His stare was chilling. It was as if he had put his hands around my neck and squeezed.
Chapter 19
A YOUNG WOMAN burst into the room, the sound breaking her father’s double-fisted lock on my eyes.
Janet Worley said, “Nicole, these people are from the police.” To me, she said, “I’ll be in the parlor,” and she left the room.
Nicole Worley was midtwenties, pretty, with a heart-shaped face, dark hair, green eyes, flushed cheeks. She wore jeans and a green sweatshirt with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife logo on the front.
Nicole asked her father, “What’s going on with you?”
“Your mother. She drives me round the bend.”
“I wish you wouldn’t fight.”
“The way she goes on about that self-important prick —”
“Stop that.”
“You women are crazy.”
“All right. All right,” Nicole said to her father. To me, she said, “I’m Nicole. You wanted to see me?”
Nigel started cleaning the burners on the stove, and Nicole joined us at the table.
I said, “We need some basic information, Nicole. Where were you over the last few days?”
“I was off on a rescue,” she said. “Pronghorn antelope get panicked at headlights, or at anything really. This one was hung up in a fence.”
“And when did you leave for this rescue?”
“Friday morning.”
“Were you alone?”
“Yes. I drove up north to Mendocino County by myself. What is it that you want to know? Did I kill some people and then dig up their heads? Leave them on the back step to scare my parents?”
“You tell me, Nicole. Did you have anything to do with the remains found here yesterday morning?”
“Absolutely not, and I cannot imagine how something like this could ever have happened.”
“Can you tell me how it’s possible that the three of you live in this house and are completely unaware of a series of crimes that happened over time outside the back door?”
Behind us, Nigel Worley said angrily, “Bloody cheek, these questions.”
“Dad, don’t you have something else you could be doing?” said Nicole.
Nigel Worley was a big, angry man with large hands. I could picture him turning violent. But if he’d killed these seven people, his exhuming their heads made no logical sense. And putting a garland of chrysanthemum blossoms around them seemed a little dainty for him.
I said, “Mr. Worley. Do you think Mr. Chandler could have been involved in what has happened here?”
“Killing and digging would require actual labor, wouldn’t it? I don’t picture Mr. Chandler getting his hands dirty.”
I didn’t know about Harry Chandler, but Nigel Worley looked like he got his hands dirty every day.
Chapter 20
NIGEL WORLEY SLAMMED AROUND behind us, crashing the last of the iron trivets against the stove.
When Nigel had left the room, Conklin put a picture of the recently decapitated woman’s head in front of Nicole. Her eyes widened at the sight of that decomposing face and she pushed back from the table.
“Do you know this woman?” Conklin asked her.
“I’ve never seen her in my life.”
“This is one of the two heads your parents discovered yesterday morning,” I said.
“It’s revolting. It’s horrible.”
“She was walking around last week, Nicole. Then her head was cut off with a saw.”
“I find this unfathomable.”
“What is your relationship with Harry Chandler?”
“I’m his caretakers’ daughter. That’s all. Do you want my opinion of him?”
“Please.”
“He’s been accused of horrible things before, but I know him to be a good man. He has been very kind to my family. We’ve been good to him too.”
“Your father seems to dislike him.”
“Oh, all that growling means nothing. He thinks my mother is starstruck and he hates that.”
“You were sixteen when you came to live here?”
“That’s right.”
“And the reason you moved from London?”
“My parents had a romantic notion about America. As soon as we arrived, I fell in love with this city and this house. I’m kind of an expert on the Ellsworth family. Harry lets me live in number two at no charge,” Nicole explained, “and so I give lectures about the house to the tourists in exchange for free rent.”
I said, “So you know everything about this house, Nicole. Everything except that the backyard was basically a cemetery.”
The young woman’s face colored.
The direct approach wasn’t working, or maybe Nicole knew as little as she said she did.
Before I could fire off another question, my phone rang.
I glanced at the caller ID, got up, and took the call in the pantry.
Claire said, “I spoke with Dr. Perlmutter. She said looks like all the skulls are female. We’ve got a little multicultural mix going on here. Two of the skulls plus the head of our Jane Doe makes three white women. We also have one female of African background, one Asian, and two undetermined.”
“Their ages?”
“Approximately twenties to forties.”
“How long have the heads been in the ground?”
“It’s hard to be precise, Lindsay. But yes, they could all have been buried in the last ten years.”
Since Chandler bought the Ellsworth compound.
I hung up and called out to Conklin, asked him to join me in the pantry.
Conklin can read me like a map.
He knew that I felt pressure from Brady to work on Revenge and that at the same time, I was committed to the Ellsworth case. I wanted to do both.
I told him about my conversation with Claire.
He said to me, “I’ll work on Nicole.”
I nodded, said, “Good. While you do that, I’m going to use my famous charm on the movie star.”
Chapter 21
CONKLIN HELD THE back door open for Nicole, then followed her out to the patio. They ducked into the tent and Conklin said hello to a tech who was labeling bags of dirt.
“Got booties?” Conklin asked.
The tech handed him a carton of disposable shoe covers and Conklin took two pairs, then handed one pair to Nicole.
A brick path skirted the base of the wall, and once their feet were swaddled in plastic, Nicole and Conklin walked around the shadowy patch of garden.
Conklin focused his attention on Nicole Worley, watched her body language as she told him that she was a biologist and was hoping a teaching job would open in one of the schools within commuting distance of the Ellsworth place.
“My parents are getting older, and it’s better for them if I’m around. I keep them from killing each other — oh, I didn’t mean that literally.”
Conklin smiled, said, “I knew what you meant.”
Nicole slipped into her tour-guide role, talked about Bryce Ellsworth, his five wives and fourteen children, how the house survived the great fire of 1906. She had anecdotes about Prohibition and about Billie Holiday, the famous chanteuse, who’d sung for the Ellsworth family in their own parlor.
As Nicole and Conklin rounded the corner of the lot, Nicole indicated the four six-story houses beyond the wall.
Nicole said, “These houses are high for this area, but Bryce Ellsworth wanted them to balance the height of the main house. He liked symmetry. Notice that there are no windows facing the back garden. This is one of the interesting things about this place. I can’t even see the garden from my flat in number two.”
“What was the point of not having back-facing windows?”
“The first Mrs. Ellsworth was very private. I think it was her idea to keep the help from spying on her when she walked in the garden.”
Conklin looked up at the brick buildings, built at the same time as the Ellsworth house. As Nicole had said, the windows were false, br
ick outlines with no glass, which made the one real window in the next-to-last building stand out.
“There’s a window on the top floor of number six.”
“Number six has been boarded up for years,” Nicole told him. “I’m pretty sure that window opens onto a stairwell.”
Conklin had gotten what he could from Nicole Worley’s running on about the history of the house and San Francisco. Now he wanted answers.
“Who does the gardening?”
“Ricky someone. I can find out.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Not currently. Not seriously. No one I’ve brought here.”
“Have any of your friends been hanging out here recently?”
“Inspector Conklin, I’m starting to feel that you’re harassing me.”
“Nicole, would you rather come to the police station and spend a few hours with me and Sergeant Boxer? We can hold you as a material witness.”
Her eyes welled up. “I don’t bring my friends here.”
Conklin pressed on.
“Have you seen anyone on or near the grounds who struck you as out of place?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“What about those star tours? Do the tourists come into the garden?”
“No, and they don’t come into the house either. It’s strictly an outside-the-front-gate lecture series.”
“Thank you, Nicole. I need your contact information.”
Conklin smiled, gave her a pad and a pen. Watched her write, took back the notepad, and handed her his card.
“I’ll need the gardener’s name and number, and if you think of anything, anything, call me anytime.”
“I will certainly do that.”
Conklin nodded at the tech who was photographing one of the grave markers.
“We’ll be here for a while. Until we know who those seven victims are and the circumstances of their deaths, we’ll be turning over every stone.”
Chapter 22
I’D GROWN UP seeing Harry Chandler’s face in both huge Hollywood productions and tight, well-produced independent films. He was sexy, had terrific range, and was convincing as a hero and as a villain.
I’d checked out Chandler’s bio before getting on the road to South Beach Harbor, and as I’d expected, his story was now colored by the disappearance of his high-society wife, presumed dead. Much had been written about Chandler’s trial and acquittal, a story as dramatic as any film since Citizen Kane.
Popular opinion had it that even though the evidence wasn’t there, Chandler had nonetheless been involved in the crime. He had made a few pictures since he’d been found not guilty of murder, including the iconic Time to Reap, a cynical look at the meltdown of the global economy.
Chandler had won an Oscar for that performance. His second. I have to admit, I was eager to see him in real life.
It was only a four-mile drive from Vallejo Street to South Beach Harbor and the yacht club, both of which were part of the gentrification of the industrial area that had started in the 1980s.
I took Pierce to Broadway, then took a right to the Embarcadero. To my left was the bay. I saw sailboat masts showing above the yachts filling the harbor.
I parked my car in the lot, then found the security guard inside the harbor office at the entrance to the South Beach Yacht Club. He wrote down my name and badge number, made a call, and I went through a gate and found Chandler’s boat, the Cecily, at the end of a pier. It was a sleek, eighty-foot-long modern yacht, Italian make, a top-of-the-line Ferretti, so impressive it actually made me imagine a life in a super-luxury craft on the bay.
I walked down the pier and found Harry Chandler waiting for me, sitting in a folding chair at the foot of his slip. He saw me at the same moment I saw him; he put down his newspaper, stood up, and came toward me.
Harry Chandler looked to me like an aging lion. He was bearded and his face was lined, but he was still handsome, still the star who’d made female moviegoers all over the world fall in love with him.
“Sergeant Boxer? Welcome aboard.”
I shook his hand, then felt a little charge when he put his hand on my back and guided me to the gangway. I climbed the steps to a covered outdoor cabin on the main deck that was furnished in white sofas, sea-green-glass tables, and teak appointments all around.
Chandler told me to make myself comfortable. I took a seat while he went to the refrigerator under the bar and poured out bottles of water into two chunky crystal glasses of ice.
When he was sitting across a coffee table from me, he said, “I read about this — what would you call it? This horror that happened yesterday. And Janet called, nearly hysterical. If you hadn’t phoned I was going to call the police myself. I’m at a loss to understand this.”
I kept my eyes on the actor as he spoke. I’d seen his handsome face so many times, I felt as if I knew him.
Was he telling the truth or giving a performance? I hoped I could tell the difference.
I showed Chandler Jane Doe’s picture and he half turned away, then dragged his eyes back to the photo.
“I don’t know her. I am wondering, of course, about Cecily. We still don’t know what became of her. Could she be one of those victims in the garden? That would be a hell of a thing.”
“Wondering, Mr. Chandler?”
“Yes. I want to know what happened to her.”
If Cecily Chandler’s remains were recovered, Harry Chandler wouldn’t be charged, not for her death anyway. He’d been found innocent of her murder and couldn’t be tried for it again. But if Cecily Chandler’s remains had been buried on his doorstep, Harry would be the number one suspect in six other deaths.
Could Chandler have killed women over time and buried them in the dark of his garden, trusting that they would never be found? Had he kept the house he no longer used so as to protect his private trophy garden?
Did Nigel Worley have a better reason than his wife’s crush on a movie star for the anger he expressed on hearing Harry Chandler’s name?
Harry Chandler was sitting so that the San Francisco Bay was at his back.
I thought about convicted murderer Scott Peterson, recalled that his dead wife and unborn child were found washed up across the bay. It seemed very possible that a lot of bodies had been dumped in the water here. That they didn’t all wash up onshore, and that some were never discovered because they floated out to sea.
I smiled at the movie star and tried that charm I’d joked about to Conklin.
“Can you tell me your movements over the last week, Mr. Chandler?”
“Call me Harry. Please. Of course. You need my alibi.”
He walked to an intercom panel in the kitchen, pressed a button, and said in his memorable, resonant voice, “Kaye, the police want to talk to you.”
Chapter 23
I LIKED KAYE Hunsinger on sight.
She was about forty, had a wide, toothy smile, and owned a small bike shop in North Beach. I made note of her massive diamond ring of the engagement kind.
Kaye, Harry Chandler, and I sat on semicircular sofas at the stern with little multigrain sandwiches on a plate in front of us. We caught some afternoon breezes, and everything was chatty and casual, but all the while, I was checking the couple for tells.
Could they have been players in the nightmare on Vallejo Street? Was Harry Chandler a murderer? Was Kaye Hunsinger, knowingly or not, covering for him?
Kaye told me that she and Harry had been down the coast for the past week, returning to the South Beach Yacht Club only last night.
“It was a brilliant week,” she said. “Zipping down to Monterey, docking at the marina there. Kicking off the boat shoes, putting on heels and a witchy black dress — oh my. Dancing with Harry.”
Pause for an exchange of moony grins and hand-clasping. Okay. They were believably in love.
“We signed in with the harbormasters at stopovers, of course,” C
handler said to me. “And lots of people saw us. If you still need more of an alibi.”
I was thinking about Chandler’s remarks of a few minutes before, that he’d been “wondering” if his wife’s remains were among those that had been dug up in his garden. I wondered too, and I was equally interested in the woman whose head had been separated from her shoulders with a ripsaw about a week ago.
Had a body dump been part of the Chandler coastal cruise?
I had no warrant and no probable cause to search Chandler’s yacht, so an eyeball search of the premises might be my only opportunity to check out the floating home as a possible crime scene.
“I’ll take that list of stopovers,” I said. “And I’m really dying to see the rest of this yacht.”
Harry and Kaye showed me around the four-cabin luxury craft. It was House Beautiful marine style, everything enviably top of the line, and not a throw pillow out of place.
The boat was fast, and the alibis could have been manufactured, but I strained to find a reason why Harry Chandler would come back to San Francisco during his cruise, dig up a couple of skulls, and then leave them with a cryptic message in his backyard.
It would be crazy, and I didn’t see any crazy in Harry Chandler.
I complimented the couple on the boat, and before the conversation could devolve into chitchat, I said that I’d be going and gave Chandler my card.
Chandler said, “I’ll walk you out.”
I started down the gangway and this time Chandler’s hand on my back was firmer, more forceful. I stepped away and turned to give Chandler a questioning look.
“You’re like a butterfly,” Harry Chandler told me, fixing his gray searchlight eyes on mine, “with steel wings.”
I was taken aback for three or four reasons I could have spat out right away. Had Harry Chandler’s crazy just surfaced?
What had Nigel Worley told me?
Harry Chandler would like you.
I said, “I hope you’re not coming on to me, Mr. Chandler. Because when a suspect in a murder investigation hits on a cop, you know what I think? He’s desperate. And he’s trying to hide something.”
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