Chaleen hadn’t forgotten. He might have tried to get physical with somebody else, but when you can’t back a man down with threats, you’re vulnerable and already half beaten. He knew it, knew what the result would be if he forced the issue; it frustrated him, but it also made him afraid. As before, as always when he came up against a man like Runyon, he was the one who backed down.
His fingers relaxed again, his gaze slid away. Then, “You’re trespassing. Get out of here before I call the cops and have you arrested!” The last sentence came out loud enough so that the warehouseman with the clipboard turned to look at them.
Runyon said slowly, in a voice that didn’t carry, “And don’t forget this conversation, or the one my boss had yesterday with Mrs. Vorhees.”
Red-faced, Chaleen shouted again. “You people go around making any more veiled accusations against me, you’ll hear from my lawyer! You got that? All right, now get the hell out!”
Runyon went, taking his time, not looking back.
In the Ford, before he drove away from Chaleen Manufacturing, he reported in to Tamara.
“So you think you scared him off?” she asked.
“Hard to tell. Maybe, maybe not.”
“Man’d have to have his head up his butt to try anything now, knowing we’re onto him.”
“You’d think so,” Runyon said. “He claimed he didn’t tell Cory about Bill’s talk with Margaret Vorhees. That might be the truth.”
“Why wouldn’t he have told her?”
“Afraid of her reaction, maybe. He may have already had second thoughts about going through with their plan.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her to go ahead with or without him,” Tamara said, “if the plan’s good enough and the stakes big enough. Everything in her record says she’s an aggressive risk taker.”
“But not unless she figures it’s a sure thing. If she does go ahead, it won’t be alone.”
“Right. Not the type to do her own dirty work. So then she’ll need Chaleen.”
Runyon said, “And she’ll make every effort to get him to do what she wants. Whether or not she succeeds depends on how strong her hold on him is. And on what else is in it for him.”
“You mean money?”
“If there’s enough to be had. That factory of his isn’t doing too well. Skeletal crew, machinery breaking down, buildings and property in disrepair.”
“So he could be heavy in debt,” Tamara said. “I’ll run a financial check on him-should’ve thought to do that before.” Then, after a pause, “What do you think about having a talk with Cory, Jake? Would it do any good?”
Runyon said, “No. Kenneth’s on thin ice as it is. Chaleen picked up on the idea he’s the one who tipped us. I think I talked him out of it, but she’s smarter than he is.”
“Yeah. Well, what about trying to get Kenny alone for another talk?”
“Same objection. Too much chance of Cory catching wise. There’s nothing he can do to diffuse the situation. If he tries, he’s liable to make it worse.”
“So we’ve done all we can and we’re back to square one. Just wait and hope nothing happens.”
“I don’t see any other alternative,” Runyon said.
14
Any sudden death in the family is a blow, and when the person is as close as Cybil was to us it’s twice as hard to deal with, twice as painful. Never mind that she had been in her late eighties and in failing health, and you knew her time was short and you’d resigned yourself to the inevitable loss. When it happens it’s still unexpected, a shock you don’t easily recover from.
Bad enough for Emily and me; devastating for Kerry. Her mother had been a vital presence in her life-confidante, touchstone, tower of strength in times of crisis. Cybil’s passing must have torn her up inside, and yet she coped with it-or seemed to be coping with it-in the same calm, controlled way she’d broken the news to me. No outward displays of emotion; if she cried, and she surely must have, it was in private behind locked doors. She comforted Emily when the girl burst into tears after being told. She let both of us try to comfort her with hugs and inadequate words, but not for any length of time and with a kind of mild but distant reserve.
The only indication of the depth of her grief was when she and I were in bed the night it happened, a few whispered words in the darkness. “What hurts the most,” she said, “was that I couldn’t be with her at the end. To tell her how much I loved her. To say good-bye.”
There was no funeral or memorial service, at Cybil’s request. She had asked to be cremated and to have her ashes scattered in Muir Woods, one of her favorite places. Kerry insisted on taking care of the mortuary arrangements herself. She also insisted on immediately clearing out her mother’s unit at Redwood Village in Larkspur.
“There’s no reason to wait,” she said. She also said, “It doesn’t seem right for all her things to be sitting there gathering dust now that she’s gone.”
She let me help her do the clearing and gathering, but I suspected it was only because she couldn’t manage the task alone. Cybil’s personal possessions were relatively few: a small trunk full of old correspondence, photographs, clippings of news items and book reviews, miscellaneous scraps of paper, and carbon-copy manuscripts of the stories she’d written under the pseudonym Samuel Leatherman for Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Midnight Detective in the 1940s; several framed family photos, a few mementoes and knickknacks; and two boxes of books and magazines, including extra copies of Dead Eye and Black Eye, Cybil’s two retro novels featuring her hardboiled pulp detective, Max Ruffe.
Kerry wanted all of this transported to our condo, along with her mother’s ancient Remington typewriter and antique rocking chair, the small bookcase in which the copies of Cybil’s published works had been displayed, and a couple of items of clothing that had some sort of sentimental value. “All of these were part of Cybil, dear to her. How can I get rid of them?” She said this defensively, even though I hadn’t questioned her or made any kind of comment.
When we were done, the only things left for Redwood Village to dispose of were the remaining items of furniture, cookware and glassware, and the contents of the refrigerator and cupboards. It took both Kerry’s car and mine to get all the stuff back to the city.
Once we had everything inside the condo, all but filling up the utility room, she began sorting through the contents of the trunk-a task she wouldn’t let me help her with. “It’s my job. Most of these things are personal.”
“I won’t look at anything you don’t want me to.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t want any help.”
“Kerry, I know how much you’re hurting-”
“Do you?”
“All right, maybe not, but Cybil’s passing deeply affected me, too-”
“Passing,” Kerry said between her teeth. “God, you know I hate that euphemism. Cybil died. My mother died.”
“Her death, then. I’m just trying to make things a little easier for you, that’s all.”
“Then don’t fuss and let me do what I have to do.”
I did not put up any further argument.
Kerry spent that evening and part of the next morning going through the trunk and the boxes of books. Looking at photographs, reading correspondence or part of a manuscript or a story in one of the pulp magazines or one of the dozens of yellowed pieces of paper on which Cybil had scribbled story ideas, character sketches, sentence fragments. One of the times I wandered in to see how she was doing, I found her stroking with her index finger a small stone carving of a panther that Cybil had kept on the bureau in her bedroom.
“My father gave this to her on her fortieth birthday.”
“What’s it carved from?” I asked. “Onyx?”