Looking for Yesterday

by Marcia Muller

  “Old lady Cleary kept the house dark on trick-or-treat night, but the kids knew to take the path to Caro’s door. She always gave Hershey’s Kisses.”

  “She shopped for my groceries once, when I was too sick to go to the store.”

  “She always brought Mrs. Cleary’s garbage cans in, as well as her own.”

  Saint Caro? Or Caro the atoner? Or something in between?

  3:36 p.m.

  In spite of the sandwich I’d had, I was hungry, so I stopped at home for a bite to eat. There was a note on the kitchen table from Hy: “Gone to LA on company business. Call you later.”

  Routine business? Dangerous? How the hell was I supposed to know? I thought again of his proposed merger with my agency; if the business entities were joined, I would insist on knowing the details of his activities, as he would the details of mine.

  I went to the fridge. Alex joined me and stood on his hind legs, peering inside. The bottomless-pit cat. I settled on ham and cheese on crackers; he joined me. I was spoiling him, but I’d always spoiled my cats. Jessie appeared, and I spoiled her too.

  While we ate I considered my next move and decided I might as well check with what neighbors of mine I knew would be home, to ask if any of them had seen Caro arrive here last night. The police would already have done this, but I thought maybe they’d missed someone or someone would have remembered something they’d forgotten or hadn’t wanted to reveal to officialdom.

  4:04 p.m.

  Mrs. Irene Hall, next door to the right, gaunt, stooped, and all angles: “We went to bed early, honey. And our bedroom’s at the back of the house like yours. We didn’t hear a thing till the police came. Lord, as we grow older we just sleep sounder. Getting prepared, I guess.”

  At the Curley house to the other side of mine, daughter Michelle popped out. “Damn,” she said, “I missed all the commotion. I was sleeping over at that place I’m rehabbing on Webster.”

  Chelle was a budding entrepreneur, having already refurbished a decaying cottage nearby and turned it for a profit.

  I said, “Is that wise, sleeping alone in a half-derelict building?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Shar, d’you think I was alone?”

  Chelle was growing up, just like Jamie. I’d have to remember that.

  “Were your folks home? Or Gwen?” Gwen Verke, Michelle’s foster sister.

  “Nope. Gwen was staying at a friend’s from school, and my parents took a few vacation days and went to visit relatives in the Santa Barbara area—where it’s not raining.”

  I felt a stab of envy for anyone who was anyplace where it wasn’t raining. While growing up in San Diego I’d mistakenly assumed that mostly sunny, warm days were the norm. Even in Berkeley and San Francisco conditions were usually good. But then came global warming—which many people claim doesn’t exist, but if not, how do you explain the polar ice melt and radical changes in weather patterns throughout the world? And the devastating flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes in places where such disasters have never been heard of?

  “You working a case?” Chelle asked. “Can I help?”

  She’d helped me before; her parents would kill me if I enlisted her again.

  “I’ve got this one under control,” I said, “but if I need assistance, I’ll call on you.”

  7:00 p.m.

  Devlin Fast was punctual to the minute. He ushered me into his cubicle at exactly seven o’clock.

  Fast was one of the department’s black recruits who had risen quickly through the ranks in a period when the city was demanding racial diversity—in a way very similar to my operative Adah Joslyn, who had become their poster officer because she was female, half black, and half Jewish. Adah had gotten fed up with the bullshit of a police force in chaos and quit to work for me, but Fast was loyal and by-the-book. If he had his problems with the department—which I was sure he did, because he was an extremely intelligent man—he kept them to himself.

  “So,” he said as we sat across the desk from one another, “the Carolyn Warrick murder. She was your client?”

  “Yes. She wanted me to reaffirm her acquittal, turn up more facts for a true-crime book she was coauthoring. What about the physical evidence in her murder—the hammer, blood?”

  “The hammer was one you can buy in any Ace Hardware. Had been used, had some scoring on the head and claws, but not much. Prints on the handle belong to Ms. Warrick.”

  “So she might’ve brought it along with her as a defensive weapon. She never said anything to me, but she could have been afraid someone was following her.”

  “Paranoid, was she?”

  “Could have been. I don’t know—we only met twice, once in my office and once at her apartment.”

  “And you have no idea why she went to your house that night?”

  “Yes, I do. She had an envelope with my name on it.”

  “The contents?”

  “Old clippings about her case. Nothing I didn’t already know. Probably the same as her biographer has.”

  “So why take them to you?”

  “She wanted me to be current on how the project was going.” God, the lies I tell! Must’ve learned that art when my parents made me go to confession.

  I couldn’t tell whether Fast believed me or not. He simply said, “Make me copies, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, she’d hired a couple of PIs before. But unlike the other investigators she dealt with, you’ve got a reputation for results.”

  “May I have the names of the other investigators?”

  “I’ll e-mail them to you as soon as I’ve gone over the old files.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why Warrick would want to stir up trouble. My former partner was on the case, and I attended a couple of days of the trial. So let’s say I’m dubious about the verdict.”

  “Please, give me your impressions.”

  Fast’s broad face became contemplative. “Ms. Warrick was an obsessive personality, so much so that she turned down an offer to return to her former position at the SF Violence Prevention Center in order to undertake this…nonsensical pursuit. As for the facts of the case, a number of times she warned her ex-boyfriend Jake Green to stay away from Amelia Bettencourt. Green interpreted the warnings as threats. The evidence in the case was tampered with while in our custody.”

  “Which evidence?”

  “The documents showing she had been licensed to own a Glock 19 had been expunged from the state records.”

  “Who could have done that?”

  “Well, that’s a good question. The dealer—Ralph Levinson here in the city—had a record of the sale and application for registration on file, but Sacramento had nothing.”

  “Maybe the application was never filed.”

  “Levinson says otherwise. Of course, he could be lying.”

  “Why would he?”

  Fast shrugged. “He didn’t file the papers and didn’t want to be caught out as negligent. Or someone paid him to.”

  “Who?”

  “The case involved people in high places. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I’ve spoken with Caro’s brother and sister; they’re in touch with her, but her parents are not.”

  “Those parents are one cold couple. Although they were defense witnesses, their testimony on the stand was almost hostile. Could be they thought she was guilty, but were doing whatever they felt parents should do—badly. From their testimony it was apparent that they cared more for Amelia Bettencourt than their own daughter. I’ll be interested to see how they behave now that she’s dead.”

  “They’re in Cabo San Lucas. I don’t know if anyone’s contacted them, but I wouldn’t count on it. They didn’t leave a number, and the surviving daughter and son seem indifferent to them.”

  “Lovely family.” Fast’s eyes became shadowed. “You know, I had a family once. Wife Cynthia and daughter Diane. It was smashed to hell when Diane died of a drug overdose and Cynthia left me. She couldn’t live
with a cop who wouldn’t acknowledge that his own daughter was in trouble and take steps to prevent it. If I were the Warrick father, I’d be holding the rest of my family close right now.”

  I thought of my big extended family: those related by blood, by adoption, and by friendship. Although many of us were separated by long distances, I held them close every day of my life.

  8:57 p.m.

  I put in an hour at the office, finishing up the loose ends of my day. Then, mindful of Ted’s admonishment, I ate a big seafood salad at Palomino, a favorite restaurant on the Embarcadero, across from shabby, doomed Pier 24½. Seeing the pier darkened and deserted made me nostalgic; the name of the restaurant made me think of Sidekick, Hy’s Palomino horse stabled on our ranch in the high desert. And that made me miss King, my roan horse. I’d always hated horses until, on one fateful visit, King and I had bonded. I hadn’t known what I’d been missing.

  The salad and a glass of chardonnay energized me. I didn’t want to go home just yet. The winter darkness when I came out of the restaurant made me think: what was Caro Warrick’s apartment like after dark?

  Places are different at night: Some things that stand out during the day are softened or erased entirely. Others become palpable, crying out for notice. When I bought my house here in the city, I insisted on seeing it before and after nightfall. It was the dark viewing that cinched the deal—the place had been and still was enveloping, not remotely threatening.

  I headed for the Outer Sunset.

  The light from the upper part of the house—Mrs. Cleary’s—bathed the pathway to the garage apartment. When I got out of my car, I thought I saw a figure standing in the shadow of a yew tree next door. I took several seconds locking the car, pretending to fumble with the keys, while I acclimated to my surroundings. Something definitely felt wrong. I turned, putting my hands up to my eyes as I would a camera and pretending to search for an address. Nothing. The person was gone, or maybe had never been there—a figment of my overactive imagination.

  Still the sense of wrongness persisted.

  I went along the walkway toward the garage apartment. Wind rattled the leaves of the ivy on the fence, promising a colder turn to the weather. Over the rustling I heard what sounded like a footstep and looked back. No one in sight. Probably just someone walking by, but still I hesitated. Slipped back along the walkway and peered out at the street.

  Empty.

  Too many nighttime confrontations had made me wary of things that go bump after dark. When you’ve been shot in the head and almost died…

  I used the keys Caro’s brother Rob had given me, eased the door open and shut. A clock, which I hadn’t noticed before, ticked softly. The refrigerator hummed. I could hear the beat of my pulse, slow and steady.

  Again I felt the sense of loneliness, unhappiness, and faint hope that I’d had before. I switched on a table lamp and went prowling, turning on other lamps as I went. New details struck me: a crack in a cut-glass vase; a faint stain that looked as if it might’ve once been orange on the wall next to the sofa; a loose section of baseboard…

  No, McCone. The baseboard’s too obvious a hiding place, as obvious as the toilet tank.

  Right. But I examined it anyway. The baseboard concealed nothing, looked as if it had been bashed by an overzealous person wielding a vacuum cleaner.

  Nothing unusual here. Nothing that you wouldn’t expect to find in a lonely single person’s apartment.

  But I still felt something was missing.

  I locked up the apartment and went down the walkway. As I turned onto the sidewalk I spotted a dark figure, approximately the same size and shape as the one I thought I’d seen before, across the street. Abruptly the person turned and fled down an alley between two houses.

  So I hadn’t been imagining things before. Somebody watching Mrs. Cleary’s house, perhaps with the idea of breaking in and finding something in Caro’s apartment? Somebody following me? Or maybe just your garden-variety Peeping Tom? In any case, he—I assumed he was male because of his size—had a good head start on me. It would be foolish to go chasing him in that dark, unfamiliar territory.

  10:14 p.m.

  The blue building on Sly Lane was dark and deserted, only security lights winking in the underground garage to show me the way to the elevator. For a moment I paused before getting out of my car, remembering my earlier edginess at Caro’s apartment and the night I’d been assaulted and shot at Pier 24½. Then I put the thoughts behind me: horrifying as many of my recollections were, I’d long ago made up my mind not to dwell on the past. I waited for the old, clanking elevator cage to reach garage level, then hit the button for the—grandly labeled—penthouse suite.

  My office was cold. I turned up the thermostat, took the envelope of Xeroxed clippings from Caro Warrick from my bag, and retreated to my comfortable armchair. I reread the clips carefully, scanning for any detail I hadn’t noticed before. The timeline was the same, as was the cast of characters. Even though only three years had passed, the paper felt brittle, was browning. The events reported might have occurred decades in the past.

  But there was an article from last December that I had somehow skimmed or overlooked the night Caro was attacked. One of those end-of-the-year where-are-they-now pieces that newspapers sometimes run about sensational crimes.

  Carolyn Warrick, of course, was still living and working in the city then.

  Elizabeth and Benjamin Warrick resided in Millbrae. That I knew.

  Amelia Bettencourt’s mother, Iris, had died of a stroke the preceding August.

  Bettencourt’s father, James, had served two years’ probation for assault with a deadly weapon and was currently living on the Monterey Peninsula.

  Interesting. ADW is one of those crimes that lawyers call a “wobbler”—meaning it can be classified either as a misdemeanor or as a felony, depending upon various circumstances. The fact that James Bettencourt had received only two years’ probation indicated that the DA hadn’t considered the assault that Bettencourt had perpetrated too serious.

  Jake Green lived in Atherton, an upscale suburb on the Peninsula. That gave me pause: Green had presented himself as down on his luck, ruined by the scandal following Amelia’s murder. Of course, he could’ve bought the house before that, when he was making big money as a stockbroker.

  Dave Walden, a close friend of both Amelia and Caro who had testified as a character witness for the defense, owned a winery up north in the Alexander Valley, with his wife, Kayla. I scanned through the clippings again; there was no other mention of Dave or Kayla Walden.

  I turned to the computer to Google them. A few sounds made me pause—metal on metal. I glanced at the old elevator to see if someone might be coming up, but the arrow on its dial remained at P.

  Penthouse, my ass.

  The problem, I thought, was that I didn’t really like the building—or Sly Lane. I’d allowed Ted to talk me into leasing it because it was in proximity to the Embarcadero (and his apartment, now that I thought of it). He loved the place—especially its blue color, and the fact that it was a former whorehouse where the madam had been murdered in 1894.

  But I felt isolated here on the hill, even though I wasn’t very far away from the liveliness I had enjoyed on the Embarcadero: the salt tang in the air, the Bay breezes, the walkers and runners and bicyclers and roller skaters, the restaurants.

  South of Market—SoMa—had changed since I’d moved the agency to Pier 24½, for the better and also for the worse. Construction was at an all-time high, with the resultant noise and dust, but many of the more ambitious projects had been halted by lack of funding. Many buildings that had sat empty because of the recession were now attracting tenants, and interesting new shops and restaurants abounded. The Museum of Modern Art had prospered and was soon to be expanded, and “parklets”—large boxes filled with ferns and other low-maintenance plants—brightened alleyways that I used to cut through on my way to and from the locations I frequented.

  The good and th
e bad, I’d take all of it. But not this building. The blue façade looked downright frivolous. The clanking elevator cage annoyed or intimidated clients. Having to run up and down stairs to have a face-to-face with staff members wasted time. But we’d signed a long-term lease.

  I turned my attention back to Google. Walden Vineyards was located on Alexander Valley Road near Healdsburg, a prime wine-grape-growing area. The winery was small, producing only a few hundred cases of sauvignon blanc and zinfandel per bottling, and had been in operation seven years. The photos on the website showed a small, high-ceilinged tasting room and a terrace overlooking vine-covered hills topped with tall pines.

  Tomorrow was Saturday; a jaunt to the valley could be pleasurable—and fruitful, in more ways than one.

  I put my computer to sleep and pushed back from the desk. The arrow on the elevator still pointed to the “penthouse.” For a moment I considered taking the stairs, then shrugged and pressed the button. The grille groaned and wheezed back, and I stepped on and pressed the Down button.

  The elevator started, then stopped. I punched the button again. The elevator moved a few inches, then lurched violently to the right. I was thrown off balance, my shoulder slamming into the wall. Sparks of pain shot up my neck and down my arm.

  What the hell…?

  I clung to the handrail for a few seconds, my blood pounding in my ears. When I righted myself, the elevator floor groaned under me. Quickly I balanced my weight evenly in the middle.

  Those noises I’d heard earlier—they weren’t normal for an elevator at rest, but I’d been so involved with my searches that I’d dismissed them. Had somebody disabled it? Was that person still around?

  I held on to the handrail and shifted my weight slightly.

  The cage stayed where it was.

  I tried punching the buttons again, all of them. Nothing.

  Stuck.

  There should have been an escape hatch on top of the cage through which I could climb, but when I looked up I didn’t see one. Nor was there a phone I could use to call for help—not that it would’ve done any good, seeing as the building was deserted.