Death Claims: A Dave Bran[d]stetter Mystery Page 12

  "A suspicion isn't evidence," Dave said.

  "I could have helped you look for him."

  "Could you have found him?"

  "I've got a lot of men trained for the job."

  "Right. I apologize. Where was he?"

  "He don't say. What difference does it make? He killed his old man for the insurance. That's all that means anything now."

  Balancing food and drink, customers pushed past from the service windows. "You'd better get a table," Dave said. "I'll order and be right with you."

  From the line he joined he could see Campos working fast with his little colored plastic knife, fork, spoon. His plate was nearly empty by the time Dave got to the window. So with his tacos and Spanish rice he took two Styrofoam cups of coffee. A black officer in a brown crash helmet had a booted foot up on the bench at Campos's left and leaned over him, telling him something funny. At his right a girl with long curtains of pale hair and pink granny glasses read a paperback book. Dave sat across from him, noon sun in his eyes. The patrolman laughed, slapped Campos's fragile shoulder, went away.

  Campos lifted the coffee cup. "Gracias. "

  Dave nodded, chewed, swallowed. "What did he want the money for? Just to keep it in the family?"

  Campos shrugged. "He's at the DA's this morning. Maybe he'll tell him. He gave me twenty-five words or less." He blew at the coffee. "His father said he was signing the insurance over to the Stannard girl. The kid knocked him out, put his swim trunks on him, the robe, carried him down the stairs and out to the point, swam towing him out beyond the rocks, let him go."

  "Neat," Dave said. "Can I talk to him?"

  Campos worried his coffee. "It's not in the rulebooks. But"—he shrugged—"you clued us to clean up a mess at that hospital. The taxpayers owe you a favor. Of course, his lawyer might feel different."

  "Court-appointed?"

  "No." Campos dug a little clear plastic cylinder from a pocket. He thumbed off its cap, shook a green pill into his hand, popped it into his mouth, washed it down with coffee. "I don't know how they did police work before they invented these. Chemical replacement for sleep." He put the pillbox away. His laugh was brief and bleak. "My wife wonders when they're going to do the same for sex." His cigarettes came in a gold hardpack. He shook the box and held it out to Dave. "No, his mother got him a lawyer. Who else?"

  "They weren't close." Dave took a cigarette. "I'd have said she didn't give a damn what happened to him." Campos clanked open a Zippo. The flame was transparent in the sun. Dave touched the cigarette to it. The taste was dark and rich. He read the box. "New brand?"

  "You make them yourself," Campos said. "Machine costs a buck. Papers, filters, tobacco, another buck. My oldest kid started it and I smoked one and liked it."

  "Making them must take time. Have you got time?"

  Campos shook his head. "He makes them for me. I pay him forty cents a pack. That's a hundred-percent profit. He isn't doing anything, just laying around. He's too smart to be a cop, too dumb to be anything else." He wiped his mustache with a wadded paper napkin stained chili-color. He stood, stepping over the bench, made a fold of his paper plate with napkin, utensils, crushed coffee cup inside. Then he quit moving and stared past Dave.

  Dave turned. Across the street, lawns, flowerbeds, old eucalyptus trees surrounded the building that housed the El Molino Police Department and city jail. White. Spanish Mission style. Central tower with pigeons. Red tile roofs. Up the wide, shallow front steps, between two beefy blond officers with big brown-handled .45's on their Prime USDA hips, walked a small. dark youth. The handcuffs that held his wrists together behind his back glinted in the sun.

  "That's Oats," Campos said. "And I don't see the lawyer. Looks like now is your chance. If it's all right with the kid." He headed for a glossy white trash receptacle that was topped by a molded plastic hippo's head, mouth open. Dave pawed together the wreckage of his own meal and went after him.

  Campos caught up with the officers and the boy outside a door at the end of a hall. The door was sheathed in steel, studded with bolts, had a little wired-glass window at eye level and a chipped enamel sign that read FIREARMS FORBIDDEN BEYOND THIS POINT. One of the officers tapped the window with something small and metallic. The other one took the handcuffs off Peter Oats. The boy's corduroy jacket matched the one April had worn on the cold night beach. Under it was a brown crew-neck pullover. His pants were tucked loosely into short boots.

  When Campos spoke to him he turned and looked at Dave, who had stopped a few yards off. He was handsomer than in the black-and-white eight-by-tens tacked up at the old-mill Stage. Even the transparencies in Whittington's wastebasket missed the dark glow of his coloring. What none of the pictures missed was the gentleness. His look at Dave was the one the ex-carpenter must have given Judas after the kiss. But he nodded to Campos.

  In the room with the blank tan walls where they'd interviewed the hospital orderly, he sat on one of the tan metal chairs, smoked one of Campos's strong cigarettes and watched Dave across the tan metal table. Steadily, gravely, out of brown eyes like a holy child's. The transcript of his confession lay in front of Dave. Typewritten, a carbon, three short, cold paragraphs. Signed in ballpoint by a hand that hadn't shaken. Peter Charles Oats.

  "Charles?" Dave said.

  "For my father's partner—Charles Norwood."

  Dave took a breath. "You realize that under the circumstances my company will withhold payment on your father's policy. To you. But the situation isn't simple. It can get tangled and expensive. We'd like you to sign a waiver."

  "Yes. All right." The boy nodded.

  Campos squinted at Dave. "You mean you don't have to shell out at all?"

  "When the policy was written, Mrs. Oats was the beneficiary. Peter was the contingent beneficiary. That is, if something happened to her, he would have collected. Then John Oats changed the policy, nine or ten months ago in the hospital. He made Peter the beneficiary—alone."

  "So who collects now?"

  "Unless Miss Stannard can prove John Oats meant to make the proposed change in her favor-the next of kin. Eve Oats, I suppose."

  "It doesn't matter," the boy said.

  Dave stared at him. "It mattered that night, mattered enough for you to kill your own father. You don't make sense. You arranged the murder to look like accident. The coroner's jury decided it was. Captain Campos here accepted their verdict. You were in the clear. You could have come back and collected what you killed him to get-twenty thousand dollars. But you didn't come back. And now you sit there and say it doesn't matter."

  "In my place, would it matter to you?"

  Dave shrugged. "You put yourself in that place."

  "You were trying to." The boy leaned across the table for the ashtray in front of Campos—a little round amber glass ashtray. He stubbed out his cigarette in it, but he didn't watch what he was doing. He watched Dave. "My mother told me. You knew I killed him."

  "That's not what kept you away. You never heard of me till yesterday. Or did you? Was someone in touch with you-someone I'd talked to?"

  For two ticks of a watch the brown eyes widened. "No." The headshake was quick. Was it also scared?

  "Where were you? Who were you with?"

  "No one. I wasn't with anyone. I was alone."

  "Just you and your guitar," Dave said. "That was a mistake, taking the guitar. It showed April you'd been there. That night."

  The boy frowned, said, "But I—" and stopped saying it. He looked at Campos. "Can I have another cigarette, please?" Campos gave it to him, lit it for him. "Thank you," he said.

  Dave said, "You had supper with your father. Not much. Provender was in chronic short supply at April's. It was scrambled eggs—right?"

  "Yes. No. I don't remember."

  "It was canned roast-beef hash. Neither one of you cleaned up his plate."

  The boy stood. "This was supposed to be about insurance," he said to Campos. "My lawyer told me I didn't have to answer questions."


  "Your lawyer was right." Campos pushed back his chair. Its feet made a rubber stutter on the plastic tiles. He got up, twisted the doorknob, leaned into the hall. "Hayes?" he said. "Libisky?" And the blond boys brought in smells of leather and Lifebuoy soap and took Peter Oats away.

  Dave handed Campos the paper. "This is no good."

  Campos squinted again. "What do you mean?"

  Dave stood up tired. "He wasn't even there."

  "Where was he? Why did he confess?"

  "That's for us to find out," Dave said.

  "Not me," Campos said. "This is tight. The DA likes it. He'll like it even better when he hears about the guitar. And I got ten other things to do."

  18

  A SINGLE SPOTLIGHT bored a white shaft straight down through the tall blackness of the room. The floor it hit was painted black, so it didn't splash. Only when fat Whittington moved through it in a Russian peasant blouse. Except for red-embroidered hem, collar, cuffs, the blouse was white, and the light struck off it and reflected in the scallops of the varnished wooden seatbacks that boxed in the acting area.

  Whittington stepped out of the light and darker figures flickered through like memories of the dead. Boys, girls, long hair, jeans, jerseys, play books in their hands. Seen. Not seen. Reciting lines, they sounded like lost children crying to each other in a cave. Dave went down the carpet-hushed steps, used a hand to shield his eyes, made out Whittington in a far corner, a swollen moon seen through smoke. He started around the dark margin of the open space.

  Whittington called, "This is where you hear the willow whistle, Natasha. No, don't move-register. Stand very still. Then, as it goes on, lift your head. No, no, darling. Don't gawp at the ceiling. And don't swivel your head. Just lift it. Slowly. An inch, two inches, so you're staring over the audience. No, no. No expression. Blankly. That's it. All right. Now. . . ." His voice took a different direction.

  "The whistle stops and Ivan and Marya start to laugh. Lightly. Pleased with each other. Ivan, you enter, holding both of Marya's hands, leading her, both of you still laughing. No, backward, Ivan, backward-don't you remember? So that Marya sees Natasha before you do. She's facing her. Go out and come in again." He looked at Dave. "Not now. I'm rehearsing."

  "I can see what you're doing. I can't see what Peter Oats is doing."

  "I told you the last time—I'd hoped it would be the last time—that I don't know where he is."

  "That's not the problem anymore," Dave said.

  "It never was my problem." Whittington folded his arms across the fat span of his chest and turned to watch the youngsters moving in the chiaroscuro. The Natasha girl began to cry.

  Dave said, "He's locked up. He says he killed his father."

  "What?" Whittington wheeled his big bulk around. His mouth was a slack gap of shadow in the blurred, pale bloat of his face. "What did you say?"

  "You heard me," Dave said.

  Whittington banged his hands together. It was a loud sound to come from a couple of pillows. The Marya girl was doing a mean little crab dance around the Natasha girl. She'd started to sing. She stopped with a little shriek. Laughter from the dark. Someone blew a slide whistle. It sounded surprised. Whittington told them, "I think the coffee must be ready."

  He led Dave around the black partition and down the long room of Beaverboard booths and costume racks. At its end, on a packing-crate table, the big shiny coffeemaker Dave had seen last time in the lobby showed a little red light and made stomach noises. Cellophane bags of cookies and midget doughnuts waited beside it with sugar, powdered milk substitute, a box of wooden stirring sticks. As if turned loose by Plato, the cave children came out of the dark blinking and swarmed happily at the packing case. Whittington led Dave outdoors where clean sunlight fell through the brushy leafage of giant eucalypts. Then he halted and half turned back.

  "Did you want coffee?" The offer was mechanical.

  Dave shook his head.

  Whittington frowned. "Killed his father? You said his father drowned."

  Dave told him what was in the confession. "His father wasn't a big man. The boy could have done it—if he knew the fireman's carry."

  "He knew it." Whittington sounded numb. A few feet off stood a ten-year-old Bentley convertible that needed a wash and a new top because the old one was gray rags. Whittington had lost his light-footedness. He trudged heavily across ground carpeted in brittle red leaves and leaned back against a dented fender. "I taught him myself. For a war play. He had to lift a black boy almost twice his weight."

  Dave went to him. "And while there was rain that night, there was no wind to speak of. The sea wasn't rough. If he swam well—"

  "Like a seal. But kill?" Whittington frowned, gave his big head a shake. A strand of pale red hair fell over an ear. "He couldn't. And his father? He adored his father. Charming man. I met him one night. Terribly disfigured. But after a minute you didn't notice. Later you remember him as handsome. Of course, Peter had to get his beauty from somewhere. Why would he kill him?"

  "The answer that leaps to mind," Dave said, "is for twenty thousand dollars in life insurance. That night was his last chance at it. It was the only money his father had to leave. Somehow, through all his disasters, he'd kept up payments on that policy. And now he was going to cut Peter out. I don't know for whom. Probably April Stannard."

  "Pretty girl," Whittington said. "I gather she and John Oats were much in love."

  "Also she'd sold most of what she owned to pay his medical bills. And looked after him, housed him, fed him. Facts Peter knew. And she'd been good to Peter too.''

  "He liked her." Whittington nodded. "And he had a great sense of fairness. I can't see him wanting that money. Not really. Money didn't mean anything to him. Do you know what I often said to him? That in another time, another period of history, he'd have been a saint. It's only that they've gone out of style. There are no jobs for saints anymore."

  "I'm not so sure," Dave said. "I talked to him this morning and he said the money didn't matter and I think he meant it. I don't think it ever mattered. Not to him." He looked hard at Whittington. "How much did he love you?"

  Whittington's big face reddened. His voice went cold. "How are you using that word?"

  "You define it," Dave said. "You were together constantly since last June. You kept his picture by your bed. You took a projector full of color slides of him. Before he had enough training you cast him in a big role in a moth-eaten costume drama nobody would stage anymore except to show off a pretty boy in tights. He was always here, hardly ever at home. His family, his friends thought he was obsessed with theatre. Was it theatre or was it you?"

  Whittington straightened, swelled. "Now, you listen to me. I told you the other morning—"

  "I'm more interested in what you didn't tell me. That the city has cut back your funds and that you're keeping the place going out of your own pocket. And that the pocket is nearly empty."

  "And just how"—Whittington tried to sound steely, but he was pale—"is that supposed to involve Peter?"

  "Twenty thousand dollars should cover operating expenses here for quite a time."

  Whittington stared. "You are out of your mind."

  "I don't think so. Peter worshiped his father. Everyone says so. They were inseparable. Yet he left him. Flat. Very suddenly. No one knows why. But I think I can guess. John Oats had become a morphine addict. It changed him. He was blackmailing former friends. He even tried to steal from a store. Peter found out about it. It hit him hard. All that love wouldn't just go away. It would turn into something else.

  "What if it turned into contempt? What if it seemed to him his father didn't matter anymore? And that you did? You loved him. A brilliant man, a famous man. Petted him, flattered him. And you were doing something, something fine he believed in, or thought he believed in. And for lack of money it was going to come to an end. His father was no good anymore, not to himself, not to anyone else. Why not have that money?"

  "You," Whittington said, "are incredi
ble."

  "The setup here the other morning"—Dave jerked his head to indicate the narrow windows of the apartment visible through the treetops—"didn't demand much of the imagination. That boy in your bed wasn't Peter Oats, but he might have been. He was no nephew. He knew I knew that. And he knew how I knew it."

  Whittington's brows rose. "Did he? Shrewd child. I marvel. All right. Yes, I wanted Peter in my bed. Wouldn't you? But hints and gallantries made no impression. So I staged Lorenzaccio for him. He was oblivious. I lost patience and spoke my mind. No. He hated to hurt me, I'd been kind, he liked me. But no. And—we didn't speak after that. The play closed and he didn't come back. Ever. If you don't believe me"—he nodded toward the mill door —"ask any of them. They talked of nothing else for a week.''

  "You said he was straight. Was he?"

  Whittington pushed heavily away from the fender. "At the end, in my pain, I asked him. A mistake. I knew he made a fetish of honesty. He told me. No, he wasn't straight. As you can imagine"—Whittington brushed grit from his hands—"that made his refusal easier to take."

  Arena Blanca still looked bleak. The cheery paint on the old houses, the glitter of the blue bay, the keen whiteness of the sand were lonely. The trim boats at the jetties waited like blind classroom kids, arms raised, with no teacher to turn them loose. Gulls, slicing the sunlight, were all that seemed alive. The weary lift door on the car stalls under the pink house still gaped. But the old station wagon was gone.

  At the top of the shaky stairs he worked the buzzer and waited. No one came. He stepped off the worn rope doormat and lifted it. A shower of sand. He looked along the outer edges of the pinkpainted doorframe. For a small nail. There was no small nail. He stretched to run a hand along the top of the frame. The key had lain there for a long time. It was crusty. But it went into the lock all right. It turned the lock. He pushed the door and went inside, where the curtains this time were open to the blue stare of empty bay and sky.