Labyrinth

38?”

“No. It doesn’t seem to be registered anywhere. Probably an outlaw weapon.”

“But it could have belonged to Victor Carding.”

“It could have.”

“And so could the missing. 32.”

“I suppose so.”

“Was Carding upset about Christine’s death?”

“Klein said he was, yeah.”

“What did he have to say about his son’s relationship with her?”

“Not much. Why?”

“Did he seem to approve of it?”

“Yes. What are you leading up to?”

“A possible answer, maybe.”

“Which is?”

“Suppose Carding hated Christine for some reason,” I said. “Suppose he was responsible for those threatening calls and letters. And suppose he was the one who killed her-lured her out to Lake Merced on some sort of pretext; she knew him well enough to have gone there to meet him after dark. Then suppose Jerry found out about it, confronted his father today, lost his head and grabbed up the. 38 and shot him. Revenge motive.”

Eberhardt lit his pipe. “I don’t like it much,” he said between draws.

Neither did I, but I said, “It is possible.”

“Possible, but damned unlikely. Donleavy and the Brisbane police searched the Carding property; they’d have found the. 32 if it was there.”

“Carding could have got rid of it after shooting the girl.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that point. But what’s the motive? Why would a man hate his son’s girlfriend enough to want her dead?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was the unbalanced one, not Jerry. Maybe his wife dying sent him around the bend.”

“He’d still need a motive, crazy or not.”

“Well, what kind of guy was he? What were his attitudes, prejudices, things like that?”

“We’re still checking and so is Donleavy. But he seems to’ve been a pretty average sort. Worked as a carpenter and construction laborer, built the Brisbane house himself fifteen years ago, got along well with his neighbors. Devoted to his wife and had a good relationship with Jerry, who’s an only child; Klein says he was grieving deeply over the wife’s death and worried about the kid’s disappearance. His only vice appears to’ve been booze. He’d been arrested once for drunk driving and once for public drunkenness, and he was about half-smashed last night-a borderline alcoholic.” Eberhardt shrugged and wreathed himself in a cloud of pipe smoke. “There’s nothing in any of that to support your theory.”

“No,” I said.

“It just won’t wash. It doesn’t explain why Jerry disappeared from Bodega Bay, or why he wouldn’t have surfaced between Sunday and today. And how could he have known his old man was the one who killed Christine? Clairvoyance?”

“Okay, Eb, it was just an idea.”

“You got any others you want to hash out?”

“No. I don’t suppose the neighbors noticed anything today, before Talbot and I showed up?”

“Uh-uh. Donleavy and the Brisbane cops drew a blank.”

I finished my beer, thought about getting another one, and decided against it; my stomach already felt bloated and gaseous. For a time I watched Eberhardt pollute the room with more acrid pipe smoke. It had a heavy smell and it made my nostrils itch. Give me cigarette smoke any day, I thought-good old cigarette smoke. Finally I stood and went over and opened one of the bay windows a little, to let in some fresh cold air.

“Still bothers you, huh?” Eberhardt said when I came back.

“What?”

“Not being able to smoke yourself.”

“Sometimes. Not too much anymore.”

“You’re a hell of a lot better off. I wish I could quit.”

“You could if you had something growing on a lung.”

He made a face. “Yeah,” he said.

I stifled a belch and sat down again. “You think it’s possible that the two murders are unrelated?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“Hell no. Jerry Carding’s girlfriend and father both get shot to death within two days of each other, and the kid himself drops out of sight; there’s got to be a connection somewhere.” He paused and tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. “There’s already one connection we know about,” he said.

“Meaning me.”

“Right. Your business card is in the girl’s purse; you’re working for the sister of the guy who accidentally killed Carding’s wife; and you find Carding’s body.”

“That is coincidence, Eb. At least as far as I know.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. First you heard of Victor Carding and the Talbot/Nichols clan was yesterday morning?”

I nodded. “After I left you at Lake Merced.”

“Any special reason why the Nichols woman picked you out of all the other private eyes in the book?”

“She didn’t tell me if there was.”

“What did she have to say about Carding?”

“Just that he’d threatened her brother’s life after the accident, and tried to attack him, and she was afraid he might come after Talbot again.”

“She didn’t indicate she knew Carding personally?”

“No. She called him a ‘common laborer,’ but that doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Did she mention Jerry Carding at all?”

“No.”

“Well, that corroborates what she told Klein and Logan tonight. They talked to her at the hospital where Talbot’s being held. She says she never laid eyes on either of the Cardings or heard of them before the accident. Talbot claimed the same thing a little while later.”

“What about Karen Nichols?”

“Who’s she?”

“Mrs. Nichols’ daughter. She’s a few years older than Jerry and Christine, but they’re still in the same general age group. It could be she knew one or both, or at least knew of them.”

“I’ll have Klein talk to her tomorrow. Anybody else in the immediate family?”

“Not that I know about. I got the impression Laura Nichols is either a widow or divorced.”

Eberhardt smoked in silence for a time. Then he said, “This job Mrs. Nichols hired you to do-didn’t it strike you as a little screwy?”

“Sure. But she was determined, and I couldn’t see any reason for turning her down.”

“Let’s try this on for size: She had an ulterior motive in setting up a round-the-clock surveillance on her brother.”

“Like what?”

“Like she wanted to provide him with an alibi. If he was being watched at all times by a team of private detectives, he couldn’t be suspected of Carding’s murder. Only Talbot crossed her up by deciding to pay a call on Carding today.”

“Which would make her Carding’s killer?”

“Right. And the motive could be that she was more afraid of Carding carrying out his threat against Talbot then she let on; so she decided to take care of Carding before he had a chance to come after her brother.”

“I don’t know, Eb,” I said. “I guess she could be loony enough to come up with a plot like that, but it sounds farfetched to me. TV cop show stuff.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t buy it either. It doesn’t involve a connection with Christine Webster, or explain the kid’s disappearance or half a dozen other things.”

We kicked it around a while longer, over another beer each, but we were both fresh out of workable theories. The problem was, there still weren’t enough facts in yet-and the pieces we did have were jumbled and shaped with odd angles. It might be days or weeks before the right pattern began to emerge. If it ever emerged at all.

Eberhardt left at eleven-thirty and I went straight to bed. But my mind was too full of questions to shut down right away; I tossed around for more than an hour before I finally drifted off. The whole business was damned frustrating. I was involved and yet I was not involved. I was a link between the two murders and yet I knew little about any of the people or any of the motivations and relationships in either case. The idea of sitting passively by waiting to be told bits and pieces as they developed did not appeal to me much-and yet there was nothing else I could do.

What could I do?