Games to Keep the Dark Away

Chapter 13

At ten the next morning I sat on one of the ornately carved chairs in the lobby of The Tidepools, waiting to talk to Ann Bates. I’d been there half an hour and the high-backed chair grew harder with each passing minute. Every time I shifted my position, the handsome dark-haired woman at the desk would look up, an anxious frown creasing her brow. When I finally stood up and went over to the glass wall that opened onto the patio, the woman jerked. I glanced curiously at her, but she lowered her eyes.

The hospice seemed strangely hushed this morning. Except for the woman at the desk, I hadn’t seen a single soul, and the phone hadn’t rung once all the time I’d been waiting. Even the fountain was quiet, its water turned off, and not a breeze ruffled the fuchsia blossoms in their hanging baskets. It wasn’t a peaceful stillness, however.

The receptionist’s tension had begun to affect me. When the carved front door opened, squeaking on its iron hinges, I jumped. A middle-aged couple, prosperous-looking in tweeds, came in. They conferred with the receptionist, then took seats on the far side of the lobby. Tired of waiting, I went over to the woman at the desk and asked how much longer Mrs. Bates would be.

“Oh, I’m certain it won’t be more than a few minutes.” She did not meet my eyes.

“Would you get her on the phone again and find out?”

Her hand strayed toward the receiver then stopped. “She knows you’re here. I’m sure she’ll be out as soon as she’s free.” She looked up, and I saw that her eyes were almost pleading. Obviously Bates was the source of her jumpiness.

I said, “Is she in a bad mood today?”

A smile tugged at the corners of the woman’s mouth. “Today and yesterday. All week, in fact. I’d rather not bother her again-” Footsteps clicked on the titled floor behind us and the trace of a smile disappeared from the woman’s lips.

I turned to face Mrs. Bates. Dressed in beige silk, she was as fashionable as the last time I’d seen her, but there were lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there before. “Ms. McCone,” she said, “what can I do for you?”

“I take it you heard about Jane Anthony’s death?”

“The police were here making inquiries. And of course it was in the papers.”

“I’m cooperating with the local force in the investigation, and there are some questions I need to ask you.”

“I’ve already told the detectives from Homicide everything I know about Ms. Anthony. Perhaps you should talk to them.”

“No, I’d rather talk to you.”

Bates glanced at the couple on the other side of the lobby, and then at the receptionist. “Mary, who are-”

“Relatives of a prospective patient. One of the volunteers is to give them a tour, but she hasn’t arrived yet.”

Bates frowned. “Doesn’t she know enough to be on time, for God’s sake?”

“They’re early.”

“Well…oh, never mind.” Bates looked back at me, exasperation plain on her face. “Ms. McCone, I realize you are merely trying to do your job, but you are hindering me from doing mine. As I said before, I suggest you talk to the police.”

Her voice was louder now, and the prosperous-looking couple turned their heads. I raised my own voice. “You also must realize that by refusing to talk to me you’re obstructing my investigation of this murder.”

The man sat up straighter and he and the woman exchanged looks.

“Ms. McCone!” Bates glanced at them frantically.

“Since you won’t talk with me, I can only assume that you-or someone else at The Tidepools-have something to hide.”

Two spots of red appeared on Bates’ cheeks. She heaved a sigh and said to the receptionist, “Hold all my calls, Mary.” Then she glared at me. “Come this way, Ms. McCone.” In icy silence we went down a hallway to an office wing.

Bates led me into a paneled office with a view of a cypress grove. It was furnished with a large, cluttered desk and banks of metal filing cabinets. She made a curt motion at a visitor’s chair in front of the desk, then went around and sat behind it.

“Now that you have succeeded in making both me and The Tidepools look bad,” she said, “what do you want to ask me?”

“I need to see Jane Anthony’s personnel file.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“It’s confidential.”

“The woman’s been murdered. Nothing about her is confidential anymore.”

“The file is the property of The Tidepools.”

“Did you refuse to show it to the police?”

“They didn’t ask. They merely questioned me about what I recalled about Ms. Anthony.”

“All the more reason I should see it.”

She leaned forward on the desk, her eyes flashing. “No, Ms. McCone. All the more reason you should not. If the police don’t need to see the file, you don’t either.”

This statement was going to be broken only by the introduction of a new element. “Why don’t we get Allen Keller in on this?”

She blinked and took her elbows off the desk. “I thought Mary told you when you arrived that Dr. Keller isn’t in today.”

“Has he been in at all since Jane Anthony was killed?”

“That’s none of your business.” But the fire went out of her eyes and she bit her underlip.

“I guess he’s taking it hard. It would be a shame to have to disturb him over something like this file.”

“Yes, it would.”

“On the other hand, if I have no choice…”

“Ms. McCone, Allen-Dr. Keller has had a very difficult time this week. He told me how you hunted him down at home.”

“Did he also tell you that he lied to me about how well he knew Jane?”

“That’s only natural, given the havoc that woman wreaked upon his life. I don’t want you bothering him anymore.”

“But I need to see that file.”

She was silent, her hands gripping the arms of her chair. Her face, which had seemed invulnerable moments ago, was now deeply troubled. I thought of women I’d known who had fallen in love with bosses or co-workers. They might lose them to other women, but still they went on, keeping the office fires burning, waiting for some improbable future chance. Was Ann Bates…?

A look of resolve spread over her features and she stood up, taking a key out of her desk drawer. “If I let you see the file, will you leave Dr. Keller alone?”

“Would I have any other reason to contact him?”

“Of course not.” Either she was not as bright as she appeared to be or she badly wanted to believe she was doing the right thing. She went to one of the file cabinets, opened it, and reached inside. Then her back straightened and she began to shuffle through the files. She closed the drawer, opened the one below it, and repeated the procedure. When she finally turned to me, her face was drained of color.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

She shook her head and shut the drawer. “I’m afraid I can’t show you the file after all.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Ms. McCone, it is not there. And from what I can tell, a large number of our other files have vanished as well.”

I left Ann Bates rummaging through her file cabinets, trying to figure out exactly what was missing, and drove to Allen Keller’s home. The maid who answered the door told me the doctor wasn’t in, but refused to say where he had gone. On my way back to the MG, I checked the garage; there was no car inside, so it was a good bet the maid was telling the truth. I thought for a minute and then remembered his boat, the Princess Jane, at the marina next to the Sand Dollar. It was worth a try. I drove over there and spotted the cruiser tied up at the far end of an outer slip. The location was reasonably private and the cruiser, which had to be at least thirty feet, was luxurious. I understood why Keller and Jane had chosen to meet there.

The marina was almost deserted on this weekday morning. As I walked out toward Keller’s slip, all I heard were the cries of gulls and the creaks of the mooring hawsers. Then I heard another sound-the clink of a bottle against a glass.

Keller sat on a folding chair on the afterdeck of the cruiser. He wore cutoff jeans and no shirt, and his stomach sagged over his belt. When I came alongside the boat, he was setting a gin bottle down on the table next to him. He looked up at me, squinting and shading his eyes from the sun, then said, “Go away.”

I stepped on board anyway.

“You do as you please, don’t you?” He picked up his glass and drank off half the clear liquid.

“Most of the time.” I looked around and found another folding chair. Keller watched me set it up.

“I could throw you off of here.” But his words held no menace.

“You could, but you look like you might need some company.”

He shrugged. I sat down in the chair.

“How’d you know I was here?” he asked.

“I guessed, since this was where you and Jane used to go.”

He paused, glass halfway to his lips. “Somebody’s been talking. Who?”

“Nobody you know.”

“Not Ann Bates. She wouldn’t.”

“No, not Ann. Let’s just say I heard some gossip.”

“Yeah, sure. Everybody’s heard the gossip.” He drank, then added, “If you’re going to stay, at least have a drink.”

If that was what it would take to get him talking, I would. Besides, it was hot there in the sun. “I’ll take a beer if you’ve got one.”

“I think there are some in the fridge below.”

“Do you want me to get it?”

“No.” He stood up, went to the entrance to the cabin, and disappeared. In a minute or so he returned with a chilled Coors. He handed it to me and reached immediately for the gin bottle. From his speech and movements, Keller wasn’t drunk yet, but at this rate he soon would be.

“So you heard the gossip and came to hold my hand.” His expression was sardonic, mouth pulled down on one side.

“Her death was a bad shock, wasn’t it?”

“You could say that.”

“Why’d you lie to me about knowing her?”

“Why should I have gone into it? She wasn’t really missing-I knew that, and you knew it too because you’d talked to her mother.”

“You knew it because she was staying with you.”

He shook his head. “No. She wasn’t with me, at least not the whole week.”

“Where was she?”

His eyes left mine and flicked toward the bow. “She was elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.”

“It may.”

“No.” He drank more gin. “Not now it doesn’t.”

“Why wasn’t she with you?”

“She needed privacy to do her research, and she didn’t want to involved me anyway.”

“What research?”

He made a motion with his hand, as if trying to erase his words.

“What kind of research?”

“Forget it.”

A telephone that sat on the deck next to the companionway door began ringing. Keller got up and answered it, standing with his back to me.

While he talked, I thought over my visit to his house. Keller probably was telling the truth about Jane not staying there, because he would not have admitted me so freely and let me stay so long if she were there or likely to return. But what about this “research?” What had she been-?

“I said, don’t worry about it!” Keller’s voice was suddenly loud. “They’ll turn up…No, I’m not coming in today… I don’t know when-For God’s sake, Ann, just hold things together there. Is that too much to ask? I’ll be in when I can.” He slammed the receiver into its cradle and strode back to his chair, his face mottled with anger.

“Ann Bates,” I said.

He glared at me. “You seem to know a great deal about my friends and associates.”

“I know Ann because I just came from The Tidepools. She was calling about the missing files, wasn’t she?”

He sighed and leaned forward, elbows on knees, head in hands. “The files are not missing, they’ve merely been misplaced. She’s making a big deal out of nothing. Jesus, why did I get up today? What the fuck is happening to me? When did it all get so out of control?”

I waited, but he just sat there, staring down at the desk. My beer can was empty, and the ice in his glass had melted. I stood up and said, “You can use a fresh drink; I’ll get some ice and another beer-”

He looked up quickly. “No, I’ll do it.” This time his steps were unsteady as he walked towards the companionway.

I waited until his head disappeared, then got up, and looked down there. I could see a small, compact galley, but that was all. I glanced down at the telephone at my feet and made a note of its number. By the time Keller returned, I was back in my deck chair.

“About that research of Jane’s…” I opened my beer and took a swallow.

Keller’s angry expression returned. “If you don’t want to get pitched over the side, drop it. I don’t even know why I’m letting you stay aboard.”

But I could guess; Keller wasn’t a man who could bear loneliness in the face of his loss. To prove it, he began to talk, his words slurring as they spilled out.

“But, then, I don’t know anything anymore. How do you know when your life gets out of control? There was a time when I thought I had it all and now I can’t even remember when that was. I was a doctor, a good doctor, and I was going to ease pain. I’d been to England, seen the work they were doing in the hospices there, and I’d inherited enough capital to start my own here. The Tidepools. Ease pain. Jesus.”

“But you do good work there.”

“Sure. Good work. And we take their money. Sometimes we even…Jesus.” He poured a full glass of gin and began in on it. “You know, it probably got out of control up there when I brought Ann in. She had a lot of ideas about making a profit and they sounded good, but what they did was bastardize the original concept. But the reason I brought her in and went for those ideas was because it had gotten out of control with me first. You know what I mean?”

“Sort of.”

“Cars. Country club. A house in the hills. This boat. The kind of women I chose. The things they wanted-Oriental carpets, sheets, towels, sterling silver. And each time one of them turned out that way, I’d choose another. Another with the same wants and needs. And me with mine, always looking to another woman for the solution. And then Janie.”

“Was she different?”

“Yes. She was different. She was willing to work for it all. When everything went to hell and it looked like I was going to lose the house and the cars and maybe even The Tidepools, she didn’t worry. She just went to San Francisco, said she’d find a way to buy us out of the trouble.”

“With a social worker’s salary?”

It was a mistake to have asked it. He frowned and set down his glass. “I’m talking too much. I always do when I drink. For that matter, I’m drinking too much. You’d better go.”

“No, what you’ve said is very interesting. It’s a real commentary on contemporary values-”

Keller stood up. “Like I said, you’d better go.”

I went. But at the other end of the parking lot, I stopped at the marina office. It was locked, and a sign indicated someone would be back at one-thirty. That might help me, if my plan worked at all. There was a phone booth outside the office, and I stepped in there, dug out a dime, and called the number of the phone on Keller’s boat. When he answered, I pitched my voice higher than usual and said, “Dr. Keller, this is Beth at the office.”

“Who?”

“Beth. You probably don’t know me; I’m new. Anyway, I wonder if you could come up here for a few minutes.”

There was a sigh. “Why?”

“It’s about those things the woman who was staying on your boat lost last week.”

“What things?” His tone was suddenly more alert.

“Oh, didn’t she tell you? She lost a key ring and a checkbook. One of the other slip holders turned them up. We have them here if you’d like to-”

“I’ll be right there.”

It had been a guess, but it had turned out right on target. Now I’d have to move fast. I ran across the graveled parking lot, back along the slips, and along one of the side floats. In a couple of minutes, Keller hurried along the dock toward the office. I waited until he was past, then sprinted for his slip and climbed on board the cruiser. As I’d hoped, he hadn’t locked the door to the companionway. I went down there, almost slipping on the ladder.

The galley was straight ahead, but that didn’t interest me. I went aft, where there were sleeping quarters. The teak-paneled cabin had two built-in bunks with a dresser between them. On the dresser was a small tan suitcase with the initials JMA. Irrelevantly, I wondered what Jane Anthony’s middle name had been.

The case was full of cosmetics, underwear, jeans, and tops-all thrown in together. Fastidious Jane had never packed-or repacked-these things. I looked through them, found nothing unusual, then turned my attention to the rest of the cabin. One bunk was rumpled, its covers turned back. The other was smooth and on it sat a cardboard box. I went over and saw it was full of file folders.

As I reached for the box, I heard a thump on the deck above. I froze, listening. Footsteps went toward the companionway and down the ladder, and then Keller appeared, his back to me, heading for the galley.

He was back much sooner than I’d anticipated. Had he realized the call was a fake? Would he search the boat? I flattened against the wall of the cabin, wishing the box of folders was still within reach.

There was the sound of an icetray being emptied and then the crack of a seal, probably on a fresh bottle of gin. Keller’s voice said wearily, “Let them keep the stuff. It’s of no use to me. Or to Janie anymore.” Next I heard breaking glass. “Jesus Christ,” Keller said. There was a long silence and then he added, “You’ve had enough, fellow.”

Keller’s footsteps left the galley and I held my breath, hoping he would go up on deck and leave the boat without the files. The footsteps came on, however, toward the cabin. I got ready and, as he stepped through the door, rushed past him, heading for the ladder.

Keller whirled. “Hey!”

I banged my knee on one of the rungs but scrambled up.

“Come back here, dammit!” Keller was right below me, grabbing for my ankle. He got a good hold on it, and I fell to the deck, then started crawling for the rail when he let go. He lurched up the ladder and grabbed me by my hair, yanking me backward. I screamed. He bent my arm behind me and glowered down, breathing gin into my face.

“That call was one of your cute tricks, eh?”

I tried to wrench free, but he held me firmly.

“So you know Jane stayed here,” he said. “So what?”

“The police will be interested.”

“Not when they find there’s no evidence of her presence. Who are they going to believe-you or me?”

I didn’t want to debate our relative credibility. I struggled harder, but he pinned both my arms behind my back and dragged me to my feet.

“You’re trespassing, you know,” he said. “Why don’t I call the police and let them handle you?”

“Why don’t you? When they arrive we can discuss what the personnel files from The Tidepools are doing below.”

“Why shouldn’t they be there? I was going over them, working here because it’s quieter than my office.”

“Sure you were.”

“Like I said, who are they going to believe?”

He was right; they were his files and the police would believe him, particularly when he got Ann Bates to back him up, as I was sure he could. Still, I decided to call his bluff. “So pick up the phone and call Lieutenant Barrow.”

He was silent for a moment, breathing hard. Then he chuckled. “No, I’ve got better plans for you.”

“Such as?”

He twisted my body sideways, and one of his arms went under my knees, the other around my shoulders. I pushed out at him with my freed hands, but he lifted me and stepped over to the rail.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said.

In seconds, I was flying through the air, and then I hit the water. I started to yell but closed my mouth just in time before I went under. The water was cold and oil-slicked. When I bobbed up to the top, my hair was plastered to my face, and I had to part it to look up at the boat. Keller leaned on the rail, laughing uproariously.

“That’ll teach you to be so goddamn nosy!”

“Fuck you!” It was one of the few times in my life I’d ever said that.

It only made Keller laugh harder.

I began to swim in the opposite direction, toward the main dock, Keller’s laughter following me. I’d lost both shoes sometime during the struggle, but my skirt-the grown-up-person skirt I’d worn to impress Ann Bates-greatly impeded by progress. I wanted to appear dignified, but it was impossible while attempting the Australian crawl, fully clothed, in six feet of dirty water. I could still hear Keller’s laughter when I hauled myself up on the dock and sloshed off toward my car.

I’ll get even, I told myself. I will get even. By the time I’m through with this case Allen Keller won’t be laughing at anything.