Marcia Muller: Games to Keep the Dark Away

I didn’t have time to search Snelling’s files for prints of these, and I was fairly certain they wouldn’t be there anyway. The person who had ransacked the house would have taken them. But the negatives lying on the light table hadn’t meant anything to the ransacker. Someone unfamiliar with the photographic process wouldn’t be able to read them or realize they were there because Snelling had been going over them, looking at them through the magnifying loupe, getting ready to print them. Before…

Before what?

I whirled and ran from the darkroom and down two flights to the lower level. I glanced in to the first door off the hall and saw a bedroom furnished in light-colored Danish modern. Snelling’s, probably. A couple of suitcases stood on the floor by the dresser, and a third was open on a chair. It was partially packed. I went inside and turned on a light. There was a thick film of dust-due to the nearby demolition-around it. The suitcase had not been packed today, and most likely Snelling had been taking things out rather than putting them in.

So he’d been prepared to run. What had changed his mind?

I left the room and hurried down the hall to the bedroom Jane Anthony had occupied. It was the same as when I had last seen it, except the phone book was on the bed, open to the notations on its front pages. I leaned over it, reading them more carefully than I had the last time I’d come here.

It leaped out at me, the final fact that made everything come clear. I would make a telephone call to confirm it.

But I was already certain I knew.

By the time I got back to Salmon Bay, I was physically exhausted. The tiredness I’d felt on the trip north was nothing to the bone-weariness I felt now. My arms and shoulders ached from steering; my right leg was stiff from pressing the accelerator; even my eyes burned from peering into the darkness through the headlights’ glare.

But my mind was alert, primed by questions answered and suspicions confirmed-and by fear.

A dark green VW was parked near the end of the semi-circular driveway at The Tidepools. I drove past and left the MG several yards down the highway, then walked back and looked at the other car. It was pulled in at an odd angle, its rear end sticking out and nearly blocking the drive.

The Tidepools itself seemed unnaturally quiet now, at a little after ten. The front wing, where the reception area and offices were, was dark except for small security lights set at intervals under the eaves. They did little more than illuminate the juniper shrubs that screened the windows. Brighter light shone from the rear wings where the patients presumably were, but even these were filtered through a thin sea mist.

I hesitated, checking the gun in my purse, then went up the drive to the VW. Its door was unlocked, the window on the driver’s side partly rolled down. In the glove compartment I found a registration made out to Abe Snelling at his Potrero Hill address.

As I’d suspected, Snelling had come to the place that-as indicated by the prints I’d found in his darkroom-had been very much on his mind all afternoon. And I thought I knew why he’d come. But where was he now? From the way he’d left the car, he’d taken no pains to cover his presence. But, then, he didn’t have to; the people here had probably never heard of Abe Snelling. Even if they had, they would never connect the car registration with Andy Smith. And I was pretty sure Snelling had arrived in a hurry and not planned to stay long.

But when had Snelling gotten here? He’d left his house early enough for both the ransacker and me to search it thoroughly. And for both of us to guess where he might be headed.

I looked around at the three other cars in the driveway. Two were station wagons with the name of the hospice painted on their doors. The other was a new-looking Jaguar XKE. All three cars had been in the drive on my previous visits.

Slipping into a grove of eucalyptus that bordered the right side of the driveway, I studied the low-shingled building. It was cold, and a strong wind blew off the ocean, rattling the dry leaves above my head. I could hear the surf crashing on the reefs and when I looked over there I saw whitecaps billowing. The tide was starting to come in now; soon it would cover the narrow beach and batter at the cliffs. I thought of the sea anemones in their dark, icy pools, and shivered.

I stood very still and stared into the darkness, looking for a telltale movement among the trees. Snelling had to be here some place-but where? Perhaps I should have gone directly to the police and let them find him. But what did I really have to tell them? Only that I felt, because I’d read Snelling’s negatives, it was all going to end here, where it had begun?

No, it would have taken the police-skeptical as they were of me now-all night to unravel my cat’s cradle of suspicions. And even then, I was afraid they would not take me seriously. Besides, this was my investigation; I should be the one to wrap it up.

I began to circle the buildings counterclockwise, keeping under the trees. The wind blew stronger and colder as I moved toward the sea. Through the rustle of the leaves and the scraping of branches, I could make out the strains of classical music. I followed them to a brightly lit side window and looked in from my dark vantage point. The window opened onto a large living room, full of comfortable, overstuffed furniture. A string quartet-three men and a woman-was playing on a raised platform at the front of the room, and about ten people sat listening. I tried to think of what the piece was. Mozart, maybe. Don would know. Don…

I stepped farther back into the shadows and continued circling. At the rear of the complex was a series of ells with sliding glass doors that reminded me of a motel. This was probably where the patients’ rooms were. There were a number of lights on and through one door I saw a white-haired man sitting up in bed reading. Yes, these were the living quarters.

What was left? I turned and surveyed the grounds. There was a small shingled outbuilding closer to the cliff’s edge. I started over there, sprinting across an open stretch of lawn and into a clump of wind-bent cypress. They were more thickly planted than the eucalyptus and, before my eyes could adjust to the blackness, a low-hanging branch caught me square in the face. I swatted at it and then felt my cheek. It was scratched, but only superficially.

Stand still until you can see where you’re going, dummy, I told myself.

I waited there, listening to the roar of the surf, until I could make out the shapes of the individual trees. Snelling, I thought. Where the devil was Snelling?

A movement off to my right caught my eye. I whirled and looked over, but it was only a curtain being pulled across one of the sliding glass doors. Its light-colored panels fluttered into place and became still.

I turned back and began scaling the rocky terrain under the cypress to where it sloped down toward the cliff’s edge. There the ground dropped abruptly away to the jagged reefs. The tide was coming in fast now, white water boiling around the dark outcroppings. The wind blew steadily, and I gripped a tree trunk for support.

The outbuilding was some fifty feet away, across a strip of open lawn. Once on the grass, I would be silhouetted against the horizon and easily spotted from any of the hospice’s wings. I debated chancing it, decided not to, and instead peered over there, trying to see what the building was. In the same architectural style as the main building, it had a peaked roof and small high windows. Its doors stood open.

A tool shed? These immaculate grounds would probably require the full-time services of a gardener. No need to risk investigating it. Although the grounds were not fenced and there didn’t seem to be any excessive concern with security, surely someone would come out here if he spotted a figure prowling around a tool shed.