“Sorry. I saw the light.”
She tossed a sofa pillow in front of the fireplace, motioned to it, then sat back down. Shephard saw a stack of papers on the floor, documents of some kind, and bills.
“Little warm tonight for a fire, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I’ve been freezing all day. Freezing in the middle of a hot Laguna August.” She picked up a pile of papers, then plopped them back down. “One thing I can say for my father is he was organized. I think he kept everything in these files. I mean, he’s got canceled checks to the phone company going back ten years. Billings from newspapers, all his feed and tack receipts, tickets from Christmas presents. Anyway, I guess I’ll throw them away.”
Shephard watched the flame shadows playing across Jane’s face. There was a little pile of wadded tissue beside her. He unfolded the Identikit sketch and handed it to her. She stared at it, looked blankly at Shephard, then folded it back up and put it in a file folder. “You’ve got his organized blood,” he said.
“Funny, you go back and look again at somebody who was always there, and they’re different. I never realized it, but dad must have spent everything he had when mom was dying. It was a long decay, you know. Cancer in the lips, then the tongue, then down to the throat. It must have been awful.” Jane tapped a short stack of papers. “I added it up, from curiosity. Just under forty thousand dollars to try to beat that cancer.”
“Sounds like a million might not have been enough to help,” he said.
Jane shrugged. “Can’t put a price on a life. You say dad had almost a thousand dollars forced into him before he died. I’ve been thinking about that. Seems to me, it was payment offered. Trying to save his own life with a little money. And whoever killed him wouldn’t take it. Would rather have tortured him and humiliated him with it.” A big tear rolled down Jane’s cheek; Shephard watched her dab it away with a fresh Kleenex. “That seems an awfully cruel thing to do.”
Shephard nodded, thinking of Hope Creeley as she watched her own eyelids coming off. “And unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary? A policeman would say it like that, I suppose.”
Jane tossed the tissue into the fire, raised up her knees and rested her chin on them. Shephard moved closer and put his arm around her, rubbing her back with his fingers. The fire popped, and he heard the cars heading out the canyon road, tourists from the art festivals returning inland. He was close enough to smell the shampoo in her hair; he dipped his nose to it, taking in the freshness. Tocopheral acetate? “I’ve been thinking of you,” he said. “Wondering what you’re doing, how you are. I’m real … taken. That sketch I brought is really just an excuse to see you, though you probably figured as much. Last night was really fine, Jane.”
Then she was up, standing in front of the fireplace and looking down at him. “Yes, it was. But Tom, don’t make too much of it, okay? We kind of short-circuited everything out there by the Indicator, and I blame myself. I’m not sorry for what we did, just for all the things that come with it. Maybe some of what you’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking too. But sometimes I just want it all real slow, Tom.” She smiled. “Though that may be hard to believe. You can’t count on me. I’ve been around, and there’s something real hard inside me I can use when I want it. I’ll tell you about my men someday, maybe. Then things will make a little more sense, I hope.”
Shephard nodded: to some statements there is nothing much to add, he thought. “Well, yeah. Take things as they come, I guess.” He stood up and kissed her cheek.
“Good seeing you, Tommy.”
He stopped at the door and said the same thing back.
Later that night he hung the painting from Ella’s on his living room wall, where Hopper’s Nighthawks had been. Compared to the red-black nightmare that now dominated his home, Hopper’s ode to loneliness had seemed almost cheerful, he thought. Beside the painting he thumbtacked the Identikit sketch, the face that included all the darkness of the painting, and then some.
And still, Shephard noted, still the sonofabitch smiled.
NINETEEN
Early Sunday morning Shephard found Little Theodore slouched against the sissy bar of his motorcycle at the back of the Church of New Life drive-in lot. Sunday had broken bright and clear over the County, with a desert breeze washing away Saturday’s stifling smog like a wiper on a windshield. The wind was warm, but promised even at seven o’clock to become hot before the morning was gone, a dry, scrubbed, high-pitched wind that stung Shephard’s nostrils as he pulled the LaVerda up beside Theodore. The big man was working on a half gallon of Gatorade, which he offered to Shephard.
“Hotter’n a whore on payday,” Theodore said, and cast Shephard a giant smile. Shephard noticed that Theodore had washed his hair and that the black T-shirt, stretched tight around his arms and almost to breaking around his belly, was conspicuously clean. He gulped the thirst-killer and found it unspiked. “You got me a tad drunk the other night, little fella. Felt like a stomped-on toad next day.”
Theodore hooked the theater speaker to the handlebar of his bike and it crackled to life with the sounds of a steel guitar. He turned it down, his massive head bent in concentration as he fiddled with the knob. When he got the volume to his liking, he leaned back against the Harley’s bar. Shephard noted the twisted, dried something that dangled from the arch of the bar top.
“Dried apricot?” he asked as a warm puff of wind sent it swaying.
Theodore tilted his head up for a look, then shook a slow no. “Bit off a woman’s ear in Cheyenne. Imagine a little gal trying to stick me with a knife? And don’t go asking why, little jackass, them days is long over.” Theodore gave his bike a shake and watched the ear dance, a smile breaking through his beard. “Long over. Just a little reminder of what a woman can do to a man. Hey, pissant, you looked a little nervous on the TV the other night. Got to learn some polish, you want to be famous as me someday.”
Shephard handed Theodore the Identikit sketch, then adjusted himself comfortably on the seat. The ride into Santa Ana had been fast: his heart still hadn’t settled. But the thrill was nothing even close to the one he’d felt that night at Diver’s Cove when Jane Algernon took him in and arched her back into the stars.
“I got a memory like an elephant, and this bastard ain’t part of it. I’ll hang onto it though, never know these days.”
Wade’s voice came through the speaker, and Theodore labored forward to turn it up. Shephard sat squat-legged on the seat, gazing out at the ocean of cars covering the drive-in lot. The battered rear ends of old Pontiacs, Chevys, and Fords. Still the poor people who come to the drive-in church, he thought, just like in the beginning. Wade always reminded him of that.
He closed his eyes as Wade began the sermon. A jetliner droned somewhere overhead, so high that the murmur of its engines seemed to come from one part of the sky, then from another. He breathed deeply and the warm wind struck his face. When he opened his eyes he saw only blue.
Wade began talking about the power of prayer and how it should not be taken lightly. The Lord is not a mail-order catalog, he said. Then he started comparing the power of prayer to a secret weapon, which must always be used wisely. But the sound of his voice, the droning of the plane overhead, and the warmth of the day soon transported Shephard into a reverie from which he caught only snippets of what was being said by his father.
He closed his eyes again and still saw the blue sky and it reminded him of the fishing trip he’d taken with Louise to Montana. He remembered turning her over the damp brown stump in the clearing and the comic dilemma of making love while a bear lumbered into their vision not fifty yards away.
“The Lord has dealt bountifully with you,” his father was saying, and Shephard agreed. They had always liked it outdoors, and even in Silverlake he had rigged a mattress on the patio for summer nights. The air always seemed better outside, and they had to be quiet because of the neighbors, and one morning Shephard woke up to find a pink mosquito bite on her ass, but they
laughed. Same patio where they had the party and he had seen that look pass between her and the producer, who ducked under a paper lantern to load a cracker with dip. Too beautiful not to be seen. And he and some others packing their noses in the bathroom. Shephard was curious, but some things a cop can’t do even if his wife can.
Wade’s voice came slowly over the speaker now: “The Lord has provided such wealth,” he said. “But still when we find something we cannot buy, we always say we’re too poor to buy it rather than we’re not rich enough to buy it. And even then we forget the abundance that is heaven and the poverty of spirit that is hell.”
Shephard brought his feet to the seat and rested his head on his knees. The wind gusted around him and tilted the motorcycle gently. Right, he thought, always richer than we think we are. He remembered holding so hard to her when she was slipping away, so that the harder he held, the faster she slipped away—like a watermelon seed between your fingers. Forget it, he thought, forget yourself like you told Dr. Zahara. But then there was the divorce, in his memory a hazy flurry of forms and negotiations, of obligatory cruelties inflicted from both sides to make the separation complete. One night still remained in his mind, a night when they had made the settlements and it must have been the mutual relief that brought them together once more to make love furiously and tenderly, both aware that it was finality, not promise, that had brought them to their last joining, and they did all that they had ever done as if in a summation before the good-bye. Louise had been too proud to demand much in the settlement, he thought; just sullen and guilty. Even the lawyers had remarked that theirs was a model divorce, but it was clear to Shephard that neither of them wanted much of what they had built together, though for different reasons.
“So no matter how little you may think you have and how little you think you will have, you can turn the water to wine and the loaves to plenty if you do as Christ and use faith.” Wade’s voice was powerful, even through the tiny speaker.
Shephard shifted his weight and glanced across at Theodore, whose hat was pulled down. The silver dollars shone brightly in the sun. The half gallon of Gatorade rested on his belly, cradled by his big hands. For a moment Shephard wished to be a simpler animal.
He gazed out again to the beaten cars around him. The lot was full except for the spaces at the back, and Shephard wondered why people liked being near the front even when there was nothing to be nearer to. But it was the County’s poor who had been the foundation of the Church, and they didn’t seem to mind that the Reverend Wade Shepard now delivered his sermons from the pulpit of a million-dollar dome made of blue glass. He could see the top of that chapel over the roof of a dusty Chevrolet. Its smooth panels glittered and shifted in the bright morning sun, a three-story sapphire. From inside the gem, Wade continued:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the earth.” There was a long pause, and when Wade began again the tone of his voice had changed. “Before we bring to an end our service for today, I would like to take a moment to bring you some good news. A good friend of the church, one of our supporters from the first days, has expanded his generosity to our new project, the Sisters of Mercy Hospital on Isla Arenillas, Mexico. Some of you may know him, his name is Joe Datilla, and he told me just yesterday that he is prepared to offer us a wonderful gift. You all have heard about the terrible events in Laguna Beach last week. Joe, just yesterday, established a reward fund for information leading to the arrest of the Fire Killer of Laguna. That reward will be one hundred thousand dollars to the individual who provides information on the case, matched by one hundred thousand dollars in donation for the Sisters of Mercy Hospital.”
Shephard could hear the crowd come alive through the speaker. Then a raucous cry came up from the cars in front of him and they sprouted arms that waved from the windows. There were hoots, shrieking whistles, applause, and finally a chorus of honking horns that drowned out the next of Wade’s words. Someone threw a beer can. Little Theodore let out a throaty rasp, broke into a cough, and pressed down the horn of the Harley, which responded with little more than a tweet. “Great deal,” he growled. “Fuckin’ A.”
“Join me in praying that the Lord will deliver this tormented man to us,” Wade said finally, “and that to him His mercy shall be given.”
The Reverend Wade Shephard’s office was hidden in a far corner of the massive new chapel. As Shephard walked through the door, a woman with her back to him turned and an embarrassed smile crossed her face. Wade was standing across from her, behind a desk, and Shephard’s entrance seemed to take him by the same surprise. The woman excused herself and Wade sat down, still dressed in the cream-colored suit he wore for the televised sermons. His smile was pleased, expansive. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” he said pleasantly. “Surprised by Joe’s offer?”
“Well, yes. Very powerful,” Shephard said, not sure whether he was really surprised or not.
“Reward money works wonders sometimes, as I’ve told you.”
“I can understand his helping the church. But why me?”
Wade leaned back in his large padded chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. Shephard saw something well pleased in the gesture. “I suppose only Joe could answer that. Of course, he bounced the idea off me before it was settled. Frankly, Tom, I think he’s as appalled at what has happened in Laguna as you and I are. Don’t forget, he’s not just helping you,” he said kindly.
“Two hundred thousand is a lot of appalled,” Shephard said. He thought of Datilla serving on the tennis court alone, then of Dorothy Edmond’s words. He isn’t happy about anything he can’t control. And it was Shephard’s nature, or at least his training, to look for what was expected in return when a gift was offered.
“Of course, he’s very interested in the hospital, too,” Wade said. “I can see the questions swirling behind that glum young face of yours, Tom. I raised a good detective. But don’t be afraid to accept a miracle. Expect them, accept them.”
Wade’s voice was confidential, his smile assuring. And his advice seemed to lift Shephard’s concerns out of an arena he wasn’t yet willing to leave. He nodded. “I met Dorothy Edmond on Friday,” he said. “She didn’t exactly portray Joe as a miracle worker.”
“Oh?” Wade’s smile had turned wry, as if he knew what might be coming next.
“Do you know her?”
“In a sense, yes. ‘I knew her once’ might be a better way to put it. She was and still is a very unhealthy woman.”
“She coughs a lot.”
“She does at that,” Wade said gently.
“She told me some, uh, disturbing stories about Joe.”
“Don’t be disturbed. I told you a thousand times who the best liars are. Do you know?”
“Those who believe their own lies,” Shephard answered quickly.
“She must be one of them,” Wade said.
“I want to give them to you just the same. I saw Joe last Thursday. When I was leaving the Surfside, Dorothy took me aside and said she knew something about the murders. When I met with her the next day, she told me a long tale about Joe and a woman named Helene. Joe mentioned her, too. Helene Lang.”
“I knew her, too,” Wade said with a new smile. Again he leaned back and crossed his hands.
“She told me that Joe fought with his partner, Burt Creeley, and arranged to have him drowned in the bay at Newport. Helene had professed her love to Burt and had managed to alter his will so that his thirty percent of the Surfside stock came her way if he died. According to Edmond, Joe and Helene Lang were in it together. They planned it in advance so Joe could get the stock control. She said Burton’s ideas were too … democratic.”
As Shephard recounted Dorothy’s story, he was aware of its gross unlikelihood. Coming from his own mouth it sounded impossible. But from Edmond, as she had sat in the cloud of smoke and lilac perfume, it was convincing enough to be real.
“I read parts of Hope Creeley’s diary,” he continued, bringing fresh conv
iction to his voice, “and the affair checks out. She wrote about it, knew about it.” Shephard stopped for a moment to ponder his collapsing narrative. Wade was listening patiently, calmly studying his son’s face. “She said I’d have to ‘reopen’ the case if I wanted to get to the killer of Hope and Tim Algernon. Then she told me to know myself. Even if everything she said were true, I still don’t see how it connects. But if she’s pointing a finger, it’s at Joe Datilla.”
“Murder is a rather heavy finger,” Wade answered. “Did you wonder why she was telling you this?”
“It’s not the kind of story you’d want to keep inside, if it were true,” Shephard answered after a pause. The truth was, he hadn’t been able to figure out why she had come to him with it.
“Or even if it weren’t.” Wade sagged forward and poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the desk. “I don’t know what she would gain by telling you something like that. I’ve known Dorothy Edmond for many years, and I’ve prayed for her many times. If Joe didn’t have the heart to keep her on at the Surfside, she’d probably be back in one of the hospitals. She’s been in quite a few, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
Wade pushed himself up from the large desk, taking his glass of water. He looked through the blinds out to the Church of New Life drive-in lot. When he turned back to Shephard his face was drained of joy, like a fighter answering the bell for a round he can’t win.
“I knew her quite well when she was engaged to Joe,” he said finally. Shephard saw that his hunch had been right: she was a jilted lover, out of hope and ready for revenge. Fool, he thought. Ass. “The reason she’s so intimate with the details of Helene Lang’s life is because … she is Helene Lang. She’s gone by a dozen names in the last thirty years. Dorothy Edmond is relatively new.”
Shephard felt his ears warm with embarrassment, like a schoolboy who has multiplied the numbers he was asked simply to add. Wade sipped the water and set the glass back on the desk.
Laguna Heat Page 20
