It was almost five o’clock. I went into the living room and used Donaldson’s phone to call my office.
“Jack phoned,” Hilda told me. “Donaldson’s car was towed away from the bus depot in Marin City ten days ago. The sheriff’s office is holding it as presumably abandoned since it hasn’t been reported stolen.”
“How long before it was towed away?”
“The cops tagged it first on the morning of the thirtieth, but Jack says it could have been parked there the night before. It’s an illegal parking zone in the daytime.”
“Good. Where is Jack?”
“He’s home. He says he’ll wait until the night man comes on at the Hall before he checks with the police. A friend of his.” I could hear Hilda shuffling papers, checking to see if she’d missed anything. “That’s all,” she said. “How are things?”
“Fine. I think Jack saved me a trip to Crescent City.”
Hilda said something more but a staccato knock sounded on the apartment door, muffling her voice. I said “Goodbye” into the phone and hung up.
“I hear you in there,” a jet haired almond skinned pantheress was shouting as I opened the door. Her right fist missed its target and punched me on the chest. She pushed me aside with the fist and stormed into the room, swung around and stood, hands on hips, glaring at me. The fire in her long lashed dark eyes dissolved slowly into wonder. She said, “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Sweeney.”
This information didn’t seem to help. She turned abruptly and began a search of the apartment, a boxlike handbag hanging from a shoulder strap bouncing against her slim hips as she glided from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom. An organdy white dress she wore didn’t show a wrinkle to mar her graceful Latin movements.
After the closets, she gave up. She came back to the living room and sat on the chaise-longue. I took the chair opposite and offered my pack of cigarettes. We each took one and I lit them. She leaned back, showing how wrong Dior can be, and looked at me steadily through the curling smoke.
“Where is he?” she asked in a mildly husky voice with a dash of Spanish accent.
“Donaldson?”
“Whom do you think I mean? He lives here, does he not?”
“I don’t know where Donaldson is. I’m looking for him myself.” When she didn’t believe me, I added, “My name is Bill Sweeney, I’m a private investigator. You can check with my office if you like.”
She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly through magenta lips. She half smiled at me and said, “I will take your word for it, Bill. I am Eve Bustamente. I live next door and Bob is the good friend of mine. As I am coming home just now I heard you moving around, and I thought I heard voices...”
“I was using the phone.”
Eve Bustamente glanced at the phone absently and nodded. “Bob and I are quite the good friends,” she said, meeting my eyes. “We had the slight quarrel last month. I have not seen him since.” She snubbed her cigarette in the ash stand next to her. “Now, you tell me. What is it all about?”
“Donaldson is missing. He hasn’t checked in with his employers for the past couple of weeks. No one seems to know where he is?”
“And I think he is avoiding me,” she said, crinkling the corners of her mouth.
“He’s also behind in his alimony payments and his wife wants him found.”
“Wife.” Eve Bustamente was on her feet, eyes blazing like flamethrowers again. “He never had the wife. Who told you that lie?”
“Mrs. Donaldson was in to see me this afternoon.”
“Ha. That thing in there on his dresser, I will bet you. Is that who is saying she was married to him?”
“No, I saw the picture. She isn’t the same woman.” I put out my cigarette and sat back, watching her pace the floor. She was puzzled and angry, and uncertain what to do about it.
“He was not married,” Eve Bustamente said, sitting down again. She leaned toward me. “I have known Bob for a long time, very well. He got this apartment through me when the old tenants moved out. We are very close. He told me he was not married. I believe him.”
I let that drop and asked her why Donaldson should disappear.
“I cannot say. Last time we are together we are as always. Except we have the fight, the small argument, about that one in there,” she waved impatiently at the bedroom. “We understand these things,” she shrugged. “But I cannot stand her watching us.”
“Who is the girl?”
“Bob says she is his sister in Peoria.” Eve Bustamente’s anger melted into a mischievious grin. She added, “About that he lies.”
“How long has the picture been there?”
“I do not know, a few months perhaps.”
We had another cigarette and more conversation that didn’t lead anywhere. Finally we left the apartment and I walked to the door of twenty-five with her.
“Will you come in for a drink?” she asked in a new voice that was nothing to do with Robert Donaldson.
“No, thanks. I have some things to do.”
“I hope you will find Bob, but I am not worried. He can manage himself. About the one who pretends she is his wife, I do not know.” She fitted her key in the lock, opened the door and turned to me smiling. “I have the hot temper sometimes. Today, it was because I think Bob is standing me up all this time. Come see me again and I will be nicer.”
I said I would and meant it.
Outside, it was sunny with a light breeze whistling in from the bay. It was hot as a stove in the heap. I rolled down both windows, made a U-turn and drove up Van Ness Avenue. In the rear view mirror I noticed a green Buick sedan with New Jersey plates perform the same illegal operation.
Later, as I nursed my 37 Chewy along the outside lane of the approach to Golden Gate bridge, the Buick bobbed and weaved in the traffic behind me.
Four
Spanking winds on the bridge cooled the effects of Eve Bustamente and John Jameson. On the other side of the bay, short of Mill-brae, I turned off the highway into Mario’s Grotto and parked. I went into Mario’s and ate a big fat lobster at the bar.
When I returned to the heap the green Buick was crouching at the far end of the parking lot, a thin cloud curling from its exhaust. Two men in gray hats, too far away for identification, were sitting in it. I maneuvered the Chewy to the top of the exit driveway and waited for a break.
There is a continuous flux of speeding, hell for rubber motorists hurtling to and from San Francisco at this time of night. I plunged into the first opening they gave me, closed the gap on the car ahead and stayed in the center lane. The Buick was left at the gate.
At Millbrae I cut off the highway and slowed to twenty-five, hugging the shoulder, giving the men in the Buick plenty of time to catch me if they’d seen me turn. When they didn’t show by San Anselmo, I drove back to the highway through San Rafael and continued north. It cost me half an hour.
Gravenstein, located in a pocket of Geronimo County twenty miles South of Tasco, the county seat, is a fine town for chickens and people over sixty-five. The main street, about three city blocks long, is bisected by Russia avenue, the main thoroughfare to the resorts on nearby Geronimo River. The town, which prides itself in low taxes, due to the heavy fines levied on summer people who overpark in it, or speed through it, or get drunk in it on their way to the resorts, was asleep when I passed through at eight o’clock. A sign on the door of Artcraft Studios said: Open 8:00 A.M.
In the outskirts of Gravenstein a billboard with a paint chipped shingle hanging under it announced Casper’s Cozy Corner, Vacancy. It pointed at a horseshoe of square, flat cabins. I stopped at the first one, labeled Office. A scrawny, beak nosed woman with bones poking holes in her faded print dress was waiting for me on the porch. She showed me a mouthful of brown and silver, introduced herself as Mrs. Casper.