This Present Darkness (36 page)

“And she was scared,” said Weed. “She’s in trouble. She said I was supposed to get in touch with you guys and tell you what I knew, and she said she had some information on Pat.”

Bernice was longing to know. “Did she say what kind of information?”

“No, nothing. But she wants to get ahold of you.”

“Well, why doesn’t she just call?”

That question helped Weed to remember something. “Oh, yeah, she thinks your phone might be bugged.”

Marshall and Bernice were silent for a moment. That was a comment they didn’t know how seriously to take.

Weed added, “I guess she called me to be a go-between, to tip you guys off.”

Marshall ventured, “Like you’re the only one she has left to trust?”

Weed only shrugged.

Bernice asked, “Well, what do you know about Pat? Did Susan ever tell you anything while you were still going together?”

One of Weed’s most painful undertakings was trying to remember things. “Uh … she and Pat were good friends, for a while anyway. But you know, Susan left us all out in the cold when she started following after that Kaseph bunch. She kinda pushed me off, and Pat too. They didn’t get along very well after that, and Susan kept saying how Pat was … heh … just like me, trying to get in the way, not enlightened, dragging her feet.”

Marshall thought of the question and didn’t wait for Bernice to ask it. “So, would you say that this Kaseph bunch may have regarded Pat as an enemy?”

“Man …” Weed remembered some more. “She did stick her neck out, I mean, she got in the way. Her and Susan had a real fight once about the stuff Susan was getting into. Pat didn’t trust Kaseph and kept telling Susan she was brainwashed.”

Weed’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, I talked to Pat once. We were sitting at a game, and we talked about what Susan was getting into and how Kaseph was controlling her, and Pat was really shook up about it, just like I was. I guess Pat and Susan really had some fights about it until Susan finally moved out of the dorm and ran off with Kaseph. Boy, she dropped out of her classes and everything.”

“So did Pat make any enemies, I mean
real
enemies?”

Weed kept digging up new things that had been buried under the years and the alcohol. “Uh, yeah, maybe she did. It was after Susan ran off with this Kaseph guy. Pat told me she was going to check the whole thing out once and for all, and I think she may have gone to see that Professor Langstrat a few times. A while later I ran into her again. She was sitting in a cafeteria on campus, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days, and I asked her how she was, and she would hardly even talk to me. I asked how her investigation was going, you know, her checking out Kaseph and Langstrat and stuff, and she said she’d quit doing anything about that, said it was really no big deal. I thought that was a little weird, she’d been so torn up about it before. I asked her, ‘Hey, are they coming after you now?’ and she wouldn’t talk about it,
she said I wouldn’t understand. Then she said something about some instructor, some guy that was helping her out and that she was doing okay, and I got the message that she didn’t want me butting in, so I just sort of left her there.”

“Did her behavior seem strange to you?” Bernice asked. “Did she seem like herself?”

“No way. Hey, if she hadn’t been so against that whole Kaseph and Langstrat bunch, I woulda thought she was one of them; she had the same kind of dopey, lost-in-space look all over her.”

“When? Just when was it that you saw her like that?”

Weed knew, but hated to say it. “Just a little while before they found her dead.”

“Did she seem afraid? Did she give you any indication of any enemies, anything like that?”

Weed grimaced, trying to remember. “She wouldn’t talk to me. But I saw her once after that and tried to ask her about Susan, and she acted like I was some kind of mugger or something … she hollered, ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone!’ and tried to pull away and then she saw it was me, and she looked all around like somebody was following her …”

“Who? Did she say who?”

Weed looked at the ceiling. “Oh … what was that guy’s name?”

Bernice was leaning forward, hanging on his words. “There
was
somebody?”

“Thomas, some guy named Thomas.”

“Thomas! Did she ever say his last name?”

“Don’t remember any last name. I never met the guy, never saw him, but he sure must have owned her. She acted like he was following her all around, talking to her, maybe threatening her, I don’t know. She seemed pretty afraid of him.”

“Thomas,” Bernice whispered. She said to Weed, “Is there anything else about this Thomas? Anything at all?”

“I never saw him … she didn’t say who he was or where she would meet him. But it was kinda strange. One minute she’d be talking like he was the greatest thing that ever happened to her, and then the next minute she’d be hiding out and saying he was following her.”

Bernice got up and headed for the door. “I think we might have a
college roster somewhere.” She began rummaging around in the desks and shelves of the front office.

Weed fell silent. He looked tired.

Marshall reassured him, “You’re doing fine, Kevin. Hey, it’s been a while.”

“Uh … I don’t know if this is important—”

“Consider everything important.”

“Well, this stuff about Pat having some new instructor … I think some of the Kaseph bunch, maybe it was Susan, they had instructors.”

“But I thought Pat didn’t want anything to do with that group.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

Marshall shifted directions. “So where did you fit into all these goings-on, besides your relationship with Susan?”

“Hey, nowhere! I didn’t want anything to do with it, man.”

“Were you going to the school?”

“Yeah, taking accounting. Man, when all this started coming down and then Pat killed herself, hey, I got out of there fast. I didn’t want to be next, you know?” He looked at the floor. “My life’s been nothing but hell ever since.”

“You working?”

“Yeah, logging crew for Gorst Brothers up above Baker.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think I’d ever see Susan again.”

Marshall turned to his desk and searched for some paper. “Well, we’ll have to keep in touch. Let me have your number and address, at work and at home.”

Weed gave Marshall the information. “And if I’m not there, you can probably find me at The Evergreen Tavern in Baker.”

“Okay, listen, if you hear anything else from Susan you let us know, day or night.” He gave Weed his card with his home phone number added.

Bernice came back in with the roster.

“Marshall, you have a call. I think it’s urgent,” she said. Then she turned to Weed. “Kevin, let’s you and I step outside and go through this roster. Maybe we’ll find that guy’s full name.”

Weed stepped outside with Bernice as Marshall picked up the phone.

“Hogan,” he said.

“Hogan, this is Ted Harmel.”

Marshall scrambled for a pencil. “Hi, Ted. Thank you for calling.”

“So you talked to Eldon—”

“And Eldon talked to you?”

Harmel sighed and said, “You’re in trouble, Hogan. I’ll give you one interview. Got a pencil handy?”

“I’m ready. Shoot.”

Bernice had just said good-bye to Weed and seen him to the door when Marshall emerged from his office with a scribbled-on piece of paper in his hand.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Zilch. There are no Thomases of any kind, first or last name.”

“It’s still a lead though.”

“Who was that on the phone?”

Marshall produced the scrap of paper. “Thank God for small favors. That was Ted Harmel.” Bernice brightened considerably as Marshall explained, “He wants to see me tomorrow, and here are the directions. It must be way back in the sticks. The guy is still paranoid as all get-out; I’m surprised he didn’t make me wear a disguise or something.”

“He wouldn’t say anything about all this?”

“No, not over the phone. It has to be just the two of us, in private.”

Marshall leaned over just a little and said, “He’s another one who thinks our phone might be bugged.”

“So how do we make sure it isn’t?”

“Make that one of your assignments. Now here’s the rest of them.” Bernice grabbed her notepad off her desk and made her list as Marshall spoke. “Check the New York phone book—”

“I did. No A. Kaseph listed.”

“Scratch that one. Next: Check around with the local real estate offices. If Weed’s right about Kaseph looking for property around here, some of those people might know something. And I’d look around in the commercial listings as well.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And while you’re at it, find out what you can about whoever owns Joe’s Market.”

“It’s not Joe?”

“No. The place used to belong to Joe and Angelina Carlucci, c-a-r-l-u-c-c-i.
I want to know where they went and who owns the store now. See if you can get some straight answers.”

“And you were going to check with your friend at the
Times
…”

“Yeah, Lemley.” Marshall added a note to his piece of paper.

“That it?”

“That’s it for now. In the meantime, let’s get back to running this paper.”

All the time, all through their meeting with Weed and their following conversation, Carmen sat at her desk busily working and acting like she hadn’t heard a word.

THE MORNING HAD
been tight, with the next issue’s deadline galloping up on them, but by noon the paste-up was ready to go to the printer and the office had a chance to resume its normal pace.

Marshall put in a call to Lemley, his old comrade-in-arms at the
New York Times.
Lemley got all the information Marshall had on this strange character Kaseph, saying he’d get right on it. Marshall hung up the phone with one hand and grabbed his suit jacket with the other; his next stop was his afternoon appointment with the reclusive Ted Harmel.

Bernice drove off for her appointed stops. She parked her red Toyota in the parking lot of what used to be Joe’s Market and was now called the Ashton Mercantile, and went into the store. About a half hour later, she returned to her car and drove away. It had been a wasted trip: no one knew anything, they only worked there, the manager wasn’t in, and they had no idea when he would be back. Some had never heard of Joe Carlucci, some had but didn’t know whatever happened to him. The assistant manager finally asked her to quit bothering all the employees on company time. So much for getting any straight answers.

Now it was off to the realty offices.

Johnson-Smythe Realty occupied an old house remodeled into an office on the edge of the business part of town; the house still had a very charming front yard, with a redwood tree standing tall in the middle of it and a quaint, log cabin mailbox out front. It was warm and welcoming inside, and quiet. Two desks occupied what used to be the
living room; both were empty at the time. On the walls hung bulletin boards with snapshots of house after house, with cards below each photograph describing the building, the property, the view, nearness to shopping and so forth, and—last but not least—the price. Boy, what people would pay these days for a house!

At a third desk in what used to be the dining room a young lady stood and smiled at Bernice.

“Hi, can I help you?” she asked.

Bernice smiled back, introduced herself, and asked, “I need to ask a question that might seem a little odd, but here goes. Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

“Have you done any business with anyone by the name of A. Kaseph in the last year or so?”

“How do you spell that?”

Bernice spelled it for her, then explained. “You see, I’m trying to get in touch with him. It’s just a personal matter. I was wondering if you might have a phone number or address or anything.”

The young lady looked at the name she had just written on a piece of paper and said, “Well, I’m new here, so I sure don’t know, but let me ask Rosemary.”

“In the meantime, might I have a look through your microfiche?”

“Sure. You know how to run it?”

“Yes.”

The lady went toward the back of the house where Rosemary—apparently the boss lady—had her office in a back bedroom. Bernice could hear Rosemary talking on the phone. Getting an answer from her might take a while.

Bernice went to the microfiche reader. Where to start? She looked at a map of Ashton and vicinity on the wall and found the location of Joe’s Market. The hundreds of little celluloid plates were arranged by Section, Township, Quarters, and the street numbers. Bernice had to do a lot of looking back and forth to get all the numbers off the map. Finally she thought she might have found the right microfiche to put into the viewer.

“Excuse me,” came a voice. It was Rosemary, marching down the hall toward her with a grim expression on her face. “Ms. Krueger, I’m afraid the microfiche is only for the use of our staff. If there’s something
you’d like me to find for you …”

Bernice kept cool and tried to keep things flowing. “Sure, I’m sorry. I was trying to find out the new owner of Joe’s Market.”