by Susan Dunlap
Few days were as clear as this, with air as clean, sun as bright. And fewer still was I up this high in the hills to survey the whole Bay Area. I wondered if Lois Palmerston, who had this view for the asking, still found it wonder-inspiring.
I walked beside the stucco courtyard wall that ran from the garage to the living room. I pressed the bell next to the gate.
The living room windows looked just as they had last night—lower shutters drawn. Done for privacy, I assumed, since every fabric in the living room was white—nothing to fade there.
Behind me the street was silent. Leaves hung motionless in the still morning. I glanced across at the Kershon house, wondering if Billy had escaped pneumonia and was back in school boasting to his friends that he was the last person to see his neighbor alive.
“Oh, it’s you.” Lois Palmerston stood in her doorway. She was wearing the same raw silk pants and silk sweater she had had on last night. Her reddish-blond hair was still drawn back in combs, but clumps of hair had escaped and hung at odd angles. She looked like the “before” picture of the woman I had seen last night. Her clothes didn’t look slept in; they appeared limp, used. The makeup that had so subtly accentuated her even features and her slightly arched nose last night had faded in the night hours, allowing the dark circles under her eyes to take preeminence. She reached a hand inside the doorway to push the gate release.
The gate swung open and I walked toward her. “Have you slept at all?” I asked.
“No. I didn’t expect to.”
“Have you eaten?”
A sardonic smile flashed on her face. “I smoked. It’s better than food.”
She didn’t have to tell me; the stench of smoke from the house was almost overwhelming. It had been barely noticeable last night; she must have chain-smoked in the intervening hours. Even now as she stood in the doorway, her hand shook as she rested it on the door frame.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“I can’t talk now. I’m in no shape to talk. I …”
“You what?”
“I have to force myself to work out complete sentences.”
My first reaction was to tell her she needed to sleep. But I had to get inside the house. I said, “It’s important.”
Her eyes seemed so pale now that I wondered if she had been wearing tinted contact lenses last night. “I can’t.”
“Mrs. Palmerston, your husband has been murdered. Someone deliberately cut the brake lines on his car.”
I looked for a response, a revealing one. But she merely nodded as if I’d told her the laundry would be late.
“Time is vital. I’m sure you want your husband’s murderer caught.”
She nodded again, as if it were all right to have the sheets and towels returned even later.
“Can I come in?”
She didn’t move. “What do you want to know?”
“I need to see your husband’s rooms, his things.” I wanted to find Ott’s report.
“Oh, you can’t do that. Not his rooms. I can’t, not yet.”
“You don’t need to come with me. I can go through the house alone. If I have to ask you—”
“No. Not now. Too soon.” She patted her slacks pocket for cigarettes. Finding none, her hand went back to the door frame. Her arm barred my way.
It was a touchy situation. I couldn’t force my way in, not legally. Bullying a distraught widow, a rich socialite with influential friends, could cause more problems than it was worth. If she didn’t let me in, I could try for a warrant, or I could wait.
“Mrs. Palmerston,” I said, “I realize that it’s difficult for you to think about mundane things, but I need to know what your husband was doing. Tell me about him and Adam Thede?”
When she didn’t react, I went on. “About Shareholders Five?” Still no reaction. She hadn’t even blinked. Taking a breath, I tried a less promising tack, but one which she could handle. “Tell me about your finances—before your marriage.”
She stared at me with those colorless eyes. “Maybe later.”
I shifted my weight. “A lot of questions are difficult when you’re upset, but you can tell me about yourself. Those things you know.” Without waiting for a response, I asked, “What jobs did you have before you came to California?”
“In New York?”
“Right.”
She looked at me blankly.
“What was your longest running play?”
“Look, I told you I can’t think straight.”
“Did you support yourself acting?”
“Sometimes.”
“And the rest of the time?”
“I did temporary jobs.”
“Where?”
“A number of places. I was there for eight years.”
“Specifically?”
“Look, this is just the type of thing I can’t think of. If you want to know the where and when of things, you’ll have to talk to me later.”
“You can’t remember anywhere you worked in eight years?” I asked, astounded.
“Okay. Bloomingdale’s.”
“When?”
“Christmas.”
“Which Christmas?”
“I don’t know. Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m falling apart?”
I took a breath. “Just one more question. When you came here, you stayed with Nina and Jeffrey Munson for a while, then you got an apartment in Pacific Heights. You bought a Mercedes, used, but still a Mercedes. How did you have the money for that?
“Savings.”
“From jobs?”
“Yes.”
“Which—”
“I can’t. … No more.” She shut the door.
I stood for a moment. It isn’t often that a police detective gets the door slammed in her face. I wondered if Lois Palmerston was as frazzled as she appeared. Was she so exhausted that she’d shut the door on a police officer without thinking? Or was she well aware of her protected position, and one sharp lady?
CHAPTER 11
FOR A NICE MAN who spent his time raising money for charities, Ralph Palmerston certainly had suspicious relatives, acquaintances, and non-acquaintances. This morning I had talked to five people, all of whom had something fishy about them. I wasn’t surprised they were holding back. I couldn’t recall a murder investigation where any suspect or witness had been completely open with me. I doubted that in their place I would have been very trusting. I only wished I knew what it was they were hiding and whether those carefully protected nuggets of their pasts had anything to do with Palmerston’s murder.
I coasted to a stop at the top of University Avenue, then made a right onto it. At Martin Luther King Junior Way, I watched four cars run the red light before I turned left. The intersection badly needed a left turn signal. There was no way to make a left there except against the light, and even with two cars breaking the law on each red, a driver could wait ten minutes to clear the intersection onto University. Somehow the system seemed very Berkeley—a utilitarian scofflawing accepted by all.
I made a left onto McKinley. The station was to my left.
To my right were cars, parked up to the edges of driveways, parked in those driveways. I slowed to first gear, not really expecting to find a parking spot this close to the station but unable to make myself give up hope and begin my search three blocks away.
Adam Thede was a chef turned entrepreneur with more impulsiveness than sense. According to him he hadn’t known Ralph Palmerston, and Palmerston’s gift of information had come too late to save him. Herman Ott hadn’t contradicted that. Nor had he confirmed it. I didn’t believe Palmerston had given Ott only one of the names of Shareholders Five. Ott knew I didn’t. And there that stood.
As for Jeffrey Munson (I helped Lois only because my wife wanted me to), Nina Munson (I mothered her for twelve years but it doesn’t matter that she hasn’t bothered with me since she married money), and Lois herself, I didn’t know where to fit them in. Jeffrey knew more than enough about cars to h
ave dealt with Ralph’s. Lois had balanced precariously on the edge of insolvency for years until she lucked into meeting Ralph.
I crossed the intersection. Was that a spot ahead? I stepped on the gas before the car coming from the other end of the street could get to it.
“Damn!” A white curb! Loading zone. How many times had I made this mistake? I kept forgetting about the daycare center and its seductive loading zone. I stepped hard on the accelerator and passed the filled curbs on the rest of the block.
One block down and two over I wedged the Volkswagen between two pickup trucks. My rear bumper was an inch in front of one, five or six inches behind the other. It had taken me five tries to get in. I climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and began a loping run to the station.
When I passed the official car lot, I spotted Howard loading Leon Evans, his educated drug dealer, into a squad car.
“Good-looking buns, sugar,” Evans called.
I turned, glaring.
Howard shoved him in the car and slammed the door. Then he ambled toward me, grinning.
I stopped, panting.
“Consider that high praise,” Howard said. “Evans doesn’t have the best manners but he is a connoisseur of the female form. He doesn’t acknowledge the mediocre.”
Still panting, I aimed my glare at him. It only made him laugh harder, and I could feel a smile creeping onto my face. I pursed my lips to hold it back. I wasn’t about to give Howard the satisfaction of making me laugh. “You want something?”
“Maybe this isn’t the best time. Maybe when you’ve billy-clubbed a couple of prisoners, you’ll be in better spirits.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “What is it?”
He looked away. The grin was still in place. “A favor,” he said in a small voice.
“What kind of favor?”
“Personal.”
“You mean on my lunch break?”
“Yeah.” His voice was lower, his grin broader. He knew whatever it was, I would do it for him. “It’s the liquor store. I’ve got to pay for the booze for the party tomorrow. No payment, no delivery. Working here didn’t impress them any. Now”—he put a hand on my shoulder—“you’re thinking why can’t this slob deal with this on his own lunch break? He’s probably eaten a much more decent breakfast than I have, right? So I’ll tell you. I have to spend the next couple of hours with our friend in the car. I’ll take him to his place, trot on in with him, and spend long enough in there to give his associates something to think about.”
That sounded like a Howard job. With his height, his curly red hair, his “cop” look, whenever anything needed to be noticed, Howard was the one chosen. “Okay.”
He fished in his pocket and extricated his wallet. “Here’s my Visa. This note says I give you permission to sign for it.”
I glanced at the note. “ ‘To Whom It May Concern,’ eh? You sure you won’t get your next bill from the Mexico City Hilton?”
“You do that and I’ll give Leon Evans your address there.” Evans, as if hearing his name, was banging on the squad car window. “It’s going to be a long couple hours,” Howard said, turning toward the car.
Pocketing his Visa, I headed into the station. I had been planning to dictate my interviews, hoping that would put them in some order for me. Now I just checked my IN box—it held one note from Pereira: Palmerston’s accountant confirms all assets in commercial stocks. No blocks big enough for influence. C.P.
My eyes wandered to Howard’s box. Last night when I looked over his messages, I had had a pang of guilt. Today, after my latest parking safari and Evans’s assessment of my derriere, I had no such qualms. But again, there was no hint of Howard’s costume there.
Leaving a note that I would be back by one, I stalked out in disgust. Maybe he already had his costume. Maybe it was hanging in his closet. Maybe I should have the liquor delivered to his house now and accompany it with a search of his room. After all, there were no ground rules on this bet. But I couldn’t believe it was there. I knew most of Howard’s roommates. Considering their all-around flakiness, I doubted he would trust them with any clue of it, much less the costume itself. Howard knew me too well to think I wouldn’t give them a try.
I crossed Martin Luther King Junior Way. Then where was that costume? Howard was six foot six. His costume was no small item. It couldn’t be stuffed in his glove compartment. I doubted it would even fit in his trunk, with all the junk he kept in there. At a friend’s house? No, the logical place would still be in the costume store, with strict instructions that it wasn’t to be revealed to anyone but Howard.
There was only one costume store in Berkeley—California Costumery. Costumers were used to secrecy. They wouldn’t reveal Howard’s secret. But I had a surprise for them.
I walked the remaining blocks to my car, finished the five tries getting it out of the space, and drove to the liquor store smiling. Ten minutes later I had used Howard’s Visa to pay for his liquor and arrived at California Costumery.
No place is as mobbed as a costume store the day before Halloween. California Costumery occupied a small showroom, with a large dressing room behind it and a storage area to the right. The showroom was a ten-foot wooden square sporting an old display case filled with noses, beaks, and snouts, bunny tails and bow ties, pointed ears, floppy ears, and mustaches of all colors. On the wall were rubbery masks of Father Time, Ebenezer Scrooge, of gorillas, goblins, purple-faced spooks, and witches in pasty white. Above them perched rebel hats, cowboy hats, fedoras, and rainbow-head wigs. Standing in the corner were canes, bludgeons (presumably of crepe paper and tin foil), broomsticks, and a selection of tails that would have inspired Beelzebub.
And in the room were at least twenty people with looks of such desperation that Halloween costumes hardly seemed necessary.
I took a number and settled under the sign that prohibited checks during the Halloween rush.
A man of about twenty at the desk was explaining that nothing but a bald head with an orange fringe of hair would do. He already had a Day-Glo black T-shirt.
I figured I’d be here awhile. I might as well do that ordering of my thoughts that I had passed over at the station. Back to the basics on the Palmerston case—Who gained? Lois inherited. She had no money of her own (as far as I knew—I would have to check further on that). But Nina and Jeffrey Munson both said, loosely translated, that she had become acclimated to wealth. Maybe she could do without Ralph, but not without his money.
The bald-and-orange-wigged man moved on and was replaced by three women with urges to be Stooges. They, the harried clerk told them, were in luck. She called to a woman and pointed the three to the dressing room.
Jeffrey, the anxious lover? He might want to kill Ralph Palmerston, but why choose now?
At the counter, a tall man asked to be done as a king. “Where I’m going,” he said, “there’ll be plenty of queens.”
What about Nina murdering Ralph? That didn’t make sense. You don’t kill a man because his wife hasn’t called you.
“Miss?”
I looked up.
“Can I help you?”
I stood up. “I’m sorry. I thought there were so many people ahead of me.”
The clerk, a young black woman wearing a halo and glitter-covered cape, laughed. “You got a dragon there. Like Chinese New Year. All seven of them. I tell you, it’s going to be a long night for the dudes in the middle.”
“Probably for everyone else, too. I hope they’re not going where I am.”
“What can I get you?” She glanced over my body and I had the feeling she was playing a private guessing game as to whether I would be half a horse or Marie Antoinette.
“I’m here to pick up a costume. The name’s Seth Howard.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You Seth Howard?”
“No.”
“Sorry. We can’t give costumes to anyone but the customer. See?” She pointed to a sign under the one forbidding checks. “We’ve got our customer�
��s trust to uphold.”
“I understand. But he got caught up and asked me to pick it up for him.”
“Sorry. No exceptions.” She pointed to the sign again.
I pulled out Howard’s Visa card and his note authorizing me to use it, and handed them to her. “He’ll appreciate your precautions. And he wouldn’t trust anyone but me with the costume.”
She studied the note, then handed it and the card back to me. “Okay. Seth Howard. Hang on.” She floated past me, sparkling cape flying out behind her.
I smiled. The really fine thing about getting Howard’s costume this way was that he himself had made it possible. Should I leave it at his house with a note—just my name? But I knew I couldn’t wait. I’d take it back to our office now and plop it in his lap. Then I’d go out and move my car into his garage.
Still smiling, I looked around. In the near corner of the dressing room a Quasimodo hump expanded on the back of a five-foot-six man. From the doorway the dragon stuck its head out, then pulled it back abruptly and collapsed to the floor. Six bare legs were visible. A voice reiterated, “It’s got to be coordinated, dummy. Right foot first.”
It was a few minutes before the clerk returned, looking more harried than before. “No,” she said.
“Not ready?”
“Not here. You were so certain, so I checked all our files. You must have the wrong place. There’s no costume for a Seth Howard. No one ordered one. No one picked one up. No one canceled one. This Seth Howard ought to get his head straight before he sends people chasing around.”
“Are you sure?”
“I just told you—”
“I know, I know. Maybe it’s my fault. Where else do they rent costumes?”
“They may have some left in San Francisco.”
“None in the East Bay?”