by Jack Lynch
“No, she wasn’t very specific. Maybe I didn’t press her enough on that. She said something about a picnic area, but she seemed a little vague.”
Smith grunted. “Maybe you should work on that. Maybe even get her up in a plane or something, fly her over the county. If she sees something that looks about right, let us know. We’ll check it out.”
He got up from his desk and I rose as well. “You’ve given me a lot of time for something this thin. I’ll tell Burt about it.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, joining me at the door. “I hate to tell you this. Maybe I’m a closet psychic myself. But about halfway through your story, I got this funny little tingle between my shoulder blades. You know, that area you can never reach in the shower? And it hasn’t gone away in all the time we’ve been talking. I think your lady might be on to something. I think she might have smelled something in the neighborhood. I think we might have some bodies out there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Smith shrugged. “What the hell. The more I think about it, the sheriff probably would love it, if there’s a quick wrap to it.”
“I’m still sorry to hear it.”
“How come?”
“There’s the other part of it. The woman psychic thinks she’s going to be one of the victims.”
THREE
“Idon’t believe it.”
The young woman who had opened the door to Maribeth Robbins’ apartment on Green Street was staring up at me with a grin of faint astonishment. I recognized her and felt a little pang of regret that I hadn’t been back to see her since the time we had met, months earlier. She was a small person, less than five feet tall with a slender build, but I had learned during our short acquaintanceship the slender build concealed a core of steel. What it couldn’t conceal, as if to mock her overall skinniness, was a round, grand-looking backside riding under tight jeans. Black hair tumbled down her shoulders and she had an angular face harboring thin lips that could make old bears want to get up and dance whenever it broke into a smile.
“The Duck’s Quack in Carmel,” she reminded me.
“I know. You’re the smarty-pants who gave me the information that helped me catch a killer. And we barely knew each other.”
“You were fun to flirt with,” she told me, opening the door wider. “And you told me you’d come back one day when you didn’t have another woman in tow. Before the year was out, you promised.”
“Events interfered,” I told her. “What are you doing here?”
“Maribeth’s my aunt. We’re the only family either of us has left. We talked on the phone last week and she sounded like she was in a bad place. I arranged some time off and came up to hold her hand for a few days.”
“Your name’s Bobbie,” I remembered.
“That’s very good,” she said, closing the door behind me. “Why is it that your name escapes me, do you suppose?”
“Because I didn’t make it back to Carmel by year’s end, I suppose. Bragg.”
“That’s right. You wouldn’t admit to a first name.”
“My secret.”
“And I guess you’re the private dick who’s supposed to save Auntie from some horrible fate.”
“Something like that. I want her to take an airplane ride with me and see if she recognizes anything.”
“Good luck.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’ll see,” she said, leading me down a hallway.
Maribeth Robbins lived on the top floor of a three-story building of white stone perched on the north slope of Russian Hill. The hallway emptied into a living room with sweeping views of the Marina yacht harbor and Golden Gate and the hills of Marin County beyond. The walls and ceiling were painted a bright ivory, the floor was covered with a thick, pale lavender carpet and the room was spotted with a white sofa and several pieces of Scandinavian furniture, all chrome and leather straps.
“Maribeth’s cleaning the back toilet. I’ll tell her you’re here.”
“Bobbie?”
She turned back. “I’ve never met your aunt. We’ve only had a couple of telephone conversations. What can you tell me about her?”
The skin around the girl’s eyes crinkled and she thought a moment before answering. “She’s just one of the world’s neat people. She’s bright and has a great sense of humor most of the time. She’s a little depressed these days. All in all she’s had a pretty good life, I’d say. She was married once. It didn’t work out, but she had a comfortable settlement from it. And she does really well with this psychic business. I think she feels a little guilty about it all. Can you imagine any other psychic grossing six figures a year still cleaning her own toilets twice a week?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Well, she does. She won’t even let me help. And under it all she really likes people. She wants to help them however she can. I had a chat with her accountant one time. A fair amount of her work is done gratis. Does that help?”
“I guess so. I’m glad you turned out to be her niece.”
“Ummm,” she said, with a look that could have meant a number of things. She walked to a doorway, then turned back. “And one other thing, Mr. Bragg.”
“Just Bragg.”
“Okay, Bragg. Right now my Aunt Maribeth is scared to death.”
She left the room and I suppose I stood there with my mouth open for a bit. I roused myself finally and walked over to the windows and stared down the hill to watch the pedestrians cross an intersection on Union Street. It was a trendy part of town. Over the years dozens of restaurants and boutiques and specialty shops had been opened along that street, drawing tourists and hometown trade alike, celebrities and hopeful singles. The only problem with it all was that if you didn’t travel by cab or on the Muni transit system you could spend an hour driving up and down hills or traversing the flatland below looking for a parking place.
“So you’re the man who saved my life,” said a voice behind me. I turned.
Maribeth was a tall, stocky woman in her early sixties, wearing old jeans and a man’s blue workshirt that had its sleeves rolled up. Her hair was dark, turning gray, and she didn’t care if the world knew about it. She had a handsome face with high, strong cheekbones, a broad, firm chin and a wide, expressive mouth. But it was her eyes that held your attention. They were dark and shiny and flashed out at the world like a pair of ebony headlamps.
Almost before I could take her all in she was across the room and giving me a hug, then stood back and held one of my hands. “God, I have wanted to meet you for so long, Bragg.” She stood on tiptoes to kiss my cheek.
“Wow, Aunt Maribeth,” said Bobbie from across the room. “Should I break out the champagne or something?”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Maribeth told her. “That was just a decade of thankfulness expressing itself.”
Maribeth was studying me closely now, her face all serious and probing. “You’re a lot bigger, and harder looking than I’d imagined.”
“Probably a little harder looking than I was back when we first talked,” I told her. “I’ve had an eventful life since then.”
“So have I, thanks to you.”
“Look,” I told her, “anybody with half a brain could have done what I did. You’ve said your thanks. And what you’ve done with your life since then says it even better. Let’s just move along to what’s bothering you now.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Let us indeed.” She took a quick breath and let it out, then crossed to the long white sofa and motioned me to one of the chrome and leather chairs. “I just hope you’re good at what you do now.”
“He’s very good,” Bobbie told her.
Maribeth looked up at her niece. “How would you know?”
“We met before. Last fall, when we were having a little trouble down in the Monterey area.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“I told you about it. That asshole waiter named Alex who ended up hanging from a flag pole?”
“Mr. Bragg came to the bar later and I let him go through things Alex had kept there. I guess it helped some, huh?”
“A great deal,” I told her. “The bad guys had abducted my lady friend. Eventually I had to shoot one of them in order to get her out of there alive and in reasonably good shape.”
“Did the man live?” Maribeth asked.
“No, he didn’t.”
She lowered her eyes and picked at some imaginary thing on her jeans. “Well, I guess those things happen,” she said quietly. “Maybe it’s just as well Bobbie mentioned that. I guess I’d built sort of a myth around you, after how you helped me before. This makes you a little more human. Bragg the man hunter.”
“He chases girls too,” Bobbie piped up.
Maribeth looked at her. “Why Bobbie, what a thing to say.”
“He does, Auntie. In fact he promised to come back to Carmel sometime without his girlfriend, so the two of us could see what sort of mischief we might get into.”
“He did?” Maribeth looked from one to the other of us. I kept my mouth shut. “Small world,” she said finally.
“Maribeth, I’d like you to come over to Sausalito tomorrow and go up in a plane with me.”
She didn’t exactly scream; it was more like a yelp that shot me half out of my chair. “What’s wrong?”
Bobbie giggled. “Why don’t I go fix us all a drink?”
“I don’t go up in airplanes, that’s what’s wrong,” said Maribeth. “And I have a client coming this afternoon, Bobbie. I never have a snort when a client’s coming.” She sat with her hands squeezed into a knot, as if somebody had struck her.
“You don’t go up in airplanes?” I asked. “Not ever?”
“Not ever. No, sir. I went up once, in nineteen-sixty-something. Never again.”
“Maribeth, it’s important,” I told her. “I’ve got a good friend over in Sausalito. Max Bolero. He’s president of Commando Aviation, that seaplane place on Richardson Bay. He’s a very good pilot. He’s one man in the cockpit I’d risk going anywhere with.”
“Absolutely not,” she told me. “Planes are out. Planes, hot air balloons, hang gliders, you can have the bunch.”
“Hang gliding’s fun,” Bobbie put in.
“Oh! I don’t want to hear about it,” said Maribeth. She looked across at me. “No, I can’t possibly do that. Why ever did you ask?”
I took a deep breath. “This morning I had a talk with a sheriff’s sergeant named Smith, up in Santa Rosa. I told him about what’s been troubling you. He’s a friend of a friend, and he listened patiently. But more than that, I think he’s receptive to do with these impressions you’ve received. But he said he really doesn’t have enough to go on, from what you’ve said so far. He said maybe if you went up in a plane, flew a search pattern over the county, you might recognize the area where you see these things. He said if you could find it, they’d check it out.”
“Well, I can’t do that,” she told me. “Not in any plane, certainly.” She shook her head. “I really don’t even want to find the place, to tell you the truth, but I’d be willing to try. We could drive up there if you think it might help.”
“That could take longer than we have,” I told her. “Can you describe the setting in more detail than you did yesterday when we talked?”
“I don’t know. Is it important?”
“Maybe. If you could describe it well enough, maybe I could do the flying for you. Maybe I could spot the place. Then you wouldn’t have to go anywhere near it.”
Watching Maribeth when she was serious was like watching a stage presentation. She seemed for a moment to recede inside herself. Her face was grave, and her normally flashing eyes seemed to glow inwardly. I thought for a moment that maybe she was trying to go into her trance, or whatever it was that she did, but then I decided she was just trying to remember.
Across the room Bobbie had settled onto the carpet with her legs tucked beneath her. She was staring at her aunt with all of that smart talk side of her put away. She was watching the older woman closely.
“I don’t know,” Maribeth said at last, relaxing against the blue cushions behind her. “I’ve been so affected by what I knew was beneath the ground, so frightened of it, I’ve never concentrated all that much on the surroundings.” She looked across at her niece. “I suppose I could crawl back into the cave and try for it.”
Bobbie got up and crossed to her aunt. She knelt and took the older woman’s hand.
“It could ruin things for my appointment later,” Maribeth said, more to herself. “What should I do, Bobbie?”
“I think you should do anything you can to help Mr. Bragg find out what’s happening, whatever it might be. Do you want me to cancel your appointment?”
Maribeth thought about it for a moment. “No, not just yet. Let’s see how it goes.”
She got to her feet then. She didn’t say anything more or look at either of us but just left the room as if she’d been told there were a couple more toilets that needed cleaning.
Bobbie stood and watched her aunt move down the hallway. “This could get a little grim,” she told me, sitting now on the edge of the sofa.
“Is it always this tough?”
“Is what?”
“Whatever she does back there. Her trance, or whatever.”
Bobbie shook her head. “No, it’s just this thing to do with the bodies. She’s told me a little bit about it. What it does to her. That’s why I’m up here instead of down in Carmel running a saloon.” It wasn’t a happy face she was wearing right then. She rubbed one knee absently.
“What’s this cave she talked about?”
“It’s the back room she has set up where she does her thing.”
“She’s a pretty dramatic woman.”
“She is that,” Bobbie agreed.
“How does she go about it?”
The girl shrugged. “It’s not difficult to describe. The tough part is what your mind goes through to get there. Have you ever been into TM? Meditation?”
“Me? Lawdy, no. Do folks still do that?”
“Don’t make fun,” she said softly. “It has helped an awful lot of people.”
“How so?”
“It’s a relaxation process. It lets you back away from yourself. It’s a letting go, only it takes a long time to realize you’re getting anything out of it. One of the primary disciplines involved is to get your mind to suppress your thoughts for a time. Five seconds, ten minutes. That’s very hard to do. Somebody once said the mind is like a frisky colt. It’s hard to make it lie down and be still. But that’s what you try to do in meditation. And what could sound more silly than to try to just shut off your thoughts?”
“It doesn’t seem to have much merit,” I agreed.
“But if you practice it, you learn differently. Anyway, you asked about Maribeth. It isn’t exactly a trance she goes into, not the sort of thing a person thinks of as a trance. What she does is go through a period of very intense meditation, blanking the mind. Or more like erasing a blackboard. Maribeth has been doing it for so long now she can achieve this state pretty quickly. It’s like stilling the part of the mind we usually work with and then digging somewhere deeper. It’s a stretching. Senses and impressions are roped in from places most of us never reach these days. That’s when she sees the things she sees, though maybe ‘seeing’ is poor word choice.”
She hesitated, then looked across at me. “I’m glad you’re the one she went to.”
“Why?”
She tilted her head. “I think you’re competent.”
I shrugged. “If what your aunt senses is actually out there, I’d better be. Do you have any of your aunt’s ability?”
The girl snorted. “Not an ounce. Oh, I used to meditate, or try to, but that’s as far as it went. I’m beginning to think it’s an every other generation sort of thing. My mother had it. She was eerie, but she always just treated it like a big joke.
I’d come home from high school with friends, and my mother would tell us that somebody was going to phone or some weird thing was going to come in the day’s mail, then the somebody would phone or a weird thing would come in the mail, and it would just crack up everybody.”
She thought about it for a moment with a smile on her face. “Those were good times,” she said quietly. “But me, it’s all I can do to get through the day straight. My problem is I never learned to repress my thoughts all that well.”
“What do you think about?”
“Men, mostly,” she said with a little smile.
It was then we heard a cry that made us both start. A calling out, followed by a moan. Bobbie was on her feet and across the room like a shot and ran down the hallway.
When she returned she had Maribeth with her, one arm up around her aunt’s shoulders. Bobbie’s eyes were brimming with pain for the older woman. Maribeth was stooped, as if somebody had just beaten all the juice out of her. Bobbie helped her to the sofa and Maribeth collapsed back against the cushions, her eyes unseeing, hands twitching.
I started to go to her but Bobbie motioned me back. She let go of her aunt finally and stood with her hands knotted into small fists at her sides, as if ready to give battle to whoever or whatever was causing such pain.
Maribeth shook herself and began to get her strength back. She straightened on the sofa and tried to smile. Color was returning to her face and she reached out to grasp her niece’s hand.
“Batty old woman,” she said, “that’s what I’m turning into.”
“Auntie, you aren’t.”
“No, it’s true. I’m an old workhorse at this sort of thing by now. Shouldn’t indulge in such histrionics. But it’s hard, when it’s this close to your own doorstep.” She was quiet for a moment, then looked up at Bobbie again. “I think maybe you had better go cancel the afternoon session for me. The number is on my appointment calendar, in my room. Reschedule it for tomorrow, if he wants. And then I guess maybe it would be a good idea if you did fix us all a round of drinks.”
Maribeth looked across at me. “I don’t have a whole lot to offer at the moment. Vodka and tonic all right?”