Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  I nodded and smiled weakly, not trusting myself to speak.

  “I don’t want to rush you, Kate. I know how hard it is. And I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.” His voice was soft and low, like a gentle summer rain. “But I can tell when something’s right.”

  “Please, let’s not talk about it now.”

  “We’re going to have to talk about it sometime.”

  I nodded. “But not right now, okay?”

  With a quick squeeze, he released my hand and leaned back, stretching his long frame. “Okay. What shall we talk about then?”

  “Tell me what’s new with the investigation,” I said, taking a bite of lettuce.

  “Good grief. Here I am feeling like a million bucks, and you have to bring up that.” But he laughed and resumed eating.

  “Well?”

  “Let’s see. I told you yesterday about there being no one in Robert’s office who drives a Jeep Cherokee.”

  I nodded.

  “Then there’s Mrs. Aldridge, over on Chestnut Street, who says when she was at Pepper’s one afternoon, a man selling driveway cleaner came to the door and turned belligerent when Pepper declined a demonstration. Mrs. Curtis, who lives a couple of houses to the east of you, reports a ‘suspicious-looking Mexican boy’ delivering fliers to the houses on the street. We still haven’t been able to locate Tony Sheris, but we’ve run a check on him and he comes out clean.” Michael gazed at the cloudless sky for a moment. “Oh, and we’ve questioned a lot of Pepper’s friends. No one has any idea who she might have been seeing. Exciting stuff, no?”

  “So Tony’s not a suspect and Robert is?” I asked, cutting to the core of the matter.

  “We’re not ruling out anyone just yet.”

  I took a deep breath, and then, somewhat reluctantly, told him about Daria’s conjecturing. It all sounded pretty farfetched, but Robert had lied to me about the car, and it was becoming pretty clear that something had been troubling Pepper.

  Michael rocked back in his chair and listened, grinning goofily. When I finished, he leaned forward so that his face was only inches from mine. “You have the most amazing green eyes,” he whispered. “They’re soft and deep, like the first grass of spring.”

  “And you,” I told him sternly, “have the most amazing way of changing the subject.” But I fluttered my lashes and turned my “amazing green eyes” to meet his gaze. “I take it you don’t think much of Daria’s scenario.”

  Michael shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”

  We sat in silence for several minutes. Michael continued to look steadily in my direction, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, while I searched my mind for a safe topic of conversation.

  “Tony’s behavior still strikes me as suspicious,” I said finally. “Why would he just pick up and leave like that if he wasn’t involved in Pepper’s death?”

  “Who knows.”

  “Surely there must be someone he was friendly with. Someone who knows where he’s gone.”

  “No one we’ve been able to locate.” Michael sat up straight and took a long gulp of beer. “You’d really rather talk about all this stuff, than us?”

  “At the moment anyway. Murder’s a lot less scary.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Okay, we’ll do it your way.” He stood and walked to the railing. “Tony moved to this area about eight months ago from Minnesota. He graduated from high school last year with mediocre grades, but he was never a troublemaker. His mother was killed when he was ten, and his dad’s an alcoholic who works odd jobs only long enough to buy another bottle. Somehow Tony seems to have come through it all in one piece. People from his home town have only nice things to say about him, although no one seems to have known him all that well.”

  “What about the apartment in Berkeley?”

  “The manager says he was an ideal tenant. Kept the place clean and never caused any trouble. Doesn’t know where he’s moved to though.”

  I thought of the fresh, young face at the back of the church. The high cheekbones, the sun-bleached hair, the timid manner. He certainly didn’t look like a killer, but why else would he just disappear like that?

  “Have you tried asking at nurseries or garden centers?” I asked. “He must have worked for someone besides Pepper.”

  Michael shook his head. “Not that we’ve been able to discover, although he did take on some cleanup work for the city and he helped on a small landscape job for one of the spec houses Burt McGregory is building.”

  “McGregory!” I sat up and cleared my throat. “That’s the man who threatened Pepper, you know, because of her involvement with the Save Our Hills Committee.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed, and he cocked his head to the side. “Yes, I do know,” he said evenly.

  I slouched back down. “Sorry.”

  He studied his bottle for a moment, picking at the label with his fingernail. “Tell me once more, how long had you known Pepper?”

  “Two years. Roughly.”

  “Did she talk much about her past?”

  “I’m sure she must have, but I don’t remember anything in particular. Why?”

  Michael appeared to be weighing something. “Same rules as before. This is strictly confidential, okay?”

  “You think just because I slept with you, I can’t be trusted? Maybe it was all a ploy to get the inside scoop on Pepper’s murder for the Walnut Hills Sun?”

  A gentle smile crossed his face. “No, that’s not what I think.”

  “Good. So tell me what this is all about.”

  “Pepper Livingston wasn’t who she pretended to be.”

  “Who is?”

  He looked mildly annoyed. “Her real name was Rosalie Simms, and she was raised in Ohio, not on Long Island. She ran away from home when she was sixteen, was arrested once for petty theft and twice for prostitution. Along the way she also made a couple of porno films, strictly low-grade stuff.”

  “There’s any other kind?”

  He patted my knee. “There certainly is.” Then he removed his hand from my knee and rubbed his chin. “In nineteen-seventy-five she was peripherally involved in an armed robbery in which two men were killed. By cooperating with the DA, she got off with parole, but her testimony put her boyfriend behind bars.”

  “You’re joking. “

  “You think I’d joke about something like this?” He was clearly offended.

  “No, I guess not.” But I didn’t see how it could be true either. The woman he described was nothing like Pepper. “There must be some mistake. Maybe somebody who looked like her or had the same name. I never believed Pepper was her given name anyway.”

  “No mistake. We’d have had all this sooner except for some glitch with the central computer.” He fell silent a minute, then added, “That’s not all. The boyfriend, Jake Turbino, has just been released on parole. He arrived in San Francisco two weeks ago.”

  “Oh, my God, poor Pepper.” As stunned as I was by Michael’s revelations, what I felt most was a newfound sympathy for this woman, the friend I had never really known. “You’ve questioned him? This Jake Turbino?”

  Michael glared at me, but there was a twinkle in his eye. “Of course we’ve questioned him.”

  “And?”

  “Says he didn’t even know Pepper, Rosalie that is, was living in California.”

  “Certainly you’re not going to—”

  Hand raised in protest, Michael interrupted. “No, we’re not going to let it go at that. Jake was apparently a model prisoner, though. Took Jesus Christ as his savior and all. Swears he bears no grudge for the years he spent in prison. But he can’t, or won’t, tell us what he was doing the night she was killed.”

  Michael went inside for a moment and came back with a manila folder from which he extracted two photographs.

  “This is the guy. Have you seen him before?”

  Taking the photos, I turned so that my body blocked the glare of the sun, and studied them. They w
ere obviously prison shots. Head only, one full face, the other a side view. Jake had dark eyes, hair dusted with gray, and surprisingly delicate features despite his heavy frame. Definitely not a mobster face. Something about the mouth caught my attention, but the longer I looked the more certain I was that I had never seen the man before.

  “No, I don’t recognize him.”

  Michael retrieved the pictures and stuck them back in his folder. “We’ll be asking other neighbors and friends of Pepper. Hopefully we’ll be able to find someone who does recognize him.” He looked pleased, like a cat with his eye on an unsuspecting canary. “This just may be the big break we’ve been waiting for.”

  We carried the dishes into the kitchen, where Michael insisted we leave them for him to wash later. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I pressed my head against his chest. The scent of beer and sex and aftershave mingled in my head and filled me with a curious sense of peace.

  “Thanks,” I said, faltering somewhat with even so simple a statement.

  “It’s nothing. I do dishes all the time.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was the nicest lunch I ever had.”

  He kissed my forehead, and then the tip of my nose. “Likewise,” he said softly.

  Then he drove me home. “When’s your next day off?” Michael asked as he turned the car onto my street.

  “Saturday. But Anna’s home then.”

  “Send her to a friend’s.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  He looked skeptical.

  “She has her own, very strong, opinions about how she does and does not want to spend her days.”

  “So be persuasive,” he said.

  I leaned over and kissed him quickly. “I’ll try.”

  ~*~

  The phone was ringing as I let myself in. Guiltily I raced for it, worried suddenly that something had happened to Anna. What if the hospital had been trying to reach me all afternoon? Calling repeatedly, frantically, the whole time I was giving way to unbridled lust.

  But it was only Susie Sullivan calling to invite me to a dinner party for Robert. “Nothing elaborate,” she said. “But I do think the poor man needs our support. I was over there the other day to take him a lasagna, and he just seemed so . . . so lonely. Oh, wait a minute, there’s a call on my other line.” The phone clicked and I was left holding a silent receiver until she returned. “Sorry, wrong number. Anyway, I thought I’d call a few of his friends, though of course I don’t want all couples—that would be just too uncomfortable for him. And, well, I thought you’d be the perfect person to ask.”

  Perfect, I thought, because I was only momentarily single and clearly not perceived as competition. I wrote down the date, told her I’d have to let her know. Then, picking up the mail from the counter where I’d dumped it in my rush to reach the phone, I sat down at the table. Among the bills and advertisements was a card from Andy, who was indeed in Switzerland. As usual, he’d written to Anna, describing for her a bicycle trip he’d taken through back-road farm country. Vertically up the side of the card, he’d scribbled a P.S.—Give Mommy a hug for me. I miss you both.

  I stared at the blue ink until it grew blurry in front of my eyes. Grabbing the orange juice glass I’d left on the table earlier that morning, I threw it with as much force as I could muster, so that it shattered loudly against the kitchen wall. And then I burst into tears.

  THIRTEEN

  “Yes, of course, we’ll come take a look,” Daria chirped, holding the receiver away from her ear and grimacing in my direction. “That’s correct, no charge for the visit. Yes, this afternoon will be fine.”

  She hung up and returned to the stack of bills in front of her, proffering only a cursory greeting. “Morning, Kate, did you enjoy your day off?”

  “Very much.”

  Absently, she nodded and began punching at the calculator with the tip of her pencil, missing entirely the self-satisfied smirk I was unable to suppress.

  “That was Art Somebody,” she said without looking up, “the new owner of Zoey’s Cafe in Berkeley. He’s changing the motif from Middle Eastern to chrome and glitz, and wants some stuff for the walls.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “That’s what we’re supposed to tell him. But nothing costing big bucks. I told him you’d drop by this afternoon.”

  I groaned. “You’re all heart.”

  “Which reminds me, Sondra Van Horn will be here in about an hour. She wanted to start looking through our stock right away. I tried to convince her to wait a few days to give you a chance to pull some things, but she insisted. Don’t fret about it, though. Just show her something.”

  “Actually, I’ve already pulled a couple of pieces and I have a few more in mind.”

  Daria raised her head and looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “My, haven’t we been efficient”

  “It’s just a beginning.” The sarcasm in her voice stung, though I knew I shouldn’t let it.

  “Whatever,” she mumbled, returning to her numbers. “I’m just thankful I don’t have to deal with that woman.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Paul, who had entered a moment earlier, balancing a cup of coffee and a stack of the Pepperidge Farm cookies we set out for customers. “You could deal with Attila the Hun and have him eating out of your hand in no time.”

  Daria grunted without raising her eyes.

  Paul winked at me and began leafing through phone messages, spreading a patina of cookie crumbs across the ledge. “When are you going to bring in more of that fantastic fudge of yours? For a while there it was nearly every day.”

  “If you’d bought a ticket to the Wine Festival, you could have eaten your fill.”

  “Thirty dollars a pop is a little stiff for my budget,” he said, and then turned to me. “You should have been around this place a couple of weeks ago, Kate. Daria was trying to perfect her recipe, using us as guinea pigs. We had something new every day. All of it, I might add, first rate.”

  I laughed. “Daria has quite a culinary following. Kimberly Livingston said the same thing, and she’s only five years old.”

  Daria looked up. “Kimberly told you about my fudge?”

  I nodded, and Daria pursed her lips. “What did she say?”

  “That it was yummy. I think she was somewhat awed by the fact that you managed to talk Pepper into letting her have some.”

  Paul chuckled. “See, I told you, you could take on anyone.”

  Daria smiled blandly and returned to her work.

  By the time Sondra arrived, sashaying into the gallery in a pair of tight pink leggings and a black halter top, I had ten pictures set out in our private viewing room, along with coffee and a plate of cookies.

  “I thought I’d show you a few things I picked out, just to get your reaction,” I explained. “Then, once I have a better idea of the sort of work you like, we can look through the files together.”

  The Courtyard Gallery, like most galleries, was able to display only a small fraction of the work it carried. In two back rooms lined with vertical cubicles, the bulk of the pieces were stored, and it simplified things enormously if we knew the type of work the client wanted. No need to spend hours sifting through boldly colored geometric abstracts if you knew you were looking for an impressionistic landscape heavy on greens.

  Sondra took the coffee I offered, waving away the cookies as though they offended her. She crossed her legs at the knees and wiggled her ankle impatiently, like some 1950s film star. The clear plastic, open-backed shoes slapped against her heel.

  “Okay,” she said, “shoot.”

  Surprisingly, Sondra’s taste in art was nothing like her taste, or lack of it, in other things. She liked all of the pieces I thought she would dismiss as too bland, and was politely noncommittal about the one awful piece I’d stuck in there just to gauge how different our artistic preferences really were.

  In the end, she selected two pieces�
��a black ink drawing of a nude figure, and a lithograph, which actually depicted the countryside near Florence but reminded me of the California foothills. These she bought on the spot, assuring me that she had no need to think it over. There were two others she was quite fond of, but neither of us was sure they would be right in her house. I would bring them out the next day, I told her, and we would see if they “worked.”

  The minute Sondra left, Daria grabbed the check and waved it through the air with a nod in my direction. “See, I told you you’d do fine. Better than fine.” She smiled broadly. “Kate, you’re a wonder.”

  I was feeling pretty pleased myself, but I wasn’t thinking dollar signs. It was just plain old reassuring to discover I was capable of something besides baking cupcakes and scrubbing floors. And molding myself to Andy’s needs. If I’d been alone I would probably have kicked my heels in the air and hollered, but since that sort of behavior was clearly not befitting my new image, I smiled demurely instead and began replacing the paintings Sondra was no longer considering.

  A few minutes later the phone rang and Paul handed it to me.

  “Hi, it’s Michael.”

  “I’m at work,” I told him, hoping the blush I felt creeping up my neck wasn’t visible to others.

  “I know you are, but I wanted to hear your voice.”

  I mumbled something unintelligible.

  “What I really want to do is undress you—very slowly. But I guess that’s out of the question, huh?”

  “For right now,” I replied, turning to face the back wall.

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  Daria cleared her throat, loudly and rather pointedly.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told him.

  “Tell me you’ll see me Saturday.”

  “Okay, Saturday.” Somewhat guiltily I thought of Anna, but only for a moment.

  “And Kate . . .”

  “Hmm?”

  “Yesterday was just a beginning.”

  ~*~

  Zoey’s Cafe, located on Shattuck Street, in the heart— or bowels—of downtown Berkeley, was one of those restaurants that changed ownership at least annually. The last time I’d been there it had still been a taqueria but, stepping inside, I could see remnants of the intervening Middle Eastern phase. For the most part, though, the layout and decor hadn’t changed all that much over the last few years, a sure sign that the succession of owners had been operating on shoestring budgets.