McCone and Friends

by Marcia Muller

  We didn’t really plan to go in the water; it’s cold along the northern California coast, even in the summer. So I caught up with her and grabbed her hand, and we strolled south to where the beach backed up against the cliffs. There were only three people around—a daddy and two kids, maybe around seven and eight. The kids were building sand castles, and the daddy was lying on his back, his head propped on a driftwood log. Lottie and I parked it on another log and watched the construction project.

  “You want to tell me about it?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever’s got you tryin’ to see if that bike can fly.”

  “Just a problem at work, is all. No big deal. Shar’s got me on this case that’s going no place, no way, no how. You’d think she’d give up. The woman’s fixated.”

  Lottie waited.

  “Okay,” I said after a minute, “this is the situation. There’s this dude, seriously weird. Name of Harry Homestead. Lives all alone in this mansion down the Peninsula that makes my dad’s place look like a homeless shelter.”

  “Hard to believe that.” Lottie’s a little in awe of my father, who makes an obscene heap of money as a country singer.

  “Well, believe it. Seven and a half years ago this dud married big bucks. Older lady, Susan Cross, of the oil and banking family. Way back when, her forebears robbed practically everybody dumber than them who ever trekked through Emigrant Gap. Harry, though, he was kind of questionable, being from someplace nobody ever heard of in Nebraska and having—among other things—run a carnival concession and done a stint as a dealer in Vegas. That’s where Susan met him, Vegas. And she married him a few weeks later, without a prenup. Maybe she thought he was exotic, after years of boring high-society life with her late husband. Who knows what makes people get together?”

  Lottie grinned and squeezed my hand. A lot of people thought we were an unlikely couple.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “one thing the two of them had in common was gardening. Harry and Susan loved flowers and spent a lot of time in the greenhouse at her Hillsborough estate. A couple of months after the wedding, one of her arrangements won what I guess you’d call the Grammy of gardening, and the picture in our file shows them with it, smiling like it was their firstborn and looking in love.”

  “I take it the wedded bliss didn’t last?”

  “You got it. Four months later, to the day, Susan disappeared. Vanished totally, without a trace. Leaving Harry in the Hillsborough mansion with the joint checkbooks. Everybody knew he’d murdered her, and that it was only a matter of time till he looted the accounts and split.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Nope. Harry stayed put. He didn’t even spend much money, just stayed on in the mansion and let the trust department of the bank pay the bills like they always did. He puttered around in the greenhouse, didn’t date, didn’t travel. Nobody knew if he was grieving, because he didn’t have any friends. He just lay low and cooperated with the cops who were investigating his wife’s disappearance.”

  “So maybe he didn’t kill her after all.”

  “Wrong again. At least, according to Shar. She and her client, Susan Cross’s attorney, claim Harry’s a patient man. He’s been waiting, they say, for the seven years to pass so he can get Susan declared legally dead. And if he has, all that waiting’ll pay off next week when he goes to court. Then all the loot’ll belong to him.”

  “So that’s what’s kept you so busy lately. Trying to get the goods on Harry.”

  “Yep. Shar says that all people leave traces of their crimes, and it’s just a matter of pinpointing and interpreting them. She’s sure that Harry’s feeling secure as his court date approaches and that he’s bound to do something stupid.”

  “After seven years of being careful? I don’t think so.”

  “That’s what I told Shar. You’d think she’d give up, wouldn’t you?”

  Lottie shrugged.”Maybe, maybe not. I have a hard time giving up on anything. Even you.”

  Now what the hell did that mean? I didn’t want to ask. Instead I watched the kids build their castles, and brooded about my morning conference with my aunt Sharon.

  “So what’ve got here, Mick?” Shar had asked me.

  She looked bright-eyed and pretty and sexy—for an old broad of forty. Her boyfriend, Hy Ripinsky, must’ve been in town. “What we’ve got is zilch,” I said.

  She gave me a look that said, Impossible.

  “Zilch,” I said again, but not as firmly. “Here’s how it went: Harry came out of the mansion at seven-thirty and went to the greenhouse. Stayed there till close to nine. Went inside and spent a couple hours in the room the house plans call the library.” I’d got hold of the plans in a perfectly legal way, since the mansion was registered as a state historical building. “Then he went to the master-bedroom wing, and the lights there went out around midnight.”

  Shar seemed to be waiting.

  “That’s all there is.” I couldn’t hold back and longer. “This surveillance is idiotic, and on top of that, I think I’ve caught a cold.”

  Now she looked sad. Oh, hell was she thinking I didn’t have what it takes for the business? Normally, I don’t get to do much field work, just sit at the computer, and she told me this case was a chance to prove my abilities. “Mick,” she said after a minute, “maybe it’ll help to review the case from day one.”

  “Whatever.” I slumped down in the chair, resigned to the rehash of details I already knew by heart.

  Shar opened the file in front of her, paged through it. “Susan Cross disappeared on October nineteen, six months and five days after she married Harry Homestead. That morning she drove to the city, left her car for an oil change at the Sutter-Stockton garage, and kept a nine-thirty appointment at Yosh for Hair on Maiden Lane. According to Homestead, he was to meet her in the lobby of the Saint Francis at twelve-thirty and take her to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Cross never showed.

  “Homestead waited at the hotel till one-thirty. Staff members saw him arrive and later go to the phones. He called the beauty salon, and they told him Cross left around eleven. He checked the restaurant, thinking they’d got their signals crossed about where to meet; called several of her friends, her attorney, and her banker, on the chance she’d stopped to see one of them and got held up. Nobody had seen her. Finally, he called the police.”

  To speed things up, I said, “The cops treated it as routine, told him to wait seventy-two hours and then report her missing. Next day her lawyer stepped in, and they took it more seriously. Cops talked to the people at Yosh’s, and that’s when one weird thing came out.”

  Shar nodded. “Cross told her stylist that she was going to meet Homestead’s mother later that day, and added that the woman was living in horrible circumstances. She said she hoped Mrs. Homestead would allow Harry and her to do something to help out. But when the stylist pressed for details, Cross changed the subject.”

  “And later it came out that Homestead’s mother had died ten years earlier. He claimed he didn’t know why his wife would tell the stylist something like that.”

  Shar flipped through the rest of the pages and closed the file. “The police started focusing their investigation on Homestead within a week. They searched the house and grounds of the estate; no body turned up. They did a complete background check on him. He came up clean except for a couple of old DUI’s. He agreed to take a polygraph test and passed. But as we know, some people can fool the lie detector.”

  “Shar—”

  “Cross’s family hired private detectives to try to get something on Homestead,” she went on. “Nothing. A reward was offered, and the usual nut cases came out of the woodwork. No leads. Homestead had no assets of his own, but he didn’t seem inclined to tap into his wife’s money. He’s kept a low profile for seven years, and if we don’t get something on him, next week he’s going to be handsomely rewarded for murder.”

  “Did you ever consider that he didn’t do it?”

/>   “He did.”

  “Or that you might be just a tiny bit obsessed with—”

  “I’m not. Harry Homestead killed his wife.”

  I threw up my hands. The woman can be so exasperating! “Okay! Whatever you say! He killed her. But we can’t prove it. This case is impossible.”

  “I thought I taught you better than that. No case is impossible.” She fixed me with that steely look of hers, the one that makes me feel like I’m still a five-year-old who won’t pick up his toys. “I think you’re burned out on this, Mick. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

  “I’m not burned out, Shar! I’m just…realistic.”

  Her mouth twitched. It does that only when she’s mad or worried. And I knew for sure she wasn’t worried. “All right, I’ll take the rest of the day off!” I got up and stomped out of there—fast.

  Lottie said, “Give it a rest, Mick. Stop fretting about the case and enjoy the afternoon.” She motioned at the kids. “You ever do that?”

  “Play in the sand? Who doesn’t? We used to have contests to see who could build the best castle.”

  “Who won?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “Of course.” She poked me in the ribs. I put my arm around her for self-protection, and we kept on watching the kids. They sure were enterprising. The boy finished his castle, marked out a subdivision, and started building another. The girl saw what he was up to, left her castle, and laid a sandy cornerstone.

  “Hey,” the boy said to her, “you can’t have two castles!”

  “You’ve got two.”

  “That’s different. I’m a boy and you’re a girl. And girls don’t got any money.”

  Lottie muttered, “A sexist, already!”

  The little girl gave her brother a snotty look—the kind I’ve seen plenty of times, from all four of my sisters. “You think I don’t have money,” she told him. “I’ve to lots of stuff you don’t know about.” That was when he grabbed her bucket and dumped sand over her head, and she screamed, and the daddy jumped up and clobbered both of them.

  And that was when something I hadn’t thought of before occurred to me, and I jumped up from the log, then pulled Lottie to her feet. “Hey, let’s go home.”

  “Now? Why?”

  “I want to play with my laptop.”

  It was getting dark by the time we got to my condo on the Embarcadero, not far from McCone Investigations’ offices. I went straight to my computer, not even bothering to take off my jacket, and Lottie joined me. By then, she’d figured out a few things too. “You doing a real estate data search?” she asked.

  I nodded without looking up from the computer keyboard.

  “Search by owner’s name? San Francisco County?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She sat down of the couch and waited while data scrolled in front of me on the monitor. Within a few minutes I had the information: Parcel 19 140-50. Owner: Harry Homestead. I turned and smile at Lottie.

  “Mick,” she drawled, ‘you’re grinnin’ like a jackass eatin’ sweetbrier!”

  “Well come and look where this property’s located.”

  She scanned the screen. “Ingleside district. Isn’t that the area of nice houses that drug dealers’ve take over? Where the property values aren’t worth squat anymore because of the crime factor?”

  “Yep.”

  “So why would Homestead buy property there when he’s got a perfectly good mansion down the Peninsula?”

  “I can think of one reason.”

  Her eyes met mine, and then she shook her head. “You didn’t read carefully, Mick. Homestead bought that property three years after his wife disappeared.”

  I looked where she was pointing. Damn!

  “Wonder who owned the place before he bought it?” she said.

  “This database doesn’t show.”

  “County registrar of deeds is online.”

  My Lottie thinks faster on her feet than I do.

  “Wolfgang Trujillo. What kind of a name is that?”

  Lottie smiled. “One that’s easy to trace. How many Wolfgang Trujillo’s can there be in San Francisco?”

  “If he still lives here.”

  “Try Information.” She handed me the phone I got a number and called. No answer.

  “Okay, Trujillo’s not home, but I left a message on his machine. I’ll try him again after I take a look at that Ingleside district address.”

  Lottie was already putting on her jacket. I went over and hugged her. “Sorry for ruining the afternoon and evening.”

  “I don’t consider them ruined, not when we’re nipping at the heels of a wife-killer.”

  “We?” I stepped back.

  “Yeah, we. You’re not keeping me out of this one. Besides, you might need me.” She patted her oversized purse.

  Yeah, I might. Lottie’s firearm-qualified and has a carry permit for her .357 Magnum. I can’t shoot straight to save my life. Plus she’s better at interviewing witnesses than I am; come to think of it, she’s my equal or better at almost anything we do. Which is what makes the relationship interesting.

  It was already the dangerous hour by the time we got to Harry Homestead’s street on the other side of the city.

  Three of those big old boats of cars that drug dealers seem to favor were parked in front of the house with a weedy front yard in the middle of the block. Guys who looked straight out of the Thugs “R” Us catalog lounged around on them, smoking and swapping lies while they waited for their clientele. Most of the houses were big two-story stucco places, set back from the sidewalk on a little grassy rise. They must’ve been nice once, but now they had bars on their windows and FOR SALE signs on their lawns.

  A couple of the dealers glanced at Lottie and me as we drove in, but the Yamaha and our leathers were what Shar called “protective coloration.” Meaning that we looked like we belonged, so they didn’t try to mess with us. A good thing, too, because the odds would’ve been with Lottie and her Magnum.

  Harry’s house was sunk way back behind a clump of yew trees. I pulled the bike up the drive and under them, and shut it down. Then we sat astride it, looking at the house. It was tall and narrow, cream stucco with dark timbers and leaded glass windows covered with heavy iron mesh. The light from the moon glinted off the glass, but otherwise it was dark.

  “Nobody home,” I whispered, “except maybe a ghost.”

  Lottie didn’t answer. She was fumbling around in her purse. “Wait here,” she whispered, and got off the bike.

  “Where’re you—” but she’d already disappeared into the yews. Dammit, what was she doing? This was my case. I should be calling the shots.

  A few seconds later I spotted her slipping up the steps to the entry, flashlight in hand. She disappeared through an archway, and I saw the beam swing around, stop, swing some more. Then she came off the steps at a trot and hurried back to me. “House is protected by Bay Alarm. We don’t want to mess with it,” she said.

  “I wasn’t planning to break and enter.” I probably sounded as pissed off as I felt.

  “The hell you weren’t!” she slid onto the seat behind me.

  “Well, maybe I would, if it was an easy in-and-out. If we’re right about this place, Harry hasn’t been near it for years.”

  “There’s still the problem of the timing. He bought it long after the missus disappeared.”

  “Maybe Wolfgang Trujillo can shed some light on that.” I took out my cell phone and punched out his number.

  Wolfgang Trujillo lived in a residential hotel on Nob Hill, close to downtown and the theater district. His living room was so full of books and magazines and playbills and newspaper clippings that there was only one place to sit—an old armchair with busted springs. He offered the chair to Lottie, and she perched on its edge.

  I leaned against the sill of a painted-shut window that stared smack at the wall of the next building, and watched Mr. Trujillo pace around the room. He must’ve been in his seventies, tall an
d skinny, with a sunken chest and a wild mop of white hair, and he liked to wave his arms around while he talked.

  “Mr. Homestead bought the Ingleside house on the advice of my former tenant, James Chaffee,” he said in response to Lottie’s first question. “I never met Homestead. The transaction was handled through Coldwell Banker.”

  “The house was rented to Mr. Chaffee for how long?”

  “Three, three and a half years before Mr. Homestead bought it. My wife had died, and I wanted to be closer to downtown, but I’d had difficulty selling, so I let it out instead.”

  “What can you tell me about Mr. Chaffee?”

  “He was a good tenant, kept the house and yard up. He installed an alarm system and didn’t ask for reimbursement. He paid his rent on a six-month basis, with a cashier’s check drawn on Wells Fargo Bank.”

  “I suppose you ran a credit check on him before he took possession?”

  Mr. Trujillo stopped pacing and gave Lottie a stern, somewhat astonished look. “Young woman, are you familiar with that neighborhood?”

  “Uh, sort of.”

  “Then you must be aware of the problems involved in owning property there. A house is very difficult to rent when drug dealers are camping on the front lawn, intimidating everyone who comes and goes. Mr. Chaffee gave me a cash deposit as soon as he looked at the place. He returned within the hour with a bank check for the balance. Frankly, I wouldn’t have cared if he had the credit rating of Saint Anthony.”

  “Huh?”

  “Patron saint of paupers,” I explained. I was raised Catholic, although most of it didn’t take.

  “Oh.”

  Lottie seemed thrown off her stride, so I questioned Mr. Trujillo. “Can you describe James Chaffee?”

  “Certainly. He was around forty. Five-foot ten or thereabouts, slender build. He had blond hair that looked like a toupee, or maybe a wig. Very regular features.”