Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  I peered over at the lot. It was heavily wooded, misshapen Monterey pines dark against the motionless fog. If I had crossed to the bluff’s edge, I would have had a view of tumbled rock and waves breaking on the crescent of China Beach. Beautiful as this place probably was in daylight, at night it seemed desolate. Even the empty mansion looked more inviting.

  I asked Wingfield, “Why no takers, given the value of oceanfront land?”

  “The slope of the lot makes it extremely difficult to build on, plus there was the stigma of the murder. That’s faded by now, but the lot is still priced too high, as is the mansion.”

  “But some of the property was sold off?”

  “Yes, in the late fifties. The house that we passed just before the wall began used to belong to the Institute; it was used for conference rooms and staff quarters. But after the murder fewer and fewer people wanted to live on the premises, so it was sold.”

  “What was the reason for the staff living here in the first place?”

  “Russell Eyestone wanted to keep his handpicked intellectuals cloistered in a little community where they could feed on one another’s genius.”

  “You sound cynical.”

  “Well, I didn’t come here all that often, but when I did I never heard anything remotely resembling lofty discourse.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “The same kind of cocktail-time chatter and gossip I herd at home. Money talk, plenty of it. Politics—they were as conservative as they come. And pretty vicious gossip. Academics can be some of the worst backbiters in existence.”

  “Leonard Eyestone claims they don’t have much sense of humor, either.”

  “Leonard should know. He laughs only at other people’s expense.”

  “Tell me who and what did they gossip about?”

  “People I didn’t now. Things that didn’t interest me.”

  “And you say cocktail-time chatter. Did a lot of drinking go on?”

  “Hard drinking. It was no secret that Vincent Benedict was a serious alcoholic, and the others usually managed to keep up with him. It’s frightening to think that such people had so much influence on the country’s public and defense policies.”

  “The Institute’s influence was that powerful?”

  “Yes. I don’t know exactly which contracts they’ve held of what studies they’ve conducted, but they’re a premier think tank, on a par with RAND or Brookings. When the Institute speaks, the decision-makers listen.”

  I made a mental note to remember to call Eyestone’s secretary for the appointment to discuss the think tank.

  A foghorn bellowed again up by the Gate—a plaintive cry, like that of a wandering soul searching for comfort.

  Wingfield shivered, violently this time. “Let’s go,” she said.

  There was nothing to see here, but something held me. “Go back to the car,” I told her. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  “Don’t’ take too long.” She hurried down the walk into the mist, hunching to light a cigarette.

  I faced the house again, acutely aware of its silence, my eyes probing the darkness. I tried to picture what it would have been like with light in its many-paned windows and music and laughter drifting through then into the night. The image would not materialize.

  I pivoted and looked to the north, where the waters of the bay became those of the sea. A wall of white blocked my view. Had it been foggy on the June night so many years before? Had Cordy McKittridge’s killer used that fog as cover, moving stealthily through it to the dovecote? Had the fog also masked the murderer’s bloody departure?

  The questions smashed my mental dam, and images washed over me. A shadowy form of indeterminate sex gliding across the lawn and slipping through the foliage. Fingers of light spilling from inside the cote, briefly pulling the mist aside. And inside the cote: rough brick walls across which more shadows fell. Shadows in attitudes of anger, rage, violence. And the long blades of garden shears shining . . . slashing. Blood flowing . . . spattering.

  I blinked. Whipped around. Stared hard at the vacant lot, then at the dark mansion.

  No evil here now, I told myself, only an empty house waiting for real estate agents to troop through it with clients. The other homes in the vicinity were solid, lighted, tenanted. The dovecote no longer existed. This was simply a pleasant neighborhood where people conducted their lives in style and luxury.

  But memories of evil still lived in the minds of some people. Memories of evil still lived in this fog-clotted darkness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When I woke the next morning, gray light filtered through the mini-blinds and I could feel fog-damp in the air. I lay bundled up in my quilts for a while, listening to Rae, whose room at All Souls was still open to the sky, getting ready for work. Even after she left, I remained in bed, fighting a peculiar leaden feeling and trying to identify what was troubling me.

  Well, if pressed, I could have thought of plenty of troubling things, from the purely personal to the global, from the important to the mundane, but none of them was what weighed down on me. Actually, “troubling” wasn’t the right word. Call it . . . haunting.

  I recalled the specters that had passed before me the previous night in Seacliff, others that had clouded my dreams. Started to push them away, then told myself, No, take a good look at them in the daylight.

  What I saw wasn’t a pretty picture, but then, murder, even one so far in the past, never was. And the murder had happened long ago, to someone I’d never known. So why the vivid images and nightmares? Why the feeling of not being safe from violent, time-trapped emotions?

  I shivered, pulled the quilts closer. Call it a morbid preoccupation with the crime; call it a weird psychic link, even. But whatever the label, last night as I’d stood in front of that house in Seacliff, I’d felt how it had been on June 22, 1958. Altered as the landscape was, I’d seen the gardens, the dovecote. And later, in my dreams, I’d sensed what might have gone on there. I knew, and yet I didn’t know. . . .

  All of which added up to the fact that I’d become too involved in this case and was in serious danger of becoming unhealthily obsessed. When your objectivity goes like that, it’s time to back off—call if quits, say you gave it your best shot, and go on to something else before you do your client and yourself irreparable harm.

  But it was too late for that now. Once I’d committed myself to an investigation, I couldn’t just abandon it. An obligation to the client, yes, but even more to myself. I wouldn’t be able to live with the knowledge that I’d allowed bad dreams to frighten me away from the truth.

  If I’d truly wanted to escape involvement in the case, I would never have gone to Seacliff the night before. Would never have opened those moldering trial transcripts. Would never have climbed to the tip of Bernal Heights and talked with Lis in the first place.

  Too late now. Maybe it had always been too late.

  As soon as I had dressed and poured my coffee, I called All Souls and spoke with Rae. Had either of her informants come up with anything on the graffiti incidents? I asked. She said no, but she’d keep after them. Next I had her transfer me to Jack and asked if Judy had made any headway in persuading her adoptive father to talk with me. He didn’t know; Judy was out of town on business, but he’d ask her when she returned that night. Finally I called the Haven, the bar on the edge of Chinatown where Frank Fabrizio had seen Melissa Cardinal: a recording told me it opened at eleven.

  That would leave me plenty of time to speak with Lis Benedict. I collected my bag and briefcase and headed for Bernal Heights.

  The fog made the steeply canted little street dismal; the streaky pink letters on the façade of the white Victorian gave it a trashed, abandoned aura. I pushed the bell, received no reply. Used the knocker and waited. After a moment the curtain on the window of the front room moved. Then the chain rattled and Lis opened the door.

  She looked haggard. Her white hair straggled and her black robe gaped at the breasts. She d
rew it together and fastened it before she motioned me inside. The house felt cold and smelled of stale cooking odors. A small formal parlor to the right was as dusty and unused as the one in my house.

  Wordlessly Lis beckoned me to follow her down the narrow hallway to the kitchen and dining area. In spite of the warm earth tones and comfortable furnishings, the room was cheerless; outside a sliding glass door, mist lured in the foliage beyond the deck.

  A half-full mug of coffee sat on the table next to a newspaper open to the want ads. On the breakfast bar a TV with its volume turned off showed an exercise class, the participants’ pasted-on smiles more like grimaces of pain. Lis smiled at me in much the same way and offered coffee.

  I accepted and sat at the table. The newspaper was Sunday’s; the ads were the rentals. Lis returned with a mug, moving haltingly, as if today she felt the full burden of her years. As she sat, she pushed the paper aside. “I’d offer you breakfast, but I’m afraid the cupboard’s bare.”

  How automatically she minded her p’s and q’s, even after all the time in prison. I assured her that I rarely ate in the morning, then asked. “Does the name Melissa Cardinal mean anything to you?”

  She thought, then shook her head. “It’s a curious name. I’m sure I’d remember it if I’d ever heard it.”

  “Even if you’d heard it before you went to prison?”

  “Prison didn’t dull my brain,” she retorted with some sharpness. “Who is she?”

  “A former roommate of Cordy McKittridge.” I explained what Wingfield had told me about the apartment.

  “I’ve never heard any of that. It never came out at my trial. Is Melissa Cardinal important to my case?”

  “I’m not sure, but I want to talk with her, if she’s still alive.” I sipped coffee, set the mug down, and leaned my forearms on the table. “Lis, I spoke with Leonard Eyestone yesterday. He claims your husband confided that he’s asked you for a divorce so he could marry Cordy.”

  Her face underwent a sudden change—sagging, crumpling. She reached blindly for her coffee mug and upset a saltshaker that sat on a trivet between us. Automatically she brushed up the salt and tossed it over her shoulder. “I guess I should have told you about that.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I’ve lived so long with . . . Do you remember what I said about my daydreams?”

  I nodded.

  “One of them was that Vincent had never decided to leave me. If I pretended that he still loved me, that Cordy was simply one of his unimportant affairs, the days in prison were easier to get through. When you pretend so hard for so long, after a while you come to believe it.”

  “I see. Is there anything else that you’ve been pretending about?”

  She got up and moved to the sliding glass door. Stared silently at the fog.

  “Lis, is there anything else I should know?”

  The phone trilled. Lis jerked violently, clawing at the drapery beside the door. From her panicked expression, I knew it wasn’t the first time this morning that the phone had rung.

  I said, “I’ll get it,” and crossed to the breakfast bar. Pitching my voice lower and trying to make it sound older, I said, “Hello?” into the mouthpiece.

  There was a click as the connection broke.

  I replaced the receiver. Lis watched me, still clutching the drapery, her face like bleached parchment. With an effort she let go and crept to her chair.

  “How often are you getting the anonymous calls?” I asked.

  “Oh . . . several times a day. At least a dozen over the past twenty-four hours. And then there’s . . . Judy’s adoptive father.”

  “He’s tried to pressure you again?”

  “Twice. Joseph Stameroff is as persistent now as when he was with the district attorney’s office. Somehow he’s gotten it into his head that he can simply bludgeon Judy and me into giving up. It’s gotten so that between him and the other phone calls, I can’t sleep. I can’t even bring myself to go out to the store or to take my walk.”

  “For God’s sake, why don’t you unplug the phone? Why doesn’t Judy get the number changed?”

  “Judy’s away, since Sunday night. I can’t leave the phone off the hook; she might call.”

  When Jack had mentioned Judy being out of town, it occurred to me that she’d chosen a very bad time to leave Lis alone. “Where is she?”

  “New York. Something to do with a stage play she’s bringing here.” Lis must have seen my disapproval, because she quickly added, “She didn’t want to go. I insisted. I’ve ruined too much for her as is, without damaging her career.”

  I felt a flash of irritation. “Stop being a martyr. You didn’t do anything to Judy. What happened was done to both of you, and frankly, you got by far the worse deal. Judy’s done well for herself, so let go of the idea that the past has somehow crippled her.”

  Lis was silent, looking down at the table.

  Briskly I added, “What you need is some food in the house. Do you want me to go to the grocery store?”

  “. . . No. The woman next door has offered. Mrs. Skillman. It’s time I accepted her kindness.”

  “Good. You should get to know your neighbors; you won’t feel so alone then. I’m going to All Souls now, and I’ll talk with Jack. He’ll probably come over later, check on you. In the meantime . . .” I glanced around the room—at the silent, flickering TV screen, the rumpled newspaper, the menacing presence of the phone on the breakfast bar. “In the meantime, try to keep your mind off your problems,” I ended lamely.

  She nodded and got up to see me out.

  I waited until I heard the dead bolt turn and the chain fasten before I went down the porch steps.

  Jack looked every bit as haggard as Lis. He sat behind his worktable, papers strewn over its entire surface. I could have sworn he’d done nothing with them since Sunday.

  I leaned in the doorframe until he noticed me. “Thought you had a case going to trial today,” I commented.

  He shrugged wearily. “The judge is out sick.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re too preoccupied to do well by your client. And I hate to burden you any more than you already are, but . . .” I told him about my visit to Lis.

  “Jesus,” he said. A pounding noise came from above, where Rae’s attic room was. He glared at the ceiling.

  “That’s been going on all morning.”

  “Yes. It’s driving me insane. The guy promises he’ll be done by noon. Did you say you told Lis I’d check on her?”

  “I said probably.”

  “Good. I’ll just call her.”

  “What’s the matter? You don’t want to see her?”

  “Not really.” He hesitated. “Shar, I don’t admit it to Judy, but Lis makes me uncomfortable.”

  “You do think she killed McKittridge.”

  “No, I don’t. But like any criminal lawyer, I’ve got a good shit detector, and I know there’s something not right about the woman. There’s a lot going on she’s not telling us. I don’t know . . . Maybe old Joe Stameroff is right. Maybe she shouldn’t be living there.”

  He looked so uncharacteristically confused and forlorn that I transferred my sympathy from Lis to him. “Listen, give it a rest. Lis’ll be all right. A neighbor is going to fetch groceries for her, and maybe they’ll visit for a while. I find it hard to believe that someone who survived all those years in prison can’t survive until Judy comes home tonight.”

  Jack looked torn. “Well, maybe I’ll give her a call. It’s the least I can do. Are you making any progress?”

  “Some.” I stepped back into the hallway. “And if I’m to make anymore, I’d better get cracking.”

  As it turned out, progress had been made for me. On my desk was a message from Ms. Cook at TWA in Kansas City. Melissa Cardinals’ records had been easy to access, it said, because she was receiving disability payments from the airlines for injuries suffered in a crash in 1961. Her current address
was on James Alley off Jackson Street in Chinatown.

  James Alley had none of the picturesque trappings usually associate with Chinatown. It was just a grimy half block with vehicles pulled up on either narrow strip of sidewalk and trash cans standing by the back doors of shops and restaurants. The smell of cooking oil, Oriental spices and garbage hung on the air; the pavement was littered and dog-fouled; dirty curtains masked the windows above the commercial establishments. Melissa Cardinal’s address was an entryway between two reeking Dumpsters; the glass in its doors wore a covering of steel mesh.

  I pushed her bell and after a while received an answering buzz. The door opened onto a steep, dark stairway that smelled of cats. I looked up, saw no one, and began climbing. At the first landing I looked up again and spied a bulky figure in the shadows. “Ms. Cardinal?”

  “Formal, aren’t you?” an old woman’s voice said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Oh.” Confused. “I was expecting . . . Who are you?”

  “Sharon McCone, from All Souls Legal Cooperative.” I started up the last flight of stairs.

  “What do you want?”

  “To ask you a few questions about a case I’m working on.” It was so dark in the hallway that I still couldn’t see her clearly. Didn’t the landlord believe in light bulbs?

  “I’m busy. I’m expecting—”

  “This will only take a few minutes.”

  The woman sighed. “All right. I’ve got that long.” She turned her back and led me into her apartment. From behind, her faded white-blond hair looked as if it had been lopped off without the aid of a mirror; ragged hanks hung down, forming an uneven line above the collar of her shapeless flowered dress. The apartment was nearly as dark as the hall, but smelled better.

  “Have a seat.” Melissa Cardinal motioned toward a lumpy sofa.

  I sat, expecting her to turn on a light. Instead she lowered herself into a recliner, sighing heavily. A white cat jumped onto her lap, and she cuddled it possessively. Now I was able to see her better, and what I saw was a shock.