Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (41 page)

When Goodhue came back, her
forehead was beaded with moisture. She mopped it with a tissue and set
about repairing her makeup. "I've never been that late," she said.
"Never. Slid into the chair with only five seconds to spare."

"I shouldn't have let you lose
track of the time."

"Not your fault. Look, I have
maybe ten more minutes, then I've got to get down to the
newsroom and go over the scripts with my co-anchor. Where was I?"

"Ben and Nilla Goodhue."

"Right." The mention of their
names banished her preoccupation with the time. A gentle, reminiscent
expression stole over her features, and she set down the mascara wand
she was using.

"Ben and Nilla. Great people.
Loving people. He was English, proper as could be, except when he was
rolling around on the rug with us kids. She was Swedish—the Nilla was
short for Gunnilla—and she could warm up a room just with her smile.
They lived in the Portola district. It was nice there back then—solid
working class, a good ethnic mix. Lots of Italian delis and soul-food
places and little corner markets. People had vegetable gardens; the man
next door to us kept chickens. It's not like that anymore; there's a
lot of gang violence, spillover from Bayview and Visitacion Valley—"
She broke off and picked up the mascara wand again, as if she'd
suddenly reminded herself of the shortness of time.

"Anyway," she went on, "that's
where I grew up, in this big house on a corner lot with anywhere from
two to six other kids. They came and went. I stayed."

"Did your mother visit you?"

"Occasionally, until I was four.
I remember her as pretty, but not very warm. When she held me, I always
felt she was afraid she might drop and break me. After she left, I
would sit on Ben's or Nilla's lap for a long time. I couldn't
understand why, if she was my mother, she didn't hold me the way they
did."

"What about your father? Did your
mother ever talk about him?"

"No, but he visited me once. I
was maybe three and a half, close to four. I hoped—or maybe I just
imagine I hoped— that they were going to take me away to live with them
soon, but then he never came again."
 

"Can you describe him?"

She shook her head. "I can't.
Over the years I've tried to picture him, but it's all cloudy. The only
impression I have is that he might have been from the Southwest,
because he wore a string tie. I remember sitting on his lap and playing
with it, clicking the little metal ends on the strings together."

I made a mental note to find out
where Hilderly had originally come from. "You say your mother came to
see you until you were around four. What happened then?"

As she'd spoken of her childhood,
Goodhue's face had become animated. Now it was as if someone had turned
a switch and put out a light. She set down the mascara wand and moved
to perch on the edge of the other chair. "She . . . died."

"How?"

"She ... I didn't know this until
a long time after. Nilla and Ben just told me she'd had to go away, but
that I shouldn't worry because she loved me and would always be
thinking about me. After that they didn't seem to want to talk about
her and, frankly, she'd been such a small part of my life that I sort
of forgot her. But when I was in sixth grade, I heard a couple of the
neighbor kids talking—older kids, who had lived there all their lives.
What happened was she got into trouble—something to do with the war
protests—and then she killed herself."

I felt a stab of sympathy for the
sixth grader who had found out an ugly fact in an unpleasant way. "What
kind of trouble?"

Goodhue shook her head. "The kids
only heard part of the story—picked up-snatches of conversation, the
way kids do. What they told me was that my mother went out to Ocean
Beach one night and shot herself in the head. Ben and Nilla freaked out
when they saw it on the news. I went to them with the story, hoping it
wasn't true, but they wouldn't talk about it. That was the only time
they let me down. Years later, after they were both
dead and I didn't feel that I was betraying either of them, I hired an
investigator to find out the whole story. He verbally confirmed that it
had happened like the kids said it had, and wrote up a report. But—this
is the weird part—you know what I did?"

"What?"

"I burned the damned thing
without reading it. After all those years of wondering and all the
money I'd spent on the investigator, I just didn't want to know."

Reputable investigators, however,
kept copies of their reports on file for quite some time. "Do you
recall the name of the person you hired?"

"Not offhand, but I'm sure it's
somewhere in my records."

"I'd like it, if it's not too
much trouble to locate."

Goodhue looked somewhat
apprehensive. "Why? Do you need it to establish my claim to the
inheritance?"

Given the fact Hilderly had
assumed Hank would know who she was, plus the fact that her name was a
relatively unusual one, I felt it safe to assume she was the right Jess
Goodhue. Still, I replied cautiously, "It would help. And it might also
help me to understand why Hilderly wrote the kind of will he did."

"Why is that important to you?"

I hesitated, then opted for the
answer that I sensed Goodhue—as a newswoman—would understand. "I'm a
truth seeker. I need to know."

She nodded. "You're like me. I'll
look for the name tomorrow, and let you know."

She still seemed oblivious to the
amount of time that was passing, so I pressed on with my questioning
while I could. "After your mother . . . died, what happened to you?"

"Nothing. I stayed on with Ben
and Nilla. I was there unofficially; the welfare department had no idea
I existed. Neither did my mother's family, and my father obviously
didn't care. Ben and Nilla raised me as their own. I took their name.
Ben died when I was fifteen, just keeled over of a stroke at the
breakfast table.
That about killed Nilla, too. She withdrew, closed the day-care center,
stopped taking in kids. Finally I was all she had."

"There had never been much money.
Without what the welfare department paid for the foster kids, things
were rough. I left school at sixteen so I could support Nilla. Got a
girl-Friday job at a stationery supply company, and they trained me as
a secretary. Nilla died when I was eighteen— it was her heart, in more
ways than one. I left the job at the stationery company, and the
Portola district. Moved downtown and got a job as a secretary here at
KSTS. After a year and a half, I convinced them to let me try my hand
as a writer. The field reporting came along pretty quick. And now here
I am." She flung her arms out, as if to embrace the shabby dressing
room, the entire studio, her successful life. But to me she looked like
the little girl whose mother had been pretty but not very warm,
reaching out for the surrogate parents who knew how to hold a child.

I said, "Jess, tell me this: do
you
want
to know if Perry Hilderly was your father?"

Her hands locked together again,
and she compressed her lips. After a moment she said, "You know, I do.
At first, after Nilla died, I was wild to find out about my parents. I
contacted my mother's family in southern California, but they wouldn't
have anything to do with me, wouldn't even believe I was Jenny Ruhl's
daughter, claimed my birth certificate was a fake. It was after that
that I hired the detective. But then—well, I told you what I did with
the report."

"Why is it different now?"

"Because Perry Hilderly left me
money. A lot of money. That must mean something."

I wasn't sure. At least not that
it meant all the good things she was obviously imagining. Guilt at
deeds left undone, I've found, does not necessarily imply love for the
wronged party.
 

Goodhue must have sensed my
doubt, because she stood abruptly. "Look, I've got to get down to the
newsroom. I'll look for that detective's name, give you a call."

I handed her one of my cards. She
pocketed it, checked her makeup a final time, and led me out of the
dressing room. On the way downstairs I asked if there was a phone I
might use, and Goodhue directed me to one at an unoccupied desk in the
newsroom. I called All Souls, found Hank was still there, and reported
my day's findings.

"Damned curious," he said when I
finished. "It doesn't quite fit with what I know of Perry. I can't see
him abandoning his own child."

"Did you break the news to his
former wife about the sons not getting their inheritance?"

"Yes. She didn't seem very upset.
Apparently she and her new husband are quite well off. She was happy
about the personal stuff, though—said what you did about it being nice
for the boys, who will have something to remember Perry by."

"I'd like to talk with her. If anyone might know about Hilderly's past,
she's the one. Will you give me her new name and number?"

"Sure." There was a pause, and then he read off the information to me.
"You're not planning on going out to Danville tonight?"

"If she'll see me."

Hank was silent.

"Oh, Lord, your dinner party for
Anne-Marie! I almost forgot."

"Look, don't worry about that. Go
see Judy Fleming and come by my place later. But just be sure to come."

"I will, I promise. Is Rae
around?"

"She left about fifteen minutes
ago. Asked me to tell you she's turned up something on Heikkinen;
she'll talk to you about it tonight."

"Okay. Keep some chili warm for
me." I hung up and placed a credit-card call to Judy
Fleming, the former Mrs. Hilderly, in the exclusive East Bay
development of Blackhawk. She was cordial and agreed to see me if I
didn't mind driving over there in rush-hour traffic. I said I'd be at
her house as soon as possible.

As I crossed the newsroom toward
the hallway, I glanced at Goodhue's cubicle. The anchorwoman was again
seated at her desk, next to her co-anchor, Les Gates. Gates, whom I
recognized from countless newscasts, was expounding on a script that
lay in front of them. Goodhue nodded and responded, but her expression
was distracted. When I passed the cubicle, she looked up, and I felt
her gaze upon me all the way to the door.

Blackhawk, the development
where Hilderly's former wife and sons now lived, has long struck me as
a phenomenon that could only have occurred in the latter decades of the
twentieth century. It is an exclusive enclave of custom-built homes
nestled in the foothills of Mount Diablo, and insulated from the world
by high walls, a private security force, and recreational facilities
that ensure no resident need seek pleasure elsewhere. Everything is
designed for the ease and comfort of the busy property owners, most of
whom are engaged in making fortunes in the industrial parks that cover
what used to be farmland near San Ramon. A buyer may purchase a house
that is fully furnished and equipped, down to the last teaspoon and
guest towel; the local supermarket boasts of clocks that display the
time in such global cities as London, New York, and Tokyo—presumably so
shoppers can rush home and call their brokers before the stock
exchanges close. While Blackhawkians may appreciate and even need these
refinements, I find something vaguely depressing about a place where
life's edges have been so smoothed and rounded.

After I was admitted past the
guard station at one of the gates, I drove through a maze of large
homes on spacious lots to the Fleming house. It was mock Tudor, with a
big live oak in the front yard. I parked at the curb and went up a
flagstone walk that bisected the neatly barbered lawn.

When Judy Fleming answered the
door, I recognized her as an older version of the woman in Hilderly's
photo album; her short brown hair was now streaked with gray, and she
was no longer plump, her face having that gaunt look that comes from
frequent dieting. She greeted me pleasantly and led me to the rear of
her air-conditioned house, where an informal living room overlooked a
swimming pool full of noisy teenagers. The room, a dining area, and the
kitchen were all connected, and there was a lived-in feel to the space
that had been missing from the more formal rooms we'd passed on the way.

Mrs. Fleming seated me on the
couch, offered coffee— which I accepted—and went to pour it from a
percolator that stood on the wet bar. She hesitated, then poured a
second mug for herself. "I shouldn't," she said. "I drink too much of
it. But I'm dieting, and it keeps me going."

She certainly did look tired, I
thought as she seated herself in a rocking chair opposite me. Bluish
circles under her eyes were more pronounced in the late sunlight that
slanted through the glass doors behind her, and her movements were
weary, almost leaden. I suspected her fatigue stemmed less from unwise
dieting than from her ex-husband's death and altered will.

A roar of laughter—muted by the
closed doors—rose from the pool, and the kids began clapping; two boys
had just tossed a struggling girl in. Mrs. Fleming smiled and said,
"It's good to hear laughter around here. The last week and a half have
been grim. My boys weren't close to Perry—by his choice, not mine or
theirs—but his death and now this business of the new will have been
upsetting."