Labyrinth (The Nameless Detective) Read online

  “What about Karen Nichols?”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Mrs. Nichols’ daughter. She’s a few years older than Jerry and Christine, but they’re still in the same general age group. It could be she knew one or both, or at least knew of them.”

  “I’ll have Klein talk to her tomorrow. Anybody else in the immediate family?”

  “Not that I know about. I got the impression Laura Nichols is either a widow or divorced.”

  Eberhardt smoked in silence for a time. Then he said, “This job Mrs. Nichols hired you to do—didn’t it strike you as a little screwy?”

  “Sure. But she was determined, and I couldn’t see any reason for turning her down.”

  “Let’s try this on for size: She had an ulterior motive in setting up a round-the-clock surveillance on her brother.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like she wanted to provide him with an alibi. If he was being watched at all times by a team of private detectives, he couldn’t be suspected of Carding’s murder. Only Talbot crossed her up by deciding to pay a call on Carding today.”

  “Which would make her Carding’s killer?”

  “Right. And the motive could be that she was more afraid of Carding carrying out his threat against Talbot then she let on; so she decided to take care of Carding before he had a chance to come after her brother.”

  “I don’t know, Eb,” I said. “I guess she could be loony enough to come up with a plot like that, but it sounds farfetched to me. TV cop show stuff.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t buy it either. It doesn’t involve a connection with Christine Webster, or explain the kid’s disappearance or half a dozen other things.”

  We kicked it around a while longer, over another beer each, but we were both fresh out of workable theories. The problem was, there still weren’t enough facts in yet—and the pieces we did have were jumbled and shaped with odd angles. It might be days or weeks before the right pattern began to emerge. If it ever emerged at all.

  Eberhardt left at eleven-thirty and I went straight to bed. But my mind was too full of questions to shut down right away; I tossed around for more than an hour before I finally drifted off. The whole business was damned frustrating. I was involved and yet I was not involved. I was a link between the two murders and yet I knew little about any of the people or any of the motivations and relationships in either case. The idea of sitting passively by waiting to be told bits and pieces as they developed did not appeal to me much—and yet there was nothing else I could do.

  What could I do?

  NINE

  The weather shifted again on Friday morning, the way it often does from day to day in San Francisco: A thick fog had come rolling in and turned the city into a bleak study in gray. It was particularly heavy in Sea Cliff, obliterating most of the ocean and Bay and all of the Golden Gate Bridge when I got out there a few minutes past nine. Most of the time I like the fog—it can create a certain sinister atmosphere, or the illusion of it, that appeals to my imagination. But not on this day; it seemed more depressing than anything else and made me feel as gray as everything looked.

  I left my car in front of the Nichols house and plodded up the terraced steps and pushed the doorbell button. Pretty soon the peephole opened; the eye that peered out at me this time belonged to Laura Nichols. The peephole closed again and the door swung inward.

  She was wearing a lavender pants suit today, but she did not look quite as poised or self-assured; the blonde hair was less carefully coiffed and there were dark smudges under the amber eyes. When she said, “Come in, please,” her voice seemed subdued, with none of the coldness or arrogance of Wednesday night. So maybe she isn’t going to give me any trouble, I thought. Which would be a good thing for both of us; the way I felt I was just liable to backtalk her if she started in on me.

  I entered, gave her my coat, and then followed her down the tiled hallway. The living room seemed even darker and more cheerless today because of the fog swirling on the patio beyond the glass doors. I sat on the sofa again and she sat on the same chair as before, and we looked at each other.

  She said, “Thank you for coming.”

  “Sure. I’m sorry about your brother, Mrs. Nichols.”

  “Yes. So am I, God knows.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not good.” She played with the diamond ring on her finger, took a breath as if preparing herself for a difficult chore, and looked back at me. “I . . . well, I owe you an apology. It seems you were quite right about Martin’s mental state.”

  I did not say anything.

  “I should have listened to you,” she said. “But it seemed so . . . I just couldn’t believe . . .”

  She broke off and glanced away; emotions flickered across her face. She was under a good deal of strain, it seemed—and it was not easy for a woman like her to admit to a serious mistake in judgment. But at least she was admitting it, which was a point in her favor. And to a virtual stranger at that. I felt myself softening toward her. Not much, but a little.

  I asked, “What do the doctors say?”

  “That Martin has suffered a severe guilt trauma followed by suicidal depression.”

  “Will they be able to bring him out of it?”

  “They have no opinion yet,” she said. “What they’re afraid of is that he’s lost all will to live and may never regain it.”

  “Do they believe his confession?”

  “They say they can’t be sure. Martin keeps insisting he murdered Victor Carding; he seems to believe it even if it isn’t true.”

  “Has he been charged yet?”

  “Yes. The county policeman, Donleavy, claims they had no choice.” She appealed to me with her eyes. “You told them he couldn’t have done it. Why wouldn’t they believe you?”

  “They don’t disbelieve me,” I said. “But it’s your brother’s word against mine, and all the evidence seems to agree with his version of what happened.”

  “Damn the evidence!” she said with sudden vehemence. “That’s all I’ve heard since last night—from the police, from my attorney, and now from you. Martin is innocent.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And the chances are good the police will prove that themselves, even if your brother won’t retract his confession. They’re not going to stop investigating; sooner or later they’ll dig up the truth.”

  “Will they? And if they don’t?”

  “I can’t answer that, Mrs. Nichols,” I said. “I don’t think he’ll be brought to trial; but if he is, my testimony might be enough to convince a jury—”

  “Martin must not be brought to trial,” she said. “I couldn’t bear the ordeal, the publicity . . . no, it has to be resolved now, as soon as possible.”

  My feelings toward her quit softening and went the other way again. The ordeal, the publicity—yeah. She was suffering, all right, but it was as much for herself as it was for Martin Talbot. Bad enough that he was mentally ill and had been charged with homicide; what if he was put on public display in a courtroom and then convicted? What would her friends and neighbors say? How could she hold her head up?

  “I want you to conduct your own investigation,” she said.

  That caught me off guard; I was still thinking what a cold and self-pitying woman she was. I blinked at her. “Me?”

  “Yes. I have confidence in your ability and your methods. If anyone can get to the bottom of this quickly, you can.”

  Sure I can, I thought. I said, “I doubt that, Mrs. Nichols. There’s nothing much I could do that the police aren’t already doing themselves.”

  “The police think Martin is guilty; they won’t be trying to prove his innocence. You will be because you know he’s innocent. ”

  “I’m not sure they’d allow me to work on a murder case, even on a peripheral basis,” I said. “They don’t like private citizens getting involved.”

  “You won’t be interfering with them, will you? Why should they prevent you from earning your living? Besides,
aren’t you already involved?”

  I hesitated. She was right, of course, and not just about my being already involved. I had got permission in the past to make private inquiries on cases involving homicide, so long as I did not get in the way and promised to report any findings immediately. I doubted that Eberhardt would turn me down on this one; he might even feel my poking around was a good idea, considering the circumstances. And the same went for Donleavy, too.

  What could I do? I had asked myself last night. Well, this was the answer. If I undertook an investigation it would give me a chance to help Talbot if I could—for his sake, not for Laura Nichols’—and a chance to do something about the death of Christine Webster. It would also keep me active, and keep me involved so maybe I could find out for myself why I was involved.

  And then there was the money . . . .

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Nichols. But on two conditions.”

  “Yes?”

  “One, that the police allow it. And two, that you’re completely honest with me.”

  She bristled a little at that. “Do you suppose I haven’t been honest with you?”

  “I didn’t say that. I only meant that I can’t do anything at all for your brother unless I know everything you know. Is there anything you didn’t tell me the other day? About him, or about the accident, or about Victor Carding?”

  “Of course not. I kept nothing back.”

  “You’d never heard of Carding before the accident?”

  “I had not.”

  “What about his son Jerry?”

  “I didn’t know he had a son until the police told me at the hospital last night.”

  “Christine Webster?”

  “No.”

  “Lainey Madden?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “The dead girl’s roommate.”

  “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  “Was anybody else involved in the accident?”

  “No. Only Martin and the Cardings.

  “Did Carding make any other threats against your brother? Call him at home later, write him a letter?”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. Martin would have told me.”

  I had been watching her pretty closely; if any of her answers had been lies or evasions, I could not tell it from her expression or from her voice. “Just one more question,” I said. “How did you happen to pick me when you decided to hire a detective?”

  “You were recommended to me.”

  “By whom?”

  “My attorney, Arthur Brown. I asked him for the name of a competent investigator and he gave me yours. He said you had once done some work for another of his clients.”

  The name was familiar; I remembered meeting Brown once a couple of years ago, through the client she’d mentioned—a civil case involving a substantial damage suit. He was a partner in an old, established Sutter Street law firm and had, as far as I knew, an impeccable reputation.

  So much for that. I got up on my feet; I was more than ready to be on my way—not just because I was anxious to go to work, but also because I wanted out of that dark cheerless house and out of Laura Nichols’ company. Working for her was one thing. But the less I had to do with her otherwise, the better I would feel.

  We said a few more things to each other, about my calling her right away if I had any trouble with the police, about money, about verbal and written reports. Then she showed me to the door. Neither of us bothered to say goodbye.

  I drove through the fog to Geary Boulevard, stopped at a service station there, and called the Hall of Justice from their pay phone. Eberhardt was in his office—and in a foul mbod, too. When he came on the wire he said irascibly, “You going to check in ten times a day, maybe? There’s nothing new; I just got off the phone with Donleavy.”

  “I didn’t call to check in,” I said. I told him about the interview with Mrs. Nichols and her proposal that I conduct a private investigation.

  “I might have figured,” Eberhardt said. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  “I guess not. Is it okay if I go ahead?”

  “Hell, I don’t care. You know the rules.”

  “You mind if I talk to Lainey Madden?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Could you let me have the address?”

  “What am I, your flunky? Look it up in the goddamn phone book. She’s listed.”

  And he banged the receiver down in my ear.

  TEN

  Edgewood Avenue, off Parnassus near the University of California Medical Center, was a hillside street so steep you had to park perpendicular to the curb. I squeezed my car into a slot a third of the way up, directly in front of the address I had found in the telephone book. The building was an old Eastlake Victorian that had long ago been cut up into apartments; but its facade had undergone a recent facelift and its gables and columns and porch pediments were painted in bright colors—orange and blue, mostly—like a lot of refurbished Victorians in the city these days.

  I went up past a couple of Japanese elms to the front porch. On the row of four mailboxes there I found C. Webster—L. Madden listed for Number Three; I pushed the intercom button above the box. There was no response at first and I thought that maybe she was not home after all; when I’d dialed her number from the pay phone I had gotten a busy signal and taken that to mean she was in. But then the speaker unit made a staticky noise and a woman’s voice said, “Yes? Who is it?”

  I told her who it was and why I was there. Silence for a few seconds; then the voice asked, “You’re the detective the police told me about? The one whose card Chris had?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  The electronic lock on the door began to buzz. I got over there and inside and climbed an old-fashioned staircase to the second floor. The door with the numeral three on it was closed; but as soon as I knocked it edged partway open on a chain. Half of a pale face appeared in the opening.

  “May I see some identification?”

  “Sure.” I got my wallet out and held the photostat of my license up for her to look at.

  When she finished examining it she closed the door long enough to take the chain off and then pulled it wide. She was a pretty girl about Christine’s age, with long straight black hair and huge sad colt-brown eyes; the pale skin had a translucent quality, etched now with lines and shadows. She was wearing what may or may not have been mourning clothes: black slacks and a black pullover sweater.

  “I’m sorry if I seemed suspicious,” she said. “It’s just that what happened to Chris has made me a little paranoid.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  She stood aside and let me come in. The living room was good-sized, furnished with inexpensive items made of blonde wood and upholstered in bright patterns, decorated in a way that was feminine without being girlish. Impressionistic oil paintings hung on three of the walls, and there were a lot of colored glass mobiles suspended from the ceiling. On one end table was an enormous white paper rose in a pewter vase.

  Lainey sat on the couch, drawing her knees up under her; I took one of the chairs. “I know this must be a difficult time for you,” I said tentatively. “I won’t keep you long.”

  “It’s all right. I want to do everything I can. Are you working with the police?”

  “No. For Martin Talbot’s sister.”

  “Oh—yes. I read about Jerry’s father in the papers this morning ; it was a shock all over again. It’s all so . . . frightening.”

  I had no words for that; I just nodded.

  “Poor Jerry,” she said. “First Chris being killed and then his father. . . .” She shivered and was silent.

  “Do you know Jerry well?” I asked.

  “Pretty well. I met him when Chris started going with him about six months ago.”

  “How did they meet?”

  “A friend of Jerry’s introduced them at State.”

  “Could you tell me the friend’s name?”

  �
��Dave Brodnax.”

  “How would I get in touch with him, do you know?”

  “Well, I don’t know where he lives, but he’s still going to State. And he’s on the football team.”

  “What about Jerry’s other friends? Do you know any of them?”

  “The only one I’ve met is Steve Farmer,” Lainey said. “He used to go to State too, but he’s been working in Bodega Bay for almost a year. He’s the one who got Jerry his job up there.”

  “When did you last see Jerry?”

  “Two weeks ago. He came down on the weekend to see Chris.”

  “Did he usually come down on weekends to see her?”

  “Yes. Except for this past one.”

  “Why didn’t he come then?”

  “He told Chris he had some important work to do.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  “No. Just that it was something he was writing.”

  “Writing? You mean creatively?”

  “I guess so. He wants to be a journalist; maybe it was an article or something. He did one once on salmon fishing and sold it to the Examiner for their Sunday magazine.”

  “Did he give any indication that he might be planning to leave Bodega Bay on Sunday night?”

  “Chris didn’t tell me if he did.”

  “And you don’t have any idea why he disappeared or where he might have gone?”

  “No, none. That’s part of what makes everything so confusing—Jerry disappearing like that, for no reason. . . .”

  I asked, “Did Jerry know Christine was going to have a baby?”

  It was five or six seconds before she answered that. Wetness glistened in her eyes, as if she were thinking of the death not only of her friend but of Christine’s unborn child; she swallowed a couple of times. “Yes,” she said. “Chris told both of us when Jerry was here that last time.”

  “While all three of you were together?”

  “No, separately. But I know she told him because she said so.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Well, neither of them wanted to have a baby right away. But Chris wanted it and so did Jerry. They weren’t going to, you know, have an abortion.”