“Did Woolfox know about Erskine before he showed up? Or did she keep her past a secret from him?”
“Told him everything when they got engaged.” Battle paused and then said mildly, “You wouldn’t be trying to build a scenario that’ll help ease your conscience, would you?”
“No way. I screwed up and I accept full responsibility. I’m going to feel lousy about it for a long time.”
He watched me awhile, then shrugged and said, “Yeah, well, live and learn. Anyhow, there’s no question that she was terrified of Erskine. It was in her voice and her eyes the whole time I talked to her. He was stalking her, and the odds are he’d have harmed her eventually, or tried to. My job is to make sure a case is what it seems to be before I wrap it up, but I hope like hell this one was an accidental shooting. Nice justice in a stalker getting careless and blowing himself away before he harms the woman.”
“Wouldn’t make me unhappy, either,” I said. “Sounds like she’s had a rough time.”
“Too damn rough. She seems decent — I liked her.”
“She still on jury duty, or did they let her off?”
“Empaneled for a gang-rape trial, called but not seated. Obligation completed.”
“One more question, Lieutenant?”
“Ask it.”
“Did she send a postcard to an old friend in Santa Fe, or was that another of Erskine’s lies?”
“Lie. She swears she’s had no contact with anyone in Santa Fe since she left Taos. Wouldn’t have dared risk writing a postcard or letter, or making a phone call, or even setting foot back in New Mexico.”
“Then how did he track her to this area?”
“He didn’t tell her and she doesn’t have any idea.”
“Well, if it was through another private detective, he or she is a hell of a lot smarter than me.”
“How so?”
“Figured out what Erskine was up to and refused to have anything more to do with him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have needed me.”
“How’d he happen to pick you, anyhow?”
“Referral list from an agency in Santa Fe. That’s what he told my assistant.”
“Which agency?”
“Patterson.”
“You know them?”
“Yes. Reputable firm. I handled a split-fee investigation for them a few years ago. He probably did get a referral list from them. Either they did work for him, or he paid them a small consultancy fee.”
“I’ll check, see if they can tell me something I don’t already know.” Battle got to his feet. “Well, I think that’s it for now. I have your card, here’s one of mine. Call me if you think of anything else.”
I said I would, and that should have been the end of my involvement in the matter. But it wasn’t, not just yet.
Ira Erskine had made a fool out of me, a burden compounded by what I’d done to Sondra Nelson — and James Woolfox and Gail Kendall — by turning a psychopath loose on her without even a whisper of advance warning. The guilt I felt today was twice as strong as yesterday’s, too strong to ignore. I couldn’t just fade away, forget it all as if it had never happened; I’m not made that way. I had to have some sort of closure in this case, just as I needed one in Eberhardt’s suicide. And that meant facing her, owning up — not because I wanted her forgiveness, but because it was the only way I could begin to forgive myself.
11
Clouds were forming a low, dark overcast and there was a sharp ground-hugging wind when I reached the junction of Alexander Valley Road and Highway 128. It was only two-thirty but shadows were already long in the folds and hollows of the hills, among the thicker stands of oaks that flanked 128. Rain later on, I thought. Maybe even a good-size storm. I could smell the ozone in the air even with the windows tightly shut.
The public parking area at Silver Creek Cellars was deserted. For the most part, wine-tasting is a fair-weather, weekend pursuit. The tasting room was still open, though; small wineries can’t afford to pander to the vagaries of weather or to make blanket assumptions about human nature. I parked as close as I could to the smaller stone building and let the wind hurry me inside.
The tasting room had two occupants, the blond hostess I’d talked to last Thursday and the heavyset, red-haired woman who’d complained about too much residual sugar in one of the fermenting vats. They were having a conversation in a small office behind the counter. The blonde noticed me as I entered, came out smiling and saying “Welcome to—” Recognition put an abrupt end to both the greeting and the smile. “Oh,” she said in chilly tones, “it’s you again. The liar.”
“Me again.”
“You have a lot of nerve coming back here.”
“I know it. Is Sondra Nelson—”
“I’m not going to talk to you,” she said, “not after what you did, the way you lied to me. Why don’t you go away? You’re not wanted at Silver Creek.”
“Look, miss—”
“What’s going on, Paula?” That from the redhead, standing in the office doorway. She moved forward to join the other woman and I had my first good look at Gail Kendall. A nametag pinned above the pocket of her white smock read “Gail,” so I assumed that was who she was. Late thirties, solid and big-boned rather than overweight, with a wedge-shaped chin and a generous mouth. Homely, but in an appealing way. The old saw about opposites attracting sometimes applies to same-sex friendships, too: she was nothing at all like the woman in Ira Erskine’s photographs.
The blonde, Paula, said, “He’s that detective, the one who found Sandy for her pig of an ex-husband.”
The look Gail Kendall fixed on me would have clabbered milk. Except that in her anger-hot eyes I was a different and much darker substance, the kind you detour around when you spot it dirtying the ground. “What the hell do you want?”
“To see Sondra Nelson. Or James Woolfox, if she’s not here.”
“Why?”
“I’d rather tell her personally.”
“More trouble, is that it?”
“No, ma’am. Not from me.”
“You know what you almost did, siccing that son-of-a-bitch on Sandy? You have any idea?”
“I do now. I didn’t last Thursday.”
“That’s no excuse. Couldn’t you see what he was? Or didn’t you care?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care. And yes, I should’ve seen what he was but I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you at least talk to her, give her some warning? What right does a man like you have to poke into people’s lives without them knowing anything about it?”
“I made a mistake, Ms. Kendall, and I’m sorry for it.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Sheriff’s Lieutenant Battle.”
She made a spitting mouth. “I suppose he’s sorry, too. Everybody’s so damn sorry. You think that makes it all right, being sorry?”
“No. But it’s all I have to offer.”
“Leave Sandy and Jim alone. You’ve caused them enough grief.”
“No more grief, just a few minutes of her time, or his. Is either of them here?”
“No.”
“At his ranch?”
“They’re not anywhere in the valley right now, thanks to you. Not anywhere in the state.”
“Come on, Ms. Kendall. The lieutenant wouldn’t have let them leave the county, much less the state, with his investigation still open.”
“...Did he tell you that? He’s still investigating?”
“Yes.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Erskine shot himself. It was an accident, how could it be anything else?”
“Nobody’s saying it’s anything else.”
“Then why isn’t the goddamn subject closed?”
“I think you’d better ask him.”