A faint wry smile. “He does that sometimes. It used to frighten his neighbors but no one pays much attention anymore.”
“He must have lived alone for a long time,” I said.
“Ever since Mrs. Bertolucci left him. That must have been … oh, more than thirty years ago.”
“October 1949? That's as far as I've been able to trace her.”
“I believe it was 1949, yes.”
“You say she left him. Divorced him, you mean?”
“No. Ran off.”
“With another man?”
“Evidently.”
“She and Mr. Bertolucci didn't get along, then.”
“Not very well. Fought all the time.”
“Over anything in particular?”
“His general cussedness, my mother used to say.”
“Did the fights ever become physical?”
“A time or two. He was free with his fists.”
“A violent man?”
“Well, you saw what he does to crows.”
“Would you have any idea who Mrs. Bertolucci ran off with?”
“Lord, no. I was only a child then.”
“So her affair wasn't common knowledge.”
“No. But people weren't surprised, the way he treated her.”
“It was common knowledge, though, that she'd run off?”
“He admitted it himself, more than once.”
“Did he seem upset by the fact?”
“I suppose he was. Who wouldn't be?”
“And he never remarried?”
“No. Never set foot out of Tomales since, that I know of.”
I took out my notebook and made some squiggles in it, mostly for show. “What can you tell me about Mrs. Bertolucci?”
“Well, let's see,” Mrs. Kramer said. “Her maiden name was Dunlap; she was Irish … but you must already know that.”
“Mmm.”
“I think Mr. Bertolucci met her through her father. He ran a plumbing supply company in Santa Rosa … no, he was a plumbing contractor, that's right. Used to hunt out here before all the land was posted, and Mr. Bertolucci made some of his trophies. He died a year or so before Mrs. Bertolucci disappeared.”
“Did she have other relatives in Santa Rosa?”
“Not that I know of. You haven't been able to find any?”
“Not so far. Did she have any close friends here in Tomales, someone I might talk to?”
“Well … her best friend was Bernice Toland, but Bernice died several years back. Kate wrote her a note before she left town, said she was going away with a man; that was the first Bernice knew about it, apparently.”
“Bernice never heard from her again?”
“No, never.”
“Is there anybody else I might see?”
“A couple of others, I suppose, but I don't think they can tell you much more than I have.”
I took their names and addresses, thanked Mrs. Kramer and her daughter, and went out to my car. For a time I sat there watching the fog swirl across the deserted highway, mulling over what I had just learned. It all seemed to fit. And what seemed to fit, too, was the way Angelo Bertolucci had dealt with his wife's disappearance—the way a man would if he had something to hide, if he'd had something to do with the disappearing.
Bertolucci was the one I wanted to talk to now; the two casual acquaintances of his wife's could wait. I started the car and swung out onto Dillon Beach Road and drove up toward Hill Street. The fog was so thick my headlight beams seemed to break off against the wall of it, smearing yellow across the gray but not penetrating it. I had to drive at a virtual crawl; I couldn't see more than twenty yards ahead.
The street sign came up out of the mist—Hill Street—and then the joining of its unpaved surface with the road I was on. Out of habit I put on the turn signal just before I started the right-hand swing.
There was a rush of thrumming sound in the fog ahead, and all at once a car came hurtling out of Hill Street, just a dark shape, no lights, like some sort of phantom materializing. I let out a yell, jerked the wheel hard right, came down on the brake pedal; the rear end broke loose and for a second or two I lost control, skidding on the rutted gravelly surface. The other driver had swerved too, which prevented a head-on collision, but as it was his car scraped along my left rear fender and booted my clunker around until it was slanted sideways across the road. The bump put an end to the skid, at least, and let me get the thing stopped. Meanwhile the other car bounced off, careened out onto Dillon Beach Road, and was almost immediately swallowed up by the gray mist. It had all happened so fast that I couldn't identify the make or model or even its color.
I shouted, “You stupid goddamn son of a bitch bastard!” at the top of my lungs, which wasn't very smart: coming on top of my fright, it might have given me a coronary. As it was, all I got was a raw throat and no satisfaction. I sat there for a minute or so, until I calmed down. Sat in silence, with nothing moving around me except the fog. The nearest house, the one with the Confederate flag for a window curtain, showed no light; the driver of the other car, drunk or sober, crazy or just plain witless, probably lived there. Christ!