City of Whispers

by Marcia Muller

  Junior assumed control of the bank upon his father’s death. The bank’s assets continued to multiply, giving birth to branches throughout the city, and when Junior finally ceded his position to his son Laurence in 1975 it had branches in five Western states. Laurence married at thirty-two; Gabriella was his and his wife Marissa’s only child. The couple died when a sightseeing hot air balloon in which they were riding caught fire and blew up over Salzburg, Austria. Gaby, as her friends called her, was twelve at the time.

  “Leaving her as sole heir,” I said. “Any other relatives who could’ve claimed a stake in the family fortune?”

  “You mean relatives who might’ve wanted to kill her to get control? None.”

  “So what happened to her after her parents’ death?”

  “A director of the bank, Clarence Drew, was appointed her guardian. She went to boarding school—Miss Abbott’s, an exclusive place on the Peninsula—and spent summers at Drew’s lodge on Fallen Leaf Lake, up near Tahoe.”

  “And she died while she was at boarding school?”

  “No. She’d graduated and was living in an apartment in Palo Alto and attending Stanford. On October seventeenth she was strangled and her body dumped up here in Golden Gate Park. The fact that she was at Stanford says she must’ve been pretty smart. And her obit says she was generous with both her fortune and time: praised her work on behalf of the homeless.”

  “What happened to the Miners’ Bank? I don’t remember seeing any of their branches in a long time.”

  “Bought out for mondo bucks by B of A after the DeLuccis died.”

  “Leaving Gaby a wealthy young woman. Who inherited from her?”

  “A trust for homeless causes that she’d set up.”

  “And who administers the trust?”

  “Clarence Drew.”

  “I’ll talk with him tomorrow. Anything else I should know?”

  “That’s it for now.”

  “Okay. Good job so far.”

  “So far? Wow, thanks.”

  I yawned. Weariness had stolen over me, I realized all at once. I still tired easily. My recovery from locked-in syndrome was not yet complete. Where I’d been quick, I was sometimes sluggish. I became disoriented easily, forgetful. I’d grounded myself from flying because I couldn’t maintain the concentration it requires. These were things that in time would right themselves, my neurologist assured me, but sometimes I wondered. Was this what it was like to age, grow feeble?

  No, I kept telling myself, I was young, in the prime of my kick-ass life. But still I wondered.

  Rae and Mick were giving me strange looks.

  “Okay,” I said briskly, “we’ll continue this in the morning.”

  Darcy Blackhawk

  I love you…. she’d said.

  The little brown girl—that was how he thought of her, even if it was only the color of her cape—had tired of asking him questions he couldn’t answer and a little while ago she’d slipped into bed with him. She was now curled up next to him, her breath warm on his cheek. Around them the house creaked and groaned. A narrow streak of light and faint talk and laughter and music filtered under the door.

  The house—what did it look like? All he could picture was an old place and worn out. Tall, with lots of steps and a sharp, peaked roof.

  Where was it? San Francisco someplace? Houses looked like that in the city.

  He remembered coming here, tripping on the front steps, and her—what was her name?—holding him up. That was all.

  But before…

  Couldn’t remember.

  So much he couldn’t remember, didn’t understand.

  He did remember the river, moving slow in the warm summer days. Rising moon, so bright, its light rippling toward the shore. High, higher than he’d ever been before. And then they’d come to him, whispering….

  Who?

  Them, just them.

  The little brown girl sighed and touched his chin with her small hand.

  All of a sudden he was afraid. Didn’t want to be that close to anybody, much less this girl. Didn’t want to be in this strange place either. Too confined, too airless, no stars or moon.

  He moved away from her. Carefully slid out of the bed, so he wouldn’t wake her. Funny—he had all his clothes on, and so did she, including the cape. The house had become quiet; maybe he could make his escape without running into anybody.

  He tried to turn the doorknob. Locked. He bent and peered though the old-fashioned keyhole. Dark outside. He vaguely remembered the jingle of keys. Where could they be?

  Not on the nightstand. The little brown girl must have them.

  He went to the bed and looked down at her. She hadn’t moved, didn’t know he was leaving. Tentatively he touched her. Fast asleep. He ran his hands over the loose folds of the cape until they encountered a pocket, slowly fished the keys out. She still didn’t stir.

  I love you…. she’d said. I love you….

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

  Sharon McCone

  Twenty past midnight by the time I got home.

  I unlocked the door, disarmed the security system, felt the feline furballs twining around my legs before I could flick on the light.

  Jessie and Alex, sister and brother. Shorthairs—Jessie black with white on her chest and paws, Alex completely black. Some miserable excuse for a human being had stuffed both of them into a Dumpster on a hot day last June, two little kittens that you could hold in the palm of your hand. They would have died if a passerby hadn’t heard their frantic cries, rescued them, and delivered them to the SPCA shelter. Where Hy and I had fallen in love with the pair and brought them to—as the shelter employees called it—their “forever” home.

  I went to the kitchen and checked their food bowls. Empty, but from the stray kibble on the floor I knew that Michele Curley or her foster sister Gwen Verke had come over from next door to feed them. Jessie and Alex bumped against my legs again, mewling for something else to eat.

  “Con artists,” I told them, then relented and put a little more food in the bowls.

  I’d had a message from Hy on my cell several hours ago, but hadn’t returned it because where he was it had been the middle of the night. Now I calculated the time for Switzerland—plus nine hours. Morning there, but when I called, Hy’s phone went to voice mail. In a meeting, I thought.

  “Okay,” I called to Jessie and Alex. “Time for bed.”

  A thump. Nothing more. But suddenly I was awake and alert, attuned to danger. No matter that the security system was armed; even the best can be breached.

  Another thump, on the deck above my ground-floor bedroom.

  I slipped out of bed and pulled on my robe, got Hy’s .45 from his end table. My own weapons were, respectively, in a lockbox upstairs and in the safe at the pier. I’m easily separated from my firearms; Hy isn’t.

  I tiptoed up the spiral staircase.

  Scrape… crash… clatter.

  Whoever was out there was making one hell of a racket. A person? Maybe a raccoon? They were all over the city at night. Sometimes you saw them balancing tightrope-walker style on the power lines.

  A series of thuds and a grunt. Sounded like whoever or whatever it was had fallen down the outside staircase. I ran up the rest of the stairs, disarmed the alarm, then eased out onto the deck. A tall figure was just turning onto the path between my house and the Curleys’. Footsteps slapped on the concrete, receded across the street.

  Random prowler? Or someone who knew my address and wanted something from me? Well, it wasn’t easy to keep addresses secret; a short time at the computer and even I could locate almost anyone, even download a photograph of the person’s house. But I couldn’t think of anything I had that anyone would want, and as far as I knew I was in no imminent danger from an enemy.

  I retraced my steps onto the deck, reached inside to flip the switch for the floods. One of the canvas chairs lay on its side, and the seldom-used croquet set was tipped over, striped balls scattered on the plank
ing. Charcoal had spilled from the bin next to the barbecue.

  Clumsy, whoever it was.

  I was about to go inside when I saw something lodged between the boards. Red, white, and blue. It was a plastic straw, bent and twisted into a knot.

  Darcy.

  He had a compulsive habit of calming himself by twisting things, and Mick had told me he’d found a straw like this on Gaby DeLucci’s grave. So the prowler must have been Darcy. But why had he come skulking around in the dark? Why hadn’t he just rung the bell?

  I picked up the straw and stared at it as if it could tell me what he’d been doing here and why he’d run away after sending that e-mail message asking for help. The straw wasn’t saying anything, so I went into the house and back to bed.

  The cats had slept through the whole episode on Hy’s pillow, but I was wakeful the rest of the night.

  “I think your son is playing games with me,” I concluded my narrative to Saskia. I’d called her as soon as I reached the pier a little before nine.

  She sighed. “Well, at least he’s still alive.”

  “He won’t be if I find him.”

  “Sharon, he’s—”

  “I know—he’s family.”

  “Well, he’s not really your—”

  “Sort of family, then, whether I like it or not. Don’t worry. I won’t kill him when I find him.”

  Families! Why did I have to have three, counting Elwood and the two malamute puppies he’d recently adopted?

  I said to Mick, “You and Julia have now spent over four hours canvassing Tenderloin hotels and soup kitchens for Darcy. I’ve called around town to everybody who might have seen him. He hasn’t contacted Robin or Saskia. There’re no leads on the woman he was seen with. And, as far as I know, Laura Mercer has no connection to any of them.”

  “I think it’s time we tried another tack.”

  “What?”

  “The Gaby DeLucci case. The woman took Darcy to her grave. There must be some connection.”

  “Sounds to me like that’s going off on a tangent.”

  “What else have we got?”

  “… You’re right.”

  At two o’clock that afternoon I was in the waiting room of the offices of Clarence Drew, Gaby DeLucci’s former guardian.

  The DeLucci Foundation had a suite on the forty-ninth floor of 555 California Street, formerly the Bank of America Tower. I had hurried up the wide steps to the plaza, past the black granite sculpture titled Transendence but locally nicknamed The Banker’s Heart. To me it has always resembled a turtle shell, reptiles being as cold-blooded as financiers.

  The foundation’s suite was not a large one, but it was well appointed: thick beige carpets, leather furnishings, good lamps, and an elaborate tansu chest, which I envied, having recently developed an interest in Japanese furnishings.

  Clarence Drew had said he could spare me fifteen minutes before his luncheon appointment. I was on time, but he kept me waiting twenty-five. When his assistant ushered me into his office I momentarily focused on the sweeping Bay view, then gave my attention to the man seated behind the desk.

  My God, he looks like Edward G. Robinson!

  The slightly protuberant eyes, heavy jowls, wide nose, and thick lips were an uncanny match for the actor’s features. His voice, however, was all his own. It squeaked.

  “Be seated, Ms. McCone.” He motioned to a leather chair across from him.

  Not courteous enough to rise or shake hands. A man in an expensive office and well-tailored suit, who didn’t fit either of them well.

  “You have fifteen minutes,” he added, tapping his cuff, under which his watch presumably resided.

  I sat. The chair was harder than it looked and the impact jarred my spine.

  “As I told your appointments secretary,” I said, “I’m a private investigator hired to look into the circumstances of the death of your former ward, Gabriella DeLucci.”

  “Hired by whom?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s confidential.”

  Drew leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his considerable belly. “Many people have been interested in Gabriella’s death, mainly for sensational reasons.”

  “My client has no intention of exploiting her story.”

  He raised his thick eyebrows, waiting.

  Different tack. “I assume you’d like to see Gabriella’s killer brought to justice.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then perhaps you could share with me what you remember about her murder.”

  The last word made Drew flinch. His gaze turned inward for a few moments. Then he blinked, focused on me again, and said, “Perhaps you should share your client’s motivations with me.”

  “There’s been a new development in the case, something connected with a missing relative of my client. That’s as much as I can tell you.”

  He leaned forward in his chair. “What sort of new development?”

  “I’m sorry. Privileged information.”

  “Privileged.” Drew slumped back into his chair, the word ending in a sigh that made his big lips quiver. “A word that also applies to Gaby.”

  “How so?”

  “She wanted for nothing her whole life. She was sheltered and catered to by her parents, and I admit I did no more to instill knowledge of the real world in her than they did. I loved the girl, but sometimes her naïveté exasperated me, and I had to remind myself that I was partially responsible for it.”

  “In what way was she naïve?”

  He spread his hands. “In every way. She had no concept of the value of money; she thought it simply poured from a fountain into her hands. She trusted everyone, even the most dubious of individuals. It’s no wonder she got herself killed.”

  Got herself killed?

  Blame the victim.

  I must have looked disturbed, because Drew said, “No, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, but it’s so difficult to watch someone you care for set out on a path toward her own destruction.”

  “Tell me about these ‘dubious’ characters she trusted.”

  “They were mostly homeless people. People who checked in and out of a shelter she volunteered for while she was in high school.”

  “Which shelter was that?”

  “St. Francis Relief, on Folsom near Seventh.”

  “Do you recall any of the homeless people she associated with, perhaps trusted more than others?”

  “Only a few names she mentioned in postcards to us while we were at the lake, and they were obviously assumed. Lady Laura, Tick Tack Jack, and the… somebody… oh, yes—the Nobody.”

  Lady Laura. Laura Mercer?

  “This Laura—what did Gaby say about her?”

  “Only that she was a prostitute who was ‘getting her act together.’ ”

  “Did she tell you her last name?”

  “No.”

  “Or what she looked like?”

  “No. I never so much as saw any of those people.”

  “And the others? What did she say about them?”

  “… She was helping the Jack person wean himself off methamphetamines. The Nobody had unspecified mental problems.”

  “Did she mention anything more specific about any of them?”

  “No. She wasn’t very forthcoming. But she gave up on that work before she moved to the apartment in Palo Alto and started at Stanford.”

  “Was she renting the apartment alone or with a roommate?”

  “With a friend from Miss Abbott’s. Lucy Grant. They’d known each other since kindergarten. She’s Lucy Bellassis now. I know because I noticed her wedding announcement in the newspaper.”

  “Bellassis? Any relation to the aircraft leasing people?”

  “Yes. Lucy’s husband, Parker, is CEO of the company. I gather he inherited it from his father.”

  “Do you know how I can locate her?”

  “I lost track of the people from Gaby’s life years ago.”

  “How long did Gaby live in P
alo Alto?”

  “Only two months or so, and then I had a call….”

  Drew bowed his head, arms outstretched on the desk. After a moment he looked up. “I had a call,” he repeated, “and my world changed forever.”

  I knew about that kind of call: one had come when my brother Joey died of an overdose in a shack near an old lumber-company town in Humboldt County; another when Pa died, happily involved in the woodworking he had so loved.

  I said, “I’ve asked the SFPD for the case file on Gaby’s murder, but perhaps you could tell me about it from your personal perspective?”

  Drew folded his hands on his paunch. “Well, as I said, there was the call. My wife, Marian, was at our Tahoe place for the week, so I rushed alone to Golden Gate Park… Elk Glen Lake. By that time they’d removed her body from the water—she was caught in the reeds at the narrower end of the lake—and put her on a gurney. She… hadn’t been dead long but I had a difficult time making a positive identification. Gaby alive was so animated, Gaby dead was… nothing. The rest of it—the police interviews, their search of her room at our house and her apartment in Palo Alto—are just a blur. Because of her disfiguring injuries, there was no viewing, just a small graveside service.”

  “Did the police question any suspects?”

  “Very few. Homeless people who were known to frequent the Elk Glen Lake section of the park. But Gaby wouldn’t have gone there alone at night.”

  “So she was killed in Palo Alto or somewhere else in the city, and her body abandoned in the lake. By someone she knew, possibly.”

  “Or a stranger. The police talked with her friends, of course, but none of them could actually be termed suspects.”