by John Dunning
16
She was late. I sat at the restaurant’s bar and cooled my heels for almost thirty minutes before she came in. I raised my hand and she saw me, changed her course on a dime, and drifted over to plop on the open stool next to mine. “You look frazzled,” I said.
She ordered a gin and tonic and smiled sweetly. “I should be, I’ve been working like a dog all day on your case.”
“Did you wrap it up yet?”
“Not quite, wise guy. But speaking of dubious accomplishment, how did you do today?”
I told her and she nodded her approval. “Now you seem to be getting somewhere; I must atone for my snide remark. And you didn’t even need to refer to your notes to tell me about it.”
“Notes are for sissies. You may not know this but I have full recall of every interview I’ve ever done.”
“Wow, how impressive, I didn’t know. They must run into hundreds.”
“In fact, thousands. But tell us, doll, how did you really waste your time today?”
“Doll?” She gave me that bitter little smile she has when there’s a cat about to come out of a bag. “I want you to remember you said that when I tell you what I really did today.”
Suddenly I sat up and paid attention. I always pay attention when she takes on that tone.
“I want you to remember the dismissal and derision I’ve had to put up with. The snide attitude, the innuendo of your silence.”
“My silence has innuendo?”
“Oh, does it ever.”
“That was a completely respectful silence. I’d even call it reverent.”
“Well, try your reverence on this. I went down to the farm today.”
I stared at her.
“Not a disparaging word from you, Cliff, I’m warning you,” she said. “Not…one…word.”
“May I at least ask why? Did you do this to teach me a lesson?”
“That must have been it. I guess I wanted you to know how it feels to be pushed aside and left behind and told nothing. To fly all the way out here and not even be told where you’re going.”
We stared at each other in the mirror. She sipped her drink and continued to look frazzled. Then she broke into that lovely smile and I waited tensely for the punch line.
“Actually I had a hunch,” she said. “You know, one of those things you’re always getting between the snide attitude and the silent innuendo.”
I nodded silently, warily.
“It occurred to me, while you were giving me all the safe tours of duty, that you might not be finished with that farm yet. So I drove down there to take a look at it.”
I closed my weary eyes and lapsed into silent innuendo. Unfazed, she said, “I also stopped in to see the coroner.”
That had been on my list of things to do before I’d had my brains scrambled.
“I’ve got a copy of his report for you,” she said, drawing me along.
I thanked her politely, still waiting for her punch line.
“It doesn’t say much anyway, so I wasted some time.”
“Kinda what you’re doing now.”
“Eventually I went on out to the farm. At first I thought I’d drive up to the gate and look at it. You know, just to rattle your cage. It was obvious there was no one home, but this hunch of mine kept nagging away.”
“Please tell me you didn’t climb over the gate.”
“I just watched it and all the time I could feel that hunch growing, like there’s something else here, like he didn’t get it all yet.”
“You’re really enjoying the hell out of this, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. And I should warn you before we proceed, you are going to have a huge pile of egg on your face. Now, knowing all that, do you wish to continue anyway?”
I sighed loudly but my heart was going like a trip-hammer. She said, “Was that a yes?” and I nodded wildly with my eyes rolling back in my head.
“That’s when it occurred to me to check out the neighbors.”
“What neighbors?”
“Why, whoever’s there, doll. And it turns out there is another farm about half a mile on down the road. It’s smaller, more like a country estate than a farm. You can’t see it from the Geiger place; you’ve got to go back out to the main road, drive till you see the mailbox, and turn in there. The road doubles back until that place backs right up to Geiger’s. If you had gone to the end of that field, you’d be right on the edge of it. Then you’d walk up a short path through the trees and presto, you’re there, right in their backyard.”
I made a go on gesture with my hands.
“It was owned by a man named Medill Ronda. He died and his daughter has it now. She’s what people in less sensitive times used to call a spinster. Sixty but doesn’t look it. I know she’s sixty because she told me she and Candice were born in the same year.”
“She told you about Candice?”
“They became close friends.”
For once I was speechless.
“She was the first real friend Candice ever had her own age.”
“How’d she know that?”
“Candice told her, silly. Do you want to hear this or not?”
I nodded lamely in her direction.
“They became friends very quickly and were soon chums, walk-across-the-field-and-share-your-most-intimate-thoughts-type friends. You ever had a friend like that?”
“Only you, you lovely warm and cuddly woman.”
“Now you’re getting back in my good graces.”
“Damn, I’m trying.”
“Candice was unhappy in her marriage.”
“And this woman told you that.”
“Among other things. It wasn’t quite the idyllic love nest we’ve heard it was.”
She sipped her drink and looked at me in the mirror. “Her name is Gail.”
My eyes opened wide in disbelief. The woman Louie had remembered was named Gail. Candice and Gail had become tight friends.
“She came all the way up here with me just to talk to you,” Erin said. She covered my hand with both of hers. “Let’s go, I’m starving.”
She had put Gail Ronda in a good hotel overlooking the bay: the least we could do, she said. “Once I told her you’re looking into Candice’s death, she wanted to come; in fact she got fairly insistent. I think she’s been bothered by this for years.”
She was a tiny, fit-looking woman with straw-colored hair and pale blue eyes. I shook her hand warmly and we booked a table at the best restaurant we could find, a place in Berkeley that came highly recommended by both the hotel desk clerk and the concierge. In the car, she said, “Erin tells me you were a police detective and can find out about anything.”
“I like to tell people that. But it took Erin to find you.”
“Oh, he’d have found you eventually,” Erin said wearily. “He was just getting started when they discovered Cameron. Then the place was full of cops and off limits for a while.”
I looked at Gail in the rearview mirror. “Did the police talk to you yet?”
“Yes, they came out that same day, but there was nothing I could tell them. I didn’t hear or see anything. I have no idea what happened to him.”
“Did you tell them about Candice?”
“Yes, but they didn’t see the connection. Candice had very little to do with any of them, especially Cameron. And the police have always accepted her death as an accident.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be short, but how can I know that? Obviously it still bothers me even after all these years. Candice was much too careful to eat anything without knowing exactly what it was, and she always had her antidote within reach.”
“Do you know if she had it that day?”
“They said it was there on the table beside her, but she never used it.”
“Maybe she was overwhelmed, maybe the allergic reaction was so sudden she never had a chance.”
�
��That’s what they all thought. And I suppose that’s possible.”
“But you didn’t believe it,” I said again, and this time she only shook her head.
I turned into Berkeley and a few minutes later we reached the restaurant. She didn’t drink and we didn’t need to, so I had them seat us at a corner table well away from the noise of the bar. We chatted about the weather, the sorry mess in Washington, the 49ers. She was a news hawk and an avid football fan and I liked her, more as time went on. She had a reluctant smile that I soon discovered was a symptom of shyness. We put in a dinner order and at last we got back on point. “Did Candice ever mention her books?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not in any detail. She was always too polite to bring it up.”
“Embarrassed by her wealth, maybe?”
“And by the fact that I had nothing even remotely like that in my own life.”
“Do you remember how the subject came up?”
“No, but I do remember her looking at my bookshelves one day. I’ve a few common books; they’re well read and tattered. Little House on the Prairie. Bobbsey Twins. Five Little Peppers. Things from my own childhood. She asked what I liked, what I’d read. Later she said she had always loved books and had a few things as well.”
“Wow, she was modest,” Erin said.
I made some notes and moved her back to Candice and Geiger. “Most of the people I’ve talked to would be surprised at what you told Erin about Candice and old Geiger,” I said. “I hear everywhere how happy she was.”
“She could make you believe that. But how many of us really know what goes on between two people?”
“So what did go on?”
“As time went on, he became quite controlling. And Candice, who had been such a happy person, began to have times of moody despair.”
“Do you know what happened to cause such a change?”
“I had my suspicions, but it’s not something I like to talk about.”
I raised my eyebrows and blundered onward. “Are we talking about sexual problems?”
Her cheeks reddened.
“I only ask because that happens to a lot of guys, some even younger than he was. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but some men still can’t face it.”
“Well, for whatever reason, he became much more possessive. He wanted her with him all the time. They had a private box high in the grandstand, and afterward she would go to the barn and sit with him while the horses cooled out. She always wore that white dress he had bought her and they went through the strange ritual of having her in the pictures.”
“What did she think of that?”
“She did it because he wanted her to. She tolerated it; then she endured it. He tried to make her go racing with him as often as he could. That became less and less. Whenever one of his stablehands spoke to her, she felt his eyes watching them.”
“Why didn’t she leave him?”
“She didn’t think that way. What good does it do to have all the options in the world when you don’t believe you have any? She was always terrified of being alone after her dad died.”
“She should’ve known better. Even without the money, she’d be a prize catch.”
“But what difference would that make if she didn’t believe it?”
“Yeah, it’s easy for me to say.”
“For me as well. I used to tell her what an exceptional woman she was, but I think it only embarrassed her to hear things like that.”
“She didn’t believe it.”
“No. I remember once she said, ‘There are days when I wish I had been born without a dime.’ But then almost in the same breath she’d say, ‘But my God, what would I do without Daddy’s millions?’ She hated the thought of becoming a whiner. Little Miss Rich Girl feeling sorry for herself, that kind of thing.”
“Doesn’t sound like her dad did her any favors in life.”
“You’re probably right. If he were alive and heard this I’m sure he’d die all over again. My own father was a lot like that, so I know. That may be part of why Candice and I became such friends so quickly. Our fathers wanted the best for us, they absolutely did, but they looked at the world differently after we were born. They saw threats everywhere. A man like that can cripple a girl’s growth.”
Our dinners arrived and we began to eat. “This salmon is wonderful,” Erin said, but I had barely tasted it. “C’mon, Cliff, relax and eat something.”
Suddenly I said, “Do you think Geiger might have killed her?”
I thought she’d be shocked but she wasn’t. “No,” she said without hesitating. “No way.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time something like that’s happened.”
“He’d need a reason, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe he had a reason. Unless he was a total whacko.”
“He wasn’t like that. He was possessive, not crazy—my opinion, for what it’s worth.”
“But you didn’t know him particularly well.”
“Maybe not. But if you’re asking me what I think…” She shrugged.
We ate some more and a period of quiet fell over the table.
“Was she ever despondent enough to harm herself?”
“No, no. Of all the things I don’t know, I’m sure of that.”
I returned to the premise. “And Geiger had no reason, right?”
We looked at each other and Erin watched us both.
“I’m telling you he didn’t kill her,” Gail said. “He loved her. I’m convinced of that.”
“Well, if he didn’t, and she didn’t, and it wasn’t an accident, then somebody else did. Any idea who that could be?”
“No.”
“No idea at all?”
She looked down at her plate. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about her. I shouldn’t.”
“I appreciate that, Gail. But if anybody’s ever gonna get to the bottom of this, and I’m the only one trying right now, somebody will have to tell me what she knows.”
She shook her head.
“Did you ever see her with other men?”
She looked away at the kitchen.
“Gail,” Erin said, “you didn’t come all the way up here not to tell him.”
“I know you’re right. It just seems like such a violation of her life.”
“The real violation of her life,” I said, “was if somebody killed her and nobody does anything about it.”
Suddenly there were tears on her cheeks. I reached across and put a hand on her shoulder and told her I was sorry. She dabbed at her eyes. “I’m having a harder time with this than I thought I would.”
“Take your time. Finish your dinner.”
The food truly was exceptional, and even Gail ate with good appetite. As we were considering dessert, she said, “There was a man. I wasn’t supposed to know, and really, I shouldn’t have known. I wasn’t spying, I swear.”
“It would never have occurred to me to think you were.”
“I felt so bad afterward…”
“After what?”
“I saw them…kissing…in the woods.”
I nodded. “Any idea who he might have been?”
She shook her head.
“This may be important. Did you see him clearly?”
She nodded her head. “Pretty well.”
“Did he see you?”
“No.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Could he have seen you without you knowing? Did you look away at any time?”
“I felt so guilty watching them. I did look away, and I thought, I’ve got to get out of here. But then I couldn’t even pick up my feet to walk away.”
I squeezed her arm. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’ll never be okay.”
“It’s time you stopped beating yourself up over it.”
She drank a small sip of water.
“Can you describe this man?”
“He was younger than her but quite a bit ta
ller. He wore a sport coat open at the collar and a black hat, one of those old-style hats you sometimes see in old movies from the forties. And at one point he seemed annoyed and started to walk away. And she yelled after him, ‘Oh pooh!’”
“Sandy,” I said.
“You know who he is?”
“I know somebody who fits. And he did have an affair with Candice, and she called him Pooh. But he told me about that. Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“After all this time, I’m not sure.”
“When was this? When did you see them?”
“Not long after I met her.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible with dates.”
“Anything might help.”
“At least thirty years ago.”
“Were there others?”
“A few, I think.”
“Did you see any of them?”
“I hope you don’t think I was in the habit of spying on her.”
“Not at all. But sometimes accidents happen.”
“I never saw her with anyone else.”
“But you knew there had been others?”
“She told me.”
I leaned forward and looked in her elusive eyes. “In what context did she tell you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Did she suddenly tell you for no reason, like a confession, or did she seem to know that you knew? Just tell me how it came up.”
“We were out in the field one day and she said, ‘My God, Gail, I’m having an affair.’”
“Just like that.”
“Yes, it was shocking the way it came up, so suddenly. Then I realized she was very troubled and was asking for my advice.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said I would never presume to judge her about anything, I believed in her always, and I did. I knew she would never do something like that frivolously, and if I could ever help her, even if all I could give her was a shoulder to cry on, she should feel free. Then she hugged me tight and said thanks. Said she loved me and I felt my own tears start.”
“She never mentioned any names?”
“No.”
I said, “What about nicknames?” and she smiled affectionately.
“She was always doing that. She called me Tinker Bell. Her daughter was Goldilocks. She remembered her father as Geppetto, very affectionately.”