“How much of this information are we giving to the police? They expect our full cooperation, Richard.” This murder business was new to me, and I was a little nervous about intermingling with the San Francisco Homicide Department, especially as I was, ever so slightly, a suspect.
“We’re giving them exactly what they asked for. No more, no less. I gave them dupes of everything you recorded the first three days of your surveillance. They’re sending someone over this afternoon to pick up the ones you turned in last night. What they don’t have is the Richard Alvarez brain,” he said, nonchalantly tapping the side of his head with his forefinger.
“The rest of this stuff on China Doll is just supposition on my part, and I don’t share suppositions with anybody, except maybe you. Gets you a bad rep.” He wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something decaying in the room. “Besides, SFPD has resources. Let them draw their own conclusions from all of this. Like I did,” he added with a wink.
“I’ll try to play it the same way,” I promised.
“Okay, I’ve got to get back to work, so here’s the rest of the results,” Richard said, changing the subject abruptly, as usual. “All the license plates you recorded during those four days have been accounted for. Take the rentals. Nothing there. Mr. and Mrs. Somebody or other vacationing from somewhere out of state, in for a week or two, blah, blah. Most of them parked their rentals, went sightseeing and then took the Red and White Fleet to Sausalito or Tiburon. The remainders are either locals who work in that area or out of town visitors but not out of state. Like this couple from Napa,” he added pointing to a name on the list.
“Now remember, I’m only giving each person a cursory look. If everything seems normal on the surface, I leave it alone.” He stressed the last part of his statement and then picked up the printout.
“Uh huh,” I replied, nodding my head. “Unless they happen be as good looking as Grace Wong.”
Richard went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “For instance, here’s a local from Oakland who was parked on that street all day and most of the night. Strange, so I checked him out. He wound up being a dentist who played hooky and took a day tour to Alcatraz. Then he gave himself a birthday party at a local bar that night. I don’t think it’s him, but on the other hand, if he managed to kill somebody while getting drunk with about sixty people watching, then he’s too smart for me.” He stopped his oration and spit his gum out in the wastepaper basket before continuing.
“The only other car that was within a two block radius that day, and was there the day before, as well…” Richard raised a forefinger in the air for emphasis. “Is Grace Wong’s. I don’t know what she’s doing there unless she’s giving longshoremen ballet lessons. Maybe that’s what she’s doing in PBS, too, ballet lessons.” I could tell Richard was immensely pleased with himself. “This check was simple, Lee. They should all be as easy as this. Here you go.”
He flung about ten sheets of paper onto my lap. All the information was printed in a painfully small font and I sighed. Richard believed in saving money, at least on paper products, so he used the smallest font possible. A couple of more years of straining my eyes like this, and I’d need a seeing-eye dog. I got up, ready to leave him to his work.
“By the way,” he added with much less bravado, as he jabbed at the keyboard and made sections on the monitor disappear. “I got some news that might make you happy.” He looked up at me with anxious eyes. “Nick got married a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas.”
I took in a sharp breath. How did I feel about that, I wondered instantly? Relieved. Simply relieved.
Maybe an unhappy and embarrassing episode of my life might go away. I opened wide eyes at Richard, who was staring at me nervously.
“Have you been keeping tabs on him all this time?”
“It didn’t take much. I just periodically checked out a few things. You know, driver’s license, W2 forms, any legal papers he might have filed. That’s how I found out about the nuptials. Easy as one-two-three.”
“W2 forms? Why, that’s illegal, Richard!” I said, more out of shock than chastisement.
“Hey, it’s only illegal if you use the information for gain or profit. I don’t do anything with it except, on rare occasions, let certain people know things they might be happier knowing. As far as I’m concerned, I’m happier knowing he’s somebody else’s problem and not my sister's.”
Laughing, I leaned down and hugged Richard. “I have to admit I feel better knowing that chapter of my life is finally closed. Thanks a lot, Richard. I'm really grateful.” I touched his hand with mine and looked solemnly into his lean, trusting face.
He flustered and swiveled his chair back to his computer screen. “Hey, what’s a computer for?” he questioned, with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Now, get going,” my kid brother said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do. I take it Our Lady didn’t say no on you following up on this murder thing?” he asked, as he reached for a small tower with attached cables and began hooking them up to his mainframe.
“No, she didn’t say no,” I uttered. I was glad the room was dark and he was concentrating on other things. I don’t lie well and Richard knows me as few people do. I could never have deceived him if he had seen my face. I turned and walked across the room to the door.
“Grace Wong. What’s up with this Grace Wong?” I asked aloud. I closed his door quietly and started back for my office, my mind whirling.
The woman parks her car, for no apparent reason, two days in a row near a warehouse where a man gets himself killed. There’s no record of shopping, sightseeing, or dining for her on either day. She could, of course, be using cash but people rarely do these days. And why has she spent several nights a month — correction, several hours of several nights a month — in Princeton-by-the-Sea? For the
past five months, she’s been filling her gas tank there, too. What, if anything, does that mean? Maybe it was time to have a closer look at Grace Wong.
Chapter Nine
A Visit To The Widow
When I got back to my office, it was not quite two o’clock. I decided to return Yvette Wyler’s call. I felt slightly guilty about the way I talked to Mom and thought a visit to her old high school chum might act as atonement. As I dialled, I crossed my fingers that the grieving widow wouldn’t be home but luck wasn’t with me. It seldom is. The housekeeper, Mrs. Malchesky, answered on the third ring and asked me to wait a moment while she went to fetch the lady of the house. As I sat with a silent phone in my hand, I hoped against hope the woman didn’t feel like company. After all, she’d only lost her husband the day before yesterday. I certainly wouldn’t want to talk to anybody so soon, especially the person who found his body.
Unfortunately, the housekeeper returned and said the recently widowed asked if it was convenient for me to drop by sometime today. I said a few silent curses and then one loud “yes.” I was familiar with the house in Woodside and knew it was only a few minutes away from the office.
Might as well get it over with, I thought. I said I would be there in fifteen minutes.
I remembered the Mr. Everett phone call I promised to make, as well, and dialed the number after searching through my card index. I got lucky with him. He wasn’t in and wasn’t expected for the rest of the day. I left a message with his secretary that I had called, hung up, and felt the clear conscience of the not so young and not so innocent.
Lastly, I called Patti and asked her to relay the Wyler meeting to Lila when she came in. Might as well start mending fences as soon as possible. I grabbed my handbag and umbrella and ran out the door. After all, the sooner I got to Mrs. Wyler’s, the sooner I could leave.
The Wyler Estate was a twelve-acre job directly off Woodside Avenue. Dubbed by the locals as “Flanders’ Folly” years ago, the original owner, a wealthy robber baron from Ohio, had used several different architectural styles before the house was completed to his satisfaction. Captain Flanders moved his wife and seventeen children into the house
and lived very happily there for over forty years. After the death of both parents within three months of one another, the surviving children sold it to Portor Wyler for a ridiculously low price just to get rid of it.
Aside from the seventy-five hundred square foot little starter-upper, there were the standard stables, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor pools, and of course, the grounds.
The house itself was a monstrous red, four-story brick job with dozens of gables, columns, chimneys and Corinthian arches that would have given Scarlett O’Hara nightmares.
Oleander bushes grew around the entire perimeter of the grounds, most over twenty feet high, in various flowering colors. I read once that oleander is poisonous and a woman was hung for giving a brewed version of it to her husband, who died a pretty painful death. Deer tend to leave it alone and people often plant a few in deer country for a spot of color in an otherwise gnawed off garden. The bush itself is pretty enough, but I think twelve acres of oleanders is a bit boring, even to keep Bambi at bay.
Once, when I was fourteen years old, I refused to go inside the house with my mother to one of Mrs. Wyler’s “high teas,” a ritual which gave the word ‘tedious’ new meaning. I decided to wait outside in the garden. Bored, I counted all of the oleanders I could find. I stopped at four hundred. When
Mrs. Wyler and Mom came out, after about an hour, looking for me, I’d turned to Mrs. Wyler and said, “Dios mio, get a rose bush or something, will you? Don’t you have any imagination?”
Of course, I apologized like crazy afterward, but I knew I’d hurt her feelings and humiliated my mother. I grimaced when remembering the snotty kid I could be, any teenager can be. Maybe I wasn’t a snotty kid anymore, but I couldn’t warm up to Mrs. Wyler any better as an adult than I could as a child. I always suspected when no one was looking, she howled at the moon and chased cars for their hubcaps.
I shook my head at the shocking thoughts pinging through my brain about the recently widowed. I needed to get a handle on it. After all, I was an adult now.
As I pulled up to the ornate black, iron-gate standing sentinel in front of the infamous oleanders, a vision of Portor Wyler’s unseeing eyes blurred the pastoral scene before me. Sitting in the idling car, I wondered how I could face the woman who might have lost her husband because of something I did or didn’t do. I resisted the urge to turn and run, sucked it in, pressed a button on a little black box and gave my name. The gates opened wide. I passed through and down the graveled drive toward the house, wishing I’d had a splash of whiskey at lunch. Or, maybe, a shot or two.
Despite the rain, Yvette Wyler, dressed in a long sack-like black dress and holding a black umbrella, was standing in the middle of the circular drive next to the house. She gave her finest Queen Mother wave as my car pulled up to the house and halted. I, in turn, smiled my best Miss America smile and got out of the car. Mrs. Wyler embraced me awkwardly and guided me inside the house asking the standard questions about my health and state of mind. She smelled of Old Lavender, Listerine, and garlic, a charming combo. We passed our dripping umbrellas on to her housekeeper, Mrs. Malchesky, who’d been with her since before dirt.
“I asked Mrs. Malchesky to make some tea and sandwiches for us,” she said as we walked into the smaller of the two main living rooms.
“Oh, God,” I thought, remembering tea in this room from my childhood but managed to remain calm. The room was ill lit and damp, even though a fire burned at one end inside a marble fireplace large enough for you to park an SUV in, should you run out of room in the driveway.
“Please sit down, Liana, dear,” said the older woman, as she smiled and gestured to a velvet green horsehair sofa, stiff and lumpy with age. Her voice echoed in the large and sparsely furnished room that for all its supposed grandeur gave off a cold and impersonal air. I sat down and tried my best to get comfortable. Mrs. Wyler sat in a matching wing back chair directly opposite me.
A small tea table, laden with paraphernalia for afternoon tea, loitered between us. Heavily starched doilies seemed to be breeding everywhere. Stiff embroidery on the armrest and at the back of the settee stuck to all exposed parts of my skin.
“Don’t bother yourself about us, Hilda, dear, I'll serve the tea this afternoon. You go ahead and pack for your trip,” she said to the housekeeper, with a dismissive look. The woman gave a nod of her head and left the room. Mrs. Wyler began the ritual of serving afternoon tea, while chatting about her housekeeper’s upcoming three-week tour of the Greek islands, something she hoped, herself, to do some day.
While this small dialogue was going on, I studied the woman’s face, marveling once again she was only in her mid-fifties, the same age as my youthful and beautiful mother. I knew the loss of her husband contributed to her ghastly appearance, but in all honesty, she looked like death warmed over, no pun intended.
Her thin brown hair, flecked with gray, was teased and coifed but still managed to droop. She wore little or no makeup, which made her yellowish eyes fade into her sallow complexion. The wrinkles on her face jumped out at me almost as much as her narrow, hooked nose. It was, however, the twitch in her right cheek I found unnerving. I found it hard not to stare or count the number of twitches per minute.
So I sat with a frozen smile on my face, a fragile teacup in my left hand, and a small plate of dreadful looking toast points covered with a brown spread that reeked of garlic and cloves in my right. As Mrs. Wyler chatted on, a frequently washed napkin threatened to slide off my lap. I could hear a distant grandfather clock ticking the painful minutes away.
I was also aware of the fire crackling at the other end of the room and wished we were closer to it. My legs were freezing, and I was sorry I hadn’t worn slacks. I began to understand how the Man in the Iron Mask felt as he sat imprisoned, listening to his beard grow. I waited in agony for Mrs. Wyler to speak about the purpose of this Command Visit.
Finally, Mrs. Wyler, after taking a healthy bite out of a soggy, beige covered toast point, cleared her throat and said, “Liana, dear, I want to apologize for dragging you into this sordid affair. Little did I know when I begged your mother to send you out to help me that I might, in some way, be endangering your life.”
“I don’t think my life was ever en...” I began, trying to reassure her in a prim and proper manner, as befitted the occasion.
The older woman held up her hand to silence me and continued, “Please, dear, do let me say this. I don’t know what was going on in my mind to send a child like you out to do something so base and contemptible as spying on my husband.
“I suppose, when a woman loves a man and is afraid he may no longer love her but another, younger woman, well, she can do foolish things. When I think of you standing out in the pouring rain, catching your death of cold, while my Portor was....” Mrs. Wyler stopped speaking, put down her cup of tea and brought her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, dear,” she murmured.
I hastily set down the china plate of toast points and reached for her hand in sympathy. Unfortunately, the plate clattered on the sterling silver tray, with a sound that rang through the room like a dinner gong. She withdrew her hand from mine and touched her temple, the way you do when you feel a sudden headache coming on. I leaned back again, afraid to move.
“Please don’t apologize, Mrs. Wyler,” I answered, downing half the tepid tea in the cup in one gulp. “I'm just sorry that what happened...happened. You have my sincere condolences,” I finished lamely.
What does this woman want of me? What am I doing here?
“I want you to allow me to pay for those new suede boots you ruined that night,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.
Boots? She dragged me here for boots?
“Absolutely not. Considering all that’s happened, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” I objected, with as much force as I could gather under the circumstances.
“I insist. I had a pair of my best shoes ruined the same night by the rain, and I know how heartbreaking losing a good pair of shoes can be. It w
as such a rainstorm! And out of the blue. Just a clap of thunder and a deluge.” She clasped her breast in remembrance, something I’d only seen done in the movies.
“I’ve already asked your mother for the brand and size. She’s such a wonderful woman, your mother, so good and kind. She’s been a godsend in helping me with the funeral arrangements. The funeral is Saturday. You’ll come, of course. You got them at Neiman Marcus, didn’t you?” she asked, brightening up, as she reached for another wretched toast point. She munched enthusiastically as she continued, “I’ve already ordered a pair for you. They should be here in a week or two.”
I had trouble keeping up with her thought processes but tried my best. “Of course, I’ll be there. I don’t know what to say about the boots, Mrs. Wyler, except you really don’t have to do that!”
“Please.” Mrs. Wyler held up the same hand again, but this time it contained the half-eaten toast point. “It’s my way of saying thank you for trying to help.”
“If it makes you feel better, then, of course, I accept. Thank you very much,” I conceded.
“There! That’s settled,” she said, putting down her plate.
Seeing this as a sign of dismissal, I half rose, putting my teacup down on the tray between us. I looked down at the woman expecting to be allowed to go.
“I hope you weren’t frightened by what happened that night and haven’t had trouble sleeping or bad dreams. You are so young.” Mrs. Wyler reached out a clammy hand and grasped my arm, almost throwing me off balance.
I chose to sit back down rather than fall. “Not at all, Mrs. Wyler. I’m fine, just fine,” I answered, feeling about three years old and not liking it a bit. “I didn’t even know something had happened until it was… too late. I didn’t see or hear anything.”
Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries) Page 10