Gravedigger

by Joseph Hansen

  “I found your card in Don’s workclothes,” she said. Knitting lay on a couch that faced the television set. She sat beside it and picked it up. She only glanced at it for a second, then turned her blue eyes on Dave, but the needles began clicking in her fingers. “You see—just after you left the other day he came tearing up here in a state, changed his clothes, and rushed out. Without a word of explanation. I could see something had upset him terribly. I said, ‘Tell me what’s the matter,’ but he just pushed me out of his way. All he said when he ran down the stairs was, ‘I’ll be back.’ But he hasn’t come back. He hasn’t even called. And it’s been two nights, now. And that’s not like him. He never stays away nights without phoning me.”

  “But he does sometimes stay away?” Dave said.

  “Yes, but he never breaks right into a working day, locks up the shop, runs off. He has orders to fill. He puts in sixteen hours a day down in that shop. Sometimes he won’t even rest on Sunday. And why didn’t he pack a suitcase? He didn’t even take a shaving kit.”

  “He had no reason to run from me,” Dave said. “Maybe somebody telephoned him.”

  “No. The phone up here is an extension. I always hear the bell. No one phoned, Mr. Brandstetter. And it was right after you and that colored boy drove off that this happened. What did you say to him?”

  “I came looking for Charles Westover,” Dave said.

  Her mouth fell open. The needles went silent. “Chass? But”—she gave a bewildered little laugh—“he hasn’t seen Chass in years. Ten years, at least.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Dave said. “Chass came to see him two weeks ago.”

  “Oh, no.” She was positive. The needles dug into the yarn again, twisting, clicking. “You must have misunderstood. If Chass had come, Don would have brought him up here to see me. Chass was an orphan, you know. He always said I was better to him than any mother could have been.” She gazed at the gray front windows, mourning a lost past, and her smile was sentimental. “I loved that boy and he loved me. He wouldn’t have come without running up here to give me a hug and a kiss.”

  “Maybe you were out,” Dave said, “at the supermarket or someplace. He came, Mrs. Gaillard. Don told me. Lyle Westover told me.”

  “After all this time?” She wasn’t letting go her stubborn disbelief. She scoffed. “What for?”

  Dave didn’t want to be the one who told her about the loan. “I don’t know. What I do know is that just afterward, Westover disappeared. I have to locate him. It’s about an insurance claim. When I learned he and Don Gaillard were old friends, I came to ask Don if he knew where Westover was. He said he didn’t.”

  “Don is always truthful,” she said primly.

  “But Westover meant a lot to him—isn’t that right?”

  They were as close as any two boys I ever saw—men. After they broke up”—she quit working the needles and lifted the droop of blue knitting to study her progress—“Don wasn’t the same person.” She smoothed the knitting on her knees. “He’s never gotten over it.”

  “So it’s just possible, isn’t it,” Dave said, “that he shaded the truth to me, and went to help his friend?”

  “How?” Her laugh was helpless, impatient. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Help him, how? What is this about insurance?”

  “The Banner company thinks Chass may have filed a false claim. But he has worse troubles than that. Don didn’t know how bad things had gotten for Chass until I came and told him.”

  “But if Chass isn’t at home,” she said, “how could Don go to him? Where?” Her look rested on Dave in mild reproach. “It was I who phoned you to find out where Don is—remember?”

  “You said they used to go to the desert,” Dave said.

  She gave a nod and began knitting again. “They spent every weekend of their lives together, even after Chass was married. The desert, the mountains, the beach. I don’t remember the names of the places, if they ever told me.”

  “Not Yucca Canyon?” Dave said.

  Her look was blank. Plainly she’d never heard of it. “Is it so far away he couldn’t get home in two days?”

  “It’s just up the coast.” Dave stood and picked up his jacket. “What kind of car does Don drive?”

  “A panel truck,” she said, “dove-gray, with Don’s name on the side, and ‘Hand Crafted Furniture.’ In yellow. Of course, it’s old, and the paint’s all faded now.” She frowned. “What kind of troubles were these Chass had?”

  Dave was back in Yucca Canyon, driving those twisty little trails, looking at cars in shrubby yards where rain sparkled on leaves in morning sunshine. No panel trucks—dove-gray or any other color. “Money troubles,” he said.

  “Money? Hah.” Her mouth tightened at one corner. The needles clicked, bad-tempered. “Don is no fancy lawyer. You see how we live. No—if it was money, there’s no way in the world Don Gaillard could help Charles Westover.”

  “Thank you.” Dave moved to leave. “If Don comes home, will you have him phone me, please?”

  “What if he doesn’t come home?” She put the knitting aside, got quickly to her feet, reached out to him. “What if something’s happened to him? I’m frightened.” Her mouth trembled, there were tears in her eyes. “The streets get so slick in the rain. Maybe he’s lying in a hospital someplace, unconscious, hurt, helpless.”

  “If he carried identification,” Dave said, “you’d have been notified. Have you called his friends?”

  She turned her eyes away uneasily. “He doesn’t like me prying into his private life. He gets very angry. He has that right, I know.” She sounded as if she didn’t really think so. “He’s a grown man, after all. But I was frantic.” She looked up at Dave as if he could give her absolution. “I felt guilty even going into his room. But I went, and I found his little address book, and phoned some of them. No one’s seen him. Most of them hardly seemed to know who I was talking about. Nothing but first names in that book—Pete, John, Ralph. They weren’t any help.”

  “You don’t know any of them?”

  “He never brings them here,” she said. “Maybe he’s ashamed of me. That’s how he acts, sometimes.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Dave patted her shoulder. She was like a lost little girl of five who needed her tears dried. “Where’s your telephone?”

  She took him back to the kitchen. It was on a wall. He dialed Salazar. The deputy looking after his desk said Salazar was home with the flu. Dave doubted there was anything in Salazar’s files he could refer the deputy to. He’d wanted Salazar to look for Gaillard. That might lead them both to Westover. He wasn’t going to get that help. Still, the deputy surprised him. Salazar had located Howie O’Rourke. In the L.A. county jail. For breaking parole—drunk, disorderly, consorting with known criminals.

  “Did he have twenty thousand dollars on him?”

  “He lost it on the horses at Santa Anita.”

  Dave thanked the deputy and hung up. He told Thelma Gaillard, “I’m going now, but I want you to promise me something. To get on this phone as soon as I’ve gone and call the police, missing persons. Tell them about Don.”

  “Oh, no.” She looked shocked. “Don hates the police. He’d never forgive me.” She begged Dave with her eyes. Her cheeks were flaming red. “It’s not that he’s ever committed a crime. It’s just little, well, indiscretions, boyish things. He gets tired and overwrought. He works so very hard. What harm does it do? But the police have been very nasty to him.”

  “He won’t hate them,” Dave said, “if he needs them and they help.” He pulled open the door. Rain had begun to fall. The breath of the rain came cold through the screen door. “And if they find him, you let me know right away, will you? I’ll appreciate it.”

  She stared at the phone, face pinched with dread. She plucked nervously at her lower lip. She turned to Dave. “Isn’t there anything you can do? You’re a private investigator. It says so on your card.”

  “There’s only one of
me,” Dave said. “There’s a lot of them. Now, they’ll ask you for a list of places he goes, people he sees—”

  “He’d hate that,” she said. “I don’t know, anyway. He never tells me anything. I don’t dare ask him.”

  “Mention Yucca Canyon to them.”

  “But I—” she started to protest.

  “As a favor to me,” Dave said, and went out and pulled the door shut after him.

  He ran across the uneven bricks through the rain to the cookshack and built a double martini before he even took off his coat. While the martini chilled, he sliced tomato and avocado and laid the slices on lettuce on a plate. He tasted the martini, sighed, smiled, and switched on the radio. Brahms’s Liebeslieder waltzes in the version for voices and piano. He sang along while he mixed a dressing of homemade mayonnaise, tarragon vinegar, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, seasoned salt. He lit the grille, tasted the martini again, and mixed a batter in a thick bowl. He dumped into the batter a half-pint of cooked shrimp that he’d stopped for on the way home from Gaillard’s, spooned the batter onto the grille, pulled a slim green bottle of white wine from the refrigerator, and uncorked it. He turned over the fritters, which were a nice toasted color. He poured a tall glass of the wine and set it on the table. He transferred the fritters onto the plate, poured the dressing over the tomato and avocado, finished off the martini, set the plate on the table, and sat down to eat. But he had only swallowed a forkful of the salad, a gulp of wine, a bite of the fritters, when he remembered, and lifted down the telephone.

  Lyle Westover said, “You just caught me going out the door.” The syllables were mashed and jumbled, but Dave understood. “I’m flying to Nashville. A recording gig.”

  “I asked you to report your father missing,” Dave said. “Did you do that?”

  “Right away, to the sheriff, like you said. But they just wrote it down and stuck it in a file, I think. They never checked back with me. Did you find out whether it’s my father who’s been taking the mail?”

  “It was dark, and I couldn’t see him well,” Dave said. “But I think so. The car was right. I’ll watch for him again tonight. Look, I don’t want to hold you up, but I need the answer to one question.”

  “I hope nobody finds out,” Lyle said. “Country-western music. I’m not going to let them list my name in the album credits.”

  “Good thinking,” Dave said. “Yucca Canyon. What would your father be doing in Yucca Canyon? Does he know someone who lives up there? Friend? Client?”

  “Not that I ever heard of.”

  “There’s an address book on his desk in the den,” Dave said. “Have you got time to check through it, or will you miss your flight?”

  “Trio’s driving me,” Lyle said, “and she goes very slowly when it rains. Rain scares her to death. She didn’t get here as soon as she promised. I better go.”

  “Just get the address book,” Dave said, “and put it in the mailbox. I’ll pick it up tonight.”

  “All right. The union canceled those checks and made me out a new one so that’s okay,” Lyle said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Dave said. “When will you be back?”

  “Three or four days,” Lyle said, “unless something else comes up, unless I get more work.”

  “Good luck,” Dave told him, and hung up. Now he could finish his meal. But he wasn’t on the chair again before the phone rang. He sighed and lifted down the receiver. “Hello—Brandstetter.”

  “I’m in the Valley,” Cecil said. “You wouldn’t believe how wet it is out here.” A siren moaned behind his voice. “I’m on this assignment. It’s a hostage situation. This crazy brother is in this supermarket with thirty customers and clerks and one of those little machine guns made in Israel, and nobody knows when it will be over. One thing is clear to me. If only one reporter from channel three stays, that reporter is going to be me. So when I see you will be when I see you, right?”

  “Better sooner than later,” Dave said. “Try not to get shot, all right? I’ll be staking out Westover’s place again—unless there’s a Yucca Canyon street number in his address book. Lyle’s leaving his address book for me. So it looks like a late night for both of us.”

  “Not together,” Cecil said.

  “Whose fault is that?” Dave said.

  “Don’t start on me,” Cecil said. “I’m already feeling bad enough.” A voice roared through a bullhorn. Dave didn’t catch the words. Cecil said, “I mean, it is going to be Noah’s ark or nothing before this night is done.”

  “Try to keep dry,” Dave said. “Thanks for calling.”

  “I don’t think you should follow him alone.”

  “It’s a hard rain,” Dave said. “Maybe he won’t show.”

  He finished his supper, poured another glass of wine, recorked the bottle, and stowed it away. He drank the wine while he washed the dishes and cleaned up the grille. He wanted that address book now, but he was too tired. He needed sleep. The book would be there at midnight. A few more hours wouldn’t matter. He’d be a menace on the road, the way he felt. Stunned was the word for it. He ached with weariness.

  He picked up the sheepskin coat, switched off the cookshack light, and ran across the courtyard to the back building, key in hand. He went through the high-raftered dark of the place without bothering to turn on a light. It was cold and damp but he couldn’t be bothered to clean the grate and build a fire. He dropped the coat on a chair and climbed the stairs to the loft and the wide bed. In bed, he’d get warm. To ensure that, he kept his sweater on. He shed the rest of his clothes, slid between the sheets, and touched someone.

  A voice said, “Welcome. I thought you’d never get here.” A naked arm pinned him down, a naked leg. A naked body crowded against him, a mouth covered his, a bearded mouth. He jerked his head away, freed an arm, groped out in the cold for the lamp and missed. He tried to get out of bed, but arms held him. The owner of the arms was laughing. Dave’s hand met the lamp and switched it on. Miles Edwards sat up in the bed, brushing hair out of his eyes and grinning. “The pictures didn’t seem to do it,” he said. “I decided on a personal appearance.”

  Dave was on his feet, kicking into his corduroys. “Get the hell out of that bed and put your clothes on.”

  “You’re joking.” Edwards threw back the sheets and blankets. He sat cross-legged. He was more beautiful now than he’d been in his teens when those pictures were taken. Still lean, but with better definition, harder. He held his hands open. “You don’t want this?”

  “Whether I want it or not is beside the point. You are, for Christ sake, marrying Amanda. And whether you give a damn about her or not, I do. How the hell could you imagine I’d do this to her?”

  “What’s Amanda got to do with it? Amanda and I are all right, we’re fine. This is something separate and apart. Good God, you’re old enough to know that.”

  “It’s not a matter of age,” Dave said, “it’s a matter of cynicism. Obviously. But even if I did ‘know that’—I don’t think Amanda does know it. And I don’t want her to have to learn. Not from you and me.”

  “She wouldn’t. What would be the point? Oh, come on.” Edwards got to his knees. Scoffing, but anxious. “You’re not going to tell her? What for, for Christ sake?”

  Dave turned away, found cigarettes on the stand under the lamp, lit one. “There’s not going to be anything to tell.” He leaned on the loft rail, gazing down into the dark. “We are going to forget it. And you are just very quietly going to slide out of her life, doing your best not even to leave a ripple of regret.”

  “Why? Because I go both ways? What do you expect me to do—change how I am? Can you?” The bed moved. Under his feet Dave felt the loft planks tremble. Edwards’s arms came around him again. Edwards pressed against his back. “Come on,” he pleaded. “You know you want to. I’ve been dying for you. I thought if you saw those pictures—”

  Dave shrugged him off. “I don’t think you’re right in the head.” Edwards’s clothes lay on a chair at th
e far side of the bed. “If you want somebody, you don’t aggravate him by everything you do.” He grabbed up Edwards’s briefs and held them out to him. “I haven’t liked five minutes of the time I’ve spent with you, and I never will. Put these on, God damn it.” He pushed the briefs into Edwards’s hands. “And get your ass out of here. How the hell did you get in, in the first place?”

  “You don’t really want me to go.” Edwards drew the little white knit shorts up his dark legs but not all the way. “You don’t really want me to cover this up.” Dave leaned on the rail and looked down into the dark again. Edwards said, “Amanda has keys, remember?”

  “Jesus,” Dave said. He turned. Edwards was sulkily flapping into his shirt. Dave said, “What about Cecil? I doubt that someone with your moral capacity can understand this, but what I wouldn’t do to Amanda, I wouldn’t do to Cecil, either.”

  Shaking his head in disgusted disbelief, Edwards sat on the bed and pulled on his socks. “I know how old you are,” he said, “but you don’t have to act like it. I never thought you would.” He stood, and his glance pitied Dave. “True love?” he sneered, kicking into his pants. “Two hearts that beat as one?” He zipped up the pants, reached for his vest, his tie. “Please. That is not how human life is lived.” He didn’t button the vest. He draped the tie loose around his neck. He got into his jacket. “You deal with people all the time. You know that’s all bullshit. People do what they want, they do what they have to.” He remembered his shoes, and sat down again to put them on and tie them. “We all do.”

  “All right,” Dave said. “What I have to do is throw you out of here, because what I want is not you. What I want is Cecil. And what I also want is for you not to give Amanda pain. She’s had enough of that.”

  Edwards brushed past him without looking at him. He rattled down the stairs. Below, a ghost shape flapped white in the shadows. He’d brought a raincoat, of course. His heels tapped away. “Believe me,” he shouted, “we’re fine. We’ll stay fine because she’ll never know. Not from me.” The door opened. Rain pattered outside in puddles on the bricks. “So, if you don’t want her to have any pain, you just keep out of it, old man.” The door slammed.