Vixen

11

Thursday was a hell of a miserable day.

The kind that makes you think, not nearly for the first time in my case, that free will is a load of crap and your life really isn’t your own. That Shakespeare was right and we’re all just players on a vast stage, being secretly moved around and fed lines to speak and actions to take by some unseen director. Or part of an ecumenical puppet show: marionettes controlled by an impossible-to-comprehend webwork of invisible strings and threads and wires. Or, worse, not even flesh and blood human beings but androids programmed and manipulated by impulses from some all-powerful mega-computer operated by an entity or entities beyond our ken. The devout among us call it God’s Plan-the Almighty working in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. But I’m not convinced it’s as simple or benign as that. Or that it’s benign at all.

Such days usually follow a pattern: they start out in ordinary fashion and then grow progressively worse. This one was no exception. I woke up in a pretty good mood; so did Kerry, so did Emily. The three of us had a companionable breakfast, even did a little joking around the way close-knit family units often do. I kissed Kerry and off she went to Bates and Carpenter, kissed Emily and off she went to school. Then I had the place to myself-one of my stay-at-home days, with nothing more demanding to do, or so I thought, than to devote some more time to my pulp collection.

I was involved in that project when Jake Runyon called in a report of his meeting and conversation with Kenneth Beckett, a call that began the day’s shift from commonplace to dark and hellish. Trying to decide, when the phone rang, if I could afford a hundred bucks for a 1932 issue of Dime Detective with an Erle Stanley Gardner novelette, one of only two issues from that year that I didn’t own. The price was not too bad on the current collector’s market and the dealer making the offer was a man I’d bought from before; the sticking point was the magazine’s condition, which he described as “near very good with a piece missing from the spine.” He’d provided color scans in his e-mail, but looking at scans isn’t the same thing as holding a magazine in your hands for a close inspection.

Jake’s report put me in something of a quandary. I didn’t blame him for getting together with the Beckett kid-I’d have done the same if I had been on the receiving end of the plea for help-but what he’d been told about a conspiracy between Cory Beckett and Frank Chaleen created an ethical and moral dilemma. Officially, we had no standing in the matter. No client, no evidence to support the suspicions of an emotionally damaged young man, which for all we knew for certain were nothing more than delusional ravings. Nor could we justify notifying the police. If the allegations of a plot to harm Margaret Vorhees turned out to be unfounded, we’d be wide open for a potentially ruinous lawsuit.

That was the ethical and legal side of it. The moral duty side was something else again. In all good conscience, you couldn’t afford not to alert a potential victim when you had enough familiarity with the other people concerned to make premeditated homicide a very real possibility.

Runyon agreed. He thought he ought to stay on it, maybe have a talk with Mrs. Vorhees and alert her to the potential danger. I didn’t much like the idea-ticklish business, approaching somebody out of the blue with a story like that and not very much to back it up, because it could so easily backfire-but I couldn’t and didn’t reject it, either. What I did was to put Runyon’s suggestion on hold for the time being. He had other work to do, and the final decision was mine and Tamara’s.

I hemmed and hawed with myself for a time. Then, with my mind pretty much made up, I called Tamara. For support, mainly, because I knew what her position would be. As young as she is, and despite a somewhat checkered past, she has a moral outlook similar to mine and Runyon’s.

“Damn right we should do something,” she said. “Sooner the better. I say take what we know to Mrs. Vorhees and see what she says.”

“That was Jake’s suggestion.”

“You agree?”

“Leaning that way.”

“Okay, then. Might even be she’ll hire us to protect her.” Moral, my partner, but ever practical. “Yeah, I know we’re not set up for bodyguard work, but we could make an exception in this case.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll consider it.”

“Think I should be the one to talk to her, woman to woman?”

Tamara has plenty of strong points, but caution and tact are two that she hasn’t quite mastered yet. And when you were dealing with a prominent citizen who was also a vindictive alcoholic, you had to be extra careful. I said, “Better let me handle it.”

“Jake’s the one who talked to Kenny. Maybe he should do it.”

I reminded her that Runyon had an appointment in the East Bay and was already on his way. “I’m old enough to be nonthreatening to most people,” I said. The patriarchal approach might just get through to her, if I worked it right. Besides, it was my case, or it had started out that way anyhow. “I’ll need Margaret Vorhees’ phone numbers, land and cell both.”

Tamara didn’t put up any further argument. She tracked down the numbers for me in short order.

I tried the cell first, but the call went straight to voice mail. I clicked off without leaving a message and rang Margaret Vorhees’ home phone. That call was answered by a woman with a Spanish accent who informed me she was the housekeeper. Yes, Mrs. Vorhees was home, but she was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. The way she said the word “busy,” in a faintly disapproving tone, made me wonder if her employer might be getting an early start on her day’s drinking. Did I wish to leave a message? No, I didn’t. If I left my name and number, chances were I would not get a callback. And I didn’t want to lay out my bona fides except to Mrs. Vorhees herself, in person.

Her home was only a couple of miles from our Diamond Heights condo. I decided I might as well drive over there and see if I could maneuver my way into an audience with the woman.

Like Nob Hill, St. Francis Wood, on the lower western slope of Mount Davidson, is one of the city’s best residential neighborhoods: near-palatial old homes on large lots that you couldn’t afford to buy unless your net worth was counted in the millions. The Vorhees house stood on a tree-shaded street not far from the home once owned by George Moscone, the San Francisco mayor who’d been assassinated along with Supervisor Harvey Milk back in the seventies. Spanish Mission-style place, all stucco and dark wood and terra-cotta tile, tucked back behind tall hedges and a procession of yucca trees. A line of eucalyptus ran along the west side. The overall effect was of a kind of mini-estate that somewhat diminished the stature of its neighbors.

I followed a winding flagstone path that led from the front gate onto a tiled porch. The front door was of heavy dark wood mortised with strips of metal, a bell button set into the tile alongside. A thumb on the button produced musical chimes loud enough to be heard through the stucco walls.

Pretty soon the door opened on a chain and a plump brown face peered out at me-the Latina maid I’d spoken to on the phone. When I asked for Margaret Vorhees, she offered up the same “busy” message and started to close the door. My foot was in the way by then. I passed one of my cards through the opening and said through a grave professional smile, “Please take this to Mrs. Vorhees and tell her it’s urgent I speak with her on a matter involving her stolen necklace.”

The maid looked at me as if she didn’t quite comprehend the message. Or pretended she didn’t. So I repeated it in Spanish. My command of the language is passably good because Spanish is similar to Italian, which had been spoken in my home every day while I was growing up. The use of her native tongue did the trick. She nodded and said, “Espere por favor aqui,” in a more respectful tone, and on that obliging note I removed my foot and let her close the door.

The wait was maybe five minutes. A couple of cars drifted by on the street, the wind made rattling noises in the eucalyptus; otherwise the neighborhood seemed wrapped in stillness. Money can buy peace and quiet as well as luxury and privacy. Sometimes.

When the maid returned, the chain rattled and the door opened all the way to let me in. I followed her along a dark, terra-cotta hallway into an equally dark living room, where she asked me again in Spanish to please wait and then left me alone.

Thick patterned drapes were drawn over the windows; the only light came from a floor lamp set between a couple of heavy wood-framed couches set at right angles to each other. Against one wall was a massive, ornately carved sideboard on which an array of liquor bottles and crystal glasses gleamed on silver trays. The rest of the furniture was the same heavy, baroque Spanish style. No television set or other modern touches, just the collection of expensive antiques arranged on a dark-patterned carpet.

The only real color in the room was on the walls-half a dozen paintings, a rough-woven, blanket-like affair like an oversized serape-and what there was of it was in muted hues. The overall effect was one of oppressive gloom. Spend much time in here and you’d start to feel claustrophobic, maybe even a touch suicidal. If this was where Margaret Vorhees did most of her home-front drinking, as the booze on the sideboard indicated, then she must be a pretty depressed individual.

I was looking at one of the paintings, a court scene signed by Diego Velázquez that was probably a copy, or then again maybe not, when a swishing sound turned me around. She came sweeping in from the hallway, like a diva making an entrance-a diva who might have been in mourning, given the fact that she was wearing a loose black pantsuit that matched her coiled black hair. The only color on her was too much bright red lipstick, less than artfully applied, that made her mouth look like a bloody smear.

At a distance she had a slender, regal bearing, and a kind of pale, patrician beauty, but as she advanced toward me I could see the signs of dissipation. She was on the near side of forty, but already the skin on her high cheek-boned face had lost its firmness and you could see the beginnings of puffy folds under her chin. The regal bearing was an illusion, too; her movements were the stiff, careful ones of the practiced drunk intent on simulating sobriety. The too-red mouth had a kind of crooked laxity and it wasn’t smiling.

She stopped about three feet from where I stood. Her arms were down at her sides and she kept them there: no offer of a handshake. She looked me up and down for maybe fifteen seconds. Nothing changed in her expression, and it was too dark in there to read her eyes, but I had the impression she didn’t much like what she saw. The first words she spoke confirmed it.

“Private detective,” she said, the way you’d identify a large bug. Cold voice, careful enunciation without a trace of slur. “Who sent you?”

“No one sent me, Mrs. Vorhees.”

“I suppose it was Cory Beckett,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “That’s whom you’re working for, isn’t it?”

“Not any longer. I was retained by Ms. Beckett and her brother’s bail bondsman-”

“To do what? Help keep her brother from going to jail for stealing my necklace?”

“In a way, yes.”

“What way?”

“That’s privileged information.”

“Privileged,” she said, making it sound like a dirty word. Then she said, “That poor young fool. He didn’t steal the necklace, she did. She’s the one who should be facing a prison sentence.”

“If you know that for a fact,” I said, “then why are you pressing the charge against him? Why not just drop it?”

Fleeting smile, small and mean. “She’s the one who hid the necklace in his van, to save herself. And I intend to see that she pays for it, one way or another.”

“Why do you hate her so much?”

“That’s none of your business. You just go and tell her what I said.”

“There wouldn’t be any point in it. As I told you, Cory Beckett is no longer my client.”

“Then what are you doing here, bothering me?”

I took a breath before I said, “Candidly, Mrs. Vorhees, it’s because of an apparently legitimate concern for your welfare.”

“My welfare?” Long, dark stare. “Are you threatening me?”

“Of course not. Exactly the opposite.”

“The opposite of what? You’re not making sense.”

“Look, this isn’t easy for me. I’m trying to explain the best way I know how. My associates and I have uncovered certain credible information that leads us to believe your life may be in danger. We felt it our duty to make you aware of the threat.”

“… That’s a ridiculous statement.”

“No, ma’am. It isn’t.”

“For God’s sake! What information?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s hearsay and we have no proof as yet to back it up.”

“So you expect me to believe my life is in danger just because you say so? I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you.”

“I’ve been a detective for thirty years and my agency is considered one of the most reputable in the city. If you’d like a list of references-”

“Jesus,” she said.

Then, abruptly, she stepped around me and went straight to the sideboard. Glass clinked against glass, no small amount of liquid gurgled. Whatever it was she poured, she tossed it off in a single flip of her wrist and backward toss of her head. She refilled the glass before she turned to face me again-right up to the brim.

“In danger from whom?” she said, as if there had been no interruption in the conversation. “Not my husband, surely. He doesn’t have the balls.”

“I’m not in a position to tell you that.”

“The Beckett whore, if I don’t drop the charge against her brother?”

“I’m sorry-same answer.”

“Damn you. You stand there claiming somebody wants me dead, but you won’t say who or why.”

I could feel my face heating up. This was going badly. I should have known it would; I should have stayed the hell away. “Legally and ethically, I can’t make unsubstantiated accusations against anyone. All I can do-”

“Do you want money? Is that it?”

“No. All I can do is make you aware of the potential danger-”

“How much, goddamn you?”

“This isn’t about money, Mrs. Vorhees. I’m just trying-”

“Oh, yes, sure. Just trying to be a good Samaritan. Well, that’s a crock of you-know-what.”

There was nothing I could say to that.

She knocked back half of her second drink, then came toward me again. Her face was splotchy now, the lipstick smeared; even in the pale lamplight I could see the anger like pinpoints of firelight in her eyes.

“Who?” she said in low, strained tones. “Who wants me dead?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t give you any names.”

“Names, plural. More than one person?”

I didn’t say anything.

“The Beckett whore and who else? Her brother?”

“No.”

“Damn you, then who?”

I could not just keep on standing there like a dummy. The urge to get the hell out was strong, but I’m not the kind of man who runs away from a difficult situation. All I could think was: She has a right to know, dammit. Give her something, let her figure it out for herself. But I knew I was making a mistake before all the words were out of my mouth.

“I’ll say this much. When we were employed by Cory Beckett, there was a situation in which she brought along a friend to help her. A close friend, evidently, given the circumstances. His name is Frank Chaleen.”

It rocked her. Her hand jerked enough to slop a little of the remaining whiskey over the rim of her glass.

“Frank? Frank and that slut? I don’t believe it.”

“The operative who was present can confirm it if you like.”

“He’s having an affair with her, too? She wants me dead and he’s colluding with her? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I’ve told you all I can, as much as I know to be fact.”

“Meaning draw my own conclusions? Well, I won’t draw them-I don’t believe it.” She looked half wild now, her face twisted out of shape. “You’re a goddamn liar.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not-”

“Liar! Liar!”

And all in one motion, with no warning, she threw the glass at me.

I was half-turning away from her and I didn’t see it coming in time to dodge. The heavy crystal bottom edge slammed into my forehead, just above the bridge of my nose, with enough force to jerk loose a yelp of pain and knock me cockeyed. I staggered backward, banged into an end table and sent an unlighted lamp crashing to the floor. I went down after it, hard on my side on the rough-weave carpet. My vision was still out of whack; I swiped a hand across my forehead, felt an open stinging gash and the stickiness of blood mixed with whiskey. The liquor stench made my gorge rise.

Dimly I heard the maid come running into the room, calling out querulously in Spanish. Margaret Vorhees told her to shut up, go get some towels, look at all that damn blood. The maid hesitated, said something about first aid; there was a brief argument, the words all jumbled together through a sharp buzzing in my ears. I twitched around on the floor, still trying to swipe my vision clear so that I could see. More sounds flowed around me, but no more voices, and when the room finally swam back into focus I saw that I was alone.

I shoved up onto my knees. My right hand was smeared with diluted blood; little streams of it spilling down around my nose kept trying to screw up my vision again. I caught hold of the table and hauled myself upright, but I had to keep leaning on it for support, woozy and wobbly, aware now of a blistering, throbbing pain across my forehead into both temples.

I was still standing there, trying to pull myself together, when the maid hurried back into the room. She made concerned noises at me in both English and Spanish, only some of which penetrated-asking if I was all right, if I needed a doctor. I managed to say yes and then no, and let her take my arm and guide me to one of the couches and sit me down. She’d brought a first-aid kit and an armload of wet towels; gently, she sopped up most of the blood around the wound and on the rest of my face, said something that sounded like “not too bad,” and then went to work with an antiseptic that stung like hell and some gauze and adhesive tape.

By the time she was done, the dizziness and disorientation were gone and I was all right except for the headache. Margaret Vorhees hadn’t put in an appearance, and wouldn’t, but not because she was contrite or ashamed. She just didn’t want anything more to do with me, with or without the blood. There was nothing I could do about the glass-throwing incident and she knew it. It was her house, I hadn’t been invited, and I’d upset her with vague and unsubstantiated claims. The hell with me.

Yeah, and the hell with her, too.

I felt like the damn fool I was for coming here.

Pretty soon I tried standing up, and that was all right; then I tried walking a little and that was all right, too. The maid was down on her knees now, scrubbing at the spatters of blood and whiskey on the carpet-orders from Mrs. Vorhees, no doubt. She gave me a sad, sympathetic look underlain with something that might have been bitterness or exasperation, or maybe both. I thanked her in Spanish, and she said, “De nada, por favor.” She would have dutifully gotten up to show me out if I hadn’t made a stay-put gesture and told her I could find my own way.

Outside in the car, I peered at myself at the rearview mirror. Christ. The area around the bandaged wound was puffy and already starting to discolor. The maid had gotten most of the fluids off my face, but there were still spots and streaks here and there. On my shirt, tie, and jacket, too. It looked as though I’d been in a fight and gotten the worst of it. Hell of a time explaining this to Kerry, I thought, after my promise to keep myself out of harm’s way.

But that concern became irrelevant in the next minute or so. It didn’t matter what had just happened to me; it was simply no longer important.

I keep my cell phone turned off when I’m in somebody’s home or office; I sat there a little longer to make sure I was okay to drive before it occurred to me to check for messages. There was one on my voice mail, from Kerry. A message that slammed me harder and did more damage than Margaret Vorhees’ crystal tumbler; that really ripped the day apart, turned it dark and bleak and far more painful.

“The on-duty doctor at Redwood Village just called,” she said. Very calm, very controlled, as if she were holding herself in rigid check. “Cybil had a massive stroke this morning. She died before they could move her from the clinic to the hospital.”