“Might be worth a try. Did you know Russell Dancer?”
“I don't believe I ever met him. The name isn't familiar. You say he knew Harmon fairly well?”
“They were drinking companions for a while.”
“Yes, well, people tell each other things when they've been drinking that they wouldn't discuss sober. Or so I'm told. I wish I was a drinking man; I might have got to know Harmon much better than I did. But I haven't much tolerance for alcohol. Two glasses of wine make me light-headed.”
“You're probably lucky,” I said, thinking of Kerry last night.
When I hung up I dragged the San Francisco telephone directory out of the desk and just for the hell of it looked up Ellen Corneal's name. No listing. I checked my copy of the directory of city addresses, just in case she had an unlisted number. Nothing. So then I called information for the various Bay Area counties; but if Ellen Corneal was still alive and still living in this area, she didn't have a listed phone under that name. Which left me with the Department of Motor Vehicles, a TRW credit check, and the obit file at the Chronicle. I put in calls to Harry Fletcher at the DMV, Tom Winters, who was part owner of a leasing company and who had pulled TRWs for me before, and Joe DeFalco at the newspaper office-all of whom promised to get back to me before the day was out. I decided to forgo a check with the registrar's office at UC until I saw what turned up on the other fronts. Likewise a research trip to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, on the possibility that Ellen Corneal might have remarried here in the city.
Ten-fifteen by this time and still no Eberhardt.
I called his house in Noe Valley. No answer. I went over to his desk and looked up Wanda's home number in his Rolodex and called that. No answer. I called Macy's downtown, and was told that Ms. Jaworski was out ill today.
Well, hell, I thought.
I waited until ten-thirty. Then I scribbled a note that said, I'm sorry about last night, Eb-we'll talk, put it on his desk, and left for Tomales. A long drive in the country was just what I needed to soothe my twitchy nerves.
Tomales is a village of maybe two hundred people, clustered among some low foothills along the two-lane Shoreline Highway, sixty miles or so north of San Francisco. But there isn't any shoreline in the immediate vicinity: the village is situated above Tomales Bay and a few miles inland from the ocean. Sheep and dairy ranches surround it, and out where the bay merges with the Pacific there is Dillon Beach and a bunch of summer cottages and new retirement homes called Lawson's Landing. The town itself has a post office, a school, a service station, a general store, a cafe, the William Tell House restaurant, a church, a graveyard, and thirty or forty scattered houses.
It was well past noon when I got there. The sun was shining, which is something of an uncommon event in the Tomales Bay area, but there was a strong, blustery wind off the ocean that kept the day from being warm. There hadn't been much traffic on the road out from Petaluma, and there wasn't much in Tomales either. What little activity there was in the place was pretty much confined to weekends.
The general store seemed the best place to ask my questions about Angelo Bertolucci; I pulled up in front and went inside. It was an old country store, the kind you don't see much anymore. Uneven wood floor, long rows of tightly packed shelves, even a big wheel of cheddar cheese on the counter. There weren't any pickle or cracker barrels and there wasn't any pot-bellied stove, but they were about all that was missing. With its smells of old wood, old groceries, fresh bread, and deli meats, the place gave me a faint pang of nostalgia for my long-vanished youth.
Behind the counter was a dark-haired girl of about twenty; she was the only other person in the store. I spent a quarter on a package of Dentyne, and asked her if she lived in Tomales. She said she did. So I asked her if she knew anyone locally named Bertolucci.
“Oh sure,” she said. “Old Mr. Bertolucci.”
“Old? He's lived here a long time, then?”
“All his life, I guess.”
“Would his first name be Angelo?”
“That's right. Do you know him?”
“No. I'd like to talk to him about a business matter.”
“Oh,” she said, “you want something stuffed.”
“Stuffed?”
“A deer or something.”
“I don't… you mean he's a taxidermist?”
“Didn't you know? He's got all kinds of animals and birds and things in his house. I was there once to deliver groceries when my dad had the flu.” A mock shiver. “Creepy,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“All those poor dead things with their eyes looking at you. And Mr. Bertolucci… well, if you've ever met him…”
“No, I haven't.”
“You'll see when you do.”
“Is he creepy too?”
“He's kind of, you know-” and she tapped one temple with the tip of her forefinger. “My mother says he's been like that for years. ‘Tetched,’ she says.”
“How old is he?”
“I don't know, seventy or more.”
“In what way is he tetched?”
“He hardly ever leaves his house. Everything he wants he has delivered. He's always shooting off his shotgun too. Some kids got in his yard once and he came out with it and threatened to shoot them.”
“Maybe he just likes his privacy,” I said.
“Sure,” she said dubiously, “if you say so.”
I asked her where Bertolucci lived, and she said on Hill Street and told me the number and how to get there: it was all of three blocks away, off Dillon Beach Road. I thanked her, went out, got into my car, and drove to Hill Street. Some street. An unpaved, rutted dead-end scarcely a block long, with four houses flanking it at wide intervals, two on each side. The first one I passed had a Confederate flag acting as a curtain over its front window; the second one, opposite-a sagging, once-white 1920s frame-was half-hidden by a wild tangle of lilac shrubs and climbing primroses. The second one belonged to Bertolucci.
An unpainted stake fence enclosed the yard; I bumped along and parked in front of its gate. On the gate was a warped sign that said TAXIDERMY in dull black letters. I put a hand against the sign, shoved the gate open, and went along an overgrown path to the porch. Another sign hanging from a nail on the front door invited, Ring Bell and Come In. I followed instructions.
The girl at the general store hadn't been exaggerating: the room I walked into was definitely creepy. For one thing it was dim and full of shadows; all the curtains were drawn and the only illumination came from a floor lamp in one corner. There was just enough light so the dozens of glass eyes arranged throughout caught and reflected it in faint, dark glints that made them seem alive. Half a dozen deer heads, one sporting an impressive set of six-point antlers. An elk's head mounted on a massive wooden shield. A game fish of some sort on another shield. On one table, a fat raccoon sitting up on its hind paws, holding an oyster shell between its forepaws. On another table, an owl with its wings spread and its taloned claws hooked around the remains of a rabbit. Dusty glass display cases bulging with rodents-squirrels, chipmunks, something that might have been a packrat. Two chicken hawks mounted on pedestals, wings half-unfolded and beaks open, glinty eyes staring malevolently at each other, as if they were about to fly into bloody combat. All of that, and a farrago of ancient furniture and just plain junk thrown about in no order whatsoever so that the effect of the place-and the smell that went with it-was of somebody's musty, disused attic.
I was standing there taking it all in when the old man came through a doorway at the rear. He was slat-thin and so stoop-shouldered he seemed to be walking at a low, forward tilt. Thick, knob-knuckled hands, a puff of fuzzy, reddish gray hair like dyed cotton, a nose that resembled the beaks of the two chicken hawks. Dressed in a pair of faded overalls and a tattered gray sweater worn through at both elbows. He was a perfect fit with the rest of the place: old, dusty, frail, and riddled with slow decay.
Or so it seemed until he spoke. When he said,
“Yes?” his voice spoiled the impression. It was strong, clear, and more irascible than friendly.
“Mr. Bertolucci?”
“That's right. Help you with something?”
“Possibly. I'd like to-”
“Don't do deer anymore,” he said. “Nor elk nor moose nor anything else big. Too much work, too much trouble.”
“I'm not here about-”
“Birds,” he said, “that's my specialty. Hawks, owls-predators. Nobody does 'em better. Never have, never will.”
“I'm not here to have something stuffed and mounted, Mr. Bertolucci. I'd like to ask you a few questions.”
“Questions?” He moved closer to me in that crabbed way of his and peered up at my face. His own was swarthy and heavily creased; the lines bracketing his mouth were so deep they looked like incisions that had not yet begun to bleed. His rheumy old eyes were full of suspicion now, as glass-glinty as those of the stuffed animals and birds. “What questions?”
“About a man named Harmon Crane, a writer who died back in 1949. I wonder if you knew him.”
Silence for a time-a long enough time so that it seemed he might not answer at all. His gaze remained fixed on my face. There was a slight puckering of his mouth around badly fitting dentures; otherwise he was expressionless.
“How come?” he said finally.
“How come what, Mr. Bertolucci?”
“How come you're interested in Harmon Crane?”
“You did know him, then?”
“I knew him. Been dead a hell of a long time.”
“Yes sir. I'm trying to find out why he killed himself.”
“What for, after all these years?”
I explained about Michael Kiskadon. Bertolucci listened with the same lack of expression; when I was done he swung around without speaking, went over to the table with the owl on it, and began to stroke the thing's feathers as if it were alive and a pet. “Ask your questions,” he said.
“Did you know Crane well?”
“Well enough not to like him.”
“Why is that?”
“Stuck-up. Big-city writer, always tellin people what to do and how to do it. Thought we was all hicks up here.”
“You did get along with him, though?”
“We was civil to each other.”
“Did you know he used your name in one of his books?”
“Heard it. Didn't like it much.”
“But you didn't do anything about it.”
“Like what? Sue him? Lawyers cost money.”
“You rented Crane a cabin, is that right?”
“Stupidest thing I ever done,” he said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Told you. I didn't like him.”
“Where was this cabin?”
“Not far. Five miles, maybe,” Bertolucci said. Slowly, as if he were reluctant to let go of either the words or the information. “End of the big peninsula south of Nick's Cove.”
“The cabin still there?”
“Long gone.”
“Do you still own the property?”
“No. Sold it to an oyster company in '53, but they went out of business. Man named Corda bought it twenty years ago. Dairy rancher. Still owns it.”
The smell in there was beginning to get to me-a musty, gamey mixture of dust, fog-damp, old cooking odors, and the carcasses of all the dead things strewn around. Even breathing through my mouth didn't quite block it out. Another fifteen minutes in there and I'd be ready for stuffing myself.
I asked him, “Do you remember the last time Crane was up here, about six weeks before his suicide?”
Bertolucci gave me a sidewise look. “Why?”
“There was an earthquake while he was here. About as strong as the one the other night.”
He didn't say anything at all this time. Just stood there looking at me, still stroking the owl.
“You did see him then, didn't you?”
“No,” Bertolucci said.
“Why not?”
“Only time I ever saw him was when he come to town to pay me his rent.”
“Then you don't know if anything happened while he was staying at the cabin that last time.”
“Happened? What's that mean?”
“Just what I said. Something that depressed him, started him brooding and drinking too much when he went back to San Francisco.”
Silence.
I said, “Do you have any idea why he killed himself, Mr. Bertolucci?”
More silence. He turned away from the owl, gave me one more expressionless look, and shuffled through the doorway at the rear-gone, just like that.
“Mr. Bertolucci?”
No answer.
I called his name again, and this time a door slammed somewhere at the rear. Ten seconds after that, as I was on my way out, there was a booming explosion from the yard outside, the unmistakable hollow thunder of a shotgun. I reversed direction, shoved through the litter of stuffed animals and furniture, and hauled back the blind that covered one of the side-wall windows. Bertolucci was thirty feet from the house, stooped over in a meager vegetable patch, a big. 12-gauge tucked under one arm. When he straightened I saw what he had in his other hand: the bloody, mangled remains of a crow.
I walked to the front door and out to my car. Through the windshield I could see him still standing back there, shotgun in one hand and the dead crow in the other, peering my way.
The girl at the general store hadn't exaggerated him either, I thought. Angelo Bertolucci was every damn bit as creepy as his surroundings.
ELEVEN
I drove south on Shoreline Highway, following the eastern rim of Tomales Bay. The bay is some sixteen miles long and maybe a mile at its widest, sheltered from the rough Pacific storms by a spine of foothills called Inverness Ridge that rises above the western shore. The village of Inverness lies over there, along the water and spreading up into the hills; and beyond the ridge are the white-chalk cliffs, barren cattle graze, and wind-battered beaches of the Point Reyes National Seashore. On this side are a sprinkling of dairy ranches and fishermen's cottages, a few oyster beds, a boatworks, a couple of seafood restaurants, the tiny hamlet of Marshall, and not much else except more wooded hills and copses of eucalyptus planted as windbreaks. It's a pretty area, rustic, essentially untarnished by the whims of man-one of the last sections of unspoiled country within easy driving distance of San Francisco. That wouldn't be the case if it weren't for the weather; developers would have bought up huge chunks of prime bay-front property years ago and built tracts and retirement communities and ersatz-quaint villages, the way they had farther up the coast at Bodega Bay. But down here the fog lingers for days on end, so that everything seems shrouded in a misty, chilly gray. Even on those rare days like this one when the sun shines, the sea wind is almost always blustery and cold; right now, gusting across the bay, it had built whitecaps like rows of lace ruffles on the water, was tossing anchored fishing boats around as if they were toys, and now and then smacked the car hard enough to make it reel a little on the turns. Out on the National Seashore, I thought, it would be blowing up a small gale.
Bad weather doesn't bother me much, though; I come out to Tomales Bay now and then for a picnic, a visit to the Point Reyes lighthouse, fried oysters at Nick's Cove or one of the other seafood restaurants. The bad weather hadn't bothered Harmon Crane, either. It didn't bother the people who lived out here now, nor would it bother the people living elsewhere who could be induced to move here when one or another gambling developer finally pulled the right strings and the inevitable rape of Tomales Bay began. Onward and upward in the name of progress, good old screw-'em-all free enterprise, and the almighty dollar.
Bleak thoughts, a product of the mood Eberhardt's no-show and my unorthodox meeting with Angelo Bertolucci had put me in. Gloom and doom. It was too bad the sun was out; a dripping gray pall of fog would have been just the right backdrop for a nice, extended mope.
When I passed Nick's Cove I began looking
for the peninsula Bertolucci had mentioned. It came up a mile or so farther on: a wide, humpbacked strip of grassland, dotted with scrub oak, that extended out some two hundred yards into the bay. A dirt road snaked up onto it off the highway, vanishing over the crest of the hump; but there was a gate across the road a short ways in and a barbed-wire fence stretching away on both sides. Bushes and a morass of high grass and tall anise blocked my view of the terrain beyond the rise.
Not far away, on the inland side of the highway, was a cluster of ranch buildings surrounded by hilly pastures full of dairy cattle. I drove that way. A lane lined with eucalyptus connected the ranch buildings with the county road, and a sign on one gatepost said CORDA DAIRY RANCH-CLOVER BRAND. I turned into the tunnel formed by the trees, which led me to an old gabled house ringed by bright pink iceplant. A couple of hounds came rushing toward the car, but their tails were in motion and their barks had a welcoming note. One of them jumped up and tried to lick my face when I got out, and a woman's voice called sharply, “Dickens! Down, you! Get down!” She had come out through the front door of the house and was starting toward me. The dog obeyed her, allowing me to go and meet her halfway.
She was in her mid-fifties, pleasant-featured and graying-Mrs. Corda, she said. I showed her the photostat of my investigator's license and told her what I was doing here. Then I asked her if she'd known Harmon Crane.
“No, I'm sorry,” she said. “My husband and I are both from Petaluma. We bought this ranch in 1963.”
“You do know there was once a cabin out on that peninsula?”
“Yes, but there's almost nothing left of it now. Nor of the oyster company that owned the land before us.”
“Would you mind if I had a look around anyway?”
“Whatever for?”
I wasn't sure myself. If I had been a mystic I might have felt I could establish some sort of psychic connection by standing on the same ground Harmon Crane had stood on thirty-five years ago. But I wasn't a mystic. Hell, chalk it up to the fact that I was nosy. It also gave me something to do, now that I was here.
“ Do you mind, Mrs. Corda?”
Bones nd-14 Page 10
