Crazybone

9

It was a woman, a big woman because she pretty much filled the open doorway. I hadn’t heard the door open; I must not have closed it tightly when I let myself in, the afternoon breeze had blown it open, and I’d been too intent on my search to notice. She was backlit by sunlight, so I couldn’t tell much about her at first except her size.

“I asked what you’re doing here.” Gravelly voice, the kind that brooks no nonsense.

When you get caught with your drawers down or your hand in a cookie jar, the smart thing to do is to play dumb and bluff it out. I pasted on a sheepish smile and said, “Doing a favor for my mother-in-law. I should’ve known better.”

“That’s right, you should have.” She came inside and a little to one side, so that I had a clearer look at her. Mid-forties, gray-streaked blond hair, a prominent nose. And big all over, more bone and muscle than fat — nearly six feet and a solid hundred and sixty pounds, with a chest that strained the front of her white blouse and probably required a D cup. “Just how did you get in?”

“She gave me a key. My mother-in-law.”

“That’s against the rules. If she has a key to Mr. Todd’s unit, she should have turned it in after he died. What’s her name?”

“Cybil Wade. The cottage across—”

“Oh, the writer. What’s your name?”

I told her. Only that, not my profession.

“I’m Jocelyn Dunn, one of the nurses here. What’re you looking for?”

I was ready for that. I said, “Two chapters of her new novel, the one she’s writing now. She can’t find them and she thinks she may have given them to Captain Archie to read before he died. That’s Cybil for you. Absentminded as all get out.”

“Did you find the chapters?”

“No. They’re not in the desk. Maybe the bedroom—”

“I’ll look. You wait outside. Then we’ll go over and talk to Mrs. Wade.”

I waited outside. Pretty soon Ms. Dunn came out and said, “No manuscript pages that I can see.” Then she said. “The key, please.”

“Well, it is Cybil’s...”

“No, it’s not. It’s the property of Redwood Village. The key, please. I’ll lock the door.”

I didn’t have much choice; I gave her the key. She locked up and tucked the key into her pocket, and we went across the street to Cybil’s duplex. I knocked on the door before I opened it, called out, “Company!” and did the ungentlemanly thing of going in first. Nurse Dunn didn’t wait for an invitation; she came right in after me.

Kerry and Cybil were on the couch, drinking coffee. I said, “Cybil, I didn’t find those two chapters from your manuscript. You must’ve misplaced them here somewhere.”

She was a quick study. Without missing a beat she said, “Oh, dear. And I’ve torn the place apart. Hello, Nurse Dunn.”

“Mrs. Wade, I’m surprised at you. Keeping a key to Archie Todd’s unit and then sending your son-in-law over there to trespass. I really ought to report you.”

Cybil managed to look contrite, and her apology was a model of false sincerity. Nurse Dunn relented, lectured Cybil on abiding by the rules, and then took her big hide out of there and left the three of us alone.

Cybil, reproachfully: “So you got caught.”

Me, defensively: “Nobody’s perfect. Not even that fictional super-dick of yours.”

“Did you find anything before the side of beef spotted you?”

“Probably not. Unless this means something to you.” I showed her the scrap of paper. “It was in one of his books.”

“Inca? No, nothing.”

“Last letter could be an ‘o.’ Inco.”

“I never heard Archie use either word.”

“Well, let’s see what calling the number gets us.”

It didn’t get us a thing. San Francisco number, all right, but it had been disconnected.

“Monday,” I said. “This, Evan Patterson, whatever else I can do. Just don’t expect much to come of it, okay?”

“I don’t,” Cybil said. “I didn’t when I decided to hire you.”

Which may or may not have been a mild shot. With Cybil you can’t always tell. She likes me, I think she respects me, but down deep she’s never quite forgiven me for not living up to her Samuel Leatherman ideal of the tough and infallible private eye.

When the phone rang at six-thirty that evening I was trying to relax by watching a forties film noir on TV. The Web, with Edmond O’Brien. Pretty good, but my head wasn’t into it. Cybil kept intruding; so did little Emily Hunter.

Kerry answered the call and sang out that it was for me. I went to take it on the kitchen phone.

A male voice said angrily, “She’s gone, goddamn it. You may as well know.”

“Who’s gone? Who is this?”

“Trevor Smith. You know damn well who’s gone.”

“Sheila Hunter?”

“And her kid. Both of them.”

I could hear my breath in my throat; it had a ground-glass sound. “Gone where?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon sometime.”

“And you waited this long to call me?”

“She told me not to tell anybody, particularly you. I wasn’t going to, but... ah, Christ, I don’t know what to do.”

“Gone away for a while, or—?”

“Two or three weeks, she said. Someplace where she can pull herself together. But I don’t know... the way the two of them acted Thursday night, the way Sheila put me off on the phone yesterday, I don’t think they’re coming back.”

“Easy, back up a little. What happened—”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy,” he snapped. “You and your investigation, harassing her... this is your fault. If you’d just left her alone...”

“I’ll take the blame if you want to lay it on me. But the truth is, she’s running because of whatever she and her husband were mixed up in ten years ago.”

I listened to silence for eight or ten beats. He used the time to get a grip on himself; he sounded calmer when he said, “She claims you’re crazy, that she and Jack had a perfectly normal life in Pennsylvania before they moved out here.”

“And you believe her.”

More dead air, about five beats’ worth this time. “I don’t know what to believe,” he said.

“You tell her what I said about helping her?”

“I told her. She called you a liar and a lot worse.”

“How scared was she?”

“Scared, man. She nearly had a hemorrhage when I said that damn word to her.”

“What word? Crazybone?”

“She turned white. I thought she was going to keel over.”

“Give you any idea what it means?”

“No. I tried to get it out of her, but she— Don’t you know?”

“No idea.”

“Then where’d you get it?”

I told him about startling her in the potting shed on Tuesday. “It has a pretty terrible meaning for her, whatever it is. It’s tied to the reason she ran away.”

“Yeah,” Smith said. Then he said, “I think she was already planning to go before I showed up.”

“Thursday night, you mean. At her house.”

“Yeah. She didn’t say anything about leaving then, not until she called me at home yesterday — I took the day off work, waited around, I thought she might need me. I didn’t think she’d just run out of my life, I thought we had something better than that...” The last couple of words had a phlegmy sound, as if he were choking up. He drew an audible breath. “I wanted to marry her,” he said then. “I still do.”

There was nothing for me to say to that. I asked, “What makes you think she’d already made up her mind to run?”

“How uptight she was before I even mentioned you. Uptight and scared. Emily, too. Both of them.”

“Was Emily there when you talked to Sheila?”

“No. Crying in her bedroom by then.”

“Crying? Why was she crying?”

“Sheila... smacked her, that’s why.”

My hand tightened around the receiver. “Hurt her?”

“No. Slap across the face. She’s got a temper, a bad temper when she’s upset, and the kid wouldn’t leave the room. She knew something was going on... Emily did... and she wanted to know what it was.”

“And you just let her mother hit her?”

“I’d’ve stopped it if I could. It happened too quick. You think I like the idea of kids being smacked around? Well, I don’t.”

“All right. Is she in the habit of hitting her daughter?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Ever see Emily with bruises or marks?”

“No. Christ, Sheila’s not like that. She’s not, dammit. It’s just that Jack getting killed, the two of us seeing each other, this thing she’s so afraid of... everything coming down on her at once, it’s got her half crazy.”

No damn excuse, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I said, “What about the two of you? Going on how long?”

“What the hell does that matter?”

“How long, Trevor?”

“Three months. That’s all I’m going to say about Sheila and me.”

“How about her husband? He played around, too, didn’t he?”

“Damn right he did. Why do you think Sheila — Never mind, I’m not getting into that either.” He sucked in another audible breath. “Listen, you’re a detective, you’ve got your nose in this already. You think you can find her?”

“I’m sure going to try.” But not for your sake or hers, I thought. For Emily’s. “Did she ever mention anyone named Karen to you? Artist, makes stained glass, lives somewhere up the coast.”

“No. A friend of hers?”

“Or a relative. Emily calls her Aunt Karen.”

“Sheila didn’t talk much about her personal life,” Smith said. “Didn’t have any relatives in California or anywhere else that I know about.”

“Okay. They left yesterday afternoon, you said?”

“Before two. It was after one when she called me. Said she was leaving, told me not to tell anybody, don’t talk to you at all anymore — she’d be in touch. I said wait, let me come over, we’ll talk it over first, but her mind was made up. As soon as we hung up I drove up to her house. I live in Santa Clara, it took me forty minutes to get there. They were already gone by then. I stayed home today, too, I thought maybe she’d call. When she didn’t... I had to talk to somebody, I couldn’t just sit around and wait for a call that might never come...”

“You did the right thing contacting me. Where will you be tomorrow?”

“Emerald Hills. Another day here and I’ll go nuts.”

“All right. I’ll see what I can find out. Call you if there’s any news.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Pause. “I don’t blame you. The kind of trouble Sheila must be in...” Another pause. “Shit,” he said.

Yes, I thought, and the pile keeps getting bigger. And I wish I knew where to find a shovel.

I couldn’t sleep.

I kept lying there with my eyes wide open, watching the dark and listening to Kerry’s even breathing and thinking mostly about Emily Hunter. Her mother had overheard part of her call to me, or found out about it some other way; that was why she hadn’t shown up at the riding academy. It was also why Sheila Hunter had decided to pack up the kid, ripping out ten years’ worth of roots, and haul her off to Christ knew where. Bad trouble, all right, but it wasn’t just the woman’s anymore. She’d made it her daughter’s as well. Ten years old, sensitive, bewildered... did Emily have any idea of what it was all about? If she did, it wasn’t because her mother had confided in her. The only secret-sharing Mrs. Hunter had done was with her late husband and co-conspirator. And yet the Hunters’ relationship couldn’t have been all that tightly bound after a decade, else both of them wouldn’t have been seeking solace in other people’s beds. How long had they been cheating on each other? Recent thing, or had the marriage begun to unravel long ago from too much guilt, too much fear?

Crazybone. The word was at or near the center of the Hunters’ secret, of Sheila’s panicked flight. But without some connection, some piece of the hidden past, there was no way to decipher it.

A nonsense jingle began to run around inside my head; kept on running until fatigue drove me down into a restless sleep. Crazybone connected to the shoulder bone, shoulder bone connected to the neck bone, neck bone connected to the crazybone, and little Emily’s gone away...