by Janet Dawson
Mercer shook his head, then took a mouthful of coffee and swallowed. “From then on, the rest of senior year, I looked for more bruises. Mark knew I was watching him. But I never saw anything else. In April he started to get real tense, though, strung tight like a wire. He spent a lot of nights at our house, but he didn’t sleep well. He tossed and turned so much he’d wake me up. Something was going on. I wish...” He stopped and stared at the table.
“What do you wish?” I asked him.
“I wish I’d been able to help him.”
The waitress stopped to ask if we wanted anything else. I shook my head, watching Mercer’s face as he stared a hole into the table.
“Tell me about the night of the murders.”
“It was Friday evening. There was this big party, eight o’clock at the high school gym. Mark and I had dinner at our place. We left about ten past eight. I was going to pick up some other people. Mark said he had something to do first and that he’d meet the rest of us at the party. He took off in his VW. Me and the other guys got to the party about eight-thirty. About nine, nine-fifteen, I noticed Mark still wasn’t there. By then I had this real bad feeling.” Mercer rested his chin on his tightly laced hands.
“I went to a pay phone and called Mark’s house. A cop answered. I hung up and flew out of there, headed for the Willis house. When I got to Gibbons Drive there were cops and red lights all over the place. I couldn’t get near the house. I stood on the sidewalk across the street. I stood there a long time, until I saw them bring Mark out. In handcuffs.”
Mercer sighed. “That was the last time I saw him. I saw pictures in the paper and on TV, the sentencing and all. I didn’t go to the memorial service.”
“You ever try to see him at San Quentin?” I asked.
“Yeah, once, about three years after. He wouldn’t see me.” The waitress laid the check on the table and we both reached for it.
“I’ll get it,” I said, but he refused, so we each paid for our own coffee and left the grill.
“Thanks for the information.” We stood on the corner of Third and Franklin. I heard a whistle in the distance and saw a train several blocks up Third.
“I hope this helps,” Mercer said. “I don’t talk about it much. I know Mark’s probably out of prison now. Sometimes I wonder where he is and if he’s all right. I keep thinking there’s something I could have done. To help him past whatever he was going through, whatever made him do it.”
The truth according to Mercer, I thought. It was different from the truth related in Bill Rolf’s police report. Both pictures were incomplete. Memory is faulty by nature. It’s subjective, selective. What Leo Mercer and I remembered about Mark Willis were only pieces of reality. I wanted to know what happened that night in the Willis house. It was almost as important as finding Elizabeth. Maybe what happened fifteen years ago explained why she’d disappeared.
It was time to talk to my client, presuming I could locate him. For once Philip Foster was where he was supposed to be. He answered the door of his seventh-floor room, an anxious look in his brown eyes that turned to relief when he saw it was me. He wore blue corduroy pants and a blue-and-red knit pullover, but he carried himself as formally as if he wore a suit.
“You have something to tell me?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, I do. I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday.”
“I’ve been... unavailable.” I waited for an explanation but I didn’t get one. He waved me toward a table and a couple of chairs near the window and walked over to a small refrigerator. “Please sit down. Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thanks.” I sat down. He took a soft drink from the refrigerator and popped it open. Then he sat down in the other chair, leaning forward, waiting for me to speak.
“First of all,” I said, “your wife’s name isn’t Renee Mills. It’s Elizabeth Renee Willis.”
Philip Foster’s face barely had time to register amazement at my words when someone knocked sharply on the door. His expression shifted again, beyond anxiety to outright fear. The knocking continued.
“Are you going to answer it?” I asked.
He set the soft-drink can on the table and got to his feet slowly, stiffly. When he opened the door, a silver-haired man in an expensively tailored blue suit strode into the room and turned on him.
“Philip, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Why aren’t you at work? I had to cancel all your appointments, plus the meeting on the Interstate account, all because you’re up here on some goddamn wild goose chase.”
I stood up, and the older man noticed me for the first time. “Who the hell are you?” he snapped.
“This is the private investigator I’ve hired,” Philip said. “Jeri Howard. Ms. Howard, this is my father, Edward Foster.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
Edward Foster was about my height, five-eight, with a whipcord body like a retired jockey. He had eyes like hard brown pebbles in a creekbed and his tight-lipped mouth didn’t bother with a smile. As I looked at him I chalked one up for Norman Gerrity and understood why my client had been unavailable for the past twenty-four hours.
“I thought we’d dispensed with peepers,” Edward Foster said contemptuously. “This is a waste of time, Philip.”
“No, it isn’t. Ms. Howard’s already found out something. Something important. Renee has another name.”
“I’m not surprised.” The elder Foster fixed me with his unpleasant gaze. “Well?”
I looked at Philip. “You can talk in front of my father,” he assured me. “Please, go ahead with what you were telling me.”
“All right. I checked the birth records for your wife’s birth date. There was no Renee Mills born in Alameda County on that particular day. I checked a wider range of dates, with the same results. Assuming she changed her name but not her birth date I came up with some other names. Student Records at Cal State Hayward says your wife did study there. She was an English major and she dropped out at the end of her sophomore year. Her real name is Elizabeth Renee Willis.”
Edward Foster walked over to the window and looked down at the traffic on Broadway. Philip watched him move, like a dog that expects a blow, then turned his attention back to me.
“While she was at Cal State, she lived with an aunt named Alice Gray in San Leandro. I went to that address, but Mrs. Gray has moved to Stockton. A neighbor gave me her current address. The antique store your wife called the day before she left is owned by another aunt, Vera Burke. I haven’t been able to contact her. She went to Stockton last week because her father had a stroke and died.”
“It sounds like you’ve done a lot,” Philip said. His eyes darted from my face to his father’s, then back again. He took a nervous step toward the door. He wanted me to leave.
“I’m not finished,” I said. “Your wife’s parents were murdered. By her brother, Mark. Elizabeth — Renee — was in the house at the time.”
Philip’s face paled. He sat down on the bed, hands gripping the bedspread as I gave him a brief history of the Willis case.
“My God,” he said when I finished. “My poor Renee. To have gone through that.”
“It sounds like your wife’s grandfather had his stroke about the time Renee left. It’s possible she went to see her family.”
“Bullshit,” Edward Foster said.
Philip winced. “Dad, please don’t.”
“She didn’t go to see her damn family.” Edward Foster’s mouth twisted, and his hard brown eyes bored into mine. “I know it and Ms. Howard knows it, even if you don’t want to face facts.”
“I don’t know where she went,” I said. “But Stockton is a logical place to start looking.”
“Her family was in Los Gatos.” Anger sharpened Edward Foster’s words. “She walked out on him. She packed a suitcase, left her kid with my wife, cleaned out the bank account, and disappeared, without so much as a word to anyone. You can bet she didn’t go visit her family. And you can bet she’s
not coming back.”
“You don’t like her very much, do you, Mr. Foster?”
“She’s a bitch.”
“Dad!” Two red spots appeared on Philip’s pale face. He looked like an unhappy clown.
“She doesn’t love you. She never did. You might as well face it and get on with your life.” His son sat hunched on the bed. Edward didn’t bother to soften his harsh tone. “You’re wasting your money and jeopardizing your job. Give it up and come home.”
“No.” Philip shook his head. “I want to find her.”
Edward Foster threw up his hands. “Why?”
“He loves her,” I said.
“Then I guess they’re right when they say love is blind.” Edward’s mouth tightened and he looked at me, his eyes glinting. “What are you going to do next?”
“That’s up to my client.” I addressed my words to Philip. “It’s your money, Mr. Foster. What do you want me to do?”
“Find her,” Philip said.
“I’ll do my best. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I could hardly wait to get out of that room. All the way back to the office I turned the scene over in my mind. Edward Foster loathed his daughter-in-law. As far as he was concerned she could stay missing. I wondered how far he was prepared to go in order to convince his son to drop the search. No doubt he was back in the hotel room trying to persuade his son to do just that. And Philip appeared to be a man who was easily swayed.
I could end up without a client. But until Philip Foster told me otherwise, I would continue my investigation.
Five
I TRIED TO REACH ADMIRAL AND MRS. FRANKLIN that afternoon and evening, with no luck. At some campaign function, I speculated. My guess was confirmed by a story in the next morning’s Tribune about the admiral’s fund-raiser at an Oakland restaurant. I finished my coffee and the newspaper and left my office a little before nine.
As I drove to Alameda I thought about Elizabeth Willis and how difficult it was to pull her into focus. I had seen her at that high school reception, yet I couldn’t clearly recall her face. Neither could my brother. Four years my junior, he had been her classmate, just as Mark Willis had been mine. When I called Brian last night at his home in Sonoma I interrupted his dinner. He picked up the phone as his wife, Sheila, shushed my niece and nephew.
“So,” Brian said, “when are you going to get a real job?”
“That’s getting old, baby brother.”
“I know. Besides, I can’t recommend teaching, not these days. Were we this crazy when we were kids?”
“You were a pain in the ass until you were twenty. Listen, this is important. Think back to junior high. Do you remember a girl named Elizabeth Willis?”
Brian laughed. “That was a long time ago.”
“Try.”
“How much can you remember about junior high?” he protested.
“Acne and hormones.”
“See what I mean? Kids are self-centered at that age. Other people don’t register. Elizabeth Willis, huh?” The phone line went quiet. I pictured my brother’s forehead furrowing under his dark hair as he searched his memory. “Was that the girl whose brother killed someone?”
“Yes. The parents. Do you remember her?”
“Vaguely. The girl I’m thinking about was slender, with long brown hair. She was shy and sort of faded into the woodwork.” He chuckled wryly. “Now I have students like that.”
“You’re no help.”
“Sorry.”
This morning I drove slowly along Gibbons Drive, which runs like a leafy tunnel through Alameda’s East End, trees spreading their branches high across the street. Big houses sat comfortably on their lots, lawns lush and green from the recent rain.
The Franklins lived in a Spanish-style house of cream-colored stucco, with a red tile roof and red flagstones leading from the driveway to the front porch. A red-white-and-blue sign on the front lawn proclaimed FRANKLIN FOR STATE SENATE. As I went up the walk I looked at the two-story house on my left, where the Willises lived fifteen years ago. Its pale green exterior and closed blinds didn’t reveal any secrets. Then I mounted the shallow steps of the Franklins’ front porch and rang the bell.
The woman who answered was short, perhaps five-two. Her silver hair was curly and cropped close to her head. Laugh lines surrounded her warm topaz eyes. She carried a pair of gardening gloves in her left hand and held the door open with her right. I noticed a smudge on one knee of her blue slacks.
“Mrs. Franklin?”
“Yes?” She looked up at me curiously.
“My name is Jeri Howard.” I held out my license and the topaz eyes examined it. “I’m a private investigator. I’d like to talk to you and your husband.”
“Whatever for?”
“A case I’m working on. It relates indirectly to the Willis family.”
Her eyes flicked to the house next door, then back at me. “How odd,” she said. “I was thinking of them this morning.”
“You were? Why?”
She shrugged. “No reason. I just was. Please come in.”
Mrs. Franklin opened the door wider, and I stepped into a tiled entry hall, with more campaign signs leaning against one wall. She led the way though an arched doorway to the living room. The room was large, with a thick beige carpet that made me feel like I was walking on marshmallows. The furnishings were evidence of the Franklins’ years in the Navy. Two oriental rugs in shades of blue and red covered the carpet in the center of the room, and a ship’s bell hung on the wall next to a carved mahogany bar. The rest of the furniture was teak. Brass trinkets from the Philippines, cloisonné from China, and Japanese lacquer competed for space on the shelves of a boxy curio cabinet and on the low tables at each end of the sofa. Framed Japanese woodblocks and Chinese silk prints dominated the walls. On the mantel I saw pictures of another sort, photographs of the Franklin family, including one formal shot of the Franklins, the admiral in his dress white uniform, sword dangling at his side and several rows of medals on his chest.
“That was taken at Joe’s retirement, two years ago,” Mrs. Franklin said when she saw me looking at the photograph.
“Is your husband home?”
“No, he’s playing golf. I expect him back soon, though. He’s speaking at a meeting at eleven.” She sat down at one end of the long sofa and I took the armchair facing her.
“Now what’s this about?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Elizabeth Willis,” I said. “She’s missing from her home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mrs. Franklin frowned. “I haven’t seen Beth since... it happened.”
“No matter. I need some background information about the family. It may help me find her. I understand you and your husband were close friends of the Willises.”
“Yes, we were. For a long time.” She stopped and looked past me out the front window. “There’s Joe now.” She got up and went to the front door, opening it. I heard the slam of a car door and brisk footsteps coming up the walk.
Admiral Joseph Franklin entered the house carrying a golf bag, which he stowed in a hall closet. He was a tall spare man with thinning gray hair, a long narrow face, and an uncompromising beaked nose. He radiated what Navy people refer to as military bearing. Wearing tan slacks and a short-sleeved pullover, he carried himself as though he wore a dress uniform. He looked at me and waited for his wife to introduce me.
“This is Miss Howard, Joe,” Mrs. Franklin said as I stood. “She’s a private investigator.”
“Private investigator?” His opaque gray eyes went over me carefully.
“She’s looking for Beth Willis. She’s missing.”
“Indeed. Get me a cup of coffee, will you, Lenore?” Mrs. Franklin looked at me inquiringly. I shook my head. As his wife went back to the kitchen the admiral fixed me with a narrow-eyed stare. “Are you really a private investigator?”
“Yes.” I took out my license and showed it to him.
He glanced at it. “Who
hired you?”
“My client’s identity is confidential.”
The admiral was not accustomed to insubordination. His mouth tightened. Mrs. Franklin came back, carrying his coffee.
“Sit down,” she said. “Tell Joe what you told me.”
“I have to get ready. We’ll need to leave at ten-thirty,” Franklin said, glancing at his watch.
“I won’t keep you long,” I said. He sat down with ill-concealed impatience, his wife next to him on the sofa. I resumed my seat in the armchair.
“I need some information about the Willis family.”
“I don’t know what good that would do,” Franklin said.
“I’m looking for leads anywhere I can find them. The more information I have about Elizabeth and her family, the easier it will be for me to trace her. People don’t change the patterns of their lives that much, even when they are trying to conceal themselves.”
“It sounds like she left of her own accord,” Franklin said. I didn’t answer. “Then you’ll have a hard time finding her.”
“I’d like a clearer picture of whom I’m looking for. Anything you can tell me about the family will be helpful. Admiral, I gathered from the newspaper article on the memorial service that you’d known George Willis for a long time.”
Franklin studied me for a moment. He didn’t answer right away, considering whether to answer at all. Then he spoke, deliberately and carefully, as though he were addressing his political constituents.
“I met George Willis at the Academy. We were in the same class. He was from Florida. Some little town near Pensacola, where we both went through flight training. His parents were dead. We weren’t close friends at first, but later we kept running into one another at duty stations all over the West Coast and the Pacific. When two officers are in the same career pattern, assignments often coincide. That’s when we got to be friends, when our families were growing up. George and I would be stationed aboard the same carrier, and back in San Diego or Pearl our wives and kids would be holding down the fort.”