"What can I do for you?"
I put my key in the lock, opened the door, and went in. He followed, surveying the premises with the sort of look that told me he was pricing the furniture, calculating my overhead, estimating my quarterly taxes, and wondering why his wife hadn't hired a high-class outfit.
I sat down behind my desk and watched him while he took a seat and crossed his legs. Nice, sharp crease in the pants, nice narrow ankle, Italian leather pumps with a narrow polished toe. I caught sight of his snow-white shirt cuff, his initials – AND – in a pale blue monogram, hand-done no doubt. He was smiling at me faintly, watching me watch him. He took a flat cigarette case out of his inside jacket pocket and extracted a slim, black cigarette that he tamped on the case and then stuck in his mouth, flicking a lighter that shot out a jet of fire I thought might set his hair ablaze. He had elegant hands and his fingernails were beautifully manicured, with clear polish on each tip. I confess I was sore amazed at the sight, amazed by the scent of him that was wafting across the desk at me; probably one of those men's designer aftershaves called Rogue or Magnum. He studied the ember on his cigarette and then fixed me with a look. His eyes reminded me of hard clay, flat brown with no warmth and no energy.
I didn't offer him coffee. I pushed the ashtray toward him as I'd done with his wife. The smoke from his cigarette smelled like a smothered campfire and I knew it would linger long after he'd driven back to Los Angeles.
"Beverly got your letter," he said. "She was upset. I thought maybe I should drive up here and have a chat."
"Why didn't she come herself?" I said. "She can talk."
That amused him. "Beverly doesn't care for scenes. She asked me to handle it for her."
"I'm not crazy about scenes myself, but I don't see the problem here. She asked me to look for her sister. I'm doing that. She wanted to dictate the terms and I decided I should work for someone else."
"No, no, no. You misunderstood. She didn't want to terminate the relationship. She simply didn't want you to go to Missing Persons with it."
"But I disagreed with her. And I didn't think it was nice to take her money when I was ignoring her advice." I tried a noncommittal smile on him, swiveling slightly in my chair. "Was there something else?" I asked. I felt certain he was angling around for something. He didn't have to drive ninety miles for this.
He shifted in his chair, trying a friendlier tone. "I can tell we've gotten off on the wrong foot here," he said. "I'd like to know what you've found out about my sister-in-law. If I've pissed you off, I'd like to apologize. Oh. And you might be interested in this."
He took a folded paper from his jacket pocket and passed it across the desk to me. For a moment, I thought it was going to be an address or a telephone number, some scrap of information that might really help. It was a check for the $246.19 Beverly owed me. He made it seem like some kind of bribe and I didn't like that. I took the money anyway. I knew the difference whether he did or not.
"I sent Beverly a copy of my report two days ago. If you want to know what I've come up with, why not ask her?"
"I've read the report. I'd like to know what you've found out since then if you're willing to share that."
"Well, I'm not. I don't mean to sound surly about this, but any information I have belongs to my current employer and that's confidential. I'll tell you this much. I did go to the cops and they're circulating a description of her, but that's only been a couple of days and so far they haven't come up with anything. You want to answer a question for me?"
"Not really," he said, but he laughed. I was beginning to realize that his manner was probably born of discomfort, so I plowed ahead anyway.
"Beverly told me she hadn't seen her sister for three years, but a neighbor of Elaine's claims she was not only up here at Christmas, but the two had a knock-down-drag-out fight. Is that true?"
"Well, yeah, probably." His tone was softening and he seemed less aloof. He took a final drag of his cigarette and pinched the ember loose from the end. "To tell you the truth, I've been concerned that Beverly's somehow involved in this."
"How so?"
He'd stopped looking at me now. He rolled the tag end of his cigarette between his fingers until nothing was left but a small pile of tobacco shreds and a scrap of black paper. "She's got a drinking problem. She's had it for some time, though you'd probably never guess. She's one of those people who might not have a drink for six months, then... boom, she's off on a three-day drunk. Sometimes a binge lasts longer than that. I think that's what happened in December." He looked at me then and most of the pomposity had dropped away. This was a man in pain.
"Do you know what they quarreled about?"
"I have a fair idea."
"Was it you?" I asked.
He focused on me suddenly, with the first real life in his eyes. "What made you say that?"
"The neighbor said they probably quarreled about a man. You were the only one I knew about. You want to buy me lunch?"
We went to a cocktail lounge called Jay's just around the corner. It's very dark, with massive art deco booths in pale gray leather and black onyx tables that look like small free-form pools. The surface of them is so shiny you can almost see your reflection, like some kind of commercial for liquid dishwashing detergent. The walls are padded with gray suede and the carpet underfoot is tricked out with matting so thick you feel as if you're walking on sand. The whole place comes close to a sensory-deprivation tank, dim and hushed, but the drinks are huge and the bartender puts together incredible hot pastrami sandwiches on rye. I can't afford the place myself, but it felt like the perfect setting for Aubrey Danziger. He looked like he could pay the tab.
"What sort of work do you do?" I asked when we were seated.
Before he could answer, the waitress appeared. I suggested two pastrami sandwiches and two martinis. That look of secret amusement returned to his face but he agreed with a careless shrug. I didn't think he was accustomed to women ordering for him, but there didn't seem to be any harmful side effects. I felt like this was my show and I wanted to work the lights. I knew we'd get blasted, but I thought it might take the high gloss off the man and humanize him some.
When the waitress left, he answered my question. "I don't work," he said, "I own things. I put together real-estate syndicates. We buy land and put up office buildings and shopping malls, sometimes condominiums." He paused, as though he could have said a lot more, but had decided that much would suffice. He took out his cigarette case again and held it out to me. I declined and he lit another slim black cigarette.
He tilted his head. "What'd I do that pissed you off? That happens to me all the time." The superior smile was back but this time I didn't take offense. Maybe that's just the way his face worked.
"You seem arrogant and you're way too slick," I said. "You keep smiling like you know something I don't."
"I've had a lot of money for a long time, so I feel slick. Actually, it amuses me to think about a girl detective. That's half the reason I drove up here."
"What's the other half?"
He hesitated, debating whether to say it. He took a long drag of his cigarette. "I don't trust Beverly's account of what went on. She's devious and she manipulates. I like to double-check."
"Are you talking about her transactions with me or hers with Elaine?"
"Oh, I know about her transactions with Elaine. She can't stand Elaine. She also can't leave her alone. Have you ever hated anybody that way?"
I smiled slightly. "Not recently. I guess I have in my day."
"It's like Bev has to know about Elaine and if she hears something good, it pisses her off. And if she hears something bad, she's satisfied, but it's never enough."
"What was she doing up here at Christmastime?"
The martinis arrived and Aubrey took a long sip of his before he answered. Mine was silky and cold with that whisper of vermouth that makes me shudder automatically. I always eat the olive early because it blends so nicely with the taste of gin.
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He caught sight of the shiver. "I can leave the room if you want to be alone with that."
I laughed. "I can't help it. I never drink these things, but Jesus Lord, what a rush. I can already feel the hangover forming."
"Hell, it's Saturday. Take the day off. I didn't think I'd catch you in your office at all. I was going to leave you a note and then nose around seeing if I could find out something about Elaine myself."
"I take it you're as puzzled as everybody else about where she might be."
He shook his head slightly. "I think she's dead. I think Bev killed her."
That got my attention at any rate. "Why would she do that?"
Again, the long hesitation. He looked off across the room, checking the premises, doing some kind of mental arithmetic as though in placing a dollar value on his surroundings, he'd know where he stood. His eyes slid back to me and the smile hovered on his mouth. "She found out I'd had an affair with Elaine. It was my own damn fault. The IRS is auditing my tax returns from three years back and, like a fool, I asked Beverly to dig up some canceled checks and credit-card receipts. She figured out I'd been in Cozumel right at the same time Elaine went down there after Max died. I'd told her I was off on a business trip.
"Anyway, I got home from the office that day and she flew at me in such a rage it's a wonder I got out alive. Of course, she'd been drinking. Any excuse to sock down the sauce. She took a pair of kitchen shears and stabbed me right in the neck. Caught me right here. Just above the collarbone. The only thing that saved me was my collar and tie and maybe the fact that I have my shirts done with heavy starch."
He laughed, shaking his head uncomfortably at the recollection. "When that didn't work, she got me in the arm. Fourteen stitches. I bled all over the place. When she drinks, it's like Jekyll and Hyde. When she doesn't drink, she's not too bad... bitchy and hard as nails, but she isn't nuts."
"How'd you get involved with Elaine? What was that about?"
"Oh hell, I don't know. It was stupid on my part. I guess I'd had the hots for her for years. She's a beautiful woman. She does tend to be self-involved and self-indulgent but that only made her harder to resist. Her husband had just died and she was a mess. What started out as brotherly concern turned into unbridled lust, like something off the back of a paperback novel. I've strayed before, but never like that. I don't shit in my own Post Toasties as the old saying goes. This time I blew it."
"How long did it last?"
"Until she disappeared. Bev isn't aware of that. I told her it was over after six weeks and she bought it because that's what she wanted to believe."
"And she found out about it this past Christmas?"
He nodded and then caught the waitress's attention, glancing over at me. "You ready for another one?"
"Sure."
He held up two fingers like a victory sign and the waitress moved over to the bar. "Yeah, she found out right about then. She tore into me and then jumped straight in the car and drove up here. I got a call through to Elaine to warn her, so we could at least get our stories straight, but I'm not really sure what was said between them. I didn't talk to her after that and I never saw her again."
"What'd she say when you told her?"
"Well, she wasn't crazy about the idea that Bev knew, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. She said she'd handle it."
The martinis arrived, along with the sandwiches, and we stopped talking for a while in order to eat. He was opening up a whole new possibility and I had a lot of questions to ask.
Chapter 17
* * *
"What's your theory about what went on?" I asked when we'd finished lunch. "I mean, as nearly as I can tell, Elaine was in Santa Teresa until the night of January ninth. That was a Monday. I've tracked her from her apartment to the airport and I've got a witness who saw her get on the plane. I've got someone else who claims she arrived in Miami and drove up through Fort Lauderdale to Boca. Now, this person swears she was in Boca briefly and then took off again and was last heard from in Sarasota where she's supposedly staying with friends. I have a hard time believing that last bit, but it's what I've been told. When could Beverly have killed her and where?"
"Maybe she followed her to Florida. She was off on one of her benders just after New Year's. She was gone for ten days and came home a mess. I'd never seen her so bad. She wouldn't say a word about where she'd been or what had happened. I had a business deal I had to close in New York that week so I got her settled and then I took off. I was out of town until the following Friday. She could have been anywhere while I was gone. Suppose she followed Elaine to Florida and killed her the first chance she had? She flies home afterward and who's the wiser?"
"I can't believe you're serious," I said. "Do you have any evidence? Do you have anything that links Beverly even superficially with Elaine's disappearance?"
He shook his head. "Look, I know I'm fishing here and I could be completely off base. I hope like hell I am. I probably shouldn't have said anything..."
I could feel myself getting restless, trying to make sense of what he had said. "Why would Beverly have hired me if she'd killed Elaine?"
"Maybe she wanted to make it look good. The business about the cousin's estate was legitimate. The notice arrives in the mail and now what's she going to do? Suppose she knows Elaine is strolling along the bottom of the ocean in a pair of concrete shoes. She has to go through the motions, doesn't she? She can't ignore the situation because somebody's going to wonder why she doesn't show more concern. So she drives up here and hires you."
I looked at him skeptically. "Only then she panics when I say I'm going to the police."
"Right. And then she figures she better cover for that so she talks to me."
I finished my martini, thinking about what he'd said. It was very elaborate and I didn't like that. Still, I had to concede that it was possible. I made concentric circles on the tabletop with the bottom of my glass. I was thinking about the break-in at Tillie's place. "Where was she Wednesday night?"
He drew a blank. "I don't know. What do you mean?"
"I'm wondering where she was Wednesday night and early Thursday morning of this week. Was she with you?"
He frowned. "No. I flew to Atlanta Monday night and came back yesterday. What's the deal?"
I thought I should keep the details to myself for the time being. I shrugged. "There was an incident up here. Did you call her from Atlanta on either of those days?"
"I didn't call her at all. We used to do that when I was off on business trips. Talk back and forth long-distance. Now it's a relief to be away." He took a sip of his drink, watching me . above the rim of the glass. "You don't believe any of this, do you?"
"It doesn't make any difference what I believe," I said. "I'm trying to find out what's true. So far it's all speculation."
He shook his head. "I know I don't have any concrete proof, but I felt like I had to tell someone. It's been bugging the shit out of me."
"I'll tell you what's bugging me," I said. "How can you live with someone you suspect of murder?"
He stared down at the table for a moment and the smile when it came was tainted with the old arrogance. I thought he was going to answer me, but the silence stretched and finally he simply lit another cigarette and signaled for the check.
I called Jonah in the middle of the afternoon. The encounter with Aubrey Danziger had depressed me, and the two martinis at lunch had left me with a nagging pain between the eyes. I needed air and sunshine and activity.
"You want to go up to the firing range and shoot?" I said when Jonah got on the line.
"Where are you?"
"I'm at the office, but I'm on my way home to pick up some ammo."
"Swing by and pick me up too," he said.
I smiled when I hung up the phone. Good.
The clouds hung above the mountains like puffs of white smoke left in the wake of a giant old-fashioned choo-choo train. We took the old road up through the pass, my VW making hi
gh-pitched complaints until I shifted from third gear to second and finally into first. The road twisted up through sage and mountain lilac. As we approached, the dark green of the distant vegetation separated into discreet shrubs clinging obstinately to the slopes. There were very few trees. Steep expanses of California buckwheat were visible on the right, interspersed with the bright little orange faces of monkey flower and the hot pink of prickly phlox. The poison oak was thriving, its lush growth almost overwhelming the silvery leaves of the mugwort which grew alongside it and is its antidote.
As we reached the summit, I glanced to my left. The elevation here was about twenty-five hundred feet and the ocean seemed to hover in the distance like a gray haze blending into the gray of the sky. The coastline stretched as far as the eye could see and the town of Santa Teresa looked as insubstantial as an aerial photo. From this perspective, the mountain ridge seemed to plunge into the Pacific, appearing again in four rugged peaks that formed the offshore islands. The sun up here was hot and the volatile oils, exuded by the underbrush, scented the still air with camphor. There were occasional manzanita trees along the slope, still stripped down to spare, misshapen black forms by the fire that had swept through two years back. Everything that grows up here longs to burn; seed coats broken only by intense heat, germinating then when the rains come again. It's not a cycle that concedes much to human intervention.
The narrow road to the firing range veered off to the left just at the mountain's crest, climbing at an angle through huge sandstone boulders that looked as light and fake as a movie set. I pulled into the dirt and gravel parking area and Jonah and I got out of the car, taking guns and ammo from the backseat. I don't think we'd exchanged six words the entire thirty-minute trip, but the silence was restful.
We paid our fees and tucked little wads of foam in our ears to muffle the sound. I had also brought along a headset, like earmuffs, for additional protection. My hearing had already sustained some damage that I was hoping wasn't going to be permanent. With the plugs in place, I could hear the air going in and out of my own nose, a phenomenon I didn't pay much attention to ordinarily. I like the quiet. At the core of it, I could hear my own heart, like someone thumping on a plaster wall two floors below.