“We all suffer for our sins.”
“Some of us more than others.”
“Yes. Before you go, will you answer two questions for me?”
“Of course, if I can.”
“How did you find me? The sheriff’s lieutenant wasn’t clear about that and I’d like to know. Something to do with the Silver Creek label...?”
I explained about the photographs, Ms. Weissman, the Salishan Gallery connection.
“That damn label,” Woolfox said. “I should never have insisted you design it.”
“You didn’t know about Ira then, sweet.”
“You should’ve told me then, instead of letting me push you into doing the design.”
“I wasn’t sure of us or myself two years ago. I did the label to please you, because you wanted it so badly. And to please myself, because I was ready to paint again. It seemed safe enough. A small winery, estate-bottled vintages mostly distributed in California... and Ira neither drank nor had any interest in wine. If it hadn’t been for...”
She let the rest of it trail off, so I finished it for her. “If it hadn’t been for me, chances are he’d never have found you that way.”
“You must be a very good detective,” she said.
“Not in this case.”
“Well.” She asked then, “When were you sure Sandy Nelson and Janice Erskine were the same person... last Thursday after you’d been to the winery, was it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you come back on Friday and talk to me? That’s the second thing I’d like to know. Why didn’t you at least call and give me a chance to tell you my side before you went to Ira?”
“I don’t have a defensible answer, Ms. Nelson. I should have talked to you first, no question. All I can say is that I had some personal matters on my mind that may have clouded my judgment. Anyhow, I still believed Erskine’s lies about a son dying of leukemia. It didn’t seem necessary at the time to contact you myself.”
“And of course Ira asked you not to.”
“Yes, but that’s not an acceptable excuse, either.”
She looked away, out over the wind-rippled landscape. “He was always such a brilliantly devious liar when he wanted something badly enough. I’ve never known anyone who could manufacture lies the way Ira could on the spur of the moment. Or who could hate as intensely as he hated. He claimed to still love me, but he really didn’t, you know. Love turned to hate the day Karen died, but both emotions were so violent even I couldn’t tell the difference right away.”
“Karen... your daughter?”
She nodded. Old pain moved like a current behind her eyes, beneath the surfaces of her face. “A crib death, one of those terrible tragedies no one can prevent. But Ira blamed me. Blamed me and beat me...” Headshake. Slow, labored breath. Then, “He would have killed me eventually, no matter what I said or did. It was only a matter of time.”
Woolfox said, “He was a monster,” and tightened his protective embrace with enough force to make her wince.
“A monster is exactly what he was.”
“But he’ll never hurt you again. No one will ever hurt you as long as I’m alive.”
She favored him with another smile and he kissed her cheek. Very much in love, those two; genuinely deep and abiding affection can’t be feigned or mistaken. It was the kind of closeness Kerry and I felt toward each other. I’d kill to protect her — almost had once, not long ago — and I was pretty sure she’d do the same for me. Woolfox and Nelson, too?
As far as they were concerned I was already gone, but I mumbled something about wishing her peace and happiness, repeated how sorry I was — a run-on exit line that I ought to’ve swallowed instead — and left them clinging to each other. They were already inside out of the cold by the time I finished turning the car around.
Now it was a closed case for me, I thought as I drove out to Chalk Hill Road. I’d done my penance, made my lame apologies, and they could proceed with their marriage and their winemaking and their life together in rustic Alexander Valley, and I could get on with my work and my life and try to profit from the foolish mistakes I’d made.
Right?
Sure, right.
So why did I feel dissatisfied and vaguely cheated, as though I’d run into new layers of deception — and more illusion — this afternoon? And why did I have a hunch I wasn’t quite rid of the Erskine case after all and that it wasn’t over for any of the principals except Erskine himself?
12
A fairly routine background check kept Tamara and me busy all of Wednesday morning and into early afternoon. The daughter of a well-off Hillsborough widow had met a man on a Mexican cruise and become engaged to him by the time the cruise ship docked again in L.A., and the widow was concerned that he might be a fortune hunter; she went to her lawyer and he called me. The check turned up some interesting information about the boyfriend’s past, including one arrest and conviction in Galveston, Texas, for bilking a woman of forty thousand dollars in a real estate investment scam. The lawyer was pleased to hear my report; the widow would be pleased to hear it. The daughter wouldn’t be, but she’d get over it and thank her mother someday. And I’d be pleased when I received the check to cover my fee. The only loser was the con artist, which was as it should be, and why the hell couldn’t all my investigations turn out to have such simple happy endings?
Shortly before two I had a call from the claims adjustor at one of the small insurance companies I work for now and then. Would I be able to come in this afternoon for a brief conference concerning a personal injury claim the company considered suspect? I would. We made an appointment for two-thirty, which gave me just enough time to drive downtown to the insurer’s offices on lower Market, garage the car, and allow myself to be shot upward fourteen floors in a box not much larger than the one Eberhardt had been planted in. Elevators have a claustrophobic effect on me. God forbid I should ever find myself trapped in one between floors for any length of time; the ordeal would probably reduce me to a bag of gibbering clay.
The personal injury claim was suspect, all right. A thirty-three-year-old man who slips and falls in the produce section of a supermarket and claims to have suffered such grievous injuries as recurrent back spasms, impaired use of his left leg, and a groin pull so severe he is unable to sit comfortably in any kind of chair, and whose attorney is whoring after a settlement of two hundred thousand dollars in lieu of a million-dollar lawsuit against the supermarket chain, is either the world’s most fragile human being or a fraud trying to happen big-time. I told the adjustor I’d see if I could get his employers off the hook, we settled on my usual fee, and I was out of there.
It was three-oh-five when I exited the building. Last night’s rain had turned into a misty overcast with just enough moisture to keep a sheen of wetness on the sidewalks. And as I made my slippery way to the garage, it occurred to me that Embarcadero Center was only a few short blocks away. Great Western Insurance had its offices in one of the Center’s high-rises, and among GWI’s rabbit warren of glass-walled cubicles was the large one in which Barney Rivera held sway. Well? I was going to have to see him sooner or later, whether he liked it or not. Might as well be sooner, and at my convenience instead of his.
I changed direction, hoofed it over there, put myself into another elevator and let it hurl me like an object in a pneumatic tube twenty-nine floors above the city streets. When I popped out, I was facing a young male receptionist, who treated me to a bored look and asked what, please, he could do for me. I said Barney Rivera and offered my name; he wanted to know if I had an appointment; I said no, and he told me to have a seat, he’d see if Mr. Rivera was available. Ritual scene. I wondered, as I waited, how many times I’d played it over the past thirty years, mouthing the same dialogue or any number of dull variations, with a legion of faceless receptionists, secretaries, and factotums of both genders. Thinking about it, I decided I understood exactly what T. S. Eliot had meant with his oft-quoted line about measuring out his life in coffee spoons.