by Susan Dunlap
I stepped over what appeared to be two concentric plastic circles with a handle on top. Seeing my confusion, she said, “It spins, but you have to be under five to figure out how to use it.”
Pushing aside a Richard Scarry book with trains and cars and other odd vehicles on the cover, I sat on the couch. Carol Grogan cleaned off an ottoman opposite. I was just about to speak when the phone rang.
“Excuse me.”
“Sure.”
She walked through the dining room to the kitchen to take the call. The house was typical of Berkeley, with the living room across the front, the dining room and kitchen in line behind it, and a door leading from the dining room into a square hallway that in turn led to both bedrooms and the bathroom in between. In contrast to the jumble of the living room, the dining room was an adult area. An antique cherry table and sideboard stood on an Oriental rug. In the built-in cabinet was a set of gilt-edged china. The furniture dwarfed the room, as if it had come from a larger house, from a wealthier life style that Carol Grogan was not willing to let go of.
“Sorry,” she said, settling back on the ottoman. “That was one of my research people wanting to know the extent of Julia Morgan’s influence on architecture in the East Bay. I needed to get some specifics.”
“Is that how you know Lois Palmerston, through architecture?” I asked, remembering that Lois had worked for an architectural firm.
She stared a moment, then shook her head. “No. I’m not a specialist in architecture. I do research. This client just happens to be into Julia Morgan.”
“Is that part of your job at the library?”
“No. It’s a side business. A very small side business. I am a conglomerate of Carol Grogan Research, Carol Grogan Typing Services, and more often than I’d like, Carol Grogan Babysitting. My job at the library is only part-time. The payments on this house alone cost a fortune. And my kids go through clothes like they were an EPA testing service.”
“Their father—”
“Their father,” she said with a sigh of disgust, “was in middle management with an oil company. When we were married, we bought a house at the base of the hills. It seemed like we were paying a fortune then. Now that house costs twice as much as this, and I can’t afford either. What you were going to ask was, do I get support from him, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “? did for a while. When we were married, he traveled. He said he hated to be away. Then, after a while, he stopped saying that. Then he stopped coming home. And lately he’s stopped paying support.”
“There are laws.”
“Yeah. After he stopped paying, he also stopped working. He said he was setting up his own business, something to do with arranging to supply oil to small companies on an emergency basis. It sounded to me like shipping a couple gallons to Sioux Falls when they had a blizzard. But whatever it is, or was, it’s not making money. I could take him to court, but there’s nothing to get. So I type, research, and watch kids.”
“What I wanted to ask you,” I said, “was about Ralph and Lois Palmerston. You had dinner with her last night.”
“When he was murdered,” she said.
“Did Lois call and tell you that?”
“I saw it on the two o’clock news this afternoon.”
So the press had realized it was murder. I’d hoped it would take them longer.
“Did you call her then?”
“No. I figured she would either be sedated, or in the morgue, or whatever she was doing she wouldn’t want people calling up.”
This was beginning to sound like the Munsons’ comments. I asked, “Would you say you were a close friend of Lois’s?”
“Oh, no. Not now. We were friendly only a short time, when my boys were little. That’d be five years ago. But our lives are hardly the same now. I wouldn’t expect Lois Palmerston to endure this”—she motioned around the room—“any too often.”
“But you did invite her to dinner last night.”
“Yesterday was a good day. I had the day off. I could go to the store, I could cook.” She picked up a polo shirt and began folding it, though it was obviously stained. “It was a lark, the invitation. Or maybe lark is too cheerful a word. You see, Lois and I had this brief and rather odd friendship. We met at the movies. My husband was in Saudi. And I had this rather embarrassing passion for Peter O’Toole. The UC Theater was having a Peter O’Toole festival. I began to notice Lois there a couple of days. You do that. There’s sort of a conspiracy feeling. And then when she sat through two showings of The Ruling Class, I knew we were meant to be friends.” She picked up a handful of plastic building blocks and began stacking them, sticking the protrusions of one into the holes of the next. “It was odd though, or maybe not, but our friendship didn’t go much beyond Peter O’Toole. It wasn’t like we had a similar streak of adolescence. It was just one small matching blotch. And after a while we’d said all we could about him. I mean, how much can a stranger, even a famous stranger, fill out conversation. And I didn’t care about his life. I only loved his eyes and his chest.”
“But you did invite Lois Palmerston to dinner.”
“Yes.”
“Because …?”
“Well … okay. I wanted to borrow money. I knew she’d married a really rich man.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I never asked. It was clear five minutes after she got here that there was no point. To say we had nothing in common is suggesting a closeness that wasn’t there.” She smiled briefly. “I’ll bet that was the first meal she’d had with a six-year-old demanding honey on his garlic bread and a seven-year-old critiquing each entrée with ‘Gross!’ She probably isn’t used to banging into a bicycle when she pushes her chair back either.”
Remembering Lois Palmerston in her silk pants and sweater, I could understand Carol Grogan’s assessment. “She stayed here by herself before dinner when you went to pick up the children.” I left the “that seems strange” unspoken.
“This time of year, half the kids are coming down with the flu. I figured she didn’t need to be exposed. People without kids don’t have the immunities we do. And besides, it didn’t take a genius to see Lois wouldn’t enjoy the day-care scene. Lois didn’t have to put up with that. I guess those are the joys of wealth.”
Or childlessness, I thought. “Why didn’t you ask Ralph Palmerston for the money?”
“Ralph? I never met the man. He would have had no more reason to make a loan to me than he would to you.”
“What about Shareholders Five?”
Her dark eyes opened wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mrs. Grogan, you were one of a group of five people that Ralph Palmerston made a point to find out about. He went to a lot of trouble to discover what was important to you.”
“He did? What did he find out?”
“You tell me.”
“How would I know?”
“If someone were investigating you for that reason, what would they come up with?”
“Dustin and Jason, my kids, I guess.”
“Has anything changed with them in the past two weeks or so? Have they gotten any gifts, or been accepted at a better school or”—I was in deep water here trying to think what a philanthropist could do for a six- and seven-year-old or what a misanthrope could do to distress them—“or have they been denied gymnastics classes?”
“No, they still spend the day in school and day care and come home refreshed and ready to empty their closets all over the living room floor.”
“What about your job?”
“At the library? It’s civil service. Unless the county comes up with more money, I’m not likely to get longer hours or, God forbid, a raise. Prop. Thirteen will keep me in poverty till the boys are in college.”
There was only one other possibility. “This is your house, right?”
“Mine and the bank’s.” Her eyes widened again.
�
��Has anything changed with it—the payments, the insurance? Has anyone made you an offer to buy it?”
“No.” Her reply was too quick.
“Look, this is very serious. You have young children. You have a lot of responsibilities. You don’t have time to get entangled on the wrong side of a murder investigation. Now, I know something important in your life has changed. What is it?”
She eyed a handful of plastic blocks but didn’t reach for them. “Nothing’s changed. The kids are the same. We live in the same place. I do the same work. Their father still doesn’t pay support.”
“Have you heard from their father in the last two weeks?”
“No.”
I leaned forward. “You say you were barely friends with Lois Palmerston five years ago. Then, all of a sudden, you call her. She comes to dinner and that night her husband is murdered. Now we find you were one of the five people he was investigating. And you’re telling me that you don’t know him and nothing’s changed in your life. I don’t believe that for a minute. Either you can give me a truthful answer or you can have me leave here wondering what it is you’re hiding. And you can have me and the officers working under me make it a priority to find out.”
Now she did grab a handful of the tiny blocks.
“Mrs. Grogan?”
“I’ve told you everything. I’m amazed Ralph Palmerston was checking on me. I’m outraged.” She sounded not outraged but nervous. “He wouldn’t have known me on the street. What business was it of his how I spent my money?”
How I spent my money. “You were going to ask Lois for a loan. What for?”
She pushed the plastic blocks one into the next, forming a line. “You know, Christmas. The kids.”
I forced myself to control my anger. I didn’t need another complaint. “Mrs. Grogan, you don’t call a casual friend you haven’t seen in years, a woman with no interest in children, to borrow money for presents for boys who already have plenty.”
She stared down at the blocks.
“We’ll check your finances. We’ll go to your bank, to the mortgage company, to the library, the county offices. Do you want that?” When she didn’t reply, I said, “Do you?”
“Okay, okay. It’s the second mortgage. I’m behind. I thought it was no problem. It was held by a man in the Oakland hills. He’d always been very nice about it. Then, suddenly, he said he needed money and demanded all the back payments.”
“How much?”
“Four months. Three hundred and fifty each. Fourteen hundred. I just didn’t have that. I wasn’t sure I could get it. But, I thought, to Lois fourteen hundred dollars was nothing. She must have coats that are worth more than that.”
“But you didn’t ask her for the money. Now what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to get in touch with Mr. Hargis. I’ve left messages. I don’t know.”
I asked her for Mr. Hargis’s address and phone number. She knew them by memory. Extricating a toy car from between the sofa cushions, I said, “Tell me about Adam Thede.”
“Adam Thede? The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“You and he are lumped together in this investigation.”
“How? In what?”
“It doesn’t matter. What I want to find out is how you know him.”
She looked down at the pile of blocks on her lap, as if she was surprised to see them all separated. “I don’t know him.”
“Think.”
She sat for a moment, but I doubted she was searching her memory. “I suppose I could have met him at a party. You meet a lot of people like that and you don’t recall their names later.”
“How else?”
“At the library.”
“How is it, Mrs. Grogan, that Ralph Palmerston would consider you two in the same light?”
“I don’t know. I was a very casual friend of Lois’s. Maybe this Thede was too. But surely Lois must have had more than five friends of that caliber.”
“What about Nina and Jeffrey Munson?”
“No. I don’t know them either.”
“Lois lived with them when you knew her.”
“That could be, but I wouldn’t have met them unless they came to the movies.”
I stood up. “Mrs. Grogan, you are at the center of this murder investigation. You are the only person who was both pinpointed by Ralph Palmerston and a friend of Lois’s. I know there’s something you’re not telling me. I don’t want to have to spend a lot of my time finding that out. Now, here’s my card. It has my office number and my home number. Call me when you decide that it’s more sensible to be completely honest with the police.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look up. Stepping over a fire engine, I walked out.
I got into the car and headed to lower Marin Avenue. I’d been tough with Carol Grogan. She was holding something back; I didn’t know how much. But she had also given me a new slant on the case. Carol Grogan and her second mortgage. As soon as I could talk to Mr. Hargis, I’d have a clearer idea of exactly how Ralph Palmerston was operating with the information Herman Ott had gotten him.
It was after five o’clock. I should have gone back to the station and started dictating all my day’s interviews. They had to be on Inspector Doyle’s desk before Detectives’ Morning Meeting. But I had a squad car. I could get up the hill fast. I could tackle—very gently—Lois Palmerston.
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS DUSK. SOME cars had their headlights on. Lamps shone through curtains in living room windows. But the Palmerston house was dark. With the garage door closed it wasn’t possible to tell whether Lois was out or just hadn’t put the lights on. I rang the bell by the gate and waited.
There was no answer. No head peered over the wooden shutters in the living room. I rang again.
Behind me a door slammed. I turned. “Oh, Billy, hi.”
Billy Kershon, half running, half walking, arrived at my side. He stood, shifting his weight from one gangly leg to the other. “Hi. I don’t think she’s there. I mean, I haven’t seen her all day.”
“Didn’t you go to school?”
“Oh, yeah, that. Well, I mean when I was here.”
“I guess you didn’t get sick, then.”
“Nah. Ma sees germs everywhere. It’s like this humungous conspiracy of germs all aimed at me, you know?”
I smiled. With the coming of dusk the afternoon winds had picked up. It was chilly, but as if to flaunt his health against the invisible army of microbes, Billy Kershon wore a T-shirt and shorts. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?”
“No. I just wanted to know how things were going.”
I glanced back at the Palmerston house. There was still no movement there. “They’re going okay,” I said, “but if you know anything, tell me. I can use all the help I can get. Later, after this case is over and we’re not so rushed in Homicide, why don’t you come down to the station and I can show you around?”
“Really? You mean not just the ride-along with the guys on the beat, but Homicide?”
“Right.”
“Great.”
“Listen, you better get back inside before your mother sees you out here in shorts.”
“Yeah, I know. Germs.” He hesitated and then turned and loped across the street.
I gave a final look to the Palmerston house. Nothing had changed. I felt uneasy about leaving. Lois Palmerston hadn’t been in good condition when I’d seen her last. If she was in there now, who knew what shape she’d be in. But there was nothing I could do. Or at least nothing more than leaving my card with a note to call me at work or at home if she was ready to talk. I made a show of slipping it through the mail shoot into the box inside the courtyard wall. If Lois was in the house watching, she would see me.
I drove down Marin, adolescently enjoying the firm hold of the squad car brakes. At the traffic circle where Ralph Palmerston had been killed, cars shot out from all six entry roads. It was a game of chicken. Again, adolescently,
I bullied my way in. For a Volkswagen driver, used to anything bigger than a Honda cutting me off, being behind the wheel of a black and white was heaven.
As soon as I was at my desk, I called Hargis. He had held Carol Grogan’s second mortgage, but he’d sold it three weeks ago. Had he, I asked, called in payment before then? With that question, Hargis got cagey. He had told me enough. Part of the deal of selling it—he’d gotten a good price, a damned good price—was that he say nothing about it. And he intended to keep his word. I asked if he’d sold it to Ralph Palmerston. Again, he said he couldn’t tell me anything, but the pause before his reply was answer enough.
Then I turned my attention to my reports. Note pad in hand, I headed for the dictating booths. It took longer than I had expected. Frequently, the act of putting my observations into sentence form served to clarify them and illuminate an internal order that hadn’t been clear to me as I pondered them. But tonight, as I dictated my interviews with Adam Thede, Jeffrey Munson, Nina Munson, Lois Palmerston, and Carol Grogan, and an edited version of the two with Herman Ott, no one theme emerged. There was Lois’s opportunity to get to the brake lines. There was Lois’s shaky financial situation. There was Lois’s cutting off the friends she had depended on as soon as she married Ralph. But there was also the question of the Munsons and their reasons for helping Lois. Had Nina Munson watched out for Lois all those years and not cared when Lois dropped her?
And Jeffrey? I still wasn’t willing to believe he hadn’t been attracted to Lois.
Shareholders Five? What did Adam Thede and Carol Grogan have in common? And who were the other three members? And what had drawn Ralph Palmerston’s attention to them?
Those were the main disparate themes. For smaller threads there were such questions as why Ralph Palmerston was so furious with Sam Nguyen at the repair shop? Had Lois Palmerston been involved in prostitution or with cocaine, as Jackson suggested? I wished I could somehow braid them together. But what I had was just separate hairs.
When I finished dictating, it was seven o’clock, much later than I would have guessed.
I had thought of going home, taking a shower, putting on fresh makeup before I met Cap Danziger. But it was too late now. I hadn’t eaten since the doughnuts this morning. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, was in my fridge. And I was suddenly too ravenous to do without.