Twining made a Who-knows? gesture with one hand. “She’s one of those people who think insurance is a ghoul’s game.” He looked at me squarely and added, “Even stone-fox widows can be a little nuts.”
I ignored it; there was nothing to be gained in challenging him again. “Did you talk to her after that?”
“Once. To see if maybe she’d changed her mind. She wouldn’t even let me in the house.”
“So you haven’t told her about Intercoastal bringing in an investigator.”
“Not my place. Besides, Fujita said I should keep it confidential. You going to see her?”
“As soon as I can.”
“How about if I go out there with you, pave the way—”
“Not necessary. All I need is directions to her home.”
He provided them, and we both came up out of our chairs as if some kind of bell had gone off. No handshake this time, no parting words — both of us anxious for me to be gone. At the door I glanced back and he gave a little dismissive wave; his smile had slipped halfway into a sneer. What an asshole, his eyes said.
I went out thinking the same about him.
2
One of the good things about living in Greenwood was that no matter where you were located, even along the main road through the village, you felt you were in the country. Trees and ground cover grew in dense profusion: half the streets and side roads were shade tunnels created by the interlocking branches of oak, manzanita, eucalpytus, plum and wild cherry, other trees I couldn’t name. Busy six-and eight-lane Highway 280 was only a couple of miles away, but here the effect of quiet rusticity was so complete you might have been tucked away in a High Sierra backwater. To my mind, the best part was that it was still a natural habitat, not an architect’s wet dream like so many ritzy planned communities these days. The builders had taken advantage of the environment without any sort of destructive tampering. Peaceful coexistence between man and nature. Even developer in California, particularly the perpetrators of tracts thrown up on indiscriminately clear-cut and bulldozed land, in which every house looks the same and the overall effect is of a gigantic penal colony, ought to be force-fed the principles of the Greenwood method.
But even then, I thought in my cynical fashion, the greedy bastards still wouldn’t get it or give a damn if they did. They didn’t care where or how other people lived, as long as they didn’t have to be there among them. Half of the land-raping, build-’em-fast-and-loose developers in the Bay Area probably resided right here in woodsy, horsey, affluent Greenwood.
Whiskey Flat Road, along which I was driving as I indulged in these gloomy speculations, was a narrow lane about a third of a mile west of the village center, where the rolling land began to rise into steeper hills. There were homes on large parcels along both sides, a picture-postcard brook that kept meandering from one side of the road to the other through carefully constructed culverts. I passed gated drives, pastured horses, fences of wood and chainlink and stone and mossy brick, most of them overgrown with ivy or oleander shrubs. About half the houses were hidden, the rest partially so. Number 769 was more or less in the second category, set up on a little knoll on the west side and surrounded by trees and shrubbery so that you had a kind of filtered look at it even when you turned into the driveway. I couldn’t even be sure of its architectural style from down below, though most of the Whiskey Flat homes were variations of the sprawling, single-story ranch type.
The drive was gated, but the gate was open; I went on through, uphill past the first screen of trees. Ranch-style, all right, off-white with dark-green trim, tinted glass and brickwork, solar panels, a redwood side deck that wrapped around to the rear; the whole cradled by two huge heritage oaks. The garage was detached, off on the right. On the far side stood a smaller outbuilding with a slanted glass roof, its near wall two-thirds glass. Sheila Hunter’s potting studio.
I parked in a paved semicircle fronting the house. There were no other cars in sight, and when I rang the bell its chimes didn’t bring anybody. I wandered over to the outbuilding. The afternoon sun threw flamelight off the glass surfaces, lit up the interior in a glaring way. The effect, as I approached, was of a building on fire. The woman in white sitting in the glass-walled section, motionless with her head bowed, might have been a penitent in some weird religious ceremony — or a corpse prepared for cremation in a glass oven.
The illusion vanished as I reached an open door in the wood-walled section. Unpleasant image, given the circumstances, and I was glad to be rid of it. I had a clearer look at the woman now: she was seated on a stool before a potter’s wheel, her hands clasped between her knees, her back sharply bent forward and her head so far down I couldn’t see her face behind a hanging screen of dark hair. The white outfit was a man’s shirt and a pair of tailored jeans. No widow’s weeds for Sheila Hunter, if that was who she was. Not that clothes make a grieving spouse: you can mourn just as deeply naked or in the raiments of royalty.
I poked my head through the doorway. “Mrs. Hunter?”
No answer. She didn’t move, didn’t seem to have heard me. I thought: Why not just go and leave her alone? But it was reflexive and without conviction. Like it or not, the nature of my job is to bother people, too often at the worst of times. If I started giving in to my overload of empathy, I might as well get out of the investigation business.
I stepped inside. Storage shelves of pots, bowls, urns in odd, twisted shapes, some wearing bright green and blue glazes overlain with geometric black designs, others unglazed. Tubs of wet clay. Miscellaneous clutter. A doorway without a door gave access to the glass-walled section where the woman sat. In there I could see a kiln, squatty and much tinier than I’d imagined kilns to be, and the potter’s wheel and a long bench and not much else. I framed myself in the opening and said her name again. Still no response: she might’ve been in some kind of trance.
“Mrs. Hunter?” Louder, and a rap on the inner wall to go with it.
She came alive in a convulsive spasm, sitting bolt upright, the dark hair flying silkily as her head whipped around my way. For three or four seconds she gawped at me out of wide, bulging eyes — a look that made me recoil a little. It contained as much raw terror as I’ve ever seen in anyone’s face. Then she was on her feet, in a movement so sudden it toppled the stool: backing away, one hand up in front of her as if she were trying to ward off an attacker. The edge of the workbench stopped her. She reached down to grab it with both hands, steadying herself, still radiating fear at me. Her eyes had an unfocused sheen. She was breathing so rapidly I thought she might start to hyperventilate.
“Crazybone,” she said.
The word popped out in a thin, choked whisper. There was dread in it, and something else, a visceral emotion from deep within her. She seemed unaware of having spoken; it was a sleepwalker’s word, a nightmare word.
I said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hunter, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Oh, God.” Eyeblinks, several of them. A palpable shudder. And then she was herself again, the eyes focusing, some of the terror retreating. “Who are you?” she said in a stronger voice. “What do you want?”
“I called to you twice from outside, but you—”
“Who are you?”
I told her my name, that I represented Intercoastal Insurance. I had one of my cards in hand, but I was afraid of setting her off again by approaching her with it. Instead I reached over and laid it on the clay-stained bench.
“Jesus,” she said, “that fucking insurance policy.” Then she said, “You scared the hell out of me, coming in here like that. You’re trespassing.”
“I’m sorry.” I was tired of apologizing, but she was right on both counts. “Would you like me to come back at some other time?”
“Why? Why are you bothering me? I told Rich Twining I don’t want to file a claim.”
“Why not, Mrs. Hunter?”
“That’s my business. Who sent you here? What do you do for Intercoastal Insurance?”
&nbs
p; “I’m an independent investigator. I was hired to—”
“For God’s sake!” The fear was back, a lurking presence that made her pale gray-green eyes almost luminous. She raised her hands to cup both elbows, pulling in tight against herself as if she were cold. “Investigating what? Me?”
“Not exactly. If you’ll just let me explain—”
“I’m not going to file a damn claim. How much clearer do I have to make it to you people?”
“Would you turn down the fifty thousand dollars if it was given to you?”
“Given? What’re you talking about?”
“Intercoastal deeply regrets your loss.” Company line; I didn’t believe it any more than she did. “As a gesture of goodwill to you and your daughter, they’re willing to honor your husband’s policy without the usual paperwork.”
Incredulity crowded the fear aside. Twining had called her “drop-dead gorgeous,” and there was justification for that assessment. Flawless complexion as luminous as her eyes, perfect features, that dark silken hair, a long-legged, high-breasted figure. But there was also a worn, haggard quality that diminished and roughened the edges of her beauty. Part of it was grief, no doubt, but it seemed more ingrained than that. The fear, maybe, a physical corrosive if you live with it long enough.
Pretty soon she said, “Why would they do a thing like that?”
“A gesture of goodwill, as I—”
“Oh, bullshit. Insurance companies don’t give a damn about people. They don’t do anything unless there’s something in it for them.”
“All right, Mrs. Hunter, I’ll be candid. In return Intercoastal would ask the right to publicize their gesture, use your name in a promotional campaign.”
“So that’s it. My photograph, too, I suppose. And my daughter’s name and photograph.”
“With your permission, of course.”
“I won’t consent to anything like that. Never. What’s the matter with them? I just lost my husband, Emily lost her father, our lives are in a shambles. We’re not about to become shills for a fucking insurance company.”
“That’s not what—”
“That’s exactly what it is.” She was angry now. The anger was genuine, but I had the impression she was working it up, using it to hold the fear at bay. “They hired you to poke around in my life, my husband’s life, make sure we’re not ax murderers or sexual deviants or something else that would make them look bad if it got out. Isn’t that right?”
“There’s nothing in your background you’re ashamed of, is there?”
“Of course not!” She spat the words at me; the gray-green eyes flashed and sparked. “How dare you!”
“I didn’t mean that to be insulting.”
“I don’t care what you meant. It is insulting, this whole ploy is insulting. You get out of here right now. You leave my daughter and me alone, stay out of our lives. And you tell your bosses if they bother me again in any way I’ll sue them for harassment. You understand?”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”
“Now get off my property. And don’t come back.”
I didn’t argue with her; it would have been an indefensible argument even if I’d had the inclination. All I did was nod and walk out into the sunlight and tree shadows. She followed me as far as the studio entrance. When I glanced back after a time she was still standing there, still hugging herself as if there was no more warmth in the day and little enough in her body.
As I came around the nearest of the big oaks into the parking circle, I saw that my car had a visitor. A slender little girl of nine or ten stood on its near side, peering at it the way you would at a giant and unfamiliar bug.
She turned her head when she heard me approaching, and her posture changed into a kind of poised wariness like a cat’s when it sees a stranger — not startled, not afraid, but ready to run if the situation called for it. I smiled and slowed my pace, but if that reassured her any, she didn’t show it. Even though she was motionless, facing me as I came up, she still gave the impression of being on the verge of flight. No, not flight exactly. Up close, it seemed more like a readiness to retreat, to take refuge within herself. A defense mechanism of the shy, the vulnerable, the lonely.
“Hello,” she said. She made eye contact all right and her voice was cordial, but she seemed uncomfortable, as if she wished one of us wasn’t there. “Who are you?”
“Nobody special. Insurance man, I guess you could say.”
“Oh.”
“You’re Emily?”
She nodded. “Is my mom in her studio?”
“Yes. I tried to talk to her, but she told me to go away.”
A little silence. Then, “She doesn’t like it that Daddy took out a policy.”
“Why is that, Emily?”
“I don’t know. Did you know my father?”
“No, I never met him.”
“I miss him,” she said.
It might have been an awkward moment. What do you say to a ten-year-old who has suddenly and tragically lost her father? But her words were a simple, solemn declaration that required nothing of me, least of all pity. Emily Hunter had to be hurting inside, but her pain was a private thing to be shared with no one except her mother. She resembled Sheila Hunter physically — the same fine, dark hair and luminous eyes and willowy body — but I sensed an emotional stability in her that was lacking in her mother. Self-contained, better equipped to handle a crisis, mature beyond her years.
“What will you and your mom do now?” I asked. “Will you stay here, do you think?”
“It’s our home. We don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“No relatives back in Pennsylvania?”
“Where?”
“Pennsylvania. Harrisburg. Your folks are from there, aren’t they?”
“There’s just us,” Emily said, and I couldn’t tell if it was an evasion or not. “Except for Aunt Karen, but she—”
She broke off abruptly, as if she’d been about to say something she wasn’t supposed to. It prompted me to ask. “Where does your aunt Karen live?”
Emily shook her head: closed subject. “We have enough money so we’ll never have to worry. We don’t need the money from Dad’s insurance policy.”
Parroting words of her mother’s, I thought. “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “But people can always use a little extra, in case of emergency.”
“No. Mom said—”
“Emily!”
We both turned. Sheila Hunter was striding toward us, almost running. Even at a distance I could see the tenseness in her body, the anger that put splotches of dark blood in her face.
She came up fast, her breath rattling a little, and said, “Emily, go into the house,” without looking at her daughter. The glaring hostility was all for me.
“Mom, I—”
“Right now. You heard me, go.”
Emily aimed an unreadable glance at me, then went straight to the front door and inside. No hesitation, no backward look. As if she were escaping rather than obeying.
“You,” the woman said to me, the way you’d say it to a dog you’d just caught relieving itself in your front yard. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Your daughter was here when I came out. We were just talking.”
“You were trying to pump her for information. What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. What’re you afraid she might have told me?”
“Damn you! I told you to leave us alone! If you’re not gone in one minute I’ll call the police and report you. I mean it, one minute.”
I was in the car and rolling in less than thirty seconds. And bidding a none too fond good-bye to Greenwood ten minutes after that. End of a brief and unsatisfactory visit to the Peninsula’s lap of luxury. End of job, too, right? Sheila Hunter wouldn’t take Intercoastal’s fifty K if they brought it to her in small, unmarked, tax-free bills; Intercoastal could not capitalize on her and her daughter’s tragedy no matter how squeaky clean the Hunters might be; s
o there was no point in continuing my investigation. Go back to the office, write up a report for Tamara to feed into her computer and send to Ken Fujita, and then move on to the next case on the docket.
Except that I did not want to let go of this one just yet.
I kept thinking about the little inconsistencies and ambiguities that had cropped up during my conversations with Sheila and Emily Hunter. I kept getting mental glimpses of the woman’s fear and wondering what could generate such abnormal terror in a recent widow. And I kept hearing the word that had popped out of her when she’d first seen me, the nightmare word “crazybone.”
A reasonable amount of curiosity is a good thing for a private investigator to have; too much, though, becomes a drawback. I had way too damn much. Always had, always would. And along with it, an overactive imagination and a need to find answers. The combination had gotten me in trouble more than once, so you’d think I would have learned from past experience. You’d be wrong. In spite of myself I kept right on giving in to my weaknesses, making the same mistakes — doing it my way, just like Old Blue Eyes.
So I wouldn’t write a report to Ken Fujita yet. A little more digging first, maybe some answers that would satisfy me even if they were irrelevant to Intercoastal Insurance. And at my expense, since I couldn’t justify putting it on their tab.
Crazybone. Hell, it was a word you could use to describe my head.
3
On my way out of Greenwood I passed Anita Purcell Fine Arts. I would have gone in there to talk to the Purcell woman except that the place was dark and there was a Closed sign in the window. I swung into the lot long enough to read a smaller sign that said their hours were eleven to five, Thursday through Sunday.
In Redwood City I stopped at a service station and looked up the address for the Lukash Dental Clinic. It turned out to be an operation large enough to warrant its own building, a refurbished pile that took up a third of a block on a downtown side street. Busy place. The parking lot was packed, and inside, the reception area contained four uncomfortable-looking individuals waiting on chairs and two women working phones and appointment calendars behind a horseshoe desk. Other people wandered in and out while I was there, hygienists and dentists in white smocks and patients who were all done being drilled and scraped and polished and X-rayed. Nobody seemed particularly happy except the staff: they all smiled a lot, maybe to demonstrate that they practiced what they preached, since every one of them had very white teeth. Or maybe they were cheerful because they were integral cogs in what was obviously a successful assembly line production.
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