Harmon Crane was married to a frigid woman. He met the redhead somewhere, San Francisco, Tomales Bay, wherever, and they became lovers. Dancer had told me he didn't think Crane was seeing another woman, but Dancer was a drunk and you can't always trust a drunk's memory or perceptions. I was inclined to believe Mrs. Brown's story of walking in on her ex-husband and the redhead; there had been too much nasty pleasure in her voice for it to have been a fabrication.
All right. Mrs. Brown had been pestering Crane for money, a loan for some purpose or other; Crane kept refusing her. On that score I believed Dancer. But then Ellen Corneal had walked in on Crane and the redhead, and all of a sudden she had something on him, a little leverage to pry loose that “loan” she'd been after-the $2,000 he'd withdrawn from his savings account on November 6, 1949, some ten days after his return from Tomales Bay. No wonder Mrs. Brown hadn't wanted to talk about the money angle. Technically she was guilty of blackmail and she knew it.
So far, so good. But now there were gaps, missing facts, that still had to be filled in. Assuming it was the red-haired woman's bones Emil Corda and I had found yesterday-and that wasn't a safe assumption yet-what had happened at the cabin the day of, or the day after, the earthquake? A fight of some kind between Crane and the redhead? An accidental death? A premeditated murder? And who was she in the first place? And why had Crane apparently covered up her death by burying her body in the fissure?
If you accepted Crane's culpability, the rest of it seemed cut and dried. He came back from Tomales, he began brooding and drinking heavily-a natural enough reaction, considering he was a sensitive and basically decent man. Then Ellen Corneal blackmailed him for the $2,000: more fuel for his depression and guilt. He finally reached a point on December 10 where it all became intolerable, and he put that. 22 of his to his temple and blew himself away.
Simple. The suicide motive explained at last.
Then why didn't I believe it?
Damn it, why did it seem wrong somehow?
FIFTEEN
When I got back to the office Eberhardt was gone again and there was another typed note on my desk. This one read: 2:45 P.M.
I talked to DeKalb. Looks like those bones you found are a woman's. Lab found woman's wedding ring, one- carat diamond in gold setting, on a finger bone. Victim was a small adult, probably between 25 and 50, but that's all they can determine so far. Skull may have been crushed prior to burial of body but they're not sure enough to make it official. Unofficially DeKalb thinks it might be homicide connected to your case. He expects to be in touch.
Items buried with bones as follows: four keys on metal ring, cigarette case (no monogram), woman's compact, gold brooch with two small safires (sp?), remains of metal rattail comb, remains of fountain pen, two metal buckles. DeKalb figures all this stuff contents of victim's purse.
You had one call, same pesty woman who called before. Said you'd know who she was and she'd call again. Women.
I sat down and looked out the window at the eddies of fog that obscured the city. Yeah, I thought, women. I didn't want to talk to Mrs. Kiskadon again and I hoped she wouldn't call back while I was here; it would only be more of the same I'd gotten from her up in the park.
I quit thinking about her and thought instead about the woman's wedding ring, one-carat diamond in a gold setting. Harmon Crane's red-haired lover had been married, it seemed. To someone he knew? To a stranger? No way of telling yet. And either way, that kind of affair happens all too often; it didn't have to mean anything significant, to have a direct bearing on the woman's death.
I pulled the phone over and dialed Stephen Porter's number. But it was late afternoon and he just didn't seem to be available at this time of day: no answer. On impulse I looked up Yank-'Em-Out Yankowski's home number and called that. The housekeeper answered. I identified myself, she said just a minute and went away; when she came back, after a good three minutes, she said Mr. Yankowski wasn't home and hung up on me. Uh-huh, I thought. I had figured the old son of a bitch for a grudge-holder and that was what he was.
The phone and I stared at each other for a time. I was debating whether or not I ought to call DeKalb and tell him about the red-haired woman. But there didn't seem to be much point in it just yet. I still had no idea who the woman might have been; for that matter I couldn't even be certain that it was the redhead's bones we'd found yesterday. Some other woman's, maybe. Hell, Crane might have had a steady stream of women up there at Tomales Bay, Dancer's opinion notwithstanding. Better to keep on digging on my own. I had more incentive than DeKalb did anyway: I was getting paid for this specific job, and I was a lot more interested in what had happened in late October of 1949 than he was.
I stared out the window some more. Would Amanda Crane have any idea who the red-haired woman had been? Not likely. From all indications she had worshipped her husband; if she'd had any inkling that he was having an affair or affairs, particularly in view of the fact that her frigidity was the probable cause, she was the type of woman who would have put on blinders and refused to admit the truth even to herself. And her mental state being what it was now, it would be cruel to subject her to that kind of questioning. Not that I could even get to see her again, what with that niece of hers on guard…
The niece, I thought. Would she know anything about Harmon Crane's extracurricular activities? She couldn't be more than fifty, which made her a teenager when Crane had died; but teenagers are just as perceptive as adults sometimes-and sometimes even nosier-and there was also the possibility that she had picked up knowledge later on, from Mrs. Crane or from someone else.
What was the niece's name again? It took me a few seconds to remember that it was Dubek, Marilyn Dubek. Shortterm memory loss-another indicator of creeping old age. I got the number from Information and dialed it, the idea being to determine whether or not she was home yet. If she'd answered I would have said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up and then driven over to Berkeley for the third time in two days. But she didn't answer. Nobody answered.
Temporary impasse.
I decided it was just as well. After four now-almost quitting time. And rush-hour traffic would be turning the bridge approaches into parking lots at this very minute. Who needed to breathe exhaust fumes for an hour or more? Who needed to put up with idiot drivers? Who needed to go to Berkeley to talk about a dead redhead when a live redhead would soon be available in Diamond Heights? Who needed the company of Petunia Pig when the company of Kerry Wade could be had instead?
I closed up half an hour early and hied myself straight to Diamond Heights.
Kerry and I went to a movie down at Ghirardelli Square. It was a mystery movie-“a nightmarish thriller in the grand tradition of Alfred Hitchcock,” according to the ads. It was a film to give you nightmares, all right. And both it and its damned ads were a lie.
Filmmakers these days seem to equate suspense with gore: you're supposed to sit there damp-palmed and full of anticipation for the next gusher of blood, the next beheading, the next Technicolor disembowelment. Hitchcock knew different; every film noir director in the forties and fifties knew different. Character and atmosphere and mood are the true elements of suspense, cinematic or literary; it's what you don't see, what you're forced to imagine, that keeps you poised on the edge of your seat. Not blood, for Christ's sake. Not exposed entrails and rolling heads. Not human depravity of the worst sort.
Seven minutes into this piece of crap, the first bloody slashing took place. One minute later, while it was still going on, we got up and walked out. I've seen too much blood and carnage in my life as it is- real blood, real carnage. I don't need to be reminded of all the torn flesh, all the violated humanity, all the shattered hopes and futile dreams, all the goddamn waste. And I don't need my guts tied into knots by phony bullshit special effects that make a mockery of violent death and a mockery of its victims.
I said all of this to Kerry after we were outside the theater. I was pretty steamed up and when I get angry I tend to rant a little. Usually she just lets me rant without saying much, Kerry being of the opinion that if somebody is going to throw a tantrum, he ought to do it and be done with it. Very rational, my lady, which can be annoying as hell sometimes. This time, however, she did some ranting of her own; she doesn't like splatter movies any more
