Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(2)

“Oh, no, that wasn’t it. It was just that he took a dim view of
the whole overblown ritual and what he considered the funeral
industry’s exploitation of family grief. Said it’d do them good
now and then to have to deal with a hardheaded businessman
who was still alive. So he picked out the cheapest package they
had, beat them down to the rock-bottom price, and paid it and
gave me the receipt. I pointed out that since he’d probably live
to a hundred and ten, he was losing the interest on the money,
but he said with the chronic rate of inflation he wasn’t losing a
cent. And he was right, when you stop to think of it.”
“Yeah. And then the same man’s supposed to have gone
wandering around the streets of San Francisco like some kind of
nut with a suitcase full of money.”
Bolling spread his hands. “The same man.”
Romstead stood up. “Well, thanks for filling me in, Mr.
Bolling. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
“We’ll be in touch with you. Are you going back to San
Francisco right away?”


Man on a Leash — 22

“Tonight, probably, or early in the morning. I’d like to drive by
and see the place, if you’ll tell me how to find it.”
“We’ll lend you a key so you can get in.” They went out into
the anteroom, and Bolling took a tagged house key from a safe.
“Just be sure everything’s locked when you leave. Go straight
west here on Third Street. It’s on the right, about four miles, a
ranch-style house a hundred yards back from the road, white
brick and redwood with a red tile roof.”
He went back to the motel and got the car. He wanted to call
Mayo, but it was too early yet.
Man on a Leash — 23
3
He checked the odometer as he made the turn into Third. After
a few blocks of residential district and a close-in area of small
farms and orchards, the two-lane blacktop ran unfenced
through the sage with a low ridge to his right. There was very
little traffic until a big Continental suddenly materialized in his
rearview mirror as it overhauled him at high speed. It started to
pass but braked and swung back, tailgating right under his
bumper, as a pickup truck came toward them in the other lane.
The pickup went past; the Continental burst from behind him
with a shriek of rubber and went on. He caught a brief glimpse
of a blond woman behind the wheel as it flashed past. She was
scarcely a hundred yards ahead of him when she abruptly hit
the brakes again, forcing him to slow down to keep from
running up on her as she swung off the road onto a driveway
running up the hill between twin lines of white-painted fence.
He muttered with annoyance. And they talked about California
drivers killing themselves. There was a sprawling low-roofed
ranch house at the top of the hill, and beside the road a white
mailbox with the name Carmody. The mailbox was supported by
a serpentine column of welded links of chain.
A few hundred yards ahead the road curved to the right
around the end of the ridge, and he saw the place. There was a
cattle guard through the fence and a red gravel drive leading
back to the house, which was the only one in sight as the road
Man on a Leash — 24
swung left again and disappeared over a rise a quarter mile
away. He turned in.
He stopped in front of the attached two-car garage at the
right end of the house and got out. In the intense silence his
shoes made a harsh grating sound on the gravel. There was a
flagstone walk bordered by flower beds leading to the front
door, and in front of that a considerable area of some kind of
ground cover he thought was ivy. Beyond the far corner of the
house was a large cottonwood. The big swing-up door of the
garage was closed, and curtains were drawn over all the
windows in front. The red gravel drive continued on past the
side of the garage toward the rear. He walked back.
There was a wide expanse of flagstone terrace here, extending
between the two wings of the house and outward toward the
rear. Farther back were a redwood shed, which was probably
the pump house for the well, and then a white-painted corral
fence and a small barn. At the top of the sloping hillside to his
right he could see some trees and part of a patio wall which
must be the rear of the Carmody place.
He went back around in front and let himself in with the key
Bolling had given him. There was a small vestibule just inside,
floored with dark ceramic tile. The air was stale, as in a house
closed and unoccupied for a long time, and underlaid with the
ghosts of uncounted cigars. The back of the entry-way opened
into one end of the living room, while a door on the right led to
the kitchen, which was along the front of the house. Another
door on the left connected with a hallway along the bedroom
wing.
He crossed the kitchen and opened the door at the far end of
it. The garage had no windows, and the light was poor. He
flicked a switch, doubtful that anything would happen, but two
overhead lights came on. The pump, he thought; they’d had to
leave the power on because of the water system and the
automatic sprinklers. The car was a blue Mercedes. It bore a
heavy coating of powdery white dust, and the windshield was
smeared with spattered insects. It had been on a long trip at
high speed, all right, but he frowned, wondering how it had got
that dusty driving to San Francisco. Well, maybe it had been
that way before the trip.
There was no doubt Brubaker had already done it, but he
opened the left front door and checked the lubrication record
Man on a Leash — 25
stuck to the frame. “Jerry’s Shell Service, Coleville, Nevada,” it
said, and the date of the last service was July 4, 1972. Oil
change and lubrication at 13,073. He leaned in and read the
odometer. It stood at 13,937. That was more than 800 miles.
San Francisco was—call it 270, round trip 540. So the old man
had driven another 300 miles somewhere in that time between
July 4 and 14. Well, that could be anything—or nothing.
He switched off the lights and went back into the kitchen,
pushing the button in the doorknob to relock the door. There
was another entrance to the combined living room and dining
room from this end of the kitchen. It was a long room with a
deep shag carpet, and most of the opposite wall was covered by
drawn white drapes. At the right were a dining table and then a
teak buffet and a long sofa sitting back to back to divide it from
the living-room area. In the latter there were two large
armchairs and a coffee table and a white brick fireplace, but the
first and overall impression was of books, record albums, and hifi
equipment.

He started toward that end of the room, but as he passed the
end of the sofa, he saw a piece of luggage sitting on it. There
was a faintly jarring incongruity about it in this otherwise neat
and well-ordered room, and he stopped, for some reason
remembering his question to Brubaker on whether there had
been any sign of a fight. Why would somebody with a seaman’s
passion for a-place-for-everything-and-everything-m-its-place
leave his suitcase in the living room?
It was a small streamlined case of black fiber glass with no
identification on it of any kind. He flipped the latches. It was
unlocked. On top was a folded brown silk dressing gown. He
lifted it out of the way and poked through the contents beneath
it: pajamas, a rolled pair of socks, a laundered shirt in plastic, a
couple of ties, a pair of shorts, and a plastic bag containing a
soiled shirt and some more underwear. At the bottom were a
zippered leather toilet kit, a half-empty box of Upmann cigars,
and some books of paper matches variously advertising a San
Francisco restaurant, a Las Vegas hotel, and a savings and loan
association. He shrugged. There was nothing of interest here,
and Brubaker had no doubt already searched it anyway.
But why was it here? He idly lifted one of the aluminum tubes
from the cigar box, twisted off the cap, and slid the cigar out. It
was encased in a thin curl of wood veneer and then a tightly
rolled paper wrapper. He removed these and sniffed it. He’d
Man on a Leash — 26
smoked cigars for a brief period in his early twenties before
he’d given up smoking altogether, but even after all these years
he could still appreciate the aroma. He went out into the
kitchen, found a knife in one of the drawers, cut the tip off it,
and lighted it with one of the paper matches.
He took a deep, appraising puff, removed it from his mouth,
let the smoke out slowly, and gestured with judicial approval. If
you had to kill yourself, do it in the imperial manner; arrive at
the operating room for the thoracotomy on a stretcher of royal
purple borne by Nubian slaves. He picked up the silk robe to put
it back in the bag; something slithered out of its folds,
something golden and soft that might have been the pelt of
some unfortunate honey-colored animal or the scalp of a
Scandinavian settler. It was a hairpiece; a fall, he thought, was
the correct terminology.

He looked at it helplessly for a moment and then sighed. That
certainly didn’t raise any doubts it was the old man’s case; if
you looked at it in the light of history, it merely confirmed it. No
doubt his mother, unless she’d forsworn the practice early in
the game, could have suited up an average sorority by filtering
the old rooster’s bags for lipsticks, mascara pencils, pants, bras,
and earrings. While it sure as hell could help answer a great
many questions if you knew the identity of this molting San
Francisco roommate and where she was now, at the moment it
was of no help at all. He dropped the fall back in, folded the
robe over it, and closed the bag. He wondered if Brubaker had
spotted it and then decided he wouldn’t be much of a cop if he
hadn’t.
Big hi-fi speakers were mounted in the corners of the living
room opposite the sofa. They’d been housed in some dark wood
he thought was ebony. The components—turntable, FM tuner,
and amplifier—were mounted on teak shelves in the center of
the same wall, themselves encased in the same wood as the
speakers. Above and on both sides were shelves of operatic and
symphonic albums, several hundred of them at a conservative
guess. Most of the balance of the wall space was taken up with
books. Romstead walked over and ran his eye along the rows,
lost in admiration for the far-ranging and cultivated mind of a
man whose formal education had ended at the age of fourteen.
Though mostly in English, there were some in German and
French and his native Norwegian, and they ranged from novels
and biography to poetry and mathematics.
Man on a Leash — 27
His thoughts broke off suddenly at the sound of a car coming
up the drive, scattering gravel. He stepped out into the kitchen
and parted the curtains above the sink just as it slid to a stop
behind his and the driver got out and slammed the door. It was
the hell-for-leather Valkyrie in the Continental.
She was five eight, at least, a statuesque figure of a woman
clad in a peasant blouse and skirt in a flamboyant combination
of colors and snugged in at their juncture around a surprisingly
slender waist considering the amplitude of the bust above and
rounded hips below. The tanned legs were bare, and her shoes
appeared to consist principally of cork platforms an inch and a
half thick. She carried an oversized straw handbag in the crook
of her left arm and moved with a self-assured sexy swing as she
came toward the flagstone walk. Romstead noted the shade of
the rather carelessly swirled blond hair, and his eyes were
coldly speculative as he let the curtain fall back in place. In a
moment the doorbell chimed. He went out into the vestibule and
opened the door. She looked up at him; the blue eyes went wide,
and she gasped.
“Oh, no! Even the cigar!”
He removed it from his mouth. “I stole it,” he said. “It belongs
to the United States Customs.”
“Well, that figures, too.” She gave a flustered smile then that
didn’t quite match the eyes. “Excuse me, I don’t know what I’m
saying, you startled me so, the very image of him—I mean
younger, naturally—but when you just loomed up there at me
puffing on the same cigar—oh, heavens, I’m Paulette Carmody,
your next-door neighbor.”
“How do you do,” he said. “Won’t you come in?”
She preceded him into the living room and sat down on the
sofa right beside the suitcase with no apparent notice of it while
girlish chatter continued to pour forth like whipped cream from
a ruptured aerosol can.
“—just now heard you were in town, and then it struck me, I
mean, that car I’d passed on the road, it did have California
tags, and I was just positive I’d seen San Francisco on the
dealer’s license plate holder, and I said I’ll bet anything that
was Eric—”
She had crossed her legs,, revealing an interesting expanse of
golden thigh, and Romstead reflected that if the front of that
peasant blouse were cut any lower, she’d better never lean
Man on a Leash — 28

down or frothy conversation wouldn’t be the only thing to well
forth. He wondered about it. Maybe she was a harmless fluffbrain,
but he didn’t think so. She was forty to forty-five, and
she’d been around. There were intelligence and toughmindedness
in there somewhere. He listened with grave
courtesy while she said what an awful thing it had been and she
wanted him to know how sorry she was.
“Are you moving in?” she asked then.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I just borrowed a key to have a look.”
“Oh, I see.” She gestured. “I thought perhaps the suitcase was
yours.”
“No.” He shrugged. “I just assumed it was his. It was sitting
there when I came in.” Ma’am, there’s nobody here but us
chickens, and you know we wouldn’t have searched it. “I wish I
could offer you a drink or something.”
“You know, I could use a beer. He always kept some Tuborg in
the refrigerator.”
“I’ll see.” He went out into the kitchen. There were several
bottles of beer. He listened intently for the sound of the latches,
but her continued chatter would have covered it if there were
any. Somehow he’d have to get a peek into that straw handbag.
He found some glasses and a bottle opener and poured the beer.
He went back, and on the opposite side of the case from her
there was just a fraction of an inch of brown silk showing where
she hadn’t got all the robe back in. He handed her the glass and
sat down.
“Thank you, Eric.” She smiled. “As I was saying, he was the
most fascinating man I ever met—”
“You’d better run it through a laundromat before you wear it
again,” he said.
“What?” Just for a second the confusion showed. “I don’t
understand— Wear what?”
“The doily. It’s been shut up in a suitcase for two weeks with a
box of cigars. It’ll smell like the end of a four-day poker game.”
“Well!” The outrage was just about to become airborne when
it collapsed in a gurgle of amusement that gave way to laughter.
“Oh, crap! So you had found it.” She lifted the hairpiece from
her handbag, sniffed it, made a face, and dropped it back.
Man on a Leash — 29
“It was a stupid thing to try, anyway,” he said. “Brubaker’s
bound to have seen it when he searched the house, and he’ll
know you were the only one who had a chance to get it back.”
She shrugged, took a pack of filter cigarettes from the
handbag, and lighted one. “Brubaker could already make a
damned good guess whose it is, but he’s not about to.”
“Why not?”
“He’d have to be ready to prove it, for one thing, unless he
likes the odor of singed tail feathers. Also, he’d have to be
damned sure it had anything to do with what happened to your
father. Which it didn’t.”

“That remains to be seen. But he could sure as hell sweat
some answers out of you about what the old man was doing in
San Francisco and why he needed that money.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t in San Francisco with him.”
“Sure. You just loaned him the rug. He was going to audition
for a job at Finocchio’s—”
“Oh, I was with him, all right, but it was in Las Vegas.”
“What? I mean—when?”
“Before he went to San Francisco. We drove down on the
Fourth—”
“Hold it. You say you drove? Which car?”
“His.”
“How far is it?”
“Four hundred and five miles. We checked it.”
“Excuse me a minute.” He strode out to the garage and
opened the door of the Mercedes to check the figures again:
13,937 less 13,073 was—864. Twice 405 was 810. That left only
54 miles unaccounted for.
“What is it?” She had come out and was standing in the
kitchen doorway.
He indicated the service sticker. “He couldn’t have driven the
car to San Francisco. Or even to Reno to take a plane.” He
repeated the figures. “So how did he get there?”
“Maybe somebody else drove him to the airport.”
“You’d think whoever it was would have said so by this time.
Anyway, Brubaker checked the airlines; he had no reservation
any time in that period.”
Man on a Leash — 30
She frowned. “Well, we’d better tell him. I didn’t know about
this mileage bit.”
“I’ll do it. Maybe he won’t lean on me for the name.”
“Oh, hell, that’s all right. I mean, if it’s important to the
investigation. I’m not married, now. Or running for the school
board.”
“Was the car this dusty when you got back?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark. But I don’t see why it
would have been; we certainly didn’t drive on any country
roads, going or coming, and it wasn’t dusty like that when we
got there.”
He nodded. Then a good part of that 54 miles had been on a
dirt road. They went back to the living room, and he retrieved
his beer. “How long did you stay in Las Vegas?” he asked.
“That night and the next day. I think we started back around
eleven P.M. Anyway, he let me off at my place just a few
minutes before five A.M.” She sighed. “Forty hours with about
two hours’ sleep. God, I’m glad I didn’t have to try to keep up
with him when he was twenty-eight—”
“Wait a minute,” Romstead interrupted. “That’d have to be
five A.M., the sixth?”
“Hmmmm—yes, that’s right.”
Just two hours, he thought, before he’d called Winegaard with
that sell order. “Well, look, did he go in the bucket in Las
Vegas? I mean, on the cuff, for really big money?”
She smiled. “God, no. I doubt he lost twenty dollars. Gambling
—or that kind of gambling—bored him to death. He said
anybody with any respect for mathematics would have to be
insane to think he could beat a house percentage and a limit. He
just liked the shows, and the fact that nobody ever goes to bed—
to sleep, anyway.”
“Well, did he tell you he was going to San Francisco?”
“No.”
“That’s funny. No mention of it at all?”
“Not a word. If it’d been anybody else, it would have puzzled
hell out of me. I mean, if he was planning to take off again just
as soon as we got home, you’d think he’d have said something
about it, just to make conversation if nothing else, but that’s the
way he operated.”
Man on a Leash — 31
“But nobody knows for sure when he did leave.”
“Oh, it was within a few hours. Don’t ask me how in hell he
could do it, but he was gone again before noon.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s when I woke up. When I started to unpack my bags, I
noticed the fall was missing, so I called to see if I’d put it in his
by mistake. No answer. I tried again several times in the
afternoon and gave up.”
“Well, did he say anything about a business deal?”
“Absolutely nothing. But then he wouldn’t have; he never did.”
“You know Brubaker’s theory? That he was mixed up in the
drug traffic.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m glad you don’t believe it. But I guess we’re in the
minority.”
“Darling, I have no illusions at all about your old man; I’ve
known him longer than you think I have. He was arrogant,
pigheaded, and intolerant, he had the sex drive and the fidelity
of a stallion, and any woman who could stay married to him for
fifteen years the way your mother did could qualify for instant
sainthood; but he wasn’t a criminal.”
“You knew him before he moved here?”
“Umh-umh. He saved my life, a few years back.”
“How’s that?”
“It sounds a little kooky, out here in the sagebrush, but would
you believe a rescue at sea?” She glanced at her watch and
stood up. “But I’ve got to run. If you’ll stop by when you get
through here, I’ll hammer together a couple of bloody Marys
and a bite of lunch and tell you about it.”
“I’d love to. Thank you.”
He went out with her and down the walk. As she started to get
into the Continental, there was a sudden wild clatter of the
pipes in the cattle guard beyond them, and a dusty green
Porsche came snarling up the drive. It pulled off and stopped on
the other side of her. When the driver emerged and slammed
the door, there was more an impression he had simply removed
the car like an article of clothing and tossed it aside rather than
got out of it, and Romstead thought of the old joke about one of
Man on a Leash — 32
the Rams’ linemen: When he couldn’t find a place to park his
VW, he just carried it around with him.
While he wasn’t quite that big, he would have made an
ominous hunk of linebacker staring hungrily across the big butts
at a quarterback. He was pushing forty now, Romstead thought,
and a little gone to belly, but not too much, and the pale eyes
were mean as he padded around the rear of the Continental.
Something was riding him.
“I tried to call you,” he said to Paulette Carmody. “Carmelita
said you were down here. Figures.”

“Lew,” she began the introduction, “this is Eric—”
He cut her off. “I know who he is.” The eyes flicked
contemptuously across Romstead and dismissed him along with
the rest of the scenery. “Have you seen Jeri?”
“Mr. Bonner.” The tone was sweetly dangerous. “May I
present—” She broke off herself then. “Jeri? You mean she’s
here in town?”
“She came in last Tuesday. But when I woke up awhile ago,
she was gone. No note or anything.”
“I’ll see you up at the house,” Paulette said.
“Right.” Before he turned away, Bonner swept Romstead with
that flat stare again. “Going to take over the family business?”
“Shut up, Lew!” Paulette snapped. Romstead stared
thoughtfully after him but said nothing. The Porsche shot back
down the drive.

“I’m sorry,” Paulette said. “Usually he has at least as much
social grace as a goat, but he’s a little off his form today.”
Romstead shrugged. “Something’s chewing on him.”
“It’s his sister. I’m worried about her, too.”
“Who is he?”
“He used to work for my husband, and before that, he played
pro football, one of the Canadian teams. Owns a liquor store
now.” She got into the car. “See you in a little while.”
“Hadn’t I better skip it?” He nodded after the Porsche now
disappearing around the bend in the highway. “I don’t think
we’re going to grow on each other, and it’ll just be unpleasant
for you.”
“Oh, he’ll be gone before then.”
Man on a Leash — 33
She swung the big car and went back down the drive.
Romstead returned to the house. He rinsed out the two glasses
and dropped the beer bottles in the kitchen garbage can. There
was another room in this wing of the house, directly back of the
garage, its entrance through a doorway at the rear of the dining
area. He went in.
It was a library or den. There was another fireplace, a big
easy chair with a reading lamp, a desk, and a coffee table. On
the walls were more books, an aneroid barometer, some carved
African masks, a bolo, a pair of spears, and several abstract
paintings. A magazine rack held copies of Fortune, Time, and
Scientific American. The cigars were in a closet, each box
individually wrapped and sealed in plastic.
In the other wing the small bedroom at the front of the house
was apparently a guest room. The next door down the hall was a
bathroom. He glanced in briefly and went on. The master
bedroom was at the rear. He stepped in and stopped abruptly in
surprise. After the neatness of the rest of the house it was a
mess.
It was a big room containing a king-sized double bed with a
black headboard and matching night tables with big lamps on
each side. One of the lamps was lighted. The drapes, the same
dark green as the bedspread, were all closed. Off to his left, the
door to the bathroom was ajar, and he could see a light was on
in there too. Beyond the bathroom door was a large dresser, all
its drawers pulled open and their contents—shirts, socks,
underwear, handkerchiefs, boxes of cuff links, pajamas—thrown
out on the rug.
On top of it was a woman’s handbag, open and lying on its
side, a kitchen knife, a spoon, a hypodermic syringe, and a small
plastic bag containing some fraction of an ounce of a white
powder. He strode on in to look at the floor on the other side of
the bed. A yellow dress and a pair of scuffed and dusty pumps
with grotesque square heels lay on the rug beside it. Next to
them on a hassock were a slip, nylon pants, and a bra. There
was no sound at all from the bathroom. He felt the hair prickle
on the back of his neck as he went over and slowly pushed the
door open.
To his left was a stall shower and at the other end the
commode and washbasin. The oversized tub was directly
opposite, a slender leg draped over the side of it with the
Man on a Leash — 34
doubled knee of the other leg visible just beyond. He stepped on
in and looked down. She was lying on her back, her head under
the spigot and turned slightly to one side with the long dark-red
hair plastered across her face so that little of it was visible
except the chin and part of the mouth. There was about an inch
of water in the bottom of the tub, but no blood and no marks of
violence on her body.
The tub had apparently been full when she fell in, but owing
to an imperfectly fitting plug in the mechanical drain assembly,
the water had slowly leaked out over the hours, leaving her hair
to settle like seaweed across her face. There was no need to
touch her to verify it; she’d been dead from the time she fell in.
Had she struck her head on the spigot? There was no hair stuck
to it, no blood. The heroin, he thought, or whatever that stuff
was she’d shot herself with. But, hell, even somebody drugged
should be able to climb out of a bathtub before he drowned. He
was suddenly conscious of the passage of time and that he was
wasting it in disjointed and futile speculation when he’d better
be calling the police. He whirled and went out.
Man on a Leash — 35
4
There was a telephone on one of the night tables. He grabbed it
up, but it was dead; it had been disconnected. It was then he
noticed the shards of broken glass on the rug against the far
wall. He went over and parted the drapes above it. It was a
casement window. She’d knocked out enough glass and then cut
away part of the screen, probably with the kitchen knife, so she
could reach in and unlatch it and crank it open. There was a
wooden box on the ground beneath it, along with the remains of
the screen. It was at the side of the house, so he hadn’t seen it
when he was out back.
But why in the name of God had she broken in here to shoot
herself with that junk? He looked then at the scattered contents
of the dresser drawers, at the mute evidence of her frenzy, and
felt a little chill between his shoulder blades. But, damn it,
Brubaker had searched the house. For Christ’s sake, get going,
he told himself. He ran out to the car.
He was out on the highway before he remembered he hadn’t
even closed the front door of the house. Well, it didn’t matter.
He made a skidding turn off the road and shot up the driveway
toward the Carmody house, wondering now what the urgency
was, since the woman was dead and had been since last night or
maybe even the night before. Bonner’s Porsche was parked in
the circular blacktop drive under the big trees in front. He
pulled up behind it and hurried up the walk to punch the bell.
Man on a Leash — 36
He heard it chime inside, and in a moment the door was opened
by a pleasant dark-haired woman with liquid brown eyes.
“Could I use your phone?” he asked.
“I’ll ask,” she said. “What is your name?”
“Romstead.” At that moment Paulette appeared in the small
entry behind her. “Why, Eric, come on in.”
He stepped inside. “I’ve got to use your phone. Something’s
happened.”
Paulette smiled at the maid. “It’s all right, Carmelita, I’ll take
care of it.” Carmelita disappeared. Paulette led him through a
doorway at the left into a long living room with a picture
window and French doors at the back of it opening onto a
flagstone deck and a pool. Bonner was sitting at a table under a
big umbrella. He saw them and got up.

The phone was on a small desk across the room. He grabbed
the directory, looked inside the cover for the emergency
numbers, and dialed.
“What is it?” Paulette asked. “What happened?”
“There’s a woman in the house. Dead.”
“Oh, my God! Where?”
“Back bedroom. In the tub, drowned—”
“Sheriffs department. Orde,” a voice answered.
“Could I speak to Brubaker?”
“Just a minute.” There were a couple of clicks.
“Brubaker.”
“This is Eric Romstead,” he said. “I’m calling from Mrs.
Carmody’s. I’ve just come from my father’s place, and there’s a
dead woman in the bath—”
His arm was grabbed by a big paw, and he was whirled
around. It was Bonner, his face savage. “How old is she? What
did she look like?”
Romstead jerked his arm away. “I don’t know how old she is.”
He got the instrument back to his ear to hear the chief deputy
bark, “—the hell is going on there? Dead woman in whose
bathroom—?”
“Captain Romstead’s. She broke in a window.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes. Stay out of the house!”
Man on a Leash — 37
He dropped the phone back on the cradle. Bonner lashed out
at him, “God damn you, what did she look like?”
“I don’t know,” Romstead said. “Except she had red hair.”
The big man wheeled and ran for the doorway. “Brubaker said
to stay out,” Romstead called, but he was gone. The front door
slammed. Before he and Paulette could reach the walk outside,
there was a snarl from the Porsche’s engine and a shriek of
rubber, and he was tearing down the drive. They got into
Romstead’s car and ran down the hill onto the highway. By the
time they’d turned in through the cattle guard the Porsche had
already come to a stop, and Bonner was running in the front
door. He stopped behind the other car, but they did not get out.
When he looked around at her, there were tears in her eyes.
“Maybe it’s not,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “She was one of the most beautiful girls I ever
saw, and she had dark red hair.”
“Was she on drugs? There was a needle in there.”
“He was afraid she was.”
“Where did she live?”
“San Francisco.”
“She knew the old man?”
“Yes. How well, I don’t know, but she was with my husband
and me on that sailboat when he picked us up at sea. Could you
tell what happened to her? Did she fall in the tub and knock
herself out, or what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But my guess would be an overdose.”
He told her about the packet of heroin, or whatever it was, and
the way the dresser had been ransacked.
“I don’t get it,” she said, baffled. “I just don’t believe it—”
She broke off then as Bonner emerged from the house and
walked slowly toward his car. They got out, but there was no
need to ask.
“I’m so sorry, Lew,” Paulette said.
He made no reply. He leaned his arms on top of the Porsche
and stood, head lowered, staring at the ground. It wouldn’t do
any good, Romstead thought, and he might be just asking for it,
but he had to say something.
“I’m sorry, Bonner,” he said. “I’m sorry as hell about it.”
Man on a Leash — 38
Bonner spoke without looking around, his voice little more
than a ragged whisper. “Don’t bump me,” he said. “Don’t crowd
me at all.”
* * *
It was hot in the room, and there was a strained, tense silence
as they waited for Brubaker and the others to finish in the
bedroom. Romstead had drawn the drapes and opened the
sliding glass door to get a movement of air through it, but it
didn’t help much. Bonner stood with his back to the others,
looking out at the terrace. Paulette Carmody was smoking a
third cigarette. Romstead stared at the rows of books without
seeing them. The coroner had gone now, as well as a deputy
with a camera, the picture taking completed. Two men came out
through the vestibule carrying the sheeted figure on a stretcher.
Brubaker was behind them. He watched the body go out to the
waiting ambulance, his face bitter.
“Junk,” he said. “Goddamned junk.”
Bonner spoke without turning. “Nice she knew where to find
it.”
Romstead said nothing. What could he say? He asked himself.
There was no use trying to kid himself or anybody else the girl
had had the stuff with her. She hadn’t walked four miles in the
dark and illegally broken into a house to take a bath. There was
no use even conjecturing on how it had got here, but there it
was. The girl was dead because of it, and Bonner was running
very near the edge, so this might be one of the really great
opportunities of a lifetime to keep his mouth shut.
“It looks like just another overdose,” Brubaker said. “There
are no marks on her of any kind, she didn’t fall and hit her head,
and there’s no evidence anybody else was in the room. We’re
checking for prints as a matter of routine, but we’re pretty sure
what happened is that it was pure heroin instead of being cut
four or five to one, and she took too much. The autopsy and lab
tests should verify it.”
“But,” Paulette interrupted, “why was she in the tub?”
“Don’t forget she’d just walked four miles, probably running
half the time, and she was suffering withdrawal symptoms—a
couple of which are profuse sweating and screaming nerves.
And she’d just walked into an addict’s paradise—at least a
week’s supply of junk and a place nobody could find her and
Man on a Leash — 39
take it away from her. All she wanted was to get some of it into
a vein, relax in a hot tub while her nerves uncoiled, and then
float off for days. So just about the time she got the tub filled it
hit her. She was probably sitting on the side of it testing the
water, and she went over backward into it. She drowned,
technically, but she’d have been dead anyway.”
“If you want to ask me any questions,” Bonner said harshly,
“ask ‘em. I’d like to get out of this place.”
“You say she came back last week? How?”
“On the bus. She said she’d quit her job and wanted to stay a
few weeks while she made up her mind what to do. But she
worried me, the way she acted.”
“How?”
“She couldn’t seem to decide on anything. One minute she
was going to New York; then it was Los Angeles, and then
Miami. She was going to try modeling; then she was going to
study computer programming. I told her I’d lend her the money
for any kind of trade school she wanted or even for college if
she wanted to go back. She’d be all for it, and half an hour later
it was out; she was going to get a job on a cruise ship or hook
up with some couple sailing around the world. The only thing
she never mentioned was going back to San Francisco, which
was screwy, because she was always crazy about it.”

Brubaker frowned. “Well, did she see any of her friends?”
“No. She didn’t even want anybody to know she was here. She
was nervous as a cat, pacing all the time, but she wouldn’t
budge out of the house. I told her she could use the car any time
she wanted it and asked her why she didn’t drive out to
Paulette’s and visit and have a swim, but no, she didn’t want to
see anybody. She’d jump six feet when the phone rang, or the
doorbell—”
“And you didn’t know she was on the stuff? There were needle
tracks all over her arm.”
“God damn it, maybe I didn’t want to know! Anyway, she
always wore things with sleeves like so—” Bonner made a
slashing gesture with one hand across the other forearm.
“Three-quarters,” Paulette said.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Brubaker asked.
“About two o’clock this morning.”
Man on a Leash — 40
“When you got home from the store?”
“Yeah. Her bedroom door was closed; but I looked in, and she
was asleep.”
Brubaker shook his head. “Probably faking it so you’d cork off
and she could slip out. If she was desperate enough for a fix to
walk four miles and burglarize a house, she wasn’t sleeping,
believe me.”
“Well, why did she wait till I got home? I was at the store from
six P.M. on, and she could have taken off any time.”
“Maybe it still wasn’t unbearable then, and she was trying to
sweat it out. She probably had a little she’d brought from San
Francisco. Also, after two A.M. there’d be no traffic on the road
and she wouldn’t be seen. Did she ever mention Captain
Romstead?”
“No, not that I recall.”
“But she did know he was dead?”
“Yes. At least, I told her, but you could never be sure she was
paying any attention to what you were saying. It didn’t seem to
interest her.”
“Do you know whether she’d ever been in the house here?”
Bonner’s face was savage. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, obviously she knew the stuff was in here and right
where to find it.”
It was Paulette who answered. “No, I don’t think she was ever
in here. As far as I can recall, a few days last Christmas was the
only time she’s been home since Captain Romstead moved here,
and he was in San Francisco then.”

Brubaker nodded, his face thoughtful. “That still leaves the
question, then, of how she was so sure she’d find it here ... But I
guess that’s all, Lew, except I’m sorry as hell about it.”
Bonner started out. He turned in the doorway and asked
Paulette, “You want a lift home?”
“No, thanks, Lew. There’s something else I want to see Mr.
Brubaker about.” She got up, however, and went out with him.
“How old was she?” Romstead asked.
“Twenty-four or twenty-five. Jesus Christ, that’s what tears
you up.” Brubaker took a cigar from his pocket and started
removing cellophane. They heard the Porsche go down the
drive, and Paulette came back in.
Man on a Leash — 41
“Good God, not that smudge pot,” she said to Brubaker,
“unless you want us to yell police brutality. Here.” She flipped
up the top of the black case, dug in it for the box of cigars, and
held it out. He took it, completely deadpan, lifted out one of the
tubes, and pulled the cap off, watching as she started to close
the case again. Innocence itself, she flipped the robe out full
length, folded it carefully, and replaced it so she could bring the
lid down. He sighed.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”
She told him about the trip to Las Vegas. He went out to the
garage to verify the mileage on the Mercedes. When he came
back, he looked thoughtful, but he shook his head.
“So he just went to San Francisco with somebody else,” he
said. “Probably one of the outfit he was dealing with.”
“But where did he go on that dirt road?” Romstead asked.
“And why? If we could find the place—”
“You got any idea how many old ruts there are out there
through the sagebrush and alkali flats in a radius of twentyseven
miles? To windmills and feeding stations and old mining
claims? And if you did find it, I think what you’d see would be
the wheel tracks and tail-skid marks of a lightplane.”
“Why?”
“A lot of junk comes in from Mexico that way. And it could be
how your father got to San Francisco.”
Romstead tried once more, with the feeling he was only
butting his head against a wall. “Look—he got back here at five
A.M., and two hours later he was on the phone to his broker to
raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. There
hadn’t been a word about going to San Francisco or about a
business deal. I think something happened in those two hours
we don’t know about.”
“Sure. Because he hadn’t said anything,” Brubaker said
wearily. “You ever hear of anybody on his way to pick up a
shipment of junk that bought time on TV or took out an ad in the
paper? Anyway, what is there to argue about now? I’d say Jeri
Bonner had settled it once and for all.”
It would always come down to that, Romstead thought, and it
was unanswerable. Brubaker went on, “I’ll admit I goofed to
some extent; I searched the house, and I didn’t see it; but I was
looking for something the size of that suitcase, not a teabag.”
Man on a Leash — 42
“Incidentally,” Romstead asked, “where was the suitcase? Did
you find it right here?”
“No. It was in the trunk of the car. We brought it inside. They
must have been waiting for him when he drove in.”
“Since you keep begging me for my opinion—” Paulette said.
“All right. Go ahead.”
“Your whole theory’s horseshit. I don’t have the faintest idea
who killed Captain Romstead, or why, but he wasn’t a drug
peddler. And if Jeri found that heroin in this house, I say he
didn’t know it was here.”
* * *
“Why?” Romstead asked. He had brought Paulette home, and
they sat in the air-conditioned living room of her house with the
bloody Marys she had promised. It was too hot now to sit out by
the pool, and neither was interested in lunch with the death of
Jeri Bonner weighing on their spirits. The Romstead house was
locked up again, and Brubaker had said he would notify Sam
Bolling so the broken window could be replaced. Romstead had
given him the key to return. “I don’t think he knew the stuff was
there either,” he went on, “but what makes you so sure of it?”
“Because I knew him. Better than anybody here.” She set her
drink on the coffee table between them and lit a cigarette. “I’ve
heard his views on the subject, and like all the rest of his views,
they were pretty strong. He had nothing but contempt for
people who used drugs of any kind—except, of course, for his
drugs: Havana cigars, brandy, and vintage champagne—and an
even worse loathing for pushers and smugglers who dealt in any
of it, even marijuana. On the Fairisle, his last command, he
arrested one of his own crew for trying to smuggle some heroin
in on it. I mean, right out of the eighteenth century, locked him
up like Bligh throwing somebody in the brig, and turned him
over to the federal agents when they docked. High-handed, oh,
brother—he could have been fired for it or picketed by every
maritime union in the country, except that the man was guilty,
he had the heroin to prove it, and the guy was convicted and
sent to prison. That’s no wild sea yarn, either; I knew the nut
myself. He was out in orbit, a dingaling with a hundred and sixty
IQ. But I was going to tell you how we met, almost five years
ago.”
Man on a Leash — 43
She hesitated a moment, rattling the ice in her drink; then she
looked up with bubbling amusement. “This is a kooky
experience—I mean, telling a son about your affair with his
father. I feel like a dirty old woman or as if I were contributing
to the delinquency of a minor.”
“It’s all right,” Romstead said. “I’m precocious for thirty-six.”
“Good. I felt fairly certain you might be ... Anyway, this
happened in 1967. Steve—my husband —was a businessman,
mostly real estate and land development, here in Nevada and in
Southern California; but his health was beginning to give him
trouble, and he was semi-retired. We lived about half the time at
our place in La Jolla and did quite a bit of sailing. Steve had
been an ocean-racing nut since he was a young man, but he’d
given that up when his health began to fail. He sold the Ericson
thirty-nine and bought a thirty-six-foot cruising sloop a couple
could handle, and we planned to sail it to Honolulu, just the two
of us.
“Then Lew Bonner asked us if we’d take Jeri, Lew was
working for Steve then, running a lumberyard and building
supply here in Coleville, and we both knew Jeri, of course, and
liked her. She was a real sweet kid, but becoming something of
a hippie, and it bothered Lew a little. Most jocks are as square
as Smokey the Bear, anyway—oops. The good old Carmody tact,
but then I don’t think of you as a jock, somehow.”
Romstead shrugged. “Neither did the National League.”
“Their parents were dead, and Lew had looked after her since
she was sixteen. She’d been going to school at San Diego State
but dropped out and was hanging out with a bunch of kids in
Del Mar. She liked sailing and thought the trip would be groovy,
or whatever the word was in 1967, so she came along.
“Everything went along fine until about a thousand miles out
of Honolulu when we ran into a real bitch of a dustup. I don’t
think it ever reached gale force, actually, but it kept freshening
while we were running before it, and before we knew it, we
were carrying too much sail and had already carried it too
damned long. We broached to, got knocked down, lost the mast
and sails overboard, and shipped enough water to soak
everything below. But the worst of it was Steve. He was badly
hurt. He’d got thrown across the deck and landed on something
that caught him just below the rib cage. He was in awful pain
and could hardly move. The radio was drowned, so we couldn’t
Man on a Leash — 44
call for help, and Jeri and I alone couldn’t cope with that mess
over the side. We made Steve as comfortable as we could with
the pain-killers from the medicine chest, but we were absolutely
helpless.
“We were near the Los Angeles-Honolulu steamer lane, and
late that afternoon we sighted a ship on the horizon and fired off
some distress flares, but either it didn’t see us or didn’t give a
damn, because it went on. And just about sunset, Steve died. I
still wake up with a cold sweat, dreaming about that night. Jeri
and I didn’t think we’d ever see dawn again, and before the
night was over, we were so beaten we didn’t really care a great
deal whether we did or not. But when daylight did come there
was another ship in sight, way off on the horizon. All we could
do was fire off the last of our flares and pray. Then we saw it
had changed course and was coming. It was the Fairisle.
“Your father sent over a boat and took us off. An autopsy was
performed on Steve when we reached Honolulu, and the doctors
said he’d died of internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. I’d
had it with oceans for all time, or thought I had. After I got back
home and began to recover a little, I wrote the usual letters
thanking him and the boat crew and also to the line praising him
for his seamanship and for the royal way we’d been treated
after we were picked up.
“That would have been the end of it, normally, except that
about a year later I was in San Francisco on a shopping jag and
walked out of the City of Paris one afternoon and bumped right
into him. He invited me to have a drink. I don’t know what he
did three days later, when the tugs pulled the Fairisle away
from the pier and she started down the bay, but I went back to
the Mark and collapsed; I think I slept the clock around twice.
Your father was one hell of a charming and fascinating man, and
he had a way with women, as perhaps you’ve heard.
“When he came back from that trip, I was waiting for him in
San Francisco, flew to Los Angeles to see him there, and then
flew to Honolulu. The following trip I sailed with him, to Hong
Kong, Kobe, and Manila—the Fairisle has accommodations for
twelve passengers, you know. In the next three years I made
three more trips to the Orient with him, and when he retired, I
was partly responsible for his settling here. He wouldn’t even
consider La Jolla.
Man on a Leash — 45