Read Gravedigger Online

Authors: Joseph Hansen

Gravedigger (17 page)

It was the Jaguar from the Beverly Hills showroom. In all the excitement—if that was the right word for it—he had forgotten that delivery had been promised for today. From the hospital he’d had his accountant draw a certified check that Cecil had taken to the dealer. A white-haired black in a crisp brown jumpsuit with the dealer’s name stitched across its back bent to unfasten from the rear bumper of the car a three-wheeled motorcycle. He dropped the chain into the carrier of the motorcycle, dropped the lid, and saw Dave. His face lit up as if they’d discovered each other in some hostile alien land after a long, forced separation. Dave had never seen him before. He came forward, pulling a fold of papers from a breast pocket

“Mr. Brandstetter? Good to see you, sir. Brought your car. Beautiful.” He held the papers out for Dave to take, who took them. The man in the jumpsuit said, suddenly very serious, “But you going to have to do something about that driveway, otherwise you going to rip her guts out and that would be a shame.”

Clumsily Dave flattened the papers against the doors of Cecil’s van. “Do I sign these?” The man in the jumpsuit found a pen and marked an X on the top sheet. “Right there, please. Here, let me hold them for you. Shame about your accident. Pretty little car. Sound like you was lucky. Burned up, Mr. Lowe say.” He held the papers while Dave signed them. He put the pen away, handed Dave the white copy of the papers, folded the colored copies into his pocket, and the big loving smile was back as he laid the keys to the Jaguar in Dave’s hand. “I hope you have better luck with this one.” He stroked the Jaguar’s sleek brown-gold finish as he passed it. He straddled the motorcycle, kicked the motor softly to life. It was very quiet, as befitted a motorcycle delivering thirty-thousand-dollar automobiles from Beverly Hills. “Anything you want to know about the car is in the manual. It’s in the glove com-part-ment.” He separated the syllables carefully. “Have any trouble, just call us.”

“Thank you,” Dave said. “And don’t have bad dreams about the driveway. I’ll get it fixed right away.”

“This is good.” Cecil mopped his plate with french bread. “Wonderful. But you could hurt yourself here. You know where the most accidents happen at home? In the kitchen. And you only have one arm.”

“You needed your sleep,” Dave said, and drank wine.

“Sleep like I had,” Cecil said grimly, “nobody needs. I’m sorry about that. Kept you awake, didn’t I? Acted like a little child can’t wipe his own nose.”

“My fault,” Dave said. “Don’t you apologize. I just hope the nightmares go away soon. None of it would have happened if I’d told you what Edwards was doing. I weighed telling you. I didn’t because I thought it would spoil the job for you, and you were liking the job, you were proud of it. I didn’t want you thinking you didn’t deserve the job.”

“I wouldn’t think that. Doesn’t matter why he did it. I was fine on the job.” He looked gloomy. “But I’m not going back there. The way those people acted—black, white, brown, all of them. Nobody is anything to them except a newsbeat. Don’t bleed in the barnyard, you know? Other chickens will peck you to death.”

“Try not to think about it,” Dave said.

Cecil took the empty plates to the sink. “I wish you’d think of how to put that bastard in jail.”

“Come on,” Dave said, and rose. “I’ve got something to show you that will cheer you up.” He left the cookshack and Cecil came trailing after him, frowning, hands shoved deep in pockets, gait slow and moody and without bounce. But he brightened when he saw the Jaguar. He walked around it, wide-eyed, awed. His mouth shaped a voiceless oh.

“Shee-it!” He grinned at Dave, grinned at the car. “Look at
that!
Whoo-ee!” He opened the door with great gentleness and respect. His hands moved over the seats, the dashboard. “Real wood,” he whispered, “real leather.” He shut his eyes and breathed in deeply, wrinkling his nose. “And doesn’t it smell beautiful.” He pulled out of the car, faced Dave, eyes begging. “You can’t drive. Not with one arm. Can I drive? Can we go for a ride?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Dave said.

They drove a long way up the canyon and around back streets. It was sunset when they reached the upper end of Horseshoe Trail. The engine of the Jaguar made hardly a sound. Its ride was smooth and easy. Remembering the jouncy little Triumph, Dave smiled contentment.

“Don’t you go chasing Westover in this car,” Cecil said. “Don’t care how comfortable a coffin it would make.”

“I’m letting him come to me,” Dave said, and told Cecil about Lovejoy and the letter.

“He won’t come,” Cecil said. “But if he does, you make sure I am with you. Up on the loft, hiding, with a gun pointed at his head.”

“What gun? You know I won’t have guns around.”

“Wasn’t a gun almost killed you,” Cecil said. “It was a car. I nearly pass out every time I think about it.”

“It was a 1958 green-and-white Impala,” Dave said, and told him about the gas-station boy’s call.

“What is going on with Charles Westover?” Cecil said.

Dave said, “Wait a minute. Slow down. Stop.”

Horseshoe Trail had no sidewalks, no curbs, only a shallow cement ditch to carry off rainwater. A brown-and-white sheriff’s car, a row of red, yellow, white lights across its roof, was empty and still, with one front wheel in the ditch, beside a mailbox and a driveway that meant that back in the trees and brush a house was concealed. The name on the mailbox was Vosper. Cecil halted the Jaguar, and Dave climbed out of it.

“What’s going on?” Cecil said.

“I forgot to tell Salazar.” Dave limped up the driveway, which was carpeted in pine needles. The house, screened by dark deodars and lop-limbed cedars, was sided in raw shingles, like his own house, but was newer and two-storied. Cecil came running up behind Dave. The little shaggy brown dog came yapping toward him from the house. In the doorway of the house stood Hilda Vosper, talking to a young man in a tan sheriff’s uniform. The dog hopped at Dave, happy, ears flapping like fur butterfly wings. Dave bent and ruffled the ears. The dog ran in a circle of delight, barking.

“Why, Mr. Brandstetter,” Hilda Vosper called. “We were just talking about you. You had a robbery.”

The deputy held out his hand. “Hopkins,” he said. Dave shook Hopkins’s hand. The little dog was facing Hopkins, barking up at him, and kicking its furry hind paws. Hopkins crouched to play with the dog. He looked up at Dave. “You’ve got a witness here. Always talk to people with dogs. Have to walk a dog. See what’s going on in the neighborhood.”

“What was going on?” Dave stared at Hilda Vosper. She wore a checked flannel shirt, black-and-white, and warm-looking gray flannel slacks. “What did you see?”

“I didn’t realize what I was seeing.” She gave a little apologetic laugh. “A young man, tall and slim.” She smiled at Cecil. “I thought it was you. It was your van. The doors were open. Television sets, loudspeakers, all that kind of thing, were stacked up in the yard, and he was loading them into the van.”

“It wasn’t me,” Cecil said.

“Yes, I realize that now. But it was after dark. It must have been seven o’clock. I only saw him against the lighted windows of the house. But you don’t have a beard and mustache.”

“Also, I am not white,” Cecil said.

“But it was your van, wasn’t it?” she asked anxiously.

“Stolen,” Cecil said. “To get me into trouble.”

Hopkins got to his feet. “Description mean anything to you?” he asked Cecil.

Cecil opened his mouth to answer but Dave interrupted. He asked Hilda Vosper, “Do you think you could identify the man if you saw him again?”

“I thought it was this young man just moving some things out of the house,” she said. “But yes, I believe I could. I think I’d recognize him. Now that I see you,” she said to Cecil, “there isn’t much resemblance. You’re stronger, your shoulders are broader. I remember thinking that he was wearing very beautiful clothes to be doing heavy work in. Of course”—she gave a little embarrassed laugh—“I didn’t stare. I just glanced into the yard and passed right on down the trail. Teddy was off the leash, and he’d run after a gopher or a mole or something. I thought he might have dashed down into your yard.”

“You take in a lot at a glance,” Hopkins said.

“I paint a little,” she said. “It teaches you to see.”

Hopkins looked at Cecil. “You know who it was, don’t you? You know too, Mr. Brandstetter.”

Dave let Cecil tell Hopkins who it was. Cecil would get satisfaction from it. Cecil said, “He’s a lawyer. His name is Miles Edwards. But you won’t find the stuff he stole when you find him. I’ve got it back.”

Hopkins looked puzzled. “What was it—some kind of practical joke?”

“Do you see me laughing?” Cecil said.

13

I
T CAME ON TO
rain in the night. In the morning, they inched in Cecil’s van along shimmering freeways clogged with cars and trucks. Over the glass towers of downtown Los Angeles, the sky was slate-gray. The rain fell softly but with no hint of ever quitting. They spent the day in noisy offices, jostling corridors, elevators, dark lineup rooms, overheated courtrooms, with assorted police officers, clerks, bailiffs, judges. With Abe Greenglass. With Deputy Hopkins and Hilda Vosper for a little while and, for a little while, with a young woman camera operator who had seen Miles Edwards drop something into Cecil’s hanging jacket at the television studio. With Miles, unshaven, pale, sullen. And with Miles’s father, a sick and shrunken-looking man who moved like an invalid and was acting as Miles’s attorney.

The hours dragged. There was more waiting than anything else. Standing around on marble floors tired Dave and made his bruises and torn ligaments ache. Now and then he studied Cecil, waiting for the boy’s exhilaration to wear off, waiting for him to get bored with making Miles suffer. But mostly his thoughts strayed. At first to Amanda, and what learning the truth about Miles was going to do to her. Then to the Westover matter, sorting through all the places he’d been, all the people he’d talked to, all the words they’d said to him. Late in the afternoon, when the courts began emptying out and the plaintiffs and defendants and lawyers with briefcases pushed in herds out the tall doors into the rain and the darkening day, he found a pay phone not in use and rang Salazar.

“The Nevada plates are stolen,” Salazar said. “They don’t belong to any 1958 Impala. They come off a Toyota pickup in a town called Beatty—Amargosa desert.”

“Is that a fact?” Dave said. “Listen, thank you for finding a witness to my burglary.”

“Any time,” Salazar said. “When do I get that lobster?”

“I’m going to spend a couple of days in bed,” Dave said. “The doctor was right. I should have stayed in the hospital. I’m not healing as fast as I used to.” Of course he’d get out of bed if Westover came from hiding in response to the letter. “I’ll call you next week.”

“Take it easy,” Salazar said.

Cecil was beside Dave when he hung up the phone. He said, “You want to drop the charges now? Forgive and forget?” He looked a little wan.

“Had your fun?” Dave said.

“It wasn’t as much fun as I hoped,” Cecil said. “Tell the truth, I’m a little sick about it. A little ashamed.”

“I thought you would be,” Dave said. “Who do we see?”

“Down here,” Abe Greenglass said, and led the way.

Dave sat propped by pillows in the bed on the loft. He had doped himself when they got home from dinner at Max’s last night, and had slept from eight until noon. Cecil had brought him breakfast in bed—coffee, fresh orange juice, pancakes, and sausage, the plates covered by foil to keep the heat in and the rain off. The rain whispered on the shingles overhead, but the loft was warm, fire crackling in the grate below.

“While you were fixing breakfast,” Dave said, “I tried to telephone Jay’s Good Used Cars in Perez. Jay doesn’t answer his phone. No one answers for him. On a hunch, having viewed Jay’s operation, I tried Lucky’s Strike. I thought Jay might be drinking his lunch. He wasn’t. Lucky gave me Jay’s home number. Jay is not at home.”

“You want me to drive down and find him?” Cecil rose with his empty plate and took Dave’s. “What do I ask him when I find him?” He started for the stairs and turned back. “If he sold a used green-and-white Impala?”

“To Serenity Westover.” Dave nodded. “On the day Azrael shot the deputies and ran. Show him her picture. That car is just the kind old Jay specializes in.”

Cecil blinked. His jaw was a little slack. “You mean you think the skinny blond girl the gas-station kid told you about is her? She’s alive? She’s with her father?”

“Watch the commercials,” Dave said. “A girl can have hair any color she likes. A girl can lose weight any time she likes. Just pop a little pill.”

“Or live under a lot of stress,” Cecil said. “Only what about the Nevada license plates? Stolen in Nevada, didn’t you say?”

Dave shrugged and was pleasantly surprised: this morning his shoulder hardly hurt at all. “Maybe she was trying to catch up with Azrael, had some reason to know he’d make for Nevada. That’s where his van ended up.”

“I know that.” Cecil made a face. “But why would she want to catch up with him? I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

“Why would she stay with him for years? She was at that ranch with him while he murdered six girls—remember?”

Cecil blew out a long breath. He gave his head a shake. He went on down the stairs with the plates. Dave heard him dump another chunk of pine log on the fire and set the screen back, heard him walk down the room to the outside door. Cecil called, “This is weird. This has got to be the weirdest mess on record. No wonder you almost got killed.” The door opened to the sound of rain and closed.

When he returned, bearing a fresh mug of hot coffee for Dave, he was frowning to himself. He shrugged into the corduroy car coat and fastened the pegs, put on his leather cap and driving gloves. He bent and kissed Dave, tasting of sweet, creamy coffee. He stood looking down at Dave, forehead creased. “What if Westover comes? I don’t like leaving you alone, not all battered-up like you are. How can you defend yourself if he turns mean?”

“All he wants is money,” Dave said.

“What if his crazy daughter comes with him? Who knows what she wants?”

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