Dead Seed (8 page)

“He did. He’s—creepy, isn’t he? I mean Mr. Sarkissian, of course, not Corey. But handsome!”

“That he is,” I agreed. “He reminds me of Tyrone Power.”

“Who is Tyrone Power?” she asked.

“I’ll get your beer,” I said.

“While I show Penelope the rest of the house,” Jan said.

They were still prowling the other rooms when I told Corey, “You had better get that lovely girl out of there before Sarkissian starts chasing her around the office.”

“Nah. He’s gay.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Positive. I was thinking—now that I’m working up there exclusively for you—”

“All right,” I said. “Three-twenty an hour.”

“Fair enough. What did you learn at your end today?”

I didn’t tell him all of it, only that Mrs. Lacrosse had suddenly come into money and was no longer living at Kelly’s.

“So that’s why they bounced me,” he said. “It’s a really strange case, isn’t it? But challenging.”

“We’ll solve it,” I assured him.

Ten minutes of chitchat after that, they left. Five minutes later, I remembered that Corey wasn’t working exclusively for me as he had claimed; he had another source of income as a dishwasher. The kid should go far. He had the true hustler’s instinct.

“I wonder what she sees in him,” Jan said. “Not that he isn’t nice enough, in his way. But she is lovely!”

“We made it. Why shouldn’t they?”

“I’m not following you again.”

“They are our junior clones,” I explained, “a lovely girl with taste and a vulgar private eye.”

She shook her head. “You’re not at all like Corey, Brock.”

“You didn’t know me when I was his age,” I told her.

C
HIEF HARRIS HAD PROMISED BERNIE
that we could take all the time we wanted on this case. It was possible that Bernie and I were not on the same case. I was out to nail the killer of Sydney Morgenstern. Bernie hoped to nail Kelly. As for the third fearless bloodhound on this hunt, crafty Corey Raleigh, his primary goal was to build up his bank account.

Over our waffles in the morning, Jan told me she was going to play golf today.

“A sound idea,” I told her. “All work and no play could make Jan a dull girl.”

“It’s work, in a way. I’m playing with my new client.”

“Ms. Impeccable?”

Jan nodded. “She’s a twelve-handicapper.”

Jan was a fifteen. “Be sure,” I advised her, “that you don’t play her like you play me. Don’t ask for strokes, and don’t putt well.”

“That would be dishonest, Brock. That would be customer golf.”

“Pardon me! I forgot—she’s not a customer, is she? She’s a client.”

“She is. And I hope you recognize the distinction.”

I did; about eighty percent in markup. I tactfully kept my big mouth shut.

When she left, I phoned Bernie and asked if I should come down this morning. We had no place to go, he told me. Why didn’t I keep an eye on the Medford house? He would phone me around noon.

And then a thought hit me. In our talk with Kelly, Bernie had not asked him for a Saturday-night alibi. “Why not?” I asked.

“Because Captain Dahl thought it might be smarter to find out where he was before we asked him. We can catch him in a lie easier that way.”

I didn’t try to follow the police logic of that. I told him about Corey being fired by Mrs. Lacrosse.

“Naturally. She doesn’t need him any more. She got her blackmail money. What we’re going to try to find out this morning is how much.”

“We—?”

“Captain Dahl and I.”

They had never been soul mates, those two. They had found a bond of common interest; they both hated Kelly.

“Remember now,” he warned me, “if you get a chance to talk with Grange or Miss Medford, don’t get too pushy. We don’t want to scare them off.”

“I will be my usual suave self,” I informed him coolly.

I poured myself another cup of coffee and took that and the
Times
with me to the backyard. The people next door had paid off. But Mrs. Lacrosse was not leaving town. She still had to recover her son. She didn’t need Kelly for that, she now figured, not even low-pay Corey.

He was, she thought, too bright to buy the Sarkissian pitch and would soon leave the place. That might be true. But if he hated his mother, where else could he go to escape her, where else could he find free board and a guarded sanctuary?

He must have assumed she wouldn’t stay in town forever. She probably had other relatives back in Skeleton Gulch. San Valdesto could be an uncomfortably alien environment for Mrs. Carl Tryden Lacrosse.

Tryden. For the second time that word rang a muted bell in my unconscious. Tryden and Tyrone? Tyrone Power? No, that wasn’t it.

I was deep in the trenchant prose of Ellen Goodman when, from the other side of the hedge, Fortney Grange called, “Good morning, Brock.”

“Good morning,” I said, and stood up. “Come on over. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

He came over to take the chair next to mine. I went into the kitchen where Mrs. Casey was eating her breakfast. “Is there enough coffee left for Mr. Grange?” I asked her. Then I saw the decanter was still half full. “Never mind,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

“No, no!” she said. “It’s cold. I’ll warm it up and bring it out to you in a minute.”

I felt the side of the decanter. “It’s hot enough.”

“Please?” she asked.

Fortney Grange had at least one loyal fan left. “All right,” I said. “But if you’re going to ask for his autograph, be sure to bring the paper and pen with you. I’m sure he didn’t bring either with him.”

I went back to tell him Mrs. Casey would bring his coffee. I sat down and said, “That was shocking news about your friend.”

He nodded. “And for the police to suspect me—!”

“They have to follow all leads,” I explained, “even remote possibilities. Will his funeral be in Los Angeles?”

“No. He is being cremated here and his ashes sent back to Brooklyn, where his parents are buried. There will be no funeral.” He paused. “He told me he was here Friday night.”

And that is why you’re here now,
I thought. I said, “He was. He and Jan discussed the possibility of her decorating the house he hoped to buy up here.”

“He knew her?”

“Only by reputation. He also asked me to alert him if you came home. He had a message for you.” I stopped quickly and took a sip of coffee. I had almost added
and Miss Med ford.

“Some message! He told me he had turned down some parts because they were not worthy of me. That really burned me. Who did he think I was—Sir Laurence Olivier?”

I was beginning to understand the Vogel-Dahl-Kelly police ploy.

Mrs. Casey was coming across the lawn now with his coffee. I said, “Here comes a fan who thinks that Olivier couldn’t play your stand-in.”

She had dressed it in high style, our silver coffeepot with the matching silver sugar bowl and creamer set on a damask napkin on our silver tray. Royalty had come to visit the humble Callahan cottage, and she had been prepared for the occasion.

“It is so good to see you home again, Mr. Grange,” she told him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Casey. It’s good to be home.”

“I was wondering—” she said, and stopped to look doubtfully at me. She was holding a file card and a ballpoint pen.

“Of course,” he said. “You’re the first person to ask me for my autograph in some time.”

When she went back to the house, I remembered Vogel’s warning about not being too pushy and decided to ignore it. I said, “I don’t think that was the message he meant. He wouldn’t have considered that a secret message, I’m sure.”

“You mean he told you something besides those roles that he had turned down?”

“He never mentioned any roles, only that he had what he called ‘a private thing’ to tell you.”

He shrugged. “I can’t imagine why he should have said that.”

Okay, Callahan, get pushier.
I said, “It was something that Carl Lacrosse had told him.”

No reaction in his trained actor’s face. “Oh, that! This Lacrosse is a photographer. He suggested to Sydney that I be included in some crazy idea he had, a montage of old movie personalities.”

“I see. And that’s why Mrs. Lacrosse was parked out there? She wanted a piece of the action?”

His face remained bland. “Quite possibly. God, Carol fired that awful woman decades ago!”

What had become of my former hero? Had this stalwart warrior become the sycophant of a frivolous woman? That was too much to believe.

He stood up. “Well, Carol and I have a date with the dentist. Thank you for the coffee.”

“Anytime,” I said.
But not too soon,
I thought.

When I took the tray back to the kitchen, Mrs. Casey said, “Aren’t they a beautiful pair, him and Miss Medford?”

“They certainly are,” I agreed. “They deserve each other.”

Good-bye, old hero. I had a new one, Sydney Morgenstern. Carol had her money to insulate her from the cruel and real world. Grange had had his agent. Morgenstern would have his avenger.

We have a nationally known school of photography in our town. I phoned them and asked for the man in charge. Was there any source he knew of, I asked him, who might help me locate the present whereabouts of Carl Lacrosse?

He knew of none. “His last showing was in Beverly Hills,” he told me. “I talked with him there last week. I wanted him to come up for a short talk with our students this week, but he said he had another commitment.”

I told him what Vogel had been told on the phone by an employee at the Roquel Gallery, that Lacrosse might be heading for Norway.

The director thought it unlikely. “Carl often puts out those hints to keep people from bothering him. He goes where his mood of the moment takes him. He is a very private man. You might phone his family down in Skeleton Gulch. That’s in Arizona. But it’s possible they don’t have a phone. It’s not really a town, only a few buildings on the road about halfway between Prescott and Skull Canyon.”

“You’ve been there, then?”

“Oh, yes. That’s where he grew up. It’s one of our shrines.”

I thanked him. Skeleton Gulch, Skull Canyon, Barren Rock, Death Valley; the desert, has so many depressing place-names. Rome, Paris, Venice, Florence, Vienna, London; what magical names those must have been to an artistic kid growing up in Skeleton Gulch.

Vogel didn’t phone me around noon, as he promised. I didn’t phone him. He was working with Captain Dahl, another professional. They didn’t need any outside help from the bush-league Lord Peter Whimsey.

Grange had called Mrs. Lacrosse an awful woman. So far as I knew, he had never met her. But what did I know? I hadn’t even known that photography was an art. I had thought that Fortney Grange was a legitimate hero.

For a man who had grown up in Long Beach and spent his working years in Los Angeles, that was a shameful adolescent hangover. It was about time I learned that real-life heroes usually wound up as victims or martyrs.

I was deep in reverie when Mrs. Casey came out to ask me, “Would you like a drink before lunch as long as the missus isn’t here?”

“Why not? Bourbon and water, mostly bourbon. Pour yourself some Irish and we’ll sit out here together and curse the British.”

“You—!” she said. “You are a caution!”

She brought my bourbon and water. She brought her own drink along, straight Irish whiskey over ice. Our liquor bill had gone up since she had joined us. It was one of her fringe benefits.

“Did Mr. Grange explain about that pair in the van?” she asked me.

“He did. I’m a little disappointed in him.”

“Why? Because he’s living with Miss Medford? If the kids can live in mortal sin today, together, why not adults?”

“I suppose you’re right. With people their age, the Church might consider it only a venial sin.”

“Not to
good
Catholics. All adultery is a mortal sin. I know that you have left the Church, Mr. Callahan, but I hope you still believe that.”

“We can’t be sure they are committing adultery,” I pointed out.

She sniffed. “I may be old-fashioned, but I’m not stupid. They are lovers. But neither one is Catholic. Let them have their fun. Maybe they honestly believe they aren’t going to burn in hell for it.”

That could be where I had developed my instinctual need for vindictive retribution—from my youthful training.

I had the rest of last night’s Irish stew for lunch and considered several courses of action for the afternoon. None of them seemed likely to be rewarding. I took a nap.

I was awake and trying to find new connecting lines between the characters on my chart when Corey came. It was only three o’clock, which I pointed out, and added, “You couldn’t have put in your full eight hours today. Were you fired?”

“No. There were some incubator babies who were naughty today. They’re washing the lunch dishes. But reporting to you, that still keeps me on the payroll, doesn’t it?”

“I guess. Learn anything?”

He nodded. “Some of it last night. Penelope told me that Kelly and Sarkissian aren’t enemies. They work together.”

“How?”

“When the parents are wealthy, and a lot of them are, they pay Kelly big money to get the kids out. I mean, they arrange the raids together and split the take.”

“And what about the kids whose parents can’t afford to pay Kelly?”

“Sarkissian still makes a buck off of them. A lot of them don’t want to leave. Do you remember that long building you had to pass to get to Sarkissian’s office?”

“I do.”

“The kids live on the second floor of that building. The first floor is all workshops. He’s got a kiln there for making pottery. He’s got looms where they can weave phony cotton Oriental rugs. They sell them on the beachfront, at that place where the local artists display on Sundays.”

“Did you talk with Joel again?”

“Yup. He’s one of the kids who wants to stay. He really hates his mother. I guess he hates his father, too, but he doesn’t talk much about him. They must both be creeps. Because Joel is one good kid.”

“Is he buying the Sarkissian pitch?” I asked.

“Not for a minute. It’s dumb gobbledygook. It’s part EST, part imitation Islam, but mostly the old Puritan ethic.”