Intimate Betrayal (15 page)

“We’re not suggesting anything, Ms. Jefferson. We are merely trying to establish a few facts.”

“Is there something suspicious about Giuseppe’s death?” Annie demanded. “Are you looking for someone to blame it on?”

The cops exchanged glances. Sullivan nodded, and Foster said to her, “We’re looking at some possible sabotage of the scaffolding
in there, yes. Three of the pins that hold the pipes in place under the wooden platform where your workman was standing have
been removed. The thing was bound to collapse, killing whoever was standing on it at the time. So, yeah, we think Giuseppe
Brindesi was murdered.”

With the cathedral closed down and the site surrounded by crime-scene tape, Annie had no choice but to return to her office
at Brody Associates. There she found people standing around in small groups, talking and speculating. The news that Giuseppe’s
death had not been an accident spread fast.

By eleven o’clock the press had arrived, trying to get some footage to put on the noon news. Annie declined to talk to them.
She knew that as the project manager, she would have to talk to them sooner or later, but she was damned if it was going to
be now.

At a few minutes past twelve, Matt Carlyle telephoned. “I heard about your workman’s death,” he said. “How are you holding
up?”

Annie was touched. Except for Sam and Barbara Rae, who were always thoughtful, Matt was the first person to ask about her
state of mind instead of peppering her with questions about what had happened at the site.

“I think I’m in shock. I knew him and liked him very much, but I haven’t had a moment yet to focus on the fact that he’s gone.”

“Can you escape for a few minutes?” he asked. “I know what it’s like over there—but can you meet me for lunch?”

“I don’t—”

“I’m concerned about this too, Annie. After all, I am the new head of the building committee. And I was introduced to this
poor man yesterday, just a few hours before his death. I thought of coming directly to your office, but I’m sure you’re getting
enough publicity as it is without the zoo that would result if the infamous Matthew Carlyle showed up in the aftermath of
another suspicious death.”

He was right, of course.

“Where do you want to meet?”

He gave her the name of a small pasta restaurant in Union Square just a few blocks from her office. “They know me, and they’re
discreet.”

“Okay. I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.”

Annie slipped out the side door and walked briskly up Post Street to Union Square, the heart of the city’s shopping district.
Macy’s, I. Magnin, and Neiman-Marcus rose over the small park, and she longed to head into one of them and lose herself in
a whirl of what Darcy called “retail therapy.” And where
was
Darcy? she wondered. She hadn’t seen her all morning.

A cable car chugged up Powell Street. It stopped in front of the park to take on passengers—most of whom were tourists clutching
cameras and maps—then continued up the hill. It would go over Nob Hill and Russian Hill, then descend to sea level on the
other side of the city at the Cannery near Fisherman’s Wharf. Annie wished she could join the tourists
and forget her troubles. Just be a visitor here, without anything greater to worry about than which cable car to squeeze onto.

She found the restaurant tucked between two stores on Geary. She descended into a dimly lit cellar, which was filled with
a few small tables with green and white checked tablecloths. Matthew had already arrived. He was wearing a beautiful dark
suit and tie that fit perfectly over his broad shoulders and that spoke, discreetly, of his great wealth and excellent taste.

He stood as the waiter led her to his table in the corner, and Annie thought,
I keep forgetting how tall he is.
She knew that she was deliberately trying to forget how magnetic he was.

She felt a thrill go through her when he took her hand.Mentally, she rebelled against it.
I don’t have time for this.And it’s just not right, with poor Giuseppe lying dead.…

“You look pale, Annie. Sit down. Have you eaten anything today?”

“I don’t think so. I had some coffee at the office. Too much coffee, probably.”

He signaled the waiter. “Do you mind if I go ahead and order for us? I have a feeling you’re not going to be able to concentrate
too well on that menu. Is there anything you don’t like?”

“I don’t eat much meat,” she said. “Fish or chicken is okay.”

He ordered hearty salads and their catch-of-the-day special, to be served with plenty of pasta. Crusty bread and red wine
showed up almost immediately, and Annie forced herself to taste a bit of both.

Matt kept the conversation going with pleasantries of various
kinds, and Annie relaxed and allowed the sound of his husky voice to help to center her. He ordered tea instead of coffee
after the food was cleared away, and as they sipped it, he finally asked about the tragedy.

“I’ve already heard rumors that he was murdered. Is there any truth to that?”

She nodded wearily. “That’s what the police told me when they interviewed me. They said it looked as if the pins had been
removed from some of the joints just underneath his platform on the scaffolding.”

“Pins?”

“Construction scaffolding is made of metal cylinders that slide into one another,” she explained. “It’s similar, in a way,
to an erector set. The joints are secured with metal pins about a quarter of an inch in diameter… maybe a little thicker than
that, actually. If the pins are pulled out or loosened, the wooden platforms they support can’t take a man’s weight. The police
wouldn’t allow me inside, but from what I can gather, that part of the scaffolding collapsed, and he fell to his death.”

“So somebody sabotaged the scaffolding? When? During the night?”

“Presumably. Giuseppe gets to the site very early every morning. Just after dawn, usually, so I suppose it must have been
done during the night.”

“And do you think Giuseppe was the intended victim, or were other people using the scaffolding?”

Annie had been wondering about that too. Giuseppe did have men helping him, but he was notorious for insisting on doing the
lion’s share of the work himself. And because Giuseppe was the first to arrive and the last to leave, it was
difficult to imagine that anybody else could have been the target.

She explained this and added, “I think the police are focusing on his nephew. Vico is already on the run from the law. He
and Giuseppe were at each other’s throats—Giuseppe was so disappointed in the boy.”

“Just because two people are in conflict doesn’t mean one will murder the other,” Matt said with an edge to his voice.

“I didn’t say I suspected Vico, just that I got the impression the police do.”

He made a gesture that showed exactly what he thought of the police.

“On the other hand,” she said, “if the scaffolding was sabotaged in the manner the police described, it suggests that whoever
did it is familiar with construction techniques. In other words, he would have known what to do.”

“So would anybody else who worked there,” Matt pointed out.

She nodded. Losing Giuseppe was bad enough, but the thought that the fiery young Vico might have killed him just made things
worse. When she thought about Paolina, his pregnant girlfriend, she felt a kind of despair settle over her.

“If the boy and his uncle fought, and one of them killed the other, I should think it would be a crime of passion, not premeditated
murder,” said Matthew. “Sabotaging the scaffolding is a devious, cold-blooded act. Is this kid likely to do it that way?”

“You’re right,” Annie said slowly. “No, I can’t imagine him doing it that way. If Vico killed, he’d do it in your face, with
a gun or a knife.”

“
Is
there anybody else that you know of who might have wanted to murder the guy?”

“Maybe.” She told him about the threatening notes she’d received. “They appear to be aimed more at me than at any of the workmen,
though.”

“Have you shown them to the police?”

She shook her head. “No. I probably should have mentioned them this morning, but I think I was in shock, not thinking straight.…”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get another chance. I’m sure the cops aren’t through with you yet.”

She sighed. “I’d better get back to the office. There will be all sorts of ramifications. The press is there, and OSHA will
undoubtedly turn up demanding an investigation. It’s going to be messy.” She met his gaze uneasily. “You know what the press
is like. Somebody will zoom in on the fact that there’s been a murder in the cathedral within a few days of your being elected
chairman of the building committee, Matt.”

“I know,” he said grimly.

“I’m sorry. You’ll probably be in for more nastiness.”

“It’s not your fault. Murder seems to be dogging my footsteps lately. Like a curse.”

That afternoon in Sam’s office there was a tense meeting of everyone who was working, or had worked, on the cathedral project,
including Sam, Darcy, Annie, a couple of Brody Associates structural engineers, Jack Fletcher, and Paul McEner-ney, the general
contractor.

Sam was more belligerent than Annie had ever seen him before. He’d told her briefly before the start of the meeting that the
more he thought about what had happened to Giuseppe, the angrier he got. “Look, Paul,” he said now, “you assured me the site
was safe. You also assured me that there wasn’t going to be any trouble. Now we’ve got a man down—murdered, for chrissake!—and
the press is swarming all over the place like a cloud of locusts.”

“Take it easy, Sam,” McEnerney said. “Sit down. You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit. I’ve been answering questions from the
cops and the press since six o’clock this morning. We’ve got tabloids declaring that the site is cursed and the Devil is determined
to throw down the work of the Lord.”

“A real epic battle, huh?” McEnerney said. “Don’t worry, Sam. The Lord always wins these things.”

Sam shook his head. “Look, a man—a good man, an artist whose work is respected all over the world—was killed while working
on my project. I want to know why. I want to know, for example, if this has anything to do with union/nonunion trouble.”

“You mean because Giuseppe was nonunion? I doubt it. The unions all know that we have to hire these guys for the esoteric
work like fine marble carving and stained glass.”

McEnerney glanced at Fletcher and added, “My job superintendent here hasn’t noticed any union/nonunion troubles, right, Jack?”

“Right.”

Sam turned to Annie, “Do you agree with that, Annie? Have you seen any evidence of union-related conflict on site?”

She shook her head. “We have a lot of subcontractors on site. The workers all have different skills, and my impression has
been that they respect each other. Giuseppe and his men kept pretty much to themselves, and I never witnessed any trouble.”

“Except from the nephew,” Fletcher put in. “Vico and his uncle were at each other’s throats.”

“So this kid is the prime suspect?” McEnerney asked.

“It’s beginning to look that way,” Annie said reluctantly. “But it’s really hard for me to imagine that Vico would murder
his uncle.”

McEnerney shrugged. “Maybe he wanted money and his uncle refused to give it to him, they had a fight—who knows? People kill
each other for all sorts of stupid reasons.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair, and Annie felt a rush of sympathy for him. This killing had taken a toll on everyone. Every
time she thought of Giuseppe’s family, her heart seemed to squeeze in her chest.

“All I know is, the cops are tearing up the city looking for the kid,” he said. “And I hope to God they find him. Soon.”

Darcy spoke up for the first time: “Are there any other suspects? Any other reason why somebody might want Giuseppe Brindesi
dead?”

Sam’s eyes locked with hers. “None that I know of,” he said. He glanced at Paul McEnerney. “I certainly hope it doesn’t turn
out in any way to be a job-related killing.”

“You worry too much, Sam,” McEnerney said.

Sam sighed heavily. “Somebody’s got to. By the way, the cops want to fingerprint everybody who works at the crime scene or
was there during the last few weeks. Apparently they’re processing an area that’s full of prints, and if the killer’s are
there, they want to find them.”

“
All
our fingerprints will be there, Sam,” Annie said.

“Of course they will. Doesn’t mean any of us is under suspicion. Just that they want to identify all the prints they can,
and see what they have left.”

Doesn’t mean any of us is under suspicion.

Maybe not, Annie thought. But if Vico didn’t kill his uncle, who did?

* * *

That night Annie went as usual to the youth center to volunteer. It seemed odd to be so close to the cathedral and yet not
able to enter the site. The police crime-scene tape was still in place.

For once, there was no one to counsel. The activity of the police so nearby was keeping them away, Barbara Rae speculated.

Annie didn’t stay long, since Barbara Rae was in the middle of preparing a eulogy to deliver at Giuseppe’s funeral.

Annie had left her car parked among the trailers in the construction lot adjacent to the cathedral. Two police cars were still
there, and there were lights in the back of the cathedral and crime-scene tape around the east end. The west end, however,
was dark and quiet. No police, no tape. All the activity was down by the altar.

So, Annie was startled to see a slight figure tiptoeing in the shadows near the west entrance. She caught a glimpse of long
blond hair as the figure slipped into the west entrance of the construction site.

Paolina. Vico’s girlfriend.

What was she doing here? Looking for Barbara Rae? Sneaking inside to pray for her missing lover and her unborn child? She
must know, surely, that the cathedral had been closed down as a crime scene. She must know that Vico’s uncle was dead and
that Vico was being sought for questioning in the murder.