There's Something in a Sunday

by Marcia Muller

  I shrugged, trying to control a flash of anger. “You’re right. So, since we’re speaking of business, I’ll get to the reason I’m here.”

  “Somehow I didn’t think this was a social call. What do you want this time?”

  “The truth-for once.”

  “About what?”

  “Irene Lasser.”

  Vicky set the unlighted joint down and scurried back to the headboard, where she once again cradled the pillow defensively. “Who?” she said.

  “Come on, Vicky. You know Irene. You loaned her your car last Monday, and you gave her one of those neighborhood-business shopping bags so she could load it with goodies and take it to Bob Choteau at the place he’s hiding in the park.”

  “I didn’t- Who’s Bob Choteau?”

  “No more lies, Vicky.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who you’re talking about. You copied some license-plate number down wrong, and now you’re trying to blame me for things I didn’t do, for knowing people I’ve never heard of. I didn’t loan my car to anybody, I didn’t take a bag of food to some bum-”

  She realized her mistake; that showed in her eyes. Quickly she got off the bed, ran into the dressing room area, and slammed the door. The lock clicked into place.

  “What are you going to do, Vicky?” I called. “Sit in there and scream off and on for twenty-four hours?”

  Her reply was close to a scream. “There’s a phone in here. If you don’t get off my property right away, I’m calling the cops!”

  That I didn’t need. I got off her property.

  SIXTEEN

  The elderly desk clerk at the Kingsway Motel knew Frank Wilkonson but said he hadn’t checked in as usual the night before.

  “Funny about that,” he added. “He’s got a standing reservation.”

  I looked disappointed and said, “I was so hoping to see Frank. Are you sure he didn’t just come in later than usual? Maybe somebody else checked him in.”

  “I’m the only one on duty Saturday nights, miss. There’s no way he could have escaped my notice.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have missed him. A couple of my other friends mentioned that he’s been staying here regularly. I guess you’ve seen them-they’ve visited him a few times now.”

  The old man looked thoughtful, pausing to suck contemplatively at his yellowed teeth. “Just the one fellow.”

  “Which one?”

  “The fellow with the funny curly hair.” At my inquiring look he added, “Curls up from the front here”-he indicated the center of his own bald pate-“like one of those ribbons on a birthday package, the kind you run the scissors over and it comes out all twisty.”

  Gerry Cushman would probably not have been flattered by the description. “Oh, that’s Gerry,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in ages. When was he by?”

  “Two weeks ago? I can’t recall for sure, but that sounds right. He said he’d spotted your friend Wilkonson leaving, but hadn’t been able to catch him. I told him about the standing reservation, so I guess they got in touch. Hard to tell who’s visiting who in this place, but that’s like it should be. The guests have a right to their privacy.”

  Bet they don’t get to exercise that right much with you on the desk, I thought. I fished a scrap of paper from my bag and wrote my home number on it. “Will you call me if Frank comes in? Without telling him I’ve been here? I want to surprise him.”

  The old man’s eyes grew shrewd. He’d probably spent his adult lifetime on motel row; he wasn’t all that easy to fool. He said, “It was worth twenty dollars to your friend Gerry to surprise him.”

  I reached in my bag for my wallet. “It’s worth twenty to me, too.”

  The old man smiled. “I like surprises as well as the next man.”

  When I arrived at the Murphy Windmill, the green Ranchero still stood under the cypress tree. Two parking tickets fluttered against the windshield. I pulled the MG onto the verge behind it and studied the mill.

  It was close to eleven; the day had turned sunny and warm. Joggers pounded by; bicyclists pedaled lazily along; riders on horses rented from the park stables paused to look at the decaying windmill. By now the people who called the mill home might either be inside or out taking advantage of the good weather. It didn’t matter which because there was no way I could investigate further until the park users cleared out and darkness fell.

  I made a U-turn and headed for home.

  Watney was not pleased with me. He grudgingly accepted the food I placed in his empty dish, ate ravenously, and then stomped off into the blackberry vines. Probably the Curleys had assumed I’d be home long before this; poor old Wat had had to depend on his own rusty hunting skills. It didn’t particularly bother me; the creature was too damned fat for his own good. But his greeting set the tone for the rest of the day.

  First I dragged the cordless out onto the sunny deck and tried to call Jack Stuart. Hank answered the phone at All Souls and told me Jack wasn’t expected back until around noon the next day. I asked him if he knew anything about the beneficiaries under Rudy Goldring’s will, and he said no, Gilbert Thayer had drawn it up. Since none of us had bothered to ask Gilbert where he was going when he’d quit the co-op, I had no idea how to reach him-nor did I particularly want to talk with him.

  Next I tried to call Ben Gallagher for an update on the Goldring investigation. Ben was on duty but out of the office, and they didn’t know when he’d be back. I left a message.

  Then I sat for a while, thinking about the Lasser-Cushman connection. Maybe my initial assumption had been wrong; maybe Irene’s connection was with Gerry, not Vicky. She could be one of the women he played around with. He could have loaned her his wife’s car. Perhaps that was what had provoked the fight Gerry and Vicky had had last night. If so, I doubted I’d get any more out of Gerry than I had his wife. I especially doubted he’d tell me why he’d been at the motel asking after Frank Wilkonson. The thing to do was find Lasser.

  I went inside and burrowed through the closet where I keep my collection of Bay Area phone directories, checking them for Irene Lasser, I. Lasser, I. Johnstone, I. L. Johnstone, and other variants thereof. None of the combinations was listed. I also checked for Susan Lasser, on the off chance the daughter was old enough to have her own phone. The results were just as negative.

  On my way back outside, I stuck my head through the door of the half-completed bedroom in what had once been my back porch. I’d been remodeling the house-a cottage built to shelter victims of the 1906 quake and fire-piecemeal since I’d bought it; I was likely to still be remodeling it in 2006. The space looked more like a demolition site than a construction zone, and it made me feel as frustrated as my lack of progress on untangling the relationships between Goldring, Wilkonson, et al.

  I shut the door on the mess and went back to the deck. The sunshine quickly perked up my flagging spirits, and I grabbed the cordless and called the Kingsway Motel. Wilkonson still hadn’t checked in. Next I punched out Rae’s number; no one answered. Undaunted, I decided to call Anne-Marie. Hank was at All Souls, so it was a perfect time for us to get together for a heart-to-heart. Both of us were reticent where our private lives were concerned, but she’d helped me a lot at the time of my breakup with Don, and perhaps I could return the favor.

  All I got was the machine, and the damned thing cut me off before it even beeped.

  I put the phone down and leaned back in my lounge chair. Thought of my youngest sister, Patsy, who, together with her new husband Evans, had recently opened a restaurant in Ukiah. I couldn’t call them-Sunday dinner would be going on. There were other friends here in the city I could call-Paula, Carolyn, Liz, Alison-but on nice Sundays San Franciscans tend to take to the out of doors, and they probably wouldn’t be home. I should call my mother, but I didn’t want to. Since my breakup with Don, Ma had been harping at me because she was afraid I’d never get married. I even considered phoning my old friend Wolf, a fellow PI with whom I’d shared a case, but I
knew on Sunday he’d be with his lady friend, Kerry Wade.

  Why is it, I thought, that when you’re in the mood to talk, no one calls? When you want peace and quiet, the phone never quits ringing.

  I stayed there on the lounge chair for a long time, until the sun patch had moved away from the deck, across the scraggly backyard, and into the shadows of the pines at the rear of the lot. At about five-thirty I got up and went into the house for a glass of wine. I’d recently started drinking the good stuff-the varieties with corks-rather than the jug brands that had been a staple of my youth. The cork in the bottle of white zinfandel that I tried to open was dry-so much for the good stuff-and when I finally wrenched it free, the corkscrew skewed sideways and made a jagged slice in my thumb.

  Sunday, I thought. Sunday evening coming down.

  SEVENTEEN

  Wilkonson never did check into his motel, and I decided it would be unproductive, if not foolhardy, to return to the windmill. So at six the next morning, after a good night’s sleep, I waited halfway down the Cushmans’ cul-de-sac in my MG. I suspected that sooner or later one of them would make contact with Irene Lasser; I’d follow whoever left first today, and if that didn’t produce results, concentrate on the other tomorrow.

  As I waited, staring at the row of golden-leaved poplars, I felt a twinge of guilt over neglecting my duties at All Souls. But I pushed it aside, reminding myself that my desk was relatively clear. Also, it was time Rae began shouldering her share of the work. I’d tried to reach her up until ten the previous night; there had been no answer. So I’d decided to proceed on the assumption she’d arrive at the office on time and deal with any urgent business.

  The Cushmans obviously didn’t believe in tackling the world too early on a Monday. It was close to eight when the automobile gate opened and Vicky’s BMW emerged. I slouched down in my seat as the car went past me, then sat up and turned the key in the ignition.

  The BMW proceeded with the flow of rush-hour traffic down Oak Street, the east-bound arterial bordering the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. I stayed a couple of car lengths behind it, straining to get a glimpse of its occupants. Vicky appeared to be wearing a dark scarf over her wilted curls; a couple of blond heads bobbed in the back seat. She must be taking her girls, Betsy and Lindy, to school.

  The BMW turned on Divisadero and drove to Pacific Heights. When we reached a block on Broadway where buses and cars disgorging children jammed the street, I realized the Cushman daughters attended the Abbott School, a bastion of upper-middle-class respectability that for generations had shielded the offspring of the city’s affluent families from the ugly realities and poor instructional quality of our public institutions. The girls delivered-properly uniformed and waving happily-Vicky headed back to the Haight.

  Instead of turning toward the cul-de-sac, however, she climbed the hill on one of the roads that skirt Buena Vista Park. The land above the park is steeply terraced, and the small streets twist and turn. I followed slowly, downshifting all the way to first gear on the switchbacks. Rounding a curve, I found myself a few yards from the BMW’s rear bumper. As I backed off, it pulled to the curb in front of a vacant lot surrounded by a double line of young grapevines. Beyond them was a rough board shed and regularly laid-out rows of plants. Some of them I recognized: Brussels sprouts, artichokes, lettuce.

  It was one of the community gardens that seem to be springing up on vacant lots all over the city. Given her background in horticulture, Irene Lasser might very well be involved in organizing this one, and Vicky might have come here to see her. I eased the MG to the curb in front of a small apartment house, hoping she hadn’t noticed me.

  But the woman who got out of the BMW wasn’t Vicky. What I had taken for a dark scarf over blond curls was a rich fall of chestnut hair fastened at the nape of her neck.

  It was Irene Lasser who had driven the Cushman girls to school.

  I gripped the steering wheel with tense fingers as she went to the rear door, opened it, and leaned in. When she backed out and straightened, she had a small child in her arms. She set the child down, took it by the hand, and they walked toward the garden.

  Even though I couldn’t actually tell the gender of the child, I assumed it must be Susan Lasser-the daughter whom no one in the Hollister area seemed to know existed. She looked to be about two, meaning she would have had to have been born a number of months after Lasser had fled the Burning Oak Ranch.

  Whose child, then? Harlan Johnstone’s? Frank Wilkonson’s? Or had Susan been fathered by someone her mother had met after she ran away?

  I remained in my car while the Lassers went inside the shed and emerged with gardening tools-a hoe and spade for Irene, a plastic bucket and shovel for Susan. They carried the tools to the back of the lot where there was an area that apparently had been cleared of the summer crops. Irene proceeded to cultivate the earth, while Susan squatted nearby, filling and emptying and refilling her bucket. Irene moved in a steady, strong motion, breaking up the clods and leveling the fine soil. Every now and then she would pause to say something to the child, or wipe sweat from her face and refasten her heavy hair. The rhythm of her movements and the way she serenely squinted up into the clear sky while resting exuded an air of contentment. Susan played quietly, her round face now and then breaking into a delighted smile; when she spoke to her mother, she seemed to laugh, and Irene replied in kind.

  I watched for a while, knowing that soon I would have to shatter their shared tranquility. As I did, I tried to figure out an approach that would not panic Irene. She would recognize me, of course. I was sure Vicky had told her of my visits-probably with a good deal of melodramatic embellishment and speculation as to my motives. It made approaching Lasser a tricky proposition.

  Vicky and Irene-now that was interesting. What was the relationship between them? Irene used Vicky’s car, drove Vicky’s children to school. Did she also live at The Castles? From the relatively early hour that she’d left with the kids, I guessed she must.

  I have to admit that my sometimes evil mind immediately suggested ménage a trois. But no-while such an arrangement might fit what I knew of Gerry, it was nothing Vicky would go along with. Gerry had wanted an open marriage many years before, at least that was what Vicky had told me. She’d also said, I can’t…I won’t….

  So what was the relationship between the two women? Were they just friends? Related…?

  And then I thought of Vicky, frazzled and overworked by her numerous causes. Too overworked to properly care for her daughters. And I remembered her comment about the woman who worked for her, who had said she should take up a hobby, “something peaceful that will give me a chance to be alone with my thoughts.” A peaceful hobby such as Irene was indulging in right now.

  I also remembered Betsy coming into the living room and asking her mother if it was all right if Rina and Lindy and she made popcorn in the adjacent kitchen. Rina-a nickname for Irene.

  No wonder Vicky’s negative response had been so vehement and out of proportion to the request. She’d just gotten done insisting she hadn’t loaned her car to the woman with the long chestnut hair, didn’t even know anyone of that description-and there was her daughter, about to parade that very woman through the room. Vicky had reacted in a similar way yesterday morning, when I’d suggested we go to the kitchen and I cook something for her-probably because it was about the time when Irene would be there, preparing breakfast for the kids.

  Irene was the Cushmans’ nanny, nursemaid, governess, or whatever such people called them. She must live on the grounds of The Castles, possibly in the structure originally built for servants. She and her little girl had been there all along.

  But why the secrecy? Because Irene was hiding from her former husband? Because Frank Wilkonson was looking for her? Because Susan was the daughter of one of the men, and Irene didn’t want him to have contact with her? In any event, lying to the police in a felony case seemed extreme.

  But then, I reminded myself, people like the Cushman
s often feel they’re above the law. They’re the first to howl about inadequate police protection, the first to arm themselves with handguns. But they’re also the last to volunteer information that might help the cops make a collar.

  The thought made me angry. To hell with the gentle approach, I decided. I didn’t care anymore if I scared Irene Lasser. I just wanted some truthful answers.

  As I started to get out of the car, however, two men in jeans and plaid shirts who had been ambling down the sidewalk veered off into the garden. Irene waved to them, and they waved back and went to the shed for tools. Soon they had hung their shirts on grapestakes and were working beside her, pausing occasionally to roughhouse with Susan. Within half an hour two older women had shown up; they dragged out long hoses and began watering. A young man appeared with two kids about Susan’s age; the kids joined her and they set to building an elaborate dirt castle. The young man hung around Irene, talking to her and generally getting in her way. After a while she spoke sharply to him, put her tools away, and called to Susan. They left the garden, waving good-bye to the other laborers, got in the BMW, and drove off.

  I debated following them but decided against it. It was after eleven; chances were they were going back to The Castles for lunch. If Vicky was there, I wouldn’t be able to set foot inside the wall. Instead, I got out of my car and wandered into the garden.

  The first person I came to was one of the women with the hoses. When I spoke to her, she turned abruptly, and the stream of water ran over my boot. “Sorry about that,” she said. “But you shouldn’t be wearing such good dress boots in here anyway. The heels’ll sink into the mud and it’ll ruin the leather.”

  “They’re old and the leather’s already shot,” I said. “Can you tell me-was that Irene Lasser and her daughter, Susan, I just saw leaving?”