Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “It’s so nice to see you again, Jeri,” Lenore Franklin said as she opened the door. She looked cool and comfortable on this August evening, a compact woman with her silver hair cut short, wearing leather sandals and a blue cotton dress.

  “I wish it were under better circumstances.”

  “So do I, but be that as it may...” Her warm brown eyes were friendly and so was the smile on her tanned face. “I really appreciate your helping Ruth.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  I stepped into the foyer and followed Lenore into the living room, which reflected the Franklins’ history as a career Navy family. The furniture was teak and mahogany, decorated with keepsakes that spoke of visits to exotic places all over the Pacific and Asia, places like Hong Kong and Bangkok, Saigon and Taipei, Manila and Tokyo.

  A little girl sat by herself in the middle of a blue and red Oriental rug. In her lap she cradled a colorful rag doll with a bright orange costume and a grinning face topped by hair made of lengths of yellow yarn. The child crooned a wordless little tune as she rocked the doll back and forth in her arms. Red highlights tinged her curly blond hair. She was bare-legged and barefoot, clad in shorts and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. I’d seen her picture when I was here last March, one of the many family photographs that lined the Franklins’ mantel.

  “This is Wendy, my granddaughter,” Lenore said. The child stopped singing and stared up at us. “I’ll tell everyone you’re here.”

  As Lenore headed through the dining room to the kitchen, I knelt and stuck out my hand. “Hi, Wendy. I’m Jeri.”

  She had her mother’s solemn brown eyes and she was wary of strangers. She didn’t say anything, reserving speech as well as judgment. Finally one small hand released its grip on the doll and her fingers brushed mine.

  As I straightened, Ruth Raynor entered the living room from the kitchen, followed by a tall man with close-cropped blond hair, his muscular body clad in faded blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Wendy scrambled to her feet and scurried toward the grown-ups she knew, her doll tucked under one arm. When she reached her mother, she hid her face in the swirl of Ruth’s green skirt. Ruth ruffled the child’s strawberry-blond hair and dropped to Wendy’s level to hug her. “Dinner’s almost ready, sweetie. Go wash your hands now.”

  The little girl muttered something that sounded like “not hungry.” Ruth took the child’s face in her hands. “But you like barbecued ribs and com on the cob. And for dessert Grandma has ice cream. Chocolate, your favorite. You need to eat some dinner before you have dessert. Okay? Then go wash up.”

  Wendy looked at her mother as though she didn’t see much logic in washing her hands before smearing them with barbecue sauce and butter. Then she nodded, in agreement or resignation, and carried her doll out to the kitchen. When she’d gone, Ruth turned to me. “You must remember my brother Kevin. You both graduated the same year.”

  I took Kevin’s hand, thinking how much he looked like his father. “Fifteen years ago.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Kevin said.

  Kevin Franklin and I went to high school together, but we never ran with the same crowd. Tall and good-looking, he was the star center of the basketball team. Besides sports, he’d been president of the senior class, prom king, and major heartthrob of my female classmates. I eschewed sports of any kind in favor of the drama club, and my idea of exercise was to walk down to the beach at Alameda’s south shore, smear myself with suntan lotion, and sit on the sand with my nose in a book. The only connection Kevin and I had in school was as members of the honor society. I knew he’d received an appointment to the Naval Academy, just like his father, going to Annapolis that summer after graduation, just as Joseph Franklin, then a commander, transferred to another duty station in San Diego. Kevin must have been a senior lieutenant by now, if not a lieutenant commander.

  “Surface, submarine or air?” I asked.

  Kevin grinned. “Surface, much to the dismay of my aviator father.”

  “Where are you stationed?”

  “I’m on leave, in transit from San Diego to Japan. I have a couple of weeks before I’m due to report.”

  I turned to Ruth. “You were in my brother’s class, weren’t you?”

  “Brian Howard. Oh, I remember him.” She laughed. “We were in the same biology lab. One day when we were dissecting frogs, he put an eyeball in the teacher’s coffee cup.”

  “Sounds like my kid brother. I haven’t heard that story before. I’ll have to rag him about it.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Married, two kids, teaches junior high in Sonoma. I assume some of his students are doing to him what he used to do to his teachers. One would hope so, anyway.” I looked past Ruth and met the hard gray gaze of Admiral Joseph Franklin, USN-Retired. “Good evening,” I said, voice neutral, eyes as steady as his.

  “Evening,” Franklin said, his voice chilly as his chin dipped in an almost imperceptible nod. The Admiral’s gray hair was thin on top and his beaked nose jutted sharply from his narrow face. Despite the fact that he was dressed casually in gray slacks and a plaid shirt, he held himself erect and squared, as though he were still wearing the dress whites and sword he wore in the retirement photo on the mantel.

  When I met the Admiral and his wife in March, I’d been looking for a missing woman named Elizabeth Willis, daughter of the Franklins’ long-ago next-door neighbors. As my investigation progressed, I learned that Franklin and his neighbor’s wife had been more than casual friends. The last time I’d seen Franklin, his eyes had been full of rage as I confronted him about the relationship. As he looked at me now, I saw the enmity was still there, frozen like a slab of ice. I wondered how Lenore, the sweet, self-effacing Navy wife, had persuaded him to let Ruth hire me, much less let me into the Franklin house. I suspected there was steel in Lenore’s spine. There would have to be, for her to put up with the Admiral for thirty-plus years of marriage. Ruth must have had some of it too, to finally leave Sam and her marriage.

  I turned to my client. “Ruth, what did you want to show me?”

  “It’s back here, in my old room.”

  Ruth led the way down the hall to a bedroom at the front of the house. I wondered if it had changed since Ruth lived here as a schoolgirl. It looked like a room in which a teenage girl would find refuge. The furniture was white wicker, a single bed with a low headboard matched by a nightstand and a dresser with a round mirror attached to the wall above it. The bed was covered with a pink and white floral comforter, its pattern matched by the curtains on the windows. Several houseplants were arrayed around the room, on the nightstand, dresser, and windowsill. A half-dozen cardboard packing cartons were shoved against one wall and a stack of papers rested on the dresser. Ruth reached for these, handing me a single sheet torn from a spiral steno pad. It was covered with blue ink, words and figures written in no order I could discern.

  “I found this with some things I mailed to my mother last April,” she said. “That’s Sam’s handwriting. And that number at the top, with B.A. in front of it, that’s the account at the Bank of America. I wrote down the account number when I found the statement last Christmas.” She indicated a number preceded by a squiggle that looked like a dollar sign. “This must be the balance. He’s added quite a bit to it since December.”

  “Puts the total well over a hundred thousand dollars. If B.A. is Bank of America, then W.F. must mean Wells Fargo Bank.” I looked at the sheet of paper with new eyes, trying to make sense of the jumble. I pointed at another set of figures. “This is a phone number, in the 408 area code. Which is San Jose, Sunnyvale, and points south.” I looked at her. “Maybe when Sam scribbled these notes, he was planning how to move that money from Guam to the Bay Area. The first thing I’ll do is check out the phone number.”

  “Good. When I found it, I thought it could be important. Have you made any progress, or is it too early?”

  “Too early. Ed Korsakov gave me the name of a Chief LeBard who was with the
Armed Forces Police Detachment on Guam the same time you were there. Sam may have been involved in smuggling drugs to Guam. If that’s the case, I’m sure that’s where he got the money.”

  Ruth sat down on the bed, her weight pressing down the frilly pink and white comforter. “I had no idea,” she said, her voice somber. “But it wouldn’t surprise me.” She fingered the collar of her white blouse. “Ill-gotten gains.”

  “Ill-gotten or not,” I said, studying her face, “that money’s community property and you’re entitled to a share of it. Chief LeBard mentioned two people who were stationed on Guam the same time Sam was. They’re now in the Bay Area—a sailor named Harlan Pettibone and a chief named Yancy. Are either of those names familiar?”

  Ruth thought for a moment. “Pettibone... no, I don’t think so. Now Yancy does ring a bell. Steve and Claudia Yancy. She’s in the Navy too. They both worked at the air station, like Sam. They liked to play poker, so they hosted a game at their house almost every Friday night. Sam went regularly, I think.”

  “Did he lose or win?”

  “He never would say.” Ruth shrugged and played with a fold of her skirt. “If I’d ask about it, he’d tell me to mind my own business. So I didn’t ask.”

  A supposed gambling debt might be a way for Sam Raynor to hide some of the missing money. I’d have to check out the Yancys and see if they were still hosting poker games, and whether the stakes were nickel-dime-quarter, or something with dollar signs and lots of zeroes before the decimal point.

  From the kitchen at the rear of the house I heard voices, their words indistinct, Wendy’s high-pitched piping mingled with the lower tones of the adults. Then Lenore Franklin appeared in the door of the bedroom. “Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Jeri, will you stay and have some ribs with us?”

  “No, thanks. I have some things I need to do.” Besides, the prospect of sitting down to dinner with the Admiral glaring at me across the table was not particularly conducive to my appetite. I folded the paper Ruth had found and tucked it into my bag.

  “I’ll check out this information and be in touch,” I told Ruth as we walked back up the hall to the front door.

  Six

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING I CONSULTED MY CRISSCROSS directory for the South Bay, looking up the number Sam Raynor had written on the sheet of paper Ruth found. It was a Wells Fargo branch in downtown San Jose. Bingo, I thought, picking up my coffee mug, speculating as I sipped the black brew. Raynor had moved the money from Bank of America on Guam to Wells Fargo in San Jose. Maybe. It would be nice if it were that easy. I’d have to see if I could get any information out of the bank when it opened.

  I got up and poured myself another cup of coffee. It was going to be another hot day in the Bay Area. My office window was already open, seeking a breeze. The building that had gone up just down the street now blocked my view of the Oakland waterfront and I think it blocked the air flow as well.

  Back at my desk I read through that morning’s edition of the Oakland Tribune. The Port of Oakland was losing money, businesses were in trouble all up and down Broadway and the city’s budget was stretched to the limit. There had been another fatal drive-by shooting, probably drug-related, and I wondered if my ex-husband Sid Vernon, an Oakland homicide cop, was working on that one. He’d been working on a similar case last May.

  I pushed the newspaper aside and checked my calendar for that day. I had an appointment at ten with a prospective client, then some work to do for an insurance company. This afternoon I planned to watch Sam Raynor’s attorney’s office—again.

  At nine I called the Wells Fargo bank in San Jose. I told the teller on the other end that I had a check for twenty thousand dollars given to me by Sam Raynor and I wanted to know if he had sufficient funds to cover it. He wanted to know the account number.

  Damn. I punted. “I don’t have it in front of me,” I said, sounding like a harried executive. “I’m calling from my car phone. All I know is it’s drawn on your branch. I don’t want to know the man’s life story, I just want to know if he’s got funds to cover it. Surely you can tell me that.”

  “Just a moment.” The teller put me on what seemed like permanent hold. For several minutes I watched the second hand of my clock go round and round. Finally he came back on the line and said, “We did have an account for a Samuel Raynor, but it’s been closed.”

  “What?” Indignation sharpened my voice. “That thief. I trusted him. When was it opened and closed?”

  “It was opened in June and closed in July.”

  “He said he had the money. Where did he transfer those funds?” I demanded, taking a wild shot on the remote chance the teller would drop all the details in my lap.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information.” He stumbled a bit over the words, realizing he’d given me too much already.

  After I broke the connection I sat back in my chair and sipped coffee, thinking. Someone named Samuel Raynor had opened and closed an account at the Wells Fargo branch in San Jose. Given the June-July time frame, I assumed it was the Sam Raynor I was investigating. Raynor left Guam the first week in July. Maybe he’d authorized a wire transfer before he left, so his money would be waiting for him in the Bay Area. Something else was waiting for him—divorce papers. That prompted him to close the account and hide the money. But where?

  I picked up the San Jose telephone directory and made several calls to school administration offices, in an attempt to find out whether Sam Raynor had in fact attended school in that city. Since it was late August, the districts were gearing up for the coming school year, but no one had the time or inclination to assist me in this particular quest.

  I replaced the phone in the cradle, speculating as I swallowed the lukewarm dregs of my coffee. A suspicious nature is an asset in a private investigator, and I certainly had one. Sam Raynor had lied to Ruth about many things during their marriage. What if he wasn’t from San Jose after all? Apples don’t fall far from the tree, or so they say. Maybe Raynor’s hometown was nearby—Milpitas, Morgan Hill, or Gilroy.

  Worth a few phone calls to investigate, I decided, but right now I had other things to do. Before I left for my ten o’clock appointment, I initiated credit checks on Raynor’s acquaintances, Harlan Pettibone and Chief Yancy. The phone book had addresses for both, in Alameda. I figured anyone who knew Raynor on Guam was a likely accomplice, particularly since Yancy was Sam’s poker-playing buddy. I liked the theory of a gambling debt as a hiding place for part of Raynor’s cash, and I wanted to explore that further.

  The day went by quickly. I grabbed a salad between tasks, saving room for my dinner with Alex that night, before our movie date at the Paramount. By three I was parked outside the MacArthur Boulevard office of Sam Raynor’s attorney, sipping a soda from a nearby fast food stand, one eye on a paperback and the other on the office. Please let me get lucky, I muttered, chewing on the end of the straw. It’s too damn hot to be sitting in this car.

  I got lucky.

  Just after four a bright red Trans-Am parked on the other side of the street. Sam Raynor got out of the car and stuck a few coins into the parking meter, then walked briskly into his lawyer’s office. I got out of my Toyota and jaywalked across MacArthur for a closer inspection of the Trans-Am. It was a late model, and I wrote down the license plate number as well as the number of the NAS Alameda sticker in the front window. Unfortunately the car was locked. I peered inside and saw a collection of cassette tapes scattered on the passenger seat Raynor’s taste ran to rock and country.

  I returned to my own car and finished my soda while I waited. At a quarter to five Raynor left the lawyer’s office. The evening rush hour was in full snarl and he had to wait for an opening in traffic. I started my own car, thinking this was going to be dicey because we were on opposite sides of the street. But Raynor pulled out of the parking place and made a quick illegal U-turn.

  Go home, I muttered, moving into place a couple of cars behind Raynor. He made a right turn onto Fruitvale and
drove through Oakland. After he crossed the Fruitvale Bridge into Alameda, he headed for the West End. Finally he pulled the Trans-Am into the parking lot of a two-story apartment building on Pacific Avenue near Third Street, just a few blocks from the Naval Air Station.

  It was an L-shaped building of faded orange stucco, looking like so many of the cookie-cutter boxes thrown up in Alameda during the fifties. The length of the L ran deep into the lot, with the short end at the back, paralleling the street. Brown doors with no screens, and windows with Venetian blinds, faced a sidewalk on the first floor and an open-air walkway on the second. Raynor parked at the short end and took the metal stairs to the second floor. He unlocked the first door he came to and entered the apartment.

  I waited, but Raynor didn’t come out, so I chanced a stroll into the parking lot. I counted ten units per floor. The door Raynor had opened was numbered 210, and the blinds on the window were drawn shut. I returned to my car by way of the mailboxes at the front of the building. The name on 210 was Pettibone.

  So Sam Raynor was living with his friend Harlan. I sat in my car, waiting and looking at my watch. The movie was at eight, and I was supposed to meet Alex for dinner at Le Cheval at six-thirty.

  Just after six Raynor left the apartment, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt. He started the Trans-Am and pulled out of the lot, turning left onto Pacific. I followed him across Webster to a discount liquor store. As soon as he went through the door, I was out of my car, headed for the phone booth near the entrance, hoping I could catch Alex at home.