“Where are the boys now?”
“Trey, that’s Parker Holloway the Third, he’s coaching the baseball team at Central and teaching social studies or something like that.”
Viv leaned close again to say, “But Harlan, well, he’s out of rehab again. I saw him over at his mother’s place when I took a casserole by after church yesterday. Either he’s real broke up over his dad, or he needs a drink real bad.”
“Or both?” I ventured.
“Or that.” She winked at me and took her coffeepot down the counter to refill the cups of the two men sitting together at the far end.
“You talking about Park, Viv?” A well-weathered older man, wearing a billed cap and starched and ironed Carhartt overalls, held out his cup for her.
“Is there anything else this town is talking about, Chet?” she asked, topping off his mug as she scooped up his companion’s empty plate. “Dutch, you need anything else there, hon? Cookie made a nice-looking pie out of the early berries. Might be a bit on the tart side.”
“No, thanks, Viv.” Dutch patted his plaid-covered belly. “I’ve had a sufficiency.”
Chet picked up the conversational thread. “The paper didn’t say, but I heard he was shot in the back of the head.”
“I never heard that,” Dutch countered. “Tom at the mill said he heard he was choked.”
That thread was interrupted when my eggs appeared in the service window. Viv set them in front of me; a farmhand-size portion.
“Do you think Mrs. Holloway is at home this morning?” I asked her. “I would like to pay my respects.”
“Oh no, honey,” Dutch volunteered. “She opened up the library as usual. It’s Monday morning, you know, story time for the kids from the elementary school. She’ll be over there by now.”
I thanked him, did my best by Cookie’s eggs, paid my check and left.
Dutch was correct, it was story hour at the town’s library. A couple dozen little kids sat on a rug in a semi-circle around the feet of a woman seated on a low chair reading with great expressiveness from a picture book. She was attractive, blond, maybe sixty-Karen? I decided to wait outside until the kids came out.
The day was already warm, temperature moving into the eighties. I found a bench in the shade near the bandstand and used the time to catch up on messages.
Max hadn’t called. He had gone into his meeting with Lana and the network goons at eight and now it was after ten. Contract negotiations can drag on for months, but Max and Lana already had a template to work from, the contract that the network had not signed in December, and there was a certain immediacy to the project’s topic. I was hoping for a quick resolution.
Fergie had sent a lengthy file titled “Holloway’s Naughty List.” I opened it to see what she had found; not much. Several bread-and-butter campaign violation charges were filed against Holloway when he was in Congress, generally for using campaign funds for personal expenses. There were also some ethics charges that had to do with voting on bills that favored his campaign donors, but none of those charges got all the way to the hearing stage, and there were no formal reprimands, ever.
I closed the file, thinking that some people always seem to float to the top of trouble, like cream, and called Fergie.
“Nothing more substantial about Holloway?” I asked her.
“Not really. I went through the archives of all the newspapers I could find from Holloway’s congressional district and searched for any scandal, skulduggery, innuendo, or rumor that might attach to him.
“There were complaints about his votes on federal water distribution, but water allocation in California is always a hot political topic, especially in farm regions like his district, and there is no way to make everyone happy. And some garlic growers in Gilroy were upset that he sponsored a bill that made it easier for China to export garlic. Except for that, the guy squeaks,” she said, clearly disappointed she hadn’t unearthed some real dirt.
Apologetically, she said, “He’s either a saint or he has good people shielding him.”
“Someone was angry enough to kill him, so let’s assume the latter,” I said. “Did you put together a bio for me?”
“Yeah, but it’s still pretty sketchy.”
Fergie had found obituaries for his parents, Lettie and Parker Efrem Holloway, Sr., raisin grape farmers, the salt of the earth. He had two sons, as Viv told me. One had been a stand-out baseball player in high school-Trey, I guessed-but there was no mention of the other one, Harlan, except in captions under a series of official family portraits. The only potential wrinkle was suggested by the disappearance of the wife from the family portraits. They divorced, so what?
Fergie told me she was currently working her way through the Congressional Record, searching for any mention of Holloway. I asked her to leave that for later and to focus on any footprints Holloway made after he left Congress, focusing on his connection to the art market, if any. Buoyed by the prospect of a regular income stream, she was only too happy to get at it.
I also asked her to add Hiram Chin, Clarice Snow, her gallery, and her son Frank Weidermeyer, AKA Franz von Wilde, to the investigation list.
“With luck you’ll find some cross-pollination,” I told her.
I asked if she had spoken with Jack Flaherty, a good friend who worked in the research department at the network.
“I talked with Jack briefly after I talked to you on Friday,” Fergie said. “We discussed strategy, but he said he would be gone over the weekend so he wouldn’t be able to get into the network archives until today. He should be in by now; I’ll call him.”
“Wait until we hear that the contracts have been signed,” I told her. “If something goes wrong, his involvement at this point could lead to something messy and expensive.”
There were two messages from Kate, so I called her next.
She told me that Hiram Chin was still insisting that a campus memorial service for Holloway be held on Wednesday, day after tomorrow. The coroner had started the autopsy first thing this morning, should be finished by early afternoon, and would release the body to Holloway’s family-those two sons-as soon as they made delivery arrangements with a mortuary. The sons were apparently eager to hold the memorial sooner rather than later because there would be services over the weekend in Gilstrap. Because she was chair of the Academic Senate, Hiram expected Kate to work with him on the arrangements. None of this had anything to do with me; Kate was just venting.
I asked her, “Any idea when we can schedule Sly’s event?”
“A week from Friday,” she said. “That would be a postponement of only one week.”
Jean-Paul had called just to say hello, so I called him back. We talked about nothing and everything for about ten minutes. He asked about my weekend plans. He had some official functions to attend and wanted to know if I would accompany him. I turned down an invitation to the Philharmonic on Thursday night because I taught an early film workshop Friday morning. He suggested offering his tickets to Mom and an escort. I thought of Max right away, and told him I would ask them.
An untidy queue of youngsters, each carrying a muslin bag imprinted READ WITH ME! that was heavy with books, emerged from the library with several adults to herd them along. From the gaps in their front teeth I guessed their ages to be seven or eight, second graders, maybe. I waited for the last of them to file out the big doors before I rose to go inside.
The woman I had seen reading was behind the circulation desk checking in a tottering stack of children’s books, probably the books they had checked out on their last visit. She looked up and smiled at me.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I said. “Is Karen Holloway in?”
She studied me hard, brows furrowed, before she said, “I am Karen Holloway.”