All three Hoyts came out to greet Kerry and me when we arrived at two on Sunday afternoon. I was of two minds about being there; I wanted to talk to Bobbie Jean but I didn’t really want to see again what Eberhardt had done to her. The visit had been Kerry’s idea, the first stop of a two-part Sunday outing. Bobbie Jean and the Hoyts first, then a short drive south and some socializing and an early dinner with Kerry’s mother, Cybil, at her seniors’ complex in Larkspur. I’d let her talk me into it without much protest, as a payback for her accompanying me to Elizabeth Street yesterday. An hour or so with Bobbie Jean and her family was something to get through, but I liked Cybil now that she was independent and writing fiction again after a forty-year hiatus. She’d finished one novel and was into another, and it looked as though the first would be bought by one of the better New York publishers. The Eberhardts of the world make life seem bleak and futile; the Cybils are beacons of light, symbols of hope.
Cliff shook my hand and said again, as he had to Kerry on the phone, that he was glad we’d decided to stop by and that Bobbie Jean was eager to see us. His cheerfulness had a hollow ring. And Pam’s smile was wan and thin, like one of those happy faces crookedly pasted on. Even Jason seemed subdued. All of which pretty much told me what to expect as we trooped in to where Bobbie Jean was waiting in what Pam called the sun room.
She was sitting in a lounge chair, an afghan tucked around her legs and a sweater over her shoulders despite the sun streaming in through tall rear windows. She didn’t look any worse than she had at the funeral, but she didn’t look any better, either. Drawn and tired-eyed, pain lines puckering the corners of her mouth, the flesh loose and wrinkled on her neck and under her chin. She’d put on rouge and lipstick, but it only called attention to the sickly pallor of her skin. The lingering impression I had was of an elderly hospital patient, propped and primped for the coming of callers.
But Kerry and I had our own masks on; we pretended she looked fine, made meaningless small talk designed to lift her spirits. I handed her the nonjunk mail I’d collected from the house yesterday; she barely glanced at it. I told her we’d pretty much finished going through both house and office, had separated out a few things we thought she might want. They were in the car, Kerry said — would she like us to bring them in? No, not now. When we do give them to her, I thought, she won’t want a single item. Wouldn’t weaken as I had with the fishing gear. The part of her life that had included Eberhardt was as dead to her as he was, and understandably so. He’d hurt her far worse than any of us.
So then everyone except Jason sat around and drank coffee and didn’t eat the carrot cake Pam had set out and made more small talk for forty interminable minutes. Eberhardt was such a presence in the room, though none of us mentioned his name, that his shade might have been sitting on one of the empty chairs, leaking ghost blood from the gaping wounds in his chest and back. I stood it as long as I could, finally got up and made excuses that were met with token protests from the Hoyts, silence from Bobbie Jean.
We were all on our feet except her when I said, “Bobbie Jean, I’d like to ask you a few questions before we leave.”
“Questions?”
“Some things that turned up that puzzle me.”
Faint smile. “Always the detective. Go ahead.”
“Last Tuesday Eb deposited five hundred dollars in cash in his checking account. Do you have any idea where he got the money?”
“...No. Five hundred dollars? Are you sure?”
“Deposit slip in his checkbook. He also wrote a check to somebody that same day for the same amount. No payee’s name in the register. It wasn’t to you?”
“No. I wrote him checks, not the other way around.”
“That makes it even odder. Five hundred in cash is a lot of money, and for him to be writing a check for that much the day before he... Well, you see why it’s bothersome.”
She nodded. “I suppose it could have something to do with that liquor warehouse business.”
“It’s possible. Did he talk to you about the job he was doing for the O’Hanlon brothers?”
“No. He never said much about his work.” She sighed, shifted position in the slow, careful way of people whose joints ache from arthritis. “If you want me to, I’ll call the bank in the morning, find out if the check’s been cashed.”
“I’d appreciate it, Bobbie Jean. Just one more thing. Did you know Eb was seeing a psychologist, a man named Disney?”
Surprise flickered in her eyes, vanished and left them dull again. She said in a matching tone, “No, I didn’t know that.”
“There was a notation on his appointment calendar — two P.M. last Tuesday.”
“He was a busy bee Tuesday, wasn’t he.” Still the dull voice, but bitterness was implicit in the words. “Have you spoken to the psychologist yet?”
“No, but I will.”
“What can he tell you that you don’t already know? He didn’t do Eb any good, did he? Nobody could do him any good, least of all me. When a man wants to die as badly as he did, there’s no way to change his mind. He’s better off dead.”
Pam said, “Mother...”
“It’s the truth, dear. He’s better off, I’m better off, you all are better off. He wanted to die and he’s dead and that’s the end of it.”
Not as simple as that, Bobbie Jean, I thought. If it was, you’d be in far better shape right now. We’d all be in better shape, skipping right along with our lives. And none of us is.
But I kept all of that to myself. Yielded to Kerry’s warning glance and tendered my good-byes. Each of us kissed Bobbie Jean’s cheek, and out we went with Cliff for company. Pam stayed with her mother.
Outside Cliff said, “I wish you hadn’t asked all those questions. It still doesn’t take much to upset her.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“I know you didn’t, but good Lord, what importance can Eberhardt’s actions his last few days possibly have?”
“None to anyone but me, I guess.”
“That sounds as though you intend to keep investigating.”
“For a while.”
“Well, then, talk to Richard Disney or anyone but Bobbie Jean.”
I said I wouldn’t bother her anymore. I didn’t add that I meant after she called the bank about that five-hundred-dollar check.
Richard Disney, Ph.D., practiced psychology out of a brown stucco-fronted Edwardian on Church a block off 24th Street. It was a Noe Valley address, not all that far from Eberhardt’s house on Elizabeth — a private home that likely belonged to Disney and so allowed him the best of all possible commutes.
I rang the bell on the downstairs office door at a few minutes after nine Monday morning, on the theory that psychologists, like medical doctors and private detectives, were usually on the premises and not necessarily averse to seeing people earlier than their posted office hours. I was right in this case; the door buzzer went off almost immediately, giving me access into a carpeted foyer. At the end of a short hallway, a waiting room opened up. It was small, comfortable, like somebody’s sparsely furnished living room. At the far end a desk was set between two closed doors; behind it sat a youngish woman with seal-brown hair and the kind of wide brown eyes that look enormous behind the lenses of glasses. Her glasses were rimmed in gold wire. A nameplate on her desk said she was Ms. Scott.
“Good morning,” she said. “May I help you?”
“I’d like to see Dr. Disney, if he’s in.”
“He is, but he doesn’t see clients until nine-thirty. And I’m afraid he has a full schedule today.”
“I’m not a client, I’m here about one. A couple of minutes of his time is all I’m asking.”