chasing that myth, I have no idea.”
“Maybe you could show me some of their books. I’ve heard you have the biggest collection in the world.”
My compliment fell strangely flat: he didn’t seem unusually proud of the fact, if it was a fact. But he said, “When will you come? I’m not doing anything wonderful right now.”
“Now is fine.”
I took down his address. He lived on the sound, in Richmond Beach. Five minutes later, I banked the Nash into 1-5, heading north.
24
Huggins lived in a two-story brick house on a large wooded lot facing the water. It was well back from the street, hidden from the world. In the last light of the day I could see the water gleaming off in the distance as I drove into his yard. I saw a curtain flutter: a door opened and he came out on an upper deck.
He had a shock of white hair and a curly white beard, a big belly, and burly, powerful arms. Santa Claus in coveralls and a flannel shirt, I thought as I came toward him. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows: he looked like a working man waiting for some wood to chop. We shook hands and he welcomed me to his home. There was a spate of polite talk as we went inside. I asked if he’d been here long and he said yes, twenty-six years in this house this coming November. His wife had died a few years ago and for a while he had considered selling it—lots of old memories, you know, lots of ghosts—but he had kept it and now he was glad he had. It was home, after all: everything he had was here, and the thought of moving it all, of winnowing down, was…well, it was just too much. Then about a year ago all the pain had begun melting away. He had begun taking comfort in these nooks and crannies and in all the thousands of days and nights he had lived here.
We went through the living area and into his kitchen, where he had just brewed a pot of coffee. The window looked down a rocky hillside to Puget Sound, which stretched away like an ocean into a wall of coming darkness.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, “I’m terrible with names.”
I fed him my alias again and he repeated it in an effort to remember. The coffeepot gushed its last orgasmic perks and he poured two huge mugs without waiting for it to end. “I like it strong,” he said, and I nodded agreeably, waving off the sugar and cream. “So,” he said, getting down to cases, “you want to know about the Gray sons. Where do you want to start? I’m afraid you must be the guide here, sir—I don’t mean to brag, but my knowledge of the Grayson Press is so extensive that we could be here for days.” He gave a helpless-looking shrug.
“I’m not sure where to start either. I said I wouldn’t take up much of your time, but I’m just beginning to realize what a deep subject this is.”
“Oh, my dear,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Even the Aandahl biography is a monster. It’ll take me a week to read it.”
He made a derisive motion with his hand. Santa was suddenly cross. “The woman’s a maniac.”
“Who, Aandahl?”
“Journalists,” he sneered. “All they ever want is the garbage in a man’s life. Gossip. Bedroom stories. Lurid sex. But what can you expect from a newspaper reporter?”
“I guess I won’t know that till I’ve read it.”
“Don’t waste your time, you won’t learn anything about the books, Mr. Hodges, and isn’t that what we’re here to discuss? Listen, if Darryl Grayson himself were sitting with us at this table, he’d tell you the same thing. A man is nothing. All that matters is his work.”
I had never been able to swallow that notion, but I didn’t want to push him on it. It seemed to be a sore spot that he had nurtured for a long time.
“I don’t mean to be harsh,” he said in a kinder tone. “It’s easy to like Trish: she’s witty and quick and God knows she does turn a phrase. I’m sure she can be delightful when she’s not chasing off to Venus or obsessing over the Grayson brothers. But get her on that subject and she’s crazy. I don’t know how else to put it.”
He gulped his coffee hot. “I’ll tell you how crazy Trish Aandahl is. She thinks Darryl and Richard Grayson were murdered.”
I stared at him as if I had not heard the same words from Trish herself. “Is she serious?”
“Damn right she is. She gets her teeth into something and never lets go of it. She’s like a bulldog.”
“I guess I’m at a disadvantage here. I just got her book and I’ve barely had time to look at it.”
“You won’t find any of this in there. The publisher made her take it out.”
“Why?”
“The obvious reason—she couldn’t prove any of it. It was all conjecture. As a reporter you’d think she’d know better. But I hear she fought with her editor tooth and nail, really took it to the wall. It almost jeopardized the book’s publication. If she hadn’t listened to her agent’s advice, the whole deal might’ve fallen through.”
“What advice?”
“To take what she could get now—publish the biography without all the trumped-up mystery. To keep working the other angle if she believed it that strongly. If she could ever prove it, it might make a book in itself, but as it was, it just undercut the credibility of the book she’d written.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
