Nobody's Child (The Jeri Howard Series Book 5)

by Janet Dawson

  Finally, no doubt to get rid of me, the woman at the desk gave me an address on Divisadero. I knew from the number it wasn’t the Pacific Heights side, where huge homes on the steep hills looked down on million-dollar views of the city and the bay. This was the Western Addition, sandwiched between the picturesque Victorians that edged Alamo Square and the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, not far from the funky allure of the Haight-Ashbury district.

  It was a neighborhood which, several decades ago, had been traditionally black, and still had a strong black presence, though it was now integrated with San Francisco’s ethnic stew. The neighborhood also had its rough edges. It was crowded and known for a high crime rate. On the plus side, there were lower rents for the flats in the Victorian buildings and good access to mass transit, which was necessary. Many people who live in San Francisco don’t have cars. The reason they don’t was brought home to me as I attempted to park. Finally, on my fourth pass, I found a spot on Hayes and hoofed it back to Divisadero.

  It was past three in the afternoon. I had no way of knowing whether Ennis would be home. He was a college student but there was a chance he had some sort of job as well, even a seasonal one to tide him over during the holidays. He lived in a three-story building, Victorian in appearance, with a security gate to one side of the commercial storefront on the first floor. I saw two names listed on the apartment number I was looking for, Ennis and Barfield. I pushed the buzzer. A moment later a woman’s voice answered.

  “I’m looking for Patrick Ennis,” I said.

  There was no answering buzz to let me into the building. I looked past the gate, peering through the square window on the apartment building door, where I could make out a narrow foyer. A moment later I saw someone round the corner at the end of this entryway. When he opened the door and looked at me through the bars on the gate, I recognized him from his photograph at his aunt’s house. He was a good-looking young man in his early twenties, café au lait skin setting off the pencil-thin mustache that decorated his upper lip. He was casually dressed in khaki slacks and a green knit shirt.

  “Are you looking for me?” he asked, with a city dweller’s wariness.

  “I am if you’re Patrick Ennis.”

  “Who are you? What’s this about?”

  “My name’s Jeri Howard. I’m a private investigator,” I began, equally wary. “I’ve been in touch with your aunt, Ramona Clark.” Trouble was, I didn’t know if Ramona had called to warn Patrick that I was looking for him. In the back of my mind I hadn’t entirely eliminated Patrick Ennis as a suspect in Maureen Smith’s murder.

  He took the card that I passed through the bars of the gate and turned it over in his hands. Then he smiled, and at that moment there was no doubt in my mind that he had fathered Maureen’s child. The resemblance was there, for anyone who wanted to acknowledge it.

  “Now, why would a private investigator want to talk with a fine, upstanding young man like me?” His tone was amused, but he still hadn’t let me in.

  “I’m looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of a young woman named Maureen Smith,” I said. Would mention of Maureen’s name get me into the building, or a door shut firmly in my face?

  “Maureen?” Now he looked surprised, and not only at the fact that she was dead. It was as though he hadn’t thought of her in a while. His reaction seemed genuine. “She’s dead? How did that happen?”

  A car went past on Divisadero, horn blaring, and I was conscious of a group of teenagers behind me on the sidewalk, all of them talking at once. “Is there somewhere we can talk that’s a little less public?” I asked.

  “Well, I...” He hesitated, still not sure whether to let me into the building.

  I saw movement behind him. Another building resident, heading for the front door, I guessed. But the person stopped and snaked an arm around Patrick’s waist. It was a young woman, about the same age as Patrick. She was quite beautiful, with smooth coppery skin and a tousled mane of black hair. She wore a quilted jacket over her slacks and sweater and had a leather shoulder bag with the strap draped over one shoulder.

  “I was wondering what happened to you,” she said, looking at him fondly as she snuggled next to his shoulder. Then she looked at me, with a question in her dark brown eyes, and raised her hand to brush back a strand of hair.

  “This is my fiancee.” Patrick’s introduction came just as I noticed the diamond sparkling on her left hand. “Colette Barfield. Colette, this is Jeri Howard. She’s a private investigator. Wants to ask me a few questions about... somebody I knew once.” His mouth tightened and he looked at me, willing me not to say anything more about Maureen while Colette was here. “We were just about to go out,” he told me. “Can this wait until another time?”

  “No, I’m afraid it can’t.” I gazed at Patrick, while Colette’s eyes moved from Patrick to me, then back to her fiance. Her unspoken inquiry went unanswered.

  “No problem,” she said in a cheery voice, with a smile to match. “I’ll go on downtown. That’ll give me a chance to do a little Christmas shopping on my own. I’ll meet you by the escalator on the first floor of San Francisco Centre at...” She consulted her watch. “Five-thirty? By that time I’ll be ready for dinner and someone to carry all my packages. Then we can talk.”

  Patrick Ennis let me in, and we both watched in silence as Colette Barfield strolled down Divisadero toward the corner of Hayes Street.

  “She’s a nice lady,” I said.

  “The best.” Patrick led the way down the entry hall and started up the stairs.

  “How long have you been together? When are you getting married?”

  “I met Colette about two years ago, when I transferred to State. We’ve been living here maybe a year.” He stopped at a door and stuck a key in the lock. “The wedding’s in June, after we both graduate.”

  Their apartment was on the second floor, a small one-bedroom furnished in wicker and rattan from Cost Plus. One corner of the living room served as an office, with a computer and printer crowding a desk. Next to it was a shelf full of textbooks. On top of this I saw a large framed photograph of Patrick and Colette, and a basket full of Christmas cards. A large window with horizontal blinds looked down on Divisadero. In front of this a low table was decorated with an artificial Christmas tree, dwarfed by the wrapped packages that surrounded it.

  Patrick shut the door behind us and pointed toward a chair. I decided to remain standing.

  “You better tell me what this is all about. You say Maureen’s dead, but the girl wasn’t that much younger than me. Some kind of accident?”

  “She was murdered,” I said, watching his face. “Her body was found in November, on a lot up in the fire zone.”

  Patrick looked appropriately shocked, but without the connection that comes from deeper feelings. He didn’t appear to be hiding any guilty knowledge of the crime either. He simply looked confused.

  “Why do you want to talk to me? I only knew the girl a few months.” He shrugged and moved toward the window that overlooked the street “That was three years ago, when we were both staying with my aunt. I was going to Laney. Then I transferred over here to State. I haven’t seen Maureen since I left.”

  “But you had sex with her.”

  His mouth tightened under his mustache. He put his hands on his hips and his voice took on a challenging tone. “It’s none of your damn business who I had sex with.”

  “It’s not that easy, Patrick.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Did your Aunt Ramona tell you what happened after you left?”

  He shrugged. “She said Maureen ran away again, that’s all.”

  “She didn’t tell you Maureen was pregnant.”

  It wasn’t a question. I knew very well Ramona Clark hadn’t bothered her nephew with this little detail that might complicate his life. She certainly hadn’t mentioned that it was she who had kicked Maureen out of her house.

  “Oh, my God,” he said.

  He sat down abruptly in one of the wi
cker chairs, all of his young manchild bravado disappearing. “Maureen? Pregnant?” He wiped one hand over his face, as if to erase my words. “Did she have it? Was it...? I mean, damn, you know what I mean.”

  “Yours?” I reached into my purse and drew out one of the snapshots that showed Maureen and Dyese Smith at Naomi’s house last March. I handed it to him and he gazed at it wordlessly.

  “A little girl, huh.” Emotions rippled over his face. “Sure as hell looks like me, doesn’t she?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Did my aunt take this picture?” he asked, looking up at me. I nodded. “Why the hell didn’t she tell me?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.” And I’d like to be a fly on the wall when he did. “Tell me about Maureen, Patrick.”

  He handed back the picture, then ducked his head. “She was a pretty little thing. Really quiet and sweet. She seemed like she needed someone to hold her.” He sighed. “And I guess I obliged.”

  “I guess you did. She had her baby in November, two years ago.”

  He was quiet for a moment, as though he were counting the months. “One thing led to another, you know,” he added, sounding defensive. “I won’t say it didn’t mean anything. But that was a long time ago.”

  “A pleasant interlude,” I commented. “Nothing more. She was vulnerable, and you took advantage of her.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he protested, marshaling his defenses. “She wanted it as much as I did. Hell, the girl was eighteen. She didn’t act like a virgin. I guess you could say I took what was offered. And then I left and moved over here and I didn’t give it another thought. Damn it, if I’d known she got pregnant—”

  “What would you have done?”

  I refrained from pointing out the advantages of using a condom, at least with regard to preventing unwanted pregnancies. It seemed like locking the barn door after this particular horse had fled. As to the other benefits of condoms, we’d get to that in the next phase of this conversation.

  He sighed again. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s not like I would have offered to marry her. Give her some money, except I didn’t have much of my own. Maybe pay for an abortion, if that’s what she wanted. But I guess she could have done that on her own. Looks like she had the baby instead.” He stopped and looked at me as though something had just occurred to him, something he wasn’t sure he liked. “If Maureen’s dead, where’s the child? Is that why you’re looking for me, to take the child?”

  It had never occurred to this young man that I might consider him a possible killer. Except I believed him when he said he hadn’t seen Maureen since Dyese was conceived.

  “I can’t take care of a child,” Patrick protested. “Not right now. Oh, damn, what am I gonna tell Colette?”

  “The child’s name is Dyese, Patrick. And she’s missing. No one has seen her for a couple of months.”

  “Damn,” he said, striking his knee with a balled-up fist. “You think the same person who killed Maureen killed the little girl?”

  “I don’t think Dyese’s dead, Patrick. I’m doing my best to find her.”

  I stopped talking as a siren approached. Some emergency vehicle sped by on Divisadero, its wail drowning out other noises and making conversation impossible. When the siren faded away, I looked at the young man seated across from me in this crowded living room, leaning forward as his hands clutched the arms of the wicker chair.

  “There’s something else we have to talk about, Patrick.”

  I took a deep breath and told him about the autopsy tests on Maureen Smith’s body, the ones that revealed she was HIV-positive. All the time, I was thinking of my earlier conversation with Dr. Pellegrino over at Children’s Hospital, when he was telling me about the stress an HIV diagnosis puts on a family. I watched Patrick Ennis’s young face pale with shock as he contemplated the consequences of unprotected sex and the possibility that the walls were about to come tumbling down on his head. I watched his eyes fill with anguish and fear as they moved toward the picture of him with his fiancée, and felt as though I were pulling the bricks out of the wall, with both hands.

  But he had to get tested. If I didn’t tell him, who would?

  Thirty-four

  DUSK CAME AT ME OVER THE OAKLAND HILLS AS I drove back over the Bay Bridge, though it wasn’t yet five o’clock. As the year spiraled toward its end, the days grew shorter. I was halfway across the bridge when I remembered that I’d intended to stop at Cavagnaro Industries in the Financial District, to see if I could get further information on the people who owned the lot where Maureen had been found. But my interview with Patrick Ennis had left me as cold and as short as the days.

  I returned to my office and made a pot of coffee. The message light on my answering machine was blinking. I’d received a call from Lenore Franklin, the admiral’s wife, inviting me to stop by for some eggnog and cookies sometime during the next few days. When I opened the mail, I found bills and a couple of Christmas cards. I hadn’t sent any Christmas cards this year, something I usually did. Just hadn’t been able to muster the enthusiasm.

  Now I propped the cards on top of my bookcase, next to the invitation I’d received a week or so ago from Vee and Charles Burke, inviting me to a holiday open house. I checked my calendar and made a note in pencil. Maybe spending a few hours with Vee and her husband would get me into the mood. A week until Christmas, and I still hadn’t done any shopping.

  I sipped coffee as I tackled some paperwork. It was more or less busywork, end-of-the-year stuff. In this week before Christmas, business was at low ebb. I’d wrapped up several jobs in the past two weeks, and the case I’d acquired last week was routine. With all this peace, love, and goodwill in the air, not many people were interested in hiring a private investigator. At least not for the reasons people usually hire investigators. I’d have to wait until after the new year, when the nastier side of human nature reasserted itself.

  The phone rang and I picked it up. It was Sid, advising me that the coroner had finally released Maureen Smith’s body. I wondered if Naomi would sober up long enough to schedule a funeral. That’s what she wanted, after all. To bury the dead and get on with her life, such as it was. I wasn’t sure she was still my client. In fact, I’d decided I was really working for two-year-old Dyese Smith. It appeared to me that the missing child had no other advocate.

  I’d just poured myself another cup of coffee when the door to my office opened. Dr. Kazimir Pellegrino, he of the dynamite blue eyes, walked in. I was so surprised to see him, I was speechless. Finally I sputtered, “Dr. Pellegrino.”

  “You’re supposed to call me Kaz, remember?”

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  He smiled. “You gave me your card, Jeri.”

  Of course I had. I hid my embarrassment by raising my mug to my lips. Then I remembered my manners. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  I got to my feet and stepped around the bookcase to the little table at the back of my office. Now that I’d offered, I wondered if there was enough coffee left for my guest. Fortunately there was about a cupful in the glass carafe. I poured it into a mug and turned to find my guest had followed me. At these close quarters I was very much aware of my attraction to him. It made me feel gawky and awkward.

  Come on, Jeri, I told myself. You’re thirty-three—make that thirty-four—years old. I’d been around the block, several times. What was it about this guy? Or was it me? After the fits and starts of relationships since my marriage to Sid ended, was I ripe for getting swept off my feet? Not that the doctor appeared to be holding a broom. I was reading a lot into a pair of blue eyes and an unexpected visit.

  I took a deep breath and handed the doctor his mug. Then I motioned him to the chair in front of my desk. Once we were both seated, I waited for him to speak.

  “Have you had any luck?” he asked after taking a sip of the coffee. “Finding the child you told me about last week? I thought about her all weekend.”

 
; I shook my head. “No. I’m discouraged. But I’ll keep looking. I’m afraid if I don’t, no one else will. Her mother’s dead, her grandmother’s an alcoholic. I have this depressing feeling she’s going to end up in foster care whether she has HIV or not.”

  “As I told you Friday,” he said, “we have children in our program who do well in foster care. There are loving, dedicated foster parents out there. Sometimes it’s best for the child to be removed from a volatile situation. In other words, if nobody wants this child, I know people who will take very good care of her.”

  “Now all I have to do is find her.” I paused and took a swallow of coffee. “I found the father of the child. At least I’m fairly certain he’s Dyese’s father. I told him about Maureen’s HIV infection. He took it hard. He’s engaged to be married and he’s been living with his girlfriend. I hope I did the right thing.”

  “God, yes, you did the right thing,” Kaz said, cradling the coffee mug in his hands. “Sometimes the bad news is necessary so people can do what they need to do to take care of themselves.”

  I sighed, recalling the look on Patrick Ennis’s face as my words hit home. “How long have you been with the pediatric AIDS program at Children’s?”

  “About a year. I came on board after I got back to the States.”

  “Where were you before?” I asked.

  “I spent three years with a group called Doctors Without Borders.”

  “The relief organization?” My interest in this man rose to new heights. Kaz nodded. “I’ve been impressed by their work. Where were you?”

  “Somalia. Rwanda after that. I was suffering from burnout, so I decided I needed a break from the stress.”

  I shook my head. “So you came back to the States and started working with children who have HIV and AIDS? Sounds like you exchanged one type of stress for another.”

  Kaz smiled. “At least here nobody’s shooting at me.”

  “In North Oakland? Give it time.”