“Still bothers you, huh?” Eberhardt said when I came back.
“What?”
“Not being able to smoke yourself.”
“Sometimes. Not too much anymore.”
“You’re a hell of a lot better off. I wish I could quit.”
“You could if you had something growing on a lung.”
He made a face. “Yeah,” he said.
I stifled a belch and sat down again. “You think it’s possible that the two murders are unrelated?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Hell no. Jerry Carding’s girlfriend and father both get shot to death within two days of each other, and the kid himself drops out of sight; there’s got to be a connection somewhere.” He paused and tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. “There’s already one connection we know about,” he said.
“Meaning me.”
“Right. Your business card is in the girl’s purse; you’re working for the sister of the guy who accidentally killed Carding’s wife; and you find Carding’s body.”
“That is coincidence, Eb. At least as far as I know.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. First you heard of Victor Carding and the Talbot/Nichols clan was yesterday morning?”
I nodded. “After I left you at Lake Merced.”
“Any special reason why the Nichols woman picked you out of all the other private eyes in the book?”
“She didn’t tell me if there was.”
“What did she have to say about Carding?”
“Just that he’d threatened her brother’s life after the accident, and tried to attack him, and she was afraid he might come after Talbot again.”
“She didn’t indicate she knew Carding personally?”
“No. She called him a ‘common laborer,’ but that doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Did she mention Jerry Carding at all?”
“No.”
“Well, that corroborates what she told Klein and Logan tonight. They talked to her at the hospital where Talbot’s being held. She says she never laid eyes on either of the Cardings or heard of them before the accident. Talbot claimed the same thing a little while later.”
“What about Karen Nichols?”
“Who’s she?”
“Mrs. Nichols’ daughter. She’s a few years older than Jerry and Christine, but they’re still in the same general age group. It could be she knew one or both, or at least knew of them.”
“I’ll have Klein talk to her tomorrow. Anybody else in the immediate family?”
“Not that I know about. I got the impression Laura Nichols is either a widow or divorced.”
Eberhardt smoked in silence for a time. Then he said, “This job Mrs. Nichols hired you to do-didn’t it strike you as a little screwy?”
“Sure. But she was determined, and I couldn’t see any reason for turning her down.”
“Let’s try this on for size: She had an ulterior motive in setting up a round-the-clock surveillance on her brother.”
“Like what?”
“Like she wanted to provide him with an alibi. If he was being watched at all times by a team of private detectives, he couldn’t be suspected of Carding’s murder. Only Talbot crossed her up by deciding to pay a call on Carding today.”
“Which would make her Carding’s killer?”
“Right. And the motive could be that she was more afraid of Carding carrying out his threat against Talbot then she let on; so she decided to take care of Carding before he had a chance to come after her brother.”
“I don’t know, Eb,” I said. “I guess she could be loony enough to come up with a plot like that, but it sounds farfetched to me. TV cop show stuff.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t buy it either. It doesn’t involve a connection with Christine Webster, or explain the kid’s disappearance or half a dozen other things.”
We kicked it around a while longer, over another beer each, but we were both fresh out of workable theories. The problem was, there still weren’t enough facts in yet-and the pieces we did have were jumbled and shaped with odd angles. It might be days or weeks before the right pattern began to emerge. If it ever emerged at all.
Eberhardt left at eleven-thirty and I went straight to bed. But my mind was too full of questions to shut down right away; I tossed around for more than an hour before I finally drifted off. The whole business was damned frustrating. I was involved and yet I was not involved. I was a link between the two murders and yet I knew little about any of the people or any of the motivations and relationships in either case. The idea of sitting passively by waiting to be told bits and pieces as they developed did not appeal to me much-and yet there was nothing else I could do.
What could I do?
NINE
The weather shifted again on Friday morning, the way it often does from day to day in San Francisco: A thick fog had come rolling in and turned the city into a bleak study in gray. It was particularly heavy in Sea Cliff, obliterating most of the ocean and Bay and all of the Golden Gate Bridge when I got out there a few minutes past nine. Most of the time I like the fog-it can create a certain sinister atmosphere, or the illusion of it, that appeals to my imagination. But not on this day; it seemed more depressing than anything else and made me feel as gray as everything looked.
I left my car in front of the Nichols house and plodded up the terraced steps and pushed the doorbell button. Pretty soon the peephole opened; the eye that peered out at me this time belonged to Laura Nichols. The peephole closed again and the door swung inward.
She was wearing a lavender pants suit today, but she did not look quite as poised or self-assured; the blonde hair was less carefully coiffed and there were dark smudges under the amber eyes. When she said, “Come in, please,” her voice seemed subdued, with none of the coldness or arrogance of Wednesday night. So maybe she isn’t going to give me any trouble, I thought. Which would be a good thing for both of us; the way I felt I was just liable to backtalk her if she started in on me.
I entered, gave her my coat, and then followed her down the tiled hallway. The living room seemed even darker and more cheerless today because of the fog swirling on the patio beyond the glass doors. I sat on the sofa again and she sat on the same chair as before, and we looked at each other.
She said, “Thank you for coming.”
“Sure. I’m sorry about your brother, Mrs. Nichols.”
“Yes. So am I, God knows.”
“How is he?”
“Not good.” She played with the diamond ring on her finger, took a breath as if preparing herself for a difficult chore, and looked back at me. “I… well, I owe you an apology. It seems you were quite right about Martin’s mental state.”
I did not say anything.
“I should have listened to you,” she said. “But it seemed so… I just couldn’t believe…”
She broke off and glanced away; emotions flickered across her face. She was under a good deal of strain, it seemed-and it was not easy for a woman like her to admit to a serious mistake in judgment. But at least she was admitting it, which was a point in her favor. And to a virtual stranger at that. I felt myself softening toward her. Not much, but a little.
I asked, “What do the doctors say?”
“That Martin has suffered a severe guilt trauma followed by suicidal depression.”
“Will they be able to bring him out of it?”
“They have no opinion yet,” she said. “What they’re afraid of is that he’s lost all will to live and may never regain it.”
“Do they believe his confession?”
“They say they can’t be sure. Martin keeps insisting he murdered Victor Carding; he seems to believe it even if it isn’t true.”
“Has he been charged yet?”