by Linda Barnes
Martinson’s face reddened even more. “I have a great capacity for wine.” He gazed discontentedly at Mary Ellen, slack-jawed and faintly snoring in the passenger seat. “Unfortunately, my wife does not share that gift.”
The statement needed no confirmation. Spraggue banged Martinson’s car door shut with more than necessary force and headed back to his car, glad he’d drunk so little of the wine, sorry that Mary Ellen had felt the need to compensate for his restraint.
What game were they playing, those two? A simple round of capture-an-innocent-bystander-for-dinner to alleviate their mutual boredom? Or a deeper charade? And what was Martinson up to, encouraging Mary Ellen to guzzle her drinks like a combat-zone pro, refilling her drained glass the moment she set it down, then lamenting over her limited capacity? The drunker she got, the wider her husband’s grin. And now Martinson would chauffeur her home and stuff her into bed unconscious. How many nights a week did they play out that scenario?
A warning bell sounded somewhere in Spraggue’s head, cautioning him to back off and leave such speculation strictly alone. Turn on some blaring radio station, it urged him. Memorize those movie lines. Anything to avoid getting snared in the spiderweb of strangers’ lives.
How could he ever have been a private investigator? The answer may have puzzled Kate, but it was no mystery to Spraggue, just an outgrowth of the same desire to live other lives that drove him as an actor. How would you play a man like George Martinson? What made people tick and tick and keep on ticking years after the mechanism should have run down?
But acting wasn’t life. Three years of delving into reality had taught him that there weren’t any pretty painted proscenium arches to frame messy slice-of-life melodramas with meaning. No safe scripts with all the loose ends tied in careful knots. No resolutions, no illusions, no curtain calls. The best you could hope for was to shelter a tiny circle of loved ones from disaster.…
Kate was a throwback to a time before he’d learned that lesson, a time when he hadn’t loved as cautiously.
The engine started smoothly. Spraggue drove carefully, keeping a tight rein. At least contemplating the Martinsons’ bizarre relationship delayed thoughts of Kate. Kate and Lenny.…
“Stick around and help me, Spraggue. I’m not sure I can handle the crush all by my lonesome.” Crummy dialogue, but better than “Stick around and help me find my lover.” How would that line have gone over? Not half as well. Bad taste, begging the ex to find the present. And offering to sleep with the ex to seal the bargain. Shit.
He hadn’t believed Howard, old unperceptive Howard. But Mary Ellen and George and Phil Leider.… How many witnesses did he need?
So Lenny and Kate had a winemaking spat Sunday night and Lenny ran off. Just like that. God, he wondered what the battle had really dealt with. Hadn’t taken place in any kitchen over coffee, either. Not with Kate.
And that was the gossip Lieutenant Bradley wasn’t authorized to clue him in on.
Spraggue jammed his foot down on the accelerator, too hard for the narrow twists of Zinfandel Lane. Lights blossomed in his rear-view mirror; he’d picked up an unexpected companion on the usually deserted road. He yanked his foot completely off the gas, let the car creep, back to normal speed. Why hurry? He hoped Kate would be sleeping by the time he got back, knew she wouldn’t be. Knew she’d be waiting, reading, in the old double brass bed, naked.
Shit. The anger blew out of him like air out of a punctured balloon. What right had he to pass judgment on Holloway’s bedmates? He didn’t own her, just half the winery. Didn’t want to own …
The car was handling oddly. The next bump in the road left no doubt about that. When he hit the brake, it grabbed, swerving off to the right. He fought the steering wheel to keep the Volvo aimed down the center strip. That car behind him followed too closely.
Damn, Spraggue muttered under his breath. He groped for the emergency flashers, flicked them on, and swung over as far as possible toward the right-hand verge of the narrow road. The other car gunned its engine, whizzed past, roared out of sight. Spraggue stopped the Volvo dead, got out to check on a visible cause for the car’s erratic behavior.
The night air was heavy with the smell of ripe grapes. Vines stood thick all around, supported by wood and lashings of rope, bowed with the weight of the purple clusters. Spraggue stared straight up and took a calming, lung-filling breath. So many stars.
The right front tire was flat as Kansas. He’d never make it to Kate’s, up that twisty driveway.
Not a car, not a house. That jerk behind him—Once, years ago, when a car displayed flashers, pulled off the road, the driver behind would stop, offer aid. Maybe Leider was right. Nobody did that anymore. Too dangerous. Better not to get involved.
Let there be a spare tire. Kate was notoriously negligent about such petty details. He retrieved the keys from the ignition. At least there were two on the chain. She could have just handed over the ignition key, never dreaming he’d need to open the trunk. Maybe she kept a flashlight in the glove compartment. Spraggue circled the car, opened the passenger door. Nothing in the glove compartment but used paper towels and a half-empty bottle of Windex.
Another car passed, didn’t slow down even when he waved.
He left the right-hand door open for light. The glow barely reached around to the trunk. He fumbled with his hands for the lock before remembering the tiny pencil flash on his own key ring. He found it, clicked it on, tried the key in the lock. Rusty. He worked it for what seemed like minutes before the key turned and the trunk sprang open.
As soon as he smelled it, he was glad of the darkness, glad the stars were faint, faraway specks. Not masked by embalming fluid now, it was a sickly sweetish stink. He flicked off the pencil flash and turned away. He had no desire to see what was left of Lenny Brent. His knees wobbled and he straightened up with effort. The silence was so intense it seemed to hum.
The hum came closer. This time the passing car stopped. It had flashing blue lights and the sheriff’s insignia over the door.
8
“When can I speak to Kate Holloway?”
Shakespeare mirrored the fall of kings in foul weather. Lenny’s death, Spraggue thought, glancing disgustedly around the sheriff’s office in the early hours of Saturday morning, was rendered in stale smoke, filthy ashtrays, and the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs.
Two hours since the discovery, two hours of hurry-and-wait, hurry-and-wait, punctuated by a single question, his own: “When can I speak to Kate Holloway?”
She was somewhere around the L-shaped bend, stashed in one of the tiny offices. That much, Lieutenant Bradley had leaked. Captain Enright wasn’t communicating; he’d given it up with a satisfied smirk the moment Spraggue had identified the body.
Bradley barged out of the inner office. “Coffee?” he said, before Spraggue could gear up for the question.
“Thanks. Black.” Spraggue stood and fumbled for change in his right-hand pocket.
“I’ll take care of it. Seeing as you’re an unwilling guest.”
Spraggue wished Enright were the flunky they sent out for coffee. He tried a variation of his request when Bradley returned with two steaming cups balanced precariously on a cardboard tray.
“Can I see Kate Holloway?”
“I doubt it. But hang around, by all means. Enright gets a charge out of knowing you’re still here fuming.”
“Is he talking to Kate?”
“Yeah. She stopped listening about an hour and a half back.”
“I presume he knows it’s illegal to question a suspect without a lawyer present.”
“Oh, I suppose he made it clear that she doesn’t have to say anything.”
“Is he confining his agenda to Lenny’s death?”
Bradley nodded, sipped coffee.
“Just a coincidence that two guys wound up stuffed in car trunks within the week?”
“I don’t tell Enright how to run an investigation.”
“Do you know how Lenn
y died?”
“No sign of violence. We’re waiting for the autopsy report—”
“Which is confidential police business.” Enright loomed around the L.
“When can I—” Spraggue began.
“You a lawyer?”
“No.”
“Then get lost.”
“A conviction was recently overturned by the Supreme Court because some cop in Iowa refused to let a suspect talk to his mother,” Spraggue said.
“You her mother?”
“Let me try a more subtle approach: I will make one hell of a stink if I don’t get to see Kate soon.”
“Yeah?”
“And I hate to make trouble.”
“I don’t even think you can.”
With effort, Spraggue willed his right hand to stay unclenched and harmless down at his side. If the deputy weren’t so huge … Hitting Enright would have the same effect as pounding a frozen side of beef: broken knuckles. Worse. You didn’t get tossed in jail for assaulting a dead cow.
“I’m starting to feel,” he said, his smile not reaching his eyes, “the urge to make a handsome campaign contribution to anyone running against Sheriff Hughes.”
Enright snorted. “Got to go to the can,” he said. “Bradley, take over here for a while.” His footsteps clicked down the hall. Spraggue wondered if he had king-sized taps stuck to his toes and heels to punctuate his swagger.
Bradley crumpled his empty coffee cup in his fist and dunked it into a corner wastebasket. “Come on. What he means is that I should get you and Miss Holloway together. Then he’ll yell at me for knuckling under to you.”
Spraggue followed Bradley around the L-shaped bend and through a warren of antiseptic hallways, finally turning into a small cubicle off a long corridor. In a chair sat Kate, pale as chiseled ivory, hands clasped tightly in her lap.
Bradley signaled to a severe woman in a tan uniform, who glided noiselessly away. He stationed himself just outside the door. “Can’t really give you any privacy,” he muttered apologetically. “No privileged Communication or anything.”
“How much time do we have?”
“How long does it take Enright to pee?”
“Can you call my lawyer?” Kate said, too calmly. “He might hang up on me—the lady who cried wolf and all that.”
Spraggue leaned down and kissed her cheek. “We haven’t got much time, so just answer me.”
“In front of the jailer? Don’t you think I killed Lenny?”
“Whisper. If you stashed him in the trunk, you wouldn’t have loaned me the car.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked softly.
“Were you sleeping with Brent?”
“Where did you get that tidbit?”
“Mary Ellen Martinson.”
Kate glared at him for a moment. “When I said you’d get the gossip soon enough,” she said angrily, “I had no idea you’d head straight to the source.”
“You weren’t sleeping with him?”
“Does it matter? You think I’m more likely to murder a man I’ve had sex with?”
Their eyes locked, his challenging, hers defiant.
“Is that all?” she said.
“No. When I speak to your lawyer, I’m going to ask him not to bail you out.”
“This better be good, Spraggue.”
“How’s this? Act One: unidentified body found in abandoned car. Act Two: very identifiable body found in far-from-abandoned car. The play has only one continuing character: you. You played the chief suspect in Act One; you’re doing an encore now. So maybe someone is killing people to put you in jail.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, staring down at her jittery hands. “You’re reciting dialogue from that detective movie of yours.”
“Howard Ruberman isn’t that fond of you. Mary Ellen Martinson—”
“If she’d been stuffed in the car, I’d need an alibi.”
“She feel the same about you?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Keep your voice down.” Spraggue leaned back against the cool cement-block wall. “And tell me why people keep asking me if I’m planning to sell Holloway Hills.”
“Mary Ellen say that?”
“Does it matter?”
“I got an offer on the place. I turned it down. That’s all.”
“Who?”
“United Circle. A good price. Should I have asked you?”
“You can veto any sell-out, Kate. Terms of the contract.”
“I’d never sell.”
“You told somebody from United Circle that?”
“Sure.”
“Who?”
“Some guy … I don’t remember …”
“They could think I’d be more willing to sell—”
“I said United Circle, Spraggue. Not the Mafia.”
“What was the guy’s name?”
“… Baxter … just some stiff in a pin-striped suit.”
Bradley had a sudden coughing fit. “Enright,” he said out of the corner of his mouth before strolling tactfully toward the water cooler.
“Kate,” Spraggue said quickly, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Picking that fight on the hillside this afternoon, instead of—”
“Your loss,” she said coldly.
“I know.”
Enright’s boot heels cleared the corner. “What in the devil is going on here?” He jerked his thumb in Spraggue’s direction, glowered at Bradley. “Out!”
Spraggue smiled, “Her lawyer’s on the way.”
“Out.”
“One thing. That squad car tonight, was that a regular patrol?”
Bradley answered. “Somebody called in and reported a vehicle in trouble. Gave your location.”
“And before? How did you happen to look in the trunk of that abandoned car over at my place?”
Bradley stared at his shoes.
“Out,” Enright repeated.
“Anonymous tip,” Spraggue said flatly. “Right?”
Enright took a threatening step forward.
“Relax,” Spraggue said. “I’m leaving.”
9
Spraggue intended to start off his investigation with a breaking-and-entering at Lenny’s girlfriend’s apartment.
Four scanty hours sleep hadn’t exactly cleared the fog. Twenty minutes in the shower, until the pounding water turned too icy to bear, sharpened his senses and revived his memory: Lenny’s address book. And Mary Ellen’s snide advice: cherchez la femme.
Searching Kate’s bedroom undid at least half the good of the shower; he felt dirty again. An invisibly slimy intruder prying through bureau drawers, betraying trust with prodding, curious fingertips.
Seven years had hardly changed her room. A fresh coat of cream-colored paint, a different bedspread tossed over the old cane-back rocker. The same black-and-white framed studies of water lilies, dating from her amateur photographer days. She still folded her underwear with spartan neatness and scattered scarves and stockings over the mirrored dresser top. Her scent clung to the scarves, familiar and reproachful. When he lifted her pillow, a lacy nightgown was stuffed underneath, just as he’d known it would be.
He examined the adjoining room, his old room, even more relentlessly. Kate never cared to spend the entire night with a man; connecting doors with a lock on her side, that was her preferred arrangement. He found no trace of Lenny; plenty of dust.
Five toothbrushes in the bathroom, some old, some new. Impossible to guess the gender of a toothbrush’s owner.
Grady, then.
Spraggue rummaged through the kitchen cupboards until he found an unopened jar of strawberry jam. The English muffins in the cellophane packet on the counter-top were stale. Toasted and drenched with jam, they’d pass for breakfast. He opened the refrigerator, surveyed Kate’s meager supplies, made a mental list of survival groceries.
The toaster popped. The jam jar surrendered its top after he beat it repeatedly with th
e edge of a knife. He poured more coffee—thank God, Kate liked good coffee—and sat on a gimpy-legged chair at the kitchen table. While he ate, he read Lenny’s address book, starting with the A’s and plowing straight through.
“Grady Fairfield” was scrawled across most of a page, with a number underneath, but no address. Spraggue shrugged, dialed. No answer.
Kate kept the phone books in the kitchen junk drawer. “Fairfield, G.” lived at 455 Solano, Napa. Spraggue dumped his dishes in the sink, dressed quickly.
Kate’s old Ford station wagon was out behind the winery, neatly parked in by Howard Ruberman’s Buick. Spraggue had hoped to avoid Howard, hated the thought of listening to the dire consequences of Kate’s imprisonment on the grapes. But with the Volvo in the police garage, he had no choice. He sent one of the cellar crew off to borrow the winemaker’s keys, stressing the “no need to disturb him.”
Howard came on the run. The car keys couldn’t be found. Which pocket did he keep them in? Had he locked them in the car? How was Miss Holloway managing? How would he ever cope all alone? By the time Spraggue coaxed the old wagon into life some fifteen minutes later, he had to stifle the urge to run down Howard. Reciting lines from Still Waters into his portable tape recorder didn’t improve his mood.
Grady’s address was as slumlike as Napa got, a swath of weathered gray four-story buildings far enough from the railroad tracks for the trains to miss.
The fourth-floor-front mailbox was labeled G. Fairfield. Ring bell and wait for buzzer. The door was propped open with a warped board. So much for security.
The steps were narrow, the hallway dingy. If Grady was a kept woman, her standards were low.
He knocked, just in case. The feeble lock yielded easily to the two bits of stiff wire he’d snatched off Kate’s workbench.
Part of the Grady mystery cleared up as soon as he opened the door. She painted. Bold abstract canvases leaned against stark white walls. Two huge red pillows and a standing floor lamp were the main room’s only furnishings.
He shut the door and drew the blinds.
Searching a room containing two pillows took all of thirty seconds. He bypassed the kitchen, moved on to the single bedroom.