No Sign of Murder

by Alan Russell

  PRAISE FOR ALAN RUSSELL AND THE STUART WINTER NOVELS

  “Chilling . . . satisfying . . . offers up tasty tidbits of San Francisco lore . . . [Russell] has a gift for dialogue, slyly using it to reveal character.”—New York Times Book Review

  “Polished and provocative . . . a California mystery of the hard-boiled school . . . very well written, with a corking good plot and fine characters.”—Booklist

  “Smoothly plotted, deftly written, and thought provoking.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Remarkable . . . [hops] from avant-garde theater to a deaf school, from winos’ alleys to an artist’s studio, to a double-twist conclusion.”—Armchair Detective

  “A well-written, excellently paced mystery.”—Rendezvous Reviews

  “An excellent book with a fine plot of modern conflicts. You’ll love the mystery.”—Macon Beacon

  “A shocker . . . a genuinely original PI novel.”—Jeremiah Healy, Shamus Award-winning author

  “A wise book, distilled from a life’s understanding of the human animal: its limits, excesses, and, on occasion, its surpassing beauty.”—Loren D. Estleman, author of the Amos Walker Mysteries

  NO SIGN OF MURDER

  BOOKS BY ALAN RUSSELL

  Gideon and Sirius Novels

  Burning Man

  Guardians of the Night

  Lost Dog

  Gideon’s Rescue

  L.A. Woman

  Hotel Detective Mysteries

  The Hotel Detective

  The Fat Innkeeper

  Detective Cheever Novels

  Multiple Wounds

  The Homecoming

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Shame

  Exposure

  Political Suicide

  St. Nick

  A Cold War

  Stuart Winter Mysteries

  No Sign of Murder

  The Forest Prime Evil

  NO SIGN OF MURDER

  ALAN RUSSELL

  Three Tails Press

  New York, New York

  Copyright © 1990, 2019 by Alan Russell

  All rights reserved. Please comply with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of this book in any form (other than brief quotations embodied in critical reviews) without permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 90-12263

  Three Tails Press, New York, New York

  For author contact and press inquiries, please visit alanrussell.net.

  To Laura

  CONTENTS

  PRAISE FOR ALAN RUSSELL AND THE STUART WINTER NOVELS

  BOOKS BY ALAN RUSSELL

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE FOREST PRIME EVIL SNEAK PEEK

  POLITICAL SUICIDE SNEAK PEEK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  “GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE.”

  It wasn’t my usual greeting, and it made Miss Tuntland laugh, a laugh that never failed to make me feel better.

  “Good morning, Mr. Winter.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time you started calling me Stuart?”

  “No.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “I’ve found that clients who have me call them by their first names are generally late on their payments. I think they feel first-name dispensation entitles them to a form of friendship, and being a friend means paying late—or not at all.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “So don’t ask me to break rules just for you,” she said, “even if all the other women in your life do.”

  “Miss Tuntland, you know you are the only woman in my life.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why?”

  “Among other things, many other things, you had a call ten minutes ago from a Tammy Walters. Throaty voice, punctuated by meaningful breaths. The kind of voice that drives men wild.”

  “Like yours.”

  “The bill’s still due on the first, Mr. Winter.”

  Tuntland had another call, so we said our good-byes. Nowadays most answering services have gone the way of the dodo, but her personalization and professionalism have kept Miss Tuntland’s business thriving. Her services cost a pretty penny, but they would have been cheap at twice the price. She retains a limited number of clients, clients assiduously screened before accepting their business. Miss Tuntland takes calls twenty-four hours a day, and does more juggling than a circus clown. The strange thing is that I have never met her in person. Our lives crossed with the telephone wires. Like me, she doesn’t advertise. A friend of a friend had told me about this woman with an unflaggingly cheerful voice who answered other people’s calls. That sounded good to me. I don’t like answering my cell phone, and I don’t like being bothered. My source said he understood that Miss Tuntland had a disability and worked from home. That topic has never come up between us, and probably never will.

  Although I never investigated Miss Tuntland, she investigated me before taking me on as a client. When I called and inquired of her service, she not only didn’t answer my questions, but took the opportunity to interview me. I found her technique interesting, and her questions odd enough to require honest answers. She told me that she had just dropped a client “for rudeness,” and said she would consider my application. I remembered to say “thank you,” and leapfrogged over a long waiting list. Why she accepted me as a client, and continued to put up with all the miscellaneous dirt that trailed me at the oddest hours, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t complaining.

  Maybe, she picked a private investigator for a client for vicarious thrills. Maybe she just liked my voice. I had learned long ago that some things are not worth investigating. Miss Tuntland’s brain left most others in the starter’s box, so I wasn’t afraid of bouncing ideas off her. I didn’t have a secretary, but she was so personable that everyone who called assumed she was one. She was my voice in the morning and at night, a conscience and a prod. She almost made me like the telephone.

  Miss Tuntland gave me the number, as she said, “with misgivings.” She told me Tammy Walters had been referred by John Palmer, a fact I’d check before calling her back.

  I dialed John Palmer’s work number. After getting through his secretaries, I identified myself. “This is Winter,” I said.

  “Yes,” he answered, his words obviously constricted by the presence of others.

  “I had a call from a Tammy Walters. She said you referred me.”

  “I did.”

  “When you are free to call, I would appreciate hearing about her.”

  “All right.”

  When John Palmer called back he was able to talk, even if he wasn’t exactly gabby. “I’ve known Tammy and Terrence Walters for ten years,” he said. “Terrence is one of Kurz, Brooke, and Reid’s expensive senior partners. You might have seen Tammy’s picture on the Chronicle’s social pages. She’s always entertaining at their palatial Piedmont home.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let my membership to the social register lapse.”

  “Anyway, Tammy’s a regular. She comes from an old San Francisco family with money, so she’s always at the right party, and with
the right face. Tammy has a perpetual smile like a three-way lamp: bright, brighter, brightest. When I noticed she wasn’t smiling at last Saturday’s fund-raiser for the Rep Theatre, I knew something was wrong.”

  “Why wasn’t she smiling? Bad manicure?”

  “You really ought to get over your prejudice of the rich, Winter. It won’t help your business.”

  “I know. Please continue.”

  “Her daughter’s been missing for six months, since New Year’s Eve. So, I gave her your name.”

  “Did you tell her about your own difficulties?”

  “No. Said a friend of mine swore by you.”

  Palmer wasn’t inclined to talk more than necessary, so we said our good-byes. I don’t tend to get too many Christmas cards from ex-clients, especially those who have needed their dirty underwear cleaned.

  I dialed Tammy Walters. Piedmont is an Oakland suburb with big trees and bigger houses. A woman answered the phone, and when I requested Tammy Walters, I was asked my name and business. Everyone is suspicious these days, and for good reasons.

  “Stuart Winter,” I said. “John Palmer gave me this number.”

  Half a minute later, Tammy Walters came to the phone. She was the second person that morning who didn’t want to advertise that she was talking to a PI.

  “Mr. Winter,” she said, “it isn’t convenient for me to talk now, but I was planning on visiting the City later this afternoon. Would there be a good time for us to get together?”

  We agreed upon the hour of three, and I gave her my office address on Geary. Miss Tuntland was right about the throaty voice. It hadn’t driven me wild, but it was good enough to rank in the cheap-thrill category.

  Tammy Walters proved to be an anticlimax to her voice, but then anything short of Garbo would have been. She was close to forty, and had a permanent tan. Her hair was artfully highlighted, which enhanced her light features. She had smile lines, but they didn’t show while she was smiling or frowning, which she alternately did during most of our conversation.

  “Mr. Winter.”

  She came forward without hesitation and extended her hand, a nice hand made more white and genteel in its coating of black sable. Her flesh was warm on a cold day, but sable coats have a habit of warming female parts. Twain hadn’t said it, but he might as well have: ‘The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.’ The statement and presence of her coat made my office smaller by half. I found Tammy a chair for her bottom and one for her coat. While I filed the paperwork, she surveyed the office and me. I noticed that her smile remained tentative. I agreed with her appraisal.

  “May I get you a cup of coffee or tea, Mrs. Walters?”

  She shook her fine coif with the slightest tilt and continued to look at me.

  “So how can I be of help, Mrs. Walters?”

  “My daughter’s been missing since New Year’s, Mr. Winter. I’m told you have some expertise in these matters.”

  I chewed on the word for a second, and like an old dog at his bone decided to let out a small growl. “Experience is an ambiguous word, Mrs. Walters,” I said, “but I’ll use it in this example: it’s been my experience that most people who are missing have made that choice of their own accord. And, if they have not broken any laws, and sometimes even if they have, I don’t feel it is my business to go and find them.”

  “I don’t know if any laws have been broken, Mr. Winter. I only know something must have happened to my daughter. Almost six months have passed now. I would have heard from her if she were all right.”

  “I don’t have to ask if you’ve gone through the usual channels?”

  “The police? They’ve been contacted. Too many times, they’ll tell you.”

  “And what makes you think I can do more than they have?”

  “You come recommended. From two people. No one was willing to give details. They only said you gain results. I need a private investigator. That is what you are, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, but only after a moment’s hesitation that didn’t go unnoticed. “Did you wish to add something, Mr. Winter?”

  I knew it would be easier to equivocate and be done with it, but chose the longer answer, anyway.

  “Yes, I am a private investigator, Mrs. Walters. That’s what my tax return says, but I don’t like the implications of the title. If you buy me enough drinks I’ll tell you that what I really am is a cleaner. I go into places and situations that are dirty and I try to clean things up. I don’t take pix of husbands cheating on their wives. I don’t track down witnesses to traffic accidents unless my creditors are calling. And I don’t go looking for debutantes who have decided to walk away from their parents.”

  “Are you quite finished?”

  “Quite.”

  “Then may I tell you about my daughter? Or do you have the need to make some more statements?”

  I shrugged.

  “Anita is twenty years old,” she said. She opened her mouth to say more, but had trouble beginning.

  “A student?”

  “She decided on taking a gap year, but is scheduled to attend Gallaudet College in Washington, DC, this fall.”

  “Brothers or sisters?”

  “None. She’s an only child.”

  “Describe her personality.”

  “Independent. Spirited. That’s why the police are sure she went off with somebody. But it’s been six months . . .”

  “Interests?”

  “Everything, especially lately. Modeling. Wildlife. Politics.”

  “What kind of politics?”

  “Human rights, especially the rights of the disabled. Anita is deaf.”

  There was an appropriate silence. I finally broke it.

  “Do you have a picture?”

  A snapshot slid across my desk. I picked it up. The promising voice of the mother was personified in the looks of the daughter. She had chestnut hair, green eyes that did a Sousa march, and cheekbones that perfectly bisected her brow. Her lips were indecently full and ran into dimples on both sides of her cheeks.

  “You forgot to mention how beautiful she is,” I said.

  “I haven’t mentioned many things about her.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  Tammy talked further. Anita, she said, was as smart as she was willful. As I listened to details about her life, I continued looking at the picture with her smiling face and dimples. Anita was last seen on December 31. It was her tradition to join the downtown throngs and bring in New Year’s. Mrs. Walters said Anita had always enjoyed being a part of the midnight madness, was stimulated by all the vibrations in the air, and the activity. Anita was supposed to have met up with friends that night, but missed connections are common amidst all the North Beach New Year’s chaos. Anita also no-showed for a party she had promised to attend, but that apparently wasn’t unusual. Her reputation for independence was well established, enough so that it was a full week before anyone grew alarmed at her apparent disappearance. When Mrs. Walters’s smile failed, and her mascara was three seconds from running, I spoke.

  “I’ll look into this, Mrs. Walters. If I take this case, you should know it’s not going to be cheap. It will cost you $5000 up front.”

  She nodded, her smile a little fuller now, able at last to categorize me as a mercenary, one of those expensive necessities of life. I didn’t like that smugness. I didn’t want her to think she was hiring a conscience, someone she could hold up to her friends and say, “I bought the best. I didn’t spare expenses for poor Anita.” So I cleared my throat for the sermon.

  “You should know, Mrs. Walters, that cleaning is sometimes not a pretty process. When you cook, sometimes sauce spills on your oven rack. You can clean it up, but the job doesn’t end there, it only begins, because suddenly you notice how dirty the rest of the rack is. So, you take out the rack and scour it, and when that job is done, you put it back only to see how filthy the other rack is in comparison. Which forces you to clean the second rack, and I don’t know if you’ve e
ver noticed, but two clean racks don’t look like they belong in an oven that hasn’t had a lot of elbow grease. That’s when you clean the inside of the oven, make it spotless. And you think the job is finally over, but even while you are patting yourself on the back you notice fingerprints on the outside chrome of the oven, and no fingerprints ever seemed so obtrusive. The cleaning continues.”

  “Is there a point to this story?” she asked, the slightest edge to her cultured voice.

  “Yes,” I said. “Cleaning is dirty work. And even when you finish, things never shine exactly like you want.”

  2

  “YOU PROMISED TO TELL me your theory, Stuart.”

  “I didn’t promise you anything.”

  “You said you owed me for doing that evaluation. This is my day to collect.”

  “I said I’d buy you a drink. I didn’t say I’d be one of your goddamn patients.”

  “I helped you with a case. Again.”

  My one-word response was made acceptable to the tourists by the ringing of a cable car. Our dialogue had carried us east for ten blocks along Geary, from street people to the kind of people staying at the St. Francis who had streets named after them. Lefty O’Doul’s was a welcome relief from both.

  Norman excused himself for a visit to “the little boy’s room,” and when challenged, pretended not to be ashamed of his euphemism for the crapper. Phase one overcompensation, I supposed. Lefty’s was quiet. The piano bar was on hold for later in the evening, and the work refugees hadn’t yet arrived. I looked over the old baseball paraphernalia and allowed myself to sink a little bit into the vinyl. It was a good watering hole, not the best in the City, but a strong contender in my warped beauty contest. There was enough wood and history and spilled beers in its seams to make it pretty to me, enough pictures of stern men in baseball knickers to make me like it.

  Norman arrived back at our table about the same time as our server. He tried to carry himself as tall and fit, but the inches he didn’t have in his frame were in his stomach. As usual, he was stroking his well-trimmed beard. I had asked him on numerous occasions if that was psychologically significant, and he was fond of replying that sometimes a cigar is only a smoke. Norman probably owned a hundred different pairs of glasses, but all of them somehow managed to magnify and distort his dark eyes. He had attempted having contacts fitted about a dozen times, and each time had fled the optometrist’s office in terror. It was a phobia, one of many, that he claimed to be actively working on. Perhaps because he didn’t see well, he looked harder at things than most people.