by Jack Lynch
I got Catlin’s rifle from the kitchen and carried it with me out to the car, looking this way and that, up and down and over my shoulder. I got the bag out of the trunk and tossed in the rifle and slammed the lid. By the time I got back to the house Erica had worked herself up to making a declaration.
“Peter, I just can’t go spend the night by myself. Really, I’ve had too many shocks. I’m afraid I’d lose my mind. Can’t I stay with you?”
“No, I’m not sure yet how I’m going to work things out. I have to look around for Catlin’s camper, and who knows where the killer might be?”
“Why do you have to find his camper?”
“I’d like to find his chess pieces. Without those this whole thing goes down the drain. The killer might be looking for the same thing if he knows what’s at stake here.”
“Is that possible?”
“Yes. Or it could be the two men from New York sticking their feet into things again. Catlin killed one of their tribe or whatever the hell they call themselves these days. Or it could have been the traveling man or somebody else we don’t know anything about.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Catlin had a lot of strange business dealings of his own going on in different parts of the country. Some of them probably weren’t too savory. He probably had to stay in touch even from here. But enough of that, we have to get out of here.”
“But, I can’t…”
“I know, I’ll think of something. Get packed.”
I went back to examine the hallway more closely, going over it carefully. I found two more stains that could have been blood. I went into the bathroom again and stared at Catlin’s body. So far as I could tell he’d been shot in the hallway or front room then was dragged to the bathroom and dumped into the tub. That didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I went back to the front room. Erica was just finishing packing things.
“I’m ready,” she said, snapping shut the case. “What now?”
“As much as it sticks in my throat to have to say it, you could go back to San Francisco and spend the night with Bryan Gilkerson again. I’m serious.”
She looked at me a moment, then turned toward the dark fireplace. “No, Peter.”
I waited for her to continue, but that was all she had to say about it.
“Okay, there’s no time to argue about it. How about my place, then? It’s a compromise. You’ll have to spend the night by yourself, but you should be plenty safe there. It has a refrigerator and the basic amenities. Cozier than a motel room. Maybe not as neat, is all.”
She turned back with a little smile. “Yes. I like that. I could manage that by myself, I think. Could I sleep in your bed, Peter?”
“I guess you’ll have to. There’s a hide-a-bed in the living room but it’s not made up. You can sleep in my bed, use my john, drink my whiskey, even.”
“Oh, whiskey,” she exclaimed. “I forgot to fix one for the road.”
“Fix two, would you? I’m going to follow you up to the top of the hill and sit there long enough to make sure nobody’s following you before I come back and do whatever has to be done here. I’ll take bourbon if you have some.”
When she came back she had a pair of lidded pint Mason jars filled with what looked like mostly bourbon and ice. I acknowledged they looked like a pair of whoppers and asked what made her think of using Mason jars.
“It’s something I learned from a girlfriend who grew up in Virginia. She said back there they always put their one for the road in one of these things. It’s the only reason I have them around.”
She appeared to have calmed down pretty well in the aftermath of finding Catlin’s body. I gave her the key to my apartment in Sausalito and directions on how to find it. We closed up and left, and I felt to see if the spare key was on the overhead ledge. It was.
I told Erica to pull over for a minute at the crest of the hill by the Pantoll Ranger Station, then got in my car and followed her out of town. They’d turned off some of the lights in the Sand Dollar. It was only a little after midnight, but they must have decided to close early. I wished I had time to go in for a while myself. It’s a grand little bar. Stinson Beach is just remote and small enough to drive a lot of the year around residents slightly balmy. They do an awful lot of drinking.
At the Pantoll parking lot Erica pulled to one side and stopped. I got out and made her repeat the instructions I’d given her on finding the apartment. She seemed to have it down. I think she was looking forward to spending the night there. I suspected she’d do her share of snooping around the place, but there was no helping that.
“And, Erica, stay put until you hear from me tomorrow. Leave the curtains drawn over the front window and just lay low. Don’t answer the door unless you know it’s me.”
“I’ll be good, darling, I promise. I’m really looking forward to spending the night in your bed. It would be nice if you came with it. Are there pictures of you around the apartment?”
“No, why should there be?”
“Well, you’ve seen Harry’s gallery in the front room. Some men are like that.”
“This man isn’t. And my war didn’t have much to take pictures of.”
She made a little pout then raised her mouth for a kiss. I gave her a quick one and waved her on her way. I backed my own car deeper into the parking area where it wouldn’t be seen by anybody coming up the hill from Stinson Beach. The rain beat against the metal roof of the car and I reached over for the Mason jar on the seat beside me. She might have mixed a little water with it, but very little. She must have emptied an entire bottle into the two jars. If that’s how they did things in Virginia I decided I’d have to get back there some day and look things over.
I waited about five minutes. Any longer than that would have been indulging myself. I screwed the lid on the jar and put the car in gear.
I still hadn’t figured out what to tell the sheriff’s office. In this case, maybe an anonymous phone call would be best. And then there was Harry’s study down under the house. I wanted to go through that before any sheriff’s deputies did. But I wasn’t in all that much of a hurry to get back to the house and body. I decided to go looking for Catlin’s van first. Once down in the town I spent about a half hour driving up and down the steep and winding streets on the hill behind the beach, looking for a van with Washington license plates. I didn’t find it. I continued the search on the other roads in town and those leading down to the beach. It wasn’t a lot of fun. I had to back out of some of those narrow roads when I couldn’t find a way to turn around. I couldn’t see much of anything out the rear window and had to stick my head out into the rain to tell where I was going. I got wet on the face and down my neck but I never did find the camper.
It was close to two in the morning when I gave it up. I was cold and the Mason jar was empty. Maybe whoever killed Catlin had already found his van and done something with it. I parked back behind the Shank house and walked up to the front door. I let myself in with the key on the ledge, started to put it back but then thought better of it and put it into my pocket. I didn’t know how many people might know about that.
I threw my coat over a chair by the wall heater and turned the rheostat on high. I went out to the kitchen and turned on the light to look for more bloodstains. I didn’t find any. I went back to the front room but I didn’t find anything more there, either. I started back down the hallway, then stopped. Somebody had been trying to rub the bloodstains out of the carpet. The carpeting was damp in both places where I’d seen stains earlier.
I took out the .45 again and went in for a quick inspection of the bathroom. The shower curtain was pulled back and Catlin’s body was gone. The tub had been scrubbed out so you couldn’t tell it had ever been in there. I did another quick search of the house, and found nothing out of the ordinary. I had the feeling that if I were just a little bit smarter I’d be able to start making connections between things. I put away the pistol and went back to put the chain on the front door,
then went to the kitchen and fixed myself another drink. I carried it into the front room, took off my jacket and slumped down into a chair.
I could only think of one reason why anybody should have come back and carted off Henry Catlin’s body and removed any trace it had ever been there. They didn’t want the sheriff’s people to know about it. And I wondered why. What would an investigation into Catlin’s death do to whatever plans the killer had? I got up and went over again to the wall where Harry Shank’s World War II career was hanging out for everyone to see. Again I studied the photo taken in the jungle clearing—Battersea, Buddy Polaski, Henry Catlin, Harry Shank and some others. Taken by the aborigine. Polaski and Catlin looked the most self-assured of the lot, as probably they’d been their entire lives. I’d seen Polaski’s death; I knew all about that. I still didn’t understand Henry Catlin’s. He was self-assured, but he also was intelligent and gun smart. He wouldn’t have let strangers into the house. It wasn’t consistent with his past behavior. And then I had another thought. I wondered in how many ways Henry Catlin had been consistent, and I felt a little tingle at the back of my neck.
Behind the house there was an extension ladder suspended from a couple of hooks beneath the studio eaves. I’d noticed it before. I put my jacket and raincoat back on and went out to get a flashlight from my car. I put up the ladder and climbed up onto the roof, took a quick look around, and found what I was looking for wedged between the brick fireplace chimney and the canted roof. It was a bundle wrapped in oilskin stuck inside of an old gunnysack. I carried it back down, put the ladder away and went into the house. Inside the bundle were Catlin’s chess pieces, wrapped in the same dirty black tape as the ones Polaski had carried. There was something else as well, showing again that Catlin was a prudent man when danger was near. He’d put four spare magazines for the rifle in the sack. He hadn’t wanted to be caught short of ammunition when it was time to grab up his chess pieces and move along. It only deepened my bafflement at his letting somebody get close enough to put a bullet into his head.
I was stretched out on the sofa wondering about that when I fell asleep.
SEVENTEEN
I woke up the next morning stiff and sore. I was sneezing again. I got up and showered and poked through the bathroom cabinets until I found a safety razor Harry must have used. I normally used an electric razor, but I had a stubble of beard I wouldn’t feel right about taking out into the world with me, so I lathered up and knicked and scraped away the worst of it. I drank about a gallon of water, had some orange juice from the refrigerator, then fumbled around with Erica’s coffee maker until I had something resembling coffee in a pot. I had two cups of that, thinking about things, and by then it was nine o’clock. I phoned my apartment in Sausalito. Erica answered in a tentative voice.
“It’s Peter Bragg, Erica, how did the night go?”
“Oh, God, Peter, it was exquisite. The best sleep I’ve had since Harry was killed. I could even smell you in the sheets. It was almost, or at least a little bit like having you here with me.”
“Most of that’s sweat. I sometimes do that at night.”
“I don’t care, I love it here. You were right, it is cozy. I’m not so sure about some of the naughty posters you have on the walls around here though…”
“Those aren’t naughty, just a poor substitute for a man in a hurry most of the time.”
“Can I stay?”
“At my place?”
“Uh huh.”
“Don’t be nuts. It’s safe to come home now whenever you feel like it.”
“What did you tell the deputies?”
“Didn’t have to tell them anything. I went looking for Catlin’s camper before coming back here. By the time I finally did get back somebody had hauled off Catlin’s body and cleaned up the tub.”
“You’re joking.”
“No I’m not, and I didn’t find his camper, either. Somebody wanted all trace of the man removed.”
“Why on earth would anybody do that?”
“I don’t know. But at least they didn’t get his chessmen.”
“Oh, my God, Peter. You found them?”
“Yes, I did. He had a good hiding place for them. Used it up at his own place in Washington and told me about it. That’s how I found them. But the really crazy part of it all is that whoever removed his body couldn’t even have been looking for them.”
“How do you know that?”
“They would have torn up your place looking for them. They didn’t do that.”
“I don’t know what to make of it all.”
“I don’t either, so far. I still want to go through Harry’s studio. Then I’m coming by the apartment to change and after that I’m going into the office. What are your plans?”
“I have a million errands to run, things I’ve neglected since Harry’s death. I’ll be going into San Francisco as well.”
“Why don’t you call me at the office in a couple of hours? I want you to get your chess pieces cleaned off. I’ll tell you how to find the shop where my friend is.”
“All right. Peter? What about Catlin’s chess pieces? Who do they belong to now?”
“So far as I’m concerned they belong to the rest of you. At least there isn’t anything now to prevent our giving back the money your brother stole and splitting the proceeds of the sale.”
“It sounds almost too good to be true.”
“Yeah, well don’t hold your breath. This is far from over. Talk to you later.”
I hung up and went around to Harry’s studio. The rain had quit again. A sharp breeze was pushing low clouds across the sky. There even was a patch of blue sky here and there.
Inside the studio I saw what Erica meant about her late husband not being a tidy man. Old newspapers, books and magazines were piled on chairs and atop file cabinets. Stacks of bills and correspondence littered his desk. None of it was of any interest to me. The drawers in his desk held twenty-five years of cramming. He had a lot of newspaper and magazine articles to do with the Pacific campaigns in World War II. There were a bunch more photos as well, similar to the ones lining the walls upstairs.
In a bottom drawer of the desk I came across a different sort of photograph. It was of Erica. She had told me how Harry would have her wear some skimpy clothing around the house so he could take photos of her. Things didn’t come much skimpier than what she wore in this one. She was on a bed, on her hands and knees, with a long scarf around her neck. Nothing more. She had a tiny smile on her face which I found embarrassing. I wondered if she’d missed it when she went through the desk looking for Catlin’s address. If she’d seen it I would have thought she’d have destroyed it. But then there still were a lot of things I didn’t know about Erica.
There were some old letters and greeting cards and certificates and citations to do with his newspapering career that Harry had garnered over the years, and under that stuff was a folder that had what I was looking for. It concerned the chess set. There were copies of the initial query letters Harry had written Catlin and Battersea, asking his former colleagues if they still had those old chessmen they’d taken from the native village. The letters were dated the end of July of this year. The folder also had the replies he’d gotten. Battersea’s mentioned the piece he’d given Kwalli. Catlin’s reply was salty in the extreme. There wasn’t any correspondence with Edward Bowman. They must have talked by phone. And Harry’s initial contact with Buddy Polaski must have been by phone as well. There was no copy of an initial query letter, but there was a letter from Polaski. He told his brother-in-law that he had an idea of how to gather the money they needed to buy out Bowman and Battersea. He didn’t spell it out, but he wrote that he would phone Harry in a day or so and talk it over with him. It was beginning to look as if Buddy himself had conceived the idea of trying to steal from the mob he worked for. He hadn’t seemed that stupid when we talked at the airport. But it got me to thinking that Buddy must have known there would be people from New York chasing him soon
after he and the cash disappeared. That meant he would have had to make a quick exchange and probably get out of the country to start a new life in very short order. Harry Shank must have told him that it was possible. Harry Shank must have assured him the pieces could be rounded up quickly. So at some point he must have known the traveling man and missing chess piece were close at hand.
Beneath the letters was something of even more interest. I recognized it because of the couple of times I’d been back up to the Chronicle city room since they’d traded in their typewriters for the video display terminals hooked up to the computer. Not only did the reporters now type their stories on the VDTs, which stored the information electronically, but wire services now had direct lines into the computer as well. These days those stories were transmitted in a flash, instead of clattering in line by line over a teletype machine.
What Harry had in the folder was a computer printout of a book review. The book had been written by a vagabond Englishman who’d spent his life trying to find missing treasures, from the Lost Dutchman gold mine and sunken treasure galleons to the Mediterranean Chess Set. The book review said the book’s author had traced the chess set’s movement to Southeast Asia during World War II. He had apparently talked to a former Japanese army colonel who had taken the set off the Awa Maru, only to have it stolen in turn by native servants at a former Dutch rubber plantation. The colonel had even described how he’d cleverly concealed the set’s value by wrapping it in tape. The colonel had been staggered by the loss. He said the natives could have no idea of what it was they’d taken. He said they took things, “as the Americans say, just for the hell of it.”
If the colonel had been staggered when he lost it, Harry Shank must have been equally jolted when he realized what those odd souvenirs he’d had all those years really were.
On the margin of the printout was a scribble by Harry:
“Where did this come from?”
