Liar (37 page)

“Who’s he?”

“My good-looking cousin,” I said. “Much younger cousin.”

She smiled. “Cool!”

I didn’t think a body shop would be open on a Sunday, but I couldn’t keep myself from driving past it. I made my way over to Highway 39, Beach Boulevard. I didn’t have far to go before I came to Sun Coast. As expected, it was closed. I pulled up in front and saw several cars locked up behind its wrought-iron fence. None of them were Camrys. I’d have to come back on Monday.

I headed back to PCH. At a traffic light, I moved the envelope on the seat next to me so that it was tucked in more securely. I thought of Travis. With some distance between me and Robert DeMont’s house, I began to doubt myself. Maybe I should have stayed and talked to De-Mont, should have at least tried to figure out what he was planning next. I could have learned more. What assignment was Richmond working on now, I wondered?

With a little lane changing, I got past some slowpokes on Highway 1. In the clear, I asked for a little more from my old ragtop, and it delivered. I was anxious to get back to my family.

“Frank called,” Mary said when I returned. “He left this number. Room two fifty-four.”

“Where’s Travis?”

“Sleeping. His hand was bothering him and-of course, much more than that. Took one of those pills. Sleep will do him good. You look like you could use a little nap yourself.”

I did feel weary, but I knew it wasn’t caused by a lack of sleep. Remembered precariousness, vulnerability-that was what weighed on me. It was as if I had blindly stepped out over a cliff with one foot, drew back in time to keep from falling, but now, with solid ground beneath me, could only think of that near miss.
Watch where you’re going. Watch where you’re going.

“Maybe I’ll try to catch some sleep a little later,” I told her. “Mind if I use your phone?”

I billed the call to my home number.

“Are you in Montana?” I asked Frank, once I was connected to his room.

“Yes, in Helena.” He gave me the hotel name, which I hadn’t been able to decipher from the switchboard’s mumbled answer. “Thought I’d give you that information on DeMont,” he said.

“That was fast-this friend of yours must be pretty efficient.”

“I didn’t ask for anybody’s help.” I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “I looked it up myself-well, Pete and I worked on it together, and I found it first.”

“How?”

He laughed. “Same way you would have. I went to the library.”

“And to think some women have to worry about how their husbands will spend a Saturday night on the road.”

“Be sure you tell Rachel that Pete came with me. The library was open last night and we had some time, so we looked at microfilm-old local newspaper files, just to see if we could find anything. Pete took the first half of June, I took the second half. And I found it.”

“Great! Tell me what you learned.”

“Okay. June 19, 1940. Robert DeMont and his father were named in the article, and the paper referred to them as ‘two drifters from California.” They did some work on a farm owned by a widow, on the understanding that she’d pay them. She wasn’t satisfied with the work and was going to give them less than the agreed-upon amount. Robert lost his temper, picked up a kitchen knife and took a couple of swipes at her.“

“A knife?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “Maybe it’s his weapon of choice.”

I began to feel a little better about breaking DeMont’s window-and a little shaky again.

“Are you there?” he asked.

“Yes-sorry. So what happened then?”

“According to the paper, Horace and the widow struggled with Robert, both trying to get control of him, but he still managed to cut her once. Horace wrested the knife away from him, and then helped the widow bind up her wound.”

I had been in Robert DeMont’s kitchen. What if he had been in the mood to stab somebody then?

“Apparently it wasn’t very deep,” Frank was saying, “but naturally, she was upset. A neighbor happened by and the DeMonts got scared and ran off. The neighbor called the police, who managed to catch the DeMonts before they got very far.”

“They were both arrested?”

“No, just Robert. But Horace wouldn’t leave town without him. There was a second article, a little later on, saying that the charges were dropped, and there’s a quote from the widow that made it sound as if the whole thing was a misunderstanding.”

“Right,” I said. “A misunderstanding that got straightened out once Papa DeMont’s checks cleared the bank.”

“Probably.”

“I wonder how often his money covered some situation like this?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but steer clear of these people, all right?”

“I can promise you, I won’t go near Horace or Robert DeMont.” I didn’t tell him I had already learned that lesson the hard way.

“What happened?” he said sharply.

Oh, damn. “Who said anything happened?” I tried, but even to me it sounded feeble.

“ ‘I can promise you’? You think I just met you yesterday?”

So I ended up explaining.

After a long silence, I heard him let out a deep sigh. “You’re sure you’re okay? I mean, I know you weren’t hurt, but-”

“Yes,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

“You’re still willing to make that promise? I don’t have to have Reed show you a pile of photos of stabbing-wound victims?”

“Not necessary-I promise. I believe absolutely that Robert DeMont is capable of stabbing someone in a fit of rage. I don’t want to be next.”

“You might also think about the fact that one of the easiest places in the world to buy a wetsuit is Huntington Beach.”

I didn’t say anything. I was picturing self-involved Robert DeMont- walking past a surf shop, looking in the windows, suddenly inspired; later, pleased with his plan to use the wetsuit, reveling in his invention of a special torture device, eager to try it out.

Frank’s voice brought me back from horrific visions. He had changed the subject-apparently he didn’t want to end on that note of fear and argument. I didn’t either. We talked for a while longer. I thanked him again for the research help, and we agreed to talk again later that night. In the end, I was glad not to be hiding anything from him, and knew that talking about it with him had helped me shake off the worst of my gloominess.

Mary, seeing I wasn’t going to take a nap, made a strong cup of coffee for me. I asked to borrow a magnifying glass, and after locating one for me, she went out to work in her garden. One of the things I like about Mary is that she puts a limit on her hovering.

I sat at the kitchen table and took another look through the envelope I had taken from Robert DeMont. This time, I pulled out the note. It read:

Robert-Rushed these per your request, no time to sort them. I have my own copies, these are yours to keep.

Have already spoken to you re: photos I took of subject’s mother prior to locating him. Of interest is Irene Kelly, subject’s cousin, who appears with subject and unknown woman in some shots. Believe Kelly may have possession of item we seek.

It was signed by Harold Richmond.

The anger kicked in again. I was feeling better and better about breaking that window. If I hadn’t made that promise to Frank, I would have considered going back and breaking a few more. But what, I wondered, was this “item” they were looking for? The murder weapon? But why would they look for that if Robert DeMont had killed her?

I thought about this. If Robert DeMont had killed Gwendolyn in a fit of anger, then left the knife at the scene, who found it? Arthur or the housekeeper, Mrs. Coughlin. If Richmond believed I had it, he must also believe that Arthur took it from the scene.

But Richmond thought Arthur, not Robert DeMont, was guilty. He’d never work for DeMont if he thought Robert had killed Gwendolyn. Maybe that suited DeMont just fine; let Richmond pursue it for his own reasons and-and what? It made no sense. DeMont would not want Richmond to find the knife-not if the knife could somehow link him to the crime.

Perhaps the “item” had nothing to do with the crime scene. I quickly dropped that idea-Richmond’s obsession, his connection to the DeMonts and Arthur and my cousin, was one event: Gwendolyn’s murder.

I set that problem aside and went back to the photos, started looking through them more slowly.

At the top of the pile were the ones of Briana in San Pedro. I pulled out my notebook, flipped to my conversation with Mr. Reyes. According to the store owner, Briana had been wearing a blue sweater on the day she was killed. I sorted through the photos, found the ones taken of Briana when she was walking near the market. A red sweater. Little chance of mistaking one for the other. The photo had not been taken on the day she was killed.

Still, she had been stalked.

I went on to the ones taken at my house-of Rachel, Travis and me getting out of the camper; of the house, street and camper from other angles. The photos were taken during the day; the only daylight hours during which the camper had been at the curb in front of my house were that same afternoon. By later that evening, it had been destroyed.

If Richmond had been taking photographs before he-or Robert De-Mont-had rigged a bomb, perhaps one of the people on the street had seen him near the camper, witnessed him fooling around with it.

It was while I was looking at a group of people walking on the sidewalk, slightly down the street from the camper, that I inadvertently made a discovery. The group included a young woman with two small boys. I didn’t recognize them, and although they appeared to be giving their mother a hard time, I doubted the kids were young urban terrorists, out to rig bombs in campers. As I idly moved the glass to focus on one boy’s impish expression, I saw something odd in the car nearest the group-gradually, I realized that it was a shoulder.

The car was a gray El Camino with dark upholstery. The shoulder, in a white T-shirt, stood out against the dark seat. It belonged to someone who was sitting in the car, ducking out of view from the camera.

In three or four other shots, varying portions of the car and the shoulder appeared, but there was no closer shot of it. It became apparent that Harold Richmond, master detective, had no idea that someone was trying to hide in a car not half a block away from where he was spying on us. A large man with muscular shoulders.

One shot accidentally caught a portion of the man’s head, taken as he was either starting to peek up or duck down again. Dark hair, silver on the sides.

Robert DeMont’s hair was white. Harold Richmond’s hair color was very similar to that of the man in the photo, but Richmond was the camera man. Gerald Spanning’s was also dark, going to silver on the sides.

I told myself that from the little that was visible of the man in these photos, there was no way to tell if it was Gerald Spanning in the El Camino. I couldn’t convince myself that it wasn’t.

That raised other questions. If it was Gerald, how did he learn where I lived? How did he manage to be there on the same day I found Travis, at the same time as Richmond? Had he followed Richmond? How would he even know what Richmond was up to, who he was watching?

There was also the problem of the car. At Gerald’s mobile home, he had pulled up in a pickup truck. Parking was limited near his trailer; I hadn’t seen an El Camino.

I kept looking at photos. At the end of the stack, I came to one that made my blood run cold.

Mary Kelly’s house.

Richmond-and Robert DeMont-knew where to find us.

“Mary!” I called, running into the backyard.

“For heaven’s sake-”

“Do you have friends you could stay with, someone else you could spend a few nights with?”

She looked puzzled, but said, “Yes, why?”

“It isn’t safe here for you, or for us.” I found myself looking toward Travis’s room, worrying that I would be too late to take him out of harm’s way. Hastily, I tried to explain, all the while distracted by my fears, wondering if even now the killer was watching this house, setting new plans in motion.

“What can I do to help?” she asked calmly, after I had told my disjointed tale.

She wasn’t going to challenge me, question me at length. Some of the panic lifted. “Help me wake Travis. Pack whatever you’ll need. Most of my own things are ready. You have Travis’s cell phone number?”

“Yes.”

“Take it with you. If you need to reach us, use that number.”

“Where will you be?”

“In the van. I’ll stay on the move. Safer for us, safer for our friends.”

I knocked on Travis’s door; he didn’t answer. I knocked louder, still no answer. “The pain pills,” Mary said, and opened the door.

He slept peacefully on his back, on top of the covers; except for stockinged feet, he was fully clothed. His hands lay palm up at his sides, his mouth slightly open, his face relaxed-but it was not the face of the puckish storyteller in the park. The young man before me had been marked by too much sudden grief, its signs apparent even as he slept.

Reluctantly, I tried to wake him; he opened his eyes, murmured something, fell asleep.

“Let him sleep until we’re ready to leave, then,” I whispered to Mary. I put his few items of new clothing in his trunk, packed up my own belongings and the cell phone, then took all of it out to the van. I made up the bed in the back.

When I came back in, Mary was ready to go. She gave me a slip of paper on which she had written information about where she would be staying. “Met her in my t’ai chi ch’uan class,” she said.

We managed to rouse Travis enough to get him into the van; he promptly fell asleep on the bed.

I hugged Mary, and she pulled me back into a second embrace, giving me a kiss on the cheek and telling me, “Be careful. I will never forgive you if you don’t outlive me.”

“I feel exactly the same way about you,” I said, making her laugh. I watched her walk over to the Mustang and called out, “Will you be able to park that thing in your friend’s garage?”