T. Parker - Laguna Heat

“Okay,” she said evenly, though her voice trembled. “Let’s get some ground rules straight. I’ll help you if I can. I’m too tired right now to care who killed my father, but if someone else is in danger I feel... obligated to help. I can get you the handwriting, his business ledger, some photographs. And I’ll tell you what I can about him on the promise that you’ll leave your cheap, goddamned budget psychologizing out of it. I don’t need your analysis, I don’t need your guilt, I don’t need you.”

The inside of Jane Algernon’s cottage was small but neat. In contrast to the disheveled exterior, the living room gleamed with modern, high-tech appointments: a glass coffee table sat in the middle, surrounded by chrome and green velvet chairs, a low couch that matched them, a square glass end table. From one side of the room a long-necked chrome lamp swung outward to hang above the table; in the other stood a mirrored shelf containing stereo components and a small television, surrounded by plants. A breakfast nook built off the living room had more chrome and glass and a palm tree in a high chrome pot. The walls were pale salmon, the carpet a blue-gray. Shephard sat down in front of the coffee table. She crossed in front of him and disappeared into the bedroom. A moment later she was back with a damp washcloth, which she tossed to him, and a photo album that she opened over her legs when she sat down on the couch.

“Nice place,” he said, dabbing at his bandage. Not so nice a lady, he thought. She glanced at him and handed him a snapshot.

“My father and Rebecca, taken last year. He was in good shape for a man his age. Tall and strong.” Shephard examined the picture in the ample light of the living room. Tim Algernon sat atop the corral, Rebecca standing at his side, her face pressed into his open hand. Jane reclaimed the picture and put it back in its place. Then another, this time of her father and herself inside what looked like a barn. “That was taken five years ago. It’s the most recent one of us together. Like I said, we hadn’t been close the last few years.”

“How often did you see him, recently?” She put back the picture. Shephard brought out his notebook, which was sadly bent from the fray.

“See him? Once a month maybe. Hi, how are you, that was all. People grow apart.”

“Yes. May I?” Jane handed Shephard the photo album, then crossed her long legs over the velvet and leaned back. “When was the last time you saw him?” He leafed through the book. Tim Algernon riding Rebecca, Jane atop another mare, Jane with Buster the sea lion in his pen, Jane and a young man with their arms around each other, a close-up of Buster, a quiet shot of sunlight on a vase of flowers. He looked up.

“Two weeks ago,” she said. “About.” She looked down, brushed something from her leg, then stared at Shephard.

“What did he say? Did he come here or did you go to see him?”

“He came here,” she said quietly. “He sat where you’re sitting now, and we talked for a few minutes. Nothing in particular.” She turned to face the sunlight that slanted through a window. Shephard studied her profile: her nose straight and thin, her lips full, the eyelashes golden in the rush of sun.

“Was he worried, preoccupied?” He continued his study of sunlight and woman, a combination he decided was insurmountable.

“My father was very calm,” she said, still facing the light. “That comes from breaking horses as a young man.” She looked at Shephard. He ducked into the photo album.

“Uh, finances. In order?”

“He made enough money to gamble away and drink on,” she said sharply. “He was bad at gambling, good at drinking.”

Shephard heard the bitterness in her voice. “Do you own this house, Miss Algernon?”

“What do you care? I thought you’d decided I was bitter because he didn’t help with money.” She brushed her hair from her face and looked back out the window.

“That was just to piss you off.” He stared at her legs, for the moment supremely happy.

“Well then, one for you, detective. I rent. Father was never interested in helping out that way. Booze and horses had first priority.”

“It’s hard for people our age — how old are you, Miss Algernon...?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“To finance homes themselves. I’ve wished my father had been in more of a position to help me when I was looking to buy. Resented it a little, too.”

She turned to him, a dull gaze. “I’m not interested in your resentments, detective.”

“Then I figured that love and common courtesy must count for something too. That’s more than a lot of people ever get.”

“I’m happy for enlightment,” she said. “But I always thought that poverty makes us all look a bit ridiculous.”

Shephard heard the rage working its way back into Jane Algernon’s voice. His head began to ache again, as if in warning. “I’d like to see his house now.”

“No.” The reply was curt and final. She stood, went to the window of the breakfast corner, then turned to look at him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could... look at his things right now. I don’t feel I can do that kind of thing just yet. Do you understand?”

“Yes, and that’s why we have to go now. I need you in a mood to talk. Filters off, feelings raw. Do you understand?” He stood and set the photo album on the coffee table. His heart was beating with inexplicable speed. He wondered if it was the coffee. He watched her round the kitchen table, look out the window again, then disappear into a back room.

A moment later she was back, with a purse slung over her shoulder and a pair of pumps on her feet. “You first, detective.” She motioned to the door. “You stare at my legs any longer, they’re going to fall off.”

They stood on opposite sides of Tim Algernon’s den, the small bed between them, the identical pictures of the same horses peering over each of their shoulders. Jane had picked up a small trophy from the dresser.

“What I remember most about growing up were the good times we had here at the stables,” she said, handing him the trophy. “But dad used to talk about this club all the time. How grand it was.” She handed him the trophy, which read: TIM AND MARGARET ALGERNON — THIRD PLACE DOUBLES — SURFSIDE MEMBERS TOURNAMENT — 1947. “That’s the Newport Beach club. Mom and dad were members until the early fifties, until she got sick, I guess. He was always talking about the great days at the Surfside, the two of them playing tennis and sailing. Kind of idealized it, maybe.”

She took the trophy back from Shephard and set it on the dresser. The house had made her pensive, as he had hoped it would. He followed her as she rambled, remembered. In the living room, Jane stood in front of the big fireplace and looked into the ashes. “When I was a girl, we were close. Even when I started getting to be a woman, he was kind of a father and a mother. I guess I was eighteen maybe, before I saw the drinking doing its work on him. He’d go up and down — manic. High as a kite, then too depressed to get out of bed. Get violent too, but not with me. I watched him punch one of his horses in the face once, because she bit him. He was a strong man.” She laughed quietly, tears welling in her eyes. “Yeah, I might have blamed him for mom dying, even though I never knew her. I blamed him for blowing his money at the track, drinking, passing out in the stable feed trough, things like that.”

Jane turned her weakening face to him. She ran her hand against her eyes, then returned to the ashes. A strand of dark hair fell across her face, hiding it from him.

“He was an easy man to be hard on,” she said finally. “And I took advantage of it. By the time I started college I was truly ashamed of him — the way he’d carry on in town. People always telling me stories about him, where he ended up some night, how he fought, got sick. A village idiot, a clown. And gambling away the money. I could have used a little help. We all could, I guess. Anyway, there was something cold inside of me, and I knew he felt it.”