Crazybone (4 page)

“You haven’t told me who Smith is.”

“The club pro at Emerald Hills.”

“Golf pro? The Greenwood Country Club?”

“Yes.”

“He and Mrs. Hunter are involved, is that what you’re saying? Had an affair or are still having one?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Lukash said priggishly. “I don’t tell tales, I’m not Rich Twining.”

“And you have nothing to hide.”

“Nothing whatsoever. My relations with Sheila Hunter have always been strictly aboveboard. I am not in the habit of playing around with tramps.”

“Tramps, Doctor? Is that what Mrs. Hunter is?”

Lukash clamped thin lips over his pretty white teeth. He’d said too much and was already starting to regret it. He glanced pointedly at his watch and then got to his feet, saying, “Your five minutes are up.” He looked at a spot past my left ear and added, “I’ll thank you not to bother me again. Or to repeat anything that has been discussed here. If you do—”

“I don’t carry tales, either. Doctor,” I said, and left him standing there looking pretty damn guilty for a man who had nothing to hide.

It was five-thirty by the time I got back into the city and up to my office. Tamara was long gone; Tuesday is generally one of her half days, because of classes at San Francisco State. On my desk was a note from her — computer printout, of course, since she never wrote anything by hand if she could help it. Child of the new age. Two phone messages, neither of any importance, and a cryptic one-liner that read: “Still working on the Hunter bg check but what I’ve got so far is VERY interesting.” The “VERY” was not only in large caps but one of those fancy curlicue typefaces computers can print up these days.

So what did this mean? Sheila Hunter was already a complex little enigma: uninterested in an easy fifty thousand dollars, terrified of something, as closed off as her late husband, possibly an unfaithful wife. More than that, too? The owner of some dark, VERY interesting secret tucked away in her and/or her late husband’s background?

I sighed. Tamara Corbin is an efficient young woman, but she has yet to lose her flair for the dramatic. When she does, and when she has a few more years of experience, she’ll make a twenty-first-century detective to put to shame a technophobic twentieth-century dinosaur like me. Most of the time the prospect pleases me; having a protégé with unlimited potential gives me a sense of accomplishment. Occasionally, though, considering her intelligence, ambition, organizational and computer skills, and indispensability after only two years of part-time effort, I wonder if maybe the real protégé in the agency is its founder. And then I just feel old.

There was one message on the answering machine, which Tamara had switched on before leaving; also not important. Other messages might well be waiting on e-mail, along with whatever Tamara’s background check on the Hunters had uncovered, but since I didn’t know and refused to be taught how to access anything on the new office computer, I’d have to wait for tomorrow. Old, yes. And stubborn and outmoded, with a crazybone for a head.

I locked up again and took my hidebound hide home to the one other woman on the planet besides Tamara with the patience to put up with me — and the only one with the understanding, compassion, courage, and sheer masochism to marry me and let me share her bed.

Kerry said, “We need to talk.”

Uh-oh, I thought. I had been home exactly twelve seconds, just enough time for her to give me a quick kiss and me to give Shameless a quick pat. Home being her condo on Diamond Heights, where we spent most of our time together — to the point where I was actually thinking of giving up my Pacific Heights flat, even though it was rent-controlled and I’d had it for nearly thirty years. Sentimentality only goes so far, even with me. Simple fact was, the flat was no longer home to me and the condo was.

I straightened as the cat continued to wind himself around my legs, making his fluttery little motorboat noise. “Talk about what?”

“Cybil. I spoke to her a little while ago.”

“She all right?”

“She says she is. I don’t think so.”

“Not some kind of health problem?”

“No, thank God.”

“Trouble with her new novel?”

“Not that, either. Something’s going on over there.”

Cybil was Kerry’s eighty-year-old mother. “Over there” was Redwood Village, a seniors’ complex in Marin County where Cybil had lived the past two years. In the forties and fifties she’d been a successful writer for the pulp magazines, mainly of stories about a hard-boiled detective named Samuel Leatherman. She had abandoned fiction writing when the pulps folded, and taken it up again after a forty-year hiatus when she moved to Redwood Village. You’d think she might have lost some of her skills after such a long layoff, but not if you knew Cybil. She had not only written her first novel and sold it to one of the smaller New York publishers, she’d been given a contract for a sequel.

I said, “What do you mean, going on?”

“At Redwood Village.”

“You mean with the staff? One of her neighbors?”

“I’m not sure. But it might be serious.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I think she wants to hire you to investigate whatever it is.”

“What? Oh, come on—”

“I’m not kidding. She didn’t come right out and say so, but she hinted around about it.”

“Didn’t she give you any idea of what it is?”

“Just that it has something to do with Archie Todd. You remember him, the retired ferryboat captain who lived across from her.”

We were in the kitchen now, procuring a beer for me and a glass of wine for Kerry. I took a long swig of Bud Light before I said, “What about Captain Archie?”

“He died suddenly last week. I got the impression Cybil believes it may not have been of natural causes.”

“Suicide?”

“Or homicide.”

I had another long pull. “In a place like Redwood Village? Who would want to kill a nice old bird like Captain Archie?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“How did he die?”

“She didn’t say. She wants us to come to lunch on Saturday and she’ll talk to us about it then.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said we’d come. I thought you’d be as curious as I am.”

“Sure, curious. But if she actually does want to hire me... My God, she’s got me confused with Samuel Leatherman.”

“You can listen to what she has to say, can’t you? It’s not like you’re under any obligation to her.”

“I didn’t mean I wouldn’t listen. I only meant—”

“Keep an open mind and then do what you think best,” Kerry said. “She really is upset about whatever happened to Captain Archie. I could hear it in her voice. And Cybil is more level-headed than either of us, you know that. If she thinks something funny’s going on, then something probably is.”

“Okay, okay. If there’s anything I can do for her, you know I will.”

We took our drinks into the living room and settled into our Mom and Pop chairs. But I didn’t get to enjoy the rest of my beer. Kerry saw to that.

“There’s something else we have to discuss,” she said.

“Uh, what?”

“Friday night. The cocktail party at Bates and Carpenter. I told you about it last week, remember?”

A little worm of premonition began to crawl slimily among the hairs on my neck. “I remember,” I said warily. “What about it?”

“I know how much you hate large social gatherings, but—”

“Oh God.”

“—but I need you to go with me.”

“No,” I said. “No way.”

“It’s important. To me, to the agency, and to Anthony DiGrazia. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t.”

“DiGrazia?”

“Don’t play dumb. I told you about him, too. My new account — DiGrazia’s Old-Fashioned Italian Sausages. The party is in his honor, to celebrate his signing with B and C.”

“All right, so?”

“He’s as old-fashioned as his sausages. Family values and all that. Married couples are supposed to attend social functions together, get acquainted with one another’s spouses — especially when the function is business-related. Plus, he knows who you are, he’s read about you in the papers. He wants to meet his ‘fellow paisan.’ Jim Carpenter thinks — I think — he’ll be offended if you’re not at the party, no matter what the excuse.”

I didn’t say anything. Shameless jumped up on my lap and began digging his claws into my knee. I glared at him and said to Kerry, “How about if we take the cat along, too? One big happy family for old Anthony to get to know.”

“Oh, cut it out,” she said. “It’s one evening out of your life. Do I ask things like this of you very often?”

“All right,” I said.

“Well? Do I?”

“No. I said all right. How many people will be there?”

“Seventy-five or so.”

I managed not to cringe. “How long will it last?”

“Just a couple of hours. Five to seven. And dinner after that, but it’ll only be six of us — the DiGrazias, Jim and his current lady, you and me.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. Sounds like a slice of hell, I thought.

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” I lied. “Don’t worry, I’ll be on my best behavior and I’ll try to have a good time. Anything for you, my love.”

“Mmmmm,” she said. One of those sounds women make that call to mind the warning rattle of a diamondback. Meaning I’d better be on my best behavior and I’d better try very hard to have a good time. Or else. Just what the “or else” might be, I preferred not to speculate.

Tamara was twenty-five minutes late on Wednesday morning. When she showed up she wore a quirky little smile and a satisfied, cat-in-the-cream expression. I knew that look: I’d had it myself on more than one occasion.

“That Horace,” she said as she hung up her favorite grungy coat. “Have to be changing his name to Mr. Sun pretty soon.”

“Mr. Sun?”

“Up bright and early, just keeps getting hotter and hotter. Too many mornings like this, I’m gonna have to start wearing sunblock to bed.”

“Tell me something. Ms. Corbin,” I said. “Why is it young people feel compelled to discuss their sex lives in such great detail?”

“Why not? Sex is cool, man.” She grinned. “ ’Specially when it’s hot.”

“It’s also private, or should be.”

“Well, we don’t have hangups about doing the nasty.”

“Who’s ‘we?’ Generation X?”

“Lot more open than yours, right?”

“Too open, if you ask me.”

“No such thing. Better to call it sweet and clean than pretend it’s dirty. Besides, don’t you remember how it was?”

“How what was?”

“Bein’ my age. Horny all the time instead of every once in a while.”

“What does that mean? Every once in a while?”

“You know, now and then.”

“Define ‘now and then.’ ”

“Birthdays, holidays, like that.”

“Is that what you think? People in their fifties and sixties only have sex on birthdays and holidays, if they have it at all? Seven or eight times a year?”

“That often? I figured maybe two or three.”

“... Are you putting me on?”

“No, sir. Horace’s folks don’t do it at all anymore. That’s what his daddy told him and he’s only fifty-two.”

“That’s too bad. But for your information, Ms. Corbin, some of us old codgers still manage to indulge regularly. Not as regularly as you and Horace, God knows, but as often as once or twice a week.”

“Lordy.”

“In the morning, the afternoon, and sometimes even more than once a day. Not always in the missionary position, either, contrary to what you probably believe.”

She made a “tsk” sound and shook her head. “Tell me something, boss,” she said, deadpan. “Why is it middle-aged people feel compelled to discuss their sex lives in such great detail?”

I stared at her for about three seconds and then burst out laughing. She’d been putting me on, all right, playing me the way Horace, her symphonically inclined boyfriend, plays his cello. Score another one for Tamara. Trying to win a point, any point, with her was like going one-on-one against Michael Jordan. You didn’t stand a chance; she had too many moves and too much quickness, and every time you ended up feeling outmaneuvered and overmatched.

“Okay,” I said when I got my face straight again, “let’s do some work here. You can start by explaining that cryptic note you left me yesterday.”

“About the Hunters?
Very
interesting stuff, so far.”

“So you said. Interesting how?”

“Mr. Jackson Hunter in particular. Seems the man was ten and a half years old when he died.”

“What?”

“Intercoastal application says he was horn in Harrisburg, P.A., in I960,” Tamara said. “I checked the Vital Stats Bureau there. No birth record for anybody named Jackson Hunter. Not that year and not any year between fifty-five and sixty-five.”

“One of the nearby towns...”

“Uh-uh. Pennsylvania’s not a big state, so I checked all the counties. A few Jackson Hunters and Jack Hunters, but they’re all the wrong race, deceased prior to two weeks ago, or still living in P.A.”

Frowning, I said, “Sheila Hunter is supposed to be from Harrisburg, too. Twining told me her maiden name is Underwood.”

“Yeah, I got that from the daughter’s birth record. No Sheila Underwood born in Harrisburg during that same ten-year span. And there be no record of a Hunter-Underwood marriage.”

“All right. But that doesn’t make Jack Hunter ten and a half years old when he died. How’d you come up with that figure?”

“Man’s Social Security number,” Tamara said. “Can’t get any information out of the Social Security Administration — be easier to back into the Pentagon files — but the number itself tells you some things. First three digits, where it was issued. Other digits, approximately when.”