Not Exactly a Brahmin

by Susan Dunlap

  I nodded. The aroma of beef filled the living room. It reminded me that I had been headed for ice cream an hour and a half ago.

  “In a way, I’m not surprised,” she said slowly, “about the accident, I mean. It was such a shame. All those years with his first wife so sickly. He had his health but he couldn’t go anywhere. And then in the last six months his own eyesight started to go. He’s hardly driven at all in the last two months. He didn’t want to endanger people.”

  “But he did drive today.”

  “Today he almost hit Billy.” The words seemed to burst out, as if Palmerston’s prior thoughtfulness made this offense that much worse.

  “Billy’s your son?”

  “What? Oh, yes.”

  “Is he here?”

  “He’s in his room.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  She nodded and opened a door to a staircase. “Billy,” she called. “Put your robe on and come down. There’s a police officer here who wants to talk to you about Mr. Palmerston.” To me, she added, “He’s in bed, trying to avoid catching pneumonia.”

  But when Billy ambled down the stairs, he was wearing jeans and a sweater. He was a long-blond-haired adolescent who clearly had had a large spurt of growth and had not filled out to match it yet. He looked like a vision in a tall, thin mirror.

  “You weren’t in bed, were you?” his mother demanded.

  “Aw, Ma …”

  To me, she said, “He rode his bike to school this morning. Of course it was pouring when school was out. I went to pick him up. We could have put the bike in the back of the wagon. We’ve done it plenty of times before, right, Billy?” she demanded, turning to him.

  “Aw, Ma …”

  “But no, when I got to school he was gone. He had to ride his bike to the top of the hills so he could see the storm better. Can you believe that?”

  “She doesn’t look so dry herself,” Billy put in.

  “Billy!”

  “Your mother says you saw Mr. Palmerston today,” I said to him.

  “He nearly creamed me! Jeez, he came this close.” He held his hands inches apart.

  “How close?”

  “Well, maybe this far.” Now it was a foot. “But it was close. He didn’t even see me.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In the street. I was just making my cut for the driveway. See, if you stay on the other side of the street till you’re right across from the driveway, there’s this bump. You can hit it and bounce and then the edge of the driveway gives you another bounce.”

  Billy’s mother sighed. “Two thousand dollars on orthodontia …”

  “Where were you and where was he?”

  “I was making my cut. He was up the street, driving real slow like he always did. He’s old. But then he started to turn for his garage and he speeded up. He barely missed me.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know, exactly,” Mrs. Kershon said. “It was one fifty-three. Billy got out of school early today. There was a teacher’s meeting. I’d been watching for him since one-thirty. I was sure he’d been hit by lightning. Instead, he was off seeing how wet he could get.”

  Before Billy could get out his “Aw, Ma,” I said, “You said Mr. Palmerston hadn’t driven in two months, but today he picked up his car from the repair shop and went out with it this afternoon. Do you have any idea where he was going?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “When they go out, his new wife drives him. They take her car. I’m surprised his needed to be serviced, he used it so rarely.”

  Billy opened his mouth and then let it close.

  “Do you have any idea where Mrs. Palmerston is now?”

  “No. She doesn’t go out all that much without him.”

  Billy squirmed forward on his chair.

  “Sit still,” his mother snapped. To me, she said, “They never leave the lights out. We’ve had burglaries. You must know that. Ralph has always been very careful. He has some lovely pieces and it would be a pity to have them stolen.”

  I nodded, recalling my similar reaction to their darkened windows. “Mrs. Kershon, I understand that Mr. Palmerston used to be very active in charity work, but has stopped that in the last few years. …” I let the thought hang.

  “Since he married Lois,” she said, picking it up.

  “Why do you think he changed?”

  Mrs. Kershon fingered her soft blond hair. She glanced at Billy as if assessing whether to speak in front of him.

  But it was Billy who spoke. “She’s got more important stuff to spend money on than charity.”

  “Billy!”

  “It’s true, Ma. She’s got a Mercedes. She’s got fur coats. Boy, I sure haven’t seen her putting a quarter in the Free Clinic box.”

  Mrs. Kershon started to speak to him again, then caught herself and shrugged. “It’s true, Officer. I don’t know her well—hardly at all, but she doesn’t look … well, she looks like she devotes most of her thoughts to her appearance. You know what I mean.”

  I did, but I said, “Can you give me any examples?”

  “Examples? She looks like a model. And she’s a lot younger than Ralph.”

  Picking up the unspoken inference, I asked, “Do you think she married him for his money?”

  “Well, I don’t want to make judgments, I mean, I hardly know the woman, so I really can’t say what her motivations were.”

  “That’s not what you said to Dad.”

  “Billy!”

  I stared at her, fighting to control a grin. “Mrs. Kershon?”

  “Well, okay, off the record, I can’t think what else would have motivated Lois. She’s very attractive, very sure of herself. Ralph is a nice man. He would make some woman a lovely husband. But not Lois Palmerston.” She paused. “The thing is, Officer, Lois Palmerston doesn’t look like a woman for whom nice would be enough, if you know what I mean.”

  Billy was sitting on the edge of his chair, his knees tapping together.

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Kershon.” I gave her my card, with the old extension crossed out and my new Homicide one inked in. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  I stood up and started for the door. “One more thing. As long as Billy is dressed anyway, I wonder if he could show me the exact spot in the street where Ralph Palmerston nearly hit him. We’ll use an umbrella.”

  “Sure,” she said. “He’s either going to get pneumonia or not now. But you put your jacket on, Billy.”

  Without pause he headed to a closet and drew out a jacket and umbrella.

  Once outside, I said, “What did you want to tell me?”

  “Gee, how did you know—”

  “Police training,” I said with a straight face.

  “See, I couldn’t tell you in front of my mother. I mean, she sent me to bed, right after I got home. Like I was a baby. She’d kill me if she knew I’d gone back outside, I mean, after she told me to stay in bed.” Suddenly he looked frightened. “You won’t tell, will you?”

  “Not unless it’s vital to the case. And if that happens there’ll be so much going on that it won’t matter.” I waited till he nodded, then said, “So you went back outside.”

  “See, I really wanted to see the lightning and all. I figured I’d ride my bike up into Tilden Park and find a spot under the trees and watch.”

  “What did you do?” We were standing in the middle of the street. The wind was tossing the rain against our legs; rain bounced off the macadam onto our ankles.

  “Well, I got my bike and I started out into the street and then Mr. Palmerston backed out of his garage. He nearly hit me.”

  “You said he nearly hit you when you were coming home from school.”

  “Well, he came close then, but this was the time he nearly hit me. Of course, I didn’t tell Mom that. I started telling her about him nearly hitting me and I was telling her before I realized that I’d be
tter not. So I adjusted things quick.”

  “And?” I hoped this wasn’t all I was standing here in the rain to learn.

  “Well, he stopped. He felt real bad. But he said he was in a big hurry. He was going for his wife. It was an emergency.”

  “Did he say where she was?”

  “Yeah. That’s the really interesting part.” Billy stared straight at me, enjoying his moment of suspense. “He said they called and told him to come and get her out. She was at the Albany Police Department.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I HAD BILLY KERSHON repeat exactly what he recalled Ralph Palmerston telling him: “They called and said my wife was being held at the Albany Police Department. I have to go and get her.” He wasn’t sure whether he had said “get her” or “get her out.” He didn’t know why she was there. He didn’t think Ralph Palmerston did either. What he did think was that Ralph Palmerston was as frantic as he’d ever seen him.

  Whatever Mrs. Palmerston was doing there, her presence at the Albany Police Department explained why Ralph Palmerston, who hesitated to drive because of his eyesight, ventured out on the stormiest night of the year and drove down the steepest street in town. Marin Avenue led directly to the police station.

  I considered going back inside the Kershon house and asking to use the phone privately, but decided against it. I would have to go and get Mrs. Palmerston anyway. So I drove down, around the Marin traffic circle, which was now free of any evidence of Ralph Palmerston’s accident, except for the bent metal divider. Cars moved cautiously, lights bright, windshield wipers on high. From there down Marin Avenue to the bay it was less steep—just a normally sloping street. Huge trees formed a canopy over the pavement along the Berkeley portion of the avenue. Past the Albany line the tops were lopped off to accommodate the power lines. I drove one mile to the police station and pulled into their lot.

  It took me only five minutes to discover that they had no Palmerstons in custody, none who had been in custody, and indeed, no record of a Ralph or Lois Palmerston at all.

  “So Palmerston picked up his car at one-thirty and drove directly home. Then about four-thirty or so, just when commuter traffic was starting to get heavy, someone called him and told him to come get his wife at the Albany Police Station,” Pereira repeated. She was sitting at her desk in our own station squad room. Theoretically, now at nearly 9 P.M. it was not her desk, but the property of the night watch officer. But he was out on beat. Pereira had notes spread over the desk blotter. Her normally curled short blond hair hung limp from the rain. Frown lines were deep in her forehead, but her brown eyes were bright. The uneasy mix of intensity and exhaustion was clear on her face. This was her first murder case as a beat officer. Before the reorganization, she would have been in charge. Then beat officers handled anything on their beats, from jaywalking to murder. Now she could only request to be part of the investigation team, my investigation team. But I knew from my own experience on beat that once you’ve been in charge of a case, to you it never ceases being yours. “So someone made sure Ralph Palmerston would drive down that hill in the rain, someone who knew his brakes wouldn’t take that kind of stress.”

  “And someone who didn’t care if he smashed into three or four cars in the process of killing himself.”

  Pereira sat back in her chair. “What do we know about Palmerston? There’s nothing on the Alpha file except that he owns a Cadillac. I’m checking with the Corpus file to see if he’s been booked on anything anywhere else in the county, but I’m not hopeful.”

  I leaned back against the desk in front of her. “The question of the moment is, where is Lois Palmerston? She’s not at home. She’s not at the Albany Police Station. Where is she?”

  “Probably at the movies, Jill. After all, it’s only nine o’clock. If this were any other night it wouldn’t be strange for a woman to be away from home at nine. I mean she wasn’t planning on her husband being killed.”

  “Maybe not.”

  She stared up at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Palmerston’s car was in perfect running order when he left the garage. He drove it directly home. Two hours or so later there were perforations in his brake lines. No one was there but him and his wife. He didn’t cut those brake lines himself.” I took a breath. “And then there’s this note from the car’s glove compartment—‘Shareholders Five’ and a phone number.” Without much hope I picked up Pereira’s phone and dialed. It rang ten times before I put it down. “Damn.”

  “It is nine o’clock, Jill. Lots of businesspeople go home before nine, particularly if they deal with the stock exchange. ‘Shareholders Five’ sounds like stocks. Those people have to be up at six in the morning to get the ticker tape from New York.”

  “I know, I know. I’d just like someone who has some information about this case to be around when I need to see them. Here.” I passed her the paper. “See what you can find out about the phone number—who’s it is—and anything about Shareholders Five.”

  “You know, Jill,” Connie said, smiling, “it may be that I can find out about Shareholders Five. There’s this guy, Paul Lucas, who keeps asking me out. He’s not real attractive, but he’s the most incredible font of financial gossip. He does financial planning in the city and he has to keep up on it. Honestly, Jill, going out with him is like watching a soap opera. You wouldn’t believe what’s going on in the upper echelons of Bechtel.”

  “Do you think he’d know anything about Ralph Palmerston?”

  “He’ll be embarrassed if he doesn’t.”

  “And Shareholders Five?” I could feel my enthusiasm returning.

  “He should. If there’s informed opinion to be had, Paul will have it.”

  “You look like you could use a drink. Maybe you should give Paul a call. In the meantime I’ll go back to the house and wait for Lois Palmerston to come home.”

  Connie sighed. “Gee, it’s wonderful to be in charge, however briefly. I want to cherish this moment—someone else is going to be sitting in a cold car in the rain waiting for a widow while I’m heading for a brandy and soda.”

  “Don’t worry, things will even out tomorrow.”

  The rain slashed against the high windows in the squad room as I walked through the corridor back to detective division to check my desk. There was nothing new on it; I didn’t expect there would be. Actually there was barely anything on it at all, since I had only been assisting the regular guys with their cases so far. There were no messages in my IN box. The rain hitting the windows seemed louder. My car was three blocks away. I glanced at Howard’s IN box. It held three slips of paper. After seeing Ralph Palmerston’s body, this wager of Howard’s and mine seemed almost obscenely trivial. I had mixed feelings about it in any case. I didn’t want to beat Howard at anything right now. But not giving this my best would be condescending. Even if he never found out, I would know. And as for comparing it with the fact of Palmerston’s murder, I knew that if I were to have a passably normal life, I couldn’t let the auras of the deaths I investigated cover every other facet of my time.

  I sighed, listening to the rain. Balancing my philosophical hesitation was the fact that this was the only way I would ever get a parking spot less than a quarter of a mile from the station. If Howard’s costume was as hard to guess as he seemed to think, he must have bought it somewhere. I couldn’t see Howard at home, needle in hand, stitching it up. And I couldn’t see him giving his home number to his couturier. Howard lived in a large, brown shingle house with five other guys. Leaving a message there was like tossing pennies into a fountain in hopes your wish would be granted. No, if the secret costumer called Howard, it would be here. I picked up his messages.

  Two, I recognized as drug informants. The third was his dentist. So much for covert investigation.

  I would have liked to have sent a uniformed officer up to watch the Palmerston house, but there was no chance of the watch commander releasing anyone from traffic tonight. By now those people who had stopped for a few drinks a
fter work, planning to wait out the storm, would be giving up and stumbling to their cars to drive home. The ambulances would be busier than ever.

  What I wanted to do was go home and change into dry clothes and eat. I thought fondly of the ice cream I’d been headed for hours ago.

  Instead, I hurried back to my car. The rain had eased a bit now. Keeping under the trees I managed to get not too much wetter than I already was. I had dried out a bit in the station, so that I was mostly just squishy damp.

  I followed my roundabout route back up to Grizzly Peak. Even though Lois Palmerston had not been home, I didn’t really think she was on the run. There was no reason for that. If she had shot her husband, then she might be trying to vanish. But if she were responsible for the damage to his brake lines, she had tried to make his death look like an accident. A woman doesn’t leave town because her husband was killed in an auto accident. She sits home and inherits.

  So innocent or guilty, she should be returning home. I hoped it would be soon.

  It was. I hadn’t been outside the house more than fifteen minutes when a Mercedes convertible pulled up to the garage. The door opened automatically. The Mercedes pulled to the left-hand side of the garage, next to the house, and in.

  I waited till the light went on inside the house, then rang the bell.

  Lois Palmerston was about five-nine, slender, with reddish blond hair pulled back above her ears and caught with tortoise shell combs. She had hazel eyes that seemed to pick up the color from her hair. The slight arch to her nose gave her otherwise model-like face character. She was still wearing a gray raincoat with a rust scarf inside the collar. She looked like she had just come from a fashion show. She looked like someone who always looked like that.