place where Wilkonson's body had been dumped didn't help to narrow the range of suspects. "How's Jane Wilkonson taking it?"

"She's bearing up. Woman's got guts, she'll weather this one. Let's just hope Frank was well insured. Six kids is a lot of mouths to feed."

"I'm sure Harlan Johnstone will see they're provided for."

"Don't count on it. Old Harlan was pretty bitter about Irene running off like that."

"Well, it's not Jane or the kids' fault that she and Frank— Wait a minute, you didn't tell me Harlan had heard the rumors about his wife and Wilkonson. In fact, you said they weren't true."

"That's because I didn't believe they were."

"But now you do."

"I don't know. Wilkonson's been murdered, though; maybe there is something to them."

"How did Harlan hear the rumors? Surely no one would have talked to him—"

"Young Hal told him, after the divorce papers came through. Told him he ought to forget about Irene and why. Harlan went after Frank. They had a pretty violent confrontation. Hal managed to keep them from killing each other, and that's when Harlan started to drink so heavy and Hal took over the hands-on management of the ranch."

"I wish you'd told me this earlier."

"So do I. But I didn't think it was relevant, and I didn't want to make the Johnstones—Harlan, Hal,
or
Irene—look bad."

I thought back to the chronology of the story he'd told me, readjusting for this new information. "Stupid of Hal to have brought it all into the open at that late date, wasn't it?"

"Not so stupid—the boy's running the ranch now, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is." I'd have to think a bit more about Hal Johnstone.

Walt didn't have anything more to tell me, so I hung up and called All Souls. To my surprise, Anne-Marie answered. After business hours phone duty falls to whoever is standing closest to one of the red push-button instruments that are—for some long-forgotten reason that probably was terribly significant at the time of their installation—an All Souls tradition. Usually Ted, who lives in a rather rococo cubbyhole on the second floor, beats the others to the phone from force of habit. Anne-Marie had been there so seldom in the evenings since she and Hank married that hearing her voice disoriented me.

I said, "I tried to call you on Sunday, but your machine hung up on me."

"It has that habit." She sounded dull and lifeless. "Was it anything important?"

In the old days she wouldn't have asked such a question. "I just wanted to chat. You sound tired. What're you doing there so late?"

"Trying to round up my wandering husband. We're supposed to go to a cocktail party, a fund-raiser for"—she named a liberal state senator—"and I was supposed to pick Hank up here. But he seems to have flown the co-op."

I laughed, glad that not everything had changed. "Flown the co-op" was a pun Anne-Marie and I had invented, part of that special shared vocabulary that exists between good friends. But this fund-raiser!…

Hank, in spite of a growing fondness for designer suits and first editions of obscure "cult" writers, has managed to survive this decade with his leftist ideals relatively intact. (Although he likes to think of them as slightly to that side of Mao Zedong, while everyone else claims they're more compatible with the philosophy of FDR.) The candidate Anne-Marie had just mentioned was one Hank considered a cop-out artist—and not a very good one at that.

I suggested, "Try the Remedy."

"That's what Ted said." She sounded particularly dispirited now. "He's been spending a lot of time there lately, hasn't he?"

"A fair amount."

"He never used to drink this much."

"No." I had half a mind to tell her about our drunken lunch, but now wasn't the time. She needed to extricate Hank from the clutches of the Remedy, and I needed to check for any messages. "Look," I said, "let's talk soon."

"Why, has Hank said something to you about me?"

"No. You're my friend, and I'm worried about you."

When she spoke, she sounded slightly chastened. "We'll talk soon. I promise."

"Good." In order not to further delay her, I asked for Ted.

Ted is the world's perfect secretary—so long as you can put up with his eccentricities. He is thoroughly immersed in his job, willing to work long hours for very little pay. He is blessed with a set of hyperactive ears and a nose that can smell gossip at seven leagues. If sworn to secrecy, however, Ted will defend the pact to the death. I, for one, have often found his talents highly useful.

Tonight he read me my message slips without complaint— even though I'd interrupted his dinner. There were five: from three clients, Rae, and my mother. (I knew I should have called Ma on Sunday; when she starts phoning the office, she's worried and I'm in deep trouble.) Bob Choteau hadn't called.

Talking with Bob—if and when he decided he wanted his twenty dollars—could be vital. I said to Ted, "Are you going to be there all evening?"

"As far as I know." Which meant until something interesting turned up.

"As long as you are, would you make sure to answer the phone?"

"Are you expecting an important call?"

"Yes. I really need to get the message if this Bob Choteau calls. And look, if he does, and you decide to go out before you hear from me, would you leave the message at this number?" I gave him Daphne and Charlie's.

It upset me that Bob hadn't called by now. Possibly he had gotten more drunk or stoned and had forgotten all about my visit to the mill. But when I set the receiver back in the cradle and looked toward the front of the print shop, I saw a far better lead walk in with his daughters.

After Charlie had left with the girls, Gerry and I walked over to a coffee shop on Haight called The Beanery. Three days of uninterrupted good weather had finally brought the fog in. It gusted out of the park and down the street, making pedestrians pull their outerwear closer around them and head for home.

Gerry had on the same baggy houndstooth jacket he'd worn Sunday. He hunched inside it, hands deep in its pockets, head thrust forward as if he were hunting for change on the sidewalk. I had the idea that tonight the oversized jacket was less a fashion statement than a shell within which he could hide from the emotional storms around him. There was no way of telling what he was feeling or thinking inside there; his defeated posture was sharply at variance with the little smile that continually played on his lips.

The air inside The Beanery was warm and steamy, its aroma an odd mixture of various types of coffee, in which no single one dominated. I studied the chalkboard that listed the day's offerings. To me, coffee is coffee—sometimes good, often bad, usually indifferent. This array of roasts and blends and what I supposed could be called nationalities confused me. It was a moment before I settled on Kenya Peaberry—simply because I liked the name. Gerry ordered a New Orleans blend that the clerk warned was exceptionally heavy in chicory. That seemed to please him; possibly he found the choice of something bitter as apt as I did.

We took our mugs to a table in the window bay that overlooked the sidewalk. I removed my old suede jacket and hung it over the back of the chair, but Gerry kept his jacket on, not even bothering to unbutton it. He sipped his coffee and made a face. I tasted mine: it was odd, slightly acidic, yet smooth and winey. I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not.

"How's Vicky doing?" I asked.

The folds of the jacket rippled in what I interpreted as a shrug. "By the time we left, she'd barricaded herself in the bathroom. There's a phone in there, so it probably means she was getting ready to call her shrink."

"She's in therapy, then?"

"If you can call it that. She's been seeing this woman for eight years. There's been no visible progress. I think she lies to her. I know she doesn't tell her the whole truth."

"How do you know that?"

"Vicky tells me about the sessions—in every excruciating detail. Here's one example: Originally she started seeing the shrink because our relationship wasn't all she wanted it to be, but she didn't want to divorce me, either. She sat in the woman's office for two solid years talking about everything else under the sun before she got around to admitting what the real problem was."