by Jack Lynch
“There’s one woman I’m afraid I like too much.”
She stared at me a moment. “I see.”
She turned and went back over to the sofa and sat on the edge of it, her head lowered and hands jammed back into her coat pockets.
I took a swig of the bourbon and crossed the room, pulled the chair back over and straddled it. “I’m sorry I barked at you. This has been a bad day for me.”
“This has been a terrible day,” Karen agreed, not raising her head.
I looked at her closely. It was no act, she was in misery. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. If I told you about today I think it would make me cry. I don’t like to cry. It is just—I am afraid. I don’t know things Nancy knew. I am afraid I could lose my business. And I don’t want to lose my business. I need my business.”
“Don’t you have accountants? People like that?”
“We have accounting firm. Big deal accounting firm. Nancy would talk to them. I don’t know how to talk to big deal accounting firms.”
“Don’t you have an attorney?”
She shook her head.
I sat a moment, then got out one of my cards and handed it to her. “Call here tomorrow. Ask for Sharon Rapler. She runs the office and is well connected. Tell her I suggested she might be able to help you. She knows accountants and tax attorneys. She can give you the names of people you can trust who will help you. It’ll cost you, but you’ll get some of the load lifted. I’m serious.”
She was staring at the card, then jammed it into one of her pockets. I drained my drink and got up and went back over to fix another, then turned and just leaned back against the bar, sipping the bourbon. Maybe I’d been all wrong about her.
Karen looked over at me. It was as if I had spoken aloud and she had heard me. She got to her feet and crossed to stand in front of me again. She had a very serious look on her face.
“These things I have said to you, things that bother you. It was a mistake I see now. But when I meet a man who knocks me for the loop the way you did yesterday—no, don’t say anything for a minute, I am not blowing the smoke here—when I meet somebody like that it is always the same: heart upside down, brains out window. I never do it right. If I play little girl, they want Mama. If I am big siren with long eyelashes and cigarette holder, they want pal, somebody they can go hunting with.” She shrugged.
“Why don’t you just try being yourself instead of what you think anybody else wants?”
“What is myself? I don’t know that. This flirty, bold woman I have been pitching to you, Bragg, is the person I have shown the world since I went into business for myself. I think it is good for business, but bad for love. I have not had many men friends. Not real friends.”
“I should think you’d have the pick of the crop of the young hunks who work for you. They can’t all be gay.”
“No. Most are not gay, but it would be bad for the business. Besides, most of them are very stuck on themselves. I need somebody I think who can be just a little bit stuck on me. The last man I fell in love with borrowed twenty-five thousand dollars to help start a small business, he said. He left town the next day and I haven’t heard from him since. I am a bad judge of men I think, but when I met you yesterday, something inside me said you might be one who is different. I had heard some about you long ago, please remember, from my husband. Bragg, detective. A man who can take care of very bad business. Already in my mind I had this little excitement before you came to my apartment yesterday. It took just one look and…”
She turned away. “Think what you want, Bragg. It is not smoke. I only wish you could have felt a little bit for me what I felt. I think I will go home now.” She walked to the sofa and slipped her shoes back on. I went over to her.
“Karen, for what it’s worth, somebody once described you as being a beautiful woman. When I first saw you last night I had to agree with that.”
She blinked at me. “Who said that about me?”
“Your late husband’s secretary.”
“Another woman.” She shrugged. “I could use a good man or two in my life, not another woman. That is what I should have said to the insurance man.”
“What insurance man?”
She made a little wave with one hand. “I had this phone call,” she told me. “At home one evening. This crazy man was trying to sell me some life insurance. I could not believe it. But he had a very engaging way and he made me laugh. Any man who can make me laugh is worth a little of my time. So I let him go on about loved ones and lives being destroyed by the unexpected.
“I told him finally that he could save his breath and move along to the next name on his list because I thought insurance companies already had too much money, and besides, I didn’t have anybody I would want to leave anything to. That knocked him for the loop. He said, ‘There must be somebody,’ as if it was my duty to care enough about somebody to put aside a lot of money each month for the insurance industry to invest at the small risk that someday I might be run over by a freight train coming through my office wall.”
She had another little sip of her Scotch. “He was very persistent. He asked if I ever did take out insurance, then died, who would I leave the money to. And I of course told him it would be Nancy Dobbs, my partner. He said, oh, did we have one of those relationships. That is when I should have hung up on him. Instead I played his game. I asked just what sort of relationship did he have in mind. And he said one that only women can have. And I said, you mean like—and I began to make up the most naughty things I could think of that those crazy women do with each other. I went on and on, trying to be as nasty as I could. And you know what?”
“What?”
“He hung up on me.” She threw back her head and laughed again, then stopped abruptly. “I really shouldn’t laugh about it. Not after what happened to Nancy.”
“Did you ever hear back from him?”
“No.”
“Did you get any follow-up pitches in the mail?”
“No.” She drained the last of the Scotch, put down the glass, pulled the little beret out of her pocket and slipped it atop her head again.
“Back into the spy novel?”
“Perhaps, Bragg. You have a funny way of talking to women.”
“Maybe I don’t understand women any better than you understand American men.” She waited over by the door while I closed up the bar and turned out the lights.
“Will you walk me to my car?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll get my jacket.”
I finished closing up the office and we went down in the elevator. I walked her up O’Farrell Street to where she had found a parking place. She was driving a smart-looking little Mercedes coupe, light blue in color. I waited on the sidewalk while she went around and unlocked the driver’s side door. She opened it then straightened and stared at me, the little beret cocked at just the right angle, traffic passing close by to where she stood.
“I want to apologize again for the things I said earlier,” I told her. “I was way out of line.”
She gave me a brief smile. “Thank you, Bragg. I think we are at least friends now.” She started to get into the car then hesitated.
“What would you do if I asked you to come give me a little goodnight kiss?” she asked. “No big deal kiss. Nothing to make horns honk.”
I had to smile, and figured maybe I owed her something for acting like such a jerk earlier. I went around the car to give her a brief kiss, but it lingered on a moment more.
She put her hands on my face. “That was nice, just right,” she told me, but she still didn’t move to get into the little car. She cocked her head. “What would you do if I asked you now to give me a big kiss goodnight? Maybe something to make horns honk?”
I almost told her she was making me feel like a human being again and I wouldn’t mind kissing her for the rest of the night. But problems, my problems, never get solved that easily.
“I’m
afraid I’d turn you down,” I told her, resting both hands briefly on her shoulders, “because I have a personal life that’s pretty messed up right now. You can take it as a compliment that I’m even telling you this. And I have to straighten that out somehow before I can go around giving you or anybody else a kiss that would make horns honk.”
She looked at me for a moment. “Maybe of all the American men I have known I don’t understand you most of all,” she said finally. Then she made a fist with one hand and gave me a little thump on the chest. “I have a secret about this moment, this moment right now. I must tell you sometime.”
And with that she got into the little coupe and drove off leaving me standing in the street staring after her until horns began honking and I got back on the sidewalk.
TWENTY-ONE
I called Smith early the next morning before leaving my apartment. I would have preferred talking to Rachel, but she was out of the office. I suspected that Smith wasn’t going to buy what I had to sell. It would have been easier with Rachel.
“What is it you’ve got, Bragg?”
“Just an idea. Maybe you could pass it along to Rachel when she checks in. I think maybe we’ve been trying to make the wrong connection. Maybe the pattern we’ve been looking for isn’t among the victims, but among people who were closest to the victims, maybe among the names you compiled as main contacts in each case.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Not one bit. Whatever you might think, please pass it along to Rachel. Where is she, by the way?”
“Interviewing the widows of Calione and Dizzy Holmes. The two women are friends. They’re staying together, trying to help each other through this thing.”
“An example of what I’m talking about.”
“But not much of one. Their husbands had business dealings together. Why shouldn’t the women have met and become friends?”
I gave up on it. Maybe the problem was one of semantics. I felt I was onto something, or that our office guru Sharon had been onto something, but I couldn’t think of where to take it. I phoned Maribeth’s number. Bobbie answered.
“Maribeth was talked into going out for breakfast with a neighbor from down the hall. You almost missed me as well, sweetie pie, I was just on my way out.”
“Back to Carmel?”
“Not quite yet. I’m going to do that taped interview. We’ve been getting some phone calls from other TV stations and the newspapers. They learned Maribeth’s name somehow. Maybe the interview will satisfy them.”
“I hope it works that way. I’d like you to leave a note for her. Tell her I’ll be in touch later in the day.”
I hesitated before making the next call. I supposed if I really bought the connection to be found among survivors of the murder victims, I should put my money where my mouth was and go out interviewing them myself, the grief-stricken ones. But I had very nearly had a bellyful of that just the day before at the Whitley home.
Instead I made a call that was apart from all the body business. I just wanted to satisfy a suspicion I had. I phoned Jeff Anderson, a friend who headed the publicity department at one of the local television stations. We chatted a few moments, then I told him why I was calling. Without mentioning her name I told Anderson about Maribeth and her connection with the body story.
“She wanted to avoid publicity on this thing,” I told him, “but some of the stations have learned her identity and have been trying to reach her. Could you ask the people in your newsroom if they know about her, and if so, where they got her name?”
“That’s an odd request,” Anderson told me. “I’m not even sure they’d tell me.”
“Give it a try, will you? I think I already know, but I’d like confirmation. Tell them if they help on this I’ll try to throw something their way before it’s all over with.”
“You just said the magic words,” Anderson told me. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He called back five minutes later to tell me they had been given Maribeth Robbins’ name by Welch. I thanked him and hung up with a little smile on my face. It was as I had suspected. Welch was a sly fellow. Maybe Bobbie had been stalling him on the interview he wanted so he had arranged it for other media people to begin bothering Maribeth to prod her and her niece into giving him the interview that might satisfy the others.
But that bit of satisfaction was just stalling, I knew. It didn’t get me anywhere with the theory the survivors of the murder victims held the key to the whole mess. I could think of only one more possible commonality among them. It was a long shot, and one I couldn’t expect to get an answer to over the telephone.
I went back to the cabinet and got out the .38 revolver once more, stuffed it in the traveling bag and hit the road.
The Horse Around Ranch was nestled in the steep hills east of the fishing village of Bodega Bay. A two-story timbered lodge was the heart of the operation, with small wooden cabins spotted around a surrounding meadow. I parked in an unpaved lot in front of the main lodge.
The ranch didn’t seem to be doing much of a business. Only one other car was parked in the lot. People probably would begin arriving later in the day to spend the weekend. The sound of hammering and sawing came from a building under construction across the meadow, and blue jays were squawking in the trees. A large sign beside the wooden stairs leading to the veranda urged guests to conserve water. “Leave Some for the Horses,” it said.
The open front door led into a reception area with a counter and desk and a small office beyond it. An entryway on one side led off to a community room with a big fireplace along one wall, sofas and chairs set in friendly clusters, several shelves full of books and a television set in the corner. A stairway opposite the fireplace led up to a balcony that ringed the upper floor, giving access to individual rooms. Just off the community room was a dining area.
I went over and tapped the little call bell on the counter.
A bouncing young woman in her early 20s came out of the office wearing denim pants, a pale yellow shirt and a friendly grin. She had dark eyes, dark hair cinched into a pony tail and a dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks.
“Hi, there,” she greeted me. “I don’t know if we’ve got a horse big enough to carry you, but you’ve just about got the pick of the accommodations.”
“I’m not staying over this time,” I told her, opening my wallet. “I’m working.” I showed her the photo of my state license and put one of my business cards on the desktop. I also took out the latest list of names Barry Smith had given me.
“I’m helping the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department on this one. I’d like to know if some of the names on this list were staying here at the same time, a weekend last December, I believe it was.” I folded the list of victims and contacts down the middle, turning the side listing survivors toward her.
The girl’s smile faded. She looked at me, lowered her eyes to glance briefly at the list, then looked back at me. She remained polite enough, but now assumed the stance of a seasoned innkeeper.
“You’ve got to be kidding. You, a private detective, expect to waltz in here and go through the guest register? I mean we don’t demand marriage licenses of the guests. As long as they behave themselves in public and, as they used to say, don’t scare the horses, we pretty much mind our own business.”
“It’s not what you think. This isn’t any sort of divorce matter. This involves a number of violent deaths. Truly.”
She glanced at the list again, seemed to waver, then got another grip on herself. “Oh, come on. You can tell me any story you want. I still don’t know what you’re up to. You come back with a sheriff’s deputy, I’ll help you any way I can.”
“What’s your name?”
“Susan.”
“Susan, if I get in touch with the people I’m working with, sheriff’s people in Santa Rosa, if I get them on the phone would you give them the information?”
“Probably not. It isn’t the sort of information we give out over the phone.”
I thought a moment. “Okay, let’s try it this way. Among those names on the list, I know that the Whitleys and the woman named Karen Ellis were here the same weekend. Would you tell me if you remember any of the other names on that list? The Ellis woman runs a modeling agency in San Francisco. She’s flamboyant enough so you’d probably remember her. If you could recognize just one other name it might help tremendously.”
“I wasn’t here last December.”
I went back outside and leaned against the car. I couldn’t blame her. It just went to show how spoiled a person could become after traveling for a couple of days with authentic lawmen who can flash a badge and demand an answer.
I glanced across the meadow to where two men were up banging hammers on the roof of the building under construction. Then I straightened and looked around some more, wondering where they kept the horses. I didn’t have the country background that Rachel did, but it seemed to me that an outfit calling itself the Horse Around Ranch should have horses. I strolled across the meadow.
The two men on the roof were shirtless beneath bib overalls. One wore a cowboy hat, the other had a bandanna wrapped around his head, like country music singer Willie Nelson. He even looked a bit like Willie Nelson, an older fellow with nut brown skin and a grey stubble on his chin. That’s probably why he wore the bandanna.
I was standing a little ways off from the structure. When Willie glanced up and saw me I waved at him. He nodded his head in turn, then paused. He said something to his partner, who also stopped banging nails.
“Howdy,” called the man in the bandanna.
“Hi. You the owner, or manager here?”
“Naw. We’re just hired help. Carpenters, this week.”
It was a more than adequate description of the marginal, many-faceted work lives of the men living along the Northern California coast.
“What is it you’re building?”
“Stables.”
“Expanding?”
“Nope. Replacing.”
I nodded my head. “I was wondering where they kept the horses.”