Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) (39 page)

There was one person, I thought, who might be able to help me make sense of all this. Frank Wilkonson. Because there was something else my instincts cried out against: Wilkonson coming to the city to "unwind."

I went into the house and fetched the cordless phone. Ben Gallagher's extension at the Hall of Justice was busy. I called my friend Sheila at the Department of Motor Vehicles; she pulled Wilkonson's address for me: c/o Burning Oak Ranch, P.O.B. 1349, Hollister. Then I went back inside and rummaged through my collection of road maps to see if I had one for that area. I didn't, and on the California map Hollister was a mere dot about forty miles southeast of San Jose. The only thing I knew about Hollister was that in the late 1940s it had been terrorized by an outlaw motorcycle club, and the incident had been the inspiration for the classic Marlon Brando biker movie,
The Wild One
.

I put the map down and tried the Hall of Justice again. This time Gallagher answered. He was obviously busy, and curt with me, but he provided the information I needed: the coroner's preliminary finding was that Rudy Goldring had died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by his head striking his kitchen stove at approximately eleven Monday morning. The complete autopsy report wouldn't be available for two weeks or more—testimony as to how overworked and understaffed the medical examiner's office was. The search for Bob Choteau, Gallagher said, was proceeding smoothly, but it would take some time to flush him out of the park.

"But we'll get him," he added—more optimistically than I was sure he felt. "The people who've lived in the park a long time don't want a killer loose there any more than you or I would want one loose in our neighborhood."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I didn't think Bob had killed Rudy, and why, but he had another call and ended the conversation abruptly.

It was almost nine, time to go to All Souls and roust Rae from what I was sure would be her bed—or couch, in this case—of pain. Today didn't seem the proper occasion to inaugurate my new plans for her training, so I decided to turn her loose on my one remaining skip-trace and see how resourceful she could be while suffering from a hangover. That would leave me with notes to transcribe on a couple of interviews, my weekly expense report, and three phone calls that had needed returning for at least two days now.

And then? I could retrace my route of the previous Sunday and talk with the nursery employees, attempt to get a line on who Frank Wilkonson had been looking for. But that seemed a great deal of effort for what would probably be very little return. There was no guarantee that the same clerks would be on duty this afternoon, and even if they were, chances they would remember Wilkonson out of all the customers they'd seen in the past week were slim. Better start with Wilkonson himself. With diligent work, by noon I'd have cleared my desk and be free to take off for the Burning Oak Ranch near Hollister.

Hollister turned out to be an old farm town situated on the eastern side of a flat agricultural plain that stretched from Highway 101 to the foothills of the Diablo Range. The land was covered with walnut orchards and onion fields, and the town itself had a nice feel of yesterday. The outskirts, as they are nearly everyplace these days, were cluttered with franchise restaurants and gas stations. Hopper trucks hauling fruit and vegetables to the local packing sheds clogged the commercial route. But the central district was full of old brick- and stone-fronted buildings, one with a handsome clock tower, and the residential section had quiet tree-canopied streets and well-kept houses on large lots. I drove slowly through town and finally stopped at a corner liquor store to ask directions to the Burning Oak Ranch. The clerk knew it and seemed surprised that I didn't. He drew me a rough map on a paper sack.

"You follow Route Twenty-five through town, out past all the new developments," he said. There was a touch of contempt in his voice that told me what he thought of them. "The route turns where there's a brand new shopping center, and you keep going through Tres Pinos and Paicines, past the county fairgrounds and the Almaden Vineyards. Then you'll start seeing cattle graze, and pretty soon the ranchhouse, at the top of a knoll. Can't miss it."

I thanked him, bought an ice-cold bottle of seltzer, and went back out to the MG. The afternoon here in the inland valley was a hot one, probably in the nineties, and I drank the water and checked the car's temperature gauge—the engine had always run hot—before I started out.

The liquor-store clerk had meant it when he said "all" the new developments. There were miles of tracts, apartment complexes, and shopping centers, of an antiseptic uniformity that the differences in design, building materials, and colors could not hide. I felt vaguely relieved when I was back in the country, climbing on a two-lane highway into the sun-browned foothills. Even there progress intruded; I passed "country estates" and a golf course. But then a sign appeared for the little (POP. 500) village of Tres Pinos, and had it not been for the cars and trucks, I might have been back in the nineteenth century.

The village was a haphazard collection of frame and adobe buildings, a couple of them abandoned, the others sagging with age. The two restaurants and a saloon looked touristy—and probably were, since this was one of the routes to the Pinnacles National Monument—but they were interspersed with ordinary dwellings and outbuildings, a pretty church and graveyard, and a tiny post office. On the right side of the highway was a weathered brown structure with a western-style false front and a sign that said WALT'S TAVERN. A fat man in a bartender's apron—Walt himself?—leaned against one of the support posts on the sagging front porch, contemplating the road. The place was the country equivalent of the Remedy Lounge, and I resolved to stop in for a beer on my way back. The resolve was strengthened when the man raised his hand in a friendly salute.

Further along the road were the county fairgrounds and a still smaller town—Paicines—which consisted of a general store with gas pumps. Then the valley widened. A brush-choked creekbed ran along to my left, and the hills on either side were wheat colored, dotted by scrub oak and grayish brown sagebrush. The higher peaks beyond them were thickly forested, but a stark rocky cliff face stood out like an ugly scar. I sniffed the dry air and thought of fire danger; as I rounded the next curve, I saw a hillside that had been burnt black, its trees a dead rusty orange. But when I came upon Almaden's Paicines Vineyards, the grapevines were lushly green and spilled over the curves of the hills, crowding into their hollows. Now I began looking for cattle, and the ranchhouse on the knoll.

The cattle range appeared fairly soon, on both sides of the road, but I didn't see any ranchhouse. The hills gentled a bit, and golden, humpy pasture dotted with fat steers extended toward the distant peaks. The land was fenced and posted with NO TRESPASSING signs; I checked the odometer, and by the time the fence joined a whitewashed adobe wall, it had been a good three miles. The wall went on for a half mile more, and then a set of pillars connected by a filigreed wrought-iron arch rose from it. I slowed the car and looked up at the rounded knoll.

It was far off, at least a quarter of a mile, and covered with what appeared to be an elaborate terraced garden. Fruit trees grew there; I could see orange and yellow orbs weighing down their branches. There were multicolored flowering shrubs as well. The blacktop driveway itself was lined on both sides by palm trees and ended up top, near an enormous white adobe house with a terra cotta roof. The house was flanked by yew trees—or perhaps, I thought,
shrouded
was a better word than
flanked
, considering Sallie Hyde's name for them, funeral trees.

I hesitated at the foot of the drive and checked the script letters woven into the filigreed design of the gate's arch: BURNING OAK RANCH. Then I eased the MG into first gear and drove slowly along the blacktop. The driveway widened into a large semicircular parking area, but no other cars were in sight. I left the MG on its shady side and got out, breathing in the fragrant air. I couldn't identify any of the mixture of scents— except possibly flowering jasmine and bay laurel.

The door of the house was enclosed in a small bricked courtyard, and the way in was barred by a wrought-iron gate. Through its scrollwork I could see raised flower beds faced with bright mosaic tile. I located a buzzer set into the adobe to the right of the gate, pressed it, and waited. There was no response. I rang again, then pushed at the gate. It was secured. I was about to go back to my car when I heard the whine of a motor starting up the drive; it was louder than my MG's— which is by no means quiet—but sounded considerably healthier. When an old spoon-shaped black Porsche with personalized license plates saying MR VET—veterinarian?—appeared, I stepped forward.

The Porsche rolled to a stop next to the MG.

The man who stepped out of the Porsche was young, a good six-five, with thick sun-bleached hair and a tan to match. His muscular body and long, strong legs were shown off to perfection by a navy tank top and khaki shorts. His eyes were a clear blue, his teeth an even white, and there was—so help me—even a cleft in his chin. The every-woman's-dream type.

For me, he was an instant turnoff.

I watched warily as he crossed the blacktop. At first I detected a faint suspicion in his eyes, but then they scanned me, and he seemed to relax. The once-over was devoid of the usual sexual come-on you get from that type, and I began to feel ashamed of my visceral reaction. When he politely asked if he could help me, I decided it had been more knee-jerk than gut-level,

I identified myself—as I'd decided to do while cooking up a plausible cover story—as Alissa Hernandez, insurance investigator. The name is that of a friend who works for Allstate and gives me a supply of her business cards; with my one-eighth Shoshone heritage, I can pass for a Chicana if no one looks at me too critically. I don't like to use the cards—or Alissa's persona—unless it's a necessity, but in this case I felt it was. The San Benito County sheriff's men had questioned Frank Wilkonson, and probably his employer, too; Ben Gallagher might have told them the name of the private operative who had been hired to tail Wilkonson, and the sheriff's men might have passed it on.

The man studied the card I handed him. Up close he looked older than I'd first thought: late thirties, rather than mid-twenties. He said, "If this is about that truck accident, you should talk with our ranch manager."

"Actually, it's about the manager. Frank Wilkonson is his name?"

The man nodded.

"Could we talk inside?" I motioned at the gate. "I've been ringing, but I guess there's no one else here."

Now his eyes flicked apprehensively toward the house.

"How long have you been here?" It wasn't a polite inquiry— he wanted to know.

"Five minutes, maybe a little more."

"And you got no response at all?"

"No."

"I see." He moved swiftly toward the gate, jamming one of his keys into the lock and jiggling it roughly. The lock stuck. He exclaimed, "Shit!" and jiggled it again. This time it turned. The gate flew open and banged into the tile-faced flower bed next to it. He yanked at the key, and when it wouldn't come out of the lock, let go with a disgusted motion and stalked across the courtyard toward the front door. I followed.

We stepped into a large foyer and the man said, "You'll have to excuse me for a few minutes. I'm concerned about my father and need to check on him. He's been… ill and— Will you wait here, please?"

There was a wide stairway at the far end of the room; he sprinted up it and disappeared. I could hear his footsteps pounding on the floor overhead.

I shut the outside door and looked around. There was no furniture in the room other than a heavy antique sideboard, covered with what looked to be junk mail and what definitely was dust. The rough plastered walls were hung with Indian rugs; even to my untrained eyes they looked expensive. On a raised shelf running across the sideboard were Indian pottery vases, the shape and colors of each contrasting with and complementing the others. The room had obviously been decorated by a person of considerable means and taste; it was too bad they had let it get so filthy.

There were dust mice—no, dust
rats
—lurking along the baseboards. The terra-cotta floor was so crusted that I could see footprints leading here and there. In one corner was a blob that looked suspiciously like cat barf. The curtains over the windows next to the stairway were torn and pulled—probably by the same creature that was responsible for the mess in the corner. The doors on either side of the foyer were closed, and the house had an unlived-in atmosphere that contrasted sharply with all the loveliness outside.

I heard footsteps upstairs again, and the man loped down the stairway. "Sorry about the delay," he said. "Have you been standing here the whole time? I should have thought to send you into the living room."

"Is your father all right?"

His handsome features clouded and he said curtly, "Yes, thank you." Then he opened a door to the left and motioned me into a large room decorated in the same Indian motif, with woven rugs, a display of kachina dolls and pottery, and lots of simple leather-and-wood furniture.

I said, "Someone in your household must be an expert on Indian art, Mr… ?"

"Johnstone. Hal Johnstone. Please, sit down."

I took a low-slung chair, and Johnstone sat opposite me, across a rough-hewn coffee table. Before I could speak, he said, "I hope there isn't another problem with Frank Wilkonson."

"
Another
problem?"

He made a gesture of dismissal. "There was some trouble earlier in the week, a case of mistaken identity, but that wouldn't concern you. How can I help you?"

I told him the story I'd settled on as I'd driven down there: One of "our" Allstate policyholders had been parked in the vicinity of Cost Plus at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco the previous Sunday afternoon. In his absence his car had been hit-and-run; a witness had left a note on his windshield giving the license plate number of the fleeing vehicle: SDK 080. We'd traced it through the DMV and found it registered to Frank Wilkonson, at this address.