Double Take

CHAPTER 28

As he drove his Audi on 19th Avenue toward the Golden Gate Bridge, Cheney asked a silent Julia, “How long were you and your husband married, Julia?”

“Nearly three years. Then he was killed.”

Would you have stayed married to that old man? “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-nine.”

“I had a woman friend who said she was twenty plus nine.” She said nothing, looked straight through the windshield. “I believe he was in his late sixties, sixty-eight, I think.”

“You think? You don’t know the age of your own husband?”

“No.”

“All right, you’re angry with me. Come on out and say it.” She whirled around to face him. “You’re a jerk! You were needlessly rude to poor Wallace. You baited him, you sneered at him. I’m surprised you didn’t accuse him of molesting teenagers!”

“I thought about it, but couldn’t see any payoff.” She smacked his arm with her fist. “Wallace didn’t kill August. He didn’t kill his wife. Just because you’re a skeptic, you don’t have to act like an ass.”

“All right, so maybe I was a bit over the top. Look, Julia, I’m not only an FBI agent, I’m also a lawyer. I have to see something, feel it, understand it, before I can believe it. And we’re pressed for time here—I needed to rile him to see what would happen. I didn’t have time to make nice. Do you understand?”

“Be a skeptic, just don’t insult my friends.”

“I’m thinking it would do you some good to have some different sorts of friends.”

“You’re right, I do want some more friends. None of them will be cops, that’s for sure.”

“Hey, maybe you’re more interested in Tammerlane than you let on. Are you sure you only think of him as a friend?”

“You’re ridiculous, Cheney Stone. You sound jealous. Young men—I’d forgotten about all that testosterone clogging your brain cells.”

Cheney wanted to yell back at her, but he reined himself in. “I don’t sound jealous, dammit.”

“Forget it.”

Since it was late morning, traffic wasn’t heavy on the bridge. No northbound toll, so Cheney drove right through.

“I won’t tell you where Bevlin lives until you promise you won’t act like an ass around him.”

Cheney sighed. “All right, I’ll be more light-handed with Bevlin Wagner.”

“You swear?”

“What will you do if I overstep my bounds—or rather your bounds?”

“I’ll shoot you.”

He laughed, couldn’t help it, and raised his hand in surrender. “Okay, I’ll be very cool with Bevlin.”

“Good. Now, take the first exit onto Alexander and stay on it into downtown Sausalito.” She paused, looked out the Audi’s window. “I wish those blasted clouds would burn off. There’s nothing on earth more beautiful than the ocean on one side, the bay on the other, all glistening under a bright sun.”

“All chirpy now, are we, since you’ve got me in a choke hold?”

“Yep. I don’t believe in rubbing salt in wounds.”

“So you married August when you were twenty-six.”

“You’re a dog with a meaty bone, aren’t you? Yes, that’s right. How old arc you?”

“Me? I’m nearly thirty plus three, in November.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a freewheeling laugh. “Why are you asking me these personal questions?”

“Humor me, please. I’m trying not to be a jerk about it. I just need all the background I can get. You married him because you felt gratitude toward him since he was with you when your son died.”

“You just crossed the line,” she said.

Cheney drove the beautiful winding road into the town of Sausalito. Due to the heavy winter rains, the Marin Headlands were richly green, nearly an Irish green. By August, unfortunately, the hills would be brown and barren, a perfect setting for Heathcliff.

“So what do you want to tell me about Bevlin Wagner? Other than he wanted you to marry him. Is that his real name?”

“Doesn’t sound Croatian, does it? He told me he was from Split, a city on Croatia’s Adriatic coast. Evidently his parents changed their names when they came to the U.S. when he was a young boy. He’s never mentioned another name. Bevlin’s been on the local psychic scene for about eight years.”

“He’s also a medium—talks to dead people?”

“That’s right.”

“So, a psychic medium is your ultimate woo-woo master. Not only can he put on the psychic show—tell fortunes, see a building fall down before it actually does, see a murderer do the deed—he has the additional selling point of talking to dead great-uncle Alfie.”

“That’s right, and you’re being an ass again.”

He gave her a crooked smile.

She said, “August told me once that Bevlin had no center yet, that he didn’t know quite who he was, or what he was supposed to do with himself. But he was young, there was time for him, he said. August hoped he wouldn’t give up on what was in him before he found out what it was and how to use it.”

“This guy seemed so intense—if it’s for real he’s got to be burning himself up from the inside out. On the other hand, when he turned that intense expression of his on me yesterday, I thought he looked like he wanted a drink.”

This time a chuckle burst out of her, whole and clean. Good, she wasn’t as pissed at him. She cleared her throat. “I shouldn’t have done that, really. Maybe Bevlin does drink too much on occasion. I remember a get-together last year. Bevlin was ‘intensing’ everyone, as I think of it—you know, sitting in a corner pretending to brood and staring everyone down—until I realized he had a fifth of vodka behind him. I saw him turn a couple of times, sort of hunch over, and swig right out of the bottle.”

“When his parents came to the United States, where did they live?”

“New Hampshire. Bevlin always likes to say he’s from Croatia, first thing when he meets someone new—I think he believes it makes people think of Transylvania and vampires and things that go bump in the night—you know, it makes him sound like he’s steeped in otherworldly knowledge.”

“Even though Transylvania is in Romania.”

“I remember I said something smart-mouthed like that once to August.” She frowned.

“What?”

“August didn’t like that I’d said it, that I’d poked fun. Take a left at this first light, Cheney. Hey, would you look at all the tourists. They’ve got to be freezing.”

There were a good hundred out-of-towners huddled in jackets on the sidewalks of Sausalito, giving their custom to all the scores of clever tourist shops on either side of the street, ice cream cones and umbrellas in their hands.

“He didn’t like it? Why would he care?”

“You’ve got that bone in your mouth again. August felt I shouldn’t mock a man who might have much to offer the world sometime in the future.”

Cheney turned up Princess Street and began tacking his way up the hill.

“Do you think Bevlin Wagner has a lot to offer the world in the future, Julia?”

She stared out the window a moment, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t know, I really don’t. He has written one book on spirituality—To Watch Your Soul Take Flight, I have a copy, I’ll lend it to you. Read it. It—well, it helped me once.”

“All right, I will. But how can you not be a skeptic? I mean, finding lost children, maybe even forecasting disaster, but really, talking to dead people? Give me a break. It sounds absurd.”

“Everyone should be a skeptic, but keep an open mind. In the end, though, we all have to make up our own minds, Cheney.”

“Why should I really care one way or the other?”

“Because at various times in our lives we have need of something to help us make sense of things—of senseless tragedy, for example. I know that makes us more vulnerable to those who would deceive us—you bet it does. But if you’ve never felt ground under with despair or grief, if you’ve never been forced to focus inward rather than at your outward daily routine in the world, then I don’t think you should judge them or what they do because that inner eye of yours is closed to it, as they’d say.”

“Inner eye?”

“That’s their word for it. They speak of it as a door deep in our minds that cracks open occasionally, usually when we have need of spiritual comfort. Of course you can’t prove it with any sort of science or critical argument.”

“Is your inner eye open now?”

“No. That’s Bevlin’s house up there, perched right over the cliff.”