And pretty soon, they’d make Odum damned unhappy that he was.
Seventeen
After Ballard left to interview the parole officer, Kearny called Oakland Control and had one of the girls look up 1377 Mount Diablo Street in the cross-directory. The entry read: Beaghler, Robert, wife, Sharon, occupation: auto mechanic; which checked with what Ballard had learned from Sharon, that her husband was named Bob and that the last name began with B-e-a-g. If the directory hadn’t come through, he still would have had the utilities companies, garbage collection, voter registration records, real estate plot registrations, the postman — and, if you didn’t care whether word got back to the subject, the neighbors.
While Ballard fought the freeway traffic to Oakland, Kearny sat on a quiet side street in Concord with the windows open and let his mind play with the case. There was still something bugging him about their new reconstruction with Odum as the villain. It was the sort of feeling that made you suddenly turn around and go back up to the house you had just left, and ask that one more question which broke the case.
For one thing, why would Odum, posing as Griffin, sell that furniture? Spite? And if not Odum, why would Griffin? He sure as hell didn’t need the money. And, having sold it, why would he ask Cheri to send the checks to a San Jose address he had gone to great lengths up to that time to keep secret? That had been in March. In April, Odum had turned up with the car. Any connection?
Almost 5:30, where was Ballard? He couldn’t go lean on Sharon yet: he wanted Beaghler home for that. She had been lying to Ballard, of course; she would have an address on Odum, it would not be the one the parole officer had. If Odum was their boy, he’d have a bolt-hole, a place the Adult Authority didn’t know about. Too easy for the PO to make an unannounced visit, because when you were on parole, your legal residence was still a prison cell. And prison cells could be searched, any time, without any warrant or forewarning.
And if you happened to be sitting on thirty thousand bucks, say, you really wouldn’t want the parole officer dropping by, would you? Especially not if you had killed someone to get that money.
Still, pegging Odum for it was just a hunch, nothing more. And look at some of the sour horses he had backed on hunches, down through the years. And after his lecture to Ballard about facts...
The radio sputtered, lapsed into silence, then Ballard’s voice came through, choppy and distant.
“... residence address... 10-4?”
“Repeat that address, over.”
There was a blast of static, then Ballard’s voice came on clear and thin, as if he were yelling down from a third-floor window. “1-6-8-4 Galindo Street... Concord...”
“All right, I’ll meet you there. Outside, across the street...”
The rider’s door opened and Kearny slid in. Ballard was parked across still-busy Galindo and down the block from 1684, a rambling old California residence which would have been built when the street was a country dirt road. Since World War II it had been encapsulated by a growing Concord; now it was a rooming house, soon it would be razed as standing on property too valuable for it.
“Any activity?” asked Ballard. He had seen Kearny’s parked car when he had circled the block.
“A number of guys in and out, all men. Any of them could have been Odum, seeing that we don’t know what he looks like.” He glanced at Ballard. “The parole officer didn’t have his picture?”
“I didn’t ask.” Ballard’s voice just missed being defensive. It had been a long, hot, frustrating day, although the sun was low now, the air was cooling, neon signs were winking on. “I was supposed to be interested in a car, remember?”
“Just asking,” said Kearny cheerfully. “I checked all the street parking, and got a look in the garage out behind the house. Nothing. The garage used to be a stables back when. I also went up to check on Odum’s room.”
He stopped there. Ballard fidgeted, finally asked, “And?”
“Locked. With a note on the door that Denny is over at Mary’s.”
“Whoever the hell they are,” grumbled Ballard.
Kearny opened his door. “Let’s go find out.”
As they started up the walk to the old stately frame building, a man brushed past them. Odum? Ballard turned to look down the walk at the retreating back with a returning sense of frustration. Dammit, this place had to give them a lead to Griffin or, if Kearny was right, the man who had killed him and then had attacked Bart.
Had to; they didn’t have any other leads left. And fewer than eight of their original seventy-two hours left.
Bart. Was he still lying there, unmoving? Unthinking? With his brain gouged by a depressed hunk of bone so he would always lie there, unmoving, unthinking?
There was no answer at the heavy hardwood door with the cheap metal 4 screwed to the panel. The note about Denny and Mary was still there.
“So now what?” asked Ballard in a voice heavy with fatigue. Kearny looked as fatigued as a diesel engine. Never missed a trick, the bastard, and never missed letting you know that he was taking it, either.
“Now we go talk to the landlady,” he said. “Naturally.”
The trouble with people was that they continually refused to fit into their neat little categories. Widow of a con, ran a rooming house full of ex-cons. If she was old, granny with a steel hatpin up her sleeve, right? If she was young, blowzy and full-blown, with meaty knees and the wrong color lipstick, right?
Wrong.
She was at first glance young, and she was close to chimerical — if Ballard had known the word. Dreamlike came to his mind when she opened the door. He didn’t recognize the music this let out into the hall, but it was also rarefied, classical, all strings and violins, and so forth. By the lines in her face she was obviously well past forty, yet the face had an almost luminous serenity that was ageless. Even Kearny, Ballard noticed, was affected. His right hand actually started a motion as if he were going to take off the hat he wasn’t wearing and almost never did.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Can I help you?”
The voice suggested that helping people was her only role in life. Kearny’s voice was an obsequious rumble, like sounds from a bowling alley heard in the street outside.
“We’re... terribly sorry to bother you, ma’am. We’re trying to get in touch with the tenant in room four.”
“Howie. Oh, I hope... He isn’t in trouble?” Her eyes pleaded with this oddly assorted pair of hard-faced men.
Kearny should have answered, soothingly, that they were friends of good old Howie, and were interested in buying that new T-Bird he had. Instead, Kearny was affected enough to say, “We certainly hope not also, ma’am.”
Ballard realized whom she reminded him of: Billie Burke in The Wizard of Oz. The good witch of whatever direction she was from. North?
Kearny said, “Do you know anyone named Denny, ma’am? Or Mary?”
“I’m Mary.” Her eyes widened. “Oh dear, is that note still on Howie’s door? Denny put that there on — goodness, that must have been on Tuesday evening...”
Tuesday evening? It was fitting together. It was all fitting.
“And you haven’t seen Mr. Odum since then?”
“He is in trouble,” she said sorrowfully.
Kearny’s voice was almost glutinous. “I’m afraid he probably is. Would you know if Mr. Odum is... um... seeing a young lady?”
Ballard barely stifled a snort of self-disgust. He should have thought of that himself. A charming, good-looking con-man just out of Quentin wasn’t going to remain celibate very long — as proved by Sharon; but he wasn’t going to confine himself to a risky, hit-and-miss liaison with a married woman, either. Still, he was glad it was Kearny asking questions. He was glad he didn’t have to hurt this gentle being who had created a quiet warm little world for herself and her charges.