Vixen (12 page)

“Goddamn it! I told you, Cory's just a friend. Get that through your head. Nothing more than a casual friend.”

“Like Margaret Vorhees is a casual friend?”

“Now what the hell are you insinuating?”

“I'm not insinuating anything. Just going on what seems to be common knowledge.”

“About Margaret and me? Malicious gossip. There's nothing between us, any more than there is between Cory and me.”

“Cory and Andrew Vorhees,” Runyon said. “Is that just malicious gossip, too?”

Push enough buttons and you're bound to hit an unprotected sensitive spot. Chaleen's face went dirty with a surge of anger. He took a half step forward, his hand lifting and fisting again. “I've had enough of you and your bullshit, man. I ought to break your face.”

Runyon hadn't moved. “Welcome to try. But don't forget what happened at Belardi's.”

Chaleen hadn't forgotten. He might have tried to get physical with somebody else, but when you can't back a man down with threats, you're vulnerable and already half beaten. He knew it, knew what the result would be if he forced the issue; it frustrated him, but it also made him afraid. As before, as always when he came up against a man like Runyon, he was the one who backed down.

His fingers relaxed again, his gaze slid away. Then, “You're trespassing. Get out of here before I call the cops and have you arrested!” The last sentence came out loud enough so that the warehouseman with the clipboard turned to look at them.

Runyon said slowly, in a voice that didn't carry, “And don't forget this conversation, or the one my boss had yesterday with Mrs. Vorhees.”

Red-faced, Chaleen shouted again. “You people go around making any more veiled accusations against me, you'll hear from my lawyer! You got that? All right, now get the hell out!”

Runyon went, taking his time, not looking back.

*   *   *

In the Ford, before he drove away from Chaleen Manufacturing, he reported in to Tamara.

“So you think you scared him off?” she asked.

“Hard to tell. Maybe, maybe not.”

“Man'd have to have his head up his butt to try anything now, knowing we're onto him.”

“You'd think so,” Runyon said. “He claimed he didn't tell Cory about Bill's talk with Margaret Vorhees. That might be the truth.”

“Why wouldn't he have told her?”

“Afraid of her reaction, maybe. He may have already had second thoughts about going through with their plan.”

“I wouldn't put it past her to go ahead with or without him,” Tamara said, “if the plan's good enough and the stakes big enough. Everything in her record says she's an aggressive risk taker.”

“But not unless she figures it's a sure thing. If she does go ahead, it won't be alone.”

“Right. Not the type to do her own dirty work. So then she'll need Chaleen.”

Runyon said, “And she'll make every effort to get him to do what she wants. Whether or not she succeeds depends on how strong her hold on him is. And on what else is in it for him.”

“You mean money?”

“If there's enough to be had. That factory of his isn't doing too well. Skeletal crew, machinery breaking down, buildings and property in disrepair.”

“So he could be heavy in debt,” Tamara said. “I'll run a financial check on him—should've thought to do that before.” Then, after a pause, “What do you think about having a talk with Cory, Jake? Would it do any good?”

Runyon said, “No. Kenneth's on thin ice as it is. Chaleen picked up on the idea he's the one who tipped us. I think I talked him out of it, but she's smarter than he is.”

“Yeah. Well, what about trying to get Kenny alone for another talk?”

“Same objection. Too much chance of Cory catching wise. There's nothing he can do to diffuse the situation. If he tries, he's liable to make it worse.”

“So we've done all we can and we're back to square one. Just wait and hope nothing happens.”

“I don't see any other alternative,” Runyon said.

 

14

Any sudden death in the family is a blow, and when the person is as close as Cybil was to us it's twice as hard to deal with, twice as painful. Never mind that she had been in her late eighties and in failing health, and you knew her time was short and you'd resigned yourself to the inevitable loss. When it happens it's still unexpected, a shock you don't easily recover from.

Bad enough for Emily and me; devastating for Kerry. Her mother had been a vital presence in her life—confidante, touchstone, tower of strength in times of crisis. Cybil's passing must have torn her up inside, and yet she coped with it—or seemed to be coping with it—in the same calm, controlled way she'd broken the news to me. No outward displays of emotion; if she cried, and she surely must have, it was in private behind locked doors. She comforted Emily when the girl burst into tears after being told. She let both of us try to comfort her with hugs and inadequate words, but not for any length of time and with a kind of mild but distant reserve.

The only indication of the depth of her grief was when she and I were in bed the night it happened, a few whispered words in the darkness. “What hurts the most,” she said, “was that I couldn't be with her at the end. To tell her how much I loved her. To say good-bye.”

There was no funeral or memorial service, at Cybil's request. She had asked to be cremated and to have her ashes scattered in Muir Woods, one of her favorite places. Kerry insisted on taking care of the mortuary arrangements herself. She also insisted on immediately clearing out her mother's unit at Redwood Village in Larkspur.

“There's no reason to wait,” she said. She also said, “It doesn't seem right for all her things to be sitting there gathering dust now that she's gone.”

She let me help her do the clearing and gathering, but I suspected it was only because she couldn't manage the task alone. Cybil's personal possessions were relatively few: a small trunk full of old correspondence, photographs, clippings of news items and book reviews, miscellaneous scraps of paper, and carbon-copy manuscripts of the stories she'd written under the pseudonym Samuel Leatherman for
Black Mask, Dime Detective,
and
Midnight Detective
in the 1940s; several framed family photos, a few mementoes and knickknacks; and two boxes of books and magazines, including extra copies of
Dead Eye
and
Black Eye,
Cybil's two retro novels featuring her hardboiled pulp detective, Max Ruffe.

Kerry wanted all of this transported to our condo, along with her mother's ancient Remington typewriter and antique rocking chair, the small bookcase in which the copies of Cybil's published works had been displayed, and a couple of items of clothing that had some sort of sentimental value. “All of these were part of Cybil, dear to her. How can I get rid of them?” She said this defensively, even though I hadn't questioned her or made any kind of comment.

When we were done, the only things left for Redwood Village to dispose of were the remaining items of furniture, cookware and glassware, and the contents of the refrigerator and cupboards. It took both Kerry's car and mine to get all the stuff back to the city.

Once we had everything inside the condo, all but filling up the utility room, she began sorting through the contents of the trunk—a task she wouldn't let me help her with. “It's my job. Most of these things are personal.”

“I won't look at anything you don't want me to.”

“That's not the point. I don't want any help.”

“Kerry, I know how much you're hurting—”

“Do you?”

“All right, maybe not, but Cybil's passing deeply affected me, too—”

“Passing,” Kerry said between her teeth. “God, you know I hate that euphemism. Cybil died. My mother
died
.”

“Her death, then. I'm just trying to make things a little easier for you, that's all.”

“Then don't fuss and let me do what I have to do.”

I did not put up any further argument.

Kerry spent that evening and part of the next morning going through the trunk and the boxes of books. Looking at photographs, reading correspondence or part of a manuscript or a story in one of the pulp magazines or one of the dozens of yellowed pieces of paper on which Cybil had scribbled story ideas, character sketches, sentence fragments. One of the times I wandered in to see how she was doing, I found her stroking with her index finger a small stone carving of a panther that Cybil had kept on the bureau in her bedroom.

“My father gave this to her on her fortieth birthday.”

“What's it carved from?” I asked. “Onyx?”

“Black jade. From Burma. He said it had magical powers.”

“She never mentioned that.”

“She didn't believe it. Neither do I.”

“But he did?”

“He claimed he did. I'm not so sure he believed in any of that occult crap he wrote about.”

Telling statement. Ivan Wade had started out as a pulp writer himself, concocting grim and gruesome stories for
Weird Tales
and other fantasy/horror magazines, and then had gravitated to radio scripting, slick magazine fiction, some TV work, and finally novels and nonfiction books on occult and magic themes. Kerry adored Cybil's work, but hadn't much cared for any of her father's—an accurate reflection of her feelings toward her parents as individuals. Cybil had been warm and nurturing, Ivan cold and distant. I'd met him at the same pulp convention in San Francisco where I'd first met Kerry and Cybil, and disliked him intensely; he'd been nasty as hell to me, tried to keep Kerry and me apart on the claim that I was too old for her and in too dangerous a profession. Kerry had loved him, but she hadn't mourned his death several years ago half as much as she was mourning Cybil's.

When she was finally done with the sorting, she carefully restored every photograph and scrap of paper to the trunk and then asked me to move it into her office. She'd have liked the bookcase and rocking chair in there, too, but there wasn't enough room for both; as it was I had to shift some of the existing furniture around to make the bookcase fit. She settled for putting the rocker in a corner of the living room.

From memory she filled the bookcase with Cybil's published works in the exact order they'd been in her mother's apartment, and had me take the remaining books down to our basement storage unit. Then she placed the typewriter, some of the saved gewgaws, and most of the framed photographs on top. The rest of the curios and framed photos, including a prominent one of Cybil in her midthirties at her typewriter, ended up on Kerry's already cluttered desk.

A shrine. That was the overall effect, and her intention whether a conscious one or not.

Neither Emily nor I said anything about it. What can you say to a grieving and emotionally fragile woman in circumstances like these? Nothing meaningful or worthwhile. If Kerry needed a shrine to help her cope, then that was fine with us. I'd have turned the whole flat into one if that was what it took to help her get through this new crisis.

What worried me was that her control was mostly surface; that once the necessities had been dealt with and the shrine was in place she would begin to withdraw again into that dark corner of herself where she'd huddled for the weeks after the Green Valley ordeal. Recurring nightmares, not wanting to be touched, weight loss, refusal to leave the flat alone and then only with me for visits to her doctor or with Cybil. I was afraid for her, and afraid that neither Emily nor I was equipped to handle it if it happened again. The stress and emotional drain of those weeks had taken their toll on us as well as on Kerry.

I had a private talk with Emily on the subject—she's far more mature than her fourteen years—and she agreed that we would have to once again adopt the same careful mode as before. Be there for Kerry when she needed us, but put no pressure on her of any kind. Maintain as much of a normal home environment as we could at all times.

But it seemed that our fears were groundless. For the time being, at least.

On the morning of the third day after Cybil's death, Kerry went back to her office at Bates and Carpenter. There was a lot of work piled up on her desk, she said, and a client conference that she felt obligated to attend. A healthy decision, as far as I was concerned; I'd thought she might opt for holing up in her condo office and working from home by telephone and computer, as she had during her long recuperation. She was still a little distant with Emily and me, unwilling to share more than little pieces of her grief. Throwing herself into her work might be just what was needed to reestablish her equilibrium and the equanimity of our home life.

With Emily back in school, I did not have much reason to hang around the flat, either. The wound Margaret Vorhees had inflicted on my forehead was not severe enough to require stitches. I didn't think so, anyway, after I'd removed the bandage the Latina maid had put on and in the bathroom mirror inspected the gash and a purplish bruise that haloed it. Nor did Emily, who insisted on an inspection of her own and then applied more antiseptic and a fresh bandage. Not Kerry, though. She didn't ask me what had happened until the morning after Cybil's death; the bandage and bruise may not have even registered until then. I made light of both the incident and the wound and she took me at my word, let the subject drop without question.

I'd worried a little about the possibility of a concussion because my headache had lingered overnight and bothered me while Kerry and I were loading and unloading Cybil's possessions, but it was gone by that evening; and I hadn't had any other symptoms. The gouge was deep enough to leave a very small scar, maybe, without a doctor's attention and a couple of stitches, but that prospect bothered me not at all. What was one more scar among the many?