by Susan Dunlap
“One more thing, Mr. Kleinfeld. The night of the murder, where were you?”
“I told you. I was with—”
“Names.”
He looked at the floor thinking. “Okay, I guess I should have told you the truth.”
“You were lying.” This I didn’t look forward to admitting to Lt. Davis.
“Yeah. There wasn’t any woman.”
“Then you were alone?”
“No.”
“You were with a man?”
“It’s not what you think.” Kleinfeld looked truly abashed. Apparently, homosexuality was not something a fully realized person practiced. “I was in the Penlops’ house.”
Great. In proximity to the temple and the stage. Wonderful.
“I was there meeting Walt. You know, that big blond Penlop, the one who looks like he’s still alive.”
“Yes.” The one who had been so eager to hand me the strongbox.
“He was giving us—Vern and me—information,” Kleinfeld went on. “I mean, since Bobby died, we had no one inside. Walt was, well, keeping an eye on things. Or at least supposedly. He never really gave us much of anything. He just said stuff like ‘Chupa-da bought more tea’; ‘Braga looks nervous.’ ” Now the words tumbled out. “I told Felcher it was a waste of money, but he insisted we needed the protection in case anything unlikely happened. And it was his money, so, well, you see…”
“I do see.” Catching his gaze, I repeated, “I do see.” I gave him the same warning I’d given Braga and headed for the car. I called into the station and left word where I was going, then drove across the town to Comfort Realty.
“I don’t got enough problems without you here again?” Felcher slammed his desk drawer shut.
Dispensing with the preliminaries, I pulled out the photo. “Do you recognize this?”
“The knife?”
“Yes.”
He stared at it for almost a minute. “I suppose that must be the knife that killed Paddy-guru.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Why else would you be showing it around?”
“Okay. But does it look familiar to you?”
“Hell, no. Listen, lady, what kind of dumbo do you take me for? You think if that were my knife and I’d used it to stab Paddy, I’d be telling you?”
“I didn’t say it was yours. I—”
The phone rang. Felcher jumped for it. “Comfort Realty.” He listened half a minute, his hand reaching for the ever-present ballpoint pen, then said angrily, “Don’t give me that self-sacrificing crap again. Look, I’m in the middle of negotiating a deal, I don’t have time…”
Where had I heard this before, I wondered as I watched him snap the ballpoint in and out?
“All right, all right. Half an hour.” He slammed down the receiver.
“What was all that?”
“The laundry lost my shirt.”
“Really?”
“What about the knife?”
“Never seen it.”
“Mr. Felcher, that knife belonged to your son. It was Bobby’s knife. His initials are scratched on it. I have a witness who remembers seeing him with it.”
Felcher stared at the photo, then at me. “So what are you saying? You think Bobby rose from the grave, grabbed the knife and stabbed Paddy? You think there’s some justice in the world, maybe?”
Ignoring that, I said, “Bobby said in front of several witnesses that he was going to take the knife home. He was living with you.”
“Nice of Bobby to be so cozy in public. Home, huh? He never called it home. He never accepted my apartment as home, even though he had his own room. I worked sixty hours a week to make a place for that kid, and you think he’d call it home? He never…” His voice trailed off.
“The using wasn’t one-sided. You did bring Bobby to Berkeley to have him infiltrate the temple. You set him up.”
Felcher pressed his thumb against the already limp end of the pen. “Look, I may not have been the best father in the world. It may look like I brought Bobby here just to increase my odds on the deal. That’s what Bobby thought. It’s what his mother thought. But I’ll tell you”—he looked away from me—“that was my way of getting him here, with me. He didn’t understand any more than you do.” Felcher’s face was flushed. “I had this nice place for him, and he never brought a thing here. No magazines, not even a hairbrush. And, lady, no knife!” His fist smashed into the desk.
As if by reaction, the phone rang. Felcher snatched it up. “Yeah? What? Who? Oh, yeah.”
He held out the phone to me.
“Hello?”
“Officer Smith, this is Heather Lee. You know, from the temple?”
“Yes, Heather. Why are you calling me here?”
“I called the police station. They told me where you were. It’s important.”
“I’m talking to someone.”
“Well, this is important. You said something about not leaving town. Well, I have to go. I have to go tonight.”
“You can’t leave until the investigation is completed.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“Why?”
“Because of Chattanooga,” she said with a triumphant finality.
“Chattanooga?”
“Yeah, Chattanooga Charlie Spotts. He’s heading for Eureka to do a gig there. He wants me to go with him. He’s going tonight.”
“I’m sorry, Heather, but I can’t let you leave Berkeley.”
There was a noise as if she’d started to protest, then reconsidered. “You mean as soon as Padma’s murder is solved I can go?”
“Right.”
“Well, then, I think I can tell you who killed him.”
“You know who the murderer is?”
“I think so.”
“Well, who is it?”
“Wait. If I help you, will you get them to make sure I can leave right away? I won’t be involved in anything about Padma not being a real guru, will I?”
“I’m sure something can be worked out.”
“You’re sure?”
“I said I was. Who killed him, Heather?”
I could hear her breathing. “I want to check on something. Meet me in an hour.”
“Heather, where are you?”
“In the temple office.”
“Is anyone there with you? Heather, you’d better tell me what you know now. It’s dangerous to have that kind of secret. You don’t know if someone’s overheard you. You can hear a lot through that office window.” I knew that from my own experience.
“No, I—”
“Heather, you could be killed.”
She laughed. “Meet me in an hour. Meet me someplace real. You have an expense account, don’t you? For informers?” She laughed again. “Meet me at Priester’s, on the Avenue. I could use a hamburger.”
“Heather—”
But the phone had gone dead. I stood staring at it, wondering if I could count on Heather’s meeting me at Priester’s restaurant. I’d meant to scare her, but recalling the ease with which I’d overheard Felcher and Braga’s conversation in that room, I realized that what I’d told Heather was too true to be taken lightly.
I ran for my car.
Chapter 20
THE RAIN HAD STOPPED temporarily, but dark clouds sagged down from the sky, intensifying the dim gray of dusk. Now, at five o’clock, the wet Berkeley streets looked like night.
Even with the flasher and siren on, it took me twenty minutes to get back to the temple. I raced down the steps to Braga’s office. Empty. Up, through the door under the stage, into the temple proper. It held only a group of Penlops. Spotting me, they turned silent.
“Have you seen Heather in the last half hour?” I asked.
The blond Penlop spoke for the group. “No.”
Running out the back door, I headed across the courtyard to the tepee and pulled the flap half open. The marble oil lamp was lit, but there was no sign of Heather. Only her matching leather suitcases stoo
d there, lined up by the door, ready to go to Eureka.
The ashram was no better. Leah wasn’t there. Two Penlops were asleep. Chupa-da’s attic room was empty. I tried to think where else Heather could be. Maybe she’d found what she wanted and gone on to Priester’s early.
I ran back to the car, headed through the one-way traffic on the Avenue and double-parked in front of the restaurant, ignoring the angry drivers behind me. Moving through the restaurant, I generated a fair amount of uneasiness among the customers but didn’t find Heather.
If she was not at the temple, not in her tepee, not in the ashram, not here, where was she? Had someone overheard our conversation and got to her already?
There was no way to tell. There was no sense in staying here. If she made it to the restaurant, she’d be okay.
I walked back to the car, started to call in for the beat officers to watch for her, and realized I didn’t know what she was wearing. The description I could give was so general as to fit a quarter of the girls on the Avenue.
I drove back to the temple, got out of the car and moved toward the dimly lit building. Forty-five minutes had passed since Heather’s call. Anything could have happened.
If the murderer hadn’t found her before my race through the buildings here, he could have after I’d left. And—I stopped in my steps—it wasn’t only the crew here I had to worry about. I didn’t know whether they’d heard what Heather had said, but I had repeated all the salient points with Vernon Felcher sitting right beside me. I’d announced where Heather was, what she knew and the fact that she was alone.
I moved slowly to the temple door.
A hand touched my shoulder.
I whirled.
Heather smiled. “You don’t waste much time. But I want to go to Priester’s.”
I leaned back against the temple wall. “Where have you been? Are you all right? No one bothered you?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m fine. I just went to the all-night drugstore. You know that far-out rouge I had? Scintillatingly Scarlet, it’s called. Well, I lost it and—”
“You held up a murder investigation to buy rouge?” The fury was evident in my voice.
Heather turned, stalked to the patrol car and treated me to an icy silence all the way to the restaurant. It wasn’t till after we were seated and she had ordered herself a cheeseburger deluxe, their special salad and a Coke that she said, “Okay.”
“So who’s the killer?” I asked in a half whisper.
“Vernon Felcher, the real-estate man.”
“Felcher!”
“Felcher. Yeah.”
I leaned forward. “How do you know it was Felcher?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t say that I knew for sure. I just figured it out because everything points that way.”
“What things?”
The waitress arrived with Heather’s meal and my cup of coffee. Seeing the food, I wished I’d ordered something to eat, too.
“What things?” I repeated.
“Well, there’s motive. I mean, he was Bobby’s father. I can see where he’d be really pissed off that Bobby died in the ashram. I mean, as a mother, I can understand that. I mean, I can see where he might blame Paul.”
I felt irritation setting in. “Any other motive?”
“Well, there’s the land. I know he wants the land.”
“Anything else?”
Heather strained to think. She obviously wanted to tell me enough to ensure her right to leave town. She would have personally placed Felcher before a firing squad if it would have reunited her with Chattanooga Charlie.
“Well,” she said, “there are other things besides motive. I mean, he was right there.”
“Where?”
“He was at the ceremony.”
That was news. Felcher had told me he was at a movie. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, Leah told me. I remember because I was surprised he’d have the gall to come, particularly on that night when there was so big a crowd they’d had to turn people away.” She looked more confident now. Biting into the cheeseburger, she watched my reaction. My mouth was watering—one reaction.
“His being there doesn’t prove he killed Paul,” I informed her. “As a matter of fact, if he was in the audience it means that he was not under the stage. He was not in a position to knife Paul.”
Heather chewed hurriedly. “No. Umm. Listen, Leah said he was sitting right up front. On the aisle just a couple of rows from her.”
I remembered Leah deVeau, sitting in the front row. I remembered her lifting her hands to Padmasvana. “You’re sure she said he was on the aisle?”
“Ye … yes, I’m sure.”
I sipped my coffee, barely aware of the taste. “Heather, I still don’t see how that implicates him. If he’d gotten up, walked to the back of the room, out and around to the basement steps, through the basement to the trapdoor, to—”
“No. Umm.” She put up a hand and swallowed quickly. “He didn’t have to do that. That’s the point. He would be right by the door under the stage. All he had to do was slip through there, pop up through the trapdoor, plunge the knife and sit back down.”
“Don’t you think that would have been rather obvious?”
“Jesus! Don’t you remember what that room was like? I looked in once or twice during the ceremony. Felcher could have set off a firecracker and no one would have noticed.”
I lifted the coffee cup halfway and held it. Heather had a point. Felcher could have slipped through the stage door, killed Paul and, in the ensuing panic, slipped back into his seat. People had jumped up; they’d screamed; one or two had fainted. It would have been no problem at all to melt into the swarming crowd. Even Felcher, an outsider, would have had no trouble. And, likely, he had access to the murder weapon.
There was one problem with this theory, of course. The Penlops at the door had sworn no one had left the building or grounds after the stabbing, and Felcher had not been on our list of people in the audience. Still, I supposed he could have been there and managed to sneak away somehow.
“Anything else?” I asked as Heather started in on her salad.
“What more do you need!”
“Then that’s it?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it enough? Can’t I go? Chattanooga will be leaving.”
“I can’t let you go until we have an arrest. It could be soon, or maybe not. Get Chattanooga’s schedule and meet him along the way. If it’s true love,” I said with a straight face, “it will survive.”
“Shit!”
Ignoring my suggestions to hurry, Heather dallied over her salad, ordered a slice of banana-cream pie and, finally, announced that she would get home alone. I reminded her that Felcher was loose and that, if what she implied were true, he could be dangerous. Heather was not impressed. She’d walk back along the Avenue, under the streetlights. At the temple there’d be people. She’d be okay, she assured me. And anyway, she kind of knew this guy a couple of booths down and she wanted to say hello and…
Reiterating my warning, I left and drove back across town to Comfort Realty.
The building was dark. Felcher was gone. How soon after Heather’s call had he left? Had he kept the appointment with his unidentified caller? Or had his need to find Heather preempted that?
Hurrying back to the car, I drove to Felcher’s apartment in the hills by the Kensington city line. It was the bottom unit of a duplex and it, too, was dark. I banged on the door to the upper unit. Irritated, a middle-aged woman shuffled down to the door and responded that no, she had not heard Felcher tonight. No, that was not unusual; he rarely came home before eleven. Yes, she was sure he hadn’t been there. She’s been watching a movie on television—one that she was now missing—and she would have had no trouble hearing Felcher’s car.
Could Felcher have left town? Should I alert the airports, the bus depots and the Santa Fe station? Was he somewhere on I-5 headed south? Or driving madly toward the open spaces of Nevada or speeding north for the Oregon line
?
Or was he hiding around the ashram, waiting for Heather?
I turned the car, put on the pulsers and raced back down the hill, calling in an all-points to the Highway Patrol on the way.
It was almost seven o’clock. I called in again to ask for backup as I pulled the patrol car up in front of the temple.
Shutting the car door quietly, I started across the courtyard. Footsteps hit the walkway behind me.
I turned.
“Heather!” I stopped. “This is the second time tonight you’ve done that.”
“Done what?”
“Never mind. I’m just glad you’re all right.”
“I’m not all right. I’m lousy! Chattanooga Charlie’s already left. Someone at Priester’s saw him pack up. He didn’t even tell me he was going. He didn’t even bother.”
Her face drooped. The scowl that usually marked it was replaced by a genuinely woebegone expression. For the first time, I felt some sympathy for Heather, some sense of kinship. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Come on, maybe it’ll help to talk about it.” It wouldn’t hurt for me to sit in the tepee until the backup crew arrived and listen. I’d run out of nearby places to look for Vernon Felcher, anyway.
Heather nodded, and together we walked across the courtyard. She lifted the tepee flap, stepped inside and screamed.
Chapter 21
THERE ON THE FLOOR amid broken makeup bottles lay Vernon Felcher. The back of his head was caved in. His blood had stained the bottles and streaked the white paint on the table as he slid down. There was blood on his jacket, blood on what I could see of his face. And there was blood on the marble lamp, lying beside Felcher’s body.
Pushing Heather outside, I followed, inhaling deeply, trying to control my nausea. Heather leaned against the tepee and retched. I took another breath and started across the courtyard to my car radio.
As I reached it, the backup crew I’d called for arrived. I told them. “It’s a one-eighty-seven—bludgeoned with a marble lamp. Outgrowth of the guru stabbing here Wednesday.”
“Your case?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded with a touch of disappointment. Of course, he hadn’t seen Vernon Felcher’s body. He hadn’t known Felcher alive. “I’ll run logistics: you want to take the suspects, since you know who they are?”