“Daniels. Sure …” Unconsciously, Farnsworth sat up straighter in his oversize swivel chair and addressed the speaker phone squarely. “She died, you say? His stepdaughter?”
“She died in San Francisco. That’s where I am. Her father is a lawyer here. And the police think—they’re sure, really—that it was a drug overdose.”
“A kind of stocky girl, lots of dark hair, not very good looking, bad complexion, big tits. Is that the one?”
“That’s the one.”
“Used to go out with the Weston kid, once in a while—” Farnsworth nodded at the speaker. “Yeah, I got her now.” Then: “A drug overdose, eh?”
“Yessir.”
“So what’re you saying? That she OD’d because of the Weston kid, because he was killed? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I think the two deaths are connected. I also think Preston Daniels could be involved.”
“And where’re you getting your information, Mr. Bernhardt?”
“I talked with Diane Cutler. Twice. I—ah—don’t think this is something we should get into on the phone. I’m going to be out there in a few days. And I—”
“Then why’re we having this conversation? Why’d you call?”
“I called,” Bernhardt said, measuring the words, “because I wondered whether you’re investigating Jeff Weston’s death as a homicide. Because if you are, then I have good reason to suspect that the same person who killed Jeff Weston made an attempt on Diane Cutler’s life last Friday night. Which could be why she OD’d.”
“That sounds like quite a stretch.”
“Maybe.”
Now Farnsworth was frowning at the speakerphone, deciding on a response. “Bernhardt,” the caller had said. A Jew. A smooth-talking Jewish private detective from San Francisco. A snooper. He’d dealt with them before: con artists with telephoto lenses. Hacks, bought and paid for by big-city divorce lawyers, mostly.
“Did you say you planned to be on the Cape in a few days?”
“Yes, sir. Wednesday, probably. Thursday, at the latest.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what you do. When you get here, you give us a call, and make an appointment. And we’ll see what we’ve got. Okay?”
“Yes …” Reluctantly. “Okay.”
“Good.” Smiling at the speakerphone, Farnsworth delicately broke the connection. Score one for the home team.
5:15 P.M., PDT
“ALAN.”
On the phone, Bernhardt recognized the voice: Frank Hastings.
“Frank. Thanks for getting back so quick.”
“You won’t thank me when you hear what I got from your friend Constable Joe Farnsworth.”
Your friend … meaning that Hastings had talked to Farnsworth after Bernhardt called the Cape.
“No luck, eh?”
“I tried to get the name of the missing girl. Nothing. Zip. I told you about some of these rural cops. But this guy Farnsworth is something else. I told him I was investigating an attempted homicide, which wasn’t precisely true. He still wouldn’t cooperate. All he said was that he got a fistful of missing-persons reports every week, and he didn’t remember anything concerning a girlfriend of Daniels.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” Hastings sighed heavily. It was a harried exhalation, signifying that, as always, Hastings was short on time. But then, speculatively, Hastings said, “There’s one thing, though—he said he didn’t remember. He was careful not to close the door completely. Covering his ass, maybe.”
“So what’d you think that means?”
“I’m not sure—except that he might have his own game going.”
“You mean he might be getting paid off?”
“It’s happened before. When there’s so much money involved, strange things happen.”
“Hmmm.”
“Gotta go, Alan. Keep me posted.” The line went dead.
TUESDAY,
August 7th
11 A.M., PDT
“I THOUGHT FUNERALS ALWAYS started on time,” Paula whispered.
Bernhardt nodded to the man and woman sitting in the first pew. “That’s Cutler and his wife. They’re waiting for Diane’s mother.”
“Is Daniels coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“There aren’t many people, not as many as I’d’ve thought.”
“Cutler kept it out of the papers, I think. Because it was an overdose. And she hadn’t lived in San Francisco for three or four years, so I don’t think she had many friends here.”
“Poor kid.”
He sighed, mutely nodded.
“I wish you’d let me come with you tomorrow.”
“You can help more by staying here and catching phone calls, stalling clients. Believe me, Paula, if you want to help out, that’s how.”
“How long’ll you be gone?”
“I figure four or five days. That’s all the time I can afford, even though Cutler’s paying well for this.”
“Will Cutler—” She broke off as a palpable ripple of anticipation swept the congregation. Bernhardt turned in time to see the couple framed in the tall, backlit doorway of the church. Preston and Millicent Daniels, without doubt. Behind them, a handful of photographers were held at bay by determined men dressed in morning clothes, their arms spread wide.
“It’ll be in the papers now,” Paula whispered.
Not responding, Bernhardt turned as Preston and Millicent Daniels came slowly up the aisle. Behind her black veil, Millicent Daniels’s profile was finely drawn, a classic American beauty. Her figure was almost perfect; her bearing was almost regal: a queen advancing toward the nave of some lofty medieval cathedral. And, beside her, with her hand in the crook of his arm, Preston Daniels was a complementary figure of perfection: the prototypical captain of commerce, a prince of the realm. His profile was decisively chiseled, his expression grave. His clothing draped beautifully.
As Daniels and Millicent approached the empty left front pew, Bernhardt saw Cutler turn to look at Millicent. Responding, Millicent moved to her right, where Cutler and his wife were seated. It was a spontaneous movement, signifying a grief more profound than the bitter memories of a failed marriage. But now Daniels shifted his hand to grasp his wife’s arm, propelling her to the left. Sitting on the aisle, Millicent exchanged a last look with Cutler before both mother and father, in unison, turned their eyes to the casket as, on cue, a clergyman in Episcopalian robes came through a small door to the right of the altar. As the minister approached the casket, Bernhardt’s gaze traversed the assembled mourners. Most of the faces, most of the suits and dresses, were upper-middle-class or better, an assembly of the privileged. Except for Carley Hanks and a few others, there were no young faces. Yet, when she’d lived in San Francisco, Diane had been happy. And happiness equaled friendships; it was the first law of adolescence. Diane had never been pretty. Therefore, she’d probably been less popular than others; that was the second law of adolescence. But there had been Carley and a few others—enough of the others. Diane had been contented, therefore willing to see what life offered.
And then her parents had divorced.
And the downward spiral had begun. Leaving Diane a wanderer in the concrete canyons and gilded brambles of Manhattan, entangled. Adolescence without friends, privilege without love; both had destroyed Diane’s dreams. Then, with all the dreams gone, she’d destroyed herself. It was simple logic.
If he’d believed Diane Cutler—really believed her—might she be alive now?
It was, Paula had sternly lectured him, a wrongheaded exercise in self-abnegation, the classic Jewish angst.
The minister was calling for a hymn. Dutifully, Paula was reaching for the hymnal, rising, turning to the hymn, beginning to sing. Eyes straight ahead, Bernhardt stood silently beside her.
“Sing,” she whispered, digging her elbow into his ribs.
“I’m Jewish,” he whispered.
“I’m agnostic.” She dug him again. “So sing.”
“HELLO?” A WOMAN ANSWERED the telephone on the third ring.
“May I speak to Mr. Cutler? It’s Alan Bernhardt. I just have a quick question.” Only hours after Diane Cutler’s funeral, he spoke softly, deferring to the dominion of death.
“Just a moment.” The woman spoke shortly, coldly. Was it Cutler’s wife, the woman who had kept Diane at a distance? Remembering her high-styled face, her aloof manner at the funeral, he decided that the guess was a good one.
“Yes?” It was Cutler’s voice. Expressionless. Exhausted.
“It’s Alan Bernhardt, Mr. Cutler.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry to intrude, but I’ll be leaving for Cape Cod early tomorrow morning, and there’s something I want to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“It concerns Mrs. Daniels—Diane’s mother.”
“Just a moment.” Bernhardt heard a door close. Then Cutler spoke in a low, cautious voice: “Yes?”
“Are you—” Bernhardt hesitated. “Are you in touch with Mrs. Daniels?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I want to talk to her. I know it’ll be hard getting through to her. I thought you could help.”
“Help in what way?”
“Their schedules for the next day or two. Private phone numbers. Maybe an introduction, over the phone. Anything.”
“As far as I know, she and Daniels are going to Cape Cod, probably tomorrow. I have their number there. And their home number in New York, too. Private numbers. Just a minute.” As Bernhardt waited with pen poised, he heard a drawer close. Cutler read off the telephone numbers.
“Do you have a private number for Daniels at his office?”
“No, I don’t. But it’s Daniels, Incorporated, in Manhattan.”
“Well, these numbers are fine. Thanks.”
“Why d’you want to talk to Millicent?”
“From what Diane said, I have the feeling that Millicent and Daniels are having problems. Marital problems. If that’s true, and if Millicent knows Daniels plays around, it could give me leverage. Maybe a lot of leverage.”
“You’re thinking of the missing girl.”
“That’s where it all starts, Mr. Cutler. If there really was a girl staying overnight Saturday with Daniels, and if he killed her on Sunday and buried the body in a landfill, then everything Diane said makes sense. It’s been three weeks now. That lady’s been missed. Somewhere, there’s a printout on her, a missing-persons bulletin, if nothing else.”
“But you don’t have a name …” Cutler mused. “And without a name, you’re stuck.”
“That’s why I’m going to Cape Cod. To get a name.”
“You’ll keep me posted.”
“Definitely.”
THURSDAY,
August 9th
10 A.M., EDT
“VERY NICE.” FARNSWORTH’S PLUMP face registered a small, mock-cherubic smile. With a fat forefinger he pushed Bernhardt’s plastic identification plaque across the desk. Next he allowed himself the pleasure of staring at the visitor until, finally, the man from San Francisco frowned, looked briefly away, began to shift uncomfortably in the office’s only visitors’ chair. Yes, he’d been right about Bernhardt. A Jew, unmistakably. The face was dark and lean and hollowed out, a Semitic face, beyond all doubt. Dark, thick, half-long hair, flecked with gray. And, yes, the aviator glasses, the intellectual’s trademark, a dead giveaway.
“So what can I do for you, Mr. Bernhardt?” Farnsworth pushed his swivel chair back from his oversize desk, braced one foot on an open desk drawer, tilted the chair back, clasped his pudgy hands comfortably across the mound of his stomach. “I’ve been thinking about what you said on the phone. When was that? Monday?”
“Yes. Monday.”
“And you were asking about Jeff Weston, about how we’re handling the case. Is that right?”
“Yes. You see, I wanted to know whether—”
“Wait.” Farnsworth held up a peremptory hand. “I’ll ask the questions.” Once more, coldly, he stared at the other man until, yes, control was achieved. “Okay?”
Gracelessly, Bernhardt was nodding. “Fine.” It was a hard, clipped monosyllable. Behind the aviator glasses, brown eyes snapped. Would Bernhardt be more troublesome than he’d first appeared?
“You said on the phone that Daniels was involved. What’d you mean by that?”
“Before I answer, I’d like to know—”
“Ah-ah.” Farnsworth raised a forefinger, naughty, naughty. “You’re forgetting again.”
Jaw tightly clenched, eyes still snapping angrily, the other man drew a long, grim breath. “Sorry.”
“Daniels,” Farnsworth prodded gently. “Start with Daniels.” Complacently, he watched the other man as he struggled so obviously to get a grip on his temper. Finally, tight-jawed, Bernhardt began to speak:
“On Sunday, July fifteenth, Diane Cutler drove up to Cape Cod from New York. She got here about ten at night. She connected with Jeff Weston at a bar called”—Bernhardt drew a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket, glanced at it—“called Tim’s Place. Then they took a drive in Diane’s dark-green BMW.”
“Ah.” Farnsworth nodded. “The girl with the BMW. Right.”
“They apparently ended up at the Danielses beach house,” Bernhardt said. “As I understand it, they’d been drinking, and they’d smoked some grass. They’d probably popped a few pills, too. So they were high, and they decided to spy on Daniels. That was probably about midnight. And they saw Daniels carry something out to his car”—he glanced again at the notes—“a Jeep Cherokee. They thought it was a body, wrapped in a rug, or a blanket.”
“They thought, you say. They weren’t sure.”
“When I talked to Diane, she was sure.”
Farnsworth snorted. “It sounds like she could’ve been hallucinating.”
“She could’ve been imagining the body, I suppose. But it’s hard to imagine Preston Daniels deciding at midnight to move a rug. Besides, he took a shovel with him, in the back of the Jeep. And, furthermore, Diane saw a hand and an arm, that worked free.”
“Or so she imagined.” Farnsworth’s voice was flat, his eyes expressionless.
“We’ll never know whether it was imagination or not. There were only two witnesses. Diane and Jeff. Jeff’s dead. And now Diane’s dead.”
“Meaning,” Farnsworth said, “that all I’ve got is a secondhand story, which you probably know is worth about as much as a pitcher of warm spit, in a court of law.”
“I’m telling you exactly what Diane told me.”
“Did she ever tell her story to a policeman?”
“Not that I know of.”
Signifying that the answer was a foregone conclusion, Farnsworth grunted. Saying: “Let’s get back to Daniels. What happened after Daniels put the, ah, bundle into his car?”
“And the shovel,” Bernhardt insisted. “Don’t forget the shovel.”
“The shovel.” Broadly, Farnsworth nodded. “So noted.”
“After he’d done that,” Bernhardt said, “then he drove out to the landfill, east of town. The one with the cyclone fence around it.”
“The landfill …” As Farnsworth said it, images began to materialize: Preston Daniels, digging a shallow grave, bent to his task beneath the night sky like some common laborer. Preston Daniels, tumbling the body into the grave.
Carolyn Estes, beyond all doubt.
Carolyn Estes, dead and buried on the night of Sunday, July fifteenth. Dump trucks, coming and going the next day, and the next, and the next, each truck creating its own mound of dirt and construction debris, mound after mound after mound. Followed by the bulldozers, leveling it all out so the process could begin again. And again. And again.
Carolyn Estes, one of Preston Daniels’s blondes.
Carolyn Estes …
As if the name had taken control, Farnsworth found himself staring fixedly at the bottom drawer o
f a nearby file cabinet. In that drawer, he knew, in the missing-persons file folder, was the bulletin on Carolyn Estes.
As if someone else were talking—as if someone else had made the decision—he heard himself saying, “And then what?” Conscious of the effort required, he turned his gaze from the file cabinet to the face of Alan Bernhardt, the skinny, sad-eyed Jew who talked like a professor—and who was forcing choices that could change a whole life.
“Then,” Bernhardt was saying, “the next night, Jeff Weston was killed. And Diane thinks—”
“Wait. Wait.” Farnsworth raised both hands, exasperated. “Let’s go back to the goddamn landfill. What happened next, at the landfill?”
“Apparently there’s only one way in, and Diane didn’t want to get trapped inside. Anyhow, they—”
“Or maybe they were still spaced out.”
Impatiently, Bernhardt nodded. “That, too.”
“Okay. Go ahead. What happened next?”
“They went to a motel, Sunday night.”
“A local motel?”
“Yes.”
“About what time?”
“That would’ve been about one o’clock in the morning, I’d guess. Maybe one-thirty.”
“Monday morning.”
Bernhardt nodded. “Right. Monday. Later that day, Diane drove back to New York. Whereupon she apparently had a fight with her parents—her mother and Daniels. That was about five o’clock Monday evening. So she got back in her car, and drove up here.”
“To Carter’s Landing?”
Bernhardt nodded. “Right. She got here at about eleven o’clock Monday night. And that’s when she discovered that Jeff Weston had been killed. She was sure—absolutely sure—that Daniels had Weston killed to prevent him from talking about the murder of the girl. Maybe he’d tried to blackmail Daniels. It’d make sense.”
“Did she have any idea who killed Weston?”
“No, not then. Later, though, she thought it could’ve been Bruce Kane. Daniels’s pilot.” Plainly watching for a reaction, Bernhardt was eyeing him closely. As if to carefully consider the private detective’s statement, Farnsworth nodded judiciously, then frowned as he allowed his gaze to wander away. “Did she have any proof?” he asked. “Or was she just guessing?”
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