Death Claims (2 page)

"What about his partner? Didn't he come?" 

"Charles?" She shook her head. Her smile was wan. "I'm afraid he's jealous. Of me. Poor Charles." 

"What made you look for John in the morning?" 

"I didn't." Color came into her face. "I walked on the beach again, but not looking for him. You see, I'd made up a story by then, sitting here, waiting. I decided Peter had come and they'd gone off together. To look at whatever place Peter was living." 

"Does Peter own a car?" 

"No, but other things said Peter. There were two plates for supper, two cups but only one glass. Peter doesn't drink
—
he only just turned twenty-one. Also, when he moved out he left his guitar. And it was gone from his room. Anyway, who else could it be but Peter? I didn't think about the car. Kids borrow cars. But of course there was a big flaw in my story. John would have left a note for me and there was no note. Still
—
I had to believe something." 

"Something non-melodramatic," Dave said. 

She gave a little nod. "And by morning it had become absolutely true to me. And I was hurt. If John had tried to phone before I got home, to explain he was staying over with Peter on account of the rain, he could have kept phoning till he got me. Or Peter could have, if John was too tired
—
he could tire suddenly. So I was feeling sorry for myself. Taken for granted. Abused. And when it got daylight and the phone just sat there and I couldn't bear to look at it anymore and I couldn't bear the emptiness of this place without him, I went down and walked on the beach again. It was still raining, but not hard
—
gentle, sifting. Gray, you know? Mournful?" She breathed a wry laugh at herself. "Like a scene from a film. Young girl alone on empty beach, shivering, forsaken, deeply hurt. In the rain, with the sad gulls crying. Romantic." Her mouth tightened in a grim crooked line. "Until I found him." She spoke it harshly and her hand shook when she tried to drink from the cup. "The dead are terrible," she said. "They won't help you at all. No matter how you loved them. No matter how they loved you." 

She was right and he didn't want to think about it. He said, "Wasn't Peter in the way?"

S
HE STIFFENED
. "I don't understand you." 

"Of the love you keep talking about," Dave said. "Yours and John Oats's. This isn't a very big house. Wasn't a college boy underfoot?" 

She set down her cup. Too fast. Coffee tilted into the saucer. She stood up. "I don't think you're going to help me," she said coldly. 

Dave stood up too. "I'm going to find him. That's what you want, isn't it?" 

She watched him distrustfully. "I did. Do I now? What's your reason for wanting to find him?" 

"A piece of mail from my company arrived here the day after his father drowned. Addressed to John Oats. Did you open it?" 

She shook her head. "I didn't even collect the mail-not for days. Then I got to thinking there might be word from Peter and I made myself look. There wasn't any word from Peter. I didn't open the rest." 

"Is it here somewhere?" 

A door broke the wall of shelves. She went out through it and came back with envelopes and put them into his hands. They felt dusty. He shuffled them. Phone bill. Book-auction catalogue. There it was
—
gold medallion in the corner. He held it out to her. Frowning, she tore it open and took out the folded sheets. She blinked at them, then at him. 

"It's some sort of form," she said. "The letter says to fill it out and return it." 

"He phoned Medallion the morning of the day he drowned. He said he wanted to change the beneficiary of his life insurance. It's a simple procedure. The clerk sent him the necessary papers." 

She stared at him for a moment, not understanding. Then her eyes widened. She dropped into the chair. Her tongue touched her lips. The words came out a whisper. "Peter was the beneficiary." 

"Does that answer your question?" 

"No." She moved her head from side to side. Slow. Stricken. "Oh, no. You can't believe Peter would kill his father. Oh, you don't know him. You didn't know John. You don't know what they meant to each other. You don't know
—
" 

"I know he'd been struck on the head." 

"By the rocks!" She shouted it. "The surf smashes on those rocks in a storm. It picked him up and
—
 It's in the coroner's report." Her hands were clenched, the knuckles white as the papers they crumpled. "Why can't you believe the coroner? He's seen more drowned men than you have. John's lungs were full of water." 

"I didn't say the blow on the head killed him. He drowned. I believe the coroner." He gave her a thin smile. "I believe him the way you do
—
uneasily. You can't figure John Oats going to swim in the rain." 

"The police believe him," she argued. 

"You told me yourself the police don't care. They've got a verdict that doesn't involve them. It's not their problem anymore. It's still my problem." He lit a cigarette. "He could have been knocked unconscious here in this room, undressed and dragged down to the beach and into the water." 

"Not by Peter." Her face set stubbornly. "He couldn't, he wouldn't. Why would he?" 

"For twenty thousand dollars." Dave walked to the fogged glass wall. A trawler inched along the far blue edge of the horizon. "You say he had supper with his father. Maybe his father told him he was changing beneficiaries. Did Peter need twenty thousand dollars?" 

"No. Whatever for?" 

"I'd like to ask him." Dave turned. "Why don't you know where he is? Weren't you on speaking terms?" 

She flushed. "I invited Peter down here to live. Before his father, even. I felt sorry for him. He was miserable with his mother. Especially after she
—
" Her voice dropped. "After she did what she did. But they never got along. While John was in the house it was, well, at least possible. With John in the hospital, he simply couldn't take it. There was room here. I said, 'Stay at the beach place.' I was still living at the family house then. In time I sold it. Had to. There were so many bills, such huge bills." 

"Not yours, though. John Oats's
—
right?" 

She nodded. "There was operation after operation. Specialists. Skin grafts. Hideous. There were so many times he thought he couldn't take it anymore, when he was ready to give up, when he just wanted to be allowed to die and get it over with." 

"So Peter came to live here?" Dave bent at the table to use the parakeet ashtray. "Then you came. And finally you brought John Oats when he was released from the hospital. And Peter moved out." 

"No. John was here in time for Christmas. Peter didn't move out till
—
what?
—
two, three weeks ago. He'd had a birthday. He'd graduated from El Molino State." 

"You don't know where he went. Do you know why?" 

"Well, it wasn't because he was underfoot. When he wasn't at school, he was at the El Molino Stage. It's the community little theatre. But even if he hadn't been, he wasn't childish. He was happy for John and me. Yes, it's a small place. Yes, John and I slept together. It's not the nineteenth century anymore, Mr. Brandstetter. Especially not to people under twenty-one." 

"I'll have to change my calendar," Dave said. "The one with the kittens and the satin bows." He picked up his cup and swallowed some coffee. "If you were getting along with him, why didn't he tell you his reason for going'? He had to say something." 

"I wasn't here for him to say anything to. I was working again. He didn't come home the night before. Next evening when I got here he'd moved out." 

"Just like that. What did his father say?" 

She breathed in sharply. "Look, Mr. Brandstetter, suppose you leave now. I really don't think I have to answer your questions. I've told the police all about this. Captain Campos. If you really feel you need to know, I'm sure his records will be open to you, just as the inquest transcript was." She stood up. 

"You don't want to send me to the police, Miss Stannard." He looked at her hard and straight. "Not unless you've got it in for Peter for some reason. See, they don't know yet that John Oats was about to erase Peter as his beneficiary." 

Her mouth was a tight line for a minute. Then she went to the window. Her words came to him flattened by the glass. "John didn't say anything. 'I don't want to discuss it,' was all. He drank more than usual that evening. I thought I could get an explanation from him then. I couldn't." 

"Was he angry?" 

She turned. "Not angry. Depressed. Terribly. He loved Peter. They'd gone through so much together. That woman was such a bitch. I don't think either of them could have made it alone. They'd been a team. Now, suddenly they weren't a team anymore." 

"He had another woman now." Dave gave her a smile. "One who wasn't a bitch." 

She returned the smile, but dimly. "Maybe. I'm afraid I acted like one right then. I hated for him to be so unhappy. I hated Peter for having done it to him. I guess I was jealous too. It was the first time he'd ever shut me out that way. We'd always been open with each other. But he'd suffered so much I couldn't turn on him. Instead I said a lot of harsh things about Peter. John didn't respond right. He just stared at me. Sad. So sad." She shivered, clutched herself, turned back to the window. 

"Maybe he brooded about the boy." Dave bent to twist out his cigarette. "Maybe he could have walked into the surf in the rain, not wanting to come out." 

She turned back, stung. "I was here." 

"Not that day. It might have been too long for him. There are days like that." 

"No. He wouldn't. Not after the fight he'd put up to stay alive. Not after the way I'd fought to keep him alive. He wouldn't. He wouldn't do it to me." 

Dave moved to the shelves, prying reading glasses out of his jacket pocket. The books were ninety percent old. Some of them respectably, some just shabbily. But they all had a chosen look. He put the glasses on. "I don't know what sent him to the hospital." 

"Burns. They'd bought a new house. Not new, but expensive. Not his idea. Eve's. That was how she was. Never satisfied. Always asking him for more, more." 

"Some men need that," Dave said, "or think they do." He took down a book in dark-blue cloth with worn gold bars stamped across the thick spine.
Look Homeward, Angel
. Scribner, 1929. The "A" below the copyright data made it a first edition. "He stayed with her." 

She let that pass. "It was a hillside house, with a storage room under it on the down slope at the back. He wanted to use it for books. There were always more than the shop could hold. It's the same with every bookseller. The car sits rusting in the street because the garage is filled with books." 

He set the Thomas Wolfe book back. There were others beside it
—
Of Time and the River
, stocky black and green,
From Death to Morning
, soft coffee brown. 

"There were grease stains on the cement floor and John wanted to be able to set books down there while he arranged them on the shelves he was going to build in. And so
—
" The tough dungaree of her skirt whistled against the chintz as she sat down again. "He got a can of gasoline and was going to scrub up the grease stains. The weather was cold. The door and windows were shut. The gas hot-water heater was in the corner. And when he splashed the stuff around, either the gas itself touched the pilot flame or maybe just the fumes. Anyway, in a second the floor was a sheet of flame and he was burning. It happens so fast, fire does. You don't have a chance with it. Human beings are so
—
" 

"Vulnerable." Dave looked at the other Wolfe books. They had the "A" too. 1935. Three years afterward the big writer had shared his pint of rye with a sick man on a Victoria-to-Vancouver steamer and caught the virus that killed him at thirty-eight. Eleven years younger than John Oats was when he died. "And it took a long time to patch him up. And you were around all the while, sold your house and your car to pay the bills." He turned and she was a blur because that was what the reading glasses made of everything distant. He took them off, folded the bows with a click, tucked them away. "He had life insurance. Didn't he have any other kind?" 

She shut her eyes and gave her head a quick shake. "Only the usual automobile things. No health insurance. I mean"
—
her hands lifted and dropped
—
"he was so young, thought so young, moved so young. His body wasn't a man's nearly fifty. It was trim and hard, you know? Just naturally. He wasn't an exercise addict, he never dieted. Maybe if he'd had that kind of mind he'd have had Blue Cross or something. He didn't. He took his body for granted. It never occurred to him anything could go wrong with it because nothing ever had. It had always worked for him, it always would." 

"Till it stopped completely," Dave said. "Life insurance he did have. And more than average." 

"That was for others," she said. "Look, it wasn't just my house and car. It was his too, and the business, the bookstore, his part of it. Charles Norwood bought him out, his partner. It was everything. Even Eve. That was worst. While he was getting ahead, succeeding, she stuck with him. But when this happened and the doctors said he could die and that even if he didn't he probably couldn't lead a useful life again, she divorced him." 

"Nice woman," Dave said. 

"You can understand why Peter wanted out, then?" 

"I can understand. And why he came here. You're special, Miss Stannard." 

"Is that a way of saying 'crazy'?" she wondered. "Most people think I am
—
Mother's friends, the people down here in Arena Blanca, the doctors. What did I want with a man half eaten away by fire? Well, he wasn't 'a man.' He was John Oats. And I loved him. Before it happened and afterward and forever." Tears drew silver lines down her face. She smeared them with thin girl fingers, the nails short and without enamel. "I'm sorry." 

"Did something happen to Peter's love?"