Deadfall (Nameless Detective) (13 page)

Dessault hadn’t been doing anything in here, the way it looked. Except hiding, maybe. Caught here, or out in the open nearby, when he heard my car; so he’d waited, watching, until I entered the house, and then made his escape through the trees.

But I still couldn’t figure a reason for him being here. Did he know Martinez? The way he’d reacted yesterday morning, when I’d asked Melanie if she knew anyone who spoke with a Latin accent … now that I thought about it, his reaction had been a little too sharp and edged with surprise. Maybe he
did
know Martinez. But that still didn’t explain his presence here today, or his furtiveness.

The barn was oppressive, somehow; I went back out into the sunshine and took a look at the chicken coop. Nothing there. I crossed to the house again. And prowled through its five rooms and bath, starting with the parlor.

The loose papers on and around the desk weren’t particularly interesting. Old bills, some paid and some not; a couple of personal letters written in Spanish to “Eva cara mia” and signed “Mama,” but with no address or envelope to tell me where they’d come from; some crayon drawings similar to the one on the wall, the kind of stuff proud parents save. What
was
interesting was the way the papers were strewn around, as if they had been pawed through by somebody in a hurry. Martinez? Or Dessault? And if it had been Dessault, why? What was he looking for?

The kitchen was next. Pots and pans, a few dishes, some packaged and canned foodstuffs in the cupboards—Martinez hadn’t bothered to take any of that. Or clean out the refrigerator, either: a couple of things in there wore greenish fur coats. But again, there was evidence here of haste either in packing for departure or in a rapid search. Cupboard doors stood open, drawers had been pulled out and left that way, the shards from a broken vodka bottle were scattered across the drainboard and among a tier of dirty crockery and utensils in the sink.

A dining area opened off the kitchen, but there wasn’t anything in it except a table and some chairs and a sideboard. Nothing in the little boy’s bedroom, either, except a bunk-style bed; the closet was empty except for a couple of dropped coat hangers, a toy soldier with its head twisted off, and the remains of a balsa-wood model airplane. I moved into the bath that separated that bedroom from the one where Martinez and his common-law wife had slept. The medicine cabinet door was open, revealing two empty shelves and one containing some used razor blades. A vial of cheap men’s cologne had been dropped and broken in the sink; but there was not much odor from it, even when I poked my nose down there, which meant that the vial hadn’t been broken recently.

The closet in the master bedroom was empty, too. So were the bureau and the two nightstands flanking the bed. The bed still had its sheets and pillows and blankets, all of them rumpled and not very clean. On the wall above it was another crucifix, this one made out of bronze with silver ornamentation. An oval mirror in a dark-wood frame hung on another wall, and what drew me to it were two color snapshots wedged between the glass and the frame on one side. One of the snaps was of a laughing little boy with huge brown eyes, like a child in a portrait by Keane. Danny Martinez’s son. I wondered, for no particular reason, what his name was. The other photo was of a man and a woman and the same little boy, the man holding the child in one arm, all three of them grinning. It had been taken at a beach somewhere; the ocean, spattered with sunlight, was visible behind them.

I took that one off the mirror and looked at it more closely. The woman was slim and attractive in a narrow-faced way, with shiny black hair that fell almost to her waist. The man—Danny Martinez, no doubt—was tall, heavy through the chest and shoulders, and sported a bandit’s mustache. They had made a nice-looking family, the three of them, back when this photo was taken. It gave me an odd, sad feeling, being here in the house they’d shared, a house emptied of all but the residue, the ghosts, of their years together. No more outings on the beach, no more closeness, no more laughter. Nothing left now but bitterness and pain and the wreckage of a man’s self-respect.

I stood for a time holding the snapshot, staring at it. Then, on impulse, I slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket and turned and left the bedroom, left the house. Nothing more for me there either. Like the barn, it too had become oppressive.

I drove around the area for a while after I left the Martinez farm. It took me all of five minutes to find the road and the gravel turnaround where Richie Dessault had parked his car. So he wouldn’t have had to know the area any better than I did in order to find the road himself and figure out that it was a short trek through the woods and over the hill to the Martinez place. And he hadn’t had to worry about anybody noticing him or the car because there weren’t any other houses within sight.

On the way back along Elm Street I stopped at the only neighboring house I’d seen in the immediate vicinity, the one I’d passed coming in. A middle-aged woman greeted me cordially and told me nothing useful. She knew Danny Martinez—“a nice young man,” she said—but she hadn’t seen him since his wife and son went away to Mexico, and expressed surprise to learn that he was gone too. She didn’t know any of his friends; and when I described Dessault she gave me a blank smile and shook her head. The only thing of any interest I got from her was the little boy’s name: Roberto.

From there I drove over to Highway 1 and headed up the coast over Devil’s Slide; there wasn’t anything more for me to do in Moss Beach today. I picked up the 180 freeway beyond Pacifica and followed it all the way downtown to the Fourth Street exit, where I got off and looped back around to Mission Creek. But that was a waste of time, too: if Dessault and/or Melanie were inside their houseboat, they were not opening the door for the likes of me.

I drove up Fifth, put the car briefly into the Fifth and Mission garage, and went across the street to the
Chronicle
building to collect the package on Margaret Prine. DeFalco had left it with the lobby guard, so I didn’t have to go upstairs; I was back in the car in three minutes, and on my way to the office three minutes after that.

Eberhardt was there when I came in, polluting the air with one of his smelly pipes. I don’t know where he gets his tobacco, but the stuff is as black as tar and smells like tar. It must be contraband, made in somebody’s basement; no reputable tobacco manufacturer would inflict crap like that on the public. Or was “reputable tobacco manufacturer” a contradiction in terms? I thought. They kept right on putting cigarettes on the market, didn’t they? Pre-fab cancer, all wrapped in nice bright packages, with sexy ads to entice teen-agers into the carcinoma fold. I wondered how many tobacco company executives had quit smoking, or never started in the first place, because they themselves were afraid the health warnings the government forced them to put on their product might be true.

I asked Eb, “What are you mulling over? Something profound, I trust.”

“I was thinking about getting laid,” he said.

“A very deep philosophical subject. You got any prospects?”

“Might have.”

“Yeah? Anybody I know?”

“Not yet. Maybe you will, though, if things work out.”

“What’s her name?”

“Barbara Jean. She’s from the South.”

Uh-oh, I thought, here we go again.

“South Carolina,” he said. “Charleston.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“She works in Henderson’s office in San Rafael.”

“Whose office?”

“Henderson. The guy who wants the double-indemnity policy with Great Western. She’s a secretary.”

“And you’ve got a date with her, huh?”

“Might have. She gave me her number.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

“No wisecracks. She’s a lady.”

“Sure. That’s why you’re already thinking about getting laid.”

“Men
always
think about getting laid,” he said. “We’re just a bunch of animals.”

“Ain’t we though. She have a big chest?”

He gave me an injured look. “No. She’s no Wanda, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

That was exactly what I was thinking. Wanda was his most recent passion, an unlovely lady with an enormous chest, three brain cells, and an irritating personality (or lack of one). They had been engaged for a while, until Kerry—leave it to Kerry—had got sloshed on wine during a dinner foursome at a place called Il Roccaforte, the worst Italian restaurant in the world, and dumped a bowl of spaghetti over Wanda’s dyed blond head. The convoluted repercussions of that had opened Eberhardt’s eyes, or at least had removed them from their blind fastenings on Wanda’s chest, and allowed him to see her for what she was. He had been down-in-the-mouth ever since the break-up, bemoaning the fact that he was getting old and women didn’t find him attractive anymore—all of which I took to be sexual frustration. A woman was just what he needed, as long as she was a good woman who was good for him. But ever since his wife Dana had left him a few years ago, he had had a knack for picking losers. Barbara Jean, from Charleston, South Carolina. Oh boy.

I said, “Well, good luck. I hope it works out.”

“Me too. I’ll let you know.”

“I can hardly wait. So did you wrap up the insurance thing?”

“Everything except the paperwork. I already called Barney.”

“Why aren’t you doing the paperwork now?”

“I hate that crap.”

“Who doesn’t? Hop to it. We don’t get paid until the report is delivered, remember?”

I went over and sat at my desk. There was a piece of paper on the blotter with a name scrawled on it—Ruth something—and a telephone number. I held it up. “What’s this, Eb?”

“Oh, yeah, right. Woman called a little while ago, said she wanted to talk to you about Leonard Purcell.”

“What’s her last name? You write like a monkey on LSD.”

“Mitchell. Ruth Mitchell.”

“I don’t know any Ruth Mitchell.”

“She said she’s his ex-wife. Leonard’s.”

“She tell you why she wants to talk to me?”

“No. Just call her back.”

Well, she could wait; I had other calls to make. The first one was to Tom Washburn. I told him what I’d found out about Danny Martinez, and it got him excited and I had to calm him down. The information was positive, apparently corroborating his theory, but we were still a long way from any conclusive answers.

I asked him, “Does Martinez’s name mean anything to you?”

“No. This is the first I’ve heard it.”

“You’re sure Leonard never mentioned it?”

“Positive. I’d remember a name like that.”

“How about Richard or Richie Dessault? Did Leonard ever mention him?”

“I don’t think so. Who’s he?”

“The kid Melanie is living with. He calls himself a poet.”

“No, I’m sure he never said anything about a poet.”

“Are you up to going back to your house?”

“I … suppose so. Why?”

“You might check through Leonard’s papers, see if there’s anything on Martinez, Dessault, or Alex Ozimas.”

“All right. If you feel it’s a good idea.”

“Worth the effort, anyway. Call me if you find anything.”

We rang off, and I dialed the Hall of Justice. Klein was in. And not a little surprised at what I had to tell him. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “We didn’t even get a smell of this guy Martinez.”

“I get lucky sometimes. You’ll check him out, Ben?”

“Right away.”

“What have you got on Dessault?”

“Not much. He’s got a record, but it’s small-time stuff; I’ll dig deeper, see if I can turn up a link to Martinez.” He paused. “By the way, I ran Ozimas through the computers. Nothing on him state or local. I’m still waiting for the FBI report.”

“Thanks, Ben.”

“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he said. “Maybe apologizing, too. If this Martinez angle pans out, you and Washburn were right and we just blew it.”

“It happens. No apologies necessary. I’ve blown a few in my time, too, God knows.”

When I cradled the receiver Eberhardt’s piece of paper caught my eye again; I picked it up and squinted at it again. “What’s the last digit of Ruth Mitchell’s number?” I asked him. “A two or a three? I can’t read that, either.”

He quit pecking at his old Smith-Corona, got up, and came over and looked at the paper. “That’s a three. Can’t you tell a three from a two?”

“Not the way you write it.”

I dialed the number. And a recorded voice came on and said it was sorry, that number was no longer in service. I disconnected and said to Eberhardt, who was back at his desk, “A three, huh? Damn number’s out of service, with a three.”

“So maybe it’s a two. Try it with a two.”

I said a couple of words under my breath and tried it with a two. This time the line buzzed emptily. I hung up on the tenth ring and got the directory out and looked up Ruth Mitchell. No listing. I said some more words under my breath and thought: The hell with it. Let her call me back, if it’s that important.

I opened the envelope from Joe DeFalco and read the
Chronicle’s
file on Margaret Prine. It told me nothing I didn’t already know, except that her husband, Leland Prine, had died of heart failure in 1974, that she was chairperson of a couple of local charity drives, and that she had been hit by a car and suffered a broken hip while crossing the street in front of her building in 1981. The only item of interest wasn’t part of the file at all; it was Mrs. Prine’s unlisted telephone number, which DeFalco had dug up somewhere. Newspaper people, for some reason, seem to have better resources than detectives when it comes to ferreting out unlisted numbers.

Mrs. Prine could wait a while longer, though. There was somebody else I wanted to see first—more specific information I needed. I put the file away, got on my feet, asked Eberhardt to take care of locking up, and left him smoking his pipe and looking thoughtful while he pecked out the Henderson report.

Barbara Jean, from Charleston, South Carolina. Well, shut my mouth. Y’all want some pecan pie, Ebbie, dahlin?

I couldn’t wait to see the expression on Kerry’s face when I told her.

It was twenty of five when I walked into the Summerhayes Gallery. There weren’t any customers today, either—just Elisabeth Summerhayes standing behind one of the display counters, using a soft cloth to polish one of the patterned glass paperweights. She did not look very pleased to see me. Her mouth turned down at the corners and her back got stiff; she put the cloth and the paperweight down carefully and folded her hands together at her waist as I approached.

“My husband is not here,” she said when I reached her.

“Do you expect him back?”

“No. I will be closing myself, very soon.”

“When can I see him?”

“On Monday, if he chooses to talk to you.”

“Meaning you think he won’t?”

“He does not like to be bothered by detectives.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t. Is that how you feel, too?”

“Yes. Why don’t you leave us alone? We know nothing about what happened to Kenneth or Leonard Purcell.”

“I think you do,” I said. “For instance, when I was here yesterday why didn’t you or your husband mention the purchase of Kenneth’s collection?”

She blinked at me. “The … what?”

“Kenneth’s collection of antique tobacco art. Mrs. Purcell told me you and your husband are buying it.”

“But I don’t—” She broke off, and her downturned mouth got tight at the corners. Something hot showed in her eyes, something I took to be a combination of sudden understanding and sudden anger. “How much did Mrs. Purcell say we are paying for the collection?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

“How
much?”

“Three hundred—”

“Yes, all right, I understand.”

I thought: So that’s the way it is. But I said, “This the first time you’ve heard about it, Mrs. Summerhayes? I’m surprised your husband didn’t tell you.”

She didn’t answer the question. “When are we to take possession, according to Mrs. Purcell?”

“As soon as Kenneth’s will clears probate. Not too much longer now.”

“And the money? Has any of it been paid as yet?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you ask your husband?”

Silence. But she was thinking of a confrontation with him; you could see it in those angry eyes, in the hard set of her jaw and the stiffness of her body. She was a bundle of thinly contained rage. And of hurt, too, maybe; she struck me as the kind of woman who would hide her pain more deeply than any other emotion.

Just the same I thought: Go ahead, push her a little more. Be a bastard. That’s the kind of business you’re in, isn’t it? “Evidently your husband has a buyer or two lined up for some of the pieces,” I said. “I suppose it depends on whether or not
he’s
been paid.”

“What does?”

“Whether or not he’s paid Mrs. Purcell.”

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I suppose so.”

“I’d be interested to know who those buyers are. And which pieces they’re buying.”

Silence again.

I said, still pushing her, “I understand from Mrs. Purcell that she and your husband are close friends. Have they known each other long?”

More silence.