Wanda was a twit and she'd deserved it, by God.
The only thing I was worried about was Eberhardt's reaction. What he'd said to me before I left might have been just words, flung out in the heat of anger; but on the other hand, he was something of a grudge-holder. The last thing I wanted was an episode like last night's putting a damper on our friendship and a strain on our working relationship. Fat-mouth Wanda's feelings weren't worth that. And neither was what I found myself thinking of as the Great Spaghetti Assault.
So I stayed there in the office, waiting for him, instead of getting an early start for Tomales to follow up on the Angelo Bertolucci lead. Keeping busy wasn't much of a problem at first. I called Stephen Porter's number again, found him in, and had a ten-minute talk with him that didn't enlighten me much. In the first place, he hadn't found the box of Harmon Crane's papers yet, even though he was sure they were around “somewhere.” And in the second place, while he knew Crane's first wife had been Ellen Corneal, and that they had been married in Reno-an elopement, he said-in 1932, he didn't know what had happened to her after their divorce; nor had he had any idea she'd been pestering Crane for money not long before his suicide.
“Harmon never mentioned her to me,” he said. “It was Adam who told me about her.”
“Did your brother know if their divorce was amicable or not?”
“He seemed to think it wasn't. One of those brief, youthful marriages that end unhappily when all the passion is spent. I gathered they didn't get on well at all.”
“Do you know if she had a profession?”
He paused to think, or maybe just to catch his breath; his coughing and wheezing sounded severe this morning. “No, I can't recall Adam mentioning it, if she did.”
“Would you have any idea what she studied at UC?”
“No. You might be able to find that out through the registrar's office, though.”
“Might be worth a try. Did you know Russell Dancer?”
“I don't believe I ever met him. The name isn't familiar. You say he knew Harmon fairly well?”
“They were drinking companions for a while.”
“Yes, well, people tell each other things when they've been drinking that they wouldn't discuss sober. Or so I'm told. I wish I was a drinking man; I might have got to know Harmon much better than I did. But I haven't much tolerance for alcohol. Two glasses of wine make me light-headed.”
“You're probably lucky,” I said, thinking of Kerry last night.
When I hung up I dragged the San Francisco telephone directory out of the desk and just for the hell of it looked up Ellen Corneal's name. No listing. I checked my copy of the directory of city addresses, just in case she had an unlisted number. Nothing. So then I called information for the various Bay Area counties; but if Ellen Corneal was still alive and still living in this area, she didn't have a listed phone under that name. Which left me with the Department of Motor Vehicles, a TRW credit check, and the obit file at the Chronicle. I put in calls to Harry Fletcher at the DMV, Tom Winters, who was part owner of a leasing company and who had pulled TRWs for me before, and Joe DeFalco at the newspaper office-all of whom promised to get back to me before the day was out. I decided to forgo a check with the registrar's office at UC until I saw what turned up on the other fronts. Likewise a research trip to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, on the possibility that Ellen Corneal might have remarried here in the city.
Ten-fifteen by this time and still no Eberhardt.
I called his house in Noe Valley. No answer. I went over to his desk and looked up Wanda's home number in his Rolodex and called that. No answer. I called Macy's downtown, and was told that Ms. Jaworski was out ill today.
Well, hell, I thought.
I waited until ten-thirty. Then I scribbled a note that said, I'm sorry about last night, Eb-we'll talk, put it on his desk, and left for Tomales. A long drive in the country was just what I needed to soothe my twitchy nerves.
Tomales is a village of maybe two hundred people, clustered among some low foothills along the two-lane Shoreline Highway, sixty miles or so north of San Francisco. But there isn't any shoreline in the immediate vicinity: the village is situated above Tomales Bay and a few miles inland from the ocean. Sheep and dairy ranches surround it, and out where the bay merges with the Pacific there is Dillon Beach and a bunch of summer cottages and new retirement homes called Lawson's Landing. The town itself has a post office, a school, a service station, a general store, a cafe, the William Tell House restaurant, a church, a graveyard, and thirty or forty scattered houses.
It was well past noon when I got there. The sun was shining, which is something of an uncommon event in the Tomales Bay area, but there was a strong, blustery wind off the ocean that kept the day from being warm. There hadn't been much traffic on the road out from Petaluma, and there wasn't much in Tomales either. What little activity there was in the place was pretty much confined to weekends.
The general store seemed the best place to ask my questions about Angelo Bertolucci; I pulled up in front and went inside. It was an old country store, the kind you don't see much anymore. Uneven wood floor, long rows of tightly packed shelves, even a big wheel of cheddar cheese on the counter. There weren't any pickle or cracker barrels and there wasn't any pot-bellied stove, but they were about all that was missing. With its smells of old wood, old groceries, fresh bread, and deli meats, the place gave me a faint pang of nostalgia for my long-vanished youth.
Behind the counter was a dark-haired girl of about twenty; she was the only other person in the store. I spent a quarter on a package of Dentyne, and asked her if she lived in Tomales. She said she did. So I asked her if she knew anyone locally named Bertolucci.
“Oh sure,” she said. “Old Mr. Bertolucci.”
“Old? He's lived here a long time, then?”
“All his life, I guess.”
“Would his first name be Angelo?”
“That's right. Do you know him?”
“No. I'd like to talk to him about a business matter.”
“Oh,” she said, “you want something stuffed.”
“Stuffed?”
“A deer or something.”
“I don't… you mean he's a taxidermist?”
“Didn't you know? He's got all kinds of animals and birds and things in his house. I was there once to deliver groceries when my dad had the flu.” A mock shiver. “Creepy,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“All those poor dead things with their eyes looking at you. And Mr. Bertolucci… well, if you've ever met him…”
“No, I haven't.”
“You'll see when you do.”
“Is he creepy too?”
“He's kind of, you know-” and she tapped one temple with the tip of her forefinger. “My mother says he's been like that for years. ‘Tetched,’ she says.”
“How old is he?”
“I don't know, seventy or more.”
“In what way is he tetched?”
“He hardly ever leaves his house. Everything he wants he has delivered. He's always shooting off his shotgun too. Some kids got in his yard once and he came out with it and threatened to shoot them.”