Listen to the Silence

by Marcia Muller

  She blinked in surprise, and her mouth twisted. For a moment I thought she might cry, but then the all-too-familiar steely resolve crept into her eyes. I waited. Ma had never been a woman to pass up an opportunity.

  “And what of your brothers and sisters? Your nephews and nieces? Jim and Susan? I hope you won’t forget them, just because you like this new half sister and brother.”

  “How on earth could I forget them? Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t let me.”

  Now she smiled. “That’s true. They’re quite a handful. Always have been. But you were always my good girl—at least as far as I know.”

  I smiled too. “At least as far as you know, Ma, I’m a very good girl.”

  Thursday

  SEPTEMBER 28

  7:10 P.M.

  “Happy birthday, McCone.”

  Hy raised his champagne flute to mine, and we clinked softly, then drank. We were seated on the rim of the stone fire pit in our brand-new, mostly unfurnished living room at Touchstone. The sun was a smudge of orange on the horizon, the sea’s purple troughs capped by pinkish spray. Gulls, hawks, and ospreys wheeled above, seeking dinner.

  He added, “Forty-one tops a banner year for you, huh?”

  “Yeah—four new family members. But then there’s Austin.”

  “You break the news to him on the way back from San Diego?”

  “I did, and to tell the truth, he seemed relieved. I don’t think he’s a paternal kind of guy, and he’s got enough to handle, after what happened up north. My presence in his life would be one more painful reminder. He said he wants to keep in touch, but I’m betting he won’t.”

  “Is that a loss?”

  “No. I never connected with him, and he only thought he was connecting with me. And then there was his father…”

  “Some piece of work.”

  “You know, it’s ironic: Joseph DeCarlo committed murder because he thought his son had fathered a child by an Indian woman. Then he spent decades covering up and hating and scheming. He made Austin despise him to the point where he killed him. And in the end it was all so unnecessary.”

  “Aren’t the actions of bigots always unnecessary?”

  “Unnecessary, and monstrous.”

  But it was my birthday; I didn’t want to discuss weighty issues. Instead I sampled some pâté that sat along with caviar, Brie, and crackers on the platter between us. “So tell me about your hostage negotiation.” He’d tracked me down in Boise on Friday to report it a success.

  “Actually, I’m more interested in talking about how we’re gonna furnish this place. Comfort is what I care about, so maybe we should—”

  The phone rang. I went to where it sat on the floor and answered. John, sounding upset and not bothering to offer me birthday greetings.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s Joey. I finally got news of him, and I don’t like it.”

  “Now what’s he done?”

  “Ma got a postcard from him this morning. Dated three weeks ago, looked like it’d been misrouted and mangled in the mail. Photo of a place called the Anchor Bay Bar and Grill, said he was working there—”

  “Anchor Bay? That’s here in the county, south of us.”

  “I know. Anyway, I called there, talked with the owner. He said Joey didn’t show up for his shift a week ago Monday. After a couple of days one of the waitresses—I think she’s Joey’s girlfriend—went around to the trailer park where he’s been living. His truck was gone, so she talked the manager into letting her into the trailer. Everything of his was there, right down to his toothbrush. She’s been checking each day, and nothing’s changed.”

  My scalp prickled. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “No. Shar… I know you’ve been through a lot of heavy-duty family stuff lately, but would you—”

  “Go down there and check it out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me get my notebook so I can take down the details.”

  When I replaced the receiver, Hy was standing by the seaward windows watching the last of the sunset. He put his arm around me and drew me close.

  “Families!” I said, nestling my head against his shoulder.

  “More trouble?”

  “Yeah. Why can’t humans be hatched from eggs and go our separate ways, like insects?”

  He didn’t bother to reply. It was a rhetorical question I often voiced, and one to which we both knew the answer. Related or unrelated, we all need each other to get through. Besides, the journey wouldn’t be worth much alone.

  I watched darkness fall over the sea and thought about the morning. The drive south to Anchor Bay was a pretty one—well worth making if I could find some lead on my missing brother.

  Settled into their new home, Sharon McCone and her husband, Hy, are beginning to at last feel comfortable. But the seeming calm is shattered when Hy gets a visit from a troublemaking former colleague, while Sharon takes on a new client desperate to save his home from thugs and drug dealers.

  Look for Someone Always Knows, available in July 2016.

  A preview follows.

  11:12 a.m.

  “It’s awfully different from the artist’s rendering,” I whispered to my nephew, Mick Savage.

  He and I and several of my staff were standing at the spacious entrance to the recently remodeled McCone & Ripinsky building on New Montgomery Street in San Francisco’s financial district. Workmen had just removed the tarps from a sculpture we’d commissioned—at great cost—from the world-renowned artist Flavio St. John.

  “What do you suppose Flavio’s intention was?” Julia Rafael had recently been dating a prominent Latino painter and was into all things artistic.

  “He needed a cure for a hangover,” Patrick Neilan offered, scratching at his thatch of red hair.

  “Don’t be facetious,” I said. “What is it supposed to be?”

  “Looks like clam shells.” This from our office manager, Ted Smalley. “A cheap concrete clamshell fused to a larger fake gold one. Flavio must’ve been hungry for seafood the day he came up with the design.”

  The workmen with the tarps seemed anxious to pack up and go. A small crowd had gathered, blocking their trucks.

  “Where is Flavio?” I asked.

  “Rome,” Patrick said. “He had urgent business there, so I drove him to the airport the other night.”

  “Urgent business? Without letting me know he was leaving? More likely he was escaping the scene of the crime—with our check in his wallet. I’m putting a stop on it.”

  “Ma’am,” a gentleman in the growing crowd said, “can you explain why you people elected to put such an eyesore on your beautifully restored granite building?”

  “Well,” I began, “we thought… The concept is as—”

  “As ugly as my Aunt Stella Sue’s butt.”

  That came from my husband, standing on the edge of the crowd: tall, lean in his tight jeans, with the brim of his cowboy hat pulled down over his roughly-hewn face. People erupted into laughter at his remark.

  Trying not to laugh myself, I said, “The gentleman who just spoke is my partner and co-owner of the building, so I suppose he has a right to express his opinion.” I shot Hy a dark look and added, “And you don’t have an Aunt Stella Sue.”

  He shrugged.

  “You may as well come up here and say a few words.”

  He shouldered through the crowd.

  “Actually, folks, I was just joking. The designer of this dramatic entrance, Flavio St. John, is one of the finest sculptors in the world. His talents in any form of sculpting surpass even those of the late Beniamino Bufano who, except for that horror of a spire that looks like a totem pole at Timber Cove Inn up the coast, did all of us Californians proud.”

  I stepped on Hy’s foot—hard.

  He added, “Apparently our clamshells are Flavio’s equivalent of Bufano’s totem pole.”

  Then, mercifully, he shut up.

  “Thanks for coming!” I called to
the crowd, and turned to glare at Hy.

  He backed up, holding his hands out defensively. “What could I say? It’s a piece of shit.”

  “Of course it is.” I took his arm and hustled him through the lobby to the elevators.

  “We ought to sue that rat-faced little bastard,” he added.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Crappy concrete and bogus gold that look like clam shells with chipped edges are not the way to inaugurate our new partnership.”

  “We’ll do something about it.”

  “What? There’s probably some goddamn clause in our contract with him that says we can’t alter it without his permission.”

  “Then it’ll just have to meet with an accident. A terrible accident.”

  “McCone, I love the way you think,” he said as we entered the building.

  Maybe I was just used to downscale, but many times when I came through the door of the high security building—express line, where all the guards knew me—I felt as if I were sneaking in under false pretenses. The offices seemed to demand that I spiff up my public image: dress more stylishly use more artfully applied makeup, and for Christ’s sake get those nails done!

  All this paranoid hoopla induced by a building! One owned by my husband’s company and, since we’d merged our firms, by me too.

  We entered the reception area on the second floor, and I spotted a freshly opened bottle of champagne and several glasses on the desk. I looked at my watch: it was after noon. Why not? I needed a drink.

  In the area beyond the desk, staff members were milling around, their faces studies in shock and disbelief. Most were imbibing wine in quantity. In spite of my outrage over Flavio St. John’s ridiculous sculpture, I couldn’t help but take pleasure in seeing all the people—both new hires, old timers, and friends.

  Since the merger, there had been quite a few changes: Hy and I consulted on all cases together. Mick had hired more tech people, many of whose activities I couldn’t fathom; they populated the third floor below us. Ted Smalley, our office manager, had also hired a large support staff, some of whom I suspected were practically living in the building—at least I’d seen many sleeping bags, duffels, and clothing on hangers passing by at all hours in the second-floor hallways. Sometimes, in the dark hours of the morning when I worried about the city finding us out and trying to levy a hotel tax or maybe penalize us for violating some ordinance. They’d been closing in on such home-sharing services as Airbnb and VRBO. But recently our rate of closed cases had climbed steadily, and our employees were compensated well enough that they could relocate if necessary. So who was I to complain about a few squatters?

  I accepted a glass of champagne from Ted and tapped on the desk. Everyone quieted and turned to me. I toasted them. “Here’s to Italian sculpture, twenty-first century style.”

  Many laughed, but others—especially those who had been involved with the designer of the new façade—looked as if they’d rather be at their desks preparing their resumes.

  “Come on,” I said, “it’s not the end of the world. We made some mistakes and were too trusting, that’s all.”

  Ted moaned, “Why did we allow Flavio to keep his ‘art’ covered up until today? Why didn’t we sneak looks at it instead of unveiling it for everybody to see?”

  “Because we were caught up in the mystique—which Flavio wove all too well—of ‘great artists must be allowed to create in private.’”

  “At least there weren’t any press people there,” Patrick said. “They’d be accusing us of destroying a perfectly beautiful building.”

  “Uh,” Ted said, “there was one representative of the press—”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Jill Starkey.”

  Oh, shit!

  Starkey was a former Chronicle reporter and owner/editor/sole employee of a dreadful right-wing rag called The Other Shoe. A terrible little troll—oh, I’d pay in my next life for thinking such things, assuming there was a next one, but right now I didn’t care—Starkey had frizzy brown hair, a pinched lopsided smile, and hated most things (except for ice cream, and she wasn’t too sure about it). One of the chief objects of her hatred was me.

  I’d never understood what I’d done to deserve such venom. When she was at the Chron, I’d been cordial to her, even though I didn’t really like her. But since she’d been dismissed from the major paper for causing a libel suit that forced them to settle a large amount of money on the plaintiff, she’d found herself an investor and set up her own publication. Then the gloves had come off. Over and over she’d aimed journalistic jabs and punches at me that I’d learned to duck or roll with. It was either that or throw her off the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Thank God The Other Shoe was a weekly; the next issue wouldn’t come out till Friday.

  Ted said, “You okay, Shar?”

  “Yeah, just thinking about how much I dislike Jill Starkey.”

  “Me, too. She’s homophobic.”

  “I know. How does she find enough people in a city like this who will read her crap?”

  “As Grandma would say, there’s a top for every box.”

  I smiled at the malapropism. My mother has a new one almost every day. Sometimes I think she does it on purpose.

  “Seriously, though, we’ve got to do something about that blight on the building’s façade. This is one of the classics of its era.”

  Built in 1932, of carefully selected slabs of Vermont granite, the four-story office building had large float windows (as they called plate glass back then) that allowed sun and moon and starshine to brighten its offices and corridors. The floors were made of beautifully tessellated hardwood, except on our fourth level, where a massive leak had necessitated carpeting. We leased the ground floor to stylish shops—leather goods, a high-end women’s shoe store, the legendary Angie’s Deli, and a sweet shop that I’ve been known to go around the block to avoid—and reserved two, three, four and the roof garden for our growing operation. The real heart of McCone & Ripinsky was the fourth floor and the roof garden.

  Fourth floor: Picture a big, well furnished waiting room with soft leather chairs and sofas, and rosewood tables covered with a wide variety of periodicals. Coffee, tea, you-name-it provided; drinks too if the client insisted. I think we stocked yak’s milk once for an extremely fussy client from the Middle East. And if any of them were hungry after long drives or international flights, Angie’s Deli provided.

  Sometimes I feel as if I’m running a catering service rather than an investigative agency. But then, I’ve been known to tack my food orders onto the clients’.

  Back to the offices: As with the building, I had mixed feelings about them. They were elegant—very, very elegant. Oriental carpets over the hardwood on floors two and three; deeply piled pale gray carpet on the fourth; something that lasted like Astroturf but seemed more like real grass on the roof. Attractive and functional contemporary furnishings throughout; posters from special events at the city’s museums brightening the pale gray walls. My own space was a dream: it had an expansive view from the Golden Gate to the East Bay hills, a huge cherrywood desk and matching bookcases and file cabinets; a full length sofa so I wouldn’t have to lie on the floor during my infamous “quiet times” (which often are not quiet).

  My ages-old armchair, years ago rescued from my office in a closet under the stairs at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I’d begun my career, was now restored in leather; it and its newish matching hassock were positioned by the windows under a healthy potted schefflera plant named Mr. T., after Ted. The Grand Poobah, as he prefers to call himself, had decorated the suite single-handedly. Sometimes I regretted giving him such a free hand and open checkbook with the remodeling, but he has impeccable taste, and the results attest to it.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t used to such luxurious working environs. For years my agency’s offices were on the upper tier of Pier 24½, which was now in the process of being demolished, and I’d loved it there, drafty and cold and echoi
ng as it was.

  Before that, I’d first had the coat closet and then an upstairs room at All Souls’ Legal Cooperative’s big Victorian in Bernal Heights, in the southeastern section of the city. The poverty law firm, headed by my best male friend, Hank Zahn, had subsisted in the big broken-down house, with some employees living in and others—mercifully, me—living out. But most of the friendships forged there had carried on to this day, and when the co-op folded, I’d managed to bring Ted along to my new agency. Hank and his wife and law partner, Anne-Marie Altman, had offices within two blocks of us. And the new people we’d acquired were all good fits.

  I didn’t miss the old days, not really. But I wasn’t used to such affluence. My family had been solvent, but just barely. I’d put myself through U.C. Berkeley on small scholarships and nighttime jobs as a security guard. The years after graduation were lean—who wanted a young woman with a B.A. in sociology? But then I’d gotten on with a private investigator, trained under my employer for my license, and landed the job with All Souls. After that things had slowly gotten better.

  Finally I’d met Hy Ripinsky. Man with a shady past who possessed a great deal of money of an equally shady origin, or so I’d thought at the time. The secrets of that past and money we’d sorted out over time, and I’d finally come to trust him. A couple of times, literally, with my life. After we married, I’d realized I was a wealthy woman, in more ways than just financially.

  I plunked my briefcase down on my desk, then studied it critically. It was getting shabby. I was having a bad hair day, and I realized that once again I’d forgotten to put on makeup.

  Well, old habits die hard.

  1:05 pm

  Ted buzzed me. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You and Hy have a visitor. Gage Renshaw.”

  My breath caught and my pulse elevated. “… Gage—that can’t be! Hy and I assumed he died years ago.”

  “But you never received conclusive proof of it.”

  “No, but it’s been years since he disappeared. Knowing Gage, he would’ve turned up to devil us long before this. Are you sure it’s him?”