He dialed Julio’s number, late as it was.
Chapter 24
Curt’s watch read 7:39 when he pushed the buzzer on Barbara Anderson’s door. It hadn’t started out to be a date; he merely had called to report his progress in searching for the predators. She had, after all, urged him to keep in touch. But she had been so interested in getting the details in person that they had ended up with a mutual decision to go out for a drink together.
The door opened and Barbara smiled up almost shyly at him. Seeing her, the clean-lined beauty of her face, the now strangely tranquil jade eyes, Curt felt a stab of almost adolescent excitement. Which was silly and, he felt, somehow disloyal to Paula’s memory; but the feeling persisted.
“You look lovely, Barbara.”
She made a small mock bow, standing aside to let him by. She wore a navy-blue dress with a short flaring skirt to emphasize the excellence of her legs. “Thanks for them few kind words, sir. I only spent four hours getting ready. How about a drink before we go? I have Scotch, or Scotch.”
“Scotch is fine.” Curt grinned. They were both a little keyed-up and tense, and a drink would help with that.
They stood on the narrow balcony, looking out over the swimming pool, softly lit and empty and very blue and lonely-looking.
Curt tinkled the ice cubes in his glass. “What happens to Jimmy while we’re out?”
“He’s used to it; I sometimes have to work an extra shift at the hospital. We take the TV into his room, and he watches until eight-thirty — that’s what he’s doing now. Then, lights out. He has the manager’s phone number, the police number, and the fire department number. Plus, once we get wherever we’re going I’ll call and give him the number there.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “Enough?”
Curt held up his hands defensively. “Sorry I asked.”
Yes, vaguely sparring, like teen-agers on a first date. They drove slowly south on El Camino, finally choosing an anonymous cocktail lounge with big vinyl booths which successfully isolated them from the other patrons. A bar waitress in black mesh stockings took their orders, rather wearily, as if her feet hurt.
Barbara made her phone call, then returned, lit a cigarette, and looked at Curt through the wisping smoke. “Filthy habit, wish I could break it. And now I want to hear all the details about what you’ve found out.”
“Well, I still haven’t found my predators,” Curt said a bit ruefully, “but I think I’m darned close. You remember Jimmy told me that the girl’s folks were named Marsden and lived in a big white house with a stone front on Glenn Way. That turned out to be a four-block street in the Hillcrest Development, and there were only two houses that fit.”
In one house he had found a childless couple named Moyes who had been living there for eight years. That left the other, in which lived a family named Tucker, and they had been there just about a year. They didn’t know who had lived in the house before they got it.
“But, then, it seems you were no better off than before,” said Barbara. “If you wanted the Marsdens...”
Looking across the table at her, Curt felt that vaguely disquieting touch of excitement again. She was more animated than she had been before, her eyes alight, her face rapt. He had a rather absurd urge to reach across the table and take her hand, but he didn’t. It was too much like someone in a darkened unfamiliar room, holding out a tentative hand because he was afraid of running into something sharp or unpleasant.
“It’s amazing how much neighbors know about other people,” Curt said. “I just went to those on either side of the Tucker house.”
The Marsdens were well remembered; they had lived in the subdivision for years, until moving to San Leandro the previous year. The Marsdens had a nineteen-year-old daughter named Deborah. Curt had called San Leandro Information, gotten their new address, and had driven across the Bay to talk with the girl’s parents.
“Did you tell them why you wanted to talk with her?” Barbara’s lips were half parted; Curt could see a pulse beating in the hollow of her throat above the scoop neck of her dress as she leaned forward.
“No. Her folks are very fine people, and I didn’t want to... well, until I was sure I had the right girl. And what they told me made it seem even less likely that she would be a lookout for a... a gang of rapists. Debbie, they said, was an honors student but was currently attending summer classes at a certain Los Feliz University — which also boasts on the faculty a certain professor named Curtis Halstead—”
“Oh, Curt!” Barbara exclaimed. “Right in your own back yard! If you only had known. All those weeks of looking...”
“Until I talked with Jimmy, remember, I had no idea that a girl might be involved.”
“Is she involved?”
Curt grimaced, and signaled the waitress for refills. “That’s where it starts to get sticky,” he said.
He told of checking the school records, finding which class the girl was in, what dorm she lived in, what classes she was attending, and of leaving his number for her to call. The setting up of the meeting for the following Monday, because the girl was busy on the weekend.
Barbara sampled her drink. “If you ever want to quit teaching, Curt, you could get a job as a private investigator.”
“Maybe I ought to. This past summer I’ve learned more about people, and human nature, than I learned in twenty years of university life. But” — he shook his head — “I still don’t have the predators.”
“Debbie didn’t show up on Monday?”
“Oh, she showed up, all right.” He described the encounter with the girl, ending up with his impulsive handing to her of Paula’s suicide note as Debbie went out the door. “I was hoping it would break her down. You see, I believe her, Barbara. She knew nothing of what went on that night, and just thought she was there to help the one — I call him X — who’s supposed to have had an affair with Paula.”
“Do you think he did?” Seeing Curt’s blank look, Barbara added, “Have an affair with Paula, I mean.”
Curt felt his face coloring up.
Barbara laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Curt,” she said simply. “That was really a sort of rotten question to ask.”
“It doesn’t bother me, Barbara — really.” As he said it, Curt was surprised to realize that it didn’t. Paula was gone: how could it affect, one way or the other, what their relationship had been? He went on, rather pleased with the discovery, “The hell of it is that Paula could have, I suppose. We each lived our own lives, after all. I don’t believe it for a minute, but... this Debbie was very persuasive in her belief in her boyfriend’s innocence of any violence.”
“But she won’t give you his name. You know, Curt, kids — even kids who are nearly adults — can delude themselves so completely when they think they’re in love. If... if it’s so important to you to... go on with this, give Debbie my phone number. Tell her to call me, I’ll tell her just what was threatened on that phone call to me.”
The same thought had occurred to Curt: using Jimmy and Barbara as a lever to pry information from Debbie. But now he realized that he didn’t want to do that. Barbara seemed somehow to identify his problem as her own, but he found it distasteful to think of putting her or her son into possible further jeopardy from the predators.
“I couldn’t let you do that, Barbara,” he said flatly.