Double

27: McCone

I sat in the phone booth I’d called Wolf from, contemplating the graffiti scrawled on its wall. Fuck the devil, it said. And underneath: God is love, and if you don’t believe me, I’ll kill you. At any other time it would have made me smile wryly. Now it just brought up questions about the mentality of the average American — questions I’d just as soon avoid thinking on.

Now that Jim Lauterbach had been murdered, it seemed certain that Elaine had been killed to cover up something. The illegal activities at Casa del Rey? Ibarcena and Beddoes both had an alibi, backed up by their secretary. Beddoes, even disintegrating emotionally as he was, had stuck to the story, which meant it was probably true.

Once again I considered a personal motive, one stemming from a romantic relationship. There was Rich Woodall, of course, and I would want to talk with him again. But more important, there was Henry Nyland, who had hired Lauterbach to investigate Elaine. Nyland was connected with both murders, and my first priority should be to talk to him. I’d been intending to do that anyway.

I dialed Nyland’s home on Coronado, and the housekeeper told me he would be at campaign headquarters from seven o’clock on. After I hung up, I looked at my watch. Ten after five. It would take me a while to get to downtown San Diego and Nyland’s headquarters, but not two hours. That left time for a stop at the House of Slenderizing and Massage, where Elaine presumably had met both the retired admiral and Woodall.

When I parked across the street from the renovated brick storefront, an enormously fat woman was going in. I crossed and followed her, but was forced aside by two even fatter women who were coming out, grumbling cheerfully about something called a Nautilus Machine.

Good Lord, I thought, the folks who run this place have their work cut out for them.

Directly inside the door was a lobby with muted lighting and mirrors all around. I glanced at my reflection and found myself possessed of a gazelle-like slimness I’d never noticed before. Trick mirrors, not as exaggerated as those in a funhouse, but enough to make a person look ten pounds lighter.

A young woman with dark hair piled high on her head sat behind a reception desk working on a bookkeeping ledger. I went up to her and asked to see the manager. She smiled cordially and said, “You’ve found her. Our regular receptionist is out sick today, so I’m wearing two hats. What can I do for you?”

“Do you have an employee named Rick?”

She sat up a little straighter and pursed her lips. “Mr. MacNelly is no longer with us.”

“How long has it been since he left?”

“More than two months.”

“Is there any way I can get in touch with him?”

She gave me a look as if I’d just committed an indecent act. “I’m afraid I can’t give out that information.”

Something was wrong here if the mere mention of the man’s name could make her freeze me out this way. I said, “Look, I’m a private investigator, trying to locate Mr. MacNelly in connection with a case.”

She relaxed slightly, and then her eyes took on a thoughtful look. “Do you have any identification?”

I got out the photostat of my license and showed it to her. She nodded, a nasty smile beginning to play on her lips. “I do hope Rick’s not in any trouble.”

Since she so obviously did hope so, I said, “Not yet. I take it he didn’t leave under pleasant circumstances.”

“I fired him.”

“Why?”

“Moral reasons. Rick had been soliciting some of the ladies for sexual favors — his favors, to be paid for by them. Apparently he had quite a bit of luck before anyone complained.”

“I see.” Had one of those ladies been Elaine? “Who was it that complained?”

“Mrs. Abbot.” She motioned at the door behind her. “She came in just before you did.”

The huge fat one. Good Lord.

The woman went on, “If she hadn’t complained, God knows what would have happened. We just opened six months ago, and we’re trying to build a reputation as a decent spa, a place where the ladies can go right downtown near their offices. We certainly don’t need a scandal. I put a lot of money into this franchise—”

“Do you know where I can reach Mr. MacNelly now?”

“In San Francisco. I have the address where I sent his final paycheck.”

I copied it down, an apartment house on Sanchez Street, not far from where I lived. I’d use it as a last resort, if all my leads here came to nothing. “You mentioned ladies a couple of times. Do you have male members as well?”

She shook her head. “Most of our ladies are quite heavy. They would be uncomfortable displaying their bodies in front of the opposite sex.”

I frowned. “But Rick MacNelly is a male.”

“A masseur. That’s different.”

This couldn’t be the place where Elaine had met Woodall or Nyland, then. “Does your club have a branch in Borrego Springs, by any chance?” I asked.

“No. This is the only branch in the San Diego area.” She paused. “It’s odd you should ask, though.”

“Why?”

“Rick apparently spent a good bit of time in Borrego Springs. He would mention going out there occasionally.”

“Why, do you know?”

She shrugged. “I’d always supposed he was into dune buggies or dirt bikes. They do a lot of that out there in the desert.”

Now I felt more at sea than before. “I’d like to run some names by you, if I might, to see if you recognize any of them.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

I did, mentioning Elaine, as well as all the principal figures in the case, male and female. She recognized Henry Nyland as running for city council, but to all the others she replied in the negative. I thanked her and started to leave.

“Hey,” she called after me, “aren’t you going to tell me what Rick’s done?”

“Sorry,” I said, “it’s confidential.” I gave my new, gazelle-like body a final look and went out into the street.

As I drove toward Henry Nyland’s campaign headquarters, I thought about Rick MacNelly, the man who sold himself to women. What on earth had Elaine been doing with the name of such a person in her address book? She hadn’t been a member of the club where MacNelly worked. And surely she hadn’t had to pay anyone for sex.

The club. It kept cropping up in people’s conversations. And Wolf had said that, according to Lauterbach’s file, Elaine had spent time at a club in Borrego Springs. What club? Maybe Nyland could enlighten me.

Unlike the day before, Nyland’s campaign headquarters bustled with activity. Men and women — most of them around college age — rushed about, waving papers and calling to one another. Several sat at a long table stuffing envelopes, and another group were making phone calls. I recalled from my reading of the local papers that Nyland was running in a special election, to fill the seat of a council member who had died. Balloting was next week, hence this last-minute flurry.

A floppy-haired young man tried to recruit me as a volunteer the instant I came in the door. I said no thanks, and asked to see Nyland. The young man replied that Admiral Nyland was in conference with his campaign manager, and absolutely no one was to interrupt them.

I showed him the photostat of my license. Evidently he didn’t know the difference between it and police identification, because he looked perplexed and rushed away, muttering something like “not again.”

Of course the police would have seen the same information in Jim Lauterbach’s office as Wolf had; they would have talked to Nyland by now. I was covering the same ground as the officials, but, as I’d told Mrs. Deveer in relation to her husband’s papers, maybe something that Nyland said would have significance to me that it hadn’t to the police. I sat down on a folding chair to wait.

A red, white, and blue banner hanging across one entire wall trumpeted what appeared to be Nyland’s campaign slogan: HONESTY, INTEGRITY, NO NONSENSE. The words were laid out as an acrostic on the candidate’s full name, Henry Innis Nyland. I looked around at all the fresh-faced, clean-cut volunteers and remembered reading that the campaign had shaped up into a battle between liberals and the Moral Majority. Even if I hadn’t read about Nyland and known he was a retired admiral, I would have known which camp this was.

In a couple of minutes, the floppy-haired young man came back, followed by an older man in his fifties. He had iron-gray hair, a stiff military bearing, and was dressed in expensive-looking golf clothes. Normally he would have been handsome, but right now his bushy brows were drawn together, giving his face a downward cast, and his mustache twitched with irritation.

“Is this the one?” he asked the young man, gesturing at me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you’re dismissed. I’ll handle it.”

The young man scurried away, and his companion came up to me, folded his arms across his chest, and planted his feet widely apart. “I’m Henry Nyland,” he said. “What’s the meaning of this interruption?”

“I’d like to talk to you about Elaine Picard.”

It wasn’t the answer he’d expected. He glanced around, as if to see if anyone was within earshot.

“And Jim Lauterbach,” I added.

“I’ve already spoken to another policeman. And a man from the sheriff’s department.”

I hesitated. It was the perfect opening; I could let him go on thinking I was with one of the law enforcement agencies. But this was a powerful man, doubtless with friends in high places. I couldn’t risk a charge of impersonating an officer.

“Admiral Nyland, could we go someplace more private?”

Again he glanced around. “Very well. This way.” He led me through a maze of desks and tables to a cubicle at the back of the room, one of several that had probably been used by salesmen for closing their deals when this was an automobile showroom. Once inside, he seated himself behind a cluttered desk and motioned me to a chair on the other side of it.

I sat and got out my identification. “I’m not with the police or sheriff’s department, Admiral Nyland,” I said. “I’m a private investigator, a friend of Elaine’s.”

He took the I.D. and looked at it. When he handed it back to me, his irritation had faded, and his gray eyes were puzzled. “I don’t understand. Elaine died in an accident. According to my sources, there’s no question of that.”

“Perhaps not officially, but I was Elaine’s friend, Admiral. And I think she was murdered.”

He started, and the color faded from his face, leaving it with a grayish clayey look. “Why?”

“There are a number of reasons.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No one would want to kill Elaine. She was lovely, good...” But a worried expression had come into his eyes, as if he too were thinking of possible reasons. After a moment, he said, “Are you conducting your own investigation into her death?”

“A personal one.”

“I see.” He stared down at the desktop, drumming his thick fingers on a sheet of computer printout. “I can appreciate why you’re doing this — I cared for Elaine a great deal. If anything, she was the love of my life. And if someone killed her, I want to see him punished. But I don’t know what I can tell you.”

“You may be able to shed light on some of the things that are puzzling me. When did you last see Elaine?”

“Several weeks ago. I’d tried to reach her since then, the last time being Friday night. I went to the Casa del Rey, hoping to talk, but the clerk said she’d already gone home. I doubted his story because her car was still in the lot. Probably she’d asked him to lie for her.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to see you?”

“That is personal.”

I tried another tack. “Where did you meet Elaine?”

“At the Casa del Rey. The party held a fund-raiser there last spring. There was some trouble, and the security people were called in. Elaine was efficient, very take-charge. I appreciate that in a woman, so I asked to see her again.”

“Trouble? What kind?”

“Nothing serious. A bunch of young punks — radicals — setting off fireworks outside the banquet room.”

“And this was the first time you’d seen Elaine?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I had the impression you’d met her at a club.”

“Well, I took her to the Officers’ Club — both at North Island and Miramar — a number of times. But no, I didn’t meet her there.”

That was not what I’d hoped to hear. “Admiral Nyland, I don’t mean to pry into your personal affairs, but did you ever write Elaine a love note mentioning a club?”

“A love note? My dear young woman, I have better things to do with my time!” He seemed genuinely affronted, as if I’d questioned his manhood.

“Can you think of any club she might have belonged to?”

“Club? What is this about a club?”

“Please, can you think of any?”

He paused. “No.”

“What about in Borrego Springs?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you know of any friend of hers named Darrow? Arthur Darrow?”

“I’ve never heard the name. Would you mind telling me what this is leading to?”

“Apparently, Elaine spent a good deal of time at some club in Borrego Springs, and she knew the Darrow person from there.”

His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “If she did, she never told me about it.” I could tell he was seriously upset now; he didn’t like the idea of Elaine having had a part of her life she had kept back from him. “How do you know all this, Miss McCone?”

“Jim Lauterbach had discovered it. Hadn’t he reported any of this to you?”

“No. He’d reported nothing of significance.”

“Well, he’d uncovered that much.”

“The police didn’t tell me that. By all rights, that information belongs to me.”

“You’ll have to take it up with them. Why did you hire Jim Lauterbach, Admiral Nyland?”

His posture went ramrod stiff.

I added, “Didn’t the police ask you that?”

“They did, and I told them. But I don’t feel the necessity to go into it again. So if you’ll excuse me...”

I’d known men like Nyland all my life — Navy types with rough exteriors, used to having their own way. My father had been like that before he’d retired and mellowed to the point of singing folk ballads. So I put on a downcast, little-girl look and reached out one hand in a supplicating gesture. “Please, sir, Elaine was my friend. I’m awfully upset about what happened to her, and I need to know...”

He looked down at me, his face softening. “I understand. Her death has hit me hard, too. The only way I’ve managed is to carry on with the campaign as if nothing had happened.”

“Then please won’t you tell me why you hired Lauterbach?”

“All right.” He sat again, straightening the computer sheets on the desk and aligning their edges with those of the blotter. “I hired Lauterbach because Elaine wouldn’t marry me and I couldn’t understand her reasons. I’m well off, respected in the community. I was giving her the opportunity to share my life, be my helpmeet. But she repeatedly turned me down.”

“Why, do you think?”

“Because the woman was a damned fool, that’s why.”

“But you didn’t need a private detective to tell you that.”

“Of course not. There had to be a reason for her foolishness, however, and I assumed it was another man. I needed to know who it was, what he was like, in order to talk her out of it.”

“You told Lauterbach you thought Elaine was involved in something bizarre.”

His face lost its softness and became a protective blank. “Where did you hear that?”

“It was in his file, the one I suppose the police have now.”

“No one has a right to see that!”

I was silent.

“By all rights, they should have turned that file over to me. I paid for Lauterbach’s services in advance.”

“What was the bizarre thing, Admiral Nyland?”

He paused, trying to calm himself. “Nothing, really. I was making too much of some little things she said once when we’d both had too much to drink. We won’t discuss it.”

I sat contemplating framed copies of the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer on the wall above Nyland’s head. I knew Navy people; they came in as many types as the population as a whole. But with old-school officers like Nyland, the things a great many of them wouldn’t discuss were sex and drugs.

Had Elaine been using drugs? I doubted it. She couldn’t have handled her demanding job if she had been addicted. Well, she could if she’d been using uppers. But Elaine had acted too tired to be availing herself of such measures.

What about sex? What would Nyland have considered bizarre? Homosexuality. But no less an authority than Karyn Sugarman had been certain Elaine’s orientation was heterosexual. So it couldn’t be that either.

“Admiral Nyland—” The young man with the floppy hair stuck his head into the cubicle. “Admiral, we’ve only got half an hour before we have to tape that show for Channel Eight.”

Nyland had been staring at the blotter, and it took a few seconds for him to rouse himself, He looked at the young man as if he had forgotten why he was taping a show.

The aide held up his wrist and pointed to his watch.

Nyland stood up slowly. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” To me, he added, “I’m sorry, Miss McCone, but I must keep to my schedule.”

I got up and followed him across the large room to the door. “You run a tight campaign ship, Admiral.”

He looked at me curiously. “Were you a Navy brat?”

“Yes, sir. My father was a chief. Thirty-year man.”

He looked around the room — at the envelope stuffers and the phone canvassers, and at the red, white, and blue banner. Something seemed to have gone out of him, as if my visit had recalled images of Elaine too vividly. He stared blankly at the banner, then shook his handsome gray head. “Then you know what we’re trying to do here,” he said with an effort. “The godlessness we’re dedicated to fighting.”

“Yessir, I do.”

And although I wouldn’t put it on religious terms, I knew far better than he, for all his years and experience. I’d been out there in the middle of the filth and the crime and the violence, while Henry Nyland had only viewed it from his lofty and protected perch. Unlike him, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to fight it, except on a slow, day-to-day basis. But I did know his way wouldn’t work.