Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  “Mr. Tregear—Steve. You’re a very smart guy, but you’re not a criminal lawyer or a cop. I don’t think you appreciate how hard it is to get a conviction for capital murder. If we break the rules, he’ll walk.”

  “Okay. It was only a suggestion.”

  It occurred to Ellen, who had kept quiet during this exchange, that it was almost as if she were watching a Greek tragedy. Tregear was right, but Sam was bound by the rules of procedure. She had the terrible feeling that it would end badly.

  “Could we use someone from one of the licensing boards?” she asked suddenly. Both men turned to her as if they had forgotten she was in the room. “A contractor operates under a state license. Somebody from the state board goes in to make sure they’re up to code, or something like that.”

  “It’s a thought.” Sam nodded meditatively. “I don’t know if we can get away with it, but we can run it by Legal.

  “Time to go back to work.”

  He stood up, which instantly got Tregear to his feet, and the two men shook hands. It was like watching a couple of prizefighters touch gloves.

  “Well, thank you for coming,” Tregear said.

  In the general movement toward the front door, Ellen glanced at Tregear.

  “How’s the finger?” she asked.

  He smiled and said, “It’s mending.”

  “I suppose he might suit you,” Sam said, once they were back in the car. “God knows, he’s screwy enough.”

  Ellen could only laugh. “You don’t miss much, do you, boss.”

  * * *

  When they got back to the squad room, Ellen phoned her friend in the DA’s office. Mindy was not impressed with the idea.

  “Sorry, Toots, but it’ll have to be a police show from end to end. It’s either probable cause or you get their permission. You use a subterfuge, it’s an invasion of privacy.”

  When Ellen told Sam, he merely shrugged.

  “Okay, we’ll worry about lovesick secretaries another day,” he announced. “For now, it’s time to knock on doors. You take Wilkes and Hudson, since they were both in apartments here in town, and I’ll take Blandish. I think she lived in a house over in Oakland. God, I hate Oakland. I always get lost.”

  Kathy Hudson had lived in a regular apartment building, with a super. He was perfectly willing to go through his records and, yes, they had had the air-conditioning guy in when the main vent in that unit had frozen up. He gave Ellen a copy of the invoice, which read, “Allied Heating and Cooling.” The date was just a few days shy of a month before Kathy had been found in a neighbor’s car trunk.

  As soon as she was back on the street, Ellen’s cell phone rang.

  “Are we still on for dinner?” Tregear asked.

  “Yes. Sure. I said so.”

  “You said, ‘That sounds good,’ which isn’t quite the same as ‘yes.’ I just wanted to hear you say it when Sam wasn’t around.”

  “How do you know he isn’t around now?”

  “Sam is in Oakland.”

  In one of those barely conscious acts that seem to have nothing to do with the will, Ellen found her eyes wandering over the sidewalk on the other side of the street. And then suddenly she realized she was looking for Tregear.

  But, then, he wouldn’t be there. He seemed like God gazing down from heaven.

  “And am I ever going to find out how you know that?” she asked.

  “You will if you have dinner with me.”

  “Then make it a good story.”

  “Would you like me to pick you up?”

  “No. I’ll come over there.” She figured she would need an hour in her apartment, to get changed, feed Gwendolyn and explain to Mindy that she was having dinner with a material witness. “Figure seven-thirty?”

  “Okay. Where would you rather eat, my place or out?”

  “I’ll leave that to you.”

  She clicked off her cell phone, thinking how odd it was that this man, who seemed to know everything, had needed to hear again that they had a date. Somehow it pleased her, although she couldn’t have said why.

  I suppose he might suit you. God knows, he’s screwy enough.

  Apparently Sam knew a thing or two.

  * * *

  Mrs. Patterson, Sally Wilkes’ landlady, remembered Ellen and didn’t seem very glad to see her again. The apartment, of course, was still sealed, and that was a grievance. But she recalled that there had been a problem with the heat and a man had come to replace the thermostats.

  “You don’t think he killed her, do you? He was such a nice man.”

  “Probably not,” Ellen said, smiling her best professional smile. “We’re just checking anyone who might have had access. Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “Young. Fifties, I’d say.”

  Mrs. Patterson’s eyes took on a dreamy cast as, apparently, she enjoyed the recollection. Ellen remembered what Tregear had said: To women he’s like catnip.

  Well, like father like son. Suddenly she was really looking forward to her evening.

  With vast reluctance, Mrs. Patterson consulted her checkbook. There was an entry just a month back, $212.17 to Allied Heating and Cooling.

  Bingo. This was it. It just felt right.

  When Ellen got back to her car, she phoned Sam and told him she had struck pay dirt.

  “Any luck with Rita?”

  “Not a thing. She lived with a couple of girlfriends, and I have the impression they paid their bills with nookie. Anyway, they claim there haven’t been any servicemen in the house over the past year.”

  Of course not. And, anyway, why would anyone living in Oakland call a San Francisco company? They would want someone local.

  “She was killed at the Marriott,” Ellen told him. “You want me to run over there and ask if they’ve had anyone in?”

  “If you would be so kind.”

  But the Marriott was a blank. With 329 rooms, they had their own maintenance staff, thank you very much. So maybe Rita had been just a target of opportunity.

  But now she had a match on two cases. It was enough.

  * * *

  As it turned out, they went to a restaurant on the Wharf. It was only a few blocks from Tregear’s apartment and he said it would give them more time to talk.

  On the way their shoulders kept brushing against each other in a way that seemed perfectly natural, as if from long-standing habit.

  In the restaurant there was a little interval for regaining one’s self-possession as they were seated and could busy themselves with the contents of the menu.

  “Would you like some wine?” he asked while the waiter, who seemed to regard Tregear as his personal possession, hovered behind his chair.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Pinot Grigio?”

  She merely nodded, and the matter was settled.

  When they were alone again, she had thought he would want to hear about her reaction to his material, but he never brought the subject up. Instead, he wanted to hear about her.

  “I hardly know anything about you,” he said. “Aside from your taste in wine and the fact that you drive a four-year-old Toyota, you’re a mystery to me.”

  He smiled, a trifle uncertainly, and it occurred to Ellen that this was not a man who simply assumed you found him irresistible. That kind of unself-conscious modesty was in itself almost irresistible. He could even order a bottle of wine without seeming to suggest that he was one of the world’s great connoisseurs.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Whatever there is to know—whatever you care to tell me. I’ll settle for why you decided to become a cop.”

  “You shouldn’t ask me questions I’m not sure I have the answer to,” she said, allowing a little hint of laughter creep into her voice. “I don’t know, except that it’s about real life.”

  “Is homicide real life?”

  She almost said, You of all people should know, but she restrained herself. Instead she said, “It beats Atherton.”

>   “You don’t like Atherton?

  He smiled again, and Ellen began to think she might be developing a taste for Tregear’s smiles.

  “It’s not real life. It’s like a ritzy department store where everyone spends their time shopping for things they don’t really need. After a while you wonder what you’re doing there.”

  For a moment his eyes drifted away as he seemed to consider the matter. He didn’t give the impression he was reaching any conclusions.

  “Given the life you’ve led, that probably strikes you as self-indulgent nonsense.”

  Instantly it occurred to her that she might have made some ghastly mistake, but he only shook his head.

  “No, I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “Nobody wants to live in a cage, even if it’s gilded.” And then he laughed. “Actually, that isn’t even halfway true. Probably most people would be perfectly happy in a gilded cage.”

  “Most people in Atherton seem happy with it.”

  “That’s because they can’t see the bars.”

  Yes, she thought. That was precisely the truth of it—at least, it was her truth. The two of them had started out from such different places and somehow managed to arrive at the same point.

  There was a basket of sourdough French bread on the table. She took a piece and buttered it thickly—it was a way to distract herself a little, and she needed distracting. She felt almost as if she were falling under a spell.

  Besides, sourdough French bread was one of the chief reasons why Ellen knew she could never live anywhere except the San Francisco Bay Area, and butter was a vice she indulged only in restaurants.

  The wine came, and the waiter, with the air of someone who knew how these things were done, poured a little into Tregear’s glass and waited expectantly for him to taste it.

  “It’s fine. It’s wonderful,” Tregear said, and the waiter seemed satisfied.

  It was just a little ceremony, something by which restaurants above a certain price point defined themselves. And for Tregear, it seemed, that was all it was, a little ceremony, like shaking hands. Something he was willing to put up with to avoid injuring anyone’s self-esteem.

  So the waiter filled their glasses and went away, content.

  And it occurred to Ellen, almost as a happy recollection, what a nice man Tregear was, how considerate he was. And not by design but by character.

  “So tell me something else about yourself.” Tregear was still holding his wineglasss. Then he appeared to remember its existence and set it down. “How you liked Berkeley, for instance. Or your six all-time favorite movies. Anything.”

  By the time dinner came, they had settled that neither of them liked Ingmar Bergman films, that Earl Hines was the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived and that unhealthy desserts were the best kind.

  When dinner arrived, Ellen was telling him all about her problems with her mother.

  “It’s terrible. I’m thirty years old and every time I’m around her she acts like I’m getting ready for my first prom.”

  “And so I take it being a homicide detective isn’t her idea of a suitable career?”

  “You guessed it. Marriage to a board member at Wells Fargo would have been her idea of a suitable career.”

  Tregear smiled the faintest of smiles. Probably he was thinking of the mother he could hardly remember and the father who just wanted to kill him.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellen said, suddenly penitent. “I must sound to you like a perfect brat.”

  “No, you don’t.” The smile broadened just a trace. “I’m glad you told me.”

  And then he smiled suddenly the way one does upon seeing the joke.

  “Everyone, it seems, has trouble with the folks.”

  While they ate they talked about San Francisco, and Ellen described to him how cold the Pacific was and the quantities of jellyfish that got washed up on Ocean Beach.

  “It isn’t really much of a beach, but you can walk up toward the Cliff House and watch the sea lions on Seal Rock. I like sea lions.”

  “Breathes there a man with soul so dead that he doesn’t like sea lions?”

  They both laughed. They both liked sea lions, and wasn’t that wonderful.

  They talked about other things as well. Tregear, it seemed, was interested in music, particularly jazz, and was extremely disappointed to learn that Turk Murphy had been dead for decades.

  “I heard one of his records once, when I was in the Navy. Oh well. Another of life’s missed opportunities.”

  “They named a street after him.” Ellen shrugged. “Actually, it’s only a block long. It’s up in North Beach.”

  The idea that the city fathers would name a street after a trombone player—even if it was only one block—seemed to please Tregear.

  “I think I’d like to go visit it,” he said.

  Dessert—crème brûlée—was eaten in near silence. It was as if they shared a secret that they couldn’t mention, even to each other.

  Once she looked up and caught a look in his eyes of almost wistful longing, as if he believed she would be forever beyond his reach, and she felt in the core of her being that he had to be the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

  And in half an hour or so, it occurred to her, less as a decision than as a discovery, they would go to bed together. The idea made her smile, and she hoped he could see that smile, and read it correctly.

  * * *

  It was about that simple. On the walk back to his apartment they held hands, and once inside his door she turned to him, put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss that told him there wasn’t anything to negotiate. After that it just happened, as if it had never crossed either of their minds that it wouldn’t.

  And it was perfect. There was no other way Ellen could have described it. It didn’t have anything to do with technique or staying power. Nobody had anything to prove. It wasn’t an athletic event, just a man and a woman coming together because on some level too fundamental for analysis they needed each other.

  After the first time, the thought crossed Ellen’s mind that it had been a long, long drought and she probably really needed this drink of water. But the first time was only the first time, and there was a second and third, and each time was just as good, or perhaps even better. They would make love and sleep and wake and make love again. And it was making love. It wasn’t just sex.

  She didn’t know how he felt, and she wasn’t sure it would make any difference. He might be using her, and if that were true she wanted to be used. But she didn’t think he was using her. This man was everything that Brad and her other lovers had never dreamed of being.

  17

  In the town of Half Moon Bay, some twenty-five miles down the coast road from San Francisco, stood a house set in the midst of fields that smelled of brussels sprouts. It had been left abandoned for nearly eight years, so the owner was happy to have it occupied even at a cheap rent, with only a one month deposit, particularly since the new tenant had offered to fix it up for just the cost of materials. He was a single man in his fifties, a pleasant sort and apparently very capable. After two days he had the well running again and after five the old wiring had been stripped out and replaced and it was safe to turn the electricity back on.

  In that first week the landlord had come out nearly every day to see for himself how things were progressing. But after a while his tenant made it clear, without actually putting the thing into words, that he regarded these little visits as an intrusion and that he preferred his privacy, after which the landlord left him alone.

  The tenant’s name was Walter Stride.

  And, aside from the landlord, hardly anyone in Half Moon Bay even knew of Mr. Stride’s existence. He worked in San Francisco and did his shopping either there or in Pacifica, which was on his way home. He must have rented a post office box somewhere because he never got any mail, and no one ever saw him in the local restaurants and bars. The only signs of his existence were the rent payments, in cash, that were regularly del
ivered to his landlord’s office and the house lights that could be seen from Highway 1.

  * * *

  Walter had quickly recovered from his pique at the landlord. After all, the guy was just trying to be friendly. Walter could appreciate that, although cultivating friendships was not very high among his priorities. The way he saw it, one friend was one too many. Friends were a nuisance and a danger.

  But the landlord struck him as a good sort and had taken the hint. Walter would reward him in a way he could appreciate, by taking good care of the property. He himself preferred a tidy house. He had been careful to put a big plastic tarp down on the basement floor to keep Sally Wilkes’ blood from ruining the linoleum.

  Sally had been his guest for a pleasant evening at home. That was the sort of relationship he preferred to cultivate. She suffered so eloquently that it had been really a pity when he had to tape her mouth closed. The next one would be better because by then he would have the basement properly soundproofed.

  He had the next one all picked out. He was looking forward to her because she would come of her own free will. It was more amusing when they chose their fate. Sally, for all her youth, had known better than to trust strange men. He had had to grab her as she walked to her car, which was both dangerous and unsatisfying.

  It was a blessing that age made women foolish. Harriet Murdoch was a forty-something realtor who lived and worked across the hills in San Carlos. She was divorced and her son was safely distant in some college in Los Angeles. Walter had met her in a bar two weeks ago.

  By comparison with a lot of places he had lived, the Peninsula seemed rich. In all of the towns following one another along that finger of land, with San Francisco at its tip, the general impression was of prosperity. You had to look to discover a real slum.

  Under the circumstances, finding the right kind of bar had been a challenge. Women with comfortable incomes tended to be suspicious to begin with, and snobs. They wouldn’t look at a man who didn’t wear a suit, and Walter didn’t even own a suit. He wanted someplace where he would fit in, where no one would notice him and where he would have a chance to work his charm.

  The right kind of bar had been a place on El Camino Real, which was the main artery up and down the Peninsula. Pete’s Tavern was on a corner, next to a discount furniture store. The neon signs in the window advertised Budweiser and Miller Lite.