Early Graves

by Joseph Hansen

  A counter crossed the front room of the newspaper offices. Beyond desks that held computer terminals or typewriters and slag heaps of paper was a Masonite partition. When Dave stood at the counter, where advertising rate sheets covered in yellowing plastic were fastened down with aged and curling transparent tape, he saw a pressroom through an opening in the partition. Offset presses whirred. A young man with a boil on the nape of his neck rattled the keyboard of a typesetting computer.

  A man got up from a desk and came to the counter. He was stocky, wore plain steel-rim spectacles and a bushy red beard. He was bald on top, but the fringe of hair he still had grew long down over the collar of his checkered wool shirt. Dave took him for about forty. The 1960s had formed him. That was what his appearance said. He smiled with small, badly aligned teeth. It was the smile of a man naturally cheerful, naturally optimistic. That was, of course, too easy a judgment. Anybody trying to make a living off operating a small-town weekly newspaper simply had to be like that. “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “Pete McCaffrey?” Dave held out the folder with his private investigator’s license in it. “I’m making some inquiries into the death of Drew Dodge. They tell me you were good friends.”

  McCaffrey dropped the smile. Not out of decorum. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t know he was gay. Never. He never dropped a hint.”

  “I didn’t see you at the funeral,” Dave said.

  “It’s—it’s publication day. Busiest day of my week. We go to press tonight. I have easy days. But not this one. I was here at five this morning. I’ll be here till five tomorrow morning. No way could I get to the church.”

  “I don’t think you’d have gone if it was an easy day,” Dave said. “I think you’re scared of what people would think.”

  McCaffrey grimaced. “That’s one of the joys of running a small-town paper. If you look cross-eyed at somebody, they pull their advertising.”

  “And if they got even the faintest idea that you were gay because of your association with Drew Dodge—?”

  McCaffrey drew a stubby finger across his thick throat. “Yeah. Right. It makes a man ashamed of himself. Time was when I wouldn’t have given a damn.”

  “When you wrote for the LA Free Press?” Dave grinned.

  McCaffrey snorted. “It was Open City, but you’ve got the idea. Yeah, if I was dying, I’d have crawled out of bed to go to that funeral. Shit.” He wagged his head.

  “Let me guess—you’ve got a family to support,” Dave said. “Responsibilities. You have to think of consequences now. The years make us cautious.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s nice of you to put it that way,” McCaffrey said, “but I’m not proud of myself.”

  A sixtyish woman, straw-colored hair pulled up on her head, had been rattling away at one of the scarred IBM Selectrics on a desk, copying from a dog-eared pocket notebook. Now she took off her half-moon glasses, rose, and came to McCaffrey with a question. When she’d gone back to her desk, the telephone on the counter rang, and McCaffrey talked into it for a while. Dave turned and watched small children in red and green padded jackets and jeans swing in the park. He also saw Morales lead an arm-waving Murray Berman into the sheriff’s office. McCaffrey hung up, read his watch.

  “What’s on your mind?” he said. “I have to get to work.”

  “Dodge left an envelope with you, didn’t he,” Dave said, “only days before he was killed? What did it say on it—‘To be opened in case of my death?’”

  McCaffrey took a step backward. “Jesus,” he said. “Who the hell are you, anyway? How did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. I’m guessing. But I’m guessing right, no? Is that what was written on it?”

  “Nothing was written on it,” McCaffrey said. “He just gave it to me and said, ‘Keep this, Pete, and if anything should happen to me, open it and publish it.’”

  “Something happened to him,” Dave said. “Did you publish it?”

  “I forgot all about it,” McCaffrey said. “When he brought it in out of the rain, it was one of those days like today. My mind was on a thousand details here, and we had a computer breakdown, and the repairman was late.” He went to his desk, pulled open a rattly drawer. “I dropped it in here and didn’t think any more about it.” He rummaged an envelope out from others in the drawer, banged the drawer shut, brought the envelope back to the counter, scowling at it. DREW DODGE ASSOCIATES was printed in the upper left corner. The red-bearded man turned the envelope over and over in his fingers. He peered through the little lenses at Dave. “Do you think I ought to open it? Maybe I ought to phone my lawyer. Maybe I should give it to the sheriff.”

  “What for? It was you he handed it to. Open it. Maybe there’s a scoop in it.”

  McCaffrey eyed Dave uneasily. “You know what’s in it?”

  “Not for sure. But I’d bet on a Xerox of a letter to Dodge from Senator Bud Hollywell.”

  “Oh, Christ.” McCaffrey lost some of his ruddiness.

  “Asking Dodge to return the money Hollywell invested in the shopping mall project.” Dave watched the editor closely. “I expect you can tell me why.”

  “I—I don’t know what you mean,” McCaffrey said.

  “If you don’t,” Dave said, “then you’re a very unusual newspaperman.” He glanced around the shop. “They always know more than they print. Rumor. Gossip. Leaks they can’t get witnesses to commit to.” He tilted his head. “Hollywell is headed for trouble. Isn’t that right?”

  “I’ve—heard something like that,” McCaffrey said.

  “He was a shoo-in at the last election,” Dave said. “Like ninety percent of the incumbents, if they want the job again it’s theirs, isn’t it? The two who ran against him advertised and campaigned like crazy and got nowhere. He had a bulging war chest and hardly had to crack it.”

  McCaffrey gave in. He nodded. “Bulging with seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. It’s on record.”

  “What’s not on record,” Dave said, “is that he turned half a million of it over to Drew Dodge for the shopping mall project. Invested it. Expecting a high return. That’s what Dodge promised you all, wasn’t it? Meantime, the campaign money was just sitting there. Nobody’d know the difference. It wouldn’t be counted again until the next election.”

  “Except the election commission decided to audit it,” McCaffrey said. “That what you’re getting at?”

  “Is that the rumor?” Dave said.

  McCaffrey nodded grimly. “That’s the rumor.”

  “Dodge wasn’t in a position to pay it back,” Dave said. “And Dodge also knew there was two hundred fifty thousand more where Hollywell had gotten the first half million. He was being pressed hard to pay contractors and suppliers. And at least one other investor was threatening to ruin him if Dodge didn’t give him back his hundred thousand.”

  McCaffrey squinted. “You saying Drew went to Hollywell asking for more?”

  “Didn’t he?” Dave said. “You knew him. You were, his friend, whether you like the sound of that or not. I’m told he had a gift when it came to getting money out of people. Never worried about it. Knew just how to go after it, just where and when to ask. And never came up empty.”

  McCaffrey gave a sad, one-cornered smile. “Yeah, I guess that kind of sums him up, all right.” He remembered and frowned at the envelope again. “You mean he threatened that I’d print the facts about Bud’s misusing those funds for his own profit?”

  “Unless Hollywell forked over the balance,” Dave said.” He had to go to Hollywell, the way I hear it. The rest of you had given him your last dime already.”

  “I sure as hell had,” McCaffrey said. He snorted, shook his head, used a thumb to pry up the flap of the envelope, making a ragged tear. He drew out two pages and read them. He looked at Dave with grim admiration. “You win your bet. But it was some sicko who killed Drew. Down in LA. It wasn’t Bud Hollywell.”

  “What do you know about his daughter?”

  “Matilda?!” Mc
Caffrey frowned. “What about her?”

  “Tall skinny kid with long hair. A witness saw someone like that where Dodge was killed just before his death.”

  McCaffrey winced. “Jesus, you’ve got some kind of mind.”

  “Is she wild? Ever been in trouble?”

  McCaffrey unhappily rubbed a hand over his bald dome. “Okay, school vandalism once, years ago. Lately—there were some break-ins around here. Shops. Liquor missing, little stuff like that. But she’s an important man’s daughter. The sheriff didn’t want to make waves. He rang Sacramento for mom to come and get her. You know how it is.”

  “Drugs?” Dave asked. “Thefts of items she could sell to support a habit?”

  “She’s not even seventeen yet,” McCaffrey protested.

  “They start at eleven these days,” Dave said.

  “No. The sheriff never said anything about drugs,” McCaffrey said. “Listen, are you seriously trying to tell me a child like Matilda Hollywell would go out and stab somebody to death on a dark street?”

  “Does she own her own car?”

  “Every kid in Rancho Vientos owns a car by the time they’re old enough to get a driver’s license.”

  “And she does run around without parental supervision—right? Father and mother go up to Sacramento for days at a time together, leaving the kids alone?”

  “With the cleaning woman,” McCaffrey said. “Sheriff tells me they want her to go up with them, but she refuses. Smashes up her room and so on. But this is an insane conversation, Brandstetter. Bud Hollywell? Tell his own daughter to go kill an enemy for him? Come on!”

  Dave said, “Maybe she acted on her own. Worships her father. Overheard Dodge threatening him. Wasn’t going to let anyone bring down her hero.”

  “I’m glad I don’t think like you,” McCaffrey said.

  “So you’re not going to print the letters,” Dave said.

  “Not without confirmation,” McCaffrey said.

  “I’m going to brace him this afternoon. Come along.”

  “No way. I want no part of it till it’s proved.”

  18

  DAVE LEFT THE JAGUAR where it was, crossed the square, and found the narrow passageway of shops Judith Ober had led him down what seemed a long time ago. Today the shops had customers, buying belts and handbags, serapes and junk jewelry, fancy coffees and teas. Tourists. Sunglasses, sundresses. Men in checked trousers like Murray Herman’s. Cameras on straps around their necks. Dave remembered a set of three pay phones someplace along here. He found them. Luckily, no one was phoning home to check on the kids. Maybe they all knew it was no use anymore. Like the Hollywells. He dug out his plastic call card to get Mel Fleischer in LA.

  Tall, balding, patrician, Fleischer was a senior vice president of a big California bank that had recently grown much bigger, swallowing up first one, then a second, then a third chain of banks in five states. Mel was a genius at what he did, making money earn money, his own as well as other people’s. He lived well, but he also gave lavishly to the museum, the Philharmonic, and lesser cultural projects that kept musicians, actors, artists off welfare. He collected the work of California painters, mainly Millard Sheets, and paid the rent and grocery bills for promising newcomers, if their stuff wasn’t too farfetched. He and Dave had been lovers when the world was new and strange. At present, Mel lived with a Japanese graduate student called Makoto. It kept him young.

  “What I need, I need in a hurry,” Dave said, “and it may not be easy to get.”

  Fleischer laughed. “What else is new? Does he bank with us or a competitor?”

  “There’s only one bank in Rancho Vientos, and it’s yours,” Dave said. “But that doesn’t mean he uses the same bank in Sacramento. He’s a state senator, Charles Emmett Hollywell, affectionately known as Bud.” Dave spelled out the story. “I need confirmation of the withdrawal.”

  “Fascinating,” Fleischer said. “Do the voters ever elect men of honor anymore?”

  “I haven’t heard of one lately,” Dave said.

  “I’ll get back to you,” Fleischer said. “Where?”

  “I’m on the move,” Dave said. “Better leave word at Tom Owens’s.”

  “Not with friend Cecil?” Fleischer sounded surprised. And avid. “Don’t tell me you’ve broken up.”

  “All right,” Dave said, “I won’t tell you. He’s spending time with a young lady these days. I don’t know when it will end. I’m beginning to wonder if it ever will.”

  “Too bad,” Fleischer said. “He’s a dear boy. Well—I never did understand sex. And I fear I never shall.”

  “Keep working on it,” Dave said. “Listen, thanks for your help. We’ll have dinner at Max’s when this is over.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” Fleischer said.

  Dave walked to the end of the passageway and into the little café with its blond tables, bentwood chairs, hanging plants. Sun shone cheerfully through the skylight today. When Dave and Judith Ober had the place to themselves, rain had pattered up there. Today, the ranch-hand waiter with the sunburned nose had to stumble around among a lot of lunchers. Dave had to wait for a table. He leaned on the small bar and drank Glenlivet. His shoulder ached, and he was thankful for the breather. This was getting to be quite a day.

  Katherine Dodge didn’t look sick. She looked better than on the first morning he’d seen her. She’d changed her black funeral dress for jeans, a gingham shirt, and had piled her hair on top of her head, carelessly, not expecting anyone. She squinted in the sunlight at the open front door, plainly not sure just who he was, but thinking she ought to remember. He freshened her memory.

  “Oh, yes.” Her smile was faint. “I was in shock. I don’t know that I’m out of shock yet. What do you want?’

  “The police in LA know now that it wasn’t the serial killer who murdered your husband. Are you aware of that?”

  “From the news.” She pulled wet latex gloves off her thin hands. “It was a tall blond boy with long hair.” Her eyes cleared. “Ah. He attacked you too, didn’t he?”

  “He seems to think I know something that can hurt him. He’s wrong. I’m asking around Rancho Vientos today to try and find out what it could be, who he is.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I think I may have seen him once. Someone who answers that description, anyway.”

  Dave blinked. “You didn’t tell the police?”

  “They haven’t been back. I gather there’s a dispute with the sheriff about who has jurisdiction in the case. I only remembered the boy now. You reminded me. Come in?”

  “You’re busy,” Dave said. “I don’t want to keep you. Where did you see this boy? When?”

  “Sunset time. The day Drew appeared on that LA talk show. He was excited about it and, of course, I missed it, wouldn’t you know? The children had gone on a field trip from school. The bus broke down. They were hours late getting back. I was stuck waiting at the school. With all the other mothers. I rushed to apologize to Drew. I felt awful about it. He wasn’t in his den. I went out to the lanai. And saw him out by the pool, talking to this ragged, long-haired teenager. I stepped outside, called to Drew, and the boy started toward me. Drew grabbed his arm, spoke sharply to him, and the boy went away out the back gate.

  “I’m told you don’t have his sort in Rancho Vientos.”

  “No, that’s true, we don’t,” she said. “But we did that time, didn’t we?”

  “Maybe not. Do you know Bud Hollywell’s daughter?”

  “Slightly. Matilda.” She brushed a fallen strand of hair off her face. And frowned. “Ah. I see. Tall, blond, long-haired. Do I think it was Matilda? Dressed like that?”

  “Kids put on funny clothes these days,” Dave said. “They pay high prices for wrinkles, rips, and wrong sizes.”

  “I know.” But she shook her head. “I asked Drew who it was. A boy wanting yard work, he said, to clean the pool, trim the trees.”

  “And you believed that?”

  Her laugh w
as brief and bitter. “I believed whatever Drew Dodge told me. Then. I learned better, didn’t I, but not till it was too late. He lied all the time, damn him.” Tears came into her eyes. Her mouth trembled. She gave her head an impatient shake, angry at the tears, the self-reproach. “His whole life was a lie.”

  “Tell me about his life. Where did he come from? Who were his parents? Where did he go to school?”

  “He wouldn’t talk about the past. He said none of it mattered. All that mattered was now, the two of us. I wasn’t raised to pry. I loved him. We were happy. I was a fool.”

  “The past came to get him,” Dave said. “He told Tom Owens that, the architect. The night before he was killed. Somebody surfaced, demanding money to keep quiet about that past that didn’t matter. Owens didn’t know how to help, so he gave him my business card.”

  “And that’s how he came to be at your house. Where you found him that morning. Dead.”

  “That’s how.” The sun was high, it was a winter sun, but it had a little warmth to it now. Dave took off the tweed hat and stuffed it into a side pocket of his jacket. He said, “Your mother told me he wouldn’t have his picture taken. Yet he agreed to be on television. Didn’t it occur to him that amounted to the same thing? Cameras?”

  Her mouth opened slightly. “My God, you’re right. No, he didn’t think of it. Neither did I. Or mother. We’d have said something. Teased him. And he wouldn’t have done it. Never. It was a phobia with him.” She eyed Dave anxiously. “Is it important? It is, isn’t it?”

  “Unless that was Matilda Hollywell you saw.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” Dave said. “Not yet.”

  Clouds came from the west, from beyond the ridges that cut the valley off from the ocean. The temperature dropped and the wind picked up. He drove into the new gas station at the place where the road left the highway and wound up into the expensive houses on the eastward hills. He left the Jaguar to be fueled at a row of shiny square blue and yellow pumps, and went to find a phone. Two of them, bracketed by steel-framed glass, were fastened to the outside wall of the station office. He used his card to get the number he wanted. The phone rang in his ear. Out on the highways cars swished past. Up on the green hills, reading the weather, cattle began to move slowly toward the shelter of old oaks. Inside the station, a boombox thundered rock music. Larry Johns answered the phone.