The Night Searchers (A Sharon McCone Mystery) (4 page)

“We’ve all seen the damage those combinations can do: the Manson Family, the People’s Temple, the Mormon separatists.”

“Yes, and if some factor disturbs the mix, tips the scales, it can lead to serious trouble. If I were you, Ms. McCone, I’d be very careful in your dealings with this group.”

8:01 p.m.

I was surprised when Jay answered my ring at the Givenses’ Russian Hill condo, because when I’d called to make the appointment with Camilla, I’d requested it just be the two of us. In jeans and a 49ers T-shirt, he seemed relaxed and friendly. The building on Francisco Street, which Mick’s research on the Givenses had revealed he and Camilla owned, was a two-story stucco, flanked by much larger apartment houses. They lived on the top floor and rented out the lower unit.

Jay led me into a stark black-and-white room and offered me what he referred to as “the cow chair,” a semi-recliner upholstered with black-and-white spotted cowhide and supported by a spindly faux-silver framework.

“It’s the most comfortable chair in the place,” he said.

I could believe that: the other furnishings looked as if they could be used as implements of torture. Apparently the Givenses had succumbed to every faddish object touted in popular publications’ décor sections and the result was hideous. To make things worse, the windows that would have revealed a splendid view of the city lights were covered with draperies in a wild Hawaiian floral print.

Jay offered me coffee, and while he was in the kitchen, Camilla came out of a short hall that I assumed led to bedrooms. She wore a purple velveteen robe and had her hair wrapped in a towel.

“Sorry Jay’s here. I knew you wanted our meeting to be private, but for once I couldn’t get him to go about his nightly rounds—whatever they may be,” she said, sitting down on a bright orange settee and thus creating another visual horror.

“I’m also sorry about being so casual,” she went on. “I need to wash my hair early because it’s so heavy and it takes so long to dry.”

“I used to have long, heavy hair too.”

She studied me. “Why’d you cut it?”

To disguise myself, I thought, remembering a particularly taxing case along the US-Mexican border. “It was more trouble than it was worth,” I said.

“It suits you at shoulder length.”

“Thanks.”

Jay came in with two mugs of coffee and glanced questioningly at Camilla, who was lighting a cigarette.

“None for me,” she said. “I won’t sleep a wink.”

I asked, “Is sleeplessness the reason for your late-night walks around the neighborhood?”

“Well…yes.” She glanced quickly at her husband, then looked down at her hands. The fingers were twisted together, their knuckles white. She’d nearly crushed the freshly lit cigarette.

Jay didn’t seem to notice his wife’s unease, or if he did, his only reaction was to fiddle with an intricately woven silver bracelet on his right wrist. Vaguely I remembered he’d had on a different one the other day.

To keep things casual, I said, “Nice bracelet. I’ve been considering giving my husband one for his birthday, now that they’ve become fashionable for men.”

“I hope he’s more careful than Jay.” Camilla cast him a dark look. “So far he’s lost two—and they were expensive.”

“And how many times have you lost expensive earrings or locked your keys in the car?” he shot back. “Repeated calls to Triple A cost too.”

“They don’t cost anything. Besides, everybody does that.”

“I don’t.”

I put an end to the squabbling by saying, “I’ve drawn up an agency contract that you’ll both need to read and sign.”

I took two copies of the standard McCone Investigations agreement from my briefcase, handed one to each of them. Jay read slowly through his, but Camilla merely stared at the first page.

After a bit Jay said, “Looks okay to me.” He scribbled a signature on it and offered it to Camilla, who signed too. “I’ll get you a retainer check now,” he added.

He hadn’t bothered to ask his wife what she thought; Jay Givens clearly was the decision-maker in this twosome.

He went down the hall. When I was sure he was out of hearing range, I asked Camilla, “How are you holding up?”

“What does that mean?”

“Have you had any more bad experiences?”

“Bad experiences? That’s a strange thing to call them. Of course
delusions
,
spells
,
nightmares
,
hallucinations
—they’ve all been applied to what’s happened to me too.” She paused, and in a plaintive voice asked, “Ms. McCone, do you believe I saw the things I say I did?”

“I wouldn’t have taken the case if I didn’t believe you saw
something
. Is there anything more you can tell me about them?”

“No.” Quick glance at the hall down which her husband had disappeared.

“Any details you might have forgotten?”

“No, there’s nothing.” She paused. “Sometimes even I don’t believe I saw what I did. Sometimes life…it’s like a dream and I feel I can’t get back to the place where I fell asleep so I can wake myself up.”

“Have you talked with anybody about this? A therapist?”

“No. Jay doesn’t…
we
don’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing, Cammie?” Jay had come down the hallway, check and contract in his hand.

“What?”

“You were telling Ms. McCone—Sharon—that we didn’t believe in something.”

“Oh, that.” Briefly she closed her eyes. “Religion. We were talking about religion. Sharon’s a Catholic, and I was going to tell her we were atheists.” From under her half-lowered lids she flashed me a look of complicity.

Well, she was half right about my relationship with organized religion. I was raised Catholic, but lapsed somewhere along the way to adulthood. No rupture with the church, no big revelation about my faith—just a gradual process of attrition. To the grown-up me the world itself is too complex for its day-to-day issues to be understood; to contemplate a creator and his or her motivations for the full, and sometimes horrible, range of the human experience is impossible.

“What brought that subject up?” Jay asked.

“Just chatting.” I put the contract and check in my briefcase. “Now that I’m officially representing you, I have a few questions to ask. Do either of you know the Kenyon brothers, Chad or Dick?”

They exchanged a glance, shook their heads.

“You must have heard of them. Your firm represents them, isn’t that right, Jay?”

“Well, yes,” he said, “but I’ve never met either one. It’s a big firm, and there’re many clients I never get to know. Besides, they’re rich and powerful and surrounded by an army of gatekeepers.”

“What about a man named Van Hoffman?”

“No,” Camilla said. Jay hesitated before he echoed her.

I considered questioning them about the Night Searchers, but decided against it. Jay was inquisitive and would want to know why I’d asked and what the Searchers’ connection to their case was. For all I knew there wasn’t one. Maybe, if I got the opportunity, I’d ask Camilla, but right now she didn’t seem particularly interested in anything outside her own little sphere.

“Well, I have what I need for now,” I said, “so I’ll leave you to the rest of your evening and report again tomorrow.”

As I followed Jay to the door, I glanced back at Camilla: another emotion had crossed her face. It was fear. And I instinctively knew she was afraid of her husband.

10:02 p.m.

As I drove home, I thought about Camilla. She chattered a lot, and most people would have written her off as something of an airhead, but there were depths behind the ditzy façade. Also silences: it was what she
wasn’t
saying that interested me, but hard as I tried, I couldn’t get a handle on it. And that final fearful look: it was clear she didn’t trust Jay, and I myself didn’t like him very much, but he didn’t seem to be a man who would do anyone serious harm. Then again, Camilla lived with him, and I didn’t. To plumb the depths of those silences, I’d have to spend more time with her outside her husband’s presence.

Hy still wasn’t home when I got back to Avila Street, and there was no message on the foyer table where we usually left notes for each other. I ignored Alex and Jessie’s pleadings for food while I checked my answering machine and flicked on the TV to see if any news of the Van Hoffman kidnapping had been leaked to the media. No, the lid was tightly on it—which meant less danger for all involved.

I hoped.

6:10 a.m.

H
y called, as he often did, at an ungodly hour of the morning.

“Where the hell are you?” I snapped. And thought,
What a great start I’ve given to both our days
.

He laughed, however. “Des Moines. A—”

“—situation’s come up,” I finished for him. “What, your whereabouts aren’t confidential any more?”

“I thought we’d settled that issue.”

“It’s just hard to get used to. Has anything happened with the Hoffman case?”

“Not a thing, dammit. No more communications, taunting or any other kind, from the kidnappers. McCone, can you spare some time to help me this morning? My people out there are tied up with other cases and—”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“For you to go down to Atherton and interview Hoffman’s wife and any family members you can locate. See if they can shed any light on the situation.”

“Will do.”

“E-mail me through RI if you find out anything useful.”

11:33 a.m.

Atherton: an expensive, exclusive, leafy green community with a small downtown, nestled between the Bay and the Coastal Range on the Peninsula some thirty minutes south of the city. It was thickly wooded with pines and eucalyptus, and had large lots on winding lanes that discouraged high speeds. Nevertheless a group of helmeted, leather-clad motorcyclists on Harleys whipped around me as I was looking for the entrance to the Hoffman driveway on Isabella Avenue. I trailed my fingers in the air, and some of them waved back.

Mick has been riding Harleys for a number of years now. The machines have a bad reputation—Hell’s Angels and too many movies like
Easy Rider
and
The Wild One
—and I admit I was leery at first when he bought his. But motorcyclists, like gun owners like me, are mostly conscientious, and Mick has been very careful. Except when he tried to fly off the Coast Highway after a romantic disappointment—but that’s a story better forgotten.

I drove past extensive properties, most of them walled and gated with only trees and roof peaks showing over their tops. Mick had found from his recent searches that the average home here sold for over four million dollars. The
average
. These properties in Atherton had probably been in families for generations—or in newly rich techies’ hands for years or months—and they awed me.

When I reached the address for the Hoffmans’ home and pulled into the driveway, I spotted an officer in an RI uniform sitting in a folding chair next to the wrought-iron gate. He was one of the men I knew, and he automatically waved me in.

The inner driveway, of red granite pebbles, skirted a lawn that was browned and weedy. At its top stood a French château–style house: smaller than its neighbors, with cream stucco walls fronted by mature yew trees. The walls needed repainting where the trees’ branches had rubbed against them, one window to the right of the door was cracked, and there were shingles missing from the roof. Genteel neglect, because of financial problems?

I parked near the four-car garage and went up the path to the front door. It opened before I could ring the bell, and a pair of faded green eyes, sunk deeply in their nests of wrinkles, peered out at me.

“Ms. McCone?”

“Yes.” I offered my credentials, but the woman didn’t glance at them. She must have had complete trust in the RI man on the gate.

“I’m Jane Hoffman,” she said. “Come in, please.”

She was very thin, with gray-blond hair cut in a pageboy that had gone out of style decades ago. Her skin had that leathery sheen of someone who has spent too much time worshiping the sun. Her hand, when she thrust it into mine, felt rough and dry.

“You must excuse me,” she said, gesturing at her dark-blue sweat suit. “I’ve been too upset to dress—”

“I understand.”

“We’ll talk in the little room. I’ll have Suzy bring us tea.”

The “little room” was a den equipped with all the elements of leisurely living—wide-screen TV, pool table, brick fireplace, fifties-style jukebox—and overlooking an Olympic-sized swimming pool that was covered by a film of algae. Around the fireplace was a collection of furniture that conjured up an image of a rustic lake cottage. This, as indicated by a knitting bag, magazines, paperbacks, and sewing kit, was where Mrs. Hoffman spent her days.

“What a lovely room,” I said, although it wasn’t, particularly.

“Thank you. The children used to enjoy it, but of course they’re grown now.” She motioned me to one of the armchairs and bellowed in an unexpectedly loud voice, “Suzy! Tea!”

“I have to yell at her,” Mrs. Hoffman told me with a confiding look. “She’s my great-niece, Suzy Cushing, a college girl. All that music through the headphones—it makes them deaf.”

More likely that
she
would make Suzy deaf.

Suzy was cute—Texas cute, as Mick would say. Blond and curvy and perky, like a cheerleader. When she set the tray down she spoke in a foreign language I couldn’t quite place.

“Show-off,” Mrs. Hoffman grumbled.

Suzy smiled. “I’m a linguistics minor at Stanford, with a major in geopolitical physics. What I just said was Nepali for ‘I hope you enjoy your repast.’”

“And this degree will allow you to…?”

“Delve into the way we humans—in many nations and languages—have contrived to fuck this planet.”

“Suzy! No F words!”

The young woman left the room, laughing.

Mrs. Hoffman was laughing too. “That one,” she said, “can put a smile on my face no matter how bad I feel.”

“I’ve got a couple of those in my family,” I told her, thinking of Mick and his younger sister Jamie. “But as to the current circumstances…”

“Yes.” The smile disappeared and she spooned some sugar into her tea. “Mr. Ripinsky recommends you highly.”

“I have to qualify his praise: I’m also his wife.”

“He explained that to me, and I’m happy to see an example of how times have changed. In my day—and I suppose to this day in my generation—a husband would never praise his wife for her professional abilities, much less work together with her. He’d be proud of her volunteer work or her cake baking or her fine sewing, perhaps, but nothing more serious. Like Van used to be proud of me.”

I caught a bitter twist to her words. Well, I couldn’t blame her. She struck me as intelligent and capable—someone who might have done well in many fields of endeavor.

I took out my tape recorder. “Do you mind? I’m a bad notetaker.”

“Please, go ahead.”

I switched it on, and gave the date and time and nature of the interview.

“First of all,” I said, “has there been any ransom demand?”

“There has, by phone at eight thirty this morning.”

“Did you take the call?”

“Yes.”

“Was the caller’s voice familiar?”

“I can’t say. It was distorted.”

“Male? Female?”

“It was impossible to tell.”

“How much did the caller demand?”

“Forty-five thousand dollars.”

“Did you—or are you going to—pay it?”

“Certainly not! That amount is almost exactly what we have in savings. If my husband doesn’t return, it’s all I’ll have to live on for the rest of my life.”

“But this house—”

“It’s mortgaged for more than I could sell it for. And my husband’s position is about to be abolished. At best, what the two of us can hope for is spending the rest of our days in some tiny, wretched apartment.”

“Does Mr. Hoffman have life insurance?”

“Not any more. He let it lapse.”

A grim picture for her, from any angle.

“Let’s talk about your husband. Would you say his work can be dangerous?”

“Van is a philosopher. He advises governments and private individuals on how to deal with global conflicts. Dangerous? I suppose it might be.”

“He’s in a position that would allow him access to information of national security?”

“…I really don’t know. He never talks about his work.”

“You called RI when he didn’t come home at the expected time. You must have thought something was wrong.”

“Not really. I called them because that was what Van has always told me to do in what might be a crisis situation.”

“But you weren’t seriously concerned for his safety?”

“Well, no. In the thirty-six years we’ve been married, he’s never before given me cause to worry.”

“This is an awkward question, but I have to ask it: is there any possibility that he may be seeing another woman?”

“Of course not! My husband has always been completely faithful. He’s away from home a lot, but he leaves contact numbers in case I need him.”

“Only not this time.”

“No, not this time.”

“To your knowledge, does he have any personal enemies?”

She paused, but her eyes never left mine. I’d seen that kind of hesitation before: coolly calculating, judging how far a lie can go.

“None that I can think of, no.”

I shifted the focus slightly. “From my research, I see that your husband used to maintain a public presence, and was very outspoken about his policy recommendations. Then, about a year ago, all that changed. Now he rarely gives interviews, avoids the press. Why?”

“I…don’t know. Are you sure that he’s changed?”

“You haven’t noticed it?”

“…As I said before, he doesn’t talk to me about his work. We have separate lives. I have my own activities—charities, you know—and, well, they take up a great deal of my time.”

“You mentioned that your children are grown?”

“Yes, we have two: Melinda and Catharine. Melinda is a stay-at-home mom. Catharine is a…career woman.” Faint disapproval in the last statement.

“What does Catharine do?”

“She and a friend own the BodyWorks, that exclusive spa in Palo Alto.”

“Is she married?”

“No. Ms. McCone, exactly where is all this going?”

“I’m trying to get a sense of what your family is like.”

“It’s my husband who’s gone missing, not the rest of my family!”

The phone shrilled. Mrs. Hoffman looked at it apprehensively, as if afraid it might be bad news.

Someone, probably Suzy, answered it on an extension. After a moment the red message light stopped blinking.

“A wrong number,” Mrs. Hoffman said in relieved tones. “We’ve had a lot of those lately. Is there anything else?”

“Do you know the Givenses of San Francisco, Camilla and Jay?”

“…The names are not familiar.”

“What about the Kenyon brothers, Dick and Chad?”

Her nose wrinkled. “I’ve heard of them. I guess most people have. What do they have to do with my husband’s disappearance?”

“Perhaps nothing. Are you sure your husband has never had dealings with them?”

“How would I know?” She put her hands over her eyes. “Ms. McCone, I’m so tired. If you’ll leave a contract for your services, I’ll return it with a retainer check tomorrow morning.”

“There’s no need for that: I’m working for RI. The Global Policy Forum pays their bill.”

“Oh, yes, of course. For now, would you please excuse me?”

Without waiting for a reply, she stood with difficulty and left the room. I waited a moment and then went looking for Suzy.

12:15 p.m.

A thin, nervous-looking woman who was chopping vegetables in the kitchen informed me that Suzy was in the potting shed. She directed me through a door to a small, shingled structure nestled under the boughs of a pine tree.

“I thought you’d want to talk with me,” Suzy said, dusting soil from her fingers. “Tomatoes,” she added. “I’m a little slow getting them started, but they fruit in late August.”

“So in addition to being a geophysicist and a linguist, you’re also a gardener.”

She drew up a stool, motioned me to a second one. “Dealing with plants relaxes me. That’s a definite plus in this household.”

“Mind if I ask how come you’re living here?”

“I promised my mom I’d look after Aunt Jane. It was part of the deal for Mom and Dad footing my tuition at Stanford.”

“Your aunt Jane has a husband. Can’t he be depended on to look after her?”

“Well, hardly. He’s never here even when he is, if you know what I mean. And Aunt Jane’s pretty fragile. A stroke, three years ago. She’s all right now, but she needs somebody.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think you do. The stroke affected her emotionally. She cries frequently and at length for no good reason. She blanks out, stares at nothing for hours. She’s afraid to drive. It’s difficult to even get her to go out of the house. Personally, I think Uncle Van’s neglect is slowly driving her crazy.”

“What do you think has happened to him?”

“I don’t have any idea. Nothing terrible, I hope—in spite of him being a bastard.”

“What about his work? Would you say there’s any danger in it?”

“I certainly wouldn’t. He sits in his office and ponders issues that have no clear connection to reality. He writes reports that are probably ignored. Frankly, I think he might welcome some kind of danger; at least he’d feel alive. He walks around here like a character out of
Night of the Living Dead
.”

“And he’s not often home?”

“No, he stays away long hours—often up to twenty a day. Personally, I think he spends most of those hours playing solitaire on his computer and devising other ways to keep from having to come home. After all, he’s got a do-nothing job with a do-nothing foundation that Washington is about to ax. When he gets back from the office, he collapses on the couch in his study.” Suzy frowned. “But, you know, after some of those late nights, he gets up acting jazzed as hell and cooks himself up a huge breakfast.”

“Jazzed—how?”

“Chipper—as chipper as a man of his temperament can be. Self-satisfied, as if he’d scored big-time. Maybe he
does
have another woman.”

“I see. About this forty-five-thousand-dollar ransom—is it really true that she can’t pay it?”

“Oh, she could pay it if she wanted to.”

“She claims it’s nearly all they have in their savings account.”

“So? There’re stocks, bonds, retirement accounts. She just doesn’t want to pay it, is all. You might not believe it to look at her, but Aunt Jane is keeper of the financial keys in this household. And rightly so—most of the money was hers to begin with.”