The Anteater of Death

by Betty Webb

  He hadn’t called that many times. After four or five calls every week for the first month or so, they’d dwindled down to one or two a week, then after a few more months, nothing.

  “Your timing wasn’t good, Joe. I was still hurting over Michael, and I didn’t trust my own judgment anymore.” And I was so afraid. Of him, of love, of the whole man/woman thing.

  “I understand that now.”

  “Anyway, I’m not sure...” I stopped, uncertain whether I believed what I was about to say, that I wasn’t sure we could pick up where we left off fifteen years ago because we were different people now, grownups with all the complications maturity implied. But with Joe sitting so close to me, and my body crying out for his, my intended words sounded inane.

  “I’m not sure either, honey,” he said.

  “A lot’s happened. Too much, probably.”

  “Yeah.”

  “After all, we’re not in high school anymore.”

  “Nope.”

  “People can’t go back to where they started. It’s not realistic, however attractive it might seem.”

  “Good point.”

  “I’m glad you see it my way.”

  We both stared at the faucet for a while, then as if on cue, closed the distance between us so that my leg pressed against his all the way from the ankle to the top of the thigh. Neither of us moved further, just sat there trembling, waiting for the other person to make a move.

  “This is dumb.” I said, after a few minutes.

  “When you’re right, you’re right.”

  “Not that we’ve been smart so far.”

  “Ha.”

  “So what do you think?”

  He pulled me into his lap. “I think we both think too much.”

  Once I got my breath back, I said, “Yeah, when you’re right, you’re right.”

  ***

  Two hours later, Joe left. I breezed through my Sunday chores, humming the tune we’d decided so long ago was “our” song. Dolly Parton had written and recorded “I Will Always Love You” the year he was born, and his father sang it to his mother.

  The first time Joe and I made love, parked in his father’s truck on the beach at Otter Point, we heard Whitney Houston’s version on the local San Sebastian radio station. Two years later, alone in my room at Miss Pridewell’s Academy in the heart of rural Virginia, I turned on WHRO, hoping for some cheerful Vivaldi. Instead I heard flutist James Galway performing a classical take on the song. By the time I heard Melissa Etheridge’s power-ballad version on San Francisco’s KSAN, my marriage was falling apart. I was feeling cynical at the time, and the anguish in Etheridge’s voice suited my mood perfectly. Now I was humming the thing, but darned if it didn’t sound downright jaunty.

  Love can make you see stars in sewers, heaven in songs about heartbreak.

  Besides, my own heartbreak was in the past, wasn’t it? There remained no need to mourn, no need to anguish over men’s inability to remain focused on just one woman.

  Some men were different.

  ***

  Caro took a long time to open the door, and when she did, her hair was a mess, yet she’d never looked so beautiful. “What are you doing here?” She sounded out of breath, too.

  No lecture about yesterday’s adventure in the spectacled bear pit?

  I held up the paper bag. “Just returning your necklace.” I lowered my voice in case any neighbors had their windows open. “Dad’s here, isn’t he?”

  She grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me inside. “What makes you think that?”

  “Your blouse is on backwards.”

  Her face reddened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not...” At the sound of springy footsteps descending the stairs, she stopped.

  “Hello, Teddy.” Dad’s shirt was buttoned crooked and a trail of lipstick traveled from his jaw to his ear, but at least he’d combed his hair.

  Caro led me into the living room and briefly disappeared to plop a teabag into a cup of nuked water. Upon her return, she delivered her hundredth-or-something warning about the dangers of zoo life in general, anteaters and spectacled bears in particular.

  Dad just smiled fondly and asked, “What’s that song you’re humming? It’s pretty.”

  My turn to blush. “Song?”

  Caro narrowed her eyes at me. “It’s that wretched thing Whitney Houston used to sing. You and that moony Rejos boy called it ‘your’ song.” She sketched the quote marks in the air. “Surely you’re not seeing him again!”

  “It’s Rejas, not Rejos. If I’m dating him, it’s none of your business.”

  Dad leaned forward. “Wait a minute. Rejas. Joe Rejas. Isn’t that the sheriff?”

  “So?”

  Appalled, he yelled, “You’re dating the sheriff now?! And me sitting here with federal and state warrants out for my arrest? What if during a ... a heated moment you slip and say something? Don’t you understand what could happen to me?”

  “But I...”

  Caro jumped in. “How dare you, Teddy! It’s bad enough that Joe whatever-his-name-is almost ruined your life once, now he’s actually trying more of the same.”

  “But...”

  With great effort, my father pulled himself together. “He’s not the problem. It’s me and my foolishness in coming here to visit you both in the first place, but I missed you both so much that....” His voice broke, but he recovered quickly. “Perhaps I should clear out and leave you two in peace.”

  Caro made panicky noises, but he merely shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ll find someplace safe. Teddy shouldn’t have to redesign her whole life just to keep me safe.”

  At his miserable expression, I realized the complications my runaway heart had caused. “Leaving won’t be necessary. I’ll figure out something to keep the sheriff away.”

  After all, hadn’t I been doing exactly that for more than a year?

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stayed at my mother’s long enough to suffer through a tense lunch. As I’d feared, she carried on and on about the bear incident, renewing her pleas for me to quit my job.

  Since arguing never worked, I simply ignored her. While I was finishing up my asparagus-mushrom crepes—compliments of my father, not Thumbs-in-the-Kitchen Caro—I remembered Roarke telling me that his uncle, Henry Gunn, was a member of the anti-Trust contingent, too. Henry had always been one of my favorite Gunns. Whenever I’d gone up to the castle to play Monopoly with Jeanette, he’d sneak us forbidden pieces of Aster Edwina’s jealously-guarded marzipan. Although I hadn’t seen him since he divorced Eleanor, his first wife, I figured he could give me a different slant on the Trust.

  After calling ahead to make certain he was at home, I jumped in my truck and started the ninety-mile drive north to San Francisco. Sunday traffic was light so by two p.m. I was searching for a parking spot near his Pacific Heights house. After another fifteen minutes I found one, although my rusty Nissan pickup looked woefully out of place among the luxury sedans and SUVs lining the street.

  Henry and Pilar, his second wife, owned a large Victorian two blocks off Divisadero, with a stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge. When he opened the door, I tried not to reveal my shock at how much he’d aged. Remarried less than a year, he looked ten years older. His face appeared gaunt and most of his hair had vanished. Divorce had been rough on him, too.

  “How’s that rogue nephew of mine?” he asked, offering me a tray filled with marzipan. He’d remembered.

  “He’s fine,” I told him, selecting a marzipan topped with candied orange garnish.

  Oblivious to my gastronomical ecstasy, Pilar snorted. “Roarke will always be fine.”

  Henry chuckled. “Pay no attention to her. She had a thing for him once, all the girls did, but then I came along, didn’t I, babe?”

  She forced a smile.

  A thing for Roarke? Henry had met Pilar two years earlier at a party aboard the Tequila Sunrise. Had she been husband-hunting among the yacht club set? Filing
his comment away for further reference, I looked around. Judging from the antiques in the living room alone, they’d spent a fortune furnishing the place. But when I complimented Pilar on her taste, she waved away her surroundings with a dismissive hand.

  “They’re Henry’s old things, left over from the divorce.”

  Like so many wealthy men are prone to do, Henry had traded in his increasingly-broad-in-the-beam first wife for a sleeker model. Pilar was a tall brunette at least twenty-five years his junior, with sharp features that kept her from being conventionally beautiful. As if to distract from her razor-blade nose, she wore a pink silk scarf around the neck of her mauve track suit. Perhaps the track suit was a mere wardrobe choice, but I doubted it because she had the nervous energy of a runner. After settling me on a fawn-colored Chippendale sofa, for the rest of my visit she paced back and forth through the light-filled living room, touching a priceless porcelain here, a silver candlestick there. It tired me just to watch her.

  When Henry spoke again, the sharpness of his voice hinted that the honeymoon was over. “I told my wife that with Grayson dead and the move to break the Trust now stalled, she’d better make her peace with the Victorian era.”

  She flushed, whether with anger or embarrassment, I couldnt tell. “Just because he’s no longer in the picture doesn’t mean the Trust can’t be broken.” She gave me a quick look. “No point in being secretive about it. The damned Wall Street Journal has already printed everything there is to know.”

  “And the damned San Francisco Examiner,” Henry grumped. “Next comes The National Enquirer, I guess. I can see their headlines now. GUNN FORTUNE FUNNELED TO ALIEN INVADERS.”

  I laughed, but the humor-challenged Pilar frowned.

  After helping myself to another piece of marzipan, I followed up on the opening they’d so kindly given me. “When did Grayson first approach you about breaking the Trust?”

  Henry started to answer, but she spoke first. “In February. After you called, I looked it up in my appointment book. Like you, he visited on a Sunday, which is the only day I’m at home because I work for a living.” She shot a meaningful look at her scowling husband. “Anyway, he arrived around two o’clock and we spent the rest of the day formulating a plan. I must say that I was impressed by the thought Grayson put into his strategy. He knew who was ready to jump ship, who planned to stick, and who hadn’t yet made up their minds.”

  “With you two firmly on the ‘jump ship’ side.” I glanced at Henry, waiting for him to speak. He was, after all, the one with the money. But he continued letting his wife do the talking.

  Vibrating with energy, she stalked around the room, her blue-black hair gleaming in the sun that streamed through the tall window behind her. Beyond, I could see the blue waters of San Francisco Bay, the green hills of Marin beyond—a view most San Franciscans would cheerfully kill for.

  “It makes no sense whatsoever allowing that money to sit around earning little more than interest,” Pilar continued, her mind fixed on things less pedestrian than hills and water. “If money doesn’t work for you, there’s no point in having any.”

  I looked around and spotted among other treasures a Duncan Phyfe sideboard and a George III center table. Originals, not copies. It seemed to me that the “little more than interest” Gunn Trust worked well enough. But Pilar was a stockbroker, a member of a profession allergic to letting money just sit there, which was probably what had attracted her to Henry in the first place. All that unused money lying around for her to “work” with. How had she reacted when she discovered that the family fortune was tied up in the immovable Trust and all she’d ever see was a monthly dividend check?

  She must have noticed my expression. “This place may be nice if you go for the embalmed look, but we’re tired of it and want something modern, like those new towers over on Van Ness. All steel and glass.” Then she remembered her husband. “Don’t we, Henry?”

  On cue, he nodded. “If you say so.” His tone wasn’t as amiable as his words.

  “Yes. I do.”

  Henry reminded me of Abayo, the zoo’s aging lion. Content to lie in the sun all day, Abayo was healthy enough to sire cubs but not agile enough to evade the occasional slaps from Elsa, his mate.

  “DidGrayson say anything else of interest while he was here?” I asked. “Maybe he mentioned someone being angry with him.”

  Pilar raised her sharp nose in disdain. “Are you kidding? Everyone in the pro-Trust camp was furious with him. The lazybones were afraid they might have to get out there and work for their money.”

  I snuck a look at lazybones Henry, who’d never held a job, wondering if her barb had gone over his head. Except for a slight narrowing of his eyes, his face didn’t change. I wondered if he missed his easy-going first wife. “What about Jeanette? Did she say anything?”

  Pilar turned away from the Renaissance Revival clock she’d been fingering and shook her head. “She didn’t come with him. Suffering from another of her week-long migraines, I guess.”

  Henry spoke up again. “I doubt that because I saw them together the next day at that little restaurant down the street. Grayson...”

  His wife interrupted. “I’ve told you time and again that her headaches are psychosomatic! She fakes them to get attention.”

  Having experienced a few migraines myself during the waning days of my marriage, I was certain Jeanette’s suffering was the real thing, but Pilar was obviously one of those women who enjoyed perfect health and had nothing but contempt for others who didn’t. Not the most comfortable woman for a man to be married to as he marched up the ramp from middle to old age.

  She interrupted my musings. “Teddy, how’s your own portfolio?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Abandoning her pacing, she sat down next to me on the sofa. “Your portfolio. There are some interesting opportunities out there I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Henry stifled a laugh. He knew all about the vanished Bentley millions, not to mention my father’s embezzlements and the Feds’ subsequent grab-all. But his wife, her eyes fixed so firmly on the prize that she missed the alarm in mine, proceeded to rattle off a long list of stocks that she guaranteed would double in value within six months. All it took, she said, would be backbone on my part.

  “I don’t have much backbone,” I told her.

  This time Henry didn’t bother to stifle his laugh. “Ease up on her, Pilar. She’s flat broke.”

  She snapped, “But you said...”

  “I said she was one of the San Sebastian Bentleys and you interrupted me before I could tell you that they lost their money during the Crash.”

  “Crash?”

  “The Depression, dear. That little financial mess in the Thirties? What with one thing and another, the Bentleys never recovered.”

  “Oh.” She looked at her watch. “My! I didn’t realize it was so late. Henry and I are getting ready for a theater matinee, aren’t we?” She rose from the sofa so quickly it groaned.

  I stood up, too. “It’s been nice visiting with you, Pilar.”

  She bared her teeth. “We must get together for lunch.”

  I bared back. “I’ll call.”

  “You do that.” After making certain I was right behind her, she headed for the door.

  Behind her, Henry’s smile looked strained.

  When I reached the Nissan, I checked my cell to see if the zoo had left me any messages; it hadn’t. But I counted seven other messages—five from Caro, two from Joe. With a sigh, I climbed into the truck. Without consciously planning it, I found myself driving south on Castro Street and into the old Noe Valley neighborhood where I’d once lived with Michael. It wasn’t actually out of my way, I argued with my more commonsense self, because once through Noe, I could pick up Mission, take that down to the 280, and then transition onto 101 south. Almost a straight shot.

  The minute I turned onto Church Street, where my husband and I had leased our own small Victorian, I saw the folly of my ways. The pe
riwinkle blue-and-cream house was still there but now two sandy-haired children played in front, watched over by a woman dressed as a nanny. I’d wanted children but Michael wasn’t enthusiastic. At first his excuse was that he wanted to pay off his school loans, later that he needed time to settle in at Hoffman, Williams, and Williams. After that, he said we should start saving for our own house, and stressed that children were a financial drain we couldn’t yet afford. Still later...

  There was no later. By the time I emerged from denial, it was too late.

  As I passed the house, the door opened, revealing a blond man and woman who resembled the children. The man held a golden retriever on a leash. Both children ran toward him, clamoring for the rights to walk the dog. When the older child won, the woman gave the other the consolation prize of a hug. Together the small group set off in the direction of Mission Dolores Park.