J is for JUDGMENT Page 6

  “Well, it’s possible, I guess, but I’m not really sure what kind of reception he’d get. They used to be close, but when Wendell pulled his little vanishing act, Eckert was the one left holding the bag.”

  “I heard he went to jail.”

  “Yes, ma’am, he did. Convicted on half a dozen counts of fraud and grand theft. Then the investors went after him in a class action suit, claiming fraud, breach of contract, and who knows what else. Not that it did any good. By then he’d filed for bankruptcy, so there wasn’t much to collect.”

  “How much time did he serve?”

  “Eighteen months, but that’s not gonna stop a sleazy operator like him. Somebody was telling me they ran into him not too long ago. I forget now where it was, but he’s still in town.”

  “I’ll have to see if I can scare him up.”

  “Shouldn’t be that hard,” he said. “Meanwhile, what are the chances of you coming by and working with our police artist on a composite? We just hired a kid named Rupert Valbusa. He’s a whiz at this stuff.”

  “Sure. I could do that,” I said. Mentally I was calculating the worrisome issue of Wendell’s likeness suddenly being plastered everywhere. “California Fidelity doesn’t want him scared off.”

  “I understand, and believe me, we don’t either. I know a lot of people with a vested interest in seeing this guy picked up,” Whiteside said. “You have any recent pictures of him?”

  “Just some black-and-white photographs Mac Voorhies provided, but those are six and seven years old. What about you? There’s not a mug shot, is there?”

  “No, but we had a photograph that went out when Jaffe first disappeared. We can probably adjust that one upward for age. What kind of cosmetic work has he had done, could you say?”

  “I’d guess chin implant and cheeks, and he’s maybe had his nose refined. From the pictures I was given, it looks like his nose used to be broader across the bridge. Also, his hair is snowy white now, and he’s bulked up to some extent. Aside from that, he looks pretty fit. Nobody I’d want to tangle with.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll give you Rupert’s number and you two can work out your own arrangements. He doesn’t come in on a regular basis, just when we need him to work something up. Soon as he’s done, we can issue a ‘be on the lookout.’ I can contact Perdido County Sheriff’s Department and in the meantime I’ll call the local FBI offices. They may want to distribute a bulletin of their own.”

  “I’m assuming there’s still an arrest warrant outstanding.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I ran a check before I picked up the telephone. The feds may want him, too. We’ll just have to see what kind of luck we have.” He gave me Rupert Valbusa’s telephone number, then added, “The sooner we can get this in circulation, the better.”

  “Got it. Thanks.” I tried Rupert’s number and got his machine. I left him my name, my home telephone number, and a message, encompassing the bare bones of the case. I suggested an early morning meeting if his schedule permitted and asked him to get back to me to confirm. I hauled out the telephone book and checked the white pages under Eckert. There were eleven of them listed, along with two variations: one Eckhardt and one Eckhart, which I didn’t think were correct. I tried all thirteen numbers but couldn’t stir up a “Carl” among them.

  I dialed Information in Perdido/Olvidado. There was only one Eckert listed and that was under the name Frances, whose tone was one of polite caution when I told her I was looking for Carl.

  “There’s no one here by that name,” she said.

  I could feel myself cock an ear, like a dog picking up a signal pitched beyond human hearing. She hadn’t said she didn’t know him. “Are you related to Carl Eckert, by any chance?”

  There was a moment of silence. “He’s my ex-husband. May I ask what this is about?”

  “Sure. My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator up here in Santa Teresa, and I’m trying to track down some of Wendell Jaffe’s old friends.”

  “Wendell?” she said. “I thought he was dead.”

  “Looks like he’s not. In fact, I’ve been trying to contact old friends and acquaintances on the off chance he might be getting in touch. Is Carl still in the area?”

  “Actually, he’s up in Santa Teresa, living on a boat.”

  “Really,” I said. “And you’re divorced?”

  “You bet. I divorced Carl four years ago when he started doing time. I had absolutely no intention of being married to a jailbird.”

  “I can’t say I blame you.”

  “I’d have done it if anybody blamed me or not. What a smooth-talking skunk he turned out to be. You find him, you can tell him I said so. There’s no love lost between us.”

  “Do you happen to have a work number for him?”

  “Of course. I give his number to everyone, especially his creditors. It gives me great pleasure. Now, you’ll have to catch him during the day,” she went on to caution me. “There’s no telephone on the boat, but he’s usually there by six every evening. Most nights he has supper at the yacht club and then hangs around until midnight.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Oh, he’s very well known. Anyone could point him out. You just go on over there and ask for him by name. You can’t miss him.”

  “What about the name of the boat and the slip number in case he’s not at the club?”

  She gave me both the marina and the slip numbers. “The boat’s called the Captain Stanley Lord. It was Wendell’s,” she said.

  “Really. How did Carl end up with it?”

  “I’ll let him tell you that,” she said, and hung up. I did a few odds and ends and then decided to pack it in for the day. I’d felt crummy to begin with, and the antihistamine I’d taken earlier was knocking me for a loop. Since there wasn’t much else going on, I thought I might as well go home. I hiked the two blocks to my car and headed over to State Street, where I hung a left. My apartment is tucked away on a shady side street just a block off the beach. I found a parking place close by, locked the VW, and let myself in the front gate.

  The space I now occupy was formerly a single-car garage, converted into a studio, complete with a sleeping loft and spiral staircase. I have a galley-style kitchen, a living room that serves as guest quarters on occasion, one bathroom down and another one up, all of this fitting together with amazing efficiency. My landlord redesigned the floor plan after an unfortunate explosion two Christmases before, and he’d infused the “day-core” with a nautical motif. There was a lot of brass and teak, windows shaped like portholes, built-ins everywhere. The apartment has the feel of an adult-size playh9use, which is fine with me, as I’m a kid at heart.

  When I rounded the corner, moving toward the backyard, I saw that Henry’s back door was open. I crossed the flagstone patio linking my studio apartment to the main house on the property. I tapped on the screen, peering into his kitchen, which looked empty.

  “Henry? Are you there?”

  He must have been in cooking mode. I could smell the sautéed onions and garlic that Henry seems to use as the basis for anything he makes. It was a good indication that his mood had improved. In the months since his brother William moved in, Henry had ceased cooking altogether, in part because William was so finicky about what he ate. In the most self-deprecating manner imaginable, William would declare that a dish had a little bit too much salt for his hypertension or just that wee touch of fat he wasn’t permitted after his gallbladder removal. Between his fussy bowels and his temperamental stomach, he couldn’t handle anything with too much acid or spice. Then there were his allergies, his lactose intolerance, and his heart, his hiatal hernia, his occasional incontinence, and his tendency to pass kidney stones. Henry had taken to making sandwiches for himself, leaving William on his own.

  William began to take his meals at the neighborhood tavern his beloved Rosie had owned and operated for years. Rosie, while paying lip service to William’s maladies, insisted he eat according to her personal gastro
medical dictates. She feels a glass of sherry will remedy any known debilitation. God only knew what her spicy Hungarian cooking had done to his digestive system.

  “Henry?”

  Henry said, “Yo,” his voice emanating from the bedroom. I heard footsteps and he came around the corner, his face wreathed in smiles when he caught sight of me. “Well, Kinsey. You’re home again. Come on in. I’ll be right there.”

  He disappeared. I let myself into the kitchen. He’d pulled his big soup kettle from the cupboard. There was a bunch of celery in the dish rack, two large cans of crushed tomatoes on the counter, a package of frozen corn and one of black-eyed peas. “I’m making vegetable soup,” he called out. “You can join me for supper.”

  I raised my voice so he could hear me room to room. “I’ll say ‘yes,’ but I gotta warn you you’re risking a cold. I came back with a real doozie. What are you doing back there?”

  Henry reappeared, bringing a stack of fresh hand towels into the kitchen with him. “Folding laundry,” he said. He tucked the towels in a drawer, keeping one out for current use. He stopped and squinted at me. “What’s that on your elbow?”

  I checked the skin on my forearm. The self-tanning lotion had darkened decidedly. My elbow now looked as if it had been swabbed with Betadine in preparation for surgery. “That’s my Tan in a Can. You know I hate to sunbathe. It’ll wash off in another week. At least, I’m assuming it will. What’s been happening around here? You seem cheerier than I’ve seen you in months.”

  “Sit down, sit down. You want a cup of tea?”

  I took a seat on his rocker. “This is fine,” I said. “I’ll only stay a minute. I took some medication for my nose and I can barely stand up. I’m thinking to crawl back in bed for the day.”

  Henry took out a can opener and began to crank open the two tins of crushed tomatoes, which he dumped into the kettle. “You’ll never guess what happened. William’s moved in with Rosie.”

  “You mean for good?”

  “I hope. I finally understood that what he did with his life was simply none of my business. I kept thinking I had to save him. It was all so inappropriate. It’s a bad match, but so what? Let him discover that for himself. In the meantime, it was making me crazy to have him underfoot. All that talk about sickness and death, depression and palpitations and his diet. My God. Let him ‘share’ that with her. Let them bore each other senseless.”

  “Sounds like the perfect attitude. When did he move out?”

  “Over the weekend. I helped him pack. I even pitched in and moved some of his boxes. It’s been heaven ever since.” He flashed me a smile as he picked up the celery and pulled the stalks apart. He rinsed three ribs, then took a knife from the rack and began to dice them. “Go on and hit the sack. You look exhausted. Pop back over here at six and I’ll feed you some soup.”

  “I may take a rain check,” I said. “With luck, I’ll sleep straight through.”

  I let myself into my apartment and staggered up to the loft, where I pulled my shoes off and buried myself in my quilt.

  My phone rang thirty minutes later and I dragged myself up from the drug-induced depths of sleep. It was Rupert Valbusa. He’d had a brief chat with Lieutenant Whiteside, who’d impressed upon him the importance of getting the composite done. He was going out of town for the next five days, but if I was free, he’d be in his studio for another hour. Inwardly I groaned, but I really had no choice. I made a note of the address, which was not far from me in an industrial/commercial area just off the beach. A former Bekins warehouse on lower Anaconda Street had been converted to a complex of artists’ studios available for lease. I put my shoes on and did what I could to make myself presentable. I grabbed my car keys, a jacket, and the photographs of Wendell.

  Outside, the air was damp with the breezes coming off the ocean. As I drove along Cabana Boulevard, I could see patches of pale blue where the cloud cover was breaking up. By late afternoon we might have an hour of sunshine. I parked on a narrow tree-lined side street, locked my VW, and walked around the warehouse to the north side, entering the building through a door flanked by two impressive metal sculptures. The interior corridors had been painted stark white, hung with framed works of the artists currently in residence. The ceiling in the hallway rose three stories to the roof, where a series of slanted windows admitted broad shafts of daylight. Valbusa was on the top floor. I climbed the three flights of metal stairs at the far end of the hallway, my footsteps ringing dully against the painted cinder block walls. When I reached the landing at the top, I could hear the muffled strains of country music. I knocked on Valbusa’s door and the radio was doused.

  Rupert Valbusa was Hispanic, stocky, and muscular. I put him in his mid-thirties, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. His eyes were dark under the unruly ruffle of his brows. His dark hair was thick, cut full around his face. We introduced ourselves, shaking hands at the door before I followed him in. When he turned to walk away I could see a narrow braid extending halfway down his back. He wore a white T-shirt, cutoffs, and a pair of tire-soled leather sandals. His legs were nicely shaped, the contours defined by dark, silky hairs.

  His studio was vast and chilly, with a concrete floor and wide counters circling the perimeter. The air smelled of damp clay, and most surfaces seemed to be coated in the chalky residue of dried porcelain. Big blocks of malleable clay had been swaddled in plastic. He had a kick wheel and a power wheel, two kilns, and countless shelves lined with ceramic bowls that had been fired but not yet glazed. At the end of one counter he had a dry copier, an answering machine, and a light box for slides. There were also stacks of dog-eared sketchbooks, jars of drawing pens and pencils, charcoals, and watercolor brushes. Three easels had been set up, bearing abstract oil paintings in various stages of completion.

  “Is there anything you don’t do?”

  “Not all of this is mine. I’ve taken on a couple of students, though I don’t much like to teach. Some of this is their work. You do any art yourself?”

  “I’m afraid not, but I envy those who do.” He moved to the nearest counter, where he picked up a manila envelope with a photograph inside. “Lieutenant Whiteside sent this over for you. Looks like he included an address for the guy’s wife.” He handed me a slip of paper, which I tucked in my pocket.

  “Thanks. That’s great. It’ll save me some time.”

  “This the dude who interests you?” Rupert passed me the picture. I glanced at the grainy eight-by-eleven black-and-white head shot. “That’s him. His name is Wendell Jaffe. I’ve got a few more here just to give you some other views.” I pulled out the collection of shots I’d been using for ill purposes and watched as Rupert sorted through them with care, arranging them according to some system of his own. “Good-looking fellow. What’d he do?”

  “He and his partner were into real estate development, some of which was legitimate until the bottom dropped. In the end, they ripped off their investors in what’s commonly known as a Ponzi scheme, promising big returns when they were really just paying off the old investors with the new investors’ money. Jaffe must have realized the end was in sight. He disappeared off his boat in the course of a fishing trip and was never heard from again. Until now, of course. His partner served some jail time, but he’s out again.”

  “This is ringing a bell. I think the Dispatch ran an article about Jaffe a couple of years ago.”

  “Probably. It’s one of those big unsolved mysteries that capture the public imagination. An alleged suicide, but there’s been a lot of speculation since.”

  Rupert studied the pictures. I could see his eyes trace the contours of Wendell’s face, hairline, the distance between his eyes. He brought the picture up close to his face, angling it toward the window where the light was streaming in. “How tall ?”

  “About six four. Weight maybe two thirty. He’s in his late fifties, but he’s in good shape. I saw him in a bathing suit.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “Not bad.”

  Rupert moved over to the
copier and ran off two copies of the photograph on what looked like rough-textured beige watercolor paper. He dragged a stool over to the window. “Grab a seat,” he said, nodding to-ward a cluster of unpainted wooden stools.

  I hauled one over to the window and perched beside him, watching while he sorted through his drawing pens and pulled four from the jar. He leaned forward and opened a drawer, taking out a box of Prisma color pencils and a box of pastel chalks. He had an air of distraction, and the questions he began to ask me seemed almost ritualistic, his way of preparing for the task at hand. He secured a copy of the photograph to a board with a clip at the top. “Let’s start at the top. How’s his hair these days?”

  “White. It used to be medium brown. It’s thinner at the temples than in the photograph.”

  Rupert picked up the white pencil and masked out the dark hair. The immediate effect was to make Wendell seem twenty years older and very tanned.

  I found myself smiling. “Pretty good,” I said. “I think he’s had his nose trimmed down. Here at the bridge and maybe some shaved along here.” Where my finger touched the nubby paper, Rupert ‘would shade and contour with fine strokes of chalk or pencil, both of which he wielded with an air of confidence. The nose on the paper became narrow and aristocratic.

  Rupert began to chat idly while he worked. “It’s always amazed me how many variations can be wrung from the basic components of the human face. Given that most of us come equipped with the standard-issue features…one nose, one mouth, two eyes, two ears. We not only look entirely different from one another, but we can usually identify each other on sight. Do portraits like I do and you really begin to appreciate the subtleties of the process.” Rupert’s unhesitating pencil strokes were adding years and weight transforming a six-year-old image to its current-day counterpart. He paused, indicating the eye socket. “What about the fold, in here? Has he had his eyes done?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Droopiness? Bags? Five years would etch in a few lines, I should think.”