Charles Williams: Man on a Leash

“Then did he alert the bank?”

“Yes. On Monday, the tenth, he called and talked to Owen Richter, one of the officers he knew personally. Told him about the upcoming deposit, asked him to clear it as fast as he could, and told him he was going to want it in cash, so they’d be prepared.”

“Did he ask Richter to call him when it cleared?”

“No. He said he’d call back himself. Which he did, Wednesday morning. The money was there, so he came in and picked it up.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes. I specifically asked Richter about that. He said there was nobody with him at all. He seemed to be perfectly all right, rational and sober. He got a little abrasive when Richter tried to talk him out of taking it in cash, and he didn’t offer any further explanation except that it was for a business deal; but both of these are entirely characteristic of the captain in the best of circumstances. He seldom explained anything, and he had a very low tolerance for unsolicited advice.”

Romstead nodded, puzzled. “And Winegaard didn’t get any further explanation either?”

“No.” Bolling smiled faintly. “I doubt he expected much; he’d dealt with your father a long time. The only thing he objected to was the selection of the stocks to sell.”

“How was that?”

“Well, normally, of course, if you’re liquidating part of a portfolio for some reason, you do it selectively, that is, you prune out the weak sisters, the indifferent performers, losers where you want to cut your losses, and so on. He didn’t do that. He just went straight down the list until the total added up to a little over two hundred and fifty thousand and told Winegaard to sell it all.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“No. Certainly not for a man who’d managed to make a fortune in the stock market over the years. As I say, Winegaard objected, or tried to, but he was cut off pretty sharply.”

“I don’t get it.” Romstead shook his head. “Oh, how about the burial expenses? Are there any accounts to settle?”

“No. They’re all taken care of.”

“Then you paid them, as executor of the estate?”

“No, he did. At the time he drew up his will, just shortly after he moved here, he made all the arrangements with the mortuary and paid for his own funeral in advance. Also the headstone.”

“Why? You don’t suppose he had some warning this was going to happen?”

“Oh, no, that wasn’t it. It was just that he took a dim view of the whole overblown ritual and what he considered the funeral industry’s exploitation of family grief. Said it’d do them good now and then to have to deal with a hardheaded businessman who was still alive. So he picked out the cheapest package they had, beat them down to the rock-bottom price, and paid it and gave me the receipt. I pointed out that since he’d probably live to a hundred and ten, he was losing the interest on the money, but he said with the chronic rate of inflation he wasn’t losing a cent. And he was right, when you stop to think of it.”

“Yeah. And then the same man’s supposed to have gone wandering around the streets of San Francisco like some kind of nut with a suitcase full of money.”

Bolling spread his hands. “The same man.”

Romstead stood up. “Well, thanks for filling me in, Mr. Bolling. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“We’ll be in touch with you. Are you going back to San Francisco right away?”

“Tonight, probably, or early in the morning. I’d like to drive by and see the place, if you’ll tell me how to find it.”

“We’ll lend you a key so you can get in.” They went out into the anteroom, and Bolling took a tagged house key from a safe.

“Just be sure everything’s locked when you leave. Go straight west here on Third Street. It’s on the right, about four miles, a ranch-style house a hundred yards back from the road, white brick and redwood with a red tile roof.”

He went back to the motel and got the car. He wanted to call Mayo, but it was too early yet.

3

He checked the odometer as he made the turn into Third. After a few blocks of residential district and a close-in area of small farms and orchards, the two-lane blacktop ran unfenced through the sage with a low ridge to his right. There was very little traffic until a big Continental suddenly materialized in his rearview mirror as it overhauled him at high speed. It started to pass but braked and swung back, tailgating right under his bumper, as a pickup truck came toward them in the other lane.

The pickup went past; the Continental burst from behind him with a shriek of rubber and went on. He caught a brief glimpse of a blond woman behind the wheel as it flashed past. She was scarcely a hundred yards ahead of him when she abruptly hit the brakes again, forcing him to slow down to keep from running up on her as she swung off the road onto a driveway running up the hill between twin lines of white-painted fence. He muttered with annoyance. And they talked about California drivers killing themselves. There was a sprawling low-roofed ranch house at the top of the hill, and beside the road a white mailbox with the name Carmody. The mailbox was supported by a serpentine column of welded links of chain.

A few hundred yards ahead the road curved to the right around the end of the ridge, and he saw the place. There was a cattle guard through the fence and a red gravel drive leading back to the house, which was the only one in sight as the road swung left again and disappeared over a rise a quarter mile away. He turned in.

He stopped in front of the attached two-car garage at the right end of the house and got out. In the intense silence his shoes made a harsh grating sound on the gravel. There was a flagstone walk bordered by flower beds leading to the front door, and in front of that a considerable area of some kind of ground cover he thought was ivy. Beyond the far corner of the house was a large cottonwood. The big swing-up door of the garage was closed, and curtains were drawn over all the windows in front. The red gravel drive continued on past the side of the garage toward the rear. He walked back.

There was a wide expanse of flagstone terrace here, extending between the two wings of the house and outward toward the rear. Farther back were a redwood shed, which was probably the pump house for the well, and then a white-painted corral fence and a small barn. At the top of the sloping hillside to his right he could see some trees and part of a patio wall which must be the rear of the Carmody place.

He went back around in front and let himself in with the key Bolling had given him. There was a small vestibule just inside, floored with dark ceramic tile. The air was stale, as in a house closed and unoccupied for a long time, and underlaid with the ghosts of uncounted cigars. The back of the entry-way opened into one end of the living room, while a door on the right led to the kitchen, which was along the front of the house. Another door on the left connected with a hallway along the bedroom wing.

He crossed the kitchen and opened the door at the far end of it. The garage had no windows, and the light was poor. He flicked a switch, doubtful that anything would happen, but two overhead lights came on. The pump, he thought; they’d had to leave the power on because of the water system and the automatic sprinklers. The car was a blue Mercedes. It bore a heavy coating of powdery white dust, and the windshield was smeared with spattered insects. It had been on a long trip at high speed, all right, but he frowned, wondering how it had got that dusty driving to San Francisco. Well, maybe it had been that way before the trip.

There was no doubt Brubaker had already done it, but he opened the left front door and checked the lubrication record stuck to the frame. “Jerry’s Shell Service, Coleville, Nevada,” it said, and the date of the last service was July 4, 1972. Oil change and lubrication at 13,073. He leaned in and read the odometer. It stood at 13,937. That was more than 800 miles. San Francisco was—call it 270, round trip 540. So the old man had driven another 300 miles somewhere in that time between July 4 and 14. Well, that could be anything—or nothing.