Double

by Bill Pronzini

  I sipped wine, just as glad he wasn’t going to bother to trot out that old overworked argument.

  “So why are you here, exactly?” Woodall asked. “You didn’t drop by to commiserate with me on my loss of Elaine

  “No. I’m merely checking all the people in her address book. It’s the only lead I have.”

  He went a little pale at that and took a hefty gulp of wine. “You’re a private detective, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who hired you to look into this?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t give out the names of my clients except to the police.”

  “Did your client give you my name?”

  I shook my head in a way that could have been either yes or no.

  Woodall looked petulant. “What did he say about me?”

  “Who?”

  “Your client.”

  “I didn’t say that he told me about you.”

  “Then who—”

  “Rich,” I said, “did Elaine mention anything to you about something being wrong at the Casa del Rey?”

  Whatever he had expected me to ask him, that wasn’t it, and in a way it seemed to put him at ease. “No. But as I told you, I hardly knew the woman.”

  Their relationship had deteriorated markedly in the time I’d been talking to him. I started to phrase yet another question, but Woodall stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to leave now. I have ... a lady coming over in a little while.”

  His resistance was pretty high now; I’d get no more from him tonight. Nodding, I got to my feet. He led me through the tastefully appointed living room, past the gun rack, to the front door.

  By the time I’d stepped out onto the walk, Woodall had recovered his poise. “I wish I could have helped more,” he said, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture and smiling. “But you know how it is.”

  “Yes, I know how it is.”

  And how it was was pretty damned suspicious.

  18 “WOLF”

  On Sunday morning, things at the Casa del Rey took an abrupt twist. And not for the better, either.

  I went down about eight-thirty, on my way to breakfast, and detoured by the desk to drop off my key. The Esquire fashion-ad clerk was back on duty. He looked at me as if I had suddenly turned into a minor V.I.P. and said, “Excuse me, sir. Aren’t you the gentleman who asked about Bungalow Six yesterday?”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “Well, sir, I really must apologize. I was under the impression that Bungalow Six had been empty, but that wasn’t the case at all.”

  “It wasn’t, huh?”

  “No, sir. A young woman and her son were staying there; you were absolutely right about that. Mrs. Nancy Clark and Timmy. One of our assistants checked them in and failed to fill out a registration card or notify any other member of the staff.”

  I looked at him for a time without saying anything. He looked right back at me; he was somebody you wouldn’t want to play poker with, not unless you had a .38 cocked in your lap. Pretty soon I said, “What about the maid?”

  “Sir?”

  “I talked to the maid who was cleaning Bungalow Six yesterday afternoon. She also said it was empty, hadn’t been occupied for a week.”

  “A heavyset black woman? Middle-aged?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I must apologize for her too. We’ve had trouble with her before. She’s not very friendly with guests and sometimes tells lies when she doesn’t want to be bothered. Mr. Beddoes intends to dismiss her.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “All right, where did Nancy and Timmy Clark go in such a hurry? And how come they didn’t check out first?”

  “Oh, they did check out, sir. With Mr. Ibarcena, who is a personal friend of Mrs. Clark’s. They had a plane to catch and he drove them to the airport.”

  “A plane to where?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “So Mr. Ibarcena must have known they were staying in Bungalow Six. How come he didn’t say anything to anybody about it?”

  “He had no reason to, sir. Until this morning, when I happened to mention to him that you’d been asking about Bungalow Six.”

  Nice, I thought. They’ve got it all worked out nice and pat. I said, “How about if I talk to Mr. Ibarcena? Or is he off again on another errand?”

  “As a matter of fact, he has left the hotel. But if you’d care to talk to Mr. Beddoes I’m sure that can be arranged.”

  “Mr. Beddoes said it was all right, did he?”

  “Why, yes, sir, he did. Would you like to see him?”

  “Sure. I’d like it a whole bunch.”

  “If you’ll just wait here for a moment ...”

  He came around from behind the desk and went through a door to the left marked PRIVATE. Two minutes later he reappeared and gestured to me, and I went past him and into an anteroom that might have been a waiting area in some sort of penitentiary: gray carpeting, flat white walls, gray steel file cabinets, and a desk with a frumpy-looking young woman behind it. There were three doors leading off the anteroom, two of them closed and one open. In the open doorway was Lloyd Beddoes, smiling at me. But the smile was a little off-center, like a tough warden welcoming a member of the Prison Reform League.

  “Come in,” he said, “come in, won’t you?”

  I went in. His office was bigger than the anteroom and a little less institutional, with windows that looked out toward the ocean on one side and the gardens on the other. The air conditioner was on and turned up high; it was like walking into a cold-storage locker. Beddoes shut the door, waved me to a chair, and went behind his desk and sat down when I did. The smile was still in place and still crooked. He had a tense, worried look about him, similar to the one he’d worn yesterday while Knowles and his men were on the grounds.

  “Now, then,” he said. “Mr. Scott explained about the misunderstanding with Bungalow Six?”

  “He explained it.”

  “You seem, ah, a bit skeptical.”

  “Why should I be skeptical?”

  “No reason. None at all.”

  “I’m just curious,” I said. “I ran into Timmy Clark and his mother yesterday, not long before Elaine Picard’s death, and we had a talk. The boy indicated they’d be staying on here another day or two. Then all of a sudden they disappeared. You can see how that would make me wonder.”

  Beddoes plucked nervously at a wing of his blond hair. “Oh yes,” he said, “of course. Perfectly understandable.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t . . . Oh, you mean how come they left so suddenly. Well, I believe it had to do with a family emergency of some kind. You’d have to ask Mr. Ibarcena.”

  “I’ll do that. I don’t suppose you know where they went?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. Perhaps Mr. Ibarcena—”

  “But you can tell me where they live.”

  “Where they live? Why do you want to know that?”

  “We kind of hit it off, the three of us,” I lied. “Talked about getting together later on. So I’d like to get in touch with them. Pretty woman like Mrs. Clark ... you know how it is.”

  He nodded a little jerkily; his smile wasn’t much at all now. I wondered if he’d turned the air conditioner up so high on purpose, just before I came in, to keep himself from sweating during our little interview.

  He said, “I’m afraid I can’t give out that information.”

  “Why not? You’ve got a record of it, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. But the law forbids us to divulge personal data about our guests.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want to break the law, would we.” I started to get up, pretended to change my mind, and sat down and leaned toward him. “Any word yet on Elaine Picard?”

  He blinked at me. “Word? I don’t know what—”

  “About her fall yesterday. Whether it was an accident or what.”

  “Oh. No. No word.”

  “You haven’t talked to
the sheriff’s department since then?”

  “I ... no, I haven’t talked to them.”

  “Well, what’s your opinion, Mr. Beddoes? Did she fall or jump? Or was she pushed?”

  “Pushed?” he said. His hands twitched; he folded them together to keep them still. “What makes you think she might have been pushed?”

  “I didn’t say that’s what I thought. But it is a possibility, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Who would want to—to murder Ms. Picard?”

  “Seems you might have some ideas about that.”

  “Well, I don’t. Why should I?”

  “She worked for you; she was your chief of security. Any sort of security or police work can be high risk at times.”

  “Not at the Casa del Rey. We’ve never had any serious security problems.”

  “I heard you tell Lieutenant Knowles that she was distraught the last time you saw her. Extremely distraught, I think you said. That didn’t have anything to do with her work here?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Do you know what was bothering her?”

  “I have no idea. None.”

  “But you did know her personally, didn’t you?”

  He twitched again; the question seemed to make him even more nervous. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t know her well at all. We certainly didn’t socialize, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’m not implying anything, Mr. Beddoes. Did you know any of her friends? A young guy with wavy brown hair named Rich, for instance?”

  “The only friends of Ms. Picard’s I’m acquainted with,” he said stiffly, “are the members of the Professional Women’s Forum. Why are you asking all these questions? What right do you have to interfere in this matter?”

  “I saw her die—remember?”

  “Still, that doesn’t give you . . . For God’s sake, she either threw herself out of the tower or she fell accidentally. There’s nothing—sinister about it. It happened and now it’s finished, there’s isn’t any more to it.”

  “Isn’t there, Mr. Beddoes? I wouldn’t be too sure about that if I were you.” I got on my feet. “Have a nice day.”

  I left him sitting there looking a little pale around the gills. When I came out into the lobby I had a half-formed notion to head for the coffee shop instead of the hotel dining room. I had no appetite for breakfast now; all I wanted was a cup of coffee. But one of the people threading their way through a confusion of loaded luggage carts and departing guests was McCone, and that changed my mind. I detoured over to her, caught her arm.

  “Wolf,” she said, “you’re just the person I wanted to see.”

  “Ditto. Let’s go talk.”

  “Where? The coffee shop?”

  “No. Outside somewhere, away from any big ears.”

  We went out through the side entrance, into the gardens. But there were a bunch of Japanese tourists there, taking photographs of the tropical flora and of each other, so I steered McCone down onto the beach. It was hot already, and there were people sprawled out on the sand and splashing around in the light surf. Out where the deep blue water met the paler blue of the sky, a couple of naval vessels moved like sluggish gray reminders that all this was illusion and the world wasn’t such a peaceful place after all.

  McCone stopped and took off her sandals. As we started off again she said, “Okay, what’s up? You seem kind of grim this morning.”

  “I feel kind of grim. I just had a talk with Lloyd Beddoes.” And I told her about that, and about the sudden switch in official hotel position on Nancy and Timmy Clark.

  “Sounds fishy,” McCone said. “How do you figure it?”

  “The same way you’re figuring it. Beddoes is running some kind of scam with the hotel as cover. Ibarcena’s probably in on it too. The desk clerk Scott too, maybe, but more likely he’s just doing what he’s told. Same with the maid.”

  “What kind of scam?”

  “I don’t know yet. But Beddoes and Ibarcena are scared to death the police will find it out. That’s what made them so nervous yesterday after Elaine’s death, and it must be why Ibarcena hustled the Clarks out of here so fast. Then you found that letter Elaine wrote to her lawyer and gave it to Knowles, and he must have gone after Beddoes right away, talked to him sometime last night. Beddoes covered up somehow —pleaded ignorance, or maybe tried to discredit Elaine as a paranoid and probable suicide—but that wouldn’t have made him feel much safer.”

  “And then this morning,” McCone said, picking it up, “he came in and Scott told him you’d been asking questions about Bungalow Six. So Beddoes cooked up that story about the Clark family and told the clerk to pass it on to you as soon as he saw you.”

  “Right.”

  “But the thing I don’t get,” she said, “is what sort of illegal activity could involve a seven-year-old kid traveling with his mother.”

  “Neither do I. Not yet.”

  We walked along in silence for a few seconds. We were down close to the water, where the sand was wet and packed and the footing was better. Little wavelets rolled in and lapped at McCone’s bare feet; she didn’t pay any attention. I don’t like feet much—a foot fetish is one of those quirks I’ve never been able to figure out—but hers were small and well shaped. It made me feel a little silly to have noticed them and to be thinking about them. The human mind is a funny instrument sometimes.

  She said, “I found the guy named Rich last night. And you were right —he’s strange.”

  “How did you manage to track him down?”

  She gave me one of her little smiles. “Detective work. I’m good at it too, you know.”

  “Mmm. Who is he?”

  “His last name’s Woodall and he’s a zoologist—does public relations for the San Diego Zoo. He also keeps a private zoo in his backyard.”

  “A what?”

  “A private zoo. Big cats, birds, foxes, snakes, some other things. Right before I got there, he found that someone had broken into his yard where the cages are—sawed through the chain. Can you imagine what might have happened if his menagerie had gotten loose?”

  “If he lives here in the city, it could have been pretty bad.”

  “Actually he’s in a secluded area north of El Cajon, near Lakeside. No close neighbors, and he tells me the area is unincorporated, so there aren’t any laws prohibiting what he’s doing. Still, he’d have been in trouble if his zoo had scattered. He was really upset about the break-in. He said if he’d caught the person who did it, he’d have blown him away.”

  “That kind, huh?”

  “Yes. He keeps a rack of guns in his living room. I can’t reconcile it—an animal lover also being a hunter. But maybe that’s just me.”

  “Did you get anything out of him about Elaine?”

  “Not much,” she said. “I pretended ignorance of what happened in the bar on Friday, and he didn’t mention it either. He said he wasn’t Elaine’s boyfriend and didn’t see her socially. According to him, they were just casual friends who got acquainted when she adopted an animal at the San Diego Zoo. One of those sponsorship deals—a gorilla. But I think that’s a lie.”

  “How come?”

  “When I knew Elaine she didn’t like animals. Wouldn’t own a pet, wouldn’t have anything to do with them.”

  “I can give you another reason Woodall might be lying. One of Elaine’s friends, a woman named June Paxton, told me last night that she saw Elaine and Woodall together in a place called Borrego Springs six weeks ago. Having dinner at some hotel there—the Casa del Zorro.”

  McCone gave that some thought. One of the patrol planes from North Island came zooming over. When it was gone and the beach was quiet again she said, “How’d you happen to meet June Paxton?”

  I told her. When I started to explain who June Paxton was, she broke in, saying, “I’ve met her. Yesterday morning in Elaine’s office. She seemed like a nice person.”

  “I thought so too. She was taking Elaine’s death
pretty hard.”

  “Did she think it was an accident or what?”

  “Suicide. Because Elaine hadn’t been herself recently.”

  “She have any idea why?”

  “No definite idea. She thinks it was man trouble.”

  “Rich Woodall?”

  I nodded. “But she said there was another man in Elaine’s life too.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “Guy named Henry Nyland. A retired admiral and budding right-wing politico. Seems he’d been trying to get Elaine to marry him and she kept turning him down.”

  McCone looked thoughtful again. “I’ve heard of Nyland. He’s running for city council on what amounts to a Moral Majority ticket. God knows why Elaine would get mixed up with somebody like that.”

  I said, “I had a little brush with the man on Friday night,” and told her about it. “He seemed to be a pretty unpleasant type.”

  “I wonder if he came here to see Elaine,” she said. Then she said, “That love note I found. Nyland must have sent it to her.”

  “Sounds likely.”

  “It said they met at some club. Probably a health club downtown—the House of Slenderizing and Massage. She had their address in her book.”

  Another plane went over. When the sound of it faded, McCone asked, “Did you find out anything else from June Paxton?”

  “Not much. Except that one of her and Elaine’s friends is bisexual, if that means anything.”

  “Which one?”

  “A woman named Karyn Sugarman. She’s a shrink—might have been seeing Elaine professionally.”

  McCone looked surprised. “I met her too. I wouldn’t have thought she was the type to go both ways.”

  “You never know these days,” I said. “Everybody’s got some kink or other, it seems,” and I found myself thinking again, stupidly, of foot fetishes and McCone’s feet.

  “Well, Sugarman is one of the people I’m planning to talk to,” she said. “June Paxton, too. Now I’ll have to add Henry Nyland to the list.” She paused. “What are you going to do?”

  “Something I should have done yesterday: call Tom Knowles and tell him about the Clarks. That’ll clear my conscience. Then I think I’ll talk to Lauterbach, see what he knows. After that . . . we’ll see.”