The lieutenant said, “Think that might be someone you know, Mr. Jasper?”
“No.”
“Maybe you’d care to hear it again?”
“No, thanks,” Jasper said. “I had an idea it might be a secretary I had to fire last week.”
“Disgruntled employee, right?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think a man in your position had much to do with the hiring and firing of secretaries.”
“There are exceptions.”
“I’m sure there are. Let’s play it again to make sure it wasn’t your disgruntled employee, shall we?”
“No. No.”
“Usually when we’re having somebody try to identify a voice, we play the tape several times.”
“There’s no need for that. It wasn’t my former secretary.”
“I know that, Mr. Jasper. Who was it?”
Jasper shook his head.
“You won’t identify the caller?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t, won’t, same difference as far as I’m concerned. I don’t get an answer... It sounded like a girl to me. Would you agree with that?”
“I guess so.”
“Perhaps it was one of those girls at the special school where Roger Lennard worked.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, you’ve heard the tape. Now I’d like to hear your answers to a few questions. Shall we go back into the house?”
“I’d prefer to stay here.”
“Mrs. Jasper?”
“Mrs. Jasper.”
“Feisty woman. I like the type but they’re tough to live with. Any kids?”
“We have a son, Edward. He’ll be a senior at Cal Poly this fall.”
“No daughters?”
“No.”
“Once in a while our crimes are solved for us by disgruntled daughters as well as employees... How long have you known Lennard?”
“Not long.”
“What made you decide to call on him this morning?”
“I prefer not to answer that.”
“Your prefers and my prefers aren’t going to jibe, are they?”
“I’ll make a simple statement about my actions this morning without going into motives. I quarreled with Lennard, I hit him twice, he didn’t fall down, I left. Those are the facts. I can’t tell you any more at this time.”
“You haven’t told me anything I didn’t know.”
“I confessed to hitting him. That will have to be enough for now.”
The lieutenant rewound the tape and played it through again. “You’ll notice, Mr. Jasper, that the girl refers to Mr. Lennard as Roger.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
“She was evidently a friend of his.”
“Yes.”
“And you evidently were not a friend either of his or of hers. She called you a mean old man.”
“So I heard.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-four.”
“That’s not old,” the lieutenant said. “Is her other claim also exaggerated?”
“Am I mean? Apparently someone thinks so.”
“Some secret enemy?”
“You might say that.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t say that at all, Mr. Jasper. I’m convinced you know this girl, perhaps very well. Have you been fooling around?”
“No.”
“I believe you. She didn’t sound like the kind of person who’d appeal to a man of your social status. She’s definitely lower class, don’t you agree?”
“I’m not in the habit of judging a person’s social position by listening to a few sentences on tape,” Jasper said stiffly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll—”
“Who was the girl, Jasper?”
“I can’t say.”
“Okay. That’s all for now. You’re free to go back in the house, watch TV or go to bed, or finish the argument with your wife, whatever.”
“Aren’t you going to wait for Aragon?”
“Why should I?” the lieutenant said. “I’d probably get even less information with him around... Thank your wife again for the dinner. And tell her I never get indigestion from food, only from people.”
The lieutenant returned to headquarters. Kowalski, the desk sergeant who’d played him the tape on the radiophone, was still on duty. He was eating a ham sandwich that oozed the bilious yellow of mustard. A young woman in uniform was sitting at a desk with a typewriter in front of her, scratching her head with a pencil. Nothing much seemed to be happening, except possibly inside the young woman’s head.
“Quiet night,” Kowalski said. “Anything we can do for you, lieutenant?”
“I’d like to see the city directory.”
“Sarah will get it for you. Hey, Sarah.”
The young woman dropped her pencil. “Don’t you hey-Sarah me or I’ll report you to the National Organization for Women.”
“You reported me twice this month.”
“Three times and out.”
“All right, all right. Sarah, honorable policeperson, would you please drag your beautiful butt over to the shelf and get the lieutenant the city directory?”
“That ‘beautiful butt’ remark could be construed as sexual harassment.”
“Get the directory, kiddo,” the lieutenant said.
He took the directory back to his office, a small room, hardly more than a cubicle, sparsely furnished with two straight-backed chairs in addition to the swivel chair behind his desk. There was also a filing cabinet, and a water cooler used mainly to water the Boston fern on a five-foot stand in the corner, its fronds reaching all the way to the floor. Except for the standard electronic equipment, the desk was almost bare: no heavy paperweight that could be used as a weapon and no papers that could be spied on. On one side there was a small graceful porpoise carved out of ironwood and on the other a photograph of three people in tennis clothes: a fair-haired woman and two teenaged boys.
The house at 1200 Via Vista was listed in the directory as jointly owned by Frieda and Hilton Jasper, with Edward Jasper, Cleo Jasper, Paolo Trocadero and Valencia Ybarra as residents. Trocadero and Ybarra were probably servants and Jasper had mentioned his son Edward, but claimed to have no daughters. So who was Cleo and why hadn’t her name come up in the conversation?
He called the record room and asked for any recent information on Hilton or Cleo Jasper. Ten minutes later Sarah appeared with a card bearing the name Hilton Jasper, the time of his arrival at the police station, the nature of his complaint, a missing person described as his sister, Cleo, a student at Holbrook Hall. Attached to the card was a passport-size picture of an unsmiling pretty girl with long straight hair. The absence of any further information indicated that no action had been taken on the case.
The lieutenant leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. His eyes moved back and forth as if he were watching a computer readout on the ceiling.
Cleo Jasper. Runaway. Student at Holbrook Hall. Victim of some degree of mental or emotional impairment. Member of a wealthy family. Alive as of six thirty. Still in town, since a nonlocal radio station wouldn’t bother to report the death of someone as unimportant as Lennard.
No indication even of Cleo’s existence had been given by the Jaspers, Mrs. Holbrook, or Aragon. What were they protecting — the girl’s future? Their own pride? The reputation of the school?
The lieutenant yawned, stretched, studied the picture on the card again.
“Cleo,” he said aloud. “Where the hell are you?”
12
The mail was delivered to Holbrook Hall the following morning at ten o’clock. Rachel Holbrook had been waiting for it, pacing around her office as if she were measuring its precincts, glancing at her wristwatch every few minutes. When she saw the truck coming up the driveway she went to meet the postman at the front door.