“Believe me, I’m not going to say anything. I’m just asking for my own purposes. What about his clothing? How was he dressed?”
“Jacket, pants, shirt.”
“Shoes and socks?”
“Well, shoes. He didn’t have socks on and he didn’t have a wallet or anything like that.”
“Any signs of injury?”
“None that I’ve seen.”
I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to ask for the moment so I thanked him and said I’d be in touch.
Then I went out to look for Barbara Daggett. If I was going to work for her, we needed to get business squared away.
Chapter 6
I found her standing in the foyer, looking out at the parking lot. The rain was falling monotonously, occasional gusts of wind tossing the treetops. Gozy-looking lights were on in all the buildings that rimmed the parking lot, which only emphasized the dampness and the chill outside. A nurse, her white uniform flashing from the flaps of a dark blue raincoat, approached the doorway, leaping over puddles like a kid playing hopscotch. Her white hose were speckled with flesh-colored blotches where the rain had soaked through and the tops of her white shoes were spattered with mud. She reached the entrance and I held the door for her.
She flashed me a smile. “Whoo! Thanks. It’s like an obstacle course out there.” She shook the water from her raincoat and padded down the hallway, crepe soles leaving a pattern of damp footprints in her wake.
Barbara Daggett seemed rooted to the spot. “I have to go to Mother’s,” she said. “Somebody has to tell her.” She turned and looked at me. “How much do you charge for your services?”
“Thirty an hour, plus expenses, which is standard for the area. If you’re serious, I can drop a contract off at your office this afternoon.”
“What about a retainer?”
I made a quick assessment. I usually ask for an advance, especially in a situation like this, when I know I’ll be talking to the cops. There’s no concept of privilege between a P.I. and a client, but at least the front money makes it clear where my loyalties lie.
“Four hundred should cover it,” I said. I wondered if the figure came to mind because of Daggett’s bounced check. Oddly enough, I felt protective of him. He’d conned me-there was no doubt of that-but I had agreed to work for him, and in my mind, I still had a duty to discharge. Of course, I might not have felt as charitable if he were still alive, but the dead are defenseless, and somebody in this world has to look out for them.
“I’ll have my secretary cut you a check first thing Monday morning,” she said. She turned back, looking out the double doors into the gloom. She leaned her head against the glass. “Are you okay?”
“You don’t know how many times I’ve wished him dead,” she said. “Have you ever dealt with an alcoholic?” I shook my head.
“They’re so maddening. I used to look at him and I was convinced he could quit drinking if he wanted to. I don’t know how many times I talked to him, begging him to stop. I thought he didn’t understand. I thought he just wasn’t aware of what we were going through, my mother and me. I can remember the look he’d get in his eyes when he was drunk. Little pink piggy eyes. His whole body radiated this odor. Bourbon. God, I hate that stuff. He smelled like somebody’d dropped a bottle of Early Times down a heater vent … waves of smell. He reeked of it.”
She looked over at me, her eyes dry and pitiless. “I’m thirty-four and I’ve hated him with every cell in my body for as long as I can remember. And now I’m stuck with it. He won, didn’t he? He never changed, never straightened up, never gave us an inch. He was such a shitheel. It makes me want to smash this glass door out. I don’t even know why I care how he died. I should be relieved, but I’m pissed. The irony is that he’s probably still going to dominate my life.”
“How so?”
“Look what he’s done to me already. I think of him every time I have a drink. I think of him if I decide not to have a drink. If I even meet a man who drinks or if I see a bum on the street or smell bourbon, his face is the first thing that comes to mind. Oh God, and if I’m around someone who’s had too much, I can’t stand it. I disconnect. My life is filled with reminders of him. His apologies and his phony, wheedling charm, his boo-hooing when the booze got to him. The times he fell, the times he got put in jail, the times he spent every dime we had. When I was twelve, Mother got religion and I don’t know which was worse. At least Daddy woke up most days in okay shape. She had Jesus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was grotesque. And then there were the joys of being an only child.”
She broke off abruptly and seemed to shake herself. “Oh hell. What difference does it make? I know I sound sorry for myself, but it’s been such a bitch and there’s no end in sight.”
“Actually, you look like you’ve done pretty well,” I said.
She turned her gaze back to the parking lot and I could see her faint, bitter smile reflected in the glass. “You know what they say about living well as the best revenge. I did well because it was the one defense I had. Escape has been the motivating force in my life. Getting away from him, getting away from her, putting that household behind me. The funny thing is, I haven’t moved an inch, and the harder I run, the faster I keep slipping back to them. There are spiders that work like that. They bury themselves and create a little pocket of loose dirt. Then when their prey comes along, the soil gives way and the victim slides right down into the trap. There are laws for everything except the harm families do.”
She turned, shoving her hands down in her raincoat pockets. She pushed the door open with her backside and a draft of cold air rushed in. “What about you? Are you leaving or will you stick around?”
“I guess I’ll hit the office as long as I’m out,” I said.
She pressed a button on the handle of her umbrella and it lifted into the open position with a muffled thunk. She held it for me and we walked toward my car together. The raindrops tapping on the umbrella fabric made a muted sound, like popcorn in a covered saucepan.
I unlocked my car and got in, while she moved off toward hers, calling back over her shoulder. “Try me at the office as soon as you hear anything. I should be there by two.”
My office building was deserted. California Fidelity is closed on weekends so their offices were dark. I let myself in, picking up the batch of morning mail that had been shoved through the slot. There were no messages on my answering machine. I pulled a contract out of my top drawer and spent a few minutes filling in the blanks. I checked Barbara Daggett’s business card to verify the address, then I locked up again and went down the front stairs.
I walked the three blocks and dropped the contract off at her office, then headed over to the police station on Floresta. The combination of the weekend and the bad weather lent the station much the same deserted air as my office building. Crime doesn’t adhere to a forty-hour week, but there are days when even the criminals don’t seem to feel like doing much. The linoleum showed a gridwork of wet footprints, like a pattern of dance steps too complex to learn. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and damp uniforms. I could see where someone had fashioned a folded newspaper into a rain hat and then abandoned it on the wooden bench just inside the door.
One of the clerks in the identification and records section buzzed Jonah and he came out to the locked foyer door and admitted me.
He wasn’t looking good. During the summer, he’d shed an excess twenty pounds and he’d told me he was still working out at the gym, so it wasn’t that. His dark hair seemed poorly trimmed and the lines around his eyes were pronounced. He also had that weary aura that unhappiness seems to breed.
“What happened to you?” I asked as we walked back to his office. He’d been reconciled with his wife since June, after a year’s separation, and from what I’d gathered, it was not going well.
“She wants an open relationship,” he remarked.