Casebook_Four Jeri Howard Stories

by Janet Dawson

  Fleming nodded. “Lambert’s doctor said the cancer would have killed him in a year or eighteen months. So he could have committed suicide, even if his lady friend insisted that was impossible.”

  “Is that Mrs. Wong, the woman he was with the night he died?”

  “Yeah. Lived around the corner from him, on Farragut Avenue. She said he wouldn’t have killed himself. I didn’t have a note to indicate a suicidal state of mind. Why are you asking about the Lambert case?”

  “Any chance it might be murder?”

  “Murder?” Fleming’s eyebrows shot up. “We haven’t had a murder in, oh twenty, twenty-five years. Way before my time, anyway.”

  The rich are different, I told myself, and Piedmont really was a world apart from Oakland. Fleming dropped the laid-back yuppie persona. “What makes you think anyone killed Raleigh Lambert?”

  “My suspicious nature, I guess. Tell me, where was Harold Baldwin the night his uncle died?”

  “At home, in his apartment in Concord. He worked as a salesman, wholesaling electronics.”

  Baldwin didn’t need to work any more, judging from the figures I’d seen in Uncle Raleigh’s probated will. “He’s come up in the world, hasn’t he? Any witnesses? To his being home in Concord?”

  “I took his word for it. Didn’t have any reason to doubt it. Do you?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “A hunch and a buck will get you a lottery ticket,” Fleming declared. “You get lucky on either, you let me know.”

  Patricia Wong’s house on Farragut Avenue was a small, pleasantly proportioned stucco, blue with white trim. It had a well-kept garden and it was obvious that Mrs. Wong did the keeping. I found her at the side of the house pruning an azalea, with a sedate black standard poodle for company. As I approached the house, the poodle got up from its spot on the grass and walked over to inspect me.

  “He won’t hurt you,” Mrs. Wong said, with a friendly smile. She was in her early sixties, dressed in blue jeans and a blue work shirt. Today the sun shone and it was warmer than it had been earlier in the week. The poodle sniffed my shoes, legs and hand, then wagged its short tail to indicate I was okay. Mrs. Wong set down her pruning shears and removed her straw hat. I saw that she had shoulder-length black hair, streaked liberally with silver.

  “My name is Jeri Howard,” I told her. “I’m a private investigator. I’d like to ask you some questions about Raleigh Lambert.”

  The smile left her face, replaced by sadness in her large brown eyes. “Why?”

  “Are you satisfied that his death was an accident?”

  She didn’t even stop to consider. Instead she shook her head resolutely. “Not at all. But he wouldn’t have killed himself either.”

  Fifteen minutes later we were in Mrs. Wong’s living room, seated on a rosewood sofa. She’d made tea, and the strong jasmine scent filled the air. The poodle stretched out at our feet and sighed with contentment.

  “Tell me about Raleigh Lambert,” I said.

  Patricia Wong smiled. “Raleigh was the most charming man. Dapper, handsome, debonair. I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I compared him to Cary Grant or Fred Astaire. Not in looks, really. But he had that air about him. Let me show you a picture.”

  She stood and crossed the room to a shelf which held numerous framed photographs and returned with one, which she handed to me.

  I examined it and grinned. I could see Lambert robbing a casino and romancing Grace Kelly in To Catch A Thief, or dancing with Cyd Charisse and total aplomb in The Bandwagon. He looked like a pistol, his long thoroughbred’s face topped by a full head of white hair. Incredibly bright blue eyes smiled out from a tanned face. In this head-and-shoulders shot, Lambert wore a white shirt and I saw what looked like a tennis racquet propped on one shoulder.

  “That was taken at the National Senior Games, five years ago,” Mrs. Wong said. “Raleigh won gold medals in both singles and doubles. He was so alive. I just can’t believe he’d take his own life. Nor can I believe he would be so careless as to lower the garage door before he’d turned off the engine.”

  “Where does that leave us?” I asked, not yet ready to say the word I’d been thinking ever since I saw that flicker of panic in Harold Baldwin’s eyes when I’d mentioned dear uncle Raleigh. Murder?

  Mrs. Wong wasn’t ready to say it either. Instead she reached for her jasmine tea. “Why are you asking these questions?”

  I decided I wouldn’t tell her about that strange look in Harold Baldwin’s eyes. At least not right now. “A week before he died, Raleigh Lambert left his Corvette at a repair shop in Oakland. He never picked it up.”

  “The Corvette,” she mused. “I wondered what happened to it. Raleigh and I used to tool down Highway One in that Corvette, playing the radio and singing along.” She sighed. “Raleigh loved old cars. He stored most of them in Oakland, but he had several at the house. There was a T-Bird, a Packard. He even had an Edsel.”

  She looked as though she were having such a wonderful time reliving the past with Raleigh that I hated to bring her into the present. “Now the garage owner is trying to sell the Corvette. He does have a lien, because the repairs were never paid for. But he hasn’t taken the legal steps that would enable him to sell the vehicle. A friend of mine is interested in buying the car, so I started checking into it. That how I stumbled into this. I got curious about why no one ever claimed such a valuable car.”

  “Harold must not have known it was in the shop.” Mrs. Wong freshened our tea. “I suppose now that he does, your friend will have to buy the Corvette from Harold instead of the garage owner. Harold got rid of all of the cars, except the Jaguar. I think he sold them to a museum or another collector.” She sighed. “Harold couldn’t wait to trade up from his beat-up Honda and his one-bedroom apartment in Concord. He’s let both the house and garden go to seed. He may have Raleigh’s money, but he’ll never have Raleigh’s style.”

  “How long had you known Raleigh?”

  “Over twenty years,” she said. “He and my late husband both loved tennis. I knew his wife Felicia. She died a long time ago. When we were both widowed we started seeing more of each other. Raleigh and I talked about marriage but we decided we were quite happy just keeping company.”

  “How would your families have reacted to a marriage?”

  “My children wouldn’t have minded at. In fact, my daughter used to ask me when Raleigh and I were going to elope. I think Harold was afraid I’d do just that and get his inheritance. Raleigh and Felicia never had any children, you see. Harold’s mother was Raleigh’s only sister.”

  I nodded. “Tell me about that night.”

  “We’d been to a ballroom dance contest at the Claremont. We won first place. I still have the trophy.” She smiled fondly at his photograph. “Raleigh was the only man of my acquaintance who could tango. Does that sound like a man who would kill himself the same night?”

  “No, it doesn’t. But he did have liver cancer.”

  “I realize that. He told me the day he was diagnosed.” Mrs. Wong sipped her tea. “You see, Felicia died of ovarian cancer. A very long and painful death. Raleigh told me he wouldn’t go that way. I think he would have killed himself before he became totally incapacitated. But he wasn’t. He’d only found out about the cancer a month before. He was going to try radiation and chemotherapy. He would have fought the disease hard before giving into it.”

  “Had he been drinking that night?”

  “Well, yes,” she said, a tad reluctantly. “We both had. But he certainly wasn’t drunk. Raleigh held his liquor like the gentleman he was. I didn’t detect any sign of intoxication while we were driving home.”

  “What time did you get here?”

  “About ten. He saw me to the door. I invited him in for a nightcap, but he declined. It was a Thursday night. Raleigh had a tennis match at nine Friday morning, and I was taking a class. Besides, I think we were both tired from all that dancing.”

  I had to agree with her th
at it didn’t sound as though Lambert had killed himself. Maybe he was more intoxicated that she’d thought. “Who found the body?” I asked.

  “Teo Martinez, Raleigh’s doubles partner. When Raleigh didn’t show up for their tennis match, Teo called and didn’t get any answer. Finally he went by the house. He heard the car running in the garage as he walked up the driveway.” Mrs. Wong shuddered. “Poor Teo.”

  “So there was no one there besides Raleigh. He didn’t have a housekeeper?”

  Patricia Wong shook her head. “No household help. He had a cleaning service that came in once a week, on Monday. And he liked to cook for himself.”

  When I drove into the parking lot of Musetta’s repair shop the little red Corvette was gone. I went looking for Del, who glared at me from his grubby lair.

  “You got some nerve showing your face around here, lady. I got a hotshot lawyer threatening to hand me over to the cops, charge me with conversion or some damn thing. All because you stuck your nose in.” He stared glumly at the spot where the Corvette had been. “Why couldn’t you have just bought it?”

  “I wasn’t really interested in buying the car, Musetta. I’m a private investigator. Besides, it’s your own fault. You should have made more of an effort to contact the legal owner. Did you know Lambert?”

  “Never met him till he brought that Corvette in here. He said his regular mechanic had retired, and he’d heard I did good work. Told me he collected cars and if I did a good job on the Corvette, maybe we’d have us a long term arrangement.”

  “But a week later he was dead. You must have known that, must have seen the article in the Tribune.” I waved away his protests. “You figured his heir wouldn’t miss one car out of half a dozen. So you waited a couple of years before selling it. You should have gone to the DMV for an authorization for lien sale. But they might have tumbled to the fact that you hadn’t made any effort to contact Lambert that the repairs were done. Or his heir.”

  “Swear to God, I did try,” Musetta insisted. “I called three, four times. I left messages on his answering machine. I even went by the house twice.”

  “When?”

  “A week after he left the car. I drove up to Piedmont one night after I closed the shop. Made another trip the very next morning, hoping I’d catch him before he left the house.”

  My ears pricked up. “What day of the week was that?”

  Musetta sighed. “Lambert left the car here on a Friday. Only reason I remember that is I was planning to cut out early and go fishing. I told him I couldn’t get to it until Monday. He said that was fine and to call him when it was ready. I finished the work late Monday afternoon. Called, left a message. Same thing the next three days. I start to wonder if the guy’s out of town. Finally I went by the house, Thursday. I know it was Thursday, ’cause that’s my bowling night.”

  Thursday was the night Lambert had squired Mrs. Wong to the dance contest at the Claremont. “Who did you talk with? What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” Musetta said. “There wasn’t anyone home. Not even a maid, in a big house like that. I rang the doorbell. Zip. So I figured I’d swing by there Friday morning, before I came over here to open the shop.”

  So Musetta had been at the Sea View address again Friday morning, the same morning Lambert’s body had been found by his friend Teo. “I want you to think very carefully,” I told him. “About that Thursday evening when you went to Lambert’s house. Were there any cars in the driveway?”

  Musetta screwed up his face as he looked back three years. He nodded. “A couple, covered up. Couldn’t tell what make they were. There was this beat-up Honda at the side of the garage. I figured it belonged to the household help. That’s why I was surprised when no one answered the door. I thought . . .” He paused and looked confused. “I thought someone was there. That’s it. I looked in the window when I rang the bell. Coulda sworn I saw someone in the house. But no one answered the door.”

  “Was the Honda there when you came back Friday morning?” Musetta hesitated. “Think. What time? You were on your way to the shop, so it must have been—” I broke off and looked at the hours listed on the repair shop’s door. “You open at seven, so it must have been six-thirty, quarter to seven.”

  Musetta nodded. “Yeah, it was just getting light. I didn’t go to the door. I sat in my car at the curb, where I could see the porch and the garage, till I saw someone come out. It wasn’t Lambert, though.”

  No, it couldn’t have been Raleigh Lambert. He was sitting behind the wheel of his ’65 Mustang in that detached garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. If Musetta had walked up the driveway he’d have heard the Mustang’s engine. It was still running, as it had been all night, when Teo Martinez found the body later than morning. So whoever had left Lambert’s house while Musetta was parked at the curb must have heard that car. Unless that person was deaf—or chose to ignore it.

  I probed Musetta’s memory enough to get an adequate description of the person he’d seen that morning. Then I went up to Piedmont.

  Harold Baldwin didn’t look any happier to see me this time than he had the last. While he stood at the door, I strolled past him, through the foyer to take a look at the living room. I didn’t see any of the fine porcelain Raleigh Lambert was supposed to have collected. Maybe his nephew had sold it all, the way he had the classic cars.

  He followed me into the room. “What are you doing here?”

  “The little red Corvette. The one that was left at the garage.”

  “You wanted to buy it? My lawyer is taking care of it. If you still want to buy the car you can get in touch with him.” He rattled off a name and phone number. I didn’t bother to write it down.

  “Such a shame about your uncle dying that way.” Baldwin frowned at me. “I understand he killed himself.”

  “He had cancer,” Baldwin said with a shrug. “My aunt died of cancer. I guess he just didn’t want to go that way.”

  “So you knew it was coming. Still, it must have been quite a shock when you found him.”

  “I didn’t find him. His doubles partner found him.”

  “So you weren’t here at all, either Thursday or Friday.”

  “Of course not. I lived in Concord then. I was at home.”

  “Right. I suppose you sold that Mustang. Must have had all sorts of unpleasant connotations, what with Uncle Raleigh dying in it. You sold all his cars, except the Jag and the Corvette. But you didn’t know about the Corvette. When did you unload the Honda?”

  “What Honda?” That look was back, the one I’d seen in Baldwin’s eyes the first time I mentioned his uncle and a car.

  “According to Patricia Wong, you used to drive a little green Honda. After Raleigh’s will was probated you couldn’t wait to shed your one-bedroom apartment in Concord and your old car. She was right. You may have Raleigh’s money but you sure as hell don’t have his style.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Baldwin stuttered.

  “Sure you do. You came out of the house, got into your beat-up Honda and drove off. But not before you checked the garage to make sure Raleigh was dead. You might have gotten away with it, if it hadn’t been for that little red Corvette. Someone saw you that morning—the garage owner. He wanted to catch the owner. I guess he just did.”

  I picked up the phone and called Sergeant Fleming. “I got lucky,” I told him. “And I’m not talking about the lottery.”

  Blue Eyes

  “Hey, Jeri,” Cassie Taylor said with a chuckle. “Have I got a case for you.”

  I cradled the phone receiver between chin and shoulder as I switched off my computer, glancing at my watch. “I can give you half an hour. Then I’ve got to take Abigail to the vet.”

  Cassie’s chuckle escalated into outright laughter.

  “Why is it so funny that I have to take my cat to the vet?” I asked.

  “It’s not. Abigail, I mean. It’s just that . . .” She stopped talking as she tried to get her laughter unde
r control. “Come on over and I’ll explain.”

  Mystified, I locked the door of J. Howard Investigations, located on the third floor of a building near Oakland’s Chinatown. The front suite of offices is occupied by the law firm of Alwin, Taylor and Chao. Cassie’s the middle partner. She and I have been friends since we were legal secretaries many years ago. Cassie went to law school, and I went into the private investigating business.

  Cassie was in her office, dressed as usual in one of her spiffy lawyer suits. The elegant effect of the classy navy blue wool was spoiled somewhat by the fact that she’d removed her leather pumps and replaced them with a pair of battered running shoes, which were much more suitable for walking several blocks to the Alameda County Courthouse. At the moment, however, she was leaning back in her chair with her running shoes propped up on an open desk drawer, offering a excellent view of her sleek legs.

  With Cassie was her partner, Mike Chao. Short and stocky, he wore gray pinstripes, though he’d removed his jacket. The cuffs of his white shirt had been rolled up and he’d loosened the knot on his red tie. He was sitting in one of the two client chairs in front of Cassie’s desk, holding a document in his hands. I sat down in the other client chair. “What’s this case that has you in stitches?”

  “I’m not in stitches, Cassie is,” Mike said, looking glum. “Mainly because it’s my problem and not hers. And I can’t very well take it to court, because the judge will toss it back in my lap. It’s about a cat. And a will.”

  “Don’t tell me some little old lady died and left her estate to her cat Fluffy.”

  “Sort of,” Mike said. “Only the cat’s name is Ermengarde.”

  “Ermengarde! Who names a cat Ermengarde?” I shook my head. “That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

  “This from a woman named her cats Abigail and Black Bart,” Cassie commented.

  “Let me give you some background,” Mike said. “My Aunt Mae had a friend named Sylvia Littlejohn. She was only in her early sixties. But she had cancer, and she died about ten days ago. She named Aunt Mae as executor of her will.”