white women, when their real old man was a crummy Indian from some two-bit reservation out west.”
“An Indian?”
“That’s how I heard it. Man, that must of sat big around here. No wonder Katje Crawford dumped him.”
“How did Francesca take it?”
“Like I’d slapped her. Said I was a liar at first. I told her go ask old Emil Van Hoek if her folks wouldn’t tell her, and I figured they wouldn’t. Bad blood, that was what she had, and she was going around calling the Mayor a fraud when he’d brought her up like his real own kids.”
“You think Francesca went looking for her real father,” I said, “even though he was dead?”
“Sure she did. Maybe she didn’t believe me, wanted proof.”
Celia Bazer said, her voice low from the corner, “Maybe she wanted to know about him, her real father, know who he was. Maybe she just wanted to know what really happened.”
She said it as if she, if she had been Francesca, would have wanted to know who her father had been, what had really happened a long time ago.
“All right,” I said. “Don’t go anywhere. I don’t think Mayor Crawford’ll thank you for telling her.”
Frank Keefer said nothing, went on gingerly touching his broken face which was all that interested him. Pender glared an inner anger at himself for being so stupid, for getting drunk and losing his temper. Celia Bazer stood silent in her corner, maybe hoping no one would think of her after I was gone, not until it was time to go to bed.
15
I drove thinking about a girl who went looking for a dead father. Yes, Francesca would have done that. A man might die, but he left a shadow, a life, a place of his own, relatives, all the things a girl who felt rejected and different would want to know. Death ends only a man, not the life he had lived, the place where he had belonged. Above all the place-somewhere in this world where, maybe, his daughter could belong, too, as she had never belonged among the Crawfords, and Van Hoeks, and Black Mountain Lake projects for the benefit of Abram Zarembas.
Would that search have killed her? It depended on what she turned over in the search, on a lot of things I didn’t know. Did Felicia know? I thought Felicia did-part of it anyway. Not as much, maybe, but enough to make her want to know who had hired me and what I knew. Enough to send her on the same search herself?
I stopped to call Lieutenant Oster. He had news.
“They picked up your client, John Andera, down in New York,” Oster said. “He was on a selling trip in Philadelphia. It checks out solid with witnesses down there. His alibi is good for the Crawford girl, too-another business trip.”
“What about Mrs. Grace Dunstan?”
“Not so good for her. She was in New Haven, but no one saw her from eight P.M. last night until past one A.M. She could have driven to Dresden. Harmon Dunstan isn’t covered for the time of Zaremba’s death, either.”
I told him what Joel Pender had told me. “Is it true?”
“As far as I know. Before my time,” Oster said, and there was a pause. “Mayor Crawford isn’t going to like Pender. It’s old dirty linen. Dead and buried.”
“Maybe not so buried,” I said. “Where do I talk to the grandmother? Old Mrs. Van Hoek?”
“She’s got a cottage on the Mayor’s place. What do you think she can tell you?”
“I’ll know when I ask her.”
“Take it easy, Fortune.”
“I always do, Lieutenant,” I said, and hung up.
I drove on to the Crawford mansion, parked up the road. The small cottage was in the rear among the trees, the rain dripping onto its roof. I knocked. The woman who opened the door after a time was tall, thin, white-haired, and dressed in a formal black dress without any decoration. The white hair was in a severe bun, and her long, thin face was severe too.
“Yes?” she said, and added, “You’re that detective.”
“Dan Fortune, Mrs. Van Hoek. Can we talk?”
“About what?”
The question wasn’t challenging, only neutral, implying that she had nothing to talk about. I saw that her severe manner was more disassociated than stern. The manner of someone who lived alone with her own slow thoughts.
“About Francesca and your husband,” I said.
“I never knew anything about Francesca. Mr. Van Hoek is dead,” she said, and turned away as if that settled it all.
I followed her into a small Victorian room that had an aura of timeless insulation. She sat down, as timeless as the room, and neither looked at me nor away from me. She didn’t seem surprised that I had not closed the door behind me and gone away, but her eyes seemed uninterested by me. I had an impression that we were both in the same room, but in different times, therefore invisible to each other.
“Your husband died suddenly,” I said.
She looked toward a window and the rain. “Mr. Van Hoek took many years to die.”
“He talked with Francesca just before he died,” I said.
The rain on the windows seemed to fascinate her. “I liked the rain as a girl. It was so warm in the attic of the big house where we played. That was before I met Mr. Van Hoek. Katje and the Mayor have the big house now. It’s not the same house, that was torn down years ago. I live here. As long as I live I have a home here. Katje is a good daughter.”
“Did Mr. Van Hoek tell Francesca about Katje’s first husband, Mrs. Van Hoek?”
“I don’t know. Leave me alone, please.”
She sat in her chair as if she didn’t want to move, not ever, for fear of breaking time into small pieces, of losing her own image in the shattered mirror of time.
“Katje’s first husband was an Indian?”
“A nice boy. She brought him home twice. She was defiant, you see? He was a soldier, away from home. She had it annulled. The best way. The Mayor was better for the children.”
“You opposed the marriage? The Indian boy?”
“There were the children. He was a nice boy, but we couldn’t make her try. She knew what she wanted to do.”
“You wanted her to make the marriage work?”
“She knew better. You can see that. We have a fine home.”
“But he came back, the Indian. Made trouble?”
She moved her head in a sharp jerk. “Leave me alone, please. I don’t want to talk to you.”
I heard steps coming toward the cottage. At the window, I looked out and saw a small man with silver-gray hair coming toward the cottage under an umbrella. He walked stiffly, like a judge-or a senior lawyer. How did I know? I don’t know, but it was an impression, and his face was too young for his silver-gray hair and his manner. Prematurely gray.
I went back to Mrs. Van Hoek as the gray-haired man came into the cottage. He shook his umbrella outside, laid it just inside the door, turned, and came into the living room smiling and rubbing his hands against the October cold. He saw me.
“Who are you?”
“Dan Fortune, Mr.-?”
“Carter Vance. You’re the private detective? What the hell are you doing with Mrs. Van Hoek?”
His diction didn’t quite match his silver hair or his formal clothes. Neither did his age-about forty or so. As if he’d built a careful public image to hide himself.
“I’m talking with Mrs. Van Hoek,” I said.
