If Dying Was All (2 page)

Easy asked, “May I see the letter?”

McCleary drank a little more Scotch. “I’ll read it to you.”

Turning the postmark side of the envelope toward himself without actually looking at it, the old man announced, “Manzana, California. You’ll see why in a minute.” He rested his drink on the round table, next to a bowl of spoiling fruit, and eased a sheet of thin blue paper out of the envelope. He coughed twice. “The letter is dated September 21st. ‘Dear Daddy Fred—Please don’t be upset. I’m so sorry you’ve had to worry this long, long time. Now that’s all over. All over. I know you’ve been very hurt by what I had to do. Maybe, maybe when we meet you’ll understand. I know you’ve been lonely and I’ve been unhappy so much, too. Don’t worry, please, Dad, when I tell you that I’m still in some trouble. Nothing big, though I simply can’t come back into the open yet. I must see you. Please come to me, Dad. I’ll be in Manzana, at the place you and Mother and I used to visit when I was so much younger. I’ll have a room there under the name of Hollis, which you’ll understand. Don’t phone me because I can’t risk accepting any calls. Until Thursday, then. Oh, I forgot to say earlier, Thursday is the day when I’ll be there and expecting you so impatiently. Love, Little Iodine.’”

Easy shifted in his chair. “All the pet names ring true?”

“Well, of course. My wife, my late wife, and I always called Jackie ‘Little Iodine’ when she was a child,” said McCleary. “After the brat in the comic strip. Jackie was a very high-strung little girl, very bright, but very quick to anger.”

“What about the name Hollis?”

“My wife’s maiden name.”

“The handwriting is your daughter’s?”

“Yes. I know Jackie’s writing. She wrote me many letters. Whenever I was on location with a picture, back when I did a little directing. Later she wrote me regularly the two years she was away at school in Connecticut. This letter is certainly from her.”

“You have those old letters?”

“I have everything of Jackie’s I could get hold of, all preserved.” The old man folded the letter and carefully inserted it back into its envelope. “I know what you’re leading up to, Easy. Let me tell you you needn’t go any further in that direction.”

Easy said, “Mr. McCleary, it’s the most obvious direction to go. Your daughter killed herself over five years ago and now she writes you a letter and asks you to come out and visit her in some remote spot in San Bernardino County.”

“You haven’t yet looked into the circumstances of her disappearance, have you?”

“No, not yet,” said Easy. “I remember the event, though. Your daughter jumped into the Pacific Ocean.”

McCleary made his puffy hands into fists. “Don’t be so God damn blunt, Easy.”

Easy said, “Don’t get the idea you can hire me to raise the dead.”

“I want my daughter located,” said the old man. “While I don’t necessarily expect sympathy, I won’t pay for flippancy.”

“She left a note,” said Easy. “A suicide note, in her own writing. She went over the side of a yacht in the middle of the night. That was five years ago.”

“They never found a body,” said McCleary. He was sipping from his glass again.

“That happens sometimes.” The fringed shawl began suddenly to spill down over Easy’s wide shoulders. He stood rapidly, spun.

The horse lamp and the stale sandwich went skidding over the edge of the piano. The heavy lamp bounced once on the thick brown and orange rug. “It’s only Tuffy,” said McCleary.

A fat, gray cat was bellying over the now clear top of the grand piano. He jumped by Easy and attacked the fish sandwich. Easy picked up the shawl and the lamp and replaced them. He sat again. “Tell me what happened out in Manzana.”

The old man was watching the big shaggy cat. “He’s twelve years old and still kittenish. Jackie loved him.” The old man looked at Easy, touching puffy fingers to the pocket in his coat where he’d put the letter. “You don’t seem the right person to help me.”

“Okay.” Easy left the chair.

“What would you charge to find Jackie?”

Easy said, “Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll charge you $100 a day to find out who sent you that letter and, maybe, why,” Easy told him. “If that turns out to be your daughter, fine. I won’t promise.”

The big cat, with a crust of bread in its teeth, leaped up into the old man’s lap. Absently stroking the animal, McCleary said, “I spend most of my time here, inside. In fact, that trip to Manzana was the first time I’ve been out of the house for more than an hour or two since Jackie disappeared.” He paused. “Still I try not to be too narrow in my outlook. Like some old eccentric hermit. No, I suppose I really can’t expect you to share my point of view, Easy. Very well, I’ll hire you on your terms.”

The cat climbed up the front of the old man, stepped on his head and from there jumped up to a dusty bookshelf.

Easy said, “How’d you get out to Manzana?”

“I drove,” answered the old man. I’ve kept my Mercedes in good order. Actually I believe my driver’s license has lapsed. I didn’t expect anyone would notice.”

“Where’d you go once you got to Manzana?”

“I went directly to the Golden Apple Inn.”

“That’s the place the letter mentioned?”

“Yes. We all used to vacation there years ago. Manzana is one of the quieter desert towns, a more relaxed place than Apple Valley.”

“There was no sign of your daughter in Manzana?”

The shaggy, gray cat slithered along the bookshelf, knocking down small crystal figures with its tail. The figures fell on the old man and he absently swatted at them. “No, but she had been there,” said McCleary. “She never showed up during the two days I waited there, though.”

“How do you know she was there at all?”

“Jackie made a room reservation in person,” replied the old man. “She was there at the Golden Apple on the 21st.”

“Who saw her?”

“The people who manage the inn. They told me Jackie was there Monday morning and made a reservation, under the name of Hollis, for the 24th and 25th.”

“Paid in advance?”

“No. She put down a twenty dollar deposit.”

“In cash?”

“Well, yes.”

“These people who run the Golden Apple,” said Easy. “Are they the same people who operated the inn when you and your wife and daughter used to stay there?”

McCleary shook his head. “No, this couple has only owned the inn for the past three years as I understand it. You want to know how they can be sure it was really Jackie?”

“Yes.”

“I have their description of the girl who made the reservation,” said the old man. “A tall, slender brunette in her late twenties. Jackie would be … Jackie is twenty-seven. Her twenty-seventh birthday was last July 8th.”

“This girl was alone?”

“She was alone.”

“After the 21st she never came back to the Golden Apple Inn or called?”

“No,” said McCleary. “When I arrived on the 24th, I took a room near hers and waited. I was surprised she wasn’t yet there, but I assumed she soon would be. She never appeared. I waited nearly two days, then drove back here. I felt something must have gone wrong and Jackie didn’t feel it was safe yet to contact me there in Manzana.” The old man reached again into his coat and produced a new envelope. “This was waiting in the mailbox.”

“Also signed by your daughter?”

“Yes.” McCleary took the letter out with stiff fingers. He flashed the envelope briefly toward Easy. “Postmarked Los Angeles. The 24th. Mailed while I was waiting out there.”

“What does this one say?”

McCleary’s lips compressed and he slapped the letter on his leg a few times, then unfolded it. “‘Dearest Daddy Fred—Please, please forgive me. It’s simply not safe for me to see you right now. Forgive me for thinking it was. And, dear Dad, be patient. I hope we’ll be able to meet soon, so soon. Please, if you love me, don’t try to look for me. Don’t tell anyone I’ve written you. Love, your little girl.’” The old man began to crumple the letter, caught himself. “I do love Jackie and that’s why I intend to ignore her request. She was never very good at making her own decisions. No, I humored her and went out and cooled my heels in the desert. Now, though, well, I think it best to ignore Jackie’s wishes. I don’t want to wait any more, any longer. I want you to find her. She’s in trouble and the best thing is to have me get her out of it.”

Easy watched the autumn-colored rug at his feet for a few seconds. “The trouble mentioned in the letters. What do you know about that? Did something happen before your daughter disappeared in 1965?”

“I have no idea what she means. If I did, I could have done something about it,” answered McCleary. “Something about it then and Jackie wouldn’t have had to go away.”

Easy asked, “You have no servants? No one to look after the house or grounds?”

“No one. Since Jackie disappeared I haven’t felt the need of anyone around. I can look after myself, cook when I have to. As for the grounds, well, as you’ve seen, nature has reclaimed them. I don’t feel like having a gardener around.”

“Did you tell anyone to look after your house while you were away? Neighbors or the police?”

“I don’t know the neighbors anymore. I already told you I didn’t want the police involved in any way.”

“There was no letter when you got back?”

“No, no word and there hasn’t been since.”

The cat was on the narrow mantel over the empty fireplace, stalking now one of McCleary’s Academy Award statues.

Easy said, “Any sign someone had been here in your absence?”

McCleary blinked his puffy eyes. “You think Jackie may have returned to the house?”

“Anyone might have,” said Easy. The Oscar was swatted off the mantel and fell with a clang into an empty copper woodbin. Easy crossed and retrieved it. “Did you notice that anyone had been in the house?”

“No, no evidence of that,” said the old man. “Of course, I don’t pay the keenest attention to my surroundings these days.”

Before putting the Academy Award statue back in place, Easy thwacked Tuffy lightly over the skull with it. “What about your daughter’s friends? Have any of them heard from her?”

“Let him play with it,” said the old man. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Easy gave the Oscar back to the cat and repeated, “Your daughter’s friends?”

The golden statue clanged once more into the woodbin.

“They’ve scattered in five years,” said McCleary. “I still keep in touch with a few of them. I suppose they all think my belief that Jackie is still alive is simply an obsession. By now a boring one at that. To answer your question, Easy, none of Jackie’s friends whom I’ve contacted have received any communication from her at all.”

“You can give me their names?”

“Most of them,” said the old man. “I’ll take you out to Jackie’s cottage. There are photos of her and most of the San Amaro gang.” He rose slowly from the sofa.

“San Amaro gang?”

“Jackie’s closest friends in the last year or two before she disappeared,” said McCleary, breathing with a faint wheeze as he began to walk toward the wide arched doorway. “A half dozen or so kids who hung around the beach down at San Amaro. Jackie had a notion she might want to model, do television commercials. Most of these kids were on the fringes of show business in one way or another.” He went up the three mosaic tile steps that led to the red tile hallway. “I had the contacts then to help Jackie, but she’d have none of it. She was a very independent girl. Still is I imagine. She lived by herself in a beach apartment in San Amaro those last two years.”

The fat, gray cat sailed from the mantel to the sofa to the rug. He hustled up the tile stairs and tangled himself in McCleary’s long legs. The old man tripped, fell back against Easy.

Easy caught him. “Most of these San Amaro kids were with her, were on that yacht when she disappeared?”

“With one or two exceptions,” said McCleary, regaining his balance. “Although they were in their twenties, they were still very much like a gang of grammar school kids. You know, with blood oaths and fierce loyalties.”

Easy quietly booted Tuffy over into a white plaster wall of the long hallway.

Cupboards and tables lined the walls, holding small bronze sculptures, wrought iron candlesticks, Mexican straw figures. On one cupboard shelf sat a half-finished wedge of cherry pie, now beginning to go green with mold, and on a claw-footed table a nearly full tumbler of milk was already sour.

“Jackie had her own private cottage out back,” said the old man over his bent shoulder, “from the time she was sixteen. She loved to sketch in charcoal and she wrote some very fine, though youthful, poetry.” He stopped to face Easy. “She had such great potential. I expected so much.” He turned and moved slowly on to the rear door of the corridor. From a side pocket in his tweed jacket he took a ring of tarnished keys and unlocked the door.

The thick door opened onto the glaring, yellow day. The sky was blurred with smog, and even here you could smell the burning in the valley. There was a good half acre of grounds to cross. Only a narrow flagstone path showed clear, cutting through the weeds and overgrown plants and tangled wild flowers. “Did your daughter come here often after she moved to San Amaro?” asked Easy.

Pronged leaves and drying seedpods brushed the old man’s puffy face. The afternoon heat had brought out an immediate wash of perspiration on his pale forehead. “Not often, but now and then. Jackie was never completely alienated from me. Sometimes, though, she’d show up for a day or two and not even come over to the big house at all. A very fragile, sensitive girl. I hate to think of her still in trouble.”

Near a high, whitewashed stucco wall stood a small two room cottage. It didn’t match the main house. It was like a miniature English inn or coach house, crisscrossed with beams. The big, gray cat came rustling out of the brush when McCleary inserted a key in the lock of the cottage door. “No, this is the one place Tuffy isn’t allowed. Would you see he doesn’t sneak in, Easy?”

Catching Tuffy by the scruff, Easy carefully threw him into a far clump of high milkweed. He followed the old man into the shadowy cottage and closed the door. This room was small and had a beamed ceiling. The walls were nearly all given over to bookcases, and all the books were bright and fresh dusted. “You still come out here?”