Breakdown

Chapter 10

Thursday morning.

From the office I called Paul Glickman. He had nothing to tell me; he hadn’t been able to get back in touch with either Coleman Lujack or Thomas Lujack’s widow.

Nick Pendarves was still among the missing.

Eberhardt was late again. And there had been no messages on the answering machine.

Status quo.

I scribbled a note to Eberhardt, left it on his desk, locked the office, picked up my car, and headed south across the city to Highway 280.

* * * *

The house owned by Thomas and Eileen Lujack was high in the hills above San Carlos, at the end of a twisty little street ludicrously named Sweet William Lane. It was similar to most of the others in the neighborhood-big ranch-style place not more than twenty years old, built of wood and fieldstone, with plenty of glass to take advantage of what, on a clear day, would be a miles-wide view of the bay from near San Francisco on the north to near San Jose on the south.

Low, dark clouds obscured most of the view today, though at least it wasn’t raining here just now. The lot was big for this area, about two acres, the grounds well landscaped with lawn and shrubbery and flower beds; a gnarly old oak and a couple of acacias would provide shade in the summer. Scattered on the lawn and under the trees, peeping out here and there from among the vegetation, were at least twenty gaudily painted, three-foot-tall cast-iron gnomes, each one with a different facial expression ranging from weepy to lusty-leer. The gnomes gave the place a whimsical aspect, like some sort of Disney exhibit. Cute kitsch.

At a conservative estimate I put the value of the property at half a million dollars. Pretty fancy digs for the part-owner of a box factory that grossed around three million a year. But then, Thomas and his wife may have bought it before 1975, when Bay Area real estate prices began the steep ascent to their present dizzying heights. Back then, you could have bought all of this for under $100,000.

Sweet William Lane widened into a turnaround in front of the house, like a bulb at the end of a crooked thermometer. I parked near the driveway and went in along a fieldstone walk. One of the gnomes scowled at me as I passed; I scowled back at him. The front porch was half hidden by wisteria bushes, and the front door had a knocker in the shape of a smiling gnome’s head. More cute kitsch. I found a doorbell and used that instead.

The door opened pretty soon, to reveal a thirtyish, ash-blond woman dressed in a black suit and a gray blouse. She frowned and blinked and said, “Oh. You’re not the taxi.”

“No, ma’am.”

“I mean, you’re not the taxi driver.”

“Yes, ma’am. Are you Eileen Lujack?”

“That’s right. Who are you?”

I let her have my name and one of my business cards.

“Oh,” she said, “yes, Tom mentioned you. I think your partner came to see me once, didn’t he? Elkhart or Eisenhardt or something like that?”

“Eberhardt.”

“Eberhardt, yes. You should have called first.”

“Ma’am?”

“Before you came all the way down here to see me.”

“I tried to call a couple of times yesterday-”

“I was so upset, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. So I turned the bell on the phone all the way down. That way I couldn’t hear it when it rang.”

“I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Lujack.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.”

“Would you mind talking today? There are a few things I-”

“Well, I can’t,” she said. “Not now. I’m going to be late as it is.” She looked at a platinum-gold wristwatch and then past me, down Sweet William Lane. “He should have been here by now. The taxi. I told them I had an eleven thirty appointment with the funeral people and they said they’d send somebody right away. That was forty minutes ago.”

“If you’d rather not wait,” I said, “I could drive you.”

“Oh, would you? You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all. We can talk on the way. Where is it you need to go?”

“Just into town. San Carlos. Saxon and Jeffrey-that’s the name of the funeral home. But what about the taxi?”

“Ma’am?”

“Well, he’ll come eventually and I won’t be here. The taxi company won’t like that. They might not come at all the next time I need them.”

“You can call and cancel on the way. I have a phone in my car.”

“You do? Oh, good. We’d better hurry then.”

She went and got her purse, locked the door, and set the burglar alarm. While I waited I remembered what Eberhardt had told me after his talk with the lady. “She’s kind of a ditz,” he’d said. “Not quite as bad as your typical Hollywood dumb blonde, but close. Thomas didn’t marry her for her IQ, that’s for sure.” Eb can be a sexist sometimes, if a benign one, and at the time I’d put the description down to his piggy tendencies. But now that I had spent five minutes in Eileen Lujack’s company, I decided he’d been speaking the nonsexist truth. She was a tall, leggy, chesty, blue-eyed, clear-skinned, gnome-loving ditz. And if she had spent any of the last thirty-six hours grieving over her husband, you couldn’t tell it by looking at her.

When we got to the car she gave it a wary look, as if she were afraid it might fold up around her like one of those comic jobs in a Mack Sennett two-reeler. She said, “What happened to your door?”

“Somebody broke in a couple of nights ago. I haven’t had a chance to get the lock fixed.”

Her expression said she was wondering why anybody in his right mind would break into a wreck like this, but she had the grace not to put the thought into words. I helped her in through the driver’s door, made an effort not to look at her legs as she scooted across the seat and swung them over the cellular phone unit, and then took my place under the wheel.

“I guess you have trouble with cars too,” she said.

“Well, not usually.”

“We never used to. Not until that awful thing with Tom’s car and poor Frank Hanauer. Now the police have my car too. They … what’s the word when they keep your property?”

“Impound.”

“That’s right. They impounded it. Tom got me a rental when he started using mine but I don’t like driving it. I don’t like driving at all, really, and today I just couldn’t. I should have called one of my friends but I didn’t think about it in time….” She sighed heavily. “Are you sure you don’t mind driving me?”

“Positive. I’m glad to help.”

She directed me downhill through a warren of little streets and onto Alameda de las Pulgas. On the way I called the local cab company and let her cancel her order. Afterward she sat stiff and erect, not too close to the wired-shut door, and folded her hands tightly around her purse.

“I can’t believe Tom’s gone,” she said. “I mean, I know he is but I just … I can’t believe it. You understand?”

“I think so, yes.”

“We had such a nice life until a month ago. Such a lovely life. And now … it’s all come apart, it’s all over. How can it happen like that, so suddenly?”

People make it happen, I thought. People and all their shortcomings, all their big and little evils. But I was not about to get into that with Eileen Lujack. I gave her the standard: “I don’t know.”

“So suddenly,” she said again, with a kind of awe in her voice.

I said, “The last time you talked to your husband was when he called from San Francisco Tuesday afternoon?”

“What?” She was still thinking about her lovely life and how it had so suddenly come apart. “Oh … yes.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t remember exactly. About five.”

“He said he was staying in the city because he had something to do?”

“Yes.”

“Did he give you any idea what it was?”

“Just business, that’s all.”

“What did he have to say about Nick Pendarves?”

“That man.” She shuddered. “Tom didn’t say anything about him.”

“Nothing at all? He didn’t tell you that Pendarves was almost run down and killed on Monday night? The threats Pendarves made afterward?”

“No. I didn’t find out about any of that until Coleman told me yesterday.”

“Why do you think he kept quiet about it?”

“He didn’t want to worry me, I guess. He never talked much about things like that. You know, the trouble he was in — Frank Hanauer getting killed with Tom’s car.”

“Did he ever mention Pendarves to you?”

“Not that I remember. His name was in the papers … Pendarves’s name, I mean. That’s how I knew who he was.”

We were approaching the intersection with San Carlos Avenue. Mrs. Lujack told me to turn right on San Carlos, and as I followed instructions I asked, “Was your husband in the habit of discussing business matters with you?”

“Hardly ever. I don’t have a very good head for business.”

Yeah, I thought.

“But Tom did,” she said. “Coleman too. I never thought they’d make so much money from the factory, not after the way it started out. But they did.” She laughed-a small, odd, puzzled sound. “He was right about the coyotes, I guess.”

“Ma’am?”

“Oh, just something Tom said once.”

“About coyotes?”

” ‘The coyotes are going to make us rich.’ That’s what he said. I asked him what he meant but he said it was just a joke and it wasn’t worth explaining. You don’t know what he meant, do you?”

“No,” I said. “You’re sure he said the word ‘coyotes’?”

“Well, it sounded like coyotes.”

“When was that, do you remember?”

“Oh … at least five years ago. Before we bought the new house.”

“The house you live in now, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve owned that property just five years?”

“Almost five, yes.”

“Must have set you back quite a bit.”

“Oh, it did. Over four hundred thousand. I didn’t think we could afford it, but Tom said we could. That was when Containers, Inc., really started to do well.”

I ruminated on that while we waited at a red light. When the light changed I asked her, “Do you know Rafael Vega, Mrs. Lujack?”

“Who?”

“Rafael Vega. The shop foreman at Containers, Inc.”

“Oh. I don’t know anybody who works at the factory. Well, except Coleman, of course. I’ve only been there a couple of times. It’s really not a very nice neighborhood.”

We were coming into downtown San Carlos now. I made another turn at her instruction, and then said carefully, “There’s a reason I’ve been asking all these questions. I think it’s possible Nick Pendarves may not be the person who murdered your husband. Did Paul Glickman mention that to you?”

“No. No, he didn’t.” It took her a couple of seconds to get a firm grasp on the idea. “But … I don’t understand. Tom was found in Pendarves’s garage. Who else could have done it?”

“The same person who ran down Frank Hanauer, maybe.”

“… You have some idea who that is?”

“Not yet. But with a little more time I think I can find out.”

“You mean you want to keep investigating?”

“With your permission.”

There was a little silence before she said, “I don’t know. You’ve been investigating ever since Frank was killed, you and your partner, and you haven’t found out who was responsible. Coleman doesn’t think we need you anymore. He says the police are doing everything that can be done.”

“When did you talk to him about it?”

“Yesterday. He came to the house.”

“Well, he’s wrong, Mrs. Lujack. The police are convinced Pendarves is guilty of murdering your husband. And they think your husband was guilty of running down Hanauer. They’re not going to look in the same places Eberhardt and I will be looking.”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “Now that Tom’s gone, maybe the best thing is for us to just put the whole ugly business behind us and go on with our lives.”

Not her words, I thought. “Is that what Coleman said?”

“Yes.”

“And you feel that way too?”

“I … I’m not sure what I feel right now.”

“You don’t believe your husband killed Hanauer?”

“Oh no. Of course not.”

“And you do want to see his name cleared?”

“Yes, but … you could go on investigating for months and months and it would cost us thousands of dollars and the chances are you still wouldn’t find out anything.”

Coleman again. He seemed to be trying to manipulate her, which meant he was either a callous bastard or he had reasons for wanting Eberhardt and me out of the picture, the truth buried along with his brother.

I said, “I’m not trying to drag things out for a bigger fee. Believe that, Mrs. Lujack. All I want is the truth, and another week or so to get at it. If Eberhardt and I don’t come up with something definite after that, we’ll quit and bill you for expenses only-no other fees. I’ll put that in writing, if you like.”

“Well …”

“Will you think it over? Talk to Paul Glickman about it?”

“Yes, all right. But I’ll have to talk to Coleman too.”

“By all means.” And so will I, I thought. “I’ll call you tonight and you can let me know then.”

We rounded another corner, and there was the Saxon and Jeffrey Funeral Home-white pillars, brick and glass, a circular drive in front, and a side drive with a hearse parked under a porte cochere. It looked like a cross between a neo-colonial home and a suburban savings-and-loan. I pulled into the drive and stopped in front.

Mrs. Lujack said, “Thank you again for driving me.”

I told her she was welcome, and got out and leaned back in to give her a hand. But she didn’t seem to want to leave the car just yet. She sat staring through the side window at the funeral home.

“Mrs. Lujack?”

Her head jerked, and when she looked at me her eyes were moist. “Oh,” she said. Then she said, “I don’t want to go in there and talk about Tom’s coffin, Tom’s funeral. I really don’t.” And softly she began to cry.

She loved him, I thought then. She did love him.

I realized something else, too, in that moment: Eileen Lujack may not have a high IQ, but she was neither shallow nor frivolous. Eberhardt and I had both been wrong. She wasn’t a ditz at all.

* * * *