Runyon had nothing to say to that.
Beckett seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. He said, “Mr. Runyon? Will you stop her and Chaleen from hurting Mrs. Vorhees?”
“If I can, yes.” He got out a business card with both his cell and landline numbers on it, pressed it into Beckett’s hand. “If you find out anything more, call me right away, day or night.”
“Right away. Yes.”
“And be careful not to let on to your sister that you’ve been talking to me.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
Runyon left him standing there staring at Andrew Vorhees’ yacht and the boats in the West Harbor slips, his mouth shaping more words that he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak aloud.
11
Thursday was a hell of a miserable day.
The kind that makes you think, not nearly for the first time in my case, that free will is a load of crap and your life really isn’t your own. That Shakespeare was right and we’re all just players on a vast stage, being secretly moved around and fed lines to speak and actions to take by some unseen director. Or part of an ecumenical puppet show: marionettes controlled by an impossible-to-comprehend webwork of invisible strings and threads and wires. Or, worse, not even flesh and blood human beings but androids programmed and manipulated by impulses from some all-powerful mega-computer operated by an entity or entities beyond our ken. The devout among us call it God’s Plan-the Almighty working in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. But I’m not convinced it’s as simple or benign as that. Or that it’s benign at all.
Such days usually follow a pattern: they start out in ordinary fashion and then grow progressively worse. This one was no exception. I woke up in a pretty good mood; so did Kerry, so did Emily. The three of us had a companionable breakfast, even did a little joking around the way close-knit family units often do. I kissed Kerry and off she went to Bates and Carpenter, kissed Emily and off she went to school. Then I had the place to myself-one of my stay-at-home days, with nothing more demanding to do, or so I thought, than to devote some more time to my pulp collection.
I was involved in that project when Jake Runyon called in a report of his meeting and conversation with Kenneth Beckett, a call that began the day’s shift from commonplace to dark and hellish. Trying to decide, when the phone rang, if I could afford a hundred bucks for a 1932 issue of Dime Detective with an Erle Stanley Gardner novelette, one of only two issues from that year that I didn’t own. The price was not too bad on the current collector’s market and the dealer making the offer was a man I’d bought from before; the sticking point was the magazine’s condition, which he described as “near very good with a piece missing from the spine.” He’d provided color scans in his e-mail, but looking at scans isn’t the same thing as holding a magazine in your hands for a close inspection.
Jake’s report put me in something of a quandary. I didn’t blame him for getting together with the Beckett kid-I’d have done the same if I had been on the receiving end of the plea for help-but what he’d been told about a conspiracy between Cory Beckett and Frank Chaleen created an ethical and moral dilemma. Officially, we had no standing in the matter. No client, no evidence to support the suspicions of an emotionally damaged young man, which for all we knew for certain were nothing more than delusional ravings. Nor could we justify notifying the police. If the allegations of a plot to harm Margaret Vorhees turned out to be unfounded, we’d be wide open for a potentially ruinous lawsuit.
That was the ethical and legal side of it. The moral duty side was something else again. In all good conscience, you couldn’t afford not to alert a potential victim when you had enough familiarity with the other people concerned to make premeditated homicide a very real possibility.
Runyon agreed. He thought he ought to stay on it, maybe have a talk with Mrs. Vorhees and alert her to the potential danger. I didn’t much like the idea-ticklish business, approaching somebody out of the blue with a story like that and not very much to back it up, because it could so easily backfire-but I couldn’t and didn’t reject it, either. What I did was to put Runyon’s suggestion on hold for the time being. He had other work to do, and the final decision was mine and Tamara’s.
I hemmed and hawed with myself for a time. Then, with my mind pretty much made up, I called Tamara. For support, mainly, because I knew what her position would be. As young as she is, and despite a somewhat checkered past, she has a moral outlook similar to mine and Runyon’s.
“Damn right we should do something,” she said. “Sooner the better. I say take what we know to Mrs. Vorhees and see what she says.”
“That was Jake’s suggestion.”
“You agree?”
“Leaning that way.”
“Okay, then. Might even be she’ll hire us to protect her.” Moral, my partner, but ever practical. “Yeah, I know we’re not set up for bodyguard work, but we could make an exception in this case.”
“If it comes to that, we’ll consider it.”
“Think I should be the one to talk to her, woman to woman?”
Tamara has plenty of strong points, but caution and tact are two that she hasn’t quite mastered yet. And when you were dealing with a prominent citizen who was also a vindictive alcoholic, you had to be extra careful. I said, “Better let me handle it.”
“Jake’s the one who talked to Kenny. Maybe he should do it.”
I reminded her that Runyon had an appointment in the East Bay and was already on his way. “I’m old enough to be nonthreatening to most people,” I said. The patriarchal approach might just get through to her, if I worked it right. Besides, it was my case, or it had started out that way anyhow. “I’ll need Margaret Vorhees’ phone numbers, land and cell both.”
Tamara didn’t put up any further argument. She tracked down the numbers for me in short order.
I tried the cell first, but the call went straight to voice mail. I clicked off without leaving a message and rang Margaret Vorhees’ home phone. That call was answered by a woman with a Spanish accent who informed me she was the housekeeper. Yes, Mrs. Vorhees was home, but she was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. The way she said the word “busy,” in a faintly disapproving tone, made me wonder if her employer might be getting an early start on her day’s drinking. Did I wish to leave a message? No, I didn’t. If I left my name and number, chances were I would not get a callback. And I didn’t want to lay out my bona fides except to Mrs. Vorhees herself, in person.
Her home was only a couple of miles from our Diamond Heights condo. I decided I might as well drive over there and see if I could maneuver my way into an audience with the woman.
Like Nob Hill, St. Francis Wood, on the lower western slope of Mount Davidson, is one of the city’s best residential neighborhoods: near-palatial old homes on large lots that you couldn’t afford to buy unless your net worth was counted in the millions. The Vorhees house stood on a tree-shaded street not far from the home once owned by George Moscone, the San Francisco mayor who’d been assassinated along with Supervisor Harvey Milk back in the seventies. Spanish Mission-style place, all stucco and dark wood and terra-cotta tile, tucked back behind tall hedges and a procession of yucca trees. A line of eucalyptus ran along the west side. The overall effect was of a kind of mini-estate that somewhat diminished the stature of its neighbors.
I followed a winding flagstone path that led from the front gate onto a tiled porch. The front door was of heavy dark wood mortised with strips of metal, a bell button set into the tile alongside. A thumb on the button produced musical chimes loud enough to be heard through the stucco walls.