Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery Read online

  “What?” Dave asked.

  “What did he write? Everything. Novels, plays, verse. He ate in drugstores and slept on a sleazy old couch that made down into a bed. He didn’t care. Not about anything except writing. He even grew a beard to save the shaving time. He’d show me what he was doing. He was so excited. He’d rip sheets out of the typewriter and toss them at me. We both thought they were wonderful. . . .”

  With a little remembering smile she sat forward now, elbows on knees, and stared out the big window at the fog and drizzle in the trees.

  “Publishers didn’t agree. Out went the manuscripts. . . . I remember carrying them to the little branch post office down near Hollywood Boulevard on days like this, and trudging home wet to the skin to find the mailbox full of rejected ones.” She glanced at him. “It was disappointing, but it was kind of romantic too, an adventure. Then. We were very young.” She stopped smiling. “We didn’t stay young.”

  She went to the bar again for the brandy bottle and inched the amber stuff into Dave’s glass and her own.

  “We had a baby—Gretchen. The war ended. The aircraft factories let people go. We’d thought Fox would be on all the bookshelves in the country by then. Pulitzer Prize, no less. We’d kept thumbing the biographical dictionary to check how young American writers had been when their first books were published.” She sighed. “Fox passed all their ages. I hated seeing it. He grew—well, thin. He was sick a lot. He wouldn’t let me work before the baby came. Afterward it was out of the question—or so he felt. He was the responsible male. He must do it all, work and write. He took grubby little dollar-an-hour jobs in bookshops. And when he came home he pounded the typewriter. They were always novels now. And a novel takes a long time to write. He got more and more frustrated and bewildered when book after book came back rejected. He was always swearing he’d never touch the typewriter again. But he couldn’t stop. Some kind of desperation drove him.”

  Back of the handsome desk stood a pair of gray steel file cabinets. She led Dave to them, stooped and pulled open a lower drawer. Lined up inside, like the sheeted dead after some disaster, he saw thick manuscripts in binders. She slid one out, stood and turned over the pages. They were, he saw, neatly typed, but the paper had been cheap. It was turning brown at the edges.

  “He wrote this one in 1953, 1954. How fine I thought it was.” With a small, sad laugh, she closed the covers, bent and pushed the manuscript back into its slot. “It wasn’t, I guess. Nobody would publish it.” She stood and watched her foot as it rolled the drawer shut. “There are twelve novels in this cabinet. Three plays. Fifty short stories. Hundreds of poems.” She looked at Dave and her voice was dry with remembered resentment. “Out of it all, only a handful of poems ever saw print.”

  Dave frowned. “You’re telling me about a failure. What happened?”

  3

  “To make it a success story?” she asked. “We came to Pima. . . . But look, really I haven’t told you about him. I’ve left out too much. For instance, how funny he was. I’ve only told you about the despair. But he had a marvelous sense of humor.” She touched the scripts on the desk. “You’ll see when you read these. Antic and zany and never cruel. Just warm and wildly funny.”

  “And the music,” Dave said. “What about that?”

  “Yes, that was there too. Not that he ever counted it much. It was”—she gave a little shrug and went back to the couch and sat down and picked up her glass—“a habit. His people were musical. He’d sung and played ever since he was old enough to make a noise. It was in his blood. He took it for granted, like breathing.”

  Her brown eyes warmed, recalling.

  “Sometimes, when the gloom grew gloomiest about the writing, he’d suddenly dust off his guitar and sing all evening. Old songs, songs he made up himself. Friends would come in. We’d drink beer. . . . It wasn’t all dust and Dostoevsky.”

  She glanced at him wryly and away again.

  “Just mostly. And the good times grew fewer and fewer. We weren’t in our twenties anymore. Then we weren’t even in our thirties anymore. Gretchen was growing up and needing things girls need. So Fox quit the bookshop and went to work in a factory because the wages were better. And he didn’t have the energy he used to have. Naturally, who does? It grew harder and harder for him to write. He kept trying. But he didn’t joke much anymore. There were a lot of silences. . . .”

  She gazed out the window again, looking her age, looking like someone too much has happened to.

  “So you came to Pima,” Dave said. “Why?”

  “My father had a stroke and sent for me.”

  “I’m sorry. Is he all right now?”

  “He’ll never be the same, but he manages. He can walk again. Drive his own car. That was a year ago last summer. It was strange, coming back.”

  “You hadn’t been back at all?” Dave asked.

  “Not in twenty-two years. Dad was very angry about my running away. He was even angrier about my marrying Fox. He wrote to tell me so and then he never wrote again, not even when Gretchen was born. You see, he’d planned for me to marry somebody else, a rich boy here in Pima. I didn’t want to. Not a very original story, is it?” Her smile was thin, self-mocking. “And I thought, we’ll show the old bastard. My husband will be the most successful writer in America. While I was down on my knees scrubbing worn-out linoleum in our grubby little rented kitchens in L.A., I’d dream of the sweet, vengeful day I’d come back to Pima. In glory. Wife of the famous novelist. Small-town girl makes good.”

  “And thumbs nose at Dad. He’s well off, is he?”

  “He came to California in 1933, the dust bowl time. From Oklahoma. I was ten. The way he tells it, he arrived” —she said it with a country twang—” ‘in a five-dollar Ford with my old woman and my sprout here and thirty cents in my pocket.’ By 1938 he owned his own ranch free and clear. And in a matter of months after the government ran the Japanese Americans out in 1942, he had one of the largest spreads in this valley. Grapes, citrus, truck. Yes ... my father’s well off. And nobody’d better forget it.” She glanced at her watch again. “But we’re wasting time. You want to know about Fox. I want to tell you. . . .”

  “The success story.” Dave nodded.

  “It was purest accident.” She lifted the bottle at him. He shook his head. She poured herself a finger of brandy and lit another cigarette. “I was at the A&P in Pima, buying supplies for Dad’s ranch. And this man stopped me and asked if I wasn’t Thorne Loomis. It was Hale McNeil. We’d gone to high school together. Well, not exactly together. He was three years ahead of me. But it’s a small school. We knew each other. His father owned the Pima Valley Sun. Now Hale owns it—and the radio station.

  “Well, it was fun, of course. It always is, meeting someone who used to—you knew as a kid. He was happy about it too, seemingly. And he invited me and Fox and Gretchen to his house for Sunday barbecue. Well, the round with Dad was pretty grim. Oh, there were nurses. But he demanded a lot of attention from me. And Gretchen. And he made no bones about hating Fox’s guts. It was being pretty miserable for Fox. He loved the place—the valley, the town, this canyon. But not the situation, understandably. He’d only come because I’d insisted.

  “So of course I knew Hale was just being polite when he asked us. He expected to be turned down, probably. But I took him up on his invitation. Just to have something different to do. Someplace to go. Maybe someplace pleasant for a change. Especially for Fox and Gretchen. And we did go. And there were maybe a dozen people. All very nice, the kind of easygoing moneyed people you find in places like Pima. Not many pretensions.

  “And one of them, not too surprisingly, had a guitar with him. He hardly knew how to hold it, let alone play it. So naturally Fox began to show him chords or strums or something. And before I knew it, before he knew it himself, he was singing. And people weren’t talking anymore. They were standing around listening. And applauding. And was it good for Fox! I hadn’t seen him so happy since—” She shrugged.
“Well, since Gretchen was toddling around in diapers.

  “We ate. Glorious steaks. The sun was setting. And Hale suggested Fox sing some more. Everybody seemed to favor that idea. So he sang some more. And then, just about dark, he leaned back against the barbecue chimney, chording the guitar, and began to tell this absurd small-town story. Well, they laughed till they cried. So did I. It was a total surprise to me. I’d never heard him do such a thing. He said afterward he never had. It was”—she breathed a laugh and tossed her hands up—“just sheer, insane inspiration.

  “The next morning Hale phoned the ranch. He asked to talk to Fox. And with Dad listening in on the extension—it never fails—Hale said he’d been thinking over last night, and laughing over it, and what would Fox say to doing a radio program on KPIM. Sing, tell stories, play records. Fox said he wasn’t a professional entertainer. Hale said he was professional enough to suit him. Well, Fox had quit the factory to come with me. Had no job. So he said he’d try it. And that’s how it began. . . .”

  Dave watched her stub out her cigarette. The ashtray was a rough stone mortar. The table was Danish teak.

  “Instant success?” he asked.

  “It took a while,” she said. “Hardly anyone noticed at first. Then suddenly, at the end of maybe six weeks, nobody in Pima, or in the whole valley, for that matter, seemed to be talking about anything else. Yes. It was success, beyond any of our wildest dreams. Money poured in. Every advertiser in the valley wanted to be part of it. There were so many commercials that by Thanksgiving the show had stretched from two hours to four.

  “We’d dreamed of a house of our own in a place like this canyon. Sitting huddled there in L.A. with the gas heater going and keeping warm with mugs of instant coffee, we’d plan and plan. Every room. Loving detail. So we were going to build. Luckily, we didn’t have to. This place was practically new. The couple who’d built it—the man had gotten a promotion. They had to move East. When we saw it we fell in love with it.

  “Especially Fox—with this room. Of course, it was empty then. And it was perfect. Now there was the money. He made his dream come true.” She stood and paced the room, looking at it, loving it. The brandy was working. Was she going to get sentimental? He hoped not. He’d begun to like her. “The tape machine, the sound system, the art stuff, the Goya guitar, the Gulbransen piano. All of it exactly the way he wanted. Even the books. Exactly. Do you know they’re first editions? Most of them signed.” She took a book down, opened the cover. “William Carlos Williams . . .”

  “I noticed,” Dave said.

  She put the book back and touched the shiny metal of the tall stands. “These microphones cost three hundred dollars each. They’re the finest made.”

  “What about the painting?” Dave asked. “Where did that come in?”

  “The painting?” She opened blank eyes at him. The brandy had worked. “Oh ... I thought I told you. Before the war, Pearl Harbor, he studied art. For a year, at the Provence School. On Western Avenue. He and a friend, Doug Sawyer. I never knew him. He joined the Air Force. Lost on a bombing mission over Europe in the first months. That was when Fox went into the aircraft factory.

  “He told me when we met that he’d never touch a brush again. And it was a good many years before he wanted to. And then there wasn’t time or strength. Not with working eight hours a day and writing too. And he’d invested too much in the writing to stop that. Years. So painting was one of those things he was going to do when his book got published and became a best seller and we were rich.”

  “And you got rich and he started. Right?”

  “Right.” She finished the last of her brandy and set the glass down with a click. “And the book is going to be a reality too. All those years of writing are going to pay off at last. Do you know what the advance royalty was? Twenty-five thousand dollars. That, my friend, is success! He was illustrating it himself. Here . . .” She slid a portfolio from the art cabinet and opened it on the drafting table. Dave went to look. The drawings were ink and wash. Quick and funny and filled with small-town atmosphere.

  “I’ll have to read the stories,” he said.

  “You do that.” The brandy hadn’t softened her. It had dissolved the polish. She walked to the desk, scooped up the heap of scripts, came back and thrust them into his hands. “And try to forget your grade-B-thriller theories, Mr. Brandstetter. Fox Olson didn’t demolish his new six-thousand-dollar car and trudge off into nowhere in the middle of a rainy night. He’d reached the best years of his life. They were just beginning. Record companies were interested. Television . . .” She glanced at her watch again. “See Hale McNeil, if you still have any doubts. At KPIM. He’ll show you the letters, the contract offers. Now I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to excuse me. . . .”

  Dave smiled. “There’ll be other days.”

  “I hope not!” she flared. “Frankly, I’m really quite upset and angry about this. It’s perfectly senseless. When the storm is over, Fox’s body will be found. Then you’ll feel as absurd as I know right now you are.” She turned away. “Come along. I’ll give you your coat. . . .”

  When he reached his car, under the dripping, blue-gray manzanita, his feet wet again from the shallow river that was the road, he tossed the damp scripts into the back seat. He started the engine, released the brake. But he wasn’t leaving yet. He drove up the road fifty yards, argued the car around, twice nearly sinking the rear wheels in a pothole big enough to qualify as a scenic wonder, and parked with the engine running. There was a lot of wet green brush here. Mountain holly. It masked the car.

  He waited. About five minutes. Then a station wagon swung into the Olson driveway. Green-and-blue logo on the door: KPIM. Dave slid across the seat. The blurred glass didn’t help, but through a gap in the brush he saw the station wagon brake behind the Mustang. The old Chevy was gone. It must have belonged to the girl, Terry.

  The driver got out of the station wagon. Distance and rain made it impossible to see his features. He was well set up, broad in the shoulders. No hat. Dark hair. Tan fly-front coat. Head down, he trotted along the flags toward the house. Dave lost sight of him in the tangle of brush for a second. Then he found a gap that showed him the house door. It opened.

  Thorne Olson came out, still in the brown boy’s clothes. She ran five steps through the rain and into the man’s arms. He closed them around her. She clung to him and he bent his head and covered her mouth with a kiss. They stood there locked together for a good fifteen seconds. More than enough time for a polite exchange of greetings. Then they went into the house and the door closed.

  Dave waited a few minutes, then let the hand brake go and headed back down the canyon.

  4

  She was rolling a wheel along the road. When the tire wobbled against her it smeared mud on the white raincoat. She had tied a triangle of clear plastic over her hair. It lay like drenched tissue paper. When she heard the car come up behind her and turned to look at him, strands of wet hair lay plastered down her face. She raked at them with the fingers of one muddy hand and gave him a little frantic wave with the other. The wheel got away from her then. It lurched into the roadside scrub and lay down like a sick animal.

  He set the hand brake and got out. The water thundered down the arroyo. Over its roar, he shouted, “Get into the car.”

  “The wheel!” she wailed.

  “I’ll bring it,” he said. “Get in.”

  When he opened the luggage compartment the smell of new automobile came out. He’d only opened it twice. For suitcases. Well, all that handsome, contoured carpeting was due for a shock. He heaved the split and earth-clogged tire inside and slammed the lid. Now his own coat was muddy. He sighed, wiped his hands on it and climbed back into the car behind the steering wheel.

  “Gosh, thanks.” She perched, dripping, on the seat edge. “But I’m ruining your lovely new car.”

  “It’s a company car,” he said. “They expect me to use it hard. Like James Bond.”

  “Wha
t company? Who are you? Brand what?”

  “Brandstetter, David. Medallion Life. I’m an insurance investigator.” He let go the hand brake and began to inch the car along again. The rain came down hard now. The windshield wipers waved like the arms of a drowning man. “What did you think you were doing?”

  “I had a flat and no spare. I was walking to Pima. My boyfriend works at the Signal station.” She looked at her muddy hands. “Have you got a Kleenex or something?”

  Keeping watch on the road, what he could see of it, he leaned across and opened the glove compartment. There was a box of tissues. Blue box with little white tracery flowers. He jerked some of the soft papers out and handed them to her. “How come you didn’t go back to Olson’s?”

  She sneezed. A plastic bag for trash hung off the dashboard. Thoughtful Medallion. She stuffed the muddied Kleenex into it and pulled fresh ones to blow her nose. “They don’t have a spare.”

  “I meant, you could have phoned from there.”

  “He’s there,” she said.

  Dave glanced at her. “When did you get this flat? You left up there a good hour ago. Where’s your car?”

  “Back up the road. A little below the bridge.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Dave said.

  “It’s parked up that little overgrown side road that used to lead to a house that burned down.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Waiting.” Her face set. Young, sullen. She muttered, “There was something I wanted to see.”

  “Who was coming to Olson’s—right?”

  “Right. It was him. Hale McNeil. When you didn’t come down, I began to wonder if it would be. But it was. Him. He. Then, when I started up my car, the damn tire was flat. My third in two weeks . . . Can I have a cigarette, please? I left mine in my car.”