Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (62 page)

Cal Hurley twisted slightly so he
could look at me. "This about that business last night?"

"No, although it's related in a
way." Briefly I filled him in on the background to my case. "That pink
house four doors down"—I motioned at it—"was where the people lived
when they were arrested. I wonder if you remember anything about them."

He didn't need to look to see
which house I meant. "Funny thing, that was. I took note of those kids
right off, on account of them not fitting in here."

"You mean because they were
white?"

He nodded. "All except for the
Indian. You Indian, too?"

"Some."

"Thought so. That offend you—me
saying 'Indian' instead of 'Native American?"

I shrugged. "They're just labels,
and I'm not much of a labeler."

He smiled his approval. "You
know, seems like only a little while ago I was a Negro. Then I was
black. Not real descriptive, since we mainly brown, but what the hell.
Next thing I know, black's out and African-American's in. What a
mouthful! Then the other day my grandson—he goes to college, knows
about that stuff—he tells me
that's
out, now we're 'people of
color."

"So I says to him, 'What is that?
Back when I was your age we were colored people. The way things goin',
pretty soon we gonna get to be niggers again.' The young man, he didn't
find that funny."
 

I did, however, and I could tell
my laughter pleased Cal Hurley. He'd probably been saving that story
for a suitable audience. After a moment I turned serious, though.
"About the kids in the pink house . . . ?"

"I getting to that. Don't think
I'm one of these old men that rambles. Just wanted to cheer you up
some; you looked down in the mouth for a minute there. The thing about
those kids not fitting in didn't so much have to do with being white as
it did with coming from money. Kids, they can put on old clothes, hang
out in a poor neighborhood, scrounge for garbage—and to me that's a
filthy habit no matter how down-and-out you are—but they can't get rid
of the look. Maybe their people weren't rich, but none a them except
the Indian ever gone without in their lives. But they were quiet kids,
didn't bother nobody, so folks around here let them alone."

"What did they do while they were
living here?"

"Came and went. The fellow with
the blond curly hair seemed to have some sort of real job; I had the
feeling he didn't really live there, just hung out. A couple a others
worked part-time. But mostly they stayed inside the flat. Doing what, I
couldn't guess at the time."

"How many of them were there?"

"Hard to say. You'd see people
for a while, then you wouldn't. But mainly it was the Indian, the
blond girl, the blond boy, the little dark-haired girl, and the
fellow with the scar."

Excitement pricked at me. This
was the first time anyone had placed Tom Grant in the company of
members of the collective. Cautiously I said, "Would you describe the
one with the scar, please?"
 

"Handsome kid, except for this
ragged red gouge on his left cheek. Dark hair. Tall. Older than the
others by a few years, I'd say. You'd see him alone or with the little
dark-haired girl. There was something about him . . .
well, like he wasn't really part of things. Like the girl was his
connection to the rest. When they'd
walk down the street with the others, they'd stay apart. But when it
was just the girl, she'd walk with her friends."

Interesting, that dynamic, I
thought. "Was the man with the scar there at the time the three were
arrested?"

"Yeah. Afterward, too."

"What about the blond-haired boy?"

"Oh, he was gone by then. Months
before."

"But the man with the scar stayed
on after the arrests?"

"Well, not exactly. They raided
the place, you know. The feds, they came in there and took all sorts of
stuff away. And the man with the scar was with them."

"What? Was he handcuffed?"

"Not that I could see. If they
arrested him, they must of let him go later. That flat was sealed up
all through the trial, but when they took the seal off, he was living
there again. And after she got done testifying against her friends, the
little dark-haired girl stayed with him for a while. Then
she
was
gone, and the next thing I knew, end of the month a family moved in."

"So when was the last time you
actually saw the man with the scar?"

He considered. "Well, a day or
two after the little dark-haired girl left."

I leaned back against the
cigar-musty upholstery, revising quite a few of my preconceptions. And
putting together some things that hadn't made sense or hadn't seemed
important before. But I didn't want to jump to conclusions; I needed
proof.

I asked, "If I brought you
pictures of those people, could you identify them?"

"Think so. The older I get, the
sharper I am on things that happened a long time ago. Damn, I wish I
could say the same for what's going on day to day."

"I don't think you're doing so
badly. I'll see if I can get hold of some pictures, and as soon as I
do, I'll check back with
you. Meantime, if you think of anything
else, call me, please."

After I got out of the car, Cal Hurley smiled at me and extended his
hand. "I'll do that," he said. "And you stop back anytime. I'll be
here, that's one thing you can count on."

All Souls was as quiet and deserted as if it were a sleepy Sunday
afternoon. No clients or media people waited in the parlor; Ted's desk
was vacant. I went past it and stuck my head into Rae's office. Empty.
I frowned, checked my watch. Four thirty-seven, too early for everyone
to have gone home. Then I heard a murmur of voices in the kitchen. I
hurried back there, feeling what I told myself was an unreasonable
foreboding.

The scene in the kitchen reminded me of wakes I'd attended. Rae, Ted,
and Jack sat around the table, faces somber, drinks in hand. Ted
clasped Ralph the cat as if he were a security blanket. Alice, subdued
for once, perched on the windowsill. I set my bag and briefcase on the
counter and leaned against it, braced for bad news.

"There you are," Jack said, a little too heartily. For once he didn't
cast a lustful glance at my legs or cleavage. Jack was recovering from
a divorce and for some reason had made me the object of his yearnings.
If he wasn't ogling me, something terrible must have happened.

"What's going on here?" I asked, my voice matching his for false cheer.
"You guys starting the Friday happy hour early?"

"Something like that." Ted stood and handed Ralph to me. "You look like
you could use a drink." He went toward the cupboard where the glasses
were kept.

I took the last empty chair, setting the cat on my lap. He tucked his
tail around his front paws and stared solemnly at me. I turned him
around so I wouldn't have to undergo his yellow-eyed scrutiny. "What's
going on?" I repeated in a more urgent tone. 

Ted returned with a glass of white wine and handed it to me. "Hank had
additional surgery this afternoon. He started bleeding internally
again, so they had to go in and tie off some blood vessels. None of us
could work, so we decided to knock off early."

I froze, glass halfway to my lips. "Will he be—"

Rae said, "Anne-Marie called a little while ago. He's in recovery,
holding his own."

I set the glass down on the table and pressed my hands against Ralph's
round sides, so hard he grunted. "What does that mean—holding his own?"

It was a stupid question; no one bothered to answer me.

Did I imagine it, or was there a tension in the room that hadn't been
there when I entered? I looked around the table, saw in the others'
guarded expressions that they didn't know quite how to deal with me. To
them I was not the same person they thought they'd known before last
night. Rae had seen my face just before I'd started up the hill after
the sniper; Jack and Ted had arrived with the police and found me
straddling his supine body, gun pressed to his skull. I doubted any of
them would ever fully reconcile their prior conceptions of me with the
near-murderous stranger they'd seen. And while time would somewhat dull
the memory, it would always be there, always set me a little apart from
them.

The realization filled me with sadness. I squeezed Ralph harder, and
this time he let out a tiny mew! of protest. "Sorry," I whispered, and
handed him back to Ted. Suddenly I needed to be out of there, to be
alone. I got up, grabbed my bag and briefcase, and fled into the hall.
Behind me Rae said, "Let her go. She'll be okay."

But footsteps followed me. I turned and saw Ted, still clutching the
cat. "Shar—"

"What now?"

He blinked, recoiling from the harshness in my voice. "I
only wanted to tell you there's
an envelope for you on my desk."

"Oh. Oh, thanks, Ted."

Without a word he went back into
the kitchen.

The sadness came on more
strongly. As I went down the hall my sight blurred from tears. Angrily
I brushed them away, got the manila envelope from Ted's desk, and took
it up to my office. It contained the copy of the report Wolf had
promised me. I sat down at the desk and began to read.

Wolf appeared to have consulted
the same published resources as I had, plus interviewed a number of
people who had known Jenny Ruhl. The most fruitful of these talks was
with a woman who was Ruhl's roommate during their freshman year at
Berkeley. Although their lives took off in very different directions
after those first semesters, the two remained close. The woman
confirmed that Andy Wrightman was the father of Ruhl's child. He was,
she said, a campus hanger-on who was auditing the course Ruhl was
taking on the origins of the Vietnam war when they met; they lived
together a year or so before Ruhl became pregnant. When she told him
about the expected child, Wrightman disappeared from Berkeley. But he
returned to Jenny before she moved from the East Bay to San Francisco,
and after the trial, when Ruhl's friend contacted her to see if there
was any way she could help out, Ruhl and Wrightman were living in the
flat on Page Street.

I read the report twice, the
second time trying to guess what Jess Goodhue's reaction to it had
been. Then I reviewed my contacts with the anchorwoman, eventually
focusing on the telephone conversation we'd had late on the afternoon
that she'd picked up the report. I'd told her that I thought Tom Grant
figured in my case more than he would admit; said one of the other
heirs had been startled by my description of Grant; said he'd said
something about Grant being the "right man."

But by then Goodhue had known it
was a name—Wrightman. The name of her
father. And Grant was someone she'd met, had interviewed and found
"charming"

Then I thought of the
conversation I'd had with Grant the next morning. We'd set our meeting
for nine that evening because he'd scheduled a client dinner and then
an appointment for "an interview." When Angela Curtis had told me he'd
sent her out to the movies because he didn't want her around the house,
I'd assumed the interview was with a prospective employee, possibly a
replacement for Curtis. But media people also scheduled interviews. And
when I'd tried to call Goodhue before I'd left for Grant's, she'd
supposedly been in her dressing room, where no one ever bothered her.

It was time, I thought, to have a
frank talk with Jess Goodhue.

Goodhue was already on the air by
the time I reached KSTS. I didn't want to risk missing her in case she
planned to leave the studio between broadcasts, so I told the
receptionist I'd wait. There was a grouping of chairs to one side of
the lobby, and an assortment of magazines on the low table they
surrounded;  I selected
Metropolitan Home
and leafed
through
it, glancing at the ads but barely seeing them. My thoughts were
preoccupied by the upcoming confrontation with the anchorwoman—and
the unpleasant truths that might emerge during our talk.

The hands of my watch moved
slowly toward seven o'clock. The lobby was deserted and the building
seemed hushed, as if everyone were holding his breath until the
newscast was successfully completed. The impression, I knew, was
deceptive: frantic activity would be going on behind the locked door by
the reception desk; stories would continue to break up until the eleven
o'clock report; other stories would constantly be updated. And Goodhue
could very well use that activity as an excuse for avoiding me.

So far no one had entered the
studio from the street. It occurred to me that there was a door from
the parking lot. If Goodhue wanted to duck me, she could slip out that
way when the receptionist told her I was here. I glanced at him; he was
reading a current best-seller, totally absorbed. When I got up and
meandered around the lobby, pretending to study the blowups of KSTS
personalities, he paid me no attention. I moved closer to the locked
door, staring at the face of Les Gates, Goodhue's co-anchor.

At five minutes to seven, a tall,
curly-haired man strode into the lobby, announcing that he had to see
someone named Rick—was he in the building, and if so, where?

"Studio D," the receptionist
said, his hand moving automatically to the buzzer.