Cyanide Wells

by Marcia Muller

  “So that’s what Gar Payne is holding over my head. Somehow he found out that Ard stabbed Natalie’s father, and that I helped cover it up.”

  Impossible.

  Or was it?

  No. Nothing his former wife had done was impossible anymore.

  “You say she stabbed him,” he said, his own voice sounding foreign to him. “Fatally?”

  “No. If that had been the case, there would’ve been something in the San Francisco papers. She monitored them for weeks.”

  “Why wouldn’t the boyfriend have gone to the police?”

  “Probably because he had a long arrest record, didn’t want to have anything to do with the law.”

  “Okay, Ardis stabbed him and ran. Where?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “And Natalie was born there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when they came here, Natalie was how old?”

  “Four months.”

  “And Ardis never heard from the boyfriend—what’s his name?”

  “Chase Lewis. No, she never heard from him again.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t appear to claim his share of the glory when the paper won the Pulitzer.”

  Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “I don’t think drugged-out trombonists follow the news all that closely.”

  “Still, he must’ve made some effort to find her.”

  “Ard’s theory is that it was too much trouble for him. Of course, she said the same of me because I didn’t hire a private detective every time she disappeared.” Carly closed her eyes, shook her head. “God, when I look back on the past fourteen years, I wonder how I got into such a messy relationship, much less remained in it. I never considered myself the kind of woman who lets herself be victimized, but that’s exactly what happened. And now I’m really in a mess.”

  “Well, in order to extricate yourself from said mess, first you need to find out how serious it is. Find out how much damage Gar Payne and his partner can inflict on you. While you stay here and keep working on leads to Ardis and Natalie’s whereabouts, I’m going to find out what happened to Chase Lewis.”

  Within two hours he left for San Francisco. Highway 101 narrowed some four miles south of Talbot’s Mills, widened to a freeway at Santa Carla, then narrowed again to a two-lane arterial that meandered along the bank of the Eel River. The expanse of water was swollen from the spring runoff; across it Matt glimpsed small cabins among the tall, newly leafed trees. They made him think of his own cabin overlooking Bear Rock, and he felt the strong pull of home. He was tempted to drive straight through San Francisco, turn in the Jeep at the rental car company, and use his open ticket to Vancouver. He had his camera on the seat beside him, its bag containing the films of Gwen; they would vindicate him. Let Carly McGuire solve her own problems.

  But he didn’t go on to the airport. Instead he took the Lombard Street exit from Doyle Drive and checked into the first motel with a vacancy sign. In the lobby he bought a city map, then went up to his room to study it.

  He’d visited San Francisco once during his wandering years, but found it too dreary and expensive. In the few days he’d spent there, he’d learned it was difficult to navigate—full of one-way streets and natural obstacles that made it impossible to travel in a straight line from one point to another. After he’d refamiliarized himself with the map, he pulled the phone book from the nightstand and looked up Wild Parrots, the jazz club where Carly said Ardis had waitressed. It was still in existence, on Grant Avenue in the bohemian North Beach district. It was not the starting point he would have chosen—that was the now-closed library, with its files of old newspapers—but he decided to drive over there anyway.

  Traffic in North Beach was heavy and parking spaces at a premium. Wild Parrots, shabby-looking in the early-evening light, didn’t have valet service. Many blocks away he found a lot with hourly rates so high it would have been more economical merely to trade them the Jeep; then he joined the crowds on the sidewalks. The district seemed seedier than he remembered it: Barkers outside the topless clubs were more aggressive; trash littered the gutters; homeless people reclined in doorways. It was a relief to turn uphill, onto the lower slope of Telegraph Hill, where Italian bakeries and delis and esoteric shops replaced the rough-and-tumble commercialism.

  The club was small, with a raised bandstand at one end and round tables scattered across the floor. A bar ran along the righthand wall, the smoky glass mirror behind it etched with a flock of colorful parrots. He recalled reading in a guidebook during his first visit to the city that such birds, once escapees from their cages but now generations in the wild, frequented Telegraph Hill.

  It was early, only a little after six. A couple sat at the far end of the bar in earnest discussion, but otherwise the club was deserted. Matt took a stool at the other end and waited until a bald man in a vest whose colors matched the parrots’ plumage emerged from a curtained doorway, carrying a case of Scotch. After setting it down, he approached Matt, slapping a paper cocktail napkin in front of him.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Sierra Nevada.”

  When the bartender set the bottle and glass in front of him and started to turn away, Matt added, “And some information.”

  “About?”

  “Chase Lewis.”

  “What about him?”

  “He used to play here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know him?”

  “Was before my time. I know of him. They say he could’ve been one of the greats, but he didn’t get the breaks.”

  “You know what happened to him?”

  He shrugged. “What happens to any of them that’ve got the talent but don’t make it? They booze, they do drugs. They’re in rehab, they’re outta rehab. Some of them do time. Chase Lewis, I don’t know. It’s been years since anybody here has seen him.” He gestured at the wall beside the mirror. “That’s him, the middle picture.”

  Matt squinted through the gloom but could make out very few details. “Would you have an address on file for him?”

  The bartender’s eyes narrowed. “You a cop?”

  “No. I’m trying to locate a woman he was once involved with. A family member.”

  The suspicion in the man’s eyes turned to greed. “I don’t know. I’d have to check a long ways back.”

  “It’s worth twenty bucks to me.”

  “I shouldn’t leave the bar. Business’ll be picking up pretty quick.”

  To Matt, it didn’t look as if business would ever pick up. “Thirty bucks. Final offer.”

  After the bartender disappeared through the curtain, Matt got up and went to examine the photograph of Chase Lewis. It showed a slender, light-skinned black man with a small mustache and conservative Afro, smiling and cradling his trom-bone. A standard publicity still, and it told him nothing about the man who had fathered Ardis’s child.

  The man whom Ardis had stabbed and run from.

  He returned to the bar, sipped his beer, waited. The couple at the far end left, and no other patrons materialized. It was nearly ten minutes before the bartender returned and slid a piece of scratch paper across to him.

  “Had to get it from one of the file boxes in the storage room,” he said. “Why’s it that the box you want is always on the bottom of the stack?”

  Matt placed thirty dollars on the bar as he read the address. “Hugo Street. Where’s that?”

  “Inner Sunset, a block from Golden Gate Park. Nowhere place. You’d think a guy like Chase Lewis would’ve lived in a more lively neighborhood.”

  Yeah, but I bet it was plenty lively the night Ardis stabbed him.

  The apartment house was on a corner: three stories of beige stucco with bay windows, and fire escapes scaling its walls. In the arched entryway was a bank of mailboxes with buzzers beneath them, Number five was labeled with the name C. Lewis. His good luck that the man hadn’t moved.

  He pressed the buzzer twice but got no response. Then he rang number six, w
hich by his reckoning would be on the same floor. No response either, but seven gave an immediate answering buzz. Matt pushed through the door into a dimly lighted lobby that smelled faintly of cat urine.

  There was no elevator, so he started up the narrow staircase. A woman’s voice called down, “Hey, how much do I owe you?” Her face appeared over the railing, round and eager, but it quickly turned wary. “You’re not the pizza guy,” she said.

  “Sorry. I rang you at random. I’m looking for Chase Lewis. He doesn’t answer his bell.”

  “The guy in five? He’s not here very much. I don’t really know him.”

  “Is there anybody else in the building who does?”

  “Uh…Mrs. Matthews, maybe. She kind of functions as the manager—at least she’s the one who calls the owners when something in the common areas needs fixing. She’s lived here forever. Number two.”

  Matt thanked her and located the apartment at the rear of the first floor. Mrs. Matthews looked to be in her sixties, a petite blonde-haired woman in jeans and a blue sweater. “Of course I know Chase,” she said. “What’s he done now?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve never met the man. I’m trying to locate him on behalf of a family member who was involved with him about ten years ago—Ardis Coleman.”

  “Ardis. Of course. Lovely girl. She didn’t deserve the way Chase treated her. I was happy when she left him.”

  “How did he treat her?”

  “Abused her, both verbally and physically. Threatened their little girl, too, and she was only a baby when they moved here.”

  “When was that?”

  “September of ninety two.”

  “And Ardis left him when?”

  “In November.”

  “What were the circumstances of her leaving?”

  Mrs. Matthews looked uncomfortable. “You say Ardis is a family member. I’d think you’d know.”

  “She doesn’t like to talk about that part of her life, but I understand there was some unpleasantness. If I’m to deal with Lewis, I think I should be prepared, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes. On the night Ardis left, I heard a lot of yelling and screaming up there.” She motioned toward the ceiling. “More than the usual. Then it got very quiet, and someone ran out of the building. An hour later Chase came to my door reeking of alcohol, with his shoulder wrapped in a bloody towel, and asked me to drive him to the emergency service at S.F. General. He said Ardis had left him and taken the baby, and he got so upset he stabbed himself accidentally.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Of course not. To me it was obvious what had happened, but it was no business of mine. And he managed to convince the emergency room personnel of his story.”

  “Did Chase ever try to find Ardis and the baby?”

  “No. He drank even more afterwards, and I think he was using drugs as well. He kept getting fired from his jobs, but somehow he managed to support himself and keep the apartment. Then, a few years ago he got himself into a program and has been clean and sober ever since.” Mrs. Matthews frowned. “Of course, he’s as mean as ever, although he controls himself better. Why do you want to see him?”

  “A legal matter involving the little girl. Do you have any idea when he might be coming home?”

  “No, I don’t. Last month he mentioned that he’d landed a long-term gig at Lake Tahoe.”

  “Where?”

  “He didn’t say.” She hesitated. “When you talk to Ardis, will you tell her hello for me? She may not remember me after all these years, but just say I wish her well.”

  Back at the motel he paced nervously, contemplating his next move. A drink from the bottle he’d brought along failed to calm him, so finally he sat down and dialed directory assistance in the 612 area code, copied down the number he received, and called it. Seconds later, Bonnie Vaughan’s soft voice answered.

  “Bonnie, it’s Matt Lindstrom. Don’t hang up. I have good news.”

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling me.”

  “Gwen’s alive, Bonnie. She’s been living in a small town in California since shortly after she disappeared. I’ve seen her, photographed her.”

  A long silence. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s the truth. Let me tell you how I found her.” The story spilled out of him like water rushing through a sluiceway. He ended by asking, “The two of you were lovers, right?”

  “…Oh, Matt, what difference does it make?”

  “It’s important to me. It explains a great deal.”

  “All right, yes. You must’ve suspected. That time you nearly caught us at your house…She was so afraid you’d figure it out and hate her. Hate me, too. The thing was, she loved both of us, but she loved you more.”

  “Why d’you think that?”

  “Because she stopped sleeping with me after that night. In a way, I was relieved. If there had been a scandal, I’d’ve lost my job. A high school principal having a lesbian affair with a married woman…Well, you know.”

  “She broke it off with you, but she still asked me for a divorce.”

  “Because she was afraid if she stayed with you, she’d end up really hurting you. She planned to wait till the divorce was final and then leave town, claiming she’d gotten a job in another state.”

  “If you knew her plans, how could you think I murdered her?”

  She sighed. “I didn’t at first, although I thought it was strange that she disappeared before the divorce was final, without saying good-bye to either of us. But Gwen was impulsive and didn’t always act rationally, so I decided something had happened to make her run. But then two years went by, and she never got in touch with me. Everybody else thought you were guilty, and I started believing it, too.”

  “And now?”

  “It all makes sense. These disappearing acts, they’re part of a lifelong pattern.”

  Her phrasing gave him pause. “Lifelong?”

  “Well, she did run away from home in her teens. She spent a couple of years in Chicago before she came to Saugatuck. Where she got the money to attend college, I’m not sure. She didn’t volunteer the information, and I guess I really didn’t want to know.”

  “She told me her parents had died in a plane crash and that she was using their life insurance money for school. And she told me a lot about being raised by an ultraconservative grandmother in Muskegon, Michigan.”

  “She was raised in Muskegon, yes, but her parents are very much alive.”

  Yet another revelation. Why had Gwen lied to him about a thing like that? “Did she give a reason for running away from home? Was she neglected? Abused?”

  “No. She said her parents and Muskegon were boring. She wanted more from life than they could offer.”

  “I suppose she also found Saugatuck boring. And me.”

  “Matt? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I just need some time to take all this in. We’ll talk again soon, Bonnie, I promise.”

  Carly sounded depressed when he called her an hour later, and he hated to relate news that would further deflate her spirits. As he told her the things he’d found out that evening, she listened silently.

  Finally she said, “I lived with her all those years and never knew any of this. I accepted everything she told me without question. How could I be so stupid?”

  “You had no reason to doubt her. Neither did I.”

  “She told me she stabbed Chase Lewis because he was pressuring her to have an abortion. Now it turns out she’d already had Nat. What’s the sense in a lie like that? Or the lie about her parents being dead and her awful childhood with her grandmother?”

  He’d thought about that as he’d nursed a drink in his dark motel room after talking with Bonnie. “I think there’s some deficiency in her that makes her need drama in her life. The running away, the lies—they’re all a part of that. When we were married, she would create situations that would throw our lives into chaos: a fire in the kitchen, ramming the car into the garage door.
Nothing major, but it got her a lot of attention.”

  “The same’s been true with us, now that you mention it.” Carly hesitated. “So are you coming back now?”

  “No. I still want to find out the details of the night Ardis stabbed Chase Lewis. I think I’ll make a run up to Lake Tahoe in the morning.”

  Monday, May 13, 2002

  Stateline, Nevada

  Expensive-looking hotels that Matt didn’t recall from a previous visit to Lake Tahoe hugged the shoreline, blocking views of the water. A major building boom was under way on both sides of the Nevada border; cranes rose high against the sky, the noise of piledrivers was deafening, and scaffolding covered the sidewalks. Traffic on the boulevard linking the two states crept.

  By contrast, the interiors of the casinos seemed curiously deserted, even for early afternoon. The stools at the long banks of slot machines were largely empty, and many of the gaming tables were covered. The brightly lighted rooms were too quiet, too chill, too cheerless. Even the newest and most opulent of the gambling establishments seemed shabby and fouled by stale smoke. A paradox, given the near-frantic construction going on outside. Although the casinos were the victims of an economy that had never recovered from the aftermath of the horrific events of the past September 11, the developers would eventually fall victim to their own false optimism and greed.

  He tried to canvass the casinos quickly but became frustrated by layouts designed to force a person to pass through most of the moneymaking attractions before arriving at a place where information could be had. Finally, while stopping for a badly needed drink at one of the bars in Caesar’s Palace, he encountered a waitress who knew Chase Lewis and had heard that a group he frequently played with, the Fillmore Five, was currently engaged at the Hyatt Regency at Incline Village.

  He drove north past pleasant-looking enclaves called Zephyr Cove, Cave Rock, and Glenbrook, bypassed the road to Carson City. Incline Village was near the tip of the lake, on the Nevada side, and the Hyatt Regency, some dozen stories tall, dominated the shoreline. He left the Jeep with the valet, went inside to speak with the concierge, and was directed to a smaller building on the beach, which housed a restaurant. When he stepped into its dim interior, it took a minute for his vision to adjust; then he saw wood beams, massive iron chandeliers, and a huge stone fireplace. At the far end, in a bar area, a slender black man with a receding hairline was adjusting sound equipment on a platform. Not Chase Lewis.