J is for JUDGMENT

by Sue Grafton

  Chapter 24

  *

  I parked in the lot behind the office and went up the back stairs to the second floor. Most of the businesses in the building were shut down, which gave the premises a curious air of abandonment. I’d brought along my steno book, hoping to impress Gordon Titus with my professionalism. The notebook was empty except for an entry that read “Find Wendell.” Back to that again. I couldn’t believe it. We were so close to reeling him in. What was gnawing at me was the fact that I’d seen him with his grandson. I’d heard him talk to Michael, ostensibly making amends. As big a shit as he was, I had a hard time believing it was all a front. I was willing to imagine him changing his mind about surrendering to the cops. I could picture him stealing the Lord so he could sail down the coast and rescue Brian from a jail sentence. What I couldn’t accept was the idea that he’d betray his family allover again. Even Wendell, God bless him, wasn’t that mean-spirited.

  The CF offices were officially closed, but there was a big jumble of keys in the lock, visible through the glass. Darcy’s desk was unoccupied, but I caught a glimpse of Gordon Titus in Mac’s glass-enclosed office, which was the only one showing any lights. Mac passed with two mugs of coffee in hand. I tapped on the glass. He set the mugs on Darcy’s desk and unlocked the door for me. “We’re in my office.”

  “So I see. Let me grab a cup of coffee and I’ll be right there.”

  He picked up the mugs and moved on without comment. He seemed depressed, not a reaction I’d anticipated. I’d half expected fireworks. He’d seen the case as his way of going out in a blaze of glory, retiring from CF with a big gold star pasted to the front of his personnel file. He wore a pair of red-and-green-plaid pants and a red golfing shirt, and I wondered if his current emotional state was generated by the forfeiture of his weekend tee time.

  All the workstations were empty, phones silent. Gordon Titus sat at Mac’s desk, immaculately dressed, hands folded, his facial expression bland. I have a hard time trusting anyone so unflappable. While he appeared to be levelheaded, I suspected that he truly didn’t care about most things. Poise and indifference so often look the same. I poured myself a mug of coffee and added nonfat milk before I opened Mac’s office door and braved the chill effect of Titus’s personality.

  Mac was now seated on one of his two upholstered visitors’ chairs, apparently unaware of how neatly Titus bad displaced him. “I tell you one thing,” Mac was saying, “and Kinsey can pass this on to Mrs. Jaffe for a fact. I’ll have a lock on that money till Wendell dies of old age. If she has any hopes of seeing even one red cent, she’ll have to drag his dead body up the steps and lay it across my desk.”

  “Good morning,” I murmured to Titus. I took the other chair, which at least lined me up on the same side of the desk as Mac. He shook his head and sent me a dark look. “The son of a bitch has done it to us again.”

  “I gathered as much. What’s the story?” I asked.

  “You tell her,” Mac said.

  Titus pulled a ledger over in front of him. He opened it and leafed through, looking for a blank page. “What do we owe you to date?”

  “Twenty-five hundred. That’s ten days on a flat. You’re lucky I didn’t charge you for the mileage. I’m making two and three trips to Perdido every day, and that adds up.”

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars and for what?” Mac said. “We’re right back where we started. We’ve got nothing but air.”

  Titus ran his finger down a column and penciled in a figure before he turned to another part of the book. “Actually, I don’t think this is as bad as it seems. We have enough witnesses who’ll testify that Jaffe was alive and well as recently as this week. We’ll never see a dime of the money Mrs. Jaffe’s already spent-we might as well write that off-but we can settle for the balance, thus cutting our losses.” He glanced up. “That should be the end of it. She’s hardly going to wait five years and make another claim.”

  “Where’d they find the boat?”

  He began to write, not looking up. “A southbound tanker saw it as a radar blip right in the middle of a shipping lane last night. The guy on watch flashed a warning light, but there was no response. The tanker notified the Coast Guard, who went out at first light.”

  “The Lord was still in the area? That’s interesting.”

  “It looks like Wendell sailed the boat as far as Winterset and then headed out toward the islands. He left the sails up. There was no big sea running, but with the storms coming through, the normal northwesterlies were countered by the hurricane effect. The Lord probably has a seven-knot hull speed, and with the right puff of wind it should have gone much farther. When they found the boat, it was stalled and drifting. The jib was backwinded, sheeted to the windward side, in effect, blowing the bow down off the wind while the main and the mizzen were trying to put it up wind. The boat must have lay hove to until discovery.”

  “I didn’t know you sailed.”

  “I don’t anymore. I did once upon a time.” Brief smile, the most I’d ever gotten from him.

  “Now what?”

  “They’ll tow it to the closest harbor.”

  “Which is what, Perdido?”

  “Probably. I’m not certain where jurisdiction lies. Some crime scene unit will go over it. I don’t think they’ll find much, and frankly, I don’t see that it’s any longer our concern.”

  I looked over at Mac. “I take it there’s no trace of Wendell.”

  “All his personal possessions were on the boat, including four thousand in cash and a Mexican passport, which doesn’t prove a thing. He could have half a dozen passports.”

  “So we’re supposed to think, what… that he’s dead or gone?”

  Mac gestured his irritation, showing the first signs of his usual impatience. “The guy’s gone. There’s no suicide note, but this is exactly what he pulled last time.”

  “God, Mac. How can you be so sure about that? Maybe it’s a cover. Something to divert our attention.”

  “From what?”

  “From what’s really going on.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “I’m just telling you what occurs to me. Last time he did this he abandoned the Lord off the coast of Baja and set off in a dinghy. Renata Huff intercepted him, and the two sailed away on the Fugitive. This time she was sitting in my office within an hour of his disappearance. This was noon yesterday.”

  Mac wasn’t buying it. “She was under surveillance from the time she left your office. Lieutenant Whiteside decided it made sense to keep .an eye on her. All she did was go home. She’s been there, off and on, ever since.”

  “My point exactly. Last time he made a run for it, he had a coconspirator. This time, assuming that’s what he’s up to, who’s he got on his side? Carl Eckert and Dana Jaffe surely wouldn’t come to his rescue, and who else is there? Actually, now that I think about it, his son, Brian was still free yesterday, and there’s always Michael. Wendell might have had other friends. It’s also possible he tried the gig alone this time, but it just doesn’t feel right.”

  Titus spoke up. “Kinsey thinks he’s actually dead,” he said to Mac, his mouth turning up with amusement. He tore along the line of perforation, removing a check from the ledger.

  “We’re supposed to think he’s dead!” Mac said. “That’s what he did the last time, and we fell for it like a ton of bricks. He’s probably on a boat right this minute, sailing off to Fiji, laughing up his ass at us.”

  Gordon closed the ledger and pushed the check in my direction.

  “Wait a minute, Mac. Someone took some shots at us Thursday night. Wendell made it home, but suppose they flushed him out the next day? Maybe they caught up with him and killed him.” I picked up the check and glanced at it casually. The amount was twenty-five hundred dollars, made out to me. “Oh, thanks. This is nice. I usually don’t bill until the end of the month.”

  “This is final payment,” he said. He folded his hands in front of him on the de
sk. “I have to admit I wasn’t in favor of hiring you, but you’ve done a very nice job. I don’t imagine Mrs. Jaffe will give us any more trouble. As soon as you submit your report, we’ll turn the matter over to our attorney and he can see to the affidavits. We probably won’t need to take the matter to court. She can return any remaining monies and that will be the end of it. In the meantime, I see no reason we can’t do business together in the future, on a case-by-case basis, of course.”

  I stared at him. “This can’t be the end of it. We don’t have any idea where Wendell is.”

  “Wendell’s current whereabouts are immaterial. We hired you to find him and you did that… quite handily, I might add. All we needed to do was show that he was alive, which we’ve now done.”

  “But what if he’s dead?” I said. “Dana would be entitled to the money, wouldn’t she?”

  “Ah, but she’d have to prove it first. And what’s she have? Nothing.”

  I looked over at Mac, feeling dissatisfied and confused.

  He was avoiding my gaze. He shifted on his chair, clearly uncomfortable, probably hoping I wouldn’t make a fuss. I got a quick flash of his complaints about CF in my office that first day. “Does this seem right to you? This seems weird. If it turns out something’s happened to Wendell, the benefits would be hers. She wouldn’t have to give back any money.”

  “Well, yes, but she’d have to refile,” Mac said.

  “But aren’t we in business to see that claims are settled fairly?” I looked from one to the other. Titus’s face was blank, his way of disguising his perpetual dislike, not just of me, but of the world in general. Mac’s expression was tinged with guilt. He was never going to stand up to Gordon Titus. He was never going to complain. He was never going to take a stand. “Isn’t anybody interested in the truth?” I asked.

  Titus stood up and, put on his jacket. “I’ll leave this to you,” he said to Mac. And to me, “We appreciate the fact that you’re so conscientious, Kinsey. If we’re ever interested in having someone go out and establish the company’s liability to the tune of half a million dollars, you’d be the first investigator we’d think of, I’m sure. Thank you for coming in. We’ll look for your report first thing Monday morning.”

  After he left, Mac and I sat in silence for a moment, not looking at each other. Then I got up and walked out myself.

  I hopped in my car and headed for Perdido. I had to know. There was no way in the world I was going to let this one go. Maybe they were right. Maybe he’d run off. Maybe he’d been faking every shred of concern for his ex-wife and his kids, for his grandson. He was not a tower of strength. As a man, he possessed neither scruples nor a sense of moral purpose, but I couldn’t make my peace with events as they stood. I had to know where he was. I had to understand what had happened to him. He was a man with far more enemies than friends, which didn’t bode well for him, which seemed ominous and unsettling. Suppose somebody had killed him. Suppose the whole thing was a setup. I’d already been paid off with a check and a handshake. My time was my own, and I could do as I pleased. Before this day was over, I was going to have some answers.

  Perdido’s population is roughly ninety-two thousand. Happily, some small percentage of the citizens had called Dana Jaffe the minute news about the finding of the Lord came to light. Everybody likes to share the misery of others. There’s a breathless curiosity, mixed with dread and gratitude that allows us to experience misfortune at a satisfying distance. I gathered Dana’s phone had been ringing steadily for more than an hour by the time I arrived. I hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell her about Wendell’s possible defection. News of his death would have cheered her no end, but I thought it unfair to share my suspicions when I had no proof. Without Wendell’s body, what good would it do her? Unless she killed him herself, of course, in which case she already knew more than I did.

  Michael’s yellow VW was parked in the driveway. I knocked on the front door, and Juliet let me in. Brendan slept heavily against her shoulder, too tired to protest the discomfort of a vertical rest.

  “They’re in the kitchen. I have to get him down,” she murmured.

  “Thanks, Juliet.”

  She crossed the room and went upstairs, probably grateful for the excuse to escape. Some woman was in the process of leaving a telephone message in her most solemn tone. “Well, okay, hon. Anyway, I just wanted you to know. If there’s anything we can do, you just call us now, you hear? We’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye now.”

  Dana was sitting at the kitchen table, looking pale and beautiful. Her silver-blond hair looked silky in the light, gathered at the nape of her neck in a careless knot. She wore pale blue jeans and a long-sleeved silk shirt in a shade of steel blue that matched her eyes. She stubbed out a cigarette, glancing up at me without comment. The smell of smoke lingered in the air, along with the faint smell of sulfur matches. Michael was pouring coffee for her from a newly made pot. Where Dana seemed numb, Michael seemed to be in pain.

  I’d been around so much lately that no one questioned my unsolicited presence on the scene. He poured a mug of coffee for himself and then opened the cabinet and took out a mug for me. A carton of milk and the sugar bowl were sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. I murmured a thank-you and sat down. “Anything new?”

  Dana shook her head. “I can’t believe he did it.”

  Michael leaned against the counter. “We don’t know where he is, Mom.”

  “And that’s what drives me insane. He makes just enough of an appearance to screw us up and then he’s off again.”

  “You talked to him?” I asked.

  A pause. She dropped her gaze. “He stopped by,” she said, her tone faintly defensive. She shifted on her chair, reached for the pack of cigarettes, and lit another one. She’d look old before her time if she didn’t knock that off.

  “When was this?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know, not last night, but the night before. Thursday, I guess. He went to Michael’s to see the baby afterward. That’s how he got the address.”

  “You have a long talk with him?”

  “I wouldn’t call it ‘long.’ He said he was sorry. He’d made a hideous mistake. He said he’d do anything to have the five years back. It was all bullshit, but it sounded good and I guess I needed to hear it. I was pissed, of course. I mean, I said, ‘Wendell, you can’t do this! You can’t just waltz back in after everything you’ve put us through. What do I care if you’re sorry? We’re all sorry. What horseshit.’ “

  “You think he was sincere?”

  “He was always sincere. He couldn’t hold on to the same point of view from one minute to the next, but he was always sincere.”

  “You didn’t talk to him after that?”

  She shook her head. “Believe me, once was enough. That should have put an end to it, but I’m still mad,” she said.

  “So there was no reconciliation.”

  “Oh, God, no. There’s absolutely no way I’d do that. Sorry doesn’t cut any ice with me.” Her eyes came up to mine. “What now? I guess the insurance company wants their money back.”

  “They won’t press for what you’ve spent, but they really can’t let you walk away with half a million bucks. Unless Wendell’s dead.”

  She became very still breaking off eye contact. “What makes you say that?”

  “It happens to everyone eventually,” I said. I pushed I my coffee mug away and got up from the chair. “Call me if you hear from him. He’s got a lot of people interested. One, at any rate.”

  “Would you walk her to the door, babe?” Dana said to Michael.

  Michael moved away from the counter and walked me to the front door. Lean and brooding.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Not really. How would you feel?”

  “I don’t think we’ve gotten to the end of it yet. Your father did what he did for reasons of his own. His behavior was not about you. It was about him,” I said. “I don’t think you should take it personally.”<
br />
  Michael was shaking his head emphatically. “I never want to see him. I hope I never have to see his face again.”

  “I understand how you feel. I’m not trying to defend the man, but he’s not all bad. You have to take what you can. One day maybe you can let the good back in. You don’t know the whole story. You only know this one version. There’s far more to it – events, dreams, conflicts, conversations you were never privy to. His actions are coming out of that,” I said. “You have to accept the fact that there was something larger at work and you may never know what it was.”

  “Hey, know what? I don’t care. Honest to God, I don’t.”

  “You don’t maybe, but one day Brendan might. These things tend to drift down from one generation to the next. Nobody deals well with abandonment.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a phrase that runs through my head in situations like this: ‘the vast untidy sea of truth.’ “

  “Meaning what?”

  “The truth isn’t always nice. It isn’t always small enough to absorb at once. Sometimes the truth washes over you and threatens to take you right down with it. I’ve seen a lot of ugly things in this world.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t. This is my first and I don’t like it much.”

  “Hey, I hear you,” I said. “Take care of your kid. He’s really beautiful.”

  “He’s the only good thing that’s come out of this.” I had to smile. “There’s always you,” I said.

  His eyes were hooded and his return smile was enigmatic, but I don’t think the sentiment was lost on him.

  I drove from Dana’s to Renata’s house. Whatever the flaws in Wendell Jaffe’s character, he’d managed to connect himself to two women of substance. They couldn’t be more different – Dana with her cool elegance, Renata with her dark exoticism. I parked out in front and made my way up the walk. If the police were still running surveillance, they were being damn clever. No vans, no panel trucks, no curtains moving in the Douses across the way. I rang the bell and waited, staring off at the street. I turned back and cupped a hand to the glass, peering in through the front door panes. I rang the doorbell again.