Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (14 page)

"Are they stupid?"

"Moderately. My father's side of
the family never had too much going for it. Their capacity to choose
smart, strong women is all that's allowed them to survive." Again the
small smile flickered. "Listen to me. I claim to be so smart, but what
have I ever done right but marry Mia? And now I'm destroying her,
little bit by little bit."

I decided to let that issue go
for now. "You're well educated. Where did you go to school?"

"U.C. Berkeley—in its Golden
Age." His wry expression made me think of Hank's when we'd spoken of
those days.

"I went there myself, but several
years later. Was that where you met Perry Hilderly and Jenny Ruhl?"

He nodded.

"Libby, too?"

"Yes."

"But you still don't remember Tom
Grant."

He considered. "No, not even now,
and I'm much more clear-headed than when you came out here."

"Let me describe him: he's a tall
man, well built. Thick gray hair, but it would probably have been brown
back then. Handsome, but he has a scar on his left cheek. I told Libby
it looks like something he got in a duel—"
 

Taylor's face went very pale,
then flushed. His eyes came alive, fires rekindling in those previously
dead pits. He put his hand on my forearm, grasping it hard enough to
create five small epicenters of pain.

He said, "Right man!"

I grabbed his fingers, trying to
ease their pressure. "What?"

"Right man!"

"Who
was the right man?"

"The right man," he said for the
third time. He laughed bitterly, the sound harsh, as if his vocal cords
had not been used for any kind of laughter in years. "The right man was
the wrong man."

"I don't understand."

Abruptly he let go of my arm and
slumped forward, staring down at the brackish water of the oyster beds.
"Neither do I," he said.

"Who was the right man?" I asked
again.

He didn't reply, his breath came
fast and ragged.

I touched his arm. "D.A.?"

He remained silent for several
minutes, his breathing gradually returning to normal. When he raised
his head and looked at me, his eyes were as dead as before.

Formally he said, "Thank you for
coming. Please give my regards to Libby." Then he returned his gaze to
the distant island.
 

"Yes."

Taylor had withdrawn behind an
impenetrable psychic wall, so I left him and made my way back toward
the restaurant. Neither his children nor his cousins were in evidence;
the dogs still lay on the path, and they still ignored me. The red
pickup and the camper with Oregon plates were gone; my car looked to be
the only one in the lot that was actually capable of running.

I
went up to the
restaurant and stepped inside. It was one big room with smeary,
salt-caked windows overlooking another sagging dock. Four tables stood
by the windows, and more were aligned between them and the door; their
oilcloth coverings didn't look any too clean, and a large black cat
slept on one. A bar ran along the right-hand wall, and the mustached
cousin sat behind it, reading a racing form. A skinny red-haired
waitress slumped on one of the barstools, drinking beer from the
bottle. Neither appeared to notice me.

I slipped onto the stool in front
of the man. He didn't look up, but asked, "You find D.A.?"
 

"You see why we worry about him?"

"He didn't seem that bad."

He raised his head, frowning.
"You don't know. You didn't know him before." He laughed cynically.
"Big intellectual, head of his class, college scholarship, when the
rest of us didn't even get to finish high school. Now look at him—all
fucked up."

"What happened to him?"

"I think we'll keep that a family
secret."

"Suit yourself." I took one of my
cards from my bag. "Are you Jake or Harley?"

He seemed taken aback that I knew
names. "Harley," he said after a moment.

"When's Mia due back?"

"Whenever my wife gets done
having her baby."

"Your wife's having a baby, and
you're not with her?"

He shrugged. "Chrissy's had three
others, she can manage without me."

My earlier sympathy for the
newborn, I decided, was fully justified. I pushed the card across the
sticky surface of the bar and said, "When Mia gets back, ask her to
call me— collect—please."

Harley glanced at it, his eyes
narrowing slightly. "What's your business with D.A. and Mia?"

"I told you before, it's private."

"And I told
you
before,
they're family."

"If either of them wants you to
know, they'll tell you."

He picked up the card and tore it
in half. "You don't tell me, Mia don't call you."

I reined in my rising anger, took
another card from my bag, and placed it on the bar. "If Mia doesn't
call me, you'll never know what I want with them, now will you?"

Harley pushed his jaw out
belligerently and glanced indecisively at the card. Then he went back
to his racing form, leaving the card untouched where I'd put it.
 

As I went out, the waitress
winked at me and made a circle with her thumb and forefinger.

The drive back to the city seemed
endless—possibly because the list of questions running through my mind
was also endless. Something had happened a long time ago, probably in
the sixties at Berkeley, that had welded Hilderly, Ross, Taylor, and
Ruhl together—the chains that linked them transcending years, distance,
and even death. Something to do with the Free Speech Movement, I
supposed. Jess Goodhue had told me her mother had gotten into trouble
over something associated with the protests shortly before she killed
herself. What? Had it also involved Hilderly, Taylor, or Ross? That
didn't seem right; Ruhl had died in 1969, and Hilderly was probably in
Vietnam by then. And what had Grant to do with it all—a man whom both
Ross and Taylor seemed to recognize but would not own up to knowing?
And what was this about the right man? Right man for what?

As I approached the Golden Gate
Bridge, the traffic coming from the city slowed to a near standstill.
Then the traffic on my side of the freeway slowed, too—due partly to
the rush-hour closure of two lanes and partly to a stall just south of
the Waldo Tunnel. I left off my reflections and concentrated on not
rear-ending anyone. By the time I'd passed through the toll plaza and
sped up on Doyle Drive, I was regretting not having a car phone so I
could check in for messages. A friend who had one had recently
convinced me of their merits, but when I'd broached the subject of
getting one to Hank, he'd told me I was fortunate just to have an All
Souls telephone credit card.

Traffic was heavy within the city
as well, and I fumed all the way crosstown to Bernal Heights. When I
arrived at the co-op, it was after five, and Ted was no longer at his
desk. I checked the chalkboard for urgent messages, then went up to my
office and looked in my In
box for the routine ones. Nothing.

I'd hoped for one from Jess
Goodhue giving me the name of the investigator who had looked into her
mother's background, so I called KSTS-TV. Goodhue came on the line,
sounding rushed. No, she said, she hadn't yet had the time to look for
the detective's name and wasn't sure when she could get to it.

"I really wish you'd try to find
time," I said. "After talking with the two remaining heirs, I think Tom
Grant figures in all of this far more prominently than he's letting on."

Goodhue said something that I
couldn't catch.

"What?"

"Sorry. I was talking with one of
our writers. Why do you think that about Grant?"

"Both of the remaining heirs
seemed to recognize his description, even though his name didn't ring a
bell. One of them was very startled, said something about Grant being
the right man."

"Right man?"

"Yes. What do you suppose—"

"Hang on." There was a clunk, and
then I heard papers shuffling. When she came back on the line, she
said, "Sharon, I've got to go—urgent conference with my producer. I'll
try to call you in the morning, okay?"

I glared at the receiver for a
few seconds, slightly miffed by Goodhue's abrupt dismissal of me. Then
I replaced it and stood by my desk, feeling deflated and at loose ends.
My gaze rested on the new chaise longue, the one I'd bought to relax
on, and irritation with myself rose. It was really stupid to buy a nice
piece of furniture and then not use it as intended.

I flung off my jacket, stalked
over there, and removed the file box, camera, and tape recorder,
depositing them unceremoniously on the floor. Then I lay down and
contemplated the ceiling. It was cracked and water-stained, and cobwebs
trailed down from the rosette
above the fluted light fixture.

I refocused on the wall beside
the fireplace. That was even worse.

I'd only been working out of the
office for a little over a year, and it had taken me six months to
really notice the wallpaper. For years previous to that, Hank had lived
in the room (because All Souls pays salaries that are lower than the
going market rate, it makes a policy of providing cheap living quarters
on an as-available basis to employees and partners who request it) and
I'd had little occasion to visit it, much less examine the decor. The
wallpaper would definitely not have been of either of our choosing:
faded rose and gray and cream, with flowers and garlands and cherubs
arranged in a repetitious ovate pattern. After moving in, I'd paid it
as little attention as I assumed Hank had.

Then one day, in a fit of
contemplation, I noticed that it looked uncannily like one of those
charts of the female reproductive system usually displayed on the walls
of examining rooms in gynecologists' offices. When I mentioned this to
Hank, he confessed that he'd noticed it long ago, but had merely been
amused. I was not amused, however; every time I looked closely at the
walls from then on, I was reminded of stirrups and a cold speculum.

I closed my eyes, but the image
of the wallpaper remained with me, intruding on my concentration. A car
raced its engine in the street below, and downstairs in the parlor that
doubles as a waiting room, someone turned up the TV. Shortly afterward
there came a thump and a series of scrambling noises from Ted's room
next door. Then a second thump and a loud curse.

I sighed, got up, and went out
into the hall. When I knocked on his door, Ted's voice called out in
harried tones, "Come in, but be quick about it."

I opened the door, and a furry
yellow missile hit my shins. Reflexively I reached down and grabbed it,
found myself holding a wiggly little cat.
 

"Shut the door!" Ted shouted.

I did as he told me. He was
sitting on his red velvet Victorian sofa, as dejected-looking as I'd
ever seen him, and against his chest he cradled an equally wiggly
bundle of black and yellow and white fur.

"Good Lord," I said, getting a
firmer grip on the creature in my hands. "What is this?"

"Harry's cats." The calico
wriggled free from him and bounded to the floor, skidding slightly. Ted
rolled his eyes in resignation as it made a beeline for the ladder to
his sleeping loft.

"Harry's? These are kittens; they
can't be over twelve weeks old."

"Exactly twelve weeks. They were
an ill-advised gift from a well-meaning friend who thought they might
cheer him up. His landlady's been keeping them since he went into the
hospital, but now she's turned them over to me. I promised Harry I'd
find a good home for them."

"Oh." The kitten I held had
stopped wiggling and started to purr. It reached out a paw and patted
my cheek. Quickly I set it down. "Are you going to keep them?"

"In here? Be serious."

He had a point. Ted's room is
really a cubbyhole—the former bathroom for the room that is my office.
It's a baroque retreat with red-flocked wallpaper and one of the
ugliest lamps this side of Denver, but Ted takes great pride in it. And
I have to admit that he's made the most of the least possible space:
the sleeping loft, curtained off by red sheers, is suspended above the
ornate brass-and-marble sink and toilet; the tub has been removed and
replaced by the sofa and an antique armoire; a Japanese screen
discreetly separates the two areas. To me, it looks like a tiny room in
an 1890s whorehouse, but to Ted it is perfect—minimalist and opulent at
the same time.

I sat down beside him on the
sofa. Both cats were in the loft now; there was a tearing
sound, and Ted winced. "My sheers—again."

"What about Hank?" I asked.
"Maybe he'd take them."

"He'd forget to feed them."

"Anne-Marie?"

"She's allergic."

Briefly I considered the other
partners and employees of the co-op, but dismissed them all for various
reasons. "Do they have to stay together?"