Games to Keep the Dark Away

Chapter 17

I went to the Mission Inn to phone Barbara Smith’s sister, Susan Tellenberg, and check for messages. There was one-from Abe Snelling, of all people. Perhaps the photographer wanted to rehire me. I depressed the receiver and direct-dialed his home in San Francisco. He answered immediately.

“Thanks for calling,” He said. “Hank Zahn told me where you were. It was in the papers about you finding that dead man. He was the one they originally suspected of killing Jane, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You think he did do it?”

“No. I think he knew who did, and that got him killed.”

There was a long silence. When Snelling spoke, his voice was flat. “So they aren’t any closer to finding the person now than before.”

“Not really.”

“Has anything else come up about Jane?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, anything that might…I don’t know. That might explain why she was murdered.”

I had the impression that Snelling had something specific in mind but didn’t want to say. “Well, I did find out where she was that week. She has a boyfriend down here and she was staying on his boat doing research.”

“Research?” Now he sounded astonished.

“Not of a scholarly sort. I think Jane was looking into an old murder that happened at the place where she used to work, a hospice called The Tidepools. She was going through their personnel files-the boyfriend, Allen Keller, is part owner there and probably brought them to her at the boat.”

“Why on earth was she doing that?”

“She must have had an idea who the killer was and wanted to verify it with the records.”

“But why?”

I hesitated. Snelling had been Jane’s friend and might not like what I was about to say. But, then, by his own admission they hadn’t been all that close. “I think she intended to blackmail the killer. The boyfriend here is in bad financial shape and she may have been trying to help him out. In fact, she went to San Francisco originally with the idea of making money to buy him out of his trouble.”

Again Snelling surprised me with his reaction. He said in a matter-of-fact tone, “You mean she came here looking for this killer.”

“Or a lead to him.”

“Amazing.” But he didn’t sound amazed at all. Of course, Snelling struck me as a good judge of character, and this new information may have fit in with what he had already guessed about Jane.

“Do you want to reopen the case?” I asked.

He ignored the question. “Did the police look over those personnel records?”

“I doubt they’ve had the chance. Keller was aware I knew they were on the boat, so he would have returned them to The Tidepools right away. The police would have to subpoena them, and I don’t think there’s been time for that.”

“I see.”

“Abe, don’t you want me to-”

“No. Jane’s dead, and it’s a waste of money anyway. I have to go now. I was working in the darkroom and I only answered the phone because I thought it might be you. Thanks for calling.” Abruptly he hung up.

I sat staring at the receiver. Snelling had certainly gotten a lot of information for free. “Cheapskate,” I muttered.

After a few seconds I called Susan Tellenberg’s number. This time she answered and, when I asked if I could come talk to her about her sister, she sounded surprised but agreed. She gave me instructions on how to get there and said she’d see me within the hour.

The Tellenberg home was in the older section of the city, not far from Don’s apartment house. It was a white frame cottage on a double lot, most of which was apple orchard. I went up to the door and was greeted by a plump blond boy of about five.

“Mama said you should come to the orchard,” he told me, and took off across the front yard and through the trees. I followed, savoring the pungent aroma of overripe fruit. It reminded me of cider and football games and long walks home afterward, holding the hand of the cutest boy on the team. Funny how a new romance could beget memories of an old one…

A woman with dark, curly hair and a rosy complexion sat cross-legged under the trees, tossing apples into a bushel basket. The little boy made a beeline for her and burrowed into her lap. She hugged him, adjusted the halter top he had knocked askew, and waved at me. I went over there.

“I’m Susan Tellenberg,” she said, “and this is my son, Robbie.”

The little boy wriggled out of her lap, gave me a military salute, and began to prance around, smashing apples. His mother gave him a stern look and he stopped. “Ms. McCone and I have things to talk about, Robbie. Perhaps you’d like to go in the house and find a book.”

“I’ve read all my books.”

“Reread one. You like the story about the rhinoceros.”

“Rhinoceros!” His eyes grew wide and he turned and ran toward the house.

“He’s young to be reading,” I said.

“You’re never too young.” She grinned. “Besides, it keeps him occupied and it’s cheaper than buying a TV. I hope you don’t mind if we talk out here. I’ve got to get these windfalls picked up before they rot and disease the trees.”

“No problem.” I dropped to the ground, glad I’d worn jeans. “Let me help you.”

“You want to know about Barbara,” she said.

I picked up a couple of apples and tossed them into the basket. “Yes. I’ve read up on the case, in connection with another investigation, and I wanted to get an account of what happened from someone who really knew her.”

“Is this other case something to do with Andy? Are you trying to find him?”

“Her husband? No. It’s related to one of the people who used to work at The Tidepools.

“Good.” She nodded with satisfaction and moved over to another pile of windfall apples.

I moved too. “Why good?”

“Because Andy didn’t kill my sister, and I don’t want to him found. By now, he’s started a new life and he’s entitled to it.”

“It sounds as if you like him.”

“I like Andy a lot. He put up with plenty from my sister and, on top of that, to be suspected of murdering her… well, it’s too unfair. I only wish we hadn’t run; there was no need to.”

“Oh?”

She must have interpreted the comment as skeptical, because her eyes flashed. “Barbara’s death was a suicide. Andy ran because the police started raising all kinds of stupid speculation.”

“He must have been very frightened.”

She shrugged. “Andy always was a bit of a coward. But a nice coward, a gentle man. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all Barbara. He loved her, for some reason.”

“Tell me about Barbara.”

Susan relaxed, now that we were off the subject of Andy. “It may sound as if I disliked my sister. That isn’t really true. It was just that she had so many problems-in addition to the cancer, I mean-and they were all ones she brought on herself.”

“Such as?”

“She drank too much, took all sorts of pills. She’d been in and out of therapy for years, but never stayed long enough for it to do her any good.”

“Did they ever diagnose a specific mental illness?”

“She was a manic-depressive, and as she got older the mood swings became more and more severe. When she found out she had cancer, she went into the depressive state and stayed there. We-Andy and I-felt The Tidepools was the only way to keep her from killing herself. Others in the family-if you’ve read the newspaper accounts, those are the ones the reporters talked to afterward-didn’t agree. Maybe they thought her manic phase was the real Barbara. At any rate, they resented Andy for convincing her to go to the hospice. And when the police began to suspect him, they didn’t help one bit, with their talk of how she would never take her own life.”

Susan Tellenberg had a lot of pent up anger in her, and I gathered she’d been fonder of Andy than a sister-in-law should be. I glanced at her left hand-no wedding ring. She could be widowed or divorced, with a crush on her sister’s gentle husband.

I said, “But Andy convinced her to go to The Tidepools.”

She nodded. “She didn’t want to go, but he insisted. It was the one time in their entire life together that he got his way. Usually he’d knuckle under to her demands. I’d ask him why-it wasn’t helping her get any better or take responsibility for her life-and he’d just say it was preferable to living in perpetual conflict. Anyway, Barbara went to The Tidepools, but she hated it from day one and made sure everybody knew that. And then she died. She must have saved up her medication, like the others did.”

“The newspaper stories say she wasn’t receiving it long enough to have saved it.”

Susan shrugged and moved again with her basket. “Barbara might even have brought the drugs with her. Like I said, she was always taking one kind of pill or another.”

“Did the autopsy show that what she took was the same as what they gave out at the hospice?”

“Apparently they couldn’t be that specific. What they use there is a mixture, and an autopsy can’t show exact proportions or brand names, just the types of drugs present.”

That was true, and it widened the range of possible suspects. Anyone with access to common prescription drugs could have killed Barbara. “What exactly made Andy run?”

“I told you, the police suspected him.”

“But there must have been some triggering factor.”

Susan stopped picking up apples and looked into the branches of the tree above. Sunlight cast dappled shadows over her troubled face. She sat that way for a few moments, then said, “It was all the confusion over the money that did it.”

“The money Barbara had inherited, you mean?”

“Yes. The police found out that Andy had drawn it all out of the bank in cash a few days before Barbara died.”

“Why did he do that, do you know?”

She shook her head.

“Didn’t he ever talk to you about it?”

“No.” She looked up into the trees again. “By the time I heard about it, Andy was gone. I’ve thought and thought about it ever since, but I can’t come up with any answer except…”

“Except?”

“Except that Barbara made him do it. She was always making him do things.”

“But why? What would she have needed forty thousand dollars in cash for?”

Susan rubbed her hands together and went back to picking up the apples. “I have a theory that she planned to bribe someone at the hospice to help her escape.”

“Escape? She wasn’t being held against her will, was she?”

“Well, not exactly. But you’ve got to remember Barbara was not really too well wrapped toward the end. She was paranoid and…I don’t know. That’s my theory.”

She seemed to have a number of theories, all of them conflicting and aimed at proving Andy didn’t kill her sister. I sat there, rolling an apple between my palms.

Susan must have sensed my doubtfulness. “Look,” she said, “I really don’t know what Barbara intended. I never was able to understand what went on in her head. She had everything-she was smart and pretty and had a husband who loved her. She didn’t have to work as a waitress and bring up a kid alone like I do. She didn’t have a husband who abandoned her before the kid was even born, like I did. And, when it was time for our rich aunt to will her money to somebody, she chose Barbara, not me. But did Barbara appreciate any of that? No. Not my sister. All her life she worked so hard, so goddamned hard, at screwing up.”

I remained silent, rolling the apple around and forming a theory of my own. “Had your sister accepted the fact she was going to die?”

“She believed it, if that’s what you mean.”

“But acceptance-the kind they talk about at The Tidepools-did she feel that?”

“Did she want to live out her life with dignity? Do something positive with what remained? I doubt it.”

“Then how about this?” I pitched the apple into the basket. “How about if she did make Andy withdraw the money, so she could use it as a bribe-”

“That’s what I said.”

“But not a bribe to get out of the place. A bribe for someone to get her the drugs and administer them. What if she bought herself a mercy killing?”

Susan looked startled, but then nodded. “That’s very possible. It would explain why they didn’t find the money with her things at the hospice.”

“Of course,” I went on, “why would she spend forty thousand dollars when she could have asked her own husband to help her?”

“No. Andy would never go along with something like that. He would never have helped her kill herself, and he certainly would never have gotten her the money had he known what it was for. She must have made up some story to tell him.”

“Andy worked at Port San Marco General Hospital. He would have had access to drugs.”

Stubbornly she shook her head. “No, he didn’t. He was in the education department; it’s a teaching hospital. He had nothing to do with drugs.”

“I thought he was a medical technician.”

“Yes, but he didn’t handle drugs. He was a medical photographer. He took pictures of autopsies and put together slide shows and teaching aids for the hospital’s educational programs.”

I stared at her.

“He was a damned good photographer too. He used to exhibit the portraits he took as a hobby in shows around the area.”

I sat in silence for several seconds, feeling a growing excitement. Things were beginning to fall into place at last.

“What’s wrong?” Susan asked.

“Do you have a picture of Andy?”

“Yes, in the living room.”

“Can I see it?”

She frowned, but stood up, brushing dead leaves off her jeans. “All right.”

We went into the house, to an old-fashioned formal parlor. My hands were shaking as I took the framed portrait from Susan’s hands. The face in it was bearded and the hair brown rather than blond, but it was the one I’d expected to see.

The younger, less careworn face of Abe Snelling.