Nightshades (Nameless Detective) (13 page)

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

“It’s the truth and you know it. You’re brooding right now. I can see it in your face.”

I started to say something angry—and swallowed it. She was right. But why the hell shouldn’t I be brooding? Ex-husband gone whacky and involved in some screwball cult—who the hell knew what might happen. It scared
me
, thinking about it. I loved her; if anything happened to her . . .

“You’ve got to promise me you won’t try to see or talk to him,” she said. “Will you promise me that?”

“How are you going to get rid of him, then?”

“I’ll find a way. It’s my problem.”

“It’s mine too—”

“It’s
mine
, dammit, don’t start in now, just don’t start in. I’ll find a solution to this, don’t you worry.”

“
You’re
worried. Look at yourself.”

“I’ll get over that; talking about it’s made me feel better already. Now promise me you won’t interfere.”

“As long as he stays in L.A.—all right.”

“Even if he comes back to San Francisco. Promise me.”

“Kerry, don’t try to shut me out of this. I’m involved whether you want me to be or not. I—”

“I
knew
it,” she said, “I knew it, you big pigheaded Italian
bastard
!” and she began to bawl.

I sat there. Crying women unman me; two seconds after one starts in I feel awkward and helpless and I can’t think straight. All I was able to do, after a time, was to say, “Kerry, don’t cry, babe, don’t cry,” and to put my arms around her and pat her like some idiot trying to burp an infant. She kept on crying against my chest. I kept on murmuring and patting.

Then she shifted position and put her arms around me, and the crying became snuffling, and the snuffling slowly subsided. And then, to my amazement and probably to hers, she was kissing me and I was kissing her back, and other things were happening, and pretty soon there we were thrashing and humping and making noise like a couple of kids having their first big fling.

Yeah, I thought a while later, when we were both still and my head was more or less clear again. Today is definitely going to be a humdinger.

While Kerry was showering I called Helen O’Daniel’s number again. Still nobody home. Jim Telford wasn’t available, either; he’d been in this morning, and now he was out again, and the deputy I spoke to didn’t know or wouldn’t say when he’d be back. I called the Northern Development offices. Nobody answered.

I looked up Shirley Irwin’s name in the local directory, found a listing, and dialed her number.
She
was home, at least, and she gave me the name of the firm’s lawyer, a man named Fulbright who had offices not far from the Sportsman’s Rest. He was also both O’Daniel’s and Munroe Randall’s private attorney, she said.

I asked her how Treacle was holding up, and she said she hadn’t seen him since yesterday afternoon and he’d still been nervous and worried then. I said, “How did it go with Lieutenant Telford?”

“Not very well. Mr. Treacle kept demanding police protection.”

“Did he get it?”

“The lieutenant said he’d see what could be done. But Redding isn’t in his jurisdiction; it would have to be arranged with the municipal police.”

“Uh-huh.”

She said then that she was afraid Treacle was becoming paranoid. “I asked him if he wanted me to open the office today, and he said no. I’m to say he’s out of town if anyone contacts me. He doesn’t want to see anyone.”

Except me, I thought. I thanked her and rang off.

Kerry was out of the shower and half-dressed by this time. I took my own shower, using cool water in deference to my burns. I put on shirt and slacks, and we went out for a quick breakfast at the place next door. It was another hot day, with scattered clouds but no sign of any more thunderstorms. The air had a vaguely dusty smell again, as if the rain had never happened.

When we got back, there was a message that Treacle had called again. I girded myself and returned his call. He was calmer than he had been yesterday, but the paranoia was there in his voice and in what he had to say. I placated him by saying that I was making headway on the investigation, which was neither a lie nor the truth, and that the authorities were making progress too. Then I asked him if he knew about Helen O‘Daniel’s affair with Paul Robideaux. He said no, sounding astonished. He also seemed surprised when I told him about O’Daniel’s apparent decision to file for divorce.

He wanted me to come over to his condo later, fill him in on the details of my investigation; he meant he wanted me to hold his hand. I said I would, lying in my teeth, and put an end to the conversation.

I left Kerry in the room—and in a relatively good mood; she said she was going for a drive to Whiskeytown—and took my car to the low-slung, modern building that housed the offices of Fulbright and Gault, Attorneys at Law. George Fulbright turned out to be a youngish, solemn, saturnine man with a precise mustache and a precise way of speaking. He was willing to talk, the circumstances regarding his two former clients being what they were; I’ve never met a lawyer who didn’t like to talk, once you got him primed.

He told me that the personal assets of Munroe Randall were “substantial,” although he wouldn’t name a figure, and that the personal assets of Frank O‘Daniel had dwindled in recent months and were now “on the smallish side.” He said that yes, both men had made out wills. Randall’s estate went to his mother and two siblings back in Kansas; no one locally received a bequest. As for the O’Daniel estate, such as it was, Helen O’Daniel was
not
the principal inheritor. In fact, she stood to inherit only the fifty percent the California community property law entitled her to.

“Who gets the other fifty percent?” I asked.

“A brother in Washington state,” Fulbright said, “and a sister in Alturas. Evenly divided between the two.”

“Why did he disinherit his wife? Was that provision in his will all along?”

“No. Mr. O’Daniel asked me to rewrite the will several months ago, when it became apparent to him that his marriage had failed.”

“Then he
was
going to file for divorce?”

“Oh yes. The last time I spoke to him, two days ago, he asked me to prepare the papers.”

“Why did he wait until now? Why didn’t he ask you to file months ago?”

“I gathered it was a difficult decision for him.”

“He didn’t say anything about financial reasons?”

“Not to me, no.”

“Do you know if he told Mrs. O’Daniel about his intentions?”

“Yes, he said he had.”

“Did she know he’d changed his will?”

“I believe she did.”

“Then she also had to know that if he died, and she was still married to him, she’d be responsible for his corporate debts if Northern Development went under. That’s the law, isn’t it?”

“Why yes, it is.”

“And the company
is
likely to go under?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said. Meaning yes, it was likely. “But I don’t see . . .”

I let him not see; I didn’t say anything. I was thinking: Well, there goes her motive for killing him. She got her fifty percent whether he was alive or dead—fifty percent of not much—and that was all she got. And if he was alive, she’d be better off: just wait for the divorce to go through and she could go her merry way without worrying about his business debts.

There went any profit motive for killing Randall, too, because he also hadn’t left her anything in his will. Helen O’Daniel may have been attractive and desirable and hell on wheels in the sack, but she wasn’t fooling any of the men in her life. Not where it counted, anyway.

Still, there was her probable affair with Randall and her probable presence at his house the night he died. And there was Paul Robideaux, too. She may not have murdered her husband or her lover, but it seemed a good bet she knew
something
about all that was going on.

So from Fulbright’s office I drove up to Sky Vista Road on the chance she might finally have come home. She had, but she was on her way out again: when I came in sight of the upper reaches of the O’Daniel house she was walking across from the stairs to where her yellow Porsche sat on the covered platform deck.

I veered onto the wrong side of the road and pulled up alongside her and stuck my head out of the window. “Hello, Mrs. O’Daniel. I’d like to—”

“You!” she said, and gave me a withering look and kept on going onto the deck.

Well, hell, I thought. I put the transmission in reverse and backed up until I had the car angled across behind the Porsche, blocking it in. When I got out she was standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring.

“What’s the big idea?” she said. “Get out of my way!”

“Not until we talk.”

“I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”

“Why not? You finally get in touch with Paul Robideaux?”

She had, because she said immediately, “So Paul and I have been seeing each other, so what? That’s our business, nobody else’s.”

“Not unless it has some bearing on your husband’s death.”

“Well, it hasn’t. Paul didn’t have anything to do with it and neither did I. It was an accident.”

“Was it?” I said.

“Yes, damn you. Why are you trying to make something more out of it?”

“Because I think he was murdered,” I said flatly. “Where were you Saturday night, Mrs. O’Daniel?”

“I wasn’t at Shasta Lake, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Where, then? With Robideaux?”

“. . . Yes, if you must know.”

“He told me you weren’t. He said he was home alone.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “He never told you that. He was with
me
, you understand?”

“Is that what you told Lieutenant Telford?”

“It’s the truth. Of course it’s what I told him.”

So she and Robideaux had finally got together and cooked up a story for mutual protection. That was how it figured; if they
had
been together on Saturday night, Robideaux would have been quick to tell me so. But the lie didn’t have to mean anything; innocent people do that kind of thing too.

I said, “How come you didn’t call Robideaux as soon as you heard about your husband’s death? I took him by surprise when I saw him yesterday, and that was hours after the lieutenant notified you.”

Hesitation. Then she said, “I . . . was upset, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. And there were arrangements to make, the funeral . . . ”

“Where were you last night? I tried calling you three or four times—”

Her anger flared up again. “That’s none of your goddamn business. I’ve had enough of this. Poor Frank getting killed, prowlers, and now you again; I’ve had enough!”

“Prowlers?” I said.

“Yes, prowlers. My house was broken into last night while I was out. ”

“Was anything stolen?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t find anything missing. Whoever it was ransacked Frank’s den and then he must have got scared off.”

“He didn’t touch anything else?”

“ No. ”

“How did he get in?”

“Through the back door, he broke the glass, what
difference
does it make? I’m not going to answer any more of your questions. I don’t have to talk to you, you’re nothing but a damned private snoop. Either you move your car or I’ll call the police.”

“Look, Mrs. O’Daniel—”

“You’re harassing me,” she said. “Move your fucking car or I’ll not only call the police, I’ll tell them you manhandled me. See if I won’t.”

I was not going to get anything more out of the bereaved widow—except trouble. I got in and moved the car. She revved up the Porsche’s engine until the walls of the platform deck seemed to vibrate, backed out off the deck in a controlled skid, and shot past me burning rubber. I thought for a second she was going to miss the first turn down the road, but Porsches are built for cornering as well as speed; she zipped right around it and roared out of sight.

I pulled out in her wake, driving slow, speculating. A prowler—now what did that mean? Maybe it meant nothing; maybe it was totally unrelated to Frank O‘Daniel’s death or to anything else in my investigation. But then why had only O’Daniel’s den been ransacked? I didn’t buy the theory that the prowler had been scared off; she hadn’t come home and surprised him or she’d have said so, and there wasn’t any dog or burglar alarm or neighbor close by.

All right, then: somebody had been after something specific that belonged to O’Daniel. But what? And who? And why?

I drove downtown again and went through the crowded and shady mall to Penny’s for Beauty. The only person in the waiting room was the blond receptionist, Miss Adley. La Belson must have told her I wasn’t a city cop; she was not intimidated today. She wasn’t even polite. “Miss Penny isn’t in and I don’t know when she’ll be back,” she said, and her eyes said: Drop dead, asshole.

So I grinned at her and perched on one corner of her desk and said, “How about if I go back through that arch and tell your customers who I am and that Miss Penny is mixed up in a couple of ugly murders ? Can you imagine the gossip? Can you imagine what Miss Penny would say?”

We looked at each other for about ten seconds. Then the blonde made an exasperated hissing sound between her teeth and threw words at me like spittle. “She’s at a restaurant down the way. Rive Gauche. Having her lunch.”

“Maybe I’ll have lunch too,” I said, and got off her desk. “Have a nice day, now.”

Miss Adley didn’t have anything more to say. Her eyes repeated their earlier message.

Rive Gauche was a small, chic restaurant, very French, with colored prints of Montmartre and other Parisian scenes on the walls and waitresses who spoke with Gallic accents that may or may not have been genuine. It wasn’t very crowded, and I saw Penny Belson as soon as I came in: corner table, alone, a dish of steamed mussels and a small carafe of white wine in front of her.

She was not any happier to see me than the receptionist had been. But she had more self-possession and this was a public place; when I sat down across from her she didn’t protest and she didn’t tell me to drop dead, either verbally or with her eyes.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said.

“Meaning you hoped you wouldn’t. ”

The delicate shrug. “More questions?”

“Some. Go ahead and finish your lunch while we talk.”

“I had every intention of doing that,” she said. She plucked a mussel out of its shell and washed it down with a sip of wine.

“Well?”

“Frank O’Daniel,” I said. “You heard about what happened to him, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Well, like you said the other day, a beauty salon is a good place to find out things. There’s been gossip about Mrs. O’Daniel; I thought there might have been some about her husband too.”

She didn’t answer right away. One of the waitresses came over to the table, to find out if I wanted anything, but I gestured her away. At some other time, and with some other companion, I might have ordered a meal just so I could put it on my expense account and see what Barney Rivera would say. Not today. I kept my attention on Penny Belson’s face.

“I don’t know what you’re after,” she said at length. “Frank O’Daniel and another woman—that sort of thing? I’ve heard nothing like that.”

“What
have
you heard, then?”

She sighed. “I suppose the only way I’m going to have any peace is to be frank with you. All right. Evidently he was planning to divorce his wife, sell his house and his interest in Northern Development, and move away. ”

“Who told you this?”

“One of my customers.”

“Which one?”

“I won’t tell you that. She’s no one you know, no one connected with Northern Development. She is a good customer and I don’t want to lose her.”

“Where was O’Daniel moving to?”

“The Bay Area somewhere.”

“Did he have a business opportunity down there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why was he selling out and moving, then?”

“Why do you think? His company is in financial trouble and his wife is a bitch. Isn’t that enough reason?”

“Is there anything else you can tell me, Miss Belson?”

“Not about Frank O’Daniel.”

“About Helen O’Daniel then. About any of her other affairs.”

“She’s had several. Would you like a list of names?”

“I was thinking about one in particular. An artist named Paul Robideaux.”

It surprised her—genuinely so, I thought. She said, “Robideaux. That name is familiar . . .”

I could have told her where Robideaux lived; she’d probably find it out anyway, soon enough. But I didn’t want to have to explain things, and I didn’t want to witness the catty pleasure it would give her. I said, “Thanks for your help, Miss Belson,” and got on my feet.

“Wait,” she said. “This artist, this Paul Robideaux—”

“Actually he’s a writer and his real name is Hasselblatt. Thanks again. ”

I left her sitting there sipping wine and looking coldly thoughtful.

The smells in Rive Gauche had made me hungry, so I stopped at a McDonald’s and had a Big Mac and some fries and a strawberry milkshake. Then I drove back to George Fulbright’s law offices.

But Fulbright hadn’t known anything about Frank O‘Daniel’s intentions to sell out his interest in Northern Development and move to the Bay Area; he seemed amazed at the possibility. “I can’t understand how Mr. O’Daniel could have seriously considered such a move without consulting me,” he said.

“Can you think of any reason why he wouldn’t have consulted you?”

“No, none. ”

“Did he have any business affiliations in the Bay Area?”

“Not that I’m aware of. He knew people there, of course—business people. I know two or three myself that I could check with. . . .”

“If you’d do that, Mr. Fulbright, I’d appreciate it.”

I made the sheriffs department my next stop, to see if Jim Telford was in. He was. He’d just come back from Musket Creek, where he’d been all day and where he hadn’t found out much. He had nothing else encouraging to tell me, either. The police lab had been over the remains of the
Kokanee,
and a professional diver had swept the lake bottom, with the same results in both cases: no evidence to support the theory that the explosion and O’Daniel’s death had not been an accident.

Telford hadn’t talked to Paul Robideaux because Robideaux hadn’t been home, and he was interested in what I had to tell him about my own meeting with the artist and Robideaux’s affair with Helen O‘Daniel. Still, there wasn’t anything conclusive in it. The prowler angle stumped him as much as it did me. And so did Frank O’Daniel’s somewhat odd behavior of late.

Lots of possibilities—lots of apparent dead ends.

When I left Telford I drove over to the Redding Police Department and had another, brief talk with Hank Betters. The only thing he had to tell me was that Martin Treacle had been bugging him for police protection and the department, reluctantly, had obliged by assigning a “temporary bodyguard. ” A waste of the taxpayer’s money, Betters said, but it was better that than having Treacle go to the newspapers and build a flap about police indifference.

It was four o’clock by the time I got into my car again. I was fresh out of leads, and I was also hot and tired and my face was hurting some; I headed for the Sportsman’s Rest. On the way I stopped to buy a couple of ice-cold cans of Lite beer. The stuff tasted like beer-flavored water, but you got used to it. And now that I was watching my weight, it was a hell of a lot better than no beer at all.

Something had begun to rattle around in the trunk, and when I got to the motel I opened the lid to see what it was. The stone cup I’d found at the fire scene in Musket Creek. It had come loose from where I’d wedged it behind the spare tire. I’d forgotten about the thing—I should have given it to Telford long before this. I took it inside the room and put it on the dresser so I would remember to take it to the sheriff’s department later on.

Kerry wasn’t there; still over at Whiskeytown or wherever in her rented Datsun. I opened a beer, drank some of it to cool off, and then went to the motel office to see if I’d had any messages. Two calls, both from Barney Rivera. Call back as soon as possible. Urgent.

Trouble, I thought wearily.

Back in the room, I sat on the bed with my beer and put in a call to Great Western Insurance in San Francisco. When Barney came on he said, “Anything to report? Christ, I hope so.” He sounded harried.

Well, he wasn’t the only one. I said, “Nothing yet. I’m working on it, Barney. I told you I’d call when I had something to report.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting flack here. I’m going to have to bring somebody else in to give you a hand. That’s the directors’ idea, not mine.”

“Terrific. Then we can stumble over each other like Abbott and Costello. ”

“I’ve got to do it. The directors want results. They don’t want to pay double indemnity twice; that’s four hundred thousand bucks—big money.”

“I know it’s big money,” I said. “And if they have to pay it I’ll get held responsible and you won’t throw me any more investigative bones. Right?”

“Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to. Look, Barney, I’m doing the best I can. Give me another day or two.”

“I don’t know if I can. . . .”

“Come on. I may be getting close to some answers.”

“Okay, okay—I guess I can hold off one more day, kid. Call me by close of business tomorrow, either way.”

I sighed as I put the handset down. Getting close to some answers, I’d said. Bald-faced lie. Or was it? Maybe I
was
getting close. Christ knew, I had uncovered a mound of information; if I could only shift it around and make it mean something. . . .

So I sat there for a time, shifting it around—but it was like shifting junk into little piles; none of them amounted to anything by itself. I said to hell with it for the time being. What I needed right now was to go soak my head. In the swimming pool, along with the rest of me.

I stripped and put on my Hawaiian trunks with the hibiscus flowers on them. There was a full-length mirror on the wall in the bathroom alcove; I looked at myself in it and decided I cut a pretty dashing figure for a fifty-four-year-old former fat guy. Still part of a spare tire around my middle—love handles, Kerry called it—but not too much anymore. Slimming down made me look younger too. I didn’t look a day over fifty-three.

With my second beer in hand, I walked out to the pool. And dunked myself and swam around trying to avoid a couple of small kids who kept yelling and splashing each other. While I was doing that Kerry came back. I climbed up on the ladder and waved to her, and she waved back and made gestures to indicate she was going in to change. She joined me a few minutes later.

After she’d had her swim we sat in a couple of chaise lounges and she asked how my day had gone. I told her in some detail and with the appropriate profanity.

She said, “A prowler at the O’Daniel house? That’s interesting.”

“Sure. All I need to do now is figure out what he was after and who he is. Any ideas?”

“Me? You’re the detective; I’m just along for the ride. Not too bright, but reasonably attractive and a pretty good lay.”

“Pretty good,” I agreed. “How about me?”

She batted her eyelashes at me. “Oh, baby,” she said, “you’re incredible. I see skyrockets every time.”

Putting me on again. I sat there feeling wounded.

Kerry fell silent too and stayed that way. Brooding about her whacky ex-husband again, I thought. I took another quick swim, and when I came out she was still brooding. I asked her if she wanted to go to the lounge next door for a drink; she said no, she just wanted to sit there for a while, maybe have another swim.

I went to the room alone, and showered, and as I was getting dressed the stone cup caught my eye again. I could see the fossils on it where Treacle had rubbed off the soot the other night. For some reason the thing held my attention. I stopped fumbling with my pants and went over and picked it up.

Those fossils . . . what was it Treacle had called them? Bryophytes, that was it. Bryophyte fossils, common to this area, etched in different kinds of rock . . .

Rock, I thought.

Rocks.

Things began to stir inside my head. Then they began to run around, tumbling together like little rocks in a landslide. Things I should have added up before. Things that got me a little excited because maybe, just maybe, they were some of the answers I had been looking for.

I finished dressing in a hurry and hustled out to where Kerry sat by the pool. “I’ve got to go to Musket Creek,” I said.

She squinted up at me. “Again? What for?”

“There’s something I want to check on.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back.”

“Great,” she said. “Secrets, now. I suppose that means I can’t come along?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll be back by eight or so.”

“So go,” she said, and shrugged. “I’ll find something to do.”

I went.