Nightshades

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I drove downtown again and went through the crowded and shady mall to Penny’s for Beauty. The only person in the waiting room was the blond receptionist, Miss Adley. La Belson must have told her I wasn’t a city cop; she was not intimidated today. She wasn’t even polite. “Miss Penny isn’t in and I don’t know when she’ll be back,” she said, and her eyes said: Drop dead, asshole.

So I grinned at her and perched on one corner of her desk and said, “How about if I go back through that arch and tell your customers who I am and that Miss Penny is mixed up in a couple of ugly murders? Can you imagine the gossip? Can you imagine what Miss Penny would say?”

We looked at each other for about ten seconds. Then the blonde made an exasperated hissing sound between her teeth and threw words at me like spittle. “She’s at a restaurant down the way. Rive Gauche. Having her lunch.”

“Maybe I’ll have lunch too,” I said, and got off her desk. “Have a nice day, now.”

Miss Adley didn’t have anything more to say. Her eyes repeated their earlier message.

Rive Gauche was a small, chic restaurant, very French, with colored prints of Montmartre and other Parisian scenes on the walls and waitresses who spoke with Gallic accents that may or may not have been genuine. It wasn’t very crowded, and I saw Penny Belson as soon as I came in: corner table, alone, a dish of steamed mussels and a small carafe of white wine in front of her.

She was not any happier to see me than the receptionist had been. But she had more self-possession and this was a public place; when I sat down across from her she didn’t protest and she didn’t tell me to drop dead, either verbally or with her eyes.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said.

“Meaning you hoped you wouldn’t. ”

The delicate shrug. “More questions?”

“Some. Go ahead and finish your lunch while we talk.”

“I had every intention of doing that,” she said. She plucked a mussel out of its shell and washed it down with a sip of wine.

“Well?”

“Frank O’Daniel,” I said. “You heard about what happened to him, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Well, like you said the other day, a beauty salon is a good place to find out things. There’s been gossip about Mrs. O’Daniel; I thought there might have been some about her husband too.”

She didn’t answer right away. One of the waitresses came over to the table, to find out if I wanted anything, but I gestured her away. At some other time, and with some other companion, I might have ordered a meal just so I could put it on my expense account and see what Barney Rivera would say. Not today. I kept my attention on Penny Belson’s face.

“I don’t know what you’re after,” she said at length. “Frank O’Daniel and another woman-that sort of thing? I’ve heard nothing like that.”

“What have you heard, then?”

She sighed. “I suppose the only way I’m going to have any peace is to be frank with you. All right. Evidently he was planning to divorce his wife, sell his house and his interest in Northern Development, and move away. ”

“Who told you this?”

“One of my customers.”

“Which one?”

“I won’t tell you that. She’s no one you know, no one connected with Northern Development. She is a good customer and I don’t want to lose her.”

“Where was O’Daniel moving to?”

“The Bay Area somewhere.”

“Did he have a business opportunity down there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why was he selling out and moving, then?”

“Why do you think? His company is in financial trouble and his wife is a bitch. Isn’t that enough reason?”

“Is there anything else you can tell me, Miss Belson?”

“Not about Frank O’Daniel.”

“About Helen O’Daniel then. About any of her other affairs.”

“She’s had several. Would you like a list of names?”

“I was thinking about one in particular. An artist named Paul Robideaux.”

It surprised her-genuinely so, I thought. She said, “Robideaux. That name is familiar…”

I could have told her where Robideaux lived; she’d probably find it out anyway, soon enough. But I didn’t want to have to explain things, and I didn’t want to witness the catty pleasure it would give her. I said, “Thanks for your help, Miss Belson,” and got on my feet.

“Wait,” she said. “This artist, this Paul Robideaux-”

“Actually he’s a writer and his real name is Hasselblatt. Thanks again. ”

I left her sitting there sipping wine and looking coldly thoughtful.

The smells in Rive Gauche had made me hungry, so I stopped at a McDonald’s and had a Big Mac and some fries and a strawberry milkshake. Then I drove back to George Fulbright’s law offices.

But Fulbright hadn’t known anything about Frank O‘Daniel’s intentions to sell out his interest in Northern Development and move to the Bay Area; he seemed amazed at the possibility. “I can’t understand how Mr. O’Daniel could have seriously considered such a move without consulting me,” he said.

“Can you think of any reason why he wouldn’t have consulted you?”

“No, none. ”

“Did he have any business affiliations in the Bay Area?”

“Not that I’m aware of. He knew people there, of course-business people. I know two or three myself that I could check with…”

“If you’d do that, Mr. Fulbright, I’d appreciate it.”

I made the sheriffs department my next stop, to see if Jim Telford was in. He was. He’d just come back from Musket Creek, where he’d been all day and where he hadn’t found out much. He had nothing else encouraging to tell me, either. The police lab had been over the remains of the Kokanee, and a professional diver had swept the lake bottom, with the same results in both cases: no evidence to support the theory that the explosion and O’Daniel’s death had not been an accident.

Telford hadn’t talked to Paul Robideaux because Robideaux hadn’t been home, and he was interested in what I had to tell him about my own meeting with the artist and Robideaux’s affair with Helen O‘Daniel. Still, there wasn’t anything conclusive in it. The prowler angle stumped him as much as it did me. And so did Frank O’Daniel’s somewhat odd behavior of late.

Lots of possibilities-lots of apparent dead ends.

When I left Telford I drove over to the Redding Police Department and had another, brief talk with Hank Betters. The only thing he had to tell me was that Martin Treacle had been bugging him for police protection and the department, reluctantly, had obliged by assigning a “temporary bodyguard. ” A waste of the taxpayer’s money, Betters said, but it was better that than having Treacle go to the newspapers and build a flap about police indifference.

It was four o’clock by the time I got into my car again. I was fresh out of leads, and I was also hot and tired and my face was hurting some; I headed for the Sportsman’s Rest. On the way I stopped to buy a couple of ice-cold cans of Lite beer. The stuff tasted like beer-flavored water, but you got used to it. And now that I was watching my weight, it was a hell of a lot better than no beer at all.

Something had begun to rattle around in the trunk, and when I got to the motel I opened the lid to see what it was. The stone cup I’d found at the fire scene in Musket Creek. It had come loose from where I’d wedged it behind the spare tire. I’d forgotten about the thing-I should have given it to Telford long before this. I took it inside the room and put it on the dresser so I would remember to take it to the sheriff’s department later on.

Kerry wasn’t there; still over at Whiskeytown or wherever in her rented Datsun. I opened a beer, drank some of it to cool off, and then went to the motel office to see if I’d had any messages. Two calls, both from Barney Rivera. Call back as soon as possible. Urgent.

Trouble, I thought wearily.

Back in the room, I sat on the bed with my beer and put in a call to Great Western Insurance in San Francisco. When Barney came on he said, “Anything to report? Christ, I hope so.” He sounded harried.

Well, he wasn’t the only one. I said, “Nothing yet. I’m working on it, Barney. I told you I’d call when I had something to report.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting flack here. I’m going to have to bring somebody else in to give you a hand. That’s the directors’ idea, not mine.”

“Terrific. Then we can stumble over each other like Abbott and Costello. ”

“I’ve got to do it. The directors want results. They don’t want to pay double indemnity twice; that’s four hundred thousand bucks-big money.”

“I know it’s big money,” I said. “And if they have to pay it I’ll get held responsible and you won’t throw me any more investigative bones. Right?”

“Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to. Look, Barney, I’m doing the best I can. Give me another day or two.”

“I don’t know if I can…”

“Come on. I may be getting close to some answers.”

“Okay, okay-I guess I can hold off one more day, kid. Call me by close of business tomorrow, either way.”

I sighed as I put the handset down. Getting close to some answers, I’d said. Bald-faced lie. Or was it? Maybe I was getting close. Christ knew, I had uncovered a mound of information; if I could only shift it around and make it mean something…

So I sat there for a time, shifting it around-but it was like shifting junk into little piles; none of them amounted to anything by itself. I said to hell with it for the time being. What I needed right now was to go soak my head. In the swimming pool, along with the rest of me.

I stripped and put on my Hawaiian trunks with the hibiscus flowers on them. There was a full-length mirror on the wall in the bathroom alcove; I looked at myself in it and decided I cut a pretty dashing figure for a fifty-four-year-old former fat guy. Still part of a spare tire around my middle-love handles, Kerry called it-but not too much anymore. Slimming down made me look younger too. I didn’t look a day over fifty-three.

With my second beer in hand, I walked out to the pool. And dunked myself and swam around trying to avoid a couple of small kids who kept yelling and splashing each other. While I was doing that Kerry came back. I climbed up on the ladder and waved to her, and she waved back and made gestures to indicate she was going in to change. She joined me a few minutes later.

After she’d had her swim we sat in a couple of chaise lounges and she asked how my day had gone. I told her in some detail and with the appropriate profanity.

She said, “A prowler at the O’Daniel house? That’s interesting.”

“Sure. All I need to do now is figure out what he was after and who he is. Any ideas?”

“Me? You’re the detective; I’m just along for the ride. Not too bright, but reasonably attractive and a pretty good lay.”

“Pretty good,” I agreed. “How about me?”

She batted her eyelashes at me. “Oh, baby,” she said, “you’re incredible. I see skyrockets every time.”

Putting me on again. I sat there feeling wounded.

Kerry fell silent too and stayed that way. Brooding about her whacky ex-husband again, I thought. I took another quick swim, and when I came out she was still brooding. I asked her if she wanted to go to the lounge next door for a drink; she said no, she just wanted to sit there for a while, maybe have another swim.

I went to the room alone, and showered, and as I was getting dressed the stone cup caught my eye again. I could see the fossils on it where Treacle had rubbed off the soot the other night. For some reason the thing held my attention. I stopped fumbling with my pants and went over and picked it up.

Those fossils… what was it Treacle had called them? Bryophytes, that was it. Bryophyte fossils, common to this area, etched in different kinds of rock…

Rock, I thought.

Rocks.

Things began to stir inside my head. Then they began to run around, tumbling together like little rocks in a landslide. Things I should have added up before. Things that got me a little excited because maybe, just maybe, they were some of the answers I had been looking for.

I finished dressing in a hurry and hustled out to where Kerry sat by the pool. “I’ve got to go to Musket Creek,” I said.

She squinted up at me. “Again? What for?”

“There’s something I want to check on.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back.”

“Great,” she said. “Secrets, now. I suppose that means I can’t come along?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll be back by eight or so.”

“So go,” she said, and shrugged. “I’ll find something to do.”

I went.