Troublemaker Read online

  Troublemaker

  A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

  Joseph Hansen

  This one is for Ken Thomson

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Preview: The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of

  1

  SHE WORE JEANS, HIGH-TOP work shoes, an old pullover with a jagged reindeer pattern. Somebody’s ski sweater once, somebody even bigger than she was. Her son? She was sixty but there was nothing frail about her. The hands gripping the grainy rake handle were a man’s hands. Her cropped hair was white. She wore no makeup. Her skin was ruddy, her eyes bright blue. Hearty might have described her. Except for her mouth. It sulked. Something had offended her and failed to apologize. Not lately—long ago. Life, probably.

  He said, “Mrs. Wendell?” and held out a card. She took it, read it. It named the insurance company he worked for, Medallion Life. His own name, David Brandstetter, was in a corner, DEATH CLAIMS DIVISION under it. He didn’t try to say it. His throat was dry. The morning was hot. It had been a hike from Pinyon Trail up crooked steps in a steep, pine-grown slope—rusty needles slippery underfoot—to the rambling redwood house where no one answered the bell, then out back here to this one-time garage.

  It was a kind of stable now. Beside it, in pine-branch-splintered sunlight, a sorrel gelding no longer young nosed a heap of alfalfa back of an unpainted paddock fence. A cleated board ramp fronted the garage doors, canted to reach a wood floor laid on studs over the original cement. Inside, Heather Wendell raked manure and trampled straw out of a stall. In farther stalls, shadowy horses breathed and shifted hoofs on hollow planks. The big woman pushed the card into a pocket, turned away, went on with her work.

  “Murders,” she said, “inquests, grief. They don’t mean anything to horses.” It was a man’s voice. Not pleased. “What is it you want?”

  “Your son, Richard, had a policy with us.”

  “At my insistence.” She jerked a nod, grim but self-satisfied. “He’d never have thought of it. It wasn’t that he was selfish. He simply had no imagination. It never entered his head that he could die. I’d be destitute today. Well, I’ve had that, thank you. From my father. I wasn’t going through it again. Not at my time of life.” Her thick elbow nudged Dave. “Excuse me.” She raked the pile past his feet, paused, blinked at him. “You’ve brought the check—is that it?”

  “Wrong department.” Dave smiled apology. “My department asks questions.”

  She grunted and began raking again, out into the light. She traded the rake for a stump of broom and pushed the waste off the ramp to the side. “There were a dozen police officers, in and out of uniform. That night, the next day. At least half of them asked questions. The same questions. Over and over again.”

  She leaned the broom beside the rake against a stud-and-board wall. Above sawhorses that held saddles, a tangle of tack trailed from rusty spikes. She took down a bridle and carried it to the stall beyond the one she’d cleaned. A bit clinked against teeth, a buckle tongue snapped. She led out a little paint mare who threw her head and blew when she saw Dave.

  “Step back in there a minute, would you? Men make Buffy nervous. Thank you.”

  She held the sidling Buffy by a cheek strap and shouldered her out the door. Rusty hinges creaked on the paddock gate. It closed with a wooden clatter. She came back in and took the rake to Buffy’s stall.

  “I assume one of those officers was bright enough to write. That Japanese one, surely. Or don’t the police let insurance companies see their reports?”

  “Lieutenant Yoshiba,” Dave said. “I saw the report.”

  “Good. Then there’s no need to waste your morning. Nor mine. These horses haven’t been groomed or exercised in days. That’s not right. And I’m pressed for time. The funeral’s this afternoon.”

  “You’d gone to a film that night,” Dave said. “In Los Santos. Left here a little after seven. The film screened at eight and ran three hours but you were back here before ten and it’s a forty-minute drive. What happened?”

  “I walked out. The movie was disgusting. They’re all like that now—cruel, bloody, degenerate. I tried to make myself stay, it cost so much to get in. And Rick keeps telling me I’m letting myself get old, stuck away up here, that I ought to get out in civilization once in a while.” The rake clunked at the back of the dark stall. She snorted. “Civilization! Do you know what they do to horses in those pictures? The S.P.C.A. here in the States won’t let them use trip wires—you know, to make them stumble and fall. But they go out of the country now to film, and they don’t care. They break their legs, their necks, kill them. To make a cheap, sordid movie. Don’t talk to me about civilization.”

  “I won’t,” Dave said. “You got home around ten?”

  “Parked the car where I always do. Down below, by the mailbox. You can see we don’t use the garage for cars anymore.” The rake quit a moment while she jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “When we did, we drove down from the trail above—same trail but it climbs and bends back on itself. Only take horses up and down the driveway now. Hardly a patch of blacktop left on it. Anyway, the climb up the steps is good exercise. My father always said, ‘Walking is for horses,’ and he died at forty-nine.”

  “Right,” Dave said. “You heard a shot?”

  “When I was partway up the stairs. Didn’t know what it was. Sounded like a backfire from down on the main road. These hills echo so. And my mind wasn’t on it. I was furious about that movie.” Now she backed past Dave again, dragging the litter from Buffy’s stall with the rake. “I set some milk in a pan on the stove to heat. To calm me down, let me sleep. I thought I’d change for bed while it warmed up and I started for my room. And I saw across the way there was a light in Rick’s den. That wasn’t right—he was at work. Then I remembered his VW was down by the mailbox when I’d parked. Shows you how that movie upset me. Normally he doesn’t get home till three.” She added without pride, “It’s a bar he owns, you know. With Ace Kegan.”

  “The Hang Ten,” Dave said. “A gay bar. On Ocean Front Walk in Surf.”

  “Yes.” She eyed him thoughtfully for a second, then went on scraping the stall muck toward the sunlit doorway. “Well, I was afraid Rick must be ill. I thought I’d better step across and check. It’s a separate unit, you understand. It was a guesthouse originally—two bedrooms and bath. Rick remodeled one room so as to have a place where he could relax, listen to music, watch TV and not disturb me. Our hours are different. Were. The door was open. And there was this boy, this creature—what’s his name?—Johns. Standing at the desk, stark naked, tissues in his hand, wiping off a revolver. While my son lay dead at his feet.”

  “Also stark naked,” Dave said.

  “No.” She stopped in the doorway, a bulky silhouette, and raised her head. Against the light, he couldn’t read her expression. But her voice changed. It belonged to an old woman now. “There was a great, gaping hole in his chest. I remember that. Was he naked? Yes.” Her shoulders sagged. “I suppose he was.”

  “Can I see that room?” Dave asked.

  “The police took photographs.” The rake handle knocked the wall. She broomed the dirty straw. Angry now. Probably at herself for showing human weakness. “They left the fireplace littered with those ugly little burned-out bulbs.”

  “I’ve seen the photographs,” Dave said. “Now I need to see the room. Don’t stop what you’re doing. Just point me the way.” Wincing against the hard light, he started down the ramp.

  She squared
herself in front of him. “I’m not sure I have to do that. What is it you want here? No—don’t bother to lie. I know insurance companies. I got acquainted with them in 1937. When all the policies my father had kept up for years were canceled. Because he’d missed some payments at the end. When he was helplessly ill. You’d like to find a way to stop my getting the money my son meant for me to have. To go on with. Lord knows, twenty-five thousand is little enough these days. Would you care to try to live the rest of your life on that amount?”

  “No,” Dave said. “There’s going to be a delay, though, Mrs. Wendell. Till after the trial. You understand that.”

  She stared. “Indeed I do not. Why? The police know that boy did it. The district attorney knows.”

  “A jury has to know,” Dave said. “Beyond a reasonable doubt. And juries aren’t predictable.”

  “But there he stood with the gun!” she cried. “The gun that killed my son.” Her lip trembled and she bit it sharply.

  “Your son’s own gun, wasn’t it? You told the police he kept it in his desk.”

  “Hippies infest this canyon.” She stepped past him into the stable dark. Tack jingled. She was taking another bridle off its nail. “We’re isolated up here. Help’s a long way off. Nowhere, if the telephone’s out. And that happens, you know.” Her work shoes thumped the planks. Her voice came muffled from the back of the stable. “Los Santos hasn’t the most up-to-date equipment. A rainstorm, a Santana—it breaks down.” A small window showed grimy light above the farthest stall. He saw her lifted hands work the bridle over a big, dark muzzle. “It would be foolish not to keep a gun up here.”

  “Guns are for television actors,” Dave said. “Not real people. The wrong ones always get hurt. Your son could be alive this morning.”

  She didn’t answer. She spoke to the horse, coaxing, soft. Hoofs came on, a halting stumble. Dave stepped down onto the pine-needle mat of the yard and watched her steer this one into the paddock. Ganted, knob-kneed, mane and tail stringy. The sun showed newly healed scars along sides and flanks. A rip between the eyes was still jagged and red. Heather Wendell closed the gate and over it stroked a hammer head. “Beaten with barbwire,” she said. “By a crazy man. The county would have destroyed him. Not the man—oh, never. The horse. I couldn’t let them do that. He’ll be all right soon.” There was crooning tenderness in the words. Not for Dave. For the horse. She turned to face Dave again and he told her:

  “It’s not the only thing, but the gun worries me. The jury’s going to snag on it too. A police lab man will tell them there were powder burns on your son’s hand. And his chest. It was fired point-blank. They could come up with suicide.”

  “But the coroner’s jury didn’t say so.”

  “They said Johns had to stand trial. That’s all. It doesn’t bind the jury that will hear his case. They won’t even know about it. And if they acquit Johns, it complicates things for my company. If Richard Wendell took his own life, we can’t pay. It’s in the policy.”

  “Yes.” Her mouth twisted in a sour smile. “And that would suit your company, wouldn’t it?” She bunched her fists. “Well, it won’t happen. It’s not common sense. A man doesn’t commit suicide with someone else present. A stranger.” She stepped toward Dave and her words came like thrown rocks. “The explanation for the powder burns is obvious. Rick was holding the gun. Probably found the boy trying to steal. They struggled. The gun went off. Right against Rick’s chest.”

  “Maybe,” Dave said. “Johns tells it a little differently.” The sun beat down. Dave shed his jacket, hung it over an arm. “He claims they were in bed and Richard Wendell heard a sound in the den. He went to investigate. Johns heard voices—your son’s, another man’s—and a shot. He was frightened and it took him a minute to move. When he came out of the bedroom, your son lay on the floor. He bent over him, shook him. No sign of life. Blood. The gun. He picked it up because he was too dazed to be careful. Then he realized he’d made a mistake and what he had to do was wipe his prints off it, get his clothes and run. Only the clock ran out on him. You walked in.”

  “And took the gun away from him.” Her mouth twitched contempt. “Six feet tall, one of those long mustaches, long hair. He cried like a girl, begged, pleaded. Oh, I heard his story. Half a dozen times while we waited for the police.” Her laugh was brief and scornful. “Lies. Pointless. He killed Rick.”

  “For money?” Dave asked. “Your son’s wallet lay on the chest in his bedroom, undisturbed. Two hundred dollars in it. Ones, fives, tens, twenties.”

  “In case they ran short of change at The Hang Ten,” she said. “He always carried it. Of course it was there. The boy hadn’t taken it because there wasn’t time. I interrupted him.”

  “What about the open door?” Dave said. She looked blank and he told her, “You found the door open, remember? What they were doing they wouldn’t leave the door open for, would they? They wouldn’t only have closed it, they’d have locked it.”

  “There’s no lock,” she said. “There is—but there’s no key. And the spring lock’s painted shut. This is an old place. When we bought it, there wasn’t any need for locks up here. Too remote. And we had Homer, our big Dane. Dead now.”

  “But it was standing open,” Dave said. “That’s going to help Johns’s defense.”

  “He has no defense,” she said flatly. “He’d opened it himself and left it open and Rick heard him out there and came out and—”

  “Naked?” Dave said gently.

  “I don’t know what that means,” she said, “but he’s a hippie. They’re all over up here. Why hadn’t he wandered in? Who knows what goes on in their heads? It’s common knowledge they’ve ruined their minds with drugs. He didn’t come by car. At least the police haven’t found a car.”

  “He says your son picked him up and brought him here,” Dave said. “And his clothes weren’t in the den, Mrs. Wendell. They were in the bedroom.”

  She opened her mouth and shut it hard and turned to tramp off up the board slope into the stable. “I have work to do.” When she came out, her big fingers clasped a square wood-backed brush, a coarse-toothed metal comb that glinted in the sunlight. She let herself into the paddock and began working on the sorrel.

  Dave walked to the fence, put a foot up on the lowest bar, crossed his arms on the top bar and rested his chin on them. “I went to the theater last night,” he said. “In Los Santos. Talked to the night crew. You’re not somebody who’d go unnoticed, Mrs. Wendell. Nobody remembers seeing you.”

  The brush stopped its motion. She turned. “Mr. Brandstetter, my fingerprints are also the only ones on that gun. Neither circumstance means anything. Since you don’t appear to have the wit to see that, I shall explain it to you. My son earned twelve to fourteen thousand dollars a year. Gave me a roof over my head, clothes for my back, food to eat. He let me indulge my hobby, which is an expensive one. Not without protest—but he never in the end denied me anything. Now… why would I kill him? For twenty-five thousand dollars insurance money?”

  “It doesn’t add up,” Dave admitted. “Neither does anything else about this case. That’s what bothers me.” He sighed, straightened, turned from the fence. “But it will. It will.” He looked down at the gray shake roofs tree-shadowed below. “Are those his rooms, in the L of the house there?”

  2

  SHE DIDN’T ANSWER AND HE went down broken flag steps between terraced beds where wild oats, passion vine, sunflowers choked out iris, carnations, nasturtiums, and where fat white roses strewed cankered petals from neglected canes. A lizard scuttled ahead of him down the mossy passage between house and guesthouse and lost itself in a rattle of dry leaves among flowerpots where leggy geraniums withered. She’d gardened last year. There must have been fewer horses then.

  The guesthouse door had square glass panes, a reed blind on the inside. He turned the knob, which was faceted, paint-specked glass, and went in. Richard Wendell had used lumberyard bargain birch paneling on the walls. Modular shelves hel
d stereo equipment, a portable television set, a slide projector, records, books, stacks of magazines. The carpeting was mottled blue green. So were the curtains.

  At the room’s near end, basket chairs faced a fireplace. At the far end, a blue couch looked at windows that framed ferns and the trunks of big pines. The windows stood open. They had square panes too and went out on hinges and stayed out by means of long rods hooked through eyes dense with old paint. The screens were on the inside. A little light desk backed the couch. Next to the desk the carpet had been scrubbed and was still wet. Papers littered the desk.

  There were bills, subscription blanks, an opened gaudy advertisement for a book about Renaissance Italy, with off-register reproductions of famous paintings. Blue Kleenex poked up out of a wooden housing meant to hide the box. A ballpoint pen stamped in cheap gilt THE HANG TEN lay by a brown envelope. On the back of the envelope somebody had worked arithmetic problems, taking percentages of twenty-five thousand. Heather Wendell must have sat here last night sweating out her prospects. At a passbook five and a quarter percent, she’d about be able to feed the horses.

  He opened a shallow center drawer. Stamps, paper clips, rubber bands, address labels in a little plastic box, pencils, more of the souvenir pens. He opened side drawer left. Envelopes, writing paper, an address book in fake leather. He lifted these out. Underneath was a scatter of little Kodachrome slides. He held one up to the light. Naked boys in a basic sex position. He tried some others. Same boys but the positions changed. He dropped them back and laid the stationery on them.

  The address book had letter tabs along the page edges. He picked the letter J. There were three names that meant nothing to him. But at the bottom of the page were two numbers unattached to any name. One had been scratched out. He looked for a telephone. It crouched on a low shelf by a cluster of brown-glazed clay pots. Handsome. The kind that came out of local kilns. The kind Doug Sawyer’s new shop was waist deep in. Most of those had been thrown by a lank, bushy-haired youth named Kovaks. Dave shrugged Kovaks away. He was going to mean trouble but he wasn’t trouble yet and right now Dave had work to do. He dialed the number.