Grave Error

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “You ask Harley about it?”

  “Didn’t have any reason to. Until now.”

  The sheriff got up and I followed him down the hall and into the police station. Sergeant Harley Cates was sitting behind his desk, overflowing his chair like a fresh loaf of bread.

  “Harley,” Sheriff Marks said, “I hear Al Rodman’s in town.”

  “Who?” Harley’s face got blank and unknowing, but not right away.

  “Al Rodman,” the sheriff went on. “Old buddy of yours, wasn’t he?”

  “Sure,” Harley answered. “I knew Al back in the old days. We hung out with the same gang, you know? But I ain’t seen Al in a long time.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  “What business is it of yours?” Harley snapped. “What I can’t figure is why you’re not locked up, peeper.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Obstructing justice.”

  “You wouldn’t recognize justice if it ran up and pissed on your leg, Harley,” I said. “Where’s Rodman?”

  “You son of a bitch,” Harley snarled. “I’ll get you yet.”

  “You’ll eventually get something, Harley. Probably the clap.”

  “Harley,” Sheriff Marks broke in, “sit down and shut up. I’m told you and Rodman were having a little conversation out back of Skinney’s yesterday. That true?”

  “Naw. Must have been someone else.”

  “You seen Rodman anywhere in the past week?”

  “Nope. Warrant come out or something?”

  Marks shook his head. “Just want to ask him some questions.”

  “Can’t help you, Sheriff,” Harley said. He didn’t look sorry about it, and I didn’t believe him for an instant.

  “How about Angie Peel, Harley?” I asked. “Did you know her?”

  “Sure. Best piece I ever had.”

  “Are you trying to say you made it with Angie Peel?” I asked.

  “I ain’t trying to say it, I am saying it. Just once, I’ll admit. But that was enough. Never had anything like it before or since.”

  “When was all this?”

  “Let’s see. Fifty-eight, I think. Last year in high school.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “What do you mean, how did it happen? You need a diagram or something?”

  “I mean did you rape her or what?”

  “I didn’t rape her. She just took me off one night and laid me. I didn’t have to do a thing except pull down my pants. Couldn’t believe it was happening, you want to know the truth.”

  “Who else did she favor in those days?”

  “Well, Rodman, mostly. Then that Whitson punk, there at the end. But Angie laid a lot of guys there toward the end, kind of like she was saying thank you, or good-bye or something. Hard to figure, Angie was. Kind of a whore, but kind of not, if you know what I mean.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “Right after the wreck. Went to see her over in the hospital. She was all bandaged up like a fucking mummy. Didn’t say a word. I hung around for a while and left. Ain’t seen her since.”

  “You sure?”

  “I said so, didn’t I? What’s the deal, anyway? You’re not poking around in the old Peel case, are you, Sheriff?” Harley’s words carried a threat, and we all knew it.

  “Looks like that case has gotten all heated up again, Harley,” the sheriff said, “what with Mrs. Peel’s murder.”

  “It’s a city matter, Sheriff. You just leave it be. We’ll handle it.”

  The sheriff’s eyes got hard as old fudge. “I thought I told you never to tell me what to do, Harley. You seem to have forgotten the little lesson I gave you awhile back. We may have to have another session right soon.”

  Harley licked his lips. “Naw. I don’t care what you do, Sheriff. You want to waste time working on city cases, you go right ahead. Don’t know why you’re so worked up about an old biddy and a drunk that’s been dead for twenty years, that’s all.” Harley’s eyes shifted focus. “Angie Peel,” he muttered. “I still think about that night. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me in this fucking town.”

  Harley’s eyes closed behind a curtain of nostalgia and the sheriff and I left him alone with his memory. I told Marks I thought I’d ask around and see if anyone had seen Rodman. He said he thought he’d do the same thing as soon as he finished some paper work. When I went outside, the air was as hot and thick as a bowl of chili.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I wandered down the street until I came to a place that looked like a likely spot for someone to go who was away from home and needed to catch a meal. A place someone like Al Rodman might drift into. Kay’s Place.

  All the booths but one were full and it wasn’t even dinnertime. A round display case on the counter held the biggest piece of pie I had ever seen. I slid onto a stool across from the pie and ordered a cup of coffee. Then I fit a cigarette between my lips and patted my pockets to find a match. Before I found a match I found the snapshot I had lifted from the closet at Elena Peel’s house. I’d thought about showing it to the sheriff, but I couldn’t think of a way to explain where I’d found it, so I still didn’t know who it was. But my bet was Angie Peel.

  The girl who looked back at me from the picture was young, seventeen maybe, but already there was nothing left for her to learn about seduction. Even from a faded, brittle, black-and-white snapshot her sexuality floated up to me like bubbles from a diving mask. Back arched, leg cocked, lips parted, she was a pubescent siren beckoning the photographer to his doom.

  She was wearing shorts and a halter, one of those wide elastic strapless things that bind women from their waists to their breasts and look like something you’d find on sale somewhere between the support stockings and the trusses. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and looped over one bare shoulder like a fine fur.

  She was posed all alone in a grassy meadow. What looked like the edge of a lake or a river crept into the upper corner of the picture and there was a stand of pine trees in the background, but not close enough to give perspective or balance to the picture. The photographer had been interested in the girl, not the landscape, and he had achieved what he wanted—an image he wouldn’t forget till the day he forgot everything.

  The waitress came with the coffee and I set the picture down on the table. I was assuming the girl was Angie Peel because I didn’t know why else Elena Peel would have kept the snapshot in a box in her closet. The girl in the picture certainly matched the accounts of Angie’s sensuality. It was easy to imagine her doling out sex like after-dinner mints and luring a boy like Michael Whitson away from a girl like Sara Brooke.

  I stared at the girl’s face for quite a while. It wasn’t as spectacular as the body, but it was compelling just the same. There was a look about her, that hint of innocence and puzzlement and daring you find in all sexy women. It’s a look that can’t be taught and can’t be faked; a woman has it by the time she’s sixteen or she never gets it. Marilyn Monroe had more of it than anyone in my memory and Angie Peel had enough of it to cause havoc in a place like Oxtail. I thought I’d remember if I had seen the face before, even allowing for a twenty-year lapse of time. I didn’t think I had.

  Something else about the picture tugged at me though. I went back over the case—the people, the places—but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I put the picture back in my pocket and sipped the dregs of my coffee and wondered who had taken the picture and where it had been taken and what had happened before and after the shutter had clicked. At some point I crossed my arms on the counter and lay my head down on them. The next thing I knew someone was shaking my shoulder. I looked up into the powdered face of a big buxom blonde, the kind that wait tables in little cafes in places like Oxtail.

  “This ain’t the bus depot, Mac,” she screeched cheerfully. “You’re snoring so loud old Homer over there can’t hear the jukebox.”

  I said I was sorry.

  “Homer claims if he can’t hear
Jambalaya at least once a day his liver gets puny.”

  I asked her to convey my apologies to Homer. I also asked her to bring me another cup of coffee.

  “You need some rest, son,” she said when she got back. “There’s a motel three blocks down. Got a few roaches, but they ain’t big enough to do any permanent harm. And don’t ask me how I know,” she added with a grin.

  I told her I might give it a try. Then I asked if she knew a man named Rodman.

  “You mean Al?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Used to. He grew up here. A few years older than me, but I know who he is. What you want to know?”

  “Seen him lately?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “Got a message for him. From some people in the city. Any idea where he’d be if he was in town?”

  “Let’s see. He used to go with a girl named Angie Peel, but she left town. You probably know all about that, right? Everyone around here does.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, after Angie left, Al ran around with a girl named Becky Cardozo. Becky and I used to bowl on the same team. Mixed league, you know? She works over at the Safeway now. Bakery department. Anyways, she used to talk about this Rodman guy all the time, before she got married at least. Haven’t heard her talk about him lately that I recall, but she might be able to help you. That’s the only thing I know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and when you talk to Becky go kind of easy. Her husband got killed over in Vietnam and her kid turned out Mongoloid, or whatever you call it, and Becky’s about worn down to nothing.”

  I got directions to the Safeway, finished off my coffee, left a big tip, and drove to the supermarket. The sky had become overcast and was getting darker by the minute. The gray haze spread over the city like a shroud. As I went inside the store I heard a man say something about a fire.

  I made my way past the check-out lines and the stack of midweek specials back to the bakery counter and asked the woman standing there if Becky Cardozo was around. The woman looked at me as if I had a gold tooth and a ring in my nose, then turned and walked away without saying a word. After a minute another woman came out of a room in the back and told me her name was Becky and asked me what I wanted. The words eased out with the vitality of fresh ketchup.

  Becky was tall and thin with straight blonde hair that hung below her shoulders and wire-rimmed spectacles that gave her a vacant, unfocused look. With fifteen more pounds she would have been attractive. Right now she was using all her strength just to stay on her feet.

  I smiled like a salesman and told her my name and said I was looking for Al Rodman and that I’d been told she might know where I could find him. Something flashed behind her retinas and then was gone. She sighed heavily and shook her head. “I haven’t seen Al in a long time,” she said. “He doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I heard he was back in town. Someone thought they saw him over by the pool hall yesterday.”

  Becky shrugged. “If he’s here I don’t know about it. I don’t interest Al anymore, now that he’s been to the city.” Her smile was wan and lifeless. “I never did interest him all that much, I guess.”

  That was probably the best thing that had ever happened to Becky, but I didn’t say so. She wouldn’t have believed me. I asked if she knew where Rodman might go if he had come back to town. She mentioned the name of a bar and the name of a woman. The bar was on the west end of town and the woman worked in the kitchen at the Whitson ranch. She was Rodman’s sister.

  “Did you know Angie Peel?” I asked suddenly. There was no visible reaction.

  “Sure,” Becky said listlessly. “I used to know Angie. We were friends, sort of.”

  “Seen her lately?”

  “No. Is she back too?” She was as interested in Angie’s return as she was in the stock quotations.

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “Do you happen to know where she lives now?”

  “Not for sure. San Francisco, I think. Or maybe LA.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Someone. Al, I guess. I can’t remember. Why?”

  “Just wondering. I’m trying to locate her, too.”

  “Are you from around here, mister?” Becky said vaguely. “I don’t remember you.”

  “I’m from the city.”

  “I didn’t think you were from Oxtail,” Becky said. “I’ve got to get back to work.” She turned and drifted back to the bake shop. If you didn’t live in Oxtail you weren’t of any significance. You were in another world.

  I went outside and cruised around until I found a phone booth. When I did I put in a dime and asked the operator to put me through to the Cypress Inn and charge it to my office number. It took him a while, but he got the job done.

  As the circuits clicked and bleeped I watched the large cloud of smoke that had built up on the horizon. Something was definitely on fire, something big. The sky had turned a peculiar color, almost purple, and the air smelled like a wet kitten. A fire truck clanged by in the next block and I almost didn’t hear Sara Brooke when she came on the line. After her first word I knew something was wrong.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Marsh? Is that you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Thank God. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Claire’s gone. I woke up and she wasn’t here. She’s disappeared. I don’t see how it could have happened, Marsh. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Have you looked around town?”

  “Of course. I’ve been out all morning trying to find her. I’ve looked everywhere. No one’s seen her.”

  “Did she leave anything behind?”

  “Everything. As far as I can tell the only things missing are her wheelchair and the outfit she wore yesterday.”

  “Did you look for a note?”

  “She didn’t leave one. I looked.”

  “Are you a sound sleeper?”

  “I don’t know. I guess. Why?”

  “Any chance you were drugged last night? In a bar or restaurant? Somewhere like that?”

  “We did go out for a drink. A place called the Red Lion. But I don’t see how anything like that could have happened.”

  “Any sign of violence?”

  “None. It’s like she disappeared in a puff of smoke.”

  “Did you leave her alone yesterday at any time?”

  “Yes, but not for long. I went out to get a paper first thing in the morning, then later I went out to my cabin for a second, to make sure it was all right. I wasn’t gone more than a half hour. And I’m sure Claire stayed in the room all that time.”

  “But she could have gotten a phone call.”

  “I suppose. Who do you think called her?”

  “It could have been Roland Nelson, but I think she would have left a note if she went off with him. If it was Michael Whitson, she might have snuck out on you because she was afraid you might not let her see him. Or she could have been kidnapped by almost anyone.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s not possible. I was right here.”

  “Burglars steal things out of bureau drawers all the time when people are sleeping five feet away. It can happen.”

  Sara Brooke started to cry. “What should I do, Marsh? We’ve got to find her.”

  “Stay there till tonight. Keep looking, but stay available. Check with your hotel for messages. Claire may show up. But if nothing’s changed by tonight, go back to the city. I’ll get in touch with you there. Eventually.”

  “Should I call Roland?”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  And I didn’t. It was the worst thing that could have happened, except for one. I’d thought Claire would be safe in Carmel and I’d been wrong. It was a gamble I hadn’t had the right to make.

  “Call me the minute you find out anything,” Sara added. I told her I would. An
d I told her to be careful.

  “We’ve just got to find her, Marsh. We’ve got to.”

  “I know we do,” I said.

  I hung up and called the Nelsons. A housekeeper told me they were both out and weren’t expected back till evening. I called the Institute but they weren’t there either. Then I called Andy Potter and his secretary told me he was out of town and wouldn’t be back in the office till tomorrow. I didn’t call anyone else. I was out of dimes and I was out of help.

  I could have driven over to Carmel and tried to pick up the trail from there, but I didn’t think it would be worth the time. Whoever we were dealing with didn’t make many mistakes. He hadn’t left anything behind yet and I didn’t think he was going to start now. I thought it over for a while longer and could only think of one thing to do.

  So I did it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I wanted to get to the Whitson ranch but I couldn’t make it. Police were turning back cars, causing a massive traffic jam on the highway in front of the Whitson estate.

  I joined the line of cars and began inching my way along. From time to time an ambulance or a fire truck bumped by on the shoulder and slipped into the Whitson driveway. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  The smoke was thick and acrid as I got near the drive. It burned my throat and made my skin crawl. Ashes snowed down on the hood of my car. I closed the windows but it didn’t help, so I opened them again.

  As I inched past a pair of cops directing traffic one of them said there was no way to save the house with the wind the way it was. The other said he’d heard old man Whitson had died trying to save a diamond necklace. Then the first one said he’d heard the old man was okay but the house was a total loss. I just kept going.

  When I was about fifty yards from the driveway I pulled off the road and parked. One of the cops looked over at me and I yelled “Press” and he shrugged and nodded. I ran across the highway and found a space in the hedge and squeezed through it and stumbled through the walnut grove toward the house.

  It was almost too dark to see. The driveway was clogged with vehicles, the fire engines standing like scarlet stallions surveying their brood. Nothing is more beautiful than a big fire truck, and nothing more frightening than a big fire.