He allowed the smile to fade, then decided to thoughtfully frown. “I guess it was—yeah—” He nodded. “Yeah, it was two weeks ago, just about to the hour. I flew them up from New York, from Westboro.”
“Both of them?”
“Right.”
“Did she have a car here on the Cape, do you know?”
Deciding how to answer, Kane eyed the other man. But the smooth, round, pinkish face with its prim little mouth and small, innocent blue eyes revealed nothing. Finally he decided to say, “I’m a hired hand, Constable. I’m paid to fly. Period. I don’t pay attention to who comes and goes, whether they drive or not.”
“The word around town is that this lady—Carolyn Estes—has been here several weekends lately.”
Kane decided to make no response.
“The word is,” Farnsworth went on, “that you usually fly the two of them in on Saturday, for the weekend. They keep a very, very low profile. Which is understandable, since the lady isn’t Daniels’s wife. When they arrive, they go right from the airplane to the car, which you get from the parking lot and drive out on the tarmac. They go right to Daniels’s beach house. They stay there for the weekend, pretty much out of sight. Maybe they go walking on the beach, but that’s it. No servants, no eating at restaurants. Usually they go back to New York on Sunday. Same thing, run backwards—they drive out to the airport, right to the airplane.” Farnsworth took a long moment to study the other man’s face. Then, softly, Farnsworth asked, “Is that about the way it goes, would you say?”
Kane decided to nod, decided to smile, decided to answer, “That’s about it, Constable. You’ve got spies everywhere, haven’t you?”
“It’s a small town.”
“Indeed.”
“You’re probably wondering why we’re having this little talk.” It was a soft, silky question. They were getting to the meat of it—the red meat.
Kane decided to shrug. To Farnsworth, indifference would translate into innocence.
“The reason I’m asking,” Farnsworth said, “is that a few days ago we heard from the NYPD. That’s where Carolyn Estes lives. New York.” A short, cat-and-mouse pause. “Or maybe it’s ‘lived.’”
“Lived?”
Farnsworth nodded. Meaningfully repeating: “Lived.”
“I—” Suddenly his throat closed. His eyes, he knew, had fallen, a guilty man’s reaction.
“I stopped her,” Daniels had said. “I clobbered her.”
“She lives in Greenwich Village,” Farnsworth was saying. “She works for an advertising agency, some kind of an artist. When she didn’t show up for work on Monday, and her landlady said she hadn’t come back from her weekend, someone called the cops. In New York, they don’t do anything about a missing person for forty-eight hours. Nothing. But her father’s apparently a big-shot lawyer in Manhattan, and so at the end of the forty-eight hours, the police really got in gear. And it didn’t take them long to find out that Carolyn Estes had met some very high roller who started taking her away for weekends, mostly to Cape Cod. Apparently Carolyn was pretty closemouthed about this guy. But a friend of hers said that Carolyn had talked about flying into Barnstable one time with this guy in the fog. Apparently she was pretty scared.” Expectantly—watchfully—Farnsworth waited.
Kane spread his hands. “Fog in the summer, here, that’s nothing new. With the King Air, though, it’s no problem.”
“I don’t know anything about airplanes,” Farnsworth said. “All I know is that there’s a Detective First Grade McCarville, in New York, who’s trying to find out whether, in fact, Carolyn Estes was here on the Cape two weeks ago today. And as I understand it, you’re confirming that she was. Is that right?”
Should he call Daniels before he answered? Should he say he wanted a lawyer? No—God no. Only criminals called their lawyers.
Criminals—murderers.
“I stopped her. I clobbered her.”
He was nodding, acting out the role of the good citizen. Saying, therefore, “That’s right. She was here.”
“She came in Saturday. Right?”
Kane nodded. “Right. Saturday evening.”
“And did you take her back to New York on Sunday?”
“No. I flew Mr. Daniels back to New York Monday morning.”
“Alone?”
He nodded. “Alone.”
“And now he’s come back. With his wife.”
“Right.”
Farnsworth drew a long, deep breath. “So it looks like the next person I have to talk to is Preston Daniels.”
Once more, Kane shrugged.
11:45 A.M., EDT
“YES?”
Instantly, Kane recognized Millicent’s voice: Eastern schools, Western money.
“Yeah, ah, this is Bruce, Mrs. Daniels. Can I speak to Mr. Daniels, please? It’s, ah, about the airplane.”
“Anything wrong?”
“No, not really. But I thought I should—”
A click. Then Daniels’s voice: “I’ve got it, honey.” A pause, another click, as Millicent got off. Followed by silence. At the beach house, Daniels was doubtless waiting to make sure Millicent was out of earshot. Finally, carefully: “Yes. What is it?” The voice was clipped, the accustomed accents of command.
But those were the old rules, played according to the old game.
This was the new game. Beginning ten, fifteen minutes ago, this was the new game. Beginning with the fax of Carolyn. No more masters, no more slaves.
“Is it okay to talk?”
“What is it?” Short, terse words, demanding an answer. An order from the boss.
“I just talked to Constable Farnsworth.” Deliberately, cryptically, he matched his speech to the other man’s.
“Just a minute.” A click, a long moment of silence, then another click. Finally: “Farnsworth, you say?”
Yes, it was showing through. He could hear it: the hesitation, the instinctive caution. Their little secret, now.
“He was asking about your friend. They’re looking for her.”
“Who’s looking for her?”
“The police. The New York police.”
“Ah.” A wan, wounded syllable: score one more for the Daniels-haters. “Where are they looking?”
“It started in New York, as I understand it. Then, yesterday, Farnsworth got a picture. A fax. So he wants to—”
“Yesterday, you say? He got a fax yesterday?”
“Right. So now—” He let a moment of silence fall, maximizing the impact. “So now, he wants to talk to you. That’s why I called.”
“Ah.” Another subdued monosyllable.
12:20 P.M., EDT
“SO THE WAY I get it,” Farnsworth said, “she left here about ten o’clock Sunday night, two weeks ago. And that’s the last you saw of her or heard of her. Is that about it?”
“That’s about it.” As he said it, Daniels could critique the nuances of his own response, an essential executive’s knack. And he was satisfied. He wasn’t patronizing Farnsworth, but neither was he deferring to him, as a guilty man might.
Standing together beside Farnsworth’s white police car, both of them faced out toward the ocean. For this boon—for the vital minutes that allowed him to intercept Farnsworth in the driveway, well away from the beach house, Daniels knew he must give thanks to Kane. Had it gone the other way—if Farnsworth had reached the door and rung the bell, and if Millicent had answered, Farnsworth might have—
“Did you lend Miss Estes a car, Mr. Daniels?”
“No. We—ah—” He dropped his voice to a confidential note, man to man: “No. The—ah—fact is, Carolyn and I had an argument. So …” He smiled, shrugged, let the Daniels charm come through. “So she just picked up her suitcase and took off.”
Skeptically, Farnsworth frowned. “Walking?”
“Walking,” Daniels answered firmly.
“At ten o’clock at night?”
Indifferently, Daniels shrugged. “You asked me what happened. I’m t
elling you.”
“Didn’t you go after her? Make sure she was all right, at least?”
“No, I didn’t. She had money—a lot of money—with her. That, I knew. So I assumed she hired a cab, drove to Falmouth. Whatever.” He smiled again. As he kept the smile in place he calculated the variables, the options. How could he suggest to this fat, country-bumpkin policeman that, if he cooperated, he would be rewarded? To make bribery work, though, an intermediary was necessary. But, aside from Kane, none was available. And Kane already knew enough.
“Where does she—did Miss Estes live?” Farnsworth asked.
“In New York City,” he answered. “The Village.” Yes, his voice was calm, controlled. It was, after all, the mismatch of the century: Preston Daniels versus Constable Joe Farnsworth.
“Does she work?”
“Yes. She works in advertising.”
“Did you phone her on Monday? To make sure she was okay?”
“Constable—” He allowed mild vexation to shade the single word. Then, a tactical shift, he spoke affably, one good old boy to another: “Come on. You know what we’re talking about here. I’m a married man. A happily married man. But my wife and I—” Once more, the smile, the full, direct eye contact. “We have a deal. An arrangement. Both of us, well, we get a little on the side … that’s the expression, I believe. And Carolyn, well, she was my summertime playmate, let’s say, while my wife was in Europe. But that’s all it was. Call it recreation. Okay?” As if he considered their conversation ended, Daniels moved a step toward the house. Repeating: “Okay?”
Farnsworth lifted his beefy shoulders, shrugging. Reluctantly agreeing: “Yeah. Fine. For now, anyhow. Fine.”
Encouragingly, Daniels nodded. “Good. I appreciate that.” A momentary, meaningful pause. Then, significantly: “I appreciate that very much.”
12:30 P.M., PDT
“I STILL THINK,” PAULA said, “that you should talk to her father. Tell him what Carley Hanks told you. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to talk with him, when Carley’s five hundred dollars is gone.”
Bernhardt shook his head. “I’d rather talk to Diane first, get a handle on her. Working with druggies is like working with alcoholics. Hopeless, in other words. A couple of hours talking with her—eighty dollars of Carley’s money—and I’ll know whether I want to ditch her.”
“Why would you ditch her? She needs you.”
“I’ve already told you: alcoholics and druggies have no free will. Therefore, they lie. They lie to themselves and they lie to everyone else. All the time. You can’t do business with liars. That’s the first rule.”
“What about Carley’s two-hundred-dollar retainer?”
“It’ll only be a hundred-twenty, after I talk to Diane.”
“Hmmm—”
He smiled at her. It was a playful smile, teasing her. During the drive from San Francisco to the Sausalito Art Fair, then on over the low, brown, sunbaked hills of Marin County to the ocean, Paula had consistently turned the conversation to Diane Cutler—and to their collaborating. Instead of being irritated, Bernhardt had discovered that, surprise, he enjoyed the joust. Why, he wasn’t sure.
“Do you want me to go with you, to talk to her?” she asked.
“No. I’ll do it. Monday. I’ll do it Monday.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He let his smile widen languorously. It was, after all, a Saturday afternoon, one of the few off-duty Saturdays he’d allowed himself in recent weeks. They were sitting together on an old army blanket, drinking chardonnay from plastic party cups and eating French bread, salami, and Swiss cheese. They’d bought the salami and cheese presliced, but they’d forgotten to bring a knife for the bread. They’d agreed, though, that French bread tasted best torn from the loaf. Because the sky was overcast and the wind blowing in off the Pacific was cold, they wore jeans and sweaters. The beach faced the ocean squarely, unprotected by a cove. The long line of the surf broke endlessly on the sand before them, a timeless connection of the present to the past.
“We should have brought Crusher,” Paula said.
Bernhardt shook his head. “He’d just get into a fight with the first male dog he saw.”
She nodded, then sat silently, her eyes on the ocean. “I don’t think I could live anywhere that wasn’t close to the ocean,” she said. Above the constant constant crashing of the surf, Paula’s voice was soft and pensive.
“As long as I lived in Manhattan,” Bernhardt said, “we never went to the beach much. I never felt connected to the ocean. Not like here—California.”
“Really? You never went to the seashore for summer vacations? I thought that’s what New Yorkers did.” It was more than a casual question. They’d only known each other for a few months, and were still filling in the blanks.
“My grandparents had a place in the Berkshires, an old farmhouse on a few acres. That’s where we went for the summers.”
In unison, they sipped the wine as, side by side, each sitting with arms clasped about knees, they looked out to sea. Along the surf line, Paula saw a man, a woman, two small children, and two barking, frisking dogs coming toward them. As she watched, she was conscious of a void within: an awareness of a dream still unfulfilled. It was personified by the parents and their children, laughing together, touching each other. And yes, the dogs, too. The American dream incarnate.
Her dream, unfulfilled.
She was thirty-four. No husband. No children. No career, really. Except for her parents, all she had was Bernhardt. In the first case, fortune had smiled on her. Both her parents were full professors at UCLA, her mother in sociology, her father in economics. Both parents loved her, their treasured only child.
In the second case—Bernhardt—fortune had smiled again. She’d found a man to love—a man who understood her, a man who laughed when she laughed.
But she wanted more, needed more. She needed a family. She needed children.
At twenty-one, it seemed as if the world would open its arms to receive her. Just out of college, a theater arts major, she’d lived at home while she made the rounds of the studios and the talent agencies, dropping off eight-by-ten glossies.
Like Alan, she’d gotten a fast start in the acting profession. At first there’d been the walk-ons. Then, lo! she’d gotten a few lines in a few second-rate films, plus one good review for the little-theater part of Vickie in Jeff Sheppard’s Jaguar.
But then, just a year out of college, she’d met David Bell. Her parents had warned her. Almost twice her age, twice married, with two children, David Bell was the most intriguing, most exciting man she’d ever met. A screenwriter with impressive credits, an impressive house, impressive cars, impressive big-name friends, David had asked her to marry him after they’d first made love. He’d given her a week to decide, take him or leave him—his first ultimatum. Hardly had she agreed when the misgivings began: at first the very faint tinkle of a warning bell, easily camouflaged by the excitement generated by her new life.
At the end of the first year, the tinkle was a low, persistent ringing.
Eight years later the booming of the tocsin had drowned out everything. “For God’s sake,” her father had pleaded, “let me get a lawyer. This guy’s going to destroy you. He’s a drinker and a misogynist. And you’re his target.”
So she’d called the lawyer and filed the papers. Then she’d had to get out of town.
And now she was thirty-four.
And she was in love with a wonderful man.
But the wonderful man had had a wonderful wife—a wonderful marriage. Her name had been Jennie. They’d met at college, both of them drama majors. They’d married only a year out of college; they’d both been twenty-two. They’d gone to Manhattan, where Alan had been born and where his mother had still lived. They’d begun making the rounds on Broadway and off Broadway. While he was still in college, Alan had written two plays. Incredibly, three years after he’d graduated one of them, Victims, had gotten produced off-Broadwa
y; it had had a two-month run. And, yes, both Alan and Jennie had gotten walk-on parts in a few Broadway plays.
Then, after five golden years of marriage, three teenagers had mugged Jennie less than a block from their apartment. When she’d fallen, she’d hit the back of her head on a curb. She’d died on the way to the hospital.
It had happened almost fifteen years ago. But in Alan’s thoughts, Jennie had found life eternal. Never would she age; never would she be less than perfect.
Alan had talked about it only once. Strangely, perhaps, he’d told her the story of Jennie during the first hour after they’d met. It had happened after the read-through of The Buried Child, which he had directed at the Howell. They’d gone out for beer and sandwiches, just the two of them. Exercising his director’s prerogative, he’d wanted to know her story. Where had she acted before? How long had she lived in San Francisco? Why had she come?
She’d told him the whole story; why, she didn’t quite know. She remembered the irony: how few sentences it had taken, really, to tell the story of her life.
Then it had been his turn. He’d told her how his father had been a bombardier in World War II, and had been killed over Germany the month before Alan was born. He’d told her about his mother, the Jewish intellectual whose twin passions were modern dancing and banning the bomb. They’d lived in a Greenwich Village loft, Alan and his mother. She was an only child herself, much loved. Her father was a small clothing manufacturer; her mother played the harpsichord, mostly Bach.
And then, dispassionately, Alan had told her about Jennie, about how she’d died.
And then, still dispassionately, he’d told her the rest of the story. He’d told her that in the year following Jennie’s death, his mother had died of cancer and his grandparents had been killed in a one-car accident, probably because his grandfather had suffered a heart attack.
So, like her, he’d had to get out of town. Even though he loved New York, would always love New York, he’d had to leave. He’d—
“—happened to the fruit?” he was asking, rummaging in the picnic hamper.
Except for the Bones Page 9