Casebook_Four Jeri Howard Stories

by Janet Dawson

“The whole time they were married. And before. I used to clean for Mrs. Terrell before she married Mr. Terrell.”

  “So you knew Martha Terrell fairly well?”

  “As well as you can know someone you work for.”

  “Had you seen or heard anything that might indicate that Mr. and Mrs. Terrell were having marital difficulties?”

  “No, it was a good marriage. Mrs. Terrell once told me she was happier with Mr. Terrell than with her first husband.”

  That might cover Martha’s feelings, I thought, but it didn’t account for Claude’s perspective.

  “Did they have disagreements about money? Or about their children from their previous marriages?” I asked. Finances and offspring were two of the biggest frictions in any marriage.

  She hesitated.

  “I know you don’t want to speak out of turn, but anything you overheard might be important.”

  “Well, there were arguments. About money.”

  “Between Mr. and Mrs. Terrell?”

  “Sometimes. But it wasn’t disagreements between the two of them. It was mixed up with their children.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “How so?”

  “Mr. Terrell didn’t like it that Mrs. Terrell gave money to Colin. He said Colin should learn to stand on his own two feet.”

  Mr. Terrell may have had a point. But I didn’t have enough information yet to make that call. “So Colin had money troubles, and Mom kept bailing him out.”

  Mrs. Mejia nodded. “Mrs. Terrell told me some of it. The rest I overheard. Colin can’t decide what he wants to do with his life. He dropped out of college, then he went back. He got a degree and a teaching credential, like his sister. After teaching for a few years he signed on with a dot-com company. He hadn’t been there very long when the tech boom went bust and he was out. Then it was law school. He stuck with that for a year before he quit. Since last summer he’s been working temp jobs. He couldn’t afford to pay rent on his apartment, so he moved in with his girlfriend. He has trouble making ends meet.”

  “So there was some tension,” I said. “Did you overhear any arguments between Colin and his mother?”

  “Yes, several months ago. Mrs. Terrell said Colin should settle on something, either teaching or law school. Colin got defensive, they argued, and Mr. Terrell got involved. Colin stormed out of the house. Later Mrs. Terrell told me she probably shouldn’t keep helping Colin, but he was her son. I understood. I’d do the same for my kids. She said Mr. Terrell got upset because she gave Colin money, but it was her own money. Besides, he wrote lots of checks to his own son.”

  “Same situation?” I asked. “Eric has trouble deciding what he wants to be when he grows up?”

  “Not quite the same. Eric knows what he wants to be—the boss. He started his own business, but it failed.”

  “His father bankrolled him?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Mejia said. “Mrs. Terrell told me Mr. Terrell lost a lot of money when Eric’s business went under, about a year ago. Eric wanted to start another business.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I overheard another argument, a couple of weeks before the Terrells died. Mr. Terrell and Eric had a big fight, words mostly. I was upstairs cleaning. They were in the back yard and the windows were open. I looked out and saw them shouting at one another. Eric said his father was being selfish, he had plenty of money. Mr. Terrell said that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t going to give Eric any more, because Eric didn’t have a head for business, and he wasn’t going to throw good money after bad.”

  “You said their fight was mostly words. Did it get physical?”

  Mrs. Mejia frowned. “Yes. Their voices got louder, then Eric grabbed his father’s arm. That was when Mrs. Terrell came out of the house, telling them to stop.”

  It sounded as though there were some longstanding issues about money in the Terrell family, between father and son, between mother and son as well. Mrs. Mejia’s version of Colin’s work history was different from his sister’s. Pamela had said he was between jobs, but she’d left out the fact that he’d moved from job to job, and had attended law school.

  What if Colin’s stint as a law student had brought him into contact with the details of Probate Code Section 250? What if his financial problems led him to stage the Terrells’ supposed murder-suicide? The legal connection got muddier when the background check I’d initiated on the beneficiaries revealed that both Erin Terrell and her sister-in-law Lisa worked in law offices. Lisa was an administrative assistant in a general practice firm in Oakland, where she and Eric lived. She had access to the California codes. So did Erin, who was a paralegal in one of the big San Francisco firms, one that practiced several types of law, including wills and trusts.

  I dug into the details of Eric Terrell’s failed business. He had attempted to carve out his own niche in the high-tech boom, right about the time the bottom fell out of the so-called new economy. The venture lost a lot of money. He was now working at a software firm in Oakland, doomed to a day job until his inheritance freed him to start another business.

  Time to start looking at alibis, I thought.

  Sergeant Lipensky, Alameda Police Department, looked sceptical when I spoke with him that afternoon. “Erin was in a meeting at that law firm where she works,” he said. “Pamela was in front of a fourth grade class in Hayward. Eric dropped his car off at a dealership in Oakland for service that morning. He didn’t even have transportation. Took BART and the bus to work.”

  “What about Lisa, Eric’s wife? And Ralph Allen, Pamela’s husband? He’s out of work.”

  “Lisa was working that day. She had lunch with friends at about the same time the Terrells died. Ralph had a job interview in Pleasanton.”

  “Colin Baker? He does temp work, doesn’t have a fixed place of employment.”

  “I know that. He was working at a law firm that day. All that week, in fact.”

  Another law firm, I thought. No surprise, really. The Bay Area was lousy with lawyers. “You talked with someone at the firm?”

  “I talked with someone at the temp agency, who checked his time card, which has to be signed by someone at the firm. What makes you think this is anything but murder-suicide?”

  “No note. The position of the gun. My gut.” Lipensky didn’t say anything. “What about your gut?”

  “Well . . . My gut doesn’t like it, either,” he admitted. “No note, the gun. No apparent reason. Looks like they were happily married, no problems.”

  “When I encountered Erin and Eric the other day at the house, Erin informed me that Claude was planning to divorce Martha, so of course Martha killed him, then killed herself.”

  “First I’ve heard of any divorce,” Lipensky said, on the alert.

  “That’s what I figured. Turns out Erin got that story from her brother, who says his father confided in him. No way to verify that.”

  “What do Martha’s kids say about a divorce?”

  “Pamela denies it. I haven’t talked with Colin yet. Say, what was the name of that law firm where he was working the day of the deaths?”

  Lipensky told me. “You’ll let me know if you find out anything.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course. I always cooperate with the authorities.”

  I met Henry Van, the gardener who’d call the police, in front of the house where he was working. He brushed dirt from his hands as we introduced ourselves, then took a bottle of water from the cooler in the back of his pickup truck, opened it, and drank. “Don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

  “Describe what you saw.”

  “The Krimmlakers weren’t home. They’re the people I garden for on that street. I’m there every other week. The time varies. I’ve got three other clients in that part of Alameda. I arrived around eleven o’clock. I must have been there when the Terrells got killed, but I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  “You may have, without realizing it.”

  He looked
dubious. “I was trimming hedges in the back. Power tool, makes a lot of noise.”

  “See any cars or people in the area? Anyone near the Terrells’ house, or the Victorian across the street, where the Brandons live?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. That time of day, most people are at work. It was a school day. None of the kids were around.”

  “Did you break for lunch?

  “Sure. After twelve and my stomach was growling. I went round to the front of the house and—” He stopped. “Wait a minute. I did see someone. A couple of teenagers. I was sitting in my truck eating lunch. I saw them in my rearview mirror as they walked past me. They headed up the driveway of that house across the street, and went in the front door. I didn’t think anything about it till now. I figured they were coming home from school for lunch.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “She was pretty,” he said. “Long brown hair. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. The guy was older. Lanky build, red hair, tattoos on his arms, pierced ears.”

  I’d caught a glimpse of the two Brandon daughters when I’d interviewed their parents. One was old enough to drive a lime green Beetle. She had dark, knowing eyes and wore her dark brown hair short with bangs. The other looked younger, and she had light brown hair falling past her shoulders.

  “What happened after they went inside? Did you see them come out?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I heard rock music. Really loud. Ate my sandwich, finished trimming hedges, cleaned up the cuttings. I was working on the shrubs in the front when the housekeeper went into the house next door. It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes that she ran out the front door, screaming that there were dead bodies in the house. I whipped out my cell phone and called 911.”

  “So you never saw the two teenagers leave the house?”

  He thought for a moment. “Not actually leave the house, no, I didn’t. But I saw them outside. I’m not sure when. It’s all mixed up after I called the cops. I had to wait around and give a statement. Didn’t get out of there till after four. There were a lot of people around. But sometime after the cops got there, I saw that girl and the guy. Hard to miss him, with that red hair. They were on the cross street, getting into an old car.”

  Henry said the car was a Plymouth Barracuda, blue decorated with rust stains. I thanked him and drove over to the neighborhood where the Terrells had lived. I didn’t see the Plymouth in the vicinity, but the Beetle was parked in the driveway of the Brandons’ house. I parked near the corner and waited. It was summer now. The two Brandon daughters were out of school. Half an hour passed. Finally the girl with short hair came out the front door, got into the Beetle and fired up the engine. She backed out of the drive. I started my car and followed her.

  She drove to South Shore Center and parked near the department store located at one end. I intercepted her as she got out of her car. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  She looked me over. “I remember you. The private eye who came to talk with my parents about Mr. and Mrs. Terrell.”

  “I didn’t get your name that day. Or your sister’s.”

  “It’s Sasha. My sister’s name is Missy.” She pointed to her right. “There’s a Starbuck’s over there.”

  Sasha led the way to the espresso emporium. I ordered a latte for myself, a triple mocha with extra whipped cream for Sasha, and threw in a couple of biscotti for good measure. Once we were seated, I laid my cards on the table.

  “The day the Terrells died, someone saw a girl with long brown hair at your house. Would that be Missy?”

  Sasha sighed. “It would.”

  “She was with a guy. Lanky build, red hair, tattoos on his arms, and pierced ears. Ring any bells?”

  She made a face. “Cody. He’s way older than Missy, eighteen or nineteen. Mom would burst a blood vessel if she knew.”

  “Missy and Cody were seen going into your house around noon, before the bodies were found. And again after the bodies were found. It was a weekday. You and your sister should have been in school, unless Missy came home for lunch. All afternoon would have been a long lunch.”

  “She cut,” Sasha said. “One of my friends told me about it later that day. She said Missy split after her third class, when Cody showed up.”

  “What do you figure they were doing at the house that afternoon?”

  “Each other. Having sex.” Sasha poked her biscotti through the thick layer of whipped cream to the coffee below. Then she drew it out and bit off the end with great relish.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “When I got home from school, I went looking for Missy, to bawl her out for cutting classes. She’d pulled all the sheets off her bed and washed them. They were piled on her bed, still warm from the dryer.”

  “How do you get from there to Missy and Cody having sex?”

  “Like Miss La-Di-Da would be doing laundry for the hell of it? Right. Only one reason she’d be washing sheets in the middle of the afternoon on a school day. She and Cody were screwing their brains out up in her bedroom.”

  I gave Sasha points for deductive reasoning. I’d come to the same conclusion without the sheets. “I’d like to talk with Missy and Cody.”

  “You think they saw something?”

  “Maybe. Any idea where I can find them?”

  “Not exactly, but they’re together right now. She thinks I don’t know because he parks his car on the side street and she tells Mom she’s meeting her girlfriends. Puhleez!” She rolled her eyes. “If you stake out our place, he’ll bring her home eventually. If Missy won’t cooperate, tell her I know—and I’ll tell.”

  I left Sasha to her shopping and went back to the neighborhood, parking on the side street where Cody usually met Missy Brandon. Finally I saw the rusty blue Plymouth pulled up to the curb. Two people got out of the car, a teenaged girl with long brown hair and a tall young man with a carrot top and tattoos snaking up both arms. They locked lips and bodies, not coming up for air until I walked up and called them by name.

  “Who the hell are you?” Cody growled.

  “I’m the private investigator who was at Missy’s house a couple of days ago, asking questions about her neighbors and the day they died. Now I want to talk with both of you.”

  “Why?” she asked, wide-eyed. “We don’t know anything. I was in school when that happened.”

  “No, you weren’t. The gardener working at the Krimmlakers’ house saw you and Cody go into the house. He also saw you and Cody getting into Cody’s car later that afternoon, after the police had arrived. So you were both there. Sasha knows. She suggests you cooperate with me.”

  Missy looked panicky when I mentioned Sasha. “We didn’t see anything. We were making out.”

  “I have a pretty good idea what you were doing,” I told them. “So does Sasha. Take me through it step by step.” They looked scandalized, which was refreshing, in a way. “I don’t mean your grand passion. You may have seen something without realizing it could be important. Tell me what you heard and saw as you were walking up the street toward your house.”

  They exchanged glances. “We parked here so Cody’s car wouldn’t be in front of my house,” Missy said.

  “That gardening truck was in the driveway of the other house,” Cody said. “Didn’t see anybody in the yard. He must have been in the cab.”

  “What did you do once you got into Missy’s house?”

  “We went up to the bedroom.” He glared at me. “You want to know how many times we did it?”

  “Spare me. I just want to know if you looked out the window any time during the next few hours.”

  “Yeah, a couple of times.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  He thought about it. “The gardener.”

  “Besides him.”

  “UPS guy left a package at a house down by the corner.” He rubbed his nose. “There was a guy in a boat on the lagoon.”

  That caught my interest. “What was he doing?”

  “Rowing,
” Cody said. “He rowed across to a house on the other side, pulled up to a dock and got out.”

  “That house directly across the lagoon?” Missy frowned. “I saw a guy there, too. But he wasn’t rowing in a boat. He was at the side of that house, where the trash cans were. I thought he was a garbageman. He was wearing coveralls.”

  Cody shook his head. “I saw the coveralls, but why would a garbageman be in a row boat?”

  Good question. Maybe he wasn’t a garbageman. “What did he look like? What color were the coveralls?”

  “Light blue, or maybe green,” Cody said. “I only saw him from the back. He had a ball cap on his head. Couldn’t tell what color his hair was.”

  “I saw him from the front,” Missy said. “It was an Oakland A’s ball cap, green and yellow. I figured he was a garbageman because he had stains all over the front of the coveralls. You know how yucky those guys get.”

  “He could have been a mechanic,” Cody said. “Mechanics wear coveralls when they’re working on cars. They get grease and oil stains all over themselves.” He stopped, as though something had suddenly occurred to him. “Those stains. Like maybe that was blood? Man, are you telling me that guy was a killer?”

  “Like you said, why would a garbageman—or a mechanic—be rowing a boat across the lagoon? You two are going to have to talk to the police.”

  Missy protested. She didn’t want her folks to know she and Cody had been doing the nasty boogie that day. But now that Cody realized he was a witness, he was eager to cooperate. I walked with them to the Brandons’ house, just as Sasha returned from her shopping trip. I called the girls’ parents and Sergeant Lipensky. Once the adults got there, I headed for the cul-de-sac at the other side of the lagoon and took a look at the house directly opposite the Brandons’ place. There was no one home, but the yard wasn’t fenced. Sure enough, there was a small rowboat tied up to a dock. A row of garbage cans and recycling bins were lined up along the side of the house, about thirty feet from the dock.

  I began ringing doorbells. I found a witness, an elderly woman who lived in the cul-de-sac. “I saw a man. He was walking between the houses. No, he wasn’t wearing coveralls. Slacks and a shirt, I think, and an A’s baseball cap. He got into a car parked in front of my house.” She didn’t know the make or model of the vehicle, but she thought the car was green.