“Well, let’s see. Must’ve been more than three years now. That’s right, three years in February.” Click, frown, double-click. “Kind of funny,” she said.
“How so?”
“Never said good-bye. Just up and left. And us with a date to play bingo over at the church. I saw the dog woman, McManus, down at the market a few days afterward and asked her how come Rose left so sudden. Said she went back to Michigan-that’s where she’s from, Saginaw, Michigan, like in the song. Moved back to Saginaw, Michigan, to live with her brother.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t,” Selma Hightower said, “and neither do I. Rose told me she was an only child.”
“Well, people sometimes say that if they’re estranged from a relative-”
“Hah. Rose didn’t have anybody to be estranged from. She didn’t have anybody, period. Alone in the world after her husband went to his reward. All her family dead and gone and her all alone in the world.”
Half an hour after I left Mrs. Hightower, I finally located somebody who’d seen David Virden on Tuesday. Two somebodies, in fact. Both of them in the same place-a watering hole on Third just around the corner from 20th Street called, appropriately if unappealingly, The Dog Hole.
It was one of those venerable neighborhood places that cater to a mixed clientele. At its peak hours you’d probably find blue-collar workers, Yuppies, bikers, scroungers, retired people, lonely individuals of both sexes looking for companionship of one kind or another, and maybe an upscale hooker or two trolling for customers. At this time of day, early afternoon, what you had was a small core of habitual drinkers and pensioners with no better spot to spend their time. Three men were drinking beer and playing cribbage in one of a row of high-backed booths. A rail-thin man in his seventies and a heavily rouged fat woman twenty years younger occupied stools at the bar, neither of them having anything to do with the other.
The bartender was a bulky guy in his forties-a weight lifter, judging from the bulge of his pecs and biceps in a tight short-sleeved shirt. I ordered a draft Anchor Steam, and when he brought it I showed him Virden’s photograph and asked my question. He gave the snapshot a bored study, started to shake his head, looked again, and said, “Yeah, he was in here. Double shot of Jameson, beer back.”
“What time?”
“Around this time.”
“Alone?” I asked.
“All alone. You a cop?”
“Private. He’s missing; I’m looking for him.”
“That right?” But not as if he cared. Life outside a gym and a weight room probably bored him silly. “Never saw him before or since.”
The old gent got off his stool and sidled down to where I was, bringing his empty glass with him. “Mind if I have a look?” I held the photo up so he could squint at it through rimless glasses. “Yep, I seen him, too. Stranger dressed real nice, suit and tie. But it wasn’t around this time.”
“No? When was it?”
“Well…” He set his empty on the bar and licked his lips in a mildly suggestive way. I gestured to the bartender, who shrugged and filled the glass from a bottle of port wine.
“Thank you, sir. To your health.” He had some of his port, an almost dainty sip as if he intended to make it last. “Must’ve been about one thirty when the fella come in. No more’n five minutes after I did. Remember, Stan?”
Another shrug. “If you say so.”
“You didn’t happen to talk to him?” I asked.
“No, sir. He wasn’t the sociable type.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Fella had a mad-on about something. Face like a thundercloud, you know what I mean? Sat there and swallowed his drinks and then all of a sudden he smacks the bar and out he goes.”
“Smacked the bar?”
“Real hard. Went out of here like something just bit him on his ass.”
Or he’d made up his mind about something, I thought. Like maybe going back for another conversation with the woman who was supposed to be his ex-wife.
I was out of The Dog Hole and in my car, but not driving yet, when my cell phone went off. Small favors. Or so I thought until I answered the call.
“R. L. McManus. Why are you harassing me?” This in a clipped voice as cold as ice.
“I’d hardly call two brief visits to your home harassment, Ms. McManus.”
“I told you on Monday I wanted nothing more to do with you or my ex-husband. And I told him the same thing when he showed up here the next day.”
“Did you, now.”
“In no uncertain terms. And I suppose he sent you back to bother me with more of his annulment nonsense?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t spoken to him since Monday.”
“Then why were you at my home again today?”
“Because he’s gone missing.”
One, two, three seconds before she said, “Missing?”
“No one’s seen him since Tuesday afternoon.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that. He was here for no more than five minutes and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
“Must’ve been kind of an awkward meeting.”
“It was. Awkward and unnecessary.”
“How did he look to you?”
“… What kind of question is that?”
“Eight years since your divorce. Had he changed much?”
“Not very much, no.”
“Recognized him immediately, then.”
“I’m not likely to forget a man I was married to, am I?”
“And he recognized you right away.”
“Of course he did. I haven’t changed that much, either.” Suspicion in her voice now. “What are you getting at?”
“All you talked about is the annulment, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right, and that’s the last question I’m going to answer. If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll sue you for harassment. You can tell David that goes for him, too, when you find him. Is that understood?”
What’s understood, lady, I thought, is that you’re a damn liar. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything, just pressed the Off button on the cell.
I was pretty near convinced that Tamara was right about McManus. People who overreact by threatening lawsuits usually have plenty to hide. Question was, just how dirty was she?
13
JAKE RUNYON
Another busy road day. Over to Oakland, first thing, for a deposition in an insurance fraud investigation. Then down to Union City for another interview with the second witness in the hit-and-run accident case: the attorney for the injured party had some questions he wanted answered to verify the man’s reliability. Then back across the bay on the Dumbarton Bridge and up to Palo Alto to talk to a woman who had new information on the subject of a backburnered skip-trace.
Ordinarily Runyon didn’t mind that kind of workday. Preferred it, in fact. When he’d first joined the agency, he’d asked for assignments that kept him on the move and put in as much weekend work as he could without requesting overtime pay. And most of his spare time had been spent behind the wheel; long drives that he’d pretended were to familiarize himself with the highways and back roads of the greater Bay Area but in reality were excuses to keep him moving, keep his mind occupied and focused on externals. That was how he got through his waking hours. Once he’d accepted the fact that his and Joshua’s estrangement was permanent, work became his only reason for existing. When he wasn’t on a job, he shunned company. Had no use for casual friends, didn’t want another woman even for a single night because he’d lost, or believed then that he’d lost, his sex drive.
But he hadn’t thought of himself as a lonely man. Empty, consumed by loss-a loner by choice and circumstance. It wasn’t until he met Bryn that he realized the truth about himself. And was finally able to let go of his grief, drag himself out of his self-imposed limbo.
Bryn and her son and Francine Whalen were the reason the long road day dragged by. Frustration nagged at him. He kept trying to devise some way to expose Whalen for what she was, but without support from the people she’d wounded he was hamstrung. An outsider, already walking a tightrope line. Confronting her directly, trying to intimidate her, was sure to backfire. You could intimidate a rational person whose emotions were under control, but not a calculating, unstable, and possibly sadistic one. It might even trigger her violent impulses, with Bobby as the handiest target.