Not Exactly a Brahmin

by Susan Dunlap

  The kitchen was a big remodeled room with portico windows. The center island held a stove, a chopping block, and a counter with two stools. Lois was in no condition to balance on a stool. I left her leaning against the counter.

  Thankful that Inspector Doyle couldn’t see this, I scrambled eggs, toasted bread, and found some cocoa in a cabinet. I made enough for two.

  “Eat,” I said before she could protest. “You haven’t eaten in thirty-six hours; you can eat. Now go ahead.”

  She ate, hesitantly at first, then mechanically. I toasted more bread and she ate that.

  When she was done, I said, “Now I want you to tell me what is going on.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Yes?”

  “The people who killed my husband, they’re going to kill me.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would they want to kill you?”

  She shook her head.

  “You must have some idea.”

  “No. I told you, I don’t. Stop pushing me.”

  I took a breath. “Mrs. Palmerston, you called me at home when I had company. I left my house, and my guest, to come up here because you asked. Now the least you can do is to make an effort to discover what you are afraid of.”

  She lit a cigarette and said, as if she were talking to an idiot, “There was someone outside.”

  “True. But you don’t suspect it was a prowler or a burglar. You didn’t call for a beat officer. You called for a Homicide detective. You figured the person outside was someone connected with your husband’s murder. Now what makes you think that?”

  She just shrugged and smoked.

  “Mrs. Palmerston, you say you’re afraid of your husband’s killer, but you do everything in your power to keep me from finding that person. You wouldn’t talk to me earlier. You wouldn’t let me inside. Then you filed a harassment complaint. After all that, you call me and tell me you’re afraid. Now what is it you expect me to do about that?”

  “I expect you to protect me,” she said in a surprisingly steady voice. “I’m a taxpayer. We pay a lot of taxes to the city. I expect protection.”

  I pressed my fist into the chopping board. “The police department is not a guard agency. We do investigations. If you want a twenty-four-hour guard, get a Doberman.” Before she could respond, I said, “Now I’m going to go through the house to make sure no one did get in.”

  I hurried out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and up the stairs before she could follow me. There was no one else in the house; I was sure of that. But I was also sure that Lois Palmerston was no more likely to allow me to search the house now than she had been earlier today. I could see in her the woman who had lived off the Munsons for years and then not deigned to invite them to her wedding. If lack of reciprocity were cash, Lois wouldn’t have needed Ralph Palmerston’s money.

  The second floor consisted of three rooms and two baths. For form’s sake I checked the master bedroom and the large bathroom. Then crossing the hall, I listened, but there was no sound of Lois approaching. Either she knew I wouldn’t find anything useful up here, or she believed that I was looking for an assailant and she wanted to keep out of the line of fire. Or exhaustion had caught up with her and she was too tired to bother.

  Of the two small rooms, one was a guest room. I checked the dresser drawers and closet but there was nothing but spare blankets there. Making my way through the adjoining bathroom, I came to what looked like an office. It was done in mahogany—heavy desk, bookshelves, green leather swivel chair. It looked like an office where John Farrell, the lawyer, would have felt at home.

  I listened again, but still there was no sound of Lois approaching. It would take time to search through all the desk drawers and the closet for Ott’s reports, more time than could be explained by looking for an intruder.

  I started with the center desk drawer. I pulled it open. On top, was a brown 8½ × 11 envelope. Sliding the papers out, I found Ott’s reports.

  I turned to the last page of the bottom report. I was in luck. In caps, it was headed SUMMARY:

  Persuant to your instructions of September and subsequent, I have made inquiries about the five persons you indicated, their compelling interests and what is vital to the sustenance of said interests:

  Adam Thede—Sunny Sides Up health food breakfast restaurant. Suppliers of non-organic vegetables: J & R Farms (pesticide use); Oliver Hernandez Farms (herbicide use). Always Fresh Bakery (wheat procured from G.P. Fulmot of Topeka, Kansas, which uses herbicides and pesticides and sells to commercial bakeries). [“9/26” was handwritten in pencil.]

  Carol Grogan—1397 Ordway, Berkeley dwelling. Second mortgage in arrears since June of this year. Holder Peter Hargis. Mr. Hargis is willing to sell for a significant profit. [“10/12” was handwritten in pencil.]

  Nina Munson—handcrafted jackets sold at Amber Crescent (owner Ruth Katz), Handmade Wraps (owner Estelle Usher), the Normandy (owner Thomas Juriss), and One of a Kind (owners Grace and Robert Simmons.) [“10/25” was in pencil.]

  Jeffrey Munson—Munsonalysis. Accepted contract from Von Slocum Mining five years ago. Von Slocum is a major supplier of small mining equipment to South Africa.

  As we agreed re: your subject at Trent Cadillac, the conclusion is too obvious to require my services.

  This report, following the three preliminary reports, concludes our contract regarding those persons known as Shareholders Five. It has been a pleasure being of service to you.

  The report was signed by Herman Ott.

  I sat staring at it. Nina and Jeffrey Munson, and—Jesus Christ!—Sam Nguyen.

  Or could he possibly have meant—I swallowed—Cap Danziger? I didn’t even want to consider that and its implications. I started riffling through the pages of the full report. Maybe Ott had been less cryptic there. Damn Herman Ott and his professional ethics. Any other private eye would have taken Palmerston’s money for the fifth Shareholder and considered it a gift. I skimmed the pages. I had to know who this fifth member of the group was. Was it possible that the man who had been kissing me on my chaise lounge was involved in Ralph Palmerston’s murder?

  Trips to Salinas, Visalia, Delano motels, charges for meals, phone calls, car rentals; Herman Ott was thorough.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Lois stood at the door, one hand on her hip, the other holding a cigarette. In my rush to find out what Ott had done, to find out about Cap Danziger, I had completely forgotten Lois Palmerston.

  “This is a report from the detective your husband hired,” I said, standing up. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”

  “You don’t have any right to go through his desk. I didn’t say you could do that.”

  “The report wasn’t hidden. It was in the first place anyone would look. You knew it was here. There’s no need to deny it. You knew what was in it. And you knew why your husband was getting this information. Now why was that?”

  “I want you to put that back where you found it and leave my house.”

  “You called and begged me to come here.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  I stared. I hadn’t expected this level of duplicity. I took a breath. Inspector Doyle’s face flashed before me. I didn’t want to think how he would react to a second complaint in two days. The woman was a pro. She’d probably throw in my crack about the Doberman, too. But I wasn’t about to leave. “Mrs. Palmerston, the people mentioned in this report are your friends. Why was your husband checking up on them? What is it that connects the Munsons and Carol Grogan?”

  “I told you to leave.”

  “I’ll go when you answer my questions.”

  She stared at me. I returned her gaze. It was a moment before she looked down and took a drag of her cigarette.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m going to tell you what I told Ralph about those people and then I expect you to leave. Is that a promise?”

  “We don’t make promises
in Homicide investigations.”

  She looked like she was going to argue and then suddenly found the effort too great. “Come downstairs,” she said. “I’m tired.”

  I followed her to the living room and sat next to her on one of the sofas. She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another.

  “I needed money. I borrowed it from my friends, from the people mentioned in the detective’s report. I never told Ralph until he heard from the doctor, that he was going blind.”

  I said nothing, waiting.

  “It was a very emotional time for both Ralph and me. I shouldn’t have told him; I wasn’t in control. But we were afraid; we thought at first that his eye problem came from a brain tumor. You don’t last long when you have one of those. We thought he was going to die.”

  Still I waited.

  “Like I said, it was a very emotional time. All of a sudden, he wanted me to tell him everything. Up till then he hadn’t wanted to know anything about me before I met him, I mean anything really personal. Now he wanted everything. He wanted to know what my childhood was like, what courses I’d taken in college, how I’d lived afterward. He wanted to hear about every man I’d dated, every one I’d slept with, who I’d borrowed money from. Ralph said he wanted to make restitution before he died. He wanted to leave the world with a clean slate. So I told him. I’d taken money from friends.”

  “How much had you borrowed?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “Mrs. Palmerston, your husband asked you this question. He wanted to know how much. You told him. You know. Now how much?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  “Each?”

  “Yes.”

  I restrained a whistle. Lois Palmerston certainly could get the most out of people. To Carol Grogan and Nina and Jeffrey Munson, five thousand dollars would have been a great deal of money. I asked, “When was that?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “Why? For what?”

  She swallowed. “Officer Smith,” she said in a low, very controlled voice. “I’ve answered your questions. I’m distraught. My husband was killed yesterday.” She looked at her watch. “Two days ago now. It’s after midnight. I haven’t slept in God knows when. If you don’t leave right now, I am going to call my lawyer at home.”

  “Just one more question. Who was the person at Trent Cadillac?” I held my breath.

  “No. That’s all.”

  There was an icy desperation to her words. I knew I’d get nothing else out of her, except another complaint. I stood up.

  “Put the detective’s report down,” she said.

  I did, and left.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE THOUGHT OF GOING home passed through my mind only briefly. If I was going to be awake and furious, I might as well do it at the station dictating my report. Maybe Lois Palmerston would file another complaint anyway. I’d gone out of my way to accommodate her. I should have known better. Nine to five, they’d told us in patrol officer training; don’t take your work home with you. You only end up screwing yourself. And don’t give extra services, I could have added, and then expect to get something in return for them, particularly from someone with a record of using people like Lois Palmerston’s. Four years on the force; I should have known better.

  I crossed University at King Way, running the red light after the two cars ahead of me. Cars on University hit their horns. I blew mine back.

  What I really wished was that I had Cap Danziger’s home address, that I could go there and yank him out of his patrician bed, and force the truth out of him.

  I pulled up by the station. There was a spot in front. I wasn’t even pleased. Goddamnit, I wished Howard was here to talk to. I could go by his house. For his house this wasn’t too late.

  But I paused only momentarily. I wasn’t going to discuss this with Howard. Or with Pereira. After a year of complaints about my ex-husband, I wasn’t about to admit to my friends that the first man I was attracted to was probably up to his ears in my murder case.

  I headed inside, dumped my purse on my desk, and pulled the one new message from my IN box. It was in Howard’s scrawl: Lois P. clear with SFPD Vice.

  So Lois hadn’t been involved in prostitution in San Francisco, or at least she’d never been picked up or even suspected. Another time I would have been disappointed at that dead end. Now, I was still too angry. I took my notes and walked to the dictation booths.

  “Lois Palmerston, widow of the deceased,” I began, “called me at home at ten-thirty. She sounded shaky—see earlier report on her condition—and asked me several times to come to her house.” I realized I had deleted any mention of Cap Danziger being at my house when the call came.

  I went on describing the footprints outside Lois’s windows. Stopping, I wondered who had made those prints. In running shoes, it could have been a man or a woman. It could have been ninety percent of the Berkeley population. Was it one of the Shareholders Five? Why would they be looking in Lois’s window, particularly if the house was dark? To see if they could break in and get Ott’s report? That made sense. But that also meant they knew of the existence of the report. Had Ralph told them? I felt sure that Ott, oddly professional Herman Ott, would never have revealed his assignment to the subjects of it. But if one of the five wanted to get that report, then the only logical reason was so that I wouldn’t find it and connect them to Ralph Palmerston’s murder.

  I was beginning to feel better.

  I described Lois Palmerston’s appearance, forwent any mention of the eggs and cocoa, and detailed my search of the premises and discovery of Ott’s report. Its contents I dictated as specifically as I could recall:

  Adam Thede, his health food restaurant, and his tainted suppliers.

  Carol Grogan, her house, and the overdue second mortgage.

  Jeffrey Munson, Munsonalysis, and his contract with the South African supplier.

  Nina Munson, her handmade jackets, and three of the four stores I could recall.

  And “our friend at Trent Cadillac,” for whom Herman Ott had found no professional expertise necessary.

  Controlling my resurgence of anger, I dictated Lois’s explanation of the list: her story that she had borrowed five thousand dollars from each of her friends, and that Ralph Palmerston had wanted to make restitution before he lost his sight. Did I believe that story? At a time like that, talking about childhood was understandable. Lovers—I could see that. But discussing outstanding personal debts was an odd inclusion. And despite whatever he might have told Herman Ott, Ralph Palmerston hadn’t done anything good for Adam Thede. It was possible that his information had come too late, as Thede suggested. What about Carol Grogan? Palmerston hadn’t paid the back payments on her second mortgage. Surely, he was the one who bought it from Peter Hargis. He could have canceled the entire mortgage. But if he had done that, Carol Grogan wouldn’t have called Lois to ask for a loan—if that indeed was the reason she had contacted Lois.

  Nina? It wouldn’t be difficult to see if those stores were carrying her jackets.

  Jeffrey? What good would it do him to know a contract he’d signed five years ago was with a South African supplier? For someone with Jeffrey’s radical pretensions, dealing with a South African-connected firm would be devastating. In Berkeley, that type of publicity could cripple Munsonalysis. But Jeffrey still seemed to be in business. Unlike Adam Thede, nothing bad had happened to him.

  But what was so obvious about Cap Danziger’s interests? In what way would Ralph have helped him? Cap was handsome and charming, and had good connections. All he lacked was money. If Ralph Palmerston had done something good for Cap—given him money—Cap wouldn’t have been working late, night after night. If he had money, he would certainly have a car; we wouldn’t have driven to the bar in my car last night. So it wasn’t good that Ralph Palmerston had in mind for Cap. Did he instead plan to get him fired from Trent? As a punishment that wasn’t in the same league as losing the restaurant of your dreams, where you
had the only opportunity to be creative in the world of vegetarian breakfasts. Losing one job selling cars merely meant that Cap Danziger would move to another. Car salesmen changed jobs all the time.

  I sat back, idly listening to the guy in the next booth describing an assault on Telegraph. David Thomas, seller of feather ornaments, had attacked bodily one Timothy Arndt, seller of tie-dyed T-shirts on the next blanket, after Arndt’s springer spaniel had become too familiar with Thomas’s wares. Both principles were under arrest. The springer spaniel, presumably, was home with the T-shirts (and maybe a few contraband feathers).

  I walked to the machine and got a cup of coffee. At two-thirty in the morning it tasted awful.

  What if “our friend at Trent Cadillac” was not Cap Danziger but Sam Nguyen? (It had to be one of the two; they were the only Trent employees at the dealership five years ago.) I hesitated to even consider the possibility for fear I would be misled by my own desires. But if Clayton Jackson’s conclusion about Lois Palmerston—that she was dealing cocaine—was correct, then it would make sense that her connection was not Cap Danziger but Sam Nguyen. Sam Nguyen might be known as being adamantly opposed to drugs, but dealers hardly advertised their trade. Sam Nguyen may just have worked out a good cover. He could still have connections in the Far East. And if he aimed to open his own garage, what easier way to get money?

  But how would Lois have come in contact with him? Could she have met him some time when Ralph picked up his car? No, she had got the money from the Shareholders five years ago, before she knew Palmerston. But Jeffrey had worked as a mechanic when he first arrived in Berkeley. He would have known Sam Nguyen. If Sam Nguyen were the drug connection, that would mean that instead of being one of the five Shareholders “loaning” money to Lois, he had been the recipient. It would mean that the fifth Shareholder was not Sam (or Cap) but Lois.

  I gathered up my notes. Lois Palmerston had come out here five years ago in the summer. Almost immediately she convinced four or five people to “loan” her five thousand dollars. Why, but for a highly profitable drug deal, would a woman like Carol Grogan, divorced, with two young children and a house payment she could barely manage, be willing to loan a strange woman five thousand dollars? How did she even raise that money?