Not Exactly a Brahmin

by Susan Dunlap

  “Halloween comes only once a year. How many people you think it can support?”

  I shrugged. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “Damn,” I muttered as I walked outside. “Damn, damn.” If his costume wasn’t here, where could it be? He had to be having it made privately. And if that was the case, there was no way I could find it. I couldn’t call every seamstress in the Bay Area. I’d better just save my money for a new pair of running shoes.

  When I got back to the station, I looked for Pereira, but she was out. I checked my IN box, hoping for another note from her. But what I found was a message from the Detective Division secretary: Inspector Doyle wants to see you at 2:00.

  CHAPTER 12

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR FREDERICK DOYLE had been in charge of Homicide Detail before I had joined the force, long before the proposition of being a cop had even occurred to me. Compared to Oakland and San Francisco, we didn’t have many murders in Berkeley, even with this latest spurt of killings (most of them were drug-related, it was turning out). But Doyle kept his eye on every investigation. And our record of File Closed’s was impressive. Unsolved cases ate at him. He was reputed to be able to list them all, all the way back to the sixties. And he was said to be able to name the officers who had failed to solve them.

  I’d met the inspector, of course. He’d interviewed me for the Homicide position. But I had yet to present a case to him. Now, at one-thirty, I wished that I had stayed in and dictated reports on my morning interviews instead of wasting my time at California Costumery. Inspector Doyle wouldn’t have expected that—it would be unrealistic—but it would have looked good. Barring that, at least I could decide what to emphasize—which suspect, which lead—when I talked to him.

  But before I could reach for my pad, there was a knock on the door. Almost simultaneously it opened and Clayton Jackson’s head jutted around the edge. “You in, Detective?”

  “Yeah, but I’m boning up to see Doyle in half an hour.”

  Jackson ambled in and plopped into Howard’s chair. Clayton Jackson was one of the two regular Homicide detectives. He had been in Homicide when I started on the force four years ago. I had the impression he had been new to it then, but I wasn’t sure. With the other Homicide man, Al Eggenberger, “Eggs” of course, Jackson made an unusual pairing. Eggs was in his mid-thirties, blond, and looked more like an MBA than a cop. In contrast, Clayton Jackson was the blackest man I’d ever seen. He was a bit short of six feet, barrel-chested, and, to take him at his word, could stare down any con in Alameda County.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a philanthropist murdered before he could go blind, a wife who inherits, and a note in the glove compartment saying Shareholders Five, a group that, according to Herman Ott—”

  Jackson groaned.

  “—included Adam Thede, who owns that health food breakfast place on the avenue.” I described the rest of the case to him.

  “Yet and still,” he said, “you’ve got the wife. Two to one the wife offed him.”

  “She’s a strange woman—about twenty years younger than him. Beautiful—thin, blond, aristocratic, every hair in place. She came out here for no decently explained reason. Before that she worked as an actresses in New York, but she can’t remember the name of her longest-running play.”

  “Actress, huh? Actresses can take in a lot. Did the lady say she was acting on the stage or on the sheets?”

  “She didn’t say at all. But any actress I’ve met could tell you every role she’d ever had, and probably every line she spoke. The only job Mrs. Palmerston could remember was at Bloomingdale’s.”

  “Maybe she had a rich daddy.”

  “She went to college on a scholarship.”

  “So what you’re saying, Smith, is she had no money, she didn’t make no money, she didn’t bring no money with her, and then—Wham!—she buys a Mercedes and moves to Pacific Heights. If she’s not peddling ass, then you spell that c-o-c-a-i-n-e, with a capital D for dealing.”

  “Could be. I guess I’m going to have to contact NYPD to see what they know.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Smith.”

  “Right. It won’t be a high priority for them.”

  Jackson leaned back in the chair. It lurched. Jackson jerked forward, and laughed. “This sure is Howard’s chair; like a man’s favorite dog, it don’t suit no one else.”

  I nodded. Jackson’s strength was in his chest. Howard’s was in his long legs. No one swivel chair could accommodate them both. “The thing is, Clay, there are all these—not even loose ends—strands that don’t come anywhere near each other. There’s Lois Palmerston. Maybe she was a call girl. Maybe she was dealing. Either one makes sense. But what does that have to do with her husband’s brake lines being cut? From what her friends say, she freeloaded off them for years then dumped them as soon as she’d bagged money. Not pleasant, but not unheard of. Friends don’t kill over that. And then there’s Shareholders Five—a group that Palmerston hired Herman Ott to investigate so he could do something nice for each member.”

  Jackson snorted. “Nice, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I quote Ott.”

  “Nice doesn’t usually come before murder. Nice doesn’t go with Herman Ott.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “You say this guy Palmerston’s been involved with charity for years? You’d think he would know how to be nice without paying Herman Ott to tell him.”

  “In any case he didn’t do anything good for Adam Thede. And whoever the other four Shareholders are, Herman Ott’s not about to tell me.”

  Now it was Jackson’s turn to nod. “Then you’re not going to find out, not from him. I’ve held off three guys with knives in an alley, but I’ve never gotten Ott to tell me anything he didn’t have to.”

  “It just makes me so mad. He knows who those other four people are—he denies it, of course. Damn!”

  “Yet and still, Smith, you’ve got the wife. You got a lot to dig around with there.” He stood up, pointedly looking at his watch. It was quarter to two.

  I watched him walk out, then looked down at my closed note pad. I considered reviewing my notes, but the interviews had been only this morning. Instead, I wrote out the request for anything NYPD had on Lois Burk, now Lois Palmerston. Then I called information and got the number for Binghamton College, Lois’s alma mater. It was ten to two, ten to five Eastern time. The financial aid office staff should still be in.

  I deliberated briefly whether to try a subterfuge. Bureaucrats, even in little bureaucracies, are not anxious to give information to the police. But no one other than a police officer or a bill collector would have called a college for the facts I needed.

  I was put on hold twice, but at the end of that wait, a voice—clearly an old voice—came on.

  “Miss Lowell here. May I help you?”

  “I’m from the Berkeley, California, police. I need some information about one of your former scholarship students.”

  “All our students are treated alike. Money makes no difference.”

  “It’s the repayment of the scholarship I’m interested in. The woman I just spoke to—”

  “Miss Grimes.”

  “Miss Grimes said you were in charge of those records.”

  “Have been for thirty years.”

  “Wonderful. You must know every scholarship student.”

  “I do. But I can’t give out information about them. Our records are confidential.”

  Damn. “I’m sure. And I wouldn’t ask you to violate your regulations. I am a police officer; I’m sworn to uphold the law. I just wanted to know if you recognized the name Lois Burk?”

  There was a long pause. I could picture a gray-haired lady pressing her lips together.

  “I’m not asking you if she was on scholarship. I know she was.”

  I could hear her breathing.

  “She graduated twelve years ago,” I prompted.

  Her bre
ath was sharper.

  “Students on scholarship, full scholarship, are also expected to work and to carry loans, right? You can tell me that.”

  “Yes,” she snapped.

  “And repayment is to begin a year after the student leaves college?”

  When she didn’t reply, I said, “This is just general information I’m asking for.”

  Her breath was shorter. “Yes,” she snapped again. “We give them a whole year after their final semester of college, whether that be a bachelor’s or a master’s degree, or a doctorate. They have an entire year before they have to pay one cent.”

  “And some of them don’t pay?”

  “No, they don’t. They take our money with open hands, but when it comes to paying it back, that’s another story, I can tell you.”

  “And there’s not much way of forcing them, is there?”

  “We write to them, remind them of their responsibility, tell them that there are students who need that money, but they don’t care. They’ve gotten what they need, they don’t think about those who come after them.”

  “Of course, there are collection agencies …?” I left the question open, pleased that I had been able to tap into her outrage.

  “For a long time the board didn’t want to stoop to collection agencies. They didn’t like to think our students were the kind to be badgered by bill collectors. But when I showed the board the financial statement, even they saw that there was very little difference between some of our fine upwardly mobile graduates, and deadbeats.”

  “I’ll bet the collection agencies have gotten some action.”

  “They’ve brought in more money than our nice letters did.”

  “But even they can’t get everyone to pay.”

  “No. Some they can’t find. Some don’t have anything. And some of them—would you believe this?—they quit perfectly good jobs rather than pay their debts. Of course, if there’s nothing to attach, there’s no way of getting them. But we keep checking. They can’t stay out of work forever. Sooner or later they’ll take a job where they keep records. And then we get them.”

  I could almost see her pouncing. “And Lois Burk?” I held my breath.

  “Never paid one cent. Never had a job long enough to attach her wages. I remember that girl. I remember her in here crying that she needed another scholarship, a bigger loan. She stood right here in this office and told me how she was going to New York and get herself a good job so she could pay back our generosity. They tell me she was an actress. I can tell you she was a good one. Not one cent.”

  CHAPTER 13

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR DOYLE’S OFFICE was in the rear corner of the Detective Division, behind the protection of the division secretary. At two o’clock I walked to her desk and she motioned me on.

  Doyle’s office was not much larger than mine and Howard’s. Rank could only do so much. But instead of our slatted excuse for a window, he had a large, old-fashioned, wood-framed window that gave him not only the morning sun (on those days when the fog lifted before eleven) but a rear view of the colonnaded school administration building. Compared to Lois Palmerston’s view, it was not much, but stacked up against the other possibilities in this building, it was big stuff.

  Note pad in hand, I sat on the straight-backed wooden chair he indicated. While a beat officer, I had had plenty of interviews with Lieutenant Davis. In each, I’d come ready to explain not so much my thinking about a case, as what steps I had taken, what information I’d found out. And Lieutenant Davis had sat behind his orderly desk, occasionally straightening an already geometric pile of papers, his feelings veiled behind his caramel-colored face. I had learned not to commit myself too soon; I’d learned to be more thorough than I liked; and over those years I’d picked up those subtle signals that were openings for discussion.

  But now, seated next to a desk that bore a closer resemblance to my closet floor than Lieutenant Davis’s desk, I found all my old markers useless.

  Inspector Doyle leaned back in his chair, awkwardly feeling for the armrests with his elbows. He was a tall man and at one time he had weighed more than 250 pounds. But now most of the excess was gone. The rumor was that he was going in for a series of medical tests. His prognosis, as assembled by the rumor mill, didn’t look hopeful. And his appearance did nothing to belie that speculation. He looked deflated; his uniform hung; his normally florid skin drooped. The bags under his eyes rested on his cheekbones. Even his eyebrows drooped almost into his eyes. And his hair, which had once been as fiery as Howard’s, was now muted with gray.

  With an effort, he pushed a pile of papers to the side and leaned forward. “Smith, you’re new in this detail. This is your first homicide.”

  “I had others when I was a patrol officer.”

  He nodded. His flesh rolled with the movement. “The, uh, Palmerston case has been assigned to you since, when, this morning?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Not much time.”

  “No sir.”

  “Normally I wouldn’t have you in to discuss it yet. Probably not for another twenty-four hours.”

  I waited.

  He shifted his weight to one elbow. “I’m going to be straight with you, Smith. You’re the first woman we’ve had here. The department supports equal opportunities. Our record’s as good if not better than any department in the state. But I have to tell you, I had some questions about a woman detective in Homicide. Press Officer, sure. Special Investigations, dangerous but effective. But Homicide …”

  I could feel my lips pressing together in anger.

  “But Lieutenant Davis pushed for you. I’ll be honest, Smith, I didn’t want to have a woman who was too soft, who got too emotionally involved with the widows, who didn’t want to ask the tough questions—”

  “Inspector, I—”

  “Let me finish, Smith. Like I said, I had my reservations. But what I didn’t expect was that when you’d been on the case for less than one day, there would be a complaint about you.”

  I stared.

  “Police harassment.”

  “What? From whom?”

  “One of the city council members called at noon. Had a complaint that you were badgering the widow.”

  “Badgering! Jesus! I waited till eleven o’clock this morning so I wouldn’t wake her up. Then the woman wouldn’t even let me in the house. I was trying to be considerate. Look, I broke the news to her last night—on my own time. It wasn’t even my case yet. I was just assisting Pereira then. I drove her to the morgue—on my own time. I offered to stay with her until she could have a friend come. How much less badgering can you do? If she hadn’t complained, you’d be saying I was too soft with her.”

  Doyle sighed. “The problem is, Smith, that the woman’s got connections.”

  “There are things I need to see in that house, things she could be destroying right now. I wouldn’t put money on her innocence.”

  “Calm down, Smith. Half of being a cop is diplomacy.”

  I took a breath. “Sir, when Ralph Palmerston’s car left the Cadillac dealership yesterday afternoon it was certified in perfect shape.”

  “Smith—”

  “Sir, if you’ll let me explain.”

  Grudgingly, he nodded.

  “Palmerston left there and drove straight home. And at some point between the time he got home and the time he left, his brake lines were cut.”

  “You think the wife could have cut the brake lines?”

  I had my own reservations about Lois Palmerston under a car, but it galled me to admit that now. “If it means you’ll inherit a fortune, it’s something you can learn.”

  He slumped back in his chair, his hand automatically going to rest on the paunch that was no more and landing on his leg. “I see what you’re saying, Smith. I’m not questioning your suspicions. But unfortunately, that doesn’t alter the fact that you’re going to have to tread carefully. This is not a case that will go unnoticed. So far the papers have only reported it as an accid
ent. But it won’t take them long to see a Homicide officer asking questions and to put two and two together. Then it’s going to be front-page news. They’ll be asking why we don’t have a suspect in custody, why we’re dragging our feet. The last thing we need is for them to add that instead of tracking down the killer, the detective in charge is out browbeating the widow. You follow, Smith?”

  “Yessir. But I need to get in the house. Maybe a warrant?”

  “Holy Mother! Smith, it’s bad enough they’re complaining about you harassing, how do you think a warrant would go down?”

  “But, sir—”

  “Smith, I know it’s frustrating. You’ve got to walk a fine line. You let this case go unsolved too long and the people in the hills will be screaming that we don’t bother with murder unless the corpse was dealing coke. You push this woman and she’ll have a lawyer raising hell. But, Smith, this is the type of thing that Lieutenant Davis told me you could handle. It’s what got you the nod for this job.”

  And, I thought, failing at this is exactly what will plunk me back to patrol officer. “Sir,” I said, “I’ve been assuming Lois Palmerston called in the complaint herself. Is that right?”

  He shrugged. “No way to know. By law the council members don’t have to reveal the source of their complaints. And they don’t.”

  It was clear the interview was over. I stood up, nodded, and opened the door. I nearly smacked into the chief. In formal departments, the chief would have called Inspector Doyle into his office, but Berkeley was more relaxed. If Chief Larkin wanted something, he had no qualms about walking down the hall. He stood outside the door in his gray suit and narrow red tie—another informality. When I had started on the force, I had assumed the chief would wear a uniform. He had one, I found out, but we didn’t see it often. A well-tailored suit, he had once said, was his uniform. But in truth, it was the tie that was his personal badge of office. Years passed, styles changed, thin ties gave way to wide splashily flowered ones. But for Chief Larkin, the narrow red tie was constant.

  As he nodded at me, his expression revealed nothing, though I knew, as chief, he had gotten word of the complaint.