"I hurt it killing somebody."
"Am I supposed to believe that?"
"Up to you."
"Today?"
"Of course, today. Was I walking around with this cheek last night?"
"Jiminy Christmas, don't you think I ought to know about it? Who do you think you are, Clint Eastwood? I don't believe this. I don't believe you could kill anybody, and if you did, I don't believe you wouldn't tell me." She glanced discreetly at the speedometer and tightened her seat belt. Then she sighed. "I don't know, maybe I do believe you could kill somebody."
I didn't say anything.
"Oh, stuff it," she said violently. For Eleanor that was real profanity. "I don't feel like I really know you at all anymore. I'm not even sure I want to."
"I'm not sure that you should," I said.
For the next few minutes I concentrated on driving while Eleanor cracked her knuckles very deliberately, one by one. That was always a bad sign. When she started on the second joints I knew we were in for trouble.
"Turn right on Fourth," she said very quietly. "And pull over."
I made the turn and parked Alice under a big deciduous tree that still had a few leaves clinging hopelessly to its branches. Rain strummed flamenco on the roof of the car.
"Here?" I said.
"Here is fine. I've got something to say to you, and I want you to listen. I'm not going to rake over the past, and I'm not going to do character analysis on how you got to be the way you are. You weren't like this when I met you. You were a sweet guy who didn't know where he was going, but you were good at enjoying yourself. Now you're not so sweet anymore, and you don't seem to enjoy yourself very much either. Sometimes I look at you and it's like seeing a stranger through the window of a train. But other times, you're still Simeon."
I flicked off the windshield wipers.
"Maybe it's because we've never really stopped seeing each other," she said, "maybe if we had I'd notice a big change in you. As it is, it's been sort of day-to-day and more-or-less, like getting older. But instead of just getting older, you've been getting different." She fiddled with the buckle of her seat belt, making a metallic snapping sound. "But you don't seem to notice that I've changed too. I've been taking care of myself for three years, Simeon. I've published two books, okay? I've got a good job, if I decide to keep it. I've been through some men, nothing as serious as you were, but they've been there when I decided I needed them. When I needed them. Are you listening to me?"
I nodded.
"I want you to stop acting like I'm the person you met all those years ago. I am involved in this. Maybe I'm in danger. If I am, I want to be able to defend myself, and you have to stop pretending that you're wearing forty pounds of armor and biceps, and I'm the fair lady who needs protection. I'm not helpless. I'm not a little girl. I don't scream when I see a mouse or faint at the sight of blood. You have no right to keep anything from me because you think it might make me safer, and I don't believe for a minute that knowing less is going to reduce my vulnerability. And if you've really killed somebody, then I want to know about it not only for me, but for you too. Simeon, I want you to talk to me." She reached over and put her hand on top of mine.
"Okay," I said. "Here?"
"Right here. Right now. If you don't, I'm going to get out of this car. You can go find him alone."
I told her all of it. When I'd finished she sat quietly, chewing on the ends of her hair.
"Are you going to tell this to Hammond?" she finally said.
"Eventually. When I have to."
"Why not now?"
"I want to work it out, Eleanor. I want to get the bastard who killed her."
"It sounds like you already did. But of course, he's not the one you want."
"No," I said. "I want the one who told him to do it."
"He really pulled her fingernails out," she said, as though she was trying to digest a fact that contradicted everything she'd ever been taught.
"Is there someplace else you can stay?"
"I'll think about it. I suppose I could move in with Chantra for a week or so."
"That ought to do it. If I'm not finished by then I'll give it all to Hammond."
She directed a clear gaze at me. "Is that a promise?"
"Promise." I gave her my hand, and we shook. Then she pressed my hand to her cheek, folded her other hand over it, and lowered it to her lap.
She leaned back against the seat of the car and let out a slow breath. "I'll tell you how I found him," she said.
She'd called the Times bureau in Sacramento and asked a woman there to check the Church's board of directors. "It's a California corporation, right?" she asked rhetorically. "That's what that sleazy Brooks man said. That means their corporate articles and their board of directors have to be on file with the Secretary of State. It's a big board, and one of its members is a Mrs. Caleb Ellspeth. Mary Claire, in other words."
"Well, well. Did you get the whole list?"
"Of course."
"Have you got it?"
"In my purse."
"And Caleb Ellspeth was in the phone book."
"No," she said, sounding pleased in spite of herself. "He wasn't. He was on the Times subscription list. I went into the computer, and there he was, Caleb Ellspeth, right in Venice, only about a mile from me. I was so excited, Simeon. I mean, how many Caleb Ellspeths can there be in L.A.?"
"Give me the list of directors." She pulled it from her purse and handed it to me. I put it in my pocket. "Now tell me why you think he'll be home."
"The phone listed was his work phone. His supervisor or somebody told me he had special dispensation to spend afternoons at home and to work mornings and evenings. A sick kid, he said."
"What company?"
"Miska Aerospace."
"What's he do?"
"Some kind of engineer."
"Fine. Better than fine. Listen, I don't know how he's going to react. My guess is that he's been told not to talk to anybody. It could get a little rough, so keep a brake on the humanitarian impulses, okay?"
"Oh, lighten up. You make me sound like Dear Abby. Golly, Simeon, what have we just been talking about?"
"Golly," I said mockingly. "I'm sorry about that. Just getting the ground rules straight." I leaned over and kissed her hair.
"Will wonders never cease," she said, blushing slightly. "A sporting metaphor."
I started the car. As I pulled out into traffic, she said, "Those men would have killed you."
"Yes," I said. "I think they would have."
Thirteen-twelve Ashland was a peeling one-story house with a glassed-in porch built in the thirties by a refugee from the East who didn't believe, and rightly so, that the California winters would be as mild as advertised. When he'd built the house it had had a view of the Pacific. Now three-story stucco apartment houses, the architectural litter of the fifties, made the block seem landlocked. The ocean could have been twenty miles away.
Naturally, the porch leaked. I tried to remember the last time I'd been dry. I was giving up when Caleb Ellspeth opened the door.
He didn't open it very far. A four-inch chain held it in place. His eyes were just about level with the chain. "Yeah?" he said, looking at the grease on my clothes. Then he saw Eleanor. "Can I help you?"
"We're from the Times," she said.
He started to close the door. I got a hand against it and shoved back. He wasn't very strong.
"Give me a break," he said. "No one else has in years." He had a wrinkled, oddly transparent face: pale skin like crumpled cellophane over prominent cheekbones, a hawk nose, muddy brown eyes, a skinny neck that vanished down into a white shirt that seemed several sizes too large. His hair looked like a hat. He wore it in a style that had last seen the light of day on a member of Richie Valens' backup band, a black Reddi-Wip wave at the top and heavy graying sideburns that disappeared into the collar of his shirt and, for all I knew, ended at his knees.