Bill Pronzini - Schemers

“Some. She’s a player, too, only a different kind.”

“Men?”

“Yup. Doesn’t seem to be too discreet about it, either.”

“Names?”

“Linked to three or four guys. Paul DiSantis is one.”

“Playing pretty close to home,” I said. “Pollexfen has to either know or suspect, and yet he stays married to her even with the prenup and even though they seem to hate each other. She says the main reason is the community property laws.”

“Good reason.”

“And that he’s a control freak, enjoys manipulating her, keeping her on a leash. Both good reasons. But I get the feeling there’s more to it.”

“Same kind of leverage Cullrane has?”

“The two of them blackmailing him together? That’s possible. But then why don’t brother and sister get along? She doesn’t seem to like Cullrane any more than she does her husband.”

“Maybe just a sibling thing,” Tamara said. “Like with sister Claudia and me. Besides, you don’t have to like a person to work a scam with him.”

“True enough.”

“Everybody hates everybody else. How’d you like to go to a dinner party at that house?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “The first big deal that went sour for Cullrane was five years ago, right? If he is blackmailing Pollexfen, that figures to be about when it started. See if you can find out if Pollexfen was mixed up in anything big and possibly shady around that time.”

“I’m on it. Anything else?”

“Just the phone number and address for Pollexfen’s collector friend, Julian Iverson. Maybe he can tell me something we don’t already know.”

JAKE RUNYON

The town of Sonoma was Old California, established in the days of the Spanish land grants, built around a central square with one of the original missions on one corner and nearby, the remains of a fort where troops were garrisoned when Sonoma was the capital of the Bear Flag Republic. Nowadays the historical aspects played a distant second to tourism and the wine industry. Expensive shops, tasting rooms, designer restaurants. And up-valley, dozens of wineries that catered to organized tours, charged ten-and-fifteen-dollar tasting fees, and sold promotional items by the bushel.

Runyon didn’t much care for upscale tourist traps. Too many people, too much traffic, too much undisguised greed. And too little regard for the residents. Prosperity bred high rents, overblown home prices, and jacked-up costs for goods and services. He’d heard it said that Sonoma was a nice place to visit but unless you had plenty of money and didn’t mind crowds of out-of-towners, you wouldn’t want to live there.

The Sunset Acres assisted living facility was on the southeast end, close enough to downtown shopping but far enough off the main road into town so that tourists wouldn’t be reminded of one of their own potential oldage options. It took up most of a city block-small units strung together in wings radiating out from a central building that housed staff offices, kitchen facilities, and a recreation-dining hall. The units all looked alike, wood and stucco with tiny porches, and the landscaping was the low-maintenance variety crisscrossed by flagstone paths. Nothing special, nothing distinctive. Just a place for old people who had nowhere else to go and no family members who were willing to shoulder the burden of caring for them; a place to live out the rest of their lives in relative comfort.

Visitors had to sign in at the main building. Runyon had called ahead to make sure Mona Crandall was available and would see him, so he was expected. The woman at the lobby desk drew an X through one of the squares on a grounds map, doing it with a smile and a flourish as if it were the location of buried treasure. “That’s Mrs. Crandall’s unit,” she said. “Number forty-one West. She doesn’t have many visitors, you know. She’ll be delighted to see you.”

Not exactly true at first. Mona Crandall wasn’t smiling when she opened the door to Number 41 West, and at first she didn’t seem particularly welcoming. But he won her over without making any effort other than to be polite. Reserved until she’d had time to take his measure, and then almost eager for his company. But not because she cared very much why a private investigator from San Francisco was visiting her, even though he’d made it plain in his call that his business concerned her two sons. Like a lot of the elderly in circumstances such as hers, she was starved for human contact and some friendly attention.

She was in her midseventies, on the frail side. Needed a walker to get around. Blue-rinsed hair that had had a recent styling and alert brown eyes. She’d been watching a talk show on television; as soon as she let him in, she moved over and switched the thing off.

“I keep it on for noise,” she said. “Mostly what they have on these days is garbage.”

“Except for old movies.”

That earned him her first smile. “Except for old movies,” she agreed.

She asked him if he drank tea. He said he did. No trouble at all to make him a cup, she said, and he let her do it, sensing it would hurt her feelings if he declined. While she was in the kitchenette, he took in the surroundings. The unit wasn’t much larger than a studio apartment-small sitting room, smaller bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette. Furniture crowded the sitting room, leftovers probably from the home she’d shared with her late second husband. Television wasn’t her only interest or recreation; a bookshelf was filled with well-read paperbacks and there was a stack of library books on the table beside her chair. Her body may have been wasted, but her mind wasn’t.

When the tea was ready he went out and got his cup to save her making two trips with the walker. Another smile. And they were ready for business.

She didn’t know what had been happening to her sons. They hadn’t told her and the only newspaper she read was the San Francisco Chronicle. “A terrible thing like that and I have to hear it from a stranger,” she said. Concern in the words, tempered by bitterness. “Cliff and Damon don’t call or visit very often,” she said. “Keep to themselves. I haven’t seen my grandchildren in over a year. They’re all right? The stalker hasn’t done anything to them?”

“No. Only to your sons. And their father’s grave.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake? What possible reason?”

“No idea yet. It doesn’t seem to stem from anything they did, their business or personal relationships.”

“Well, they were always good boys. Honest, hardworking. They seem to be good parents, too.”

“But not such good sons.”

She sighed. “They blame me for the divorce. Breaking up our family, leaving their father to raise them alone. They worshiped him, you know.”

“Yes.”

“I tried to explain to them, when they were grown up, tried to tell them the truth. But they wouldn’t listen.” The lines tightened around her mouth. “Lloyd told them over and over that it was my fault, all my fault. That I was the cheater, not him. He poisoned them against me with lies.”

The way Andrea had poisoned Joshua. Love your mother, hate your father. Love your father, hate your mother. Toxic damage that becomes so deeply ingrained over the years, it can never be undone.

“Cliff called me a spiteful liar to my face,” she said. “I suppose I should be grateful they visit me as often as they do.”

Grateful, no. But she’d been left with that much, at least. Andrea’s poison had been lethal; Joshua was dead to him, no possibility of resurrection.

He said, keeping his face blank, his voice neutral, because this wasn’t about him or his pain, “It must be very difficult for you.”

“At first it was. Not so much after I met Wally, my second husband. He was such a good, faithful man. But now that he’s gone and I’m alone… Yes, it’s difficult. But I won’t beg, not even for my grandkids. I didn’t beg Lloyd Henderson and I won’t beg his sons.”