The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller (21 page)

"You're going to make it tough for me to pick up and drive back to San Francisco when I finish my work."

"Then why not stay around for a while? You could open a little detective shop in a corner of my studio. And answer the phone for me and things."

"In a corner of your studio."

"Sure. And I'll get out my hammer and saw and build you a little cupboard where you can keep your disguises and magnifying glass. And paint you a couple of signs—"The Detective Is In' and 'The Detective Is Out.'"

"Funny."

"Uh-huh. And when I was feeling a little randy and you were between jobs we could put up a sign saying 'The Detective and Artist Are Far Out' and go in to bed."

"You make it sound pretty good."

"It could be. Do you ever take a vacation, Pete?"

"Not so's you'd notice. I've been trying to get to London for about ten years now. Something always seems to come up."

"Well, if you stay around here for a couple weeks, maybe I couldn't offer you a tour of Parliament, but I betcha we'd have a pretty good time."

"I'll give it serious consideration, Miss France. That's after I find Jerry. Or learn what happened to him."

"Oh yes, Jerry."

I was sorry I'd said that. It dimmed her glow. She stared at the table top and thought about things for a minute, then lit a cigarette.

"What was it you were going to tell me?" she asked.

"About what?"

"What you've been doing. What it was that you found today."

I took a deep breath. "I suppose if you really want to hear about it..."

"Of course I do. I'm worried about Jerry."

"Yes. I'm starting to feel the same way. Don't let it hit you too hard if I find him dead. When I find him."

I gave her a terse summary about Tuffy's uncle, my visit to Rey Platte, the long-ago bank robbery and the hundred dollar bill. I told her about today's trip to Willits and my talk with Dr. Nelson. And finally I told her about going back onto the mountain for my pack, and about finding the car and the dead cop. Sketchily, I told her about finding the cop. But even before I had gotten that far, the story had started to bother her. I had been afraid that it might. That's why I hadn't been keen on telling her in the first place.

"What are your plans now?" she asked.

"I just have to wait, until at least tomorrow. The Rey Platte police are sending me mug shots of this Wesley Chase, the brother of one of the suspected robbers."

"You think he had something to do with all this?"

"It's a good possibility. The dead cop, Dempsey, was looking for him. But Dempsey told his brother and wife there was more to it than that. Something bigger. Maybe Wesley's brother showed up, or one of the other gang members, or all three of them. If Dempsey had a hunch he could recover some of the money and bag the three people who took it, that would be something bigger."

"What will you do when you get the photographs?"

"More leg work. Show them to people around town. See if somebody recognizes him. The doctor in Willits said the guy who passed him the bill was wearing a beard and long hair. But maybe somebody local saw him before he grew a beard. Or maybe the beard was fake. It's just something I'll have to work on. It might take several days. If so, I'll have a chance to buy you a few more dinners, even if the vacation later doesn't work out."

Allison half turned in her seat and stared out over the cove. She was clearly upset.

"What is it?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"Nothing my foot. You've got bells going off inside..." And just then somebody kicked me low in the stomach. "Hey, wait a minute. Santa Barbara..."

Allison crushed out her cigarette. "Please, Pete. Don't pursue this."

"What do you mean, don't pursue it? It's all I've got. The guys who pulled off the robbery, and the brother who did time. They all were from Santa Barbara. And so are you, the same as Jerry Lind. You do know something, or you remember something, don't you, Allison?"

She stared tight-lipped out over the water, the color rising in her face.

"Look, kitten," I said gently. "Your telling me isn't going to change anything except save me a little time and maybe get me to Jerry Lind quicker. I've got a wanted poster with pictures of the three suspects. And tomorrow probably I'll have photos of the brother. If any of them are around this part of the country I'm going to find them."

She turned toward me then. "No, Pete. Don't. Take my word, please. There's nothing in it. Your theory is all wrong. Those three men aren't anywhere around here."

"But the brother is?"

She didn't reply.

"What is it, Allison? Is an ex-con more important to you than the missing Jerry Lind? You said you felt motherly toward Jerry. This isn't being very motherly. And the dead cop upriver. Think about him for a minute, then tell me there's nothing in it."

"That wasn't nice, Pete."

"Neither was the way that cop looked. He had the back of his head blown away. I'm trying to keep that from happening to Jerry, if it's not already too late."

Allison raised one hand to her mouth. "Excuse me," she said. She got up and left quickly.

I got up too, and took a few steps past partitions and around bursting Boston ferns to see her go into the restroom. When I felt this close to a break in my job I hardly trusted myself, let alone anybody else. I went back to the table. The waitress came around and I told her to take away the rest of my drink but to bring another cognac for Allison and fresh coffee for myself. When the coffee and brandy came I asked her for the check. I got that and paid it and waited some more until I knew I'd waited too long, even for a distraught woman. I got up and went out to ask the bartender at the front of the house where the nearest public phone was. The guy told me there was a booth out at one side of the parking lot. I could see it through the front window. Allison was inside it speaking to somebody, gesturing with one hand balled into a fist as she talked.

I went back to our table and sipped coffee. Allison took a few minutes longer. She had regained her composure. She sat and sipped some of the Bisquit.

"Sorry I was so long," she told me.

"That's okay. Want to talk about it now?"

"No."

I stared at her until she raised her eyes.

"I can't, Pete. I just can't."

I put my coffee aside and leaned forward to clasp my hands on the table. "Allison I'm going to tell you one more story about when I was growing up in Seattle. It's not one I'm particularly proud of, but it's a part of me and a part of the way I feel and act today, these many years after.

"Along about the time I was in the seventh grade I got both my first bicycle and my first girlfriend of sorts. She had moved in two doors up the street from where I lived. About a block farther up the hill lived another kid our age named David Young. We all three of us attended the same parochial grade school, about a mile and a half from where we lived. Sometimes we all three rode our bikes to school together. It was a hilly, up and down route.
One day we all were riding together when David stopped for some reason. Probably to fix something on his bike or to adjust the schoolbooks in his carrying rack, or whatever. Anyhow, the girl and I didn't realize he'd fallen back until we were several blocks farther on. We were talking, you know, and though I didn't really know what a girlfriend really was in those days, I was old enough to be showing off and making smart remarks. And I remember I was carrying on this pretty good routine that morning and I didn't want to interrupt it.

"When we finally noticed that David wasn't with us, we stopped to look back, but didn't see him. So we just continued on to school, figuring he'd stopped off at a friend's house or decided to go another way. Hell, I don't know what we figured. We were having too much fun to worry about it. David was a year ahead of us in school, so we didn't share the same classroom, and I didn't realize he'd never made it to school that morning. Turns out a car had hit him when he stopped. It was a hit-and-run. The driver apparently panicked. They never did learn who hit him or how it happened.

"David suffered a severe concussion. He must have laid out on the pavement for twenty or thirty minutes before somebody found him and called an ambulance. For two weeks nobody knew if the kid would live or die. It finally turned out that he lived, but he was never right in the head again after that. I've carried that guilt on my back ever since. I should have gone back to look for him.

"Anyhow, it taught me quite a lesson, Allison. That's why I had to carry that youngster down off the mountain yesterday. I just couldn't leave him, even for a few more hours, the way I left David that time. And it's the same right now, with Jerry Lind. And whatever you know, I would like you to tell me. Even a few hours might make a difference. People can die fast."

"You don't understand, Pete. Believe me. Whatever I know doesn't pose any threat to Jerry Lind."

"Maybe not. But if there's somebody you know who's at all connected to any of this, they might be able to light up another dim corner and give me something that will lead to Jerry. Please, Allison."

Her mouth twisted. "Oh God, Pete, I want to but I just can't!"

I leaned back and stared at her. "Okay. I guess then I'll have to manage on my own. Do you want me to drop you off or should I call you a cab?"

"What do you mean? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to start hunting for the mystery person. Whoever it was you called a few minutes ago from the phone booth outside."

"You are low, aren't you?" she asked quietly.

"I'm working, Allison. I'd butt heads with anybody to find out what I have to know. I guess probably I'll be looking for the brother who did time. I imagine you feel sorry for him, especially since there was some doubt about whether he really deserved to go to prison. Once his parole was lifted he took off. Left Santa Barbara. He could well have come up here. He could well have been a painter himself, even. I never had a chance to find out, but it makes sense you might have known him in school. Jerry Lind could have known him as well. You could all have been friends. That's why you would believe he didn't have anything to do with Jerry's disappearance. They were friends. One wouldn't harm the other."

I watched her closely. She tried to keep her face a blank, staring out over the cove. But she was too passionate. Her senses were alive; her emotions too near the surface. She wasn't tough in that way, and I kept picking away.

"He would have changed his name, of course. Nobody would know him around here as Wesley Chase."

She continued to stare out over the cove, her chin high and her eyes unblinking. And then I remembered something.

"I'll bet I know," I said softly.

Allison looked quickly at me.

"I am getting a little slow. I should have thought of it sooner."

"What?"

"The fellow you were off wandering and talking with the night I met you out at the Parsons' place. He seemed agitated, and you were calming him."

The panic was rising in her eyes. There was no mistaking it.

"What was his name? Joe something. Lodge? Dodge? That was it, Joe Dodge. I'll bet he's Wesley Chase. It's even a nice play on words, Chase into Dodge. That's it, isn't it, Allison?"

She sat glaring at me. "God damn you," she said softly. "You're going to kill him if he has to go back into prison. You wait. You're just going to kill him."

She got up and gathered her bag. There were tears brimming in her eyes. She made a plaintive gesture. "How could I be so utterly wrong about somebody?"

And then she was gone. I got up after a minute, after I'd gathered up all the memories and stuff I'd let out over dinner and stuffed them all into a dark trunk inside my head and snapped shut the lid.

The waitress was up at the bar, staring at me with something short of exuberance. When I asked, she told me Allison was back in the restroom. I left five dollars and said to give it to her for cab fare when she came out. The bartender, rubbing the life out of a glass behind the bar, stared at me as if he didn't like me much. I couldn't blame him a bit.

SEVENTEEN

W
iley Huggins, who ran the art supply shop, had said that the area's serious artists could be found at most any bar in town. I drove back to the town square, parked and began the circuit. At the second place I visited the bartender was able to tell me where Joe Dodge lived. It was an old place northeast of downtown, in the general direction of Big Mike Parsons' place, at the end of Cupper's Road. I thanked the man and left.

I drove out and parked a hundred yards from the end of Cupper's Road. I could see lights through some trees where the road ended. I was opposite an orchard. In behind it were lights from another house. I got out and listened. A breeze stole through the trees across the road. The sky was patchy with clouds drifting across the face of the moon. My .38-caliber revolver was in the glove compartment. I put it on my belt and started up the road. At road's end I concealed myself behind a tall eucalyptus tree that creaked in the wind. I stifled a sneeze and took a peek at the house.