Gravedigger Read online

“Try not to think about it,” Dave said.

  Cecil took the empty plates to the sink. “I wish you’d think of how to put that bastard in jail.”

  “Come on,” Dave said, and rose. “I’ve got something to show you that will cheer you up.” He left the cookshack and Cecil came trailing after him, frowning, hands shoved deep in pockets, gait slow and moody and without bounce. But he brightened when he saw the Jaguar. He walked around it, wide-eyed, awed. His mouth shaped a voiceless oh.

  “Shee-it!” He grinned at Dave, grinned at the car. “Look at that! Whoo-ee!” He opened the door with great gentleness and respect. His hands moved over the seats, the dashboard. “Real wood,” he whispered, “real leather.” He shut his eyes and breathed in deeply, wrinkling his nose. “And doesn’t it smell beautiful.” He pulled out of the car, faced Dave, eyes begging. “You can’t drive. Not with one arm. Can I drive? Can we go for a ride?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Dave said.

  They drove a long way up the canyon and around back streets. It was sunset when they reached the upper end of Horseshoe Trail. The engine of the Jaguar made hardly a sound. Its ride was smooth and easy. Remembering the jouncy little Triumph, Dave smiled contentment.

  “Don’t you go chasing Westover in this car,” Cecil said. “Don’t care how comfortable a coffin it would make.”

  “I’m letting him come to me,” Dave said, and told Cecil about Lovejoy and the letter.

  “He won’t come,” Cecil said. “But if he does, you make sure I am with you. Up on the loft, hiding, with a gun pointed at his head.”

  “What gun? You know I won’t have guns around.”

  “Wasn’t a gun almost killed you,” Cecil said. “It was a car. I nearly pass out every time I think about it.”

  “It was a 1958 green-and-white Impala,” Dave said, and told him about the gas-station boy’s call.

  “What is going on with Charles Westover?” Cecil said.

  Dave said, “Wait a minute. Slow down. Stop.”

  Horseshoe Trail had no sidewalks, no curbs, only a shallow cement ditch to carry off rainwater. A brown-and-white sheriff’s car, a row of red, yellow, white lights across its roof, was empty and still, with one front wheel in the ditch, beside a mailbox and a driveway that meant that back in the trees and brush a house was concealed. The name on the mailbox was Vosper. Cecil halted the Jaguar, and Dave climbed out of it.

  “What’s going on?” Cecil said.

  “I forgot to tell Salazar.” Dave limped up the driveway, which was carpeted in pine needles. The house, screened by dark deodars and lop-limbed cedars, was sided in raw shingles, like his own house, but was newer and two-storied. Cecil came running up behind Dave. The little shaggy brown dog came yapping toward him from the house. In the doorway of the house stood Hilda Vosper, talking to a young man in a tan sheriff’s uniform. The dog hopped at Dave, happy, ears flapping like fur butterfly wings. Dave bent and ruffled the ears. The dog ran in a circle of delight, barking.

  “Why, Mr. Brandstetter,” Hilda Vosper called. “We were just talking about you. You had a robbery.”

  The deputy held out his hand. “Hopkins,” he said. Dave shook Hopkins’s hand. The little dog was facing Hopkins, barking up at him, and kicking its furry hind paws. Hopkins crouched to play with the dog. He looked up at Dave. “You’ve got a witness here. Always talk to people with dogs. Have to walk a dog. See what’s going on in the neighborhood.”

  “What was going on?” Dave stared at Hilda Vosper. She wore a checked flannel shirt, black-and-white, and warm-looking gray flannel slacks. “What did you see?”

  “I didn’t realize what I was seeing.” She gave a little apologetic laugh. “A young man, tall and slim.” She smiled at Cecil. “I thought it was you. It was your van. The doors were open. Television sets, loudspeakers, all that kind of thing, were stacked up in the yard, and he was loading them into the van.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Cecil said.

  “Yes, I realize that now. But it was after dark. It must have been seven o’clock. I only saw him against the lighted windows of the house. But you don’t have a beard and mustache.”

  “Also, I am not white,” Cecil said.

  “But it was your van, wasn’t it?” she asked anxiously.

  “Stolen,” Cecil said. “To get me into trouble.”

  Hopkins got to his feet. “Description mean anything to you?” he asked Cecil.

  Cecil opened his mouth to answer but Dave interrupted. He asked Hilda Vosper, “Do you think you could identify the man if you saw him again?”

  “I thought it was this young man just moving some things out of the house,” she said. “But yes, I believe I could. I think I’d recognize him. Now that I see you,” she said to Cecil, “there isn’t much resemblance. You’re stronger, your shoulders are broader. I remember thinking that he was wearing very beautiful clothes to be doing heavy work in. Of course”—she gave a little embarrassed laugh—“I didn’t stare. I just glanced into the yard and passed right on down the trail. Teddy was off the leash, and he’d run after a gopher or a mole or something. I thought he might have dashed down into your yard.”

  “You take in a lot at a glance,” Hopkins said.

  “I paint a little,” she said. “It teaches you to see.”

  Hopkins looked at Cecil. “You know who it was, don’t you? You know too, Mr. Brandstetter.”

  Dave let Cecil tell Hopkins who it was. Cecil would get satisfaction from it. Cecil said, “He’s a lawyer. His name is Miles Edwards. But you won’t find the stuff he stole when you find him. I’ve got it back.”

  Hopkins looked puzzled. “What was it—some kind of practical joke?”

  “Do you see me laughing?” Cecil said.

  13

  IT CAME ON TO rain in the night. In the morning, they inched in Cecil’s van along shimmering freeways clogged with cars and trucks. Over the glass towers of downtown Los Angeles, the sky was slate-gray. The rain fell softly but with no hint of ever quitting. They spent the day in noisy offices, jostling corridors, elevators, dark lineup rooms, overheated courtrooms, with assorted police officers, clerks, bailiffs, judges. With Abe Greenglass. With Deputy Hopkins and Hilda Vosper for a little while and, for a little while, with a young woman camera operator who had seen Miles Edwards drop something into Cecil’s hanging jacket at the television studio. With Miles, unshaven, pale, sullen. And with Miles’s father, a sick and shrunken-looking man who moved like an invalid and was acting as Miles’s attorney.

  The hours dragged. There was more waiting than anything else. Standing around on marble floors tired Dave and made his bruises and torn ligaments ache. Now and then he studied Cecil, waiting for the boy’s exhilaration to wear off, waiting for him to get bored with making Miles suffer. But mostly his thoughts strayed. At first to Amanda, and what learning the truth about Miles was going to do to her. Then to the Westover matter, sorting through all the places he’d been, all the people he’d talked to, all the words they’d said to him. Late in the afternoon, when the courts began emptying out and the plaintiffs and defendants and lawyers with briefcases pushed in herds out the tall doors into the rain and the darkening day, he found a pay phone not in use and rang Salazar.

  “The Nevada plates are stolen,” Salazar said. “They don’t belong to any 1958 Impala. They come off a Toyota pickup in a town called Beatty—Amargosa desert.”

  “Is that a fact?” Dave said. “Listen, thank you for finding a witness to my burglary.”

  “Any time,” Salazar said. “When do I get that lobster?”

  “I’m going to spend a couple of days in bed,” Dave said. “The doctor was right. I should have stayed in the hospital. I’m not healing as fast as I used to.” Of course he’d get out of bed if Westover came from hiding in response to the letter. “I’ll call you next week.”

  “Take it easy,” Salazar said.

  Cecil was beside Dave when he hung up the phone. He said, “You want to drop the charges now? Forgive
and forget?” He looked a little wan.

  “Had your fun?” Dave said.

  “It wasn’t as much fun as I hoped,” Cecil said. “Tell the truth, I’m a little sick about it. A little ashamed.”

  “I thought you would be,” Dave said. “Who do we see?”

  “Down here,” Abe Greenglass said, and led the way.

  Dave sat propped by pillows in the bed on the loft. He had doped himself when they got home from dinner at Max’s last night, and had slept from eight until noon. Cecil had brought him breakfast in bed—coffee, fresh orange juice, pancakes, and sausage, the plates covered by foil to keep the heat in and the rain off. The rain whispered on the shingles overhead, but the loft was warm, fire crackling in the grate below.

  “While you were fixing breakfast,” Dave said, “I tried to telephone Jay’s Good Used Cars in Perez. Jay doesn’t answer his phone. No one answers for him. On a hunch, having viewed Jay’s operation, I tried Lucky’s Strike. I thought Jay might be drinking his lunch. He wasn’t. Lucky gave me Jay’s home number. Jay is not at home.”

  “You want me to drive down and find him?” Cecil rose with his empty plate and took Dave’s. “What do I ask him when I find him?” He started for the stairs and turned back. “If he sold a used green-and-white Impala?”

  “To Serenity Westover.” Dave nodded. “On the day Azrael shot the deputies and ran. Show him her picture. That car is just the kind old Jay specializes in.”

  Cecil blinked. His jaw was a little slack. “You mean you think the skinny blond girl the gas-station kid told you about is her? She’s alive? She’s with her father?”

  “Watch the commercials,” Dave said. “A girl can have hair any color she likes. A girl can lose weight any time she likes. Just pop a little pill.”

  “Or live under a lot of stress,” Cecil said. “Only what about the Nevada license plates? Stolen in Nevada, didn’t you say?”

  Dave shrugged and was pleasantly surprised: this morning his shoulder hardly hurt at all. “Maybe she was trying to catch up with Azrael, had some reason to know he’d make for Nevada. That’s where his van ended up.”

  “I know that.” Cecil made a face. “But why would she want to catch up with him? I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

  “Why would she stay with him for years? She was at that ranch with him while he murdered six girls—remember?”

  Cecil blew out a long breath. He gave his head a shake. He went on down the stairs with the plates. Dave heard him dump another chunk of pine log on the fire and set the screen back, heard him walk down the room to the outside door. Cecil called, “This is weird. This has got to be the weirdest mess on record. No wonder you almost got killed.” The door opened to the sound of rain and closed.

  When he returned, bearing a fresh mug of hot coffee for Dave, he was frowning to himself. He shrugged into the corduroy car coat and fastened the pegs, put on his leather cap and driving gloves. He bent and kissed Dave, tasting of sweet, creamy coffee. He stood looking down at Dave, forehead creased. “What if Westover comes? I don’t like leaving you alone, not all battered-up like you are. How can you defend yourself if he turns mean?”

  “All he wants is money,” Dave said.

  “What if his crazy daughter comes with him? Who knows what she wants?”

  “She’s supposed to be dead, remember? She won’t come. That would spoil their plans.” He worked up what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Stop worrying. Nothing’s going to happen to me. Don’t forget to take her picture. It’s in the top left drawer of the desk. And concentrate on your driving, all right? Don’t speed trying to get back here.”

  Cecil looked doubtful, but he went down the stairs again. Before he left, he called, “I’ll phone you, soon as I find old Jay. I’m locking the door.”

  It didn’t stay locked. Cecil hadn’t been gone ten minutes when Dave heard footsteps cross the brick courtyard and the tinkle of keys. He reached for his pants. The door opened. With the falling of the rain on the bricks for a background, Amanda called, “Dave?” sounding a little timid.

  “Ho,” he said. “Warm yourself at the fire. I’ll be right there. Help yourself to a drink.” Getting the trousers on one-handed took time. He went down the stairs. She stood in front of the fire in knickers, boots, a fur hat, and the long, long muffler. She smiled and held out a glass to him with Scotch in it and ice. Her smile was sheepish. “I’d like you to forgive me, if you can.”

  “For what? Making a mistake?” He took the glass. “Thank you.” He drank from the glass. “Don’t brood about it. How were you supposed to know what he was? He didn’t tell you—right?”

  “I mean for the names I called you,” she said, “for the awful things I said to you.”

  “What’s important,” he said, “is that you’re all right You’re going to be all right, aren’t you?”

  She looked into her glass. She sat on the couch. She looked at the burning logs. “After while,” she said. “Not right away.” She looked at Dave. “He admitted it all to me, everything you’d said.”

  “That’s nice. We won’t have to ask Avram,” Dave said. “I think he’d be a little embarrassed, telling you about those pictures.”

  “Miles thought if he confessed and said he was sorry, we could go right on.” She gave a little humorless laugh, a little shake of her head. “I’ve just come from him. And, do you know, I was tempted. That’s why I came flying to you. I know he’s rotten, but he is so damned beautiful, Dave.”

  “He thinks so,” Dave said. “You’ll get over it.”

  She took a sip of her drink, rummaged cigarettes from her shoulder bag, held the pack up to Dave. He took a cigarette, she took one. Dave lit them both. She dropped the long red pack back into the bag and frowned up at Dave through smoke. “Women sometimes make a go of it with—with someone like Miles. Someone sexually like Miles.”

  “Not someone ethically like Miles,” Dave said. “Sure, some women do. So I’ve read. I’ve never met one. I’ve met one lately that didn’t make a go of it.” He stopped talking. “My God,” he said, “how stupid I am.” He set his drink on the hearth and went for his jacket. “You’re going to have to excuse me. I have to see that woman.”

  “You got the Jaguar,” she said.

  “Lock up, will you?” he said, and opened the door.

  Rain dripped off the jungle gym whose red paint small hands had worn down in places to the dull steel tubing, rain glazed the yellow-and-blue crawl barrels, splashed in the gaudy little cars of the choochoo that never moved, wept off the steel steps of the slide, slithered down the shiny chute of the slide, and made a deep puddle at the foot of the chute. Rain pooled in the canvas-sling seats of the chain-hung swings. The low end of the gingham-print seesaw drowned in a puddle. It looked sad. But the wide windows of the playschool glowed and were pasted with cutout paper daffodils. Dave worked the latch of the gate in the chain link fence and crossed the yard. Halfway to the door, music met him, noise, the rattle of toy drums and tin xylophones and tambourines, the high-pitched piping of small voices. He looked through the streaming glass of the door. They sat in a circle on their little red chairs and played and sang and kept time by clapping their hands and stamping their feet. If he knocked he wouldn’t be heard. He turned the cold, wet knob, pushed the door open, and put his head inside. The air was warm, moist, and smelled of little kids, graham crackers, banana peels, toilet accidents. He stepped inside and closed the door. The kids paid him no attention, nor did the massive moon-faced black woman in the gay patchwork smock, but Anna Westover got up swiftly and came to him, looking alarmed.

  “Serenity? Have you found her?”

  “It’s possible. But not to talk to.”

  “What do you mean? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing lately,” Dave said. “But about ten years ago something happened, and I’d like you to tell me about it.”

  The kids were too loud for her to hear him. She lifted her hand to indicate that he was to follow her. They skirted the
circle of little red chairs, stepping over spilled toys and storybooks and stuffed animals. She opened a door and waited for him to go through, came in after him, shut the door. It was not a big office, and it was crowded with supplies—construction paper, jars of white paste, bottles of poster paint. Shelves sagged. There were boxes of wax crayons, of chalk, of small scissors, cheap paintbrushes. Cartons were stacked hip-deep—modeling clay, newsprint for painting. The desk was barely visible. She lifted an armload of stuff off a molded plastic chair with spindly steel legs for him to sit on. She sat behind the desk. The door was flimsy, the kids still loud, but it was just possible to talk.

  “Ten years ago,” Dave said, “you caught your husband and Don Gaillard involved in a homosexual act—isn’t that so?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “They’d had a long friendship, relationship, and it came to an end suddenly then and there. This was why you told me that there wouldn’t be another woman in his life, wasn’t it? Because you were the only woman he’d ever been physically interested in. Gaillard had been willing to share him with you, but you weren’t having that, were you?”

  She had turned white. “Where did you hear this?”

  “I pieced it together. You began it. Lyle told me how much he’d liked Gaillard when he was small, how close the friendship was between Gaillard and his father, how puzzled he was when it suddenly stopped.”

  “Close!” Her mouth twisted in derision.

  “Then Gaillard added a few facts. And finally, his mother filled out the rest. She said that her son and your husband had spent every weekend of their lives together, even after you and Charles married. Is that true?”

  “What has this got to do with poor Serenity? It’s ancient history, past and done with. I forgave Charles. He meant too much to me. He meant everything to me. This thing with Don—delayed adolescence, neurotic nonsense.” She snorted. “They weren’t boys anymore.”

  “If you set out to find a man who isn’t a boy anymore,” Dave said, “you’re going to be a long time looking. And you haven’t forgotten about it. It’s not ancient history to you. Don Gaillard’s still the enemy. That’s why you never mentioned him to me when I asked you to tell me who your husband might run to when he was in trouble.”