“Eb …”
“No, I haven’t heard from Dana,” he said without looking up.
“Did I ask?”
“You were about to.”
“.. Eb, are you okay?”
“Just dandy.”
“I mean-”
“I know what you mean. Don’t worry about me.”
“But I do. That’s what friends are for.”
“Worry about your own love life. How’s Kerry, by the way?”
“Fine.”
He hesitated. And then for the first time he raised his eyes to meet mine, and there was something in them that I could not quite read. “She’s a good woman, and you’re a lucky bastard to have her,” he said. “Keep her happy. Don’t let go of her.”
A hollow sensation seemed to open up in my stomach. I was careful to keep my voice neutral as I said, “I won’t.”
“Good. Now go on, beat it. I’m tired of looking at your ugly face.”
I went on and beat it.
There were no messages on the answering machine in my office and no mail to speak of. I opened the Venetian blinds to let in some sunlight-I needed sunlight this morning, and plenty of it-and then sat down and called Bates and Carpenter.
Kerry wasn’t in. “She’s gone to an early lunch with Mr. Carpenter,” her secretary said. “May I take a message?”
I said, “Just tell her I called.”
“Shall I have her return the call?”
“No. I’ll get back to her this afternoon.”
I swiveled around in my chair and stared out the window. Out to lunch with Jim Carpenter. First dinner, now lunch. Very cozy. It was just business on Kerry’s part, of course-I said that to myself half a dozen times. But what about Carpenter? I knew he wasn’t married; Kerry had told me that. What if he was a ladies’ man? What if his favorite pastime was screwing his female employees? Kerry hadn’t mentioned whether he was that way or not… and why hadn’t she?
Nuts, I thought. She wouldn’t go to bed with him under any circumstances. She’d worked for Bates and Carpenter for over a year; if she was inclined to succumb to Carpenter’s charms, whatever the hell they happened to be, she’d have done it long before this. Besides which, she was a monogamous woman, and it was me she was keeping company with these days; she had climbed into the sack with me just two days ago, for Christ’s sake.
Yeah, I thought, but it wasn’t very good for either of us. So maybe she’s tired of me and ready to look elsewhere. Maybe she agrees with Ivan the Terrible that she’s better off with a young man instead of an old bum. Maybe she already succumbed to Carpenter’s advances, had an affair with him before I knew her, and now she’s weakening again.
Things like that, all sorts of speculations, kept rambling through my head. I couldn’t get rid of them, and because I couldn’t, I felt stupid and childish and morose. And guilty, too. If she was taking up with Carpenter, or even thinking about taking up with him, it was at least partly my fault. I’d been putting too much pressure on her to marry me. I’d spent too much time bad-mouthing her old man. Ivan the Terrible may have been something of a shit, but he was still her father. How could I blame her if she chose him over me?
I brooded some more. Eberhardt and his marital problems got mixed up in it; I kept drawing parallels between his situation and mine, and I kept hearing him say, “She’s a good woman, and you’re a lucky bastard to have her. Keep her happy. Don’t let go of her.” That made me feel even more morose, finally drove me out of the office and down to the restroom at the end of the hall. I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. Why don’t you soak your head, you silly ass, you? I thought. Which seemed like a good idea, so I ran cold water from the tap and went ahead and did it.
When I came back I opened the Speers file again and tried to work. I needed to work; I needed to rechannel my hyperactive imagination. But the first thing that stared up at me was the full-color photograph of Lauren Speers. Red hair like Kerry’s, only more flamelike. I turned the photo facedown and picked up one of the newspaper clippings and read the first paragraph six times without any of the words making sense.
The telephone rang.
I hauled up the receiver and said, “Detective agency.”
“This is George Hickox. Clyde Mollenhauer’s secretary.”
Now what? “Yes, Mr. Hickox?”
“About Saturday-Mr. Mollenhauer has an additional request.”
“Yes?”
“You’re to wear a tuxedo,” he said.
“A what?”
“A tuxedo. You do know what a tuxedo is, don’t you?”
“I have some idea, yes,” I said between my teeth. “May I ask why?”
“Each male guest will be wearing a tux,” Hickox said. “Mr. Mollenhauer feels you’d look out of place without one, in the event you should come in contact with any of the guests.”
“I see.”
“If you don’t own a tuxedo, I suggest you make arrangements to obtain one. The requirement is firm.”
“I’ll rent one right away.”
“Do that,” he said and hung up in my ear.
I held the receiver at arm’s length and gave it the finger. Do this. I thought. Which was not very bright; I slammed the thing down. Tuxedo. Me in soup-and-fish and packing a rod, on guard over expensive presents at a wedding reception in Ross. The eighth wonder of the world.
It took me five minutes to find the Yellow Pages;
they were hidden away in the back of one file cabinet. I looked up a place that rented tuxedos and gave them a call. The weekend rental fee was fifty dollars, plus a deposit, but that was all right because I was not going to pay for it; Clyde Mollenhauer was going to pay for it. If there was one item that came under the heading of expenses, it was a goddamn tuxedo.
I told the guy what size I wore, arranged to pick up the tux on Friday afternoon, and then went back to the Speers file. The call from Hickox had shaken me out of my mental doldrums, at least; this time I managed to concentrate on what I was reading. Or rereading. No new angles presented themselves-not where Lauren Speers was concerned, anyhow. But I did begin to realize that maybe I had been approaching the hunt from the wrong direction.
None of Speer’s relatives or friends might be willing or able to tell me where she’d disappeared to, but what about relatives or friends of Bernice Dolan? Assume Dolan had gone wherever Speers had gone. It was a reasonable assumption; she was Speer’s secretary, and the manager of her apartment building had told me she hadn’t been home for weeks. All right, then. Find Dolan, and the chances were I would also find Speers.
There was almost no information on Bernice Dolan in the file. I weighed possibilities. The best one seemed to be a canvass of her apartment building; even if none of her neighbors knew where she’d gone, they might be able to provide some useful facts on her background. If that didn’t pan out, I could try pumping the Examiner society editor again-maybe some of Speers’s acquaintances as well. And if that didn’t work, I could resort to calling all the Dolans in San Francisco and the other Bay Area counties, on the chance that she was a native and had relatives living here. I had begun to work up a little enthusiasm by this time. I closed up for the time being, went to where I’d left my car. Getting out was a good idea. It was too damned quiet inside my office. And with Kerry on the one hand, and Edna Hornback and her insinuations on the other, it was too damned noisy inside the dusty cave of my head.
SEVEN
I got lucky for a change. Twenty-five minutes after I arrived at Bernice Dolan’s building, I found out where she’d gone.
The building was on Greenwich, over near Fill-more, in the heart of Cow Hollow-a three-story, six-unit job that faced toward the bay. The manager let me in, but he had no additional information for me; he didn’t know any of Dolan’s friends or any of her background. As far as he was concerned, she kept pretty much to herself.