“Sorry-I only moved down from Portland five years ago. Always had a dream of owning a place like this.”
Pender switched from the official to the conversational mode. “So how's it working out?”
“It was working out pretty well, up until they built that Rite-Aid across town.”
“Happening all over the country, from what I hear. Damn shame, too. Listen, Doc-do they call you Doc?”
“Some do.”
“Well, Doc, this fella here, I know he was in here around a year ago. My witness said he disguised himself to look older-maybe he was wearing a gray wig.”
“Oh, him.”
Oh- ho! Two little words, and the universe undergoes a paradigm shift.
“That's Ulysses Maxwell. Caretaker for a woman named Julia Miller. They live way out on Scorned Ridge. He first came in to get her prescription for morphine ampoules refilled not long after I bought the place. Of course I couldn't do it, just give out morphine sulfate to a third party like that. It's a Schedule Two narcotic. I told him he had to get some paperwork filled out. Oh my, if looks could kill!
“But he came back the next day with all the forms. Comes in regular, now, every month or so.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Yesterday afternoon, around two o'clock. Picked up Miss Miller's refills and a bottle of Lady Clairol- Strawberry Blonds Forever, as I recall.”
Oh-ho. Oh — fucking- ho. “Do you happen to have an address on file?”
“Sure do. Hold on, I'll find it for you.”
Just as the pharmacist disappeared into the back room, the bell over the door tinkled, and an elderly woman entered. Pender tipped his hat to her. He'd never worn a cowboy hat before-he found he enjoyed tipping it to people. Especially now that he was high as a kite on adrenaline and a sense of destiny.
Because while the extraordinary run of luck Pender had been enjoying for the last three days-Anh Tranh to Big Nig to Caz Buckley to Doc to a live address-wasn't unprecedented in his experience (and long overdue when you considered he'd gone several years without a single damn break in the case), the way the pieces were falling into place, Pender was ready to believe that destiny, or fate, or God, or whatever you wanted to call it, had selected him for this particular job.
Once again he glimpsed that mental image of the strawberry blonds waiting for him in the darkness. And although thus far Ed Pender had never seen much evidence of order to the universe (an occupational hazard), much less the hand of a micromanaging God, it now occurred to him that perhaps his whole life had been leading up to this day.
76
Tuesday morning's session stretched on into the early afternoon. When Maxwell suggested they take a picnic break down by the river, Irene was leery, but agreed. Her bathing suit (or rather, she now knew, Mary Malloy's, Sandy Faircloth's, Ann Marie Peterson's, Victoria Martin's, Susan Schlade's, Zizi Alain's, Gloria Whitworth's, Ellen Rubenstein's, Dolores Moon's, Tammy Brown's, or Donna Hughes's bathing suit) was still on the line from Sunday's swim. She took it up to her room to change, while Maxwell packed their lunch.
White meat chicken sandwiches with Grey Poupon, a bottle of white wine, chocolate-dipped ladyfingers for dessert. Maxwell doublewrapped the sandwiches and cookies, first in foil, then in baggies, remembered to pack napkins, plastic cups, and a corkscrew, and went down to the wine cellar to select a bottle of wine to cool in the creek while he and Irene swam.
He switched on the cellar light and trotted down the stairs, past the display of strawberry blond wigs mounted on mannequin heads in a glass-fronted case in the dark cellar to keep the color from fading. Only a few were still acceptable to Miss Miller, but they retained one from each of the gals for sentimental reasons.
The wine rack was behind the display case. He settled on a nice Ventana Chablis. It was a Monterey County wine-Irene would be bound to appreciate that. Maxwell slipped the bottle into his backpack, crossed the cellar to the fuse box, unlocked it, switched off the power to the electric fence.
And he was in a good mood as he climbed back up the cellar stairs. A little therapy, a refreshing swim, a picnic lunch, a little alfresco sex- a lot of alfresco sex-with a woman still in the head-over-heels-with-Christopher stage: who could ask for anything more?
A bracing swim, a delicious lunch, a short nap on the mossy riverbank, one last swim. When he made his move, Irene wasn't surprised. She'd known it was coming-she just hadn't known when or how, or, despite all she'd told herself, whether she would be able to go through with it.
When was during that last swim. How was, he came paddling up to her from behind, rested both hands on her shoulders, and began kissing the nape of her neck. And at first it seemed as if she would be able to handle it, even after he stripped her bathing suit down to her waist and began to fondle her breasts from behind.
It's a movie, she told herself-an attempt at deliberate dissociation. Her nipples were already pebbled from the cold water. He's my leading man, and it's a movie. She started to turn toward him, but he held her in place. Until then, she hadn't really appreciated how strong he was. He seized her wrist and drew her hand behind her, down to his crotch. His penis was flaccid and shrunken-from the cold, she thought at first. He wanted her to masturbate him. It was uncomfortable, reaching down and behind her like that-it hurt her shoulder. Again she tried to turn around in the water. Again he prevented her.
And then she knew. Not Christopher, but Max. Max all along. Max performing another of his devastatingly accurate impressions-this time of Christopher. Max whose hand she had held, Max whose eyes she had gazed into, Max whose red lips she had kissed, and worst of all, Max with whom she'd discussed his own betrayal.
I'm dead, she thought, feeling his penis harden in her hand.
Am not, replied a little voice in her head-a dissociated little voice. And following its promptings, she hooked her thumbs into the bathing suit at her waist and rolled it down the rest of the way, kicked it off, then bent forward, as if to provide him greater ease of access.
She held her breath as he positioned himself behind her with one hand, while fondling her breasts with the other.
“Give it to me, baby,” she whispered, then threw her head back sharply, heard a crack! saw a bright light. The arm around her went slack. She threw herself forward, kicked hard at his stomach with both feet, and struck out for the opposite shore of the river.
77
Before leaving the pharmacy, Pender purchased a box of one-and-a-half-by-four-inch Band-Aids and a nail scissors. Back in his room, he removed his old bandages and inspected his scalp in the bathroom mirror. Wong's salve had done its job. All three wounds had closed, no redness, no puffiness. Using the nail scissors, Pender took his own stitches out, rubbed on a little more salve, and covered the scars with three of the big Band-Aids, overlapped.
His next order of business was to write Steve McDougal a long letter on hotel stationery, detailing his movements in the last few days, and for the first time ever, putting a name-Ulysses Maxwell-to the suspect known up until then only as Casey.
Pender stuffed the letter into an envelope, sealed the envelope, scrawled McDougal's name and fax number across the front, and gave it to the desk clerk on his way out. “You have a fax machine?”
“Sure do.”
“If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, I want you to open this, and fax the document inside to this number.”
“You got it,” said the clerk, pocketing the twenty Pender had slipped him along with the envelope.
“Open it before then, and you're looking at a federal rap.”
“Wouldn't dream of it.”
