Someone Always Knows

by Marcia Muller

  I switched off the alarm. As I eased into the driver’s seat, I said, “Hey, I don’t even know your name.”

  “Emily Parsons.”

  “Sharon McCone.” I handed her my card, and we shook hands through the lowered window.

  “A private investigator,” she said. “Well, you sure picked some house to investigate.”

  “How long have you lived in the neighborhood?”

  “I was raised here in the house where we live now, but after high school I went to college at USC, got married, and we lived in the Valley until five years ago, when my dad died. My husband requested a transfer to his company’s office up here so we could take care of Mom, and we moved in with her.”

  “Has your mother mentioned anybody who occupied this house during the time you lived down south?”

  “I think she said there was a family who were going to move in a number of years back.” She furrowed her brow. “I can’t remember their name, though. She has a picture of them, I think. Mom and Dad had been on vacation in Arizona, and there were a couple of frames left on the film—that was before digital was common—so Mom offered to photograph them on the steps of their new home. It must be in the boxes of pictures she always plans to put in albums and then doesn’t.”

  “Could you try to find it for me? It could be important to my case.”

  “Sure. Maybe it’ll nudge Mom into getting the family album project going.”

  “Thanks. And if there’s anything I can do for you or the boys—” I started.

  She smiled shyly. “Nothing for me, but the boys might like some chocolate.”

  “I used to be a chocoholic. What kind?”

  “Ghirardelli—local loyalty, of course. Dark—it’s healthier.”

  “You’ve got a deal.” I gave her money for the candy, then watched her walk back to her house. A couple of times she shot me concerned glances over her shoulder.

  A good, caring woman, I thought. She’d probably make an excellent nurse.

  I sat at the curb till I felt okay to drive. Reflected again upon who had pushed me down those stairs. Gage Renshaw entered my mind, but I dismissed him; sneak attacks just weren’t his style. Or were they? I knew so little about the man he’d become. Really didn’t know much about the man he’d been. But how could Renshaw have known I was going to be at Webster Street alone? How could he even have known about Webster Street? No, the person was a stranger. Had to be.

  4:19 p.m.

  I phoned and rescheduled my appointment with Gil Stratton for the next day, then headed back to the office. Mick recognized my step as I started past his bailiwick and waved me in.

  “There’s nothing new on Renshaw and his whereabouts,” he said. “But Hank called; he researched some additional case law, and he’s sure we don’t have any legal problems regarding ownership of the agency. And I’ve got some background on the Webster Street house.” He swiveled around, saw I was still standing, and said, “Sit.”

  “Maybe you and Alison ought to get yourselves a dog.”

  He looked at me, frowning. “A dog?”

  “Well, you seem good at giving commands like you would to a puppy.”

  “You okay?”

  “Lousy day.” I sat down gingerly on Derek’s desk chair.

  “What happened to you? You’re moving kind of funny.”

  “Long story,” I said, and proceeded to tell him.

  “You’ve really had a bad day,” he said when I’d finished. “Maybe you should go home and rest. We can go over this info tomorrow.”

  “Best opinion I’ve heard yet.”

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7

  1:30 p.m.

  As freeways go, the Bay Shore is one of the oldest in Northern California, dating from the 1920s. In the forties and fifties it was nicknamed the Bloody Bay Shore because of the number of spectacular and often fatal accidents that occurred on its lanes. Now it’s safer—probably because people are more used to freeways—but it’s still ugly, running through light industrial areas and past SFO, and fronted by dreary apartment complexes and subdivisions. Today much of it is surrounded by sound walls between which the traffic roars and the air is oppressive. It becomes more oppressive as you near San José, a megalopolis that seems to be competing with LA for the title of smog capital of California.

  Mineta San José International used to be a small outlying field with few movements—the aviation term for landings and takeoffs—but with the explosion of tech industries in Silicon Valley, it now almost rivals SFO for traffic. Quick Stops, the FBO Gage Renshaw had once flown for, was located on Aviation Avenue, not far from the field.

  I supposed I could have flown down, but at the time I’d left it had seemed a great deal of effort to drive to Oakland Airport’s North Field, where Hy and I kept our Cessna 170B, preflight, and probably refuel. (I couldn’t remember how full the tanks had been when we last flew.) Besides, what I found out from Stratton might have required me to go on to a place where there was no decent airstrip or ground transportation.

  Quick Stops’ building was a corrugated iron shed that had seen better days. I parked and entered. It contained one room with a couple of cluttered desks and a row of file cabinets. A bespectacled, bald-headed man bent over the larger desk riffling through files. “Where is that goddamn invoice?” he muttered to himself. Without looking up at me, he said, “Gina, get your ass over here and find the AV gas invoice for last month—they called and said it’s overdue.”

  I shut the door behind me. “I’m not Gina.”

  He raised his eyes. “Oh, shit! You’re not. I’m sorry.”

  “People have told me to do worse things than locate an invoice.” I introduced myself and presented my card, and his confusion vanished.

  “That’s right. We made an appointment. I’m Gil Stratton.”

  We shook hands.

  “Sit down, please. If I know Gina, she’s over in the shop, flirting with the mechanics.” He removed a stack of flight manuals from a chair and put them on the smaller desk; they immediately fell on the floor. Stratton threw up his hands and gave me a what-can-you-do look.

  When we were seated, he said, “On the phone you told Gina you want to talk about Gage Renshaw. It’s a name I haven’t heard in quite a while. What’s he been doing?”

  I explained that he had stayed on in Asia and flown for K-Air for a while along with my business partner, Hy Ripinsky. That he’d then teamed up with Dan Kessell, owner of K-Air, and they’d returned stateside. That for a few years the two of them operated an executive protection service called Renshaw & Kessell International, and were later occasionally joined by Hy, in the capacity of a troubleshooter. And that shortly after, Dan Kessell was murdered and Renshaw disappeared.

  “Who killed Kessell?” Stratton asked. “Renshaw, maybe?”

  Same suspicion I harbored. “It’s possible. The file’s still open.”

  “And what happened to their company?”

  “Ripinsky took it over, operating it on a strictly legal basis—which often wasn’t the case before. A year ago, give or take a few months, he and I merged our respective firms into McCone & Ripinsky International. But now Renshaw’s reappeared and refuses to tell us what he wants from us.”

  “You and Ripinsky fifty-fifty partners?”

  “I should say so. We’re also husband and wife.”

  “Jesus! Never thought any woman could tame the Old Rip down.”

  “Actually, I’m his second wife. I can credit his first for doing a lot of the taming.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died.”

  “Sorry to hear that. How?”

  “Not violently, if that’s what you’re thinking. She had MS.”

  “Tough break for both of them.”

  Julie Spaulding had been a woman I was sure I would have liked: an environmental activist, in spite of the fact that she’d been confined to a wheelchair since her teens; a writer who hadn’t been afraid to publish her sometimes inflammatory opin
ions in letters to the editors of many newspapers and magazines; an advisor to various fledgling ecologically oriented associations. And she actually hadn’t tamed Hy; in fact, she’d given him a good bit of rope, just not enough to hang himself with. It was only after her death that he went wild—taking crazy risks and allying himself with the extreme element of the environmental movement. Before I first met him, a friend had told me he’d settled down but was “still dangerous.” The characterization applies to him to this very day—and the years have proven that a good deal of that dangerous quality has rubbed off on me.

  I changed the subject back to business and explained to Stratton about Renshaw’s possible designs on McCone & Ripinsky.

  Stratton thought for a moment. “Seems like a problem for a lawyer.”

  “We’ve got one working on it.”

  “Then why come to me?”

  “I’m hoping that you can give me some insight into Renshaw’s character.”

  “Hmmm.” Stratton pushed back from his desk and put his feet up on top. His loafers were new Guccis, their soles barely scuffed. The FBO business must be picking up, along with the rest of the economy.

  At length he said, “I don’t think Gage has much character. At least not in the way we usually think of it. If anything, he’s sociopathic. Gage is the center of his universe, surrounded by people who, in his eyes, might as well be cardboard cutouts. Sometimes he gets off on torturing his cutouts—which is what he’s currently doing to you and Ripinsky.”

  “He tortures people?”

  “Not in the conventional sense. But emotionally and mentally he enjoys putting the screws on. When he worked for me he especially liked to scare the clients who weren’t familiar or comfortable with flying. Made rough passes at unaccompanied women. Two customers reported us to the Better Business folks. That was it for Gage and me; I cut him his final check and showed him the door.”

  “You have any idea of where he went after that?”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t care, so long as he left me alone. I called him a sociopath before, but now that I think about him, I revise my opinion. I’d say he’s borderline psychotic.”

  “You sound like a psychologist.”

  “Master’s from San José State. I was going to go on for the PhD, but I found out I was better with airplanes than other people’s neuroses.” His gaze moved away from me, looking into the past.

  “Do you know anyone in the Bay Area Renshaw may have contacted?”

  “A couple of folks have mentioned seeing him recently in dive bars downtown. They said he looked like he was on the skids, gave him a wide berth.”

  “Did they tell you which bars?”

  “One was the Front. The other I don’t recall.”

  “Are you willing to give me the people’s names?”

  “Sorry, I’m not. They’re good customers.”

  “And there’s nobody else Renshaw might’ve been in touch with?”

  Stratton paused thoughtfully. “I’ve never known Gage to have a friend, or even a lover. As I said before, we’re all cardboard figures to him. People like him can’t make friends.”

  5:13 p.m.

  On the way to the freeway, I drove past the Front, the dive bar Stratton had named. It was closed—permanently—with slabs of plywood over its door. No way of finding out if anybody who worked there or frequented it could help me locate Renshaw.

  So where do you go in a big metropolitan area when you have no friends?

  Scruffy-looking Renshaw, with that white streak in his hair and his jutting features, would stand out in even the busiest hotel or motel clerk’s mind. I called Mick and he confirmed that no one his operatives had questioned had recalled such an individual registering, or recognized Renshaw’s photograph, which Mick had gotten off the tapes from our surveillance cams. There was no paper trail either: apparently Renshaw had no credit cards or, if he did, he wasn’t using them. He could have used bogus or stolen cards, but that would have entailed his keeping on the move as the frauds or thefts were reported. From what I knew of the man, I sensed he would prefer to carry out his scams from a fixed—and probably comfortable—location.

  So where, dammit, was that location? Where was he?

  His reappearance was already sucking up all my energy—

  Of course! I realized. That was exactly what he wanted to do. Distract, confuse, and then strike. Do the unexpected, and then sit back and gloat. Profit when the moment was right.

  But distract me from what? I reviewed the cases we had on our plate, but none of them seemed important enough to prompt a con man of Renshaw’s style to come out of hiding after so many years.

  Or had he been hiding after all? He was a careless man, slipping away without a word, never contacting anyone until it suited some whim or other. But he was also a purposeful man when he wanted to be, and what I feared was that purpose.

  6:01 p.m.

  Naturally I got trapped in early rush-hour traffic. Moving along inch by inch through Peninsula towns such as San Carlos, San Mateo, Millbrae, and San Bruno, I tried to amuse myself by imagining the lives of the people who lived there, but all I came up with was trite and out-of-date versions of the lifestyles depicted in old films. Truth was, movies like No Down Payment were my reference point, and they didn’t reflect modern suburban reality.

  Lord knew I hadn’t been raised in such an environment. Our old, rambling house on one of San Diego’s finger canyons had been like few others. Plants had grown lushly—many of them vegetables in the filled-in swimming pool that a sonic boom from nearby NAS Miramar had irreparably cracked. Birds, which my mother loved, had flown freely in and out of the house. (I learned the ability to duck my head fast, because I was deathly afraid of birds, bats, and other airborne things. It was a wonder I’d ever become a pilot, much less married one.)

  As for the rest of us—well, we’d flown away like Ma’s birds eventually did. Years ago my eldest—and now only—brother John had bought the house from the rest of us and raised two terrific boys there. Sometimes he made noises about selling it, but I hoped he wouldn’t; it’s nice to know you’ve got a homeplace to return to.

  7:10 p.m.

  My new homeplace—a single-family Spanish-style house on Avila Street in the Marina district, only a few blocks from the Bayside Green—was a joy to return to. When I’d first seen it, I couldn’t believe anyone would give it up—much less that we could afford it. But the owner had died, and the heirs lived in Florida. They wanted it off their hands quickly and priced it to sell.

  We’d toured it the first day it came on the market. The Spanish style had always appealed to us, and the red-nosed garden gnome—which we named Adolphus after Hy’s uncle and only living relative—was a nice finishing touch. Somebody had slipped a bid in before us, but that deal fell through, and only six weeks later we found ourselves under our new roof and inundated with new stuff.

  Since virtually all our possessions had been destroyed when our earthquake house on Church Street succumbed to a vicious arsonist, we needed everything, and we indulged ourselves in a fit of crass consumerism that nauseates me to this very day. I console myself with the fact that it was the insurance company’s money—and they’d been bleeding us dry for years—but still, we could have exercised some restraint.

  In a matter of weeks we’d acquired soft, buttery leather chairs and sofas. A Sleep Number bed and comfy linens and big towels. Large flat-screen wall-mounted TVs. Dining room set. Area rugs. Pots, pans, flatware, and dishes. Flowers for the garden and outdoor furniture for the deck. Antique rolltop desk. The list went on and on.…

  I doubted we could stuff another thing into the place.

  Clothing purchases were fun: for me, jeans and sweaters and jackets and shoes from such outlets as Lands’ End; for Hy, pretty much the same. I made a trip to pick up a quality black business suit and a semiformal dress from one of the downtown department stores; Hy drove to our place at the coast and brought back some extra things we kept there. No reas
on to fetch anything from the ranch near Tufa Lake: if you appeared there in garments more elegant than faded jeans and flannel, they’d probably have you locked up as a public nuisance.

  But our buying frenzy had ended now, and we both admitted we felt purged of the compulsion. To make up for it we were prepared to give back—or forward, whatever the current term was. We’d funded a small foundation to grant aviation scholarships and soon would begin evaluating applications. Those accepted would receive tuition and expenses to a number of high-quality flight schools across the nation. And a chance to take to the skies like us, the fearless flyers who kept crashing into things like mountains.

  9:15 p.m.

  Mick had called to tell me when he’d be by with the information on the Webster Street house and, as usual, he was punctual. I don’t know how he does it—some extremely accurate inner clock, no doubt—but he must’ve gotten the gene from his father’s side of the family. No one in my family has ever been punctual, except for food-and-booze-laden wakes after a funeral.

  Hy and I had spent an anxious evening, eating tacos (a joint effort; I fry the tortillas while he makes the filling) and watching reruns of old series on TV, trying to pretend Renshaw’s sudden appearance wouldn’t turn out to be ruinous. A cable channel was airing episodes of The Avengers, and each time Diana Rigg—in her Emma Peeler suit—overcame a villain, I mentally praised and envied her prowess. But at about nine, I dozed off, my head on Hy’s shoulder.

  Enter Mick.

  Hy made coffee while I tried to wake up and collect my wits. Then we settled around the kitchen table.

  Mick said, “There’s a lot of background on that house on Webster Street. Was built in 1890 by William Acton, one of the minor silver-mine barons. Four of his six children were wiped out in the smallpox epidemic of 1887; two others died of pneumonia in the early 1900s. His wife Louise then proceeded to lose her mind and became one of those crazy-lady-in-the-attic cases until her death in 1935.”