Gravedigger (12 page)

“You think the girl in that picture is still alive?”

“It’s not getting any easier.” Dave got into the Triumph and rolled down the window. “You only saw it that one time?”

“Yeah.” The boy read the card. “I’ll call you.”

“Thanks,” Dave said.

Until two in the afternoon, doggedly, not missing a turn-off, he prowled the mud-slick back trails of the canyon, going slowly, searching with his eyes every foot of every crooked mile, for the Rolls—in a yard, a carport, hidden in brush. He didn’t find it. He drove back down to the coast road and, with the sea glittering cold and blue in the sunlight to his right, headed home to Cecil.

B
Y FOUR O’CLOCK, WHEN
Cecil scrambled lankily into the van to start for work, Dave standing shivering in a bathrobe in the damp, bricked yard, the sky had clouded over. The wind blew soft and damp from the southeast. It was going to rain again. Dave had promised to sleep until Cecil returned. But while Dave had been up in Yucca Canyon this morning, the telephone had wakened Cecil, half wakened him. Thelma Gaillard had left her number.

Now, at four-thirty,
CLOSED
hung from a grubby string inside the dirty glass pane of Gaillard’s shop door, and the shop was without lights. Dave climbed the outside stairs and rapped the wooden frame of a loose screen door at the top. To the south, above rooftops, treetops, the sky was dark as a bruise, threatening. The door opened.

“Oh.” She was startled. She touched her gray hair, smoothed her old brown cardigan. Her bluejeans were faded, shapeless, her tennis shoes worn. Her cheeks weren’t rosy today. “I thought you’d telephone.”

“I was in the neighborhood.” Not true, but he liked to go, instead of phoning, to watch faces when they spoke, to look into eyes and rooms. Surprise was sometimes useful, let him see and hear what strangers weren’t always meant to see or hear. “What was it you called me about?”

“Don. I don’t know where he is. Come in.” She unhooked the screen door and pushed it open. She glanced at the sky. He stepped inside. “Excuse how things look.” She hooked the screen again, and shut the wooden door. “I’m so upset, I guess I’m just letting things go.” It needed paint, but it was a neat kitchen, except for a few unwashed dishes beside the sink, an unwashed pan on a twenty-year-old stove. She led him down a narrow, dark hallway past the half-open doors of dim bedrooms, one of the beds unmade, to a living room with tired wallpaper and threadbare furniture—none of Don Gaillard’s handiwork here—where a television set with bent antennae flickered and spoke. She said, “I thought you might know where he went,” and moved to switch off the set.

Dave said, “Wait a minute, please.”

It was a news broadcast. The pictures were of a van lying on its side in a stony ravine. The van was blue and painted with chalky-looking flowers, birds, stars, moons. The artwork was clumsy, amateurish. Men in suntan uniforms moved around the van. Desert stretched beyond. Mountains formed a ragged blue line far off. The newscaster’s voiceover said “…definitely the vehicle known to have been driven by the missing California sex-cult guru and suspected murderer of two sheriff’s deputies and at least six young women. Nevada authorities say their search will now be intensified, with—” Dave switched off the set.

“He probably wandered off out there and died,” Thelma Gaillard said. “Deserts are terrible places, hot all day, freezing at night, no water. I used to worry so when Don and Chass went to the desert. Would you like some coffee? Tea?” She looked around, doubtfully. “Don may have some whiskey. It’s so cold.”

“I’m all right,” Dave said. It wasn’t cold in here. A gas heater hissed in a corner. “I’m not sure I understand. I don’t know your son at all well. How would I know where he’s gone?” He shed the sheepskin jacket. “How did you come to telephone me?” He sat down.

“I found your card in Don’s workclothes,” she said. Knitting lay on a couch that faced the television set. She sat beside it and picked it up. She only glanced at it for a second, then turned her blue eyes on Dave, but the needles began clicking in her fingers. “You see—just after you left the other day he came tearing up here in a state, changed his clothes, and rushed out. Without a word of explanation. I could see something had upset him terribly. I said, ‘Tell me what’s the matter,’ but he just pushed me out of his way. All he said when he ran down the stairs was, ‘I’ll be back.’ But he hasn’t come back. He hasn’t even called. And it’s been two nights, now. And that’s not like him. He never stays away nights without phoning me.”

“But he does sometimes stay away?” Dave said.

“Yes, but he never breaks right into a working day, locks up the shop, runs off. He has orders to fill. He puts in sixteen hours a day down in that shop. Sometimes he won’t even rest on Sunday. And why didn’t he pack a suitcase? He didn’t even take a shaving kit.”

“He had no reason to run from me,” Dave said. “Maybe somebody telephoned him.”

“No. The phone up here is an extension. I always hear the bell. No one phoned, Mr. Brandstetter. And it was right after you and that colored boy drove off that this happened. What did you say to him?”

“I came looking for Charles Westover,” Dave said.

Her mouth fell open. The needles went silent. “Chass? But”—she gave a bewildered little laugh—“he hasn’t seen Chass in years. Ten years, at least.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Dave said. “Chass came to see him two weeks ago.”

“Oh, no.” She was positive. The needles dug into the yarn again, twisting, clicking. “You must have misunderstood. If Chass had come, Don would have brought him up here to see me. Chass was an orphan, you know. He always said I was better to him than any mother could have been.” She gazed at the gray front windows, mourning a lost past, and her smile was sentimental. “I loved that boy and he loved me. He wouldn’t have come without running up here to give me a hug and a kiss.”

“Maybe you were out,” Dave said, “at the supermarket or someplace. He came, Mrs. Gaillard. Don told me. Lyle Westover told me.”

“After all this time?” She wasn’t letting go her stubborn disbelief. She scoffed. “What for?”

Dave didn’t want to be the one who told her about the loan. “I don’t know. What I do know is that just afterward, Westover disappeared. I have to locate him. It’s about an insurance claim. When I learned he and Don Gaillard were old friends, I came to ask Don if he knew where Westover was. He said he didn’t.”

“Don is always truthful,” she said primly.

“But Westover meant a lot to him—isn’t that right?”

They were as close as any two boys I ever saw—men. After they broke up”—she quit working the needles and lifted the droop of blue knitting to study her progress—“Don wasn’t the same person.” She smoothed the knitting on her knees. “He’s never gotten over it.”

“So it’s just possible, isn’t it,” Dave said, “that he shaded the truth to me, and went to help his friend?”

“How?” Her laugh was helpless, impatient. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Help him, how? What is this about insurance?”

“The Banner company thinks Chass may have filed a false claim. But he has worse troubles than that. Don didn’t know how bad things had gotten for Chass until I came and told him.”

“But if Chass isn’t at home,” she said, “how could Don go to him? Where?” Her look rested on Dave in mild reproach. “It was I who phoned you to find out where Don is—remember?”

“You said they used to go to the desert,” Dave said.

She gave a nod and began knitting again. “They spent every weekend of their lives together, even after Chass was married. The desert, the mountains, the beach. I don’t remember the names of the places, if they ever told me.”

“Not Yucca Canyon?” Dave said.

Her look was blank. Plainly she’d never heard of it. “Is it so far away he couldn’t get home in two days?”

“It’s just up the coast.” Dave stood and picked up his jacket. “What kind of car does Don drive?”

“A panel truck,” she said, “dove-gray, with Don’s name on the side, and ‘Hand Crafted Furniture.’ In yellow. Of course, it’s old, and the paint’s all faded now.” She frowned. “What kind of troubles were these Chass had?”

Dave was back in Yucca Canyon, driving those twisty little trails, looking at cars in shrubby yards where rain sparkled on leaves in morning sunshine. No panel trucks—dove-gray or any other color. “Money troubles,” he said.

“Money? Hah.” Her mouth tightened at one corner. The needles clicked, bad-tempered. “Don is no fancy lawyer. You see how we live. No—if it was money, there’s no way in the world Don Gaillard could help Charles Westover.”

“Thank you.” Dave moved to leave. “If Don comes home, will you have him phone me, please?”

“What if he doesn’t come home?” She put the knitting aside, got quickly to her feet, reached out to him. “What if something’s happened to him? I’m frightened.” Her mouth trembled, there were tears in her eyes. “The streets get so slick in the rain. Maybe he’s lying in a hospital someplace, unconscious, hurt, helpless.”

“If he carried identification,” Dave said, “you’d have been notified. Have you called his friends?”

She turned her eyes away uneasily. “He doesn’t like me prying into his private life. He gets very angry. He has that right, I know.” She sounded as if she didn’t really think so. “He’s a grown man, after all. But I was frantic.” She looked up at Dave as if he could give her absolution. “I felt guilty even going into his room. But I went, and I found his little address book, and phoned some of them. No one’s seen him. Most of them hardly seemed to know who I was talking about. Nothing but first names in that book—Pete, John, Ralph. They weren’t any help.”

“You don’t know any of them?”

“He never brings them here,” she said. “Maybe he’s ashamed of me. That’s how he acts, sometimes.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Dave patted her shoulder. She was like a lost little girl of five who needed her tears dried. “Where’s your telephone?”

She took him back to the kitchen. It was on a wall. He dialed Salazar. The deputy looking after his desk said Salazar was home with the flu. Dave doubted there was anything in Salazar’s files he could refer the deputy to. He’d wanted Salazar to look for Gaillard. That might lead them both to Westover. He wasn’t going to get that help. Still, the deputy surprised him. Salazar had located Howie O’Rourke. In the L.A. county jail. For breaking parole—drunk, disorderly, consorting with known criminals.

“Did he have twenty thousand dollars on him?”

“He lost it on the horses at Santa Anita.”

Dave thanked the deputy and hung up. He told Thelma Gaillard, “I’m going now, but I want you to promise me something. To get on this phone as soon as I’ve gone and call the police, missing persons. Tell them about Don.”

“Oh, no.” She looked shocked. “Don hates the police. He’d never forgive me.” She begged Dave with her eyes. Her cheeks were flaming red. “It’s not that he’s ever committed a crime. It’s just little, well, indiscretions, boyish things. He gets tired and overwrought. He works so
very
hard. What harm does it do? But the police have been very nasty to him.”

“He won’t hate them,” Dave said, “if he needs them and they help.” He pulled open the door. Rain had begun to fall. The breath of the rain came cold through the screen door. “And if they find him, you let me know right away, will you? I’ll appreciate it.”

She stared at the phone, face pinched with dread. She plucked nervously at her lower lip. She turned to Dave. “Isn’t there anything you can do? You’re a private investigator. It says so on your card.”

“There’s only one of me,” Dave said. “There’s a lot of them. Now, they’ll ask you for a list of places he goes, people he sees—”

“He’d hate that,” she said. “I don’t know, anyway. He never tells me anything. I don’t dare ask him.”

“Mention Yucca Canyon to them.”

“But I—” she started to protest.

“As a favor to me,” Dave said, and went out and pulled the door shut after him.

He ran across the uneven bricks through the rain to the cookshack and built a double martini before he even took off his coat. While the martini chilled, he sliced tomato and avocado and laid the slices on lettuce on a plate. He tasted the martini, sighed, smiled, and switched on the radio. Brahms’s
Liebeslieder
waltzes in the version for voices and piano. He sang along while he mixed a dressing of homemade mayonnaise, tarragon vinegar, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, seasoned salt. He lit the grille, tasted the martini again, and mixed a batter in a thick bowl. He dumped into the batter a half-pint of cooked shrimp that he’d stopped for on the way home from Gaillard’s, spooned the batter onto the grille, pulled a slim green bottle of white wine from the refrigerator, and uncorked it. He turned over the fritters, which were a nice toasted color. He poured a tall glass of the wine and set it on the table. He transferred the fritters onto the plate, poured the dressing over the tomato and avocado, finished off the martini, set the plate on the table, and sat down to eat. But he had only swallowed a forkful of the salad, a gulp of wine, a bite of the fritters, when he remembered, and lifted down the telephone.

Lyle Westover said, “You just caught me going out the door.” The syllables were mashed and jumbled, but Dave understood. “I’m flying to Nashville. A recording gig.”

“I asked you to report your father missing,” Dave said. “Did you do that?”

“Right away, to the sheriff, like you said. But they just wrote it down and stuck it in a file, I think. They never checked back with me. Did you find out whether it’s my father who’s been taking the mail?”

“It was dark, and I couldn’t see him well,” Dave said. “But I think so. The car was right. I’ll watch for him again tonight. Look, I don’t want to hold you up, but I need the answer to one question.”

“I hope nobody finds out,” Lyle said. “Country-western music. I’m not going to let them list my name in the album credits.”

“Good thinking,” Dave said. “Yucca Canyon. What would your father be doing in Yucca Canyon? Does he know someone who lives up there? Friend? Client?”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“There’s an address book on his desk in the den,” Dave said. “Have you got time to check through it, or will you miss your flight?”