Camouflage

18

My visit to Barber and Associates was unproductive. The agent in charge of the Dogpatch property lease was a middle-aged black woman named Royster; I got her to talk to me on the grounds that I was conducting a routine insurance investigation that peripherally involved R. L. McManus. Ms. Royster was unaware McManus was in the habit of subletting a room, but she didn’t seem to be particularly concerned about it. She checked the lease agreement to determine if there was a clause forbidding sublets; there wasn’t. Ms. McManus had been a model tenant, she said, always paying her rent on time, not once requesting repairs or improvements to the property, and making no complaint when the monthly nut was increased, as it had been twice in the seven years she’d lived there.

Ms. Royster knew nothing about McManus’s background or personal life, other than the fact that her references had been impeccable. Knew nothing about Jane Carson, either. Even if there had been something in the file that might have been pertinent, she probably wouldn’t have confided to me what it was. Privileged information.

The only new thing I learned from her-and it wasn’t much-was that the owners of the house, an elderly couple now residing in Burlingame, had also operated a dog-boarding service on the property. The established existence of kennels and dog run was probably what had attracted McManus to it seven years ago.

The visit to Barber and Associates may have been wasted, but a second trip to Dogpatch wasn’t. My first stop there, The Dog Hole, yielded a little info of the sort I was looking for-enough to put Tamara on the scent again.

The rail-thin elderly guy I’d spoken to the first time around occupied the same bar stool, sipping port and playing a quiet game of solitaire. Cheating at it, too: he switched a king and queen in a row of hearts as I sat down next to him. Lonely, bored, drinking just enough to maintain a mild sedative buzz-a man with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, marking time.

He remembered me, he was grateful for the company, and my offer to stand him to another drink made him friendly and gregarious. His name was Frank Quarles, he said, and chuckled and tacked on a mild joke he’d probably told a few hundred times before: “My late wife used to say we was well named because we sure did have a lot of ’em. Quarrels, get it?”

I chuckled to let him know I’d gotten it, then told him I was still looking for the man in the photograph. He hadn’t seen Virden since last Tuesday, he said. I eased the conversation around to McManus’s roomers. Quarles couldn’t recall any of the women, but when I brought up the old man Selma Hightower had mentioned, it struck a chord in his memory.

“Oh, sure, him,” he said. “I’m seventy, but he was a real geezer. One foot in the grave and the other on a bar stool.”

“He came here regularly, did he?”

“Pretty regular for a while. Two, three months.”

“Then what happened?”

“Just stopped showing up. Figured he must’ve passed over.”

“You spend much time with him?”

“Not much, no sir. Damn near deaf, so he kept pretty much to himself. Nice old bird, though. Wasn’t above buying a round for the house now and then.”

“Sounds like he had money.”

“Must’ve. Wore this old black overcoat with a velvet collar. Made out of lamb’s wool, he said.” Quarles aimed a glance at the muscle-bound bartender, lowered his voice. “Drank good Scotch, too. Not the blended bar crap they serve here. Twelve-year-old single malt.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Well… it’s been a while and my memory’s not what it used to be.” Up went the voice again. “Hey, Stan. You remember that old guy came in regular for a while last year? Drank single malt Scotch?”

“Glenlivet. What about him?”

“Remember his name?”

“Nope. My business is drinks, not names.”

I said to Quarles, “Maybe another glass of port will help you dredge it up,” and signaled to the bartender.

“Thank you, sir.” Quarles closed his eyes, his face screwed up with effort. Pretty soon he opened them again and sighed and shook his head. “Just can’t quite get it. Foreign name, that’s all I can remember.”

“He was a foreigner?”

“Not anymore. American citizen.”

“What nationality?”

“Greek. Sure, I remember that now.” Quarles took a sip of his port. “Came over here when he was a kid, made his money in the restaurant business. What the devil was his name? Papa something. No, it sounded like ‘papa.’” Another sip, another frown that suddenly morphed into a smile. “Pappas. That’s it, Pappas.”

“First name?”

“Wasn’t Greek. American. Wait, now… same as that actor, tall fella, played in a bunch of Westerns.”

“John Wayne?”

“No sir, no, not the Duke. Famous, though, won an Oscar for that film about the lawyer and his family down south. Had ‘bird’ in the title…”

“ To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck.”

“That’s it. Real fine actor. How could I forget his name?”

“Gregory, then-Gregory Pappas. You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. Yep, pretty sure.”

I left Quarles smiling wistfully over what remained of his port and drove up 20th Street past the McManus house. Nobody around, the driveway empty, the Room for Rent sign still absent from the front fence. No sign of Alex Chavez’s Dodge, either. Been here and gone-I wondered how he’d made out.

Selma Hightower wasn’t home. At least, nobody answered the bell. I tried to recall which of the other neighbors had been cooperative on my first canvass, picked the likeliest of them, and was hoofing it around the corner on Minnesota Street when my cell phone went off.

Tamara. With news from Alex Chavez about McManus and Carson.

“If Alex can stay with them long enough, we’ll have some idea of where they’re going,” she said when she’d relayed the gist of it. “Wherever it is, it’s north out of the city.”

“If he’s right, they’re heading for the bridge.”

“Must be on it by now. He’d’ve called back if they’d turned off. Bet you they’re running.”

“Maybe. What do you think spooked them into it?”

“Us, our investigation.”

“Virden’s disappearance? If they’re responsible, they went through a lot of trouble to cover it up and as far as they know they got away with it. Why cut and and run now?”

“They can’t be sure we’re not close to nailing their asses.”

“Would that be enough reason for you to suddenly throw up everything and take off? Because somebody might be getting close? Running is an admission of guilt, you know that.”

“What about the ID theft?”

“Minor crime compared to homicide or manslaughter. And hard to prove without a complaint being filed. Virden didn’t call the law on them and neither did we. No, that’s not it.”

“Something to do with the property or the house? Like maybe a dead body that’s starting to stink and they don’t know what to do with it?”

“Jesus. You have a gruesome turn of mind sometimes.”

“Well, that couldn’t be what happened to Rose O’Day,” Tamara said. “Over three years ago that she went missing. I wish we had the names of the more recent roomers.”

“I’ve got one name,” I said, and relayed what I’d been told about Gregory Pappas. “It may or may not be the man’s right name. Quarles’s memory is pretty shaky.”

“I’m on it soon as we hang up. You still in Dogpatch?”

“Yes.”

“Then how about you take a look around the McManus property? Perfect time for it, nobody there.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “But don’t get too excited-I’m not about to break any laws.”

“Just bend them a little, huh?”

I let that pass. “Get back to me right away if Alex has anything to report.”

“Will do.”

I left the car where it was, walked down to the McManus place. Trespassing on private property is a tricky business, but if the house was deserted I ought to be able to get away with a look around the exterior areas without making inquisitive neighbors or passersby suspicious. First rule: always act as if you belong. I opened the front gate and marched up onto the porch, not hurrying and not looking anywhere except straight ahead.

I leaned on the bell for half a minute. Empty echoes, as expected.

There was a path that angled over to the driveway. I followed that, again taking my time and trying to look purposeful, and turned down the driveway past a narrow side porch to the backyard. Beyond the house was a low building that ran most of the property’s width, fronted by an empty wire-enclosed area-kennels and dog run. The rest of the yard was flower-bordered lawn crisscrossed by flagstone paths. The near end of the kennel building ended close to a tall neighboring fence; the entrance would be around on the far side. I headed in that direction. And that was when the frantic barking and whimpering started up inside.

At least two dogs, judging from the different cadences. Which meant what, if anything? Worth taking a look.

I opened the door, stuck my head inside. Canine odors mingled strongly with those of excrement-the kind of smells you get when a place hasn’t been cleaned in a while. No lights on, the interior shrouded in gloom. I fumbled around on the walls, found a switch, and flipped it. A couple of low-wattage ceiling bulbs chased away the shadows, let me see two facing rows of wire-gated cages.

The barking and whimpering picked up as I moved along the cement floor between the cages. Two occupied, the rest empty. The bigger and louder of the dogs, the one doing the frantic barking, was a shelty that hurled himself against the gate as I passed. The other animal, smaller, short-haired, a breed I didn’t recognize, lay on her belly with her front paws scrabbling at the cement floor; the whines and whimpers she was making had a frightened, mournful edge. It wasn’t me that had them so frantic; it was hunger, thirst. The food and water dishes in both cages were empty, apparently long empty. And the cement floor in both was stained with urine, spotted with piles of feces.

Abandoned. Coldly, cruelly left here to starve.

Anger welled up in me, cold and hot at the same time. One thing I can’t abide is the mistreatment of any living being, human or animal.

There was a utility table built against the wall farther along; a couple of twenty-pound bags of kibble sat on it, one half-empty and the other unopened. The empty cages were clean and contained water and food dishes. All of their doors, like the ones housing the shelty and the smaller dog, had thick wooden pegs for fasteners. I got clean dishes out of two of them, filled two with kibble, the others with water from a spigot alongside the table, and replaced them in the empty cages.

The shelty was still barking and frantically throwing himself against the mesh, but he didn’t look mean. And wasn’t. He bounced up against me when I opened his cage, let me take hold of his collar. He’d seen where I put the food and water, all but dragged me into the first of those cages, and immediately began wolfing the kibble. The smaller dog, a female, was harder to transfer. She cringed away from me, cowered shaking against the outer wall. I had to drag her out of there, into the other clean cage and up to the two bowls. She went for the water first, with wary eye shifts in my direction as I backed out and repegged the door.

There wasn’t anything else I could do for the dogs now. They’d be all right until I could get the SPCA out after I was through here.

Outside, I sucked cold air for several seconds to clear my sinuses of the kennel stench. The windows in the bordering houses all looked empty-no nosy neighbors to wonder what I was doing on the property. I went first to the rear entrance, still trying to look as if I belonged here. A screen door was unlocked, but the hardwood door inside it was secure.

Up the driveway, then to the side porch, up the stairs to the door. I expected this one to be locked, too, but it wasn’t. The knob turned under my hand and the door eased inward a couple of inches. According to Chavez’s report to Tamara, this was the door McManus and Carson had used to haul their belongings out to the SUV; they’d been in such a hurry they’d neglected to lock it before leaving. Or hadn’t cared enough to bother.

If I went inside I’d no longer be bending the law; I’d be breaking it. From illegal trespass to unlawful entry. Chances were I wouldn’t find anything anyway. On the other hand, there was always the possibility they’d forgotten or overlooked something incriminating. I’d never know for sure unless I looked.

Well?

The hell with propriety, I thought. McManus and Carson were guilty of Christ knew how many crimes, and the only one we had any real evidence of was negligent cruelty to a couple of boarded dogs. All I was doing standing out here was wasting time and running the risk of calling attention to myself.

I shoved the door open and walked in.

This was the part of the house they’d used for Canine Customers. Combination storage and supply room: more bags of dog food, extra dishes, a couple of carrying cages, leashes hanging from wall pegs. And a stack of moving cartons near the door. I opened one of them. Clothing, odds and ends. Left here because there was no more room in the SUV? Or did McManus and Carson intend to come back from wherever they were heading for another load?

I went through an open doorway at the far end. Office. Desk, a couple of cabinets, cords and wires where a computer and printer, both now missing, had been hooked up. The cabinet and desk drawers were open and there was a scatter of papers over the desk and floor: they’d done their packing in a hurry. I picked up several papers at random for a quick look. Paid customer invoices, paid utility bills, and the like. What was left in the drawers was more of the same. No income records, no bank statements, nothing pertaining to individual or professional finances. No correspondence or anything else of a personal nature.

There was nothing to see in the Canine Customers anteroom. I went from there through the foyer, into a sprawling living room.

Enough daylight filtered in past drawn blinds and shades to let me see without having to put on a light. A lot of money had been spent in furnishing it, but in a haphazard and tasteless way. Heavy antique tables and chairs of different styles, woods, and time periods, a glass-fronted cabinet crammed with gilt-patterned chinaware, heavy floor lamps with fringed crimson shades, an intricately patterned red and blue Oriental carpet that clashed with a couple of big, ugly modernistic paintings hung on two walls.

Here and there were empty spaces marked by dust lines where other, smaller pieces of furniture had stood. A section of a third wall above a secretary desk and next to a closed-off fireplace was bare except for a couple of metal brackets where something large and rectangular had been mounted; its faint outline was also visible when I got up close enough. One of those monster flat-screen TV sets, probably.

Too many items missing for them all to have been included with the boxes and other stuff Chavez had seen the two women loading into the SUV, so they must have been taken away on previous hauls. Told me two things: McManus and Carson had been planning to move out for at least a couple of days but weren’t panicked enough to leave behind the bulk of their easily transportable possessions, and wherever they were hauling the stuff to, whether a permanent or an interim location, had to be relatively close to the city.

In the inner wall was an open doorway that led into a cluttered sitting room. Nothing for me there. And nothing in the kitchen and dining room except more residue of hasty and careless packing. Behind the kitchen at the back of the house was a smallish bedroom, comfortably but not as opulently furnished as the common rooms, with a connecting cubicle that contained a toilet, sink, and tiny stall shower. The room they rented out, likely. The double bed was made, everything clean and in its place, but the bureau and nightstand drawers, the closet, and the bathroom were empty. Nobody living here now. I wondered how long it had been vacant. There was a faint odor of cleaning fluid in the bathroom.

I went back the way I’d come, through the sitting room. Between the carpet there and the one in the living room was a section of hardwood floor. The floor had been waxed recently; I hadn’t paid much attention the first time through, but this time the bottom of one shoe slid a little on the slick surface. That was what made me look down, then stop and look more closely.

There was enough light for me to make out a dark discoloration near the fringed edge of the living-room carpet. I dropped to one knee. Irregular stain like a Rorschach blot where something had seeped into the boards. An abortive effort had been made to scrub it away; you could see the marks left by a brush dipped in abrasive detergent.

Bloodstain?

I got out my penlight, shone the beam close above the stain. Might be blood, but I couldn’t be sure. Couldn’t be sure how long it had been there, either, though it didn’t appear to be very old.

If it was blood, it hadn’t come from a minor wound. A fair amount had leaked onto the floor to soak that deeply into the grain of the wood-the kind of seepage you get from direct or near direct contact with a surface. From a person dead or wounded, for instance, a person stabbed or shot or violently clubbed. Or attacked by a vicious dog.

I climbed the staircase to the second floor. The master bedroom had a massive four-poster bed that had the look of a Victorian antique; the rest of the furniture and adornments were the same expensive mismatches as those downstairs. Discarded articles of clothing were strewn over the bed, another garish Oriential carpet, the closet floor. Different sizes, different tastes as near as I could tell, indicating that McManus and Carson had shared this room. I quick-searched drawers and shelves. Nothing but minor leavings.

The medicine cabinet in the adjacent blue-tiled bathroom was open, the shelves mostly empty. Broken glass and spilled liquid from a dropped and broken bottle of nail polish marred the white porcelain sink; the splashes of polish were the color of fresh blood.

Across the hall were two more bedrooms, one of them made up but unused, the other turned into storage space, with another bathroom sandwiched between them. The storage room was a welter of empty, half-empty, and filled cartons. The contents of some had been upended and stirred through-clothing, odds and ends, a shiny scatter of costume jewelry. I opened two of the filled boxes: musty-smelling linens in one, articles of women’s clothing in the second. The clothing was of different sizes and different styles and looked to be the sort elderly women would wear.

I dug down into a third box. A couple of dark suits, old but of quality manufacture, some ancient ties, and four white shirts still in their laundry wrappings-all of a size and a style that would belong to a tall, thin man who’d lived at least three-quarters of a century. And folded at the bottom was the clincher: a heavy, old-fashioned black overcoat with a velvet collar. I ran my fingers over the material. Soft wool. Lamb’s wool. Gregory Pappas’s coat.

There was no point in going through any of the other stuff; McManus and Carson had had plenty of time to sift out and pack up items of value and anything that might be incriminating. I’d been in the house too long, anyway. The place had begun to have an oppressive effect on me. I’d always been place sensitive, particularly to places where bad things had happened, and this one had that kind of aura about it, hardly noticeable when I’d first come in but now almost palpable.

The aura of evil.