In spite of his wretched appearance, I had an irresistible urge to needle him. “Are you feeling okay, Mr. Beddoes?” I asked, sitting down on the other end of the couch.
He gave me a baleful sidelong look. “What do you think?”
“That was a nasty scene yesterday at Victor Ibarcena’s.”
“No more than I should have expected from the little faggot. But surely you didn’t come here to talk about my emotional life. What is it?”
I got up and began moving around the room. It was expensively furnished, in nubby brown and white fabrics and good teakwood, and had a panoramic view of the sea. The walls were covered with abstract prints and drawings, and several of the glass-fronted cabinets contained what looked to be valuable curios.
Beddoes’s eyes followed me slowly, as if the effort hurt. When I didn’t answer, he said, “This is what I get for allowing a convention of private investigators to meet at my hotel. First my head of security dies violently, and then I’m beset by detectives.”
“Who else besides me?”
“A big Italian-looking fellow who’s staying at the hotel. I forget his name.”
Wolf. I pretended ignorance and asked, “Why is he bothering you?”
Beddoes waved a weary hand. “He seems to be finding fault with our establishment in every way possible. I won’t go into it.”
I continued to pace around the room. Beddoes was in bad shape, and even a small amount of pressure might make him crack and tell me more than he wished to. I stopped in front of a large ink drawing — sweeping lines that at a distance made no sense. Leaning closer, I examined the patterns they made, then drew back in surprise. It represented three, or maybe four, people engaged in various kinds of sexual activity with various parts of one another’s bodies. Whips, too. And ropes.
I looked at some of the other drawings. They were definitely interesting — and I supposed a couple of them could have been arousing, if I hadn’t been here for reasons far removed from looking at high-class porn. One thing I found significant was that few were strictly homosexual in content — bearing out young Roger’s comment about the “old switch-hitter.”
When I looked back at Beddoes, he was staring blankly out the window at the sea. I went to the nearest curio cabinet and checked out the statuettes displayed there. They were of the same ilk as the drawings; the one that held my attention was a Mexican pottery rendition of the classical three monkeys — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. These weren’t seeing, hearing, or speaking, but they sure were doing, in every way their little monkey brains could possibly have thought up.
Beddoes was still looking away from me. I went back to the couch, sat down again, and said, “What about Roland Deveer, Mr. Beddoes?”
He twitched convulsively, glanced at me, and then covered up by propping his elbows on his knees and lowering his face into his hands. After a moment, he said, “Who?”
“Roland Deveer, the La Jolla businessman who disappeared six weeks ago.”
“I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know anything about any disappearance.”
“Oh, come on, Mr. Beddoes. It was front-page news.”
“I don’t read the papers.”
“Mr. Beddoes, Roland Deveer had your phone number, as well as that of the Casa del Rey, in his desk calendar. And above it he’d written the word ‘arrangements.’”
He rolled his head against his palms and looked at me with one bloodshot eye. “So? Perhaps he was planning a function at the hotel. Needed something catered. You say he was a businessman? Maybe he was arranging an office party.”
“With you personally? Why wouldn’t he just deal with the catering department?”
“My management style is very hands-on, Ms. McCone. Our guests and other customers are free to get in touch with me personally, day or night. The staff have all been given instructions about that.”
Sure, I thought; that’s why Wolf had such an easy time getting hold of you. I said, “Was that true of the Clarks?”
Now he lifted his head and looked at me with both eyes. “The who?”
“The Clarks. The woman and little boy who were staying in Bungalow Six — only, according to some of your staff, they weren’t there at >>>
Beddoes let out a protracted sigh. “Now I see what this is all about. You’ve been talking to what’s-his-name, that Italian fellow. He ran into the Clark woman and built up the fact that the clerk had forgotten to register them into a big thing. I tried to explain it, but apparently he — and you — want to create some sort of mystery around it. Just like you want to create a mystery around Elaine Picard’s death.”
“Isn’t there one?”
“No! The woman was distraught. She took her own life. It’s unfortunate, but that’s what happened.”
“Is it?”
“Yes!”
“You sound as if you were there.”
“What?”
“You sound as if you were in that tower watching her.”
He stood up, then put his fingers to his temples, pressing hard. “Ms. McCone,” he said, “I was nowhere near the tower. I was in my office with Victor Ibarcena, going over the monthly accounts. I have told this to the sheriffs department. Victor has told them. Our secretary has told them. What more do you need?”
Obviously they were standing firm on the alibi, in spite of yesterday’s falling-out. I was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t true after all.
Beddoes went to the window and drew the heavy white draperies against the late-afternoon glare. His movements were slow and pained.
“Mr. Beddoes, what’s going to happen with you and Victor, after your argument yesterday?”
“What do you mean?”
“It sounded pretty final.”
He was silent for a moment. “Yes, I suppose it was.”
“Will you fire him?”
He laughed harshly. “I doubt I’ll get the opportunity.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I know Victor, he’s already—” Beddoes broke off.
“Already what?”
“Never mind.”
“Making plans to run and leave you holding the bag? That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”
He turned slowly, his face reddening. His hands were clenched into fists, and for a moment I thought he was going to rush at me. Then he seemed to deflate. The fists unclenched, and he crossed his arms, clutching each elbow with the opposite hand. He looked at me quietly, his eyes growing bleak and dead, as if some inner resource had finally been depleted. Then he said, “You’d better go, Ms. McCone.”
“You know, if you went to the sheriff now, you wouldn’t be stuck holding that bag.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to go to the sheriff about.”
“Sooner or later it will all come out about Roland Deveer.”
“Will you please go!”
I finally complied. I would get nothing out of him by continuing the pressure. People are funny when they’re at the end of that proverbial rope. Some will break down and tell you everything in a gush of relief; others will cling to their lies because that’s all they have left.
26: “Wolf”
Lieutenant Tom Knowles was a hard man to connect with. When I left Priapus Books and Curios I drove back downtown to the sheriff’s department, but he still hadn’t returned. And probably wouldn’t until late, if he came in at all today, the deputy I talked to said; he was somewhere up in Escondido on a case. The deputy wouldn’t tell me if it was the Elaine Picard case or not.
So all right. That left me with nothing more to do for the time being — until I talked to McCone and we could compare notes. There was a chance she wanted to get in touch with me, too, and that she’d left a message at the Casa del Rey. If not, maybe I could reach her through her parents; she’d told me she was staying with them, in an area of the city near Old Town, so I figured they’d be listed in the phone book.