“What the hell’s so funny?”
“You took it away from her!” Kerry said, and let out a whoop that rattled the windows. “Oh my God! You took it away from her!”
“Ha, ha. Big joke.”
“What did she say when you tore it out of her hand? ‘Oh please, give it back to me?”’ Another whoop.
“She didn’t say anything, she just left, and I haven’t seen her since. Okay? You satisfied?”
Kerry giggled and snorted for another ten seconds or so before she got herself under control. “Oh Lord,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d seen the expression on your face when she grabbed you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it wasn’t funny at the time. It’s still not funny from where I stand.”
“Maybe not from where you stand, sweetie,” she said, “but from where I’m sitting I’ve got a different perspective on the thing. ” And she was off on another fit of cackling.
I glared at her.
Pretty soon she quit laughing altogether, wiped her eyes again, put on a sober expression, and looked back at my face for a change. “You weren’t even tempted, huh?” she said.
“Sure I was tempted. Who wouldn’t be tempted? My subconscious is probably still tempted, which is the reason for that stupid dream last night. ”
“You sound angry,” she said. “Are you angry?”
“Yeah, I’m angry. I didn’t want to tell you about that night with Jeanne Emerson; it’s embarrassing. And I don’t like having to defend myself all the time, either. I’m tired of being sniped at and treated like a villain.”
“Don’t start yelling again,” she said.
“I’m not yelling, damn it. I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to talk to you here, get some things out into the open.”
“What things?”
“You know what things. The way you’ve been acting, all this moody stuff. What’s bothering you, anyway?”
Her gaze shifted to her hands. “Nothing’s bothering me.”
“Bull. Come on, what is it?”
Headshake.
“Kerry, talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing you can do.”
Wetness glistened in her eyes again, and her face showed more of the strain. She was hurting, that was plain now. And it made me hurt too—chased away my mad and replaced it with tenderness. I moved over to the bed and sat down and put my arm around her.
“Babe, you’ve got to tell me what this is all about. It’s tearing both of us up, you keeping it bottled inside.”
Silence.
“Tell me,” I said. “Please.”
More silence. But then, just as I was about to coax her another time, she sighed and said, “Ray—it’s Ray.”
“Ray? You mean Ray Dunston?”
“Yes.”
Ray Dunston was her ex-husband, a criminal lawyer in Los Angeles. Kerry had divorced him a couple of years ago, because their marriage had gone stale and because she suspected he was seeing other women; that was the catalyst for her move north to San Francisco. She’d referred to him several times as a schmuck, and in my book that was what he was for letting her get away from him.
I said, “What about him?”
“He . . . I think he’s mentally ill.”
“What?”
“He gave up his law practice three months ago,” she said. “And sold his house and gave up liquor and meat and half a dozen other things, including sex. He’s become a religious convert.”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“I don’t think it’s a healthy thing, not in Ray’s case. He said he couldn’t bear to deal with drug peddlers and thieves and whores any more, but that’s not all of it. Something happened to him; something happened inside him. His new religion . . . it’s one of those off-the-wall Southern California cults. He chants, for God’s sake.”
“Chants?”
“Some sort of . . . I don’t know, what do you call it, a mantra? They make their people chant it forty or fifty times a day, no matter where they are. Ray . . . you never met him, you don’t know what he was like before. Pseudo-sophisticated, success-oriented, a real three-piecer. And now . . . his head is practically shaved, he wears poverty clothes, and he lives in a commune.”
“When did you see him?”
“He showed up at my place about a month ago,” she said. “Drove up from L.A. with another member of the commune. It was . . . unreal. Scary.”
“Why scary? Lots of men in their forties go through some sort of identity crisis.”
“No, it’s not like that. I told you—he’s changed. Completely. He’s not the same man I was married to.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you were scared. He’s not part of your life anymore.”
“That’s just it. He wants to be.”
She said that without looking at me. I used two fingers against her chin to lift and turn her head. “What do you mean, he wants to be?”
“He wants me again. As his wife. That’s part of this whole . . . this conversion of his. He’s decided he loves me and has to have me back.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “My God, can you see me living in a commune with a man who chants?”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him the truth—that he isn’t part of my life any longer, that he never can be again.”
“How did he take it?”
“Not very well. He wouldn’t accept it.”
“He didn’t get abusive or anything?”
“No. He was so calm it was . . . well, that’s what scares me. How calm he is. The way he looked at me. His eyes . . . that’s why I think something must have snapped in his mind.”
I said, “You think he’s dangerous?”
“No, he’d never hurt me. It’s just that . . .”
“Just that what?”
“He’s called me seven or eight times since his visit. No matter what I say he won’t listen, he won’t go away. He’s just ‘ .. there in my life again.”
“Change your phone number,” I said.
“All that’d do is bring him back to San Francisco. I can’t move on account of him. I won’t disrupt my life any more than it already has been.”
I was silent.
After a few seconds she said, “What are you thinking?”
I still didn’t say anything.
She said sharply, “You’re thinking maybe you should go down to L.A. and have a talk with him, tell him to leave me alone. Right?”
“What if I am? That’s what you want, isn’t it—for him to leave you alone?”
“Yes. But it wouldn’t do any good; it would only make things worse if he knew about you.”
“So you haven’t told him about us.”
“No, and I’m not going to. He wouldn’t listen to you in any case, you’d get angry and do or say something stupid, there’d be trouble of some kind . . . oh, God, that’s why I didn’t tell you about this before. I know you. I know how you brood about things, get them all blown out of proportion, and go off huffing and puffing and making blunders. ”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
“It’s the truth and you know it. You’re brooding right now. I can see it in your face.”
I started to say something angry—and swallowed it. She was right. But why the hell shouldn’t I be brooding? Ex-husband gone whacky and involved in some screwball cult—who the hell knew what might happen. It scared me, thinking about it. I loved her; if anything happened to her . . .
“You’ve got to promise me you won’t try to see or talk to him,” she said. “Will you promise me that?”
“How are you going to get rid of him, then?”
“I’ll find a way. It’s my problem.”
“It’s mine too—”
“It’s mine, dammit, don’t start in now, just don’t start in. I’ll find a solution to this, don’t you worry.”
“You’re worried. Look at yoursel
f.”
“I’ll get over that; talking about it’s made me feel better already. Now promise me you won’t interfere.”
“As long as he stays in L.A.—all right.”
“Even if he comes back to San Francisco. Promise me.”
“Kerry, don’t try to shut me out of this. I’m involved whether you want me to be or not. I—”
“I knew it,” she said, “I knew it, you big pigheaded Italian bastard!” and she began to bawl.
I sat there. Crying women unman me; two seconds after one starts in I feel awkward and helpless and I can’t think straight. All I was able to do, after a time, was to say, “Kerry, don’t cry, babe, don’t cry,” and to put my arms around her and pat her like some idiot trying to burp an infant. She kept on crying against my chest. I kept on murmuring and patting.
Then she shifted position and put her arms around me, and the crying became snuffling, and the snuffling slowly subsided. And then, to my amazement and probably to hers, she was kissing me and I was kissing her back, and other things were happening, and pretty soon there we were thrashing and humping and making noise like a couple of kids having their first big fling.
Yeah, I thought a while later, when we were both still and my head was more or less clear again. Today is definitely going to be a humdinger.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
While Kerry was showering I called Helen O’Daniel’s number again. Still nobody home. Jim Telford wasn’t available, either; he’d been in this morning, and now he was out again, and the deputy I spoke to didn’t know or wouldn’t say when he’d be back. I called the Northern Development offices. Nobody answered.
I looked up Shirley Irwin’s name in the local directory, found a listing, and dialed her number. She was home, at least, and she gave me the name of the firm’s lawyer, a man named Fulbright who had offices not far from the Sportsman’s Rest. He was also both O’Daniel’s and Munroe Randall’s private attorney, she said.
I asked her how Treacle was holding up, and she said she hadn’t seen him since yesterday afternoon and he’d still been nervous and worried then. I said, “How did it go with Lieutenant Telford?”
“Not very well. Mr. Treacle kept demanding police protection.”
“Did he get it?”
“The lieutenant said he’d see what could be done. But Redding isn’t in his jurisdiction; it would have to be arranged with the municipal police.”
“Uh-huh.”
She said then that she was afraid Treacle was becoming paranoid. “I asked him if he wanted me to open the office today, and he said no. I’m to say he’s out of town if anyone contacts me. He doesn’t want to see anyone.”
Except me, I thought. I thanked her and rang off.
Kerry was out of the shower and half-dressed by this time. I took my own shower, using cool water in deference to my burns. I put on shirt and slacks, and we went out for a quick breakfast at the place next door. It was another hot day, with scattered clouds but no sign of any more thunderstorms. The air had a vaguely dusty smell again, as if the rain had never happened.
When we got back, there was a message that Treacle had called again. I girded myself and returned his call. He was calmer than he had been yesterday, but the paranoia was there in his voice and in what he had to say. I placated him by saying that I was making headway on the investigation, which was neither a lie nor the truth, and that the authorities were making progress too. Then I asked him if he knew about Helen O‘Daniel’s affair with Paul Robideaux. He said no, sounding astonished. He also seemed surprised when I told him about O’Daniel’s apparent decision to file for divorce.
He wanted me to come over to his condo later, fill him in on the details of my investigation; he meant he wanted me to hold his hand. I said I would, lying in my teeth, and put an end to the conversation.
I left Kerry in the room—and in a relatively good mood; she said she was going for a drive to Whiskeytown—and took my car to the low-slung, modern building that housed the offices of Fulbright and Gault, Attorneys at Law. George Fulbright turned out to be a youngish, solemn, saturnine man with a precise mustache and a precise way of speaking. He was willing to talk, the circumstances regarding his two former clients being what they were; I’ve never met a lawyer who didn’t like to talk, once you got him primed.
He told me that the personal assets of Munroe Randall were “substantial,” although he wouldn’t name a figure, and that the personal assets of Frank O‘Daniel had dwindled in recent months and were now “on the smallish side.” He said that yes, both men had made out wills. Randall’s estate went to his mother and two siblings back in Kansas; no one locally received a bequest. As for the O’Daniel estate, such as it was, Helen O’Daniel was not the principal inheritor. In fact, she stood to inherit only the fifty percent the California community property law entitled her to.
“Who gets the other fifty percent?” I asked.
“A brother in Washington state,” Fulbright said, “and a sister in Alturas. Evenly divided between the two.”
“Why did he disinherit his wife? Was that provision in his will all along?”
“No. Mr. O’Daniel asked me to rewrite the will several months ago, when it became apparent to him that his marriage had failed.”
“Then he was going to file for divorce?”
“Oh yes. The last time I spoke to him, two days ago, he asked me to prepare the papers.”
“Why did he wait until now? Why didn’t he ask you to file months ago?”
“I gathered it was a difficult decision for him.”
“He didn’t say anything about financial reasons?”
“Not to me, no.”
“Do you know if he told Mrs. O’Daniel about his intentions?”
“Yes, he said he had.”
“Did she know he’d changed his will?”
“I believe she did.”
“Then she also had to know that if he died, and she was still married to him, she’d be responsible for his corporate debts if Northern Development went under. That’s the law, isn’t it?”
“Why yes, it is.”
“And the company is likely to go under?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said. Meaning yes, it was likely. “But I don’t see . . .”
I let him not see; I didn’t say anything. I was thinking: Well, there goes her motive for killing him. She got her fifty percent whether he was alive or dead—fifty percent of not much—and that was all she got. And if he was alive, she’d be better off: just wait for the divorce to go through and she could go her merry way without worrying about his business debts.
There went any profit motive for killing Randall, too, because he also hadn’t left her anything in his will. Helen O’Daniel may have been attractive and desirable and hell on wheels in the sack, but she wasn’t fooling any of the men in her life. Not where it counted, anyway.
Still, there was her probable affair with Randall and her probable presence at his house the night he died. And there was Paul Robideaux, too. She may not have murdered her husband or her lover, but it seemed a good bet she knew something about all that was going on.
So from Fulbright’s office I drove up to Sky Vista Road on the chance she might finally have come home. She had, but she was on her way out again: when I came in sight of the upper reaches of the O’Daniel house she was walking across from the stairs to where her yellow Porsche sat on the covered platform deck.
I veered onto the wrong side of the road and pulled up alongside her and stuck my head out of the window. “Hello, Mrs. O’Daniel. I’d like to—”
“You!” she said, and gave me a withering look and kept on going onto the deck.
Well, hell, I thought. I put the transmission in reverse and backed up until I had the car angled across behind the Porsche, blocking it in. When I got out she was standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring.
“What’s the big idea?” she said. “Get out of my way!”
“Not until
we talk.”
“I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”
“Why not? You finally get in touch with Paul Robideaux?”
She had, because she said immediately, “So Paul and I have been seeing each other, so what? That’s our business, nobody else’s.”
“Not unless it has some bearing on your husband’s death.”
“Well, it hasn’t. Paul didn’t have anything to do with it and neither did I. It was an accident.”
“Was it?” I said.
“Yes, damn you. Why are you trying to make something more out of it?”
“Because I think he was murdered,” I said flatly. “Where were you Saturday night, Mrs. O’Daniel?”
“I wasn’t at Shasta Lake, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Where, then? With Robideaux?”
“. . . Yes, if you must know.”
“He told me you weren’t. He said he was home alone.”
“You’re lying,” she said. “He never told you that. He was with me, you understand?”
“Is that what you told Lieutenant Telford?”
“It’s the truth. Of course it’s what I told him.”
So she and Robideaux had finally got together and cooked up a story for mutual protection. That was how it figured; if they had been together on Saturday night, Robideaux would have been quick to tell me so. But the lie didn’t have to mean anything; innocent people do that kind of thing too.
I said, “How come you didn’t call Robideaux as soon as you heard about your husband’s death? I took him by surprise when I saw him yesterday, and that was hours after the lieutenant notified you.”
Hesitation. Then she said, “I . . . was upset, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. And there were arrangements to make, the funeral . . . ”
“Where were you last night? I tried calling you three or four times—”
Her anger flared up again. “That’s none of your goddamn business. I’ve had enough of this. Poor Frank getting killed, prowlers, and now you again; I’ve had enough!”
“Prowlers?” I said.
“Yes, prowlers. My house was broken into last night while I was out. ”
“Was anything stolen?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t find anything missing. Whoever it was ransacked Frank’s den and then he must have got scared off.”
Nightshades (Nameless Detective) Page 13