All Signs Point to Murder

by Connie Di Marco

  A warning flared in Rob’s eyes and Dan stopped in his tracks. Rob held up his hands. “I’m leaving.” He took a deep breath and calmed himself. “There’s new information. Geneva can tell you. You know I never would have deliberately hurt Moira.” He turned and walked quickly down the hall. The front door slammed behind him.

  “Dan.” Geneva walked over and took her brother’s arm.

  He pulled away angrily. “How the hell did he know we were here?”

  “Mom told him.”

  “I can’t believe that guy. The nerve of that bastard coming here now.” Dan shook his head and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.”

  “Apparently Marjorie has information from the police. It wasn’t Rob’s gun.”

  Dan stared silently at his sister. “I’ll believe that when I see the report with my own eyes.” He turned to me. “Julia, look, I just never liked the guy, and I certainly don’t now. Always had a bad feeling about him.”

  Geneva spoke up. “Let’s get out of here. We don’t have to finish everything today. This is the bulk of it. I can come back later this week and sweep up and double check everything.

  “What about the curtains and the curtain rods?”

  “Just leave them. I don’t care about them. We need to get back to Mom’s.”

  Dan’s truck was already loaded with the few pieces of furniture. We carried two boxes downstairs and piled them into Geneva’s trunk. We left four more boxes on the sidewalk next to the garbage cans. Someone would definitely rummage through and take what they needed. If not, they’d be picked up the next day on the regular garbage run.

  Dan called out, “I’ll meet you at Mom’s tonight.” He climbed into the cab of his truck and Geneva watched as he pulled away.

  I opened one of the nearest garbage cans and dumped the contents of a wastebasket in and shut the lid. I headed toward the stairs, and then stopped. Something from the wastebasket had caught my eye. I lifted the lid of the garbage container again and looked down. A small blue cardboard box was sticking up out of the trash. I reached in and gingerly pulled it out.

  It was the container from an over-the-counter pregnancy test kit. Had Moira been pregnant? Or thought she was? Geneva came up behind me.

  “What is it, Julia?”

  I held the box up for her to see. Her eyes opened wide.

  “Was my sister pregnant? Oh dear God,” she groaned.

  “We don’t know that. Not yet. If she was, you’ll find out eventually.”

  “Sorry. Somehow that really threw me for a loop.”

  “Don’t think about that now. This doesn’t mean she was.”

  “Maybe not, but she was worried enough to buy one of those kits.”

  I took her by the shoulders. “Listen to me. Lots of people do. It doesn’t mean she was pregnant.”

  “You’re right. You’re right. I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”

  We walked back up the stairs and down the hall to the apartment. Geneva took a long look around. “I guess I’ve had this crazy idea that I’d find something here that would give me some answers. Something that would tell me what Moira was going through.”

  I thought the things we’d found had only raised more questions.

  “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  I put an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go. This is all we can do today anyway.”

  We locked up and walked down the front steps of the apartment building. Two of the cardboard boxes by the garbage cans had already vanished.

  Geneva looked at the boxes that remained there. “Maybe Dan should’ve just unloaded the truck and left it all here. Not waste gas driving to the Goodwill.” She opened her car door and climbed in. Then she rolled down her window and leaned over. “Thanks, Julia.”

  “It’s nothing. I’ll talk to you later.” Geneva nodded. “And I’ll spend a little time setting up those charts.”

  She revved her engine and drove away. I turned and started walking along the sidewalk to my car parked half a block away. I was rummaging in my purse when I felt a presence behind me. I turned quickly and came face to face with Rob.

  I took a step back. The surprise must have shown on my face.

  “Please. I don’t mean to alarm you. I just wanted to talk.”

  “Where were you? Were you waiting here all this time?”

  “Yes. Well, actually I was across the street at the café. I decided to grab a cup of coffee and I hoped I’d catch you on your way out. Away from the family. Do you have a minute? Can I buy you a cup?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got to get going. Besides, I don’t know what to say. I mean, I’m not a member of the family. I don’t have any influence over anyone.” I couldn’t help it. The guy had put my back up.

  He was quiet a moment. “Put yourself in my position. One day, I’m happily married, in love with my wife. We have a beautiful daughter and a future in front of us. The next, my sister-in-law is dead in our garage. I know I fired a shot, but I’m hoping to God that Marjorie’s right, that it wasn’t my gun that killed her. Julia, I know there was someone else there. If it does turn out my bullet killed her, do you think I’d ever be able to patch my life back together?”

  “I’m sorry too. Sorry for you and Brooke and the Learys. But I’m really only involved for Geneva’s sake.”

  “Dan never liked me. I know that. But Brooke’s mother did. Mary was very happy when Brooke and I married.”

  “And Moira?” I watched him closely.

  He shook his head. “Moira and I were oil and water. I resented the way she used Brooke, and I didn’t like having her around. I was up front about it, but Brooke wouldn’t hear anything negative about her baby sister.”

  “Hadn’t Moira cleaned up her act?”

  “Yeah, right. That’s the official story. I never bought it. I don’t think she really straightened out. Besides, you saw her behavior at the wedding. Look, I didn’t hate her or anything, but I just didn’t want her hanging out at our house all the time. That night, I never suspected it was Moira in the garage. Believe me, I would never have fired my gun if I hadn’t been shot at and panicked. I told the police this too. I know I heard whispering when I went in. Then I heard a gunshot. It was loud, and then I heard a second shot, and somehow I knew, I just knew, the bullet had hit the wall behind me.”

  “What do the police say?”

  “Nothing. They won’t give me or my lawyer any more definite information. In fact, I have to go downtown with Marjorie and talk to Ianello again tomorrow. Ask yourself this—what would you have done if someone fired at you in your own house in the dark and you couldn’t see a thing? Don’t you think you’d fire back if you thought your life was at stake?”

  “I hope that’s a decision I never have to make.”

  eighteen

  As I drove away, I glanced in my rearview mirror. Rob stood on the sidewalk looking after me. I’d planned to head home, but when I reached the corner of Market Street, I had second thoughts. I pulled over to the curb and popped the trunk. Rummaging around, I found my notebook with a list of contact numbers for everyone in the wedding party. I slammed the trunk and climbed back in the car. I’d promised Geneva I’d do everything I could to help her. We could speculate forever, but Andy was the person closest to Moira in the last days of her life.

  I dialed his number. His home phone rang four times and finally his voicemail picked up. I disconnected. I didn’t want to send a signal without reaching him directly. Next, I tried his cell and heard his outgoing message after one ring. I decided to try again later.

  Geneva had mentioned that Moira worked at a bar on Waller in the Haight. I headed out on Castro and cut through the Panhandle, the thin strip of greenery that extends like the handle of a pan eastward from Golden Gate Park. In the drugged-out days of the sixties and
seventies, the Haight was a mecca, but by the eighties, it had achieved a certain level of respectability as a tourist stop with small shops full of paraphernalia reminiscent of its original fame. The area’s been tarted up, yet a certain shabbiness still prevails. The street is lined with shops, thrift shops, coffee shops, head shops, bookstores, and a couple of tattoo parlors.

  I got to the corner of Waller and Cole and pulled over out of traffic. I looked up and down the street but still couldn’t see the place where Moira had worked. I drove around the block, slowly this time, and finally spotted it.

  The Alibi was a hole in the wall, more a sports bar that had seen better days. I turned down an alleyway and parked near a back entrance. Inside, the place was dim and virtually empty. One customer, a lone gray-haired man in a checkered jacket, sat at the bar nursing a beer. He didn’t look up. The walls were covered with dingy Masonite molded to look like pine paneling and stained with years of grime and cigarette smoke. The floor was checkered linoleum, dull and cracked in spots.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the interior. A young woman was listlessly wiping tables and setting up menus in holders on each of the five tables the place boasted. She was a little over five feet tall and slightly chubby, with a mass of dark curly hair. She wore a black T-shirt and denim skirt, both covered with a long white apron. Her name tag said Rita.

  She looked up when I walked through the back door. “Hi. Can I get you a menu?”

  “No thanks.” I walked over to the bar and sat on a barstool. The TV in the corner was tuned to a baseball game but the sound was muted.

  Eventually Rita reappeared behind the bar. “What’ll you have?”

  “Just a Coke.” I waited while she poured the drink.

  “Anything else?” she asked as she plopped the glass with a napkin in front of me.

  “Actually, yes. There is.” That caught her attention and she took a closer look at me.

  “My name’s Julia. I’m a friend of Moira Leary’s family.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “I heard what happened to her. It’s awful. The cops were even here. Look, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Wait, please. Her sister sent me.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. “Her family’s devastated, and they’re trying to find out anything they can about what was going on with her.”

  Rita hesitated, her expression shifting slightly.

  “Can you imagine how they must feel?” I pleaded with her.

  She gave a resigned sigh. “Okay, look, let’s sit over here at one of the tables. I’ll take a quick break, but that’s it.”

  I left a few bills at the bar, picked up my glass and napkin, and followed her to a table near the wall. The man at the bar stared blankly at the mute television, oblivious to our presence.

  Rita sighed and sat heavily in a chair. “I don’t know what I can tell you. Moira was nuts. She was always in some kinda trouble, and the owner here was ready to fire her anyhow.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think she mighta been doin’ drugs, speed maybe. Some days she’d show up, some days she wouldn’t, or she’d be late. She was a flake.”

  “Where’d she get her drugs?”

  Rita laughed. “Just walk the block.”

  “Anybody special?”

  “Oh, prob’ly Zims.”

  “Zims?”

  “Yeah, he hangs out down the street, near the church. He’s an old messed-up vet on disability. Legs blown off somewhere but he’s got more money than a lot of the straight people I know.” She laughed. “Guess he supplements his disability income.”

  “What about men hanging around? Was there anyone like that?”

  “Well, she used to have that boyfriend Steve, the mechanic. I mean, I didn’t know her all that well, it’s just that we both worked here together. He used to show up sometimes. He seemed all right. Although the cops kept asking me if I knew a guy named Andy.”

  “Did you?”

  “Nah. Never met him.”

  “Where does this mechanic work? Do you know?”

  “Some Honda repair shop on Geary. I’m not sure. I was talking to him once about where to get my car fixed. I have a Honda, and I think that’s the place he said he worked at. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve seen the sign. Is it the one going out toward the Avenues, past Masonic?”

  “Yeah, that’s the place, but I live over here, so it’s kinda out of my way. I never took my car there.”

  “Was she seeing anybody else?”

  Rita didn’t answer right away. I saw her lips twitch slightly.

  “I don’t know this for sure. I’ve never told this to anyone, ’cause I didn’t want to tell the cops. Screw them, anyway.” She pulled a cigarette and a lighter out of her apron pocket. “I think there was somebody else. I overheard her fighting with Steve about it one night. He was jealous about something. Whatever it was, judging from the way she was acting, it was really hot. She never said anything or mentioned any name. Guess it was a big secret.”

  “Had you ever seen her with this other guy?”

  “No, nothing like that. For some reason, she wouldn’t talk about him, but I think he mighta been buying her presents and stuff. She had on some nice earrings one day.” I flashed on the bracelet I’d found in Moira’s apartment. “I know he picked her up here one night, ’cause she was all dolled up and rushed outta here in a hurry and she didn’t have a car to drive then.”

  “And you never saw the guy?”

  “Just a glimpse. I saw her getting into a big car, black, looked expensive. I peeked out the bathroom window. You can see the parking lot from there.” She grinned sheepishly. “I was curious.”

  “And there was nobody else? Just this Steve and a guy in a black car?”

  Rita shrugged and flicked a cigarette ash on the floor. Something had closed down in her face. I had the impression I’d hit a nerve and there was something she wasn’t willing to tell me.

  I tried a new angle. “Did you ever meet her sisters or her brother?”

  “No, never. Moira kind of hinted they were too snooty to walk into a place like this. I think there was some trouble with one of the sisters or her husband, something like that. I kinda gathered that from something she said.”

  “Like what?”

  Rita was warming to her subject. “Something about she couldn’t see her niece whenever she wanted. She kinda implied her sister’s husband was a dick.” Rita shrugged her shoulders. “But you know they were pretty good to her. She told me her sister used to pay some bills for her and they gave her a car to drive when her engine blew. That was pretty nice of them, so why she thought they didn’t like her, I don’t know.”

  I sipped the Coke and wondered what Moira’s chart would show. Was there a romance or an affair no one knew about? Was there a transit activating her fifth house?

  “Thanks, Rita. I appreciate your talking to me.”

  “No problem. It’s terrible what happened to her.” Rita rose from her chair. “Can I get you another?” she asked, indicating my empty glass.

  “Thanks. No. I should get going.”

  Rita nodded and walked back toward the bar.

  I returned to my car and pulled out to the street, cruising down Waller. Then I drove around the block and passed down the street one more time. I flicked on the car radio. An oldies station was playing a seventies song, probably popular when this neighborhood was the place to be. I didn’t see anyone hanging out on the street in a wheelchair, but I spotted the church Rita had mentioned. If Zims the dealer was so well known, I’d find him eventually. I gave up the hunt and followed Masonic up the hill to Geary. At the top, I turned west looking for the Honda repair shop that I remembered. It was in the middle of the block, wedged between an electrical supply store and an apartment building. I pulled over at the first parking space
I could find and hoofed it a block back to the garage. This had to be the place Rita meant. It was the only repair shop I knew of in the area.

  The bay door was open but no one was in sight. Inside, a car was on a lift with another parked next to it. At the rear was a door with a small glass window that housed an office. Engine oil assailed my nostrils. I entered and walked carefully around equipment, stepping over hoses and avoided passing under the lift. At the rear wall, a man in a dark blue greasy coverall stood pouring a soapy solution over his hands at a sink. He was tall and rangy, maybe early thirties, with stringy blond hair. He rinsed his hands under the faucet and grabbed a paper towel from a dispenser. He ignored me as he walked back toward the lift. This had to be Steve. He was the right age.

  “I’m closing for lunch, lady.” He still hadn’t looked directly at me.

  “Are you Steve?”

  The man stopped and turned. “Yeah, I’m Steve.” He continued to wipe his hands on the paper towel. “What can I do for you?”

  “My name’s Julia. I’m a friend of the Leary family.”

  He hesitated. “So? Is that supposed to mean somethin’ to me?”

  “You were Moira’s boyfriend, weren’t you?”

  “Was. Past tense. I guess I was her ex-boyfriend when she died.”

  “So you heard about it? How?”

  “I got friends.”

  “She broke up with you?”

  “I don’t know if I’d say that. I guess she did, without telling me. I told her to get lost. I think she was fooling around with drugs again. I told her to take a hike.”

  “Where was she getting her drugs from? She didn’t have any money.”

  “Probably that brother of hers. They used to hang out together a lot.”

  That took me by surprise. Dan didn’t strike me as the type of brother to enable his sister. But then I really didn’t know anything about their relationship.

  “That’s why you broke up with her?”

  “That and the fact she was cheatin’ on me.”