Larkspur (13 page)

Jay said nothing. He looked casual, relaxed even, but I could feel his coiled spring
tension.

"Dai kept a personal journal, you see." D'Angelo drew another breath. At that rate he
was going to hyperventilate.

Jay said mildly, "Take it easy, Professor D'Angelo."

"Oh hell, don't be so formal. Did the three of us freeze our asses together in Dai's lake or
did we not?" A brave attempt at jauntiness.

"We did."

The chair rocked. "The thing is, I had an affair with Dai one summer at the lodge."

Jay nodded. I kept very still.

D'Angelo closed his eyes, opened them. "It was fourteen years ago. I was married by
then, and my wife and kids came up with me. Hal, that was Dai's lover, got jealous. He told Paula
what was happening. She took the kids and..." His voice broke.

Jay stirred beside me but said nothing.

D'Angelo cleared his throat. "The upshot was she divorced me and kept the boys. She
also threatened to expose my conduct to my colleagues at Presteign. It's a good school, but
private and church-related. So she had me over a barrel."

I must say my sympathies at that point were with the former Mrs. D'Angelo. I tried to
keep a blank face.

D'Angelo was gripping the wooden arm-rests very hard. Every time he moved, the chair
creaked and rocked. "That school-year was hell," he went on in a low, tight voice. "I was up for
tenure. My publications were okay, and I'm a pretty good teacher, so I suppose they would have
awarded me a permanent contract, but I couldn't stand the strain of waiting."

I heard the coffee maker give its last grumbles and slipped out to the kitchen, but I kept
my ears tuned. I poured two cups.

"Paula got the boys, half my salary, and the house we were buying." The chair creaked.
"She stayed there, licking her wounds and biding her time. Sooner or later, the lid was going to
blow off. The Monte position was the first thing that came along, and I grabbed at it. I said I
wanted a change of scene because of the divorce." He gave another tight laugh. "Some of my
friends even believed me, though Monte was a long step down the academic ladder."

I brought him his mug. "Cream?"

"What? Oh, no thanks." His hands shook when he raised the cup to the lips, but he drank
a little.

I went back to the couch.

Jay said quietly, "Did the relationship with Llewellyn continue?"

"No!" He bit his lip. "It's damned hard to explain this. You see, Dai--I guess the word
would be seduced--he seduced me when I was an undergraduate at Muir. I don't mean to suggest
it was rape. I was...willing."

Beside me, Jay stirred again but he said nothing.

D'Angelo took a hasty sip, burned his tongue, and swore. "I was an awful kid, what my
students would call a nerd, and Dai was a suave sophisticate. I enrolled in his seminar on modern
poetry. He liked my writing. His attention was enormously flattering, and he
was...charming."

"I met him," Jay said. "Remember?"

"Yeah, but when he was younger..." He set his cup down, leaving the thought unfinished.
"So he persuaded me into his bed a couple of times. Then he went on to better things." His mouth
twisted. "I was devastated and confused. I thought I hated him, but I still needed his approval--of
my work, I mean. Surprisingly enough, I continued to get it."

"Then you left Muir and went to graduate school," Jay murmured.

"Yeah. I met Paula in a Spenser seminar, and we fell in love." He was frowning now, as
though puzzled. "You probably don't believe that, but it was true. I loved Paula, and I found her
desirable. All this stuff about gay rights and coming out of the closet and so on, it's a good thing.
It's good if you're not, well, ambivalent. I'm ambivalent."

"Bisexual?" Jay suggested, cautious.

D'Angelo heaved a sigh. "If you have to have a label. Believe me, I've tried to
understand my...peculiar orientation. But Dai was my only experience of a male lover. And I'd
always been a nerd, so my experience with women was limited, too. I was susceptible to being
loved."

"Who isn't?" Jay said mildly.

D'Angelo picked up his mug, drank a good swallow of cooling coffee and set his cup on
the end table. "In any case, I kept on needing Dai's academic approval, and I got it. I'm a critic,
not a poet, but he liked my approach to poetry, wrote me glowing recommendations, even offered
me advice on my dissertation, good advice. I owe...owed him my academic career."

Jay rubbed his nose. "You must have had considerable talent and energy to finish out a
Ph.D. program. I doubt that you owe your career to Llewellyn or anyone else."

D'Angelo flushed, but he looked less as if he were going to fall to bits on my carpet. The
rocking chair creaked. "Well, I worked hard, but connections matter. I felt as if I owed it all to
Dai. I was flattered to be invited to the lodge when the invitation came. Hell, so was Paula." He
paused brooding.

I swallowed coffee.

"Strangely enough," he went on, "I no longer found him sexually exciting. I went
along..."

"For old times' sake?" Jay's measured sarcasm made D'Angelo sit up straight.

The rocking chair gave a large creak. "You don't believe me."

"I'm trying to understand what you're saying, D'Angelo. Your heart wasn't in the summer
fling, but you went along."

"Yeah. Afterwards, I could see Dai had been using me to provoke Hal. By then it was
too late. Paula and the boys were gone. He ruined my life..."

"Isn't that a little melodramatic?"

"Christ, who's supposed to be the literary critic?"

Jay smiled.

D'Angelo heaved a big sigh. "I'll try to be more precise. It felt at the time as if he had
ruined my life. I hated him and hated myself for needing his love or approval or whatever you
want to call it. The worst part was losing my sons. That was a kind of death." He looked at his
hands. "I was a good father. I'd started Mikey in Little League, and I was looking forward to all
that
Leave It to Beaver
stuff. I missed my kids horribly."

"Didn't you have visitation rights?" I asked, incredulous.

"I didn't ask for fear Paula would tell the judge why not. She would have, too. I saw
them, supervised, one afternoon a month until I moved to Monte. Then we had to make do with
phone calls and letters. I wrote great letters."

I felt my eyes sting with sympathetic tears. I'm a sucker for good fathers.

"Five years ago, Paula and I came to an arrangement. The boys spend a month with my
parents in Sonoma County every summer. I go down, and we have August together. She's still
suspicious, though. She never told the boys why we got divorced, but Mike's a college student
now, plenty old enough to wonder, and I've had a hell of a time re-establishing any kind of
father-son rapport with him. He's a bright kid, but he's rebellious. Fortunately, both boys like their
step-father."

"So your life didn't come to an end after all, and you kept on visiting Llewellyn's lodge
until he died and left you in charge of his Foundation."

D'Angelo started at the sudden harshness. So did I. Jay's hand closed briefly on mine. I
subsided.

"He felt guilty." D'Angelo's eyes pleaded. "He knew what had happened, how I felt about
losing my family and my place at Presteign. He was remorseful. Maybe I played on that. I wanted
him to know how rotten it was for me."

"You knew about the directorship?"

"Yes. After Hal's death Dai put his affairs in order. Last year he told me how he wanted
the Foundation administered. And he promised me the directorship."

Jay was silent for maybe a minute. I could tell he was turning D'Angelo's story over in
his mind.

D'Angelo bit his lip. "I'm getting married." Jay's eyebrows shot up.

"To a woman who knows as much as I know about my peculiarities and wants to marry
me anyway. She's had her own experiments and failures. We decided we've both had enough
solitude. And enough charades. The directorship will free me of the need to masquerade as good
old Win, man about town and universal escort. I'm forty-five years old. I don't kid myself. I love
Martha partly because she loves me and mostly because she's a damned attractive human being.
I'm also looking forward to having someone to talk to at breakfast."

Jay leaned forward and picked a sheaf of papers up from the coffee table. "Why did you
decide to tell me all this now, sir?"

"Mary Dailey..."

"Yes, I can see that would be awkward, but names in the journal are in a private
code."

"You've seen it?"

Jay gestured with the sheaf. "The current volume was in Llewellyn's room at the lodge. I
had it photocopied and asked the San Francisco police to secure the rest of his private papers.
There were a lot of them. I got a bale of photocopies yesterday afternoon, and I've been sifting
through them since then."

D'Angelo leaned back in the chair, eyes closed. Creak, creak went the rocker.

"The journal is kind of like a painter's sketch book. Pictures in words, phrases. Like
notes for poems."

D'Angelo's eyes opened wide. "My God, what a bonanza that would be for a critical
biography. You could see the stages of a poem from its inception."

Jay nodded. "I guess so. There isn't a lot of stuff about people--except for his
relationship with Brauer. He kept a running account of their emotional ups and downs."

"I wonder whether I was an up or a down?" D'Angelo mused.

I could see Jay swallow a grin.

D'Angelo must have, too. He smiled wryly. "You said the names were in code."

"Yes. He wrote enough about other people so you can tell when he was having an affair,
or a family feud, or any other emotional upheaval, but he didn't go into detail. The relationship
with Denise, for instance. I picked up on most of those references."

D'Angelo shook his head, disbelieving. "Denise..."

"Anyway, I might not have been sure about your connection with him, just from reading
the journal."

"I didn't know that."

"Maybe not, but why hand me a motive for murder?" Jay laid the papers down again.
"Reinforce a motive for murder. The directorship was a motive in itself, and I was puzzled."

"That he'd name an undistinguished jerk from a jerkwater school to head his big
Foundation?"

"I knew you'd been his student."

"So was Mary. So were a lot of people." D'Angelo got up. "Shit, it's ten thirty already. I
have to get up at five." He walked to my window and looked out. "I told you because it was
safe."

Jay stood up, too. "Safe?"

"You have the murderer--or you will have when you catch up with the Mercedes. I'm
trying to clear my desk, Dodge. Metaphorically speaking. Dai gave me a chance to start over
professionally."

"And you'll be starting a new marriage, too."

"That's right. This time around I want everything out in the open."

A short silence fell. Jay said mildly, "I ought to warn you not to leap to conclusions. The
case isn't closed."

D'Angelo turned from the window and stared. "Even so."

"Even if Miguel wasn't the poisoner?"

"Why do you say that? He ran."

"I'm hypothesizing, Professor D'Angelo."

D'Angelo nodded. He understood that kind of thinking. "Even if Miguel wasn't the
murderer, I think my motive would come way down the list." There were the Peltzes, who
thought they were going to inherit, and Fromm, who did.

"It is a big estate."

"Denise would love to do The Woman Scorned."

And the Huffs probably needed their seed money, I reflected.

D'Angelo drew a breath. "If I'd wanted to murder Dai, I would have done it fourteen
years ago. I didn't want him dead. I just wanted to see him squirm."

There was more talk, of course. Jay needed a formal statement. He was willing to wait
for it, though. He had corroboration of D'Angelo's tale (in the coded journal) and a witness to the
story (me) in case D'Angelo decided to recant. I didn't think he would. He seemed relieved to
have the story off his chest. At eleven Jay drove D'Angelo to his apartment.

I sneaked a look at the famous journal but couldn't decipher it. Word-pictures, Jay had
said. Images. Made sense. Llewellyn had been an Imagist.

I love my mother.

I thought I'd better say that at the outset. What's more she's a good poet.

She's also five two. When I'm with her I feel huge and inarticulate. I'm aware that the
problem is mostly in my mind, but that doesn't make the feeling go away. With three thousand
miles between us we get along well.

I reached San Francisco around 8:00 a.m. and the St. Francis Hotel in time for breakfast.
Ma had already asked room service to send up eggs Benedict, assorted fruit, and lots of coffee.
The cart arrived as we disentangled ourselves from the flurry of greeting. She was wearing a neat
little gray faille suit, gloves, no hat. I was wearing a dark cotton print and flats. I felt like a dark
cotton giraffe. Ma told me I looked just right. She checked out of the hotel at ten. I stowed her
bag with the bell captain and hailed a taxi.

The memorial service was scheduled for ten thirty, but it started fifteen minutes late. By
then half the academic poets in North America and a sprinkling of the rest, a segment of the gay
community, a segment of the financial community, assorted representatives of the publishing
industry, including the Huffs, a dozen lawyers, and Angharad Peltz's parents had assembled in
the vast interior of the cathedral. Neither Ted nor Angharad showed up.

The organist was playing a Bach prelude. Llewellyn had been cremated, so there was no
casket. I could see through the floral arrangements in front of the altar rail to where the priest was
set to enter. As the organ swooped, a rustle, like wind on a wheat field, ran through the
assembled mourners. I turned and looked back down the long aisle. Denise was making an
Entrance.

She wore a black dress, chiffon with flowing sleeves, and a black summer hat with the
hint of a veil. The outfit was vaguely nunnish. It suggested a great deal but stated nothing. Her
face was composed, stark. Her hands clasped a black Prayerbook. Escorted by Dennis, she
moved slowly, slowly up the center aisle.