Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  “Maybe whoever broke the glass didn’t shoot Benedict.”

  Wallace looked skeptical, but said, “Go on.”

  “Assume someone came to the front door and got no answer. Someone, perhaps, who had an appointment with Benedict and looked through the back door. Benedict was lying on the floor. The person broke the glass, found she was dead, panicked, and ran.”

  Wallace pulled out a chair and sat, looking thoughtful. “If she was shot before six-fifteen, that would explain a discrepancy in the M.E.’s report.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Degree of rigor—it was more than you’d expect.”

  Joslyn said, “I haven’t seen the report yet, but rigor varies with temperature. Couldn’t it have been accelerated by heat?”

  Wallace shook his head. “The cold coming through the door during the five or so hours before the daughter found her would have inhibited it.”

  I added. “And even before the door was broken, it was cold in here. I noticed when I stopped by that morning.”

  “Stomach contents analysis tell you anything?” Joslyn asked Wallace.

  “Only that she hadn’t been eating.”

  I said, “When I was here she told me there wasn’t any food in the house. She’d been too depressed to go shopping.”

  “One of the things I wanted to double-check with you,” Wallace said to me. “You left the victim at ten that morning?”

  “Latest.”

  “You talk with her on the phone at any time afterward?”

  “No. Jack Stuart might have.”

  “He says no; so does the daughter.”

  Joslyn said, “You checked the daughter’s alibi, of course.”

  “Her ticket on the red-eye was used. Flight attendants didn’t remember her, but that doesn’t mean anything. Given what I know of the situation, I didn’t see any need to check further.”

  Joslyn nodded, but I could see that she didn’t like the presumption. And, I supposed the possibility of Judy being involved in Lis’s death was something they should consider. She could have come home earlier than she’d said, and either sold or given away her other return tickets at the airport in New York.

  Wallace’s thoughts were elsewhere, however. He said to me, “Benedict could have died at any time from ten that morning to six fifteen that night, assuming your theory about the glass door is correct. The other thing I wanted to ask you: did she ever seem suicidal?”

  Over the weekend I’d considered that. “She had tendencies.” I explained about seeing her at the cliff’s edge.

  “You know,” Joslyn said when I finished, “if she was a suicide, the advance state of rigor could have been brought on by cadaveric spasm. The extreme tensions suicides undergo at the time of death can bring on immediate stiffening.”

  Wallace shook his head. “No way. If she’d shot herself and gone into spasm, she’d still have been clutching the gun. But it was loose on the floor beside her.”

  “But that doesn’t rule out suicide,” I said. “Not all suicides go into spasm.”

  “Two shots were fired,” Bart reminded me.

  “So she was inexperienced with guns. She missed the first time.”

  He nodded. “Okay. If we accept your theory about the glass door—and I think it’s a good one—what we’ve got is either a suicide or a murder by someone Benedict knew and let in the front door. In the latter scenario, she had the gun handy because she didn’t trust the person. They got into an argument, she started waving the gun around, fired a shot, he took it away and killed her.” Wallace’s eyes met mine; I knew he was thinking how well Joseph Stameroff fit the scenario.

  “Adah,” he added, “will you run next door, see if that Mrs. Skillman’s there? Ask her if she heard anything earlier that might have been shots or is she noticed whether Benedict had any visitors. And try the folks across the street and on the other side of the house while you’re at it.”

  Joslyn nodded and hurried out.

  “Okay,” I said to Wallace, “this brings us to Joe Stameroff. What’s your supervisors’ stance on him?”

  “Pretty damned frustrating. Officially we’re supposed to give Joe the old kid-gloves treatment, but they also want him closely looked at. You tell me how the hell we can investigate him without him noticing.” He paused, then added, “God, I’d love to see that arrogant bastard get what’s coming to him!”

  I’d seldom heard Bart speak so passionately. “You sound as if there’s history between the two of you.”

  Wallace seemed to be debating how much to tell me. In a moment he replied, “Let’s just say that I didn’t like him as a prosecutor or a superior court judge, and I like him even less now that he’s sitting on the state supreme court.”

  I wanted to probe for specifics, but decided to let it drop for the moment. “You mentioned the lab report about the graffiti on my house.”

  “Yeah. We took paint samples and pictures form both there and here. Paint was a match. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but graffiti’s like handwriting in that certain characteristics recur. Not as reliable, of course, but our expert thinks the same person might have done both.”

  I was mulling that over when Joslyn rejoined us. “Skillman says she was gone all day, only got back a little before six. Nobody’s home at the other houses. You want me to canvass the rest of the block?”

  Wallace shook his head and stood up. “I’ll do it. Why don’t you go grab some lunch with Sharon and let her fill you in on what’s in her statement? Afterward she can run you back to the Hall and sign it.”

  I had more questions for him, but he started for the front door, adding to Josyln, “And talk with her about what we discussed earlier, will you?”

  “Hey,” I called after him.

  He kept on going.

  “Come on.” Joslyn said. “Let’s get out of here before he changes his mind and I miss lunch.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Adah said she knew a good place to eat down the hill in the little shopping area on Cortland Avenue, so we left my car and walked there. Nestled among the groceries, liquor stores, taverns, and small shops was a ramshackle red bungalow overgrown by bougainvillea, with a hand-painted sign that said Twylla’s Creole.

  “I never noticed this before,” I said.

  She smiled. “A lot of people miss it. It’s been here forever. Twylla Hopper, lady who runs it, is an old friend of my folks.” She led me up rickety front steps and into a dim hallway scented with rich, spicy aromas. “Twylla moved here from New Orleans about the same time my dad came to work in the Shipyards during World War Two. She started cooking for homesick friends; now she’s a little local institution.”

  Two rooms opened on either side of the hall: pink-walled with cracked plaster; crammed with rickety chairs and tables covered by worn flower-sprigged oilcloth. Nearly all the tables were taken. Joslyn moved toward one by the window, where a single daisy reposed in a jelly jar. The flatware didn’t match and neither did the dishes; the napkins were faded cloth, carefully darned.

  “Twylla doesn’t mess around with frills,” Joslyn said as we sat, “but I can guarantee you a damn good jambalaya.”

  “I’ll take your recommendation.”

  “We’ll make it two.” She held up her fingers to a young man waiting on the next table, and he nodded. “Twylla’s grandson,” she explained. “He knows it’s my usual.”

  “You live in Bernal Heights, then?”

  She shook her head. “Grew up here, a few blocks away on Powhattan. Now I’ve got a studio in the Marian. I needed to put some distance between myself and the folks. You know how that is.”

  “Yes, I do.” I’d chosen to attend college at Berkeley rather than one of the southern California campuses and then remained on in the Bay Area in order to put that same kind of distance between myself and my emotionally engulfing family.

  “One of the problems with my folks,” Joslyn added, “is that they weren’t wild about me becoming a cop. Police work
hasn’t ever been held in real high regard by the people on Red Hill.”

  “Red Hill?”

  “You’ve never heard Bernal Heights called that?”

  “No.”

  “Funny, I thought that was why those bleeding-heart liberals you work for located here. As legend goes, you’re smack in the middle of a former Communist hotbed.”

  “No kidding. When was this?”

  “From the twenties on. Communism may be dead damn near everyplace else, but there’re still a few cells of very old Commies here today.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?”

  “Well, I don’t know any card carriers, but . . . take my folks, for instance. Dad’s an old Socialist organizer, and Mom has a Marxist study group that’s been meeting every Wednesday for decades. It was one of those opposites-attract marriages made in postwar bohemian heaven: He’s black, working class, and a tough pragmatist; she’s a college-educated Jewish intellectual with a rebellious streak. The way they go at it over their ideological differences, it’s a wonder they’ve survived.”

  “They sound interesting.”

  “Oh, they’re interesting, all right. Particularly if you don’t have to live with them.” She smiled fondly. “So tell me about this research you’ve been doing on the McKittridge case and how it feeds into this homicide. Like Bart said, I only got back from vacation this morning, and I haven’t had time to read the reports.”

  Steaming bowls of jambalaya arrived. I used the interruption to ignore her request and pose a question of my own. “What is it that Bart wants you to talk to me about?”

  She frowned, clearly displeased at having lost control of the conversation. In a moment she said, “He’s hoping you’ll keep on researching that old case.”

  “Why? Does he think it’s linked to the present one?”

  “I can’t tell. He claims not, but at the same time he’s very interested in the McKittridge homicide. What I suspect is that he’s hoping you’ll turn up something incriminating on Justice Stameroff.”

  “Something incriminating him in the McKittridge murder?”

  “I don’t think even Bart knows exactly what he’s looking for. But I do know he wants to see Stameroff brought down.”

  “What’s the history between them, anyway?”

  Adah shrugged, toyed with her spoon.

  Even though Wallace and Joslyn were offering me quasi-official sanction to proceed with a course of action I’d already more or less determined to pursue, I felt somewhat leery. “How come Bart didn’t talk with me about this back at the house?”

  “Oh, you know how he is—he hates to ask a favor.”

  “Mmm.” But that didn’t sound like Bart; we’d traded favors on numerous occasions. And Joslyn was avoiding my eyes now, which didn’t strike me as in character, either.

  “Okay,” I said after a moment, “if Jack Stuart and Judy think we should go ahead with preparing the case to clear her mother’s name before the Historical Tribunal, I’ll do it. But that’s the only way I can justify spending the time. And there’s something I need from you—department’s original files on the McKittridge case.”

  “Sure. They may not be all that easy to access, but I’ll have Records expedite it. Now brief me on what’s in the statement Bart wants you to sign; it’ll save me time.”

  Between spoonfuls of the excellent jambalaya, I outlined what I’d told Wallace on the night of the murder. When I finished, Adah considered for a moment. “All that makes me suspect that somebody got stirred up by Benedict getting released and you digging into that old killing,” she said.

  “That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. It would be obvious to anyone that if I turned up new evidence, Jack Stuart would petition to have the case reopened rather than merely present it at a mock trial.”

  “So who looks good to you?”

  I shrugged, shook my head. What could I tell her? That’d I’d forged an odd psychic link to the events of June 22, 1956? That I knew what had happened, yet didn’t know? Could sense but not conceptualize it? Sure.

  To circumvent her question, I said, “Why am I still uncomfortable about Bart not approaching me directly about this?”

  She looked down at her empty bowl. “I told you, he doesn’t like to ask a favor. Besides, he wants you to deal exclusively with me on this.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s safer. If someone’s watching you—and they probably are, given that your house was vandalized—they’ll assume we’re just personal friends.”

  “That doesn’t wash, Adah. If they’re keeping tabs on me, they’re keeping tabs on the police investigation, too. They’ll know it’s your case.”

  “Okay.” She glanced around, lowered her voice. “What I just told you was Bart’s rationalization. But we’re neither of us dumb broads, right? I know what Bart means is that it’s safer for him if I’m your liaison. If the department brass is watching us and the shit flies because we’ve co-opted a P.I. to look into areas that we can’t because of their kid-gloves policy vis-à-vis Stameroff, I don’t have as much to lose. Bart’s got a mortgage and a couple of kids in college; I’ve got a month-to-month on my studio and a tankful of tropical fish.”

  “How do you feel about taking the heat?”

  “Not great, but it goes with the lack of seniority. And I’m a natural-born risk taker. Bart isn’t.”

  If I’d been in Adah Joslyn’s place, however, I wouldn’t have accepted that kind of risk—at least not without some major concession. And since Adah, as she put it, was not a dumb broad, I was certain she’d extracted said concession from her partner. I’d love to know what.

  Also, I knew Bart Wallace wasn’t the sort of man to ask a partner to assume a risk alone—not without a strong belief that it was worthwhile and necessary. Again I wondered what the history between Bart and the justice was, and if the inspector didn’t have too personal a stake in this case.

  After I signed the statement waiting for me at the Hall of Justice, I told Joslyn that I’d probably spend most of the afternoon at the public library, then detoured to City Amusement Arcade. Buck confirmed that Tony Nueva hadn’t been in since Friday afternoon. Tony seldom went anywhere without telling Buck where he could be reached and when he’d be back, but when I pressed him, the manager claimed he didn’t know. If I wanted, he said, I could ask Tony’s fox, Linda Bautista; she worked in the next block at Wig Wonderland.

  The windows of the shop displayed an astonishing assortment of hair mounted on disembodied, featureless heads. Some of the wigs were so blatantly synthetic that they glistened; a more select and natural-looking group clustered around a sign that said, Genuine Asian Hair Grown in Taiwan. I entertained a fleeting vision of a plain at the edge of the South China Sea, where hair plants grew like artichoke plants on the Monterey Peninsula.

  The only person in the shop was the woman I’d seen with Tony on Sunday morning. She wore a cap of synthetic blond ringlets and stood in front of the sales counter, swiping with a feather duster at the heads displayed there. When the bell on the door tinkled, she looked my way, frowning as she tried to remember where she’d seen me.

  I explained who I was and said I had business with Tony. The lines of her face went rigid. “Don’t you dare say that name to me!”

  “I thought you and Tony were friends.”

  “Hah!” She folded her arms, cloaking herself in tattered dignity. “Not anymore, we’re not. Bastard ran out on me Friday night, took our emergency money and stuck me with the rent.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “To his relatives.”

  “Where?”

  “National City? Chula Vista? One of them damn placed between San Deigo and the border.” She made a gesture of dismissal. “You know what I say to him? I say good riddance. Tony promises and promises, but he sure don’t deliver.”

  “What did he promise?”

  “The ring, the wedding chapel in Reno, two nights at Circus Circus. We were gonna play the slots,
blackjack, win big. What a bunch of shit! All I got was an empty stash box and the rent coming due.”

  “You don’t think he’s coming back?”

  “He better not. But he won’t anyway, not after the beating he took. He’ll hole up forever.”

  “What beating? When?”

  Linda Bautista regarding me silently, then stretch out her hand for money, fingers flickering in a grotesque imitation of her runaway lover. I sighed, reached into my bag, and handed her a ten.

  “What happened,” she began, stuffing the bill into the V of her pink blouse, “was Tony had this scheme. Week before last he got some bucks off this guy who’d been hired to do somebody.”

  “You mean commit a murder?”

  “Jesus, no!” Linda’s hand flew to her breast. “Nothing like that! Just cause some trouble, you know?”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, anyway, then around the middle of last week Tony found out something else had gone down—something bigger. So he decided to hit the guy again. And the guy beat the crap out of him.”

  “This guy—who hired him?”

  “I don’t know. Tony said it was somebody big, but Tony’s just a lot of talk and no action. He was supposed to get all this money the second time so we could go off to Reno, and now look at me. I got nineteen bucks in the bank and the rent coming due, and I wouldn’t marry him if he came crawling back and kissed my ass.”

  Behind the defiance in her eyes I could see real disappointment. The dreams that Tony Nueva had shattered weren’t big dreams, but they were likely to be the best Linda Bautista would ever have. Fool that I am, I took another ten from my bag and handed it to her along with one of my cards. “Linda, this is an advance. If you hear from Tony, find out where he is and let me know. Or if you remember anything else he said about the guy he was trying to get the money from, give me a call.”

  She looked down at the card and bill in her hand, then closed her fingers tightly over them. “You’re not gonna hurt him or anything?”

  “No. I just need to ask him some questions.”

  “That’s good. Tony’s an asshole, but I kind of . . . “ For a moment her lower lip trembled. She got it under control, added, “It’s just that I thought he was different—you know? But he turned out like all the rest. I don’t get it. I mean, look at me. What’s wrong with me?”