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"I've heard that you occasionally buy antiques too ... ?" I
left the question hanging, and let Fran's fancy fill in the gap.

"That's true, but they have to be very special pieces. My customers have learned to expect nothing but the very best from me." She busied herself turning china teacups so that the cracks were less visible.

"Have you ever purchased any eighteenth-century things, maybe military artifacts, from a fellow named Tichnor? I'm wondering--"

"Get out! Get out of here right now!" Gone was the smooth patter and the confident authoritarian; the woman's voice was sleeted over with fear. "I don't want anything to do with him, or any of his friends neither. Get going, before I call the sheriff!" Mrs. Maggers practically dragged me to the doorway, her voice rising with every step.

"I'm no friend of his!" I insisted, gently trying to detach her hand from my elbow. "And he's not in a position to hurt anyone--he was killed a couple of months ago."

"Oh, I know all about that, and good riddance I say! It's not him I'm worried about, though God knows, if there was ever anyone wicked enough to come back from the grave, it was him. I know he's got friends and I don't want any part of them neither. I didn't want his bits of rocks and rubbish--"

Gotcha!

"--but he kept coming back and bothering me about it. And the last time he got riled up, stomping around, and damned near smashed the place, ranting about ancient treasures--" She stopped shy of the door, torn between the urge to get rid of any connection with Tichnor and the burning curiosity to know why I was asking about him.

"What happened the last time? I need to know because--" Here I stopped. I certainly didn't want to mention my suspicions about Tony. On the other hand, I needed to give something to keep this greedy woman interested. "Because I'm trying to get all the details I can for the research I'm doing about all the excitement here this summer." Not entirely untrue, I figured.

"Oh." Again Fran was caught between her desire to be shed of anything to do with Tichnor and her intense desire to get a little free publicity. "I told you before, he kept pestering me about his broken bits of things. No collectors around here for that sort of thing, most people are more interested in more refined stuff, genuine heirlooms. The last time he came in here, he was drunk as a skunk, you could smell it on him a mile away. Kept bothering me to buy some of his stuff. He got madder and madder, because this time he had gone out of his way, he'd said, to get some things that I would like."

"When was this?" I asked, wondering if it was part of the collection of objects stolen from Pauline's house. "Do you remember what he had?" I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice.

"Oh, ages ago, last June?"

June was too early for it to have come from my site or Pauline's house.

Frannie continued. "It wasn't much he had, that's for sure. A couple of brass buttons, a china cup or bowl, not Indian this time, and some flintlock parts. He said it was from his attic, but they were so dirty and nasty that I asked him if they hadn't really come from a garbage heap."

Eighteenth-century stuff, it sounded like. My own thoughts turned immediately to Tichnor's metal detector and his collection of things stolen from Fort Archer.

"That didn't sit too well with him, and he asked one more time, would I buy them or not? And I answered, for the last time, no!" she sputtered. "He started swearing and stomping around, and I thought he was going to leave at last, but he just stuck his head out the door and yelled to his friend to come in, have a word with me."

My ears pricked up. "Did his friend come in?"

"No-ooo," Frannie let go of my arm as she tried to remember. "They were arguing."

"Did you see his friend? Did you recognize him? Or her? Was it a man or a woman?" I asked excitedly.

"I didn't see anyone. I think it was a man. Now wait a minute, let me think." Mrs. Maggers pressed her finger to her mouth in a monumental display of self-important cogitation. "His name, I don't remember what Tichnor called him, exactly, but it was something
common.
Nick? Donnie? No name any polite mother would give her child. Mine are all named properly for their grandparents: Margaret, Richard, Lillian, and Gustav."

I reckoned that if any of the little Maggers were anything like their dam, their names would be rendered "Mad Maggie," "Needle Dick," and "Frigid Lily." God only knows what unkindly moniker would have befallen little Gustav.

"Could the name have been Tony? Maybe Augie?" I knew from all of my ethnographic training that the worst thing in the world I could do was give an informant a leading question, but this wasn't a textbook exercise.

Mrs. Maggers considered. "Might have been. Possible, but I don't say for certain. Anyway, I didn't wait to find out what the word might be. I shoved him out the door, hard, and then locked it." She nodded once: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I looked at the sharp-dealing shopkeeper with a new respect. It took guts to do something like that. "What happened then?"

"I pulled down the shade and listened to make sure that he wasn't going to stick around. He stood out there, hooting and hollering for a while, banging on the door. I called the sheriff's office, and he sent one of his little Cub Scouts around, but Tichnor had left long before that."

She looked me up and down appraisingly. "Are you going to write a book about all the troubles that've been up here? Something for a magazine? Lots of excitement last summer," she pointed out hopefully.

I dumped every ounce of tedium I could into my lie. "Well, it's really more of a monograph, for a sociological journal, you might have heard of it,
Annual Review of Criminal Psychological Pathology'?
It's really quite interesting, see,
I've been focusing on the presumed correlation between murder victims and their own criminal activities, I mean, the specific
types
of illicit behavior, and I've found the most fascinating data on--"

"Oh." Clearly it was nothing any of her friends were going to be reading under the dryers down at Ruby's Hair Fair. Fran lost interest in a hurry.

"Thanks very much for all of your help." I almost felt bad for disappointing her. "If it gets published, I'll be sure to mention you." Which was not entirely a lie.

"You're welcome," the prim reply came. "Perhaps you'll stop by another time, when you're ready to buy something nice.

I got out before I was subjected to any more familial fairy stories. Meg was sitting on the bumper of the truck, throwing pebbles aimlessly down the rain grate. Distant plopping noises could be heard after the ping off the grate itself, and the whole endeavor smacked of morose contemplation of things better left undisturbed.

"Ready to go?"

"Well, I did have this sizable stockpile of pebbles that needed throwing, but I s'pose I can tear myself away." I was surprised to hear the glum cast to Meg's sarcasm.

"Is there anything you want to talk about, Meg?" I asked. "You seem a little depressed today. Bummed out, not to put to fine a point on it."

"Oh no. It's just, you know, the personal stuff I mentioned, nothing you can do anything about." She dismissed my offer out of hand. A little brusquely, I thought.

"I didn't think that I was going to solve anything, just talk." I was feeling pretty churlish myself.

Meg stood up, stretched, and with a lightning movement, kicked the rest of the pebbles down the drain. A wet splash was followed by a fetid smell rising up from the sewer. I picked up her empty Coke can and followed her back into the truck.

After a while Meg spoke. "It's only that sometimes people, guys, can be really irrational and it confuses the hell out of me. They like something about you, then when you're being yourself, they get pissed off with you for it."

I thought about Brian, who adored my tenacity in everything but the present situation. I thought about Sheriff Stannard, who liked the way I looked at things, but didn't want me to look at them on my own. "The only thing you can do is keep bringing it up, get to the bottom of things. Negotiate, compromise, look for the answer." I shrugged; I knew from my own experience that it wasn't as easy as that.

"And if that doesn't work? What if there are no answers?"

That one kept me occupied until we arrived in Bakersfield.

Chapter 23

THE VOICE ON THE TELEPHONE WAS RIGHT, THERE WAS no way that I could have missed the dive shop. It was a sprawling shingled house, the lower floor of which had been converted into a storefront. A giant plaster sperm whale with a sailor's hat winked from the roof of the front porch. It was old and weathered, half of its tail missing. Seagulls had obviously found it a compelling target for years, and the once-bright blue body was faded with white smears all over it, adding a perverse sense of realism to the thing. A yellow electric sandwich board hummed in the late afternoon light, boasting the words "Bakersfield Dive Shop/How Long Can You Go Down?/Winter Classes Start Nov. 1."

I pulled in and was out of the truck saying, "Just wait here, I won't be a minute."

"But--" Meg protested. I ignored her, not wanting to bring up Tony with her.

The inside of the place was as random as the outside, with the same sense of iconoclastic decor. The walls, like the exterior, looked like they had been decorated with the castoffs of a thousand defunct clam shanties, the ornaments running
largely toward fishnets, buoys, and lobster traps. A few other oddments added to the sense of clutter, including a bizarre example of taxidermy in the shape of a stuffed and mounted basset hound. This occupied the place of honor behind the counter with the television that had blared talk-show inanities into the phone the day that I had first tried the number.

The stock, on the other hand, was in good order. I didn't know anything about diving other than recognizing some stuff that Brian used for snorkeling. I could tell, however, that the wet and dry suits, hanging like scarecrows, were expensive, and the smaller accouterments were well organized in their individual bins. The whole place smelled of chlorine, rubber, old carpet, and the unpainted wood of the walls.

The television was on again, so I knew for sure that this was the right place: It was tuned to a professional wrestling match. The man behind the counter was seated precariously on a stool, and could have easily passed for one of the contestants in the bout being shown. He was of enormous girth, the top of the stool being lost under him, and had a head of hair that looked as though it had been combed last in 1970, and then with an imprecise gardening tool.

A group of pictures formed a shrine behind the stuffed dog, and with a little squinting, I could just make out a common figure in all of them, a much reduced version of the man in front of me. The pictures were mostly on boats and beaches, a few murky greenish ones underwater, but all clearly from the premier diving spots in the world: Hawaii, Australia, the Keys, the Caribbean, and other places that I didn't recognize. Whoever the guy was, he was certainly a long way away from his previous life.

"Nice pictures, ain't they?" I was caught staring too long for casual interest. The voice that rumbled out of his chest was no less impressive than it had been over the phone, gravelly thunder trapped in a cavern. "I been a lot of places, seen a lotta things. Now I just make sure that other folks get to see them too, and don't get mangled doing it."

"You don't dive anymore." I made it more of an invitation than a question.

"Nope, can't do it. For one thing, there ain't enough neoprene on the planet." This was followed by a tumultuous guffaw. "For 'nother, doctors found a spot on my lungs, and between that and losing half my foot to a shark, I kinda lost interest. Kind of a long shot, that shark attack, and I figure, if you gotta defy the odds some way, I myself would have picked the lottery, but what are you gonna do?"

A little wistfulness tinged his voice, but his overall tone was one of making the best out of life. "Name's Johnny. What can I do for ya, Red?" He reluctantly turned the wrestlers down.

I ignored his use of the repellent nickname. "Well, it's sort of a surprise. A friend of mine dives, and he shops here, and I wanted to get something for his birthday. Of course,
I
don't know anything about diving, but I figured you might be able to help me out there." I was disconcerted by the cajoling feminine helplessness my voice had taken on. Not my usual style at all, but it seemed to be working.

"That might take a little doing," Johnny said doubtfully. "What's his name, darlin'? Does he dive around here? If he's smart, he'll be heading about two thousand miles south aways, otherwise his balls might not come down again till next Easter!" He bellowed at his own sally, making me wonder if there were a volume button or an amplifier I could turn off.

"His name is Tony--it might be under Anthony-- Markham. I know he's come in at least once."

But Johnny's eyes lit up. "I know him all right--you the one called the other day, right?"

I nodded.

"Sure, he's been in here a bunch of times, and always picks out the good stuff too," he said. "Might be kinda difficult finding something he doesn't have, he's a guy who believes in treating himself well. You a close friend of his?" The inquiry suggested that his mind was more than half made up on the subject of my precise relation to Tony.

"Oh, you know," I said coyly offhand. "An old friend of the family's, known him forever."

"Then you got some idea of where he's likely to be doing most of his diving? Same places?"

I was at a loss, having no idea where the same places were, and began to feel, well, like a fish out of water. "Well, I know he's been doing a bit around here lately, but I don't know what his plans for the winter are, and I thought--"

"We thought that we could find him something that he could use anywhere, in case he decides to go back to Kauai this winter too," a voice piped up, saving me from ... floundering.

I whirled around and nearly crashed into Meg, who apparently had come into the shop almost directly on my heels and had discreetly moved behind one of the displays. She had heard everything, and for some reason was playing along with me. I glared at her, but there was nothing I could do to chase her away without blowing things with Johnny.

"Has he already picked up a watch?" she asked.

"Yeah, sure, first thing," he replied. "And a timer. He already has all the basics: mask, fins, BCD, tank. But he's been by for a couple of bags, an Oakley dry suit, and
a fine
selection of knives." Johnny snickered. "You know, I'm about half convinced that the biggest thing that gets people into diving is that they can walk around with the knife strapped to their leg. A lot of them get off on the big, bad explorer image," he explained.

"Well, that's Uncle Tony to a T," Meg chimed in, giggling. "Computer? How about a pony tank?"

"Natch."

"What about a good map? Has he bought any of those waterproof ones from you?" I asked all of a sudden, noticing a basket on the counter. I was starting to feel left out; I couldn't, er,
fathom
what a pony tank did, I couldn't tell from BCDs, but maps I understood.