Double

Karyn Sugarman answered my call on the first ring. Her husky voice held undertones of weariness, and at first she didn’t remember who I was. When I reminded her of our meeting in Elaine’s office and asked if I might see her today, she hesitated. “I’ll be at my office,” she said finally. “I keep Sunday hours for a few patients whose schedules won’t permit appointments during the week. I suppose you could come there.” She directed me to an address in the Old Town area and said she could see me in fifteen minutes.

I got in my car and started off, my mind only half on driving. Mostly I was puzzling over what Wolf had told me about the little boy and his mother who had disappeared from the Casa del Rey. It sounded suspicious, all right, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything so major that Elaine would have been killed over it. And yet...

I was certain Wolf would get nothing more about the Clarks from either Beddoes or Ibarcena. Their guard was up now. And even after he reported what he knew to Knowles, I doubted the lieutenant would find out anything, since the people at the hotel would have had a good bit of time to prepare for him. Perhaps, however, I could learn something. I’d have to try to see both Beddoes and his assistant manager today. And I wanted to track down Henry Nyland. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to June Paxton, either, or to see Rich Woodall again.

And where, I asked myself, do you get any time for yourself? I’d planned this next week after the convention as a vacation. I was supposed to relax and enjoy my family and try to talk my brother John into looking at his custody situation realistically. Hell, at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t even have time for dinner with that lie-detector salesman. In fact, I’d even forgotten to call Don in San Francisco, to see how he was doing in my absence.

The address Karyn Sugarman had given me was a two-story Spanish-style structure built around a little courtyard. The entrance was guarded by wrought-iron gates and, looking in, I could see a tiled fountain, benches, and lots of dwarf citrus trees in pots. The names on the directory were mainly doctors and dentists, and each had a doorbell beside it. I rang Sugarman’s and received an answering buzz that tripped the lock on the gates.

I stepped into the courtyard and looked around, unsure where to go. Sugarman’s voice called out from the second-story gallery, near the rear. She was standing at the railing, dressed casually in white pants and a brown tunic top. “The stairway’s over here,” she said. “Come on up.”

I climbed up there and followed her into a light, airy reception room. The walls, carpets, and upholstery were white; the wood was blond; and in startling contrast to the room’s modernity, the walls were covered with old-fashioned black-and-white photographs.

Sugarman’s walk seemed a little hurried and nervous. Once inside, she turned to me and said, “I’m on the phone right now — a client with a crisis — but it shouldn’t be much longer. Make yourself at home, and I’ll be with you as soon as possible.” She went through a door into an adjoining room, shutting it behind her.

Since one of my interests is photography, I went over and took a look at the pictures. Some were quite old sepia prints that apparently had been touched up and could have been of members of Sugarman’s family — women in long dresses and bonnets, men sporting goatees and watch chains. Farther on were pictures that might have been taken in the twenties — people at the beach in heavy, dark bathing costumes, the women even wearing shoes and stockings. Finally there were photos that recalled the fifties and early sixties. One was a group of girls, all attired in the same type of white blouse and dark skirt, all in variations of the same bouffant hairdo, all smiling, all with their hands clasped in their laps. A gold crest and Greek letters were emblazoned in the lower right-hand corner of the print, and I translated them as Mu Omega Sigma.

So Sugarman and Elaine had been members of the same college sorority, I thought, remembering the paddle in Elaine’s “crazy closet.” That would make it a long friendship indeed, spanning over twenty years. I examined the picture more closely and found Sugarman in the third row, her blond hair poufed and teased and smoothed to make her a washed-out Jackie Kennedy. I didn’t see anyone who looked like Elaine, but she would have been several years older than these girls. Perhaps she’d been Sugarman’s big sister, or an alumna adviser.

“All’s under control.” Sugarman’s voice came from behind me. She sounded less tense now, and I guessed the crisis she’d mentioned hadn’t been too serious.

I turned and said, “I was admiring your pictures. Are you a photographer yourself?”

She shook her head. “I don’t have time for hobbies. But then you know how that goes, since you knew Elaine.”

“I didn’t know her all that well.” I followed Sugarman into an office that was furnished in the same style as the waiting room.