Bones(35)

Ten-fifteen by this time and still no Eberhardt.

I called his house in Noe Valley. No answer. I went over to his desk and looked up Wanda's home number in his Rolodex and called that. No answer. I called Macy's downtown, and was told that Ms. Jaworski was out ill today.

Well, hell, I thought.

I waited until ten-thirty. Then I scribbled a note that said, I'm sorry about last night, Eb—we'll talk, put it on his desk, and left for Tomales. A long drive in the country was just what I needed to soothe my twitchy nerves.

Tomales is a village of maybe two hundred people, clustered among some low foothills along the two-lane Shoreline Highway, sixty miles or so north of San Francisco. But there isn't any shoreline in the immediate vicinity: the village is situated above Tomales Bay and a few miles inland from the ocean. Sheep and dairy ranches surround it, and out where the bay merges with the Pacific there is Dillon Beach and a bunch of summer cottages and new retirement homes called Lawson's Landing. The town itself has a post office, a school, a service station, a general store, a cafe, the William Tell House restaurant, a church, a graveyard, and thirty or forty scattered houses.

It was well past noon when I got there. The sun was shining, which is something of an uncommon event in the Tomales Bay area, but there was a strong, blustery wind off the ocean that kept the day from being warm. There hadn't been much traffic on the road out from Petaluma, and there wasn't much in Tomales either. What little activity there was in the place was pretty much confined to weekends.

The general store seemed the best place to ask my questions about Angelo Bertolucci; I pulled up in front and went inside. It was an old country store, the kind you don't see much anymore. Uneven wood floor, long rows of tightly packed shelves, even a big wheel of cheddar cheese on the counter. There weren't any pickle or cracker barrels and there wasn't any pot-bellied stove, but they were about all that was missing. With its smells of old wood, old groceries, fresh bread, and deli meats, the place gave me a faint pang of nostalgia for my long-vanished youth.

Behind the counter was a dark-haired girl of about twenty; she was the only other person in the store. I spent a quarter on a package of Dentyne, and asked her if she lived in Tomales. She said she did. So I asked her if she knew anyone locally named Bertolucci.

“Oh sure,” she said. “Old Mr. Bertolucci.”

“Old? He's lived here a long time, then?”

“All his life, I guess.”

“Would his first name be Angelo?”

“That's right. Do you know him?”

“No. I'd like to talk to him about a business matter.”

“Oh,” she said, “you want something stuffed.”

“Stuffed?”

“A deer or something.”

“I don't … you mean he's a taxidermist?”

“Didn't you know? He's got all kinds of animals and birds and things in his house. I was there once to deliver groceries when my dad had the flu.” A mock shiver. “Creepy,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“All those poor dead things with their eyes looking at you. And Mr. Bertolucci … well, if you've ever met him …”

“No, I haven't.”

“You'll see when you do.”

“Is he creepy too?”

“He's kind of, you know—” and she tapped one temple with the tip of her forefinger. “My mother says he's been like that for years. ‘Tetched,’ she says.”

“How old is he?”

“I don't know, seventy or more.”

“In what way is he tetched?”

“He hardly ever leaves his house. Everything he wants he has delivered. He's always shooting off his shotgun too. Some kids got in his yard once and he came out with it and threatened to shoot them.”

“Maybe he just likes his privacy,” I said.

“Sure,” she said dubiously, “if you say so.”

I asked her where Bertolucci lived, and she said on Hill Street and told me the number and how to get there: it was all of three blocks away, off Dillon Beach Road. I thanked her, went out, got into my car, and drove to Hill Street. Some street. An unpaved, rutted dead-end scarcely a block long, with four houses flanking it at wide intervals, two on each side. The first one I passed had a Confederate flag acting as a curtain over its front window; the second one, opposite—a sagging, once-white 1920s frame—was half-hidden by a wild tangle of lilac shrubs and climbing primroses. The second one belonged to Bertolucci.

An unpainted stake fence enclosed the yard; I bumped along and parked in front of its gate. On the gate was a warped sign that said TAXIDERMY in dull black letters. I put a hand against the sign, shoved the gate open, and went along an overgrown path to the porch. Another sign hanging from a nail on the front door invited, Ring Bell and Come In. I followed instructions.