Muller, Marcia - [09] There's Something In A Sunday [v 1.0] (htm) (46 page)

The ground floor was a sitting room, with a fireplace fitted into the curve of the wall. In the center of the room, a spiral staircase rose to the second story. The place was in total disorder: bedding materials were heaped in one chair and on a hassock drawn up in front of it, as if someone had slept there; on a table between it and a second chair stood an empty jug of red wine and a half-full brandy snifter. My eyes moved from it to a trail of red stains that led across the pale blue carpet toward the hearth. A smashed wineglass lay there, and there was a great splash of red on the wall above the mantel. I shook my head, then went toward the staircase, calling out again.

"I'm up here," Vicky's voice said. "Has the fucker gone?"

I climbed the stairs to the bedroom. It too was round, decorated all in blue; a door opened to a combination bath- and dressing room set in the square area over the entryway. Vicky huddled on one of the most enormous beds I'd ever seen— obviously custom-made because of the way its padded headboard conformed to the turret's curving wall. The sheets and blankets were twisted and rumpled, and most of the pillows— there had to have been at least ten—had fallen to the floor. Vicky wore a long ruffly white nightgown that would have looked virginal had it not been for the red spatter marks that matched the stains downstairs. She was smoking a joint.

Sorry about that, Gerry, I thought. I
would
have tried.

"Has the fucker gone?" she repeated.

"If you mean Gerry, yes. His client came, and they took off. I thought I'd check to see if you're okay."

"Now that he's gone, I am." She extended the joint to me.

I shook my head and sat down at the foot of the bed.

"Oh, that's right. Your drug's alcohol. I'd give you some wine, but I drank it all. What I didn't throw at the wall, I mean." She giggled.

"I take it you two had a fight," I said. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"What's to talk about? It was just one more episode in the big serial fight. The other day I was thinking that we might as well make a soap opera out of it. What do you think? We could call it
As the Worm Turns
."

"Vicky—"

"I like it, don't you? Of course all the characters except Gerry would be women. He'd like that. Gerry and his women."

Ah, I thought, she does know—and cares.

Vicky stubbed out the joint in an ashtray and scuttled over to the edge of the bed. She picked up a pillow and retreated to the headboard, where she sat Indian-style, the pillow cradled against her breasts as if for protection.

"You know when I found out what he was like?" she said. "It was years and years ago. My oldest daughter, Lindy, had just been born. She was just a little baby and we were living out in the Sunset and I drove up and saw Gerry necking with this woman in her car in broad daylight in front of our own house."

"What did you do?"

"Waited till he got out of her car and tried to run him down with mine. It went out of control and I hit a fireplug instead. Water went spurting all over the place. 1 jumped out of the car and ran into the house and locked myself in this walk-in closet we had. I stayed in there for twenty-four hours, screaming off and on."

She was silent for a moment, her gaze darkly inward as she relived those hours in the closet. "When I came out the fucker told me he wanted an open marriage. That was the first episode in our soap opera. It's been number one in the ratings ever since. I can't have an open marriage, I won't have one, and Gerry—he just
does
."

I didn't know what to say, so I just sat there, wondering why she persisted in making me a sort of unwilling voyeur. If Vicky had been a close friend—Anne-Marie, for instance—I would have been glad to listen. But she was a mere acquaintance, and the primary emotion her revelations aroused in me was embarrassment. I suspected she would also be embarrassed when she recalled our conversation in a calmer, more sober light.

After a bit Vicky sighed and crawled over to one of the nightstands. She fumbled through its drawer, came up with another joint.

"Maybe," I said, "you should leave the grass alone for a while. You look like you could use some food. Why don't we go over to the kitchen and I'll cook you breakfast—"

A look of alarm passed over her features. I guessed she was afraid I'd confiscate her dope. Then the alarm faded and was replaced by irritation. "Maybe," she said, in a good imitation of me, "you should mind your own business."

I shrugged, trying to control a flash of anger. "You're right. So, since we're speaking of business, I'll get to the reason I'm here."

"Somehow I didn't think this was a social call. What do you want this time?"

"The truth—for once."

"About what?"

"Irene Lasser."

Vicky set the unlighted joint down and scurried back to the headboard, where she once again cradled the pillow defensively. "Who?" she said.

"Come on, Vicky. You know Irene. You loaned her your car last Monday, and you gave her one of those neighborhood-business shopping bags so she could load it with goodies and take it to Bob Choteau at the place he's hiding in the park."

"I didn't— Who's Bob Choteau?"

"No more lies, Vicky."

"I don't know what you're talking about.
Who
you're talking about. You copied some license-plate number down wrong, and now you're trying to blame me for things I didn't do, for knowing people I've never heard of. I didn't loan my car to anybody, I didn't take a bag of food to some bum—"

She realized her mistake; that showed in her eyes. Quickly she got off the bed, ran into the dressing room area, and slammed the door. The lock clicked into place.

"What are you going to do, Vicky?" I called. "Sit in there and scream off and on for twenty-four hours?"

Her reply was cl
ose
to a scream. "There's a phone in here. If you don't get off my property right away, I'm calling the cops!"

That I didn't need. I got off her property.

The elderly desk clerk at the Kingsway Motel knew Frank Wilkonson but said he hadn't checked in as usual the night before.

"Funny about that," he added. "He's got a standing reservation."

I looked disappointed and said, "I was so hoping to see Frank. Are you sure he didn't just come in later than usual? Maybe somebody else checked him in."

"I'm the only one on duty Saturday nights, miss. There's no way he could have escaped my notice."

"Well, I'm sorry to have missed him. A couple of my other friends mentioned that he's been staying here regularly. I guess you've seen them—they've visited him a few times now."

The old man looked thoughtful, pausing to suck contemplatively at his yellowed teeth. "Just the one fellow."

"Which one?"

"The fellow with the funny curly hair." At my inquiring look he added, "Curls up from the front here"—he indicated the center of his own bald pate—"like one of those ribbons on a birthday package, the kind you run the scissors over and it comes out all twisty."

Gerry Cushman would probably not have been flattered by the description. "Oh, that's Gerry," I said. "I haven't seen him in ages. When was he by?"

"Two weeks ago? I can't recall for sure, but that sounds right. He said he'd spotted your friend Wilkonson leaving, but hadn't been able to catch him. I told him about the standing reservation, so I guess they got in touch. Hard to tell who's visiting who in this place, but that's like it should be. The guests have a right to their privacy."

Bet they don't get to exercise that right much with you on the desk, I thought. I fished a scrap of paper from my bag and wrote my home number on it. "Will you call me if Frank comes in? Without telling him I've been here? I want to surprise him."

The old man's eyes grew shrewd. He'd probably spent his adult lifetime on motel row; he wasn't all that easy to fool. He said, "It was worth twenty dollars to your friend Gerry to surprise him."

I reached in my bag for my wallet. "It's worth twenty to me, too."

The old man smiled. "I like surprises as well as the next man."

When I arrived at the Murphy Windmill, the green Ranchero still stood under the cypress tree. Two parking tickets fluttered against the windshield. I pulled the MG onto the verge behind it and studied the mill.

It was close to eleven; the day had turned sunny and warm. Joggers pounded by; bicyclists pedaled lazily along; riders on horses rented from the park stables paused to look at the decaying windmill. By now the people who called the mill home might either be inside or out taking advantage of the good weather. It didn't matter which because there was no way I could investigate further until the park users cleared out and darkness fell.

I made a U-turn and headed for home.

Watney was not pleased with me. He grudgingly accepted the food I placed in his empty dish, ate ravenously, and then stomped off into the blackberry vines. Probably the Curleys had assumed I'd be home long before this; poor old Wat had had to depend on his own rusty hunting skills. It didn't particularly bother me; the creature was too damned fat for his own good. But his greeting set the tone for the rest of the day.

First I dragged the cordless out onto the sunny deck and tried to call Jack Stuart. Hank answered the phone at All Souls and told me Jack wasn't expected back until around noon the next day. I asked him if he knew anything about the beneficiaries under Rudy Goldring's will, and he said no, Gilbert Thayer had drawn it up. Since none of us had bothered to ask Gilbert where he was going when he'd quit the co-op, I had no idea how to reach him—nor did I particularly want to talk with him.

Next I tried to call Ben Gallagher for an update on the Goldring investigation. Ben was on duty but out of the office, and they didn't know when he'd be back. I left a message.

Then I sat for a while, thinking about the Lasser-Cushman connection. Maybe my initial assumption had been wrong; maybe Irene's connection was with Gerry, not Vicky. She could be one of the women he played around with. He could have loaned her his wife's car. Perhaps that was what had provoked the fight Gerry and Vicky had had last night. If so, I doubted I'd get any more out of Gerry than I had his wife. I especially doubted he'd tell me why he'd been at the motel asking after Frank Wilkonson. The thing to do was find Lasser.

I went inside and burrowed through the closet where I keep my collection of Bay Area phone directories, checking them for Irene Lasser, I. Lasser, I. Johnstone, I. L. Johnstone, and other variants thereof. None of the combinations was listed. I also checked for Susan Lasser, on the off chance the daughter was old enough to have her own phone. The results were just as negative.

On my way back outside, I stuck my head through the door of the half-completed bedroom in what had once been my back porch. I'd been remodeling the house—a cottage built to shelter victims of the 1906 quake and fire—piecemeal since I'd bought it; I was likely to still be remodeling it in 2006. The space looked more like a demolition site than a construction zone, and it made me feel as frustrated as my lack of progress on untangling the relationships between Goldring, Wilkonson,
et al
.

I shut the door on the mess and went back to the deck. The sunshine quickly perked up my flagging spirits, and I grabbed the cordless and called the Kingsway Motel. Wilkonson still hadn't checked in. Next I punched out Rae's number; no one answered. Undaunted, I decided to call Anne-Marie. Hank was at All Souls, so it was a perfect time for us to get together for a heart-to-heart. Both of us were reticent where our private lives were concerned, but she'd helped me a lot at the time of my breakup with Don, and perhaps I could return the favor.

All I got was the machine, and the damned thing cut me off before it even beeped.

I put the phone down and leaned back in my lounge chair. Thought of my youngest sister, Patsy, who, together with her new husband Evans, had recently opened a restaurant in Ukiah. I couldn't call them—Sunday dinner would be going on. There were other friends here in the city I could call— Paula, Carolyn, Liz, Alison—but on nice Sundays San Franciscans tend to take to the out of doors, and they probably wouldn't be home. I should call my mother, but I didn't want to. Since my breakup with Don, Ma had been harping at me because she was afraid I'd never get married. I even considered phoning my old friend Wolf, a fellow PI with whom I'd shared a case, but I knew on Sunday he'd be with his lady friend, Kerry Wade.

Why is it, I thought, that when you're in the mood to talk, no one calls? When you
want
peace and quiet, the phone never quits ringing.

I stayed there on the lounge chair for a long time, until the sun patch had moved away from the deck, across the scraggly backyard, and into the shadows of the pines at the rear of the lot. At about five-thirty I got up and went into the house for a glass of wine. I'd recently started drinking the good stuff—the varieties with corks—rather than the jug brands that had been a staple of my youth. The cork in the bottle of white zinfandel that I tried to open was dry—so much for the good stuff—and when I finally wrenched it free, the corkscrew skewed sideways and made a jagged slice in my thumb.

Sunday, I thought. Sunday evening coming down.

Wilkonson never did check into his motel, and I decided it would be unproductive, if not foolhardy, to return to the windmill. So at six the next morning, after a good night's sleep, I waited halfway down the Cushmans' cul-de-sac in my MG. I suspected that sooner or later one of them would make contact with Irene Lasser; I'd follow whoever left first today, and if that didn't produce results, concentrate on the other tomorrow.

As I waited, staring at the row of golden-leaved poplars, I felt a twinge of guilt over neglecting my duties at All Souls. But I pushed it aside, reminding myself that my desk was relatively clear. Also, it was time Rae began shouldering her share of the work. I'd tried to reach her up until ten the previous night; there had been no answer. So I'd decided to proceed on the assumption she'd arrive at the office on time and deal with any urgent business.