With an Extreme Burning

by Bill Pronzini

  When Cecca entered the room, Amy used the CD remote to lower the volume. “There were a couple of calls.”

  “From?”

  “Mrs. Garstein. Message on the machine.”

  “She didn't have any news?”

  “No, there's nothing new.”

  “Who else? Owen, I'll bet.”

  “Yeah. I talked to him.”

  “What did he want this time?”

  “Oh, you know, he's worried about us. He wanted to come over.”

  “You didn't tell him he could?”

  “No. I said we didn't want company tonight.”

  Owen. Calling up, hanging around, fussing … part of the plan to torment her? And I let him into my bed, she thought, I let him into my body.…

  “Mom? You okay?”

  “Yes. Does it seem cold in here to you?”

  “Not really. Where did you and Dix go?”

  Cecca hesitated. “The police station.”

  “Why? What's going on? If it's something real bad, I have a right to know what it is.”

  Yes, you do, Cecca thought. She couldn't keep it from her, couldn't protect her that way. It was time Amy knew exactly what they were up against. “All right, baby,” she said. “Let me make myself a drink and then we'll talk.”

  While she was in the kitchen, Amy shut off the CD player. The new silence beat against her eardrums, creating the same kind of pressure as the rock music. She sat on the couch with her drink, rested her free hand on Amy's arm.

  And as she told her, looking into her daughter's wan face, she was aware of a small, mean emotion that seemed to have crawled out of the core of her. A mixture of relief and gratitude that made her hate herself because of what it revealed about Francesca Bellini.

  She was relieved, grateful, that it was Ted and Bobby and Kevin Harrell who had been killed and burned, Eileen who lay shattered in the Lakeport hospital—them and not Amy, not her.

  FIFTEEN

  The first day of the fall semester was an ordeal.

  In the past he had always enjoyed it—all the activity on campus, the new faces, the fresh challenge of trying to cram familiar historical material into young minds that might, in a scant few cases, find it as exciting as he did. The prospect of facing this one had almost led him to call in sick that morning. But the need to occupy his time and his mind had been greater than his reluctance, and so he'd driven up to the university just as if this were another normal fall opening. He didn't regret the decision as the day unfolded. But getting through each segment was still a trial.

  Department faculty meeting first thing, at nine o'clock. Not much point to it, except that it allowed everybody to “get their game faces on,” as Elliot liked to put it. It also allowed Elliot to deliver, for the benefit of new faculty members—an associate professor of medieval studies this year—and any administration spies, his “department chair's motivational speech.” It was the same every semester; Dix could have recited parts of it verbatim: “History is holistic, involving humanity in all of its dimensions, interests, and activities, from the economic and political to the psychological and cultural. Therefore we're not only teaching our students history but encouraging them to reflect upon and analyze the interrelationship of ideas and material circumstances and of individual and group behavior as revealed in a wide range of human institutions and activities.” And so on, mining the same vein of bullshit.

  The meeting ended at nine-forty. Elliot caught up with him in the hall outside the lounge. “We've got time before your ten o'clock,” he said. “Let's have a quick chat in my office.”

  Elliot's office was as cluttered as his living room at home. Two shelves in his bookcase were devoted to extra copies of his own books, particularly the Fremont Older biography, in case any of his students or an enterprising faculty member wanted to purchase one for purposes of edification and/or brown-nosing. Once they were inside he shut the door, leaned a hip against a corner of his desk, and ran a hand through his shaggy hair.

  “I wasn't sure you'd be here today,” he said.

  “Why wouldn't I be here?”

  “What happened to the Harrell family at Blue Lake. Close friends of yours, weren't they?”

  “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “I knew Ted Harrell. He mentioned you a couple of times. Hell of a thing, a freak accident like that. He seemed like a decent guy.”

  “He was,” Dix said. “I didn't know you knew him.”

  “Not socially. He was my dentist.”

  Dix nodded. He couldn't think of anything to say.

  Elliot said, “I was watching you in the lounge. You holding up all right?”

  “More or less. Do I look that bad?”

  “Not bad, just off balance. Anybody would be under the circumstances. First your wife, then one of your best friends and his family … Christ, you've had a summer.”

  “If you're worried about my ability to teach, you needn't be. Teaching, hard work, is still what I need right now.”

  “Oh, hell, that isn't it. It's you I'm concerned about.”

  “I'm coping, Elliot, really.”

  Elliot fished a package of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket, set fire to one, and blew smoke toward the open window beside the desk. “How about those calls? Any more since we talked?”

  “Calls? Oh … no.”

  “Changing your number took care of it, then.”

  “I guess it must have.”

  “The asshole hasn't harassed you in any other way?”

  Dix felt edgy, uncomfortable. He had no desire to talk about this, any of this—to Elliot or to anyone except Cecca and St. John. He said, “No. None.”

  “Well, at least that's one cross you don't have to keep bearing.” Elliot blew more smoke, coughed, scowled at the cigarette. “I hate these things,” he said, and crushed it out in his overflowing ashtray. “You think the patch works?”

  “Patch? Oh, the nicotine patch.”

  “You know anybody who's quit with it?”

  “Not personally. But it's supposed to be effective.”

  “Only trouble is, you need to see a doctor to get it.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “With me it is. I hate doctors, too.” Elliot glanced at his watch. “Listen, Dix, I just wanted you to know you've got a friend if you need one. Sympathetic ear, somebody to get drunk with if you think that might help … whatever I can do.”

  “I appreciate that, Elliot.”

  “Don't just appreciate it. Take me up on the offer. Balboa may not be much of a university, but we take care of our own.”

  He had three classes that day; Tuesdays and Thursdays were the heaviest in his schedule. His ten o'clock was 453, The Age of Jackson. He got through that one quickly. Orientation lecture—what the students could expect to learn in the class, what was required of them, which textbooks they would need—and then an early dismissal. The new young faces that stared back at him were just that, faces; he didn't even try, as he usually did on the first day, to identify the few among them who were the most alert, the history majors and probable honor students, and to learn their names first.

  An hour in his office afterward, trying to concentrate on his syllabus. The same old questions kept intruding: Who? Why? It wasn't Sid Garstein; Sid and Helen had spent all of Saturday with their daughter and her family in San Francisco. It apparently wasn't George Flores or Jerry Whittington; George had been with a client in Santa Rosa and Jerry had taken Margaret Allen on a wine-tasting tour of the Napa Valley. Only Owen Gregory and Tom Birnam had no one to vouch for their whereabouts. Owen claimed he'd spent Saturday alone working in his darkroom and watching tapes of old movies. Tom had spent the morning at Better Lands and then claimed to have driven down to the Black Point marina and taken his sailboat out on San Pablo Bay—alone. He hadn't gotten home until eight-thirty, late for dinner. A problem with one of the boat's sails was his explanation.

  Owen or Tom, narrowed down to those two. Or was it? Dix kept worryi
ng that he and Cecca were making a huge mistake in focusing on their close friends. The tormentor could be someone else they knew. Someone here at the university, for instance—

  I knew Ted Harrell. He mentioned you a couple of times. Hell of a thing, a freak accident like that.

  Elliot?

  Strange guy in some ways. Loner, chased women, had a high opinion of himself, held attitudes that were just a little off center. Could he have seduced Katy? Maybe. Glib, good-looking in a bearish way—the combination of intelligence and animal maleness might have appealed to her. Did he know Cecca? Yes, probably; it was Better Lands that was selling his house for him, wasn't it? Had he ever been inside her house? Could have been invited at some point, for some reason.

  But none of that meant a damned thing without a motive. What possible reason could Elliot Messner have to want to murder people he knew only casually? It kept coming back to motive in every case, though. Owen, Tom, Elliot, all the men he knew … there was simply no imaginable motive for any of them. And yet it was happening, so there had to be one.

  Just before noon he walked over to the cafeteria on the Commons. He felt he should eat, even though he wasn't hungry, but he would have been better off staying in his office. Four professors, two TAs, and one of his spring-semester honor students took the opportunity to flood him with condolences on the loss of his wife. He fled back to Guiterrez Hall with his roast beef platter barely touched.

  Civil War and Reconstruction at one o'clock, an aimless tramp around campus, and then American Social History at three. Brief orientation lectures and early dismissal in each of those classes, too. And finally back to his office to gather his papers and briefcase before leaving. He felt wilted, headachey, as if he'd been teaching or writing intensively for hours without a break. He couldn't go on like this day after day. The strain would—

  His telephone jangled. St. John, he thought; word on Louise Kanvitz, maybe. He lifted the receiver, spoke his name.

  The filtered voice of the tormentor said, “You're next, Dix.”

  The Agbergs, dressed as if they were on their way to a social event, showed up at Better Lands at nine-thirty that morning. Unexpectedly, surprising Cecca; she had all but written them off. They had checked and rechecked their finances, Mr. Agberg told her, weighed their present options against their future ones, and come to the conclusion that they could afford the Morrison property, that they liked Los Alegres better than Walnut Creek, and that he could commute to his job in San Francisco just as easily from here. They did want to look at the property one more time, though, before they made the final commitment to purchase. Just to make certain they hadn't forgotten or overlooked anything vital. “We're very methodical people,” Mrs. Agberg said with some pride.

  Really? Cecca thought. I never would have guessed.

  She took them up to the Ridge and endured an hour and a half of poking and prodding and rehashing of various aspects of the contractor's and termite inspector's reports. If they change their minds after all of this, she thought, I will probably lose it and tell them what I think of dull, plodding people who get dressed up to go buy a house. But they didn't change their minds. At Better Lands they spent another half-hour reexamining the disclosure statement and counteroffer sheet and satisfying themselves that the Morrisons' counteroffer was absolutely firm and that the Morrisons wouldn't renege on paying for all termite damage repairs and a couple of minor structural repairs; then, finally, they affixed their signatures and Mr. Agberg wrote a check to cover the full amount of the down payment. By the time Cecca had answered a dozen “final” questions about close of escrow and other matters, and the Agbergs went on their merry way, it was after one and she was hungry and all but out of patience.

  She went out for a tasteless sandwich. Ten minutes after she returned, a family named Hagopian walked in: father and mother in their late twenties, a little boy about five, a little girl about two. They were from Kansas and they were relocating in the area—Mr. Hagopian had gotten a job with a small manufacturing company in Los Alegres—and they were interested in buying a house, “something nice with at least three bedrooms and a large yard, good neighborhood, close to schools, for around $250,000.” Better Lands had two possibles in that price range, one in an East Valley tract and the other Elliot Messner's house in Brookside Park. Cecca showed them the prospecti and photographs of both. They didn't care for the East Valley property; the well-landscaped Messner place elicited a much more positive response, even though it was listed at $279,000. Mrs. Hagopian said it looked “charming,” a word Cecca wouldn't have applied to any structure in Brookside Park, including those that made up the Balboa State campus.

  So she drove them up to Brookside Park, taking a route that brought them past Parkside Elementary School. They liked the school and they liked Brookside Park; their faces would have told Cecca that even if they hadn't said so. The house was deserted: Elliot was still at the university, which was probably just as well. She wondered, not for the first time today, how Dix was bearing up on his first day of school. She got the key out of the lockbox and took the Hagopians in, after warning them that the owner was a divorced man living alone and inclined to be a poor housekeeper.

  She needn't have bothered with the warning. The clutter didn't faze the Hagopians; they were far more decisive and imaginative people than the Agbergs and they saw the house not as it was but as it could be if they owned it. The living room was large and had all the right elements (“Look at that fireplace, honey, it's enormous”), the three bedrooms were large, and the master had a walk-in closet that Mrs. Hagopian exclaimed over, the kitchen was perfect (“I just love island stoves, don't you?”), and the backyard so excited the little boy that he ran around it twice, yelling his pleasure at the top of his voice.

  The only problem with the place, according to Mr. Hagopian, was the price. “Two-seventy-nine is more than we can afford,” he said when the tour was finished. “Would the owner come down to two-fifty, do you think?”

  “He might,” Cecca said. “You wouldn't insult him by offering at that price, I can tell you that.”

  “Well, let us think about it overnight, to make sure it's the home we want. I'll be honest with you: We have an appointment to view another house tonight. It may not be what we're after, but we should look at it.”

  “I understand. Take as much time as you like, Mr. Hagopian.”

  But as they got back into the car she felt certain she would hear from them again tomorrow, and that they would make an offer right away. If Elliot was at all reasonable, and she thought he would be, they ought to have a firm deal by the end of the week. You got so you could gauge buyers, some buyers, with reasonable accuracy. Not the Agbergs variety, who waffled and argued over minute details and drove everybody crazy until they made up their minds; people like the Hagopians, who knew what they wanted and acted immediately when they saw it.

  Months of frustration, lean months in which she'd sold just two properties, and now, in what amounted to a single day, she was about to make a pair of fairly substantial sales. For a real estate agent, it was like winning the lottery. But there was no pleasure for her in the sudden turnaround. The irony, in fact, was bitter. What good was business success, a measure of financial security, when your life was in jeopardy?

  “It looks like you were wrong about Louise Kanvitz, Mr. Mallory.”

  “What the hell do you mean, wrong?”

  “I spoke to her at length this afternoon. She denies any knowledge of your wife's lover. Says she didn't even know your wife might have been having an affair until Ms. Bellini brought up the subject last week.”

  “She's lying. Of course she'd deny it at first.”

  “She also denies any wrongdoing in the sale of your wife's last two paintings. And she has proof to back that up.”

  “Proof? What proof?”

  “She identified the person who bought them.”

  “Who is he?”

  “It isn't a ‘he.’ The buyer is a woman, an artist
in Bodega Bay named Janet Rice.”

  “Did you talk to this Janet Rice?”

  “On the phone. She confirms it.”

  “And you believe her.”

  “She was pretty convincing.”

  “I'll bet she was. You ask her why she paid so much for paintings by an unknown artist?”

  “She agrees with Louise Kanvitz that they'll be worth a lot more someday.”

  “My wife was an undiscovered genius, is that it?”

  “You don't think that's possible?”

  “No, I don't. She was good but not that good. Get an art expert in to look at her work, he'll tell you the same thing. Kanvitz and Rice are both lying.”

  “Why would Ms. Rice lie?”

  “Is Kanvitz a friend of hers?”

  “Evidently. That was where she spent the weekend—at Ms. Rice's home in Bodega Bay.”

  “Well, for Christ's sake, there you are. Kanvitz is lying to protect her blackmail scheme and Rice is lying to protect Kanvitz.”

  “A conspiracy?”

  “I'm not saying Rice is a blackmailer or knows that Kanvitz is one. I'm saying Kanvitz asked her to lie and she's doing it. Work on the two of them, break them down—one or the other will admit the truth.”

  “How do you propose I do that without violating their constitutional rights?”

  “Fuck their constitutional rights! What about my constitutional rights? What about my wife's and Francesca Bellini's constitutional rights?”

  “Calm down, Mr. Mallory. Flying off the handle isn't going to accomplish anything.”

  “All right. All right.”

  “I'm not telling you I think you're wrong. It's entirely possible that Janet Rice is lying.”

  “Then what are you telling me?”