me a note to call her at the hospital. God, it’s just terrible. I still can’t believe it.”
“Your uncle didn’t kill Victor Carding,” I said.
“I know that. He couldn’t hurt anyone. But the police think he did, in spite of what mother says you told them. They have him under arrest at the hospital.”
“They’ll change their minds when they’ve had a chance to investigate further.”
“Are you really sure of that?”
“Pretty sure. Did your mother say when she’ll be home? I’d like to talk to her.”
“No, she didn’t. But she wants to talk to you, too. She said to give you a message if you called: You’re to see her tomorrow morning as early as possible.”
“At your home?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you why, specifically?”
“Mother never tells me why she does anything,” Karen said, and there was undisguised bitterness in her voice. “Never. She just goes ahead and does it.”
I let a couple of seconds pass before I said, “I’ll come by around nine, then.”
“All right.”
“And try not to worry. Your uncle’s receiving the medical care he needs; things’ll work out okay in the long run.”
“Will they? I hope you’re right.”
We said goodbye and I put the receiver back into its cradle. I hoped I was right too-and I also hoped that Mrs. Nichols did not want to see me tomorrow morning so she could tell me face to face what a lousy detective she thought I was. She was not the most understanding and compassionate of women; the way she treated and alienated her daughter was proof of that. So she was probably capable of blaming me for not keeping her brother- and the family name-out of this mess; and of stopping payment on the retainer check she’d given me. Which would make a difficult situation even more difficult.
But then, maybe she had something else on her mind. Unpredictable was another adjective you could use to describe her.
In the living room I sat down again with the issue of Popular Detective and tried to read. No good; I was too restless now to concentrate on the exploits of pulp detectives. I put the magazine aside and wondered when Eberhardt was going to show up.
Two seconds later, in the crazy coincidental way things happen sometimes, the downstairs door buzzer went off. I crossed to the speaker unit mounted beside the door, pushed the Talk button, and asked who it was. Sure enough, Eberhardt’s voice said, “It’s me, hot shot. Buzz me in.”
I buzzed him in. And then opened the door and waited for him to come clomping up the stairs and along the hall. When he reached me he nodded and grunted something unintelligible. Moved past me to stand looking around at my sloppy housekeeping, his head wagging in a mildy disgusted way, as I shut the door.
“You ever clean up this pigsty?”
“Only when I’m entertaining a lady.”
“Not getting much, then, are you?”
“Not getting much,” I agreed. “Sit down. You want some coffee? A beer?”
“Make it a beer.”
I went to the kitchen, got a couple of bottles of Schlitz out of the refrigerator. When I came back Eberhardt had cleared some of the crap off the sofa and was sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him. He looked tired, irritable, and even more sour-faced than usual.
He said as I handed him a beer, “Seems you had a pretty busy day for yourself.”
“You heard about what happened in Brisbane?”
“I heard about it, all right. Makes two murders in two days you’re mixed up in.”
“Eb, I’m not mixed up in the Christine Webster shooting.”
“No, huh?” he said mildly.
“No.” I sat down. “Any leads yet on who killed her?”
“Nothing definite. We haven’t been able to trace her movements past seven P.M. on Tuesday. Her roommate, Lainey Madden, had a date that night; and just before she left at seven, Christine told her she was planning to spend a quiet evening at home.”
“How about a lead on why she had my card in her purse?”
“That we’ve got,” Eberhardt said.
“You do? What is it?”
“She’d been getting anonymous letters and telephone calls,” he said. “The threatening kind. Lainey Madden says she was considering going to a private detective about them.”
“Were they death threats?”
“Not in so many words. Veiled stuff.”
“How long had she been getting them?”
“About two weeks.”
“She have any idea who was responsible? Or why?”
“Not according to the Madden girl. Neither of them could imagine why anyone would have it in for Christine.”
“Could it be a sex thing?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.” Eberhardt took some of his beer. “Christine kept the letters and the roommate turned them over to us; nothing sexual or obscene in any of them. Or in any of the calls either, apparently. There is a sex angle, though. Which you already know about if you read today’s papers.”
“I didn’t read them; I guess I should have. What is it?”
“She was pregnant,” he said.
“Ah-Jesus.”
“Yeah. Four months along.”
“You get a line on the father?”
“Damned good line. She was engaged to a kid she met at S.F. State last semester. Only man in her life the past six months, Lainey Madden says.”
“What did the kid have to say when you talked to him?”
“We didn’t talk to him. He’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Missing since last Sunday night. From up at Bodega Bay.”
Bodega Bay was on the coast about sixty-five miles north of San Francisco. I asked, “What was he doing up there?”
“Working in the commercial fishing business,” Eberhardt said. “He decided to skip school this semester, the way we heard it, because he was running low on money. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since around nine P.M. on Sunday.”
“Well, I guess that makes him your number one suspect.”
“Sure. But it’s not as simple as it might look. Not by a damn sight, it isn’t.”
“You mean because of the threats? Maybe the kid made them himself.”
“Maybe. Thing is, there’re complications now-a whole new can of worms.”
“What can of worms?”
“One you seem to be smack in the middle of.”
“Me?”
“You. And the missing kid.”
“Eb, what the hell are you getting at?”
“The kid’s name is Jerry Carding,” Eberhardt said sourly. “He’s Victor Carding’s son.”
EIGHT
