Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) (24 page)

"Is that so unusual?" I asked, thinking of Hank talking around and around his own problem.

"I don't know. Maybe not. I don't believe in therapy, myself."

I didn't either—at least not for myself. The idea of baring my soul to a total stranger was both distasteful and unnerving. "I'd probably lie, too," I said. "Therapists seem so… well wrapped that I'd be afraid mine was sitting in judgment of me. I'd want to make myself look better than I really am."

"Yeah, I guess that's Vicky's problem. It's ironic, though; she wants to look good for someone she's paying to listen to her problems, but she can't be bothered to put up a good front for her own kids. They're going to have great memories of their mother when they grow up: stoned or drunk, screaming or throwing things. I'm not saying I haven't contributed to Vicky's problems. God knows I've got problems of my own. But I've tried not to inflict them on the kids."

"A lot of people have worse memories of their childhoods than Lindy or Betsy will. They're good kids, they'll survive, and probably be all the stronger for it."

"Yeah, well, they won't have to live with it much longer."

The incongruous little smile flickered across his lips. "I'm filing for divorce and asking for custody. My lawyer says I have a damned good chance, given Vicky's mental state."

It didn't surprise me. "Is this what precipitated her fit tonight?"

"That and other things."

"Such as Irene Lasser leaving?"

He sighed. "I was wondering when you'd put aside your phony concern for Vicky and get down to business. Irene told me you'd tracked her down and forced her to talk to you."

My anger flared. I took a deliberate sip of coffee to allow myself time to get my emotions under control. "In the first place, Gerry, my concern for Vicky isn't 'phony.' I don't like to see anyone in the state she's in. And while I realize it would take a psychiatrist to help her in any significant way, I'm available if she needs to talk or just to have someone hold her hand. Secondly, I didn't exactly 'force' Irene to talk to me. By the time we finished, she seemed damned glad we'd talked."

"That isn't what she told me."

"I suspect she was just saying what she did to stay on your good side. She was quite nervous because someone in your household had taken food to Bob Choteau. Did you admit you were the one who'd done it?"

"Yes. And Irene understands I did it to protect her."

"To protect her from Choteau?"

"Of course."

"If you really wanted to do that, why didn't you just pay him to go away?"

Gerry looked down into his cooling coffee. Beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead—whether from wearing the heavy jacket in such a warm place or from stress, I couldn't tell.

"Gerry," I said, "are you having an affair with Irene?"

No answer.

"Vicky thinks so. The girls suspect it, though they won't even admit it to themselves."

He looked up, the strange smile flickering. In stark contrast to it, his eyes were black and mirthless, their pupils dilated so much that I thought of the black holes in the universe that astronomers talk about.

"I'm going to marry Irene," he said. "As soon as my divorce from Vicky is final, I'll take my girls and go away with Irene and Susan."

He didn't look like a man who was contemplating future happiness. Unease stirred in me. I said, "Did you tell Vicky that?"

"Yes. This afternoon."

"Is that why Irene left?"

"No."

"Why, then? Did it have to do with Frank Wilkonson's murder?"

He didn't appear surprised I knew about it. "In a way. She received a phone call from her former stepson around noon. I don't know how he knew where she was, but he did. He told her Wilkonson was dead."

Now Gerry began speaking quickly in a peculiar singsong rhythm. My unease blossomed into full anxiety, and I gripped my coffee mug with suddenly cold fingers.

"She came to my studio," he went on. "I was working at home, as I always do in the initial stages of a project. I thought she was there to remind me to eat lunch. I often forget to eat when I'm working well. She told me about the call and said she was afraid. First Rudy and then Frank—murdered. She said she knew who must have done it, and that she couldn't stay at the house anymore. I told her I would take her away. We'd pick up the girls at school and go someplace safe. She wouldn't let me do that, and she wouldn't tell me where she planned to go. She just packed up and called a cab and went. I don't know where she is now. But I'll find her. And we'll be married. Just like I planned."

"Was this before or after you told Vicky you were filing for divorce?"

"Before. About an hour after Irene left, Vicky came back from one of her damned meetings. I told her she'd have to pick up the girls herself, and she started ranting. She went on and on about how busy she was with all her
important
causes. About how tired she was because she was trying to
set things right
. About how
good
she'd been to Irene. About how
much
she'd done for her and Susan. About how
rotten
it was of Irene to leave without giving any notice. Then she started in about Irene and me. She was really laying into Irene. I couldn't listen to that kind of talk. So… I told her." His voice cracked and he looked down again.

I felt slightly breathless, as if my emotions had been running to keep pace with his. To give us both time to pull ourselves together, I said, "Do you want some more coffee?"

He cleared his throat. "Yeah. Get me some decaf French roast or something, would you? I can't drink this shit."

When I came back with two fresh mugs, Gerry was staring out the window at the fog. I set them down. He didn't look at me, just picked up the coffee, drank, and watched the drifting gray ness.

I said, "Gerry, what kind of cab did Irene leave in?"

"What? Oh, Checker. She always used them when Vicky's car wasn't available. The number's posted on the bulletin board next to the phone in our kitchen. Why?"

"I may be able to trace her. What time did she call?"

He glanced hopefully at me. "It was about quarter to one. I know because I looked at my watch, to see how long it would be before Vicky was due to come home. Vicky hates Irene, but she likes having someone to deal with the girls, and I thought she might be able to persuade her to stay."

The idea of Gerry using his wife to persuade his mistress to stay didn't set well with me. I said, "You know, Gerry, this isn't the first time Irene's had an affair with a married man."

Anger flickered deep in his eyes. "You mean Frank Wilkonson."

"Yes. Did you ever think it might be a pattern with her—"

"Now you sound just like Vicky. That's the first thing she brought up when she accused me of being involved with Irene. I know all about Wilkonson. That was different. Different from what we have. So was my marriage. I love Irene in a way I never loved Vicky, never loved any woman. I'd do anything for her."

That brought me to the real reason I'd wanted to talk with him. "Such as?"

"I don't follow you."

"Vicky says you did something for Irene that you would never have done for her. Something that could ruin everything. What was that?"

He put his hands to his forehead and swiped at the beads of sweat. "When did she say that?"

It was possible he didn't remember; he probably tuned out a great deal of his wife's ranting. "Saturday night—to you." When he didn't react, I played a wild card. "Sometime after Frank Wilkonson disappeared near the Murphy Windmill."

His pupils dilated even more. I thought of the black holes again, and how their gravitational pull supposedly is so great that nothing escapes them. Then I realized I'd moved back from the table, away from the pull of Gerry's stare.

He licked his lips and seemed to fumble for words. When he spoke, the dryness of his mouth made his voice thin and reedy. "Wilkonson never came to the windmill," he said.

"Yes, he did. He left his car on the drive and walked toward the mill. That's the last I saw of him."

"
You
saw him?"

"Yes, Gerry, I was there. I followed him all the way from the ranch to San Francisco. He disappeared in the park. As far as I know, no one ever saw him again—except his killer."

Gerry shook his head. He raised his mug, but his hand was trembling so much that the coffee spilled down onto the sleeve of his jacket. He had to use both hands to lower the mug to the table.

"Jesus," he said. "Jesus, am I in trouble."

There was only one reason for him to feel he was in trouble. I said, "Did you call him and ask him to come to the windmill?"

"No! I… no,
I
didn't."

"You had Bob Choteau call him, then. That's why Bob expects you to give him more money. That was why you didn't just buy Bob off in the first place. You planned to use him."

No response. Gerry merely stared at me.

"I suppose Choteau told Wilkonson he had information about Irene's whereabouts. That would be certain to lure him to the mill. Did you hire Bob to kill him, too?"

"No! It wasn't like that!" Gerry realized he was shouting now and looked around before leaning across the table and speaking softly, rapidly. "Look, Choteau
did
call Wilkonson. Promised to take him to Irene if he'd come to the mill. Instead, I went to meet him."

"Why the windmill? And why didn't you just call Wilkonson yourself, rather than have Choteau do it?"

"I suppose it was stupid to have him make the call, but it was in the back of my mind that if I heard Wilkonson's voice, confronted the reality of the man, I might not go through with it. As for the mill, it would be dark and deserted—I'd bribed Choteau and his pals to stay away by buying them booze. Wilkonson wouldn't be able to see me all that well, and there would be no clues as to Irene's whereabouts."

"Did you plan to kill him?"

"Christ! What do you think I am? I was going to give him some information that would make him leave us alone, that's all. And if that didn't work, I was prepared to pay him. I just wanted him to
go away
, so we could be happy."

His voice had slipped into the singsong cadence again, underscored by raw emotion. "You can understand that, can't you? All we wanted was to be happy. Is it so goddamned bad to want to be happy?"

It is, I thought, if you destroy other people's lives in order to achieve happiness. I said, "Tell me what happened with Wilkonson."

"Nothing."

"Come on, Gerry. You went to the trouble of luring him there—"

"He never showed. I waited inside the mill for two hours, but he never came."

"That can't be. I saw him walk across the road from his car. It wasn't more than ten minutes, fifteen at the outside, before I went inside the mill. He wasn't there—and neither were you."

"I tell you, I waited two hours! I waited until ten, and then I gave up and went home."

"Ten? He arrived there after one in the morning."

"Why would he have done that? The appointment was for eight. What happened was, Choteau reached him around four. Wilkonson said he had to go back to the ranch offices for a while, but he'd leave early, in time to get there by eight. I wouldn't have thought he'd have wanted to be late; he thought he was going to be taken to Irene."

"He was late, though. I don't know what delayed him, but I guess he got there as soon as he could. Whoever killed him must have known about your meeting—and I doubt it was Bob Choteau."

Gerry became very still. He didn't even seem to breathe.

"Who else knew you were meeting Wilkonson, Gerry?"

"Vicky," he said quickly. Too quickly.

"Who else?"

He shook his head, horror seeping into his eyes.

"Who else?"

"… Irene. But she didn't know where, only that I was going to talk with him."

"She could have followed you."

He was silent.

It was coming together, I thought. All of it.

"Well," I said, "that solved her problem of Wilkonson trying to claim his daughter, didn't it?"

Gerry shook his head in denial. Then his mouth twisted bitterly. "If he'd been on time, if I'd been able to talk with him, there would have been no more problem."

"Oh yes—what was the information you intended to pass on?"

"The key fact that would have put a stop to it all: Wilkonson wasn't Susan's father."

For a moment I didn't believe him. "Who is her father, then?"

"I can't tell you. But it wasn't Wilkonson. He
thought
he was the one who had gotten Irene pregnant, and until he started hunting for her and Susan, it seemed better just to let him believe it."

"Better than what?"

"The truth."

"And that is… ?"

"Not mine to tell. I've already said that."

"Look, Gerry, this is no time to keep confidences. We're dealing with two murders here, and as you also said before, you're in a lot of trouble."

He pushed back his chair and headed for the door.

"Come back here!" I stood up and started after him. The sleeve of my sweater somehow got hooked on one of the uprights of the ladderback chair at the next table. I wrenched at it, and the chair tipped over, blocking my path. By the time I'd shoved it out of the way and gotten to the door, Gerry had vanished.

"Great," I said aloud. "Just great." I went back to the table, snatched up my bag and jacket, and stood there thinking.

Given what I'd just found out, it was probably time to turn this over to Ben Gallagher. Acting in cooperation with the San Benito County authorities, he could pick up Gerry for questioning and put out an APB on Irene Lasser. But I felt so damned close to the solution that I resented not being in at the finish. Besides, what had Gallagher done in the Goldring investigation except routinely search the park for Bob Choteau? He'd been so absorbed in his pat theory that he hadn't even
noticed
I was on to something. There was no guarantee he would listen to me any more now than he had before.

No, I decided, I'd see this one through, at least until tomorrow morning. And if I did turn over the information about where Frank Wilkonson had gone shortly before his death, it would be to the San Benito County Sheriff's Department.