Seaweed on the Street (25 page)

She was tall. Skinny rather than slim and heavily tanned. Her cheeks and neck were as wrinkled as a dried apple. She had dark, deeply set eyes, black eyebrows, a large nose and a wide mouth. With her high cheekbones, firm chin and youthful carriage she must once have been a beauty, before the sun ruined things. I guessed she was about 50, but her face, neck and hands were 10 years older.

After forking some hay into a manger and watching the chestnut eat for a minute, she turned to me and said curtly, “Mister, I hope you're not a pain-in-the-ass salesman, a government assessor or a lost prospector, because I want a cold shower and you are in the way of it.”

I turned on my best bogus charm. “I'm not lost. I probably hate salesmen as much as you do.”

She let out a breath and made a small, angry, impatient noise. “Who are you then, and what do you want?” Her diction, unlike the usual desert drawl, was clipped and precise.

“I'm a cop, my name is Silas Seaweed. I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

“You're not local, I know that.”

“True.”

“I'm Joan Alfred,” she said, looking at me through half-closed lids. “You can wait for me on the veranda. Don't set foot inside the house unless invited or I won't answer for the dogs.”

Fifteen minutes later, Joan Alfred had on slacks, a green silk shirt and beaded Navajo moccasins. Her long black hair, still damp from the shower, showed a few grey strands. She had painted her mouth with dark red lipstick, and it was again obvious that before too much sun she had been very beautiful. She invited me into the living room. The two dogs followed us and flopped down by a brick fireplace. The room had a polished wooden floor and was furnished traditionally with leather chairs, heavy Mexican chests, Navajo rugs. She said something to the dogs, stood with her back to the fireplace and lit a cigarette.

“I'm from Victoria, B.C.,” I said. “I'm making inquiries about a woman named Marcia Harkness.”

Joan Alfred's expression did not change. “How does that affect me?”

“Marcia was a pianist, a good one. In 1985 she bought a piano from a shop in Reno and had it delivered to this address.”

“I wouldn't know, but so what? I've only lived here 15 years or so.”

“Does the name Marcia Harkness mean anything to you? Or Marcia Hunt?”

“No.”

I said, “Before you came, I was admiring a painting on the veranda. Is it your work?”

“No, my niece is working on it,” she said impatiently. “Allie's away at art college right now.”

“It's very good.”

Her nostrils flared. “Mr. Seaweed, are you here to talk about paintings, or what?”

I stood there looking at her, wondering how to play this. I said carefully, “The city directory lists you as the tenant here, ma'am. Would you mind telling me who your landlord is?”

She turned things over in her mind and shrugged. “I don't know whether I should. Maybe the owner doesn't want people to know.”

“No offence, Mrs. Alfred, but it probably wouldn't hurt to tell me. The owner's name will be registered in Carson City. It would save me a little trouble, that's all.”

“Why should I save you a little trouble?” she said sharply.

Immediately, she relented. “I'm sorry,” she said, sounding as if she meant it. “That was stupid. I've had a long hot ride and perhaps my mood isn't the best. Would you like some cold lemonade?”

“Thanks. I'd like that very much.”

She threw her half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace and went through a bead-curtained doorway. I crossed to the fireplace and took a closer look at the picture hanging above the mantelpiece. It wasn't a painting, as I'd first imagined — it was a faded brass rubbing showing a round-faced king. The king wore a crown and was holding an orb and a sceptre.

The door to an adjacent room was open. An arrangement of photographs in silver frames stood atop an upright piano in a corner.

Joan Alfred returned with a jug of iced lemonade and two glasses and set them on a coffee table. She poured two glasses of lemonade, handed one to me and motioned me to a chair.

She sat opposite, smiled and said, “I'm sorry. This house is owned by a Mrs. Fantelli. Mrs. Agnes Fantelli. She lives in New York. The place has probably been in the Fantelli family's hands for more than a century. They were the original owners of the Pitchpine silver mine.”

The old house creaked.

Joan Alfred smiled again and said, “This place comes alive twice a day. In the morning when the sun expands the wooden boards, and at night when they shrink.” She lit another cigarette.

I stood up. The dogs raised their heads. “Do you mind if I pet them? I like dogs.”

“It's all right. They're used to you now.”

I dropped slowly to my heels, showed them the back of one hand, then gently stroked their heads. They lay docile, unresponsive, watching me with big yellow eyes. I looked at the brass rubbing and said, “Are you English, Mrs. Alfred?”

She was sitting with her legs crossed. My abrupt question unsettled her. One moccasin came free from a heel. To give herself time to think she leaned forward and pulled the moccasin on again. She said, “Me, English? Why do you ask?”

“That rubbing reminds me of some that I've seen before. They were done in English churches.”

She stared at the rubbing, lips pursed. “My husband was English,” she said and got up. “It belonged to him. That's supposed to be King Alfred. After Tommy had had a few drinks he used to boast that King Alfred was his ancestor.”

“And was he?”

“Not as far as I know. But then, I never met any of Tommy's family.” She smiled and moved closer. “Tommy was a sailor. He jumped ship in Oakland. To me, Tommy seemed exotic, larger than life, but then, I was young. I didn't know much about men. He was a lot more exciting than the boys I'd met in California. So I married him, like a sap.”

“Why were you a sap?”

She shrugged. “Tommy never loved me. I was his way to getting a green card.” She spoke self-deprecatingly. “But Tommy made me laugh. How he made me laugh.”

A strand of hair had fallen across her left eye. She brushed it away with the back of a hand.

“So. You married an Englishman. Doesn't that make you English too?”

She shook her head. “I'm a Russian out of Oakland, California. My father's family was from the Ukraine. Mother was Lithuanian.”

“That's what I thought,” I said softly. Her smile faded. Before she could speak I added, “I want to show you something, Mrs. Alfred.” She followed me into the next room and we looked at the upright piano together. I said, “That's Marcia Harkness's Heintzman. The one she bought in Reno.”

“Heintzman, that's a pretty common name for a piano, isn't it?” she said, avoiding my eyes.

I said, “You told me you were Russian. I think that your name before you married Tommy Alfred was Turko. Your brother was Frank Turko. Frank changed his name to Harkness when he went to Canada.”

But I'd overplayed my hand. She strode to the front door, flung it open and pointed outside. “Clear off. Get the hell out before I set the dogs on you!”

The dogs were growling and their hackles had risen.

I was tired. The trail to Pitchpine Road had been long. I said impati-ently, “Mrs. Alfred, neither you nor Marcia has anything to fear from me.”

“You've got that right, mister,” she said caustically. “Especially Marcia. You can find her at 2500 Stateline Road. She won't mind if you look her up, believe me.”

“'Cept for one thing,” a voice said. That ranch hand was standing on the veranda, holding a shotgun. He wagged the shotgun at me and said, “Listen up good, mister. You and me are going across to the trees together. You first. Put your hands in the air and keep them there. Try anything foolish and I'll blow you away. Now
move
.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The ranch hand was a tall, angular-faced man with a tight mouth and dark, pebble-hard eyes. He had thick shoulders and arms, a heavily muscled body, and — in spite of his 50-plus years — he moved as lightly as a dancer. Short-cropped hair covered his head like frosted wire wool. He had the look and manner of one who had spent many long dreary years pumping iron in prison exercise yards. This was Frank Harkness, I had no doubts about it.

He was about as expressive as a Caterpillar tractor, but I had him figured. This shotgun-toting incident had been spur of the moment, a senseless attention-grabbing device, the sort of drama that had probably served him well in jail, but was a recipe for disaster in the real world. Now he'd backed himself into a corner and didn't know what to do next. I kept these thoughts to myself while he checked the contents of my pockets and then wordlessly locked me inside a concrete-block pumphouse that stood adjacent to the water tank.

The pumphouse's metal door clanged shut, leaving me in the dark. I felt around for a light switch and turned it on. A twin-tube fluorescent fixture flared into light and added its electric buzz to the intermittent noise of a water pump mounted on a small surge tank. I leaned wearily against the tank. Frank Harkness represented the unknown, upon whom so many people had projected their terrors, real and imagined. That minute I felt useless, marginalized.

The pumphouse's sloping roof consisted of asphalted plywood sheets supported on two-by-six joists. The sturdy steel door hung on industrial hinges. After examining them I saw there was no way, short of using a drill or explosives, that I could remove the door's hinge pins.

A malicious impulse prompted me to switch the power to the pump off. The next time somebody flushed a toilet or ran a bath over at the house, they'd run out of water. After thinking about it, I switched the pump back on again. Harkness might get mad, come back and blast me with his shotgun. This wasn't Canada. I was in nra country. U.S. courts dealt leniently with gun-toting citizens defending — or claiming to defend — their homes from intruders.

Several hand tools dangled from wall hooks — a crescent wrench; a selection of screwdrivers, pliers and the like; and a ball-peen hammer. I picked up the hammer and hefted it. It would make a dandy weapon.

Time passed rather slowly, giving me ample time to think, and remember.

Tommy Alfred was the name of the man eating breakfast with Frank Harkness when the latter was arrested by Sheriff Firkins back in the '80s. Ergo, Joan Alfred was Frank's sister. That made her Marcia Harkness's sister-in-law.

I selected the largest screwdriver, climbed atop the surge tank and went to work. In 10 minutes I had separated a four-foot section of plywood roof from its joists. Nails creaked loose and laminated wood ripped noisily as the pieces came apart. I put my eyes to the opening. After watching for a few minutes, I saw Joan Alfred come out of the house and go across to the barn. A few minutes later she returned to the house and went indoors. There was no sign of the ranch hand.

I started levering again. It took me less than 15 minutes to create an opening wide enough to climb through. I got out, dropped to the ground — nothing the worse for my experience but for a ripped pant leg — and ran back to my car. I had the Chevy started and moving before Frank Harkness came charging out of the house. He gave me both barrels but it was a futile gesture. I was too distant. I honked my horn at him and kept going.

≈ ≈ ≈

Twenty-five Hundred Stateline Road was a cemetery. A marble stone over Marcia Hunt-Harkness's grave told me that she had died on February 18, 1987. Her grave marker was exactly like hundreds of others on that well-tended hillside. A vase of wilted roses, with a slight fragrance still clinging to them, stood before the slab.

The cemetery's custodian was a small portly man named Mr. Motherlake, wearing a Pirates baseball cap and well-tailored khaki coveralls. His office, in a miniature Parthenon, overlooked inescapable evidence of man's mortality. Being surrounded by death seemed to buoy Motherlake up rather than otherwise. When I entered his office, his grin of sunny optimism widened. He pointed to a seat opposite his desk and said, “You found her then?”

“Exactly where you said she would be.”

Motherlake clasped his hands across his wide stomach and said comfortably, “Never known 'em to move, once they get settled.”

I hesitated. I wanted to know Marcia Harkness's exact cause of death and that information was probably contained in Motherlake's filing cabinets. I said, “Mr. Motherlake, I need advice.”

“You certainly are a curious man,” Motherlake teased. “All you do is ask questions.”

“It's important for me to find out who signed Mrs. Harkness's death certificate.”

“Another young man in a hurry. I meet a lot of them here,” Motherlake said, his chin moving up and down. He exhaled a long sigh and added, “It's those gravestones out there. They remind people that time is running out and it makes 'em impatient.”

“I could go to Carson City, request the information through official channels, but weeks might pass before those bureaucrats moved.”

“True, Mr. Seaweed, and the chances are that even then those bur-eaucrats wouldn't tell you. They take death certificates very seriously in Carson City.”

“Here's the truth,” I said. “I'm a cop on the skids, working on a case in my own free time.”

Motherlake looked me in the eye. Everything I said was being filtered through his bullshit detector so I gave it to him straight. I said, “There's a kid back home who was railroaded into jail. Got five years for a crime he didn't commit. I'm trying to straighten it out, make amends.”

“I don't get it. This kid. Is he supposed to have killed Marcia Harkness?”

“No. It's complicated. Marcia's death is the key to solving some old mysteries.” I slapped my hand on his desk and added, “The hell of it is, Mr. Motherlake I'll swear on a stack of tombstones there's a copy of Marcia's death certificate in this very office.”