Valley of Shadows

by Paul Buchanan

  Keegan pressed the phone to his ear.

  “I don’t know all the details,” Moore went on. “But they said the boat had been scuttled.”

  “Scuttled?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know what it meant either,” Moore said. “Apparently, it’s when you sink a vessel on purpose.”

  Keegan stared down at the clutter of loose papers on his desk, trying to fathom what Lou Moore was telling him.

  “You were right, Jimmy,” the Lieutenant went on, sounding oddly cheerful. “There was definitely foul play. Whatever happened to Ida Fletcher was no accident.”

  A bus rumbled by down on the street outside Keegan’s office window, and he plugged one ear with a finger to drown out the noise. “Whoa,” he said into the phone. “Did they find the old lady’s body?”

  “No body as of yet,” Moore said. “But given where they found the wreckage, the old lady is probably halfway to Maui by now. The current is pretty wild out there.”

  Keegan rested his forehead on his palm. He’d just spent a weekend convincing himself that he’d been all wrong about Danny Church. And now maybe the nephew did kill his aunt after all. Why did that ugly fact make him feel so—well—pleased?

  “But here’s the thing, Jimmy,” Moore went on. “The wreckage was pretty far out to sea. It was beyond every local jurisdiction. It’ll have to involve the feds now, so it’s an even messier situation.”

  “What does that mean for us?”

  “Well, if you give me whatever you can dig up on the nephew—like, I mean, type me up a full report—I’ll pass it along to Hoover’s crowd. No guarantees they’ll be interested, though. They can be difficult to work with.”

  KEEGAN WENT BACK down to the marina early Tuesday morning to have a look around. The South Bay Yachting Club was not yet open for business. A linen service truck was making a delivery around the back, and he could hear some kind of hammering going on inside the front entrance. Danny Church’s red Jaguar wasn’t in the empty lot. He was probably back at the mansion on Monticello.

  Keegan parked his MG at the far end of the empty lot, under the eucalyptus trees. He didn’t really have much of a plan. He’d only seen Milton Burritt’s boat at night. He thought he’d walk the dog around the marina in full daylight and see if there was anything he’d missed. He’d make his way to Burritt’s boat, look for any telltale signs of damage on the outside. It wouldn’t do to sneak aboard, though, not in broad daylight, not with witnesses around, not with a canine accomplice.

  The dog had been curled sleeping in the passenger seat the whole way over. When Keegan pulled up the hand brake, she woke and scrambled to the side window to see where they were. Keegan hooked the leash on her collar. He got out the driver’s side door and she skittered out behind him. He locked up the car and led her over to the row of trees so she could pee. When she was done, he walked her across the lot and down the long concrete steps to the marina.

  Without moonlight and sea breeze, the setting looked sun-bleached and bedraggled, much shabbier than he’d imagined. The wooden planks of the walkways were gray and splintery. The slick brackish water between the boats was rainbowed with oil. On this windless morning, everything smelled like the inside of a tackle box. The dog, at least, seemed to be enjoying the scene.

  The sailboats moored on this end of the marina—mostly smaller Pearsons and Albergs—looked frayed and sun-faded. These weren’t floating trophies of wealth; they were owned by weekend sailors, the ones who found actual pleasure in their pleasure craft. People who escaped their workaday lives as teachers and insurance agents and beat cops for a Saturday sail up the coast. They’d pack sandwiches and thermoses and life-vests for the kids. Never in their lives would they set foot in the Yachting Club, though it was right up there on the hill staring down at them all.

  Keegan walked on and turned down the fourth jetty. Only here—with the wide-spaced slips and the big luxury yachts—did everything look shipshape in the cold light of morning. Every hull was smooth, every line taut, every piece of brass-work polished. A man in a windbreaker and khakis was hosing down the upper deck of a motor yacht. Keegan walked the dog past him without making eye contact. He wanted to look like he belonged here, which meant no gawking. Few people were visible, but he could feel them around him. A radio was playing somewhere. A motor was running. A man coughed. There were plenty of witnesses.

  Keegan could see the Recess tied up at the dock’s far end. He’d check the hull for any sign of damage. Perhaps Danny Church had collided with the smaller sailboat as he ran it down and boarded it. Scrapes could be analyzed. Paint could be matched. He’d have to look it over without seeming to do so.

  When Keegan got to the end of the jetty, he walked along the side of the slip, pretending to look at something down in the foul water. From what he could see, the hull was perfectly smooth, perfectly white, perfectly unmarked. He crossed back along the bow and checked the other side. There were no marks there, either.

  “Watch out for fishhooks with that one,” a woman’s voice rang out over the sound of gulls and lapping water.

  The sound made Keegan jump, and he turned to find an old woman watching him from the deck of the boat tied up opposite. She wore a shabby blue anorak. Her white hair was tied back in a red bandana.

  “How’s that?” Keegan asked her.

  “The dog,” the woman said, nodding down at Nora. “Kids are always leaving fishhooks lying about.”

  “Keeping a sharp eye,” Keegan said, though, of course, he hadn’t been thinking about the dog at all. He looked up at the other boat’s stern. Seas the Day.

  The woman came down the deck towards him. She was close enough now that Kegan could get a good look at her. It was hard to guess her age; her face was mapped with deep creases, but maybe it was just from years spent out here in the sun and salt air. She gripped a yellow chamois cloth in one knobby hand.

  “This your boat?” Keegan asked. “Seas the Day?”

  The woman laughed unguardedly. A tooth or two seemed to be missing from her smile. “Hardly,” she said. “I’m just a hired hand. People pay me to clean up after them. I’m pretty much the housekeeping staff for a lot of these floating monstrosities.” She looked back along the row of large boats, towards the quay. “One of these yours?”

  Keegan waved vaguely in the direction of the tinier boats at the marina’s far end. “Got a little boat over there,” he said. “Nothing to brag about.”

  The woman nodded and wiped the chrome railing with her chamois. “You didn’t look like one of them fat cats,” she said sourly. She seemed to harbor little affection for fat cats, so Keegan took it as a compliment.

  “I’m just a humble working man, out for a morning stroll,” Keegan said. He swept his hand out to indicate the vast boats they were standing among. “So, you know a lot of these big ones?”

  “I’ve worked on a few.”

  “How about this one here?” he said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the Recess. “Ever been aboard?”

  She shook her head. “Not one of mine,” she said. “Lot of people work on that thing.”

  Keegan nodded. “I see it here every day on my walks,” he said. “Anyone ever take it out?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Sometimes. Not a whole lot.”

  “Recently?”

  She gripped the chrome railing with her free hand and looked the Recess over. She frowned like she was trying to remember. The deep creases of her face grew deeper. “It was gone last weekend. I know that much. Had to be the weekend. I was listening to the Dodgers game while I worked. Gone all day Saturday. Got back sometime Sunday evening.”

  “You see who was sailing it?”

  “No,” she said. “Just saw the empty slip.” She shielded her eyes with her hand, giving Keegan a closer inspection now that he was asking so many questions. “Say, what’s this about?” she said.

  “Idle curiosity,” Keegan told her.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Something about this situation
clearly wasn’t kosher. “I didn’t catch your name, mister.”

  Keegan smiled up at her and offered a kind of salute. “Danny Church at your service,” he said. He clicked his heels and attempted one of the kid’s foppish bows but couldn’t quite pull it off. “You’ve been a big help, ma’am,” he rattled off. “Never steered me wrong. Been a good soldier. I didn’t hear it from you.”

  He turned and tugged at the dog’s leash and headed back towards land. “Keep those scuppers clear,” he called back to the woman over his shoulder as he walked away.

  If Danny Church had taken the boat out—and he’d been gone overnight—what was he doing all that time?

  THE LIEUTENANT CALLED on the office phone that Friday evening, an hour after Mrs. Dodd had left for the weekend.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Moore warned, “but you were right. Burritt’s boat was definitely in Avalon Harbor the weekend in question.”

  Keegan leaned back in his chair and grinned. His hunch had been right. He’d wondered if the kid had sailed it to Catalina after whatever he did to his aunt and Frank the Boxer. He thought maybe he’d anchored there overnight and crossed back to the mainland on Sunday. Then he’d have raced back to Monticello Drive just in time for Keegan to catch him—hence the kid’s lie about coming from the Bouzy Rouge.

  “The boat was in the harbor on Saturday and Sunday night. Water taxi shows one fare going ashore early Saturday morning. Another fare coming back the next day.”

  “Come on, Lou,” Keegan said. “We know what this all means.”

  The Lieutenant sighed into the phone. “Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, Jimmy,” he said. “Go easy. There’s still not enough for me to butt in. Not yet.”

  “What more could you possibly need?”

  “These things have to be done right,” the Lieutenant said. “We can’t just start throwing accusations around. These people can afford top-notch lawyers—hell, Burritt is one. I, for one, don’t want to end up in court for slander.”

  “But you’re with me, right?” Keegan asked. “You think the kid did it.”

  The Lieutenant sighed again. “I’m not sure what I think just yet,” he said. “But, yes, this has got me wondering. It’s a pretty big coincidence. Let me sniff around a bit more and get back to you.”

  IT WAS ALMOST 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning, but Keegan still couldn’t sleep. He’d tossed and turned in bed for the better part of an hour before he finally turned on the bedside lamp and picked up The Grapes of Wrath paperback from his bedside table. If Steinbeck couldn’t put him to sleep at this hour, there was no hope for him.

  He got through a few pages and then started to doze off. Mission accomplished. He marked his place and put the book back on the nightstand. He was reaching to turn off the bedside lamp when the dog, who’d been sleeping at the foot of his bed, lifted her head suddenly and pricked her ears. She woofed a half-hearted bark and then listened. She roused herself, jumped off the bed, and trotted out to the living room, issuing a rumbling, throaty growl.

  Your house is haunted by a spirit.

  Keegan left the light on and got out of bed. Barefoot, he crossed the cold oakwood floor and paused in the doorway. He’d left the living room lamp burning. The dog was staring at the empty chair again. Her hackles bristled. Her body trembled. She held her head low and rumbled. Keegan stepped into the dimly lit living room and stood behind her.

  It is a young woman. A short name. From the Bible.

  Keegan cleared his throat, already feeling foolish. “I don’t know if you’ve been talking to Madame Lena,” he said to the empty room, “but she might have mentioned that I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  At the sound of his voice, the dog, without taking her eyes off the empty chair, backed up and took her place a little behind him and off to one side. He looked down at her. She growled again and then looked up to see his reaction.

  Keegan turned back to the chair. “Despite what my secretary might have told you, dogs don’t see ghosts either,” Keegan told it. “I mean, think about it. Why would anyone bother to haunt a dog?”

  He was a fool, he knew. It was madness to speak aloud to an empty room, but he had—rooted somewhere deep within him—the wholly irrational conviction that someone was listening, someone could hear him. Was this the feeling some people felt when they prayed?

  The chair was his, of course, but it was easy to think of it as her chair. He could still picture the careless, loose-limbed way she had occupied it that night: her legs pulled up beneath her, her head thrown back in laughter. He could see the glitter of her eyes in the darkness, her smiling lips damp with wine.

  “I didn’t know you very long,” he said, abandoning all pretense of irony. “But I miss you. I wish you were still around.” His hands were tingling now, so he opened them and closed them again. He knew what had to come next. “I am to blame for all that happened,” he said. “And I’m sorry.” The sentence caught in his throat. Those had never been easy words for him, and they were no easier now, just because he spoke them to an empty room.

  No sooner had he finished speaking than the dog turned back and scampered into the bedroom again. Keegan paused and looked at the empty chair. It had seemed so large with Eve in it, sitting sideways, all folded in on herself. He could still imagine her sunny windchime voice in this empty room. He turned and followed Nora into the bedroom. She was already back up on the bed, turning slow circles on the mattress before she lay down again. Whatever had spooked her was entirely forgotten.

  Keegan pulled back the covers and lay down again. He reached over and turned off the lamp and rolled away from it on his side. Eve was forever gone, but there was Helen. He thought of her quick, crooked smile, her whip-smart conversation beside him in the stadium stands. If he could apologize to a ghost, he could probably manage it with a living woman.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ROLAND DION HAD tasked Keegan with only two jobs: track down Lillian Cole and find Ida Fletcher’s old will. In more than a week of spinning his wheels, Keegan had managed to accomplish neither. But Monday morning, he dialed Dion’s number from his office phone anyway. The receptionist put Keegan on hold, and he tapped the desktop blotter with a ballpoint pen while he waited.

  In a couple of minutes, the lawyer’s voice came over the phone. “Jim,” he said, “have you made any headway?” His reedy intonation sounded cheery. Just as well. Keegan was angling for something.

  “Not yet,” Keegan said, trying to sound eager to please. “I looked through the houses in Bel Air and Newport. Nothing there. I was thinking—”

  “How about the hotel where she was staying?” Dion said. “Did it have a safe?”

  The question took Keegan by surprise. He leaned back in his chair, feeling the air go out of him. He had never thought to ask Zinnia if there was a safe in the hotel bungalow they were renting—though the question should have been obvious. The realization felt like a face slap. Donovan might have been capable of such a lapse—in a place like the Chateau Marmont, of course there would be a safe—but not Keegan. Not when his mind was fully on the job. The distractions were getting to him. He was getting sloppy.

  “I was going to head out there today,” Keegan lied. “But I also had another thought.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That I should probably head over to Catalina Island,” he said. “I should check out the Avalon house she owned.” He kept talking, trying to sell the idea. “Just a quick overnight trip on the ferry should do it. I can keep the costs low.”

  The phone was silent a few seconds while Dion considered. “Well, it’s probably not that important that we find the original will,” the lawyer said. “We shouldn’t have any problems with—”

  “I think Milton Burritt is sniffing around the case,” Keegan interrupted. It wasn’t a complete lie. Not exactly. “He’s an old friend of the nephew’s, you know. I think they might want to challenge the will you wrote up.” Keegan listened to the silence on the other end of the line.
He squeezed the ballpoint in his fist. “If push comes to shove,” he said, pushing his own luck, “I don’t think we should leave any stone unturned.”

  “And you think she might have kept the will out there?”

  “If it’s not in the hotel safe,” Keegan said, “it’s the only other place I can think to look.” He waited, trying to interpret the silence. “I could head out there this week. Give you a full rundown by Friday, end of business.”

  Dion remained silent a few more seconds. “You know, that’s probably a good idea,” he said. “We’ll cover all our bases.”

  THAT AFTERNOON, MRS. Dodd came back late from her lunch break. She didn’t announce herself, but the dog skittered out from under Keegan’s desk to go see her, and then he heard her working the typewriter.

  He picked up the phone and called Zinnia at the Chateau Marmont. Yes, she confirmed, the bungalow had a safe, but she had no idea how to open it. No. She didn’t know if Ida Fletcher had ever used it either. She sounded tired. Her voice was faint and impossibly remote. He thought of her weeping openly, his hands on her quaking shoulders, as he guided her along Sunset Boulevard, back to her hotel.

  “Why would you need to see the safe?” she asked, wearily. “All her papers were in the strongbox.”

  “It’s just for the lawyers,” Keegan told her. “It’s a formality. They’re trying to track down the old will.”

  There was a pause. It had been a couple of weeks, but the poor woman still seemed groggy with grief. Her mind was sluggish. What was it like for her to be languishing all alone in that cloistered hotel bungalow?

  “Why would the old will matter?” she finally managed to ask.

  “It’s just routine paperwork,” Keegan told her. He tried to sound soothing. “Nothing to worry over. I’ll just come by and look, and if it’s not there—and I don’t think it will be—I’ll be out of your hair again in a few minutes.”

  Again, the woman was silent. Keegan couldn’t even hear her breathing. “I’ll leave word with Klaus that you’re expected,” she said. She hung up the phone.