The Last Good Kiss (9 page)

California: Everybody's so crazy, you have to be really

weird to get anybody's attention.

When I delivered my load to Traheame's room, he

was sleeping like a grizzly gone under for the winter,

curled on his unwounded hip, spitting out snores that

seemed to curse his sleep, great phlegm-strangled ,

whiskey-soaked, cigar-smoked, window-rattling roars. I

wondered how he slept in all that racket, how his wives ,

past and present, ever got any sleep. I hid his afternoon

ration of vodka between something called The Towers

of Gallisfried and a thin Western, Stalkahole, then

tiptoed out quietly, trying not to awaken the monster.

At the nearest pay telephone, I found the high school

drama teacher's number listed. When I called Mr.

Gleeson and told him why I wanted to talk to him, he

sounded vaguely amused rather than surprised. He

didn't have to thumb through his memory to recognize

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the name, though, which was a good sign. He agreed to

talk to me as soon as I could drive out to his house, but

only for a short time, since he had a student appointment later that afternoon. Then he proceeded to give me a set of directions so confusing that it took me thirty

minutes to drive the ten miles out to his house at the

base of the Oakville Grade. By the time I found it, I

had stopped myself twice from driving on over the

Grade into the Napa Valley and a wine tour.

Charles Gleeson lived in a cottage in a live oak glade,

a small place that looked as if it had been a summer

retreat once, with a shake roof and unpainted walls that

had tastefully weathered to a silver gray. Some sort of

massive vine screened his front porch and clambered

like crazy over the roof, as if it feared it might drown

among the large flowering shrubs that cluttered the

yard. He came to the screen door before I could knock,

a small man with a painfully erect posture, a huge head,

and a voice so theatrically deep and resonant that he

sounded like a bad imitation of Richard Burton on a

drunken Shakespearean lark. Unfortunately, his noble

head was as bald as a baby's butt, except for a stylishly

long fringe of fine, graying hair that cuffed the back of

his head from ear to ear. He must have splashed a

buck's worth of aftershave lotion across his face, and he

was wearing white ducks, a knit polo shirt, and about

five pounds of silver and turquoise.

"You must be the gentleman who telephoned about

Betty Sue Flowers," he emoted as he opened the door.

A cruising fly, hovering like a tiny hawk, banked in

front of me and sped for the kitchen. Gleeson swatted

at it with a pale, ineffectual hand and muttered a mild

curse.

"I'm sorry I'm late," I said.

"The directions, right? I must apologize, but my

conception of spatial relationships is severely limited.

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Except on stage, of course. My god, I can block out a

monster like Morning Becomes Electra in my head but I

can't seem to tell anyone how to find my little cottage in

the woods," he prattled as he twisted the heavy

bracelet on his wrist. Then we shook hands, and he

patted my forearm affectionately and drew me into his

Danish Modern, Neo-Navajo living room. "It's lovely

out," he suggested, touching the squash-blossom necklace, "so why don't we sit on the sun deck? I fear the house is a disaster area-I'm a bachelor, you see, and

housekeeping seems to elude me. " He waved his hand

aimlessly at some invisible mess. We could have

lunched off the waxed oak floorboards or performed an

appendectomy on the driftwood coffee table. I didn't

mind going outside though. His sort of house always

made me check my boots for cowshit. Unfortunately,

this time they were innocently · clean.

The sun deck, built out of the same silvered planks as

the house and threatened by the same heavy vine, was

done in wrought iron and gay orange canvas. At least it

was outside. With a deep, throbbing sigh, Gleeson

collapsed into a director's chair and genteelly offered

me the one facing him.

"It's a bit early for me, but would you care for a

cerveza?" he said, idly swirling the ice cubes in the

blown Mexican glass he had picked up from the neat

little table that matched his little chair. "A beer?" he

added, just in case I hadn't understood.

"Right," I growled, "it's never too early for me."

Then I chuckled like Aldo Ray. If I had to endure his

l'homme du monde act, he had to suffer my jaded,

alcoholic private eye.

"Of course," he murmured, then reached into a

small refrigerator on the other side of his chair and

came out with a can of Tecate, a perfect pinch of rock

salt, and a wedge of lime already gracing the top of the

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can. He had prepared, the devil. "Do you like Mexican

beer?"

"I like beer," I said, "just like Tom T. Hall."

"I see," he said, trying to hide a superior smile with a

supercilious eyebrow. "Mexican beer is quite superb.

Perhaps the best in the world. I'm quite fond of it

myself. I summer in Mexico, you see, San Miguel de

Allende, every year. Takes me away from the mundane

world of high school," he said as he handed me the

beer.

"Must be fun," I said, guessing that he spent his

summers wearing a three-hundred-dollar toupee which

looked like a dead possum and boring hell out of

everybody for forty miles in every direction.

"A lovely country," he sighed, meaning to sound

wistful and longingly resigned to a life unworthy of

his talents. Then he glanced up and said, "A touch

of salt on the tongue, then sip the beer, and bite the

lime."

"Right," I said, then gobbled the salt, chug-a-lugged

the whole beer, ate the lime wedge, rind and all, and

tossed the empty can onto the lawn. Gleeson looked

ready to weep, and when I belched, he flinched. "Got

'nother wunna them Mexican beers?" I said cheerfully.

"That weren't half bad."

"Of course," he said, the perfect host, then doled me

another can as if it were rationed. Before I had to

destroy that one too, I was saved by the bell. Or the

chirp. His telephone chirped like a baby bird. "Oh

damn," he said. "Please excuse me."

After he went back inside, I stood up to let the heavy

beer lie down. Out of an old nosy habit, I checked

Gleeson's glass. Cranberry juice and a ton of vodka.

He was either a secret tippler, a pathological liar, or

more nervous about my visit than he cared for me to

know. I sidled up to the kitchen window but I couldn't

hear anything except the distant throb of his voice and

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the insane buzz of a frustrated fly. I opened the back

door to let the poor starving devil out, then sat down to

watch a hummingbird suck sugar water from Gleeson's

feeder. I couldn't believe the little bastard had come all

the way from South America for that. Or that I had

come all this way to talk about a girl who had run away

·

ten years before.

Gleeson came back muttering gracefully about the

foibles of his simply, simply lovely students. "Now," he

said as he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands

around his knee with a soft clink of silver rings. "What

can I do for you?"

"Betty Sue Flowers. "

"Quite." A brief frown wrinkled his forehead up

toward the fragrant, glistening expanse of his scalp.

"Betty Sue Flowers," he sighed, then shook his head

and smiled ruefully. "I haven't thought about her in

years. "

"What comes to mind?"

"Such a gauche name for such a lovely, talented

child," he said. "When it became apparent that she was

more than just a good amateur actress, I advised her to

change her name immediately, discard it like so much

childhood rubbish."

"I sort of like the name," I said. I didn't like women

who changed their names. Or men who wore jewelry

before sundown.

"Quite," he said. "What exactly was it you wanted to

know? I haven't seen or heard of her since the Friday

before she ran away. What was that? Six, seven years

ago?"

"Ten. "

"How time does fly," he whispered with a dreamy

lilt, mouthing the cliche like a man who knew what it

meant.

"Quite," I said.

He glanced up, narrowed his eyes as if he was seeing

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me for the first time. "It isn't polite to mock me, " he

suggested politely. He sounded half pleased, though,

that I had taken the trouble.

"Sorry," I said. "A bad habit I have. What did she

talk about that day?"

"I'm afraid I don't have the slightest notion," he

said, then held up a finger. "Wait, I seem to remember

that she stopped by my office to tell me that she had

tickets at the ACT for the next night." He started to

explain the initials, then stopped. "I'm afraid I don't

remember what they were doing. It has been quite

some time, you understand."

"Too long," I admitted for the tenth time.

"Do you mind if I inquire into your motives in this

matter?"

"Her mother asked me to look for her," I said.

"Do you do this for a living? Or are you a member of

the family?"

"Both," I said. "I'm a cousin on her mother's side

and a licensed private investigator."

"Would you be insulted if I asked for some identification?"

"Nope," I said, and took out my photostat.

"I would have thought, from your accent," he said as

he handed it back, "that you were from the Texas or

Oklahoma branch of the family."

"Texas," I said. "But they let us live just about

anywhere we want to nowadays."

"I see," he said. "Has there been some new information about Betty Sue that prompted her mother to hire you?"

"Nope," I said. "I was just handy. Down here on

another case. And both Mrs. Flowers' sons are dead

now, and she just thought she'd like to see her baby girl

again."

"I don't imagine she's a baby anymore," he said,

smiling at his own joke. "But if I were you I would get

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