As a Favor (9 page)

“Oh.” Effield seemed to waver between remaining erect and slumping onto the sofa. Automatically he glanced at his hand and, presumably finding it clean, used it to brace himself against the light fabric.

“What I need to know, Mr. Effield, is where you were Monday night.”

He looked so startled and relieved that I wondered what he had been expecting me to ask.

“Here,” he said.

“All evening?”

“Yes. I came directly from work. I never left.”

“Can anyone verify that? It’s not that I doubt your word, but we do need—”

“Oh, yes.” He smiled. “Mona was here.”

I shifted my glance to her, still lounging against the far end of the sofa.

“I’m the perfect alibi,” she said with an amused grin that seemed to vivify her entire body. “I rode here with Alec right from work, so that was about five-thirty that we arrived. And I left around nine-thirty or ten.”

“Alec drove you home?”

“Yes.” She smiled again, mostly with her eyes, as if some private thought—ironic, unkind, scandalous—had emerged.

“Was there anything you wanted to add?”

“No.” She stretched, unshaven legs pushing out from her loose cotton skirt. “If you’re leaving,” she said languidly, “maybe you could give me a lift down the hill.”

Effield opened his mouth, but he must have thought better of his protest. Perhaps his mental picture, too, was focused on driving Mona home Monday night.

“Mr. Effield,” I said.

“Yes.” He looked wary and annoyed, as if I had again gone back on my word about the last question.

“When you drove Mona home, did you go in?”

“No. I dropped her in front of the driveway.”

“And then?”

“Then?”

“I mean, did you go anywhere else, or come on home?”

“Home.”

“And what time did you get back here?”

“I don’t know. For goodness’ sakes, Officer…”

“If he left me at ten,” Mona said, “he would have been back here before ten-thirty. It’s only a twenty-minute drive.”

“Do you concur, Mr. Effield?” I felt as if I were dealing with a deaf person, having to write out every question and wait while each minimal answer was spelled out in response.

“Yes.”

I closed my notepad. Effield retrieved a velvet cloak from the closet and slipped it over Mona’s shoulders as she lifted her long, curly hair. Whatever their relationship, it was apparent that Effield was willing to see her leave if it meant being rid of me.

With a nod to him, Mona followed me down the stairs to the patrol car. She settled herself comfortably on the passenger seat, leaning back against the door, much as she had on Effield’s sofa.

Over the crackle of the radio, she asked, “Have you found out what happened to Anne?”

“No, but it doesn’t look good.” I asked if Anne had had enemies or particular friends.

“She wouldn’t tell me. We weren’t close. We just worked together.” She paused. “What’s with the client, McIvor?”

“She seems to be missing too. At least she’s not at the address listed in her file. Alec Effield thinks she, and eleven, possibly sixteen, other clients moved and Anne just hadn’t gotten around to recording the new addresses.”

Mona sat, watching my hand on the steering wheel. “I doubt it.”

“What?”

“Anne’s hardly perfect, but inefficiency is not one of her faults. If you want to know about inefficiency, ask me; my caseload’s always behind. But Anne—if a client moved this morning, Anne would have the address change on the computer by noon.”

“Alec didn’t seem to think so.”

Mona said nothing. I wished I knew more about the welfare system; I didn’t know enough to realize what I should ask. Mona seemed straightforward. She seemed like someone who would find subterfuge too great an effort.

“Was Alec involved with Anne?” I asked. “I mean, before you and he got together.”

Mona smiled, pulling her feet up under her. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing between us.”

“Nothing? I didn’t pick that up from Alec.”

“Well, what can I tell you? I think it’s fair to say that he and I have different goals. I find him pleasant now and then, but I’m certainly not attracted to him. He, well, he’d love to go to bed with me, and he’d be appalled, no, disgusted, to see me in his apartment in the morning.”

I sneaked a glance at Mona’s face. There was no sign of hurt or anger, just the vague amusement that had characterized her during much of the discussion. I was finding I liked Mona Liebowitz.

“What about Anne, then?” I asked.

“You mean Alec and Anne? I don’t know.”

“Do you think it was likely?”

It was a moment before Mona answered. “I really don’t know. Have you seen Anne?”

“No.”

“Well, the easiest way for you to picture her is to think of the opposite of me.” There was laughter in her voice.

I laughed too. That was the type of person I could picture with Alec Effield.

We were out of the hills by now. I turned the car left onto Grove. It would have been easy to lapse into a friendly conversation with Mona. To compensate, I questioned her answers more critically. Choosing my words, I said, “Anne may have been involved in some shady dealings with clients. Do you think Alec could have gotten her into them?”

“Alec couldn’t lead an old lady across the street.”

“But he is the supervisor.”

Mona put a hand on my arm. “You can’t be as innocent as you sound. Look, civil service is run by your old-time male chauvinist pigs and when they see one of their own little piggies coming along, they give him a pull. Anyone in our unit is more competent to supervise. Alec has the job for only one reason: because he has balls. And I don’t mean that in the abstract.”

“So Anne may have dreamed up whatever’s going on and carried it out on her own?”

“Could be.” Mona sat up straight. “Anne’s more likely to have done things alone, not necessarily by choice—” She paused as if considering the wisdom of continuing.

“Not by choice?”

Mona took a breath. “Okay. Anne’s a cheat. It’s her nature, like having brown eyes. You learn that after you’ve been involved with her. She does it on everything. If she’s going to split the gas on a trip she gives you less than half. She’ll leave a dime tip and push it together with your quarter. I doubt she even realizes it.”

But, I thought, someone may have realized it and had enough of Anne.

As I stopped the car by the address Mona had indicated, not more than three blocks from my own apartment, I noticed her looking at me, assessing my expression.

“You know,” she said slowly, “it might be that I could find out things you can’t. Maybe we could get together again.”

Was this curiosity or self-protection?

Whatever Mona’s motivation, I needed all the help I could get. I’d deal with the implications later. “I’ll come by tomorrow evening.”

“Good.” Mona got out and shuffled up the path, around the house to the back.

I sat, idly watching the palm fronds flutter in the fog. Mona, Alec, Fern Day: they were either lying, hiding something, or at best trying to get a scoop on the investigation. Each of their interpretations of Anne differed, but even Alec was willing to admit she wasn’t above taking bribes. What else had Anne been doing? Ask Nat, Alec had said.

Alec Effield was right. It was time to find Nat, wherever he was.

I
STOPPED BY A
pay phone and dialed Nat. As the phone rang, my anger grew. Slamming it down on the eighth ring, I stood there for a second, then dialed again, this time Nat’s friend, Owen McCauley. It had been over a year since I’d talked to him and I suspected from the hesitation in his speech that anything he’d heard of me in that time had not been flattering.

“It’s business, Owen. And I have to see Nat now. You can tell him I pressured you.”

He laughed uneasily. “Okay. I’ll tell him you threatened to tow my car.” He hesitated again. “I don’t really know where Nat is, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say the library. There’s a new book in Nat’s field that’s just out. It’s about Maud Gonne, Yeats’ great love. It’s reference, so if Nat’s reading it—and odds are he is—he’s been waiting for the publication for a couple of months—he’s doing it in the library.”

“Thanks, Owen. Your car will still be there in the morning.”

I drove to the University campus. The main library was not too far from Sproul Plaza at Telegraph. I’d been past it in the days when Nat and I had gone for walks on campus. But the campus was arranged for foot traffic and driving was labyrinthine; I made several wrong turns before I came upon the building. I was glad that it was something I normally had no call to do. The campus police handled every crime there; the University of California force was one of the largest forces in the state.

For a Wednesday night in October—early in the term—the library was quite full. After a whispered interchange with the reference librarian I made my way through, looking over a variety of heads. No Nat.

To the librarian, I said, “I understand you just got in a new book on Maud Gonne.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Would you check? She was a friend of Yeats.”

Her shrug was not accommodating, but she did check, a procedure that consumed five minutes, and produced from her a smug shake of the head.

“Nothing connected with Yeats? Well, what about Irish poetry, or Noh plays, or theosophy?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

Another grudging shrug preceded her departure and it was five minutes more before she returned to assure me, in very crisp tones, that nothing related to any of those topics had come in.

Damn! I should have known better than to trust Owen McCauley.

Back in the car, headed toward the station, I was considering what kind of cop couldn’t even find her own ex-husband, when I came to Shattuck Avenue. Abruptly, I turned south toward the city library. Owen hadn’t specified which library. Muttering an apology to the thought of Owen, I stopped.

I left the car in a loading zone, hurried up the library steps and turned left to the reserve room. Nat was sitting at a table by the far wall, his head suspended above a book, his hair hanging over his eyebrows. He must have been there a while. I glanced at the book. It looked about two hundred pages and he was not half through. He’d probably come directly from the welfare department meeting in Oakland—a half hour drive at most. It was almost seven o’clock now.

Sliding into the seat next to him, I said, “Nat.”

He glanced over, half smiled, then a look of confusion came over his face. “What are you doing here?”

“I have to talk to you about Anne.”

“Anne? Oh, Anne. What did you find out?”

I suggested someplace more private, and followed Nat toward the stacks. As we climbed the stairs, I noticed the title of his book—
The Life of Major John MacBride
—MacBride, the “drunken, vainglorious lout” of “Easter 1916,” the man Maud Gonne married after repeatedly refusing Yeats.

“Nat,” I said, swallowing hard, “what happened at Anne’s apartment Monday night?”

Nat stopped by a row of volumes on rock gardens. “What?”

“Nat, you left your pen there—the pewter pen your father gave you. It was in Anne’s apartment.”

Nat’s hand went to his shirt pocket, then to his pants. He didn’t look at me. “Oh, the pen. Anne borrowed it.”

I said nothing. Nat was particular about his possessions. The pen had been a birthday gift. I couldn’t imagine his lending it to anyone, even someone special.

“Just before I dropped her off, she borrowed it. She said she was going to write a letter. She’d left her pen at the office.”

“She didn’t have another one at home? Come on, Nat.”

“If you’re going to take that tone, there’s no point in discussing it. You’re always on the offensive.” He leaned back against the stacks, resting an elbow on the shelf.

“Nat, this isn’t a personal argument. Something happened to Anne. Her apartment was a shambles. Furniture was overturned. There was blood on the walls. And we found clothes monogrammed “AMS” in a heap by the Bay. It looks like Anne is dead. Now, what happened when you were there?”

Nat stared, the skin pulled tight across the bridge of his nose. “Dead. It’s really hard to believe.”

I put a hand on his arm. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I have never been in Anne’s apartment. How would I know?”

“You never lend that pen.”

“Well, I did this time.”

I pulled my hand back. “Nat, this is not just a discussion between us. The fact that that pen was found in Anne’s living room is in my report. If you’re not being honest about this it will come out.”

“You mentioned my pen?”

I said nothing.

“You talk about this being impersonal—nothing to do with our having been married—but it is personal. No one else would have connected that pen to me.”

He was right, of course. “Nat, you called
me.
You could have just called the station, but we’ve been through all that. Tell me about leaving the pen.”

“I did.” The skin on his face seemed tauter yet.

I waited, knowing it was hopeless to expect him to add anything else. “Very well, then. Where were you on Monday night?”

“Monday? Monday?”

I watched him as he considered, trying to view him with the objectivity I would any witness. But it was impossible. I’d seen that look as he created excuses, as he avoided answers, as a prelude to telling me I wouldn’t understand. I glanced away, deciding to focus solely on his statements.

“Monday, Nat.”

“Ah, yes. Monday was Alec Effield’s little party. He—”

“He had a
party
Monday night?” That certainly wasn’t the impression I’d gotten from him or from Mona. I tried to reconstruct their statements. Had either one said anything to suggest they’d been alone, or could they have been as easily referring to a small party?

“Go on,” I said.

Nat half raised an eyebrow, another gesture I’d seen often in situations he found tiresome. “Every so often Alec has these little get-togethers for his workers at his place. He seems to feel he should. It’s basically an ill-conceived idea, since not many of us can tolerate each other and usually a few drinks only serve to bare the hostilities.”