Golden Orange (31 page)

B
y the time they got back to Spoon's Landing, Winnie's back was aching and stiff from the ride, the dampness and the stress. Somebody out there was a threat to Tess Binder, he was
almost
sure of it. He wondered if he should warn her to avoid the channel side of her house at night. It seemed crazy, but the shots out on the trail were crazy too. If Warner Stillwell had hired an assassin, the guy was a wild card.

When he parked in front of Spoon's, Buster said, “Havin a nightcap?”

“Better not,” Winnie said. “Tess's expecting me.”

“I got an idea might help ya.”

“Okay. Order me a drink. I gotta call and give her a report.”

They found the usual crowd plus a lot more who were venturing out for the first time now that the spring revelers were back in school. There were two empty stools at the far end of the bar separated by the presence of Guppy Stover, with her elbow on the bar and her head in her hand.

While Winnie went to the pay phone, Buster bellied up and said, “Gimme a Wild Turkey, Spoon. And Polish vodka for Winnie.” Then to Guppy he said, “Mind movin down? Me 'n Winnie wanna talk.”

That did it. “Winnie?” she sneered. “What's to talk about with Winnie? Even Bilge O'Toole can't get a rise outta Winnie, and Bilge argues with turtles. Every opinion Winnie ever had is noncontroversial. Like, ‘I'm against war. I'm for better schools. I hate lawyers.' Why would you wanna sit and talk to a
bore
like Winnie Farlowe?”

Before Buster had an answer, Spoon put the drinks on the bar, accidentally clinking Guppy's.

“Hey, watch it!” she said. “You oughtta get a curb-feeler on those shot glasses, the way you bang into things! And it wouldn't kill you to buy a lady a drink!”

Winnie stepped up to the bar then, and Guppy said, “Here he is now, salt of the earth Winnie. Well, this joint's a bleeding canker sore and canker sores don't need salt of the earth.”

“I'd love to buy you a drink, Guppy,” Winnie said sweetly. “Would you be terribly inconvenienced if I asked you to move down?”

Guppy was defanged. When Spoon poured her the free drink, she smiled coquettishly at Winnie and said, “Thank you, darling. It's a pleasure to find a real gentleman in this little corner of hell.”

When they were at last seated together, Buster said to Winnie, “So what'd your little friend say when you told her you struck out with Hack Starkey?”

“Not much,” Winnie said. “She couldn't get over how I found him so quick. Thought I'd need a week to find a drifter like him.”

“Anybody pop a cap at her tonight? Or does she have her imagination under control?”

“She told me that when she went down to the pharmacy tonight she saw a car that
mighta
been the same one the guy drove. The guy she thought was Starkey.”

“Get a license number?”

“Guy got away.”

“They always do,” Buster said. “UFO's, Bigfoot, Elvis. The way I see it, you gotta bring this to a head before she drives you outta yours.”

“You said you had an idea.”

Buster downed the whiskey and smacked his lips. “Like you said before, it's time to quit dickin around and go right to the source. Confront this Warner Stillwell
now.
Tell him what you know and what you suspect.”

“He might laugh in my face. What can I prove? Less than nothing.”

“Yeah, but you can tell him you laid it all out to a lawyer and to some a your old buddies at Newport Beach P.D. And you got a to-whom-it-may-concern note pinned to your girlfriend's underwear that says if I die suddenly, Warner did it. He'll likely call off his pal, if that gun-slingin cowboy even exists.”

“I'm jist not sure it's time to talk to him.”

“It's time. Tell him two can play the game, and if he don't resign himself to livin out the years he's got left, right there on the ranch, you might have to give him a little tit for tat. Like a rat-a-tat-tat from a fuckin assault rifle! There's a lotta things you can tell him to discourage this game you think he's playin. The bottom line is you gotta quit bein a volunteer victim for Tess Binder.”

“Maybe you're right.”

“She can get on with her life and wait for the fortune she's gonna get some day. Who knows, maybe before that she'll get lucky and catch somebody that's on the rebound from one a those other little hose monsters at her club. Maybe he'll fall in love and have a double ring ceremony on his yacht.
Without
a prenuptial agreement. And she can hire you to go along on the honeymoon as cabin boy, right?”

Winnie gaped at Buster for a moment. Then he said, “You're about as romantic as lunch in the morgue.”

“I jist know people. People like her? They're the easiest.”

“I'm worried about you. You don't even smile no more. You jist smirk. You probably smirk when you're having sex.”

“For sex you gotta get too close to people. I'm tryin to figure out how to do it from a distance.”

“One thing did come outta tonight,” Winnie said. “I got
another
motive for Conrad Binder's murder. When Binder got sick, Warner Stillwell knew for sure his housemate was screwing around with another guy. It musta made him crazy.”

“This is gettin too convoluted,” Buster said. “Look, is this case about love or money?”

“Maybe both,” Winnie said. “Life's seldom either or.”

“You're too complicated,” Buster said. “You always were. I'm jist a simple guy. To me a murder boils down to sex, revenge or money. And anybody that kills for sex or revenge has
bad
head trouble. Now I gotta go home and put this beat-up old body to bed.”

The barroom bitching started rather early that night. Tripoli Jones tasted Spoon's Special Lobster Salad and yelled, “Your lobster oughtta have detes on 'em like milk cartons: open before April first. This lobster's
rancid
!”

Spoon hollered back, “You want a money-back guarantee, go buy a car battery!”

The ex-marine then yelled to the multitudes, “Anything happens to me from eatin this, I want a hose down my nose, and Ollie North's lawyer!”

Winnie tiptoed up the carpeted stairway, planning to slip into bed without waking Tess, but she was lying awake. He wondered how many sets of those sheets she owned. They always seemed fresh and they were always the color of the flesh of a slightly overripe peach.

She didn't speak until he slid into bed beside her. Then she turned on her side and said, “I don't know what to do, Win. Tell me what to do.”

He was sober enough to know that his speech was slurred. “I'm not sure, Tess. I got a couple ideas we can talk about tomorrow.”

“We
have
to do something. I can't live like this! Looking for a killer wherever I go! I hoped it was Hack Starkey, and that when you found him you'd make him stop somehow. I still can't believe you found him so easily.”

“It wasn't that easy,” Winnie said, not without some professional pride.

“I don't want to end up like Daddy!” She threw her arms around him and pressed her naked body against his. “Please don't let me end up like Daddy, Win!”

“You won't,” he said, stroking her hair, smelling jasmine. “I won't let anything happen to you.”

As they kissed, she rolled Winnie on top of her. He was lying diagonally across the bed, and was getting aroused, but when he glanced up at the marble nymph with her hand outstretched, he saw that she was offering him something.
What?

“What's the matter, love?” Tess said. “Too tired tonight?”

“It's just … it's …”

He almost had it! There! It was there! The amorphous spangled image of a woman in a white dress! Reaching out!

“Too sleepy tonight, old son?” she asked, easing him off her body. “It's okay if you're too sleepy.”

Then it was
gone.
Winnie Farlowe felt a touch of panic. He thought about going to the library the next morning to read up on the
déja vu
experience.

Winnie said, “I
musta
met you in another life! Either that or I'm going nuts. Which is very possible.”

“
That
again? Still think we met somewhere before, huh?”

“I need to plug into one of those New Age brain wave machines,” Winnie said. “I need their synchro-energizer to unscramble my brain waves. It's like we met in a
dream
, you and me!”

Tess sighed and said, “Go to sleep, love.”

Before he closed his eyes, Winnie leaned over to Tess and said, “There's another thing bothering me besides this dream I can't remember. You said Warner Stillwell goes to a hospital from time to time. That led you to believe he had AIDS, right?”

“Yes.”

“Starkey told me there's nothing wrong with him. He doesn't have the HIV virus.”

“He
would
say that,” Tess said. “He'd like you to think badly of my father. Even if Hack Starkey isn't physically able to do me harm, that doesn't mean he isn't good buddies with Warner Stillwell. They were thick, those two!”

“He denies that too. He claims that he and your dad were … buddies. That he worked for your dad, not for Warner Stillwell.”

“Of course, Daddy paid him! It was Daddy's money, wasn't it? But Hack Starkey was Warner's man, I tell you. He's
still
Warner's man. Who's paying his medical bills now? Did you ask him?”

“No.”

“Why not? I thought you're the ace detective.”

“Tess …”

“Well, you seem to believe this … this deviate instead of believing me!”

Winnie sat up with his back against the padded headboard. He tried to take her hand, but she turned her back to him.

“I believe you, Tess! Why wouldn't I?”

“Find out who's paying his medical bills. I'll bet it's Warner Stillwell. For past services rendered! And I'll bet Warner has AIDS. I resent and detest what you're hinting at! That my dad got AIDS from that … that creature, Hack Starkey!”

“Go to sleep, Tess,” Winnie said. “I don't mean to hint at anything. I can't. I don't know
what
the hell to think.”

He awoke at The Drinker's Hour, but without the buzzards Fear and Remorse. Since meeting Tess Binder, his waking life had been filled with excitement and confusion and even
hope
, all of which helped to banish the demons. But none of that could thwart biology—the drop in blood sugar. So he lay awake for nearly three hours staring at the darkness, trying not to hear the song that was tormenting him. Instead, he heard the jazz melody from Thelonious Monk's “Mysterioso.” It made him think of his evening in Laguna Beach. Of Hack Starkey's death mask. Of the old woman trying to drive out the evil in Buster Wiles.

Winnie was feeling clammy and anxious. He had a slight sensation of dread. He countered it by deliberately thinking of his childhood. Of shooting baskets in the driveway with his dad. His dad had always seemed so big and powerful. His father had seemed eternal.

Once again, Tess got up long before he did. Once again, the omelet was ready when he got down to the kitchen.

She was wearing a white jersey with green vertical stripes on the front, white shorts, white deck shoes. She smiled and left the frying pan long enough to kiss him. “Sorry for last night,” she said.

“Nothing to it,” Winnie said. “I'll be twice as nice today to make up for it.”

“It takes two to tangle, and I was a bitch,” she said, putting the omelet on his plate.

As before, she sat and drank coffee and watched him eat. Once, she reached over and brushed his hair back from his forehead. When his cup was half empty, she refilled it. She wanted to make him another omelet, but he declined. When he wanted to help with the dishes, she pushed him toward the patio with his coffee cup.

Winnie sat watching the traffic snaking its way along Pacific Coast Highway. He saw an outrigger racing team of six college girls powering past in the narrow channel. All of them were tan and fit, muscular specimens with strong paddling strokes and great shoulders. California girls.

When Tess came out and sat beside him, she said, “I don't
really
know if Warner Stillwell has AIDS. Once he told me he had to check into the hospital from time to time, so I just assumed it.”

“It may be,” Winnie said. “Doctor Lutz in Palm Desert might tell you if you call and say you're concerned.”

“To tell you the truth, Win, maybe I don't
want
to know for sure. I guess in my heart I always suspected that what Starkey told you last night might be what happened. That he and Daddy were the ones who got …
involved
for a few …
perverse
moments. I guess in my heart I thought it could've happened that way. I guess I preferred to believe that Daddy was an innocent victim of Warner Stillwell's philandering.”