Not Exactly a Brahmin

by Susan Dunlap

  So Cap was the fifth Shareholder. I shifted my weight to the other foot. “But you didn’t bankroll Carol.”

  “No. I don’t think Carol’s ever quite forgiven me. I was the one that pointed out her deficiencies. She was local. Her father was a fireman, hardly top-drawer. She was divorced from a guy who could be bugging her for the rest of her life if he discovered she had a rich husband. It wouldn’t be hard for any prospect to find that out. And that’s not even taking into consideration her biggest drawback—two small kids. Physically, Carol was all right. She could have been made up well, and dressed well, but her personality. Well, let’s just say that Carol can be too honest.”

  “So you thought of Lois.”

  “No. I didn’t know Lois. Nina did. She said she had the perfect friend. Beautiful, an actress. From New York. She said she could get her out here.”

  “And then what happened?”

  He sat up straighter. “You know this isn’t illegal.”

  “I didn’t say this was. What happened after the party?”

  “Well, about a month passed. I’d really forgotten about the whole discussion, when Nina called me and said her friend was here. That pretty much forced our hands. We got together and talked about the project like it would really happen. Then we realized that we were going to need money for clothes, money to rent a suitable apartment, money for charitable contributions—Society charity functions are where a woman can be seen. We were going to need a lot of money.”

  “Five thousand each?”

  “Right. It wasn’t easy to come by. I had some money I’d inherited, but that five thousand wiped it out.”

  “And then you assigned tasks?”

  He looked quizzical.

  “You were the escort. Lois had to have an entrée into Society, someone acceptable, like you. Adam Thede catered. Nina”—I recalled the photo of the one white-on-white long dress on her wall, amongst the other pictures of brightly colored patchwork jackets—“Nina made Lois’s wardrobe, Jeffrey got her the car, and Carol researched exactly how to social-climb.”

  Slowly, he nodded.

  “What was the payoff?”

  “Two thousand a year.”

  “Each?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not bad.”

  “In the long run it wouldn’t have been. But the first couple of years it was hard on most of us. Maybe not Adam, but on Carol, Nina, and me.”

  I didn’t need Cap Danziger to tell me that this was the scheme Lois Palmerston had admitted to Ralph in that emotional moment when she and Ralph both thought he was going to die. And this was the one scheme to which Ralph would have reacted so violently. Any other deal where five people loaned his wife money, he might have had some qualms about. Had it been drugs, he doubtless would have objected; he was that type of man. Perhaps he would have presumed that Lois’s evil companions had led her astray, but he probably would have accepted the fact that she had some responsibility. But not with this scheme, not with one to trick him into marriage. If he cared about his marriage, or about Lois; if he wanted to preserve the illusion that his wife loved him—and what dying man wouldn’t—he couldn’t consider her as anything but a pawn in the plot, a pawn who had come to love him after their marriage. He would have absolved her, but the restraint he’d shown to her would have exploded in his revenge against the coldblooded plotters who had used his wife to make a fool of him. It was the only scheme that would have generated the intensity of revenge Ralph had had. And the most devastating manifestation of that revenge would have been aimed at the man who had dated Lois: Cap himself.

  Cap Danziger was still sitting on the foot of his bed, his bathrobe tied loosely around his waist, his legs crossed.

  “Why did you kill Ralph Palmerston?”

  He jumped up. “I didn’t kill him. Do you think I would tell you all this if I’d killed him?”

  “You were at the repair shop.”

  “I was with Palmerston. I couldn’t have been under the car. Don’t you think Sam Nguyen would have found it odd for me to rush into the shop, push myself under the car he was working on with an ice pick or something in my hand?”

  “Maybe Sam left?”

  “You know by the time Sam left I was with Palmerston. Jake Trent saw me there. How much more of an alibi do you want?”

  “Well, then if you didn’t kill him, who did? It had to be one of you five.”

  “Why one of us? Why not Lois?”

  “Because, Cap, Ralph Palmerston wasn’t threatening her.”

  He sat back on the bed. “Then I don’t know. I really don’t. I never wanted to think about it, and I haven’t.”

  “But you’ve been in contact with the others, haven’t you? You kept tabs on me for them.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t unpleasant. We were all worried. You’re bound to worry when you’re a police suspect, no matter how innocent you are.”

  I took a guess. “You called in the complaint about me, didn’t you.”

  Now he did look uncomfortable. “That had nothing to do with the murder. We just wanted to keep you from finding out about our scheme. It only made sense for me to call. I know how to get service from public representatives. That’s one of the advantages of growing up in Society. You assume public servants will serve, and if you approach them right, they do.”

  “You did all this and you expect me to believe you don’t know who killed Ralph Palmerston? It had to be one of you five.”

  He didn’t answer. And as I waited for him to dress, I wondered if indeed it did have to be one of the five Shareholders, or if it could be the person who would have found puncturing Ralph Palmerston’s brake lines no trouble at all.

  CHAPTER 22

  I DROVE CAP DANZIGER back to the station. It gave me a perverse delight to glance in the rearview mirror and see him back there in the cage. I was beginning to have a real understanding of Ralph Palmerston’s reaction. Suppose Cap Danziger had told me that Adam Thede or Nina Munson had coerced him into pumping me. Even knowing better, I would have wanted to believe him, just to salvage my self-respect. And that was in reaction to one evening, one kiss. How much greater would Ralph Palmerston’s feelings have been after four years of marriage? And even more than any of the other suspects, he would have despised Cap Danziger. Cap had been his social equal, a man whom he probably had met, a man who had been Lois’s escort—and how much more? Palmerston’s revenge on Adam Thede destroyed his livelihood and his dreams. What had he planned for Cap Danziger?

  I took Cap’s statement, had him wait while it was typed. Another suspect I might have gotten coffee, but Cap Danziger I let sit empty-handed. Ralph Palmerston’s reaction was seeming more and more understandable. When the statement was signed, I called a patrol officer to drive Cap Danziger home.

  Howard was leaving the office as I walked in. He nodded but didn’t stop. I started for the door, to call him back. Was he angry about my questioning Leon Evans last night, or was he just in a hurry? I was too tired to judge. So I sat staring at the door, willing someone to drop in so I could talk about the great break in my case. But no one came, and as I thought about it, the question arose: So what? What clue does that give you to who killed Ralph Palmerston? Are you any closer than before? All the Shareholders Five were involved in the scheme. And there was Sam Nguyen, who had started to work at the same time Cap Danziger did, who took Cap to lunch with him, whom Ralph Palmerston was screaming at, and who was not walking, but racing out the door of the repair shop.

  The excitement that had sustained me since Cap Danziger’s confession faded. Talking to him, taking his statement, waiting for it to be typed had consumed a lot of time. It was almost noon. I hadn’t eaten anything but night watch’s doughnut since the taco at dinner. What I needed was a meal, a decent meal. Even I couldn’t face another jelly doughnut. And I wouldn’t be hurt by a shower and clothes that didn’t have salsa and jelly on them.

  I signed out and drove along Martin Luther King Junior Way toward my apartm
ent. At the corner of University Avenue, waiting for the lights to change, was a witch. I crossed with the traffic. At the next crosswalk, a tiny punk-rocker, two goblins, and a white rabbit made their way, giggling and waving at the cars. I had forgotten today was Halloween. Berkeley celebrated Halloween in a big way. If you walked into the East Bay MUD office to pay your water bill, you might be greeted by Cleopatra; in the grocery you could be checked out by an executioner. At the department those of us on patrol or in Details showed some restraint, but one year all the clerks had turned up in prison stripes.

  I pulled up in front of the Kepple house. Perhaps Mr. Kepple would appear as Ebenezer Scrooge. But when I spotted him, he looked as he always did—a portly, sixtyish, bald man wearing brown polyester pants and a windbreaker. He was blowing leaves off his short driveway with an electric blower. Without asking, I knew that when he finished here, he would make his way along the path to the backyard and my flat, blower whirring like the dentist’s air squirter. I was only pleased that I hadn’t considered taking a nap.

  I waved and headed for my door.

  I’d half expected the apartment to be filled with the aura of Cap Danziger, but it just looked like home. Grabbing a robe, I headed for the shower.

  As the hot water beat on my back, I pondered Cap Danziger and Sam Nguyen. Were they just friends—two elitists thrown together? Was that why Sam had used his influence with Jake Trent to get him to rehire Cap each time he fired him? Or was the bond between Sam and Cap more than mere friendship? Love? Not an outlandish thought, particularly in the Bay Area. But neither Cap nor Sam had given any indication of being gay. If not love, was the thing that linked them blackmail?

  Blackmail? Which way? If Sam were threatening to expose Cap over … I had suspected Jeffrey Munson of being Lois’s lover. It had been hard to picture Lois with Jeffrey. But it was easy to imagine her with Cap. So if Sam Nguyen had threatened to tell Ralph Palmerston about Cap and Lois, it would have given both of them very good reason to kill Palmerston before he found out and changed his will.

  And the other way—Cap blackmailing Sam? I couldn’t come up with anything that would have involved Ralph Palmerston.

  But I could find out about both of them. I rinsed off the soap as fast as I could, whisked the towel around my body, headed for the closet, and grabbed a forest green T-shirt that said STINSON BEACH on it, turned it inside out, and put my jacket over it. I’d just have to remember not to take the jacket off. But I’d had practice at that. Putting back on the same slacks (miraculously unstained), I headed for Munsonalysis.

  The receptionist looked up as I walked into the Munsonalysis office. On her desk the multitude of electronic devices sat neither blinking nor beeping.

  “I’m here to see Jeffrey Munson. I’m with the police.”

  “He’s not here now.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “I don’t know.” There was no hostility in her voice. It was simply a statement of fact.

  “Doesn’t he usually give you a time he’ll be back?”

  “Usually, but he didn’t today.”

  “Why not today?”

  “He got a call, and he left.”

  “Who was the call from?”

  There was a slight hesitation before she said, “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Yes, you could. It was a voice you recognized, wasn’t it?”

  She lowered her head. She looked like a demure Japanese doll.

  “It was from his wife, wasn’t it? From Nina?”

  Now she looked up. Her expression—knowing, disgusted—was anything but demure. “Yes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jeffrey’s Porsche, with its radical-chic dented exterior, was parked in front of 1733 Gilroy Street. Nina’s door was open. Through it I could see Jeffrey seated on the fainting couch, with the snapshots of Nina’s white-on-white dress and her bright jackets behind him, and the clothes rack with the white painting overalls and the multitude of brightly patched garments next to him. In a beige-striped rugby shirt, tan cords, and tan running shoes, Jeffrey looked more akin to the whites than the brights.

  I walked in, and starting on the offensive, said to him, “Cap Danziger called today, didn’t he?”

  It was Nina, seated at her work table across from him who said, “Yes.”

  Beside Jeffrey was the pile of jackets with the store labels on them that I had seen before. “Returned?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Nina said.

  “What reason did the store owners give you?”

  “They didn’t. When you own a place, you don’t have to explain. They just said they were returning them.”

  “Didn’t you ask why?”

  She sat a moment, looking small and dark against the brightly colored fabrics on the table behind her. “I knew why. I’d already talked to Adam, and to Carol. It was just a question of waiting to see what tack Ralph took with me. It could have been worse. This will pass. These jackets aren’t fashion items. They don’t go out of style. I’ll sell them next year.”

  “Now that Ralph Palmerston is dead, you will. If he had lived, those stores would never have handled them.”

  “Maybe. But this isn’t the only market. I could take them to L.A. It’s inconvenient. But I could do it.”

  “Still, things are a lot easier for you now that Ralph’s dead.”

  She looked straight at me, her brown eyes catching mine. “They are, but I didn’t kill him. Why should I, after the fact?”

  I could see that it would be a long time before I rattled her into revealing anything. Jeffrey Munson sat watching her. To him, I said, “But it’s a different affair with you, isn’t it? Ralph Palmerston knew that you worked for Von Slocum, the South African supplier. That’s what you did five years ago to get the money to pay Lois, isn’t it?”

  “Listen, I don’t need to answer questions from you.” His hands tightened into fists.

  “Maybe working for Von Slocum wasn’t such a sacrifice.”

  He flushed.

  “Maybe it wasn’t your only South African deal.”

  His lips pressed together.

  “It’s like your Porsche—radical on the outside, Republican under the hood.”

  He slammed his fist into the couch. “I needed money fast. I didn’t want to. I just couldn’t think of any other way to get that kind of cash. But I’ve given more than that amount to groups working against apartheid since then.” He looked toward Nina.

  She said, “He did what he had to; I did what I had to. I had a necklace to sell.”

  “And you can live more cheaply?”

  “Listen, she gets her quarter of the net from Munsonalysis, I see to that,” Jeffrey insisted.

  “That’s right,” Nina said. “Jeffrey’s been fair to me.”

  I’d let him calm down too much. “To get back to Ralph Palmerston,” I said, “Nina’s right in saying that what Ralph planned for her, he did. But for you, Jeffrey, it was still coming, wasn’t it? Ralph Palmerston penciled in the dates he carried out his well-prepared revenges—Adam Thede 9/26, Carol Grogan 10/12, Nina 10/25. But there was no date by your name. What was he going to do, leak to the newspapers that you’d worked for Von Slocum? Or was he just going to let the word out on the avenue, or with one or two protest groups?”

  Jeffrey glanced at Nina, then said, “What difference would it make? The effect is the same. If he told one person, he might as well have painted it on my building wall, like graffiti.”

  “It would destroy your business, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would destroy me,” he said quietly.

  “But if you stopped him before the word got out, then it would be all right.”

  It was Nina who said, “It’s never been all right for Jeffrey, since the moment he made the decision to work for those bigots.”

  Ignoring that, I said, “Jeffrey, you know cars inside and out. It would have been easy for you to puncture the brake lines. It was an expert job, but you could have done it, couldn’t you
?”

  “I didn’t, dammit, I didn’t.” His voice was shaky; his hands were pressed together.

  “It would have been so easy, Jeffrey. Two holes, and everything would be all right. You said Ralph Palmerston was a parasite; he wouldn’t be missed.”

  “I didn’t.” His voice was lower.

  “You said Lois was a parasite. Look at all you and Nina did for her. Nina took care of her in college. After college, you gave her a place to live. You brought her out here. You paid for that, right Jeffrey?”

  Slowly, he nodded.

  “You spent weeks working on her car. How long did it take Nina to make her beautiful clothes? Nina sold her necklace. You endangered your business. You sold your soul for her, didn’t you, Jeffrey?”

  Nina seemed about to speak, but didn’t.

  Jeffrey just sat, but his fists were tight.

  “Lois threw it all back in your face, didn’t she? She told Ralph Palmerston about the deal you had. She gave him your names. She watched as he plotted his revenge.”

  “Dammit! Dammit!” Jeffrey was screaming. “Fucking bitch! She could have stopped him. Goddamn fucking bitch.”

  “Who killed him, Jeffrey? Was it Cap Danziger? Was he Lois’s lover?”

  I’d expected a shout of confirmation, or of outrage, but what I got was a muddled stare. The notion of Cap and Lois was clearly a new one for Jeffrey. I turned to Nina questioningly.

  She took a breath. “Lois always had her choice of men. Why would she kill a rich ‘parasite’ for a penniless one?”