“No. He is being cremated here and his ashes sent back to Brooklyn, where his parents are buried. There will be no funeral.” He paused. “He told me he was here Friday night.”
And that is why you’re here now, I thought. I said, “He was. He and Jan discussed the possibility of her decorating the house he hoped to buy up here.”
“He knew her?”
“Only by reputation. He also asked me to alert him if you came home. He had a message for you.” I stopped quickly and took a sip of coffee. I had almost added and Miss Med ford.
“Some message! He told me he had turned down some parts because they were not worthy of me. That really burned me. Who did he think I was—Sir Laurence Olivier?”
I was beginning to understand the Vogel-Dahl-Kelly police ploy.
Mrs. Casey was coming across the lawn now with his coffee. I said, “Here comes a fan who thinks that Olivier couldn’t play your stand-in.”
She had dressed it in high style, our silver coffeepot with the matching silver sugar bowl and creamer set on a damask napkin on our silver tray. Royalty had come to visit the humble Callahan cottage, and she had been prepared for the occasion.
“It is so good to see you home again, Mr. Grange,” she told him.
“Thank you, Mrs. Casey. It’s good to be home.”
“I was wondering—” she said, and stopped to look doubtfully at me. She was holding a file card and a ballpoint pen.
“Of course,” he said. “You’re the first person to ask me for my autograph in some time.”
When she went back to the house, I remembered Vogel’s warning about not being too pushy and decided to ignore it. I said, “I don’t think that was the message he meant. He wouldn’t have considered that a secret message, I’m sure.”
“You mean he told you something besides those roles that he had turned down?”
“He never mentioned any roles, only that he had what he called ‘a private thing’ to tell you.”
He shrugged. “I can’t imagine why he should have said that.”
Okay, Callahan, get pushier. I said, “It was something that Carl Lacrosse had told him.”
No reaction in his trained actor’s face. “Oh, that! This Lacrosse is a photographer. He suggested to Sydney that I be included in some crazy idea he had, a montage of old movie personalities.”
“I see. And that’s why Mrs. Lacrosse was parked out there? She wanted a piece of the action?”
His face remained bland. “Quite possibly. God, Carol fired that awful woman decades ago!”
What had become of my former hero? Had this stalwart warrior become the sycophant of a frivolous woman? That was too much to believe.
He stood up. “Well, Carol and I have a date with the dentist. Thank you for the coffee.”
“Anytime,” I said. But not too soon, I thought.
When I took the tray back to the kitchen, Mrs. Casey said, “Aren’t they a beautiful pair, him and Miss Medford?”
“They certainly are,” I agreed. “They deserve each other.”
Good-bye, old hero. I had a new one, Sydney Morgenstern. Carol had her money to insulate her from the cruel and real world. Grange had had his agent. Morgenstern would have his avenger.
We have a nationally known school of photography in our town. I phoned them and asked for the man in charge. Was there any source he knew of, I asked him, who might help me locate the present whereabouts of Carl Lacrosse?
He knew of none. “His last showing was in Beverly Hills,” he told me. “I talked with him there last week. I wanted him to come up for a short talk with our students this week, but he said he had another commitment.”
I told him what Vogel had been told on the phone by an employee at the Roquel Gallery, that Lacrosse might be heading for Norway.
The director thought it unlikely. “Carl often puts out those hints to keep people from bothering him. He goes where his mood of the moment takes him. He is a very private man. You might phone his family down in Skeleton Gulch. That’s in Arizona. But it’s possible they don’t have a phone. It’s not really a town, only a few buildings on the road about halfway between Prescott and Skull Canyon.”
“You’ve been there, then?”
“Oh, yes. That’s where he grew up. It’s one of our shrines.”
I thanked him. Skeleton Gulch, Skull Canyon, Barren Rock, Death Valley; the desert, has so many depressing place-names. Rome, Paris, Venice, Florence, Vienna, London; what magical names those must have been to an artistic kid growing up in Skeleton Gulch.
Vogel didn’t phone me around noon, as he promised. I didn’t phone him. He was working with Captain Dahl, another professional. They didn’t need any outside help from the bush-league Lord Peter Whimsey.
Grange had called Mrs. Lacrosse an awful woman. So far as I knew, he had never met her. But what did I know? I hadn’t even known that photography was an art. I had thought that Fortney Grange was a legitimate hero.
For a man who had grown up in Long Beach and spent his working years in Los Angeles, that was a shameful adolescent hangover. It was about time I learned that real-life heroes usually wound up as victims or martyrs.
I was deep in reverie when Mrs. Casey came out to ask me, “Would you like a drink before lunch as long as the missus isn’t here?”
“Why not? Bourbon and water, mostly bourbon. Pour yourself some Irish and we’ll sit out here together and curse the British.”
“You—!” she said. “You are a caution!”
She brought my bourbon and water. She brought her own drink along, straight Irish whiskey over ice. Our liquor bill had gone up since she had joined us. It was one of her fringe benefits.
“Did Mr. Grange explain about that pair in the van?” she asked me.
“He did. I’m a little disappointed in him.”
“Why? Because he’s living with Miss Medford? If the kids can live in mortal sin today, together, why not adults?”
“I suppose you’re right. With people their age, the Church might consider it only a venial sin.”
“Not to good Catholics. All adultery is a mortal sin. I know that you have left the Church, Mr. Callahan, but I hope you still believe that.”
“We can’t be sure they are committing adultery,” I pointed out.
She sniffed. “I may be old-fashioned, but I’m not stupid. They are lovers. But neither one is Catholic. Let them have their fun. Maybe they honestly believe they aren’t going to burn in hell for it.”
That could be where I had developed my instinctual need for vindictive retribution—from my youthful training.
I had the rest of last night’s Irish stew for lunch and considered several courses of action for the afternoon. None of them seemed likely to be rewarding. I took a nap.
I was awake and trying to find new connecting lines between the characters on my chart when Corey came. It was only three o’clock, which I pointed out, and added, “You couldn’t have put in your full eight hours today. Were you fired?”
“No. There were some incubator babies who were naughty today. They’re washing the lunch dishes. But reporting to you, that still keeps me on the payroll, doesn’t it?”
“I guess. Learn anything?”
He nodded. “Some of it last night. Penelope told me that Kelly and Sarkissian aren’t enemies. They work together.”
“How?”
“When the parents are wealthy, and a lot of them are, they pay Kelly big money to get the kids out. I mean, they arrange the raids together and split the take.”
“And what about the kids whose parents can’t afford to pay Kelly?”
“Sarkissian still makes a buck off of them. A lot of them don’t want to leave. Do you remember that long building you had to pass to get to Sarkissian’s office?”
“I do.”
“The kids live on the second floor of that building. The first floor is all workshops. He’s got a kiln there for making pottery. He’s got looms where they can weave phony cotton Oriental rugs. T
hey sell them on the beachfront, at that place where the local artists display on Sundays.”
“Did you talk with Joel again?”
“Yup. He’s one of the kids who wants to stay. He really hates his mother. I guess he hates his father, too, but he doesn’t talk much about him. They must both be creeps. Because Joel is one good kid.”
“Is he buying the Sarkissian pitch?” I asked.
“Not for a minute. It’s dumb gobbledygook. It’s part EST, part imitation Islam, but mostly the old Puritan ethic.”
“Work, work, work?”
“Right. For the glory and profit of Father Sarkissian. He makes money on the kids who leave and on the kids who stay.”
“You’re doing a real professional job, Corey,” I told him. “Do you want a beer?”
He smiled. “On your time or mine?”
“Corey—!”
“Just a little joke,” he lied. “Can’t you take a joke?”
He left and I remembered Sarkissian’s clever ploy. “I have to assume,” he had said, “that you are working with Dwight Kelly.”
That man was almost devious enough to be a private eye.
TEN
WHY, I WONDERED, WOULD a nice girl like Penelope continue to work for Sarkissian after learning about his tie-in with Kelly? My naïveté was showing again. Nice girls work for all kinds of bosses. Nice girls, too, are people. And people have to eat.
Jan came home around four. “How was your putting?” I asked her.
“Terrible, just terrible!”
I smiled.
“Don’t you dare think what you’re thinking,” she warned me.
“Calm down,” I said. “Let me make you a drink.”
“It’s too early for a drink,” she said. “I’m going to take my shower.”
She was still in the shower and I was out in front, picking up the evening paper, when Bernie drove up.
“Thanks for phoning me at noon,” I said. “I just this minute ran out of booze.”
“I’m sorry,” he said wearily. “I’ve been on a merry-go-round all day. I never even got to talk to that Lacrosse woman until an hour ago.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She denied that Morgenstern had phoned her. I think she’s lying.”
“Come on in,” I said. “There’s still an ounce or two of Scotch left.”
Over his drink he related the tedium of his day, trying to learn from informants and neighbors where Kelly had spent Saturday night.
“And finally,” I guessed, “you had to ask him directly.”
“Yes. He was up in Pismo Beach Saturday night talking with some parents whose daughter was at the cult.”
“And the parents confirmed it?”
He nodded. “And I believed them. The father is a judge up there.”
“I hate to sound critical,” I said, “but you could have saved a lot of time and labor by asking Kelly first.”
“Don’t I know it? It was Dahl’s idea.”
“But you went along with it.”
“I had to. He is a captain.”
I didn’t pursue that line. I said, “I think I have some ammunition for you.” I told him what Corey had learned about the Kelly-Sarkissian profit-sharing plan.
“Great!” he said. “The kid’s no slouch, is he?”
“He’s a tiger. I’ll work with him and you stick with Captain Dahl.”
He glared at me.
I smiled at him. “Just a little shot. I apologize. I’m glad you didn’t phone me. Plodding around town with Dahl isn’t my idea of a joyous afternoon.”
“He didn’t plod around with me. He gives the orders and I plod around.” He finished his drink and stood up. “How could we check Corey’s story? Who would we ask?”
“We’ll have to find somebody up there who might crack under pressure. Let’s hold off for a while to see what Corey learns.”
He nodded in agreement. “On Morgenstern, we’re nowhere, aren’t we?”
“So far.”
“For all we know, it could have been some transient, some mugger.”
It could. And writing it off, I thought, could save the police a lot of legwork. “Maybe,” I said, “but I doubt it.”
He left. I sat there, remembering somebody up at the cult who might crack under pressure. Penelope. But Bernie wasn’t going to get her name from me. I didn’t want her to be a victim of his current obsession.
When Jan came out, she looked at his empty glass and said, “You could have waited for me.”
“I did. That’s Bernie’s glass. He just left.”
“Damn him! I enjoy his company.”
“Not today, you wouldn’t. He had a bad day. His putting was sour.”
“No more of that, please.” She stretched out on a chaise lounge.
I told her about my morning talk with Grange.
When I had finished, she said, “How stupid does he think you are? Where would Mrs. Lacrosse learn down there in Arizona that her husband was planning this montage?”
“He’s scared,” I explained. “An unlikely story is the only one he could come up with. I must admit he handled it like a pro. He can still act.”
“He must be protecting Carol,” she said. “It was Carol’s house they were watching. It had to be Carol’s money that paid them off.”
“I tend to agree with you, Madame Sherlock. Now let’s have a quiet drink and talk of other things.”
“‘Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,’” she chirped, “‘and cabbages and kings.’ I’ll get our drinks.”
Jan and Mrs. Casey played gin rummy after dinner; I went over my patterns again. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There were too many connecting lines in this mess and no discernible motive. It seemed clear that blackmail had been involved. The blackmail had been paid. Why, then, the murder?
The rock that had been identified as the murder weapon had been stained with blood but devoid of fingerprints. It could have been a transient mugger, now long gone from here. Bernie was right; Morgenstern’s had been only one of a number of muggings on our long stretch of beaches. It was possible that the blackmailing had nothing to do with the murder.
Jan and Mrs. Casey were watching the eleven o’clock news when I went to bed. Jan was sleeping and Mrs. Casey was probably sleeping when I got up at one-thirty to warm a glass of milk. My long dormant ulcer was acting up again.
From the window of our breakfast room I saw a glow of red beyond the ridge to the north of us. Fire in the hills? It had to be. I switched on the kitchen radio to a local station.
“—and two units are now on the way up from Ventura,” the announcer was saying. “So far no homes or other structures have been seriously threatened, but there is a report from our San Marcos Pass lookout that some campers from Los Angeles are known to be in the area. And now to Greg Atwater at the scene—”
“Our earlier report about the campers has been confirmed,” Atwater said, “but I have an unconfirmed report that all of the campers except one are now out of danger and being treated for smoke inhalation at the temporary medical station set up at the San Sebastian school. The only identification I have on the missing camper is that he is a twelve-year-old boy. I’ll head down there to get the complete story. Back to you, Al.”
The reports went on. The fire had started in a gulley about a quarter of a mile below what the reporter called the New Awareness church. The occupants there had been alerted to evacuate, but a shift in the wind had taken them out of danger. The rescued campers were in sound health, but the boy was still missing. Arson was suspected. The police were looking for the driver of a yellow Ford pickup truck.
The fire was contained at two o’clock, under control at two-thirty. I went back to bed. Jan was sleeping soundly. Most of the town’s citizens were probably sleeping soundly. I kept thinking about that missing twelve-year-old boy and the man in the pickup truck.
The boy was still missing, the radio told us at breakfast. The driver of the Ford pickup was still b
eing sought by the police.
If the police didn’t have any more identification than that on the truck, it was a hopeless search. This was pickup country and Ford was the biggest seller of the breed. The police obviously had no license number. The public would have gotten it from the media and been advised to be on the lookout for it.
Four thousand acres had burned, four thousand acres of rain gulleys and arroyos and barrancas. Twenty officers and several dozen volunteers were now tracking through that charred wasteland, searching for the missing boy.
I went down to the station after breakfast. Vogel was talking with a uniformed officer in his office. “I know Kelly’s pickup is a light green Chevrolet,” he was saying heatedly to the uniformed man, “but how many people can tell a Ford from a Chev, and light green could look yellow at night, couldn’t it?”
“This witness could tell the difference,” the officer said patiently. “He’s a Chevrolet mechanic. And Captain Dahl told me to tell you to forget it.” He turned his back on Vogel and left.
Bernie looked at me. “What do you want?”
“I was wondering about the boy. Have they found him?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t heard. I’m sorry I was—gruff. Sit down. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”
“I’ll get them,” I said.
When I came back with the coffee he was standing by the window, staring out at the traffic. He took the cup of coffee from me and went over to sit behind his desk.
I sat on the chair nearby. I said, “That fire could be one way to get those kids out from behind that fence so a deprogrammer could grab one—or more. But Kelly doesn’t need to drive them out. He and Sarkissian are partners.”
“I know, I know! I hate that man so much that I’ve lost my sanity.” He sipped his coffee. He picked up a package of cigarettes from his desk and put them down again.
I asked, “Have you found out how much extortion money Mrs. Lacrosse picked up?”
He shook his head. “Not all of it. We know she deposited ten thousand dollars in the San Valdesto Savings and Loan. We went to a few other places after that and at some of the places we went, the manager would make a phone call, then refuse to cooperate.”
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