“I could see a lot of this coming last year. The family was all ready to fly apart. You know those chocolate apples from Switzerland that fall into pieces when you tap them?”
“The question is who tapped Phoebe.”
“Yeah. Last seen with her mother, you say? What does the mother say?”
“Nothing useful. She’s practically certifiable, in my opinion.”
“I thought they took away your medical license. Have you made any attempt to trace the taxi?”
“I’m working on it now. You could help.”
He gave me a bland impermeable look. Our Gibsons came and we sipped at them, watching each other to see how quickly we were drinking this year. Willie put his glass down half-empty:
“You think the girl’s dead?”
“I hate to admit it to myself, but I have that feeling in my bones.”
“Homicide or suicide?”
“I haven’t given suicide any thought.”
“Maybe you ought to,” Willie said reflectively. “She’s a flighty kid. Is or was. I only saw her once, for about five minutes, but she made me nervous. I didn’t know if she was going to make a pass at me or run screaming from the room. She didn’t relate, if you know what I mean.”
“Spell it out.”
“She was carrying around a lot of sex that she didn’t know what to do with. A lot of sex and a lot of trouble. From what I saw of the family, she didn’t have much help growing up. Her mother couldn’t give it to her. She’s the same type herself, sexy-hysterical. You never can tell what females like that are going to do to themselves.”
“Or what other people are going to do to them.”
“You think it’s murder,” Willie said.
“I didn’t at first. I do now.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Another murder. It happened yesterday, down the Peninsula.”
“Man named Merriman, real-estate broker?”
“You make quick connections.”
“That was the only murder on the Peninsula yesterday. They had a good day.” He grinned. “Incidentally, I heard from a friend in the San Mateo Hall of Justice that they’re interested in Catherine Wycherly’s whereabouts. If you know where she is–”
“I don’t. That’s one of my problems. I talked to her in Sacramento last night. A friend of hers hit me with a tire-iron, then they took off for parts unknown.”
“I was wondering about the bandage.”
“It’s nothing serious. But we’ve got to get our hands on Catherine Wycherly.”
“We?”
“I need your help on this case. You’re equipped to handle a dragnet operation. I’m not.”
He made a sad face. “Sorry, Lew, I have other irons in the fire.”
“What happened between you and Wycherly last year?”
He shrugged, and finished his drink.
“You don’t like Wycherly, is that it?”
“I love him. I love his type. He’s got money in his head instead of brains. And he’s tricky, the way those spoiled slobs get. He pulled the rug out from under me.” Willie was showing signs of passion: his eyes were blacker and his nose was white. “The slob sent one of his troopers around to take my evidence away from me. Hick sheriff by the name of Hooper.”
“What evidence?”
“The letters he hired us to investigate. I handled the case personally, spent three or four solid days on it, between here and Meadow Farms. Just when I was hitting pay dirt, the slob yanked me.”
“Why?”
“Ask him. He’s your baby.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Sure. I was getting too close to home. There were indications that those letters were an inside job. Indications, hell. I had the proof. I made the mistake of taking Wycherly seriously and going to him with it. I should have gone to the Post Office Inspectors. Maybe I could have headed this whole thing off.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You weren’t intended to. The point is I want no part of Homer Wycherly or his affairs.”
Our steaks arrived. I postponed further argument until we had eaten. But even with T-bone in his belly, Willie was adamant:
“No sir. I’m loaded with work as it is. If I was unemployed, I wouldn’t go back to work for Wycherly. Tell you what I’ll do, though, simply as a favor to a friend. I’ll put out the word to my informers to be on the lookout for the girl. Dead or alive.”
“That’s something.”
“You want something else?”
“Copies of those letters, if you have them.”
“It wouldn’t be ethical.” He was baiting me. “But then, neither is Wycherly. Come over to the office, I’ll see what I have in the files.”
We walked to his office, a four-or-five room suite on the second floor of an old building on Geary Street. His inner sanctum was a large front room furnished with a Persian carpet, old mahogany furniture, a couch. Wanted circulars and mug shots were Scotch-taped to the walls. A glass showcase containing hand-guns, knives, saps and brass knuckles stood in a corner between a water cooler and a set of steel filing cabinets which took up one whole wall.
He unlocked a W drawer, rummaged in it and came up with a folder whose paper contents he spread out on his desk:
“Here’s the letter Wycherly sent me in the first place.”
I picked it up and read it. It was cleanly typewritten under the letterhead of the Wycherly Land and Development Company, Meadow Farms; and it was brief and to the point:
Dear Mr. Mackey:
A San Francisco representative of my company tells me that you have a good local reputation for skills and discretion as an investigator. I seem to be in need of one. During the past week, my family has received two alarming letters from an unknown person, who is obviously a crackpot and quite likely dangerous. I want him identified.
If you are free to undertake this case, please contact me by telephone and I will make arrangements to fly you here. Nothing of this, of course, is to be divulged to the authorities, the press, or, indeed, anyone.
Yours truly,
Homer Wycherly
President
It was one of those Laocoön signatures, half-choked in its own serpentines and curlicues.
“He gave me the letters when I got there,” Willie said. “I Thermofaxed ’em. I’d just as soon you don’t tell Wycherly I kept copies. I always keep copies.”
He handed me two limp heavy yellowish sheets on which the anonymous letters had been reproduced. They had no dates, no headings. I sat at his desk and read one:
Beware. Your sins will be punished. Remember Sodom. Do you think you can copulate like dogs in the public streets? Do marriage vows mean nothing to you? Remember, sin is punished to the third and fourth generation. Remember you have a child.
If you don’t remember, I will remember for you. Rather than see you sink down in your slime, I will strike at a time and place of my own choosing. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Beware.
?A Friend of the Family.
Then the other:
You have had one warning. Here is your last warning. Your house is soaked with evil. The wife and mother is a whore. The husband and father is a complaisant cuckold. Unless you expunge the evil, it will be expunged. I speak for a jealous and an angry God. He and I are watching.
?A Friend of the Family.
“Lovely stuff,” I said. “What did Wycherly have to say about the cuckold angle?”
“I didn’t ask him. He didn’t encourage me to ask personal questions. He simply wanted me to track down the poison-penner and stop him. So he said. But when I started to get warm, he stopped me.”