by Jack Lynch
“Sure, I’ll do it. I’m a little surprised, though, that you’d want a private dick doing something like that for you.”
“If you haven’t noticed, we’re a little busy around here. In fact, Bragg, we were a little busy even before you and the psychic woman dumped all this in our laps.”
We chatted a few moments longer, until Smith’s phone began ringing again, then I left. Pershing was in a closed meeting with the county Board of Supervisors and the sheriff. Smith said they were discussing ground rules.
The sergeant had phoned me early that morning and asked me to drive up and get an update on information concerning the victims so I in turn could brief Maribeth to see if any of it meant anything to her. I told him I’d do it, but that I’d pick a time to tell Maribeth when I felt she could listen to it all without going into a faint.
Smith understood. He said that depression seemed to be an ongoing part of the job this time. He said it was affecting members of the department, even, and when I left the Hall of Justice I saw an example of it.
I had parked on a street beyond the sheriff’s parking lot out back, so I used the rear exit. While I was crossing the lot, an unmarked car drove in with Rachel at the wheel. I cut across the lot and was about to give her a big hello, then hesitated. She had turned off the motor but her hands still gripped the steering wheel and her head was lowered, her eyes shut.
“Hi, Rachel,” I said lightly.
It startled her. The window was down on her side, and when she looked up she seemed ready to bawl. Her eyes might already have shed a couple of tears and her mouth was screwed up. She turned away and dug into her handbag for a handkerchief. She blew her nose, replaced the handkerchief then opened the door and got out with a toss of her head, trying grimly to muster up a small grin.
“Hi yourself. What are you doing here?”
“Not much of value, I’m afraid. You certainly look like hell.” I tried to keep it light. Friendly banter. Buddy talk.
Rachel’s face fell and she let out a sob. That was all, just the one sob. Then she was fighting it again, going back into her handbag for the handkerchief, blowing up a storm, then jamming it back into her bag. She wasn’t a bit ashamed of all this.
“I guess I’m not as tough as I thought I was,” she told me. “Today we’ve been continuing the little chore of making contact with close relatives or friends of the victims, showing them the names and photos of the other victims, seeing if we can find any connection. Well, this morning I drew Danny McGuire, father of little Donald McGuire, and husband of the woman who committed suicide”—she looked at her watch—“oh, about thirty-six hours ago now, I guess. I told those people inside it was no time to go out there and try talking to him, but oh no, time counts, blah-blah-blah.
“Well, let me tell you something, Bragg. If you think I look like hell, you should see the way Danny McGuire looks. He’s just had the two most important people in his life torn away from him. He is in ghastly shape. So much so that I phoned the local crisis line and told them they’d better get in touch with him or he’s apt to follow his wife into the garage.”
She stood there staring me straight in the eye.
“Are you in a hurry to get back inside?” I asked after a moment.
“No, I’m not in any hurry to get back inside.”
“Then take a break. Walk me to my car.”
“Walk you to your car?” she asked with a fleeting smile as she fell into step beside me. “Isn’t that a little role reversal you’re suggesting there?”
“Not really.” We walked in silence. When we got to the car I unlocked the passenger side door. “Get in,” I told her.
She gave me a funny look, then shrugged and got into the car. I went around and climbed in behind the wheel then drove out of the county building complex and across Steele Lane and down to a restaurant and bar I’d noticed on Armory Drive, the frontage road just east of the 101 freeway. When I pulled into the parking lot and started to get out Rachel got out right along with me.
“I’m beginning to think you’ve just had one of your better ideas,” she told me.
We went inside and sat at a small table in the roomy bar section. We ordered a couple of beers but didn’t talk much while drinking them. We just stared around at the other customers and listened to their happy mid-afternoon chatter. We only had the one beer each, then left.
Driving back over to the Hall of Justice I told Rachel about the brief chat I’d had the day before at the newly discovered burial site with San Francisco Deputy Coroner Harvey Draper, and about how the unearthing of the 16-year-old girl had affected him.
Rachel sat half-turned in her seat, staring at me as I described that brief meeting. “And he’s been doing this sort of work a lot longer than either one of us has,” I told her.
I pulled into the lot and drove over to the back entrance to the sheriff’s office. When I stopped the car Rachel got out without a word and swung her bag up on her shoulder. She closed the door and walked around the car, still not saying anything. When she reached the window on my side she leaned down and stuck her head in and kissed me on the cheek, straightened and went on into the office.
FIFTEEN
Driving back to San Francisco I remembered what I had heard years earlier about Karen Ellis. She was married then to Alex Kruger, a branch supervisor for Coastal Investigations, one of the big outfits. If he had stayed at his office desk where he belonged instead of going into the field, probably he would be alive still. His young secretary had been the one to tell me about the woman he had married.
“She’s a beautiful girl,” the secretary had said. “She does a lot of modeling in the city. I see her in Macy’s ads all the time.”
Which meant probably that Karen Ellis in those days was a successful model and maybe had been able to put aside some money and that, along with whatever her husband and his company insurance had left her, was enough so she could go into the business herself with a woman who had been known as Nancy Dobbs.
After dropping off Rachel I had driven back over to Glen Ellen and Jack London State Park. There was no real reason to do that except I felt it all was a part of my job right then, and I suppose I was drawn to it the way men are drawn to scenes of old battles. It was awful in the literal sense of being full of awe.
Harvey was there and joined me on the road again. Out of nowhere the subject of model airplanes came up. Not the complicated sort that fly with real gasoline engines and a hand-held radio control box, but the sort, as it turned out, that both Doc Draper and I liked to mess with when we wanted to relax, the ones with plastic parts you could glue together and paint in a way to make it as realistic looking as you could so that when you were through with it the thing didn’t have any job to do except to just sit there and look magnificent.
Sometimes, for people who admired those old military planes that the little models resembled, that was a good enough job for them to do.
It was after four o’clock when I reached southern Marin County. I peeled off the freeway at the Sausalito exit and drove on home. I thought about the conversation I’d had over coffee that morning with Bobbie, before I’d given her a ride back to the city and then headed north again for Santa Rosa.
She had asked me about Allison, up in Barracks Cove, and I had talked about her some. Allison and I had had a rocky sort of relationship off and on, but over time the respect and then love we felt for each other had nourished a bond I thought could carry us through anything. The major hangup between us was my job. Allison was an artist, a painter and a very good one. The problem was violence, she had told me. It screwed up her head and even reading about it could deaden her work. And while I don’t seek out violence, I don’t sidestep it, either. I don’t talk about it with Allison, but when it happens, she just seems to know, as if she were a cousin to my psychic client Maribeth.
Bobbie had sat very still and listened closely, but without comment.
After putting the coffee cups to soak in the sink she to
ld me that if I really was serious about spending a week or two together sometime I should plan to give her about an hour’s notice so she could ditch any current husband or boyfriend she might have and throw a few things into a bag and meet me anywhere I told her to because, she said, she thought that if I ever got past the Allison thing and maybe one or two other hangups she sensed in me, the two of us probably could have a whale of a good time together.
I agreed with all that, but doubted I ever would be getting past the Allison thing or any other hangups lurking in the wings.
Back at the apartment I phoned the number Barry Smith had given me for Karen Ellis. It turned out to be her modeling agency. She had left for the day, but when I told them who I was they gave me her home phone number. It was answered by a woman with a strong European accent of some sort. She in turn put me on hold until Karen herself answered. She also had an accent.
“My name is Bragg,” I told her. “I’m calling at the request of Sergeant Barry Smith of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department.”
“I know,” she told me. “He called and said you would show me some photos, and a list of names.”
“Right. When would be a convenient time for you? I think the sergeant would like it sometime today. If you recognize any of these people it gives them something more to work on.”
“How soon can you get here?”
“Where do you live?”
“In San Francisco, in one of those townhouses on Van Ness Avenue. Opera Plaza, do you know it?”
“I know where it is. I can be there in about forty minutes.”
“Excellent,” she said. “I will clear the decks and be ready for you.”
She hung up and I stared at the receiver. Clear the decks? I hadn’t heard that in a while. I got my jacket and drove over to the city to visit the woman who was supposed to be quite a looker.
A middle-aged woman wearing a dark maid’s uniform with a fan cap opened the door to Karen Ellis’s apartment and invited me in. It was like walking onto a movie set depicting the sort of place where the really moneyed crowd in Beverly Hills might live: white pile carpeting, pale blue walls, arty furniture, filmy mesh curtains across the living room windows, a huge replica of a panda bear presiding over one end of the sofa, indirect lighting glowing out of aluminum channels edging the ceiling. The snow white carpet was peppered with large, black leather lounging pillows. Some sort of scent filled the air.
The maid went off somewhere to announce me and I stood looking around and trying to keep my mouth from gaping. Five minutes later the maid returned, only now she was in street clothes. She told me that Ms. Ellis would be with me shortly, then let herself out the front door.
I sat on the sofa. Me and the panda gave each other the once-over.
“Mr. Bragg?”
She was standing in a doorway at the far end of the room. I got to my feet. It was still Hollywood show time. She looked like a 1940s vamp making a sultry entrance. She was a medium-sized woman with pale blonde hair, alabaster skin and carefully applied makeup. She wore a white satin robe, and as she entered the room the robe gapped open enough to show off one of her show girl legs.
I got to my feet. “Ms. Ellis?”
She came across the room until she was standing about eight inches away, staring up at me with a little flare to her nostrils. The makeup made her look like a circus ringmaster, somebody who could put you through the hoops.
“I have been curious always about you, but I never expected quite this.” She had a funny way of phrasing her sentences.
“You know who I am?”
“Of course. My foolish husband would speak of you.”
“You are Ms. Ellis, I take it.”
“Yes. You can call me Karen.”
“Okay. You can call me Bragg.”
“What do lovers call you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are not married, are you?”
“No, I’m not married, but…” I stopped in mid-sentence. Who was supposed to be the private dick here?
“Never mind, I can tell things about a man always. It is why I have been successful. Sex is the calling card in this business. We sell it in many of its clever disguises. My girls appear in the newspapers and TV pushing everything from swimwear to stoves. But what they imply is, ‘What is really being cooked up here is me.’
“And my boys. I handle male models as well. And while they deal in a variety of products, much of the time they seem to be selling one thing while secretly piping a different little tune for the women out there.
“You, Bragg, if you did something with your hair, could have been a fabulous male model. I wish I had met you years earlier. You should have telephoned me your sorrow when poor Alex was killed. We could have gotten together maybe.”
“Your husband and I were acquaintances, not pals.”
“To be frankly about it, I do not blame you. At least Alex left me okay with the dollars.”
“Which almost brings us to the sorry reason I’m here now. I’m sorry about Nancy Dobbs.”
“I expected her to go long before now.”
“How come?”
“She was a living death wish, almost. Here, sit down.”
We settled on the sofa, Karen Ellis in the arms of the panda, me at the other end. “A living death wish? How so?”
“She was a wild woman. Very appealing. I believe she had a sex appetite that would not stop. For men and women both. No, we were not involved that way. We complemented each other in a business way. I will miss her for not being here to run her end of the things.”
“So it was just a business relationship.”
“Absolutely. Oh, sometimes we would play this little game around the office, in front of clients and others, as if we had naughty little secrets we shared. It was a part of the intrigue, our mystique. It is always good for a woman to pretend she has naughty secrets, don’t you think?”
I started to say something but she was off and running again.
“It is true that Nancy sometimes when we were alone would try to make a little pass at me. Usually after she had been drinking. But I kept her hands off me. I don’t like a woman’s hands on me. She was quite the opposite. That business of Nancy being found naked to the waist. That probably has thrown off the cops for a mile.”
“Why’s that?”
“She often drove her car that way, half naked. She craved attention.”
“That seems like a dangerous thing to do.”
“It was dangerous. It used to get her into trouble. But she would boast of these things. She said it was part of the sweet pain of life. Did you ever hear such nonsense?”
“Not that I can recall. Are you Hungarian, Karen?”
“No, Bragg, I am not Hungarian. But for some time yet I am not going to tell you all my secrets. You are the sort of man I think who could learn most of my secrets. That would put me at a jumbo disadvantage. In fact I think in jig time you could have almost total control over me.” She made a little shivering motion. “Delicious.”
“That’s if I did something with my hair, I suppose.”
“Absolutely.”
“You know, Karen, I think maybe we should get to these photos and the list of names I’m supposed to show you.”
“All right, Bragg, if you say so. See? Already you are being bossy and cruel to me, and I adore you for it.”
I shook my head and took out the material Smith had given me and handed it to her. “The sheriff’s investigators would like to know if you recognize anybody in the photos or the names on that list.”
“I know. Would you like to spank me while I am looking?”
“Not unless it’s your birthday.”
That got her attention. “What would my birthday have to do with it?”
“It’s something my family did when I was growing up. On your birthday somebody would put you over their knees and give you a whack for each of your years. Then an extra one. ‘And one to grow on,’ they called it.”
“That is the most barbaric thing I have ever heard of,” she told me.
“If that’s the most barbaric thing you ever heard of you had a pretty soft upbringing. Now look at the goods, will you?”
She took her time, going slowly through the photos once, and then a second time. She put them aside with a shake of her head. “I am quite sure I have never seen any of these people before, except for Nancy, of course.”
She studied the names then, concentrating with the same attention she had given the photos. “The cabinet on that white marble stand across the room opens into a bar,” she told me without looking up. “Would you pour me a glass of the sherry you find there, please, and fix yourself whatever you would like.”
“You’re not going to try getting me tipsy so you can make another pass are you?”
“Of course I am. What is the matter with that?”
She was still studying the list of names when she said it. I got up and went over to pour her a glass of sherry, Bristol Cream it was, and a gin and tonic made with Bombay gin for myself. She offered better quality drinks than I did. When I handed her the glass of sherry she took it without looking up. I sat back down and waited. She spent a couple more minutes at it.
“I don’t think I can do your sheriff any good at all. None of these names mean anything to me. They are not people I have known. And not anybody I think Nancy was known to.”
I nodded and began stuffing the material back into the envelope. “Did Nancy have any other close friends or relatives you know about?”
“No. We were alike in that way. Both of us had parents who died rather young. Neither of us had brothers or sisters. And she never could seriously settle down with just one man or woman, either one. Nancy Dobbs, I think, if you wanted to put her inside of a nutshell, could be thought of as the world’s leading one-night stand. I used to get around pretty good, but nothing like Nancy.”