A letter has numerous clues even before you open it. The return address, the quality of the envelope, the postmark, the stamps. “He was his father, I suppose.” Richard Howell talking about his brother, Henry, vis-a-vis Kirk. The sudden, spectacular breakup of Henry’s marriage to Ava. Kirk looking for Hardcastle. Kirk and Hardcastle, both rare blood types. Part of me, not enough, had known this when I had seen that Post-it note about rare blood types. It was a lack of mental bravery that held me up.
I talked earlier about how powerful the mind is. Mine had just suggested that Hardcastle was Kirk’s real father. Could this be right? Once articulated, the idea had an instant familiarity. Part of me had known all this time. Known and looked away.
CHAPTER 2
I was driving in my Detroit shrug of a rental, an anonymous unmarked cop-mobile. Our former manager was looking after my red Trans Am. Sometimes it’s important to play against type—except that play was over. I still owned that car, though.
I was trying to focus on Ava Howell, who I would be seeing in less than an hour. It was one of those cloudless California days where there’s a background hiss as if ear to shell, that vague pressure, the contained hum of the world going about its business. A blue sky as direct as a spiked volleyball, giving your breath a hitch. The stands of trees as I wound up and over Mount Tamalpais, passing the turn-off to the summit I had taken two days ago, the occasional vistas of the Pacific as I wound down the other side towards Stinson Beach. There was a point during my descent where the radio was playing “Brown Eyed Girl” and I got that feeling of easy freedom that you only ever get on the road in the States. That feeling of No particular place to go. Just then those dark, wet machinations on that far island may as well have been Act IV of Macbeth.
Stinson Beach is an enclave over the hill from the peopled part of Marin County. It’s a community of well-off but faded hipsters and bohemians. Retired stockbrokers reconnecting with the sixties. You walked around the small houses in Pacific light, flip-flops and blue jeans. T-shirt or something more tropical. Light too bright, even in fog. The rollers constantly twisting and tumbling and getting up for more. The casually predatory hawks gliding in the steep hills that the town backed up against.
I coasted to a stop against the hedge below Ava Howell’s house. It was clad in sun-raw salt-split shingles, a tub of geraniums on the concrete slab of her front porch. It was a house with its back to the street, front to the ocean. The knocker was a worn, bronze dolphin.
She opened the door unquestioningly. Her eyes held mine for a long beat, held that look, then swept me into her living room with a graceful flourish. Ava Howell was average height, thin, with frizzy hair once blond, now a dull light sheen like constantly waxed and polished wood, maybe maple. A faded, freckled face, rounded, with cheekbone to spare. She had languid movements. Posed as if camera-aware. Her voice was husky and droll, wryly challenging. Sunset Boulevard meets the beach. Her accent so American to me now. I wanted “dahlings” and “cahn’ts.”
“So how was England?” She made it sound a million miles away.
“Cold. Interesting.”
Apart from the funeral, I hadn’t seen her for several years. I remembered the first time I met her, backstage. She talked drolly about “my son and his noise.” Not disapprovingly; her take—boys will be boys until they grow up. If they ever do. She had that rare female talent of lightly disparaging you as a male while still being on your side.
It was dark and cool in her living room. The sliding glass doors gave on to a garden, the wood around the frame warped, needing paint. Outside, an overhead trellis trailed vines. Tubs of dormant flowers. A pile of driftwood.
“No ocean view I’m afraid.”
“I hear it though.”
“Yes, it sounds like the Hollywood Freeway. We lived near it once.”
“That’s not very poetic.”
“No, I suppose it’s not.” She waited for a long second. “He is dead, you know.”
I nodded. “There’s different levels of knowing that, I guess. Being in London, seeing his hotel, a few places he visited, his last place…that’s one level. Yet there are others where I don’t believe it at all. Call it poetic.”
“He is dead. Gone. What are you trying to do?”
“He never took drugs. It makes no sense, the way he died.”
She was sitting on the edge of her sofa, formally straight. Now she stiffened even more, gave a change-of-tone, leveling look to me. “Kirk took our divorce hard. Surprisingly hard, really. Oh, I’m not saying it should have been a minor annoyance; of course it’s tough.”
This would have coincided with his ever more erratic and unpredictable behavior in the band. I’d read it as boredom; I had always thought of Kirk as unflappable. Suddenly it was obvious how strongly the two events were connected, that divorce and Kirk’s slide into an undependable, sometimes-lead guitarist.
“He was a sensitive child. We made the mistake of allowing him to skip a grade. Intellectually he was more than ready; but not physically or emotionally. Children can be cruel.”
I didn’t know what to say. Kirk as a sensitive child?
She said, “I suppose men develop a hard shell to protect their sensitivity. It’s how they survive. Our divorce may have cracked that.”
“He saw himself as a doctor. He went on and on about the bad effects of drugs…”
“Jim.” She held my name out as you’d hold a diamond, examining it for flaws. “He’s gone. What else besides that matters? God knows I have trouble with that terrible fact every minute of every day, but I feel I’m on the road to acceptance. You…you’re still in denial.”
“I’m not denying he’s dead, Mrs. Howell, just how he died. It’s like…JFK. There’s no conspiracy theory I’ve heard of that says he’s still alive.”
“Is that why you went to London, some conspiracy theory?”
“London has been interesting. In fact, I’ve made some progress there.”
She gave me a look that mixed “good for you” with “I don’t want to hear this.”
“I had forgotten that a large part of Kirk’s background is from there,” I continued. After all, Henry Howell was English.
She wasn’t going to help me, yet she wasn’t fighting me off, either.
“Of course this is obvious. When you’re over there it becomes more obvious.”
She remained quiet, a serious set to her mouth, as if she knew what was coming and was resolved to take it.
“I feel uncomfortable with this next part, but I think it’s right that you know what I know.” I looked over to her, sitting on her sofa, still on its edge, stiff. Maybe she knew what was coming.
“I’ve met many interesting people in London who were in some way connected to Kirk.”
“I imagine most countries have their share of interesting people.”
“One of the people I met was Mr. Charles Hardcastle.”
She gave me a weak smile, proud of my efforts, but from far away.
“I’m pretty sure that’s why Kirk went over there. Unfortunately, Mr. Hardcastle can no longer tell me the story.”
“Charles is dead, too?” It was a quick moment which she sealed with a prim, so-there smile. She was giving me this, or was being generous after the fact, having blurted out that she knew Hardcastle.
“No.” I explained his current condition. I told her about his mental deterioration, but not how soon the lights would go out in his world.
“Did Kirk know?” she asked. That “know” jolted through me, provoking the hairs on my neck. “Know” and “Hardcastle” had to mean my conjecture was right; Hardcastle was Kirk’s biological father. My eyes sought hers. She met them with a light yet direct smile. Yes.
I hesitated; I suspected that, yes, he did know. It was only a hunch though.
She said, “I guess I meant to tell him.” Then she excused herself, leaving me to reflect. I sat in the gloomy room alone with my crime, a
form of grave-robbing. So much of my time in London had been taken up with this amateur narrative, built up tentatively, then solidified into theories, deductions, and working hypotheses. They buzzed around the racetrack in my head, more like yearning dreams than durable explanations, so tenuous I was loathe to risk them to outside scrutiny. Now a first demonstrable success: Charles Hardcastle was Kirk’s biological father. Yet, also a feeling of the too-private, knowing something so sensationally fundamental about my best friend that he may not have known himself.
Ava Howell was back a moment later with a glass of lemonade. A waft of her perfume washed over me. Honeysuckle. She placed the glass in front of me as if some shabby commercial transaction, an exiled queen down to waiting tables.
“I hardly knew the man.” She watched in a maternal way as I took a sip of lemonade. “We never talked about his career. Never talked about him. His interests, yes. Ideas. Books. Passions. I’ve never known a man less inclined to talk about himself.”
I wondered how they had connected. She didn’t seem all that intellectual.
“We met over orchids.” Could she read my mind? “One of his passions. He had so many. He was standing in front of one, standing for a long time. Frozen, really. This was in Hawaii; I was escaping from Henry’s conference. There I was, like some insect finding my way into his web.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was all too personal.
“He was so, so…amoral? If that’s the right word. I don’t mind confessing that a large part of this, this connection, was that I wanted a child; prove that I could, that too. Those long years with Henry never amounted to anything. And here was a man brought to a standstill by a flower.”
Ava Howell stood up, a compact formality in her movements. “You question everything. I can’t say that’s wrong; Just…just don’t sit in judgment. There are parts of any life that require acceptance.”
“Mrs. Howell. Kirk was my best friend. How could I question the way he was brought into this world?”
She smiled here, a smile you wanted to stretch out in cat-like warmth of the sun after a long winter. “Then maybe you should be the same about the way he left it.”
We were both standing now. She held back from letting me go. “Well, I guess you know what I have for you?” she said.
I nodded. It would be Kirk’s custom Hardtail Strat. No way would I ever play it.
I got in my cop car deluxe and went for a long drive up the coast. I needed time alone with these revelations. That I was right about Hardcastle as Kirk’s father; that I had proven some competence as a shamus. And most surprising of all, that Kirk was a sensitive child. How, over the ten years we had known each other he had kept that side away from me. All the things I had chosen not to see. A comment he had made at our final meeting came back to me. “It’s gotten so I don’t know who I am anymore.” It was all there, if I had wanted to see it. Now, driving seemed pointless. What I really needed was someone to talk to. The closest, even though far away geographically and possibly romantically, was Sula. I thought she might fade in the bright and familiar California light, and she did fade, but in the way the immediacy of a play quiets at intermission. Part of that quieting is from the knowledge that the second half is just beyond this lobby bar, that you will be returning to your seat, that the magic—only if this is a good play—will wrap you in its spell once more.
Part III
LONDON AGAIN
CHAPTER 1
I took the late flight, 6:00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Soon our half-empty plane was flying into the glare of New Year’s Day, bypassing drunken celebrations like stepping over a passed-out partier on your exit from the usual festivities.
I came through the barrier into the misplaced daylight of our new palindromic year. So bright when California slept on in darkness (well, many still up tottering in their party hats) like the other side of the moon, while here all was light and action.
I had three days before Sula returned from Athens. It was that dead, hung-over time after the non-stop partying of the holidays. New year, old excesses. It was no time for visits; no one was at work. I called Francine McLain—I had her correct number from Iken now—to set up a meeting. Her cell phone was switched off; probably still away.
I had plenty of time to contemplate my life here, why I had returned. All these leads to follow up. I had Francine McLain from Moira; the lawyer, Lucian Gee, from Hardcastle’s medical file. Hardcastle himself, back at Sunnydown Hills, struggling on. The mystery of my father’s poems. Kirk’s alleged drug use. The case of the missing guitar. The unstable particle of Sula; Natalie and our contract. My success with Hardcastle’s connection to Kirk gave me a sense of competence, and with that a temporary detective license. Maybe I had been lucky; maybe it was more than that. Might as well push it.
I tried to kill my new resolve with counterarguments. Claudia was none of my business. Kirk was dead; nothing I did over here would alter that gnawing fact. Hardcastle was intriguing, but the connection was now established. He was close to passing; what more did I need to know? Next more general arguments. You’re a rock singer, not some jaded ex-cop pointing his trench coat at people. You’re in London—you barely know how to negotiate your way in this society, let alone untangle foreign motives, passions, and interests. It was a strong case; I wavered. But Francine McLain and Lucian Gee were enticing leads, easily followed up. There was that airport hug with Natalie, that tacit agreement to help her. I was working backwards from a decision some part of me had already made. No more games, no turning back. I had a case to solve. I would bend my will to doing just that. So there, a decision, done. Except for one part: Estelle. Natalie had assured me she was on that case. She had an informant from the 5B annex to her party. “Trust me, I’m working on it,” she had said with that knowingly wry smile. Translation: that guitar was to Natalie as Claudia should be to me.
Decision made, it’s best to plunge straight into it. It was right there, calling to me; a plunge down two flights of stairs.
After her apocalyptic party, Natalie no longer had the keys to 4B. I did, from supervising the clean-up work. I had no desire whatsoever to go through Claudia Steyning’s underwear drawer. Nevertheless, I went down to 4B early Thursday afternoon when most of Onslow Mansions were off somewhere warm. Keyless Natalie was up in Leeds visiting her paternal grandparents.
The design was the same as my flat, only softer, muted—familiar from that time I had visited about the music. Here was the same three-piece combination of matching sofa and armchairs in pale yellow, pleated skirts around their legs. Nothing hiding behind those curtains though. The smell of fresh paint competed with a mustiness I remembered from the first day at my flat. The thick, off-white wall-to-wall carpeting had burn marks and stains. One piece had been cut out.
I started with the usual idle guest maneuver, scanning her books. There were two floor-to-ceiling shelves of them. I couldn’t divine any system except one held Iken-published books.
The other was an eclectic mix. A top shelf held old college books, an anthology of English essays, the requisite Middlemarch, well-thumbed and underlined. Inside its front cover was a slow, deliberate version of her name in purple ink, Claudia Cotterell, at this point. I wondered if with painstaking work I could assemble those highlighted lines into a portrait of a lady—that was there, too.
There was a half-shelf of travel books. Vietnam, Cuba, South Africa, Australia, Peru. I sampled a random few. It was clear from the dog-eared pages, the annotations and the asterisked restaurants that there were trips behind each one.
Claudia used old tickets as bookmarks. Mainly plays, but one rail ticket, too. I could tell she had been to the National Theatre on Friday, 13 February 1998 to see Flight by Bulgakov, and could probably assume that her reading of The Poisonwood Bible was around the same time. Or that she bought something called a ‘cheap day return’ to Newport and did that return journey on Friday, 7 July 2001 while reading, or soon to read Underworld by Don
de Lillo. The Newport trip, however, was the only marker from the same year as her disappearance.
I did a similar review of her music collection, first looking for our album. I couldn’t find it. Either Natalie had taken it or, more likely, I had dreamt up the entire scene. The rest was unexceptional. The classics were mainly compilations. Classics for Lovers; World’s Greatest Arias; Baroque by Candlelight. A few Mozart and Beethoven warhorses. The complete 3-CD box set of Pelléas and Mélisande. I imagined it a lover’s gift to accompany a trip to the opera. Other albums, but a pronounced lack of rock and roll. At the bottom I found a mirror image of her travel shelf. The songs of Peru, Indian ragas, South African Township music. Buena Vista Social Club. It was the desultory, un-themed collection of someone not all that interested in music.
The bookshelf in her bedroom made no sense either. A general theme was references, dictionaries, thesauruses, two style guides, Fowler. Also modern fiction. Her recent reading, I guessed. My eye fell to a travel guide of Barcelona. It looked out of place. All other guides were in the living room. Claudia operated by country, not city; far away rather than close. I flicked the pages. No bookmarks. Some dog ears; Park Guell, clubs in La Ribera, a section on outdoor restaurants. Was that writing I saw in the right margin? I went back over the middle-back section and eventually found it. A note in a man’s handwriting, English with its vertical pitch and looping letters.
Gentle lashes my ass!!!
It was written in bold, confident, dark blue ink on a page about moderately expensive restaurants. You had to turn the book ninety degrees to read it. The lashes had been underlined with the right end splintered into a thin spray of lines. Black ink this time. I didn’t find any other notes in the book unless you counted a teardrop of red wine on a page halfway through the history of the city.
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