Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories (24 page)

"Has he ever indicated any romantic interest in you?"

She laughed. "Joel? My God, no. All he cares about is history
and old books."

"The serviceman from the telephone company," I said. "Had you ever seen him before yesterday?"

"No, never."

"Do you know anyone who works in the phone company?"

"No. You don't think —"

The door buzzer sounded. Lynn glanced at her wristwatch
and said, "That's probably Connie. She said she'd be back after
her exam."

It was Connie. "What time is it?" I heard her ask when Lynn let her into the foyer. "My damn watch stopped again."

"Five of one. You don't have another class today, do you?"

"No. I want to catch 'Another World." She sounded relieved, as if missing an episode of a TV soap opera would have been a major blow to her. "The exam lasted longer than I expected."

"How do you think you did?"

"Not too bad." The two girls came into the living room, and Connie Evans and I saw each other for the first time. "Oh," she said. "You must be the detective Lynn's dad hired."

"Yes."

Lynn introduced us, and Connie came over and shook my hand somberly. She was about Lynn's age, not as attractive, with dark blond hair cut short, a Cupid's-bow mouth and a somewhat harried expression. Levi's and an S.F. State sweatshirt covered her angular body.

She asked me, "Do you really think you can find out who's making those calls to Lynn?"

"I'm going to try," I said.

"Well, if there's anything I can do to help. . ."

"I do have a couple of questions."

"Sure. Let me get a Coke first, okay? I'm dying of thirst."

"You and your Coke," Lynn said.

Connie disappeared into the kitchen. I asked Lynn, "Does anyone else besides you have a key to this apartment?"

"No, no one."

"Not even your fiancé?"

Faint color came into her cheeks; in this permissive age, it was nice to see that young girls could still blush. "Of course not," she said. "Larry and I don't have that kind of relationship."

Connie came back drinking from a can of Coca-Cola, walking with her eyes closed and her head tilted back; only young people seemed able to perform that little trick without stumbling into something. When she lowered the can I asked her, "Did you give Lynn's new unlisted number to anyone?"

"No," she said. "Absolutely not."

"Did you mention to anyone that she had a new number?"

"No.
"

"Did you happen to call her for any reason while you were with someone else?"

"No. I've been here most of the time since —"

And the telephone rang.

The sudden sound of the bell had an effect on all three of us. Lynn bit at her lower lip. I stiffened. Connie had been lifting the can of Coke; she froze with it halfway to her mouth.

The thing rang again. Lynn said, "It's probably Larry. Or my father."

She went over to where the telephone sat on a driftwood stand; I followed her. She hesitated, and then, as it rang a third time, she caught up the receiver and said, "Hello?"

She didn't say anything else. Her face went white; a little sound came out of her throat that was half-gasp and half-moan.

I plucked the receiver out of her hand. But I did not get to hear anything except a whirring click, then the buzzing of an empty line.

In a hushed voice Connie said, "Was it him?"

Lynn nodded convulsively as I cradled the handset.

"What did he say?" I asked her.

She shook her head; the fear in her eyes made them look enormous.

"Lynn, what did he say?"

"He said . . .
"
The words seemed to catch in her throat; it was a few seconds before she could get them out. "He said he's going to kill me."

III.

I
spent another couple minutes in Lynn's apartment—the only other thing the caller had said was that if he couldn't have her,
nobody would—and then left her with Connie Evans. Maybe
the threat was meaningless, just another element of verbal abuse; but the bastard might also be crazy enough to mean it.

There was just no way of telling yet. But it was my job to treat it
as the real thing, and I felt a sense of urgency. The feeling was enhanced by the fact that talking to Jud Canale about the call, and about what protective measures he might want to take, would have to wait; he had told me he would be in court all afternoon.

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, found apartment 5-E and rapped on the door. Pretty soon a voice said from inside, "Yes?"

"Joel Reeves?"

"Yes. Who are you?"

I told him who I was, and what I did for a living, and that I was investigating the anonymous calls Lynn Canale had been receiving.

Reeves said, "Oh, well, just a second," and the lock snicked free and the door opened on a chain. "I'd like to see some identification, please."

I showed him the photostat of my investigator's license. He studied it pretty good, and when he was finished doing that he studied me for a couple of seconds. Then, satisfied, he took the chain off and let me come in.

"Cautious, aren't you?" I said as he closed and relocked the door.

"We've had burglaries in this building. And I own some valuable books."

He was in his mid-to-late twenties, dumpy, weak-chinned, with sparse black hair and watery green eyes behind Ben Franklin glasses. He had a studious, preoccupied air about him—the kind of kid who would grow into a tweedy, middle-aged stereotype of the college professor. Or so it seemed on the surface, anyway.

His apartment was similar in size and layout to Lynn's, except that the windows faced west, toward Lake Merced and the Harding Park golf course. It was neatly if unimaginatively furnished, with filled bookcases dominating two of the walls in the living room. When Reeves led me in there, I noticed the titles on a couple of the books. They brought me over to the cases for a closer look.

Nearly all of the books were from or about Victorian England; Lynn had told me Reeves was a budding Victorian scholar. But what she hadn't told me was that one of his particular interests was Victorian erotica. At least two shelves were jammed with such pornographic novels and "confessions" as
My Secret Life
,
May's Account of Her Introduction to the Art of Love, A Night in a Moorish Harem, Venus in India
and
The Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon
; several bound volumes, dated 1879 and 1880, of an underground sex journal called
The Pearl
, and more than a dozen contemporary references, some scholarly and some designed to titillate.

I turned to face Reeves. "Nice collection of books you've got there," I said.

"Thank you. Some are quite rare."

"The erotica, for instance?"

"Oh, yes. Those bound volumes of
The Pearl
are worth . . . well, they're quite valuable."

"How do you happen to have them?"

"I bought them in London last summer." He gave me a prideful smile. "At auction. I outbid several antiquarian book dealers for them."

"You must be well off financially."

"What? Oh, no—not at all. My father left me a small inheritance when he died seven years ago, enough to put me through school and to finance the London trip and the book purchases."

"Then you must have wanted those volumes of
The Pearl
pretty badly."

"I did," Reeves said. "They don't generally turn up for sale." I moved away from the bookcase. "Aren't you a little young to be so interested in erotica?"

"Young?" He blinked at me owlishly behind his Ben Franklin glasses. "What does age have to do with a person's interest in history?"

"Is that why you collect sex books—because of historical curiosity?"

"Of course. And for research purposes. The same reasons I collect Victoriana of all types. I'm doing my master's dissertation on popular and underground Victorian literature."

"Uh-huh," I said. But I was thinking that Lynn was an attractive young woman, and Reeves was an unattractive young man whose interest in erotica may or may not have been purely academic. He also seemed to be the obsessive type, judging from what he had told me about those volumes of
The Pearl
; if that type of man wanted a woman and knew he could never have her, and if he was a little unbalanced to begin with, he might take the obscene-phone-call route.

Reeves said, "Has Lynn had more of those calls? Is that why you've been hired?"

"Two more. One last night, one this morning. The last one wasn't obscene; it was threatening."

"Threatening?"

"The man said he was going to kill her."

Reeves looked shocked. "Good Lord!"

"So I'm sure you can understand that I want to find out who
he is as soon as possible."

"Yes, certainly. But I don't know how I can help."

"Just answer a few questions for me."

"Of course."

"Lynn said you dropped by her apartment yesterday, while
the telephone serviceman was there. Did you happen to notice
her new number?"

"No, I didn't."

"But you knew she was having a new phone put in?"

"Well, she didn't say so, but I assumed that was what the
serviceman was doing there."

"How long did you stay?"

"Only a minute or so."

"Okay. A few other questions and I'll be on my way. Do you
know Lynn's fiancé, Larry Travers?"

"I've met him, yes."

"What's your opinion of him?"

"I don't like the man," he said flatly.

"No? Why not?"

"He's arrogant and self-centered and not very bright. All he
ever talks about are sports and how much beer he can drink
without gaining weight. Lynn is intelligent and serious about
her studies; I don't know how she could have chosen someone like Travers."

"Love is blind sometimes," I said.

He sighed. "Yes. So it is."

"Do you know a friend of Travers' named Tim Downs?"

"No, I don't think so. May I ask why you're so concerned
with people Lynn knows? Surely you don't believe the man on
the phone is one of her friends?"

"There's a good possibility he might be. The only people she
gave her new number to are friends. And she's had those two
calls since the new phone was installed yesterday."

"I see." He sighed again. "Poor Lynn. She must be very
upset."

"She's bearing up. Connie Evans is staying with her."

"Oh yes, the computer woman."

"Pardon?"

"A computer science major." Reeves made a wry mouth. "I don't like computer science," he said.

"Why is that?"

"It's cold, dehumanizing. Computers, machines, are symptomatic of what's wrong with today's world; in fact, they may be at the root of the problem. That's why I prefer the past. It may be imperfect, but I would much rather have lived a century ago than today. And I would much rather live today than a century from now; the probable shape of the future horrifies me."

"Maybe it won't turn out as badly as you think," I said.

"Yes, it will. It certainly will."

I gave him one of my business cards, just in case, and then left him and left the building to pick up my car. The way it looked now, there were only three people on the list of suspects—Reeves, Larry Travers, and Tim Downs. But would it stay narrowed down to those three?

I went looking for Travers and Downs, to find out.

IV.

P
otrero Hill was an older section of the city, built on one of San Francisco's forty-three hills—residential on its upper slopes, industrial down at the base. It had become a fashionable "in" place to live for the young and ambitious among the city's population; there were a lot of old Victorian houses up there, and the young people had begun buying and fixing them up. The appearance and tenor of the neighborhood had improved markedly in recent years.

The address Lynn had given me for Larry Travers was a Stick-style Victorian—one of the tall, vertical row houses that had been the dominant architectural style in the 1880s. It had a false front adorned with a "French" cap, and it had been painted recently in two not very harmonious shades of blue. It also had a
Flat for Rent
sign, with the name of a Mission Street realtor on it, on the garage door under the big, rectangular bay window.

The pair of mailboxes on the porch told me that the building had been divided into two flats and that the upper floor belonged to Travers. I pushed the button alongside his name, listened to the bell ring inside. There was no response. And none when I rang the bell a second time either.