She shook her head, then became peculiarly precise. “I haven’t talked to Nicky since nineteen seventy-four.”
If Tom’s implication that something had happened to his brother was true, his mother clearly had no knowledge of it. I was about to ask what happened to drive Nicky away some seventeen years before when she looked back at the house in awe, as if it had just made a prediction.
“Isn’t that an awful thing for a mother to admit?” she asked herself. “Nicky’s as dead to me as Tom is. Both sons dead,” she repeated, her tone less sad than awed, as though for the first time she regarded her life as cursed. “I’m not a mother anymore. It’s the only thing I ever was, and now I’m not even that.”
She started to sob, in lumpy convulsions that she made no move to stem, proud and pathetic on her porch. The dog whined awhile as well, rubbed against her leg then growled as I went to her side and put my arm across Mrs. Crandall’s nearly naked shoulders. Her flesh radiated through my jacket, not the warmth of contentment but the singe of anguish.
I waited for the convulsions to subside, then hurried to finish my business. “Do you have any idea where Nicky is living now, Mrs. Crandall?”
The tears had washed away her stupor and revived her wariness. “Why?”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“What about?”
“Tom.”
“What about Tom?”
“I’m just wondering if Tom and Nicky had been able to get together before Tom died.”
“Well, they did,” she said defensively. “My boys always did right by each other. Tom still loved Nicky, even after—” Her mouth snapped closed, trapping her final words.
“After what?”
She shook her head stubbornly. “Never mind all that. It’s been forgotten by everyone except that lunatic down the road.”
“Mr. Simmons?”
“He knows what I mean. You don’t need to.”
“Did Tom tell you he’d seen Nicky recently?”
Mrs. Crandall nodded.
“What did he say about him?”
“He said Nicky was sickly. He said he needed help.” She paused and looked skyward, at the only source of assistance she’d ever found effective. “As if he hasn’t always needed more help than anyone could give him.”
“Did Tom say what was wrong?”
“He just said Nicky was sick—so sick he might die.” She frowned. “But Tom was the one who died. Now why do you suppose that was?” She paused, then answered her own question. “Maybe he caught something from Nicky. Maybe that’s why that ambulance was here,” she added in a squirt of her former logic. “Maybe it came for Tom.”
The rhetoric had spun through her mind so rapidly I was afraid she was going to faint. “Maybe,” I agreed, tightening my grip to steady her. “Did Tom tell you where he’d seen Nicky?”
She shook her head, her thoughts elsewhere. “Tom was a good boy. Why is it the wrong ones die, do you suppose?”
I had no answer that was grounded in anything but chaos, but I wondered at the source of her heartlessness concerning her second son. “Do you know anyone else who might know where Nicky is, Mrs. Crandall?”
“There’s no one left that cares.”
“Why do people around here feel that way about him?”
“Because Nicky did bad.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged my arm off her shoulder. “Things that don’t need talking about.” She looked down at herself with dismay, as though she only now realized how she was dressed. “I have to get a housecoat on. Reverend Dobbins might come by. He said he would, to see how I was getting along. He won’t like it if he thinks I’ve let myself go.”
As she turned for the door, I tried for one last lead. “What’s the reason Nicky doesn’t come home anymore, Mrs. Crandall? Did he do something violent?” I took a second stab. “Did he kill someone?”
She started to hug herself as a shield from me, and seemed surprised to find the skillet in her hand. “Ellen,” she said abruptly.
“What does Ellen have to do with it?”
“When Tom went off to war, Nicky decided he had feelings for her. I told him it wasn’t right, that Ellen was Tom’s and always would be. Nicky told me he couldn’t help it, he wanted to keep company with her. I told him Ellen was spoken for, and if he started bothering her with that nonsense, I’d have him put away again.” Her lip stiffened. “He knew I meant it, too. Which I did.”
“Why did you have him put away the first time?”
She straightened her back to establish her rectitude. “Tom said it was the thing to do, so I did it.”
“What did Ellen think about how Nicky felt about her?”
Mrs. Crandall raised her head as royally as a duchess. “I never saw the need to ask about it.” Her eyes were hard and small; the subject was clearly closed.
“Do you have a photograph of Nicky, Mrs. Crandall?”
“Nope. Threw ’em out.”
“Do you have any of Tom’s war medals here in the house?”
“Nope. Someone stole ’em. I don’t got nothing that’s any use to anybody,” she concluded dismally, and left me and the dog to share the barren yard.
FOURTEEN
I dawdled through the remainder of the afternoon, wandering around Danville and Alamo and Walnut Creek, absorbing the changes that time and the eighties money flood had wrought. I saw scores of ridiculous houses, mammoth structures that aped everything from jungle huts to French châteaux, and the usual scab of businesses whose presence indicates that both a history and a heritage have been lost forever—the Giorgios and Guccis and Godivas that pop up in places like Carmel and Jackson Hole and Santa Fe and draw their ilk like feces draw flies until such places are unendurable by anyone who knew them when.
As a result of my meanderings, by the time I started back to pick up Ellen, I was in a lousy mood, made even more so by my suspicion that what underlay my funk was not as much a matter of aesthetics as jealousy—I couldn’t afford to live in the San Ramon Valley if I hocked everything I owned for the down payment. I’d have to rob a bank, which, in light of the savings-and-loan debacle, turns out to be how a lot of people got there in the first place.
Ellen didn’t answer the door when I knocked, her father did. His name was Orson Simmons, he announced with tawdry grandeur. He was as sunny as Lincoln and as friendly as Coolidge, and his rusty voice would have eaten through sheet steel. I anticipated trouble and got it before I was halfway through the door.
“Her mother and I would like to know more about you before we allow our daughter to leave in your company,” he declared after inviting me inside the way a drill sergeant invites a recruit to do a pushup. When I didn’t answer, he felt obliged to provide an explanation: “Ellen is not as prudent as she should be when it comes to men.”
“She seems prudent squared to me.”
“What does she know of you?”
“She knows I was a friend of Tom Crandall’s.”
He crossed his arms above the bib in his overalls. His hands were large and gnarled in odd places, as though he used them as tools rather than incur the expense of buying real ones. “You’d be mistaken to think that counts in your favor,” he declared.
I shrugged. “And you’d be mistaken to think that it matters very much.”
His face darkened to the tint of the gloomy room. The haughty attitude angered me, as hauteur always does, so I girded myself for battle. If I’d been in a good mood, I would have handled it differently, I suppose, which is not to say I would have handled it better.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Tanner?” Simmons continued in the same vein, which was the vein I used in my lawyer days when I had a cop on the stand. Because I knew how it was going to go if we got into it, I looked toward the door at his back, hoping Ellen would charge through it and rescue us, but no such luck ensued.
“I’m a private investigator,” I said, then decided to embellish and even alarm him. “I’m also a
lawyer.”
It’s testimony to the status of my current trade that Simmons saw my former one as an enhancement. “I don’t know if Ellen knows that.”
“Not many people do.”
“You don’t practice the profession?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” His expression was that of a powerless man who had sought power his whole life and couldn’t imagine anyone would willingly give it up, however minuscule the quantum.
“I’m allergic to German cars,” I explained.
He got the joke, I suppose, though you couldn’t tell from his expression, which remained as grim as a bulldog’s.
“I’ll be frank,” he declared, as though it were an achievement.
I suppressed an old rejoinder. “Feel free.”
“We’re concerned that you’re too … mature for our daughter. She is not … experienced. She is easily confused and manipulated. I—”
That did it. “Look, Mr. Simmons. You seem to think something lascivious is going on here, but it’s not. I’m not engaged to your daughter, I’m not even courting her. We’re just going to have a nice dinner, share a bottle of wine, talk about truth and beauty and the prospects for high-definition TV and—”
“Ellen doesn’t use spirits,” Orson interrupted, his words as stiff and bitter as the drink I wished I had. “I hope you will honor her decision.”
“Of course I will, if that’s what it is. But let me tell you exactly how mature I am, Mr. Simmons. I’m forty-eight years old, which means at least two things—I wear bifocals and I’m too old to care if you approve of me or not. Ellen and I have a date, and I’m going to wait here for her unless and until she tells me not to bother.” I gave him my blankest look. “So. Can Ellen come out and play, or have you chained her to her bed?”
“You have no right to insult me,” he sputtered. “This is my house. Ellen is my only child. I—”
“Why do you think your rights include depriving her of a night on the town?” I interjected loudly. “If you want a pet, maybe you should buy a dog.”
For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me or try to. For a moment, he thought so, too. But he was only angry, not witless, and my guess was that fighting back had usually gotten him in trouble.
“You know nothing about this family,” he muttered. “I have lived on this property for three generations—before there was a freeway; before there was a high school; before the walnut groves died out. I deserve respect.”
“So does your daughter.”
“You know nothing about what her life has been. Ellen has been hurt by men. More than once. She needs—”
The door to the kitchen opened with a bang, and Ellen stomped into the room, dress flaring, hair swishing, eyes white hot and fastened on her father. “You said you wouldn’t do this. You promised that for once you’d let me … go. Without a fuss.”
“But this man—”
“This man is my friend. I asked him to take me to dinner. He accepted the invitation. I was grateful. So that’s where we’re going. I’ll try to be home by ten, but don’t wait up.” She turned to me with a glorious smile that blinded me to her father’s scowl. “Sound the trumpets, summon the chariots, notify the society page; Ellen Simmons has a date.”
She took my arm, spun me around, and marched the both of us through the door. As locked in step as a drill team, we reached the haven of my car without looking back or exchanging a word.
I helped Ellen inside, then went around to the other door, but before I opened it, I glanced back at the house. Through the screen, I could see Orson Simmons, stalwart in the center of his home, head down, shoulders heaving, a monument to impotence and frustration. A tiny woman in a blue print dress hovered over him like a nurse, rubbing his back, whispering consolations, all to no avail. A moment later, he brushed her aside and disappeared into the kitchen through the freely swinging door. The woman he left behind seemed less startled than relieved at his departure.
I got in the car and turned the key. Ellen was soft and stoic against the far door, hands in her lap, eyes on the house, shawl snug around her shoulders. “They’re not bad people,” she said as I turned around and headed down the drive.
“I know.”
“They just think I can’t take care of myself.”
“Partly because you let them think that.”
“It’s also because they think the world is such a horrid place that no woman is safe in it.”
“It’s not that bad out there, Ellen. Not yet.”
“I know. I should have moved out long ago and gotten on with my life. But somehow it seemed too complicated. Or too cruel. And when I imagined what life on my own would be like, the loneliness seemed overwhelming. So I stayed put. And here I am—a spinster.”
I smiled. “A spinster who asks strange men for dates.”
She smiled gratefully and placed a hand on my thigh. “You’re not a stranger. I feel like I’ve known you for a million years.”
“I feel like I’ve been alive that long, sometimes.”
“And I feel like I’ve been alone that long.”
We slipped into a tolerable silence as I took the old highway into Alamo on the way to Walnut Creek. After we passed the cluster of Alamo Square, I looked at her again. “Did you know Nicky Crandall was in love with you?”
The question jolted Ellen out of wherever her thoughts had put her. “You mean Tom.”
“I mean Nicky.”
She frowned. “When was this supposed to have happened?”
“After Tom went in the army, Nicky wanted you to be his girl.”
Her laugh was dry and brief. “I didn’t know; he never said anything. Nicky mooned around a lot, was clearly in some other world, but I never thought that world included me. Who told you this? Nicky?”
“Mrs. Crandall.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Not much. She clearly favored Tom over his brother.”
Ellen nodded. “She’s only human.”
“Do you know why Nicky never asked you out?”
“Why?”
“Because his mother told him she’d put him back in the nuthouse if he did.”
Ellen digested the news in silence until I pulled up in front of the restaurant, a bar and grill that was a clone of a dozen like it in San Francisco. I’m sure there were better places in the area, but I don’t keep track of such things, and besides, I wanted Ellen’s attention on something more fruitful than food.
We were shown to a table in the back by a hostess whose black leather minidress was the friendliest thing about her. The decor was southwestern glitz, the clientele was cowboy yuppie and unembarrassed by it, and Ellen’s eyes were big enough to swallow it all in a single disbelieving gulp. Her astonishment enlarged geometrically when she looked at the right side of the menu.
We ordered drinks from the cocktail waitress, then Ellen put a hand on mine. “I think what you said may explain some things,” she said eagerly. “I think Nicky must have written Tom about his feelings for me. I think that could be why Tom never came back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I told you that Tom felt responsible for Nicky’s troubles, remember? I think Tom must have thought that if he didn’t come back, then Nicky would have a chance with me. A chance to best Tom at something for the first time in his life.”
It seemed a reach to me, but Ellen clearly had needed some explanation, however bizarre, for Tom’s faithlessness for a long time. If that’s what I’d brought her, I was glad.
“It’s a little Freudian,” I said, “but if you think—”
“It’s not Freudian, it’s Arthurian.”
Her voice fell to a wistful drone as I remembered that not long ago I’d thought of Ellen Simmons in much the same terms. “I was supposed to marry Nicky, don’t you see? It all makes sense: I was Tom’s gift to his little brother. And Tom was so far away, he couldn’t see how impossible it was.”
�
�Because Nicky was crazy? Or because you could never love anyone but Tom?”
She thought about it. “Both. It took Tom a long time to realize how sick Nicky was, that Nicky’s problem wasn’t his brother but his mind.” Briefly brightened by her newly minted rationale, Ellen’s face suddenly fell. “Or maybe Tom thought I was crazy, too. Maybe he thought Nicky and I were suited to each other. Maybe that’s why he—” She stopped when she noticed her reflection in the mirrored wall across from us.
She considered it for almost a minute. “Look at me. I’m still a child. I dress like one and act like one. For twenty years, I’ve done nothing to prove Tom wrong.”
The conversation had taken a crooked tack, one that had its roots in the past rather than the present, one I couldn’t follow. I tried to bring us back to the here and now. “Nicky never told you any of this himself, did he?”
Ellen shook her head. “Can you imagine how afraid he must have been, of what his mother might do if he started seeing me? Nicky was paranoid enough as it was.”
“Paranoid enough to kill his brother twenty years later? For putting him in the nuthouse?”
The question was heartless, both in intent and context, but it produced the unvarnished reaction I sought. “After all this time? Why would he? Besides, Nicky loved Tom.”
“Says who?”
“I … they were brothers.”
“So were Cain and Abel.”
That thought carried us across my scotch and her margarita and through the meal itself, which came in minuscule portions and went without fanfare except for the running chatter from the waiter, who was working so hard at making us feel important he succeeded only in making us want to hang him with one of the ropes that were noosed and coiled above the bar.
When the plates were cleared and there was a mousse in front of Ellen and a cognac in front of me, our eyes made music once again. “One last point about Nicky,” I said.
She’d had enough of the subject but was too polite to deny me. “What?”
“If you wanted to find him, where would you look?”
“A week ago I would have talked to Tom.”
“And now?”
“I guess I’d talk to Dr. Marlin.”
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