The Listening Walls

16.

Along the ocean front waves angered by the wind were flinging themselves against the shore. Spray rose twenty feet in the air and swept across the highway like rain, leaving the surface sleek and treacherous. Dodd kept the speedometer at thirty, but the thundering of the sea and the great gusts of wind that shook and rattled the car gave him a sensation of speed and danger. The road, which he’d traveled a hundred times, seemed unfamiliar in the noisy darkness; it took turns he couldn’t remember, past places he’d never seen. Just south of the zoo, the road curved inland to meet Skyline Boulevard.

The Sidalia Kennel was built on a bare, brown knoll about half a mile beyond the city limits. It looked new and clean, a brightly lit, two-story Colonial structure with an expanse of galvanized iron fencing on each side, and a small neon sign at the entrance to the driveway: pet hospital. A second sign below elaborated on the first: treatment and boarding. small animals only.

As Dodd got out of the car an Airedale began pacing up and down its runway in restless curiosity. A jet shrieked across the sky and the Airedale raised his head to howl a complaint.

“It’s no use, old boy,” Dodd said. “That’s progress.”

The howling had roused the other dogs. Before Dodd even reached the front door every runway had come alive with noise and movement: wagging tails, bared teeth, sounds of welcome and sounds of warning.

As Dodd reached out to press the buzzer the door opened to reveal a short, stout, white-haired man who looked a little like a beardless Santa Claus. He wore a smile and a white coat, both of them fresh and tidy.

“I’m Dr. Sidalia. Come in, come in. Where’s the patient? Not an automobile accident, I hope? Those I dread. So sad, so unnecessary.” He shouted over Dodd’s shoulder. “All of you fellows out there, be quiet, do you hear me? They’re good chaps,” he explained to Dodd, “just a bit excitable. Now what can I do for you?”

“My name’s Dodd. I’m a private detective.”

“Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? Wait till I summon my wife. She’s a great mystery fan. She’s always wanted to meet a real private detective.”

“I’d rather you di—”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all. We have our living quarters on the second floor. It’s noisy but more convenient. You wouldn’t believe the number of night emergencies I must cope with, more than any obstetrician, I’m sure. When we lived in the city I no sooner arrived home for dinner than out I would have to rush again to treat some little chap in trouble.”

“The chap I came here about,” Dodd said dryly, “is a Scottie.”

“A fine breed. Loyal, courageous, indepen—”

“His name’s Mack. He belongs to Rupert Kellogg. I talked to one of your employees about the dog earlier in the day. He said Mack was ready to be taken home.”

“He was taken home,” the doctor said with a pleased smile. “Oh, it was a joyful reunion, for both man and beast. Scotties are true Scots. They don’t spend freely, they don’t squander their affections on just anyone, no indeed. Fine chaps, Scotties.”

“Kellogg picked the dog up himself?”

“Of course.”

“When?”

“I should say between three and four o’clock. I was treating a Yorkie at the time. The poor lass has distemper, I don’t think she will live. Still, we keep trying, and hoping, and, if you want the truth, praying a bit too. My wife takes care of that end of it. She’s a godly woman.”

“Was Kellogg alone?”

“He came in here alone. His wife waited for him out in the car.”

“His wife’s supposed to be in New York.”

“Really? Now that’s odd, isn’t it? I met Mrs. Kellogg a couple of years ago when I gave Mack a rabies shot. A pretty little woman, quiet but friendly.”

“And you say that the woman in the car was Mrs. Kellogg?”

“Now that you’ve cast some doubt on it, I can’t be sure. I assumed it was Mrs. Kellogg because she was with Mr. Kellogg. Why, I even waved to her... Wait a minute. Come to think of it, she didn’t wave back. There’s another thing I noticed too... Mack didn’t seem too anxious to get into the car. Usually, when I’ve had a dog here for a while, he’s very eager to jump into the family car and go home.”

“I have good reason to believe that Kellogg wasn’t driving the family car and wasn’t traveling with his own wife.”

“Dear me,” Dr. Sidalia said, looking uncomfortable. “He certainly doesn’t give the impression of being that kind of man at all. He’s very fond of animals.”

“So was Dr. Crippen.”

“The English murderer?”

Dodd nodded. “In fact, it was Crippen’s attachment to a dog that led to his capture.”

“I didn’t know that. I wonder what happened to the dog after Crippen was hanged?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I hope a good home was found for him, poor chap. It can be quite a blow to a dog, losing his master.” Sidalia spoke as if the Crippen case was recent, the dog still alive, although he must have known that everyone connected with Crippen had long since died. “Why did you bring up the subject of Crippen in connection with Mr. Kellogg?”

“Kellogg’s in the same kind of trouble.”

“You don’t mean he — murdered somebody?”

“It looks that way.”

“Dear me. This is quite a shock. I must sit down.”

Sidalia lowered himself into a plastic-covered chair and began fanning his face with his hand.

“The police will be here to question you,” Dodd said. “Probably in an hour or two. They’ll want to know about the woman and about the car.”

“I never notice cars. People and animals, yes. But cars, I pay no attention to them. All I can remember is that it was dirty. I notice dirt, I’m a very meticulous man.”

“Was the car new?”

“Neither new nor old. Average-looking.”

“Color?”

“Greenish.”

“Coupé Convertible? Sedan?”

“I can’t recall.”

“You said that the dog didn’t seem anxious to enter the car. That means you stood and watched. How did the dog get into the car?”

“Kellogg opened the door, naturally.”

“Which door?”

“The rear.”

“That would make the car a four-door sedan, wouldn’t it?”

“Why yes,” Sidalia said, looking pleasantly surprised. “Yes, I believe it would.”

“How did the woman react to the dog? Did she make a fuss over him? Did she reach back and pet him?”

“No. I don’t think she did anything.”

“Assuming that the woman was Mrs. Kellogg, would you call that normal behavior under the circumstances?”

“Dear me, no! When one of my little patients is released, there’s always a good deal of excitement on the part of the family. It’s one of the joys of my life, to witness these reunions.”

“How was the woman dressed?”

“I only saw her head. She wore a bright red scarf tied under her chin.”

“What color was her hair?”

“I can’t recall that any of it was showing. She was very tanned, I know that. I remember wondering how Mrs. Kellogg could have managed a tan like that with all the fog we’ve had this summer. Of course, we’re fairly sure now that the woman wasn’t Mrs. Kellogg, so perhaps she was not tanned at all but had a naturally dark skin. These days it’s hard to tell the difference, the way women bake themselves like potatoes.”

Dodd thought, a tanned or dark-skinned woman, a greenish sedan, a black dog; that’s not much to go on. “When Kellogg left, in what direction did he turn?”

“I have no idea. I went back inside as soon as he started the car. As I told you, I had a patient on the table at the time, the little Yorkie with distemper. A cruel disease, distemper, inflicted on the poor beasts usually by the carelessness of their masters. Would you care for a pamphlet on the subject of distemper immunization?”

“I don’t own a dog.”

“Cats also can become victims.”

“I don’t own a cat, either.”

“Dear me, you must be a lonely man,” Sidalia said with sympathy.

“I get along.”

“As a matter of interest, I have two little chaps in here right now who are looking for a good home, a beautiful pair of pedigreed cocker spaniels, brothers.”

“I’m afraid I...”

“You have a kind face, Mr. Dodd. I noticed, as soon as I opened the door, that you have a very kind face. I’ll wager you have a way with animals.”

“I live in an apartment,” Dodd lied. “My landlord won’t allow dogs.”

“He must be an unfeeling man. I’d move out of there immediately if I were you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Mark my words, a man prejudiced against animals is a man not to be trusted.”

Dodd opened the door. “Thanks for the advice. And the information.”

“Must you go so soon? My wife will be very disappointed at missing the chance to meet a real private detective. I’ll buzz her, it won’t take a minute.”

“Some other time.”

“Duty calls, I presume. Well, I hope I’ve been of some assistance. Not that I would like to get Mr. Kellogg in any trouble, he’s a fine, dog-loving man.”

“Whatever trouble he’s in, he got there himself.”

“Such is the way of the world,” Sidalia said with more pity than censure. “Good-bye for now, then. And don’t forget, when you move to a new place, there’s no better company in the world than a pair of cocker spaniels.”

“I won’t forget.”

Dodd realized as he got into his car that if he’d spent ten more minutes with Sidalia the back seat would now contain two cocker spaniels, and a lot of trouble. And a lot of fun. I wonder what Doris would say if I... No, that’s crazy. One dog, maybe. But two, she’d think I’d lost my marbles. Still, not everybody is offered a pair of beautiful pedigreed cocker spaniels. By God, I bet they’re cute...

The doctor was standing on the lighted porch, waving good-bye. Dodd pressed down hard on the accelerator and the little car jumped across the driveway as if all of Sidalia’s chaps were biting at its heels.

He took Portola Drive back to the city. He wasn’t in any hurry. An hour ago he’d been overoptimistic about finding out what car Kellogg was driving, the make, the year, even the license plates; he had imagined himself following Kellogg, reaching him before the police did, breaking the case before they even knew there was a case.

“Dodd, boy dreamer,” he said aloud. “Me and my kind face.”

He was aware that the police would be waiting for him at Kellogg’s house and taking a dim view of his absence, but a few more minutes wouldn’t make much difference. The telephone call he intended to make had to be made in private, without Brandon or any policemen listening in.

He parked the car in front of the building where his office was located, and took the elevator up to the third floor. Lorraine, his secretary, had left a message for him in her typewriter, as she usually did when something important came up during his absence: “Spec. Del. letter from Fowler on your desk.” To make sure he didn’t miss the letter she had propped it between two ash trays, as if she mistrusted either his eyesight or his ability to find anything.

Happy hunting. Dodd repeated the words grimly, remembering the dead man on the kitchen floor. There were many mistakes in Fowler’s letter: all the tenses were wrong. The hunt was over.

He picked up the phone and called a number in Atherton.

A woman answered on the second ring. “This is the Brandon residence.”

“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Brandon, please.”

“Mrs. Brandon has retired for the night.”

“It’s very important.”

“She’s got a headache. I have orders not to dis—”

“Is that Miss Lundquist?”

“Why yes.”

Dodd oiled up his voice. “I’m a friend of Mr. Brandon’s. He’s often spoken of you, Miss Lundquist.”

“He has? Well, my goodness.”

“My name is Dodd. I must talk to Mrs. Brandon. Tell her that, will you?”

“I guess, being as it’s so important, she won’t mind. Hold on.”

Dodd held on, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear while he lit a cigarette. He could hear nothing from the other end, no whispers or sounds of movement. He thought the line was dead. Minutes passed, and he was on the point of hanging up when Helene Brandon spoke suddenly and sharply in his ear: “Hello, who is this?”

“Elmer Dodd.”

“We’re not acquainted.”

“We are, in a sense, Mrs. Brandon. We had a telephone conversation a couple of hours ago.”

“Is this your idea of a joke? I’ve never talked to you on the telephone or any other way.”

“I was at Kellogg’s house when you called. Kellogg wasn’t.”

After a brief pause, she said in a low, muffled voice, “Is my husband with you?”

“No.”

“Does he know — about my call?”

“I haven’t told him. But he’s going to find out. So is everybody else in Northern California when this hits the newspapers.”

“The newspapers? Why should the newspapers be interested in a private conversation between me and my brother-in-law, or what I thought was my brother-in-law? And why should you want to tell them?”

“I don’t want to,” Dodd said. “I have to. I’ve got a license to hang on to. I can’t withhold evidence.”

“Evidence? Of what?”

“Brandon hasn’t been in touch with you?”

“No. He’s not home yet. I’m beginning to worry. He’s never this late, I don’t know where he can be.”

“He’s still at Kellogg’s house.”

“You shouldn’t have left him alone with Rupert,” she said shrilly. “God knows what will happen.”

“Kellogg isn’t there. He’s skipped town, with the police on his tail.”

“Police? Why? Have they found — Amy?”

“Not Amy. A man, a stranger. He was murdered in Kellogg’s house with a kitchen knife, sometime this afternoon.”

“Oh, my God! Rupert — Rupert...”

“I think Kellogg meant to get rid of the body. He started to clean up the mess but there was too much of it. He decided to leave town instead. So he picked up his dog, and his girlfriend, and left.”

“What girlfriend?”

“The one he lied to you about. You saw her in Lassiter’s at noon.” Dodd paused. “What happened, Mrs. Brandon? Did you walk in unexpectedly and louse up the rendezvous?”

She didn’t answer immediately. He thought she might be crying, but when she spoke again her voice was clear and crisp, with no evidence of tears. “She came in while I was talking to Rupert at the lunch counter. She was heading straight for him until he turned and stared at her. I’m not a mind reader, but I know there was a message in that look of his. Anyway, she bought a package of cigarettes and left. When I asked Rupert about her, he said he’d never seen her before. I had a feeling then, that he was lying. I still have. But it’s only a feeling, there’s no evidence to back it up.”

“There might be. What did the girl look like? And how much of a girl was she, and how much of a woman?”

“Early twenties. Blond, quite pretty, a bit overweight. She looked ill at ease and uncomfortable, as if her clothes were too new and too tight. I thought at the time she was a girl from the country, used to doing a lot of outside work. The tan she had wasn’t the kind we get around these parts. It was more like the kind you see on the migrant workers who pick fruit and cotton on the ranches in the Valley.”

“A lot of the migrants are Mexican,” Dodd said.

“A lot are white too. They both end up with the same color skin.”

“You said her hair was blond?”

“Bleached.”

“By the sun or the bottle?”

“Even in the Valley the sun doesn’t get that strong.”

“Have you any reason to believe the girl came from the Valley?”

“Her feet. They were very wide and flat, as if she was used to going barefoot.”

He didn’t argue the point, but he knew that very few of the Valley pickers went barefoot if they could afford shoes. Under the noon sun the ground grew hot as a kiln.

“I saw her again later,” Helene said. “She walked through Union Square with a man about ten years older than she was. I thought he might be her brother. He had the same coloring, and they had the same general air about them, as if they were ill at ease in the city and didn’t belong there. I’m pretty sure they were arguing about something, though I didn’t overhear any actual words.”

“The man was wearing a plaid sport jacket?”

“Why — why yes. How did you know?”

“I saw him.”

“Were you in the Square too?”

“No. I saw him later.” The rest of a lifetime later.

“Who is — was he?”

“An acquaintance of your sister-in-law, I think.”

“You make that word ‘acquaintance’ sound dirty.”

“Do I? Well, let’s face it, Mrs. Brandon — when I dress for a job like this I don’t put on clean, white gloves.”

“You mean Amy and this man were...”

“Acquainted.”

“It still sounds dirty.”

“Maybe you’re just hearing it dirty,” Dodd said. “Amy and O’Donnell met in the bar of a Mexico City hotel. Amy’s gone, O’Donnell’s dead. Now you know as much about it as I do. For further information consult your local newspaper.”

“The papers. Oh God. This will be in all the papers. Gill will...”

Dodd didn’t want to be told what Gill would. He’d seen and heard enough of the man. He said brusquely, “Mrs. Brandon, when you met Kellogg at Lassiter’s at noon, did he mention his wife?”

“Yes. He said Amy would be coming back soon. By Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

“That’s not very soon.”

“Isn’t it? I guess that depends on your viewpoint.” She paused, as if she was trying to decide whether to tell him how she really felt about Amy. Then she said, “Do you think she’s coming back?”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Dodd said, “if she ever went away.”

A kitchen knife wasn’t generally the kind of weapon used in a planned or premeditated murder. It was a weapon of emergency, seized upon suddenly in a moment of fury or fear. Fists were a man’s customary instruments of quick attack and defense. A woman’s were whatever happened to occur to her or to be handy. The knife may have been lying on the kitchen counter, ready to be picked up.

There were only five women involved in the case. One of them, Wilma Wyatt, was dead. The others were living, or presumed living: Miss Burton, Helene Brandon, the young woman with the bleached hair, and Amy herself. Of these four, only the young woman and Amy were definitely known to be acquainted with O’Donnell. But it was possible that Miss Burton had met him through Kellogg, and that even Helene Brandon, for all her protestations of innocence and ignorance, had known the dead man. Known him, and had reason to fear him. In that case, Helene’s blundering phone call to Kellogg’s house might not have been a blunder at all, but part of a plan with a triple purpose: to try and establish her own innocence, and to find out if the body had been discovered and identified, and to make sure that the girl with the bleached hair was brought into the case. Bringing in the girl would direct attention away from herself and her own still-obscure part in the affair.

But what possible connection, he wondered, could Helene Brandon have had with O’Donnell? And if there had been any connection, would she have freely admitted seeing O’Donnell in the Square?

No, he thought, it doesn’t make sense. The woman at the bottom of this is not Helene, it’s Amy. It all comes back to Amy — where did she go and why did she leave?

A wild idea rose to the surface of his consciousness like some improbable sea monster. Suppose Amy hadn’t left at all, suppose she’d been living in that house all the time, under cover, for reasons no one yet knew. Incredible as the theory seemed, it would account for a number of things: the dismissal of the maid, Gerda Lundquist; the removal of the little dog, Mack, who might have given Amy’s presence away; the letters, which had certainly been written by Amy, but not necessarily from a distance, perhaps right in her own bedroom.

Doors began opening in his mind, revealing rooms that were peopled with shadows and voiced with echoes. None of the shadows could be positively identified, and the echoes were like the nonsense syllables produced by a tape recording running backward. But in one corner of one room, a faceless woman sat at a desk, writing.

The telephone conversation with Helene Brandon continued.

“Mr. Dodd? Are you still...?”

“I’m here.”

“Listen to me. Please listen. There’s nothing to be gained by dragging me into this.”

“You have important evidence.”

“But I gave it to you. You have it now. That’s what counts, isn’t it — the evidence itself, not who tells it to the police. Can’t you keep me out of it? I’ll pay.”

“If I keep you out of it, I’ll be the one who ends up paying.”

“There must be ways.”

“Name one.”

She was silent a moment. He could hear her heavy, irregular breathing, as if thinking was to her a violent physical exercise.

“You,” she said finally, “you could have been the one who saw Rupert and the girl at Lassiter’s, at lunch time.”

“Maybe I could, except I ate my lunch out of a paper bag in my office.”

“Alone?”

“A couple of flies joined me for dessert.”

“Please, for heaven’s sake, be serious. You don’t know what this means to me and my family. My three children are all in school. They’re old enough to suffer from this, suffer terribly.”

“You can’t prevent their suffering. Their uncle is wanted for murder.”

“At least he’s not a blood relative. I am. I’m their mother. If I’m dragged into this, God help them.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Dodd said flatly. “So I saw Rupert and the girl at Lassiter’s. What was I doing there?”

“Having lunch.”

“My secretary knows damned well I took my lunch to work.”

“All right then, you were trailing Rupert — or is it tailing?”

“Either.”

“When the girl came into the picture you decided to tail her instead, so you did. She went to Union Square where she met...”

“How did she get to Union Square?”

“Took the Powell Street cable car.”

“Do you know that or are you making it up?”

“Making it up. But it sounds plausible, isn’t that what we’re aiming at? Besides, she entered the Square from Powell Street.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know, I sort of lost track of time. I was — thinking about Amy coming home. And other things.” She coughed, as if to warn herself not to step on dangerous ground. “I remember it started to rain, and the old men who were feeding the pigeons got up and left.”

“It started to rain about three o’clock.” He wouldn’t have noticed the time or the rain particularly, except that his secretary had come into his office to tell him in her own peculiar way, that she was going down to the drugstore to buy a bottle of cold pills. “Some people believe that rain cleanses and washes the air. But I happen to know for a fact that what it does is bring down all the viruses and bacteria from outer space, also Strontium 90. I suppose you don’t care about Strontium 90, but when your bones begin to decay inside you...”

“Three o’clock,” Helene said. “Yes, it must have been about that.”

“Where did she meet her friend in the plaid sport jacket?”

“I have no idea. It was simply a coincidence that I saw her again. I wasn’t following her or looking for her or anything. She just appeared.”

“O.K., that’s how I’ll have to play it, as a coincidence. The police don’t like coincidences, though.”

“Coincidences like that happen here all the time. In L.A. you can go downtown every day for a month and never meet a soul you’ve ever seen before. But here, the downtown’s so small I invariably meet someone I know when I go shopping or out to lunch. It’s sort of like a village in that respect.”

“The natives would get restless if they heard you say that.”

“It’s true, though. It’s one of the things I love about the city.”

“All right,” Dodd said. “So it was a small coincidence. I wasn’t tailing the girl, she just appeared.”

“Mr. Dodd, you’re going to help me? You’re really going to help me?”

“Not you. The kids.” He wanted to, but didn’t, tell her why. When he was a junior in high school, his father had been arrested on a drunk charge. It wasn’t much, but it made the newspapers. He’d left school and never gone back. “Your job now, Mrs. Brandon, is to be discreet. If the police question you, answer them. But don’t volunteer any information.”

“What if they find Rupert and he tells them the truth, that I was the one who saw him at Lassister’s with the girl?”

“Rupert,” Dodd said, “will have a lot of other talking to do before he gets around to that.”