Games to Keep the Dark Away Read online

  “Did the autopsy show that what she took was the same as what they gave out at the hospice?”

  “Apparently they couldn’t be that specific. What they use there is a mixture, and an autopsy can’t show exact proportions or brand names, just the types of drugs present.”

  That was true, and it widened the range of possible suspects. Anyone with access to common prescription drugs could have killed Barbara. “What exactly made Andy run?”

  “I told you, the police suspected him.”

  “But there must have been some triggering factor.”

  Susan stopped picking up apples and looked into the branches of the tree above. Sunlight cast dappled shadows over her troubled face. She sat that way for a few moments, then said, “It was all the confusion over the money that did it.”

  “The money Barbara had inherited, you mean?”

  “Yes. The police found out that Andy had drawn it all out of the bank in cash a few days before Barbara died.”

  “Why did he do that, do you know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Didn’t he ever talk to you about it?”

  “No.” She looked up into the trees again. “By the time I heard about it, Andy was gone. I’ve thought and thought about it ever since, but I can’t come up with any answer except...”

  “Except?”

  “Except that Barbara made him do it. She was always making him do things.”

  “But why? What would she have needed forty thousand dollars in cash for?”

  Susan rubbed her hands together and went back to picking up the apples. “I have a theory that she planned to bribe someone at the hospice to help her escape.”

  “Escape? She wasn’t being held against her will, was she?”

  “Well, not exactly. But you’ve got to remember Barbara was not really too well wrapped toward the end. She was paranoid and...I don’t know. That’s my theory.”

  She seemed to have a number of theories, all of them conflicting and aimed at proving Andy didn’t kill her sister. I sat there, rolling an apple between my palms.

  Susan must have sensed my doubtfulness. “Look,” she said, “I really don’t know what Barbara intended. I never was able to understand what went on in her head. She had everything—she was smart and pretty and had a husband who loved her. She didn’t have to work as a waitress and bring up a kid alone like I do. She didn’t have a husband who abandoned her before the kid was even born, like I did. And, when it was time for our rich aunt to will her money to somebody, she chose Barbara, not me. But did Barbara appreciate any of that? No. Not my sister. All her life she worked so hard, so goddamned hard, at screwing up.”

  I remained silent, rolling the apple around and forming a theory of my own. “Had your sister accepted the fact she was going to die?”

  “She believed it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But acceptance—the kind they talk about at The Tidepools—did she feel that?”

  “Did she want to live out her life with dignity? Do something positive with what remained? I doubt it.”

  “Then how about this?” I pitched the apple into the basket. “How about if she did make Andy withdraw the money, so she could use it as a bribe—”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But not a bribe to get out of the place. A bribe for someone to get her the drugs and administer them. What if she bought herself a mercy killing?”

  Susan looked startled, but then nodded. “That’s very possible. It would explain why they didn’t find the money with her things at the hospice.”

  “Of course,” I went on, “why would she spend forty thousand dollars when she could have asked her own husband to help her?”

  “No. Andy would never go along with something like that. He would never have helped her kill herself, and he certainly would never have gotten her the money had he known what it was for. She must have made up some story to tell him.”

  “Andy worked at Port San Marco General Hospital. He would have had access to drugs.”

  Stubbornly she shook her head. “No, he didn’t. He was in the education department; it’s a teaching hospital. He had nothing to do with drugs.”

  “I thought he was a medical technician.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t handle drugs. He was a medical photographer. He took pictures of autopsies and put together slide shows and teaching aids for the hospital’s educational programs.”

  I stared at her.

  “He was a damned good photographer too. He used to exhibit the portraits he took as a hobby in shows around the area.”

  I sat in silence for several seconds, feeling a growing excitement. Things were beginning to fall into place at last.

  “What’s wrong?” Susan asked.

  “Do you have a picture of Andy?”

  “Yes, in the living room.”

  “Can I see it?”

  She frowned, but stood up, brushing dead leaves off her jeans. “All right.”

  We went into the house, to an old-fashioned formal parlor. My hands were shaking as I took the framed portrait from Susan’s hands. The face in it was bearded and the hair brown rather than blond, but it was the one I’d expected to see.

  The younger, less careworn face of Abe Snelling.

  Chapter 18

  I drove along the ridge above the Salinas Valley, ignoring the speed limit but keeping an eye out for the highway patrol. The air was hot and dry, and the needle on the MG’s temperature gauge rose dangerously toward the red zone. Every few minutes I would check it, tell myself it would be fine, and then my eyes would drift back to it again. King City, I thought, I’ll stop in King City. And try to phone Snelling again.

  I’d called as soon as I left Susan Tellenberg’s, planning to hang up if the photographer answered and then rush to San Francisco. But the phone had rung and rung, and finally I’d decided to risk making the trip anyway. After all, it might only mean Snelling was in the darkroom. Hadn’t he said he unplugged the phone while working?

  But, then, that might have been a lie—like all of Snelling’s other lies. Because the night he’d claimed to have worked late in the darkroom—the night I’d kept calling to tell him of Jane’s death—he most certainly had been in Port San Marco. Right now he might be hurrying for the airport or driving north, south, or east to a new identity.

  My eyes strayed to the gauge. The needle had dropped slightly.

  But why would Snelling run? He had no suspicion that I was close to uncovering his real identity. I hadn’t told him I planned to see Susan Tellenberg. Because of my manner on the phone earlier, he probably felt more secure. Maybe he was in the darkroom right now, printing more of his wonderful photos.

  The photos. That was another tragedy. While it seemed certain that Abe Snelling—or Andy Smith, whatever you wished to call him—was a killer, he also had a rare talent that would cease to be used when he was arrested. There would be no more of those portraits that probed to the core of their subjects’ being, no more expressions of his unique understanding of human nature.

  The needle on the temperature gauge rose again. Rapidly I calculated; it was only ten miles to King City.

  Well, now I had answers to a number of my questions. I knew why Jane Anthony had gone to San Francisco, why Snelling had let her live at his house, why he had lied to me about how he met her. And I thought I knew why he had risked exposure by hiring me to find her.

  I felt a certain responsibility for what had happened. Through me, Snelling had found out Jane was in the Port San Marco area. That had probably been enough to tell him how to locate her. He’d driven south, met her at the old pier, and...

  The sign for the King City exit loomed up, and I moved into the right-hand lane.

  What about John Cala? I was fairly sure he’d recognized Snelling leaving the pier, gone out there to see what he was doing, and found the body. Had he attempted to blackmail Snelling? I didn’t think so. After all, Don had said Cala wasn’t too bright. Probably Snelling h
ad recognized him too and later lured him to the old amusement park with a promise of money. They were both from the area, and the boarded-up park was a likely place for a secret meeting at which cash was to change hands. But instead of cash...

  I pulled off the freeway and turned into the gas station where I’d stopped earlier in the week. While the attendant filled my gas tank and radiator, I went to the phone booth and called Snelling. Again the phone rang unanswered. I hurried to the car, paid with a credit card, and was soon back on the freeway.

  Salinas slipped by. Gilroy. Morgan Hill. It was rush hour in San Jose. I fretted and cursed and my temperature rose, but at least the car’s gauge remained constant.

  I should have the radiator fixed, I thought. No, I should buy a new car. I had money in the bank, a fairly large reward from a grateful shipping company for whom I’d recovered a stolen consignment of cargo. It was more than enough for a new car. But then, it was almost enough for the down payment on a house. A house would solve the apartment problem...

  Now I was through San Jose and speeding up the freeway, where tract homes gave way to rolling hills and expensive estates. How many times had I driven this route in the past week? One, two, three, four. Lord, I was sick of the freeway!

  One thing was certain: no one was going to be grateful and give me a reward for solving this case. No one was even paying me. So why was I doing this? Why was I rushing up here to face a dangerous man, putting myself in jeopardy? Why didn’t I just call the police, tell them I’d located a fugitive, and let them handle it? I knew the number for San Francisco Homicide, had called it often in my year-and-a-half with Greg. I wouldn’t have to talk to him; I knew most of the men on the squad. So why not pull off this endless freeway and make the call?

  Was it because of the photos? Or because Susan Tellenberg had called Andy Smith a nice coward, a gentle man? Or was it because there were things that still didn’t fit?

  The last thirty miles went quickly. Route 280 rejoined 101 near the Daly City line, and soon I was exiting at Army Street and scaling the steep streets of Potrero Hill. It was after six; the demolition had stopped. The shells of houses stood dark and silent. So did the top story of Snelling’s, but that didn’t mean anything; the fence obscured the first floor. He could be there, or downstairs on the bedroom level.

  I got my gun out of the glove box and stuck it in the outer compartment of my shoulder bag, where I could reach it quickly if I had to. Then I went up to Snelling’s gate, keeping in the shadow of the fence.

  The first thing I noticed was that the gate was open.

  I paused, listening, then pushed it with my fingertips. It swung all the way back, revealing the overgrown yard. No lights were on in the lower windows. I started down the path.

  There was a rustling in the shrubbery to my left. I whirled, hand poised over my gun. A cat jumped lightly to the fence and down onto the other side. I relaxed, but only slightly, and kept going.

  The front door was also open, the security chain hanging limp.

  I stepped inside, waited until my eyes adjusted to the gloom, then went down the hall. The living room was dark, the draperies open. I could make out the photos on the wall, the chrome-and-leather furniture, the stairway to the top story. Everything seemed as it should be.

  And then I noticed that the desk to the side of the fireplace had been ransacked. Its drawers were pulled out and their contents lay scattered on the desk itself, the chair in front of it, and the floor. A trail of papers led from there to the stairway. I listened, heard nothing, and decided to risk turning on a lamp.

  Its soft glow filled the stark white room, and I could now see that books had also been removed from some shelves by the stairway. They were piled haphazardly on the floor, and a few were open, as if someone had been rifling through their pages. There was still no sound and, although I couldn’t be sure, I felt the house was empty. Slowly I went to the stairway and climbed to the studio.

  There was nothing there but the stool in the center. I glanced up at the skylights and saw a few wispy clouds highlighted against the early-evening sky. The door to the darkroom was wide open and, taking my gun out, I walked across the room.

  It was pitch black. All I could hear was the bubbling of the print washer. I reached inside the door, found a light switch, and flicked it on. It was the switch for the safelight, and the room was bathed in its red glow. It illuminated the enlarger and the stainless steel tanks and the dryer and the light table. A couple of prints floated face down in the washer. There was nothing amiss here.

  Or was there? I found another switch and flicked it, this time getting white light.

  There was a strip of negatives in the enlarger’s holder, and more of them, in protective plastic, spread out on the light table. In one corner, I spotted a file cabinet with its drawers open: Inside were folders full of prints, some of which had been emptied out onto the floor. Ransacked, just like downstairs.

  But where on earth had Snelling been while this had been taking place?

  I put my gun into my purse and, leaving the light on, went back downstairs to search the bottom floor. As I passed through the living room, something caught my eye—a crumpled piece of photographic paper, lying on top of a disordered pile of canceled checks. I squatted down and reached for it. It was damp, as if it had recently been pulled out of the print washer.

  The picture was of The Tidepools. It must have been taken on a day when it was going to storm, because there were dark clouds in the sky and the trees looked bent from a strong wind. It was a haunting photo and artistically I could appreciate it—but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was doing here in the living room. After studying it for a moment, I looked up at the stairway, then went back to the darkroom.

  The other prints in the washer were similar—all of The Tidepools and all taken on the same storm-threatening day. They told me nothing. Neither did the photos that were spilled out on the floor. They were all of Snelling’s clients, many of whom I recognized as celebrities. Finally I went back to the door, shut it and put out the lights, and then found the switch on the enlarger.

  The image of the negative in the holder blazed up on the board beneath the lens. It was out of focus and, after some fumbling, I corrected it. Since the blacks and whites were reversed, it would have been difficult for anyone who couldn’t read negatives to distinguish who the people were.

  A bearded, dark-haired Abe Snelling—Andy Smith, as he had been known then—stood with his arms around two women. One was Susan Tellenberg; the other I had never seen before, but I guessed it was Barbara Smith. She bore a close resemblance to her sister. In the background, I could make out a cypress grove, probably one of those on the grounds at The Tidepools.

  So what did all of this tell me? That Snelling had been taking a nostalgic look at his past?

  I took the holder out of the enlarger and examined the other negatives on the strip. They were variations of the same pose. I wondered who had held the camera or if Snelling had used a timing device and jumped into the picture at the last second. But did it matter? The negatives told me nothing except what the dead woman had looked like. I reached under the edge of the light table and felt for a switch so I could see what else Snelling had been working on.

  The white Plexiglas glowed softly. A magnifying loupe lay to one side, and I picked it up so I could see the negatives more clearly. In one of the protective plastic sheets there were more of The Tidepools and more of Susan and Barbara. Snelling must have taken his camera when he fled Port San Marco, with this roll of film inside it. I turned to the other plastic holder. In it were scenes of San Francisco. I leaned over them with interest, realizing one was the negative of the photo that had made Snelling famous.

  There, in reverse black-and-white, was the anguished face of the restaurant proprietor’s wife. And the still face of her husband. There were twelve shots that must have been taken in rapid succession, and I marveled at how Snelling had known exactly which one to pick to giv
e him that essential quality of pain and horror.

  But there were more shots that had been taken that day. Shots that, by the sequence of the numbers printed on the film, had been taken before these. They showed the rest of the cafe, the striped umbrellas, the little flowers in vases on the tables.

  And they showed another face I recognized.

  I stared down, gripping the edges of the light table. That face was the reason Snelling had stopped at the Blue Owl that day and inadvertently become famous.

  I didn’t have time to search Snelling’s files for prints of these, and I was fairly certain they wouldn’t be there anyway. The person who had ransacked the house would have taken them. But the negatives lying on the light table hadn’t meant anything to the ransacker. Someone unfamiliar with the photographic process wouldn’t be able to read them or realize they were there because Snelling had been going over them, looking at them through the magnifying loupe, getting ready to print them. Before...

  Before what?

  I whirled and ran from the darkroom and down two flights to the lower level. I glanced in to the first door off the hall and saw a bedroom furnished in light-colored Danish modern. Snelling’s, probably. A couple of suitcases stood on the floor by the dresser, and a third was open on a chair. It was partially packed. I went inside and turned on a light. There was a thick film of dust—due to the nearby demolition—around it. The suitcase had not been packed today, and most likely Snelling had been taking things out rather than putting them in.

  So he’d been prepared to run. What had changed his mind?

  I left the room and hurried down the hall to the bedroom Jane Anthony had occupied. It was the same as when I had last seen it, except the phone book was on the bed, open to the notations on its front pages. I leaned over it, reading them more carefully than I had the last time I’d come here.

  It leaped out at me, the final fact that made everything come clear. I would make a telephone call to confirm it.