Mudlark (13 page)

"Some. The best are working cops, though. I pointed out to the sheriff that getting shot at by one of the
suspects was likely to compromise my testimony. I've already given Nelson guidelines. He's pretty sharp, so the
evidence should be okay. The main problem with that department is lack of organization."

They talked for a while about the kinds of physical evidence a forensics team ought to evaluate. Tom
got interested in insects. He sounded as if he were taking mental notes. I would have laid a bet that his next novel
would involve a crime with a bug-ridden corpse.

Writers are weird people. My mother once told me she was collecting images for one of her
better-known poems at her grandfather's funeral. I can't manage that degree of detachment.

After perhaps five minutes of investigative theory, I steered the conversation back to the events of the
previous day. "How much do you know about Donald Hagen, Tom?"

He shrugged. "We've never met. After yesterday, I can't say I want to meet him."

"Was he younger than your...than Cleo?"

"Four or five years. Cleo and I were the same age, but she always had an eye for younger guys."

"I thought Hagen was pretty stupid."

"I gather he's no genius, but he doesn't have to be. The Hagen Group is a family firm--privately
owned."

"A sinecure. He must be a rich man."

"Cleo had an eye for the main chance." He sounded more amused than bitter. "But she always pulled her
weight. She earned more than I did the whole time we were married, though I was making a good salary."

Jay said, "What did you do?"

"Wrote advertising copy."

"Ugh!" That boggled my mind. Nothing in the style of either book suggested advertising, and
Small
Victories
satirized TV hype. Debasement of language was one of the book's major motifs.

Tom smiled. "As long as you can look at it as a game, like Scrabble or acrostics, writing copy's enjoyable.
I had interesting accounts--couple of Napa Valley wineries, a software firm, a chain of Mexican restaurants."

"But you quit to write novels full time?" Jay hunched a shoulder against the wind.

Tom sighed. "Not just like that. I came north when my grandparents died. They were killed in a car
wreck."

I said, "I'm sorry, Tom. That must've been awful."

"It was a shock. They were getting on, of course, and I'd thought about illness--cancer or heart trouble. I
wasn't ready to lose them both." He rubbed his forehead. "Hell, I wasn't ready to lose either of them, and not that
way. My mother was killed in a car wreck when I was twelve."

We stood silent for a while, and then Tom added, "My grandparents died five years ago, the year after I
divorced Cleo."

So he had initiated the divorce. I wondered if Jay found that as interesting as I did.

Jay is a professional interrogator. He changed the subject. "How did you get started writing?"

Tom blinked. "I dunno. I guess I've always been a story teller. It runs in the family." He laughed. "The
LaPorte family anyway. Grandma was famous for her tall tales. My grandfather was a reader, a great patron of the
Shoalwater Public Library. I remember him reading me Forester's Hornblower stories when I was really
young."

Jay turned his back on the wind. "Did you study writing?"

Tom nodded. "At UCLA, after I got out of the army. I'd published a couple of stories by the time I
graduated, and I thought I could write fiction on the side. Most writers do."

I rubbed my arms. "Couldn't you get a fellowship?"

He shrugged. "Maybe, if I'd applied. I needed a job with a decent salary. My grandparents were getting
older. Grandpa shouldn't have been out in all kinds of weather harvesting oysters--not that he was going to listen
to me. I thought I ought to help them out. Besides, I wanted a piece of the action myself. Poverty is over-rated. I got
through UCLA by cleaning rich people's swimming pools and eating a lot of beans. I don't like beans."

I knew that. He liked salmon, and crab at fifteen dollars a pound. I sighed. "Did you meet Cleo in San
Francisco?"

"Yeah, at a party. She looked good through the haze of dope. She looked good when the smoke cleared,
as a matter of fact. She was a beautiful woman--" He shoved a hand through his hair. "Cleo knew how to make her
beauty vulnerable. I'm usually intimidated by beautiful women, but she got past that. I have no idea why she
decided I'd make a good investment."

"Maybe she liked writers," Jay suggested.

"A groupie?" Tom snorted. "She never read anything but annual reports and the
Wall Street
Journal
. And she was jealous as hell of the time I spent writing
Starvation Hill
."

Jay's eyebrows rose. "Did you write that in San Francisco?"

I was surprised too. The book was pure Pacific Northwest--culture, language, geography.

"Partly." Tom made a face. "Took me seven years, counting the time I spent on it in college. Chapter two
was my senior thesis."

A four-wheeler loaded with kids jounced down the beach, well in excess of the twenty-five
mile-an-hour speed limit. We watched it out of sight.

"Shitheads. They're driving on the clam beds." Tom sighed. "People think novelists just whip stories
out. Maybe some do, but
Starvation Hill
took a lot of digging."

I was thinking about Cleo. "And your wife didn't like your preoccupation?"

"I don't know which she resented more--the amount of money I spent on research, or the time. At first
she was enthusiastic. She even came up here with me a couple of times, though she hated Shoalwater. I guess she
thought I'd write the kind of novel that gets you on "Geraldo". That rarely happens, especially not with a first novel,
but she kept talking as if I was going to turn into Tom Wolfe or Norman Mailer. She had unrealistic expectations,
which is strange, because otherwise Cleo was as hard-headed as they come."

"Did you have problems selling the novel?"

He laughed. "Freddy tells me you're a bookseller. What do you think?"

"That books like
Starvation Hill
come along once a decade." I added, with reluctant truth, "And
that you probably had a hard time placing it. Publishers don't like risks." I hung on doggedly. "The house that did
print it--"

"Wheeler Incorporated." He looked as if the name tasted sour. "They went out of business. The
receivers remaindered
Starvation Hill
about three weeks after it was published. Since I'd never seen a check
for the advance--"

"What!" That stunned me, though it shouldn't have. Jay was scowling.

Tom looked away as if the confession embarrassed him. "I was a patsy." He dug at a clump of beach
grass with the toe of his sneaker. "When the committee told me
Starvation Hill
had won that book award, I
had to tell them it was already out of print. They were sympathetic, but it was a damned awkward situation. I felt
like a fool."

Jay made a growling sound.

"What did Cleo think of that?" I asked. "Were you divorced by then?"

"We split six years ago, one of those no-fault California divorces. If she'd known about the book she
would have felt vindicated." He smiled a small, wry smile. "I was damned glad she didn't. It was not a good year for
me. The IRS audited my tax returns and reclassified writing as my hobby."

I drew a sharp breath.

Tom's mouth twisted. "Technically I'm not a writer at all, I'm a fisherman."

"Can they do that?" Indignation sharpened Jay's voice.

"Can and did. I wasn't earning enough from writing. Until I sold
Small Victories
last year I
couldn't even have got a hearing."

I said, "
Small Victories
has to be doing well now."

Tom nodded. "It's selling. When the critics liked it, the secondary rights people put the paperback rights
up for auction. That brought in a nice chunk of cash, or it will when everything's ironed out. The film rights sold,
too. I can file as a writer next year."

"Are you going to?"

He grinned. "I thought it would be more entertaining to see if the feds audit me again and insist I'm a
fisherman."

"Maybe they'll classify fishing as a hobby this time," I offered.

"Did Cleo Hagen know about
Small Victories
?" For the first time Jay sounded like a cop.

There was a long pause. A car passed our house going south. The driver craned to look at us. We were
due for the Siege Curious.

Tom said, "Cleo's information was out of date. I didn't enlighten her."

Jay's face stayed neutral. "She thought you were broke?"

"People with Cleo's resources have no trouble doing credit checks on peons like me. She knew what I
made last year to the dollar, and she knew I'd sold
Small Victories
for a modest advance. She hadn't heard
about the rest."

"So she offered to buy your house out of the kindness of her heart?"

Tom was watching Jay with dark, wary eyes. "She knew how I felt about the place, and she thought she
could take it from me."

Jay raised his eyebrows. "A motive for murder?"

"It would have been last year. This year I can afford a lawyer."

I had been doing some adding up. "When you said you were going out on a boat on Labor Day, you
meant working."

Tom nodded. "Yeah, Darla's Uncle Henry lets me crew when I need cash. It gets a little uncomfortable in
winter, but I've been working on the boats off and on since I turned fifteen."

If you fell into the ocean off the Shoalwater Peninsula you would die of hypothermia within twenty
minutes. In summer.

Tom was saying, "At least fishing doesn't do weird things to my head."

I kicked at a clump of dunegrass. "You're being inconsistent. You said writing copy was like a
game--"

"I said as long as I could think of it as a game I could go on doing that, but writing anything else while
you're in a book mucks up your sense of language. I'm better off fishing." He added, when he caught my unbelieving
stare, "Maybe not financially. Better off as a writer.
Small Victories
was a fairly cynical attempt to produce a
commercial novel."

I scuffed the sand. "It's a good book!"

"It's solid contemporary satire, and the research cost $l7.42 counting a library fine."

"Cost-effective. The IRS should love it."

"That's what I thought. It's my IRS book."

I said, "The next one's not satire, is it?"

"No."

"So Cleo Hagen knew about your financial troubles."

"That's right. And she was going to push me to sell the house."

"Do you think the Hagen Group will keep after you?"

"I doubt it. They don't need my place. If they'd needed it, they would've wanted Bonnie's, too. The
cottage was on the market almost a year."

"At thirty-five thousand?" I still found the prices incredible.

"Is that what she paid for it?" Tom didn't even sound interested. "Cleo offered me seventy-five. Just
enough to stay within the limits of probability. If she'd wanted land, she'd have snapped up Bonnie's place, and
grabbed for this one and Matt Cramer's lot, too. But she didn't. She was just trying to get at me."

Jay tugged at his mustache, eyes on Tom's face. "If I were you, I wouldn't repeat what you've said to
Dale Nelson. He thinks the offer for your house meant you had to want Cleo Hagen alive and dealing. That's the
only reason he didn't arrest you."

"Do you think I killed Cleo?"

"No." Jay didn't hesitate.

Tom scuffed sand. "I wish to hell I knew who did it."

"Want me to try to find out?"

I stared at my husband. Ordinarily he despises what he calls civilian interference in police cases. I had
underestimated his outrage.

Tom drew a long breath. "If you're serious, yes. Strange as it may seem, I loved Cleo. I didn't like her,
mind you. I couldn't live with her. But I did love her."

"Will you cooperate?"

"Yes. I can't say it'll break my heart if the killer turns out to be Donald Hagen."

Jay's face closed. "If he is, I'll find out. I called my mother yesterday. My late stepfather--Freddy's
dad--had a lot of connections in California real estate. I told Ma to cash in her favors. She keeps in touch with those
people--or her lawyer does."

The thought of my mother-in-law, Nancy, playing detective tickled me so much I was ready to call her
myself.

Jay was saying, "Of course you realize I'll have to give whatever I find out to Nelson if it seems relevant
to the official investigation."

Tom shrugged. "I have no beef with Dale. He's trying to be fair, and he isn't the sort to make an arrest
without a strong case."

Jay stuck out his hand. "I'll do what I can, then."

Tom shook it. "Thanks. I keep saying that--"

"Uh, I think Bonnie wants us across the street," I said.

When we got to the porch, Bonnie announced that she and Darla had finished and that Matt Cramer had
called from the hospital. Lottie was going into surgery to remove a blood clot in her brain. That cast a pall.

We waited an hour for the sealant to dry on the walls. The taupe paint went on fast. It looked awful.
When I saw the grungy brown I almost had another fit of weeping. However, the paint did dry lighter. Tom and Jay
nailed the strips of wood to the baseboards in short order while the female contingent gave the fireplace its first
coat. The disappearance of the red brick almost convinced me the walls needed color--but not taupe. Though we
spent a lot more time painting the woodwork, the chore went surprisingly fast with all of us working. I kept my
eyes averted from the taupe walls.

Jean Knight called again, horrified to hear of the shooting. She volunteered to cancel, but I had got the
bit between my teeth. Besides, if Jay was serious about doing an independent investigation, he would want to meet
the McKays. They represented an important focus of hostility to what Cleo Hagen had stood for. In a sense, Cleo and
Annie McKay had been rivals for power in the community. I wondered how seriously Annie took her leadership
role. I wondered how she felt about Tom's book.