Muller, Marcia - [McCone 04] Games to Keep the Dark Away (v.1,shtml) (15 page)
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Marcia Muller
The Fourth Sharon McCone Mystery
CONTENTS
"A superb series."
—
Baltimore Sun
*
"These are the kind of books you don't ever want to end…This
series is worth reading for its excitement and the kind of mystery
plotting that sets readers to muttering, 'I should have caught
that.'"
—
United Press International
*
"Marcia Muller has been a pioneer in her treatment of women
detectives in fiction. When she created the character of Sharon
McCone she set the standard by which all newer entrants in the field
were judged."
—
Sunday Times
(Trenton)
*
"The Alpha female of the pack of American P.I.s."
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
*
"One of crime fiction's most original and durable
characters."
—
Cleveland Plain Dealer
*
"A character who combines a personal interest in the people
with whom she works with a hard-boiled wit about her life and times."
—
Houston Chronicle
*
"McCone not only knows her business, she also knows and loves
the territory… Every locale rings true, even to a native."
—
San Jose Mercury News
*
"A brisk storyteller who is always one jump ahead of her
reader… [but] plays eminently fair with the evidence."
-San Francisco Chronicle
*
"The founding mother of the contemporary female hard-boiled
private eye."
—
Sue Grafton
*
"Among the leaders… [who] are stretching the
conventions of mystery and detective writing."
—
USA Today
*
"Serious fens of female detective fiction should not pass up
Marcia Muller… She lives up to her billing as'the founding
mother of the contemporary female hard-boiled private eye.'"
—
Palm Beach Post
*
"Among the very best of the many heirs of the Raymond
Chandler/Ross Macdonald tradition."
—
St. Petersburg Times
*
"A deft and graceful writer who takes you through a story
breezily… [She] has also staked out uncompromisingly feminine
turf."
—
Austin Chronicle
*
"Ms. Muller has received a good deal of attention for these
McCone books, and she deserves all of it."
—
New York Times Book Review
SHARON McCONE MYSTERIES BY MARCIA MULLER
The Shape of Dread
There's Something in a Sunday
Eye of the Storm
There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of
Double (with Bill Pronzini)
Leave a Message for Willie
Games to Keep the Dark Away
The Cheshire Cat's Eye
Ask the Cards a Question
Edwin of the Iron Shoes
Trophies and Dead Things
Where Echos Live
Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes
ATTENTION: SCHOOIS AND CORPORATIONS
MYSTERIOUS PRESS books are available at quantity
discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales
promotional use. For information, please write to: SPECIAL SALES
DEPARTMENT, MYSTERIOUS PRESS, 1271 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, NEW YORK,
NY.
MARCIA
MULLER
GAMES TO KEEP THE
DARK AWAY
THE MYSTERIOUS PRESS
Published by Warner Books
A Time Warner Company
For my mother,
Kathryn S. Muller,
And in memory of my father,
Henry J. Muller
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that
this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold
and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author
nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped
book."
MYSTERIOUS PRESS EDITION
Copyright © 1984 by Marcia Muller All rights reserved.
The Mysterious Press name and logo are registered trademarks of
Warner Books, Inc.
This Mysterious Press Edition is published by arrangement with the
author.
Cover design by Rachel McClain
Cover illustration by Phil Singer
Mysterious Press books are published by
Warner Books, Inc.
Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY
Visit our Web site at
http://warnerbooks.com
A Time Warner Company
Printed in the United States of America
First Mysterious Press Printing: April,
Reissued: August,
The
wind whipped my jacket open as I went up to the
guardrail. The sheer, rock-strewn face of Potrero Hill dropped away
for fifty yards or more, and I could look down on the roofs of the
houses below. I turned, pulling the jacket tightly around me, and
walked down the street from where I'd parked at the dead end. Broken
glass and other debris crunched beneath my feet.
All the buildings save two in this short block were condemned or
half demolished. They stood silent in the early October dusk, gaping
holes where windows had once been, jagged timbers silhouetted against
the dying light. I shivered, only partly from the biting wind.
Number twenty-one was surrounded by a six-font redwood fence on
which the number was spelled out in carved letters. I pushed through
the gate into a deep front yard that was choked with vegetation. A
gravel walk overhung by scraggly palm trees led to the front door. I
went up and rang the bell.
In a moment the door opened a crack and a pale, nondescript face
peered at me over the security chain. "Yes?"
"Mr. Snelling? I'm Sharon McCone, the investigator from All
Souls Legal Cooperative." I passed one of my cards through the
narrow opening. After a few seconds the chain rattled, the door
opened, and I was admitted into a dark hallway.
The man quickly rechained the door, then turned to me, his hand
outstretched. "It's good of you to come so promptly. I'm Abe
Snelling."
I clasped his slender, long-fingered hand. Its palm was moist.
"I'm glad to meet you. I admire your photographs."
"Thank you. Come this way." He led me down the hall
toward the back of the house. So far I couldn't tell much about
Snelling, except that he was short, shorter than my own five six, and
that his blond hair was thinning at the crown. I followed him into a
large, white-carpeted living room and stopped, caught up in the view.
In the foreground the lights of Potrero Hill cascaded down into
the industrial flatlands below. The warehouses, oil storage tanks,
and ships in drydock were softened by the dusk, and beyond them the
water of the Bay lay flat and quiet. My gaze moved to the East Bay
hills and the shining chain of bridge that linked the two shores.
"Your view of the Bay and the hills is spectacular," I
said.
"Yes, I enjoy it during the day." Snelling crossed the
dark room and drew the draperies with a decisive snap of the cord. He
then went around flicking on table lamps. The walls of the room were
also white and covered with his photographs. The furnishings were
severely modern.
I must have had an odd expression on my face because Snelling
stopped and gave me a lopsided grin, his head cocked to one side. "I
can't stand to have the drapes open after dark."
"It
is
pretty bleak-looking out there."
"No, it's not that." He motioned at a chair. "Actually,
it's snipers."
"What?"
"I have a ridiculous fear of snipers."
"Oh." I sat down in one of those chrome-and-leather
chairs that are surprisingly comfortable in spite of their looks.
Snelling sat across the glass coffee table from me and fumbled in
his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes. "It's stupid, but
when I was in my teens one of the neighborhood kids shot his mother.
She was standing at the kitchen window and he went out in the
backyard and shot her through the glass with his hunting rifle. A
thing like that makes an impression on you."
"I guess so."
"Anyway, since then, I've never been able to have the
curtains open after dark. I know it's stupid, but I can't seem to
help it."
"We all have those kinds of fears," I said, thinking of
my own phobia about birds.
Snelling fiddled with a chrome table lighter, and I watched him,
disappointed that he didn't fit my notion of what a celebrity
photographer should look like. I wasn't sure exactly what I had
expected, but Snelling wasn't it. He was slender, with an almost
unnatural pallor and washed-out blue eyes. He wore faded jeans with a
hole in one knee, a workshirt stained with darkroom chemicals, and
scuffed loafers. His abrupt motions reminded me of a bird, the kind
you see running along the tide line at the beach. The association did
nothing to endear him to me.
Still, he was a potential client and it was time to get down to
business. "Mr. Snelling, I understand you have a problem you
want me to investigate."
He finally got the cigarette lit and looked up. "Yes, as I
told your boss—Hank Zahn is your boss?"
I nodded.
"Well, as I told Hank Zahn, it's not the sort of thing I can
go to the police about. I mean, it could be nothing and then Jane
would be furious with me."
"Let's start at the beginning. Who's Jane?"
"Jane Anthony, my roommate. She's missing."
I took a pad and pencil out of my bag and noted the name. "For
how long?"
"A week. Exactly a week today."
"Tell me what happened."
"There's not much to tell. I had an early-morning photo
session. I do all my work in my studio, upstairs." He waved a
hand at a circular stairway that ascended to a second story. "As
far as I knew, Jane was still asleep in her room. The session took a
long time; it was with Anna Adams—you know, the actress who's
starring in that terrible musical at the Golden Gate?"
"Yes."
"Well, Miss Adams is a good actress, but she's got the
attention span of a flea. It took hours to get a few decent shots.
During that time, I thought I heard Jane in the kitchen below. When
Miss Adams left, Jane was also gone."
"She didn't leave a note?"
"No, nothing."
"Is she in the habit of going off without telling you?"
"Never."
"So what did you do?"
"At first I didn't think much of it. I went about my daily
routine. But, when dinnertime came and went, and Jane still hadn't
shown, I got worried. I called a few of her friends around nine, but
they hadn't heard from her."
"What about her place of employment? Does she work?"
He shook his head. "Jane's an unemployed social worker. With
all the budget cuts, jobs in that field are hard to come by."
"What did you do next?"
"Waited. Checked back with the same friends the next day.
Halfway through the week I called Jane's mother—she lives down
south in a coastside village called Salmon Bay, near Port San Marco.
I didn't want to alarm Mrs. Anthony—she's old and not in very
good health—so I just said Jane had mentioned she might stop in
there on her way to L.A. But her mother hadn't heard from her."
"Did Jane take any of her things with her?"
"As far as I can tell, only enough for a night or two. Her
stuff's gone from the bathroom, and there's an overnight case missing
from her closet, but her big suitcases are still there."
"I assume she drove."
"Yes. She has a white… I think it's a Toyota, about
five years old."
"Do you know the model?"
"No." He spread his hands apologetically. "I have a
VW beetle and, except for that type, all cars look alike to me."
I noted the probable make and year of Jane's car. "Do you
have a picture of your roommate?"
He turned and gestured to the far wall, which was covered with
photographs. "The one on the extreme left."
I got up and went over to it. Jane Anthony was a strong-featured
woman in her mid-thirties. Her dark hair was pulled back severely,
accentuating her prominent nose and the forward thrust of her chin.
It was not a pretty face, but a commanding one and, surprisingly,
Snelling had made her attractive in the photo. It was not what one
expected of the man who termed his work ''the portraiture of
realism."
I turned. "Do you have a copy that I could have?"
"Yes, upstairs." He got up and went toward the circular
stairway. "I'll get one."
While he was gone, I turned back to the wall and looked at the
other photos. They were by no means the pretty tinted variety you saw
in the windows of ordinary photographers' studios. Instead, they were
severe and uncompromisingly truthful—Snelling's trademark. I
went to the opposite wall where, over the stone fireplace, I had
spotted the picture that had made him famous.
It had happened only a year ago, when Abe Snelling was merely
another down-at-the-heels photographer roaming San Francisco's
streets in search of subjects. One morning while passing the Blue Owl
Cafe, here on Potrero Hill near San Francisco General Hospital,
Snelling had seen a man run out, pursued by the restaurant
proprietor, a gentle soul who was well liked in the neighborhood.
Sensing the unusual and obeying his photographer's instincts,
Snelling readied his camera. The two men struggled, a shot was fired,
the proprietor staggered and fell to the ground, and the robber ran
off. As the proprietor's wife knelt over the dying man, futilely
willing the life to stay in his body, Snelling snapped picture after
picture of her anguished face. The photograph that he sold to the
evening paper was picked up by the wire services, and eventually was
featured on the cover of
Time's
issue on crime in the
cities.
It was a grisly beginning, but Snelling's career had bourgeoned
after that, and now he was the "in" photographer of a
wealthy and famous clientele. Society people and celebrities were all
eager to expose themselves to the harsh eye of Snelling's camera;
maybe they found it refreshing to see themselves with none of the
warts removed.
Now I stepped back and looked at the photo from a distance. An
amateur photographer myself, I liked to think I was some judge of the
art and, if I knew anything at all, the actual picture seemed
strangely diminished compared to the reproductions I'd seen. It was
as if the starkness of the surrounding white-on-white decor had
leeched away all its rich emotion, leaving only a caricature in place
of the anguished woman.
Snelling clattered down the spiral staircase and extended a
five-by-seven copy of Jane Anthony's picture to me. I slipped it into
my bag and said, "I'd like to see Jane's room if I may."
He nodded and took me to a second stairway that led downstairs; as
in many of San Francisco's hillside houses, the bedrooms were on the
lower level. Jane's room was at the end of the hall. Snelling pushed
the door open and motioned me in.
The first thing that struck me was the room's extreme tidiness. I
myself am a finicky housekeeper—I have to be, living in a
studio apartment with all my worldly goods—but this room bore
the mark of a fanatic. The double bed would have passed a military
inspection; perfume bottles, comb, brush, and mirror were perfectly
aligned on the dresser; the spines of the books in the bookcase were
straight and an exact inch from the edge of the shelf; even the
wastebasket had been emptied. I went to the closet and found what I
had expected—
a
row of skirts, blouses, dresses, and
pants arranged by color and type. Shoes were lined up in a rack on
the floor.
I turned to Snelling. "Mr. Snelling—"
"Abe, please."
"Abe, let me ask you this—what is the relationship
between you and Jane?"
"I don't follow you."
"Were you just roommates or…"
"Oh. Just roommates. I met Jane a couple of months after she
moved here from Salmon Bay. She has an interest in photography, so we
hit it off right away. She'd hoped to get a job as a social worker
but, like I said, they're hard to come by. I felt sorry for her—she
was working part-time as a typist and having trouble paying her
rent—so I suggested she move in here until a decent job came
along. Of course, I never realized she'd be with me for six months."
"I see."
"Not that I rnind having her here," he added quickly.
"She's quiet and considerate—and a good cook."
I went to the bookshelf. There were textbooks—some of which
I recognized from my days as a sociology major—and popular
self-help manuals and a great deal of paperback science fiction.
Taking a book out, I saw that it had been read, but carefully,
without cracking the spine. I then went through the dresser and
bedside table drawers. They were as precisely arranged as everything
else—and devoid of anything personal.
"What about these friends you checked with?" I asked
Snelling. "When did you last contact them?"
"This morning. They still hadn't heard from Jane."
"Do you know if she kept an address book?"
"A small one, in her purse. I looked for it, but obviously
she took it with her."
"Can you think of anywhere else she might have noted things,
like appointments or names and addresses?"
He frowned. “Maybe in the front of the phone book. She
scribbled things down in there sometimes."
I had noticed a directory on the bottom shelf of the bedside
table. Pulling it out, I turned to the front pages. There, in a bold
hand that fit with the woman in Snelling's photograph, were various
notations—
Gold Mirror, 18th & Taraval…43 Masonic
bus (to Geary)…SFG Pharmacy 12-8… Kelly Services,
Market near 6th… Cannery Cinema, cheap show Wed
…
The notations seemed to be the names of restaurants, shops, theaters,
and bus routes, merely the details of daily life in the city.
I closed the phone book and replaced it, unconsciously lining it
up with the shelf edge in much the way its owner would have. Then I
turned to the window and looked out over the darkening vista of
vacant lots and half-demolished houses. As before, I shivered.
"Pretty desolate, isn't it?" Snelling said from the
doorway. He hadn't ventured into the room, presumably because of the
phantom snipers beyond the open draperies.
"I noticed the demolition, of course. It strikes me as a
lonely place to live."
"Maybe, but this part of Potrero Hill has the best weather in
the city. Since I work only with natural light, good weather is
important. Besides, it won't be lonely for long. Those houses are
being torn down to make way for a condominium complex; they're
building them all over the hill. I'm sorry about that, because I like
the solitude."
