F Is for Fugitive Read online

  "Can you give me an example?"

  "Anything you name. She'd ditch school, show up late, fail to turn in assignments, refuse to take tests. She smoked on campus, which was strictly against the rules back then, kept booze in her locker. Drove everybody up the wall. It's not like what she did was worse than anybody else. She simply had no conscience about it and no intention whatever of cleaning up her act. How do you deal with someone like that? She'd say anything that got her off the hook. This girl was convincing. She could make you believe anything she said, but then it would evaporate the minute she left the room."

  "Did she have any girlfriends?"

  "Not that I ever saw."

  "Did she have a rapport with any teacher in particular?"

  "I doubt it. You can ask some of the faculty if you like."

  "What about the promiscuity?" He shifted uncomfortably. "I heard rumors about that, but I never had any concrete information. Wouldn't surprise me. She had some problems with self-esteem."

  "I talked with a classmate who implied that it was pretty steamy stuff."

  Shales wagged his head reluctantly. "There wasn't much we could do. We referred her two or three times for professional counseling, but of course she never went."

  "I take it the school counselors didn't make much progress."

  "I'm afraid not. I don't think you could fault us for the sincerity of our concern, but we couldn't force her to do anything. And her mother didn't help. I wish I had a nickel for every note we sent home. The truth is, we liked Jean and thought she had a chance. At a certain point, Mrs. Timberlake seemed to throw up her hands. Maybe we did, too. I don't know. Looking back on the situation, I don't feel good, but I don't know how we could have done it any differently. She's just one of those kids who fell between the cracks. It's a pity, but there it is."

  "How well do you know Mrs. Timberlake at this point?"

  "What makes you ask?"

  "I'm being paid to ask."

  "She's a friend," he said, after the barest hesitancy.

  I waited, but he didn't amplify. "What about the guy Jean was allegedly involved with?"

  "You've got me on that. A lot of stories started circulating right after she died, but I never heard a name attached."

  "Can you think of anything else that might help? Someone she might have taken into her confidence?"

  "Not that I recall." A look crossed his face. "Well, actually, there was one thing that always struck me as odd. A couple times that fall, I saw her at church, which seemed out of character."

  "Church?"

  "Bob Haws's congregation. I forget who told me, but the word was she had the hots for the kid who headed up the youth group over there. Now what the hell was his name? Hang on." He got up and went to the door to the main office. "Kathy, what was the name of the boy who was treasurer of the senior class the year Jean Timberlake was killed? You remember him?"

  There was a pause and a murmured response that I couldn't quite hear.

  "Yeah, he's the one. Thanks." Dwight Shales turned back to me. "John Clemson. His dad's the attorney representing Fowler, isn't he?"

  I parked in the little lot behind Jack Clemson's office, taking the flagstone path around the cottage to the front. The sun was out, but the breeze was cool and the pittosporum shading the side yard were being – hedged up by a man in a landscape company uniform. The Little Wonder electric trimmer in his hands made a chirping sound as he passed it across the face of the shrub, which was raining down leaves.

  I went up on the porch, pausing for a moment before I let myself in. All the way over, I'd been rehearsing what I'd say, feeling not a little annoyed that he'd withheld information. Maybe it would turn out to be insignificant, but that was mine to decide. The door was ajar and I stepped into the foyer. The woman who glanced up must have been his regular secretary. She was in her forties, petite-nay, toy-sized-hair hennaed to an auburn shade, with piercing gray eyes and a silver bracelet, in a snake shape, coiled around her wrist.

  "Is Mr. Clemson in?"

  "Is he expecting you?"

  "I stopped by to bring him up to date on a case," I said. "The name is Kinsey Millhone."

  She took in my outfit, gaze traveling from turtleneck to jeans to boots with an almost imperceptible flicker of distaste. I probably looked like someone he might represent on a charge of welfare fraud. "Just a moment, I'll check." Her look said, Not bloody likely.

  Instead of buzzing through, she got up from her desk and tippy-tapped her way down the hall to his office, flared skirt twitching on her little hips as she walked. She had the body of a ten-year-old. Idly, I surveyed her desk while she was gone, scanning the document that she was working from. Reading upside down is only one of several obscure talents I've developed working as a private eye. "... And he is enjoined and restrained from annoying, molesting, threatening, or harming petitioner..." Given the average marriage these days, this sounded like pre-nups.

  "Kinsey? Hey, nice to see you! Come on back."

  Clemson was standing in the door to his office. He had his suit jacket off, shirt collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, and tie askew. The gabardine pants looked like the same ones he'd had on two days ago, bunched up in the seat, pleated with wrinkles across the lap. I followed him into his office in the wake of cigarette smoke. His secretary tippy-tapped back to her desk out front, radiating disapproval.

  Both chairs were crowded with law books, tongues of scrap paper hanging out where he'd marked passages. I stood while he cleared a space for me to sit down. He moved around to his side of the desk, breathing audibly. He stubbed out his cigarette with a shake of his head.

  "Out of shape," he remarked. He sat down, tipping back in his swivel chair. "What are we going to do with that Bailey, huh? Guy's a fuckin' lunatic, taking off like that."

  I filled him in on Bailey's late-night call, repeating his version of the escape while Jack Clemson pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head in despair. "What a jerk. No accounting for the way these guys see things."

  He reached for a letter and gave it a contemptuous toss. "Look at this. Know what that is? Hate mail. Some guy got put away twenty-two years ago when I was a PD. He writes me every year from jail like it's something I did to him. Jesus. When I was in the AG's office, the AG did a survey of prisoners as to who they blamed for their conviction – you know, 'why are you in prison and whose fault is it?' Nobody ever says, 'It's my fault... for being a jerk.' The number-one guy who gets blamed is their own lawyer. 'If I'da had a real lawyer instead of a PD, I'da got off.' That's the number-one guy, okay? His own lawyer. The number-two guy that was blamed was the witness who testified against him. Number three – are you ready? – is the judge who sentenced him. 'If I'da had a fair judge, this woulda never happened.' Number four was the police who investigated the case, the investigating officer, whoever caught'im. And way down there at the bottom was the prosecuting attorney. Less than ten percent of the people they surveyed could even remember the prosecutor's name. I'm in the wrong end of the business." He snorted and leaned forward on his elbows, shoving files around on his desk. "Anyway, skip that. How's it going from your end? You comin' up with anything?"

  "I don't know yet," I said carefully. "I just talked to the principal at Central Coast High. He tells me he saw Jean at the Baptist church a couple of times in the months before she was killed. Word was she was infatuated with your son."

  Dead silence. "Mine?" he said.

  I shrugged noncommittally. "Kid named John Clemson. I assume he's your son. Was he the student leader of the church youth group?"

  "Well, yeah, John did that, but it's news to me about her."

  "He never said anything to you?"

  "No, but I'll ask."

  "Why don't I?"

  A pause. Jack Clemson was too much the professional to object. "Sure, why not?" He jotted an address and a telephone number on a scratch pad. "This is his business."

  He tore the leaf off and passed it across the desk to me, locking
eyes with me. "He's not involved in her death."

  I stood up. "Let's hope not."

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  The business address I'd been given turned out to be a seven-hundred-square-foot pharmacy at one end of a medical facility half a block off Higuera. The complex itself bore an eerie resemblance to the padres' quarters of half the California missions I'd seen: thick adobe walls, complete with decorator cracks, a long colonnade of twenty-one arches, with a red tile roof, and what looked like an aqueduct tucked into the landscaping. Pigeons were misbehaving up among the eaves, managing to copulate on a perilously tiny ledge.

  The pharmacy, amazingly, did not sell beach balls, lawn furniture, children's clothing, or motor oil. To the left of the entrance were tidy displays of dental wares, feminine hygiene products, hot water bottles and heating pads, corn remedies, body braces of divers kinds, and colostomy supplies. I browsed among the over-the-counter medications while the pharmacist's assistant chatted with a customer about the efficacy of vitamin E for hot flashes. The place had a faintly chemical scent, reminiscent of the sticky coating on fresh Polaroid prints. The man I took to be John Clemson was standing behind a shoulder-high partition in a white coat, his head bent to his work. He didn't look at me, but once the customer left, he murmured something to his assistant, who leaned forward.

  "Miss Millhone?" she said. She wore pants and a yellow polyester smock with patch pockets, one of those uniforms that would serve equally for a waitress, an au pair, or an LVN.

  "Yes."

  "You want to step back here, please? We're swamped this morning, but John says he'll talk to you while he works, if that's all right."

  "That's fine. Thanks."

  She lifted a hinged portion of the counter, holding it for me while I ducked underneath and came up in a narrow alleyway. The counter on this side was lined with machinery: two computer monitors, a typewriter, a label maker, a printer, and a microfiche reader. Storage bins below the counter were filled with empty translucent plastic pill vials. Ancillary labels on paper rolls were hung in a row, stickers cautioning the recipient: SHAKE WELL; THIS RX CANNOT BE REFILLED; WILL CAUSE DISCOLORATION OF URINE OR FECES; EXTERNAL USE ONLY; and DO NOT FREEZE. On the right were the drug bays, floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with antibiotics, liquids, topical ointments and oral medications, arranged alphabetically. I had, within easy reach, the cure for most of life's ills: depression, pain, tenderness, apathy, insomnia, heartburn, fever, infection, obsession, and dizziness, excitability, seizures, histrionics, remorse. Given my poor night's sleep, what I needed were uppers, but it seemed unprofessional to whine and beg.

  I'd expected John Clemson to look like his father, but he couldn't have been more different. He was tall and lean, with a thatch of dark hair. His face, in profile, was thin and lined, his cheeks sunken, cheekbones prominent. He had to be my age, but he had a worn air about him, an aura of weariness, ill health, or despair. He made no eye contact, his attention fixed on the task in front of him. Using a spatula, he was sliding pills, by fives, across the surface of a counting tray. With a rattle, he tumbled pills into a groove on the side, funneling them into an empty plastic vial, which he sealed with a child-proof cap. He affixed a label, set the vial aside, and started again, working with the same automatic grace as a dealer in Vegas. Thin wrists, long, slender fingers. I wondered if his hands would smell of PhisoDerm.

  "Sorry I can't interrupt what I'm doing," he said mildly. "What can I help you with?" His tone had a light mocking quality, as if something amused him that he might or might not reveal.

  "I take it your father called. How much did he tell you?"

  "That you're investigating the murder of Jean Timberlake at his request. I know, of course, that he was hired to represent Bailey Fowler. I don't know what you want with me."

  "You remember Jean?"

  "Yes."Yes."

  I had hoped for something a little more informative, but I was willing to press. "Can you tell me about your relationship with her?"

  His mouth curved up slightly. "My relationship?"

  "Somebody told me she used to hang out at the Baptist church. As I understand it, you were a classmate of hers and headed up the youth group back then. I thought maybe the two of you developed a friendship."

  "Jean didn't have friends. She had conquests."

  "Were you one?"

  A bemused smile. "No."

  What was the damn joke here? "Do you remember her coming to church?"

  "Oh yes, but it wasn't me she was interested in. I wish I could say it was. She was very particular, our Miss Timberlake."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning she'd never have tumbled for the likes of me."

  "Oh, really? Why is that?"

  He turned his face. The whole right side was disfigured, right eye missing, the lid welded shut by shiny pink and silver scar tissue that extended from his scalp to his jaw. His good eye was large and dark, filled with self-awareness. The missing eye created the illusion of a constant wink. I could see now that his right arm was also badly scarred. "What was it?"

  "Automobile accident when I was ten. The gas tank blew up. My mother died and I was left looking like this. It's better now. I've had surgery twice. Back then, the church was my salvation, literally. I was baptized when I was twelve, dedicating my life to Jesus. Who else would have me? Certainly not Jean Timberlake."

  "Were you interested in her?"

  "Sure, I was. I was seventeen years old and doomed to be a virgin for life. My bad luck. Good looks ranked high with her because she was so beautiful herself. After that came money, power... sex, of course. I thought about her incessantly. She was so completely venal."

  "But not with you?"

  He went back to his work, sliding pills into the trough. "Unfortunately not."

  "Who, then?"

  The lips curved up again in that nearly beatific smile. "Well, let's see now. How much trouble should I make?"

  I shrugged, watching him carefully. "Just tell me the truth. What else can you do?"

  "I could keep my mouth shut, which is what I've done to date."

  "Maybe it's time to speak up," I said.

  He was quiet for a moment.

  "Who was she involved with?"

  His smile finally disappeared. "The Right Reverend Haws. What a pal he turned out to be. He knew I lusted after her, so he counseled me in matters of purity and self-control. He never mentioned what he did with her himself."

  I stared at him. "Are you sure of that?"

  "She worked at the church, cleaning Sunday-school rooms. Wednesdays at four o'clock before choir practice started, he would pull his pants down around his knees and lie back across his desk while she worked on him. I used to watch from the vestry... Mrs. Haws, our dear June, suffers from a peculiar stigmata that originated just about that time. Resistant to treatment. I know because I fill the prescriptions, one right after the other. Amusing, don't you think?"

  A chill rippled down my back. The image was vivid, his tone matter-of-fact. "Who else is aware of this?"

  "No one, as far as I know."

  "You never mentioned it to anybody at the time?"

  "Nobody asked, and I've since left the church. It turned out not to be the kind of comfort I was hoping for."

  The San Luis county clerk's office is located in the annex, right next door to the County Courthouse on Monterey. It was hard to believe that only yesterday we were all convening for Bailey's arraignment. I found a parking place across the street, inserted coins in the meter, then headed past the big redwood and into the annex entrance. The corridor was lined with marble, a cold gray with darker streaks. The county clerk's office was on the first floor, through double doors. I set to work. Using Jean Timberlake's full name and the date of birth I'd pulled from her school records, I found the volume and page number listing her birth certificate. The records clerk looked up the original certificate and, for eleven dollars, made me a certified copy. I didn't much care if it was
certified or not. What interested me was the information it contained. Etta Jean Timberlake was born at 2:26 A.M. on June 3, 1949, 6 lbs., 8 oz., 19 inches long. Her mother was listed as gravida 1, para 1, fifteen years old and unemployed. Her father was "unknown." The attending physician was Joseph Dunne.

  I found a public phone and looked up his office. The number rang four times and then his answering service picked up. He was out on Thursdays, not due in again till Monday morning at ten. "Do you know how I can reach him?"

  "Dr. Corsell's on call. If you'll leave your name and number, we can have him get in touch."

  "What about the Hot Springs? Could Dr. Dunne be up there?"

  "Are you a patient of his?" I set the receiver back in the cradle and let myself out of the booth. Since I was already downtown, I debated briefly about stopping by the hospital to see Royce. Ann had said he was asking for me, but I didn't want to talk to him just yet. I drove back toward Floral Beach, taking one of the back roads, an undulating band of asphalt that wound past ranches, walled tract "estates," and new housing developments.

  There were very few cars in the spa's parking lot. The hotel couldn't be doing enough business to sustain the good doctor and his wife. I angled my VW in close to the main building, noting as I had before the dense chill in the air. The sulfur smell of spoiled eggs conjured up images of some befouled nest.

  This time I bypassed the spa entrance and went around to the front, up wide concrete stairs to the wraparound porch. A row of chaise longues lent the veranda the look of a ship's deck. Under a canopy of oaks, the ground sloped down gradually, leveling out then for a hundred yards until it met the road. On my left, in an area cleared of trees, I caught a glimpse of the deserted swimming pool in a flat oblong of sunlight. Two tennis courts occupied the only other portion of the property graced with sun. The surrounding fence was screened by shrubs, but the hollow pok... pok suggested that at least one court was in use.