Winter Tides

by James P. Blaylock

It occurred to Dave then that both of the warehouse trucks had long ago pulled away from the loading dock. Jolene was working away in her office. The Earl was at the hospital. Except for Dave and Anne, the warehouse was empty. He looked at Anne. “You know what I’m going to do?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to break into the bastard’s office.”

  “What do you think is in there?”

  “I don’t really care. I’ve had it. I love this place, and I could work here till I drop dead, but unless something gets done right now, this place isn’t going to be this place very much longer.”

  “I’m going to break in, too,” Anne said. “Turnabout’s fair play. If he can break into my apartment, I can break into his office.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s illegal as hell. Even if we do find something in there, we probably can’t use it against him, not legally. Even if we were cops, we couldn’t use it against him.”

  “Right, but I want to know. Right now I don’t care about using it against him. I want to know, absolutely, that the creep was in my apartment. I’m the one with the big complaint against him, aren’t I? He bad-mouths you, but he breaks into my apartment. There’s no way you’re doing this without me.”

  “If Edmund finds out that we were in his office, he’ll press charges against us for breaking and entering. He’s liable to say anything—that we stole something, whatever he can dream up to cause us trouble. And if we do find anything interesting in there, it’ll just make it worse.”

  “He’ll never know. All we have to do is climb over the wall, right? How hard could it be?”

  Dave carried an extension ladder up the stairs and tilted it against the wall beside the door to Edmund’s office cubicle. He climbed the ladder and looked in, but as always, there wasn’t anything to see. It was the emptiest possible office, the office of a man who had nothing to do. He pulled himself up onto the wall, swung his legs over, and dropped down onto the top of the desk. He threw the bolt, stepped out on to the balcony and laid the extension ladder down so that it wouldn’t be visible from below, and then followed Anne back into the office and shut the door.

  “Two minutes and we’re out of here,” Anne said, wiping the footprint dust off the desktop. Immediately she looked beneath the desk itself, then opened the top desk drawer all the way and peered into the back of it, shutting it again almost at once. She opened another drawer and rifled through papers, and Dave pulled on one of the file cabinet drawers, which was locked.

  “They’re locked,” he said. “All of them.”

  “Of course they are,” Anne said. She opened a third drawer, shifted the contents around carefully, and then reached up under it, feeling around on the inside walls of the desk and on the bottom of the drawer above. She opened another drawer and repeated the process, then stopped and seemed to be working at something. “Here’s a key,” she said, removing it from where it was hidden and peeling Scotch tape from it. She tossed it to Dave, who fit it into the lock at the top of the cabinet. He turned it, unlocking all the drawers at once. He pulled the top drawer open and looked inside. There was a litter of real estate pamphlets on the bottom along with a couple of ads for gyms and sports centers.

  He opened the second drawer. It was empty except for one of Elinor’s dolls, which lay in the bottom, staring upward out of eyes stitched out of black thread. Dave pulled his hand away from the metal drawer pull as if it were hot, then stepped back and gestured toward the drawer. Anne looked inside, started to pick up the doll, then let it lie there. Its face was nearly indistinguishable from the face on the doll in Anne’s closet—the same slack mouth, the same demonic eyes, the same tumorous flesh from the lines of stitching pulled tight in the stuffed nylon. It was clearly a female doll, though, with long hair of stitched-in black thread and a tight black dress.

  “Let’s leave it,” Anne said. “What’s the point of taking it?”

  Dave slid the drawer shut. She was right. They knew for certain what they’d already suspected, although even this wasn’t enough to establish that Edmund had broken into Anne’s apartment, only that he had gone through her boxes. Dave opened the third file drawer, which held a scattering of magazines and newspapers and two hardcover books. The newspapers were vending machine sex ads, one of which was folded open to a page displaying grainy-looking nude photos, some of them particularly obscene. Several telephone numbers had been crossed out with felt pen.

  “Edmund’s got a problem,” Anne said, sitting down in the desk chair. “I just quit my detective job. I don’t think it’s worth it—whatever it was we’re trying to find.”

  “When Collier’s truck burned up, there was a bunch of this trash in the back end. The arsonist put it there to make Collier look bad. Obviously he was hoping it would come to the notice of Social Services.”

  “Where did he buy this stuff?”

  “Porno shops, I guess,” Dave said. “I guess that’s where he bought the magazines. You’re asking the wrong guy, actually. These newspapers, though—you can find them in vending machines all over the place. Any kid with a handful of quarters can buy one.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. All this is legal, as far as I can see. If it was pedophile stuff, it wouldn’t be legal. But it wouldn’t matter to us anyway, because you can’t break into someone’s office or car or backpack or whatever looking for evidence. If we hauled this down to the police station, they’d arrest us for breaking and entering. Edmund would be the injured party.”

  He picked up one of the books. It was titled simply Sexual Magick, and was illustrated with badly carved woodcut pictures of genitalia and sexual poses. Someone—Edmund, probably—had scribbled in the margins and underlined passages on nearly every page. The second book was the same kind of thing, even more thoroughly annotated and underlined. He laid the books back in the drawer and slid it shut.

  “Edmund’s sicker than I thought,” he said. “I thought he was just a common greedy, jealous creep, but he’s worse. A lot worse. One more drawer.” He opened the fourth drawer, which held untitled hanging file folders. He looked hurriedly into random files, but there was nothing evidently incriminating. He had no real notion what he was looking for. Simple bills of sale or real estate deeds meant nothing to him. None of them suggested anything particularly illegal.

  “Anything interesting?” Anne asked.

  “No. I guess I can’t tell. I’ve got a friend who’s a cop, though. I’m going to call him.”

  “A Huntington Beach cop?”

  Dave shook his head. “Laguna Beach. He graduated from Huntington Beach High the same year I did. My old friend Jim Hoover.”

  “Are you going to mention breaking in like this?”

  “Yeah,” Dave said. “I guess I am. I can’t just do nothing.”

  He shut the last drawer and relocked the cabinet, then tossed the key back to Anne.

  “I’ve been doing nothing for a long time,” he said, standing up. “I’m sick of it.”

  58

  IN ANNE’S APARTMENT, DAVE PUT A TOP AND BOTTOM bolt on the connecting door in the closet, and then replaced the dead bolt on the front door. Jim Hoover, Dave’s policeman friend, was off work at four, and at four-thirty Dave dialed the phone in Anne’s kitchen for the third time, but there was still no answer.

  “More iced tea?” Anne asked.

  “No, thanks.” Dave idly swirled the ice in his glass and then drank the tea-flavored water. “Even with these new locks, I’m not crazy about you staying here,” he said.

  “I’m not going to stay here.”

  The decisive sound of the statement surprised him. “Where are you going? I had a couple of ideas….”

  “Jane Potter asked me to stay with her. She lives in a part of Laguna called Bluebird Canyon. It’s really very nice. Good view, a couple of really beautiful old sycamore trees. She’s got a little rental cottage in back of her house that’s empty right now. I’ve got to run some pictures up to the gallery a
nyway, so …” She shrugged.

  “Okay,” Dave said. “That’s great.”

  “What were your ideas?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Just … I’ve got a guest room. That’s all.”

  “And you were going to ask me to be a guest?”

  Dave nodded. “You’re welcome to.”

  “I know I am,” she said, smiling at him. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, staying with you, except for your obsession with washing dishes.”

  “Then go ahead and stay.”

  “Do you have any other bad habits?”

  “I’m obsessive about polishing the chrome on the faucets, too, but other than that I’m entirely sane.”

  “How often do you polish the chrome?”

  “Six or seven times a day, but before I started with my analyst, I was up to fourteen times a day on weekends and ten on weekdays, so I’ve nearly got it under control.”

  “Maybe I should meet your analyst. Is he married?”

  “No, but he wears Jello-filled rubber suits to bed. So what do you think?”

  “It’s a little kinky, but …”

  “I mean about staying at my place.”

  She looked at him for a moment, and in that moment he knew that she wouldn’t, that she was just trying to be funny and pleasant. He wasn’t even sure what he himself was suggesting, but he was honest enough to know that he had more than her safety in mind. Probably she’d be safer out of town, staying with Jane Potter. The only thing he was certain of was his own awkwardness.

  “What I was thinking,” she said, “was that maybe we ought to get to know each other under conditions that aren’t quite so screwy, you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t really polish chrome—not that often, anyway.”

  “What I mean is that our … relationship, whatever you want to call it, has been a little strange. We’ve got this weird past together, about thirty seconds of it on the beach one day long ago, but it’s turned into fifteen years of our having this … connection, whatever you want to call it. Neither one of us has done very well with Elinor’s death, Dave.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Dave said. “Not for a second. But Casey likes to tell me that it’s possible just to let things go. He says it’s like cutting the string on a high-flying kite and watching the wind take it away.”

  “What if the kite comes crashing down? That’s more likely, isn’t it? A lot of broken sticks and paper?”

  “I’m ready to take the chance. If there was a way to cut Elinor loose, I’d let her go in an instant.”

  “It’s not only Elinor, Dave; it’s Edmund, too. You and I got thrown together because we’re both trying to deal with the same fruitcake. Most of the time we’ve spent together has been because of Edmund. Right now we’re sitting here trying to figure out what to do about Edmund. I want to get to know you better without this web of bad circumstances. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “You mean, who’s the real Dave Quinn?”

  “And who’s the real Anne Morris. I came down here partly to find out. I think I brought Elinor along with me, and that was a mistake, but it’s a mistake I’m dealing with. When I ran into you, she flared up like I’d fed her oxygen. I want you to give me a little more time, okay?”

  “Okay,” Dave said after a moment. “How long will you be in Laguna?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you giving this place up?”

  “I don’t know. No, I guess not. Right now it’s … compromised, I guess I’d say. Even with the new locks, it doesn’t quite feel safe, just like you said a few minutes ago. Elinor doesn’t care about locks. Edmund doesn’t care about locks.”

  “I guess I want you to tell me something right now, and I swear it won’t affect our friendship.”

  “Anything.”

  “Is this the brush-off? Because if you mean what you say, then I’m going to keep trying.”

  “No, it’s not the brush-off. Don’t even begin to think it’s the brush-off. I mean just what I say.”

  “Then I know some good restaurants in Laguna. There’s a place on Cliff Drive with a view of Main Beach that’ll knock you flat—especially this time of year with everything blooming. How about tomorrow night?”

  “You’re asking me out on a real date?”

  “A real date.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Dave picked up the phone receiver and punched in Jim Hoover’s number again. After the fifth ring he was just about to hang up, when Hoover answered. “It’s your dime,” he said.

  “Hoove, this is Dave Quinn.”

  “How do I know it’s the true Dave Quinn? Maybe you’re some guy pretending to be Dave Quinn. You’d better show me some I.D.”

  “I’ve got a serious question, Hoove.”

  “Sorry, go ahead. What’s wrong?”

  Dave sketched out the entire story, including the scam with the quitclaim deeds, the call from the notary, Casey’s accident. He went into detail about Edmund’s breaking into Anne’s apartment and about Elinor’s dolls and the fires at Collier’s bungalow.

  “Edmund Dalton?” Hoover said finally. “Why doesn’t this surprise me? You know about his little problem—when was it? Six or eight years ago, I guess.”

  “No, I never heard about it. What problem?”

  “He was associated with some characters who specialized in pornographic films using what you might call unwilling models, a lot of them underage. The films were made in Mexico, although they solicited runaways in San Diego and L.A.”

  “You’re kidding. How come I didn’t know anything about this?”

  “I guess that was back when you were a respectable married man and lived out in the suburbs, before you crawled back into town single.”

  “Does Casey know?”

  “I guess he does, although that was back when Casey was in his surf travel mode. He was gone most of the time, and when he wasn’t gone, he probably wasn’t in the mood to hear about his brother. Anyway, Edmund was arrested for buying from these creeps. I think he got away with a fine and probation even though he was probably guilty of a hell of a lot more than being a customer. It was Edmund’s contention that he was involved in theatrical research. The whole thing involved big-time plea bargaining. I don’t think the Earl ever really got the drift.”

  “Probably that’s just as well. There’s nothing he could have done about any of it.”

  “I don’t know about that. Edmund’s a goddamn rattlesnake, and sooner or later the old man was bound to get bit. Maybe he should have disowned the bastard. Anyway, I think you could say that Edmund’s taste in sex is what you’d call nonstandard.”

  “Great. Edmund’s a pervert on top of the rest.”

  “Besides that, what do you want? It sounds like you’ve got a whole bunch of nothing, legally speaking.”

  “I broke into Edmund’s office this afternoon. He’s out of town in Mexico for a couple of days, so I broke in and looked through his stuff.”

  “You broke in? Just like that?”

  “That’s right, Hoove. Just like that.”

  “Jesus, Dave. What do you have for brains? Breaking and entering is against the law, at least down here in Laguna.”

  “I smelled smoke, so I climbed over his office wall to see if something was on fire.”

  “Oh! That makes everything all right, then. Sure. The judge would love that one. You know, even if there was something incriminating in there, you probably killed any chance that it could ever be used as evidence. There’s a certain protocol here, man. It doesn’t matter now if you found a briefcase full of cocaine in there.”

  “Nothing that good. Just some dirty magazines and one of these dolls that I was telling you about.”

  “How about a corpse? If you found a corpse in his office, we can move on the guy. Otherwise, just give it up. Leave the man’s stuff alone. And don’t for God’s sake call me and tell me about this kind of crap.
I’m a cop, remember?”

  “Well, how the hell far does it have to go before I call a cop?” Dave asked. “Edmund breaks into Anne’s apartment and leaves this thing in her closet. He’s supposed to get away with it?”

  “That’s a matter for the HB police, Dave.”

  “We already called them.”

  “Good. You did the right thing, although there’s not a hell of a lot they can do for you right now. But tell me something. What the hell did you say about this doll in her closet? It had a big dick on it? That’s a little bit on the sick side. Your girlfriend’s sister made these goddamn things?”

  “Years ago. Sister’s dead. The dolls were stored in boxes at the Earl’s.”

  “So this doll that was in her closet is actually something that she herself owns? How many people had access to the boxes?”

  “Call it a dozen. Any of the Earl’s employees.”

  “You too, I guess.”

  “Me too.”

  “Dave, my man, what you’ve got is a lot of speculation. You’re telling me that anybody could have stolen the doll, and that this notary called you up and made allegations but he didn’t really say anything at all, and that Casey was drunk and drove into a tree.”

  “Casey wasn’t drunk.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this was one of the times that he wasn’t drunk. But it sure as hell looks like he was drunk. Regardless of his blood alcohol, the open container and the vodka residue will incriminate him. It’s not a big problem, though. Probably he’ll lose his license for a while, wind up in AA for a few weeks.”

  “It’s not the charges I’m talking about, Hoove; it’s the fire in the truck and the bottle under the seat. I know the man. Trust me on this one. Despite what anybody thinks, there’s reasons that the bottle doesn’t make any sense. Is it possible to rig something like that—the fire, the whole thing?”

  “Sure it’s possible. It’s not only possible, it’s easy. What’s probably not possible is to nail Edmund for it, even if you think he’s got some kind of motive. And from what you tell me, Edmund’s down in Mexico. And also there were no witnesses to this quitclaim scam except this notary, and he’s not talking?”