by Janet Dawson
“You mean you’ll tell me?”
“It might have some bearing on his death. But I won’t know until you tell me the autopsy results.”
Share and share alike, I thought. Sid’s silence told me he was considering it. Then I heard several loud voices shouting in the background, as though all hell was breaking loose in Homicide. “Jeri, it’s a bad time for me to talk. I’ll call you later.”
He hung up and I was right back where I started, with three pieces of paper in Rob Lawter’s file. I closed the folder, tucked it into the filing cabinet, and turned my attention to other business.
By the time Cassie and I returned from the Farmers’ Market, she’d received a phone message from the friend of a friend at Berkshire and Gentry. Rob Lawter’s sister was named Carol Hartzell. Four years ago she’d lived on Estabrook Street in San Leandro. She didn’t live there now. When I checked the listings in the phone book and the crisscross directory, one that gives the address for a particular phone number, I found that Carol Hartzell had moved to an address on Clarke Street, a couple of blocks from the San Leandro BART station. There was also a Leon Gomes living at that address. Gomes is Portuguese, a common name in the East Bay, where lots of Portuguese immigrants settled in San Leandro and San Lorenzo.
I left my office at a quarter to five Friday afternoon. I carried my Farmers’ Market purchases down to my car and drove over to Alice Street, parking in the shade several doors down from Rob Lawter’s building. I was hoping to catch some of his neighbors as they returned from work. The first few people I approached ignored me, or said they knew nothing about Rob Lawter or last night’s incident.
At five-thirty I saw the woman I’d seen this morning round the corner from Seventeenth Street, briefcase swinging at her side as she walked briskly in her running shoes. She was in her late twenties, I guessed. Her dark hair was chin length, and she’d tried to subdue her curls with a big plastic barrette, the same shade of blue as her lightweight suit. She saw me standing in front of the building and her pace quickened.
“May I talk with you?” I asked as she stepped past me and headed up the sidewalk.
She turned and glared at me, her mouth tightening. “I don’t know who you are, but I saw you hanging around here this morning. Go away. What happened last night has nothing to do with you.”
“Actually it does.” I pulled my license from my shoulder bag and held out the leather case so she could see it. “My name is Jeri Howard. I’m a private investigator. Rob Lawter was my client.”
She narrowed her eyes, stared at the license, then at me. “Why would he hire a private investigator?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential. However, it was a legal matter and his attorney can vouch for me. Her name’s Cassie Taylor, law firm of Alwin, Taylor and Chao. They’re in the book.” I stuck my license back into my bag. “If you’d like to call Ms. Taylor...”
“I believe you,” the woman said with a frown. “You know, I think I’ve even seen your name someplace, in the newspaper, maybe. But I’ve already talked with the police.”
“Sergeant Vernon called me earlier this morning to let me know Rob was dead,” I said. “But I haven’t been able to get any details on what happened. I was hoping one of Rob’s neighbors could fill me in. I haven’t had much luck so far.”
She snorted derisively. “Most of these people wouldn’t see an earthquake if the ground opened under their feet.”
“Did you see or hear something? Ms?...”
She hesitated, gripping the handle of her briefcase. Then she relented, glancing first at the building, as though she wanted to make certain we weren’t being observed. “My name’s Sally Morgan. As to what I saw or heard, I’d rather not talk standing out here on the street. Let’s go inside.”
She had her key in her hand by the time we reached the building’s double doors. I followed her into the lobby, where a faded umber area rug covered most of the brown tile. Directly in front of us was a staircase and, to the left of this, an elevator. She stepped up to a bank of mailboxes to the right of the stairway and unlocked the one labeled “Morgan, 5-B.” It was right next to the one labeled “Lawter, 5-C.”
“You lived next door to Rob?”
She confirmed this with a nod as she pulled a couple of flyers and several envelopes from her mailbox. Then she motioned me to the elevator. Neither of us spoke as the car moved upward. As we stepped out onto the fifth floor I glanced to my left and saw yellow crime scene tape stretched across the door leading to Rob’s apartment.
I heard the cat even before Sally Morgan unlocked her own front door. It was singing a variation on that old familiar theme, the empty food bowl blues. As we walked into the apartment, a large gray and white cat wearing a red collar floated up to the back of a wing chair and let out a plaintive meow. Despite the creature’s complaints, it didn’t look as though it had missed any meals.
“I’ve heard that song from my two cats,” I said. “The food bowl’s empty. To hear that one tell it, anyway.”
“Our afternoon ritual.” Sally Morgan smiled as she set her briefcase on the floor, kicked off her shoes, and crossed the living room. The cat leapt from the chair to the beige carpet and beat her to the kitchen. “Hah. You’ve got food in your bowl, Queenie.”
Queenie made an indignant cry that I translated as “but it’s not fresh!” Her protestations had an effect. I soon heard the rattle of cat crunchies being poured into the bowl.
I took the opportunity for a look around. Sally Morgan’s apartment had charm, with its high ceilings and big living room window that looked down on the sidewalk. Arrayed in front of the window, to take advantage of the afternoon sun, I saw brightly colored ceramic pots containing a ficus benjamina, Swedish ivy, and African violets. There were two doors on the wall to my left, one leading to a bathroom, and the other to a spacious bedroom where a platform bed was covered with a yellow and blue flowered quilt. In the living room, the wing chair and a cream-colored sofa faced an entertainment center complete with TV, VCR, and CD player. An alcove near the kitchen had been turned into an office, with a computer, monitor, and printer on a wheeled cart.
I glanced into the kitchen, which was small and utilitarian. Queenie had her face in her cat food bowl and was crunching happily on kibble. Sally Morgan had opened her refrigerator door and was leaning over, reaching for some cans of soda on one of the lower shelves. “You want something to drink?” she asked, glancing up at me.
“Thank you, yes.”
She grabbed two cans and handed one to me. We returned to the living room, where she waved me toward the sofa. She sat in the wing chair and tucked her nylon-clad legs under her, popping the top on the soda.
“Does Rob’s apartment have the same layout?” I asked.
“Same but reversed,” she told me. “We shared a bedroom wall.”
“How well did you know him?”
She took a sip from the can and shrugged. “Not all that well. I mean, we weren’t really close friends. Just... neighborly. He was living here when I moved in four years ago. We saw each other in the hallways, the laundry room, that sort of thing. I know he worked at Bates, you know, the food company. And he had a sister living in San Leandro.”
I nodded and thought about how well I knew—or didn’t know—my own neighbors at my building over on Adams Street. “Girlfriends?” I asked. “Or boyfriends?”
“Girlfriends,” Sally Morgan said. “I saw him with a few over the years. There was one I saw more frequently than any of the others. Really striking, a blonde.”
“Do you recall a name?”
She thought for a moment before shaking her head. “Sorry, no. And I haven’t seen her in awhile. I think they broke up.”
“Did he ever talk about work?” I asked. “Such as projects he was working on, or what was going on at the office?”
She shrugged and sipped at her can of soda. “Not much. I remember once that we talked about the fact that we both worked here in Oakland. I walk t
o work. My office is at the Kaiser Center, near the lake. Bates headquarters is about twenty minutes from here, on the waterfront, so Rob rode his bike most of the time.”
“Did you ever meet his sister?”
Now Sally Morgan shook her head. “Not formally. I saw her here once or twice, with her two teenagers, a boy and a girl. Those kids visited Rob more often. The sister’s divorced, and he was the father figure. I believe she has a live-in boyfriend. I got the impression Rob wasn’t all that enthusiastic about the guy.”
I swallowed a mouthful of soda before moving on to the main event. “Let’s talk about last night, and what you saw or heard.”
Four
“I HEARD VOICES,” SALLY MORGAN SAID. SHE’D HESITATED before speaking, and when she did, the words came slowly, as though she wasn’t sure of the veracity of what she was telling me. “I’m sure I heard voices. It could have been the TV, but I don’t think so.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Rob didn’t watch much TV,” she said. “Unless it was Star Trek.”
“Back up a little,” I said. “When did you hear the voices?”
Queenie strolled out of the kitchen, licking her whiskers in that self-satisfied way cats have. She jumped into Sally’s lap, circled twice, and settled down for a good wash.
“I went to bed around eleven,” Sally said, stroking the cat’s back. “I heard the voices about half past.”
“Were you asleep? Did the voices wake you?” From what Sid had told me earlier on the phone, Rob went out his window around eleven-thirty.
She nodded. “Asleep or just drifting off. But it wasn’t the voices that woke me. There was this loud bang. For a minute I thought Queenie had knocked something off the dresser. She does that all the time.” Sally looked down affectionately at the big gray and white cat in her lap. “But Queenie was right there in bed with me.”
“The dresser is on which wall?” I asked.
“The wall I share with Rob’s apartment,” she said, understanding where I was headed. “Yes, the bang came from that direction. Then I heard the voices.”
“How many voices?”
“More than one. But I can’t say if there were two or three or even more. All I know is one voice sounded like it belonged to a woman. At least it was higher in pitch.”
“Could you make out what anyone was saying?”
Sally shook her head again. “Nothing. Just a lot of words all garbled together. Maybe ‘no’ and ‘stop,’ but I can’t be sure. I’ve been thinking about it all day, but I come up with the same thing. Voices, talking, and I’m not sure what they were saying. That’s why I’m not even certain I heard people talking. It could have been the TV.”
“Do you believe Rob jumped out the window?”
“Not suicide.” She shook her head vigorously. “I can’t imagine him killing himself. Granted, I didn’t know him that well, but he just didn’t seem the type to take that way out. I suppose he could have fallen, but... if it weren’t for my hearing those voices.”
“How long did you hear the voices?”
“Not long. At least it didn’t seem long. Maybe a couple of minutes. I was just about to drift back to sleep. Then I heard someone scream.” She shuddered at the memory. “I got up and went to the window. Don’t ask me how I knew, but there was something about that scream....”
The sound of a human voice falling away, I thought, as Rob fell to his death on that concrete square below.
“I looked out,” Sally said, words coming with difficulty now. She looked shaken as she remembered. “I saw someone lying on the patio, all crumpled, like a broken doll. I grabbed the phone off my nightstand and called the police.”
We sat in silence for a moment. “May I see your bedroom?” I asked. She nodded.
I got up and walked into the bedroom, noting the queen-sized bed with its headboard against the wall the room shared with the bathroom, and the dresser on the far wall. The bedroom window, covered with half-closed blinds, was open a couple of inches, just enough to let in some air and keep Queenie from exploring the sill outside. I moved close to the glass and peered out. I couldn’t actually see Rob’s bedroom window, though I knew it was there, just a few feet to my left. I looked down at the patio below, imagining the trajectory of Rob’s body, the impact, the sprawling limbs, the blood splashing onto the concrete....
I raised my eyes, trying to erase that image, but it stayed with me. I focused on the other windows, those that were placed at intervals in the short rear L of the building that paralleled the street. I stepped back from my vantage point and returned to the living room.
“What about the other neighbors?” I asked Sally, who still stroked her cat, as though the motion and the softness of Queenie’s fur would block out what she’d seen last night.
She frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Did you see any other neighbors looking out their windows? If someone at the back of the building had been looking, Rob’s windows would have been visible.”
“I don’t recall. I’m sure the police talked to everyone on this floor.”
Knowing Sid and his partner, Wayne Hobart, I was sure they’d talked to everyone in the building. Question was whether Sid would share any of that information with me. I tried a different tack. “Let’s go back to what you heard. Anything after the scream?”
She thought about it, then shook her head. “I just remember calling the police and talking to the 911 operator. Only thing I heard after that was the siren.”
“Who lives in the apartment on the other side of Rob’s place?” I asked. “That unit, 5-D, would share a living room wall with his.”
“Oh, that’s Charlie Kellerman,” she said. “He wouldn’t be any help. He’s a drunk.”
“How so?” I asked.
“I don’t mean he’s a skid row bum,” she said hurriedly. “I guess he’s only one step up, though. He used to have a job, I don’t know where. But he got fired because he wouldn’t go into treatment. Now his brother pays his rent and gives him an allowance. He’s not loud or obnoxious. I hardly ever see him. He holes up in his apartment with piles of magazines and newspapers. I’ve heard the place is a real fire hazard. He comes in with sacks full of frozen entrees and whiskey bottles. He drinks the cheap stuff. I know, because I’ve seen the bottles. Most of the time he just stays in his apartment and drinks himself into a stupor.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
“Rob told me. Rob felt sorry for him.”
Charlie Kellerman, the guy in 5-D, may have been pickled in booze, but I still wanted to talk with him. After I thanked Sally Morgan for her time and left the door open for further questions, I walked down the fifth-floor hall, past Rob’s door, to Charlie’s apartment, the last one on the right before the hallway made its right turn, forming the bottom of the L.
I knocked but I didn’t get any response. Perhaps he wasn’t home. Or if he was, and Sally was right about his drinking, Charlie might be well on his way to oblivion. It was now almost six-thirty. I continued knocking on fifth-floor doors, interrupting several people at their Friday evening dinners and several more who were preparing to go out. A couple of residents whose windows overlooked the patio hadn’t seen Rob Lawter fall, but they’d heard him scream and had looked out to see the body below. Others whose apartments were on the opposite side of the building had heard some sort of commotion and opened their doors onto the central hallway, trying to determine the source of the disturbance. None of the people I spoke with had seen anything that would give me a clue as to what happened before Rob went out that window.
I gave Charlie Kellerman’s door another try before I left the fifth floor. Still no answer. I leaned forward, listening, to see if I could discern any sounds inside.
“Don’t waste your time,” said a voice behind me. I jumped, startled, then turned. It was a young man I’d talked with fifteen minutes earlier. “Charlie spends all his time in a bottle. He couldn’t have seen anything
. He was probably passed out by then. Hell, he’s probably passed out now.”
I looked at my watch. Past seven on a Friday evening, and my stomach was growling so loudly as to be audible. I left the building and retrieved my car from its parking spot on Alice Street, and headed home.
My one-bedroom apartment is located in an Oakland neighborhood known as Adams Point. I’ve lived there since my divorce from Sid, with my cats Abigail and Black Bart. I’d had Abigail for eleven years, ever since she was a tiny tabby kitten just out of the litter. Since she was an enthusiastic eater, the days when she could fit into the palm of my hand were long gone. Black Bart came to live with us last Christmas, a no-longer-feral kitten who’d gotten friendlier and larger as the months rolled by.
Lately the apartment seemed cramped, though, awakening an urge for a home of my own that would provide more space, as well as a tax deduction. The Stefano case last spring and summer earned me enough money for a down payment on a house or condo, so I’d contacted a real estate agent. However, the house hunt had been sporadic. The nature of the private investigative business is such that I was not always available to look at the listings trotted out for my inspection by Eva, my real estate agent. In fact, in July and August I had had to leave town for a week or so at a time on two different cases.
Now that Labor Day had passed, I was still looking, but so far I’d seen a lot of places that left me cold. In the neighborhoods I liked, the houses were priced out of my range of affordability. The houses I could afford were located in neighborhoods where I didn’t want to live. I was getting frustrated, wondering if buying a place of my own was in the cards this year.
Abigail and Black Bart met me at the door, tails up, with their own riff on the empty bowl blues. I did my duty as resident human and provided crunchies before opening the refrigerator and reaching for the remains of a casserole I’d fixed earlier in the week. I nuked it in the microwave and sat at my dining room table to eat, mopping up the last bit with a hunk of bread torn from a loaf of sourdough.
As I put away my Farmers’ Market purchases, I listened to my messages. One was from Kaz Pelligrino, the doctor I was involved with, saying he wasn’t sure he could keep our date Saturday night. He worked with AIDS and HIV-positive kids over at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital. His schedule kept him busy and was sometimes erratic. There was also a message from Eva, who sounded extremely enthusiastic about a house she wanted me to see. But then, she was always enthusiastic. I was the picky one. Hey, I might as well be. I was the one who’d have to pay the mortgage and live there.