Savages: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) (12 page)

We introduced ourselves. Were Kerry and I prospective buyers? No, we weren’t. That put a crimp in her smile, and when I told her I was employed by Nancy Mathias’s sister, it morphed all the way into a sad downturn. She didn’t ask what I did for Celeste Ogden and I didn’t volunteer the information. She said, “I was so sorry to read about Mrs. Mathias’s death. A terrible tragedy.”

Mrs. Mathias, not Nancy. “You didn’t know her well?”

“No, hardly at all. I wish I had.”

“I understand she bought some of your paintings shortly before her accident.”

“Actually, no, she didn’t.”

“But she did pay you a large sum of money. Ten thousand dollars.”

“ ‘Pay’ isn’t the right word. It was a gift, you see.”

“Oh? Pretty substantial gift.”

T. R. Quentin’s eyes brightened; the smile threatened to reestablish itself. “It absolutely floored me. It was like . . . I don’t know, winning a lottery prize. Manna from heaven.”

“How did it come about?”

“She called me one day at my studio. Out of the blue. Said she was a great admirer of my work and if we could meet, I’d find it well worth my time. Naturally I thought she intended to buy one of my paintings. So I invited her to come to the studio.”

“You’d never had any contact with her before?”

“None. She was a complete stranger.”

“Did she take you up on the invitation?”

“The following afternoon. She didn’t stay long, not more than twenty minutes. She had another appointment in the city, she said.”

“She happen to mention who the appointment was with?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“And she only stayed twenty minutes?”

“About that. We had coffee; she looked at my finished work; she asked a few discreet questions about my financial situation and my future goals. And then she wrote out that check. Well, I nearly fainted when I saw the amount. Every struggling artist dreams of a patron like Mrs. Mathias, but to have one actually appear, all of a sudden like that . . . well, I’m still in the pinch-me stage.”

“Did you ask her why she was giving you such a large amount?”

“Of course. She said it was the least she could do to help an artist who was going to be famous someday.” Color came into the woman’s cheeks, all but making the spots of rouge disappear, but it wasn’t the modest or humble type of blush. Nancy Mathias was not the only one who believed the “famous” prediction. “I offered to let her take any of my finished paintings she liked, more than one, but she refused. She simply shook my hand and wished me good fortune and walked out of my life as suddenly as she came into it.”

“Why did she refuse the offer, if she liked your work so much?”

“I don’t know. All she said was that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy the paintings.”

“Those her exact words?”

“I think it was something like, ‘I won’t be able to enjoy them where I’m going. Let others have the pleasure and the rewards.’ ”

“She didn’t indicate where it was she’d be going?”

“No, she didn’t. I thought it might be that she was planning to move to another state or another country—you know, change and downsize her life. But that’s just my impression.”

“How did she seem to you that day?”

“Seem? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Her demeanor, her state of mind. Was she happy, sad?”

“Well . . . not happy. And not exactly sad. Preoccupied, as if she had other things weighing on her mind.”

“And you never saw her again?”

“No. I tried to call her the next day to thank her again—her phone number was on the check—but her machine picked up. I left a message, but she didn’t return the call. So naturally I didn’t bother her again.”

Naturally. She’d gotten all the golden eggs out of the goose that she was going to and had the intellect to know when to back off. Or maybe I was just being cynical. Give her the benefit of the doubt.

Kerry and I collected Emily and went on out to Post Street. “I saw a really cool painting in there,” the kid said. “It looks like a photograph of a stained-glass window, the kind with light shining through it, but it’s not; it was done with oils. It’d look great on our living room wall.”

“Would it?” Kerry said. “How much is it?”

“Only twenty-five hundred dollars.”

Only twenty-five hundred. Only. If my two ladies had their way, we’d be in hock up to our eyebrows and I’d be confronted with modern culture every time I walked into the condo. My idea of eye candy in the home? Pulp magazines and their lurid four-color covers, any day.

JAKE RUNYON

He had no good reason to make a two-hundred-mile round-trip drive to the Trinity Alps. No business doing it with a concussion that had already cost him a night in the hospital. If he’d sat down and thought it over carefully, he might have talked himself out of it. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel like going back to the motel in Gray’s Landing, hanging around there sweltering all day; he needed to be on the move. And why drive around aimlessly, going nowhere, when you had a specific place to check out?

Alone at the migrant camp, he got out his California map and pinpointed Lost Bar. It was a flyspeck on Highway 3, southeast of Weaverville, in the mountains some sixty miles east of Redding. Then, without thinking any more about it, he started driving.

Due north on Highway 5, then northwest from Redding
on 299 and into the Trinity Alps. Scenic route. Twisty road, thick forest land, views of snow-crested peaks and a big lake from Buckhorn Summit, the winding trail of the Trinity River. Gold Rush country. The fever had struck up here, too, at about the same time as it had down at Sutter’s Mill: hard-rock miners, gold dredgers. Hillsides and backwaters were probably still honeycombed with hundred-and-fifty-year-old diggings. It was cooler at the higher elevations, a relief from the sticky heat of the valley; the air felt good in his lungs, streaming in against his face. The dull headache all but disappeared. More or less back to normal.

At a wide spot called Douglas City, a few miles below Weaverville, Highway 3 branched off to the southeast—a rougher county road that jiggled its way into the lower reaches of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Lost Bar lay in a small valley below Hayfork Summit, along the bank of Hayford Creek. Hayfork, Hayford—go figure the difference. Another wide spot. Maybe a dozen buildings, two-thirds of them old frame houses and newer mobile homes flanked by meadows and trees. Grocery store, Lost Bar Saloon, Brody’s Garage, and a pair of hollowed-out, collapsing ruins—one of redwood with
BLACKSMITH
burned into an ancient chain-hung sign, the other a smaller brick-and-mortar structure that bore the barely discernible words
ASSAY OFFICE
above its gaping entrance.

Runyon turned onto the apron in front of Brody’s Garage, stopped short of the single gas pump. The place was open; inside the big main door, a man in greasy overalls was working on something that looked like a tractor.
The mechanic straightened and swung around, wiping his hands on a rag even greasier than his overalls, as Runyon approached. Late forties, early fifties, thin and bald except for a fringe of stringy brown hair above the ears. Eyes that jumped and darted this way and that, as if he were afflicted with some sort of optical anomaly.

“Didn’t expect to find you open on a Sunday,” Runyon said.

“We’re always open. Got to be, up here.”

“Are you Mr. Brody?”

“Sam Brody, that’s right. What’ll it be? Gas, oil?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“My son. Jerry. He was up this way last Friday, had some trouble with his car, and got it fixed here. Called his mother about it, said he’d be home yesterday. But he didn’t show up.”

The jumpy eyes paused and held for three or four beats. “Is that right?”

“He’s a flaky kid. Disappears every now and then, doing Christ knows what twenty-two-year-old kids do these days. But his mother worries. She sent me out to hunt for him.”

“Last Friday?” Brody said. “What kind of car he drive?”

“ ’Fifty-seven Chevy Impala. Dark blue. Hot stuff.”

“Nope.”

“Nope?”

“I’d remember a car like that. Never saw it, last Friday or any other time.”

“Were you here all day Friday?”

“All day.”

“That’s funny,” Runyon said. “Jerry told his mother he was having the car fixed at the garage in Lost Bar. There another garage around here?”

“Nope. Next closest is in Hayfork. Maybe he meant Hayfork.”

“He usually says what he means.”

“Can’t help you then.”

Runyon said, “I wonder if he saw Gus.”

The eyes stopped darting again. Brody’s face flattened out and went blank, like a shutter snapping into place across a murky window. “Gus who?”

“Local guy Jerry came here to see.”

“Don’t know him.”

“You sure? German, owns property nearby?”

“Sorry,” Brody said. “I got to finish my work.” He started away, paused long enough to glance back and say, “Kids, like you said. Your boy’ll turn up okay,” and then let the garage swallow him again.

Runyon U-turned the Ford across the highway to park in front of the Lost Bar General Store. The interior was gloomy, faintly dank, dominated by the smells of deli meats and the creosote they used on the buckled wooden floor. Close-packed shelves, one checkout stand with a fat woman in her forties behind it, one customer buying a loaf of bread and a six-pack of Coors. Runyon wandered to the cold cases in back, picked out a bottle of Lipton iced tea, brought it back up front. The other customer
was gone by then. He paid for the tea before he asked his questions. Different approach this time, a reverse of the one he’d taken with Brody.

“I’m looking for a German fellow named Gus,” he said, “owns property in the area. Can you tell me how to get to his place?”

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“How come you want Gus Mayerhof?”

“Private business matter.”

“On a Sunday?”

“Good as any other day.”

“Not if you’re not expected.”

“I’m not, but I think he’ll want to see me. In fact, I’m sure he will.”

“He’s got a dog, Gus has. Mean bugger of a pit bull, tear your throat out if he gives it the right command. Keeps it because he don’t like strangers coming around unannounced.”

“Let me have his phone number and I’ll call him first.”

“He don’t have a phone.”

“Just directions, then. I’ll take my chances with the pit bull.”

The fat woman eyed his bandage. “What happened to your head?”

“A little accident. Nothing serious.”

“Be real serious if you tangle with that dog.”

He said nothing, watching her, waiting.

“You want a lot for a bottle of iced tea,” she said.

He found a five-dollar bill and laid it on the counter. She looked it for maybe five seconds, looked up at him again with expectant, greedy eyes.

He said, “Five’s all it’s worth,” and started to pick up the bill.

Her sausage fingers stopped him.

“Well, it’s your hide, mister,” she said. “Half a mile west there’s a road cuts off into the wilderness. Peters out into a dirt track after about four miles. Another mile or so, there’s a gate with a No Trespassing sign on it.”

He let her make the five disappear before he said, “Couple more questions before I go. Were you working last Friday?”

“Every damn day except Monday.”

“You happen to see a husky kid in his early twenties, driving a dark blue ‘fifty-seven Impala?”

“I don’t know nothing about cars.”

“You couldn’t miss this one. Might’ve been over at Brody’s part of the day.”

“Didn’t notice if it was.”

“How about yesterday or today? Any young guys come in, strangers?”

“We don’t get too many strangers in here, even in summer. Who’s this kid, anyway?”

Runyon said, “Thanks for your help,” and left her excavating an ear canal with the tip of her little finger.

The Lost Bar Saloon was a squarish log building incongruously topped with a huge satellite dish that loomed up like one of the radar scanners at the SRI complex. The reason
for the dish was apparent when Runyon walked in. The bartender and three beer drinkers, two male and one female, were all watching a pro football game on a wide-screen TV, the volume turned up so high you couldn’t hold a conversation without half-shouting. Their interest in him was brief, vanished altogether when he asked his questions. Indifferent responses void of information. None of them had seen a dark blue ’57 Impala in the vicinity recently, or would own up to it if they had.

He closed himself inside the Ford again and rolled out of Lost Bar, following the fat woman’s directions. The wilderness road was a bent and crimped tunnel bored through thick stands of pine, alternately climbing and dropping, bypassing the crumbling hillside remains of a sluice mine. The going got rougher after pitted asphalt gave way to potholed hardpan; he had to drive at a crawl to avoid damage to the tires and undercarriage. The jouncing restarted the ache in his head. He clamped his teeth together and slowed down even more.

After a mile and two-tenths by the odometer, he rounded a curve and there was the gated entrance to Gus Mayerhof’s property. The gate and the barbed-wire fencing strung out on both sides were plastered with
No Trespassing
signs, all of them handmade. If the gate had been shut and locked, he’d have had to consider whether or not to go in on foot; but it stood open, like an invitation. The access road was a scar on the hillside, heavily furrowed by the erosion of rain and winter snows, climbing up through deep woods. It crested after five hundred
yards or so, and the trees thinned; and as he started down on the other side he was looking at a home place like none he’d seen before.

It wasn’t a house or a cabin or a shack; it was a patchwork, spare-parts thing made of wood and brick and tarpaper and sheet metal, sprawling and sagging and jutting at odd angles among tall lodgepole pines. Smoke curled from a stovepipe chimney in one corner of an uneven A-frame roof. A lean-to to one side sheltered a newish Dodge pickup. The front and side yards were littered with the corpses and skeletons of two trucks, a passenger car, a wood stove, an old-fashioned icebox, dozens of less recognizable items.