Double

by Bill Pronzini

  She stopped walking and put a hand on my arm. “Wolf, we’ve sort of been working together on this and we ought to continue—keep each other informed of what we’re doing and what we find out. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. But if you do any more breaking and entering, or pull off some other kind of felony, I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “You’ll be the last person I tell,” she said, and damned if she didn’t lean up and kiss me on the cheek like a damn daughter.

  19 McCONE

  I hurried back to the hotel lobby feeling faintly embarrassed. What on earth had possessed me to kiss Wolf on the cheek? I am not an overly demonstrative person; it was the sort of thing I would only do to a lover —and Wolf certainly was not that—or to my own father. Well, that must be it. Wolf did have a tendency to fatherize.

  The Casa del Rey was humming this morning, with people checking in and out, and all the phone booths were occupied. While I waited, I debated trying to call Elaine’s lawyer, Thorburn, once more, but decided that since he hadn’t returned the message I’d left with his service, he must still be out on his boat. Then I consulted Elaine’s address book and found a listing for Karyn Sugarman but none for Henry Nyland. June Paxton’s name was there, but the address and number had been crossed out and no new ones entered.

  A fat woman in a muumuu, whom I’d been seeing off and on since the convention had started, squeezed out of the phone booth nearest me, catching her voluminous garment on the door. I helped her free herself, then slipped inside, leaving the door open so the scent of her heavy perfume would dissipate.

  Karyn Sugarman answered my call on the first ring. Her husky voice held undertones of weariness, and at first she didn’t remember who I was. When I reminded her of our meeting in Elaine’s office and asked if I might see her today, she hesitated. “I’ll be at my office,” she said finally. “I keep Sunday hours for a few patients whose schedules won’t permit appointments during the week. I suppose you could come there.” She directed me to an address in the Old Town area and said she could see me in fifteen minutes.

  I got in my car and started off, my mind only half on driving. Mostly I was puzzling over what Wolf had told me about the little boy and his mother who had disappeared from the Casa del Rey. It sounded suspicious, all right, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything so major that Elaine would have been killed over it. And yet . . .

  I was certain Wolf would get nothing more about the Clarks from either Beddoes or Ibarcena. Their guard was up now. And even after he reported what he knew to Knowles, I doubted the lieutenant would find out anything, since the people at the hotel would have had a good bit of time to prepare for him. Perhaps, however, I could learn something. I’d have to try to see both Beddoes and his assistant manager today. And I wanted to track down Henry Nyland. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to June Paxton, either, or to see Rich Woodall again.

  And where, I asked myself, do you get any time for yourself? I’d planned this next week after the convention as a vacation. I was supposed to relax and enjoy my family and try to talk my brother John into looking at his custody situation realistically. Hell, at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t even have time for dinner with that lie-detector salesman. In fact, I’d even forgotten to call Don in San Francisco, to see how he was doing in my absence.

  The address Karyn Sugarman had given me was a two-story Spanish-style structure built around a little courtyard. The entrance was guarded by wrought-iron gates and, looking in, I could see a tiled fountain, benches, and lots of dwarf citrus trees in pots. The names on the directory were mainly doctors and dentists, and each had a doorbell beside it. I rang Sugarman’s and received an answering buzz that tripped the lock on the gates.

  I stepped into the courtyard and looked around, unsure where to go. Sugarman’s voice called out from the second-story gallery, near the rear. She was standing at the railing, dressed casually in white pants and a brown tunic top. “The stairway’s over here,” she said. “Come on up.”

  I climbed up there and followed her into a light, airy reception room. The walls, carpets, and upholstery were white; the wood was blond; and in startling contrast to the room’s modernity, the walls were covered with old-fashioned black-and-white photographs.

  Sugarman’s walk seemed a little hurried and nervous. Once inside, she turned to me and said, “I’m on the phone right now—a client with a crisis—but it shouldn’t be much longer. Make yourself at home, and I’ll be with you as soon as possible.” She went through a door into an adjoining room, shutting it behind her.

  Since one of my interests is photography, I went over and took a look at the pictures. Some were quite old sepia prints that apparently had been touched up and could have been of members of Sugarman’s family —women in long dresses and bonnets, men sporting goatees and watch chains. Farther on were pictures that might have been taken in the twenties—people at the beach in heavy, dark bathing costumes, the women even wearing shoes and stockings. Finally there were photos that recalled the fifties and early sixties. One was a group of girls, all attired in the same type of white blouse and dark skirt, all in variations of the same bouffant hairdo, all smiling, all with their hands clasped in their laps. A gold crest and Greek letters were emblazoned in the lower right-hand corner of the print, and I translated them as Mu Omega Sigma.

  So Sugarman and Elaine had been members of the same college sorority, I thought, remembering the paddle in Elaine’s “crazy closet.” That would make it a long friendship indeed, spanning over twenty years. I examined the picture more closely and found Sugarman in the third row, her blond hair poufed and teased and smoothed to make her a washed-out Jackie Kennedy. I didn’t see anyone who looked like Elaine, but she would have been several years older than these girls. Perhaps she’d been Sugarman’s big sister, or an alumna adviser.

  “All’s under control.” Sugarman’s voice came from behind me. She sounded less tense now, and I guessed the crisis she’d mentioned hadn’t been too serious.

  I turned and said, “I was admiring your pictures. Are you a photographer yourself?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have time for hobbies. But then you know how that goes, since you knew Elaine.”

  “I didn’t know her all that well.” I followed Sugarman into an office that was furnished in the same style as the waiting room.

  “Oh?” She looked surprised and motioned at a pair of easy chairs. “I had the impression you were good friends.”

  I sat down, and she took the chair next to me. “From whom?”

  “Elaine. She was very pleased you were here and said something about looking forward to having a long talk with you.”

  That was odd, I thought. On Friday afternoon, Elaine had confined our conversation to a casual chat over drinks. But we’d always been able to talk easily and at considerable depth; maybe after that initial meeting she’d decided to confide in me about what was bothering her.

  “I take it you didn’t have that talk, then?” Sugarman asked.

  “No,” I said regretfully. Maybe if we had, I could have prevented Elaine’s death. If she’d wanted to talk to me, it was because I was also a professional investigator and could help her deal with a threatening situation.

  Sugarman was watching me with keen, evaluative eyes. Her gaze reminded me she was a therapist and made me slightly edgy. “When I said I didn’t know Elaine all that well, I didn’t mean that we weren’t friends,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t have much idea of what her life was like these past years.”

  Sugarman stretched her long legs and leaned back in her chair. It wasn’t the same catlike motion I’d seen her make yesterday morning in Elaine’s office, but more of an effort to ease some sort of discomfort. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, as if she’d had a bad night—and probably she had. Like June Paxton, she was taking Elaine’s death hard. “Well, Elaine’s life was pretty much like mine,” she said. “In fact, we had very similar interests.”

  “And what wer
e those?”

  “Our work, the Women’s Forum.” She reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table between us. “When you’re trying to build a career, it comes first. Many times it doesn’t even allow for personal relationships. ”

  I thought of Rich Woodall and Henry Nyland, then asked, “Do you have any idea what Elaine wanted to talk over with me?”

  “I’m sorry, she didn’t confide in me.”

  “Well, I do know something was bothering her. I keep hearing how she wasn’t herself lately, that she might have committed suicide. I thought you’d be a good person to discuss that with, on account of your work.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I wonder if you know the cause of her depression.”

  “You mean, was I her therapist?”

  “That wasn’t my specific question, but the thought has crossed my mind.”

  Sugarman exhaled smoke, made a face, and crushed the cigarette out. “God, everything tastes terrible today. To answer your question—no, Elaine wasn’t one of my clients, although she’d seen different therapists from time to time. But my practice is mainly with lesbian or bisexual women. Elaine didn’t go either way.” She hesitated. “Perhaps that was part of her problem.”

  She seemed to be saying this last more to herself than to me, but I asked, “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s merely a personal evaluation and has no bearing on her suicide.”

  “You believe it was suicide, then?”

  “What else? One doesn’t trip and fall over a three-foot railing.”

  I nodded, unwilling to bring up the possibility of murder yet. “Did Elaine say anything to you about a problem at the hotel?”

  “Plenty. Lloyd Beddoes isn’t the easiest man to work for.”

  “Maybe that was what she wanted to talk to me about. What exactly did she say about the situation there?”

  “Oh, the usual on-the-job carping. Not that I blame her. Lloyd can be a petty bastard if there ever was one.”

  “You know him well, then?”

  She leaned forward and reached for another cigarette, her tawny hair falling forward across her cheek. “Only through Elaine, but that was enough.”

  “What about Rich Woodall?”

  She stopped, match halfway to the cigarette. “Rich Woodall? What about him?”

  “Then you do know him.”

  “Only slightly.” The match burned her fingers and she dropped it in the ashtray. “You’ll have to forgive me—bad nerves today. What about Woodall?”

  “Apparently, Elaine was seeing him, or had been. There was an unpleasant scene in the bar at the Casa del Rey Friday afternoon. A friend of mine saw it. Woodall seemed to be threatening Elaine, and he grabbed her. Later he claimed to me that he hadn’t even spoken to her.”

  “God! That disgusting little I.P.!” Sugarman finally got the cigarette lit and flung the match into the ashtray.

  “I.P.?”

  “It’s a psychological term. Stands for Inadequate Personality. They’re people without much inside; no interior sense of self. They don’t do well in relationships because they aren’t really capable of caring about another person beyond what that person can do for them, even though they appear very sincere. If they’re intelligent, they realize they’re lacking. To cover, they spend their lives running around acquiring things and indulging in a lot of frantic activity. Put on a lot of front. Often they’re quite successful in a worldly way—many of our richest men and most influential politicians are I.P.s, for instance.”

  “And that’s your diagnosis of Rich Woodall?”

  “I don’t diagnose people I don’t know. It’s just what he seems like, from what Elaine told me. He maintains a private zoo, not because he likes animals but because they’re exotic, good for show. He owns two expensive cars, and worries excessively about his appearance. That kind of thing.”

  For someone who didn’t know the man, she certainly was vehement about him. But if someone like that had been bothering a close friend of mine, I supposed I would have been too. “But why would Woodall come on to Elaine in public like that?”

  “He’d been doing it a lot lately. Elaine had gone out with him a few times—”

  “Wasn’t he a little young for her? There must have been twenty years’ difference in their ages.”

  She gave me a withering look, as if to say I’d grow up someday. “Many women prefer younger men. Anyway, Elaine caught on to Woodall’s false charm quite quickly, and refused to continue seeing him. He construed it as an extreme rejection—and if there’s one thing an I.P. can’t stand, it’s rejection.”

  “How do they react?”

  “With attention-seeking tactics. They can’t stand to be ignored, so they seek attention of any kind—good or bad. While a normal person is merely regretful that a relationship hasn’t worked out, an I.P. will pull all sorts of tricks, from suicide attempts to what Rich Woodall did.”

  “Bothering Elaine in the bar at the hotel where she worked?”

  “Oh, that was extreme. In fact, he started off pretty subtly. He’d follow her when she went out shopping and park his car next to hers. Or follow her when she went out to lunch or dinner and sit at a nearby table staring at her. Then it went on to phone calls. God knows where it would have ended up....”

  Or did end up, I thought. In the east tower at Casa del Rey? “Where did Elaine meet Woodall?” I asked.

  Sugarman’s eyes were on the long ash of her cigarette. She crushed it out in the ashtray, then got up and carried it and her cigarette package to the desk on the opposite side of the room. “No more of these for me. My nerves are shot as is, and I’ve a client coming soon.”

  “You were going to tell me where Elaine and Rich met,” I said.

  “I was? You know, I’m not really sure.”

  I thought of Woodall’s explanation, about the zoo. It hadn’t had an authentic ring to me, so I made a guess and asked, “Could it have been at the club?”

  Sugarman turned to face me. “What club?”

  “The health club she belonged to, downtown. I got that impression from Woodall—”

  “Yes, you’re probably right. He would be a fanatic about his body.”

  We were both silent for a moment, Sugarman leaning against the edge of her desk. Then I asked, “And that’s all you know about Woodall and Elaine?”

  “Yes. What’s all this leading up to?”

  “I’ll explain in a minute. What do you know about Henry Nyland?”

  “Nyland. Henry Nyland. He’s a politician, running for city council, I believe.”

  “Did you know he was interested in Elaine?”

  “No, I didn’t even know she knew him.”

  “Apparently he wanted to marry her, but she kept turning him down.” For a moment I considered telling her about the love note I’d found, but decided some things should be allowed to remain private. “I gather he met her at this same club where she met Woodall. That must be some place to work out, with all these proposals—decent and indecent—coming out of it.”

  Sugarman didn’t seem to see the humor in the remark. Her eyes were far away, hands knotted together. Finally she said, “Poor Elaine.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Everybody wanted her, but she didn’t want any of them.”

  “Was this a pattern with her, that men she didn’t care for fell in love with her?”

  “All her life,” Sugarman said. She looked at her watch. “I’m afraid that’s all the time I can let you have. I’m going to have to review my client’s file before she gets here. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you. Elaine and I were friends, but I really didn’t know much about her personal life.”

  I stood up, then remembered June Paxton. “Do you have June’s address, by any chance? It was crossed out of Elaine’s address book.”

  “That’s because she just moved.” Sugarman went to her desk, looked it up, and wrote it down on a scratc
h pad for me.

  She followed me out, saying I should call if I had further questions. I went down the stairs from the gallery, past the tinkling little fountain, and out to my car.

  The trouble with talking with Elaine’s friends, I thought, was that the kind of constrained relationships she had formed hadn’t permitted any intimacy. Karyn Sugarman had told me nothing I hadn’t known before —except for a bit of interesting psychological analysis of Rich Woodall.

  Still, it was odd that Sugarman hadn’t repeated her question about what I was leading up to. Perhaps the kinds of things I had asked her had made it unnecessary.

  20 “WOLF”

  I called the sheriff’s department from the telephone in my room, but Tom Knowles wasn’t in and wasn’t expected: it was his day off. I left a message for him to get in touch with me in the morning. So much for that and so much for my conscience.

  The telephone directory gave me Jim Lauterbach’s home address in National City; and downstairs at the desk, the fashion-plate clerk, Scott, gave me a map of the area. I went out and got into the rental clunker and took it back through Coronado, onto the long curving bridge to the mainland. National City was a short distance south on Highway 5—a place full of industrial complexes, evidence that it had once been a rail center, and what seemed to be a large number of old Victorian houses. I stopped at a Union 76 station and got directions to Division Street, which was close to the freeway.

  The address turned out to be a trailer court, and a run-down one at that. I drove in and stopped at a weed-choked mobile home with a sign in front that said MANAGER. A thin, lemon-haired woman in an ancient pair of pedal pushers confirmed that the Jim Lauterbach who lived there was a private detective and said that his trailer was on Lot 12, toward the rear. I went back there on foot, through brown grass and dust and heat, and found 12: a tarnished silver Airstream, with a tattered awning along the front and some cactus growing at the back. There was no car parked near it, and when I went up and banged on the door, nobody answered.