It was well after six when I reached Nell Loomis’s studio. Shadow and silence had claimed Natoma Street. A sheet of paper fluttered from where it had been tacked to Nell’s blue door.
“Took package to South SF drop-off for Fedex,” it said. “Back soon. Don’t try door—dog is loose inside.” I hadn’t seen any dog earlier, so I assume this was Loomis’s idea of how to ward off would-be burglars—providing they could read well enough to decipher the note.
For the next half hour I sat in my car, fretting. I needed to talk with Jack about tonight, but I didn’t want to leave. If Loomis returned and didn’t find me there, she would go home, and I’d never get hold of those prints. And the prints had assumed greater and greater importance in my mind as the hours passed.
This, I thought, presented the best argument I’d come up with so far for having a car phone. On Monday I would buy one and request reimbursement for All Souls. If they balked at paying for it—as they so far had—I’d foot the bill myself. And make sure to inform them that as far as I was concerned, all their talk about moving forward into the twenty-first century was just so much overblown rhetoric.
At ten to seven, a car entered the alley and pulled up behind me. Nell Loomis and I got out of our vehicles simultaneously. She gave me a stingy smile and thanked me for waiting. Inside the studio she excused herself and went into the rest room; I used her phone to call Jack.
“Are the arrangements all set?” I asked.
“Yes—for nine o’clock. Wald’s having a fit because Keyes Development wants the number of people admitted to the property kept to a minimum. That means only participants and those with preferred passes. No press. Have you come up with anything that I should know about?”
“Nothing conclusive yet. How’re you going to handle it out there?”
“Have Judy walk through it from the beginning, starting at the window of her old room. And hope we score points with the jury.”
“How is she?”
“Cool and confident.”
“How are you?”
“A wreck. I think she’s feeding on me.”
“Well, hang in here. Judy’s our only living witness. Let’s let her memories speak for themselves.” Loomis emerged from the rest room and went into the darkroom. I told Jack I had to go, then followed her.
Nell was slipping a strip of negatives into the enlarger’s holder and blowing off surface dust with canned air. She glanced at me and frowned.
“Can I watch?”
“I guess. Just don’t get in my way.” She inserted the holder in the enlarger and switched from fluorescents to an orange safelight. The timer whirred, light flashed and disappeared, and the timer clicked off. Loomis moved the sheet of photographic paper from the enlarger to the tray of developing liquid.
“I want to check the exposure,” she said.
I moved closer, watching over her shoulder as images appeared and sharpened on the submerged sheet. The banquet table at the Blue Fox, Dulles speaking at the lectern. To his right, Russell Eyestone. To Russell’s right, his wife and then Leonard. And to Leonard’s right, Vincent Benedict—bleary eyed, probably drunk. The men were formally attired in dark jackets, white shirtfronts, and bow ties. Dulles’s shirt, as befitted a conservative, had small, austere pleats and plain studs, as did Russell Eyestone’s; Benedict and Leonard—wild and crazy young guys that they’d been—had opted for something a bit more froufrou.
Loomis said, “Exposure’s good,” and moved the paper to the stop bath. “You sure you want regular prints and not just contacts?”
“Contacts won’t give me the details I need.”
She shrugged. “It’s your money.” Then she returned to the enlarger and began printing in earnest.
Enlarger to developer, developer to stop bath, stop bath to fixer; Eyestone Senior shaking hands with Dulles at the banquet table; Dulles with Benedict, with Leonard, with people I didn’t recognize; couples chatting in the restaurant lobby; Dulles leaving amid a phalanx of Secret Service men.
I said to Loomis, “Cut to the shots of the reception, would you?”
More couples chatting in what looked like the ballroom of the St. Francis. I recognized a younger Joseph Stameroff, the then-mayor of the city, and the other public officials, including a man who would later be a two-term governor. A receiving line: Dulles, Russell Eyestone and spouse, other Institute staff members and their wives, whose faces were now becoming familiar. One of the arrivals passing along the receiving line was familiar, too: Roger Woods, lean and somewhat sinister-looking in his black formal attire. And there was the photo the newspaper had picked up of the Eyestones with Dulles; impeccably clad, smiles correct, but Leonard looking diminished . . .
I stared at the last two prints until Loomis grasped them with her tongs and fished them out of the developer. Stared some more as they sank into the stop bath. Went to the prints floating in the fixer and fished around until I found one of both Eyestones and Vincent Benedict in the Blue Fox lobby.
And saw what made these photographs incriminating to someone on the Institute staff.
Loomis jostled me. “Told you not to get in my way,” she muttered irritably.
I moved aside. “How long will it take to run these through the dryer?”
“All of them?”
“No, just this and this, these two also.”
“I can do them pretty quick, if that’s all you want.”
“Thanks.” I went out into the studio. Sank onto the sofa, but immediately sprang to my feet. Wandered aimlessly among the light stands and tripods and around the mountain of canned artichoke hearts. All the while thinking of how to play it at Seacliff.
After a few minutes I called Aday Josyln at home. Laid out for her what I knew but couldn’t prove. Asked that she and Wallace meet me at the estate.
I now knew who.
I thought I knew why.
But many things were still inexplicable. Might remain that way forever.