Bill Pronzini: Zigzag

“You think Ray— No. He wasn’t a thief and he would never have sold drugs.” She drew a deep, shuddery breath. “My husband made mistakes, God knows, but he was a good man at heart. I was married to him for nineteen years. Don’t you think I would have known if he wasn’t?”

Not necessarily. Nobody knows anybody all that well, spouses included. Spouses especially in some cases. I thought that, and then I thought cynically: Salt of the earth, Ray Fentress. Incapable of killing, except where four-footed animals like deer were concerned; never owned a handgun, never smoked, and wouldn’t ever sell dope. Good husband, good man at heart, hardworking average citizen. Until he drove drunk one night, resisted arrest and assaulted a police officer, and got himself locked up in a cell for eighteen months.

I said, “Why did you want to see me, Mrs. Fentress? I can’t tell you anything to ease your mind, and if you’re thinking of hiring me to investigate the shootings, I couldn’t oblige you if I wanted to. A private detective has no legal right to interfere in an open homicide case.”

“It’s not open, it’s closed. The man in charge up there, I can’t remember his name—”

“Lieutenant Heidegger.”

“Yes. He as much as told me so.”

I doubted that. No homicide investigation, especially one with as many quirks and questions as this one, gets marked closed in only three days. Still, inasmuch as Heidegger and his crew hadn’t turned up any new evidence and the sheriff’s department likely was overworked and understaffed, they might well be leaning toward an acceptance of the most obvious explanation. The lieutenant wouldn’t have told Doreen Fentress that, but then he might have said something to her that hinted at it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “truly, but that’s not official and probably won’t be for some time. I could have my license suspended if I tried to mount an investigation of my own.”

“Couldn’t you do something else for me?” The liquidy brown eyes added mute appeal to her words.

“Such as?”

“Try to prove I’m right about the kind of man my husband was. Try to find out how he knew Floyd Mears, why he went to see him that night. That’s not the same thing as investigating the murders, is it?”

“Well, technically, no, but—”

“I’ll pay you whatever you ask until all the money I have runs out.”

“It’s not a matter of money, Mrs. Fentress. Or rather it is where you’re concerned. What you’re asking would likely be a fruitless undertaking and you’d be depleting your savings for nothing.”

“I don’t care about my savings. You’re a detective, a good one according to what I’ve read; you have ways of finding things out. You could try, couldn’t you?” When I didn’t answer, she said with desperation rising in her voice, “I can’t stand living the rest of my life not knowing. Even if it turns out I’m wrong and Ray did intend to rob Mears, even if he was a... a killer after all, I’d rather know than not know. You understand?”

All too well. I nodded.

“Then please help me. Please try to find out.”

Thankless job, nowhere job. Waste of her money, waste of my time. I’d have to notify Heidegger, get his permission for an offshoot investigation. I’d have to go poking into a dead ex-con’s life before and after his prison sentence with little enough hope of finding out something that would relieve Doreen Fentress’ burden of grief. I’d be a damn fool to make the effort. I’d be a damn fool to say yes, okay, I’ll see what I can do.

“Yes, okay,” I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Tamara didn’t think much of my decision, either. She’d been listening at the door, all right, and when Doreen Fentress was gone she came out of her office and admitted it. When I suggested that she could have waited to hear the gist of the conversation from me, she said, “Well, I was curious after the silent treatment she gave me. No secrets around here, right?”

“Not when it comes to business, anyway.”

“What’s that mean?”

Whoops. Indirect reference to her recent disinclination to discuss her love life, which she’d always done before with casual candor and in more detail than I cared to know. But since she’d taken up again with her musician boyfriend, Horace Fields, after his return to the city following a failed near marriage, she hardly even mentioned his name. Maybe it was because she knew I had my doubts about the wisdom of hooking up with him again after the shabby way he’d treated her the first time around, but more likely it was because things weren’t going well between them. There’d been little indications that led me to suspect this was the case — grumpy mornings, puffy eyes indicating lack of sleep, long, brooding silences.

But I hadn’t made any attempt to pry; it would only have created unnecessary friction between us. Even an oblique reference was a mistake on a day when she was in a more or less upbeat mood. None of my business anyway unless she brought up the subject or her relationship with Horace affected her work, which so far it hadn’t.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Just something irrelevant you say without thinking.”

“Sort of like a mouth fart.”

I had to grin at that. “Sort of.”

“Well, anyhow, it’s a good thing you didn’t make the Fentress woman any promises. Fifty-fifty the Sonoma sheriff’s department says stay out of it.”

“More like seventy-five twenty-five they’ll allow it. Lieutenant Heidegger didn’t strike me as a hardnose and I can promise him I won’t step on any official toes.”

She gave me one of her Tamara the No-Nonsense Businesswoman looks. “You wouldn’t be thinking of a pro bono investigation, would you? Assuming you get the go-ahead.”

“No. We’ll charge Mrs. Fentress expenses and a nominal fee if nothing comes of it. Full agency rates if I turn up answers for her.”

“Which you probably won’t.”

“Which I probably won’t, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

“You always do.”

“Correction: we always do. I’m going to need some Internet help from you.”

“Uh-huh. Tamara the techno slave,” she said, and pooched up her face and rolled her eyes in that way she had. Whenever she did it, I was oddly reminded of Hattie McDaniel in the actress’ pre — Gone with the Wind days. As round and plump and dark as Tamara was, she even looked a little like Hattie McDaniel when she did the face-pooching, eye-rolling thing. Not that I’d ever said as much to her. If I had, she would probably and with some justification have accused me of racial stereotyping and brained me with her computer keyboard.

I put in a call to Lieutenant Heidegger in Santa Rosa, or tried to; he wasn’t available. I left my name and both office and cell numbers and asked for a callback at his earliest convenience. It being Friday afternoon, I didn’t expect to hear from him until Monday, but he surprised me. The return call came in less than half an hour. I was still at my desk; going straight home would have meant finishing up the plumbing job and dealing with more household chores. So I’d decided to stick around and do some paperwork on an employee background check for one of the new dot-com companies that had infested the city — infested being an apt term because the proliferation had driven real estate prices to exorbitant levels and caused a lot of small businesses and private residents to sell out and move elsewhere.

Heidegger had no objections to what Mrs. Fentress wanted me to do. He’d have to check with his superiors, he said, but as far as he was concerned I could go ahead as long as I stayed within the established boundaries and immediately turned over to him anything pertinent I might happen to find out. Then he said, “Frankly, I think it’s a waste of time. Pretty clear-cut that Fentress went to see Mears to buy or steal weed and the two of them ended up blowing each other away. I just don’t see any other explanation.”