“You said there was other stuff in the attic…besides the pictures?”
“Tons of stuff…boxes and boxes of records and papers and letters. It just fills up that attic.”
“What was the purpose of it? Did she ever tell you?”
“She always said she was going to write a book about Mr. Grayson, who had been her friend for years.”
“Did she tell you how they met?”
“No.”
“What about your father?”
Her brow furrowed: dark clouds gathered behind her eyes. “What about him?”
“Who was he?”
“Just a man Mamma knew. He wasn’t around long.”
“Was his name Harper?”
“What’s that got to do with Eleanor? My father’s been nothing in my life.”
“It’s probably got nothing to do with anything. It’s just a question a cop asks.”
“My father’s name was Paul Ricketts. I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive.”
“Was he there then?”
“When?”
“The year we’re talking about…1969.”
“He must’ve been, at least for twenty minutes.” She blushed a little. “I was born that year.”
“Where’d the name Harper come from?”
“It was Mamma’s family name. She never married this man. I really don’t see why you’re asking me this.”
I backed off. I didn’t want to lose her. “I’m just trying to find out who was there, who’s still around, and what they might know. What about this book your mother was writing?”
“She never wrote a word, never had the time. It was always tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow I’ll get started.’ But tomorrow came and guess what?…She didn’t have the time. She always had to work two jobs to keep me in shoes and have good food for us to eat. And then that other Grayson book came out, you know, by that woman at the Times , and that put the kibosh on it. Mamma knew she’d never write anything after that.”
“But she did keep the material?”
“She never threw away anything in her life.”
The thought that had been building in my mind now occurred to her. “Are you thinking maybe Eleanor found something up there in Mamma’s stuff that caused her to go to New Mexico and break into that house?”
“There’s a fair chance of it. That does seem to be where everything started coming apart for her.”
“Damn. Makes you want to go out there now and start looking through it, doesn’t it?”
“If that’s an invitation, I’d love it.”
She shook her head. “The house is dark, there’s no power, they turned off the lights three weeks ago. And I’ll feel a lot better tomorrow without the kids. I can drop ‘em in day care at seven-thirty and we can head out then.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I’m as anxious as you are. I’m just not crazy about having my kids spend the night in a dark house in the country…you know what I mean?”
“In the morning then.”
But she was my one real link to the past and I hated to leave her there.
Then I realized I didn’t have to.
36
I talked her into my room at the Hilton with little effort. I explained it away as a room I had rented but couldn’t use, and she wasn’t inclined to ask questions. To her it was a Wheel of Fortune vacation: two nights in Oz, with a color TV, a king-size bed, and room service. I told her to order whatever she wanted, it was already paid for; then I left another hundred on deposit at the desk to cover it. It was after nine when I got over to Mercer Island, a wooded, hilly residential neighborhood just across the bridge from the city. Mercer dominates the lower half of Lake Washington: you come off Interstate 90 and swing along a spectacular bluff that overlooks the highway; then you curl back inland on a street called Mercerwood Drive and up past some expensive-looking real estate. It was not a place I’d imagine a working reporter to live in. So she had a boat, pricey digs, and a job that let her write her own ticket: I still couldn’t imagine the Times paying her more than fifty grand. As I backtracked west, the houses seemed more ordinary. I turned left, deadended into a high school, and eventually found my way around it and came into her block.
It was an older house with a well-lived look to it. It sat on a large lot surrounded by trees. I pulled into her driveway and fished out the package she had left me from under the seat. She had left the night-light on as well as two lights inside the house. I got out and walked up like I owned the place.
The key was in the flowerpot, just where she’d said.
I came into a dark hallway. A brief memory of Pruitt’s house flashed through my mind before the place burst into life—two golden retrievers charged from the rear in joyous welcome. I got down with them and roughed them the way big dogs seem to like it. Mitzi and Pal, the tags on their collars said. Mitzi was especially affectionate and I felt welcome, less like a stranger in this town of endless rain.
The hall opened into a large living area. There was a TV, VCR, and disc player, all the comforts. Just off the big room was a dining room, with a mahogany table that seated eight, and beyond that was the kitchen.
In the middel of the table was a cassette tape player, with the door flipped open.
Near the tape player was a note, telling her friend Judy Maples how much to feed the dogs and where things were. The dogs came and went, I saw, through a doggie door that opened off the kitchen into a groundlevel deck, and from there into a backyard.
I opened the refrigerator, which was well stocked with beer; I fetched myself one and sat at the counter sipping the foam. I took the tape out of the bag and snapped it into place in the machine.
“Hi,” she said. “Isn’t this cozy?”
She paused as if we were there together and it were my turn to talk. I said, “Yes ma’am, and I thank you very large.”
“You’ll find beer in the fridge,” she said, “but knowing you, you already have. Seriously, make yourself at home. The dogs will want to sleep with you, but they won’t pester: if you close your door, they’ll whine for about five minutes, then they’ll shut up and go about their business. They’re well behaved; I’m sure you’ll get along famously.
“There’s plenty of food. The freezer’s well stocked, and if you don’t see anything there you want, there’s a big freezer in the garage. You can defrost just about anything in the microwave. Again I’m anticipating your little idiosyncrasies and impatiences, and assuming that you’ve never read an instruction booklet in your life. Do yourself a favor and read the two paragraphs I’ve left open and marked on the table. It’s impossible to defrost food without knowing the codes. You could spend years of your life trying to figure it out on your own. I imagine you’ll try anyway.
“I thought you’d be most comfortable in the big room on the right at the top of the stairs. It’s a man’s room—I rented this house from an FBI agent who’s now doing a tour of duty in Texas. So that’s where you should go—the room upstairs, not Texas—when you’re ready to call it a night.”
There was another pause. I stopped the tape, looked through the freezer, found a pizza, and put it in the real oven on a piece of tinfoil. The hell with instructional booklets written by committee in Japan.
I pushed the on button on the tapedeck.
“So,” she said, “on to business.”
Yes ma’am.
“The cops picked up that kid who was with Pruitt and Carmichael. His name is Bobby John Dalton, date of birth”—I could hear her shuffling through notes—“one nine…umm…‘sixty-six. He’s got a record, nothing major: one or two fights, one assault charge, a drunk and disorderly, carrying an unlicensed weapon, having an open can in a moving vehicle. He thinks of himself as a tough guy, a muscleman. Maybe he is—I mention it so you’ll know…he’ll figure he owes you for what you did to him in the garage. He was a bouncer in a nightclub, a bodyguard…Quintana wouldn’t tell me much more than that. I’m recording this on Saturday night. My plane leaves in two hours and I don’t know at this moment whether they’ve actually booked this Dalton kid or are just holding him for questioning. He was still downtown the last time I checked, about an hour ago. I don’t know if the cops have any new leads on Pruitt after talking to the kid.”