Death Claims: A Dave Bran[d]stetter Mystery Page 4

  "Is that the way April tells it?"

  "It's what she told me. Isn't it true?"

  Norwood didn't answer. His hands stopped fidgeting with the books and he shifted his eyes. To a woman who stopped in the doorway. Dark glasses, blond wig, fringed leather bolero over a white turtleneck jersey, fringed leather shoulder-strap purse at the hip of her white slacks.

  "Eve," Norwood said. "This man is from the company that insured John's life. He's looking for Peter."

  The light was behind her. Dave couldn't see her expression, but she went very still for a second. Then she came to him in squeaky straw sandals with flat heels that clacked. She stood close, took off the dark glasses, frowned. She was very blond. But time hadn't done her creamy skin any kindnesses. It was webbed like a winter-morning window in snow country. She was tall for a woman and looked strong, not heavy but strong. "Why Peter?" she said. "I was John's beneficiary."

  "I'm afraid not, Mrs. Oats. He must have made a change when the two of you separated."

  "But—" She didn't go on. She shut her mouth hard, turned abruptly and went fast through a doorway in a wall of books at the rear of the shop. Norwood drew a sharp breath. He started to reach after her. He didn't call out. He dropped the hand. He looked sick. As he stared at Dave, the corner of his mouth twitched. His voice came out a croak.

  "There must be some mistake." He almost ran for a counter where a telephone squatted by a beautiful old cash register of pierced cast iron. "I'll call." He snatched up the receiver. "What's the number there?"

  Dave's watch read 5:25. "The switchboard will be closed," he said. "But there's no mistake." He laid a card on the counter. "Call tomorrow. They'll tell you."

  Numbly Norwood lowered the phone into place. In the room beyond the wall of books there was quiet light now and a bottleneck rattled against a glass. Norwood heard it too. A dry tongue touched his lips. He gave a pained smile. "Well, I suppose you must be right. It's just such a shock. I apologize for getting excited." He flicked a glance at the door to the back room. In shadow above it, ghostly pale, a bust of Antinous bowed its head. "Look, would you excuse us now?"

  "For drinks?'Dave said. "I'd even join you if you asked me." Norwood jerked with surprise. "Why, I—" He smiled, stopped smiling, smiled again. "Of—of course. Pleasure. Eve?" He turned, rubbing nervous hands. "Mr."—he picked up the card and tilted his head back to read it through his bifocals-"Mr. Brandstetter will join us for martinis."

  "Oh?" She stood in the doorway, a squat glass in each hand. The olives stirred, the ice cubes rattled. "Why?"

  "I need to find Peter. Maybe you can tell me something that will give me a lead."

  Her ice-blue eyes watched him for a quarter of a minute, then she gave a shrug and turned away. "I doubt it. But come in."

  Under friendlier circumstances, snug would have been the word for the back room. Red leather armchairs faced a low golden- oak table where a Tiffany lamp glowed over books, catalogues, a loose stack of letters. The top letter looked like a booklist. He frowned. Where had he seen that elegantly engraved letterhead before? He shook his head. He couldn't remember.

  On a desk under a window of wired frosted glass an old black L. C. Smith waited between stacked books stuck with slips of paper and a marbled pasteboard box of file cards. The desk was a bar too. Bottles glinted there. Shelves went darkly up all around, weighted by books and supplies. Eve Oats handed Dave a martini in a glass that matched hers and Norwood's but had a chip in its rim. Norwood, still looking pale, waved at a chair.

  "Thanks." Dave sat and waited for them to sit. He looked at Eve. "Has Peter been to you? Did he come home?"

  "What for?" She lit a cigarette. Her hands were unsteady. The match flame jittered. She shook it out and said flatly, "When he left home he took everything he owned." She blew smoke away as if it annoyed her, and swallowed a third of her drink. "He decided in his infant wisdom that I'd wronged his precious father and he hated me, couldn't live under the same roof with me another minute."

  A sour smile tugged a corner of her mouth.

  " 'All right,' I said, 'go if you want to.' I think it shook him. He'd expected motherly tears and pleadings. The young live by cliche. But he went, grimly. No. I haven't seen him since." She took another long swallow of her drink. On the far side of the table the silent Norwood worked on his like an assignment. "I don't expect to. He was always stubborn. I'll never forget the fight he put up as a baby when the time came for him to begin eating solid food. Let me tell you"—her laugh was like crackling glass—"it was a contest of wills. I very nearly didn't win. He was determined to starve to death rather than eat that repulsive goop."

  She finished off the drink and reached across the circle of light to collect Norwood's derelict ice cube. Her hand paused over Dave's drink. Her eyebrows queried. But he'd barely nicked it and he shook his head. She got up and rattled glass some more in the shadows around the desk. "I could tell you a boring succession of anecdotes about that child's mulishness."

  "He was wrong about you and John Oats?"

  "He had no understanding whatever of how things were." She came back and set Norwood's drink in front of him and dropped into her chair again. "He was far too young. They get the idea that because their arms and legs stretch and they're suddenly as tall as their parents, they're adults. Of course he was wrong." She shook another cigarette from its hardpack. Marlboro.

  "You didn't walk out on Peter's father when he was fighting for his life?"

  The hand with the cigarette stopped on its way to her mouth. Her eyes narrowed and glinted dangerously.

  "He's talked to April," Charles Norwood said.

  "Ah. Has he." She didn't ask it, she said it. "Well"—she set the cigarette in her mouth, scratched a paper match and talked to Norwood—"I was going to tell him to go to hell with his prying." The match was curling black inside the flame. She touched the flame to her cigarette and dropped the match in the ashtray and leveled a hard look at Dave. "But I think I want to set the record straight. A short time after Miss April came to work here I found her with John in—shall we be elegant about it?—a compromising situation. In this very room. I understood. He was a man like all men. And like most men in their forties, foolish. She was very pretty, very young and, more importantly, very willing. That's understandable. John had a great deal of charm."

  "She told me," Dave said.

  "Yes, I'll bet she did. Well, I didn't make a scene. We talked it out sensibly, John and I, like grownups. John saw my point of view and April went. So that was that. Until his accident. Then she came back. To the hospital. I couldn't be there constantly. It takes at least two people to run this shop. She had no shop to look after. There's money in her background. The Stannards are an old El Molino family. She was there night and day, the nurses told me. John didn't know it. He was under heavy sedation. But there she sat, like something out of Olive Higgins Prouty."

  Eve picked up her glass and tilted it steeply. This drink wasn't going to last even as long as number one. She set the glass down noisily. Her voice had the texture of a rusty file.

  "Naturally when John began to be aware at all, it was faithful April he was aware of. I was a vague face that came and went. He didn't reason about it. Of course, a man in pain like that hasn't time for reason. I know it. But John was something of a special case. You see, Mr. Brandstetter-is that right?" She arched one brow.

  "The name?" Dave said. "Yes, that's right."

  "Scandinavian. Brand's daughter. Isn't that what it means? Yes. Funny." Her smile was thin and hungry. "You certainly don't look like anyone's daughter."

  "Appearances can be deceiving," Dave said.

  "Hah." She shot Norwood a dismal look. "Despite limited opportunities, I still know a man when I see one."

  "John," Dave reminded her, "was a special case."

  "Yes. He'd never been ill before. Never. He didn't know how to cope with it. Oh, life hadn't been exactly generous to him. He'd had disasters. But, you see, I'd always been ther
e, right there, right at his side, to get him through somehow. He'd come to rely pretty heavily, pretty constantly on me for that. He'd make a mess, I'd pick up the pieces. Well, this was one mess I couldn't help with. No one could but doctors, nurses. And he couldn't grasp that. I'd always come to his rescue—for close to thirty years. This time I couldn't. I was as helpless as he was. And he hated me, really hated me for that." She drank again.

  "April Stannard couldn't help him either."

  "Oh, you are so right." Her mouth took a wry sad twist. "So completely right. But did he see it that way? No. Somehow her always being there made a difference." Her hands went up and fell like shot birds. "God knows what goes on in the romantic mind. I've never been able to fathom it. He said she 'loved him' " —Eve got rid of the phrase like bad food—"and I didn't. Good God! I ask you."

  "Since it was all that could be done and she was doing it, maybe it was enough." Dave stood. "Can you give me some ideas about where Peter might be?"

  "Your urgency puzzles me." She raised a hand to keep the lamplight out of her eyes and blinked up at him. "Insurance companies aren't known for frantic efforts to locate those they owe payments to.''

  "True. There's more to the story." He told it.

  "Oh, seriously!" She laughed, shook her head, picked up her drink and finished it off. "I'm surprised at you. I'd thought you were complicated. How transparent. If he'd murdered his father, you wouldn't have to pay. It's not only transparent, it's sordid. And you didn't strike me as the least bit grubby. It shows how appearances deceive. I'm disappointed."

  "Craziest thing I ever heard." Norwood got up and went with his glass into the desk dark. "Peter and his father were friends."

  "Friends fall out," Dave said. "Mrs. Oats and her husband, for example."

  "Ah," she said, "but John and I were never friends. We were dependents. He depended on me for common sense and backbone. I depended on him for-well, he was beautiful and charming. Draw your own conclusions." She bent into the light for her glass and held it out for Norwood. "But Peter and John might have been monozygotic twins. They thought alike, moved alike, spoke alike, looked alike. They cared for the same things. They were—I don't know the words for it—absolutely gone on each other, I suppose you'd say. They're the only two people I've ever known who lived together for twenty years and genuinely enjoyed every minute of it."

  "And teamed up against you, I'm told," Dave said.

  She got a new drink from Norwood. When she turned back, her smile was sardonic. "And were twice as weak that way. You see, they not only had each other's virtues, they had each other's flaws. It's what makes your fantasy so absurd. Neither of them would have had the courage to kill anyone." She frowned thoughtfully. "Except, of course, themselves. John was doing that. With morphine. It came out in the medical examiner's report at the inquest. He was an addict."

  "It was for the pain," Dave said.

  She shook her head. "The pain was long past. Ask Dr. De Kalb."

  Norwood came back and sat down. "He could have drowned himself. He was badly scarred and he'd been proud of his looks. Also he had no money, no future."

  "April didn't mind the scars," Dave said. "She was getting jobs. They were eating. There was a roof over their heads. April was his future."

  "Peter," Eve Oats said stubbornly.

  "Not at the end. His wanting to change the policy shows that. Peter had walked out on him. No, I don't know why. But they must have quarreled."

  "Unthinkable." She held her hand against the light again. Its shadow masked her eyes. "Your eagerness to save your company money is muddling your mind. If Peter killed his father for his insurance, why hasn't he tried to collect it? What's he doing?"

  "Having the horrors someplace," Dave said. "Murder takes some people that way. Doing it is one thing. Living with it is another. Thanks for the drink."

  He went out through the dusky shop.

  6

  NIGHT MET HIM in the courtyard. He inched his sleeve back. 6:lO. His mouth tightened. He ought to have phoned earlier. He had to phone now. Was there a booth? It waited in a dark corner like a child left over from a long-ago twilight game of hide-and-seek. It was an old wooden booth with wired glass and overgrown with ivy. When he stepped inside and unfolded the door shut to make the light turn on, tendrils of ivy groped through the hinge crack like roots into a coffin. A man wouldn't talk long here—not if he hoped to leave. He listened to the quarter rattle down. He dialed.

  "Alló." It had rung only once. That was bad. Behind the voice the stereo came through. Edith Piaf, Juliette Greco, Yves Montand? He couldn't make out. It didn't matter. He felt bad about them all. As he felt bad about the copies of Paris-Match that strewed the living room, as he felt bad about each new Genet letter in The New Yorker. For Doug they kept Jean-Paul alive, the smashed auto racer he had slept with, boy and man, during the two decades he'd worked for NATO in France. Dave's stomach muscles grabbed. He wanted to shout, Turn it off! He didn't shout. They never shouted at each other. They weren't on that kind of footing. And maybe that was too bad. He said:

  "That's the kitchen phone. You're cooking. So this call doesn't count. I'll be there."

  "It's the bedroom phone. I'm not cooking. I just got out of the shower." Dave could see him, small, spare, palely naked—so like Rod, his own dead who wouldn't lie down-hunching a shoulder to hold the receiver while he scrubbed his shag of graying hair with one of Rod's red towels and dripped on Rod's white rug. "I've been at the shop since morning." He meant Sawyer's Pet Shop, kept by his bright, beaky little mother in one of those gray enclaves of neglect Los Angeles calls neighborhood business districts. "Emergency. The front of the big aquarium gave. We lost a lot of lives. Expensive ones. And I cut hell out of my hand. But the tank is fixed and I'm fixed. And there's beaucoup sand in the shower."

  "Well, don't cook," Dave said. "I'm seventy-five miles away and I've still got a man to see here. Will you drive up? El Molino. There must be a good restaurant. I'll phone Madge. She'll know."

  "Ask her to join you," Doug said. "She's closer. It's a hell of a drive from here, Dave, and it's the worst time of day for traffic." He didn't mind traffic.' He lived to drive that red Ferrari of his and he drove it the way Szeryng played the violin. "And I'm tired, and my hand hurts."

  "I'm sorry," Dave said. "Did you see a doctor?"

  "Yes. It's elegantly stitched. It still hurts. I'll see you when you get here. All right?"

  "Tomorrow," Dave said. "I'll phone you in the morning." He hung up. He hadn't known he was going to say that. Or had he? He felt hollow. Since last November, when they'd met at the sudden end of a policy-holder's heartbeats in a sand-flea beachtown roominghouse, they hadn't slept apart. This would be the first night. Did he feel bad about that? If so, why? He waited a few seconds for an answer. It didn't come. But the hollowness didn't go. It began to hurt.

  He fed the phone a dime and dialed Madge.

  The place was called The Hound and Hawk. Thatch roof, white plaster, half-timbering outside, fumed-oak rafters and paneling inside. Leaded windows. Flamelight from logs in a huge fireplace glinted on the silver, crystal, white linen of stillvacant tables, and reflected ruddy in the polished broad-board floor he crossed to a short set of warped oak steps that climbed to a door marked TAPROOM. Torchlight, hanging rows of pewter mugs, taps bunged into oaken cask ends, a barmaid out of Holbein, frill-capped, buxom, rosy-cheeked. From somewhere a trickle of Morris Dance music, lute, hautboy, tabor. He hoped Madge would hurry. He had a low tolerance for sham.

  He ordered Glenlivet with water on the side and put it away fast, dodging thoughts of Doug. And a second. And was working on a third when she stood beside him, tugging off driving gloves, unpegging her duffel coat, shaking back her wind-blown hair, boy-cropped, gray. He caught the tang of sea air when she hiked her long, fine bones onto the stool next to his. She gave him her good smile. It had been good for him for twenty-odd years. Dependable, real. He wished it was all he needed. He gave the smile back bleakl
y.

  She pushed the gloves into a pocket, told the girl, "Margarita, thanks," and laid a lean, freckled hand on Dave's. "You look tired."

  "Repeated encounters with nice, normal, everyday people who kill each other for money," he said, "can wear a man down after a couple of decades."

  She winced for him. "Again? Who, this time?"

  "A loving son, a not-so-loving wife, a pretty young mistress, a business partnern—he dug out cigarettes, lit one for her, one for himself—"or none of the above." His fingers turned the stubby glass in its circle of wet on the bar top. Blinking through smoke, he watched them. "If I knew, I'd leave word with the management here that they've got the wrong Elizabeth and go home."

  "Home?" She cocked an eyebrow. "I thought you asked on the phone to stay over with me. You'd driven all over Southern California today and you were whipped."

  The ashtray was thick pewter stamped with a coat of arms. Hound and hooded hawk. He tapped his cigarette on it.

  She said, "I suppose you're aware that's never happened before."

  He shrugged. "I'm not as young as I once was."

  "It's not that. You'd have driven from Tierra del Fuego to get back to Rod at night. And it's not your work you're tired of, either. If you'll permit me an educated guess, it's Doug. Am I wrong?"

  He drank and gave the flame-shadowed room a long, skeptical look. "I know you've never led me astray, but can the food here really be eaten?"

  "Trust me." Her drink came, creamy, the rim of the stem glass frosty with salt. She tasted it, nodded approval, set it down with a delicate click and touched his hand again. "Talk about it, Davey."

  He glanced at her and away. "You talk about it."

  "Ah? Ready for an opinion now, are we?"

  His laugh was short and wry. "You've had one prepared for some time."

  "From the minute I met him. I thought I'd been masterfully deceptive about it. You knew?"

  "That day at the raceway. The two of you with your heads together. The Ferrari owner, the Porsche owner. All that chat about Formula A versus Formula One, three litres versus five litres, V-eights versus flat twelves . . ."