by Josh Lanyon
“Aside from the fact that she’s living in Cloud Cuckooland —”
“Oh yeah,” Jake agreed. “She’s telling the truth. As far as she knows it.”
“If Truffaut did kill Stevens — and I can totally believe that he did — what happened to the cross?”
Jake said, “Mama Truffaut sold it off when she closed the gallery.”
I leaned forward against the front seat. “That makes sense. I don’t believe Eve was prevaricating — even when she should have been prevaricating. I don’t think she’d ever heard of the Cross of Rouen. And she probably forgot about it five minutes after we walked out the door.”
“It confirms Stevens’s story as far as where he found the cross — which seems to confirm Newman’s story. I don’t know how he’d have found out about the cross otherwise.”
“So he was hired by Louise Reynard, regardless of whether she admitted it to Nick Argyle. Why do you think she denied it?” I asked. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze from the crisp, precise line of the hair against the back of his neck. It was a strong neck, but somehow there was something boyish and almost vulnerable about his nape. I had the strange desire to lean forward and kiss it.
I resisted.
“He didn’t say she denied it, just that she never confirmed it. She might have been afraid of getting Stevens in worse trouble.”
“She did go to the police, though, once he went missing.”
“Yes. Argyle told me she made a nuisance of herself once Stevens disappeared.”
I said, “I didn’t get the feeling Newman was lying.”
“Neither did I.”
We fell silent as Lisa returned to the car with a small, rectangular, brown-wrapped parcel.
“What’s that?” I asked uneasily.
She was busy with seat belt. At last, she looked over her shoulder. “It’s either a housewarming gift or a Christmas present.”
“You haven’t decided?”
“You haven’t decided,” she said. “Or you don’t realize you’ve decided.”
* * * * *
“Did you want to stay for dinner?” We were back at Cloak and Dagger. Jake had parked the Forester, let Lisa and me out, and was climbing back into his S2000.
He said awkwardly, “I can’t. I’d like to. Rain check?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll call you.” His eyes met mine. “We need to talk.”
My heart sank. “Oh.”
I knew what he was going to say. The case was closed. As closed as we were likely to get it. We both knew it. The most likely scenario by far was that Guilliam Truffaut had come looking for his missing property at the Huntsman’s Lodge — and had decided to leave no witnesses. How he’d known to look for Jay Stevens was something we would probably never know.
And if the case was closed, there was really no reason for Jake to be calling me all the time or staying for dinner — or anything else.
“Anyway, you’ve got your writing group tonight, right?”
I’d totally forgotten. The weird thing about convalescence was my internal clock seemed to be off. I couldn’t keep the days of the week straight.
“Right.”
“I’ve give you a call Thursday.”
“Thursday?” I reddened at the giveaway tone of voice. Jake didn’t seem to hear it. “Thursday,” I reaffirmed stalwartly.
He caught my arm as I started to turn away. I glanced back. “Behave yourself.”
“It shall be so.” I walked away to open the side entrance for Lisa, raising my hand in farewell as the Honda rolled away with a purr of its well-tuned engine.
* * * * *
I flexed my culinary muscles that evening and made chicken salad with walnuts and black olives, which I ate on whole-wheat toast and washed down with a glass of low-fat milk. It seemed to me that I was getting the hang of this healthy-living stuff, and if everyone would stop giving me a hard time over working too hard and having too much stress in my life, I’d be back to normal in no time.
I was restless and dissatisfied after the writing group had departed. I put a DVD into the player. Tomkins made himself at home on my lap while I watched The Dark Corner. It was a 1946 film-noir gem directed by Henry Hathaway and starring a feisty Lucille Ball and painfully bland Mark Stevens. The film has art thefts, troubled PIs, and sinister Germans. The last time I’d seen it was several years ago with Mel, but the memory brought no pain. It was distantly pleasant, as though it had happened to someone else.
The cat purred as I stroked his soft, soft fur.
I wondered how Jake planned to tell me what we both already knew. Probably as carefully as possible. I couldn’t help my instinctive dread at hearing the words we need to talk. The last time he’d said it — but no. Those weren’t the words.
“I need to talk to you.”
That was it. How could I forget? And he’d told me Kate Keegan was pregnant, and he was going to marry her. That he wanted the marriage to work, wanted it to be a real marriage. That it was over between us.
It had been Christmastime, and I could still remember the scent of cinnamon and pine whenever I thought of that afternoon. Christmas carols had been playing, and outside, the window-shoppers had walked past talking and laughing, cars had flashed by carrying evergreens, and life had gone on in a blur…
Chapter Seventeen
Jinx — Jane — Powers was not happy to hear from me; however, she did take my call.
“I didn’t realize you were Lisa English’s son,” she said in that smoky, smooth contralto. She sounded peevish, as though I’d deliberately played a trick on her.
“I didn’t know you were Chris Powers’s mom,” I returned.
She had an expressive voice. I could hear the unease. “Do you know Chris?”
“Not exactly. He called threatening to bash my face in if I didn’t stop picking on you.”
In the silence between us, I could hear Natalie and Angus bickering on the book floor. I listened. It didn’t sound serious. I took a sip of Tab.
Jinx Stevens’s exasperation carried all the way from Santa Barbara. “Chris shouldn’t have done that. He’s overprotective.”
“He’s something, that’s for sure. Why? That’s the question. It’s not like I was pestering you for another interview. What’s he so worried about?”
“Clearly you know exactly what he’s worried about.” She was no-nonsense now. “My son has political ambitions, and there are things in my past that might prove embarrassing to him.”
“He doesn’t think having Cat Woman for a mom is a selling point with the neocons?”
Natalie carried in a box of battered paperbacks and shoved them on the already-crowded shelf. There was a Dell Mapback on top. The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes. Now that was a very collectible book.
“What do you want?” There was no anger in Jinx’s voice, only a vast weariness.
It occurred to me that she had lived with the threat of blackmail and exposure for half a century. A long time to bear that burden. No surprise she was tired. I wondered if she ever secretly hoped it would all come out and she could stop worrying. Or maybe she’d been worrying about it so long, it was second nature, a part of her.
“Look, if you didn’t kill Jay, I have no —”
“Kill Jay?” If she was acting, she’d gone into the wrong segment of the entertainment industry. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”
“If I’m off base here, I apologize, but it occurred to me that you and Jay might not have been brother and sister.”
I had to hold the phone away from my ear. One thing for sure, she could still hit those high notes. Her vocal range was as clear and strong as ever. When she had wound down at last, I said, “I apologize. I’m very sorry. That was way out of line.”
“Where on earth would you get such a crackbrained idea?”
“I write mysteries. I get crackbrained ideas.”
“I loved my brother. I adored him. He was my hero.”
“Please don’t scream at me anym
ore. I have a theory. Another theory. Would you like to hear it?”
“No.” But she didn’t hang up.
“My theory is that you thought you knew who killed your brother — and that’s why you left Dan Hale.”
Silence.
“I think you loved Dan Hale nearly as much as you loved your brother, but Jay’s murder was something you couldn’t forgive. Or forget.”
“You’re wrong.” It was the jaded, world-weary tone again. “I forgave Dan long ago.”
I blinked. So in the end it was this simple?
“Hale confessed?”
“No. He never did. We never spoke of it after the night I accused him and walked out.”
She gave another of those heavy sighs. I had the brains not to interrupt.
“That was a terrible night. The worst night of my life. I didn’t see Dan again for nearly twenty years. By the time we met again…neither of us had any desire to dig up those memories. What was the point? We had both moved on. Nothing could bring Jay back.”
“If Hale never confessed, why were you so sure he was guilty?”
“There was no other possibility. I knew Jay hadn’t skipped town.”
“What about Guilliam Truffaut?”
Another of those ringing silences. She said as precisely and carefully as though she were picking the letters out of alphabet soup, “How do you know about Guilliam Truffaut?”
“I spoke to Harry Newman.”
“Who?”
“Harry Newman. The PI Louise Reynard hired after Jay disappeared.”
“I…I’d forgotten. How strange. Yes, Louise did hire a private investigator. She was desperate to find Jay. She believed from the very first that something terrible had happened to him.” Jinx’s laugh broke off sharply. “Then you know everything.”
“Not really. I’m not sure why you were so convinced Hale was guilty. I’d have put my money on Guilliam Truffaut. The guy who stole the cross in the first place. Did you know he was suspected of murdering his first wife?”
“W-what?”
“That’s according to one of his biggest fans. Not a nice man, by all accounts.”
Jinx seemed to think this over. “Jay did say we needed to be careful. That we might have bitten off more than we could chew that time.”
“The way it sounds, Truffaut was a traitor to the Resistance, maybe even a Nazi collaborator. And if even half of his war experiences are true, he had the necessary skills, ruthlessness, and resources to commit murder and hide the body of your brother. Plus, he had the strongest motivation of anyone I’ve come across yet. If word got out about his having the Cross of Rouen in his possession, he’d have been facing a lot worse than a prison stretch for theft.”
The line was live, although she wasn’t speaking.
“Why did you think Hale killed your brother?”
“Because he threatened to.”
“Hale threatened to kill Jay?”
“Yes. And he went to his hotel that night. I know because Paulie — Paulie St. Cyr — saw him arrive as he was leaving.”
“Why was Paulie St. Cyr there?”
“He was picking up musical score sheets. He didn’t speak to Danny, though he did see him go up.”
“But that’s pretty circumstantial. Why did Hale threaten to kill Jay?”
“Because of that goddamned cross. Jay wanted to turn the cross over to Louise. She was practically insisting on it. Her grandmother died in a concentration camp, and her grandfather had also fought in the French Resistance. In fact, her grandfather was a great friend of Truffaut’s.”
“He knew Truffaut?”
“Not in the Resistance. At least, I don’t think so. They met here. And naturally they became close. Louise wanted to give the cross to her grandfather to return to the French people. She wanted to unmask Truffaut. Reveal him for the traitor that he was.”
I was getting lost. “Wait. How did Hale know about any of this? Was he involved in the burglaries too?”
“Yes. Danny was our silent partner. He set up the jobs, and he arranged for a fence to move the stuff we stole. Once we hooked up with Danny, we did very well. Much better than we’d ever done on our own. Then Jay fell for Louise, practically overnight, and somehow she convinced him of this crazy idea she had about turning the cross over and going straight. And Danny was furious. Of course. It was the biggest haul we’d had and he desperately needed the money to keep the club afloat. He couldn’t believe Jay was considering handing over the cross — let alone giving up our burglary sideline. They argued and argued over it.”
“If Hale killed Jay, what happened to the cross? He’d have sold it, right?”
“Yes. If the cross was where he could get at it.”
“But the cross would have been there, because Jay was taking it to Louise that night. Where else would it be?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t found in his room at the hotel obviously. I had to accept that Danny had followed through on his threat.”
“I don’t think Hale killed your brother. I think he told you the truth. I think he went to the hotel that night to have one last shot at talking Jay out of giving up the cross.”
“So who…?”
“I think Guilliam Truffaut killed Jay and retrieved the cross. I think that’s why the cross never surfaced again. Guilliam was the one person who would know better than anyone why that cross couldn’t be sold to anyone.”
I could hear her breathing; it sounded like she was trying not to cry. I didn’t blame her. If she had loved Hale as much as I thought she had, it would be pretty hard to face knowing she had ended their relationship for nothing.
Not that Hale had been any prize — and she’d done all right for herself with the senator — but in blaming him for her brother’s death, she’d wronged him. Badly. Betrayed him.
Why? Why had she been so quick to believe the worst of him?
“You were at the Huntsman’s Lodge that night,” I said. “Was there construction going on?”
“There was always construction going on. The place was falling down around their ears. I remember one thing. They were putting poison out for rats. You could smell the dead rats in the attic.”
I guessed that explained why no one had paid attention to the smell on the third floor. It sure explained why Jinx was living with Dan Hale and not her brother.
I said, trying to work it out for myself, “The thing I still don’t understand is, you loved Hale. I don’t know why you wouldn’t trust him when he told you he didn’t —”
“You’ve never been afraid,” she said harshly. “You’re like my own kids. You’ve been protected and pampered all your life, and you don’t know what fear is. Not real fear. Not gut-wrenching, piss-your-pants, do anything… You know what it is? It’s a dark tide sweeping in and pulling you out into the deep. Way out. And you go with it even when you know you should fight, even when you know the end will be your destruction, because you’re too afraid not to. You’ll trade your soul for one day, one hour, one minute more of safety. It’s why people do the things they do — that dark tide dragging them along like an undertow.”
She was still talking. I didn’t hear the rest of it. I was thinking about the war, and how people closed their eyes to the terrible things around them, did terrible things themselves — Guilliam Truffaut was perhaps that kind of villain. Or perhaps another kind. And I thought of Paul Kane and of the dark, remorseless tide that had nearly taken me and Jake on the Pirate’s Gambit only a few weeks earlier.
I thought how Jake had swum in that dark tide for most of his life, and yet somehow kept from going under.
And I thought how naively, a few seconds earlier, I had said to her, “You loved him. I don’t know why you wouldn’t trust him.”
I put the phone down softly.
* * * * *
I had only been to Jake’s house in Glendale once before, but I found it without too much difficulty. I guess I had been paying attention that day.
I parked on th
e opposite side of the shady street. It was a nice house, well tended and in good repair. There was a FOR SALE sign planted squarely in the tidy lawn.
Parked in the driveway was a small blue pickup truck. The bed was loaded with cardboard boxes, potted plants, and a couple of framed pictures.
I went up the brick walk, and the screen door banged open. A tall, slender woman with red hair and green eyes walked out holding a cardboard box.
I moved back, and she gave me a long, measuring look. I think I’d have known her for a cop even if I hadn’t realized who she was.
“Hi. I was looking for Jake.”
She continued to assess me; she called over her shoulder, “Jake. It’s for you.”
She moved past me down the brick walk and disappeared around the corner of the house.
From where I stood, I could see through to the dismantled dining room and the glass door — open — leading onto the brick patio, where Jake was sliding open the screen. He walked through the dining room. I saw by the way his shoulders stiffened that he’d recognized me before he reached the entranceway.
I said, “I don’t have to ask if it’s a bad time. I should have called.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
I need to talk to you…
“The phone still works as far as I know.” He shoved the door screen open, and I stepped inside. “Out back will be better.” He turned to lead the way.
I followed him out into the tidy square of the backyard. A hose lay glistening in the grass like an emerald snake spilling water sluggishly into the yellow roses lining the wooden fence.
“I was going to call you,” Jake said. “You’d better sit down.”
I didn’t like the expression on his face. I sat down on the nearest wooden patio chair.
A sleek German shepherd puppy came gamboling from around the side of the house, a blue rubber ball in its mouth. He had a reddish black coat and one tipped ear. He trotted right up the brick steps and dropped the ball on my feet, gazing at me expectantly.
“Hey, where did you come from?” I stroked his head, looking up at Jake. “Is this the puppy from Nick Argyle’s ranch?”
