So rethink that visit. How could he have reminded her of her father, with that intensity, if she hadn’t seen him in the same outfit, if she hadn’t been with him on that last day? Of course, she might have seen him other times in his jogging clothes . . . except that wasn’t very likely. They didn’t live together, they didn’t jog together.
Strout . . . he had mentioned in the case of May Shinn—though Hardy knew it was true anyway—that standard operating procedure at the morgue was to bag the victim’s clothes. Celine had seen Nash at the coroner’s . . . but he’d been naked.
Certainly the jogging suit was a better explanation of her extreme reaction than just seeing him in domestic bliss with wife and child. If he hadn’t been so convinced she was in love with him, would he have ever believed her explanation for her reaction? Dismas, the lady-killer. He shook his head in disgust.
But why?
Money? Greed? Well, it was true she stood to benefit with May gone, more than anyone except perhaps Ken Farris, but since she already had more than she needed he’d quickly discounted that potential motive, not to mention that he never considered her a suspect anyway.
He wasn’t happy with it. The more you got, the more you wanted? Money, the alleged root of all evil? Including murder? What about her reaction to May’s death— “At least she won’t get the money.” Greed—one of the seven deadly sins. And greed didn’t presuppose poverty or exclude the wealthy.
There had to be more.
It was rocking him. He was aware, sitting back now in his chair, that his stomach had tightened. He consciously unclenched his fists. He knew he was right, but wasn’t sure why. One thing was sure, as the killer she had acted plausibly, smartly—played on his male ego, let him think she was fixed on him in his role as her father’s avenger while May was a suspect. How better keep him from suspecting her than to fabricate and build their own illicit relationship, to use his libido, as insurance? He was such a fool.
But Glitsky had looked into this. Celine had been in Santa Cruz, she couldn’t have been out on the Eloise.
Hardy thought he had read and reread each of the binders on his desk, but he hadn’t—Abe’s reports following up on alibis for Ken and Celine sat there within their tabs. He had listened to Abe telling him about the two weight lifters who lived with one of their mothers, about Celine spending the weekend remodeling their Victorian house. Now he read Abe’s synopsis of the telephone interview he had conducted.
The telephone rang on his desk and he grabbed at it.
“Mr. Hardy. This is Judge Chomorro.”
And I’m the Queen of Spain, Hardy thought.
But it was the judge’s voice, no mistake. What was he doing calling Hardy at home over the weekend during a trial? This being his first murder trial, Hardy wasn’t certain what to make of it—was a call from a judge to a defense attorney a relatively common practice, or another example of Chomorro’s own inexperience? There was nothing to do but hear him out.
He said hello and listened while the judge told him that he had called to give him fair and decent warning that he had decided to deny Hardy’s 1118.1 motion, that the evidence was going to the jury for their verdict. Pullios had also been informed.
“By the way,” Chomorro said, “again in the interests of total fairness for the defense”—or covering your ass in an appeal, Hardy thought—“I want you to be prepared for the prosecution to object to your argument on the investigation procedure leading to the indictment of Mr. Fowler.” He paused a moment. “And I am of a mind to sustain those objections.”
Hardy tried to get out an objection now. “I understand we’d covered that in pretrial, Your Honor.”
“Well, I’ve given it a lot of thought since then, especially since yesterday, going over your eleven-eighteen, and I fail to see any direct relevance to the evidence that’s been presented. Ms. Pullios may have moved too quickly on Ms. Shinn, but there was ample evidence to indict Mr. Fowler in the first place, and certainly enough for a jury to decide to convict. We’ll leave it up to them.”
“Your Honor, you realize that was the main thrust of my defense.”
“Frankly, that’s one of the reasons for this courtesy call. I wanted to give you some time to prepare. Talk to your client—he can tell you there was nothing technically improper about his indictment. A trial is supposed to weigh evidence. If you want to impugn the system, you’re of course free to appeal, as I presume you will if you lose.”
Hardy could imagine Drysdale or Locke or both of them having had a chat with Chomorro the previous night or this morning, reminding him “a trial is supposed to weigh evidence.” Right out of the textbook.
Here was the reason for Chomorro’s unorthodox call. He’d talked to somebody and been told that his ruling on the law regarding Hardy’s defense would—perhaps— provide grounds for a prosecutorial appeal. No, Chomorro wasn’t going to screw up his first murder trial. It was a straightforward procedure. Evidence was presented and the jury decided. That was how he was going to play it.
No way he felt he could ask Glitsky. It was a fishing expedition, and Hardy knew it, and Abe had his own work to do. He wouldn’t run off on what he’d consider a hunch of Hardy’s to double-check his own work. Hardy couldn’t blame him.
Frannie called at six-thirty, a half hour late. He hadn’t noticed and swore at himself. “How are you?” he asked. “How’s the Beck?”
Her voice seemed small and far away. He told her he was still working and she said that she’d known that. Erin, Rebecca’s grandmother, had invited her to stay for dinner, maybe even overnight if the rain didn’t let up. He’d be at it until the wee hours anyway. She didn’t think he’d mind. Did he?
He didn’t mind, he said. How could he? This had been his doing and he was going to have to fix it.
He told her he loved her, would miss her but understood. He was getting to the end of it.
Jeff Elliot owed him one. He was an investigative reporter, and if there was something to discover in Santa Cruz, Hardy hoped he was the guy to find it. He only had to sell him on the idea.
“In this weather? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s probably going to be beautiful there tomorrow.”
“Hardy, read the papers, will you? This is supposed to go on all weekend.”
“Jeff, it’ll be an adventure. Take your girlfriend, go down there and have a little vacation, on me. What’s a little rain among lovers?”
He got himself a large can of Foster’s Lager and a handful of nuts and walked through the long and suddenly lonely house. Wind howled between the buildings, the rain fell without letup, the worst storm in years.
He turned on the Christmas-tree lights, planted his beer and nuts on the reading table next to his reclining chair and put a match under the kindling in the fire.
Sam Cooke played in his mind—Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody. Forget that. He had brought up his binders and was going to go through them again.
His own notes. He’d taken so many notes he thought his wrist was going to fall off. Every time he had spoken to Pullios, Drysdale, Glitsky, Farris, Celine (while it had still been strictly professional), he had jotted down at least the gist of the conversations if they concerned this case. Random thoughts, theories of Moses and Frannie, of Pico and his old officemates.
At a little after ten-thirty he got up for another beer, after which he was going to hang it up for the night and get some sleep. He had just gotten to the time Ken Farris had come downtown, ostensibly to verify Owen’s handwriting on the will. Hardy remembered that they had gotten into how the system worked too slowly—Farris knew May had been on the Eloise . . . Celine had told him. Hardy had dutifully noted it, then written “hearsay” in the margin and had, if not forgotten it, at least dropped it from his active consideration.
Celine had also told Hardy that May had planned to go out on the Eloise with Owen. They’d been walking back from their first meeting; he remembered it, now, distinctly.
May,
however, had denied it, and May, it turned out, was telling the truth.
So Celine had lied . . . except he still couldn’t prove it. Opening the refrigerator, he stopped. He slammed the door closed and nearly ran back up through the house to his binders.
It took only a minute. It had been when Pullios had him question Celine in front of the grand jury, trying for the indictment on May Shinn. Celine had testified that on Tuesday morning, June 16, she had called her father at his office, wanting to make sure he hadn’t made any plans for that weekend that included her. He had said no, that he and May were going out alone on the Eloise.
Okay. Celine’s version was in the record. But it was still hearsay. It was also a lie, but how to prove—?
Farris’s office.
Where there was a beep every twenty seconds and everything was on tape?
61
Hardy slept fitfully, waking before dawn.
Rain continued to fall, but more gently now, in a thick drizzle. He showered and dressed and sat drinking coffee, staring at the clock on the wall, wondering what would be a reasonable time to call Ken Farris again. Reasonable or not, he wanted to call him before he had time to leave the house.
He went back to the binders and read over the testimony, wanting to make sure—although he knew it—that it hadn’t been fatigue. He had asked Celine when she had called her father.
“Sometime in the morning. It was the Tuesday, I believe.”
“The sixteenth?”
“If that was the Tuesday, yes. He was at his office down in South San Francisco . . .”
He held out until seven-fifteen, about the longest ninety minutes of his life. Farris didn’t appear to appreciate his restraint.
“What the hell, Hardy? What time is it?”
He told him, apologizing, explaining, keeping him on the line. “I’ve got a real lead,” he concluded. “I don’t want to put you through all this again, give you another suspect to worry about, but I think I’ve found a place to finally get some physical evidence.” He told him his conjecture about the tapes. “Please tell me you’ve still got them.”
“We should,” he said, “we keep them for six months.”
“So you’ve still got the ones for June?”
“I don’t know. Is that six months? I’m not really awake yet, you know.”
“What I’d like to do is review the last two weeks of June, all the calls Nash made or took at his office.”
Farris sounded like he yawned. At least he was waking up. “That’s all? How about a full-scale audit while you’re at it?”
Hardy could take a little abuse if he was going to get what he wanted. He waited.
“Shit, why not? You looking for anything in particular?”
“Something, yeah, but I’d rather not say exactly what just now.”
“I mention it because we keep logs. You won’t have to listen to all the tapes if you know who you want.” He went on, sounding more like himself now. “I know all this taping seems like excessive security, but we’re in a high-tech field. There really is espionage. People have claimed oral contracts with me or Owen on some things. We like to protect ourselves.”
“You don’t have to justify a thing to me. Where do you keep the logs?”
“They’re in South City at the plant. We’ve got a vault.” Farris sighed. “I don’t imagine this is going to wait until, say, business hours tomorrow morning, is it?”
Dorothy took the exit and headed the car up the hill away from the ocean. The wipers clickety-clacked on the flat windshield of the old VW Bug. The windows on both sides were down an inch to act as defrosters. Both she and Jeff wore parkas for warmth. The heater didn’t work. The drive to Santa Cruz down Highway 1 from San Francisco had taken them a little over an hour, and they probably should have been in sour moods. Dorothy rolled down her window further and put her hand out, catching raindrops.
“I don’t think I’ll ever hate the rain again.”
“Maybe we should move to Oregon.”
“Tierra del Fuego,” she said. “It rains all the time there, I hear.” They had used yesterday’s storm as an excuse to stay inside for the whole day, nothing to do but curl up, stay warm, enjoy each other. When Hardy had called they were ready to go outside. Not dying for it, but it had some appeal. “I’ve got to meet this friend of yours, Hardy. What a great idea!”
“Well, he’s not exactly a friend. He’s a source.”
“If you remember, I was a source for your bail story.”
“You’re prettier than he is. A little bit, anyway.”
She slapped at him. The car swerved and she straightened it. They were driving through a heavily wooded pine section back up behind the UC campus. A brown slick of water ran down the center of the street. There was a house about every two hundred yards.
“I think that was our street you just passed,” Jeff said. “Plus you said you’d have an idea by now.”
She pulled the car over and stopped, looking behind her at the street sign. She started making a U-turn. “I do have an idea,” she said, “although I don’t know why I have to think of everything.”
Jeff put his hand on her leg. “I think of some things.”
She smiled, looked down, and covered his hand with her own, driving now with one hand. She squeezed it. “Yes, you do.”
The idea was to get them talking.
Len and Karl weren’t home—they were down at the gym, pumping iron together. They did it every morning, Karl’s mother explained. They were religious about it. Both were very disciplined boys, very structured. Len was currently runner-up Mr. Northern California and Karl was going down to Santa Monica right after New Year’s for the Gold’s Gym prelims.
The three of them, Jeff, Dorothy, Mrs. Franck, sat in the kitchen nook—brand-new hardwood floors, a custom oak table, curved glass in the windows. They were drinking herb tea and Mrs. Franck had cut up some fiber bars into cookielike things. The old Victorian house was large, newly painted, immaculate. Everywhere there were new rugs, framed prints on the walls, antiques.
“But look at me, chattering on. You didn’t come here to talk about my sons—I call them both my sons. Len’s my son-in-law really, but he’s like a son. They were legally married last summer, you know.”
“I think that’s wonderful,” Dorothy said.
Mrs. Franck beamed. “I’m so glad. A lot of people don’t understand, you know. They see two men . . . and you know. I admit I had a difficult time accepting it at first. But if you could see them—and then offering to take me in—I mean they’re just wonderful boys, and they do love one another. And then having all this . . .”
Looking around, Jeff took the opening. “Somebody must be doing very well already.”
Mrs. Franck beamed. “I know,” she said. “This place now. It’s a dream come true.”
“It is beautiful,” Dorothy said.
“I don’t think even Celine did it justice,” Jeff said, almost as an aside to Dorothy. “I’m glad we came down.”
“Are you really going to feature it in the Chronicle?”
Jeff nodded. “It’s why we’re here. Celine told me I couldn’t do a complete feature on restored Victorians if I didn’t see this place. But I still think she sold it short—I don’t think there’s one in San Francisco that’s this nice.”
“Well, if the boys come home, don’t even breathe a bad word about Celine. They won’t hear of it.”
“You’re all pretty close, huh?” Jeff had his notepad out.
Mrs. Franck nodded. “She must be the most generous person God ever put on this earth.”
“She was a help, was she?”
Karl’s mother rolled her eyes to the heavens. “You can’t imagine! Anything we needed. You should have seen the place before, and now . . .” She gestured to take it all in.
“So, is Celine like a sponsor, or what?” Jeff asked.
“You know, that’s the funny thing. I think she just took a liking to Karl. He had been up in the
city, trying to work out some things—they have a coach up there who’s really marvelous—and he met her at her club. She’s in fine shape herself, you know.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, you have to know Karl. But he is the sweetest man. Everyone loves him. The two of them—he and Celine—just got to be friends. I think he was a little lonely for Len, up there all alone in the city like he was. He needed someone to talk to, and you know he’s so faithful—he didn’t want to lead on any other men—so I guess he and Celine just clicked and he started telling her about his dreams, you know, his life, his career, this house he and Len wanted to fix up.” Mrs. Franck lowered her voice and leaned toward them across the table. “Celine’s very rich, you know. Her father was Owen Nash.”
Jeff and Dorothy both nodded.
“It’s a terrible shame about her father, isn’t it, that poor man. Has that judge been found guilty yet?”
Jeff told her the trial was still going on.
“Well, it’s just so awful, the whole thing. Especially for Celine.” She sighed. “And on top of everything else.”
Dorothy spoke up. “Are other things hard for her too?”
“Oh, you know, even the rich. Sometimes I think it’s almost harder for them.”
“Why?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, you know. All the people after their money. You never know if anyone’s sincere. I think that’s why she cares so much about Karl. I mean, before he even knew about the money, that she had money . . . well, he’s just always been there for her. He’d do anything for her. We all would. I think she just needs some friends she can count on, who don’t pester her. She needs a place to stay where it’s not a hotel, where she’s not Celine Nash, just a normal person.”
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