The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

  He'd seen Carol Manion in the flesh that morning, walking with her husband outside Saint Mary's Cathedral, on her way in to Judge Palmer's funeral. In that brief near encounter, he'd only had the time to form one impression, and that was of age. Not of debilitating old age, certainly, but not of anything resembling youth, either. Now the clear picture he was looking at confirmed that she appeared to be at least in her sixties.

  He shifted his gaze to the boy. Could he be the link with Staci Rosalier that had always been missing in any consideration of Carol Manion in connection with the other two victims? He stared at Todd's face, nearly half in profile from this angle, and wearing a petulant frown. The salient feature of the fuzzy portrait that Staci had framed in her apartment was the boy's beaming smile, and so the similarity, if any, remained obscure. Aside from the coloring, stare and study as he might, Hunt could not say it was the same child or even if Todd Manion had any resemblance to Staci's brother at all.

  But the question that had first grabbed Hunt's attention was not the boy's identity per se. It was the apparent age of the mother. Even if Hunt was ten years off on Carol Manion's age and she was only, say, in her mid-fifties (which he doubted), it was highly unlikely that she had borne a child eight years before.

  Which meant that Todd was adopted.

  This was Hunt's area of experience if not expertise, and he knew that if this were the case, it was decidedly unusual. It was relatively normal for a previously childless couple to adopt, and then go on to have natural children of their own. That had been the case in Hunt's own family—his mother apparently barren before they had adopted him, then giving birth to his four siblings in the next eight years.

  But he knew that it was much more rare for a couple with a first or second natural child to want to add an adoptive brother or sister to the mix. Especially with an age gap of greater than ten years. Which is not to say it never happened. But when it did, the circumstances invited inquiry.

  To say nothing of the reality that at this point, anything out of the ordinary that had even a tangential reference to Andrea was going to grab Hunt's attention and not let go until he'd wrung an explanation from it.

  He sat unmoving in front of the computer screen, but he'd stopped seeing it. With all of his efforts so far, with all of his speculations, he was still left working with only one fact that might get him some traction: Carol Manion had called Andrea's office at 7:17.

  Why would she call at that time? Why not at three forty-five or four while she would have been waiting for Parisi's imminent arrival at her home? To see perhaps if she needed directions to the house or if she'd gotten hung up with other business? Or even was stuck in traffic? Although that call would have been to Andrea's cell. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't she have had Andrea's cell number, too?

  The telephone's ring startled him out of his reverie. "Wyatt Hunt."

  "Mr. Hunt, Mike Eubanks. My office said it was important. What can I do for you?"

  "I'm working under Gary Piersall's orders on the disappearance of Andrea Parisi." Not strictly true, but Hunt didn't care. It would get Eubanks's cooperation.

  And it did. "Well, then, of course, anything."

  "We're looking into the possibility that the matter she had planned to discuss with Betsy Sobo might be important in some way, but the two women never had that meeting. I talked to Betsy this morning and she didn't have much of an idea what Andrea wanted to talk about, other than in the most general terms. But she also said that Andrea had called you first and you'd referred her to Betsy."

  "That's right. She wanted to talk about some custody issues, which is more Betsy's bailiwick, so I told Andrea she ought to call her."

  "Custody? Was she more specific than that?"

  Eubanks didn't respond for a few seconds. "She said she had a potential client with some custody issues that might be fairly complicated, so I told her that Betsy was our ace on that stuff."

  "She said potential client?"

  "Yes, I'm pretty sure of that."

  "So it wouldn't have been the union?"

  "The client? No, I didn't get that impression. I'd worked with her on some union matters before, general contract and benefit issues, but this was definitely different. Besides which " He paused.

  "What?"

  An embarrassed chuckle. "Well, it was a joke Andrea and I had with one another. Whenever she called on union business, she'd start by saying, 'Start your engines, Mike.'"

  "Start your engines?"

  "It meant we were on billable time from the git-go. This call, though, my secretary told me it was Andrea on the line, I picked up and said, 'I'm revving 'em up,' and she said, 'Not this time I'm afraid.' So it wasn't the union. Is this what you wanted?"

  "I'm not sure. It certainly doesn't hurt."

  "Good." Then, "Mr. Hunt?"

  "Yes?"

  Eubanks hesitated. "Do you think there's any chance she's still alive?"

  "No one's found her body yet." Hunt's next words came out before he'd thought about them. "Until it turns up, I'm going to choose to keep hoping."

  "That's good to hear, especially since the rest of the goddamn world's already got her in the grave. I hope I was some help."

  * * *

  He was going to make a few calls right away, but it was closing in on five o'clock and there might be something on TV that he'd want to see first.

  Hunt had bought his television so he could watch sports and the very occasional rented movie. He hadn't tuned in to a single regular network or even cable show in years. People he knew sometimes used to talk about Seinfeld or Friends and lately now The Sopranos or Deadwood or those reality-show stupidities. He didn't get it—maybe it was a habit he'd just never developed. Even if he had the downtime, which was rare enough, he would always prefer to do something active, keep the body or the brain engaged.

  But now he had his set turned on to the news. For a new all-time low in tastelessness, he gave big points to the first channel that came on, with its picture of a smiling Andrea Parisi in the corner of the screen, the caption "Andrea Watch," and a continually scrolling digital display under it counting the hours, minutes, and even seconds that she had been missing. 50:06:47.

  Counting from the phone call to her cell phone, three o'clock Wednesday.

  Changing the station, he caught a moment of anchor gravitas: " who refused to be identified confirmed a few minutes ago that Andrea Parisi is now being considered a possible suicide and is, quote, not an impossible suspect, unquote, in the shooting deaths last Monday of Federal Judge George Palmer and his alleged mistress Staci Rosalier. San Francisco police would neither confirm nor deny this characterization, but "

  Enough already.

  Hunt flipped to Trial TV. Rich Tombo was doing his part of the Donolan wrap-up out in front of the Hall of Justice, just around the corner. It seemed as though it had been forever since this morning in the street outside the Piersall offices when Spencer Fairchild had accused Hunt of colluding with Andrea in concocting this elaborate publicity stunt. When Tombo finished with his analysis of the prosecution's day in court, he staggered even the cynical Hunt by starting to introduce the new woman who would be taking over for the departed Andrea Parisi and providing insight into the defense

  Hunt couldn't even look to find out who it was.

  Back on network TV, the next station he tuned to had moved along to the inability of authorities to identify any Rosalier next of kin. They had been supplied with a copy of the out-of-focus photograph of Staci's brother, and now the boy smiled out at Hunt while the female anchor's voice urged anyone who recognized this boy to either call the police or the number at the bottom of the screen.

  But suddenly Hunt didn't see the kid's face anymore.

  He saw the shape and color of what he was standing in front of. It, too, was out of focus, in the background, but once seen, unmistakable. In a second or two, he was back at his computer. Mickey's pictures of the Manion castle. The terra-cotta tower, the bougainvillea. He checked the other
shots of the house from different angles, even finding the place where he supposed Todd Manion must have been standing when the picture from Staci's condo had been taken.

  Back to Mickey's shot of Carol Manion and her son, coming down to the limo. And something else, at the edge of that shot.

  He went back through the pictures again. One straight on of the front elevation, then one of the tower on the right, the triple garages and wide driveway to the left of the entrance portico. Hunt stopped on this one, leaned in to the terminal, although he saw it clearly enough—on the driveway, gleaming in yesterday's bright sunlight, a black BMW Z4 convertible.

  27 /

  Hunt knew Juhle was off coaching Little League, and so called his cell phone, where he got voice mail: "Dev. The picture of Staci Rosalier's brother was taken in front of Carol Manion's house out in Seacliff. I don't know what this means exactly, but it's provocative as all hell to me. You might also want to see if there's a record of any phone calls between Palmer and Manion, office to office, home to home, anything. In any event, call me as soon as you get this. Go Hornets."

  He next considered calling the Manion home, even going so far as to pick up the phone, but he stopped himself. What was he going to say? This was after all a family of extreme wealth and prominence with an exquisite sensitivity to privacy. They had a full-time publicist whose job it was to keep their name out of the newspapers except in preapproved fashion in the society or business pages. You didn't just call them up out of the blue on a Friday night, tell them you're a private investigator, and ask them questions about their son, their relationship—if any—with a murdered federal judge, his mistress, and a missing lawyer. As a homicide inspector, Juhle could perhaps make that kind of a call, but even he would be hamstrung again by their constant limitation in this entire affair: a lack of physical evidence of any kind. What was he going to hang his questions on?

  And what did Hunt have, exactly? A completely legitimate phone call about an already scheduled appointment from a wealthy woman to her prospective attorney. A picture of a young boy probably taken in front of Carol Manion's house. A black convertible.

  Yahoo.

  Six hours ago, Hunt felt he'd had more on Arthur Mowery and Jim Pine and even Gary Piersall, and the pursuit of those chimeras had wasted a lot of his time and gotten him precisely nowhere. He needed something real, something tangible and compelling that would at least supply Juhle with a wedge he could use to open some kind of an interrogation.

  Since he was already at his computer, he got on the Net and Googled the enormous Manion hit list again, trying different combinations to narrow the field somewhat. When he combined Federal Judge George Palmer and Ward and Carol Manion, he found that the families must have known each other at least socially since they had attended a slew of the same fund-raising events in the city. He tried Staci Rosalier with Manion—zip—then with Todd Manion alone and got no hits with both, although Todd had nearly a thousand of his own, all but four of them mentioning one or both of this parents. The four independent listings were evidently captions from pictures of him without his parents that had appeared on one society page or another.

  After fifteen minutes and no new leads, Hunt gave up the computer search. Something might be there among all the information on the Manions, but unless he had a more exact idea of what he was looking for—and he didn't—finding it would take forever. Like Mickey with his pictures of the Manions' home, he had to come at it from a different angle.

  * * *

  Before he left his place, Hunt changed again, out of his sweats into slacks, street shoes, a heavy black sweater.

  A half dozen cars clogged the small circular driveway and the immediate curb space around Judge Palmer's home on Clay Street. He parked seven or eight houses away, got out of the Cooper, and walked along the fog-draped sidewalk, still unsure of exactly what he was going to do. All he knew was that he had to act, to do something, look under rocks, talk to someone, get out of his place and away from the temptation of doing legwork on his computer. If nothing else, now at least he had a focus, a general thrust to what he wanted to discover.

  If the Manions had known Judge Palmer from their mutual charity events well enough to feel that they should attend his funeral, then the judge's wife might be a source of information, of facts, maybe even of evidence. Jeannette had buried her husband this afternoon. As Hunt had hoped and surmised might happen, people had come from the cemetery and gathered afterward at her home. It was as good an opportunity as he was going to get.

  Hunt skirted the garden inside the low wall, cast an appreciative glance at the gently trickling fountain, mounted the steps, and rang the doorbell. Inside they obviously weren't doing the hokeypokey, but judging from the buzz and volume of the conversation he heard, the crowd was at least trying to enjoy itself.

  A woman about Hunt's age opened the door, gave him a somewhat wary half smile as if she might have recognized him. "Can I help you?"

  "I hope so. I was wondering if I might get a few words with Jeannette Palmer."

  Immediately any trace of the smile vanished. "Are you a reporter?"

  "No." Hunt reached for his identification. "I'm a private investigator "

  "I'm sorry," the woman said, "but this really isn't a good time, as you must know. My father's funeral was this morning, and my mother's really in no condition to talk to anybody right now. So if you'd like to call and make an appointment " She backed up a step and started to close the door.

  Hunt reacted without thought, put his hand out, his foot over the sill.

  The woman looked down at the floor, at his arm holding back the door. "I'm closing the door now. I advise you to back off."

  "Please." Hunt stayed where he was. "I'm not here to make trouble, I promise. But I've got an urgent situation that may literally be a matter of life and death."

  She shook her head. "Don't you see? You've already made trouble. This is trouble, right now."

  From behind her, Hunt heard a deep male voice. "Is everything okay here, Kathy?"

  She turned back to the voice, opened the door another few inches. "This gentleman here says he's a private investigator and has to talk to Mom."

  "What about?"

  "I don't know. I told him it wasn't a good time, but he wouldn't go. He's blocking the door right now. He says it's a matter of life and death."

  "Yeah? Let's see about that." Suddenly, the door was pulled open from the inside. Hunt faced a scowling fullback in a dark suit with an amber drink in his hand. "Get the foot out of the house, pal. Right now. Then you've got ten seconds to tell me what's so important."

  "I'm trying to locate Andrea Parisi."

  "So are the police."

  "Different reasons."

  "Yeah? Well, last I heard, they're saying she killed my dad. So I'll go with theirs."

  "They're wrong. She didn't. She herself may have been killed."

  "By who?"

  "The same person who killed your father." Hunt lowered his voice, though not his intensity. "I've got a lead in that case. I need to follow it. Do you want to catch up with whoever killed your father or not?"

  Hunt could see he'd scored. The big man rocked back. He released a deep, shuddering breath. Setting his drink down by the door, he told his sister he'd only be a second, then stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him. "I'm Dave Palmer. What do you know?"

  "I'm trying to get some information on the Manions. They were at your father's funeral this morning. I believe your father or mother must have known them."

  "The Manions?" Hunt could see that the name came from about as far out in left field as it was possible to get. "You're talking the Manion Cellar Manions?"

  "That's right." If Hunt wanted to keep Dave listening, he knew he had to talk fast. He stretched the truth of what he knew. "Staci Rosalier had a framed picture of the Manions' eight-year-old son in her condo. Todd. They've been showing it on TV tonight, and it'll be in the paper tomorrow. Staci told her friends that he was her
brother."

  Clearly, Staci Rosalier was a distasteful subject in this environment, but this was an unexpected development that overcame his qualms. "She was lying."

  "That's possible, I suppose. But why would she do that?"

  "I don't know. Maybe she was a liar as well as a whore. She wanted people, maybe even my dad, to believe she came from money? She had powerful connections? I don't know."

  "She wasn't trying to impress my witness. Not like that, anyway."

  But Dave still resisted the very idea. "So if she's Todd's sister, she was a Manion, too? I don't think so."

  "I'm not sure about that either, to tell you the truth, the exact relationship. Maybe he was her stepbrother, or half brother. That's why I need to talk to someone who's maybe known them for a while. The Manions. Were they friends with your parents?"