Wanda Hatzler's address was on Yale Street, south of Wilshire, a stucco bungalow behind a lawn of lavender, wild onions, thyme, and several species of cactus. An
alarm company sign protruded from the herbs, but no fence surrounded the property.
She was at the curb by the time I finished parking, a big woman-nearly six feet, with healthy shoulders and heavy limbs. Her hair was cut short. The color was hard to make out in the darkness.
"Dr. Delaware? Wanda Hatzler." Brisk shake, rough hands. "I like your car-used to have a Fleetwood until Orton couldn't drive anymore and I got tired of supporting the oil companies. Show me some identification just to play it safe, then come inside."
Inside, her house was cramped, warm, bright, ash-paneled and filled with chairs covered in at least three variations of brown paisley cotton. Georgia O'Keeffe prints hung on the walls, along with some muddy-looking California plein-air oils.
An open doorway peeked into the kitchen, where soft dolls were arranged on the counter-children in all sorts of native costumes propped up sitting, a tiny stuffed kindergarten. Old white two-burner stove. A saucepan sat above dancing blue flames, and a childhood memory hit me: the cold-afternoon fragrance of canned vegetable soup. I tried not to think of Peake's culinary forays.
Wanda Hatzler closed the door and said, "Go on, make yourself comfortable."
I sat in a paisley armchair and she stood there. She wore a deep green V-neck pullover over a white turtleneck, loose gray pants, brown slip-on shoes. The hair was black well salted with silver. She could've been anywhere from seventy to eighty-five. Her face was broad, basset-hound droopy, crumpled as used wrapping paper. Moist blue-green eyes seemed to have suction power over mine. She wasn't smiling but I sensed some sort of amusement.
"Something to drink? Coke, Diet Coke, hundred-proof rum?"
"I'm fine, thanks."
"What about soup? I'm going to have some."
"No, thanks."
"Tough customer." She went into the kitchen, filled a mug, came back and sat down, blew into the soup, and drank. "Treadway, what a hole. Why on earth would you want to know anything about it?"
I told her about Claire and Peake, emphasizing a therapeutic relationship gone bad, keeping prophecy out of it, omitting the other murders.
She put the mug down. "Peake? I always thought he was retarded. Wouldn't have pegged him for violence, so what do I know? The only psychology I ever studied was an introductory course at Sarah Lawrence back in another century."
"I'll bet you know plenty."
She smiled. "Why? Because I'm old? Don't blush, I am old." She touched one seamed cheek. "The truth is in the flesh. Didn't Samuel Butler say that? Or maybe I made it up. Anyway, I'm afraid I can't give you any ideas on Peake. Never had a feel for him. Now you're going to leave. Too bad. You're good-looking and I was looking forward to this."
"To talking about Treadway?"
"To maligning Treadway."
"How long did you live there?"
"Too long. Never could stand the place. At the time of the murders, I was working in
Bakersfield. Chamber of commerce. Not exactly a cosmopolis but at least there was
some semblance of civilization. Like sidewalks. At night I helped my husband put the paper to bed. Such as it was."
She lifted the mug and drank. "Have you read the rag?"
"Twenty years' worth."
"Lord. Where'd you get hold of it?"
"Beale Memorial Library."
"You are motivated." She shook her head. "Twenty years' worth. Orton would be shocked. He knew what he'd come down to."
"He didn't like publishing?"
"He liked publishing fine. He would've preferred running the The New York Times. He was a Dartmouth boy. The Intelligencer-doesn't that reek of East Coast sensibilities? Unfortunately his politics were somewhere to the right of Joe
McCarthy, and after the war that wasn't very fashionable. Also, he had a little problem." She pantomimed tossing back a drink. "Hundred-proof rum-developed a taste for it when serving in the Pacific. Lived to eighty-seven, anyway. Developed palate cancer, recovered, then leukemia, went into remission, then cirrhosis, and even that took years to kill him. His doctor saw an X ray of his liver, called him a medical miracle-he was oodles older than me."
Laughing, she finished the soup, got up, poured a refill, came back. "The
Intelligencer was Orton hitting bottom. He began his career at The Philadelphia
Inquirer and proceeded to embark on a downward slide for the rest of his life.
Treadway was our last stop-we bought the rag for next to nothing and settled into a life of crushing tedium and genteel poverty. Gawd, I hated that place. Stupid people everywhere you looked. Social Darwinism, I suppose: the smart ones leave for the big city, only the idiots remain to breed." Another laugh. "Orton used to call it the power of positive backpedaling. He and I decided not to breed."
I made sure not to look at the dolls in the kitchen.
She said, "The only reason I stayed there was because I loved the guy-very good-looking. Even handsomer than you. Virile, too."
She crossed her legs. Were those eyelashes batting?
I said, "The Ardullos don't sound stupid."
She gave a dismissive wave. "Yes, I know: Butch went to Stanford-he told anyone who'd listen. But he got in because of football. Everyone else liked him, but I didn't. Pleasant enough, superficially. One of those fellows who's convinced he's a magnet for females, puts on the Galahad act. Too much confidence in a man is not an endearing trait, particularly when it's unjustified. Butch had no fire-stolid, straight-ahead as a horse with blinders. Point him in a direction and he went. And that wife of his. An oh-so-delicate Victorian relic. Taking to her bed all the time.
I used to think it was phony baloney, called her Little Miss Vapors. But then she surprised me and actually died of something."
She shrugged. "That's the trouble with being malicious- occasionally one is wrong, and a nasty little urge to repent seeps in."
"What about Scott?"
"Smarter than Butch, but no luminary. He inherited land, grew fruit when the weather obliged. Not exactly Einstein, eh? Which isn't to say I wasn't shocked and sickened by what happened to him. And his poor wife-sweet thing, liked to read, I always suspected there might be an intellectual streak hidden somewhere."
Her lip trembled. "The worst thing was those babies.... By the time it happened,
Orton and I had just sold the paper and moved down here. When Orton read about the murder in the Times, he vomited, sat down at his desk, and wrote a story-as if he were still a journalist. Then he ripped it up, vomited again, drank daiquiris all night, and passed out for two days. When he woke up, he couldn't feel his legs. Took another day to convince him he wasn't dying. Great disappointment for him. He cherished the idea of drinking himself to death, sensitive soul. His big mistake was taking the world seriously-though I guess in a case like that you'd have to. Even I cried. For the babies. I wasn't good with children- found them frightening, too much vulnerability, a big girl like me never seemed suited to those little twig bones.
Hearing what Peake had done confirmed all that. I didn't sleep well for a long time."
She brandished the mug. "I haven't thought about it in years, wondered if raking it up might bother me, but apart from thinking about the babies, this is rather fun.
For twenty years we lived above the newspaper office, scrounged for advertising, took extra jobs to get by. Orton did people's bookkeeping, I tutored incredibly stupid children in English and wrote press releases for the yahoos at the C of C."
"So you never had much contact with Peake."
"I knew who he was-rather conspicuous fellow, lurching around in the alleys, going through the garbage-but no, we never exchanged a single sentence." She recrossed her legs. "This is good. Knowing I can still remember a few things- some juice in the old machine. What else would you like to know?"
"The Crimmins family-"
"Morons." She sipped more soup. "Worse than the Ardullos. Vulgarians. Carson was like Butch, uncreative, obsessed by the dollar, but minus the charm. In addition to walnuts, he grew lemons. Orton used to say he looked as if he'd been weaned on them.
Never seemed to take pleasure in anything. I'm sure you have a word for it."
"Anhedonia."
"There you go," she said. "I should've taken Intermediate Psychology."
"What about Sybil?"
"Slut. Gold digger. Dumb blonde. Right out of a bad movie."
"Out for Crimmins's money," I said.
"It sure wasn't his looks. They met on a cruise line, faw-gawdsakes, what a horrid cliche. If Carson had had a brain in his head he'd have jumped overboard."
"She caused him problems?"
Pause. Eyeblink. "She was a vulgar woman."
"She claimed to be an actress."
"And I'm the Sultan of Brunei."
"What kind of difficulties did she cause?" I said.
"Oh, you know," she said. "Stirring things up-wanting to run everything the moment she hit town. Transform herself into a star. She actually tried to get a theater group going. Got Carson to build a stage in one of his barns, bought all sorts of equipment. Orton laughed so hard telling me about it, he nearly lost his bridgework.
'Guess who moved in, Wanda? Jean Harlow. Harlow in Horseshit.' "
"Who did Sybil plan on acting with?"
"The local yokels. She also tried to rope in Carson's boys. One of them, I forget which, had a minor knack for drawing, so she put him to work painting sets. She told
Orton they both had 'star quality.' I remember her coming into the office with her ad for the casting call."
Leaning toward me, she spoke in a chirpy, little-girl voice: " 'I tell you, Wanda, there's hidden talent all over the place. Everyone's creative, you just have to bring it out.' She even thought she'd rope Carson in, and just being civil was a performance for him. Guess what play she had planned? Our Town. If she'd had a brain, you could have credited her with some irony. Our Dump, she should've called it. The whole thing fell apart. No one showed up at the audition. Carson helped that along. The day before the ad was supposed to run, he paid Orton double not to print it."
"Stage fright?"
She laughed. "He said it was a waste of time and money. He also said he wanted the barn back for hay."
"Was that pretty typical?" I said. "Crimmins buying what he wanted?"
"What you're really asking is, Was Orton corrupt when he dealt with wealth and power?, and the answer is, Absolutely." She smoothed her sweater. "No apologies.
Carson and Butch ran that town. If you wanted to survive, you played along. When
Butch died, Scott took over his half. It wasn't even a town. It was a joint fiefdom with the rest of us serfs balancing on a wire between them. Orton was caught right in the middle. By the late seventies, we decided we were getting the heck out, one way or the other. Orton had qualified for Social Security and mine was about to kick in, plus I'd inherited a small annuity from an aunt. All we wanted was to sell the printing equipment and get something for ownership of the paper. Orton approached
Scott first, because he thought Scott would be easier to deal with, but Scott wouldn't even listen."
Beating her chest, she put on a gorilla face. " 'Me farmer, me do nothing else.'
Straight ahead and pigheaded, just like his father. So Orton went to Carson, and to his surprise, Carson said he'd consider it."
"Surprise because Carson was uncreative?"
"And because everyone knew Carson wanted to get out of Treadway himself. Each year there'd be talk of some new real estate deal."
"How long had that been going on?"
"Years. The main problem was Scott wouldn't hear of it, and half the land wasn't very attractive to the developers. The approach Orton used with Carson was to suggest the paper might be a good activity for Sybil, to keep her out of trouble."
She snapped her ringers. "That did the trick."
Now I understood the Intelligencer's sudden editorial shift toward Crimmins.
"What other kind of trouble was Sybil getting into?" I said.
She smiled archly. "What do you think?"
"I saw a picture of her and Scott at a dance."
The smile faltered, then changed course, growing wider, fuller, ripe with glee.
"Oh, that picture," she sang. "We might as well have published them naked. Orton wasn't going to print it, a gentleman to the last. But that night, he was sloshed to the gills, so I put the paper to bed."
