Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  “I will. You can count of that.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  No workmen’s trucks clogged the street in front of All Souls, and as far as I could tell, the paint on either side of the Victorian now matched that on the façade. Ted was leafing through an office-supply catalog at his desk, a red-and-white flower lei draped around his shoulders.

  “Hank’s back!” I exclaimed.

  Ted smiled benignly as he handed me a stack of messages.

  Quickly I checked the tag on Jack’s box; it indicated he was out. Then I hurried down the hall to Hank’s office. My boss—and dear friend—was hunched over his paper-strewn rolltop, running a hand through his steel-wool hair as he tried to decipher chicken scratching on a legal pad. When I knocked, he looked up and broke into a wide grin.

  I said, “How come all hell breaks loose when you leave here, and harmony is restored the instant you return?”

  “Because I got the magic touch, baby.” He sang the words, getting up to hug me.

  “Vacation seems to have agreed with you. How’s Anne-Marie?”

  “Off to save the rain forests.”

  “Really?” Anne-Marie Altman, Hank’s wife, was chief counsel for a coalition of environmentalist groups, including the foundation that Hy directed.

  “Well, she’s off to Sacramento, anyway. Just for a few days.” Hank opened his briefcase, extracted a small tissue-wrapped package, and handed it to me.

  “Oh boy—my present!” I sat down in the client’s chair and fumbled with the bow. We’ve always been big on gifts at All Souls, and Hank’s are the best because he picks each with the individual firmly in mind. This time mine was a small piece of coral, sun-drenched and deceptively delicate-looking.

  “You remembered,” I said. For years I’d carried a piece of coral from a Hawaiian vacation in the zipper compartment of my purse; then one day it just hadn’t been there, and I’d found myself more upset than the situation warranted. Subconsciously, I’d then realized, I must have thought it a talisman against disaster, and though I prided myself on not being superstitious, for a long time after its loss I’d missed it. Now I took the new coral and tucked it deep inside my bag.

  Hank said, “Keep safe.”

  “But never secure.”

  “Huh?”

  “Old proverb. In a way, it’s what I’ve lived by.” Then I began to fill him in on Rae’s and my activities during his absence, ending with the Benedict case. “What do you know about Joseph Stameroff?” I asked when I finished.

  Hank took off his thick horn-rimmed glasses and nibbled on one well-gnawed earpiece. “Stameroff’s bad news. Conservative as they come. He’s swung the vote on some Neanderthal decisions in the area of civil rights.”

  “Can he—or could he ever—be bought?”

  “Sure he can be bought; we all can, for the right price. But if you want to know if he has been . . . I’d say yes. Stameroff’s not that good a jurist; he’s gotten as far as he has because he’s done favors.”

  “For whom?”

  Hank shrugged.

  “Do you think he might have engineered a cover-up in the Benedict case? He was a deputy D.A. at the time; suddenly he got handed this high-visibility prosecution. Why, unless somebody thought he’d be easily manipulated?”

  “Have you asked Stameroff about that?”

  “He says he was the ‘obvious choice’ for the case. Something to do with him having trial experience in similar types of crimes.”

  “Hmm. Well, I don’t know all that much about the Benedict case—seeing as I was a mere child in fifty-six.”

  “Okay, hazard a guess.”

  “What you tell me makes me think it’s possible there was a cover-up.” Hank continued to gnaw at his glasses frame. “You sound pretty wrapped up in this.”

  “. . . I guess I am.”

  “What about Jack? Do you think he’s putting in too much time on what’s basically a personal cause?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you, too?”

  “Well, it’s not my personal cause.”

  “But you’ve personalized it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then keep on it. In the meantime, I’ll make some discreet inquiries about Stameroff.”

  Hank didn’t have to put himself out, and the offer told me that the facts of the case had touched him where he lived. More than any of the attorneys at All Souls, Hank feels the burden of his oath to uphold justice; more than any of us, he is the champion of the underdog.

  I thanked him for the coral and went up to my office. I easily dealt with my messages, a small amount of paperwork, and some phone calls. Then I swiveled in my desk chair and stared out the bay window, watching the play of light and shadow on the houses across the triangular park and thinking about Louise Wingfield. It bothered me a great deal that she’d initially concealed her affair with Vincent Benedict, but perhaps she had merely been preserving her right to privacy. And I had only Melissa Cardinal’s word about how much Louise had hated Cordy.

  How much credence could I place in anything Cardinal might tell me? The woman was an extortionist. She hadn’t succeeded with Wingfield, but perhaps she’d attempted the same with someone else—the man at the Haven, for instance. Maybe he’d found some way to turn the tables that made Melissa afraid.

  Who was Melissa, anyway? There had to be more to her past than her job as a flight attendant. How had she come to know Cordy? If I found the answer to that question, I suspected, any number of things would become clear.

  I needed to backtrack on Melissa, I decided, from her present address on James Alley all the way to the early fifties—

  Someone rapped on the doorframe. I swiveled, saw Jack. He asked, “Got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  He came in, shoved aside my tape recorder and camera bag, and perched at the foot of the chaise lounge. “We have a problem.”

  “More trouble with Stameroff?”

  “Of a sort. I’ve just come from a meeting with James Wald, organizer of the Historical Tribunal. They’ve got a jury and have calendared the mock trial for this weekend.”

  “What? Why so soon?”

  “Because Joe Stameroff approached both Wald and Judge Valle about reprising his role as prosecutor. Wald, the old publicity hound, couldn’t resist the opportunity to capitalize both on Lis’s murder and on having a state supreme court justice as a participant. Rudy’s interested in it from a jurist’s standpoint; he wants to see the Benedict prosecution reenacted.”

  “But why this weekend?”

  “Stameroff insisted, said it was the only free time he’d have for months. In my opinion, he’s trying to get it over with before your investigation uncovers anything else.”

  “The bastard.” I drummed my fingers on his desk. “Stameroff must really have something to hide. He’s setting up a situation that’s potentially dangerous to him in the hope he can somehow control it.”

  “And the way it looks now, he probably can.”

  “So what’s your defense?”

  “Reasonable doubt—something the original defense attorney never thought about.”

  “And when do you meet with the people who are playing the roles of the witnesses?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Can you alter the content of what you tell them to testify to after that?”

  “At any point up until they go on the stand. And remember, the defense doesn’t present until Sunday.”

  “Then we’ve got time.”

  “You still think you can find new evidence?”

  I shrugged. “To start with, let’s sit down and see what we’ve got.” I grabbed my files and we went downstairs to the law library, where we spread everything out on the trestle table. Rae heard us and came out of her cubbyhole under the stairs, still grumpy and uncommunicative. She brightened as Jack and I began drawing up a list of things to do, and soon was immersed in the files. I
t was quite a reversal of her earlier refusal to become involved in the case, but I wasn’t about to mention that. Instead I began making a list of what needed to be done.

  I took care of two items on the list immediately: making an appointment to talk with Leonard Eyestone in the morning and contacting Cathy Potter about getting access to the Seacliff house. Then I returned my attention to Melissa Cardinal.

  “Anything we can find out about her past may help,” I told Rae. “Will you check public records?”

  “Sure. I have lots of time on my hands.” She scowled but didn’t elaborate.

  Jack and I exchanged looks that said neither of us was willing to plumb the depths of Rae’s displeasure. I said, “There’s a Ms. Cook at TWA personnel in Kansas City who thinks we’re trying to trace Melissa because of a bequest from one of our clients. Call her and see if she’ll give you Melissa’s Social Security number or anything else from her personnel jacket.”

  “Right. If I’m lucky at Vital Stats and get the names of her parents, I’ll run by Voter Registration. They might have addresses and occupations for them.”

  “Melissa herself might have been old enough to vote in the early fifties; check for her, too.” I looked up as Ted came back to the door with a large Jiffy bag.

  “For you, Shar,” he said. “Was messengered over from the Hall of Justice.”

  I took the package, saw it came from Adah Joslyn. “Original SFPD files on the Benedict case, I bet. Jack, do you want to go over them first? Right now I want to make a run to North Beach and talk again with the bartender at the Haven and with Frank Fabrizio, the man who rented the flat to the bunch of them. Why don’t we gather back here around dinnertime?”

  They both nodded. Rae said, “I’ll pick up a pizza.”

  “What about Judy?” I asked Jack. “Shouldn’t she be in on this?”

  For an instant he hesitated, a shadow moving across his craggy features. “I’ll see if she can make it,” was all he said.

  The memory of the bartender at the Haven hadn’t improved since the week before; if anything it was worse. He didn’t even attempt to hold me up for money this time, and that made me wonder if his mental lapse had been induced by an infusion of cash—and if so, from whom. I left my car nearby and walked the several uphill blocks to Fabrizio Pastries. Frank Fabrizio’s son told me his father was a man of regular habits; this time of day he could be found taking the sun in Washington Square.

  It was another beautiful spring afternoon, and to the casual observer the square must have looked postcard-perfect. Old men and women sunned themselves on the benches; children, many of them in Catholic school uniforms, were playing; lovers and singles sprawled on the grass; youths congregated, talking among themselves as they watched the pretty girls. But to a practiced observer like me, the scene was far from idyllic. Too many of the old people showed signs of being in extremely reduced circumstances; among the children ran youthful purveyors of crack; eight out of ten people sleeping on the grass called no other place home; a good many of the young men’s conversation centered on drugs and illicit deals; too many of the pretty girls were prostitutes.

  It saddened me that time and experience had conditioned me to see more of the bad than of the good. But in a way I was better off than the younger, more idealistic McCone, whose faith had repeatedly been shattered as ugly truths were revealed. Besides, I wasn’t so cynical that I couldn’t recognize the good when I did see it, so jaded that I couldn’t seize and hold the rare perfect moment—was I?

  I was saved from further soul-searching when I spotted Frank Fabrizio on a bench under a shade tree. He leaned back, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed—a contented old man taking his pleasure in a fine afternoon. As I approached, one of his eyes opened. He straightened, smiling.

  “You’re the detective friend of my former tenant,” he said as I sat beside him. “Did you ever find the little stewardess?”

  “I did. You were right—it’s terrible what time does to us.” Briefly I described Melissa Cardinal’s current circumstances.

  Fabrizio’s face grew doleful. “Such a waste,” he said. “You know, I got aches and pains, some morning it’s damned hard to get out of bed, but it’s nothing, compared. And the killer is that she did it to herself. Shut herself in and let her life seep away.”

  “She’s badly scarred.”

  “Scars.” He made an impatient sound. “Scars on the face are nothing. It’s when you let them spread to your soul . .. Ah, well, who am I to talk? And it’s done, it’s done.”

  “Mr. Fabrizio, when you originally rented the flat, was it only to Melissa?”

  “She’s the one who answered my ad. October of ‘fifty-three it was. I can place it because we bought the house in Daly City that summer, and the wife was frantic because the flat wasn’t rented yet and she was counting on the income to put toward our retirement. Our retirement . . . she had such plans.” He looked around bleakly, then shrugged. “Ah, well, what’s the good of talking about that, either? It’s over, God rest her. To answer your question, it was Melissa and her stepbrother who first lived in the flat.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  The furrows around Fabrizio’s eyes deepened as he thought. “Roger . . . something.”

  “Not Cardinal?”

  “No, like I say, he was a stepbrother. A good bit older than her, too—in his thirties. Was only there a month or two. Next thing, Melissa came to me and asked if a couple of her girlfriends could move in to help with the rent. What could I say but yes? And next thing after that we had loud parties and a lot of coming and going, and the wife was fit to be tied.”

  “What happened to the stepbrother? Why did he leave?”

  Fabrizio shook his head. “I don’t recall that Melissa ever gave any explanation. Somehow I had it in my head that he’d been drafted—Korea, you know. But that couldn’t have been right; he was kind of old for the service.”

  “I don’t suppose you have anything with the stepbrother’s name on it—the lease, for instance?”

  “No, those papers are gone, long gone.”

  Another dead end. I sighed. “This Roger—what was he like?”

  The old man peered at me, eyes keen. “Why are you asking me? Since you’ve found Melissa, why don’t you ask her?”

  “Because she won’t talk to me. Someone’s frightened her, badly. I’m trying to help.”

  He continued studying me for a moment, then nodded as if what he saw had answered some internal question. “The stepbrother was . . . I don’t know how to put this. Disturbed, maybe. Angry, for sure. Made the wife nervous.” He paused, watching a pack of children who ran noisily across the grass. “I haven’t thought of Roger in years, but now I remember him clearly. Very thin, very dark, intense. Very angry. Unpleasant.”

  A breeze stirred the branches above our heads; the shadows of the leaves dappled Fabrizio’s troubled face. “You know what?” he said. “A goose just walked across my grave.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “So where is she?” It was close to seven, and Jack had been pacing around the kitchen at All Souls for at least fifteen minutes. Every now and then he’d step into the hall and stare toward the front door, looking for Rae. I wasn’t sure if he was driven by hunger for the pizza she’d promised or by eagerness to get on with preparing the case.

  “Maybe there was a long line at Mama Mia’s,” I said. “Maybe she’s following up a lead. What about Judy? I thought you were going to ask her to join us.”

  His lips tightened. “Couldn’t reach her.” He might as well have added, “Subject closed.”

  I got up and poured myself some coffee; it had been standing all afternoon and tasted charred. I made a face but drank it anyway, needing some caffeine boost. On the way back from North Beach, I’d made a few stops relating to other matters in my caseload, then run by my house to reassure myself that everything was all right there. Now the letdown of waiting for Rae made me realize how little sleep I’d gotten sinc
e returning to the city, how deep my weariness went.

  Jack peered through the door again. “A watched pot,” I said. He glared at me but came back and sat down at the table.

  “How’re you coming with the original SFPD files on the case?” I asked.

  “I’ve barely started. Later tonight I’ll get into them some more.”

  The front door opened and footsteps came down the hallway. Rae appeared pizza box in hand. Jack sprang into action, opening the box and getting out plates. Rae set her briefcase on the table and kicked off her shoes.

  I asked, “Where’ve you been all this time?”

  “City Hall—Vital Stats and Voter Registration.”

  “But they close at five.”

  “Voter Registration doesn’t—if you happen to have entranced a hunk named Tim who works there.”

  “And you did.”

  “You bet. I’m a free woman, and on the prowl.”

  Jack handed us plates. “Okay, tigress,” he said, “what’d you find out?”

  She pulled a well-filled legal pad form her briefcase and sat down, riffling through its pages while reaching for a slice of pizza. In her absorption she missed her mouth, and a piece of pepperoni slid across her cheek and landed on her white shirt, leaving a tomato-sauce slick.

  Jack said, “If only Tim the hunk could see you now.”

  Nonchalantly Rae plucked the pepperoni form her shirtfront, popped it into her mouth, and continued paging through the yellow sheets. “Okay,” she said. “Melissa Ann Cardinal, born January eleven, nineteen twenty-five to Jane Marie and William Albert Cardinal. Death Certificate, William Cardinal. May thirteen, nineteen thirty-two, heart attack. Record of marriage, June Cardinal and Lawrence Robert Woods, August eight, nineteen thirty-five. Death certificate on the mother, December eighteen, forty-nine, pneumonia. No death certificate on the stepfather in this country. No further record of marriage for him, or for Melissa.”

  “So the stepbrother’s name was probably Roger Woods,” I said.

  Rae looked up. “She had a stepbrother? You find that out from the former landlord?”

  “Yes. What’d you get from Voter Registration?”