Toll Call Read online

  “Back it up,” Charley said. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Okay,” I began. “Peggy’s best friend in the building is a woman named Karen Whittle. She lives up on four, with her daughter, Lily. Lily’s six years old. Her mother teaches the child at home, barely lets her out of the house, goes crazy if strangers come to call, all because her ex-husband is supposedly trying to kidnap the child and steal her away. But this milk carton proves that the husband isn’t the kidnapper, the wife is.”

  “You don’t know that,” Peggy blurted. “I want to talk to Karen. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “I’m afraid I’m right, Peggy,” I said. “But it’s easy to check to make sure.” When she didn’t say anything else I went on. “Anyway, the husband—I think his name is Tom Wilson, but you can check that with the Albuquerque cops—has presumably been looking for his daughter all this time, and this week he zeroed in. I saw him around the building several times, each time more angry than the one before. He’s been driving a gray Ford, a rental. I think you may have found it abandoned somewhere near here yesterday or today,” I said to Charley.

  Charley frowned, then nodded. “Ruthie asked me about it, and we did have a sheet on that. They found the Ford down by Fort Mason. Why abandon the car?”

  “Because I think Wilson’s dead.”

  Charley gave me a narrow look. “Who killed him?”

  “Tomkins. I think he buried Wilson at Baker’s Beach. Early this morning Tomkins had sand on his clothes, and Ruthie trailed him out there a few hours later, when he was probably checking to see that his nighttime burial detail didn’t leave any traces. If you take some men out and give it a good search, I think you’ll find Wilson’s body.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Charley went on. “What’s Tomkins have to do with all this?”

  “He was working for Karen Whittle. Pure and simple.”

  “What did she have on him that made him kill for her?”

  “She had money enough to get him out of town, and she was willing to barter with her body as well. I caught him coming out of her place early this morning. He’d clearly just had sex with her, but it seemed so absurd I didn’t believe it at the time.” I was all too aware of the additional inducement—the three snapshots of Lily in my pocket—but I decided not to mention them, just as I decided not to mention that I’d assumed the woman Tomkins had been visiting was Charley’s friend in the apartment across the hall from Karen Whittle’s.

  “So the Whittle woman was behind it all,” Charley said, still putting it all together.

  I nodded.

  “But why did she want to kill me?” Peggy asked. “What did I have to do with it?”

  “You ran into her at the grocery store that night. She saw you buy some milk. As it happened, the milk you bought had Lily’s picture on it, as part of the Missing Children thing. Lily was a lot younger in the picture, but she hadn’t changed all that much. Plus, when the two of you played dress-up you’d seen her in a brown wig, which was her natural hair color, and the color of her hair in the picture on the carton. She knew if you ever looked at the milk carton closely you’d realize Lily had already been a victim of a kidnap and that she was the perpetrator. She couldn’t take the chance you’d turn her in, friend or no friend, so she ran back here and changed her clothes and put on a ski mask and waited till you got back and pushed you down the stairs. Not to kill you or even hurt you, just to have a chance to get the milk carton away. You’d told her about the problem you were having with the telephone calls, so she used the words that convinced you your attacker was Arth—was the spider. Then over the next few days she kept checking back to see if you’d gotten any more milk—first to get some margarine, then some ice, always showing up with a reason to look in your refrigerator. The pressure got too much for her eventually; she decided it was too risky to let you live. So she convinced Tomkins to help her out. She’d lived in fear of discovery for years. Her nerves were shot even before her husband showed up, and when he arrived on the scene she completely flipped out, decided to do anything in the world to prevent her daughter from being taken away and herself from being thrown in jail. And the world has always included a lot of murder.”

  The room rang with my declamation for a time, then Charley broke the spell. “That takes care of her. But why would Tomkins go that far, even for money?”

  “He’s a convicted sex offender, and remember they’ve got him nailed on a probation violation. His probation officer has been regaling him with stories of what the cons do to sex offenders in the joint, because he thought it would be some sort of deterrent. Tomkins was so petrified of serving time he decided to take off. Since his mother cut off his allowance, he needed money to finance his escape, a lot of it and soon. Karen Whittle provided it.”

  I looked at Peggy. Her eyes were closed against my disclosures. For yet another time I was going to have to hurt her.

  “You said sex, too,” Charley reminded.

  “No,” Peggy blurted fiercely. “I can’t believe that. Not Karen and Tomkins. You must be wrong, Marsh. You have to be.”

  I could have pulled the pictures from my pocket, or I could have reminded Peggy about her own involvement with a faceless predator, but I didn’t do either. “Maybe I got that part wrong,” I said. From the look on Peggy’s face it seemed to help.

  “Anyway,” I went on after a moment, “first Tomkins got rid of the husband, then he tried to get rid of Peggy. And me, since the Whittle woman apparently figured that since I’d seen Lily and was a friend of Peggy’s and was in the law enforcement business in a sense, I was a threat to her as well.” I looked at Peggy, then at Ruthie. “And if these two hadn’t come to my rescue, he would have gotten the job done.”

  Peggy lowered her head to her hands. “Karen,” she said. “My God. She was my very best friend. We talked for hours and hours. I thought I knew her better than I knew anyone in the world. How could she do something like …” Her voice trailed off, silenced by a world whose propensities had grown impossibly enlarged.

  “Kids,” Ruthie intoned simply.

  Charley and I looked at each other. “Guess I’d best go get her,” he said finally.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out the envelope containing the photographs of Lily Whittle and handed it to him. “Give this to Mrs. Wilson,” I said.

  Charley looked at me. “I need to know what it is?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “That’s the reason I gave it to you.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “So,” Peggy said.

  “So.”

  We were alone. Charley had gone to question Karen Whittle, refusing Peggy’s request to accompany him. Ruthie had gone outside to find Caldwell, who was somewhere in his car, watching the door to see that no one escaped. I’d stayed behind because violence produces reactions, sometimes immediate, sometimes delayed, sometimes both, and my own reaction was that I didn’t want to be alone again until I had to be.

  “I guess it’s over,” Peggy said.

  “It is if you want it to be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “You’re not thinking about Karen and that Tomkins creature, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “I know.”

  Peggy crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, as if a cold wind had just blown through the door. “She was a good friend to me, Marsh. I know what she did was inexcusable, if she did it, but I feel terrible that she got herself so backed against the wall the only way she could think of to save herself was murder. It’s like a Greek tragedy or something.”

  “It’s too bad. I agree.”

  “What do you suppose will happen to Lily?”

  “A relative, probably. If there are any.”

  “There’s a sister, I think. In Wyoming, or somewhere like that.”

  “Then L
ily will probably end up there. If the sister wants her.”

  “What happens in the meantime?”

  “A foster home, I guess.”

  “Do you think that could be me?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you call the DA’s office and find out? I think there’s an agency called Social Services that handles things like that.”

  “I’d like to think I could adopt her for good, but I guess that would be asking too much.”

  I shrugged. “The requirements are a little more flexible these days, I think.”

  Peggy sighed. “I’m not sure my motives are all that pure, to tell you the truth. Maybe I just want to prove I can do it more competently than I did the first time.”

  I smiled. “Some things are imperfectible, you know. Almost everything but bowling, actually.”

  Peggy matched my look. “Says you.”

  “Well, you don’t have to make a decision now. Talk to the social services people tomorrow. Find out what your rights are. Then decide.”

  “Procrastinate, you mean.”

  “Deliberate. Cogitate. Evaluate. Negotiate. I’d say this is something that shouldn’t be rushed into.”

  The subject drifted away from us and we relied on silence and the sense that something fundamental had been altered by the day’s events. Peggy stared into the space above my head, at the still life of apples and pears and a wine bottle that hung there.

  “God,” Peggy said abruptly. “I still can’t absorb everything that’s happened. Every time I start to think of it my mind gets, I don’t know, stiff or something. Hardened. Like it’s becoming numb.”

  “Defense mechanism. Reflexive nonchalance.”

  “You mean it happens that way with you?”

  “Sure. The trick is not to let it become a permanent condition.”

  “So how have you managed it?”

  “I’m not sure I have.”

  “No. You still care about people, Marsh. Sometimes I think you’re the only one in the world who does.”

  “Well, if I do it’s probably because I’m underemployed. If I made more money and had more toys, I’d probably become devoted to them.”

  “You’re talking about that awful slogan you see all over the place, aren’t you? ‘He who dies with the most toys wins.’ That’s just so … wrong, Marsh. Isn’t it?”

  “I hope so.”

  “If it isn’t then we really are meaningless, aren’t we?” Peggy laughed at her own bleak synthesis. “Do you want a drink?”

  Since the question seemed ritualistic, I said, “I think I’d better go.”

  I waited for an objection. When I didn’t hear one I asked Peggy if she’d be at work on Monday.

  “I … Do you want me to be?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Why?”

  “If I have to say it I won’t get it right. If I could talk nice I’d still be a lawyer, for crying out loud.”

  “But you think we can put all this behind us.”

  “I think we already have.”

  Peggy grinned sheepishly. “Well, I know this much. If I have to kill someone to get back in your good graces, we’d better not get mad at each other very often.”

  “That didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “I think maybe it did. Just a little.”

  I knew she was right, in ways I couldn’t entirely fathom, but I knew that it was only a shortcut, not the sole solution, that we’d have been all right anyway. Eventually. But she spoke again before I could tell her so.

  “I think I can help us become friends again, Marsh,” Peggy said softly.

  “How?”

  “By telling you why I let Arthur Constable go on doing what he did to me. Why I told him I’d be willing to talk with him some more, even in light of what he’s done. Do you think that might make it easier for you?”

  “I don’t know. Would it be easy for you to tell me?”

  “Not easy. But I can do it now. Yesterday I couldn’t, but now I can. I feel whole again, somehow. I think it’s because I saved your life. Or I tell myself I did, at any rate.”

  “You did. No question.”

  “That’s nice of you to say. And I warn you, I’m going to keep believing it. I may even mention it at parties.”

  “Fine. Maybe I can get the Chronicle over here and give you a spread. Or at least a line in Herb Caen.”

  Peggy smiled easily, then closed her eyes and leaned back against the couch. When she spoke her words were flat and toneless, appropriate for reciting statistical irrelevancies. “One night, while he was pecking at me the way he did, Arthur got me to talk about the one thing in my life I’d hidden from everyone, Marsh. And I do mean everyone. I’ve done lots of things I’m not proud of, but this one was by far the worst. This baby was locked away deep, for thirty years. I was always afraid to let it out, afraid of what people would think of me if they knew, afraid of what I’d think of myself if I relived it. But with John—Arthur—it didn’t matter. I didn’t care what he thought; I didn’t even know who he was. And he knew so much about me anyway, this other thing wouldn’t be such a big deal. Plus he was clearly a basket case himself. I didn’t know how, precisely, but I knew he wasn’t normal, so he couldn’t very well criticize me for abnormality. You know what I mean?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And the funny thing is, it’s not such a big deal. I mean, it’s far from a unique experience in this day and age—the papers are full of it. But it’s unique to me. It was the biggest deal in my whole, entire life. And it stayed so horrible I refused to ever mention it because there was never anyone I felt I could trust enough to tell about it. Finally someone came along. Someone I could trust or at least be safe from.”

  “The spider, you mean.”

  “Yes. First the spider. Now you. You and Karen.”

  “Quite a trio.”

  Peggy looked pained. “Don’t be that way. Please.”

  I grinned. “Sorry. I just never thought I’d be flattered to be lumped in with a pervert and a killer.”

  “Well, you should be. In this instance.”

  “Okay, I’m flattered. Now what’s the big secret?”

  Peggy lapsed into an inward stare. Marilyn hopped into her lap and curled into a furry ball. “Now that I’ve built it up I feel kind of silly. It’s like a play everyone tells you is so great, and by the time you see it you’re inevitably let down.”

  “I promise not to be let down.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can fall asleep in the middle if you want. But I’m going to tell it, anyway.”

  “Good.”

  She leaned forward and met my eyes. “You remember I told you about my father? How bad I felt that when he got Alzheimer’s and had to be put in a nursing home I didn’t go back and take care of him or bring him out here to live with me or anything? How I just let him rot in an institution back east?”

  “I remember. Though I hardly think you let him rot.”

  “Well, that was rough for me. That ate a pretty big hole in my self-esteem. But what I didn’t tell you was I really didn’t have a choice.”

  “Why not?”

  Her eyes deepened and her voice grew grave and purposeful. “Because despite his trouble I couldn’t let myself get close to him again, and the reason is he abused me when I was a child. For about three years, between when I was ten and thirteen, he used to crawl in my bed and fondle me and make me do the same to him, or fondle myself while he watched and told me how to do it.”

  She looked to my soul for my reaction, my response, my judgment, to see if any of them came wrapped in flippancy or revulsion. I couldn’t tell if what she saw was comforting.

  Suddenly she laughed, a sarcastic cackle. “He only had one testicle. Isn’t that a strange thing for a ten-year-old girl to know about her father? And when I was old enough to fondle other men, and found a man with two, I thought he was the one who was abnormal. That was good for a laugh, let me tell you.”

  She b
roke into tears, silent ones, tears that came from ancient lakes and timeless glaciers. I reached out and patted her knee, but nothing changed until she reached up and swiped at her eyes and sniffled above a willful smile. “It was horrible, needless to say. Just horrible. I mean in those days the whole sex thing was pretty much secret anyway, you know? Not like today, where you’re bombarded with innuendo every six seconds. Back in the fifties even normal sex was a forbidden, frightening subject to a young girl. And sex with your very own father, well …”

  “Did you tell anyone about it at the time?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Not even your mother?”

  “Especially not my mother. See, when it started I wasn’t even all that sure it was wrong. I mean, what did I know? I thought this was something fathers and daughters did together. It sounds impossibly naive in this day and age, but that was the way I was. Then, after a year or so went by, and I knew it was bad, I hated my mother worst of all, for letting it happen, somehow. Then after a while it seemed too late to do anything. Because I’d let it go on for such a long time. I thought I’d be the one they’d punish, not Daddy.”

  “And so it just started and stopped?”

  She looked away, at the bedroom doorway. “Well, I kind of helped it.”

  “How?”

  “I came up with a plan. One night when Mom was gone he came in to me earlier than usual. I waited till he got close and I grabbed my hairbrush and hit him as hard as I could. Without warning. Just hauled off and slugged him. By accident I hit him right in the solar plexus. He went down like a tree. I actually thought I’d killed him, and at first I was immensely relieved but then I started to cry. Hysterically. I guess I sensed I’d done something irrevocable. That things would never be the same.”

  “What happened then?”

  “When he got his wind back he just looked at me for a long time, and left my room without a word, and never came back. He barely spoke to me after that. It was like he’d moved out of the house. And in a way that was as hard to deal with as the other.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, Marsh. The psychology of it is strange. He was my father. And I’d hurt him. Never mind how he’d hurt me, at that point I was overwhelmed by the possibility that I’d made him a different person, a lesser being. Talk about mood swings. Fear to guilt to anger to shame to maybe even a little repressed desire, who knows? Up the spectrum and back again. I was a mess. And really, I’ve been a mess ever since, at least with men. That’s why I go through so many, I think. I want them to be different from my father, and they are, of course, but sooner or later, no matter how benign they are, they do or say something and I see my father in them and so I break away. Slug them also, so to speak. Then time goes by and I try again, and then again. It’s pretty standard stuff, I know.”