Casebook_Four Jeri Howard Stories

by Janet Dawson

  “The guy’s a loser,” Beth Fonseca told me, slugging down her cappuccino as though she needed a late afternoon infusion of caffeine. “I’m surprised they didn’t fire his ass sooner.”

  “They fired him? Why?”

  “Misconduct, negligence, misappropriation of funds. You name it.”

  I asked her to name it. She was reluctant at first, but I assured her that we’d never had this conversation. So she gave me a few examples of Cathcart’s skullduggery, the kind that could get him disbarred or jailed.

  After the attorney went back across California Street I finished my latte. Time to meet the nieces, I thought glancing at my watch. It was late enough so that even if they’d worked that day, they should be home.

  I retrieved my car and headed west in the thickening rush hour traffic. Mary Hooper lived near the intersection of Twenty-First Avenue and Lake Street. Finding a parking place anywhere in San Francisco is always a chore, and it took me several passes before I wedged my Toyota into a space between a fire hydrant and someone’s driveway. The apartment was on the lower level of a house in the middle of the block, looking as though it had been converted from a garage.

  I rang the bell. No answer.

  I went back to my car and kept an eye on the place until I saw a gray Ford pull up outside the house. The driver was a man. The woman in the passenger seat leaned over and kissed him, then got out, walking toward the house. I jotted down the plate number as the Ford pulled away. By the time the woman entered the apartment I was out of my car and headed toward the house.

  Definitely a converted garage, now a bare-bones studio, I thought, judging from what I could see when Mary Hooper opened the door. Late twenties, medium height, I thought, looking her over. Her dark brown hair fell to her shoulders, and she had blue eyes. Just like Kay Loomis, Cathcart’s last secretary. Was that Cathcart in the Ford? I wondered.

  I introduced myself, telling Mary Hooper that I worked for the attorney handling her aunt’s will. “He’s a little concerned about some irregularities,” I said. “For instance, you’re not named directly as a beneficiary. There’s just a reference to a niece.”

  “I’m surprised she mentioned me in her will at all.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice, then held the carton up and asked if I wanted some. I declined. She took a seat on the end of the futon on a frame that served as both bed and sofa, and crossed her legs.

  “Mother and Aunt Sylvia weren’t close. I don’t know why, and now that Mother’s dead, I can’t ask her,” she added regretfully. “When I moved here earlier this year, I decided to make contact. I wish I’d done it sooner. Aunt Sylvia was really a nice lady.” She sipped her orange juice. “What’s going to happen to her cat? She really doted on that cat. I’d be happy take it.”

  I looked at her face, trying to detect signs of duplicity. I saw none, only concern for Ermengarde’s fate. “The cat’s being cared for. How did you know she had a cat?”

  “Oh, I was over at Aunt Sylvia’s house a couple of times.”

  “It’s interesting,” I said, “that you weren’t listed in her address book.”

  “Really? That’s odd. Maybe she had my number written down someplace else.”

  “Maybe. It was lucky that you saw the notice of the funeral in the newspaper.”

  “Yeah, it was,” she said, smiling again. “I would have hated to miss the service.”

  “And it would have made it more difficult for me to find you,” I said, “if you hadn’t given your name and address to Mrs. Chao. Then I had to wait until you came home. Were you at work?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, it’s just a temp job, in a law office. I’m doing that until I find a job I like.”

  “More job opportunities here than where you lived before?” I asked.

  “Definitely more,” she agreed. “There weren’t as many jobs back home.” She took another swallow of juice and smiled at me again.

  “Where was that?”

  Her smile grew less welcoming. “Detroit. That’s where I grew up. Say, what is this, some kind of test?”

  It was, but at this point I didn’t know whether she’d passed or failed. I’d have to go back and do some more database research to see if her story about living in Detroit was true. And I wanted to put a trace on the license plate of that Ford that had dropped her off.

  I took my leave. “You’ll let me know about the cat,” she said. I assured her I would.

  Cathy Wingate’s apartment was on Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights. When she opened her front door, somehow I wasn’t surprised to see that she, too, matched the description of Kay Loomis. Late twenties and medium height, again, with blue eyes looking at me from a face fringed with short brunette hair.

  I gave her the same spiel I’d given the other niece, and asked if I could come in.

  “You mean Sylvia left me something?” she asked, amazed. “I’ll be damned. What a sweet old gal.” She held the door open wider. Her apartment was also a studio, sparsely furnished and with an air of impermanence. She looked tired, as though she’d had a rough day.

  “I’m looking for a job,” she volunteered, popping the top on a soda from her refrigerator. She asked if I wanted one, and I shook my head. She sat down on what looked like an old sofabed and kicked off her shoes. “I had two interviews today. I’m bushed. It takes a lot out of you.”

  I went right to the questions. “What do you do?”

  “Legal secretary, legal word processor. Whatever I can get that will pay the rent. At least for now.” She sipped the coffee she’d poured for herself. “Both of my interviews today went really went well.” She held up her hand I saw that her fingers were crossed. “Wish me luck.”

  “Better job prospects here than in . . .”

  “Denver,” she said. “I moved here from Denver, not quite a year ago. I don’t know about job prospects, but the weather is sure as hell better. So, what did Sylvia leave me? I don’t mean to sound greedy or anything, but at this point, an extra fifty bucks would be a godsend.”

  “We’ll get to that. Is your family still in Denver?”

  She frowned. “Why all the questions?”

  “I’m just curious about why Mrs. Littlejohn would leave you something in her will.”

  “Well, so am I,” she said with a shrug. “I mean, I’m her niece. But it’s not like we were close. I never even met her till I came out here. I decided since she was in Oakland I’d look her up.”

  “Why weren’t you close?”

  “She and my mom had a falling out, years ago. Mom didn’t like to talk about it. And Mom’s dead now, so I can’t ask her.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He’s dead, too.”

  “What was his name?”

  “George Cooper.”

  I digested this. Funny how Cooper and Loomis both had double Os. And it was a short walk from Cathy to Kay.

  The phone rang. She made no move to answer it, instead letting her answering machine pick up the call. It was a man’s voice. He didn’t leave his name, just, “Hi, call me when you get in.”

  “Boyfriend?” I asked. Bruce Cathcart? I wondered, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Just a guy I’ve been out with a couple of times.” Cathy Wingate set her soda on an end table and gave me a hard look. “I get the feeling you don’t think I’m Sylvia’s niece.”

  “Just exercising a little caution,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

  “If it will make you feel any better, I’ve got some old pictures that belonged to my mother. They show her and Sylvia when they were kids.”

  “I’d love to see them,” I told her.

  She got up and moved over to a desk that had been pushed against a wall. She opened a drawer and then walked back toward me, opening the flap on a large accordion folder. She rummaged in one of the pockets and drew out a handful of snapshots. She sifted through the photos in her hand, then held one out to me. “Here. That’s Mom on the left and Sylvia on the right.”

/>   I glanced at the photo, a faded color snapshot showing two youngsters in frilly dresses who could have been anyone’s kids. “Did you know your aunt had a cat?” I asked.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, concern written on her face. “I forgot about her. Is somebody taking care of her? I should have asked that Mrs. Chao I met at the funeral. Sylvia loved Ermengarde. Did you know she named that cat after her old nanny? I knew why, too, the minute I saw the cat.”

  “Why is that?”

  She handed me another photograph, this one a larger reproduction showing the two little girls standing on either side of a seated woman in a dowdy black dress. Cathy Wingate pointed at the woman’s worn round face. “Ermengarde and the cat have the same eyes.”

  I looked at the photo and smiled. The woman’s eyes, like those of her namesake, were blue, slightly crossed.

  “But Aunt Mae said she thought Lucille married a guy named Fanning,” Mike said. “You’re telling me Cathy Wingate’s father was George Cooper.”

  “Lucille’s first husband was Tom Fanning. In fact, that’s why Sylvia and Lucille had their falling-out. Tom was courting Sylvia, then changed his mind and went after her younger sister. After he was killed in a car accident, Lucille married George and they had one child, Cathy. She was in Sylvia’s address book, by the way. As Mary Catherine Cooper, instead of her married name, Wingate. Sylvia never bothered to change the name.”

  “What happened to Mr. Wingate?” Cassie asked.

  “He died of cancer last year, which is one reason Cathy decided to leave Denver for California. At the same time, Sylvia knew she was dying and wanted to make arrangements for Ermengarde. That’s when she went to see Cathcart.”

  I smiled, this time with grim satisfaction. “I traced Cathcart from the plate number of that Ford. He was living in the Sunset District, as John Benson, a deceased client whose social security number he’d appropriated for new identification. Now that both Cathcart and Loomis have been arrested and charged, Kay’s singing long and loud. Says it was all Bruce’s idea. Turns out Sylvia did specify her niece Mary Catherine Cooper as Ermengarde’s caretaker. After she’d signed the will, he substituted the altered page, then set up Kay in the role of the niece, Mary Hooper. What tripped them up was Ermengarde. Cathcart knew what the cat’s name was. But he didn’t know why Sylvia chose that name.”

  “So Mike gets the probate judge to sign off on your affidavit,” Cassie said, “Cathy Wingate gets designated as Mrs. Littlejohn’s one and only niece. And Ermengarde gets a home.”

  “Well, there’s just one problem,” Mike said, frowning. “And I don’t think Jeri can fix it. Cathy Wingate’s allergic to cats.”

  Slayer Statute

  “Why would one shoot the other?” I asked. I like to know why things happen.

  Wilcoxin shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. They’re both dead. All I care about is who gets the money.” He frowned, as though considering how callous that sounded. “That’s for damn sure all the beneficiaries care about.”

  “How much money?”

  The insurance adjuster gazed morosely at the folder sitting like a toad in the middle of his desk. He named an amount certain to gladden the heart of any beneficiary, then appended a caveat.

  “Payment to the beneficiaries is my top priority, but I want to be sure the insurance company hasn’t been defrauded. That’s where you come in, Ms. Howard. You were recommended to me as someone who can untangle messes. This case has been a monumental headache.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to jump into this briar patch. “Tell me more. Then I’ll tell you if I’ll take it.”

  Judging from the look on his face, the thought that I might not be willing to take on his headache evidently hadn’t occurred to Wilcoxin. He reached for the file, which concerned a husband and wife, both of them very dead. In fact, one of them had apparently committed homicide before committing suicide. Why? That was just one of the questions I had about the late Claude and Martha Terrell.

  Late fifties, both of them. Late residents of Alameda, the island city in San Francisco Bay. They’d both been in real estate. Claude developed commercial, Martha sold residential. Having made piles of money, they both retired. Claude played golf, Martha played bridge—when she wasn’t collecting old silver.

  The Terrells had married eight years earlier, a second marriage for both, after their first matrimonial forays ended in divorce. Each had two adult children. Claude’s son Eric was thirty-one and married. Daughter Erin was twenty-nine and single. Martha’s daughter Pamela was thirty, married, with one child. Son Colin was twenty-seven and unmarried.

  Not long after their wedding, the Terrells had purchased life insurance policies with Wilcoxin’s company. The policies had included the standard suicide clause, designed to discourage people from promptly killing themselves to benefit their families. The clause stated that if the insured committed suicide within two years after the policy issue date, the insurance company’s liability was limited to a return of the premiums paid. The suicide clause on the Terrell policy was no longer in effect. The insurer was now obligated to pay the beneficiaries, whom the Terrells had designated in what should have been a straightforward, logical fashion.

  Should have been, that is, until words like homicide and suicide entered the equation.

  “You’re familiar with the Slayer Statute?” Wilcoxin asked.

  “California Probate Code Section 250? Indeed I am.”

  “The medical examiner can’t say who died first. The police can’t figure out which one killed the other. You see my problem?”

  “Indeed I do.” And it was a doozy.

  The California Slayer Statute says that a person who “feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent” is not entitled to any of the decedent’s property, interest, or benefit, which then goes to the heirs “as if the killer had predeceased the decedent.”

  So what did the Slayer Statute have to do with the Terrells’ life insurance policies? Everything.

  Under normal circumstances, if Claude died first, the money from his insurance policy went to his primary beneficiary, Martha. If Martha was no longer living at the time Claude died, the payout went to his secondary beneficiaries, Claude’s two children, Eric and Erin. If Martha died first, the money from her insurance policy went to her primary beneficiary, Claude. If he was no longer living when Martha died, the payout went to Martha’s secondary beneficiaries, her children, Pamela and Colin, then to her tertiary beneficiary, Pamela’s young daughter.

  But if the deaths were murder-suicide, normal went out the window. The law assumed the killer died first. So when it came to distributing the estate, the scenario went like this:

  If Claude killed Martha, then turned the gun on himself, the law figured Claude died first and Martha was his beneficiary. Since Martha was also dead, her beneficiaries would get the money from Claude’s life insurance policy—plus the payout from Martha’s life insurance policy. And if Martha killed Claude, then herself, the law said she died first and Claude inherited. So Claude’s beneficiaries would get the money from Martha’s insurance—and Claude’s insurance money, too.

  It was a lot of money. No wonder the beneficiaries were fighting. The winners got all the slices in the big, juicy pie.

  “Why don’t these people just split the money four ways?” I asked.

  Wilcoxin’s pained expression told me I didn’t know all the nuances of the insurance biz. Maybe not, but I knew about greed.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  I smiled. “No, I suppose not. It never is, where money is involved.”

  “There’s going to be a hearing in a couple of weeks,” he said. “The court may rule on which of the Terrells died first based on the existing evidence. Or that the estate can be divided evenly. But until that happens, my company has to make a good faith effort to determine who gets the money.”

  “Why can’t the medical examiner make that call?”

  “He can place time of death to the hour,
but not the minute. He says they died too close together for him to be sure.”

  “Suicide note? Gunshot residue? Fingerprints? Weapon position?”

  Wilcoxin pressed his hands to his temples. “No suicide note. Gunshot residue on the right hands of both decedents. Prints of both decedents on the weapon, which was registered to Claude and usually kept in a locked drawer in his nightstand. The gun was found under the table in the breakfast nook. Odd place for it to wind up, given the position of the bodies.”

  “I have to hand it to you, Mr. Wilcoxin. This one is a stinker.”

  “Will you take the case?” he asked, naked pleading in his voice.

  By now I was thoroughly hooked. So I might as well follow the line and see where it led. “All right. I can’t promise anything. But I’ll give it my best . . .”

  I almost said “shot” but caught myself in time.

  “I’ll need the police report, autopsy results, and lab analysis. You have crime scene photos?”

  He nodded, looking queasy. “They’re awfully grim.”

  “They usually are. Right now I want a look at the report.”

  He handed the report across the desk. I began to read.

  The Terrells became the late Terrells on a Friday in May, courtesy of bullets in their brains—one each. Housecleaner Estrellita Mejia arrived at approximately one o’clock that afternoon. She opened the front door with her key, went back to the kitchen, and found two bloody corpses on the floor. She ran screaming into the street, alerting a gardener working at a nearby house. He summoned police with his cell phone.

  Initially the Alameda Police Department viewed the slayings as a home-invasion robbery gone bad. But nothing had been taken. Claude’s wallet, full of cash and credit cards, was on his dresser. Martha’s baubles were still in her jewelry case. The purported burglars ignored a cabinet full of valuable silver. That pretty much eliminated the robbery theory.