The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

She shook her head. "The courtroom's dark today. I'll find out where that stands tomorrow, and probably go on until the damn trial is over."

  "Okay, then." Hunt was holding the clothes of his that she'd worn. He stood at the open and rarely used front door. "If you're still up for it when you're through with your work. But if you would rather just go back to sleep, I get it."

  "You're such a good guy," she said. "I mean it." Again, he read gratitude in her eyes. "How about we leave it open," she asked, "and I'll call you one way or the other. Say, by seven?"

  "That sounds fair. One way or the other."

  She nodded. "I'll call."

  12 /

  Predictable in retrospect, unforeseen at the time, the result of the interrogation at JV's Salon was that as soon as Juhle and Shiu left, Vanessa had called her sister and told her that whether or not she realized it, she was a suspect in the murder of her husband. The inspectors had made that abundantly clear.

  By the time they left Adriano's, Shiu—showing by now nearly constant signs that the pressure to identify a suspect was affecting his judgment—was actually arguing that he was more than halfway to thinking they should go and have a discussion with one of the assistant district attorneys. Right now. They should lay out what they had on Jeannette and start talking about the logistics of charging her with murder—whether to arrest her before she could flee or do something equally precipitous such as kill herself or whether they should wait and bring their evidence to the grand jury for a formal indictment.

  Juhle wasn't against either of those alternatives per se. In fact, he more than halfway believed what he'd been raving about to Shiu on the drive up—that they'd all but solved the case in a day. But regardless of the pressure to press charges against Jeannette, they simply didn't yet have the guns.

  True, they had a window of the wife's time that they couldn't account for and during which she could conceivably have committed the murders for which she had a strong and even compelling motive—assuming she'd known about Staci Rosalier in the first place. But the fact that she probably hadn't gone to Adriano's to buy wine didn't come close to telling them anything about what she did do during those critical four hours. Besides, they hadn't even put the screws to Jeannette herself yet. It would be bad luck if they presented her as their suspect to the DA or to Lieutenant Lanier or worst of all to Chief Batiste, only to have her show up with a witness or two who'd seen her at her sister's house or talked to her at the grocery store.

  Or anything.

  After convincing Shiu that they had to talk to her again—and soon—Juhle called her on his cell phone to see if she'd be able to give them an hour or perhaps more of her time. This was when he learned that Vanessa had called her. Jeannette would, of course, be happy to see them whenever they'd like, but the meeting would have to take place at the San Francisco office of her attorney Everett Washburn. She gave him the address on Union Street, said she'd meet them there in forty-five minutes, say 4:30 P.M.

  But their drive back down to the city was significantly extended when a deer decided to take a break from his rural environment on the Marin Headlands and seek a bit of impromptu urban culture, perhaps some nightlife, down in San Francisco. To do this, of course, he had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. The three-mile crossing, ultimately successful with the help of a California Highway Patrol six-car escort, tied up traffic in both directions on the bridge for nearly four hours.

  * * *

  Everett Washburn was pushing seventy and affected a homespun style—baggy brown dress pants, red suspenders, an over-wide rep tie under a wrinkled rack sports coat. A walrus mustache and a florid, frankly beefy complexion gave him a vaguely Captain Kangaroo–ish appearance, although Juhle thought that the blue eyes under the mane of snow-white hair were about as warm and inviting as glacier ice. If Mr. Green Jeans pulled one of his dumb stunts on this guy, he'd take a bite out of his ass. Then again, Juhle realized, the lawyer had his game face on as he pulled open his front door, six or eight feet below street level under the Café de Paris. Ostentatiously, he consulted his watch.

  "Eight-oh-six," Washburn said by way of introduction. "I really should bill the city, rather than my client, for the time I have been kept waiting after you scheduled our appointment for which I had to drive all the way from Redwood City."

  From the way he said it, Redwood City might have been a hundred miles or more from where they stood, when in fact, it was more like thirty, most of it freeway and none of it, today, deer-ridden. "If Mrs. Palmer wasn't such a valued personal friend as well as my client, and if it had not been her wish to cooperate in every way that she could in your investigation, I never would have remained until this ungodly hour. I had a heart attack two years ago, and my doctor has recommended against me working outside of business hours. But she wants her husband's killer caught. That above all. I assume you have some identification. May I see it, please."

  Juhle had, in fact, offered to cancel the appointment when it became apparent that they weren't going to make their time, but Washburn had blustered about his drive, the fact that he'd already come into the city just for this one interview. He was a very busy man and didn't know when he could guarantee a return trip. If they wanted to talk to his client, they were ready to cooperate fully today, whenever they could. Afterward, he would try to be flexible, but it might be a while, and of course, he wouldn't allow his client to talk to the police again without his presence. In short, he'd played them.

  And now was doing it again.

  Tempted to call the whole thing off and dare the old bully to let his client come before the grand jury on her own if she wouldn't talk to them, Juhle bit his tongue. It wouldn't help. He and Shiu had to move somewhere on this investigation, and until they could eliminate or implicate Mrs. Palmer, they'd be treading water.

  Washburn had them and he knew it.

  He practiced law from the basement of an old Victorian building and now without another word led them down a dark and narrow hallway with suites off the left side only. At the end, the hall opened into a wider but still small receptionist's station. Behind this was Washburn's office, a comparatively spacious octagonal room with windows on six sides and books in every other inch of wall space. There was no desk, no sign that business was conducted here. To all appearances, they were in a living room—lots of living greenery, Oriental rugs, low tables, and a couple of seating areas. Outside, through the windows, dusk had nearly settled, but the room was well lit with shaded lamps.

  Jeannette Palmer, on a loveseat, did not stand as they entered. Dressed in black, she looked brittle and exhausted. Washburn took a straight-backed wooden chair and indicated the couch on the other side of the coffee table for the inspectors. Juhle took out his tape recorder and placed it on the table between them all, getting a nod from Washburn as permission. He recited his standard introduction, then met his suspect's furious and fragile gaze.

  "Mrs. Palmer, how are you holding up?" Juhle began.

  Obviously, she'd been coached to say nothing without her attorney's approval. Now she looked sideways at Washburn, a mute question.

  Which he answered. "Frankly, inspector," he said, "she'd be better if she didn't have to deal with the absurdity of evidently being considered a suspect. And it is an absurdity."

  "Are you going to let her talk?" Shiu asked.

  "Of course. I told you she wants to do everything she can do to help you with your investigation. Isn't that right, Jeannette?"

  "Completely."

  "All right," Juhle said. "Then maybe we can make this easy on all of us."

  "It's already been far too difficult," Washburn said. "Too unnecessarily difficult."

  Again, Juhle resisted the temptation to get tough with this lawyer. There was no point in getting into a pissing contest with him, which seemed to be what he was trying to provoke. Instead, Juhle again looked Mrs. Palmer in the face. "Yesterday," he began, "at your home, we asked you about what you did on Monday afternoon, and you told us you had driven up to spend t
he night with your sister, leaving about four o'clock to avoid the traffic. Is that about right?"

  "Yes."

  Juhle lowered his voice. "Mrs. Palmer. It would be very helpful to our investigation," he said, "if you could tell us specifically everything you can remember about the time between leaving your home and arriving at your sister's house."

  Again Mrs. Palmer looked at her attorney, and this time he nodded and let her respond. "All right. As I've already told you, I left at four. I don't remember any traffic problems or really exactly what time I got to Vanessa's, but I'd be surprised if it was five yet."

  "Where did you park there?" Shiu asked. And Juhle, who just wanted to keep her talking, shot him a warning glance.

  But she answered him. "Just in the driveway. But I don't know if anybody saw me. I didn't talk to anyone."

  Shiu couldn't seem to let her alone. "How about phone calls?"

  She shook her head. "There really wasn't anyone I needed to call. I'd already called Vanessa, so she'd know I'd be there, and George was " The mention of her husband's name took an immediate and, to Juhle, somewhat shocking toll, from which she recovered only after a small but unmistakable struggle with herself. "He was going out to dinner, as I said." Looking from Shiu back to Juhle, she sighed again, and went on. "Anyway, I'm afraid I didn't do much. The driving had made me sleepy, so I must have just dozed off for a while, but eventually, I picked up Vanessa's copy of Sunset, and they had this recipe for stuffed chicken breasts that looked delicious, and I decided to surprise Vanessa and make it for dinner, so I went shopping."

  "Let's go back just a second," Juhle said. "You said you'd already called your sister?"

  "Yes."

  "Was this from home?"

  "No. The car. I usually called her when I got about to JV's. Just to say we were still on."

  Juhle looked over at Shiu, wondering if his partner had picked up the import of this admission. If Mrs. Palmer had used her cell phone on the freeway passing through Mill Valley between four and five o'clock, they could pinpoint her location within a mile or two by finding the cell site that had picked up and relayed the call. If she were really in Mill Valley, it was much more unlikely that she had returned back home to San Francisco to shoot her husband and his mistress. If on the other hand, the call had come from the city—or, better, from near her home—they were in business.

  But he couldn't give her up that easily. The motive was too good, the symmetry too perfect. They had too much invested. They still had the groceries, the wine, the difficulties with that story. It was still possible.

  "Okay, let's go back to your grocery shopping," he asked. "Where did you do that?"

  "Just the Safeway there in Novato. I don't know the exact address, but it's back a freeway exit from Vanessa's."

  Shiu spoke up. "What time was this, would you say?"

  "I don't know exactly. Six? No. I think I napped until six. Closer to seven, I'd say."

  Shiu kept at it. "Did you have any discussion with anyone there?" he asked. "Anybody who might remember you?"

  Evidently, Washburn had endured his own silence long enough. "Inspectors, excuse me," he said. "Might I suggest you ask my client if she used a Safeway card to make her purchase?" Again, it was clear they'd had this discussion. He looked expectantly at Mrs. Palmer.

  "Yes," she said, "I did."

  "So there'll be a record of that?" Juhle said.

  "With her name on it, and the exact time, as a matter of fact." Washburn sat back, rested an ankle on his opposite knee.

  Shiu, his frustration now at full simmer, said, "What about Adriano's?"

  Mrs. Palmer turned to him. "What about it?"

  "You called your sister and told her you'd forgotten to get any wine, and you were going to go by Adriano's to pick some up."

  For a moment, Mrs. Palmer's weary brow clouded again. She sank back into the cushions of the loveseat, then brought her hand up to her temples and squeezed them. "Adriano's," she said.

  Shiu prompted her. "The liquor store."

  "Jeannette." Washburn leaned over and touched the arm of the loveseat.

  "No. It's all right, Everett," she said. Coming forward, she almost managed a smile. "It's hard to remember what you didn't do," she said. Then, to Shiu, "I didn't go to Adriano's. I went back to Safeway. I remembered that I'd forgotten to get some cash when I paid for the other groceries, and they have an ATM at the cash registers, so I just went back there instead."

  This time Juhle was up to speed. "And used your card again?"

  "Well, my Safeway card, and then I paid with my ATM."

  13 /

  Hunt reached Juhle on his cell phone just as the inspectors were leaving their interview with Everett Washburn and Jeannette Palmer. He'd tried him at home first, and Connie had told him that he wasn't there and, no, he probably hadn't had dinner, either. She'd talked to him while he was stuck in traffic on the bridge, and he was going to be working late. By the time he got done, she'd be putting the kids down—not Juhle's favorite time. If Hunt wanted to meet up with him someplace, Connie thought Juhle would probably welcome his company.

  Having finally given up on getting his "either way" phone call from Andrea Parisi, Hunt told Juhle that he'd gotten stood up and that the evening yawned open before him. If Shiu would drop him at the Tong Palace on Clement, they might salvage some remnant of this otherwise shitty night.

  Now, as the ancient waitress at the dim sum place had done every five minutes or so since they'd sat down, she came by with another tray of delicacies. Hunt and Juhle pointed at what they wanted—sign language was the lingua franca here—and soon their table had plates of shrimp wrapped in transparent wontons, fried oysters, little steamed bundles of dough stuffed with seafood or meat or vegetables, a plate of siu mei, rice noodles with spicy pork. This was their third round, and their enthusiasm for the food hadn't dimmed much. Juhle held his hands apart to indicate a large bottle and said an actual word, "Asahi," while Hunt lifted the teapot and pantomimed for a refill.

  "So Jeannette didn't do it?" Hunt said.

  Juhle, on five hours of sleep, sagged at their corner table. He tipped up his tea and made a face. "Not if she called her sister from Mill Valley at four thirty and was paying at the Safeway at both seven thirty and quarter to eight. She didn't drive all the way into Marin, then remember, Oh, yeah, I was supposed to shoot George and his girlfriend tonight, so she turned around and went home, did the deed, then turned around again and went back to Novato."

  "That does seem unlikely."

  "At least. Besides, her neighbor on Clay Street who saw the car parked by her driveway? That was at seven thirty, when she was pretty definitely at the Safeway. You know Everett Washburn, the lawyer? No? Well, he somehow got the manager up there to go back and find her receipts and fax them down to him at his office. We're going to go back and check ourselves, but I'm not optimistic. She was there."

  "So who's that leave?"

  "As suspects? Approximately the whole world."

  "Not me." Hunt held up his right hand. "Monday night, I was down in Palo Alto with my dad. He'd vouch for me."

  "All right, except you. And probably Connie, who was feeding me dinner at the time, so I guess she's out, too. Everybody else, though."

  Popping an oyster, Juhle chewed and thought for a moment. "The problem is, I can't understand Staci Rosalier being there if it wasn't personal. I mean, it had to be about her."

  Hunt shrugged. "Maybe she was just there."

  "But why?"

  "I don't know. She wanted to do it in the wife's bed. He wanted to do her in the wife's bed. Any combination thereof. Whatever, he knew his wife was going to be gone, he's trying to get away with that much more for the thrill of it. Maybe it was just bad timing."

  "And somebody else showed up while they just happened to be there? In other words, a coincidence." Juhle shook his head. "I don't believe in them. Not at murder scenes."

  "Maybe this is the exception."

  "It isn't.
Somebody else was there because they knew Palmer and the girl were there. Count on it. Or, thinking out loud now, Palmer might have been seeing somebody else, too. He invited her over to his house, but the dead girl—Staci—found out about the new one and came by to confront them both." Juhle savored a bite of pork bun. "So Staci brings the gun with her, shoots Palmer "

  "Out around the front of the desk?"

  "Sure. Why not? There's a struggle. The gun goes off—the extra round in the book. In the scuffle, the other woman grabs the gun away from Staci and shoots her, then sees what she's done and takes the gun and splits."

  Hunt waited for Juhle to take his beer from the waitress and pour it into the chilled glass. "So what actual evidence do you have?"

  Juhle drank half the glass. "Damn little. Shiu thinks the shooter might have been short, as in not tall, so as you can see, we've really narrowed things down there. I personally favor the midget-standing-on-a-box theory. Nobody in the neighborhood heard or saw anything, except for a sports car that might have been a BMW Z4 or some look-alike. But there's no connection between that car and anything else inside the house or out. It wasn't a robbery or burglary gone bad, and a burglar's not going to park his car in the driveway." After a long, futile day of investigation, Juhle clearly had wrung about all the amusement he could out of this case.