Muller, Marcia - [McCone 04] Games to Keep the Dark Away (v.1,shtml) (12 page)

I
went to the Mission Inn to phone Barbara Smith's sister,
Susan Tellenberg, and check for messages. There was one—from
Abe Snelling, of all people. Perhaps the photographer wanted to
rehire me. I depressed the receiver and direct-dialed his home in San
Francisco. He answered immediately.

"Thanks for calling," he said. "Hank Zahn told me
where you were. It was in the papers about you finding that dead man.
He was the one they originally suspected of killing Jane, wasn't he?"

"Yes."

"You think he did do it?"

"No. I think he knew who did, and that got him killed."

There was a long silence. When Snelling spoke, his voice was flat.
"So they aren't any closer to finding the person now than
before."

"Not really."

"Has anything else come up about Jane?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, anything that might…I don't know. That might
explain why she was murdered."

I had the impression that Snelling had something specific in mind
but didn't want to say. "Well, I did find out where she was that
week. She has a boyfriend down here and she was staying on his boat
doing research."

"Research?" Now he sounded astonished.

"Not of a scholarly sort. I think Jane was looking into an
old murder that happened at the place where she used to work, a
hospice called The Tidepools. She was going through their personnel
files—the boyfriend, Allen Keller, is part owner there and
probably brought them to her at the boat."

"Why on earth was she doing that?"

"She must have had an idea who the killer was and wanted to
verify it with the records."

"But why?"

I hesitated. Snelling had been Jane's friend and might not like
what I was about to say. But, then, by his own admission they hadn't
been all that close. "I think she intended to blackmail the
killer. The boyfriend here is in bad financial shape and she may have
been trying to help him out. In fact, she went to San Francisco
originally with the idea of making money to buy him out of his
trouble."

Again Snelling surprised me with his reaction. He said in a
matter-of-fact tone, "You mean she came here looking for this
killer."

"Or a lead to him."

"Amazing." But he didn't sound amazed at all. Of course,
Snelling struck me as a good judge of character, and this new
information may have fit in with what he had already guessed about
Jane.

"Do you want to reopen the case?" I asked.

He ignored the question. "Did the police look over those
personnel records?"

"I doubt they've had the chance. Keller was aware I knew they
were on the boat, so he would have returned them to The Tidepools
right away. The police would have to subpoena them, and I don't think
there's been time for that."

"I see."

"Abe, don't you want me to—"

"No. Jane's dead, and it's a waste of money anyway. I have to
go now. I was working in the darkroom and I only answered the phone
because I thought it might be you. Thanks for calling." Abruptly
he hung up.

I sat staring at the receiver. Snelling had certainly gotten a lot
of information for free. "Cheapskate," I muttered.

After a few seconds I called Susan Tellenberg's number. This time
she answered and, when I asked if I could come talk to her about her
sister, she sounded surprised but agreed. She gave me instructions on
how to get there and said she'd see me within the hour

* * *

The Tellenberg home was in the older section of the city, not far
from Don's apartment house. It was a white frame cottage on a double
lot, most of which was apple orchard. I went up to the door and was
greeted by a plump blond boy of about five.

"Mama said you should come to the orchard," he told me,
and took off across the front yard and through the trees. I followed,
savoring the pungent aroma of overripe fruit. It reminded me of cider
and football games and long walks home afterward, holding the hand of
the cutest boy on the team. Funny how a new romance could beget
memories of an old one…

A woman with dark, curly hair and a rosy complexion sat
cross-legged under the trees, tossing apples into a bushel basket.
The little boy made a beeline for her and burrowed into her lap. She
hugged him, adjusted the halter top he had knocked askew, and waved
at me. I went over there.

"I'm Susan Tellenberg," she said, "and this is my
son, Robbie."

The little boy wriggled out of her lap, gave me a military salute,
and began to prance around, smashing apples. His mother gave him a
stern look and he stopped. "Ms. McCone and I have things to talk
about, Robbie. Perhaps you'd like to go in the house and find a
book."

"I've read all my books."

"Reread one. You like the story about the rhinoceros."

"Rhinoceros!" His eyes grew wide and he turned and ran
toward the house.

"He's young to be reading," I said.

"You're never too young." She grinned. "Besides, it
keeps him occupied and it's cheaper than buying a TV. I hope you
don't mind if we talk out here. I've got to get these windfalls
picked up before they rot and disease the trees."

"No problem." I dropped to the ground, glad I'd worn
jeans. "Let me help you."

"You want to know about Barbara," she said.

I picked up a couple of apples and tossed them into the basket.
"Yes. I've read up on the case, in connection with another
investigation, and I wanted to get an account of what happened from
someone who really knew her."

"Is this other case something to do with Andy? Are you trying
to find him?"

"Her husband? No. It's related to one of the people who used
to work at The Tidepools."

"Good." She nodded with satisfaction and moved over to
another pile of windfall apples.

I moved too. "Why good?"

"Because Andy didn't kill my sister, and I don't want him
found. By now he's started a new life and he's entitled to it."

"It sounds as if you like him."

"I like Andy a lot. He put up with plenty from my sister and,
on top of that, to be suspected of murdering her…Well, it's
too unfair. I only wish he hadn't run; there was no need to."

"Oh?"

She must have interpreted the comment as skeptical, because her
eyes flashed. "Barbara's death was a suicide. Andy ran because
the police started raising all kinds of stupid speculation."

"He must have been very frightened."

She shrugged. "Andy always was a bit of a coward. But a nice
coward, a gentle man. He wouldn't hurt anyone, least of all Barbara.
He loved her, for some reason."

"Tell me about Barbara."

Susan relaxed, now that we were off the subject of Andy. "It
may sound as if I disliked my sister. That isn't really true. It was
just that she had so many problems—in addition to the cancer, I
mean—and they were all ones she brought on herself."

"Such as?"

"She drank too much, took all sorts of pills. She'd been in
and out of therapy for years, but never stayed long enough for it to
do her any good."

"Did they ever diagnose a specific mental illness?"

"She was a manic-depressive, and as she got older the mood
swings became more and more severe. When she found out she had
cancer, she went into the depressive state and stayed there. We—Andy
and I—felt The Tidepools was the only way to keep her from
killing herself. Others in the family—if you've read the
newspaper accounts, those are the ones the reporters talked to
afterward—didn't agree. Maybe they thought her manic phase was
the real Barbara. At any rate, they resented Andy for convincing her
to go to the hospice. And when the police began to suspect him, they
didn't help one bit, with their talk of how she would never take her
own life."

Susan Tellenberg had a lot of pent-up anger in her, and I gathered
she'd been fonder of Andy than a sister-in-law should be. I glanced
at her left hand—no wedding ring. She could be widowed or
divorced, with a crush on her sister's gentle husband.

I said, "But Andy convinced her to go to The Tidepools."

She nodded. "She didn't want to go, but he insisted. It was
the one time during their entire life together that he got his way.
Usually he'd knuckle under to her demands. I'd ask him why—it
wasn't helping her get any better or take responsibility for her
life—and he'd just say it was preferable to living in perpetual
conflict. Anyway, Barbara went to The Tidepools, but she hated it
from day one and made sure everybody knew that. And then she died.
She must have saved up her medication, like the others did."

"The newspaper stories say she wasn't receiving it long
enough to have saved it."

Susan shrugged and moved again with her basket. "Barbara
might even have brought the drugs with her. Like I said, she was
always taking one kind of pill or another."

"Did the autopsy show that what she took was the same as what
they gave out at the hospice?"

"Apparently they couldn't be that specific. What they use
there is a mixture, and an autopsy can't show exact proportions or
brand names, just the types of drugs present."

That was true, and it widened the range of possible suspects.
Anyone with access to common prescription drugs could have killed
Barbara. "What exactly made Andy run?"

"I told you, the police suspected him."

"But there must have been some triggering factor."

Susan stopped picking up apples and looked into the branches of
the tree above. Sunlight cast dappled shadows over her troubled face.
She sat that way for a few moments, then said, "It was all the
confusion over the money that did it."

"The money Barbara had inherited, you mean?"

"Yes. The police found out that Andy had drawn it all out of
the bank in cash a few days before Barbara died."

"Why did he do that, do you know?"

She shook her head.

"Didn't he ever talk to you about it?"

"No." She looked up into the trees again. "By the
time I heard about it, Andy was gone. I've thought and thought about
it ever since, but I can't come up with any answer except…"

"Except?"

''Except that Barbara made him do it. She was always making him do
things."

"But why? What would she have needed forty thousand dollars
in cash for?"

Susan rubbed her hands together and went back to picking up the
apples. "I have a theory that she planned to bribe someone at
the hospice to help her escape."

"Escape? She wasn't being held against her will, was she?"

"Well, not exactly. But you've got to remember Barbara was
not really too well wrapped toward the end. She was paranoid and…
I don't know. That's my theory."

She seemed to have a number of theories, all of them conflicting
and aimed at proving Andy didn't kill her sister. I sat there,
rolling an apple between my palms.

Susan must have sensed my doubtfulness. "Look," she
said, "I really don't know what Barbara intended. I never was
able to understand what went on in her head. She had everything—she
was smart and pretty and had a husband who loved her. She didn't have
to work as a waitress and bring up a kid alone like I do. She didn't
have a husband who abandoned her before the kid was even born, like I
did. And, when it was time for our rich aunt to will her money to
somebody, she chose Barbara, not me. But did Barbara appreciate any
of that? No. Not my sister. All her life she worked so hard, so
goddamned hard, at screwing up."

I remained silent, rolling the apple around and forming a theory
of my own. "Had your sister accepted the fact she was going to
die?"

"She believed it, if that's what you mean."

"But acceptance—the kind they talk about at The
Tidepools—did she feel that?"

"Did she want to live out her life with dignity? Do something
positive with what remained? I doubt it."

"Then how about this?" I pitched the apple into the
basket. "How about if she did make Andy withdraw the money, so
she could use it as a bribe—"

"That's what I said."

"But not a bribe to get out of the place. A bribe for someone
to get her the drugs and administer them. What if she bought herself
a mercy killing?"

Susan looked startled, but then nodded. "That's very
possible. It would explain why they didn't find the money with her
things at the hospice."

"Of course," I went on, "why would she spend forty
thousand dollars when she could have asked her own husband to help
her?"

"No. Andy would never go along with something like that. He
would never have helped her kill herself, and he certainly would
never have gotten her the money had he known what it was for. She
must have made up some story to tell him."

"Andy worked at Port San Marco General Hospital. He would
have had access to drugs."

Stubbornly she shook her head. "No, he didn't. He was in the
education department; it's a teaching hospital. He had nothing to do
with drugs."

"I thought he was a medical technician."

"Yes, but he didn't handle drugs. He was a medical
photographer. He took pictures of autopsies and put together slide
shows and teaching aids for the hospital's educational programs."

I stared at her.

"He was a damned good photographer too. He used to exhibit
the portraits he took as a hobby in shows around the area."

I sat in silence for several seconds, feeling a growing
excitement. Things were beginning to fall into place at last.

"What's wrong?" Susan asked.

''Do you have a picture of Andy?''

"Yes, in the living room."

"Can I see it?"

She frowned, but stood up, brushing dead leaves off her jeans.
"All right."

We went into the house, to an old-fashioned formal parlor. My
hands were shaking as I took the framed portrait from Susan's hands.
The face in it was bearded and the hair brown rather than blond, but
it was the one I'd expected to see.