Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  “That’s something else’s that’s a little irregular. I’d like to go tomorrow night, after dark. Given today’s fog, the weather should perfectly re-create the conditions on the night of the murder.”

  He frowned. “That makes the timing awfully tight. I’ll have to open the defense in the last afternoon rather than on Sunday morning, but I think I can manage it. If necessary, I’ll waive my opening statement—it’s a bunch of bullshit, anyway.”

  “In the meantime,” I said, “I’ll be in and out of the courtroom, following up on a couple of other things. I’ll keep you posted on what develops. Tomorrow night, if everything works out, we’ll go to Seacliff and you can have Judy walk through what she did and saw on the night of the murder. That should convince the jury that there’re big holes in the prosecution’s case. And Judy may remember something significant that will strengthen the rest of your presentation on Sunday.”

  “You really believe all this about repressed memory?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He looked away from me. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  “Well, I talked with a therapist about it; it’s a more common occurrence than you’d imagine. The Susan Nason case—”

  “I know about that.” He shook his head. “I guess it’s hard to believe something that bizarre is happening to a person you’re close to.”

  “Well, don’t brood on it tonight; you need your rest.” I stood and picked up the thick file from the SFPD.

  “You going home?”

  “Yes, but not to sleep. I have some reading to catch up on.”

  JUDY BENDICT: Mama’s dress was red in front. It was a white dress, but there was red all the way down to the hem. She said it was ink . . . .The ring was in the delphinium dress she wore last Christmas. . .

  RUSSELL EYESTONE: The child came downstairs with the ring. She said she’d found it in the delphinium—that was the color of the dress. She said she could have thrown it away too . . . I guess she meant that Mrs. Benedict should have thrown that dress away with the others she gave to Goodwill. . . .

  DR. ROBERT McDONALD: (Lis Benedict’s personal physician); No, Mrs. Benedict didn’t consult me about her case of food poisoning. Frankly that surprises me. She’s always struck me as a bit of a hypochondriac. . .

  LEONARE EYESTONE: All of us, with the exception of Mrs. Benedict, were present at the Blue Fox and later at the St. Francis. The only time the party was separated was in transit, and as you know, that’s only a short distance. . . .

  RUSSELL EYESTONE: Interrogate the secretary of state? Are you insane?

  AARON OVERTON: (deputy coroner of San Francisco County); Whoever killed her would have been covered in blood, literally soaked. Unless they dressed in protective garments and even then . . . Dismembering a body after death, when it doesn’t actually bleed, is a messy proposition. Hacking a person to death . . . well, you saw the inside of that cote. Which wound was inflicted first? How do you expect us to be able to tell?

  TOM DECK: (head groundskeeper at the Institute); Those shears, they was always in the garden shed when I locked it up at five. But now that I think on it, I might’ve left them in the cote, near it, anyway. I was working there that afternoon trimming back those larkspurs that grow around it, and I could’ve stuck them inside or leaned them against the wall. I was in a hurry, see, ‘cause it was my kid’s Peewee baseball night . . .

  LEWIS WELLMAN: (rare coin dealer); In late fifty-four—I think it was November—I sold a pair of nineteen forty-three war-issue pennies to Vincent Benedict. I remember it well, because Mr. Benedict knew the pennies were made of zinc-covered steel, wanted them because of that. He was a chemist, you understand. He said buying them as a gift, I assumed it must have been a joke gift, because he seemed highly amused at his selection.

  I pushed away from the kitchen table and stretched. Shaded evidence, vague evidence, suppressed evidence—it was all there in the SFPD file. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was almost five in the morning. I felt curiously alert in spite of a slight headache.

  My purse sat within reach of the counter. I fumbled in its zipper compartment for some aspirin, and my fingers encountered a piece of coral Hank had brought me from Hawaii. For a moment I rubbed its rough surface; then I smiled. Everything was coming together now. I had only two pieces of information to look up.

  Forgetting about the aspirin, I went to the closet off my home office and located the old Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedia that my mother had gotten us with Blue Chip stamps many years before. I dragged out Volume 15, Lace to Moats, and Volume 25, Watfo to Zymol, and perused a couple of entries while sitting cross-legged on the floor. Then I left the books there and went back to the kitchen, where I poured myself a small snifter of brandy.

  The couch in the sitting room looked inviting. I curled up there, thinking how I should have tried to get hold of the police file long before, read through it immediately. The typed reports, transcripts of interviews, autopsy reports, and scribbled notes of long-retired or dead detectives had begun to take on a certain shape and definition. What wasn’t contained there was significant, too. Now the facts enmired in my subconscious had begun to filter loose and merge with what I’d discovered: soon they would flow freely toward a solution.

  But at that moment I needed to sleep, if only briefly. I’d sleep more soundly, I was sure, than at any time since Hy and I had flown back from the Great Whites on Wednesday.

  Hy, I thought suddenly, what’s happened to you? Where are you now, and why haven’t you called? My body missed him, but more than that, I needed him intellectually. If I could talk this through wit him, utilize his objectivity and keen perceptions . . .

  But that was never possible, and I’d have to accept the fact that I would never be able to rely on him, any more than he’d be able to rely on me. A poor relationship? Maybe, to most people’s way of thinking. But deep down it satisfied a restlessness in me—a need to be free that had caused me to chafe at other, more settled unions.

  I sipped brandy, stared at windows that grew light with the dawn. All was quiet, and I had no further fears of vandalism. Enrique Chavez, if he hadn’t already been apprehended, was on the run.

  On a cushion by the fireplace, Allie snored. Ralph, a true couch potato, lay beside me. I stroked him and, as I had in the early hours of the morning of Lis Benedict’s death, thought about the victims and the predators. About now I now knew most of the reasons why. . . .

  PART THREE – ALL THE REASONS WHY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  At eight-thirty that Saturday morning the rotunda of City Hall was jammed. Security measures—always heavy since the 1979 slayings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk—were in full force. As I pushed through the crowd beneath the dome, voices babbled around me and rose to echo off the archways framing the three tiers of galleries. I glanced upward but saw no familiar faces peering over the rails.

  Before my gaze returned to those around me, it rested briefly on one of the building’s many sculptural details: the city’s initials, entwined so that the S resembled a dollar sign—a wholly unintentional effect, I was sure, but apt for a city that hustled so energetically for the buck. I smiled, then looked at the broad marble staircase that swept from the rotunda floor to the chamber of the Board of Supervisors and spotted Justice Joseph Stameroff.

  He stood in its center, a few steps above everyone else, pontificating to a knot of admirers. A woman elbowed through them, followed by a man with a Minicam, and I recognized Jess Goodhue, co-anchor of the KSTS-TV evening news. She went right up to Stameroff and thrust a microphone in his face; he moved up a step before beginning to speak. Good hue kept closing in, intruding farther and farther into his space, and Stameroff was forced to retreat even higher in order to maintain the superior position. Finally he was rescued by James Wald, a balding man verging seriously on obesity, who planted himself between Stameroff and Goodhue’s microphone. As I weaved and dodged over there, Jess seemed to lose inter
est in what Wald was saying—probably the Tribunal’s standard press spiel. By the time I reached them, she and her cameraman were turning away.

  “How come you’re out on this story?” I asked Jess. As an anchor, she rarely worked in the field.

  She grinned when she recognized me. “Hey, Sharon. I’m thinking I might put together one of my special reports on the mock trial.” The greeting, while hearty, contained an element of reserve. A while back I’d saved Jess from a potentially disastrous situation, and like most people who felt they owed a debt they could never repay, she was vaguely uncomfortable in my presence.

  She added, “You care to tell me about your investigation or the co-op’s courtroom strategy?”

  I shook my head.

  “What about the murder in Chinatown last night—the Cardinal woman? What’s the connection?”

  “No comment.”

  Jess didn’t press me, merely asked, “You seen the judge, yet?”

  I opened my mouth to say no, but just then Rudy Valle appeared at the top of the staircase and beckoned to Wald. The Tribunal’s organizer tapped Stameroff on the arm and ushered him up toward the second-floor elevators.

  “Too bad. I wanted to talk with him,” Jess murmured, turning practiced eyes on the surrounding crowd, her gaze skipping from person to person in search of fresh quarry. I followed its direction and spotted Jack and Judy waiting at the bank of the elevators in the lobby on the Civic Center Plaza side of the building.

  Judy was plainly in the pull stage of their push-pull relationship. She clung to Jack’s arm, plucking at his sleeve like a hungry street waif. Jack was ignoring her; from the set of his mouth and the impatient way he stared at the elevators, I sensed he would have liked to shake her off. Goodhue started over there without saying good-bye, leaving me alone on the bottom step of the staircase.

  Now Rae and Hank entered from one of the side archways, which were still shored up by plywood against structural damage done by the Loma Prieta earthquake. I waved; he noticed me and waved back, pointing me out to her. As I waited for her, I glanced up at the galleries again; Leonard Eyestone was leaning against a pillar on the second floor, staring over the ornate gilt railing.

  Even from below I could tell that the Institute director’s eyes were preoccupied and unseeing. I wondered if they were focused on another point in time, some three and a half decades before. Certainly the weary set of his mouth indicated hat he was thinking of the dead. I would have given a great deal to be privy to those thoughts.

  Rae joined me. “Hank’s grabbing a cup of coffee and going upstairs. You’d better hurry, before somebody steals your seat.” I’d been assigned one in the row directly behind the defense table.

  I nodded and followed her toward the elevators.

  “Judy’s in top form this morning,” Rae added as we waited for a car to arrive.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Hank and I ran into her and Jack on the street. ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’d do without Jack’s support. Oh, Jack, you’ve got to help me get through this.’” Her voice parodied Judy’s breathy tones. She broke off and made a gagging sound. “God, what a manipulator.”

  I frowned at her, surprised that such an expert manipulator as she would dare to criticize.

  “Yeah, I know,” she added cheerfully. “Takes one to know one. Well, how else could I catch on to what nobody else apparently sees?”

  As a vacant elevator arrived and we stepped on, I said, “Doesn’t it bother you to admit that you’re—”

  “Sure, sometimes. It’s certainly not my most desirable character trait. But at least I know what I am and admit to it. Judy’s either incredibly deluded about herself or thinks she can fool everybody—and I’m banking on the latter.

  I thought about that while the last few people squeezed onto the elevator, preventing its doors from closing. As two of them stepped back off, I said, “Do you think Jack has caught on to her?”

  “Smart men can be idiots when they’re in love, but I’m pretty sure he’s starting to. And when he does, it’s going to be painful.”

  I remembered Jack’s verbal explosion the week before about Rae’s own manipulative behavior in the matter of the skylights. Even then it had seemed too strong a reaction. Now I wondered if he anger with her wasn’t actually displaced anger with Judy’s similar behavior. If Rae was right about all this, hard times were once again ahead for Jack.

  The elevator doors finally slid shut, and the car rose to the fourth floor. The people in front of me seemed to spew forth into the area by the pay phones and concession machines. I lost Rae in the crush and hurried toward the north corridor, fishing my pass from my bag. The mock trial was to be held in one of the larger superior courtrooms; I’d testified there myself a time or two, had spent many hours in these hallways, sitting alone on the oak benches or chatting with other witnesses and attorneys. Today I was struck by the absence of staid business suits, high heels, and briefcases. The people who gathered here were casually dressed, and their talk was of dinner reservations and theater tickets rather than countersuits and out-of-court settlements. As I attached myself to the tail end of the line entering the courtroom, I spied Jed Mooney, dressed in full Beat regalia. He waved and smiled as the guard studied the pass I’d had messengered to his home early this morning. I’d now seen all the principals in the case except Louise Wingfield.

  Inside the courtroom, the golden oak paneling, institutional green walls, and high judge’s bench had a subduing effect on those who entered. They filed in sedately and took their seats with a minimal of conversation. I hurried up the aisle, the soles of my athletic shoes squeaking on the worm brown linoleum, and folded down the wooden seat of the chair directly behind Jack. As I slipped into it, he glanced back and nodded.

  I’d seldom seen him so tense at a real trial. His shoulders were stiff, and his hands moved aimlessly among the piles of documents on the table before him, as if he were trying to keep afloat in the mire of facts and theories that so far constituted our case. I smiled reassuringly, but too late; Judy, who was sitting a few seats down from me, leaned forward and tugged at his sleeve, and he turned to her.

  From the judge’s chambers, Stameroff and James Wald entered. Wald sat at the end of the jury box, while Stameroff took his place at the prosecution’s table. He twisted around and smiled at his daughter; Judy avoided his eyes. Stameroff frowned, then nodded cordially to Jack. Jack’s return greeting seemed nervous, shifty. So far, All Souls was looking none too good.

  The jury filed in next. I checked the handout given me at the door. Today’s panel was indeed impressive, included professors from several U.C. campuses, Stanford, and San Francisco State as well as a Los Angeles Times journalist who had won a Pulitzer for court reportage and a well-known author of true-crime accounts.

  The jurors settled into place, and the courtroom grew still. I glanced around, noting the row of reporters behind the prosecutor’s table. Behind them sat Bart Wallace, arms folded across his chest, face stern an unreadable. His topcoat lay on the seat next to him, probably reserving it for Joslyn. There was still no sign of Louise Wingfield.

  I turned toward the front, about to give my full attention to the proceedings, but a thought popped into my mind: How ludicrous!

  Quickly it was followed by another, equally heretical: And offensive.

  Solemn as this assemblage might be, what we were actually doing here was playing. As I’d said to Jack before, the Historical Tribunal was nothing more than an intellectual game for adults, a brief weekend’s amusement. Today we would toy with and possibly damage the memories of the dead—Cordy McKittridge, Lis Benedict and Melissa Cardinal. And we could also tarnish the reputations of the other, still living victims.

  As James Wald faced the court and began a self-serving speech about his role in establishing the Historical Tribunal, I thought, Don’t dignify this game. What we’re actually doing is providing entertainment for people before they use their dinner reservations and theat
er tickets.

  I wondered what the reaction would be if I stood up and voiced my thoughts, told them to end this travesty.

  Fortunately Wald’s speech was a short one. Judge Valle entered. We stood, were told to be seated.

  Valle wore full judicial robes. He mounted the bench, sat, adjusted his microphone. Then he stared sternly down his Roman nose at the courtroom, dark eyes searching.

  In his gravelly voice, the judge began, “As Mr. Wald has said, we are here this weekend to decide a point in history. And while this tribunal is an avocation for me, I do not take my responsibility lightly. Nor do our jurors, our prosecutor, or our attorney for the defense. We hope our audience will conduct themselves with equal seriousness. While ex officio, we are nonetheless a court of law, and the law is not to be toyed with.”

  I relaxed somewhat, letting go of my reservations.

  Valle’s eyes once again searched the courtroom. “In the recital of the State of California versus Lisbeth Benedict,” he went on, “we encounter unusual circumstances. Until ten days ago, the defendant was still living. Her daughter and others who were involved in the original trial are presently in this courtroom. A woman who, the defense tells me, was closely connected with the case was brutally murdered just last night. These circumstances lend the matter before us both an immediacy and a potential impact that we seldom see at this tribunal.”

  He paused to let the words sink in, then continued, “In light of these circumstances, I am going to take an unusual action. At this point we will take a five-minute recess during which the prosecution and the defense may reconsider their willingness to proceed. When I return, I will call for their decisions, and those will be final and binding.”

  Valle rose, surveyed the court once more, then stepped down and went to his chambers.

  For a moment the crowd remained silent. Then a buzzing began—primarily in the area where the press was seated. I watched Jack and Judy. He turned toward her, spoke in low tones. She listened, the shook her head vehemently.