“If he left town,” Kennerly said—a trifle smugly, I thought—“any direction he might have chosen, he’d have run into terrible weather. The way I hear it, the whole Midwest is virtually shut down.” So it was; I’d heard the same thing on the car radio on the drive out, but forgot it almost instantly since it didn’t affect me. The snowstorm out west—the one that had delayed Castelar’s flight last night—had traveled this way, bringing high winds and low visibility and up to twenty-four inches of snow in some places. By some-meteorological miracle, it had changed course at the last instant, wreaking the rest of its havoc to the north of us, across the Dakotas and into Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the rest of this part of the country was treated to the same paralyzingly cold winds we had been receiving, which was as bad as or even worse than the heavy precipitation. When the thermometer flirts with windchills of fifty and sixty below, a car can freeze up even while the motor is running. I had seen plenty of stalled vehicles dotting the highway between here and the city, cars that had been literally blown off the road, and semis whose diesel fuel had turned to jelly in the tank. Kennerly was right: Jennings wouldn’t have gotten very far at all, even if he had been foolish enough to start out in the first place.
Banner was on the same wavelength. “Our best guess is that if he did try to rabbit, he’d get no more than fifty or sixty miles out of town. In all likelihood, he’s still in the area. But that doesn’t change anything. Finding him is still a job for the police.”
“No argument here,” Kennerly replied expansively. “But everything you’ve said supports my conviction that your first priority will be finding Jennings. That’s as it should be. However, my first priority is finding Kate. Whether she’s with Jennings, whether she went with him willingly, whether she knows her father has been murdered—it’s all academic. I just don’t want the search for Kate to take a back seat, and with all respect, it’s going to as long as you’re hunting a suspected murderer.”
“Ever hear of the FBI? They’ve gotten pretty good at handling kidnapings over the years.”
“I’m unconvinced this is a kidnaping, and wouldn’t the FBI require some evidence of a crime? In any event, I’d rather spare the family the additional publicity, the additional stress, if it can be avoided. And I think it can.”
Banner remained silent.
“That’s why I want someone whose first—indeed, only—priority will be finding my client’s daughter. My friend’s daughter. If that overlaps the search for Jennings, if that runs parallel to the search for Jennings, then so be it. Just as long as it isn’t secondary to the search for Jennings.”
Kennerly paused for effect. As are all good trial lawyers, he was an actor at heart. His head swiveled slowly from me to Banner, then back. “What do you think, lad—are you up to it?”
Someday I’ll learn, maybe. Not today, obviously, but someday. My responsibility had begun and ended yesterday. The job was complete. I found the girl, got her safely deposited in a hotel, and made my report. Selah. Pax vobiscum. Happy trails. There was no need for me to feel obliged to become any further involved, to participate in a needle hunt in a haystack of uncertain dimension. Banner was right, this was a job for the law and its legendary long arm. Despite what the writers of television shows think, the police are better equipped to handle this sort of thing than is a solitary hero. No matter how rugged and handsome he may be.
But then, you can’t get into the Private Eye Hall of Fame without tilting at an occasional windmill.
I told him I’d do it. “But later, I want to talk to you about your definition of easy money.”
With that settled, Banner finally proceeded with her presentation. It had to do with time of death and angle of entry and caliber and deflection and the ongoing search for the slug. Little of it mattered to me. You can’t run a ballistics check unless and until you have the murder weapon, and even then it’s mainly a matter for lawyers to sweat over as they try to make or break a case. The cops were guessing the weapon was a .38, which is only about the most common handgun in the universe. And the time of death didn’t have anything to do with what I was about; again, it’s something that takes on significance when you get to court, and we were still a long way from that.
Not being real keen on police procedurals, I drifted a little during Banner’s recitation. I tried again to imagine what a classy girl like Kate saw in an apparent creep like Jennings. I tried to imagine how and where I would begin my search. I tried to imagine how Kim Banner would look with her clothes off. Job-related stuff like that.
However, just to be polite and make it look like I was interested, I did ask one question: How come Castelar had lain out here undiscovered for several hours; why wasn’t anyone in the house roused?
“That’s not surprising,” Banner said. “For one thing, look at how far away the house is from the road—six hundred feet if it’s an inch. For another, these trees”—she swung an arm to indicate the gnarled old ones fronting the property—“would muffle the shot. So would the wind and the snow on the ground. Plus, it was very late and people were asleep, and there was only one shot. Plus, of the four bedrooms—”
“I think I get the picture …”
“—two, the son’s and the youngest daughter’s, are at the back of the house. Kate, of course, wasn’t in hers, and Mrs. Castelar is evidently in the habit of taking sleeping pills at bedtime.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“You’re welcome. We try to be complete. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’d like to see if they’ve dug up that bullet. With the snow and the ice and these trees …”
There was nothing else, and Banner, moving carefully on the slippery surface, crossed the road to check on her people’s progress. I watched her, the way she moved: purposeful, direct, even when she was fighting to keep her balance. That’s not easy.
Then Kennerly took me by the elbow and nodded in the direction of the house. “Let’s go in,” he said quietly, and it was okay with me; I was about to send my feet a telegram to see if they were still around. We climbed over the dike that had prevented the cab driver from taking Castelar up to the house last night and tramped up the long unpaved driveway. It was shaped something like a hockey stick, running straight as a shot past the north side of the house, then curving lazily around back.
The house itself was a beauty—big and old and sturdy and white, whiter than the snow surrounding it. The sun was fully risen now, and a wisp of smoke was winding straight up from the house’s tall red brick chimney and frost was glimmering in the windows and on the bare trees in the yard. The stuff of Currier and Ives or Norman Rockwell. Except for the Grim Reaper in the foreground.
The distance from the road to the house was about an eighth of a mile—a goodly distance by city standards, but not as far as it may sound if you’re unaccustomed to walking more than ten feet to get your mail. Even at our leisurely pace, the trip took no more than four minutes. It was made in silence.
We followed the driveway around to the back of the house, where it widened and ran up to a newish-looking three-car garage about fifteen feet off the back porch. Quite a distance farther back, at the very edge of the yard where it met the field beyond, stood a large weather-beaten barn that must also have held a vehicle of some sort: Tracks both automotive and human crisscrossed the snowy expanse between the barn and the driveway. A smaller shed stood forlornly to the south of the barn, overshadowed by a tall old blue-gray grain silo.
Kennerly held open the porch door for me and I stepped in. The flooring was of thick wooden planks that bumped and rumbled hollowly but solidly beneath our feet. Snow boots, shovels, pavement salt, and other seasonal paraphernalia were stacked near the door to the house, alongside an old porch glider that had been covered for the winter. Kennerly didn’t knock but went straight in. I followed.
The kitchen was large and modern and, most important, warm. The ceiling stretched up a good ten or twelve feet—none of this modern seven-and-a-half-foot nonsense, where even
a guy of my average height feels he has to duck. The room was well lined with cupboards and cabinets and all the latest conveniences, while in the center stood an island containing the range and a dining counter. Umpty million copper-bottomed pots and pans hung suspended overhead. A tired-looking black spaniel in one corner looked up at us when we came through the door, decided we weren’t whom he wanted to see, and, with a canine sigh, again rested his chin on the edge of his wicker bed.
I was scratching the dog behind his ears when the kid came in.
This would be Vince, I said to myself, Kate’s younger brother—though not much younger. I knew he was a senior at UNO, so that must have made him twenty-one or twenty-two to Kate’s twenty-three. He was tall and skinny and blond, clean-shaven and baby-faced, with hair trimmed close on the sides and back but puffed into a fluffy pompadour on top. He wore a gray V-neck sweater with no shirt, faded jeans with tapered legs, and battered penny loafers with no socks. He tore into the room like a pack of hounds was after him, but the only one in sight was the mourning one groaning gently under my fingers.
“What’s going on?” Vince Castelar demanded of Kennerly.
The lawyer peeled off his heavy blue overcoat, hung it on a solid peg near the door, and went to work deliberately on the iced-up zippers of his overshoes. “How’s your mother, Vince?” he asked quietly but insistently.
Something in his tone or manner upset the kid. He didn’t say anything, but a hot flush splattered his cheeks, the way it will with blonds of a certain complexion, and his eyes were murderous when he said, “Fine. She’s upstairs. Bruhn gave her something.” Bruhn was the family doctor, called in by Kennerly. “What’s going on out there?”
Kennerly was done with one boot and having at the second one. “The police are gathering information, Vince, looking for evidence. That’s all. Same as before.”
“God damn it,” he said with the precision of someone for whom cursing has not yet become commonplace. “I told you they’re wasting their time here. They should be out looking for that bastard Jennings. He’s killed my father”—his voice went tight but it didn’t break—“and now he’s got Kate. They should be looking for him instead of playing in the snow. Did you tell them that?”
Kennerly straightened up and ran a hand through thinning hair flattened by his hat. “Not in so many words,” he told Vince. “For one thing, finding Jennings isn’t enough; they also have to find evidence to convict him, if he did it—”
“If?!”—
“—if he did it, and playing in the snow, as you put it, might just turn up some of that evidence. The bullet, for instance. For another—”
“Listen, he did it all right, I—”
“—what you see out there is not the entire police force, although it may look like it. While these people are doing their jobs here, other people—OPD, the state patrol, sheriff’s departments in all the adjacent counties—are doing their jobs. And that includes keeping an eye open for Walt Jennings. All right?”
It wasn’t, but the youngster couldn’t think of anything to say about it. So he rolled a narrow shoulder at me. “Who’s this?”
I had something wise to say to him, but I reminded myself that his old man was murdered only a few hours ago and kept it to myself. Kennerly patiently filled him in. “He’s the private investigator who found Kate yesterday. I’ve asked him to look for her again.”
“Well, then, what’s he hanging around here for?” I wondered how they liked Vince’s singleness of purpose down at the business school. “If Kate was here we wouldn’t need him, would we? Tell him to go find Jennings, then he’ll have found Kate, too.”
“Tell him yourself,” I said. I don’t like being talked around, and it was becoming obvious that this pup wasn’t traumatized or grief-stricken. He was just a jerk.
“Fine.” He at me. “Why don’t you get the hell out of here and go do the job you’re being paid to do.”
“That’s better. Now shut up and mind your own business.”
Before he could open his mouth, another voice said, “I think that’s a good idea, too.”
I looked up, through the archway to the dining room, to the foot of an enclosed staircase that ended in a far corner of that room, near pocket doors that separated it from the living room at the front of the house. Leaning heavily against the woodwork was a middle-aged woman. Her dark hair rose dramatically from a widow’s peak high on her forehead, darted back behind her head, and reemerged on her shoulders. She wore little make-up—a light lipstick that looked recently applied, and perhaps a little something around the eyes; I wasn’t certain—and her skin was pale, almost luminescent, in contrast with her black hair and the chocolate-brown robe she had wrapped tightly around her.
Emily Castelar was what mystery writers invariably describe as a “handsome” woman. She was not beautiful, although she may have been once. Now she was fighting the battle of the bulges and sags. She was losing, too, which I suppose is inevitable. The skin around her eyes was loose and puffy, although it was not inconceivable that she had been crying recently, and the flesh along and under her squarish jaw was following the letter of the law of gravity. The robe billowed noticeably at her waistline.
“You’re supposed to be resting, Mom,” said Vince, turning toward her.
“I’m fine,” she said with a casual wave of her hand. Unfortunately it was the hand she had braced herself against the wall with, and when she took it away she pitched to the right and banged her shoulder against the other wall.
Vince was to her instantly, helping her to a chair at the dining table. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she repeated. “It’s the shock, I suppose …” That and a handful of tranquilizers, I thought. Uncharitable, I know. But Kate had told me her mother swallowed downers like candy on even a typical day, and this wasn’t a typical day, not for any household.
Making solicitous, consoling noises, Kennerly crossed the parquet floor. “Vince is right, Emily; you should be upstairs resting.”
She ignored him and inspected me. I stood in the arch, where the linoleum met the parquet, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, not knowing what to do with my hands except hold my hat in them.
“I apologize for my son’s rudeness,” Emily said precisely, primly, as if her tongue had turned to wood but she’d be damned if anybody knew it. “I gather you’re the private detective, Mr. …”
“Nebraska.” It was Kennerly. “He’s the one who found Kate for us yesterday, Emily,” he said, as if he were talking to a child, and a slightly stupid one at that. “He’s going to do that for us again now.”
“He’s going to try,” I amended, stepping forward. “It doesn’t mean much, Mrs. Castelar, but I’m very sorry.” She took my hand, which was still cold from the great outdoors; hers was colder still. I looked into her face. The grayish eyes were shiny with tears, but behind the moist film they were dull and not quite focused. Her lips formed the words “Thank you”; there was no volume behind them. Then her eyes drifted away from me and toward the tall windows in the wall opposite her. She seemed intent on studying a small bird perched on a feeder hanging from a barren tree. Raymond Chandler could have told you what kind of bird, and what kind of tree, too; to me it was just a bird and a tree. After maybe twenty seconds it was just a tree, because the bird flew off. Simultaneously Emily Castelar looked around the room like someone just roused from a trance.
“Where’s Kate?” she said to no one in particular in a voice composed of equal parts confusion and alarm.
I glanced at Kennerly but he didn’t return the favor. His eyes were for Emily, and the creases in his brow seemed deeper than before. He leaned over her and took one of her pale, chilly hands between both of his. “Emily.” She looked at him. “We don’t know where Kate is. She’s run away, remember? And Mr. Nebra—”
“I know that,” she said impatiently, dragging her hand from Kennerly’s grip. “I meant Amy. Where’s Amy?”
This time Kennerly did glance my way, relief written all ove
r his face in bold headline type. Whatever other problems she may have had, at least Emily Castelar’s little red choo-choo was still on the track.
Vince said Amy was still in the living room, and Emily insisted on seeing her. After some lackluster protestation, Kennerly and the boy helped her to her feet and guided her through the pocket doors. The dog and I followed.
Like all of the house that I had seen so far, the room was like a spread from Country Living, complete with dark wood floor, great oblong rugs, high-backed furniture, brick fireplace, and burgundy-and-cream wallpaper above eight-inch baseboards. I wondered if you had to take oxygen up with you if you were going to paint the ceiling, which was crossed with heavy black beams.
At first I thought the room was empty; then I saw the young barefoot girl in plaid flannel pajamas, curled in a plush wing-backed chair and staring into the cold fireplace. Amy, the thirteen-year-old. She gave no sign of having noticed us enter the room. Emily Castelar moved stiffly to her daughter’s side and, gracelessly, knelt near the chair. “Amy? …”
Nothing. Not a flicker. Her eyes were locked on the empty hearth the way a kid her age is supposed to stare at MTV.
“No change at all?” It was Kennerly, sotto voce, to Vince.
The boy was shaking his blond head very slowly, his eyes on his mother and sister, his face unreadable. “This is just exactly how I found her when I came down to see what was wrong with the dog. I don’t think she’s even moved.” I knew from Banner’s briefing that the spaniel had roused Amy to let him out on a pre-dawn mission. The dog took forever to come back, so Amy pulled coat and boots from the pile in the kitchen and went to investigate. She soon found what had captured the dog’s attention. Then she came back to the house, planted herself in this chair, and evidently had been this way ever since, withdrawn and uncommunicative. After a while the spaniel, who was still outside, woke Vince with his barking. It was he—Vince—who called Kennerly, and Kennerly who called the authorities.
I imagined that Amy was quiet and solitary under the best of circumstances; she looked like that sort of girl. She was thin and pale and dark-haired, rather like her mother in complexion if not build. Her eyes, too, were dark, and liquid, and sad. Emily spoke to her in low, quiet words that I couldn’t hear. Amy gave not the slightest indication that she knew anyone else was in the room, the house, the world.
Moving Targets Page 4
