“I heard about that,” Dave said. “I’m sorry. It surprised you, did it?”
“These days, I’m a consultant in consumer psychology, marketing strategies, mainly in audio components. But I began as a university instructor. I don’t follow politics. Yes, it surprised me. I thought Winter Creek was far enough from the city so it would be free of violence. That’s why I came down here with my children and my father to live.”
“Not your wife?” Dave said.
“My wife was killed in a random drive-by gang shooting near USC, where she was an instructor.”
“I’m sorry,” Dave said.
“That was what made me throw up my own teaching career and move down here.” Alexander looked past Dave at the untroubled sky, the enduring hills, and thought his own thoughts for a moment. Then he looked at Dave with a glum smile. “Apparently there is no place free of violence. Not for me and mine. It follows us.”
“I heard about the dog,” Dave said, “the children. You said you’d be driving them to school—where?”
Alexander glanced at his watch. “Up the freeway to Fortuna. There are a few African-American children in their system. There’s racism there too, I don’t fool myself about that, but Alice and Andy don’t draw the special attention there that they drew in Winter Creek.”
Dave studied the troubled, handsome face and said, “But it’s too late for your father, isn’t it?”
The odd eyes looked at him, startled.
Dave said, “He was the watchman at the low-cost housing development that burned. Am I right? A Mr. Alexander.”
“Barrett.” Alexander nodded. “Barrett Foley Alexander. He’d been a sharecropper in Alabama, went North to work in the Detroit factories in World War Two, and came to California after that. A determined, hard-working man no amount of adversity would stop. In Los Angeles, he took pick-and-shovel work, day laborer—it was all he could get. Later on, he was a school janitor. We didn’t have good clothes, and we didn’t live in comfort, and sometimes there wasn’t much to eat—but somehow he saw to it that all four of his children went to college, Mr. Brandstetter. Two are attorneys, two were university professors—one still is.”
“You’re comfortably off here,” Dave said. “He didn’t have to take that watchman’s job.”
“For his own pride’s sake,” Alexander said. “He didn’t want to be beholden to me for his keep, as he put it. He wanted to pay his way, as he’d paid his way all his life.”
“It cost him his life,” Dave said.
“It was murder,” Alexander said grimly, “and George Hetzel will pay. I won’t rest till I’ve proved that in court. I’ll finish him, if it costs me my own life.”
“I interviewed Hetzel last night,” Dave said. “He swore up and down he had nothing to do with that fire.”
Alexander’s nostrils flared. “Did you believe him?”
“Not then. But thinking about it—after the ruckus he raised opposing that project, wouldn’t even Hetzel, crazy as he is, realize that if it burned, he’d get the blame?”
Alexander drew breath to answer that, then decided against it, smiled determinedly, and said, “We were having breakfast.” He stepped back and motioned Dave into the house. “Will you join us? I don’t know what use I can be to you, but we’ll share a cup of coffee. And you can meet the children. There’s time for that.” He closed the door and turned Dave an odd smile as he did so. “It will be a novelty for Alice and Andy. We don’t get many visitors.”
Moving like an athlete, a dancer, with easy and unconscious grace, he led the way through a vast living room, through a long dining area with sliding glass doors that looked out on a sparkling blue swimming pool, and into a handsome kitchen. What the builders probably called a family room lay beyond, full of sunshine.
The girl sat at a table where bowls, glasses, mugs, cereal boxes, frozen waffle boxes surrounded a pot of yellow chrysanthemums. Alexander was clearing a place for Dave to drink his coffee when a twelve-year-old boy came into the room. His head was concealed in a man-sized safety helmet, his thin young body in a camouflage outfit much too big for him, cuffs rolled up, sleeves rolled up. And in his hands was a paintball gun. He pointed the gun at Dave.
“K’pow,” he said in his high child’s voice. “K’pow.”
Dave looked at Alexander. The man was stunned. His voice was thunder. “I told you not to touch that stuff. Put it back, Andy, right now.” He started for the boy with a hand raised. “Right now, you hear me?” The boy, with a yelp that wasn’t really frightened, that played at fright, stumbled and flapped out of the room. His father called after him, “It’s time for school. Hurry up.” He gave Dave a rueful smile and shook his head. “You never know,” he said.
“Vaughn Thomas was killed playing paintball,” Dave said.
“I haven’t played in months. Last year, some of us teachers got up a team,” Alexander said, “but after Virginia was shot, I didn’t feel the same about it.”
He brought a glass coffee maker from the stove and filled a mug for Dave. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have tried to go alone. Those fields don’t welcome blacks.”
Dave sipped the coffee. “And you weren’t up in Los Angeles last Sunday?”
Alexander’s eyes widened, narrowed. “I was. So were several million other people.” He pulled out a chair and sat down hard, scowling. “What are you insinuating? I told you, I never heard of Vaughn Thomas.”
“It’s a routine question, Mr. Alexander,” Dave said mildly. “Nothing personal. There aren’t a lot of electronics manufacturers in Winter Creek, so that has to mean you travel some. Was it business that took you to Los Angeles?”
“My elder sister, Anne Alexander-Lloyd, a juvenile court judge, became a grandmother last week. We went to see the new baby. There was a celebration.”
“And you were late,” Alice said. “Out jogging someplace all morning. We nearly starved. Everybody looking at their watches.” She grinned at Dave. “Daddy cooks the evilest barbecued chicken in California. Only where was he?”
“It wasn’t that late.” Alexander glanced nervously at Dave. “You exaggerate. I got a little bit lost, is all. I don’t know that neighborhood. Culver City. What kind of a place is that to live, anyway? In the MGM back lot.”
Dave said, “And yesterday afternoon?”
Alexander blinked. “What?” Then he understood, and didn’t much like it. “I’m a suspect in the murder of Vaughn Thomas, and that makes me a suspect in the death of his wife? Aren’t you forgetting? They’ve arrested Craig for that.”
“I’m not forgetting,” Dave said. “It’s a weak case.”
Alexander snorted. “All right—I was at Newport, the marina. For a one o’clock lunch with a client. The Old New Bedford Lobster House.”
“The client’s name?” Dave said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Alexander said. “He didn’t show. He did telephone the restaurant, after I’d sat there waiting half an hour, to say he couldn’t make it.”
“And did you take the call?” Dave said.
Alexander shook his head. “The maître d’ brought me the message. So I ate in solitary splendor, did a little shopping in those overpriced boutiques, and drove back just in time to get Alice and Andy from school.” He frowned. “When did it happen—to the Thomas girl?”
“Around three thirty,” Dave said.
“That was when Daddy picked us up,” Alice said. “You should see the beautiful jacket he bought me.”
“Shoulders big enough for a football player.” Andy came in, out of uniform. His hair was cut flat on top, Mike Tyson style. “Girls wear the goofiest stuff.”
“And boys get goofy haircuts,” she said.
Dave waited up the street and watched the red Sterling leave. When it was out of sight, out of hearing, he went back to the lonely house. He’d noticed as he left that the sliding glass door of a room in the wing facing the swimming pool at the rear was open. He had only to pick a padlock on the wooden gate to the patio,
walk around the pool, and step indoors. From the scattering of Nintendo boxes on the floor around the television set, he judged it to be Andy’s room.
He crossed the room into a hallway and after a false start found Alexander’s den—desk, computer, printer, copy and fax machines. He looked over the desk, put on reading glasses to scan the contents of a file folder marked FBI that lay there, penciled with telephone numbers and names. Alexander had written twenty letters demanding information on the department’s investigation of Hetzel in connection with the fire that had killed his father. The replies had not been forthcoming. But the date on Alexander’s latest letter was only a couple of days old—he was still trying. Other folders here were marked Sacramento, Sen. Cranston, HUD. He didn’t bother with them. He tried a file cabinet. The top drawer held nothing useful. He tried the second and third drawers without luck, rolled the desk chair over, sat on it, and opened the bottom drawer. Here lay a large, brown envelope, no label on it, only scrawled telephone numbers—one for Channel Three in Los Angeles, the place where Vaughn Thomas last worked. His heart bumped. He pulled papers from the envelope, and blinked. Xeroxes of personnel forms, headed ARYAN AMERICA MOVEMENT. He smiled. Hetzel was mistaken. It hadn’t been the FBI that had broken into his office to conduct that unauthorized search. Each form had an ID photo. The boyish face on the first form he’d never seen, but the typed name under it made it Vaughn Thomas. The form told him little he didn’t already know. But Alexander had scribbled two dates at the top of the sheet—21 May 1976 and 13 July 1977. He looked at the next sheet. Jemmie Engstrom. He slid the pages back into the envelope, dropped it back into the drawer, closed the drawer with his foot, scooted the chair back to the desk, and quickly opened and shut the drawers of the desk. Nothing.
He left the room, found what he took to be Alexander’s bedroom, and searched the closet there. Andy had stuffed the camouflage suit back carelessly. Dave probed beyond it. He pawed around on the closet shelf. Nothing. He went through dresser drawers. Still nothing. Damn. Could it be in the car? He didn’t think Alexander would chance that. Police stop blacks too often for no reason except that they’re black. In the hall he noticed a ceiling opening. He got a chair, stood on it, pushed up the trap. The rifle was there.
Carrying the carton of cigarettes, he went around to the back, where the big white hens stalked clucking in dry grass, ragweed, foxtail, and where sunflowers had toppled from the weight of their heavy heads. Morning glory twined on a shaky fence and showed purple blossoms to the new day. A hen hunkered down in the dust, kicked dust up under her wings, rustled her wings with satisfaction, and fussily groomed her feathers with her beak. He stepped up on the rickety wooden stoop and rapped the screen door that rattled in its frame. Nobody stirred in the kitchen. Making blinkers of his hands, he peered through the sagging black mesh. Stove, cupboards, table, and chairs, but no Fern Casper. He called, “Hello? Anybody home?” But no one answered.
He went around to the front porch and here he didn’t bother knocking. She wouldn’t hear over the racket. He stepped into a little entry hall, then peered into the room the sounds came from. Old green roller shades covered the windows, so it was hard for him to see at first. Then he made her out, seated small and shrunken in a massive overstuffed chair, staring at the brightly colored moving images of a big, new television set. Packing materials were strewn over the dusty carpet. A big shipping box stood between him and her. He moved it with a foot and edged around it. Holding out the carton of cigarettes, he shouted over the laughter, shrieks, and hectic applause of a game show.
“Miz Casper? Good morning.”
Her cropped head jerked up, eyes wide. She fumbled in the chair, found the remote control, and aimed it like a lethal weapon at the set, and picture and noise died.
“Good morning,” she said, and waved a hand at the set. “Look what happened. Those damn fools at the drugstore made a mistake, and I ended up with a brand new television. I tried to tell the boy, but he wouldn’t listen. Says it was for me. Barges in here, unpacks it, wires it all up. I expect he’ll be back before long to take it where it’s supposed to go. I’m trying to get some fun out of it first.”
She blinked in sudden surprise at the cigarettes. “Oh—are those for me?” He gave them to her, she began clawing at the carton to get it open. “It’s my lucky day, isn’t it?” She cackled happily, pushed up out of the chair, headed for the kitchen. “Come on. We’ll have coffee to celebrate.”
When the coffee steamed in thumb-smeared white mugs on the table, and cigarette smoke circled their heads, she said, eyes bright with tears of happiness, “Oh, I tell you, I’ve missed my television. Time you get to my age, everybody dies on you, you know. Or else they’re old and crippled up like me and can’t go anywhere without a wheelchair and a nurse to push it and a tank of oxygen standing by. It gets lonesome.”
Dave remembered Max Romano again, and changed the subject. “What did you learn from nosing around the neighborhood?” he said.
Her wrinkle-webbed face went blank. “About what?”
“Did anybody see who entered Barney Craig’s house yesterday afternoon?”
“Oh, that.” She twisted out a cigarette, and right away lit another from a crumpled paper matchbook that advised her to enroll in classes that would teach her to drive a truck. EARN BIG MONEY/BE YOUR OWN BOSS. She pretended to study the printing for a moment, then looked at him slyly, and grinned with her snaggly teeth. “You thought I forgot, didn’t you?”
“You’re pretty good at teasing,” Dave said.
“Used to drive the boys crazy with it,” she said. “My mama said if I didn’t stop, none of ’em would marry me.” She chuckled and drank some coffee. “And Mama was right—none of ’em did.” She reached suddenly across the tabletop and squeezed his hand. “I shouldn’t tease you about the TV set. Thank you. It was you that sent it, wasn’t it?”
“You’re welcome,” Dave said. “What did you learn?”
“It was a feller dressed like a jungle fighter, ran up on the porch and straight inside, middle of the afternoon.”
“Your witness didn’t recognize him?”
Fern Casper shook her head. “Might have been any one of them from over at Hetzel’s—that’s how she put it.”
“Did she hear the shots?”
“She did, but she was in the bathroom by then, didn’t know where they came from. Didn’t figure it was him. He didn’t have a gun with him.”
“He didn’t need one, did he?” Dave said. “Barney has guns enough for a small army in that house.”
“I’ve heard that.” She nodded.
“She didn’t see him leave, then?” Dave said.
“His car was gone, time she looked again.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“Little gray one. Common. She says its the kind you get when you rent one at an airport.” She peered at Dave through the smoke. “That any help to you?”
“She didn’t say whether he was tall or short, fat or thin, young, old?”
Fern Casper smiled again, proud of herself. “I figured you’d want to know that. So I asked her.” The smile faded. “But all she said was, average, nothing special.”
“Could he have been black?”
She eyed him, startled. “You talking about Ralph Alexander? No, he drives a red car. Something new and fancy, English, somebody said.” She waited, and when Dave didn’t comment, she added, “You can’t tell what color somebody is when they wear those helmets.”
“Where had you seen his car before?” Dave said.
“Over there,” she said. “At Barney’s. Monday morning.”
11
“HOW IN HELL DID you find a witness?” Claude Rose said. He sat at a gray metal desk in his glass-partitioned office at the Fortuna County sheriff substation, ate an Egg McMuffin, and drank coffee out of a paper cup printed with yellow arches. “Me and Underbridge asked every householder on that street. Going in, I knew we wouldn’t get noplace. Barney’s Hetzel’s ma
n—and Hetzel’s got everybody scared.”
“I used a technique I learned in World War Two. I traded cigarettes for information.”
The goose-necked man stared. “You’re kidding.”
“A little old lady trying to live on Social Security,” Dave said. “Harmless. She’d get the gossip if I asked her to and I asked her to and she did. I doubt you’ll get out of her who the witness was, but does it matter?”
“Doesn’t seem to,” Rose said, “not much.” He wiped his mouth with a tiny paper napkin, crumpled the napkin, the sandwich wrapper, and the paper sack the sandwich had come in, and dropped these into a wastepaper basket. He asked, “Anything interesting in it?”
“When I went to see Hetzel last night,” Dave said, “a gray compact was parked in his driveway.”
“A zillion cars like that.” Rose shrugged. From a desk drawer he took a pipe. An old suede tobacco pouch lay on the desk. He took off it the large paper clip that held it shut—the zipper had evidently given up—and poked shag into the pipe’s scorched bowl. He lit the pipe with a long lick of flame from a throwaway lighter. Aromatic smoke drifted in the office air. “And he was dressed in camouflage and a helmet? Might have been anybody? Might have been Barney, then, Brandstetter.”
“Did you check? Was he in L.A. on Sunday?”
Rose ducked his head in a nod and smiled a smug little smile. “He was up there, all right. Receipts on all them illegal guns and bullets I seized out of the cupboard where the boy hid show that. He took delivery on ’em on Sunday, drove ’em down in his truck.”
“What’s he want with them?” Dave said.
“Hell, they ain’t his. Barney won’t talk. Ain’t said one word, not even to his lawyer. But the way I figure, he was just holding ’em till Hetzel could take ’em off his hands. Once Hetzel would have had Barney deliver the stuff to him direct. But he’s cagy, now. Lutz, the sheriff here before me, he looked the other way, and Hetzel laughed in my face at first, but I put a stop to those hoodlums of his going around town armed, and he won’t warehouse guns and ammunition with me watching. He claims he’s a big patriot, and I’m impeding the defense of this country from enemies—”
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning: 11 (The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries) Page 11