Ellipsis (19 page)

He nodded. “We've found it's best to go into those discussions armed with as much data as we can assemble beforehand.”

I thought it over while Cadberry gazed on my painting with a look of what could have been resentment. Or maybe he figured I'd stolen it.

Ultimately I decided to play ball, at least in a limited way, for reasons that had to do with immunizing Chandelier Wells from further danger as best I could. “I'm afraid I haven't been able to assemble much data or anything else for that matter,” I said, and proceeded to prove it.

When I was finished summarizing my work so far, Cadberry frowned. “That's, it?”

“Afraid so.”

“You like anyone in particular at this point?”

“Nope.”

“What's your next move?”

“The woman at the reading.”

“Slim.”

“Emaciated, even.”

“And then?”

“The ex-boyfriend.”

“Buckley.”

I nodded.

“High-profile guy.”

“The highest.”

“Probably have a roomful of lawyers, if you even get in to see him.”

“True.”

“I could tag along if you want.”

“I've been in a roomful of lawyers before. It's as much fun as being in the men's room at a Giants game, but I think I can handle it.”

Cadberry shrugged and stood up. “Well, good luck to you, Tanner. We'll be in touch.”

“Look forward to it.”

“Here's where you can reach me.”

The card he tossed on my desk had a name and a number, nothing else.

Cadberry walked toward the door, then stopped and looked back. “My wife just loves her damned books. As far as Betty's concerned, this is the biggest case I've ever had.”

Chapter 19

The people at Steinway Books helped me track her down, thanks to the mailing list for their quarterly newsletter. Even so, it was almost noon by the time I pulled to a stop in front of a nondescript gray stucco building on Page Street not far from the UC Extension building.

Lucy Dunston Bardwell lived on the top floor of four, her apartment reachable only via a malodorous stairway that looked to have been the site of a food fight. Tongues of wallpaper lapped off the walls, nonskid rubber mats flapped loose from the tread like shingles in a windstorm, the banister had been ripped out and disposed of in some manner that was probably profitable, and the bulbs had been removed from the lights in the stairwell for reasons other than mood. The smells that flavored the stagnant air didn't come from sources I cared to deduce. Although it was high noon outside, in the stairwell it might have been midnight.

Peering through the man-made dusk, I knocked on the door to apartment 10. And waited. And repeated the procedure three times. And called out, “Ms. Bardwell? If you're in there, I'd like to talk to you. It's about Chandelier Wells.”

After another minute I was about to reuse the fetid stairway when the knob rattled and the door inched open. The eye that peered out at me was as wild and wary as a cheetah's. “I don't know you. Who are you?” The question implied I couldn't be anything good.

“My name is Tanner. I was at the reading at Steinway Books yesterday afternoon. I thought we could talk about what happened to Chandelier Wells after you finished speaking.”

“Are you a policeman?”

“No.”

“A lawyer?”

“No, also.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I work for Ms. Wells. I'm trying to find out who hurt her.”

“I have no idea who hurt her.”

“You don't seem all that chagrined about what happened.”

Her lips curled in an enigmatic grin. “
Chagrined
. I like that word. It suggests charm and good humor yet it means just the opposite. As you seem to know.”

I smiled and shrugged. “I read books once in a while.”

“Really? What kind of books?”

“Ones that keep me awake.” I looked back the way I'd come. “It isn't all that, shall we say … salubrious out here, Ms. Bardwell. I wonder if I could come inside.”

She shook her head with amusement. “
Salubrious
, is it? Now you're showing off.”

I admitted it.

She licked her lips while she pondered. “I suppose the police will be here sooner or later.”

“Indubitably.”

“Then I would be wise to have a dress rehearsal, I suppose.”

She closed the door, unhooked the chain, opened it wide enough for me to enter, then closed and locked it behind us. I felt like a bit player in an Eric Ambler novel, delivering the key to the code.

The apartment was a drab and dingy studio, with a trundle bed along one wall, a pine table painted with pea green enamel along another, an orange butterfly chair in the corner, and an upturned orange crate in the minimalist kitchen that featured a hot plate that looked one fried egg away from a short circuit. No TV or stereo was in sight, only a small clock radio on the floor next to the bed and half a dozen white votive candles that had to stand in for a fireplace.

The most prevalent form of diversion was books. There were dozens of them, piled everywhere, including on the window ledges and space heater. The ones I could see were by people like Gardner and Forster and Burroway and purported to teach their readers how to write. Interestingly, none of the books had jackets or even bright colored boards—they had clearly been bought used, castoffs acquired at garage sales and thrift shops, a treasure trove of intelligence plucked from the jetsam of this purportedly literary city by someone with a thirst for knowledge and an empty purse. Since I'd been in such straits myself in my early days, my respect for their owner began to rise. But I don't think it's a good sign when even writers can't afford new books.

Lucy Dunston Bardwell pointed toward a straight-backed chair near the green table and invited me to sit. The table seemed to serve as both dinette and desk. As I eased down onto the frayed cane seat, I noticed a notebook lying open on the table, spiral and college-ruled, of the kind I used to use in class to take notes when I was awake enough to write. The pages of this one were full of tiny handwriting done with blue ballpoint, then edited once with red ink and a second time with green. As a result of the multiple revisions, the page was completely filled with manuscript, in all the margins and between all the lines. I don't know how it measured up as literature, but if her goal was to minimize her use of foolscap, Ms. Bardwell was already successful.

I got as comfortable as I could in the rickety chair and looked at Lucy Bardwell, who had taken a seat on a pillow on the bare floor, then crossed her legs and clasped her hands as though I were some kind of seer. She wore what looked to be a homemade outfit—baggy parachute pants and an oversize rag sweater and battered Birkenstocks over gray wool socks that were nearly a quarter inch thick. I could have reproduced the ensemble for less than ten bucks in any Goodwill outlet in the city.

“Is Ms. Wells okay?” Lucy Bardwell asked all of a sudden.

“Not really. She's badly burned. They're still not sure she'll make it.”

“You mean she might die?”

I nodded.

She bowed her head and murmured what could have been a prayer. “I'm sorry.”

“You didn't sound very sympathetic when you accosted her at the reading.”

Her eyes filled with the bright light of virtue. “I didn't accost her, Mr. Tanner. What I said was entirely true. She stole my ideas and my words, and now that she's rich she should pay for it, somehow. But not like that. No one deserves that, except maybe the editors in New York who keep rejecting my work.” She rolled her eyes to show she was joking.

I smiled. “So you didn't hire a hit man to take her out?”

Her look darkened. “No, but that's nothing to joke about, surely. Murder has never seemed very funny to me.”

“Me, either,” I admitted. “Is there anyone who might have been angry with Chandelier on your behalf?”

She frowned and gnawed her lip. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Father or brother or boyfriend? Someone who might think Chandelier had gypped you out of a major career as a writer but with her out of the way you might get it on track?”

She blinked and looked toward the window, which looked out on to an air shaft and a solid brick wall. “My father is dead and my brother's in Sweden and the only lover I ever had committed suicide six years ago.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So am I. I'll never get over it.” She pointed at the notebook I'd seen on the table. “One reason is, it's very hard to do this by yourself.”

“Do what, exactly?”

“Write.”

“Write what?”

“Novels and short stories.”

“How long have you been doing that?”

“Eleven years. Going on twelve.”

“That's a long time.”

She nodded. “It's similar to solitary confinement, I imagine.”

“How so?”

“As authoritarians seem to have known from time immemorial, sitting alone in a room for extended periods can make you crazy.”

“Is that what you are, Ms. Bardwell?”

She seemed to treat the issue as a serious one. “Not yet, I hope. But I'll probably be the last to know, don't you think?”

“Well, you don't seem crazy to me.”

She accepted the compliment graciously. “Thank you very much.”

“Are you still taking writing classes?”

“I can't afford any more classes, but even if I could, I'm not sure they're what I need at this point.”

“What do you need at this point? Money?”

She smiled with shy deprecation. “Last year I earned four thousand two hundred dollars waiting tables at the local Denny's and I actually managed to live on it.” She gestured at the room. “My life is hardly splendid, as you can see. But what I need most isn't money, what I need most is optimism.”

“About what?”

She shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “My future. My work. My life. I've written four novels and twenty-two short stories. None have been published, none have been taken on by an agent. Even I know that it seems silly to go on at this point, insane, really, but for some reason I'm afraid to stop.”

“Why is that?”

She couldn't meet my eyes. “I guess because I'm afraid my work is all I have.”

“Maybe writing's not what you do best,” I said quickly, to head off a case of the doldrums. “Maybe you'd be happier doing something else.”

She shook her head with the vehemence of a zealot. “Writing is my life. It's all I do, all I think about, all I dream about, all I want out of existence.”

“But you are writing. You're just not getting published.”

She shook her head in sympathy with my ignorance. “I'm not one of those who want to ‘have written,' Mr. Tanner. I work my butt off. I write ten hours a day, six days a week. So I'm not in it for the glory, I'm in it for the joy of creation and the music of the language, and for what I learn about life as I write. But writing good prose is only half the Holy Grail.”

“What's the other half?”

“Readers. I need to know people are being touched by what I do; that my work makes some sort of difference in their lives. Not by answering the great ethical questions or anything—I'm not a philosopher or even an intellectual. But I do want to give people joy. And peace. And escape from the hardships of their lives for a while, which is the gift my favorite books have always given me.” She looked up at me and grinned shyly. “That's probably too much to hope for, isn't it?”

“No, Not at all,” I said, mostly because I hoped it was true.

“The sad thing is, I'm a good writer. Not to brag or anything, but a wide variety of people have told me that over the years, including Chandelier Wells, if you can believe it. But it's not enough to be good, I've discovered. You need something extra. A hook. A gimmick. A kick in the teeth to some jaded editor who thinks she's seen it all before. And in my case, that something was
Childish Ways
. The topicality of the subject matter, the gritty humanity of the protagonist, interplay of terror and romance in the plotline—all the elements of commercial success were there. But Chandelier stole them and published them and kept my life from moving on. Do you wonder that I'm furious at her?”

“What I wonder is if you did anything but berate her at the reading.”

“You don't think I had anything to do with that explosion, surely?”

“I don't know if you did or not.”

She gazed around the room as though she hoped I would do the same and read its message accurately. “All I do is write, Mr. Tanner. And go to church. And work at the restaurant. And sit with my mother on Sunday afternoon while she listens to the radio preachers. I have no money; I have no lover; I have no children; I have very few friends. Two, in fact, and one of them lives in Oregon. Truth to tell, I have no life at all beyond the lives I create in my books and my stories.”

“I'm sure you're exaggerating.”

“I'm really not, as it happens. The only things I have other than my work are my honor and my dignity and my effort to do no harm to the world. I recycle, I keep the heat below sixty-eight degrees, I take public transportation, I'm a Big Sister when I'm not too tired. The only things that keep me going are my belief that I'm a good person and my dream of becoming a writer. Intentionally injuring another, no matter how odious that person is or how much pain she's caused me, would destroy both of my lifelines, Mr. Tanner. I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree.”

“Only in one sense,” I said, then stood up and stuck out a hand. “I wish you well, Ms. Bardwell. I'm sure good things will happen if you persevere.”

Her grin was brash and irrepressible. “I've been persevering for eleven years. I'm not about to stop just when I've gotten good at it.”