Jessie nodded. “It’s a good point. But I’ve figured out a couple of reasons. Velma doesn’t seem the type to run even if she knew how to cover her tracks, and that’s a lot harder to do in these days of computers. She’d have to cover her tracks awfully well with Walt after her, him being an ex-cop. I think she’d figure he’d track her down, she wouldn’t feel safe for a minute.”
“And if she simply divorced him,” Kate mused, “she probably wouldn’t come out with much of a settlement, considering the length of their marriage.”
Jessie moved her soup bowl aside and pulled a folded sheet from the Kennon case file, a real estate map of Seacliff. “I’ve measured mileage to the exact tenth, Kate. Drove from Gil’s Union Station to my house, then back to Walt’s. I’ve got to think he came as direct as he could to my place—Gil at the station said Walt picked the car up at six fifty-five, five minutes before the station closed. Walt arrived just after seven, like he usually did, and I’ve got four other witnesses to prove it.”
“And afterward,” Kate contributed, “aside from Velma’s statement about when he arrived home, he wouldn’t have reason to go anywhere. It was pouring rain—”
“And everything in town was closed, anyway,” Jessie concluded. “So I got one and eight-tenths miles clicked off what Walt drove. That leaves an extra two tenths to account for, plus whatever other tenths were on there because the gas station only wrote down the whole number. Meaning Walt or Velma drove the car half of that distance, and Velma drove it back the other half.”
Jessie extracted a pen from her uniform shirt pocket with the ease of habit. “Here’s the Kennon house.” She indicated a point on the map in the center of a circle inscribed in pencil. “I took a compass and measured and drew this circle around the Kennon house—”
Kate reached for the map, studied it closely. Jessie said, “Most of it’s residential.”
“True,” Kate said, “but there’s some vacant land in here, Jess, and part of a cemetery.”
“Rolling Hills Cemetery,” Jessie said with a nod. “Alice Kennon’s buried just on the other side of my circle. The cemetery’s all grass, kept perfect, just like a lawn, I checked it out Sunday. And all that vacant land, I walked every bit of it, Kate. I looked at every damn square inch.”
“You said it rained hard Friday night,” Kate pointed out. “Heavy rain could cover up traces of a grave.”
Jessie looked at her soberly. “I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t expect to find a grave. I mean, how could a little thing like Velma Kennon dig a grave? Anybody who’s ever put a shovel into the ground can tell you uncultivated earth is like digging into cement. Earth wet from rain is like lifting a pile of rocks.”
Their food arrived. Jessie looked at her swordfish with indifference. Kate sprinkled lemon on her lobster, then cut off a piece and munched on it as she continued her study of the real estate map.
Jessie said, “Let me fill you in about the other leads I checked out.”
“Sheriff Graham,” the young teller had said nervously, “I gave Mrs. Kennon just what she asked for—”
“I know you did, Sarah. Now just relax,” Jessie said in her most reassuring tones. “There’s no problem about it at all. Were any of the bills in series?”
Sarah nodded. “But that much money in cash, I had to take it from the PG&E payroll, and that’s close onto a hundred fifty thousand dollars, so there’s no telling which of those bills I gave her.”
Disappointed, Jessie said, “Thank you, Sarah. You call me now if you see any transaction Mrs. Kennon makes that’s unusual, all right? Confidential, you have my word.”
Jessie interviewed Ms. Neville, the librarian, who had telephoned Saturday afternoon as word of Walter Kennon’s disappearance spread around town.
“It was six weeks ago, Sheriff.” Ms. Neville peered at Jessie over the narrow rectangles of her reading glasses. “She never did check anything out. Every day for a week she came in here. And hasn’t been back since.” Her words were a sibilant, penetrating whisper in the single-room cavern that was Seacliff’s public library, crowded and murmurous at this mid-afternoon hour on the weekend. “Can’t say what she was reading, either. And that’s what seemed so suspicious. She’d just put her book right back up on the shelf and move off if I came anywhere near.”
The librarian’s reproachful frown deepened. “Why would anybody care if another person saw what she was reading?”
Maybe she just flat resented your nosiness, Jessie thought. But she said gently, “Ms. Neville, can you tell me what general section she spent her time in?”
“The sciences. Anatomy. Medicine.”
Jessie cut several pieces from her swordfish, moved them around on her plate. “I’ll tell you what else I did. I talked to everybody in the Kennon neighborhood—nothing. I ran a check on Velma Kennon’s background—nothing. I sent urgent inquiries to every doctor and pharmacy in Alta Vista county, all I’ve turned up so far is a Darvon prescription when Walt had dental surgery.”
Jessie took a forkful of baked potato. “I’ll tell you, Kate, I’m baffled. I can’t figure what Velma did or how she did it. Right now my theory ...” She thrust the forkful of potato down in recoil from the images. “I think maybe she’s chopped him up and got a piece tucked here and there.” She braced, expecting incredulous laughter.
But Kate said firmly, “Jess, put that nightmare out of your head. I’m not claiming this woman doesn’t have the alligator mentality it takes to do such a thing, we both know better. But look at your own body, think about all those quarts of blood. Imagine anybody trying to cut through bone and muscle. Imagine the kidneys, the intestines. With all respect, Jess—”
Jessie nodded hurriedly, feeling both foolish and immensely relieved. “Got to be an answer to this, Kate. Got to be.”
Kate said, “Why don’t I take a few bites of that swordfish you don’t want?”
Jessie cut a large section from her fish. “The rest of this’ll be a nice treat for Damon, my cat.”
Kate nodded absently, her eyes once more on the Pacific. “Before we go to your place, I’d like you to drive me around the circle on this map. While it’s still light.”
III
Velma Kennon sat in her living room sipping tea, the day’s Courier in her lap. But she was watching the patrol car, a black menace drifting along her street. Having passed the house twice, it would circle the block and come back once more. And a half hour from now, repeat the process. Velma knew the habits of Seacliff’s Sheriff’s Department well; she had been under its close surveillance for the past three days.
With an irritated shrug she unfolded the Courier. Her eyes were instantly drawn by a name in a small headline down the page:
Former D.A.R. Chapter Pres.
Margaret Paxton Dies Here
She shook the paper open and scanned the short article extolling the accomplishments of Margaret Paxton, wife to the recently deceased Grant Paxton, then turned to the obituary page. The notice was almost identical to the one six days ago, which had branded itself into her memory. Chilled, she dropped the paper back into her lap, stared out at the black police car cruising back past the house.
Not much longer, she reassured herself, sipping the hot, bracing tea. Only a matter of days before Sheriff Jessie Graham could no longer justify detaining her in Seacliff, before the Sheriff would have to pursue her all the way to the coast of Florida if she wanted to continue her useless surveillance. A few years from now Velma Gardiner Kennon would be the stuff of memory and legend in this town, the suspected murderess who had somehow conjured away the body of her husband.
Soon ... it would all happen soon, and exactly as she’d planned. She had a nice solid nest egg now, and the day would come when she’d have even more—when Walter was declared dead and his life insurance paid off, and the title to the house would clear as well. A few more days and she’d have her freedom. After two years of pure misery, she’d earned it.
Never again would she suffer the hu
miliation of facing the future without resources. She would be able to forget those months of paralysis after Johnny’s heart attack and the stunning news of his insolvency, when all the security she’d taken for granted for nearly thirty years had been wiped out. And the bitter months afterward when she’d been forced to live on the proceeds from her few good pieces of jewelry, when she’d learned how friendships just melted away once you were in trouble. And the job she’d been forced to accept as cashier in the dining room of the Duquesne, a hotel frequented by traveling salesmen and the women who found its dining room and bar convenient for assignations with those salesmen.
Walter Kennon had been an anomaly in such surroundings, pure chance bringing him there for the ten days of his visit with his ill brother. His interest in her had been tentative, shy and awkward; and she, having by this time taken cold-eyed stock of her situation, knew that marrying a man like the colorless, uninteresting Walter Kennon was probably about as well as she could do.
When he said she resembled his deeply mourned Alice, she had laid siege to Walter Kennon’s affections by asking myriad questions about Alice, then pretending to be like her in every way she could devise. To her despair, Walter had returned to Seacliff after those ten days—but a month later reappeared to sheepishly propose marriage. That very same day she had resigned her detested job and, in triumph, traveled back with him to Seacliff.
But the town was slow-paced and quiet beyond all imagining. The spring and summer months of cloudy, foggy weather were depressing, unmitigated by the presence of the ocean; and the modest stucco or frame houses and their ordinary inhabitants were equally depressing. Her first husband had loved to socialize, to dance and drink; Walter Kennon sternly disapproved of alcohol, and looked forward only to his weekly poker game. Of all her pretense before their marriage, he was most unforgiving of the lie that she, like Alice, knew the game of poker and loved to play it.
But, deadly dull as Walter Kennon might be, he was, she conceded, kind and decent, and a good provider. She lived comfortably, if not agreeably.
In the first days of their marriage he had shown her the contents of the locked desk drawer. “So you can rest easy about everything,” he told her. “There’ll be plenty enough for you, but I’ve written out this will making it a condition my brother Ralph’s taken care of, too. I’ve made Jessie Graham executor, I’m depending on you both.”
She had agreed, of course. She seldom disagreed, argued even more rarely. As the waif taken under his wing, any wishes of hers were subordinate to his decisions, and in his house she could not so much as move a pillow from sofa to chair without him moving it back. The ghost of Alice Kennon pervaded every room including the bedroom: Walter was indifferent to her physically.
Every aspect of their marriage was a sham, and her status in the life of this man, her distinct inferior, added a fresh layer of gall to all her other humiliations. Walter Kennon had married her only to keep his memories alive, to serve as a reflection of his enshrined Alice.
Smothered by her life, without any acceptable alternative, she daydreamed of moving back to Los Angeles to flaunt economic independence under the noses of the “friends” who had deserted her; she yearned to live independently amid the bright lights and energy of a major city. She longed for freedom unencumbered by Walter Kennon.
Then the letter from Bergan Construction Company had arrived. The company was interested in the property in Santa Barbara, prepared to make an offer. There was a toll-free eight-hundred number to call.
Walter had crumpled the letter, thrown it into the trash. “Alice’s parents left her that house. The Herreras, they’ve lived there for years, Alice promised they could stay so long as they pay the taxes and upkeep on the place. I’m bound to keep that promise.”
She had fished out the letter and called the toll-free number the following day. And learned that the land was now re-zoned, and Bergan Construction would offer a quarter of a million dollars clear cash, the buyer paying all expenses of the sale. Stunned by the magnitude of the offer, she explained the situation. Perhaps, Jack Bergan suggested, with Mrs. Kennon’s approval, and provided he had her cooperation in the matter of selling the property to him, he himself might talk to the tenants. Perhaps they could be persuaded to move out on their own ...
Two weeks later a terse communication had arrived from Mr. and Mrs. Raul Herrera. At the end of the month they would be vacating the home they had lived in for nearly thirty years. The brevity of the note, its coldness, had bewildered, then hurt, then infuriated Walter.
At the height of his railing over the Herraras’ lack of gratitude, Velma detailed the problems involved in refurbishing the house and finding suitable new tenants. When another letter from Jack Bergan fortuitously arrived in the next day’s mail, Walter picked up the phone and called the eight-hundred number. Velma did not know how Jack Bergan had managed the Herreras’ eviction, nor did she ever inquire.
She was now joint tenant on a bank account amounting to over two hundred and ninety thousand dollars, and heir to the house and Walter’s life insurance and pensions besides. She could not simply take the money from the bank account—even if Walter’s friends at the bank did not notify him moments after such a withdrawal, where could she run to that Walter would not find her? No, it would all be hers only when Walter died, and never mind that blood-sucking brother of his.
If only Walter would die.
The phrase echoing in her mind, she immediately told herself she meant nothing by it. Over the following days, as the thought further implanted itself, she argued that she was not truly contemplating murder, merely examining the possibility out of pure curiosity. And she continued to repeat this to herself during the months she spent seeking a method, a foolproof plan: she was merely searching out the solution to a difficult and fascinating puzzle, the only interesting thing she’d found to do since coming to this dreary town.
It was no easy matter, she learned, to safely rid oneself of a person. Modern crime detection techniques were too highly sophisticated. And when the person was an ex-Sheriff who knew how to protect himself, who had strong ties to current law enforcement, the problem was immeasurably more thorny.
She dismissed the idea of a handgun: how did one go about finding an unregistered weapon and disposing of it properly afterward? Walter, of course, had a gun—his old service revolver—but the possibility of arranging an accident with that weapon seemed hopeless.
And how did one go about obtaining undetectable or untraceable poison? Stabbing was out of the question; it required expertise as well as a high degree of luck, and made a dreadful mess besides. Other methods—gassing, bludgeoning, pushing Walter from a height, arranging an accident with the car—presented their own problems. What if the result was not death but permanent injury? What could be worse than being condemned to caring for Walter Kennon, invalid, for the rest of her life or his? And if she was caught and convicted of murder, she would undoubtedly go to jail for the rest of her life, if not face a hideous death inhaling cyanide in California’s gas chamber.
Given the fact that any method had to be absolutely foolproof, arranging Walter’s death by other than natural causes seemed an impossibility. Yet there had to be some way ...
IV
As Jessie traversed the circle she had drawn on the real estate map, Kate asked several times to stop. Once she got out of the car to look over a low bluff into a grassy ravine; then to tramp a weed-choked lot; then to scuff a jogging shoe in the dirt of another lot recently cleared of its brush. As daylight faded to gray, she had Jessie stop at Rolling Hills Cemetery.
Jessie stood with Kate on the tar-surfaced road alongside the graveyard, its long green hillside extending all the way down to the fog-shrouded sea perhaps a quarter of a mile away. A hand extended over her eyes as if she were shading them from the sun, Kate looked out over the perfectly sodded graves with their imbedded granite markers.
Realizing the memories undoubtedly triggered by this scene, Jessie offered gruff
ly, “My folks are buried here, you know.” She gestured toward a distant green hill. “On the old side where Alice Kennon is. It doesn’t have these flat headstones that all look alike.” As Kate nodded in reply, Jessie reflected that she herself was getting just as cantankerous as Walt Kennon about every change in the world she knew and loved.
Kate lowered herself to a knee and ran a hand over the bent Bermuda grass of the hillside. “Tell me again what Walt was wearing Friday night.”
“Gray corduroys, a blue plaid Pendleton shirt.”
“A plastic raincoat, you said.”
“That too. He arrived in it, left in it. A black one.”
Kate stood, brushed her hands together to remove the dust of the grass. She walked slowly and for some distance along the hillside, stopping just beyond a white stake to examine a single tire track beside the paved road, any distinguishing features of the track obliterated by the recent rain.
“I have to tell you,” Jessie muttered, staring down the smooth, steep hillside, “I considered the notion Velma might’ve rolled him down this hill and all the way to the ocean, I really did. I even walked it. But the land flattens out down there—” she gestured, “—a good hundred yards at the bottom of the hill. No way she could push or drag him to where the hill drops again. No way in hell.”
Kate said, “I’d have considered the exact same idea, Jess.”
Her hand once more across her eyes, Kate again surveyed the cemetery, a deepening gray shadow as nightfall approached. Jessie felt a renewed comfort that Kate was here and reviewing every detail of this investigation with her.
“Jess.”
Alerted by the tone, Jessie looked sharply at Kate, but she was turned away from her.
“Anne told me once she wanted cremation.” The tone was low, distant. “But I buried her, you know. Cremation was what her family wanted too, but they were good enough to leave me alone about it. The thing was, she burned to death. I couldn’t bear to burn her again. Can you understand that?”
Dreams and Swords Page 3
