The Cover Girl Killer

CHAPTER TWO-1

CHAPTER TWOLindsey and Marvia Plum took Jamie and Hakeem to an old Tahoe restaurant for breakfast. It wasn’t glitzy and it wasn’t full of yuppies in the latest L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer ski-wear but the food was good and the portions were generous.

The boys were not pleased at missing their weekend in the snow, but Lindsey and Plum promised them another shot at it as soon as they could get away. Normally Lindsey was the one who worked Monday through Friday. Since he’d moved from International Surety’s Walnut Creek office to SPUDS, he pretty well set his own days and hours.

Marvia Plum was the one who had to fight for the shifts she wanted. A homicide sergeant on the Berkeley Police Department had to be available when the department needed her. Murderers didn’t knock off after six o’clock in the evening. In fact, they got busy after the sun went down, and peaked just about when most citizens were watching the evening news or crawling into their beds.

But this time it was Lindsey who had got the call, and this time it was Lindsey who clicked his heels, saluted smartly and did as he was commanded: Find the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.

He dropped Marvia and both youngsters at her house. She would take care of them, get Hakeem White back to his parents and take her own son to her parents’ house. They would spend the evening there. Marvia spent more time with her mother since her father’s death. Not that Gloria Plum needed it. She had always been an island unto herself. But somehow, it seemed to Lindsey, Marvia drew strength from being in the house where she was raised, and where her father had lived almost until the end.

Lindsey left them at Oxford Street in Berkeley. Marvia would drive Jamie and Hakeem to Bonita Street in her classic Mustang. Once the boys talked things over on the ride back from Tahoe, they decided that their adventure would make better telling than an ordinary weekend excursion would have. They’d seen the helicopter crash—it almost crashed on them. They’d helped rescue the pilot, Hakeem had been on the national news and Jamie Wilkerson was a real network cameraman.

Lindsey’s computer search had turned up hundreds of books with “Death” in their titles, from Death About Face by Frank Kane, 1948, to Death-Wish Green by Frances Crane, 1960. Lots of Death in’s too. There was Death in the Devil’s Acre by Anne Perry, 1985, and there was Death in the Diving Pool by Carol Carnac, 1940. That was where Death in the Ditch belonged, right between Death in the Devil’s Acre and Death in the Diving Pool. But it wasn’t there.

Maybe it wasn’t a book at all. Maybe it was—what? What would have a cover with a girl on it, with a title like Death in the Ditch, other than a book? A magazine? A record album? A pack of trading cards? They were making some pretty weird trading cards these days, everything from famous gangsters to friendly dictators. They weren’t restricted to the athletes and movie stars that Lindsey remembered collecting in grammar school, but Vansittart’s life policy had been issued in 1951. If the designated beneficiary hadn’t been changed in later years, that would narrow the field.

He’d have to check on that, but first, after dropping Marvia and the youngsters, he headed for Walnut Creek. He pulled his rebuilt Volvo 544 into the driveway and parked beside the silver-gray Oldsmobile that had been parked there increasingly often these past few months.

Inside the house he found Mother’s new friend, Gordon Sloane, sitting in the living room with his shoes off and his feet on the ottoman. A CD was playing ii it sounded like Mozart—and Sloane held a nearly full martini glass by its stem. He looked up, clearly surprised, when Lindsey came in.

“I thought you were up in Tahoe. Your mother said—”

“That was the plan. Had to come back.”

“I hope nothing’s wrong.”

Before Lindsey could answer, Mother came into the room. She wore an apron over a pair of jeans and a warm blouse. Her hair had gone to gray—every time Lindsey noticed a change in her it was a shock to him—and she carried a wooden salad bowl and a pair of hinged tongs. She looked like everybody’s perfect mom—by Norman Rockwell out of June Cleaver. Lindsey embraced her and planted a kiss on her cheek. She smelled like flowers and cooking.

Lindsey said, “I guess you two were planning an evening at home. I can make myself scarce.”

Mother smiled. “We wouldn’t throw you out of your own home. There’s plenty of food.”

Lindsey looked past her, at Sloane. Sloane nodded. Lindsey said, “Okay. I’d better go wash up. I’m feeling kind of stale.”

At dinner he told them about the events at Tahoe, about Jamie Wilkerson’s debut as a network cameraman, and about Desmond Richelieu’s telephone call.

Sloane said, “We caught part of the report on TV. It was in this morning’s papers, too. They’re going nuts over Vansittart. I didn’t realize you were involved.”

Lindsey reached for a slab of pot roast. “Only by accident. Of course Jamie’s beside himself.”

“He’s going to be Hobart’s son,” Mother offered. “When he marries Marvia. You know Marvia, Gordon. Such a lovely girl. No, woman, we don’t say girl any more.”

Lindsey couldn’t suppress his grin. “That’s all right, Mother. It’s a small enough matter.”

“Well, I try to do what’s right. Don’t I, Gordon?”

Sloane agreed. Mother tried to do what was right. And she did amazingly well. After decades in a twilight world, not knowing whether Ike was President or Ronald Reagan, forgetting half the time that her husband had died in the Korean War and forgetting half the time that that war had been over for decades and that her son was a grown man approaching middle age, Mother had come around.

Something had penetrated the fog. Something like a miracle.

After dinner was over and the dishes cleaned and put away—six hands made quick work—Mother turned on the TV. It was getting late, they had lingered over coffee, and the evening news was just coming on.

There was a follow-up to the Vansittart story. The Coast Guard had dropped a plumb line, trying to find the helicopter. Nothing came up. The lake was too deep at that point, the line couldn’t even reach the bottom.

There was a canned biography of Vansittart. The news people had turned up his high school and college yearbook photos, old newspaper shots and black-and-white footage of the millionaire. Toasting the mayor of San Francisco at some civic dinner, shaking hands with the governor of California at another.

Vansittart must have been quite a fellow. Apparently he’d been ambassador to several postage-stamp nations in the 1960s and 70s, obviously the reward for generous campaign donations to the Presidents of that era.

And newsreel footage of Vansittart escorting movie stars to premieres and rolling dice at the gaming tables in Reno and Las Vegas. Yes, quite a fellow. The reporter in Reno mentioned that Vansittart had been traveling by chartered helicopter to a planned seventy-fifth birthday party—his own—when the ’copter crashed and sank into Lake Tahoe, taking Vansittart with it.

In the morning the Oldsmobile was still in the driveway. Lindsey got into his blue round-back Volvo and headed downtown to the International Surety office. Now that he was assigned to SPUDS he could have moved out, rented space for himself, hired a secretary. But he preferred to work out of the office where he’d worked for so many years.

Not that the atmosphere was perfect. Elmer Mueller, Lindsey’s successor as area manager, was a loathsome bigot, and Mueller’s hand-picked office manager, Kari Fielding, was as vicious as her boss. But in a strange way Lindsey enjoyed seeing them once in a while. It was the way you enjoy having a really miserable day once in a while, he told himself: it makes you appreciate the rest of your life.

But it was Saturday and he was alone in the office. Agent claims would be filed directly through KlameNet. Anything else could wait until Monday morning.

Lindsey used the office computer to log onto the mainframe at National. He printed out the text of Vansittart’s policy, checked the history file, verified that the peculiar description of the beneficiary had been there from the outset. The only changes over the years had come about when the alternate bennie had changed its name. Originally the Chicago Artists and Models Mutual Aid Society, it had become the National Welfare League for Graphic Creators, then the World Fund for Indigent Artists.

Each time the organization changed its name there was a new address and a new set of officers. Well, in forty-plus years, that wasn’t especially surprising. The current address was 101 California Street, San Francisco. Lindsey knew the building well, a gleaming, modern high-rise full of high-profile law firms and corporate offices. A disgruntled ex-client of one of the law firms had burst in with an arsenal of assault weapons one day and reduced the California Bar Association membership sizably. Since then there was better security in the building.

The current President of WFIA was one Roger St. John Cooke. Vice President was Cynthia Cooke. The file showed that the Cookes had been running the fund for a decade. It sounded like a nice little mom ’n’ pop non-profit foundation. The world was full of do-gooders, including those who did well by doing good.

Lindsey made a note to expect some input from the Cookes. (Brother and sister? Husband and wife? Mother and son?) There would be a polite phone call, then a lawyer letter. How handy, they probably wouldn’t even get wet if they had to visit their attorneys on a rainy San Francisco day. But Lindsey wasn’t going to worry too much about the contingent bennies today.

His job was.… He must have been listening to too much music lately. His mind was setting his task to music. A silent orchestra played inside his head as he sang along.

Was the tune Happy Birthday to You…?

Find the girl on the book, Find the girl on the book, It’s Death in the Di-itch.…

Or maybe it was Beethoven’s Fifth.…

Locate the girl! Locate the girl! Locatethegirllocatethe-girllocatethegirl.…

He found himself giggling into the monitor screen. Maybe this job was making him crazy. He shut down the computer, left the office, grabbed a snack downstairs and walked to his car. Traffic in the Caldecott Tunnel was light.

It was a gray day in Berkeley. Lindsey was dressed casually, a heavy sweater over a woolen shirt. He parked in a city garage just off Telegraph Avenue and headed for Cody’s, the town’s premiere bookstore. A clerk at the center desk offered to help him. She had short hair and a spectacularly beautiful face. She wore a Dan Quayle for President tee shirt. Lindsey didn’t know what to make of that, so he didn’t comment.

He asked if she knew of a book called Death in the Ditch. No author, no publisher, but it was probably first issued in 1951 or so. The clerk smiled. “I doubt that it’s still in print. Unless it was a classic of some kind.”

“I don’t know what kind of book it was, except there was a girl on the cover.”

The clerk raised her eyebrows. “A little girl, you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

“Or a woman. A grown-up woman.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

The clerk turned away. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll look in Books in Print. On the CD-ROM.” She punched some keys on a computer. Mysterious boxes and symbols raced across the monitor screen. Finally it settled down. The clerk turned back to Lindsey. “Sorry. Doesn’t show anything like that. Death in Venice? Death in the Bathroom? Death in a Warm, Dark Place?”

Lindsey shook his head.

The clerk nodded. “I didn’t think so. Tell you what.” Lindsey had one hand on the counter, and the clerk put hers on top of his. “Maybe you could try Moe’s next door. First floor, they have a lot of used paperbacks. That might be your best bet.”