“Kate,” Carl said, “this is Detective Lieutenant Roger Tejeda from the Santa Angelica police.”
“Lieutenant?” She offered her hand, smiling to cover the prickly feeling of dread growing inside. “What’s happened? We haven’t rated anyone ranked higher than sergeant yet.”
“Maybe you just got lucky.” He gave her hand a little squeeze before he released it. A small gesture, she found it reassuring, until he put a sudden brake on the smile that started to light his face. He smoothed his tie, leaving a faint dark tracing on the red silk. “We found something down on the beach we hope you can identify.”
She held her breath, remembering the last time the police had politely asked her to come and identify something; it had been her mother, laid out on a cold slab in the county morgue. Her throat seemed to clench shut. She tried to clear it, to break through the tight knot. “Is it a body?”
There was a collective gasp around her.
“Oh, God, no.” Tejeda touched her arm, seemed embarrassed. “It’s just a handbag.”
“Ah,” she breathed, feeling a little chagrined by her reaction. “It’s Mother’s?”
“Think so,” he nodded. “Maintenance people found it when they cleaned the beach this morning.”
“Our beach?” She stepped away from the car to look down toward the beach, straining as if she might still be able to see some impression on the sand, find some reality there. “Where?”
“Just down there.” He pointed in the direction of the beach stairs.
Carl edged between them. “If Kate needs to see the purse now, Lieutenant, why don’t you bring it up to the house. We’ll all get something cool to drink.”
“Thanks just the same,” Tejeda said. “This is only a formality. If the rest of you folks will excuse us, my partner will bring the bag over for Mrs. Teague. Save you a trip downtown. I know the timing is bad, but I thought you’d rather take a look at this thing now and be done with it.”
“Carl, darling.” Mina took him by the elbow and gently turned him. “Would you please help Dolphy up to the house? This heat is just more than he can bear.”
Kate sensed Carl’s hesitation, as he looked first at Dolph, then at Tejeda. Then he shrugged, dismissing the importance of the dilemma. He gave Kate a possessive kiss on the cheek. “Yell if you need me. We’ll be at the house, waiting.”
Kate recognized how skillfully Mina had gotten rid of Carl by giving him a graceful way out. Maybe Carl knew it, too. He solicitously held both Dolph and Mina by the arm so that they formed a little cluster as they walked to the shady portico of Kate’s house and stopped there by the big front door, watching Kate and the lieutenant in the same way that gulls hover over crumbs on the beach.
Tejeda motioned to his colleague, who picked up an untidy plastic bundle and brought it to him. The bundle trailed a thin stream of sand as he crossed the courtyard.
“This is Sergeant Green, Mrs. Teague,” Tejeda said.
“We’ve met.” Kate recognized him from the beginning of the investigation into her mother’s death.
“Mrs. Teague.” Sergeant Green gave her a Boy Scoutish salute. “Sorry to put you to more bother.”
“It’s okay,” Kate said, nodding toward the bundle in his arms. “Is that it?”
“’Fraid so,” he said, futilely trying to clean sand from it.
Tejeda took the bundle from him and set it on the hood of the Mercedes, spilling sand among the ashes that dulled the hot surface. He unrolled the leaves of plastic, exposing a black handbag with a dazzling gold clasp.
Kate drew in a painful gasp of searing dry air, reeling a little as she recognized it.
“Can you identify this?” Tejeda asked.
“It’s my mother’s.” Her voice was a dry whisper. The Mark Cross handbag had been such a beautiful extravagance, even for Mother. It was certainly worth more than its contents. Now it hung like a filthy derelict from Tejeda’s hand, bringing back the rush of horror she’d felt when she saw her mother in the morgue; the beautiful and immaculate woman who had been soiled and discarded on the dark city street.
Lieutenant Tejeda removed the bag’s contents, laying Mother’s personal little collection of necessities in a precise row on the hood of the car. Heat shimmered around them, blurring their outlines like shadows on a mirror.
Kate reached out for the wallet, then pulled back her hand, afraid almost to touch it, as if the murderer’s taint lingered there.
“Go ahead,” Tejeda said. “We’ve already lifted prints.”
Kate picked up the wallet and opened it. She leafed through the folder of photographs. Most of them were her school portraits, carefully encased in plastic, following her as she changed from sweet, sometimes toothless, awkwardness into blooming young adulthood. The most recent picture was twelve years old, a quick snapshot taken outside the courthouse after her wedding. In the picture Carl towered over her, beaming at the camera.
“You were a cute kid,” Lieutenant Tejeda said, smiling. He pushed a well-gnawed thumbnail at Carl’s face. “I see your husband in court sometimes. I’m glad he’s on our side.”
Kate hardly heard what he said, aware only that his conversation was meant to put her at ease. She opened the bill compartment of the wallet and pulled out a thin sheaf of currency, then a checkbook and a folder of credit cards. She held them out to Lieutenant Tejeda. “These shouldn’t be here, not if…”
“Changes things, doesn’t it?” He took them from her. “Credit cards and checks your standard-issue purse-snatcher won’t always bother with. But cash? What worries me is your mother was found downtown and this handbag turned up almost in your backyard.” He focused his brown eyes on her face. His voice became very soft. “Could she have been carrying anything else—jewelry, bonds, anything of value that might make someone overlook a bit of cash?”
Kate shook her head; it all seemed so fathomless, ludicrous even. “Secret codes, blackmail letters?”
“Right.” The corners of his mouth rounded in a tentative smile. “Anything like that. If her death wasn’t a random thing, then we have to start looking for reasons.”
“Where do you start?”
He glanced toward the group still assembled in front of the house.
“You can’t be serious!” Kate felt the heat rise in her face. After a moment needed to compose herself, she explained, “I saw what was done to my mother. She was no angel, but no one who knew her could have hurt her that way, could have hated her enough to club her so viciously.” Looking again at Tejeda she continued uncertainly, “No one had enough to gain to do that to her.”
“We’ll find out,” he said. His hand was a warm patch on her arm. When he took his hand away she could still feel its residual heat.
Tejeda turned back to the objects on the car hood, biting his bottom lip as he slowly returned Mother’s things to the sandy handbag. He folded the bag into the plastic wrapping and tucked the bundle under his arm. Reaching into his breast pocket he pulled out a crudely hand-laced rawhide card folder with “Lt. Daddy” burned in childish letters on the cover. Awkwardly shifting the bundle he pulled out a card and handed it to Kate. “I’ll be in touch with you, but if you need me, call me at this number.”
She met his eyes. “Please come in for a drink.” Then she remembered Sergeant Green standing beside her. “Both of you.”
“Thanks,” Tejeda smiled. “Maybe another time.”
“Yes.” She curled his card into her palm, closing her fingers around it. “You’ll let me know what you find out?”
Sergeant Green took the bundle. “We through, Rog?”
He nodded. “For the moment.”
Kate watched their retreating backs for a moment before she turned away. With a sense of déjà vu, she walked toward her family, waiting for her in front of the house just as they always had when she came home from boarding school on holidays.
Mina walked down the front steps to meet her. “What did he want?”
“They found Mother�
�s purse.”
“Oh, good,” Mina said. “Be a shame to lose it. Margaret spent a fortune for it. It’s a real Mark Cross, you know.”
“But…” Kate started, then decided there wasn’t much point in arguing the implications of the find with Mina. At least, not now.
The tall front doors behind Dolph and Carl opened slowly. Esperanza, as always in a starched white uniform, emerged from the dark interior. Her silver hair was pulled back from her flat, Mexican-Indian face and twisted into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She moved gracefully, standing so that her shoulder covered the mismatched panes of the stained glass clipper ship set into the door. Kate had broken the window when she was seven years old and the repairman hadn’t been able to match the original colors. The old house and children had never been very compatible.
Esperanza opened her arms and folded Kate against her.
“Oh, Esperanza. I’m so glad you didn’t come to the cemetery.”
“I stayed because I was worried about Mr. Miles,” Esperanza said, nodding her head toward the companion house across the courtyard where Kate’s invalid uncle lived.
“Is he okay?” Mina asked.
“I think so,” Esperanza said. “See there? As always, he is watching.”
Carl glanced toward the window where Miles kept his constant vigil. Heavy drapes fell into place as Miles retreated from view. “Did he say anything to you?”
Esperanza shook her head. “I think he is too sad to talk.” Only a slight softening of the consonants betrayed her Mexican origins.
“Such a waste,” Dolph murmured. “He had a brilliant legal mind once, Carl. I’m sorry you’ll never be able to work with him. He could be such help to us on the oil leases.”
“Don’t talk shop, you two,” Mina said sharply. “Now that you’re working together, there’s one of Grandpa Archie’s rules I intend to enforce. He built three houses on this bluff for his family and no legalese or office chitchat is allowed in any of them. Right, Kate?”
“Right,” she said, straightening up and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “But we’re going to break another dictum right now. I’m hot and I’m tired and I’m thirsty. The new management is offering drinks all around even though the sun hasn’t passed below the breakwater. Esperanza, is there anything very tall and very cold?”
“I have chilled some nice wine for you.” Esperanza smiled tenderly at Kate. “I will bring it into the study where it is cool and you can watch for the sun to go down.” She patted Kate’s hand and went back into the house.
“She’s always so Zen,” Mina said when Esperanza was out of earshot. “So inscrutable. Wouldn’t you like to know what goes on in her mind?”
“No,” Carl said, “I wouldn’t. Let’s go inside.”
“You and Kate go ahead.” Mina grabbed him by the arm and stretched up to give him a peck on the cheek. “We’re going home. If Carl’s mother is coming tonight you youngsters will need some time alone. See you at eightish for dinner. Come, Dolphy,” she led Dolph down the steps and toward their house. Abruptly, she turned.
“Miles,” she called across the courtyard in a strong voice, “we’re home from Margaret’s funeral. She’s buried up on the hill next to Mother and Father Byrd and Kate’s daddy. Your flowers were lovely, dear.” Turning again, she walked briskly home.
* * *
Carl embraced Kate inside the great arched doorway. “I wish I could spare you the grimness of all this murder business.”
“Did Tejeda tell you about Mother’s handbag?”
“Yes.”
“You know what it means?”
He nodded.
“It’s scary,” she shuddered, “scarier than when I thought Mother was just a victim in a random killing, even if it makes more sense. If this was a premeditated thing by someone Mother knew, then chances are I know him, too.” She looked up at him. “Who? Why?”
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.” His smile was forced. “Those are just rhetorical questions, right?”
“Yeah.” She patted his damp cheek. “Just don’t leave town for a few days, mister.”
“Count on it,” he said, holding her close. “Now, about that drink?”
“You go ahead,” Kate said, stepping away. “I feel restless. I need to walk a little. Meet you inside later.”
“Don’t be long.”
Kate walked down the hall and out through the back terrace door. She stopped at the corner of the house to take a quick drink of water from a garden hose and to shed her black pumps. Barefoot, she crossed the cool lawn to the beach stairs. She raced down the stairs, the hot, green-painted wood burning the soles of her feet. At the bottom she stopped in a straggly patch of ice plant to relieve her feet and to catch her breath. Coughing what felt like chunks of the smoky air, she surveyed the nearly deserted beach.
Twenty feet from the bluff a patch of the smooth white sand was disturbed, as if churned by wrestling giants. Kate followed the trail of one of half-a-dozen sets of footprints leading to the place. Standing there, she turned and looked up, searching for the place where the murderer might have stood when he threw her mother’s handbag over the bluff. She narrowed it down to a fifty- or sixty-foot section of the craggy bluff, including the beach stairs. Surely, she thought, the handbag was meant to be found. On a public beach in the middle of a heat wave, someone would see it.
She counted on her fingers; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Three days since the murder. She doubted that the handbag could have been here, undiscovered, for three days, and the realization gave her a cold chill. The murderer had been around here after the murder, and maybe no one had been alarmed because it was someone they all knew.
Lost in thought, she swept her toes in long arcs, smoothing the disturbed sand. She turned up cigarette butts, bits of pop can tops, shells, little chunks of driftwood, the usual beach detritus. She hardly noticed any of it, until a dull shine caught her eye.
Bending closer, she found, sticking out of the sand, a torn corner from an old black-and-white glossy photograph. Browned by time, the fragment showed four feet standing on a brick pavement: a pair of slender ankles in thick 1940ish pumps, and a pair of child-sized dark oxfords and dark socks. The woman’s feet were angled smartly, posed. The child’s feet were planted solidly apart, the left food turned in slightly.
She turned the photo over. There were no markings on the back, but the paper was clean and dry. It couldn’t have been in the sand very long.
“Shelling?”
Startled, she spun around, slipping the fragment into her pocket. “Dolph! Where’d you come from?”
“I saw you down here alone. Thought you might want some company.”
“Thanks.” She looked him over, standing there in his usual beach attire—shorts, barefeet, sand clinging to the hair on his still-muscled legs. “You look okay. Thought you were ailing.”
“Good as new. It’s just low blood pressure; can’t stand still too long.” He turned in a half-circle, leaving deep prints in the sand. “Is this the place?”
“Guess so.” She shrugged. “What’s it all about, Dolphy?”
“Wish I knew. Your mother had more than a few people mad at her, but to think someone would kill her. It’s crazy.”
“Who was mad at her?”
“You want a list?” His question was a short bark of laughter.
“Yes.”
“In addition to the immediate family, about every second name in the Santa Angelica phone book.”
“Be serious,” she sighed.
“I am. Since your mother filed suit to be named Miles’s conservator, she’s had a lot of bad press. Miles did a lot of good things for the town, and people still remember him.”
“You’re just trying to cheer me up, right?” She turned away from him, hands plunged deep in her pockets. The torn edge of the photograph scratched against her thumb. She pulled it out and thrust it in front of him. “Recognize these people?”
Dolph too
k it from her and angled it under his bifocals. “Nice legs. Where’s the rest of her?”
She shrugged. “That’s all I found.”
“Here in the sand?” He turned it over. “Doesn’t show much. Still… Maybe you should give it to that lieutenant.”
She took it back. “Maybe.”
“Kate.” He lifted her chin. “You’re mad at me. I spoke out of turn.”
She shook her head. “I’m not mad.”
“What then? You look like you’ve lost all your starch. Where’s my old sparring partner?”
She laughed softly. “Maybe I’ve taken one too many on the chin.”
“Tell your old uncle, Kate. Remember how you used to come and pound on my shoulder when you were mad at your mother? I’m still here.”
“I’m not angry.” She looked away. “It’s something else. I have this sort of empty feeling inside sometimes that’s somewhere between loneliness and not enough sex; like indigestion that won’t go away. When things settled down after the divorce I started noticing it. And the last few days since Mother died, it’s been so intense, like a big rubber eraser came by and scrubbed out some essential part of me. I don’t like it.”
Dolph wrapped her in his arms, folding her head against the hollow under his chin. “It’s just loneliness, Kate. It’ll pass. Do you know how lucky you are right now? May sound awful, but without Carl, without your mother, there’s no one to stop you from doing anything you want to do.” He held her away and peered into her face. “No one but yourself, that is.”
“Funny thing to say, since you’ve just asked Carl to come and work with you.”
“He may not be great husband material, but he’s the best litigator I’ve ever met.”
“Dolphy,” she smiled again. “You’re not like anyone else I know.”
“How’s that?”
“You always cut right through the shit.” She stayed beside him a few moments longer, taking from him a dollop of emotional sustenance. They stood in the circle of churned sand, watching the horizon, where thick plumes of white occasionally broke through the shroud of black smoke. Kate followed the curve of the bay until it intersected the range of low, round coastal hills, fuming now like loaves of bread fresh from the oven.
No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1) Page 2