Not Exactly a Brahmin (13 page)

“I’ll bet the collection agencies have gotten some action.”

“They’ve brought in more money than our nice letters did.”

“But even they can’t get everyone to pay.”

“No. Some they can’t find. Some don’t have anything. And some of them—would you believe this?—they quit perfectly good jobs rather than pay their debts. Of course, if there’s nothing to attach, there’s no way of getting them. But we keep checking. They can’t stay out of work forever. Sooner or later they’ll take a job where they keep records. And then we get them.”

I could almost see her pouncing. “And Lois Burk?” I held my breath.

“Never paid one cent. Never had a job long enough to attach her wages. I remember that girl. I remember her in here crying that she needed another scholarship, a bigger loan. She stood right here in this office and told me how she was going to New York and get herself a good job so she could pay back our generosity. They tell me she was an actress. I can tell you she was a good one. Not one cent.”

D
ETECTIVE
I
NSPECTOR
D
OYLE’S OFFICE
was in the rear corner of the Detective Division, behind the protection of the division secretary. At two o’clock I walked to her desk and she motioned me on.

Doyle’s office was not much larger than mine and Howard’s. Rank could only do so much. But instead of our slatted excuse for a window, he had a large, old-fashioned, wood-framed window that gave him not only the morning sun (on those days when the fog lifted before eleven) but a rear view of the colonnaded school administration building. Compared to Lois Palmerston’s view, it was not much, but stacked up against the other possibilities in this building, it was big stuff.

Note pad in hand, I sat on the straight-backed wooden chair he indicated. While a beat officer, I had had plenty of interviews with Lieutenant Davis. In each, I’d come ready to explain not so much my thinking about a case, as what steps I had taken, what information I’d found out. And Lieutenant Davis had sat behind his orderly desk, occasionally straightening an already geometric pile of papers, his feelings veiled behind his caramel-colored face. I had learned not to commit myself too soon; I’d learned to be more thorough than I liked; and over those years I’d picked up those subtle signals that were openings for discussion.

But now, seated next to a desk that bore a closer resemblance to my closet floor than Lieutenant Davis’s desk, I found all my old markers useless.

Inspector Doyle leaned back in his chair, awkwardly feeling for the armrests with his elbows. He was a tall man and at one time he had weighed more than 250 pounds. But now most of the excess was gone. The rumor was that he was going in for a series of medical tests. His prognosis, as assembled by the rumor mill, didn’t look hopeful. And his appearance did nothing to belie that speculation. He looked deflated; his uniform hung; his normally florid skin drooped. The bags under his eyes rested on his cheekbones. Even his eyebrows drooped almost into his eyes. And his hair, which had once been as fiery as Howard’s, was now muted with gray.

With an effort, he pushed a pile of papers to the side and leaned forward. “Smith, you’re new in this detail. This is your first homicide.”

“I had others when I was a patrol officer.”

He nodded. His flesh rolled with the movement. “The, uh, Palmerston case has been assigned to you since, when, this morning?”

“Yessir.”

“Not much time.”

“No sir.”

“Normally I wouldn’t have you in to discuss it yet. Probably not for another twenty-four hours.”

I waited.

He shifted his weight to one elbow. “I’m going to be straight with you, Smith. You’re the first woman we’ve had here. The department supports equal opportunities. Our record’s as good if not better than any department in the state. But I have to tell you, I had some questions about a woman detective in Homicide. Press Officer, sure. Special Investigations, dangerous but effective. But Homicide …”

I could feel my lips pressing together in anger.

“But Lieutenant Davis pushed for you. I’ll be honest, Smith, I didn’t want to have a woman who was too soft, who got too emotionally involved with the widows, who didn’t want to ask the tough questions—”

“Inspector, I—”

“Let me finish, Smith. Like I said, I had my reservations. But what I didn’t expect was that when you’d been on the case for less than one day, there would be a complaint about you.”

I stared.

“Police harassment.”

“What? From whom?”

“One of the city council members called at noon. Had a complaint that you were badgering the widow.”

“Badgering! Jesus! I waited till eleven o’clock this morning so I wouldn’t wake her up. Then the woman wouldn’t even let me in the house. I was trying to be considerate. Look, I broke the news to her last night—on my own time. It wasn’t even my case yet. I was just assisting Pereira then. I drove her to the morgue—on my own time. I offered to stay with her until she could have a friend come. How much less badgering can you do? If she hadn’t complained, you’d be saying I was too soft with her.”

Doyle sighed. “The problem is, Smith, that the woman’s got connections.”

“There are things I need to see in that house, things she could be destroying right now. I wouldn’t put money on her innocence.”

“Calm down, Smith. Half of being a cop is diplomacy.”

I took a breath. “Sir, when Ralph Palmerston’s car left the Cadillac dealership yesterday afternoon it was certified in perfect shape.”

“Smith—”

“Sir, if you’ll let me explain.”

Grudgingly, he nodded.

“Palmerston left there and drove straight home. And at some point between the time he got home and the time he left, his brake lines were cut.”

“You think the wife could have cut the brake lines?”

I had my own reservations about Lois Palmerston under a car, but it galled me to admit that now. “If it means you’ll inherit a fortune, it’s something you can learn.”

He slumped back in his chair, his hand automatically going to rest on the paunch that was no more and landing on his leg. “I see what you’re saying, Smith. I’m not questioning your suspicions. But unfortunately, that doesn’t alter the fact that you’re going to have to tread carefully. This is not a case that will go unnoticed. So far the papers have only reported it as an accident. But it won’t take them long to see a Homicide officer asking questions and to put two and two together. Then it’s going to be front-page news. They’ll be asking why we don’t have a suspect in custody, why we’re dragging our feet. The last thing we need is for them to add that instead of tracking down the killer, the detective in charge is out browbeating the widow. You follow, Smith?”

“Yessir. But I need to get in the house. Maybe a warrant?”

“Holy Mother! Smith, it’s bad enough they’re complaining about you harassing, how do you think a warrant would go down?”

“But, sir—”

“Smith, I know it’s frustrating. You’ve got to walk a fine line. You let this case go unsolved too long and the people in the hills will be screaming that we don’t bother with murder unless the corpse was dealing coke. You push this woman and she’ll have a lawyer raising hell. But, Smith, this is the type of thing that Lieutenant Davis told me you could handle. It’s what got you the nod for this job.”

And, I thought, failing at this is exactly what will plunk me back to patrol officer. “Sir,” I said, “I’ve been assuming Lois Palmerston called in the complaint herself. Is that right?”

He shrugged. “No way to know. By law the council members don’t have to reveal the source of their complaints. And they don’t.”

It was clear the interview was over. I stood up, nodded, and opened the door. I nearly smacked into the chief. In formal departments, the chief would have called Inspector Doyle into his office, but Berkeley was more relaxed. If Chief Larkin wanted something, he had no qualms about walking down the hall. He stood outside the door in his gray suit and narrow red tie—another informality. When I had started on the force, I had assumed the chief would wear a uniform. He had one, I found out, but we didn’t see it often. A well-tailored suit, he had once said, was his uniform. But in truth, it was the tie that was his personal badge of office. Years passed, styles changed, thin ties gave way to wide splashily flowered ones. But for Chief Larkin, the narrow red tie was constant.

As he nodded at me, his expression revealed nothing, though I knew, as chief, he had gotten word of the complaint.

When I got back to my office, Howard was in his chair and Pereira was on his desk, her feet propped on his open bottom drawer.

“Well?” Howard asked.

“News gets around fast,” I said, sitting in my own chair. “Almost as fast as you get back from Leon Evans’s place. I thought you’d be gone for hours.”

“Finished early,” he said with a shrug.

“About your meeting with Doyle,” Pereira said. “What happened? He doesn’t usually focus in on a case this soon, or so they tell me.”

“Most cases don’t have a harassment complaint before the day is out.”

“What?” they said together.

“Complaint that I badgered the widow.”

“I was kidding about you billy-clubbing prisoners to let off steam,” Howard said.

I shrugged off Howard’s attempt to lighten the atmosphere. To Pereira I said, “What have you found out this morning?”

“Other than Lois Palmerston’s one mention in the society column for giving a breakfast party, not much. I left you a note about the accountant.”

“Right. Anything more than you said there?”

“Not really, and I know he told me all there is. I started off by mentioning my drink with Paul Lucas and name-dropped along for a few minutes. Gorley, the accountant, was impressed. He should have been. The names I tossed out were the royal family of West Coast finances—much too far above his level for him to check on me.”

“Did he know anything about Lois Palmerston’s money before her marriage?”

“If she had any, it was below the level of his attention. You know, Jill, to those people less than a hundred thousand is called a nuisance account.”

“What I had in mind was the difference between Lois arriving with nothing or with five thousand.”

Pereira shook her head. “To Gorley, a pauper is a pauper.”

“What about the lawyer?”

“John Farrell? He’s completely reliable. His firm is known for representing money. They handled Palmerston’s father’s affairs. And I can tell you it wasn’t easy to get anything out of him.”

“What did you?”

“Probably nothing you don’t already know. After he got the okay from the widow, he told me that she gets everything. No strings attached.”

“What did he say about Palmerston himself?”

She laughed. “As little as possible, of course. But the picture he painted was of an old-line conservative who felt it was his duty as a member of the gentry to do his part. It was a picture Farrell approved of.”

“How come this guy lived in Berkeley?” Howard demanded. “He could have lived down the Peninsula with the rest of the money.”

Pereira smiled. “Actually, I know the answer to that too. Farrell found it odd—well, appalling is more accurate. He said, of course Palmerston didn’t enjoy the ‘radical atmosphere of lunacy’—that’s a quote. But he liked the weather, he carried on about his view, and he had his house fitted out to suit him.”

I recalled Palmerston’s panoramic view. His attachment to it made me think fondly of him. “I’m beginning to wonder what is going on with Lois Palmerston. Here she is giving her attorney permission to tell us about her husband’s will, being as helpful as she can, and the next thing she files a complaint about me. Maybe Jackson was right. Maybe she had a shady past. She could have been a call girl in San Francisco. She could be trying to keep me from asking about that.”

“I can check for you,” Howard said. “I am in Special Investigations now. Vice and drugs are my bread and butter. If SFPD had made a collar, we’d know. But I can call over there and find out if there were any suspicions about her. Someone may recognize the name.”

“But Jill,” Periera said, “are you sure
she
was the one complaining about you?”

“Well, no. But who else would care? Who else would
know
?”

Pereira shifted her feet on the desk drawer.

Howard asked, “If you don’t see her for a while, what happens?”

“Or what doesn’t happen?”

“Well, the main thing is that I don’t get to search the house, and I don’t get a look at Herman Ott’s report to Palmerston on Shareholders Five, assuming Palmerston kept that in the house.”

“He probably did,” Pereira said.

I stared at her.

“Farrell,” she said quickly. “He complained that Palmerston tended to keep important papers at home as long as he thought he might have to refer to them—long after Farrell felt they should have been in his safe deposit box.”

“Well, wherever he kept it, I’m not likely to see it.”

“So then, who is it who benefits by your not seeing it?” Howard asked. He leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, stretching his legs across the room. “Lois Palmerston?”

“I don’t know. I asked her about Shareholders Five and she had no reaction. It could be that it has nothing to do with her.”

“The Shareholders themselves,” Pereira suggested.

“Possibly, but according to Adam Thede, he didn’t know anything about being chosen for Palmerston’s beneficence.”

“You believe that?” Howard asked.

“I’m letting that decision ride. But even if Thede is lying and he knows he’s part of the group, that doesn’t mean he knows that Palmerston hired a detective to check on them. What Herman Ott told Palmerston he could have figured out himself. So—” I laughed.

“What?”

“One person who gains by keeping that report a secret is Herman Ott. I told him that with his client dead no one but us would pay for his research. He gave me a scrap of it, but hardly twenty pages’ worth.”

Howard rolled forward. “So of Herman Ott’s sitting on his perch waiting to sell you Palmerston’s information bit by bit.”

“Unless,” Pereira added, “you can get to that report first, in which case Ott gets nothing.”