“But not this one?”
“I already told you once.” Hyams sounded hurt. “And I promise I’ll call. Look, Tom, I’m getting ready for a big night. But come back earlier sometime. We can laugh about the old days at Laguna.”
Even at ten o’clock, when Shephard was approaching the last row of galleries south of the gay quarter, the night was still warm and balmy. He had tried the Little Shrimp and the Boom-Boom Room and been met with the same regrets, received the same promises to call if the man was seen.
In a brightly lit gallery called Laguna Sunsets, he found a tired woman counting out the register. She smiled wanly when he walked in. She counted out a thin stack of money and slid the drawer halfway back into the register. Still shuffling the bills in her hand, she glanced at the sketch that Shephard had laid on the counter in front of her and nodded.
“He came in this week,” she said. “Monday, maybe Tuesday. What’s he wanted for?”
“Murder.” She looked back down at the money in her hand and continued counting. Must have been a tough day, Shephard thought. Even murder doesn’t get a reaction. “Did he buy? Sell? What did he want?”
“Seller,” she said. “He had two canvases with him, and said he had more in the car.” She dropped the money in a sack and put the sack in her purse.
“And?”
“Couldn’t do it. Too bleak, too black. I sell art but I don’t sell gloom. Why should someone look at something that makes them feel dark inside?”
The question struck Shephard as deceptively simple, and the answer he gave seemed deceptively complete. “The same reason someone would paint it,” he said. “Because that’s how they are.”
“Then he was real dark, I’d say. He showed up a few days later. Yesterday, I think. He stuck his head in the door and said he didn’t need any cretin gallery owners anymore. Said he had a new car and lots of money. He pulled out a wad of bills and waved them at me. Robber, too?”
“Just a killer.”
“Well, at least he knows what he wants,” she said, turning the Yes We’re Open sign to Sorry We Missed You.
The woman’s exhaustion seemed to draw out his own. He walked her out of the shop and watched her disappear down the sidewalk, walking slowly and stiffly. His car was waiting up the highway, two very long blocks away.
He drove out Laguna Canyon Road until he saw the willow tree sagging its green shadow over Jane’s house. A light was on inside, and when he parked he thought he saw her behind a window. He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath. Buster began yelping in his pen. He rang the doorbell twice, holding an Identikit sketch, his ostensible reason for coming there. Half wishing he hadn’t come, he rang again. Why is this so hard? Ah, he thought, footsteps from inside... but it was only the thump of Buster’s slick body on cement. From behind him the beast croaked with stupid verve. He felt a dribble of sweat making its way down his back, wondered if he smelled bad.
He rang once more, then turned away, started the Mustang and headed — for what reasons he wasn’t sure — to Tim Algernon’s stables up the road.
There was a light on at Tim’s house too, a feeble glow from the living room.
As the car crunched across Algernon’s driveway, the sound of the tires, the tall shadows of the eucalyptus, and the sight of Tim’s ranch house brought all the grim events of last Monday back to Shephard. Six days, he thought: two murders, no suspect in custody, no motive. He could see Jane’s father sprawled in the dust with a rock dividing his face, hear the mockingbird chattering away above him. And as he stepped from the car Shephard smelled smoke — the real thing, he thought — and with a sudden lurch of fear, searched the smell for something human.
The porch boards bent and creaked as he moved to a front window. Inside, the fireplace was alive with flames that cast an orange glow on the room. She sat on the floor facing the fire, her back to him, and a stack of cardboard filing cabinets beside her. She was wearing a blouse and jeans, and Shephard could see her hair held again by chopsticks, dark bangs curling across her forehead.
He knocked quietly on the door, and called out. A moment later she cracked it, studying him through the protective sliver, then pushed it open wide. He noted the puffiness of her eyes, the tissue in her hand. “You scared the hell out of me,” she said, closing the door behind him.
“Sorry. I saw the light.”
She tossed a sofa pillow in front of the fireplace, motioned to it, then sat back down. Shephard saw a stack of papers on the floor, documents of some kind, and bills.
“Little warm tonight for a fire, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I’ve been freezing all day. Freezing in the middle of a hot Laguna August.” She picked up a pile of papers, then plopped them back down. “One thing I can say for my father is he was organized. I think he kept everything in these files. I mean, he’s got canceled checks to the phone company going back ten years. Billings from newspapers, all his feed and tack receipts, tickets from Christmas presents. Anyway, I guess I’ll throw them away.”
Shephard watched the flame shadows playing across Jane’s face. There was a little pile of wadded tissue beside her. He unfolded the Identikit sketch and handed it to her. She stared at it, looked blankly at Shephard, then folded it back up and put it in a file folder. “You’ve got his organized blood,” he said.
“Funny, you go back and look again at somebody who was always there, and they’re different. I never realized it, but dad must have spent everything he had when mom was dying. It was a long decay, you know. Cancer in the lips, then the tongue, then down to the throat. It must have been awful.” Jane tapped a short stack of papers. “I added it up, from curiosity. Just under forty thousand dollars to try to beat that cancer.”
“Sounds like a million might not have been enough to help,” he said.
Jane shrugged. “Can’t put a price on a life. You say dad had almost a thousand dollars forced into him before he died. I’ve been thinking about that. Seems to me, it was payment offered. Trying to save his own life with a little money. And whoever killed him wouldn’t take it. Would rather have tortured him and humiliated him with it.” A big tear rolled down Jane’s cheek; Shephard watched her dab it away with a fresh Kleenex. “That seems an awfully cruel thing to do.”
Shephard nodded, thinking of Hope Creeley as she watched her own eyelids coming off. “And unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary? A policeman would say it like that, I suppose.”
Jane tossed the tissue into the fire, raised up her knees and rested her chin on them. Shephard moved closer and put his arm around her, rubbing her back with his fingers. The fire popped, and he heard the cars heading out the canyon road, tourists from the art festivals returning inland. He was close enough to smell the shampoo in her hair; he dipped his nose to it, taking in the freshness. Tocopheral acetate? “I’ve been thinking of you,” he said. “Wondering what you’re doing, how you are. I’m real... taken. That sketch I brought is really just an excuse to see you, though you probably figured as much. Last night was really fine, Jane.”
Then she was up, standing in front of the fireplace and looking down at him. “Yes, it was. But Tom, don’t make too much of it, okay? We kind of short-circuited everything out there by the Indicator, and I blame myself. I’m not sorry for what we did, just for all the things that come with it. Maybe some of what you’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking too. But sometimes I just want it all real slow, Tom.” She smiled. “Though that may be hard to believe. You can’t count on me. I’ve been around, and there’s something real hard inside me I can use when I want it. I’ll tell you about my men someday, maybe. Then things will make a little more sense, I hope.”