Her jaw had a stubborn set now; I wasn't going to get anything else out of her. I said, “All right, I won't bother you any longer,” and got up and went into the entrance hall. She followed me to the door, stood holding it as I stepped out onto the porch.
Turning, I said, “Thanks for your time, Mrs. Br—”
“Go to hell,” she said and slammed the door in my face.
On my way back to the city I put together what I had so far. It wasn't much, really, and what there was of it was open to more than one interpretation. But plenty of solid inferences could be drawn from it just the same.
Harmon Crane was married to a frigid woman. He met the redhead somewhere, San Francisco, Tomales Bay, wherever, and they became lovers. Dancer had told me he didn't think Crane was seeing another woman, but Dancer was a drunk and you can't always trust a drunk's memory or perceptions. I was inclined to believe Mrs. Brown's story of walking in on her ex-husband and the redhead; there had been too much nasty pleasure in her voice for it to have been a fabrication.
All right. Mrs. Brown had been pestering Crane for money, a loan for some purpose or other; Crane kept refusing her. On that score I believed Dancer. But then Ellen Corneal had walked in on Crane and the redhead, and all of a sudden she had something on him, a little leverage to pry loose that “loan” she'd been after—the $2,000 he'd withdrawn from his savings account on November 6, 1949, some ten days after his return from Tomales Bay. No wonder Mrs. Brown hadn't wanted to talk about the money angle. Technically she was guilty of blackmail and she knew it.
So far, so good. But now there were gaps, missing facts, that still had to be filled in. Assuming it was the red-haired woman's bones Emil Corda and I had found yesterday—and that wasn't a safe assumption yet—what had happened at the cabin the day of, or the day after, the earthquake? A fight of some kind between Crane and the redhead? An accidental death? A premeditated murder? And who was she in the first place? And why had Crane apparently covered up her death by burying her body in the fissure?
If you accepted Crane's culpability, the rest of it seemed cut and dried. He came back from Tomales, he began brooding and drinking heavily—a natural enough reaction, considering he was a sensitive and basically decent man. Then Ellen Corneal blackmailed him for the $2,000: more fuel for his depression and guilt. He finally reached a point on December 10 where it all became intolerable, and he put that .22 of his to his temple and blew himself away.
Simple. The suicide motive explained at last.
Then why didn't I believe it?
Damn it, why did it seem wrong somehow?
FIFTEEN
W
hen I got back to the office Eberhardt was gone again and there was another typed note on my desk. This one read:
2:45 P.M.
I talked to DeKalb. Looks like those bones you found are a woman's. Lab found woman's wedding ring, one-carat diamond in gold setting, on a finger bone. Victim was a small adult, probably between 25 and 50, but that's all they can determine so far. Skull may have been crushed prior to burial of body but they're not sure enough to make it official. Unofficially DeKalb thinks it might be homicide connected to your case. He expects to be in touch.
Items buried with bones as follows: four keys on metal ring, cigarette case (no monogram), woman's compact, gold brooch with two small safires (sp?), remains of metal rattail comb, remains of fountain pen, two metal buckles. DeKalb figures all this stuff contents of victim's purse.
You had one call, same pesty woman who called before. Said you'd know who she was and she'd call again. Women.
I sat down and looked out the window at the eddies of fog that obscured the city. Yeah, I thought, women. I didn't want to talk to Mrs. Kiskadon again and I hoped she wouldn't call back while I was here; it would only be more of the same I'd gotten from her up in the park.
I quit thinking about her and thought instead about the woman's wedding ring, one-carat diamond in a gold setting. Harmon Crane's red-haired lover had been married, it seemed. To someone he knew? To a stranger? No way of telling yet. And either way, that kind of affair happens all too often; it didn't have to mean anything significant, to have a direct bearing on the woman's death.
I pulled the phone over and dialed Stephen Porter's number. But it was late afternoon and he just didn't seem to be available at this time of day: no answer. On impulse I looked up Yank-'Em-Out Yankowski's home number and called that. The housekeeper answered. I identified myself, she said just a minute and went away; when she came back, after a good three minutes, she said Mr. Yankowski wasn't home and hung up on me. Uh-huh, I thought. I had figured the old son of a bitch for a grudge-holder and that was what he was.