Crazybone

8

In the morning I woke up with a headache, a fuzzy taste in my mouth, a sour stomach, and enough gas to power a modern version of the Hindenburg. Hangover supreme, courtesy of Anthony DiGrazia. Not so much red wine- or party-induced as the product of a heaping plateful of fried peppers, garlic, and DiGrazia’s Old-Fashioned Italian Sausage. He’d insisted we have dinner at a North Beach restaurant owned by a friend of his, and then insisted we all have the chef’s house special. With garlic bread, naturally, and three or maybe six bottles of vintage Rubbino Chianti. In addition to having a heart full of unrequited lust and a head full of reactionary ideas on crime and punishment, the man was of the same breed, different genus, as the intense young woman with the weed-whacked hair — a food nazi.

Kerry stirred beside me. I looked over at her, and she muttered a good morning without making eye contact. “You feel as bad as I do?” I asked her.

“Worse. And don’t you dare say you’re glad.”

“I want a divorce.”

“What?”

“I thought you should know what the words sound like. You’ll hear them again if you ever try talking me into another evening like the last one.”

“I wouldn’t try to talk myself into another evening like the last one.”

I got up, drank an Alka-Seltzer, brushed my teeth, took a shower, swallowed another Alka-Seltzer, brushed my teeth again, and put clothes on. When I came back into the bedroom, Kerry was still lying in bed looking miserable.

“Rise and shine,” I said. “Lunch with Cybil at noon.”

“Oh, Lord, that’s right.”

“Maybe she’ll fix us something with Italian sausage.”

Kerry groaned and pulled the covers over her head.

After I made coffee I checked the answering machine again. There hadn’t been a message from anybody in Greenwood last night and none had magically appeared this morning. I called the office and accessed the machine there. No message. An e-mail, maybe? My business cards now had the office e-mail address, the result of Tamara’s urging. I thought about calling her, decided it was too early on a Saturday morning, and that in my condition I couldn’t stand being yelled at for interrupting the rising of Mr. Sun, and waited for Kerry to get up. She keeps a pc in her study and she had the good sense not to chide me, as she sometimes does, about being too stubborn to learn even rudimentary computer skills. She accessed the office e-mail for me. And that was a bust, too.

One more day, I thought bleakly. If I don’t hear from somebody by this time tomorrow. I’ll go down there and shake a few trees until something falls out.

Cybil said, “You smell like garlic and stale wine. Both of you.”

“Oh, God,” Kerry said, “and I gargled three times and brushed my teeth twice this morning.”

“It gets into the pores, dear.”

“You have any Alka-Seltzer?” I asked her.

“No. Out carousing last night, were you?”

“Carousing isn’t the word for it.”

“A business dinner that didn’t turn out well,” Kerry explained briefly. “Is that chicken pot pie I smell?”

“It is. Very soothing to an alcohol-ravaged stomach.”

“Hah,” I said. “As if you didn’t take a drink yourself now and then.”

“Always in moderation.”

“Sure, moderation. I know all about those drunken orgies you and Russ Dancer and your other pulp-writer pals used to indulge in.”

“Scurrilous lies. I have never been to an orgy in my life.”

“That you can remember.”

“Oh, I remember all of my escapades.”

“And there’ve been some doozies, I’ll bet.”

“You’ll never know.”

Cybil wasn’t ready yet to talk about Archie Todd; she bustled around her tiny kitchen getting lunch ready, while Kerry and I took up space in the living room. The bungalow was a small two-bedroom, one half of a duplex with a shared back patio; she used the second bedroom as her office. This and Redwood Village’s other duplex cottages were surrounded by well-tended lawns and flower beds and shaded by redwoods. Among other amenities on the five acres were rec room, dining hall, swimming pool, and putting green. Nice, quiet little enclave in the nice, quiet little town of Larkspur. And Cybil had thrived in it. When Kerry’s father. Ivan, died a couple of years back, and Cybil sold their L.A. house and moved in with Kerry, she had been lost and dying by degrees herself. The move to Redwood Village had literally saved her life. Not only had it allowed her to regain her independence, it had given her back her zest for living and her desire to write fiction.

A copy of her recently published first novel. Dead Eye, was prominently displayed on the end table next to where I was sitting. Her brag copy, she called it. I’d already read the book, but I picked up the copy and glanced through it again. A remarkably smooth and polished period piece, set in L.A. during the Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s. It was as though there had been no more of a gap than a few months between Samuel Leatherman’s last pulp-magazine adventure, published in those same early fifties, and his first full-length ease. She was something, Cybil was. No woman who bad produced both a tough-as-nails hero like I weatherman and a daughter like Kerry, and put up with a contentious anal retentive like Ivan Wade for fifty years, could be anything but special.

She was troubled now, though. The sharp wit and cheerful demeanor were like the clothes she’d donned for the occasion: dress-up facade. There were gloomy depths in her tawny eyes. Kerry noticed it, too: I could tell by the concerned look she gave me when Cybil left us alone.

Over lunch the talk was superficial dead-air filler. I kept waiting for Cybil to bring up Archie Todd’s name and it kept not happening. Kerry toed me under the table once and I toed her back and went on eating. The pot pie was very good. Soothing, too, as Cybil had said. And I deal better with family and professional matters on a full stomach.

Kerry delivered another not-so-gentle nudge as I finished my second helping. Okay, time for me to prime the pump. I said to Cybil, “Kerry tells me Captain Archie passed away recently. I was sorry to hear it.”

“Passed away,” she said. “Such a silly euphemism.”

“What would you prefer? Croaked?”

That earned me another poke, but Cybil said, “Rubbed out would do better. It’s old-fashioned but accurate.”

“You’re not saying he was murdered?”

“No, I’m not, because I have no proof he was. But it’s what I suspect.”

“You’re serious,” I said.

“Of course I’m serious. Would I make a joke about a thing like that?”

“What makes you suspect foul play?”

She pressed her lips together and stared out through the window. From where she was sitting she could look across tree-shadowed lawn and the street out front to where other cottages were spaced at intervals. Looking at the one Captain Archie had occupied, maybe.

“Cybil, how did he die?”

“Congestive heart failure,” she said. “He died in his bed sometime during the night.”

“Well, if that’s the case, it’s the best way any of us can go.”

“It would be if that was all there was to it. Dr. Lengel thinks so, because Archie had CHF disease — that’s a reduction in the ability of the heart to pump blood. CHF patients often die from ventricular fibrillation, a sudden heart attack.”

“Lengel’s the resident physician here?” Redwood Village had a small clinic with a doctor and nurse on call twenty-four hours.

“Yes. He signed the death certificate.”

“So if Captain Archie had a bad heart and there’s no question of how he died...?”

“Congestive heart failure can be induced by an overdose of digitoxin, the medication he was taking to regulate his heartbeat. His maintainence dose was 0.05 milligrams per day. His prescription — from his own physician, Dr. Johannsen — was for pills of exactly that dosage, to be taken one every evening at bedtime. But the night he died he was given or forced to swallow a larger dosage.”

“How can you know that?”

“Well, to begin with, I’m the one who found him.”

Kerry blinked at her. “How did you—”

“We were friends, good friends. Archie had been depressed and I went over early that morning to see if I could cheer him up.”

“How did you get in? Was his door unlocked?”

“I have a key. And it’s none of your business why.”

“What about this digitoxin overdose?” I asked.

“Archie’s pills, the prescribed 0.05 dosage, were orange. When I went back later, after his body was taken away, I found a pink pill that must have been dropped and accidentally kicked under the bed. I had a feeling something was amiss and the pink pill confirmed it.”

“The pink pill did.”

“That’s right. Pink is the color of a 0.10 dosage, twice what Archie was permitted to take each day.”

“Are you sure it was digitoxin?”

“Positive. Of that and of the dosage. I showed the pink pill to my own doctor.”

“Maybe it was from an old prescription of Archie’s. Maybe it’d been under the bed a long time.”

“Archie never took a dosage larger than 0.05,” Cybil said. “He told me so himself. And there was plenty of dust under his bed but none on the pill.”

“He didn’t get the larger dosage from Dr. Lengel, by any chance?”

“No. And there were no other pink digitoxin pills in his unit. I know because I looked.”

“And that’s why you think he was murdered, the one pink pill you found?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“That’s pretty thin evidence, Cybil.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“You haven’t talked to the local police, have you?”

She gave me an up-from-under look, the prototype of the one Kerry used on me from time to time. “Of course not.”

“Told anyone else of your suspicion? Dr. Lengel? Dr. Johannsen? The Captain’s attorney?”

“No. An autopsy would corroborate the overdose, I’m sure, but Dr. Lengel saw no reason to request one and no one else will either without evidence of foul play. Besides, I don’t care to be considered a foolish, fanciful old lady by anyone including my daughter and son-in-law.”

“Did I say you were foolish and fanciful?”

“It’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I don’t doubt your good sense and neither does Kerry. I’m just trying to understand why you’re so sure it was murder. Why not suicide? You said Captain Archie was depressed and his health was poor. He could’ve gotten the larger dose of digitoxin himself, some way—”

“He did not commit suicide,” Cybil said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Archie Todd was a devout Catholic. He attended Mass regularly every Sunday.”

“Oh,” I said.

Kerry said, “Why exactly was he depressed?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk about it. But it was more than just general melancholy — he was angry about something. Very angry the day before his death.”

“You’ve no idea why?”

“The only thing he ever said to me was that he’d made a terrible mistake, he should never have trusted the bastards. His exact words.”

“Friends or business associates who deceived him in some way,” I said. “Or old enemies come back into his life.”

“I can’t imagine who would want to do him any kind of harm. Archie Todd was a gentle, easygoing man. He got along with everyone.”

“Profit is the obvious motive. How large is his estate?”

“I can’t tell you exactly. I would guess six figures, mostly in stocks and mutual funds.”

“Then he must’ve had a broker or investment counselor.”

“Dunbar Asset Management.”

One of San Francisco’s largest financial management outfits; even I had heard of them. “Who’s the executor of his estate?”

“Evan Patterson, Archie’s attorney.”

“Local?”

“Yes. He has an office on Magnolia Avenue.”

“And who inherits? Captain Archie had no living relatives, did he?”

“Only one. A niece in Connecticut. But he hadn’t seen her in twenty-five or thirty years and he told me once he’d left her out of his will. His entire estate goes to the San Francisco Maritime Museum, along with his collection of ferryboating memorabilia. He loved ferries, you know, and he was an expert on their history and lore. The bequest was to establish a permanent museum exhibit in his name.”

“Well, there goes the only motive that makes sense.”

“Unless someone was after his collection,” Kerry said. “Is that possible, Cybil? If it’s valuable enough—”

“Its value is mainly historical. I suppose another collector might be willing to pay dearly for it, but the bulk of the collection is already in storage at the museum. Archie let them have it four years ago, when he moved over here from the city, as a stipulation of his bequest.”

I said, “Okay. So what all this boils down to is, you want me to conduct an investigation based on not much more than a hunch and a pink pill. I don’t see what I can—”

“Did I say I wanted you to conduct an investigation?”

“That’s why you asked us to lunch, isn’t it?”

“Smart guy. All right, then. I’ll pay your standard fee.”

“You will like hell. I won’t take money from you.”

“You take money from strangers.”

“That’s different. You’re family.”

“Crap,” Cybil said. “Samuel Leatherman would take it in a New York minute.”

“I’m not Samuel Leatherman.”

“And a good thing, too. If I were writing stories about you I’d still be an unpublished writer.”

“Cybil,” I said with a tight grip on my patience. “Cybil, I’m only trying to tell you that I doubt there’s much I can do without something more to work with.”

“So you won’t even try.”

Kerry said, “Of course he’ll try. Won’t you, dear?”

I said, “Ow,” because she’d poked me again. Hard.

“Let him alone, Kerry. If he thinks I’m a silly old lady pursuing a fantasy, well, I can’t really blame him. After all, he’s more experienced in these matters...”

“Will you knock off that silly old lady stuff? You’re as smart and wily as they come and you know it. If you’re convinced that Captain Archie was murdered I’m not going to argue with you, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Does that mean you’ll look into it?”

“Yes, okay, I’ll look into it. As a favor. No money — don’t bring up the subject of money again. Monday morning I’ll check with Evan Patterson—”

“Why wait until Monday? Why not start now?”

“Lawyers don’t work on Saturday, you know that.”

“I don’t mean Evan Patterson. I mean you could go over to Archie’s unit and have a look through his things.”

“It’s all still there?”

“It is. Patterson hasn’t been able to locate the niece, and Archie’s rent is paid through the end of the month.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t tell me you haven’t been over there snooping around — more than once, I’ll bet. If you didn’t find anything, there’s nothing there to find.”

“I’m not a detective,” she said. “You are.”

“You write detective stories — you know what to look for and where to look as well as I do.”

“Balls. The difference is that you’re a professional snoop and I’m only an amateur. Will you go and look?”

“It’d be trespassing. I don’t have any right to enter and search a premises without permission.”

She rolled her eyes. “You have my permission. I was his friend, his close friend, and he entrusted me with a key. I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Can I at least have some dessert first?”

Kerry said, “When you come back.”

Cybil said, “I’ll get the key.”

Judging from the furnishings in his one-bedroom duplex. Captain Archie had lived something of a Spartan existance. The living room contained an old, deep, cracked-leather armchair, a small portable

TV on a stand, a rickety secretary desk that looked as if it might have had nautical origins, and a bookcase. In the kitchen there was a dinette table and two chairs. And in the bedroom there was a bed stripped down to mattress and box springs, one nightstand, and a dresser.

It would’ve been a pretty drab and impersonal place if it hadn’t been for the photographs. There were dozens of them on the walls in every room including the bathroom, all black-and-white posed and candid shots of ferryboats and their crews dating back to the 1800s. Holdouts from his collection, I supposed. The photos created a nostalgic atmosphere, but there was also a certain sadness in the overall effect — glimpses of times and a way of life long gone, and a reminder that the man who had gathered them and been part of those times and ways was gone, too.

I started my search in the bedroom. Poking through other people’s possessions is uneasy work, and when the owner is deceased the task has a ghoulish feel. Besides, I had nothing specific to hunt for. So I was not quite as methodical as I might’ve been in different circumstances.

The nightstand yielded a well-used Bible, a rosary, and a spare dental plate in a plastic box. The dresser was less than half filled with underwear, socks, laundered shirts — and facedown in the bottom drawer, a framed and washed-out color photo of a heavyset, attractive young woman with curly blond hair. An inscription at the bottom read “To Archie — Love, Delia.” It was at least fifty years old and the glass was cracked and webbed at the top, as if it had been smacked with something hard. According to Cybil. Captain Archie had never married. An unrequited love, and the glass broken in anger or frustration? Why keep the photo then, turned facedown in a bottom dresser drawer? One of those little pieces of a person’s life that stir your imagination. And that made me feel the sadness again.

No hidey holes in the bedroom. Nothing taped under drawers or behind dresser, nightstand, headboard. Nothing hidden between mattress and box springs. I moved on to the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet I found a half-full bottle of small orange pills. Archie

Todd’s heart medicine, prescribed by Dr. Johannsen. The only other thing I found out from the cabinet was that Captain Archie had shaved with an old-fashioned straight razor.

Nothing of interest in the kitchen. The living room bookcase contained a few dozen beat-up paperback Western and historical novels, and half as many nonfiction texts on ferryboating. One of the texts, Lore of the Ferrymen, looked pretty old; I plucked it out, opened it to the copyright page. Published in 1891. As I started to put it back, I noticed writing on a scrap of paper that had been used as a bookmark. I slipped the paper free.

One word, Inca or Inco — I couldn’t quite make out the last letter — and a telephone number, penned in a crabbed hand. The paper was white, with no signs of age; the phone prefix indicated it might be a San Francisco number. I tucked the scrap into my shirt pocket. Relevant or not, I would show it to Cybil as proof that I was every bit as thorough and sharp-eyed as Samuel Leatherman.

I’d saved the desk for last. The usual miscellany that accumulates in desk drawers; plain envelopes jammed with bill receipts marked Paid; bank envelopes bound together with a thick rubber band, each containing statements and a few cancelled checks written in the same crabbed hand. I found the three most recent statements and thumbed through the checks. Redwood Village, Dr. Johannsen, a local pharmacy, a supermarket, a credit card company. None were made out to individuals. I glanced at the statements. A deposit had been made on the first of each month in the amount of $2,500 — either a draw from his stock portfolio or a pension payment, because the amount was too large for a social security check. Most of the $2,500 went for rent; gracious retirement living in Redwood Village didn’t come cheap. The average balance was in the $1,500 range, slightly more than that as of the latest statement.

Nothing.

I rummaged through the rest of the drawers. No personal correspondence of any kind. No copy of his will. No address book or Rolodex; if he’d had one of either, it had probably been turned over to the attorney, Evan Patterson. The only odd note was the absence of any account statements of other mailings from Dunbar Asset Management. There ought to be a fairly large file, given the size of Captain Archie’s portfolio. Chances were they’d been turned over to Evan Patterson as well, though why he would want all but the most recent—

“You there!” a voice said behind me, so suddenly and with such forcefulness that I twisted around, banged my knee, and nearly knocked over the desk. “What do you think you’re doing?”