“Yes, of course. He and Mr. Pallack were together for a very long time, more than ten years, I believe. Why?”
They heard Savich draw a deep breath. “We just might have some overlap with another case. I think Sherlock and I are going to come over to San Francisco along with a sheriff from Virginia and another FBI agent from Headquarters. A pleasure to speak to you, Mrs. Ransom—Julia. We’ll probably see you tomorrow.” When Cheney hung up the phone, he turned to Julia. “Yep, think of me as your rottweiler. Nothing’s going to happen to you on my watch. You ready to see Wallace Tammerlane?”
CHAPTER 25
Cheney kept his eyes on the green Camry weaving around in front of him on Lombard Street. When the Camry driver was finally off his cell, Cheney said to Julia, “The videotapes we watched—I swear I wanted to tell you it was all a load of crap, but your husband, he was very good, Julia, very believable. The others too, but August Ransom was the one who really drew me in completely, despite my being the skeptic from hell. How much do you think was excellent performance and how much was real? It was hard for me to tell.”
Julia laughed. “I felt the same way before August was with me in the hospital. I remember rolling my eyes when the editor initially gave me the assignment to interview August. I was thinking all he wanted was a lovely positive fluff piece after I found out his wife had used August to contact her dead father and wouldn’t stop singing his praises.
“He changed my mind, I’ll admit it. I saw him in action, saw how he worked, how he dealt with grieving people, how he eased them into accepting the continual presence of their dead loved ones. He spoke openly to me about how many charlatans there are in the field, that some of them would do anything to earn a buck, and if someone had the talent—the charisma, I guess, the verbal facility, and the ability to make people buy into them—then only God knew many times who was for real and who wasn’t. Grieving people, he said, were the most vulnerable people in the world. As I already told you, I still wasn’t certain until Linc.”
“But you were grieving, deeply.” She nodded.
He turned his Audi off into the Presidio to weave smoothly through the immense former army base, and came to a stop next to the cemetery. He turned to face her. “But you believed he was really in communication with your son?”
“Yes. There is no doubt in my mind at all. Don’t you want to go see Wallace?”
“We have time.” He wanted to ask her why she had no doubts, but instead, he said, “All right, why don’t you tell me what you think of Wallace Tammerlane.”
“You already know that both he and Bevlin Wagner are fond of me, that they admired August, that they’ve grieved at his loss with me. I remember when the police kept pressuring me to give them names of people who could have killed my husband—other than myself, of course—I couldn’t say Wallace or Bevlin, I simply couldn’t. They’re both my friends. But—” She stopped, turned her face away from him. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
She took a deep breath, expelled it, and turned back to face him. “The truth is, I’ve felt so helpless since August’s murder, like the police had painted a bull’s-eye right between my eyes. And then this assassin, Makepeace, came after me.” She reached out to touch his arm. “Cheney, I want you to know I’ve decided to keep practicing with my gun so I’ll get better. I’m going to keep protecting myself. And you know something? Maybe there’ll come a time when I can protect you too, when I can watch your back.”
Cheney said slowly, “Not all that many people have ever offered to watch my back. Thank you.”
Julia smiled. “You’re welcome. So what did you think of the police files on Wallace Tammerlane’s interviews?”
“There was only one interview. Not all that much there.”
Julia lowered her voice, leaned close to his right ear. “Did you know some people believe Wallace killed his wife back in Spain in the late eighties?”
He could only stare at her. “That’s a kicker. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, really, it’s true. I don’t believe it for a minute, of course, but I don’t know specifically what happened since it was way before my time.”
“There wasn’t anything about a murdered wife in the files. Maybe if they’d known about this they would have checked into it. Why didn’t you tell them?”
“That’s easy. August never believed Wallace was a murderer and neither do I.”
“Tell me. Don’t edit, Julia.” He covered her hand. “Look, Makepeace’s two attempts to kill you are obviously tied to Dr. Ransom’s murder. I’ve got to look at everything again, and I need all the information I can get. Don’t hold back on me, believing you need to protect anyone, okay?”
She nodded. “August said Wallace and his wife Beatrice lived in Madrid for close to seven years, moved there in the early eighties. Wallace became the psychic to all Spaniards rich and famous, even King Juan Carlos and his prissy crowd, the Spanish A-list. August said Beatrice was a lovely woman, very beautiful in an ethereal blond sort of way, but she was more like Wallace’s cipher, his companion shadow, quiet and watchful. He said he’d rarely even seen her speak to another man. She was focused entirely on Wallace.
“In 1988, Wallace took her with him to visit a client in Segovia. She jumped off the Roman aqueduct. It was ruled a suicide even though a witness reported seeing a man with her on the aqueduct. Since no one could find this man, they didn’t rule it the Spanish equivalent of death by misadventure, but rather suicide.”
“Did Tammerlane have an alibi?”
“No. He’d already left his client.”
Cheney shrugged. “Still, it seems suicide is probably exactly what happened. Was there a reason for her to kill herself?”
“August said she was unstable, that Wallace tried to hide the extent of her illness, that he tried to protect her from talk. I guess she finally broke. So, of course the rumor mill started grinding something fierce. When the Spanish media got up to full steam, even King Juan Carlos’s name was bandied around. The king wasn’t happy about it, needless to say. Wallace left the following week, accompanied his wife’s body back to Ohio.”
Cheney asked, “Where is August buried?”
“In Connecticut, outside of Hartford. That’s where he was born and grew up, where his elderly mother still resides. He wanted to be cremated, he even wrote it in his will, and so I had it done here. His mother hasn’t spoken to me since then because she’d wanted to bury him next to his brother and sister, and his father.”
Cheney fell silent for a moment. Then he reached out and took her hand again. “Julia, let me say this fiat out. I know you didn’t kill your husband, so don’t ever wonder about that, all right?”
There was that surge of gratitude toward him again. She smiled at him, leaned close—”You wanna guess Wallace Tammerlane’s real name?”
“Bernie Swartz?”
“Worse.”
He grinned at her vivid face. “I give.”
“Actis Hollyrod.”
“Come on, Julia. Actis? What kind of a name is that?”
“His parents must have been spaced out on drugs when he was born, don’t you think?”
“Something for sure. Actis. What a thing to do to a kid.”
“Another thing, Cheney. Wallace likes young girls.”
“So do a lot of older men. Wait, don’t tell me he’s a pedophile.”
“Oh no, certainly not, but he appears very partial to females who haven’t quite yet reached voting age.”
“Do you know this for certain? Or are these rumors in the psychic world? Or did his colleagues simply read his mind and see visions of what he was doing?”
She cocked her head to one side, sending her hair falling beside her face. “Do I hear a bit of snark in your tone?”