State’s Evidence Page 16

  Martin sighed. “I’ve grappled with this thing night after night, sitting up there on that hill behind the house. I guess what I’ve decided is, anything that breaks up a marriage like Katie and I had once upon a time can’t be all good, can’t be doing God’s work.”

  “You don’t necessarily have to blame the doctrine, Mr. Martin. Just the interpretation.”

  “I never said she had to accept Jesus in the same way I did,” Martin protested. “I only made suggestions, though I see now that she thought they were orders. But I guess that doesn’t matter. My lawyer says it doesn’t, so I guess it doesn’t.”

  Martin shook his head as if to expel his lawyer from his mind, then pushed himself off the curb and walked unsteadily toward his car, a beaten fighter trying to feel his way out of the reeling ring. “You just keep out of my way,” he said to me roughly, crazily. “I’ve got enough problems without you sneaking around here. Just keep away, or you’ll wish you had. I mean it.”

  Without waiting for an answer Martin shouldered his way into his car, pleased that he had accomplished his mission, unaware that his mission was needless. He backed away from the curb and, with a screech of his tires and a warning tick of his horn, drove off down the hill.

  I got back in my Buick and put it in gear, then had to stop once again. The gate to the Blair house swung open, slowly, silently, and James Blair’s silver Seville drove out, also slowly, also silently. The gate swung shut behind the car, and for a moment I could have convinced myself it hadn’t happened. In the next moment I convinced myself, for no good reason, that I should follow him.

  The last gasp of commuter traffic was all against us, so I had no trouble keeping the Seville in sight. Like metal balloons we descended through the strata of El Gordo, strata as illuminating as anything unearthed at Olduvai by Leakey or at Mycenae by Schliemann. But no one was bothering to dig in places like El Gordo. Perhaps because the discoveries would be too damning.

  We reached the commercial flatlands and turned north on El Camino, our passage marked by neon comeons and cardboard sirens. A few miles later the Seville’s turn signal winked and Blair veered into a parking lot behind a restaurant. A blinking sign proclaimed its name: Wadley’s. I pulled to the curb and waited in my car while James Blair got out and went inside. I pulled into the lot, parked, and went inside as well.

  The foyer was lined with fuzzy wallpaper and lit by carriage lamps. The little light on top of the leather-covered lectern at the far end shone down on the pudgy hands of the little man standing behind it. The man didn’t seem particularly glad to see another customer. The diamond on his pinky flashed a warning burst. The sign above his head indicated the restaurant was to the left and the lounge to the right. I smiled and pointed toward the lounge. A solitary boozer. The little man raised half a lip and nodded. I walked past him the way I walk past things afloat in formaldehyde. I was ready with an excuse in case I encountered my client.

  The bar was dark and cold. In the back a layered and lacquered woman was playing a white piano—“The Shadow of Your Smile.” None of the stools around the piano was occupied. The smile on the woman’s face had been there since the Eisenhower administration. I took a seat at the bar and ordered a drink from a bartender who was too young to know how to do his job and who spoke with an accent, Boston. He looked like Ringo Starr. Maybe he was Ringo Starr.

  The only other people in the room were a couple at the far end of the bar, where it was dark. They wore matching silk shirts in a paisley pattern and were whispering and giggling and smooching. They seemed permanently joined at the wrist and forehead. After sliding my drink at me, the bartender took a position halfway between his customers and began cleaning his fingernails with a small buck knife. I gulped and swiveled on my stool until I could see into the half of the building where people were eating.

  There wasn’t much of a crowd in there, either. Only two of the dozen or so tables I could see from where I was were occupied, one by a solitary diner, the other by James Blair and another man, curly-haired and florid and wearing a black tuxedo and a red cummerbund. Wadley, the restaurant’s owner, I assumed. Every minute or so Wadley unleashed a booming laugh, then wiped his nose with his sleeve. He was as comfortable in a tux as a dowager in a Danskin.

  I tried eavesdropping and reading lips and came up empty, with no hint of what they were talking about and certainly no hint that Teresa Blair was the subject of the conversation. Blair was in profile to me, and never once looked my way. The other man cast a proprietary glance around the room from time to time, but I was nothing he was interested in. Blair consumed his meal rapidly and seemed eager to get away, which he did about ten minutes later. When he left, I followed him. As far as I could tell, he didn’t pay for his meal or notice me.

  I expected him to return to his house, but instead he led me into downtown El Gordo. The evening breeze was musty, as though it had passed over too much of mankind on its way in from the sea. Blair’s car was a ghost ship, Blair its cursed captain. He pulled into a small lot at the rear of a brick and glass office building.

  By the time I thought it was safe enough to follow Blair into the building, there was no one in sight. I found the listing on the building directory: James Blair—Accountant. His office was on the third floor. The elevator seemed glad to have something to do.

  The hall outside Blair’s office was thickly carpeted in gold and the walls were lined with roughened burlap. The door to the office was closed. The letters painted on it repeated exactly the ones on the building directory. The door was wood but there were clear glass panels in it. On the other side of the panels was a woman, thin and brown-haired, sucking on a pencil as she typed feverishly on her Selectric. The plastic sign on her desk said her name was Florence Hendrickson. I decided I had gone far enough in pursuit of serendipity.

  Montaigne kept me company until Blair finally emerged at midnight. He went straight home from the office. After waiting outside his house for another hour, I did the same, unsure of what I knew and didn’t know.

  14

  The first tendrils of spring had begun to snake up out of the valley toward the high meadows, and the opposing battlements of snow that bordered Highway 50 had begun to shrink, their foundation trickling from beneath them and crossing the road in broad, flat bands of brown. There was still plenty of packed powder on the upper slopes, of course, and the Porsches and Volvos that zipped around me in the passing lane had ski racks strapped to their tops and bragging slogans pasted to their bumpers. The road signs directed me to carry tire chains but I couldn’t remember whether I had any in the trunk or not. I just rolled along, the slowest car on the road, my windows cracked to the tang of mountain air, my eyes rising regularly toward the magnet of the High Sierras, my soul more attuned to peace and perspective than to tracking down a witness to a crunching death.

  Lake Tahoe had once been something special even in a state where alfalfa sprouts and pyramid shapes and hot tubs are accorded the same status. The lake and the wooded shore surrounding it were a flawless gem cradled in an antique setting, a talisman of curative and regenerative powers. In my younger days a week at the lake had, more than once, sucked the lowland poisons out of my systems and transfused my urban blood with something less adulterated and more noble. But the sports faddists and the nature cultists and the casino gamblers discovered the region. Newly hewn freeways made the lake as accessible as a Burger King, and now the waters are befouled with algae and the shore is blistered with glass-and-redwood sores and the air shimmers from the fumes of high rollers and show biz groupies. The mystical magic has been squashed flat by four solid lanes of tourist traffic and condo dwellers.

  I cruised all the way through Stateline once, into the Nevada side and back, confirming my memories, both good and bad, then found a gas station and asked the station attendant if he knew how to get to the Lakeview Lodge. He named some streets and some points of the compass and I set off after them. Surprisingly, I found the place within ten minutes.

>   The Lakeview Lodge was a four-story, rough-sided log building that hibernated quietly in the center of a stand of ponderosa pines about a hundred yards from the lakeshore in a relatively secluded area. The building was a relic from the good old days, genuinely rustic and darkly serene. The driveway was lined with lights the size of beehives. The porch that stretched along the entire front of the lodge held a row of rocking chairs, heavy and squat, constructed of thick wood and saddle leather. A consumptive old man was rocking in one of the chairs, causing it to creak like a sloop in a storm. When I walked past him, he nodded once, then spit into a coffee can. The string tie around his neck was gathered by a turquoise cinch the size of a gas cap.

  The lobby was dark and pine-paneled, furnished in overstuffed and dusty comfort. A small wood fire burned in one corner of a massive fireplace that didn’t draw well anymore. The rack of antlers above the mantel seemed to point at me with a felonious accusation. The magazine on the coffee table was Guns. There was no one in the room but me and the dead deer.

  I made like a regular and followed the signs in the lobby and made my way to room 32. When I found it, I put an ear to the heavy door and listened to nothing, then knocked. The maid pushing a service cart toward the far end of the hall called out: “She gone already. Looked like she was fixing to do some serious walking. Sometimes she don’t get back till real late.”

  I waved my thanks to the maid and asked if anyone was with the woman when she left. The maid shook her head. “She always alone. Too bad, too. Woman like that was made to give comfort to someone—man, woman, child, don’t matter which. You the husband?”

  “No,” I said, then went back to my car.

  At one side of the parking area was a small swimming pool, deserted and empty still, a vat of pine boughs awaiting warm water, air, and bodies. At the other side of the lot was an open fire pit, scorched black from bonfires and pig roasts and other celebratory blazes. In between these hallmarks various trails led off into the woods. The trails were labeled by wooden signs nailed to the trunks of pines. One trail led to the lake, another to the horse barn, a third to something called the Grass Meadow. I thought back to the picture postcards that clung to the little wire rack in the lobby, and got out of the car and strolled down the trail to the meadow, remembering the coonskin cap I’d had when I was nine and wondering whether the world could possibly be better off with kids knowing all about the Dukes of Hazzard and nothing at all about Davy Crockett.

  Pine and cottonwood and aspen lined the path. Some persistent rays of sun fought through the prickly foliage and rested in golden puddles on the forest floor. The bowed and waving branches sang like distant choirs. The air was cold and clear in my lungs, as substantial as spring water. Pine needles rolled beneath my shoes atop the springy loam. I hoped the meadow was far away.

  The trail continued for half a mile. At various times I moved aside for mounted horses and human hikers and frenzied chipmunks. I really didn’t expect to find Mrs. Blair at the end of the trail, and by the time the path opened onto a sun-drenched clearing, I was almost hoping I wouldn’t.

  The meadow was a horizontal flag of grass that rippled in the wind. The ground underfoot was soft from the spring melt. Blimps of crusted snow still dotted the edges of the field, in nooks immune to sun. In the center of the meadow some rotting stumps and fallen trunks of trees created a roofless room of black and geometric furnishings. A woman sat on one of the logs, her back bent toward me, her pale and eyeless face raised to the new spring sun. I gave one last glance to the trees and sky and snow, took one last conscious breath of pine-spiked air, then made my way through the stiff bear grass toward the woman. When I was halfway there, she heard me coming and opened her eyes and turned. I trudged the rest of the way in the black shadow of her frown.

  She was appropriately dressed for the setting—stiff ankle boots, tight denim slacks, plaid flannel shirt with snaps, gray raglan sweater. Her brown hair flapped loosely about her shoulders above the white scarf knotted around her neck. Her face was a face I knew, but only in its commercially photographed state. Animate and guileless, it was even more lovely than in the photos.

  She didn’t know who or what I was, but she suspected I was a sexual prowler and she tried to intimidate me with her lips and her eyes. When that didn’t work she spoke with a cultivated rasp. “I came out here for some peace and quiet. Please. If you want conversation, go to the bar at the lodge. The bartender’s name is Rick. He hunts mountain sheep and college girls. He likes to talk about it.”

  I kept walking toward her scowl and her disdain. When I was five feet away she stood up, and I thought she was going to slap me. I stopped and stood silently, to see what she would do. She looked me over closely, one brow cocked. Then a link was made, and her hostility became resignation. “You found me,” she said simply. “I hoped I’d have a few more days.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Tanner, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  I wasn’t sure what else to say, or even what else to do now that my quarry stood like an injured doe before me. I asked if I could sit down and she nodded.

  “It was Kathryn, wasn’t it?” she asked. “She thinks she’s doing me a favor, I suppose.”

  “It wasn’t Kathryn Martin,” I said truthfully, Davy’s bemused and lovely face fresh in my mind.

  “It must have been someone,” she said absurdly.

  “It’s always someone, Mrs. Blair. That’s what I do—find the someones. I’m a detective. I’m here on behalf of the El Gordo District Attorney.”

  “Oh, I know who you are. Kathryn raced up here to tell me all about you. Did you follow her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, someone did. Or so she thought. She also thought I was in mortal danger.” Her eyes softened, her voice warmed. “Am I in danger, Mr. Tanner?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Are you?”

  If there was an answer to my question, it was in the black script of her eyes, but I couldn’t read them. “What do you intend to do now that you’ve found me?” she asked.

  “Take you back to El Gordo. With maybe a stop along the way to see your mother at the Silver Season.”

  “My God. Kathryn didn’t tell me you’d seen her.”

  “Kathryn didn’t know.”

  “What did my mother say about me?”

  “She said she wanted to see you.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing much that I could understand.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know. The physical facilities seem adequate. As for the rest, well, a selective senility has its advantages, I would guess.”

  “Did she talk about the old days? She always talks about the old days when I go out there.”

  “Some,” I said. “She mentioned her father, and the rest of your family. I’m afraid I couldn’t keep it straight.”

  “Did she say anything about my father?”

  “Only that he lost his business and died.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Your sister.”

  “Mary.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “No reason. What if I refuse to go back?” she asked after a pause.

  “I’ll notify the El Gordo authorities.”

  “And what will they do?”

  “Serve you with a trial subpoena for sure. Arrest you for something or other as well, probably. Just so they can keep you on ice.”

  “Arrest me for what?”

  “Oh, PC one-eighty-two, I imagine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Conspiracy. In your case to obstruct justice and the due administration of the law, I’d guess. It’s a real convenient statute, especially when they just want to lock someone up for a while.”

  “Who am I supposed to have conspired with, Mr. Tanner?” she asked sarcastically.

  I matched her tight smile. “I h
aven’t the faintest idea, Mrs. Blair. But the charge only has to hold up until Monday. Once they get you on the witness stand in the Fluto trial, the need for games is over.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “They can do anything they want for a couple of days. Due process generally runs a little late.”

  “Is that what you think this is?” Mrs. Blair asked abstractly. “A game?”

  There was bewilderment and perhaps wistfulness in the rhetoric. I had no answer, but she expected none. We stared at each other for a moment, each recalling what we knew about the other and what we knew about ourselves.

  “Putting a man like Tony Fluto behind bars isn’t a game,” I said after a while. “It’s serious and important business. Do you still intend to testify?”

  “I called Mr. Tolson and told him I’d be at the trial on Monday. What more does he want?”

  “So it really was you.”

  “Of course.”

  “I guess Tolson’s a bit insecure,” I said. “Any honest man in a place like El Gordo is bound to be. He wants to walk into court with you on his arm. Just like you were going to the Policeman’s Ball, is the way he put it.”

  Teresa Blair stood up and brushed off her pants and took a couple of steps down the path toward the lodge, then turned and came back to where I was still sitting. “I won’t go home,” she said abruptly. “Not to James.”

  “Why not?”

  “My reasons. And I won’t go to jail, either. I’ve spent all the time in jails I’m going to.”

  “Visiting Frankie?”

  Her eyes exploded to new dimensions. Her breath was louder than the wind. “What are you doing, Tanner? Who really sent you? Why are you here?” Her eyes looked wildly to the edge of the clearing, as though she feared assault and sought escape.

  “I’m just here to take you back,” I said calmly.

  “Then what does Frankie have to do with it?”

  “Nothing. Or does he? Who are you afraid of, Mrs. Blair?”

  “Everybody,” she said simply, then thought for a minute. “I don’t want a bunch of cops playing nursemaid to me for the next three days. I don’t think I could stand that.”