The Bite Of The Wolf

A simple case of tracking down a run away daughter... but is it.

They say that hard work never killed anyone but I wasn't taking any chances. So, I sat in my office with my feet up and my eyes closed, deep in thought; I was thinking about the state of the World and the state of my bank account, but as neither of those were in a good shape I decided to think about something much more pleasant; a relationship I once had with a female contortionist known as Flexible Freda.

I was waiting for a prospective client who had called earlier and had arranged to come at eleven o'clock. There was still twenty minutes to go and I couldn't be bothered to do anything in the meantime.

Dead on the hour I heard my outer office door open and through the frosted glass I saw the silhouette of a woman. She sat in one of the visitors chairs . I opened the inner door.

“Mrs Barbini?”

“Yes. Mister Thrust?”

I nodded.

“There was no one in the office so I thought I'd wait.”

“My secretary has just popped out,” I said.

She'd popped out three years ago when I found the business didn't make enough money to pay for her and I hadn't seen her since.

“Please come through.”

Mrs Barbini was a large middle-aged olive-skinned women who looked liked she'd lived of a diet of too much pasta for too long. She had more chins than is strictly necessary. She had jet black hair; too black to be natural. I offered her a seat and it creaked in protest as she sat down. The more you weigh the more difficult you are to kidnap. I judged that Mrs Barbini was very safe from being abducted.

“What can I do for you?”

“Detective Oles recommended you.”

Good old Barney. He'd often push business my way and in return I'd buy him beer, listen to his boring war stories and lose to him at cards. I still find it difficult to believe his story about how they were repaid after liberating a brothel in Northern France.

“How can I help you?”

“My daughter has run away from home.”

“I would have thought that was a job for the police.”

“They said as she had left a note and was too old that they couldn't do anything.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-five.”

“I think she is old enough as well.”

“You don't understand. She is very immature. She's always lived at home and doesn't have any friends.”

“What about at school?”

“She was home schooled, we thought it best. And she doesn't understand about men.”

Mrs Barbini put a lot of extra meaning into her last statement.

“What about your husband?”

“I'm a widow. My husband died ten years ago. He always had a bad stomach and it finally caught up with him.”

“So it was just you and your daughter living at home?”

Mrs Barbini nodded.

“Can I see the note?”

She rummaged in her voluminous purse and pass me across a single sheet of paper. The writing was flowery and the author hadn't paid much attention to following the lines. It was short so I'll reproduce it here:

Mom,

I have decided that it is time that I left home. I'm going to live with Bruce. He has a big garden and a large greenhouse and says I can grow my plants there. Don't worry about me. I'll write in a few weeks and tell you how I'm getting on.

Claudia

“I thought you said she didn't have any friends, so who's Bruce?”

“I've no idea.”

“So what do you expect me to do?”

“I want you to find her and bring her home.”

“If she doesn't want to come then I can't make he. She's twenty-five and quite capable of making her own decisions”

“But she isn't. She's just a child.”

“The law would say differently,” I said.

Mrs Barbini sat dejectedly looking at the floor. While she was looking down, her multiple chins merges into her chest. I took pity on her.

“I'll tell you what I'll do. If I can find her I'll make sure she is okay and see whether she'll talk to you.”

“Alright.”

So I took down the details, told Mrs Barbini my rates, asked her for a picture of her daughter and said I'd visit her house the next day to look for clues. She seemed very grateful that I was doing something but I had precious little to go on. My visitors chair gave a sigh of relief as she stood up and looked at me accusingly.

When I was alone again I poured myself Jack Daniels in preparation for lunch, as I never like to eat on an empty stomach, and sat looking at the picture of Claudia Barbini. She had a chubby face with a blank stare that I could read nothing into. She was clean and tidy with her dark hair tied back in a ponytail.

The Barbini household was a twenty minute drive away in an older suburb of Los Angeles where the houses had been built on larger plots. I rang the doorbell at the appointed hour and it was immediately opened by Mrs Barbini. She invited me in to her lounge and offered me a coffee which I accepted; black no sugar.

The inside of the house was clean and tidy. The furnishings were in good condition. But the house didn't looked lived-in. It looked like someone had cleaned and tidied it and then just left it; homely it was not.

“Do you think you can find my daughter?” asked Mrs Barbini anxiously when she returned with my coffee in very delicate cup. So delicate that I had no choice but to raise my little finger while drinking from it; very refined.

“All I know is that she has run off with someone called Bruce. So unless I can find something here then that is going to be difficult.” I should have said impossible but my optimism gets the better of me sometimes.

“Oh.”

“Apart from her bedroom are there any other places around the house where she might keep personal things?”

“There's a greenhouse in the yard. She spends a lot of time there. She grows plant and sometimes makes herbal medicines from them. I get indigestion a lot and she makes a potion that is very good for that and another that relaxes you so you can get to sleep easier.”

“I'll start with the bedroom.”

Claudia's bedroom was large and looked out onto the back yard. I stood in the middle of the room and Mrs Barbini hovered by the door waiting for me to do something.

“This is going to take a while,” I said and ushered Mrs Barbini out of the room and closed the door behind her.

I looked around. There were pictures of fairies, unicorns and other mythical creatures around all the walls and one of an alien with a bulbous head and large eyes. I wouldn't like to try to go to sleep with that looking at me. The drapes and the bed covering were adorned with large orange and red flowers. On a dressing table were pens and pencils. On the bedside table, next to the lamp, were a couple of furry soft toys. On the bed was a large, threadbare teddy bear. It had one eye and I didn't like the way it was looking at me.

This was the bedroom of a ten year old girl and not a twenty-five year old women. There was no makeup, no pictures of the latest pop or movie idol for her to wet her knickers over and no showbiz magazines. Maybe Mrs Barbini wasn't exaggerating when she said her daughter was immature.

I was always jealous of the movie detective who can find a clue in a few minutes that immediately leads them to their quarry. In real life a search can take a long time and is often fruitless.

I started with the large wardrobe. The clothes that were hanging there were alright for gardening or just lazing around the house but there were no “going out” clothes and no party frocks. There were a number of empty hangers suggesting she had taken some clothes with her. I checked all the pockets of those that remained and came up with nothing more than fluff. In the bottom was a pile of magazines which all proved to be about gardening or the supernatural, and a number of pairs of shoes, all flat, practical and well-worn.

The content of the dressing table and a chest of drawers told a similar story; no lingerie just practical knickers and tops. No bras. No nylons. Mrs Barbini was right that her daughter knew nothing about men and she was unlikely to find out with clothes like these. I was beginning to lose heart.

I had more luck when I looked under the bed. Inside a box I found a pile of papers. There were scribblings in the same flowery hand I'd seen on Claudia's note. Mostly they were notes about plants or how to make herbal medicines from those plants. However I found a bundle of letters tied together with string.

The first letter started “Dear Claudia” and was signed “Bruce”. If I was the excitable type then I would have shouted “yippee” at this point but instead I just had a sudden craving for a beer; excitement often makes me thirsty.

The letter from Bruce appeared to be a reply to some questions Claudia had asked about an article in the magazine Californian Herbalist. It told me the various medicinal usages that camomile could be put to. What it didn't tell me was Bruce's address or last name, which would have been much more useful. However the letter was dated and a number of the magazines in the wardrobe were Californian Herbalist.

It took me a while to find the issue of Californian Herbalist to match the date of the letter. There was an article written by Bruce The Herbalist, but again no last name or address. There were several glossy pictures of Bruce's gardens and one of him; a middle aged man with not enough hair and too much stomach. A catch for the ladies, he was not. There was an invitation to send Bruce questions at a PO Box in Santa Barbara which is what Claudia had obviously done.

I spent the next two hours reading all the letters in date order and matching them with articles in other issues of the same magazine. I noticed a gradual change in Bruce's replies. They started being just factual responses to Claudia's question then they got more chatty and personal. At one point Bruce said “he'd never had much luck with the ladies”. In the last few letters I saw questions like “do you like adult pastimes” and “are you game”. I didn't have Claudia's original letters of course but I got the impression that she didn't understand Bruce's not too subtle suggestions. The final letter was dated about two weeks ago and had arrangements for Bruce to pick up Claudia so that they could live together. He said he'd bring his truck to take away her plants. The only other information I found in the letters about the location of Bruce's house was where he said it was “in the foothills a couple of miles north of Santa Barbara”.

I tore the picture of Bruce from one of a magazines and several pictures of Bruce's house and gardens before putting everything back. I put the room back roughly as I'd found it and with one last look at the evil one-eyed teddy-bear, I left.

Mrs Barbini was hovering outside.

“Did you find anything?”

“I'll have a look in the greenhouse first and then I'll let you know.”

It was a large greenhouse with long tables containing pots and trays of plants. All were labelled, some with names I recognised like agave, sage, lavender and rosemary, and some I didn't recognise like yarrow and monkshood. There were plenty of gaps with the outline of pots and trays, the ghosts of plants that had recently been removed. The greenhouse gave me no further clues to the whereabouts of Claudia Barbini; I hadn't thought it would.

“Did you find anything?” Mrs Barbini asked me again as soon as I re-entered the house.

“She's in Santa Barbara,” I said.

“Do you know the address?”

“No. But I'll drive up this evening and try to find her tomorrow.”

“I'll come with you.”

The thought of spending the evening with an over-weight woman suffering with anxiety over her daughter didn't fill me with joy.

“I have to work alone.”

“But how will you find her if you don't know the address?”

“We detectives have our methods,” I said, resisting the urge to wink as I said it.

In this case the method I would most rely on was luck.

The drive north to Santa Barbara took about two hours with the huge expanse of the Pacific Ocean on my left hand side to keep me company the whole journey. I stopped for gas on the way and picked up a Santa Barbara street map.

I found a cheap motel a few blocks from State Street. It was called Sea View but the only way you'd get a view of the sea would be to stand on the roof.

I hoped that the state of my room wasn't going to be a reflection of the state of the receptionist. He was unshaven with greasy hair and a strong smell of stale tobacco. The remains of his last meal stuck to the front of his shirt. I showed him the pictures I'd torn from the magazines and he said he didn't recognise Bruce or his house.

The motel room was exactly what I expected, so I won't describe it here. I intended to spend as little time as possible in it.

Santa Barbara is an upmarket tourist town. Being a short drive from LA it attracts people looking for a short break and, in the foothills nearby are the homes of several Hollywood stars. There are bars and restaurants that cater for this clientele but that wasn't what I was looking for. I asked the receptionist to tell me of any bars that were frequented by the locals. He had trouble understanding why I'd want this but eventually came up with the names of a couple of establishments.

The first bar was a short walk from the motel. The receptionist hadn't let me down as this was exactly the downmarket joint I was looking for. The usual suspects were there; a couple of kids who were too young to drink, playing pool, a lush with too much makeup and clothes twenty years too young for her, and a selection of locals distributed about the place.

I ordered a beer and showed the bar tender my pictures. He looked carefully at each and said he didn't recognise Bruce or his house. He then called a couple of his regulars over to look. Within a few minutes there were a crowd of people looking at the pictures and offering suggestions.

One drunk said Bruce looked exactly like his dead brother and then burst into tears. The bar tender whispered to me that the man's brother had died when he was four years old. Two others, more sober men, were both certain where the house was but they both said it was somewhere different. It looked like this might come to violence until I said I'd check both places. I marked any suggestions I thought viable on my street map. Discounting any location that wasn't about two miles north of the town I was left with three possibles.

Thirsty minutes later I had extracted myself from the bar and headed towards the centre of town where I might find another bar with more appealing surroundings and maybe some attractive company to talk to.

The bed was surprisingly comfortable and I got a good nights sleep. I'm sure the bug I'd shared the bed with, who'd managed to bite my leg in several places, also had a good night.

By nine o'clock I'd arrived at the first potential location for Bruce's house. I drove up and down the street several times before giving up and moving on to the next location.

At the second location I found Bruce's house straight away, on a bend in the road. It was a large ramshackle single-story house with a large plot to the side and rear. Two large greenhouses were visible at the back. I pulled into the gravel drive and parked next to an old and rusty truck.

I knocked on the door and shortly it was opened by Claudia Barbini. In her picture she had looked clean and tidy and neatly turned out but now her hair was all over the place, there was a smear of dirt across one cheek, there was dirt under her fingernails and the man's shirt she was wearing could do with a good wash. She was a well-built young woman and really should have been wearing a bra.

“Claudia Barbini?”

“Yes?”

“I've been sent by your mother to make sure you're alright.”

I'd expected some surprised reaction or maybe anger but she simply said, “please come in.”

The inside of the house matched the ramshackle appearance of the outside with mismatched and generally worn furnishings everywhere. I was led into a lounge.

“Please sit down.” I sat down.

“Would you like a drink. I've just made some camomile tea.”

Although I had a strong suspicion I wouldn't like camomile tea my curiosity overcame me and I said I'd have some. She returned with a mug and filled it from the pot which was already sitting on the table. It is difficult to describe the taste so I'm not going to try; you'll just have to try it for yourself. All I will say is that it won't replace my breakfast black coffee with a shot of whiskey to liven it up.

“How is mother?” she asked conversationally.

“Worried about you,” I said.

“I left her a note.”

“Yes. But she's still worried.”

“How did you find me?”

“Through your letters to Bruce. Is he here?”

“He’s not in the house at the moment.” The slight intonation in Claudia’s voice made me think that maybe relations between her and Bruce was not all sweetness and light.

“Should I give your mother a message?”

“Tell her that I’m perfectly alright and she shouldn’t worry about me.”

“Why did you leave home? Were things alright between you and your mother?”

“Oh yes. But she did stop me doing things. I’m much happier here as I can do what I like when I like and I have a much bigger garden. And Bruce has taught me to drive the Truck.”

“Do you have a licence?”

“Do you think I need one?”

I let that question go unanswered.

“Should I tell your mother where you are?”

“Please don’t otherwise she will only come and interfere. Now finish your tea and I’ll show you my garden.”

Claudia led me through the kitchen which looked as it might have done fifty years before, and out into the gardens.

There were two a large greenhouses off to one side. The rest of the ground either had rows of plants or was lying fallow. There was a cracked concrete path that ran down the middle.

We walked along the path until we were about halfway down and then Claudia pointed to an empty area and said, “this is my part of the garden.”

A thin strip about six feet long was freshly dug but the rest was still to be turned over.

“I’ve brought my plants with me. They’re in the greenhouse and I’m going to plant some of them out when I've dug the rest of the ground. Come and have a look.”

For the next thirty minutes Claudia enthusiastically explained the medicinal uses of the plants in the greenhouse. When it looked like she would go on for hours I told her I really had to go.

“I’ll tell your mother that you're alright and she’s not to worry,” I said.

“Yes, please do.”

“I’ll take your phone number in case I have any messages.”

I phoned Mrs Barbini from a call box:

Me: I've found Claudia.

Mrs Barbini: You’ve actually seen her?

Me: Yes. I met her earlier today.

Mrs Barbini: What’s the address?

Me: I told Claudia that I wouldn’t tell you where she is.

Mrs Barbini: I need to know she’s alright.

Me: She looks fine and told me to tell you not to worry.

Actually she looked like she needed a good wash and some clean clothes.

Mrs Barbini: But she’ll never be able to cope on her own.

Me: Maybe that’s because you haven’t let her.

Mrs Barbini: You don’t understand….If you won’t tell me where she is then I'll get another investigator. You found her and now I know she's in Santa Barbara..

Me: I wouldn't advise that.

Mrs Barbini: Then tell me where she is.

I wasn't going to win this argument.

Me: I’ll give her a call and see what she says and call you back.

So I called Claudia.

Me: I’ve spoken to your mother.

Claudia: Is she well?

Me: I expect so. She still wants to know where you are.

Claudia: Don’t tell her. She’ll only make me come home.

Me: She says she’ll get another investigator to find you unless I tell her where you are.

Claudia: He might not be as clever as you..

Me: Can I suggest that you meet your mother on some neutral ground so she can see you're alright.

Claudia: I don’t understand.

Me: I’ll arrange for you to meet her somewhere in Santa Barbara and then she can see you are alright and then leave you alone.

Claudia: Do you think that will work?

Me: It will be better than her turning up on your doorstep. And please have a wash and put on some clean clothes before you meet her.

Claudia: Alright then.

Me: You could take Bruce along for support.

Claudia: I don’t think he’d be interested.

I rang off, called Mrs Barbini back and arranged for her to drive up the next day and meet Claudia in a restaurant on State Street. Maybe I should be there to act as a referee but I was rapidly losing interest in this pair of dysfunctional people.

Mrs Barbini had paid her bill promptly and sent me a note to say that Claudia had decided to come home following their meeting. I thought I'd heard the last of her but I was about to be disappointed.

The office phone rang and I picked it up.

“Dick Thrust Associates,” I said brightly in a voice designed to give potential new clients confidence in my investigative ability.

“Can you come. I think I've been poisoned,” it was Mrs Barbini.

“Phone for an ambulance,” I said.

“I can't do that.”

“You must phone for an ambulance.”

“Please come quickly.”

She rang off.

I hurried to my car and drove to Mrs Barbini's house. The journey would normally have taken twenty minutes; I took twenty minutes. I wasn't going to break the speed limit and risk a ticket for someone I didn't like and who wasn't currently paying for my services.

I knocked on the front door and tried to open it; it was locked. I didn't wait for an answer before looking through the lounge window. Mrs Barbini was laying half on and half off the sofa. I banged on the window and she stirred but didn't look in my direction. I turned around and broke the glass next to the handle with a backwards thrust of my elbow. I carefully reached through the broken glass and opened the window and climbed through.

Mrs Barbini looked up at me and said, “I've been poisoned,” in a weak voice.

“What with?”

“She's put something in the tea.”

There was a cup on the table. I picked it up and sniffed it. I wouldn't have been able to identify a poison from its smell but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. It smelled like camomile tea.

“I'll ring for an ambulance.”

“You mustn't. It will get Claudia in trouble and then they'll take her away from me.”

I ignored Mrs Barbini and made the call from the phone in the hallway. They asked me what the poison was but I couldn't tell them. I was told to make sure she didn't fall into unconsciousness before the ambulance arrived.

Mrs Barbini had closed her eyes when I returned to the lounge so I shook her by the shoulders until she opened them again.

“Where's Claudia?” I asked.

“She's taken my car. I don't know where she's gone.”

The next twenty minutes, until the ambulance arrived, seemed like hours. I found it hard to think of things to say as we had little in common. She didn't seem interested in the current dismal performance of the Hollywood Stars Baseball team or the rules of stud poker. She lapsed into unconsciousness several times and each time I shook her until she woke up.

When the ambulance arrived they had a great deal of trouble getting Mrs Barbini's bulk onto the stretcher which creaked as they struggled to get her out of the door. They took away the camomile tea and a bottle marked “monkshood” they found on the kitchen table.

They told me the police had been informed and asked me to wait for them to arrive. I left as soon as the ambulance was out of sight.

The only other place in the World that Claudia knew was Bruce's house in Santa Barbara. I had some doubt that someone who couldn't drive a few days ago could take a car she had never driven before and drive there without crashing or getting lost. But it was all I had and so I drove there now.

Mrs Barbini's car was parked outside the house next to Bruce's rusty truck. I was impressed that Claudia had managed to drive here but the fact the passenger door and the front fender were missing indicated she hadn't made the journey without incident.

I knocked on the door and Claudia opened it. She was dressed a lot more smartly than before with a clean blue and white checked shirt over dark slacks. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and looked a lot cleaner than before.

“Hello!” There was genuine pleasure in her voice. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Come in.”

She took me through to the lounge and I sat in an overstuff armchairs.

“I was just making some dandelion tea, would you like some? It's good for the digestion.”

“Yes. I'll try some.”

The room was even shabbier than I remembered. It wasn’t just that the furnishings were old and worn but it was dirty as well. The threadbare carpet was visibly dirty and surfaces were covered in dust. I started to feel itchy.

Claudia re-entered the room carrying two mismatched mugs and handed one to me before she sank into the unresisting springs of another armchair.

I lifted the mug to his lips and watched Claudia over the rim. I wasn't intending to drink the tea; I'm not that daft, but I wanted to see her reaction. I set mug on the floor next to my chair untasted.

“It is good for you,” she said.

“I’m sure it is but its a little too hot at the moment. Now tell me why you poisoned your mother?”

Claudia’s smile disappeared.

“She told me if I came home then she'd let me have more freedom and stop telling me what to do. It was alright of a couple of days but then she started telling me how dirty I was and that I couldn't look after myself.”

“It seems a bit drastic to put poison in her tea.”

“I just lost my temper but once I'd done it I felt as if I was free again. So I took her car and came back here.”

“Is monkshood very poisonous?”

“It is also called Wolfsbane. Ancient people would bate meat with it to kill wolves. It contains a poison called aconite.”

That didn't answer my question but I let it lie.

“Is mother dead?”

“The last time I saw her she was still alive and being driven away in an ambulance.”

We sat silently for a while but then something disturbing occurred to me.

“Where is Bruce at the moment?”

We stood by the small patch of freshly dug ground in the area that Claudia had claimed as hers on my previous visit.

“I didn't bury him very deep,” she said.

“But why kill him?”

“He was alright for a few day. He helped me with my plants and taught me how to drive his truck. I had a lot of fun in those few days. But then he said he wanted to do... things.”

She said the last word very quietly and I could see she was blushing.

“Things?” It was wicked of me to prolong her discomfort by asking this question when I knew very well what those things were. I can't help myself sometimes.

“You know. Play mothers and fathers.”

I very nearly burst out laughing.

“When I wouldn't do it he tried to kiss me. He had terrible bad breath and his chin scratched me. And then he touched my chest. I told him I'd do things but only after we'd had some tea.”

“Wolfsbane?”

“I added a lot and he died quite quickly.”

She said this so matter-of-factly as if discussing what to have for dinner. I felt a shiver pass through my body and we stood there in silence for a while.

“What did you plan to do now?” I asked.

“I thought I'd stay here.”

“I think the police will want to talk to you about your mother and Bruce.”

“Will they be cross with me?”

“Not if you explain things to them as you have to me.”

I rode the elevator to the second floor of the hospital. As the doors slid open I was presented with a list of wards and departments on this floor; I was looking for Nightingale Ward.

Claudia was in the care of the Santa Barbara police and when I'd got back to Hollywood the police here had wanted to talk to me about Mrs Barbini being poisoned. Barney Oles had helped me get things sorted out quickly. For the second time I had thought I'd heard the last of Mrs Barbini but then I had a call from the hospital saying she wanted to see me. So here I was.

Mrs Barbini was laying propped up in her bed reading a magazine. She looked a little grey but a lot healthier than the last time I'd seen her, being loaded into the back of an ambulance.. She had a drip in her arm and the sign above the bed said “Nil By Mouth”.

She smiled weakly at me and I sat down in a visitors chair.

“How are you doing?” I asked. I didn't really want to know.

“I’m well on the road to recovery. It appears that once Aconite is gone from your body then there is no lasting damage. If you don’t die then you make a full recovery. I’ll be out of here in a few days.”

“Good.”

“Have you seen Claudia? Is she alright?”

“She's with the police in Santa Barbara. I think they've worked out that she needs special treatment.”

“She must be petrified. I should be with her.”

“I've been told she's taking it all rather well.”

“What is going to happen to her?”

“I think there can be little doubt that she will be found unfit to plead and probably end up in some secure hospital.”

“She needs to be at home where I can look after her.”

We fell silent for a few moments and then I asked the question that had been niggling me for a while.

“Did Claudia poison her father?”

Mrs Barbini didn’t answer but kept her gaze firmly on the bad sheets.

“Come on, you owe me an answer and I won’t tell the police as there would be no point.”

She sighed and looked at me.

“Her father told her off once for putting a herb in his coffee. She had said it was good for him but he was quite angry with her and told her never to add anything to his food or drink again. So she put something into his dinner to teach him a lesson.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“She said she didn't mean for him to die. As he was already being treated for a weak stomach they put his death down to natural causes. She was very sorry and they might have taken her away from me.”

“And as a result you’ve caused another deaths and almost got yourself killed.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I won’t be visiting again.” I said and left to find a place to get a drink and maybe some more sane female company.