The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  Besides, one of the first things Shar taught me was the axiom that if you don’t know what sort of situation you might encounter, it’s best to just show up and let the element of surprise work in your favor.

  The man who came to the door was old and frail. He peered myopically at me through the screen. No, he said, Mrs. Keel didn’t live there anymore. He’d bought the house in a foreclosure sale four years ago.

  “Do you know her current address?”

  He cupped his hand to his ear. I repeated the question more loudly.

  “Oh, address. No. She might’ve gone to live with relatives after the accident.”

  “What accident?”

  “Bad smashup out on the highway. She and her husband, they owned a big rig, were almost home from a long haul. He fell asleep, was killed. She ended up paralyzed.”

  I’d told the highway-patrol guy that truckers were the real menace. Too damn many of them are either hopped up on speed and driving like lunatics or coming down and falling asleep. “D’you know anybody who might’ve kept in touch with Mrs. Keel?”

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  So what now? Canvass the neighbors. No—first find a phone, call Ricky, then get a cup of coffee. No—breakfast. I was starving.

  The Hyatt Regency wouldn’t put me through to Mr. Savage. He’d given strict orders to hold all calls, but I could leave a voice-mail message, if I liked. I thought about raising hell, but what good would that do? Besides, he needed his sleep if he was to perform well tonight. I left basically the same message as before: I was okay, was following up on a promising lead, and would get back to him. Then I went to the coffee-shop booth where the waitress was just delivering my breakfast and tore into a stack of pancakes drowned in butter and maple syrup.

  When Shar is frustrated or upset she loses her appetite—which has always struck me as grossly unfair, since she never gains an ounce, no matter what gastronomic atrocities she commits. I, on the other hand, stuff my face and then pay for it by extra poundage and long workouts at the gym. I’d surely pay for today, because not only was I frustrated but—now—upset and a little hurt.

  I understood why Ricky had his calls held before a concert. He’d done the same yesterday in L.A. But couldn’t he have asked them to put mine through? Didn’t he want to hear my voice, as he’d said he did every time he called during the desperately unhappy weekend when he realized his marriage had come unraveled?

  Well, maybe he had faith in my ability to take care of myself. Maybe he knew that when I said I was okay, I really was.

  No, I thought, adding more syrup to what was left of the stack, blasé wasn’t his style when it came to the people he cared for. And he’d admitted to a protective feeling toward me, which I didn’t mind, because nobody had ever wanted to look out for me before, not even when I was a little girl. When you feel that way about the woman you love, you don’t have her calls held and just go to sleep.

  The woman he loved…

  I’d phone him again before he had to go to the coliseum to run his sound checks.

  Twenty-four

  1:11 P.M., MDT

  The phone was ringing. Loudly.

  Hy mumbled something, grabbed for it, knocked it off the nightstand.

  “Goddamn it to hell!”

  I winced. It was going to be a long afternoon and evening.

  “Hello!… Yes, she’s right here.”

  With the heavy draperies closed I could barely see his hand as he extended the receiver. Our fingers collided and the ring he wore grazed me.

  “Ow! Dammit!”

  He sighed. “Sorry.” He must’ve also thought it was going to be a long afternoon and evening.

  “Hello?”

  “Shar, what’s going on there?” Mick.

  “Don’t ask. What have you got?”

  “She didn’t fly anyplace. She rented a car at LAX. Hertz.”

  “What did she give as her contact address?”

  “Here at the hotel.”

  “Damn. Look, Mick, she didn’t by any chance make any notes while she was using your computer?”

  “I already checked—no.”

  “Well, thanks.” I peered at the digital clock on the nightstand. “You heading up to Tahoe soon?”

  “I’m packed and about to leave.”

  “Give my love to the family. I’ll see you when… when this is all over.”

  Hy had gone into the bathroom. He came out, got back in bed. “We could’ve slept nearly another hour,” he said wistfully.

  “I know.” I told him what Mick had found out.

  “You know,” he said, “sometimes Rae can be a pain in the ass.”

  I restrained myself from saying that sometimes he could too, and went into the bathroom myself. When I came back he had the bedside lamp on and was talking on the phone. He held out the receiver. “Ricky.”

  “Hi, what’s happening?”

  “She called again, but the desk screwed up and didn’t put her through. Same message—except this time she said she was following up on a promising lead.”

  “I suspected as much. What time did the message come in?”

  “Eleven-twenty—ten-twenty at home, if that’s where she is.”

  “Well, wherever she is, at least she’s okay.”

  “She better be.” His voice grew ragged with emotion. “I don’t think I could take it if anything happened to her. A person can stand only so much loss.”

  “You’re not going to lose her.”

  We talked a moment more, then I gave the receiver back to Hy and propped myself against the pillows. He hung it up and did the same. For a while we lay there without speaking.

  Always before we’d had such a strong, close connection that we often didn’t have to speak to know what was on the other’s mind. But today I couldn’t fathom his thoughts—only sensed that he was disturbed and a little sad, turning inward in a way that he hadn’t for quite some time. Finally I took his long-fingered hand. He didn’t pull away.

  The phone rang again.

  He sighed and disentangled his fingers, leaned over and picked up. “Yes?… Yes, she is.” He handed the receiver to me. “Jenny Gordon, in Austin.”

  “Hi, Jenny.”

  “Hi, did ya’ll get my fax?”

  “What fax?”

  “About Terriss’s sister. I sent it to your hotel in L.A. late yesterday afternoon.”

  “It must not’ve gotten delivered.”

  “Well, Terriss gave her doctor here the name of a sister as next of kin not living with her, lady in Paso Robles, California.” She gave me the details and I wrote them down.

  “How’d you get a doctor to give you information about a patient?”

  In a sultry voice she replied, “I’ve got my ways.” Then she added, “Actually, he’s a poker buddy.”

  “Well, thanks. Did you come up with any connection between Terriss and Curtin?”

  “Nothing more than them both performing at the lodge. They knew each other, but people I talked with said it was no big thing.”

  “Listen, I’ve got a Nashville phone number for that Tod Dodson, but he hasn’t returned my call.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She took down the number and hung up.

  Hy had placed the phone on the bed between us. I put the receiver into its cradle and told him what Jenny had said.

  When I finished, he stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “That hotel’s pretty good about delivering faxes. Wonder if Jenny’s found its way to somebody else.”

  “Rae?”

  He nodded.

  “Would she withhold it from me?”

  “Who knows what she’d do these days? A week ago I wouldn’t’ve expected to see her holding hands with your brother-in-law on the front page of the Insider.”

  “Or facing down that crowd at Union Station. You know—”

  The phone rang again. Charlotte Keim. “Hey, there. I’ve dug up a report from Richman Labs from the pile that’s burying your desk; it’s ab
out some kind of plant, and the case number is for Savage.”

  The analysis on the Carolina jessamine. “What does it say?”

  “‘Sample is Gelsemium sempervirens, commonly known as Carolina jessamine. Due to flowering cycle (late winter to early spring), it can be assumed to have been hothouse grown. Evidence of frost damage throughout.’ That’s it.”

  “Frost damage?”

  “Yeah. Weird, huh?”

  Not so weird, if you considered that the heat in the Two Rock Valley had been intense the night of the concert. Whoever had placed the jessamine in Ricky’s trailer had probably kept it fresh in a cooler.

  Keim and I discussed a few more of the items on my desk, and she agreed to take care of them. I’d just hung up when the phone rang yet another time.

  “Jesus!” Hy exclaimed. “I feel like we’re running a bookmaking joint here!”

  I answered. Linda Toole. “I’m getting to the bottom of this thing with the banner, and I don’t like it one bit. The Amtrak representative who received it swears up and down that it was in the package with our banner.”

  “Interesting. Who packaged yours?”

  “Well, I picked it up at the printer’s; it was a rush job, and I was worried it wouldn’t get delivered on time. I took it to the office, gave it to the receptionist, and told her to have it messengered over to Amtrak.”

  From yesterday’s visit to Ethan Amory, I could picture that reception area: large and open, with easy access from both the hallway and the inside offices. “Who was around there at the time?”

  “Well, Ethan. Kurt. Pete, Norm, and Forrest. Rats.”

  “What were Rats and the band members doing there?”

  “Picking up cash for incidentals while on tour.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “My assistant. Rick’s secretary. Ethan’s secretary. Other office support staff.”

  “You ask the receptionist about this?”

  “Uh-uh. She’s taking a couple of vacation days, and I can’t reach her.”

  “Damn! Well, keep trying.”

  As I hung up, Hy gave the phone an evil look. “We might as well get up,” he said. “That thing isn’t going to quit.”

  “No, wait a few minutes. I want to tell you what Toole found out—as well as what I found out yesterday. You never did give me the chance to brief you.”

  “Sorry about that. I wasn’t in a very good mood last night.”

  I waited, but he didn’t elaborate, so I launched into my lengthy account. When I finished he was silent for a moment.

  “Terriss’s killing the boyfriend’s fish was a nasty symbolic act,” he finally said.

  “A nasty indicator of her mental state then—and a nastier indicator of what it might be now.”

  “And of what she might do. You know, McCone, I think you were right in what you said yesterday morning—we’d better be prepared for something very, very grim on Saturday night in Austin.”

  RAE’S DIARY:

  1:18 P.M., PDT

  “Austin?” the records clerk at Sierra Vista Medical Center said. “No, she didn’t go there after she was discharged.”

  “But you won’t tell me where she did go?”

  “Our patient records are confidential, Ms. Kelleher. I’ve already told you more than I should.”

  “If I were a police officer, would you tell me?”

  “I’d have to check with my supervisor on that, but he’s out of town, and since you’re not an officer anyway—”

  “I know.” I left the office, followed the arrows on the floor to the lobby, and went out into the early-afternoon sunlight. The heat was godawful here, and even though I’d changed into a sleeveless shirt in the restroom of the coffee shop, I was about to melt into a tired little puddle.

  And I was fresh out of leads.

  One of Veronica Keel’s former neighbors had told me that after the accident she’d been taken to the trauma unit at Sierra Vista, so I’d zoomed down here, sure I could get the address I needed. But I’d forgotten how prickly hospital administrators can be, and now I was at a dead end. Or was I?

  I went back into the air-conditioned chill of the hospital and found a phone booth. In my address book I located the SFPD number for Adah Joslyn, Shar’s friend on Homicide. But Adah wasn’t there; she’d gone to Mexico on vacation.

  Did I wish to speak to anyone else? Immediately Greg Marcus, Shar’s former boyfriend and a captain on Narcotics, came to mind. I asked for him, the Homicide guy transferred me, and I was told Greg was off duty. I had his home number, but I couldn’t bring myself to call him. Greg thinks I’m a ditz, and his condescending manner always sets me off; the last time had been two weeks ago, when I called him a chauvinist porker. You don’t ask somebody you’re barely speaking to to use his official status to extract information from a hospital-records clerk—especially on his day off.

  Another dead end.

  Think, Rae. Think about what you know about Veronica Keel.

  Okay, she and her husband owned their big rig. They were independent truckers, probably a driving team. Not an easy life: You’ve got no union, no benefits; you’ve got big payments on the truck, lots of repair and maintenance bills.

  Repairs and maintenance…

  I opened the Yellow Pages. The listing under “Truck” in the index was nearly a column long. In addition to buying trucks and their various components, you could have them lettered, painted, pooled (whatever that was), steam cleaned, washed, weighed, and wrecked (which was what eventually happened to the Keels’s).

  I took a look at the long listing under “Truck Equipment, Parts, and Accessories,” said, “Damn!” and shut the directory. It would take me a week to contact all of them and ask if they knew anything about Veronica Keel’s present whereabouts.

  Now, wait a minute, Rae. What else do you know about truckers?

  They eat at truck stops. They probably take a lot of Rolaids. They talk on CB radios. They drink too much coffee. Some of them take uppers. They have hemorrhoids. They probably listen to Ricky Savage songs.

  Ricky…

  Concentrate, Rae. Okay, a trucker’s life is rough. You’re out there on the road alone all the time. If you’re an independent, you’re really alone. Nobody to fall back on but yourself. Sort of like independent private investigators, come to think of it, or even small-agency owners like Shar and Jenny Gordon.

  So what do they do?

  They join organizations and bitch a lot about how they get stuck paying for their own health insurance.

  I opened the directory again and looked up “Organizations.” Turned to “Business and Trade.”

  Central Coast Independent Truckers Association, on Higuera Street.

  It was worth a try.

  Twenty-five

  2:27 P.M., MDT

  Can you blame me for being worried?” Ricky asked.

  He sat in one of the big leather chairs in the dark-paneled bar off the lobby, wearing shorts and a Midnight Train tee, his fingers toying nervously with a glass of beer on the low table between us. Driven from his suite, I thought, by sheer stir-craziness and not even noticing the sidelong glances of the pretty cocktail waitress, who had recognized him. His bodyguards were drinking Cokes at a nearby table.

  Hy and I had tracked him down before heading over to the fairgrounds, and I’d taken a few minutes to brief him on what Rae was probably doing. I’d thought it might reassure him some, but instead it made him even more edgy.

  “What if this sister is as whacked out as Patricia?” he asked. “What if Patricia’s there, for God’s sake?”

  “Hy and I think she’s in Austin, and I doubt Rae’ll find the sister, anyway. I checked, and there’s no phone listing for her in Paso Robles; she’s probably moved.”

  “If that’s the case, why’d Red go up there? And why hasn’t she called again?”

  “I don’t know. If she does, will the desk remember to put her through?”

  His eyes narrowed. “They will now—and they
know exactly where to find me.”

  “Shouldn’t you be upstairs getting some rest?”

  “Sister Sharon, I couldn’t rest if I drank two six-packs of this.” He motioned with his glass, sipped.

  “Well, try to go easy. When’re you supposed to run your sound checks?”

  “Five, but maybe I’ll go over early.”

  “See you later, then.”

  Hy and I went out into the dry, blistering heat; the sky was milky blue and a heat haze blanketed the Sandia Mountains. As we climbed into the RKI van that was waiting in front, he asked, “Is he going to blow his performance tonight?”

  “I don’t think so; he’s always had good control on stage. Of course, he’s never been this stressed before. It sure would help if Rae surfaced.”

  “Especially if she surfaced with a solid lead.”

  The Tingley Coliseum, where Ricky would be performing, was next to the racetrack on the New Mexico State Fairgrounds. Hy steered the van past an iron-gated main entrance that reminded me of a military base’s, explaining, “I want to go in the way the limos will, follow the route they’ll take to the east end of the building.”

  I glanced at him, trying for perhaps the dozenth time that day to assess his mood. He seemed more laid back, but I still felt a remoteness—a tension, too. But why shouldn’t he be tense? He’d told me that from the diagrams he’d studied, the coliseum looked to be something of a security risk.

  We turned in at a second gate, drove past livestock barns, made a right onto a tree-shaded street lined with low, salmon-colored buildings trimmed in turquoise. The coliseum appeared ahead of us: also salmon, and domed. Numerous wide pipe-railed staircases descended from exit doors on the upper tier, and the bowed-out canopy over the lobby entrance was garnished with chromium trim and bold block letters that spelled its name. Straight out of the fifties, I thought, and proud of it.