Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “No. I thought I saw him at the memorial service, and it seemed odd, that’s all.”

  “Well, Pepper had a way about her. Lots of people admired her.” I could sense that Claudia found this baffling.

  “Thanks. And don’t forget to call if I can help out.” As soon as I hung up, I pulled the phone book off the shelf and turned to the S’s. There was only one Sheris listed, a W. Glen Sheris in a neighboring town. I tried the number, but the woman who answered didn’t know any Tony. “We have a grandson, Teddy, but he’s only nine months old,” she said. “My son and my husband are both Walter Glen.”

  Even if I’d found him, I wasn’t at all sure what would come next. I had planned to say I was interested in finding someone to look after my garden, and that Pepper had given me his name. I thought maybe if I could get him talking about her, I might learn something useful. But he was hardly going to admit to killing her—that suspicion was, I finally conceded, what underscored my uneasiness—and I certainly couldn’t grill him about attending her service.

  Still, it was worth a few more calls. I tried information for all the major East Bay cities and finally, in Berkeley, found a listing for Tony Sheris. “Is that the Sheris on Dwight?” I asked. The telephone company won’t give out addresses, but I’ve learned that if you ask the right questions you can sometimes get what you want anyway.

  “No, this one’s on Blake. Two-three-five-three.”

  Bingo. Again I dialed, rehearsing my story.

  “You have reached a number which is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this number in error——

  I hung up, drained of the elation I’d felt only moments earlier. I’d tell Stone about Tony the next afternoon at the Wine Festival. Or maybe I’d just forget the whole thing. Attending your employer’s memorial service, even if you happen to simultaneously disconnect your phone, hardly made you a criminal.

  By the time I went to bed that night, though, I knew I would do neither. First thing the next morning I was going to drive by the Blake Street address myself, just to check it out. At least that way Stone wouldn’t think I was a complete imbecile.

  I went to sleep thinking how impressed Stone would be if I managed to uncover an important lead. Right around the time I drifted off, he was telling me how incredible I was and soundly planting a commemorative kiss, which lasted a full minute at least, on my lips.

  SEVEN

  A little after six the next morning a pair of icy feet pushed against my back.

  “Move over, Mommy, you’ve got the warm spot.”

  I slid over and then turned so that Anna could curl against my chest. She squiggled and squirmed and inched backwards until everything was adjusted to her satisfaction; then she patted my hand and fell back to sleep. I stayed awake, though, enjoying the soft warmth of my daughter and concocting elaborate schemes to explain the behavior of the Livingstons’ gardener. By the time I got up I was almost convinced there was, indeed, nothing to explain. Still, I intended to drive into Berkeley that morning.

  Because I was already feeling guilty about having to drag Anna with me, I made waffles and hot cocoa for breakfast, and poured extra syrup on her plate. As I predicted, Anna was pleased. Wrapping her arms around my waist, she buried her face in my sweatshirt.

  “I’m glad I was the egg chosen,” she declared solemnly.

  “The egg?”

  “Yes. You know how I started out as an egg? Well, if some other egg had been chosen then I wouldn’t be alive. And then I would miss you terribly.”

  A remarkably sophisticated, if self-canceling, concept. “I’m glad you were the egg chosen too,” I told her. Then, in the interest of both fairness and biological accuracy, I reminded her that she should also be happy she was the sperm chosen. “It takes both to make a baby don’t forget.”

  I know, but the egg is more important, right?”

  “They’re both necessary.”

  “But the egg is the leader.”

  A budding feminist. I started to explain and then gave up. “We’re going to take a drive to Berkeley this morning,” I told her, tweaking her nose. “So run along and get dressed.” I changed into a clean sweatshirt and got out the map.

  We found the place on Blake without any trouble. It was one of those two-story, stucco apartment houses built in the late 1950s. Boxy and drab, it had probably looked uninviting even when new. The effect now was downright dismal, though given its proximity to the university, I was certain the rent was anything but cheap.

  The mailbox listed a Sheris in apartment 206. Standing on tiptoe, I peered through the mail slot to see if Tony had any letters. Empty. I was expecting maybe one from Pepper, begging for mercy? Or a ten thousand dollar check drawn on a Swiss bank, with a little Post-It attached saying something like, “Good job, Tony”? Actually, I was so pleased with myself at establishing his identity and finding out his address, I hadn’t bothered to think much beyond that, except to convince myself there was something unusual about his connection with Pepper.

  The elevator was at the end of the building, diagonally across from the mailbox. Someone had scratched the words “out of order” in the paint on the metal doors, but I wouldn’t have trusted it under any circumstances. Instead, Anna and I took the stairs, which smelled of urine and stale grease, but at least appeared to be intact.

  “Don’t touch anything,” I warned her. “And be sure to keep your fingers out of your mouth until we get home and wash your hands.”

  She nodded and kept her arms rigidly fixed to her sides until we got to the top landing, where she reached out and ran her hand along the length of the grimy railing.

  “Anna!”

  “Whoops.” She looked truly penitent. “I forgot.”

  With the kind of deep sigh that is second nature to mothers, I reminded her to keep her hands away from her face, then rang the bell. A few minutes later, I knocked on the door, loudly. Just then a pudgy man with curly hair and a scraggly black beard emerged from the apartment to the left.

  “I’m looking for Tony Sheris,” I said. “Do you know him?”

  The man was busy locking his door, and glanced in my direction only momentarily before turning his attention back to the door. He had that intentionally disheveled look so many Berkeley residents like to cultivate, and the aloof, somewhat apathetic expression which went with that look.

  “He lives here, doesn’t he?” I asked.

  “He a friend of yours?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Yes, he is.”

  “He pulled out day before yesterday.”

  “Moved?”

  “That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

  “Where’d he go?”

  The man shrugged and pocketed his keys. “All’s I know is he’s gone. We wasn’t exactly close.”

  I’d read about declining test scores and poorly prepared students, but I hadn’t imagined things were this bad. I could only hope the young man was a member of the Berkeley fringe and not actually a student at the university.

  “Did Tony live alone?” I asked, grabbing at what seemed to be my only chance of finding him.

  “Never saw anyone else looked like they lived there.” The man began edging toward the stairs.

  I followed after him, as closely as I dared. “Was it a sudden departure?”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “Had Tony been planning to move or was it a spur-of- the-moment decision?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  I glanced quickly at Anna, who was walking uncharacteristically close to my side.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “But like I told you, him and me didn’t talk much.”

  “Was there anyone in the building who was friendly with him?”

  Another shrug. “He kept to himself mostly.”

  We were at the bottom of the stairs. I knew he wasn’t going to hang around and answer my questions forever, but I gave it one last shot. “What was Tony like?”

  The man eyed me with suspicion.
“I thought he was a friend of yours.”

  “A friend of a friend, actually.”

  For a moment he chewed on his mustache, then apparently decided my reasons for being interested in Tony didn’t really matter.

  “He was just your average guy. Quiet, kind of a loner, though I did see him with a girl a couple of times. He fed a lot of the stray cats in the neighborhood. Fed ‘em and talked to ‘em. They could probably tell you more than I can.” He laughed at his own cleverness. “That’s about it.”

  “What about the girl, does she live around here?”

  “Nope, at least I haven’t seen her. Wasn’t a girl really, more like a woman. Good looker too. Sleek blond hair and a tight little behind. Some guys have all the luck.”

  Pepper? The description fit, but I couldn’t imagine why she would visit Tony at his apartment. I couldn’t imagine her getting all hot and heavy with a guy like Tony, either. He was too young, too meek, too bland. I wasn’t sure what her type was, but I was pretty certain what it wasn’t.

  As I led Anna back to the car I tried to stifle my disappointment, consoling myself with the thought that it had been a stupid idea anyway. From now on I was going to leave the detective work to the police.

  “Why does that man want to live there?” Anna asked as we pulled away.

  “He needs to live somewhere.”

  “But that place smells.”

  I delivered a brief lesson in economics and the realities of living—I didn’t want Anna to grow up thinking the rest of the world was like Walnut Hills—but I agreed with her that the place was indeed pretty bad. Then I put all thoughts of Tony and Pepper out of my mind and concentrated instead on choosing something to wear to the Wine Festival that afternoon—something stylish and sophisticated . . . and maybe a little sexy.

  ~*~

  The Benefit Guild Wine Festival is a fundraiser held each year at the Diablo Gardens, part of an old estate now owned by the city and leased out for parties, weddings, concerts and, with increasing frequency, the making of movies. Restaurants and caterers donate the food, wineries the wine. Members of the Guild bake the desserts. The profits, which are sizable, go to support local charities and services for the community.

  As fundraisers go, it’s pretty good. A number of local artists exhibit their works, and there are usually several bands. The real draw, though, is the food and the chance to sample wine from a large number of wineries. Since I had sworn off drinking until I was no longer pregnant— however that event happened to come about—I left Jim and Daria to wend their way around the tasting tables while I headed for the desserts. I’d learned from experience that desserts disappeared early, the Guild ladies preferring, on the whole, to plan parties rather than bake for them. If I spent time savoring marinated chicken wings and polenta with salsa, the best desserts would be long gone by the time I went for them.

  “Be sure to sample my fudge,” Daria called after me. “You’ve never tasted anything like it.”

  Promising myself an extra long run the next morning, I loaded my plate with chocolate brownies, miniature éclairs, lemon cheesecake and a piece of Daria’s fudge. Then I grabbed a handful of sugar-coated almonds and moved out of the way.

  I was headed for a quiet, shady spot when Lily Peters caught my arm and pulled me aside. “Ah’ve just had the most awful experience,” she drawled in that honey-coated Southern voice of hers. “Ah just can’t believe it.”

  It’s hard to tell when Lily is really upset, because she habitually overreacts, sounds breathless even when she says good morning. When I’m around her I feel as though I should be ready to whip out the smelling salts at a moment’s notice. Instead I held out a brownie.

  She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “No thank you. Ah believe ah’ll save dessert for later.”

  Her face was red and splotchy as though she’d swallowed the wrong way and been coughing hard. The rest of her, though, looked as gorgeous and polished as ever. Lily never goes anywhere unless her makeup is perfect and her outfit is fully accessorized. She has one of those beauty contestant hairdos that hangs in soft, shoulder-length swirls around her face and never looks mussed. She brushed at one of those loose S-shaped curls now, and looked at me.

  “Ah’m still shakin’,” she gasped.

  “What happened?”

  “Larry and I were standing in line over at the Frog’s Leap table. They make a wonderful cabernet if y’all haven’t tried it. We were talking about something totally boring, when ah noticed Burt McGregory standing in front of us with some other man, laughing.”

  “Mmm.” I frowned at my cheesecake thoughtfully.

  Lily shuddered. “That man makes my skin crawl.”

  I was pretty sure she meant Burt McGregory, the developer who wanted to build on the ridgeline, and not Larry, who was her husband.

  “You worked with Pepper on the Save Our Hills Action Committee, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I stood in front of Safeway holding a petition, but that’s about as far as my involvement went.” And Pepper had had to twist my arm to get that. I’m simply not a doer.

  “Then you don’t know what a slime ball that man is.”

  Actually I’d heard him called worse. “What did he do now?”

  Lily took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, the other man made some snide comment about the opportune timing of Pepper’s death. Can you imagine? Opportune. What a horrible word to use about someone’s death. And then McGregory said, ‘Maybe this will put an end to that damned petition of hers. The woman’s been a thorn in my side from the start.’”

  Here Lily stopped to close her eyes and shudder before continuing. “Then he laughed again and said, ‘I ought to find the guy who did it and offer him a reward.’ “ Lily turned to look at me. “Can you believe it?”

  “Well, he certainly wouldn’t win the Miss Manners award for good breeding, but his animosity toward Pepper is hardly news. And you said yourself he was a slime ball. People like that live in a different world.”

  “But still, to speak like that about someone who is dead. Someone who was m-mur-murdered. It makes me nauseous.”

  I could see that it was indeed making her sick, or at least somewhat unwell. She looked as though she might at any moment fall over in a heap. But she pulled herself together and continued.

  “I was at the last town council meeting,” she said. “The meeting where Pepper made that wonderful speech and the council decided to postpone the vote till next month. After the meeting, I saw McGregory grab her by the arm and call her”—here she lowered her voice and held a hand to her mouth to shield innocent bystanders—”a royal bitch. He told her she would regret the day she took him on. Wouldn’t you’d think that now, given what’s happened, he’d feel some remorse?”

  “Maybe he killed her.”

  Lily’s hands flew to her mouth. “I never thought about that.”

  And here I’d believed that’s what she’d been suggesting.

  “Do you think he did?” she asked with a nervous glance toward the Frog’s Leap table.

  “Probably not. Walnut Hills isn’t exactly Chicago, and it’s quite a jump from slime ball to murderer.” Besides, McGregory had always struck me as the brag-and-bluster type, all show and little substance. I couldn’t imagine that when it came right down to it, he felt passionately about much of anything, except maybe his twenty-two-year-old wife, Lynette.

  Larry came over then with a glass of wine for Lily and a business associate he wanted to introduce her to, so I headed back to refill my plate, promising myself that the following round would be nothing but celery spears and fruit salad. I made a quick sweep of the faces near me, hoping to catch a glimpse of Stone. Then, angry with myself for even thinking about him, I started toward one of the bands.

  This man on the brain stuff was not my usual style. I left that sort of thing to women like Susie Sullivan who seemed constitutionally unable to ignore an attractive male. Sure, now and then I’d admire a firm derriere in
a pair of tight jeans, or a set of biceps which seriously tested the stretching power of lightweight jersey, but since I’d married Andy, since I’d met him in fact, I hadn’t actually spent much time thinking about other men. Not that I had found myself thinking about Stone exactly, and certainly not in any substantive way, but something about him affected me nonetheless.

  Just as I neared the knoll where a female singer was trying to dazzle the small crowd gathered around her, I saw him. He was standing off by himself, a glass of seltzer in hand, like a director surveying a scene which wasn’t playing the way he’d envisioned it. At that same moment, he noticed me and started in my direction with a smile. There was a dangerous fluttery feeling in my chest that even my deliberate deep breathing wouldn’t quiet. But what the heck, I was allowed a few harmless fantasies, wasn’t I?

  “This is quite a shindig,” Stone said with a sweep of his free hand.

  I agreed. It was, in fact, an amazing undertaking for a group of rich, pampered housewives. It surprised me every year.

  “And a great selection of wines. Too bad I’m on duty.” Frowning, he raised his glass and inspected it, then took another swallow of seltzer. “What about you? You’re not sampling any of the wine?”

  “I’m on a diet.” It was the excuse I’d been using for the last month. It had always worked just fine, but this time I was holding at least six hundred empty calories in my hand, right out in the open.

  Stone glanced at my plate and gave me a funny look. “Interesting diet.”

  He was standing close enough for me to detect a faint, fresh smell, as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. Close enough for me to feel a silent charge pulse through the warm spring air between us.

  “Did you find out who Pepper was seeing?” I asked, stepping away slightly.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. Crime detection is slow, tedious work. I’ve got men working on it though.”

  “But discreetly?”

  “Very discreetly.”

  I had just begun to tell him about Tony and my visit to Berkeley that morning, when a tall, willowy blonde in a very short, black skirt came up to us.