Valley of Shadows

by Paul Buchanan

  Keegan gave up. He groaned and rolled out of bed. He picked up the dog, carried her out into the living room, and turned on the lamp to show her no one was there. “You shouldn’t listen to Mrs. Dodd,” he told the dog, his voice creaky from sleep. He could feel her rapid-fire heartbeat in his arms. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

  She gave a little whimper and wagged her tail.

  He switched off the lamp again and carried the dog back into the bedroom. He kicked the door shut behind them and set her at the foot of the mattress where she liked to sleep. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “That woman’s a bad influence on you,” he told the dog. “She’ll have you reading your horoscope soon.” He lay down, but his heart had picked up its pace. He knew he probably wouldn’t get back to sleep. He put one arm behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.

  If he were to be haunted by an apparition, whose ghost would it be?

  His mother, of course, had died in this very room a little over a year ago—but she had always been a quiet soul. She’d never raised much ruckus when she was alive, so why would she do it now?

  Eve, perhaps—but he refused to let his mind traipse down that avenue of thought. It was too well trod already, and it only led to darkness.

  Hell, it could be Frank or Ida Fletcher at this point—back from the other side to make sure Keegan avenged their deaths. Or perhaps to avenge Keegan for putting the murderous nephew on their trail. If a ghost could ride an elevator, why couldn’t one look Keegan up in the white pages and float on over to the listed address?

  Keegan reached down and ran his hand along the dog’s dense, curly fur. She’d stopped trembling now, and her breath was slowing, deepening. At least one of them might get back to sleep tonight.

  THE LOBBY DIRECTORY at 22 Heeser showed that Roland Dion and Associates occupied a suite up on the building’s third floor. Donovan’s old office had been in 302, so Keegan had been right: when the old lady had asked Donovan to find her a new lawyer, he hadn’t even got on the elevator. It would have been just like him. The man spared no effort when it came to avoiding effort. For him, laziness was a single-minded pursuit, every shortcut tirelessly run down and wrestled into submission. What would retirement even look like for someone like Donovan? Other than waking up every day in a new city, was there any noticeable difference to his life?

  Keegan stepped onto the one open elevator with Ida Fletcher’s strongbox tucked under his arm. On the third-floor hallway, he passed Donovan’s old office on the way to Dion’s suite. Keegan paused to look at the new gold lettering that had been painted on the pebbled glass panel of 302. The office now belonged to a certified public accountant. Out with the old.

  The law offices of Roland Dion and Associates were at the very end of the hallway and took up half the third floor. Keegan went into the reception area and gave his name to the woman behind the desk. He told her someone should be expecting him; he’d called ahead.

  The receptionist was direct and officious—a young redhead, brimming with professional poise, in a no-nonsense skirt and blouse. Keegan guessed she probably never talked about haunted elevators or ambushed her boss with blind dates or sat in the office reading movie magazines when no one was there to look over her shoulder. With a graceful sweep of her hand from the other side of the counter, she invited Keegan to have a seat on one of the stylish leather chairs arranged against the floor-to-ceiling windows across the room. Someone would be with him in just a moment.

  Keegan sat down and propped the strongbox on his knees. The chair, he had to admit, was much more comfortable than the wooden bench clients waited on in his own office. A better secretary and better furniture—perhaps Keegan should have gone to law school after all.

  Roland Dion’s office also seemed incredibly busy, with phones ringing and the steady clatter of electric typewriters. Out the big plate-glass window behind him—past all the palm trees and red-tile roofs—Keegan could make out the turquoise stucco of the Georgian Hotel, and, beyond it, the pier’s Ferris wheel. His own office windows looked down on a Sixth Street barber shop and realtor’s office.

  Keegan waited only a couple of minutes before Roland Dion himself came rushing out from the back offices to greet him. Keegan did an involuntary double take when he first saw the man. He tried to cover it up by fumbling with the strongbox as he got to his feet, and then he stooped to shake the lawyer’s hand.

  Dion was short. He was, in fact, astonishingly short. He was the kind of short that probably drew constant double takes from those who met him—followed, no doubt, by Keegan’s exact brand of flustered backpedaling.

  He was dressed in a perfectly tailored bespoke suit, navy blue with a yellow silk tie, and he had pale translucent skin—all of which combined to give Keegan the unfortunate impression of a ventriloquist dummy. Dion waved Keegan through the door into the back offices and then led him past a number of closed doors—the advertised Associates, Keegan guessed.

  Keegan followed behind, gripping the strongbox with both hands and trying not to look down at the baseball-sized bald spot in the smaller man’s combed-over hair. They entered a big corner office. Two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling glass, with dizzying views of terracotta roofs and the distant sweep of azure water. It was a lot to take in.

  A pair of black wingback chairs sat facing Dion’s oversized desk. The little man waved at them and went behind the desk to his own high-backed executive chair. It swiveled as he sat down on it.

  Keegan sat on the nearest of the two chairs and set the strongbox in the other. He crossed his legs and looked across the desk at the lawyer. Now that they were both sitting, their height difference had vanished. Did Dion have some kind of platform back there?

  The lawyer folded his boyish hands on top of his desk and offered Keegan an indulgent frown. “I was so sorry to hear about Mrs. Fletcher’s passing,” he said in a reedy tenor voice. “I’m sure she will be greatly missed.”

  Keegan nodded at the cliché. It was the kind of perfunctory sentiment you had to offer in situations like this. So sorry for your loss. Time heals all wounds. Yes, perhaps the old lady would be greatly missed—but not by either of them.

  “Did you know her well?” Keegan asked.

  The question seemed to fluster the lawyer. He pressed both hands down on his desktop blotter, like a schoolkid caught in a lie. “I met her just the once,” he admitted, “at her hotel. She was a relatively new client to our firm.”

  Keegan nodded. It was just as he had guessed. “Mike introduced you to her, I assume?” he asked.

  “Michael Donovan?” Dion said, brightening a little. “Why, yes. Mr. Donovan and I work together on occasion. You know him?”

  Keegan nodded. “Old Donovan and I go way back,” he said. “He was my predecessor in this job with Mrs. Fletcher.” Keegan reached over and picked up the strongbox in the chair next to him and set it on his knees. “In fact, he recommended me to Mrs. Fletcher when he moved away last month.”

  Dion cocked his head. It seemed news to him that Donovan had left town. Had he failed to notice that the man was no longer in the building? That his name had vanished from the lobby directory? That a CPA had moved into office 302?

  The lawyer tented his tiny fingers. “Well then, we both owe Mr. Donovan a debt of gratitude,” he said. “Mrs. Fletcher was among our firm’s biggest clients.”

  Keegan thought of the envelopes of cash back in his office. “Yeah, mine too,” he said. “Any idea why the old lady fired the family lawyer and came to you? I think the lawyer’s name was Burritt.”

  Dion nodded. He straightened up and fiddled a little with his yellow tie. There were, of course, lawyer-client rules about confidentiality, and the man seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “She came to believe there were financial irregularities,” he said, after that most pregnant pause.

  “But you didn’t believe her?”

  The lawyer put on a polite smile. “Milton Burritt enjoys a sterling reputation in the
California Bar,” he said. Again, he paused to perfect his wording. “And I was given to understand that our client sometimes had her own notions.”

  If notions were a euphemism for delusions, Keegan was given to understand the exact same thing. He lifted the strongbox from his knees and set it on Dion’s desk. He pulled the key ring from his trouser pocket, unlocked the box, and lifted the steel lid. “I was holding these for her in my office safe,” Keegan said. “As far as I can tell, this is all your headache now.” He turned the box in Dion’s direction and pushed it across the large desktop in his direction.

  Keegan sat back in the chair. Was that it? Would it really be so easy to get clear of this mess?

  Roland Dion pulled the box closer and started taking out the documents one by one. He made a big production of putting on his reading glasses and tilting his head back, sorting the papers into four or five piles on his desktop. Breath whistled though his nose as he worked. Behind him, through the big plate-glass windows, a flock of brown pelicans crossed the sky in a V, left to right, way out along the water’s edge.

  There didn’t seem anything else for Keegan to do. He glanced at his wristwatch. He’d wait here silently a polite ten minutes while the lawyer worked. Then, if he didn’t seem to be needed, he’d make some excuse to leave. He looked beyond Roland Dion again, out the window at the vast, sun-flecked swath of the Pacific Ocean. The gray hulking outline of Catalina Island lay profiled on the far horizon.

  The thought struck him, cold and unexpected as a rogue wave: somewhere in that field of glimmering blue was Ida Fletcher’s watery grave. That was the exact stretch of water where Frank the Boxer died. He thought of the man’s gray hulking body, supine on the steel table, profiled by the coroner’s sheet.

  How would you even go about it? How would you intercept a little sailboat out on that vast open ocean? How would you get aboard? How would you sink it?

  Roland Dion’s voice seemed to come to Keegan from a great distance. “It all seems fairly straightforward,” the lawyer was saying. “First, we file a petition with the State and wait for a declaratory judgment.” He pressed his small, childlike hand down on one of the stacks of paper. “With an affidavit from Miss Zinnia and the wreckage and the body that already came ashore, it shouldn’t take long,” he said. “After that, the State forwards a court order to the registrar to issue a death certificate, and we’re free to execute the will. It’s just a matter of filing the right paperwork.”

  Keegan nodded. He hadn’t quite followed the lawyer’s train of thought—he’d been derailed by the man’s use of the word we. “Is there anything you need from me?” he said.

  Roland Dion looked him over from behind his massive desk. “Well, since you’re Michael Donovan’s replacement, there are a few loose ends I’d like you to help us with,” he said. His hand hovered over the stacks of paper. “For one thing, I notice there isn’t a copy of the original will in here,” he said. “The one she had before she came to me. That would come in handy. Do you have any idea where it might be?”

  “Everything she gave me is in the box,” Keegan said.

  “Well, tracking down the original document would be a big help,” Dion said. “I wouldn’t want to tangle with Milton Burritt in probate if it can be avoided. I’m sure there are some notes about it in our files, but the original document itself would be a great help.” At that point, he stopped talking and pushed a button on his intercom. He told someone on the other end to bring him everything from the files on Ida Fletcher. He sat back in his elevated chair and gave Keegan a boyish smile. He seemed pleased with himself, to be acting so officiously.

  “We had Mr. Donovan on retainer,” Dion said, folding his hands on his desk blotter, “and we can do the same with you. It will be good to have someone familiar with the case to—”

  There was a smart rap on the door. The ginger receptionist entered, holding a stack of manila file folders with both hands. She must have had them all ready to go before she was even asked. Without a word, she set them on the lawyer’s desk, graced Keegan with an efficient smile, and slipped back out, quietly closing the door behind her. No sass, no gossip, no bickering. Everything poised and professional.

  The lawyer opened the files and consulted his notes. “Yes, yes, here are the notes,” he said. “A woman who went by Madame Lena was cut out of the will entirely.” He glanced at Keegan now over his glasses and then looked back down at his notes. “Her share was then split between Romano and Zinnia and a former employee called Lillian Cole.”

  “Madame Lena?” Keegan said. “What kind of a name is that?”

  The tiny lawyer made a face. The subject seemed distasteful to him. “I was given to understand that was her professional name,” Dion said. “She was an advisor to Mrs. Fletcher. A spiritual advisor, she might call herself.”

  “And what might we call her?”

  The lawyer sighed. He looked at Keegan over his reading glasses again. It seemed to pain him to speak plainly, without the emollients of legal jargon. “We would probably call her a medium,” he said.

  “As in flickering candles and crystal balls?”

  “I’m not sure of the accoutrements,” Dion admitted, “but yes. I suppose that would be a fair assessment.” He looked back down at his notes. “Apparently, our client came to distrust the woman.” He turned a page and ran a small finger down the lines of typed texts. “You would be tasked with tracking down this Lillian Cole and informing her of Mrs. Fletcher’s generosity,” he told Keegan. “What with Mr. Romano’s death before the will’s execution, her share will likely be even greater than our client originally intended.”

  Keegan nodded. A simple skip-trace. That kind of job was bread and butter for a PI. All it required was to find someone. Sure, it could sometimes be tricky if the person in question was trying not to be found. In this case, though, no one would be hiding. People might cover their tracks to avoid alimony or child-support payments, but no one ever hid from a six-figure windfall.

  “Sure,” Keegan said, “I can find her. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Anything else?”

  “Just locating the original will,” the lawyer said, closing the file he’d been consulting. “Maybe Miss Zinnia knows where it is.”

  “Sure,” Keegan said, “I’ll get right on that. I guess I should keep the key ring for now. I’ll need to check the houses.”

  The lawyer said something in return, but Keegan wasn’t listening. His mind was still on the fortune teller. Ida Fletcher was clearly afraid of her nephew. If the old lady had unburdened herself to anyone about what was going on with him, it would be this spiritual advisor with her crystal ball. “I think I’ll track down the fortune teller too,” Keegan said. “Someone should let her know what happened.”

  The other man nodded. He seemed doubtful but unwilling to put up much of an argument. “If you think it advisable,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN KEEGAN GOT back to the office that afternoon, he called an old acquaintance in LAPD vice and got Donovan’s new phone number out in Tempe.

  “How’s the easy life?” Keegan asked when Donovan picked up.

  “It’s a paradox, Jimmy,” Donovan told him. His voice was somber, reflective. It was as if he’d been giving this very question a great deal of thought. “You spend your whole life as a working stiff looking forward to Saturday. It’s the only thing that keeps you going.” He started coughing, and the sound was suddenly muffled, like he’d covered the mouthpiece with his palm to spare Keegan the eruption. In a few seconds, he came back on the line, breathing raggedly. “But then you retire,” he said. “And suddenly every day is a Saturday.” He sighed into the phone. “It turns out to be a living hell.”

  “That’s a damn shame,” Keegan offered. “Maybe you could take up a hobby. Stamp collecting? Ham radio? There’s got to be something you can do out there in the desert.” He hoped that would be enough small talk. He was never much good at idle chitchat. He hadn’t been trained in courtly etiquette like
Danny Church. “But, Mike,” he said, “here’s the reason I’m calling.” He gave Donovan a quick rundown of all that had happened since that night they’d talked by the Ambassador’s pool—the nephew, the sinking boat, Frank Romano dead and the old lady about to be declared so.

  “Wow,” Donovan said, when he had finished his recitation. “I turn my back for five minutes.”

  “And to top it off, I got hired by Roland Dion,” Keegan said. “Your old friend on the third floor.”

  Donovan whistled into the phone. “You don’t mess around, Jimmy,” he said. “I give you Ida Fletcher, and you swoop in and scoop up the little man too. You’re just helping yourself to everything I left behind.” He let loose with one of his wheezing laughs. He seemed overly happy just to be talking to someone on the phone.

  “He’s the reason I called,” Keegan pressed on. “Dion wants me to track down Lillian Cole. You don’t have any idea where I could find her, do you?”

  Donovan was still puffing a little. “Who the hell is Lillian Cole?” he managed to say.

  “I was hoping you’d know,” Keegan said. “Her name’s in the will.” He leaned back in his chair and swung his heels up onto the desk. “She was on the old lady’s staff, but I guess she retired a while back. With Frank out of the picture, she’ll be splitting half a million with that Zinnia woman.”

  “Mildred Zinnia,” Donovan said wistfully, like the name conjured up fond memories. “I had a bit of a thing for that girl. Why, if I was twenty years younger…” He let the thought trail off and chuckled. “You keep your hands off her, Jimmy,” he said. “Leave me with something to remember.”

  Keegan thought about how he’d steered poor Zinnia, blind with tears, across Sunset to the Chateau Marmont. Donovan clearly hadn’t known about her and Frank the Boxer, either. “Sure thing,” he said. “She’s all yours, Donovan. But this Lillian Cole? You don’t know anything about her? I’m supposed to track her down and deliver the good news.”

  Donovan breathed into the phone. “I think I know who you mean,” he said. “I never met the woman. She was up and gone before I got hired on. She was some kind of long-term housekeeper or companion to the old girl. Went to live up in Portland with her daughter, I think someone said. Shouldn’t be too hard to track her down.”