by K. K. Beck
“It was a shock, of course. But in a way, we weren’t surprised. Linda seemed so reckless. Not physically reckless, but it was always as if she didn’t care what happened to her in a way. I mean, Linda was always very self-centered, always more concerned with herself than with anyone else. But she was wild, too, and careless about herself. So when we heard she drowned—well—Dad said she was probably on drugs.”
“Do you think she could have killed herself?”
“Linda? No, I don’t. Suicides are depressed, aren’t they? Linda wasn’t depressed, she was angry. Always angry. Fighting.” Susan began to rock the baby, who seemed to be falling asleep now, her eyelids at half-mast, her brow smooth, her wet pink mouth slightly open. “That’s why she was such a pain. She was always fighting.”
“Fighting your parents?”
“Yes. And somehow fighting to be happy.”
“What about her real father?”
“Long gone. My mother never talked about him. I guess he was a real loser. Linda tried to find him once when she was about fifteen. His parents lived in California, I know that. They used to send her ten dollars every Christmas. We all were somehow embarrassed by that. Embarrassed that she had relatives we didn’t, and that Mom had been married before to this bum. I did get the impression he was a flake.
“Linda always seemed extra, somehow. In all our family pictures she was standing off to one side. And she was darker than me and my brother. It was like she was a guest in the family, someone you had to invite.
“I’ll be right back,” said Susan, looking down at her baby. Camille was asleep now, and breathing snuffily. “I’ll put her down for her nap.” She carried the little girl from the room and returned a few minutes later. The sound of a music box chimed from some back room. “She usually falls asleep about now,” she said. “She’s such a good baby.”
Susan sat down heavily. “Like I say, I’ve been thinking more about Linda now. I’m sad she never saw Camille.
“I realize I’ve pushed a lot of it to the back of my mind. When she died, I felt so guilty. I wished I’d been nicer to her. When I was really little she used to walk me home from kindergarten. I’d hold her hand while we crossed the street, and I’d feel proud to have a big sister. It was only later I thought of her as my half sister.”
“I wish I knew more about her state of mind before she died,” said Jane. “What I’m trying to do for Leonora is to see if we can somehow prove that the money your sister gave away to the Fellowship of the Flame was fraudulently obtained.”
“There was her best friend in high school. She’s still around. I ran into her in the Safeway the other night. Judy came to Linda’s funeral. I remember that.”
“Judy?”
“Judy Van Horne. She might be in the phone book.”
“What about your brother? Does he remember much about Linda?”
“Gregg? He joined the service right out of college. He’s based in Germany now. I don’t think he and I talked about Linda more than five or six times in all the years since she died.”
“I really appreciate your talking to me,” said Jane. She wondered if Susan Gilman wanted to see her niece. Mrs. Donnelly hadn’t asked about Leonora, which Jane thought was strange. Susan didn’t ask either. She showed Jane to the door and said, “I hope you can help Linda’s girl. She must be pretty big by now.”
“She’s seventeen. A very nice young lady.”
“How do you know her?” said Susan. “Why exactly are you trying to help her?”
Jane had been waiting for this, and in fact, she wondered why it had taken Susan so long to ask.
There was absolutely no way to explain that Uncle Harold had decided Jane was going to be a nonprofit detective; that there wasn’t really much else for her to do with her life right now; and that she was trying to make a big case out of an old injustice, probably in vain, so she could get her hands on some money of her own and lead a comfortable, respectable life, something that had eluded her up to now. Instead she said, “I’m a music lover, and Leonora needs some help getting herself a good education. She’s a very talented pianist.”
“I see,” said Susan. “That’s really nice of you.”
As she walked back to the car, Jane thought to herself, No, it isn’t. I’m not being nice at all. I’m just a hopeless case myself, getting too tired to keep living by my wits and what charm I manage to scrape together when I need it.
Chapter 9
She glanced around the cul-de-sac at all the neat homes, the tidy yards, felt the heavy stillness. She’d always felt an antipathy toward neighborhoods like this.
But the people who lived in them had figured out something she never had. They lived quiet, respectable lives and they had accepted that to do so they had to take boring jobs working for other people and doing the same thing every day.
Jane had thought she could be freer than that. Mostly, she’d wanted freedom to keep moving toward new people and new places. But she wasn’t free at all, really. For years, ever since Bernardo’s money had all disappeared, she’d been scrounging. And for years, while these people were building for the future, she’d been living for the future, hoping things would change for the better, that she’d somehow hit on a magic formula, a perfect job, maybe a perfect husband. Instead, she found herself at the mercy of dead Uncle Harold’s whims dragging around all these oppressive suburbs like some kind of Avon lady in her Chanel suit.
Jane decided to head right back to the city and get immediately into her self-pity mode. Her theory was that feeling sorry for yourself was best tackled head-on, with calculated self-indulgence. She felt miserable, and she’d systematically cheer herself up.
She drove back across the lake and headed downtown to the Pike Place Market. Parking was tough, but she found a public lot, and pulled the car into a slot. She sat for a minute in the car, looking out over a railing and marveling that, here in Seattle, a parking garage could have a fabulous view. She was looking out over Elliott Bay, and across to dark green, forested islands, and beyond that to blue, snow-topped mountains. In the foreground, on the water, sailboats tacked around the wake of a big Japanese container ship.
She walked back to the market past a small park with a sweeping view of the sound. There, on green lawn sculpted into a hill and decorated with cedar totem poles, she watched two police officers. Giant night sticks and big guns on their belts, they patted down two Indians, a young man and a woman with glasses. One of the policemen took a couple of cans of beer away from them and poured it out on the grass, then fastidiously put the beer cans in a trash container.
Nearby, a couple of tourists, apparently oblivious to any irony, pretended not to notice, while they admired the ancestral art of the Indians.
She walked a little farther past a line of antique streetlamps with big glass globes, remembering how grim the market had been years ago when she had left. There had been rainy days when she’d come down to buy fresh produce from elderly Japanese truck farmers. Back then, there’d been empty stands, derelicts jaywalking across the cobblestones, and a few eager citizens with petitions to save the market.
It had been saved with a vengeance. In fact, it looked almost like a movie set. There was a lively crowd pushing past stands selling crafts or shiny fruits and vegetables. She admired stands selling little bunches of fresh herbs, and beautiful bouquets of flowers sitting in coffee cans. They were bouquets of the kind of old-fashioned flowers that needed more space than could be had in city gardens— lupines and hollyhocks and columbine and delphiniums. Jane bought a bunch from a Cambodian lady who wrapped everything deftly in tissue paper with small, beautiful hands.
Energetic, flirty young men in aprons shouted out the merits of their vegetables. Jane bought some fresh peas and looked forward with anticipation to shelling them—an occupation she associated with back porches and a big chipped enamel bowl, some childhood memory, she supposed. She also bought a handful of small red-skinned potatoes. Already, she was beginning to feel better.
She felt the kind of poignant intensity she had felt before, when traveling alone. It came from all the faces of strangers and from the vivid surroundings, flowers and food and vendors hustling their wares with practiced theatricality; and, from across the street, the saxophone of a street musician, running a line of slow notes in a minor key through all the festive energy. Small brown birds hopped along the ground, grazing deftly between pedestrians’ feet. Restored turn-of-the-century ironwork lamps and baskets of summer flowers gave a finished look to the proceedings.
At a fishmonger’s stall, she gazed happily at Dungeness crab set in neat rows and beautiful clear-eyed whole fish on mounds of ice. She bought a couple of bright red sockeye salmon steaks, and added the white butcher paper package to her collection.
A juggler was holding forth farther along, where the narrow corridor of stands opened into a kind of plaza. Children in strollers watched him solemnly. Jane crossed the brick-paved street and discovered that the area around the market had blossomed forth into dozens of restored storefronts. Overhead, on a narrow balcony looking down on the narrow street, was a restaurant achingly festive with a wrought iron railing and umbrellas over white tables. Jane bought a bottle of good wine in a shop that had grapevines growing out of window boxes in the front; three chocolate éclairs in a bakery; and a pound of coffee in an antiseptically white store with more kinds of coffee beans than anyone really needed. And then she found an international newsstand where she bought heavy, slick magazines—a French Elle, an Italian Vogue, and a Tatler—for an exorbitant amount of money.
Back at her car, she felt, as she set her purchases in the backseat, the usual satisfaction she felt after shopping. Here she had the makings of a lovely meal. But the intensity of all she had seen, while it seemed to have blotted out her depression, had left her with another feeling, troublesome in a different way.
Her own solitude and all that stimulation had collided in a rather unsettling way. Sometimes that feeling could be embraced and be exhilarating. Now, with the prospect of going back alone to Uncle Harold’s gloomy house, she saw it might upset her. Like a drug addict who tries to control his mood with a complicated regime of uppers and downers, Jane decided she needed to make one more stop, for something to distract her more profoundly than those luscious thick magazines.
She had spotted a video rental place near Uncle Harold’s house. Tired, but willing herself on, she went there, and after a slight contretemps with the owner, who didn’t like it that she didn’t have a Washington State driver’s license and then ran her Visa card through some computer and found it wanting, she discovered he was an Algerian. In French she convinced him to let her rent some tapes and a VCR. Heading straight for “Classics,” she grabbed two Fred Astaires, one early Jean-Paul Belmondo gangster film, and Gary Cooper and Madeleine Carroll in The General Died at Dawn. She wouldn’t have time for all of them, but the whole idea of an antidepression orgy was to wallow in luxury and the extravagance of abundance and choice.
Struggling into the house with everything, Jane felt quite lovely and perfectly justified. After all, she’d been working hard. And if, after all her efforts, Uncle Harold’s cronies deprived her of her inheritance, she at least deserved one decent meal and a movie, magazine, and éclair marathon on his nickel.
Chapter 10
Linda’s friend Judy Van Horne was easy to find. Jane found her parents listed in the Bellevue phone book, and they gave her an address in Carnation, a small town to the northeast.
She drove through pastureland where black-and-white dairy cows grazed, startled to see such a rural landscape so close to Seattle. She was still in King County, but she could have been hundreds of miles away, or decades in the past.
The house was a low, scruffy bungalow surrounded by trees and a yard that looked as if it had never been cared for, unless the one dusty lilac by the front porch was the last remnant of someone’s garden. When she pulled into the driveway, a fierce yapping of dogs began.
A couple of black Labs and a yellow mongrel rushed up to the car. Jane wondered whether it was safe to get out. Then, a tall, angular woman in jeans and a man’s shirt strode out and spoke sharply to the dogs. She had a weathered face and short, rather wild hair. The dogs scuttled back toward her, but kept up their movement, obviously excited.
“Quiet, you guys,” she yelled, as Jane got out.
“Hi,” said Jane. “I’m looking for Judy Van Horne. My name’s Jane da Silva.”
“I’m Judy.” She looked wary. Jane was startled to see how old she was. Because Linda had died young, it was hard to remember her contemporaries were entering middle age.
“Susan Gilman gave me your name. Linda Donnelly’s little sister.”
“Yes?”
“I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about Linda.”
“But she’s been dead for years.” She had the Labs by their collars. They were panting and fractious.
“I know. I’ve been trying to help her daughter find out about her.”
“Oh. Well, you can come in, but I doubt if I can help you.”
Jane followed her up onto a creaking porch and into a living room obviously ravaged by the dogs. Upholstery and carpeting were scratched and chewed, and the place smelled of animals. A long-haired cat was sleeping on the sofa. A poster on the wall showed a monkey in a cage and read STOP VIVISECTION AND SPECIES CHAUVINISM. Another poster showed a harbor seal.
Judy sat down. “I was her friend in high school. That was a long time ago.”
Jane felt awkward, but she plunged ahead. “Well, her daughter is almost grown now, and she never knew much about Linda.”
“Linda and I were very close for a while. We were both unhappy at home, and that brought us together. But then she started going out with Ken in her junior year and she lost interest in me.”
“I imagine that was painful,” said Jane. “Young girls can be cruel.”
“Humans are cruel.” The yellow dog came and rested its head in her lap. She stroked its fur. “Not like these guys.” The dog made a whiny sound and drooled. Jane decided she’d better show some interest in the menagerie and looked around for something else to pet. She was reasonably fond of animals, especially well-behaved dogs. They made nice companions on walks. She generally admired cats for their elegance, but found something unpleasantly cavalier about the way they treated the humans who loved them.
None of the present assembly of animals appealed to her particularly, but to be polite, she ran her hand down the back of a nearby cat, which nipped her thumb and gave her a feline sneer.
“Oh, Colonel Mustard’s always crabby,” Judy said casually. “He bites everybody.”
Managing a wan smile at Judy, Jane shot the cat a cold look, but it just closed one eye and looked bored.
“Anyway,” continued Judy, “she did invite me to her wedding.”
“Oh, yes. On a mountaintop, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. I don’t remember much about it. I guess she was really happy. I don’t think I saw her after that. I went away to college and lost track of her.”
“But you heard she died?”
“Yes. I went to the funeral. Her stupid stepfather was there. I remember wondering if he was glad she was dead. She hated him.”
“So Linda was pretty unhappy?”
“I think so. She was always complaining about her family.”
“Why didn’t she get along with her stepfather?”
“He was always nagging her. She said he treated her like a servant. It was like Cinderella. She was always supposed to baby-sit his kids. Who knows? People just seem to hate their stepparents. I certainly hated mine.”
Judy leaned back on the sofa, as if her memories were collecting themselves, and her voice became more thoughtful. “Looking back on it, it seemed he’d spoiled her rotten when she was a little kid, but when she hit adolescence it kind of threw him. He used to tell her she dressed like a slut. I remember one time we were watching TV and she was l
ying on the couch and he came and yelled at her that her skirts were too short.
“It was different at my house. My mom was always giving me charge cards and trying to get me to wear more fashionable clothes.” A look of contemptuous irritation flitted across her features.
Jane wished someone had given her charge cards in high school and set her loose. In fact, she wished someone would do it right now. But, “I see,” was all she said.
“Basically, Linda was pretty out of it, and so was I, and she needed someone to sit with in the cafeteria and go shopping with. You know what I mean?”
“Adolescence is rough,” said Jane, trying to look sympathetic but not pitying—as if she knew this from personal experience. Which, of course, like anyone else, she did. “Later she was involved with a cult. Do you remember anything about the Fellowship of the Flame?”
“It sounds familiar. Weren’t they pretty big around here in the late sixties and early seventies?”
“That’s right. Linda gave them all her money. She had an inheritance and she turned it over to them.”
“That figures. She always wanted to belong. But she didn’t care that I needed that too.” Judy shifted in her chair.
“Ken, her boyfriend, was kind of a loser too. I mean, no one ever paid any attention to him until he turned himself into a hippie. Suddenly he grew his hair and wore these flowing blouses and stuff and did a lot of dope. They got together and she was thrilled. But she just dumped me.”
“That must have been hard.”
“Well, it wouldn’t have been any big deal if I hadn’t already felt rejected and vulnerable. I’ve worked a lot of that out in therapy since.”
“Linda was seeing a therapist in high school, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right. Dr. Hawthorne. She was crazy about him. Her parents sent her there and she really took to it.”
Judy cleared her throat and wrenched the conversation firmly back to herself. “My own therapy really helped with rejection. I realized in group that Linda had truly hurt me in high school. We spent half a session on it, I think.” Judy frowned. “And what was really strange was that there was this guy there who’d known Linda later— around the time she died.