Games to Keep the Dark Away Read online

  “Where were you thinking of going?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I sipped my drink. “Maybe back to Port San Marco. I really enjoyed it there; I hadn’t been there, you know, for years and years. It’s still warm enough to sit on the beach and I could—”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I ignored his skeptical look. “I could relax.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I have to admit there’s more to it.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “I met a man there.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yes. His name’s Don Del Boccio. He’s a disc jockey but he’s also a classical musician. He has the most wonderful apartment, and this horrible metallic gold Jaguar and...” I let the words drift off, realizing that Hank had seen through me for sure now. I never discussed my private life with him if I could help it—which was one reason why it fascinated him.

  “Right,” Hank said again.

  “Well, I did meet such a person.”

  “I didn’t think you could make someone like that up. But you also stumbled onto a murder.”

  “True.”

  Hank signaled for another drink. “Shar, didn’t Snelling say the investigation was closed?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You can’t just go down there and snoop around without a client.”

  “I’m not going to ‘snoop around.’”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Look, Hank, I’ve been straightforward with the Port San Marco police. I’ve given them everything I know and they’ve appreciated it. I wouldn’t go back there without checking in with the lieutenant in charge of the case.”

  “And what would you tell him?”

  “That I was back in town and...”

  “And what?”

  “And that I was interested in hearing whatever they’d come up with.”

  “Would you tell him Snelling was no longer employing you?”

  “He probably wouldn’t ask.”

  “So you’d imply you still had a client.”

  “I guess you can say that.”

  “Sharon, it’s too risky. You’ve gotten in trouble with this sort of thing in the past.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  I finished my drink. “I’m more sensible now.”

  “More sensible than you were last year?”

  “Yes. I promise, I’ll talk to Lieutenant Barrow first thing. And I’ll report anything I find out immediately. Please, Hank, let me have this time off.”

  He stared down at his glass. “I don’t suppose I can stop you. You could always call in sick if I said no.”

  “Would I do that?”

  “Yes.” He looked at me, and then the laugh lines around his eyes crinkled. “Ah, what the hell. Go. With my blessing. Maybe you’ll come back less of a grump.”

  “A grump?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve been impossible the last few weeks.”

  “Well, I told you I needed a vacation.”

  We finished our drinks in silence and then Hank said, “I’ve got to get back to the house.”

  I stood up. “I’ll come with you and pick up my briefcase. If it’s okay with you, I’ll just file the documents and take off without coming in tomorrow morning.”

  He slid off the barstool, looking uncomfortable.

  “That is all right—just to file them and go—isn’t it?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “What’s wrong then?”

  He paused. “Nothing, really. Come on.”

  When we entered the big brown Victorian, I understood what had made Hank hesitate. Greg Marcus sat on an edge of the front desk, chatting with Ted. I supposed Greg and Hank had dinner plans; the two of them had been friends years before I had entered their lives and I couldn’t expect that to change now.

  When Greg saw me, there was a barely perceptible hardening in his eyes and the lines of his jaw grew taut. Then his face smoothed and he said, “Hi, papoose.” To Hank, he added, “You’re late.”

  “I’ll only be a minute.” Hank hurried off down the hall without so much as a glance at me.

  Ted, craven coward that he was, got up and muttered something about the men’s room.

  I turned to Greg. “So, how have you been?”

  “Okay. How about you?”

  “Busy. I’ve been hunting for a new apartment, but without much luck.”

  “Hank tells me you found a body down near Port San Marco the other night.”

  Now why had Hank done that “Yes.”

  “Up to your old tricks?”

  “What tricks?”

  “Well, I hope you’re cooperating with the police down there better than you’ve cooperated with me in the past.”

  For a moment when I’d seen him sitting there, handsome in his blue suit and striped tie, I’d felt a momentary softening. But now all the reasons I’d ended our relationship came flooding back.

  “Cooperation,’ I said, “has to be mutual if it’s to work properly.” In the instant before I turned and started down the hall, I saw him do a double take.

  Greg, however, could not be humbled for long.” Always quick with the snappy comeback, eh, papoose?”

  I kept going, into my office. No wonder I had broken up with him! No wonder. Besides, what kind of woman could remain in love with a man who called her by such a ridiculous nickname?

  Chapter 12

  I was back in Port San Marco, in the same room at the Mission Inn, by three the next afternoon. As soon as I’d unpacked, I called Lieutenant Barrow at the police department. The investigation of Jane’s murder was going slowly, he told me, and they were now in the process of interviewing her friends and former neighbors and employers. John Cala had been released; he still insisted he’d merely gone out on the pier for a stroll and, while Barrow didn’t believe him, the alibi I’d supplied for the fisherman had checked out.

  “So that’s where we stand at present,” Barrow said. “This one isn’t going to be easy.”

  “You seem to be acting on the theory that the killer was someone out of Jane’s past.”

  “It stands to reason. She was killed in Salmon Bay, in a place that few people from outside the area would know about.”

  “She could have arranged to meet an outsider there.”

  “Possibly.” But he obviously didn’t think much of the idea because he changed the subject. “I take it you’re back in town?”

  “Yes. I’d like to ask your permission to follow up on a few leads. Of course, I’d report my findings immediately.”

  “What kind of leads?”

  “Nothing earthshaking. I’d like to talk to Jane’s mother again, and possibly John Cala.”

  “If you can get anything out of either of them, I’ll be very surprised. The people in that damned village are as close-mouthed as they come.”

  “So I’ve noticed. But I’d like to try anyway. Also, I want to talk to the people at The Tidepools. I suppose you investigated the deaths there?”

  There was a pause. “Yes, but I don’t see any connection.”

  “Jane worked there at the time.”

  “I know that; we’ve already checked with their personnel director, Ann Bates. But the deaths are a closed file, except for the last one, where the husband apparently did the killing and then disappeared.”

  “I’d still like to look into a possible connection.”

  “Go ahead, if you want. But I doubt you’ll find one.”

  “But it’s okay with you?”

  “Sure. Just keep in touch.”

  As I’d expected, he hadn’t asked me if Snelling was still my client. I hung up, found the address of the public library in the phone book, and set off to check their back issues of the Port San Marco Herald.

  At five o’clock, I rewound the last reel of microfilm and left the redwood-and-glass building that housed the library, rubbing my eyes. The first death at The Tidepools, of a
seventy-eight-year-old patient named Mary Sloan, had been perfunctorily reported as a suicide. With the second, of an eighty-three-year-old woman named Amelia Canfield, the reporter had indulged in speculation that the drug overdoses had been connected. A small item appeared weeks later, stating that both deaths had been ruled suicides. Two months later, Barbara Smith’s death had received front-page coverage.

  Mrs. Smith had been in her early thirties, suffering from terminal cancer. She had been at The Tidepools barely three weeks when she was found dead, an apparent overdose like the others. What distinguished her death from theirs, however—besides the obvious difference in age—was that she hadn’t been at the hospice long enough to have saved up a lethal dose of the painkiller. In fact, she hadn’t been receiving the mixture for more than a few days. And, immediately after her death, her husband, Andy, a medical technician with Port San Marco General Hospital, had vanished.

  The reporter had talked to Barbara Smith’s friends and relatives. She had been in good spirits, they said, and was happy to have been admitted to The Tidepools. Besides, she wasn’t the type to kill herself. I myself tended to discount their statements. If you believe the friends and relatives, no one who commits suicide is the type to do it. What I didn’t discount was the fact that two months before her death Barbara Smith had received an inheritance of more than forty thousand dollars, which should have gone to pay for the cost of her lengthy care at the hospice. Her husband had withdrawn the money in cash from their Joint savings account several days before she died—and he left town in a hurry.

  The story had continued to receive coverage for a week after Barbara Smith’s death but, when the police failed to locate her husband, it had faded into obscurity. Probably Smith would never be found; forty thousand dollars could buy a lot of anonymity.

  I went back to my motel, put on my swimsuit, and went out to the pool. Swimming was the one sport I really enjoyed—far more than the tedious workouts I endured weekly at my neighborhood health club—and it also relaxed me and helped me think. I was firmly convinced there was some mysterious connection between water and the creative process: I knew writers who wrote in the bathtub, businessmen who plotted strategy in the shower, actors who worked on their lines in the hot tub. As for myself, I puzzled out cases in swimming pools.

  I eased into the unheated water and began swimming. Up, down, across, back, laps, lengths. Sidestroke, crawl, breaststroke, butterfly. I was getting plenty of exercise, but after a while I realized nothing else was happening. The facts of the case failed to form any rational pattern.

  Jane Anthony had been missing for a week and then someone had stabbed her to death... She had been killed in an out-of-the-way place few people except for residents of Salmon Bay would ever know about... The man who first discovered her body had no good reason for being in that place...Abe Snelling had panicked after hearing of Jane’s death, then called a halt to my investigation....Snelling had also lied to me about how he met Jane...There had been three deaths at The Tidepools while Jane had worked there, all of them suspicious....Jane had been assigned to the medical team that had worked with at least one of those patients...

  I needed to find out why John Cala had gone to the old pier. I needed to find out if Jane had been assigned to the other women who had died of overdoses at The Tidepools. I needed to find out how Jane really met Snelling.

  I got out of the pool and went back to my room. While blow-drying my hair, I planned a course of action. I would go to see Mrs. Anthony and John Cala. And tomorrow I would convince either Ann Bates or Allen Keller to let me look at The Tidepools records on Jane. Probably the police had already done so, but they hadn’t been looking for the same thing I was.

  When I arrived in Salmon Bay, the Anthony home was dark. After knocking and getting no response, I asked an old man who was mowing the lawn which house was John Cala’s. He pointed to the one to the right of Sylvia Anthony’s. It was small and box-like and had once been painted a light green, but the color had faded and now the paint was beginning to peel. Cypress trees hunched on either side of it, their branches drooping onto its flat roof. The unfenced front yard contained an assortment of junk: tires, lumber, plastic milk crates, old mattresses, rolls of chicken wire, and a washing machine without a lid. I’d noticed the place before, mainly because it presented such a contrast to Mrs. Anthony’s flower-filled yard. I decided it fit with my impression of Cala. I made my way through the jumble to the front door and knocked but got no answer. Either Cala and Sylvia Anthony weren’t home, or they weren’t in the mood to welcome callers.

  I went back to the MG and started it, uncertain of what to do next. Glancing at my watch, I flipped the radio to KPSM Don Del Boccio was dedicating a song from Sally to Larry and urging listeners to call in on the Hot Hit Line. I drove to the Shorebird Bar, got out a dime, and went into the phone booth.

  “Hot Hit Line,” Don’s voice said. “What can I play for you tonight?”

  “I doubt you’ve got anything there I’d want to listen to. It’s Sharon McCone. Can I buy you a drink after your show?”

  “You sure can. I was hoping you’d get in touch. How about eight-fifteen at the Sand Dollar? It’s on Beach Street, by the marina.”

  I’d seen the place. “All right. See you then.” I went back to the car and started off toward Port San Marco, feeling much more cheerful. As I turned up the radio, a tire commercial ended and Del Boccio, in a softer voice than he usually employed, dedicated a song to Sharon from Don. It was James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”

  The Sand Dollar faced the water where the charter fishing boats tied up. It was a brightly lit place with tables on levels separated by shiny brass railings. Old-fashioned fans stirred the fronds of giant ferns that hung nearby. This type of fern-bar modern decor usually indicated a singles’ bar, but the Sand Dollar had none of that frantic, clutching atmosphere. I took a table on the top level, from where I could see the lights of a ship in the channel, and ordered a glass of wine.

  Don came through the door promptly at eight-fifteen. He spotted me and started across the room, waving to people on either side, giving a thumbs-up signal to the bartender, shaking hands with one of the waiters. He wore jeans and a rough cotton shirt that was unbuttoned just enough to show a couple of inches of thickly haired chest. I watched his easy progress with pleasure, smiling in response to his obvious good cheer. To look at him, you’d never know he’d been talking, yelling, and making strange honking noises for six hours. When he arrived at the table, a waiter was right behind him with a glass of red wine.

  “I take it you’re a regular here,” I said.

  He flopped into the chair, reaching for his wine. “Sort of. When they see me coming, they know it’s been a rough night and they do their best to ease my pain.” He raised his glass to me, winked, and downed half the wine.

  “And has tonight been a rough one?”

  “You’ve heard the show babe—they all are.” But as he said it, he grinned. I had the feeling that nothing was really all that disagreeable to Don.

  He leaned back in his chair, studying me over his wineglass. “So, I take it you’re investigating Jane’s murder, since you’re still here. I’ve kept up on it through the people in our news department and it doesn’t sound like the police have found out much.”

  “Nothing too promising.”

  “I guess your client has more confidence in you than in them. Who did you say he was?”

  “A photographer named Abe Snelling, Jane’s former roommate. But he’s not my client anymore.”

  Don frowned.

  “He decided when she died that the case was closed. I went back to San Francisco after I saw you last, but I couldn’t get my mind off the murder, so I came back down here on my own.”

  He set his glass down and ran a finger over his bushy moustache. “Poor Jane. The guy doesn’t even care who killed her. She never did have much luck with men. Is this Abe Snelling a boyfriend, or what?”

  “Mostly what.
He claims they were just friends, and not very close at that. But a few days ago he was awfully anxious to find her, and he lied to me about how they met. When you say Jane never had much luck with men, what do you mean?”

  “She kept making the wrong choices—guys who treated her badly; guys who were weak and leaned too heavily on her; guys with messy domestic situations.”

  “I take it you don’t include yourself in those categories.”

  “Me?” He grinned and sat up straighter. “I’m a fine catch. A terrific cook, in the best of health, self-supporting, don’t leave my underwear on the floor, thoroughly domesticated. You could do worse.”

  “I’m sure I could.” The silence that fell between us was not uncomfortable, merely speculative. Finally I said, “Well, tomorrow I’m going to get answers to some of the questions about Jane that have been bothering me.”

  “Such as?”

  “Her connection with those deaths at The Tidepools. I’m going up there and talk to Allen Keller—”

  A look of intense dislike flickered in Don’s hazel eyes and he attempted to mask it by picking up his glass and motioning to the waiter for refills. He’d reacted to Keller’s name that way the first time I talked to him.

  “What is it with you and Keller?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You really don’t like him. Why?”

  He sighed. “It shows that much, does it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well if we must talk about him, Keller was one of the guys Jane got mixed up with, one of the ones with a messy domestic situation. It was my misfortune to be the guy she dumped when old Allen came along.”

  So Keller, like Snelling, had lied to me about Jane. “I see. Keller told me he was getting divorced....What exactly was his situation when Jane became involved with him?”

  The waiter brought two fresh glasses of wine and Don waited until he had left before speaking. “Keller was married to his third wife, Arlene. He had a reputation as a womanizer—that’s how he ended up with wives number two and three-but Arlene kept him on a tight leash, at least until Jane came along.

  “And then?”