The Goodbye Look

chapter 21

The main street was quiet and bright when we walked back to the car. The stars were all in order, and quite near. I don’t remember seeing any other people until I went into the restaurant to phone George Trask.

He answered right away, in a moist, overused voice: “This is the Trask residence.”

I said I was a detective and would like to talk to him about his wife.

“My wife is dead.”

“I’m sorry. May I come over and ask you a few questions?”

“I guess so.” He sounded like a man who had no use for time.

Moira was waiting for me in the car, like a silver-blue cat in a cave.

“Do you want to be dropped at the hospital? I have an errand to do.”

“Take me along.”

“It’s a fairly unpleasant errand.”

“I don’t care.”

“You would if you lost your marriage and ended up with me. I spend a lot of my nights doing this kind of thing.”

Her hand pressed my knee. “I know that I could be hurt. I’ve already made myself vulnerable. But I’m sick of always doing the professional thing for prudential reasons.”

I took her along to Bayview Avenue. The police car was gone. The black Volkswagen with the crumpled fender was still in George Trask’s driveway. I remembered now where I had seen it before; under Mrs. Swain’s rusty carport in Pasadena.

I knocked on the front door and George Trask let us in. His gangling body was carefully dressed in a dark suit and black tie. He had an air of having made himself the servant of the situation, like a mortician. His grief showed only in his reddened eyes, and in the fact that he didn’t remember me.

“This is Mrs. Smitheram, Mr. Trask. She’s a psychiatric social worker.”

“It’s nice of you to come,” he said to her. “But I don’t need that kind of help. Everything’s under control. Come into the living room and sit down, won’t you? I’d offer to make you some coffee but I’m not allowed to go into the kitchen. And anyway,” he went on, as if his voice was being piped in from someplace beyond his control, “the coffeemaker got broken this morning when my wife was murdered.”

“I’m sorry,” Moira said.

We followed George Trask into the living room and sat down beside each other, facing him. The window drapes were partly open, and I could see the lights of the city wavering on the water. The beauty of the scene and the woman beside me made me more aware of the pain George Trask was suffering, like solitary confinement in the world.

“The company is being very understanding,” he said conversationally. “They’re giving me a leave of absence, open-ended, with full pay. That will give me a chance to get everything squared away, eh?”

“Do you know who murdered your wife?”

“We have a pretty good suspect – man with a criminal record as long as your arm – he’s known Jean all her life. The police asked me not to mention his name.”

It had to be Randy Shepherd. “Has he been picked up?”

“They expect to get him tonight. I hope they do, and when they do, put him in the gas chamber. You know and I know why crime and murder are rampant. The courts won’t convict and when they do convict they won’t mete out the death penalty. And even when they do the law is flouted right and left. Convicted murderers walk free, they don’t gas anybody any more, no wonder we have a breakdown of law and order.” His eyes were wide and staring, as if they were seeing a vision of chaos.

Moira rose and touched his head. “Don’t talk so much, Mr. Trask. It makes you upset.”

“I know. I’ve been talking all day.”

He put his large hands on his glaring face. I could see his eyes bright as coins between his fingers. His voice went on unmuffled, as if it were independent of his will:

“The dirty old son deserves to be gassed, even if he didn’t kill her he’s directly responsible for her death. He got her started on this latest mania of looking for her father. He came here to the house last week with his schemes and stories, told her he knew where her father was and she could be with him again. And that’s what happened,” he added brokenly. “Her father’s dead in his grave and Jean is with him.”

Trask began to cry. Moira quieted him with small noises more than words.

I noticed after a while that Louise Swain was standing in the hall doorway looking like her daughter’s ruined ghost. I got up and went to her:

“How are you, Mrs. Swain?”

“Not very well.” She drew a hand across her forehead. “Poor Jean and I could never get along – she was her father’s daughter – but we cared about each other. Now I have no one left.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Jean should have listened to me. I knew she was getting into deep water again, and I tried to stop her.”

“What kind of deep water do you mean?”

“All kinds. It wasn’t good for her to go wandering off into the past, imagining that her father was alive. And it wasn’t safe. Eldon was a criminal and he consorted with criminals. One of them killed her because she found out too much.”

“Do you know this, Mrs. Swain?”

“I know it in my bones. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, remember. For that kind of money anyone would murder anyone else.” Her eyes seemed to be squinting against a bright light. “A man would even murder his own daughter.”

I maneuvered her into the hallway, out of hearing of the living room. “Could your husband still be alive, in your opinion?”

“He could be. Jean thought so. There has to be a reason for everything that’s happened. I’ve heard of men changing their faces with plastic surgery so they could come and go.” Her narrowed gaze swung to my face and stayed on it, as if she was looking for surgical scars that would mark me as Eldon Swain.

And other men, I was thinking, had disappeared and left in their places dead men who resembled them. I said to the woman:

“About fifteen years ago, at the time your husband came back from Mexico, a man was shot dead in Pacific Point. He’s been identified as your husband. But the identification has to be tentative: it’s based on pictures which aren’t the best in the world. One of them is the photograph you gave me last night.”

She looked at me in bewilderment. “Was that only last night?”

“Yes. I know how you feel. You mentioned last night that your daughter had all your best family pictures. You also mentioned some home movies. They could be useful in this investigation.”

“I see.”

“Are they here in this house?”

“Some of them are, anyway. I’ve just been going through them.” She spread her fingers. “It’s how I got the dust on my fingers.”

“May I have a look at the pictures, Mrs. Swain?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Money. Why should I give you anything free?”

“It may be evidence in your daughter’s murder.”

“I don’t care,” she cried. “Those pictures are the only things I have left – all I have to show for my life. Whoever gets them has to pay for them, the way I’ve had to pay for things. And you can go and tell Mr. Truttwell that.”

“How did he get into this?”

“You’re working for Truttwell, aren’t you? I asked my father about him, and he says Truttwell can well afford to pay me!”

“How much are you asking?”

“Let him make a bid,” she said. “Incidentally, I found the gold box you were inquiring about – my mother’s Florentine box.”

“Where was it?”

“That’s none of your business. The point is that I have it and it’s for sale as well.”

“Was it really your mother’s?”

“It certainly was. I’ve found out what happened to it after her death. My father gave it to another woman. He didn’t want to admit it when I asked him about it last night. But I forced it out of him.”

“Was the other woman Estelle Chalmers?”

“You know about his liaison with her, eh? I guess everyone knows. He had his gall giving her Mother’s jewel box. It was supposed to go to Jean, you know.”

“What makes it so important, Mrs. Swain?”

She thought for a moment. “I guess it stands for everything that has happened to my family. Our whole life went to pieces. Other people ended up with our money and our furniture and even our little objects of art.” She added after another thinking moment: “I remember when Jean was just a small child, my mother used to let her play with the box. She told her the story of Pandora’s box – you know? – and Jean and her friends pretended that was what it was. When you lifted the lid you released all the troubles of the world.” The image seemed to frighten her into silence.

“May I see the box and the pictures?”

“No you don’t! This is my last chance to get a little capital together. Without capital you’re nobody, you don’t exist. You’re not going to cheat me out of my last chance.”

She seemed to be full of anger, but it was probably sorrow she was feeling. She’d stepped on a rotten place and fallen through the floor and knew she was trapped in poverty forever. The dream she was defending wasn’t a dream for the future. It was a dreaming memory of the past, when she had lived in San Marino with a successful husband and a forty-foot pool.

I told her I would discuss the matter with Truttwell, and advised her to take good care of the box and the pictures. Then Moira and I said good night to George Trask, and went out to my car.

“Poor people.”

“You were a help.”

“I wish I could have been.” Moira paused. “I know that certain questions are out of bounds. But I’m going to ask one anyway. You don’t have to answer.”

“Go ahead.”

“When you found Nick today, was he in this neighborhood?”

I hesitated, but not for long. She was married to another man, and in a profession with different rules from mine. I gave her a flat no.

“Why?”

“Mr. Trask told me his wife was involved with Nick. He didn’t know Nick’s name, but his description was accurate. Apparently he saw them together in Pacific Point.”

“They spent some time together,” I said shortly.

“Were they lovers?”

“I have no reason to think so. The Trasks and Nick make a very unlikely triangle.”

“I’ve seen unlikelier,” she said.

“Are you trying to tell me Nick may have killed the woman?”

“No, I’m not. If I thought so I wouldn’t be talking about it. Nick has been our patient for fifteen years.”

“Since 1954?”

“Yes.”

“What happened in 1954?”

“Nick became ill,” she said levelly. “I can’t discuss the nature of his illness. I’ve already said too much.”

We were almost back where we started. Not quite. Driving back to the hospital I could feel her leaning close to me, tentatively, lightly.