Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (14 page)

I said, "Sure, it's okay. Hate to bother you
at this time of night but it really is important."

"No problem," he assured me. "What can I do
for you?"

"Ann Marie is in big trouble," I told him.
"The police seem to think she's been killing off her husbands."

He said, "So that's it. A policeman was here
the other day. He didn't tell me why. Just wanted my version of
Nathan's death—how I felt about it and all."

"How do you feel about
it?"

"It's been seventeen years. What am I
supposed to feel? If you mean do I blame Ann for it, the answer is
no, I do not blame anybody for it. Nathan was screwed up, that's
all. Not his mother's fault, not my fault. Certainly not Ann's
fault. They were both just kids, I mean really kids. I thought it
was a mistake at the time, but what the hell can you do except give
your blessing and hope for the best? Ann woke up in time and got
out of it, that's the way I look at it. I'm not even sure if Nathan
killed himself over her. He had...other problems."

"What other problems?"

Sturgis took my arm and
walked me into the yard, obviously to distance the conversation
from the house. He said, "We thought of Ann as one of our own. She
was in this house every day for two years. She and Nathan were
pals. They hung out together, played records, studied, walked down
to the malt shop, went to the movies. Understand? They were pals.
But I never saw them touching each other. I don't think they'd ever
kissed, or even held hands. It worried me, let me tell
you."

"What worried you?"

"Didn't seem natural. Know
what I mean? Nathan was never...too masculine. This friendship with
Ann—that was okay, that was fine, there doesn't always have to be a
sexual thing between boys and girls—but there weren't any other
girls, see. There weren't any boys either. I mean, you know, he had
nothing in common with other males his age."

I put it to him point-blank. "Did you
suspect that your son was gay?"

Sturgis placed his hands on his hips and
gazed into the sky. "Of course he was gay," he replied softly.
"That marriage was never consummated. I went with Ann myself to
file for the annulment."

"Did she tell you Nathan was gay?"

"Nawww. She did say they hadn't had
sex."

"What did she give as her reason for the
change of heart?"

Sturgis tossed a glance at his house, moved
me a few feet closer to the street, said, "She told me that she and
Nathan married for the wrong reason. They were dear friends but
simply not in love. She claimed the marriage was for convenience
and she felt guilty about that; she was just using us to solve her
own problems and it wasn't fair to Nathan, wasn't fair to us. That
was a very grown-up little girl, let me tell you."

"But you still came to the
conclusion that Nathan was gay."

"I knew damned well he was gay. The only
damned reason I blessed the marriage in the first place
was..."

I sighed, said, 'To prove you were
wrong."

He sighed too, glanced again at his house,
said, "It's a dumb world, isn't it."

I asked him, "Concerned about Mrs.
Sturgis?"

"She's a worrier," he replied. "Frets if the
cat doesn't eat, frets if it eats too much—or if it doesn't play or
plays too much. Mary likes the world at even keel."

I asked, "She get over Nathan okay?"

"She'll never get over it," he replied
softly.

I said, "Yeah. Well...I'm sorry to revisit
all this on you but..."

"No no, I'm glad you came to see me. I've
been wondering ever since the cop was here."

"Have you kept in touch with Ann?"

He made a face and
replied, "Oh, not directly anymore. For a few years there, we did.
It was just that...Mary couldn't let it go. Every time Ann called
or dropped by, Mary cried all night. I guess Ann knew that. Anyway,
the visits stopped and the calls became more infrequent. We haven't
heard from her in, oh, fifteen years maybe."

I said, "You knew she'd become a
minister."

He said, "Oh yes. Didn't surprise me one
bit. Always was a deep kid, very serious about life. I'm just
surprised it took her so long to get it together."

I said, "Well it took several marriages to
put it together. She had lousy luck with each of them. This cop
thinks she's a black widow."

Sturgis coughed into his
hand and said, “That's ridiculous! A sweeter girl was never born.
That girl was an angel. I'll tell anybody that.”

Black widow... saint... angel. What
else?

I asked, "Ever attended one of her
services?"

"No, I...Ann knows where we live. If she
wants contact, she'll make it."

I asked, "Ever get the feeling that she was
psychic?"

He replied, "If you mean like woman's
intuition, yes; she showed plenty of that. Come to think of it, I
used to wonder sometimes if she was reading my mind."

I lit a cigarette and offered him one; he
declined. "Were you in love with her, Wayne?" I inquired
casually.

He said, "Hey! I told you she was like my
own."

I said,
"
Like
your own is
not quite the same, and it isn't even that unusual if she were your
own. Quite common, in fact. Not talking incest, of
course."

"Well just so we keep that distinction," he
said. "I wouldn't have touched her for the world but... what the
hell, sure, I'm not ashamed to say I was attracted to her that way
but we're not dogs, are we?—we're influenced by more than animal
instincts. I felt very protective, very..."

"She in love with you?"

Sturgis took an agitated step backward,
crossed his arms at his chest, said, "What the hell is this?"

I told him, "No offense intended. I am
trying to understand."

"What are you trying to understand?" he
asked, softening.

"Not counting Nathan," I explained, "Ann
Marie has taken three husbands, all considerably older than her. Is
she attracted to older men? A father substitution? Or is it
something else?"

"How much older than her?"
he asked quietly.

"Two of them," I said, "were older than you
are right now."

He said, "Yes, that's interesting."

Again I asked, "Was she in love with you,
Wayne?"

He said, "It's crazy."

I said, "Did she hang around the house
because of Nathan or because of you? Did she marry Nathan as a way
of remaining close to you?"

He said, "This is really crazy."

The porch light came on
and the door opened. A very aged lady wearing a bathrobe shuffled
into view and called out in a querulously wavering voice, "Wayne?
Are you out here?" She spotted us, cried almost angrily, "What in
the world are you doing out here in the middle of the
night?"

I looked at Wayne and said, "Your
mother?"

Wayne looked at me and said, "My wife."

I said, “Would you mind if
I asked—?”

"Wayne! You get in here this minute!"

"Guess I'd better—"

"May I ask Mary's maiden name?"

"Boone."

"Boone?" I needed confirmation on that
one.

"Yes. Maybe you've heard of her. She was a
silent film star."

"Wayne!"

"She have a sister named Clara?"

"Half-sister, yes. They haven't spoken for
years. I keep telling her it's going to be too late some day,
but—"

"Already too late," I told him. "Clara went
home today."

"What?"

"Wayne! Get in here!"

"I'd better be going. Hope I helped."

Maybe he did and maybe he didn't.

But it was really crazy, yeah.

Chapter Eighteen: Patterns from the
Loom

So...are you beginning to see the weave of
this tapestry? Or are you already way ahead of me? That's okay.
Just don't get too far ahead because the woof is still not all that
distinguishable from the warp and it could be very easy at this
point to leap to a false conclusion. I was diligently trying to
avoid that, to keep an open mind and a balanced perspective.

That can be hard to do
when you are immersed in a situation with as many
cross-connections as this one. It's like trying to figure out where
you're at in a television soap opera if you can't watch it every
day. Like, you know Jane got raped by Jim after Jean stabbed John
and Jake exposed Jim as John's illegitimate son and therefore
Jean's half-brother, which makes Jim's marriage to Jean an
incestuous relationship, so now Jane is carrying Jim's child though
married to Jake who is really in love with Jean. Maybe we can
follow that okay, but if we missed yesterday's episode in which it
was revealed that John's second wife, Jill, is really Jason—Jake's
brother—after a sex-change operation, and now Jill has the hots for
Jim and Jean has the hots for Jill but Jill wants to adopt the baby
Jane is carrying by Jim, then maybe we don't fully understand why
Jake is so furious about the whole thing.

I was not too far from that state of
confusion in trying to follow the threads of this case.

Life is not a soap but
both lather up and sometimes you cannot tell the suds apart. Bruce
is gay and talks to spirits who send him to me on behalf of Ann but
I had found Ann on my own just in time to collect the dying
fragments of Herman who is also gay but apparently did not listen
to the spirits and wanted to kill Ann who is deeply involved with
Francois whom I have known for years so accepted a commission to
protect Ann from some nebulous threat although police authorities
feel that Ann is the threat after taking note of a web of death
around her, including that of her own mother, Maybelle, good friend
of Clara who may or may not talk to spirits but certainly expects
eternal life and who sent me into the golden past of Hollywood to
find my same old friend Francois as a young romantic married to a
sickly recluse and loathe to sleep alone in a foreign land so
probably consoled himself briefly with Clara and more enduringly
with Maizey who is really Maybelle so spurned illegal encampment
with Francois for the sake of Ann who seven or eight years later
fled to Nathan who is gay or maybe to Wayne who is not but
considerably older although not nearly as old as his wife Mary who
is Clara's sister. Ann settles for neither but goes on to wed and
mourn—or wed and devour, depending on the point of view—three older
men including George who is Bruce's father, and maybe she now has
her cap set for same old friend Francois and the circle is
complete.

Or is it?

If you lay it out in a
flow pattern, it goes like this: Ann Marie is born. Father Tony
dies. Mother Maybelle, or Maizey, falls in love with Francois—but
Ann Marie is alive and dependent, so the love affair dies. Maybelle
marries Wilson Turner for stability but eight years later Wilson
dies thoroughly destabilized. Ann Marie shifts her dependency to
Nathan, and Nathan dies. She then marries Donald, Larry, and George
in successive dependencies, and they each die.

Enter, now, a different pattern. Ann Marie
has got it together. Apparently she is dependent on no one—but
quite a lot now seems to be dependent on her. So what else is
different? The pattern of death is different, and I need to get a
better understanding of that.

It was getting onto midnight and it had been
a hell of a long day but I could not cut and run home with all this
stuff seething in the brainpan so I decided to swing back through
the valley for another go at the Light Center. At least I was
making my way home; I could take the Ventura Freeway on over to Las
Virgenes and go home the back way through Malibu Canyon. This is
what I had loosely in the mind anyway when I pulled off the
freeway at Van Nuys.

Twenty or more cars were
still in the parking lot when I reached the center and there were
plenty of lights at work but apparently the late activities there
had concluded and the place was emptying. I found a uniformed
security cop loitering in the gazebo I'd shared twice that day
with Janulski; I introduced myself and invited him for coffee. He
looked me over and checked his watch; said, "It closes in ten
minutes," referring to the snack shop on the property.

His name was Barney, would
you believe, a retired navy lifer earning extra bucks the easy way,
midnight to eight, to augment the pension. Guy of about fifty,
thick black hair just beginning to gray, neat and trim in the
uniform and packing a .45 Colt ACP in a very businesslike way.
Thirty years in the military puts a stamp on a guy, an unmistakable
trademark that says here's a man with self-discipline and staying
power, a guy who can cope and maintain. I've always admired those
guys because I was part of that system myself and just barely
managed to cope with the five years of mandatory service after
Annapolis—and the academy itself was no tea party,
either.

I bought the coffee in
throwaway cups and we took it with a sack of stale doughnuts back
to the gazebo. Barney was not officially on duty for a few minutes
so we relaxed and talked navy and swapped a couple of stories. He
had been seventeen years a chief gunner's mate and had served on
everything from destroyers to battleships. Turned out that he'd
also pulled shore duty at the Pentagon during part of the time that
I was there so we had a lot in common and he was visibly impressed
with my stories about ONI, the Office of Naval
Intelligence.

So we were buddies by the
time the coffee was gone and he had to start his lock-up
inspection. He invited me along, which was what I had in mind
anyway.

Barney had not heard that
his employer was in jail but of course he knew about the Milhaul
tragedy and he knew about the child-fondling incident and Charles
Cohan McSweeney—who, it turns out, had been a fellow
employee.