“That’s right. A sports car.”
“Dark or light colored?”
“Light colored. There was a bit of moon and its hood and top gleamed and I remember it made me think of quicksilver.”
“So it could have been silver.”
“Yes. Yes, it could.”
“About the man himself. Did you get a clear look at him?”
“Not very clear, I’m afraid. His coat collar was pulled up.”
“Did you have an impression of height, weight? Big, small, thin, fat?”
Mrs. Conti worked her memory, one hand stroking the old cat on her lap until Big Girl made a burbling sound like water boiling. “Well, he wasn’t fat. Tall? No, not really. But not short, either… I’m sorry, the only image I have in my mind is of a moving shape.”
“Could you estimate his age?”
“No… except that he seemed young to me. He moved the way a young man does, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, ma’am. Did you tell the police about him?”
“The police? Why, no. No one from the police came to see me.”
No surprise there. A woman dies from a fall inside a locked house, with no signs of forced entry. Verdict from the beginning: accident. None of the investigators had seen a need to canvass the neighbors, so they hadn’t bothered.
Mrs. Conti said, “Should I call and tell them?”
“No, that isn’t necessary.”
“But if you believe that man had something to do with poor Mrs. Mathias’s accident… That is why you’re investigating, isn’t it?”
“It’s part of my investigation, yes. If I find out that the man you saw was responsible, I’ll contact the police myself.” Before I got to my feet I reached over and rubbed the tortoiseshell’s ears. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Conti. You’ve been a huge help.”
“Have I? I’m so glad. I don’t have much opportunity to be helpful to anyone since Adam passed on. My children don’t need me anymore. It’s I who need them. Isn’t that sad?”
Very sad.
And very lonely.
G aunt. Overworked. Nervous. Those were the three descriptive adjectives that came to mind on my first look at Philomena Ruiz. She was not much more than forty, but her black hair was already streaked with gray and the lines in her face were etched deep. She hadn’t been home long when I got there a couple of minutes past seven; she still wore work shoes and a twinged expression when she moved, as though her legs bothered her and she hadn’t had a chance to sit down yet.
In the doorway, after I explained that I was working for Celeste Ogden, she said, “I told everything I know to the police. And to Mrs. Ogden when she came to see me.”
“I’m sure you did. I just have a few questions-I won’t take up much of your time.”
She let me come in, with a certain amount of resignation, and conducted me into a tidy living room packed with old, well-used furniture. The chin-whiskered teenager hovered around us, but not in a protective way. When Mrs. Ruiz and I were seated, the kid said rudely, “No te pases tanto tiempo con ese anglo viejo y gordo. Tengo hambre y quiero mi comida.”
My Spanish is rusty, but not that rusty. What I said to him came out pretty quick, if not particularly fluid: “Ciudado con lo que dices, jovencito. Deberias mostrar mas respector a tus mayors.”
He blinked at me, openmouthed. Mrs. Ruiz seemed to be trying to hide a smile behind a raised hand. In sharper terms she told him the same as I had, to show some respect for his elders, and also to go fetch his own dinner for a change. He beat it out of there in a hurry. When he was gone she used more formal language to apologize for his rudeness and to say, politely, that I spoke Spanish very well. I thanked her; but my command wasn’t all that good, I said, and would she mind if we had our conversation in English.
“What is it you wish to know?”
“Well, to begin with, how long did you work for Mrs. Mathias?”
“Nine years. One full day, one half day, every week.”
“Was she usually home when you were there?”
“Not when she was married to Mr. Ring. She was very busy at that time-she had many friends, many activities.”
“And after she married Mr. Mathias?”
“Then she was home often when I came.”
“What did the two of you talk about?”
“My work.”
“Personal matters? Did she confide in you?”
“No. Never. We spoke only of my work and things of no importance.”
“She never said anything about her relationship with Mr. Mathias?”
“No. Never.”
“What’s your opinion of the man?”
“I do not know him. I met him only a few times.”
“How did he treat you?”
No response.
“Mrs. Ruiz?”
“As some men treat their servants,” she said. She said it without inflection, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness in the words. “As if only he was a child of God.”
“Did he treat Mrs. Mathias as a man should treat his wife-as a friend, an equal?”
“No. I do not think so.”
“Yet she never complained about him.”
“She was a woman in love. Women in love do not complain to those who work for them.”
“Do you think she was still in love with him at the time of her death?”
Long pause before Mrs. Ruiz said, “Perhaps not.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to change her feelings toward her husband?”
“No.”
“The last few times you saw her,” I said. “Did she seem different to you, as if something was weighing heavily on her mind?”
“Yes. I thought so.”
“Do you have any idea what it was?”
“No. But her headaches seemed worse… you know she have bad headaches?”
“Migraines, yes.”
“She suffered very much from them.”
“Was she seeing a doctor about the headaches?”
“I asked her the last time. A doctor in San Francisco, she said.”
“San Francisco?”
“A specialist.”
“What kind of specialist?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did she mention his name?”
“No.”
“Or how long she’d been seeing him?”
“No.”
That was all Mrs. Ruiz had to tell me. I left her to her rude son and her dinner, headed for home and a late dinner of my own.
Making progress. But even so, I didn’t have a good feeling about the direction we were heading. A case like this one is like driving through a bad neighborhood at night: the streets seem familiar and you’re pretty sure you’re on the right one, but your instincts keep telling you that sooner or later you’ll come to a dead end.
17
JAKE RUNYON
Conflicting reports, conflicting images. Every time somebody handed him a verbal picture of Jerry Belsize, it was as if he was looking at the same person with a different face. Like the picture of Dorian Gray. And now the same thing was happening with Sandra Parnell.
The girl was Belsize’s devoted soul mate, the one person he was able to turn to in a time of crisis. She wasn’t the girl he thought she was and he didn’t want anything more to do with her. She was decent, loyal. She was a dope-smoking slut. She was strong willed, with Jerry’s best interests at heart. She was a weak and easily fooled punching bag.
It was even worse with Belsize. He was an innocent victim of circumstance. He was guilty as hell. He was a good, clean-cut kid who got along with everybody. He was a wild and crazy kid who bought and distributed marijuana, drove like a maniac, ran down dogs for the thrill of it. He got along fine with Manuel Silvera. He murdered Silvera in cold blood in a particularly vicious way. He treated his girlfriends in a normal fashion. He was a borderline rapist who slapped them around when he got high. He was good; he was evil; he was a little bit of everything in be
tween.
More: He spent all day Friday in Lost Bar, buying half a kilo of weed from Gus Mayerhof and getting his car fixed. He wasn’t in Lost Bar at all on Friday. He was a regular customer of Mayerhof’s. Mayerhof didn’t know him from Adam’s off ox. He was so afraid of Kelso he’d opted to hide out at the migrant camp rather than go home and proclaim his innocence. He left the camp for no apparent reason and went somewhere else. He torched the camp. He didn’t torch the camp.
What was fact and what was fiction?
Which was the real Sandra Parnell, which the real Jerry Belsize?
T here were no other cars in the Gasco station when Runyon drove in. He parked alongside the convenience store, went inside. The red-haired kid with the dim eyes, Bob Varley, was behind the counter looking hot and bored. The place had neither air-conditioning nor ceiling fans and the temperature outside had climbed up into the nineties again.
Runyon said, “Talk to you for a minute?” and introduced himself. But he needn’t have bothered.
Varley said, “Yeah, I know who you are.”
“No secrets in a small town.”
“Yeah.”
“I understand you and Jerry Belsize are pretty good friends.”
The kid quit making eye contact. Not that it mattered. You couldn’t read anything by watching his eyes. They were like a cat’s, more mirrors than windows, and even if you could see through them, all you’d be looking at was mostly empty rooms.
“We hung out together sometimes,” he said. “But I don’t know where he is and I don’t know nothing about those fires. I already told Deputy Kelso that.”
“You think Jerry’s guilty, Bob?”
“I dunno. Everybody says he is.”
“Not everybody. His parents don’t believe he’s capable of setting fires, hurting people.”
“Yeah, well, they’re his parents, you know?”
“What kind of guy do you think he is?”
“Jerry? A good guy. We get along real good. He don’t treat me like some people do. I mean, I know I’m not smart, but that don’t matter to him.”
“What do the two of you do when you hang out?”
“Do?”
“Chase girls, drink some beer, drag race?”
“Nah, we don’t race.”
“I heard Jerry likes to drive fast, run down animals that get in his way.”
“What? Hey. That’s bullshit, man.”
“Smoke some dope now and then?”
“I never smoked no dope.”
That was a lie. Varley would never be a good liar; it made him turn shifty and furtive.
Runyon said, “Jerry does, though. Supplies weed to his friends, gets it from a German farmer up in Lost Bar.”
“He don’t. That’s more bullshit.”
“Come on, Bob. It’s no big deal. Everybody smokes pot now and then.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Jerry’s ex-girlfriend does and she’s not afraid to admit it.”
“What ex-girlfriend?”
“Sandra Parnell.”
“She’s not an ex.”
“His mother says they broke up two or three weeks ago. Not so?”
“Jerry never said nothing about it to me.”
“And he would if it were true?”
“I guess he would. Sure, why not?”
“Why would they bust up, if they did?”
“I dunno. They been together a long time.”
“Jerry smack her around much?”
“Huh?”
“You know, hit her when he was mad. He likes to play rough, doesn’t he?”
“Nah. Who told you that?”
“Maybe he found another girl he liked better. Maybe that’s why he broke up with Sandra.”
“He didn’t care about no other girl.”
“Maybe she found somebody else. Pretty hot stuff, I hear.”
“Who? Sandra?”
“Made it with a lot of guys.”
“She’s not like that. Jerry wouldn’t stand for that.”
“How about before she started going with him?”
“Nah. She never screwed around, not like some girls.”
“What’s she like then?”
“Oh, you know. Cool.”
“Ashley Kelso cool, too?”
Varley began to tighten up; you could see it happening, a kind of ripple effect from his body down his arms and on up to his mouth and chin. “How come you’re asking about her?”
“Don’t worry, Bob. Anything you tell me won’t get back to her father. Strictly between us.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“No lie. I’m not looking to get anybody into trouble.”
“Then why you ask so many questions?”
“I’m a detective. Detectives ask questions. Like on TV, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“So tell me about Ashley. What’s she like?”
“She’s okay. She’s friends with Sandra.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. They hang out sometimes, like me and Jerry.”
“She used to go with Jerry, right?”
Varley shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
An SUV came rumbling into the station; he looked out through the window, watching as it pulled up to one of the forward pumps.
“Bob?”
“What?”
“Ashley and Jerry.”
“What about ’em?”
“They went together for a while, until her father caught them fooling around and kicked Jerry’s ass.”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“How’d Jerry feel about that?”
“Nobody likes to get his ass kicked.”
“I meant about not being able to go with Ashley anymore.”
“He didn’t care too much. They was gonna break up anyway.”
“How come? Because of Sandra?”
“I dunno.”
“So he didn’t keep seeing Ashley on the sly?”
“Nah. She wanted to, but he didn’t.”
“She must’ve been pretty hung up on him.”
“I guess so. For a while.”
“When did she start going with Zach Battle?”
“She don’t go with Zach. He wants her to, but she just wants to drive his car. She don’t have her own car.”
“How soon did Jerry and Sandra start going together? Right after he and Ashley broke up?”
“Not right after. Pretty soon.”
“How did Ashley feel about that?”
“I dunno.”
“Put a strain on her friendship with Sandra?”
“Why ask me, man? I don’t know Ashley real well.”
“Never dated her yourself?”
“You kidding? She don’t want nothing to do with a guy like me.”
“Sandra doesn’t feel that way, does she?”
“Yeah, she does. None of the girls like me much; they all think I’m just a big dummy.” The hurt showed in the abrupt clenching of his hands, the quick twist of his mouth.
End of interview. It would’ve been even if the driver of the SUV hadn’t come in just then to pay for his fill-up. The sad cases like Bob Varley were responsive enough until you touched a nerve; then they closed off entirely, retreated into the dimly lit rooms behind their eyes.
H e didn’t find Kelso. It was Kelso, after a while, who found him.
He was feeling a little woozy when he left the service station. The thick heat and the fact that he hadn’t eaten all day; Rinniak’s call had dragged him out of the motel before he’d had a chance for breakfast. There was a Chinese restaurant downtown he’d noticed when he dropped off Ashley Kelso; he drove there first, ate most of a tasteless plate of fried rice with shrimp. Bad choice. The food lay heavy in his stomach before he was out the door, gave him gas and queasiness. His head had begun to ache again, too.
He’d intended to stop by the sheriff’s substation again. Instead he went to the motel. Two more messages waiting. The fir
st was from the same reporter who’d called yesterday, sounding pissed at having been ignored. He’d be even more pissed tomorrow. The second, clocked in at 10:20, was from Mayor Carl Battle. Would Mr. Runyon please stop and see him, at either Battle Hardware or the mayor’s office at city hall, before he left Gray’s Landing? Not today, Mr. Runyon wouldn’t. Tomorrow morning was soon enough.
He found a packet of Alka-Seltzer in his kit, swallowed a Vicodin tablet with the fizz. Stripped to his shorts and lay down in the darkened room with the air conditioner cranked up high. The idea was to rest until his gut and his head were right again, but it wasn’t long before he dozed off.
A persistent hammering on the door woke him. The bedside clock said it was after five-he’d been out nearly three hours. Groggy, sweaty, but the physical symptoms seemed to have abated. The banging on the door continued. He thought about putting on his pants and shirt, said the hell with it. He went over in his underwear and looked through the peephole in the door before he opened up.
“It’s about time,” Kelso said.
“I was asleep.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“Not like this. Inside.”
Runyon backed up as the deputy crowded in and shut the door, not quietly. He sat on the bed, rubbed his face in his hands to clear away the last of the cobwebs. Kelso stood as he had in the Redding hospital, flat-footed, jut jawed, one hand resting on the butt of his service revolver.
He said, “What’s the idea, questioning my daughter?”
“You make it sound like an interrogation.”
“I asked you a question.”
“I went by your place looking for you. She-”
“How’d you know where I live?”
“You’re listed in the phone book,” Runyon said. The air-conditioning had chilled the sweat on him; he reached for his shirt. “Ashley was on her way to work. I offered her a ride; we talked some on the way. That’s all.”
“Personal things. About her and Belsize. Matters that are none of your business.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“I don’t like it when a cheap private detective comes around my town-”
“ Your town?”
“-and bothers my daughter and a lot of other people with questions about a felony investigation.”
“One that I happen to be involved in.”
“Not directly and not officially. Didn’t I tell you before to keep out of it? Who do you think you are?”
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