Trophies and Dead Things

by Marcia Muller

  I made a mental note to find out where Hilderly had originally came from. “You say your mother came to see you until you were around four. What happened then?”

  As she’d spoken of her childhood, Goodhue’s face had become animated. Now it was as if someone had turned a switch and put out a light. She set down the mascara wand and moved to perch on the edge of the other chair. “She . . . died.”

  “How?”

  “She . . . I didn’t know this until a long time after. Nilla and Ben just told me she’d had to go away, but that I shouldn’t worry because she loved me and would always be thinking about me. After that they didn’t seem to want to talk about her and frankly, she’d been such a small part of my life that I sort of forgot her. But when I was in sixth grade, I heard a couple of the neighbor kids talking—older kids, who had lived there all their lives. What happened was she got into trouble—something to do with the war protests—and then she killed herself.”

  I felt a stab of sympathy for the sixth grader who had found out an ugly fact in an unpleasant way. “What kind of trouble?”

  Goodhue shook her head. “The kids only heard part of the story—picked up snatches of conversation, the way kids to. What they told me was that my mother went out to Ocean Beach one night and shot herself in the head. Ben and Nilla freaked out when they saw it on the news. I went to them with the story, hoping it wasn’t true, but they wouldn’t talk about it. That was the only time they let me down. Years later, after they were both dead and I didn’t feel that I was betraying either of them, I hired an investigator to find out the whole story. He verbally confirmed that it had happened like the kids said it had, and wrote up a report. But—this is the weird part—you know what I did?”

  “What?”

  “I burned the damned thing without reading it. After all those years of wondering and all the money I’d spent on the investigator, I just didn’t want to know.”

  Reputable investigators, however, kept copies of their reports on file for quite some time. “Do you recall the name of the person you hired?”

  “Not offhand, but I’m sure it’s somewhere in my records.”

  “I’d like it, if it’s not too much trouble to locate it.”

  Goodhue looked somewhat apprehensive. “Why? Do you need it to establish my claim to the inheritance?”

  Given the fact that Hilderly had assumed Hank would know who she was, plus the fact that her name was a relatively unusual one, I felt it safe to assume she was the right Jess Goodhue. Still, I replied cautiously, “It would help. And it might also help me to understand why Hilderly wrote the kind of will he did.”

  “Why is that important to you?”

  I hesitated, then opted for the answer that I sensed Goodhue—as a newswoman—would understand. “I’m a truth seeker. I need to know.”

  She nodded. “You’re like me. I’ll look for the name tomorrow, and let you know.”

  She still seemed oblivious to the amount of time that was passing, so I pressed on with my questioning while I could. “After your mother . . . died, what happened to you?”

  “Nothing. I stayed on with Ben and Nilla. I was there unofficially; the welfare department had no idea I existed. Neither did my mother’s family, and my father obviously didn’t care. Ben and Nilla raised me as their own. I took their name. Ben died when I was fifteen, just keeled over of a stroke at the breakfast table. That about killed Nilla, too. She withdrew, closed the day-care center, stopped taking in kids. Finally I was all she had.”

  “There had never been much money. Without what the welfare department paid for the foster kids, things were rough. I left school at sixteen so I could support Nilla. Got a girl-Friday job at a stationery supply company, and they trained me as a secretary. Nilla died when I was eighteen—it was her heart, in more ways than one. I left my job at the stationery company, and the Portola district. Moved downtown and got a job as a secretary here at KSTS. After a year and a half, I convinced them to let me try my hand as a writer. The field reporting came along pretty quick. And now here I am.” She flung her arms out, as if to embrace the shabby dressing room, the entire studio, her successful life. But to me she looked like the little girl whose mother had been pretty but not very warm, reaching out for the surrogate parents who knew how to hold a child.

  I said, “Jess, tell me this: do you want to know if Perry Hilderly is your father?”

  Her hands locked together again, and she compressed her lips. After a moment she said, ‘You know, I do. At first, after Nilla died, I was wild to find out about my parents. I contacted my mother’s family in Southern California, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with me, wouldn’t even believe I was Jenny Ruhl’s daughter, claimed my birth certificate was a fake. It was after that that I hired the detective. But then—well, I told you what I did with the report.”

  “Why is it different now?”

  “Because Perry Hilderly left me money. A lot of money. That must mean something.”

  I wasn’t sure. At least not that it meant all the good things she was obviously imagining. Guilt at deeds left undone, I’ve found, does not necessarily imply love for the wronged party.

  Goodhue must have sensed my doubt, because she stood abruptly. “Look, I’ve got to get down to the newsroom. I’ll look for that detective’s name, give you a call.”

  I handed her one of my cards. She pocketed it, checked her makeup a final time, and led me out of the dressing room. On the way downstairs I asked if there was a phone I might use, and Goodhue directed me to one at the unoccupied desk in the newsroom. I called All Souls, found Hank was still there, and reported my day’s findings.

  “Damned curious,” he said when I finished. “It doesn’t quite fit with what I know of Perry. I can’t see him abandoning his own child.”

  “Did you break the news to his former wife about the sons not getting their inheritance?”

  “Yes. She didn’t seem very upset. Apparently she and her new husband are quite well off. She was happy about the personal stuff, though—said what you did about it being nice for the boys, who will have something to remember Perry by.”

  “I’d like to talk with her. If anyone might know about Hilderly’s past, she’s the one. Will you give me her new name and number?”

  “Sure.” There was a pause, and then he read off the information to me. “You’re not planning on going out to Danville tonight?”

  “If she’ll see me.”

  Hank was silent.

  “Oh, Lord, your dinner party for Anne-Marie! I almost forgot.”

  “Look, don’t worry about that. Go see Judy Fleming and come by my place later. But just be sure to come.”

  “I will, I promise. Is Rae around?”

  “She left about fifteen minutes ago. Asked me to tell you she’s turned up something on Heikkinen; she’ll talk to you about it tonight.”

  “Okay. Keep some chili warm for me.” I hung up and placed a credit card call to Judy Fleming, the former Mrs. Hilderly, in the exclusive East Bay development of Blackhawk. She was cordial and agreed to see me if I didn’t mind driving over there in rush-hour traffic. I said I’d be at her house as soon as possible.

  As I crossed the newsroom toward the hallway, I glanced at Goodhue’s cubicle. The anchorwoman was again seated at her desk, next to her co-anchor, Les Gates. Gates, whom I recognized from countless newscasts, was expounding on a script that lay in front of them. Goodhue nodded and responded, but her expression was distracted. When I passed the cubicle, she looked up, and I felt her gaze upon me all the way to the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Blackhawk, the development where Hilderly’s former wife and sons now lived, has long struck me as a phenomenon that could only have occurred in the latter decades of the twentieth century. It is an exclusive enclave of custom-built homes nestled in the foothills of Mount Diablo, and insulated from the world by high walls, a private security force, and recreational facilities that ensure no resident need seek pleasure elsewhere
. Everything is designed for the ease and comfort of the busy property owners, most of whom are engaged in making fortunes in the industrial parks that cover what used to be farmland near San Ramon. A buyer may purchase a house that is fully furnished and equipped, down to the last teaspoon and guest towel; the local supermarket boasts of clocks that display the time in such global cities as London, New York, and Tokyo—presumably so shoppers can rush home and call their brokers before the stock exchanges close. While Blackhawkians may appreciate and even need these refinements, I find something vaguely depressing about a place where life’s edges have been so smoothed and rounded.

  After I was admitted past the guard station at one of the gates, I drove through a maze of large homes on spacious lots to the Fleming house. It was mock Tudor, with a big live oak in the front yard. I parked at the curb and went up a flagstone walk that bisected the neatly barbered lawn.

  When Judy Fleming answered the door, I recognized her as an older version of the woman Hilderly’s photo album; her short brown hair was now streaked with gray, and she was no longer plump, her face having that gaunt look that comes from frequent dieting. She greeted me pleasantly and led me to the rear of her air-conditioned house, where an informal living room overlooked a swimming pool full of noisy teenagers. The room, a dining area, and the kitchen were all connected, and there was a lived-in feel to the space that had been missing from the more formal rooms we’d passed on the way.

  Mrs. Fleming seated me on the couch, offered coffee—which I accepted—and went to pour it from a percolator that stood on the wet bar. She hesitated, then poured a second mug for herself. “I shouldn’t,” she said. “I drink too much of it. But I’m dieting, and it keeps me going.”

  She certainly did look tired, I thought as she seated herself in a rocking chair opposite me. Bluish circles under here eyes were more pronounced in the late sunlight that slanted through the glass doors behind her, and her movement were weary, almost leaden. I suspected her fatigue stemmed less from unwise dieting than from her ex-husband’s death and altered will.

  A roar of laugher—muted by the closed doors—rose from the pool, and the kids began clapping; two boys had just tossed a struggling girl in. Mrs. Fleming smiled and said, “It’s good to hear laughter around here. The last week and a half have been grim. My boys weren’t close to Perry—by his choice, not mine or theirs—but his death and now this business of the new will have been upsetting.”

  “Why did he choose to distance himself from his sons?”

  “That was his way. It was one of the reasons I divorced him. The main reason, actually.” She paused. “I’ve always loved Perry, though. That’s why this business of him disinheriting the boys is so hard to take.”

  “Hank Zahn had the impression you don’t mind about the money.”

  “About the money, no. It’s Perry’s lack of caring and the . . . inexplicableness of what he did that’s disturbing.”

  “So far I’ve been able to locate two of Perry’s new beneficiaries—Thomas Y. Grant and Jess Goodhue. Did he ever mention either of them to you?”

  She shook her head.

  “What about a David Arlen Taylor, Libby Heikkinen, or Jenny Ruhl?”

  “None of those names is familiar. I’m sure I’d remember if I’d known or heard of them.”

  “Well, neither of the two I’ve spoken to claims to have known Perry, or understands why he would name them in his will. Perhaps when I locate Taylor and Heikkinen, they can shed some light on his reasons. The other person I mentioned, Jenny Ruhl, was the mother of Jess Goodhue. Goodhue thought her mother might have known Perry at Berkeley.”

  “That would have been a long before I met him.”

  ”What was that, and where?”

  “At S. F. State, after he’d come back from Vietnam. I was only nineteen; he was several years older, and very intriguing to me. A distant, silent, haunted man, who had already lost a wife and child. I thought I could help him, bring him out of himself. That’s how naïve I was!”

  “I take it he remained distant.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t until after my first son, Kurt, was born that I realized how distant. I remember looking at Kurt and wondering which of us he would be more like—Perry or me. And then it came to me that I knew virtually nothing of the man who had fathered him.”

  “Do you mean that he thought and felt, or actual biographical details?”

  “Both. Oh, he sketched out a chronology for me when we first met, but it was more like an outline, with none of the substance.”

  “Where was Perry originally from?”

  “Albuquerque.”

  I thought of the father wearing a string tie who had visited Jess Goodhue. “Did he speak of his childhood?”

  “More than any other part of his life. It sounded fairly normal. I never met his father; he died when Perry was in high school. His mother remarried and they traveled a lot; I only met her once. She was quite outgoing, so wherever he got his remoteness, it wasn’t from her.”

  “And you divorced Perry ten years ago?”

  “Ten years next month. Toward the end we were living in Pacifica. We’d bought a house. Perry commuted to the city. He kept long hours—purposely, I thought. It wasn’t as if he didn’t love the boys or me; he just couldn’t cope with the intimacy of family life. Eventually he became more like the fog that drifted in and out, rather than a husband or father. I felt as if I were failing him when I divorced him, but he seemed more relieved than anything else. I guess he’d gotten in over his head emotionally by marrying and having a family.”

  The kind of uninvolved individual Mrs. Fleming described didn’t mesh with the young man who had clowned and laughed his way through the stormy days at Berkeley. Even the man Hank had known in Vietnam had sounded more connected to others. I wondered if it had been the deaths of the woman and child over there that had changed him. But even when they had been alive, Hilderly had been closed off in certain aspects.

  I asked, “After the divorce, did you see Perry?”

  “Very occasionally. He’d pick up the boys on their birthdays to take them to the city to the zoo or a ball game. On Christmas he’d send gifts—usually ones that were in appropriate for their age levels—and call. But that was the extent of it.”

  I’d been wrong in thinking Judy Fleming knew anything useful about her husband’s past. “I know you find Perry changing his will inexplicable, “I said, “but I’d like to ask you to think over the contacts you and your sons have had with him in, say, the past year. Was there anything in his behavior that even hinted he might do such a thing?”

  She considered, pleating the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. “One occasion comes to mind. Perry was behaving oddly . . . but maybe you’d best talk to Kurt about it. He was there and I wasn’t.” She went to the glass door and opened it, called out to one of the boys by the pool. He came to the house, toweling himself off as he walked.

  The introductions over, Kurt sat down on the raised stone hearth, his long arms wrapped around his bare knees. His mother said, “Tell Ms. McCone about your birthday celebration with Perry. “ To me she added, “Neither of the boys felt close enough to call him ‘Dad.’ That’s what they call my husband.”

  Kurt asked, ‘You mean tell her about the weird stuff?”

  Judy Fleming nodded.

  “Okay. This was in the middle of June, a Saturday. I went into the city on BART and we took in a Giants game. Perry was kind of quiet. I thought it might be because for my present he’d given me this video game that was really for young kids, and I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm over it.” Kurt paused, looking at his mother. “He was always doing that. You remember the year he gave me the big stuffed koala bear for Christmas? I was thirteen and into Indiana Jones.”

  Mrs. Fleming merely smiled.

  “Okay,” Kurt went on, “after the game we started back here and stopped in Walnut Creek at a Mexican restaurant. Perry got into the margaritas. They make a strong one there—” H
e glanced at his mother again. “Or so I’m told. Perry had four. After the second he started going on, sort of—what’s the word I just learned? Maundering.” He seemed to savor the new word; his mouth shaped it as if he were tasting each syllable.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “All sorts of stuff. He started by asking me if I’d decided on a college yet, but before I could answer, he said that the decisions people make early on are important, that the wrong one can change the whole course of your life. He said that even a right decision can come back to haunt you later, even if you know you did the right thing.”

  “That sounds like fairly standard father-to-son advice.”

  “You didn’t know Perry. He wasn’t much on advice. Anyway, then he started going on about this seminar he’d had to go to for his job a couple of weeks before. He said he hadn’t wanted to go, but that it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. ‘It’s changed my whole life,’ he said. ‘I know what I have to do to get in touch with my former self.”