Double

The club. It kept cropping up in people’s conversations. And Wolf had said that, according to Lauterbach’s file, Elaine had spent time at a club in Borrego Springs. What club? Maybe Nyland could enlighten me.

Unlike the day before, Nyland’s campaign headquarters bustled with activity. Men and women — most of them around college age — rushed about, waving papers and calling to one another. Several sat at a long table stuffing envelopes, and another group were making phone calls. I recalled from my reading of the local papers that Nyland was running in a special election, to fill the seat of a council member who had died. Balloting was next week, hence this last-minute flurry.

A floppy-haired young man tried to recruit me as a volunteer the instant I came in the door. I said no thanks, and asked to see Nyland. The young man replied that Admiral Nyland was in conference with his campaign manager, and absolutely no one was to interrupt them.

I showed him the photostat of my license. Evidently he didn’t know the difference between it and police identification, because he looked perplexed and rushed away, muttering something like “not again.”

Of course the police would have seen the same information in Jim Lauterbach’s office as Wolf had; they would have talked to Nyland by now. I was covering the same ground as the officials, but, as I’d told Mrs. Deveer in relation to her husband’s papers, maybe something that Nyland said would have significance to me that it hadn’t to the police. I sat down on a folding chair to wait.

A red, white, and blue banner hanging across one entire wall trumpeted what appeared to be Nyland’s campaign slogan: HONESTY, INTEGRITY, NO NONSENSE. The words were laid out as an acrostic on the candidate’s full name, Henry Innis Nyland. I looked around at all the fresh-faced, clean-cut volunteers and remembered reading that the campaign had shaped up into a battle between liberals and the Moral Majority. Even if I hadn’t read about Nyland and known he was a retired admiral, I would have known which camp this was.

In a couple of minutes, the floppy-haired young man came back, followed by an older man in his fifties. He had iron-gray hair, a stiff military bearing, and was dressed in expensive-looking golf clothes. Normally he would have been handsome, but right now his bushy brows were drawn together, giving his face a downward cast, and his mustache twitched with irritation.

“Is this the one?” he asked the young man, gesturing at me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you’re dismissed. I’ll handle it.”

The young man scurried away, and his companion came up to me, folded his arms across his chest, and planted his feet widely apart. “I’m Henry Nyland,” he said. “What’s the meaning of this interruption?”

“I’d like to talk to you about Elaine Picard.”

It wasn’t the answer he’d expected. He glanced around, as if to see if anyone was within earshot.

“And Jim Lauterbach,” I added.

“I’ve already spoken to another policeman. And a man from the sheriff’s department.”

I hesitated. It was the perfect opening; I could let him go on thinking I was with one of the law enforcement agencies. But this was a powerful man, doubtless with friends in high places. I couldn’t risk a charge of impersonating an officer.

“Admiral Nyland, could we go someplace more private?”

Again he glanced around. “Very well. This way.” He led me through a maze of desks and tables to a cubicle at the back of the room, one of several that had probably been used by salesmen for closing their deals when this was an automobile showroom. Once inside, he seated himself behind a cluttered desk and motioned me to a chair on the other side of it.

I sat and got out my identification. “I’m not with the police or sheriff’s department, Admiral Nyland,” I said. “I’m a private investigator, a friend of Elaine’s.”

He took the I.D. and looked at it. When he handed it back to me, his irritation had faded, and his gray eyes were puzzled. “I don’t understand. Elaine died in an accident. According to my sources, there’s no question of that.”

“Perhaps not officially, but I was Elaine’s friend, Admiral. And I think she was murdered.”

He started, and the color faded from his face, leaving it with a grayish clayey look. “Why?”

“There are a number of reasons.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No one would want to kill Elaine. She was lovely, good...” But a worried expression had come into his eyes, as if he too were thinking of possible reasons. After a moment, he said, “Are you conducting your own investigation into her death?”

“A personal one.”

“I see.” He stared down at the desktop, drumming his thick fingers on a sheet of computer printout. “I can appreciate why you’re doing this — I cared for Elaine a great deal. If anything, she was the love of my life. And if someone killed her, I want to see him punished. But I don’t know what I can tell you.”

“You may be able to shed light on some of the things that are puzzling me. When did you last see Elaine?”