The Motive (7 page)

“But obviously Mr. Hanover gave her all this willingly.”

“Oh yes. According to him, she was always wonderful to him. Sweet, loving, understanding. Although you should have seen her when Mary—my sister-in-law?—mentioned that maybe she was going a little overboard on the house.”
Catherine Hanover paused. “Oh, listen to me. You know, I really don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but it was so obvious that she was a gold digger—very subtle and very patient—although Paul wouldn’t even hear of that, of course. We couldn’t even bring up that he might at least consider that possibility, get a prenup, something. But he wouldn’t go there. He loved her. She was the love of his life, and he was just so blessed that he’d found her. Pardon me, but puke.”

“So you didn’t believe her?”

“None of us did.”

“And who’s that, all of you?”

“The family. Paul’s daughters, Mary and Beth, my husband, Will. The kids.”

Taking the opportunity to get some details on the extended family, Glitsky wrote down names, addresses and telephone numbers. “But none of them came to the fire last night?”

“None of them knew about it until today, or way late. When I got back, maybe one o’clock, I called Mary and Beth but got their machines. My husband has been on a fishing trip off the coast of Mexico for the past three days—I still haven’t gotten to him, though he’s due back in tomorrow. He’s going to be devastated about his father, although maybe a bit relieved at the same time.”

Glitsky, speaking on his office telephone, shifted his weight to get more comfortable. Catherine Hanover was turning out to be the often sought but rarely encountered mother lode of witnesses, effortlessly providing him with facts, people, rumor and innuendo, context. “Why would he be relieved?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t mean really relieved. That might be too strong. But it’s no secret that we were all of us a little concerned about what would happen after Missy and Paul actually got married. I mean, Will is an architect and we do all right, but none of us have had Paul’s incredible financial success.”

“You were counting on an inheritance?”

“That sounds so cold-blooded. I don’t know if saying we were counting on it is really accurate—we all loved Paul and wanted him to live forever—but let’s face it, he was
worth a fortune. That money had been sitting there as a possibility for us for so long, let’s just say that it was a bit of an adjustment after he started talking about marrying Missy, thinking it wouldn’t be there anymore. And now, suddenly, here it is again. This sounds so terrible, doesn’t it? I never even thought about the money until this morning, really, but then once I realized…” She stopped, sighed into the receiver. “It’s terrible to talk like this,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Glitsky said, “It’s natural enough.”

But Catherine couldn’t drop the topic. “It’s just that there really was such a dramatic change after he started seeing her. I mean, until Missy came along, Paul used to help with all the kids’ tuitions. And we’d all go to Maui for Christmas every year. All of us, the whole extended family, for a week at Napili Kai. Stuff like that. To say nothing of college coming up for all eight of the grandkids. I really shouldn’t say it’s a relief, but…” Again, she trailed off.

Glitsky wanted to keep her talking. “So Missy lived with your father-in-law full-time?”

“Mostly, I think, yes. For about the last two years.”

“And do you know any of her friends from before she met him?”

“No. After she met Paul, there weren’t any other friends. He was her full-time job.”

Glitsky made a note that he’d need to follow up on the friends of Missy D’Amiens if the investigation widened. Although for the moment it appeared that, if anything, it had narrowed down to the obvious original theory. Certainly Catherine Hanover’s breezy admission of what might under other circumstances be considered a reasonable motive for murder—a large inheritance—argued against her own involvement in any foul play. He would of course verify the whereabouts of her husband and his two sisters last night, but for the moment it looked like Kathy West would remain disappointed in her benefactor and political ally.

But that moment abruptly came to an end during the next exchange.

“Can I ask you something, Inspector?”

“Sure.”

“The arson inspector thought they both might have been shot. Have you found out if that’s true?”

“Yes. It is.”

“So they were murdered?”

“Yes, ma’am. Or maybe one of them killed the other, and then himself.”

“Or herself.”

“Maybe,” Glitsky said. Although he found them compelling and consistent with his own experience, he wasn’t going to get into a discussion of Inspector Becker’s theories on why, in a scenario like this one, it probably wasn’t the woman.

“But you think it was Paul?”

“I don’t know.” He was silent for a minute, then realized that the details would undoubtedly be in the paper tomorrow, possibly on the television in a couple of hours. He wouldn’t be giving anything away. “The location of the woman’s wound indicated that she didn’t kill herself. It was up behind her head. Probably not self-inflicted.”

“And what about Paul’s?”

Glitsky let out a breath. “About where you’d expect in a suicide. Just over the right ear.”

Another short silence. Then Catherine Hanover said, “Wait a minute. The
right
ear?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“The medical examiner was, and he usually gets it right.”

“I think maybe you ought to go back and doublecheck.”

“Why?”

“Because—I thought everybody knew this, but—Paul had polio back in the early fifties. His right arm was paralyzed. It was dead. He couldn’t use it at all.”

Glitsky caught up to Kathy West as she pursued a photo op out of the newly refurbished, utilitarian, yet lovely again Ferry Building at the bay, the eastern end of Market Street. The sun, dusk-bound, had just slipped under the blanket of coastal fog that came to cover the city at its western edge at this time of day, at this time of year. In late spring and early summer, San Francisco bore a marked climatic resemblance
to Newfoundland. It was still nowhere near the evening proper, although what had only moments before been a shining, sparkling, even inspiringly welcoming downtown suddenly lost its direct sunlight and turned quite cold. Now gusts of the chill early-evening breeze flung open the jackets of businessmen, rearranged the hairstyles of women. Newspapers and food wrappers swirled in the eddies of alleyways and skyscapers.

The mayor’s office told Glitsky that he’d find her somewhere along Market if he missed her at the Ferry Building, but he should try there first. He had Paganucci drop him out front and walked head down, hands deep in his pockets, until he got himself out of the wind and inside. Her honor and the press entourage surrounding her were just coming out of Book Passage, where she’d “spontaneously” picked up a couple of novels, three cookbooks, a handful of musical CDs, Don Novello’s latest humor and a travel guide to Italy—all of it written and/or performed by San Franciscans.

Glitsky was standing to the side, listening with some skepticism while West talked to the assembled reporters, extolling the virtues of the city, its ongoing importance as a mecca of creativity and art, as these many eclectic works so amply illustrated. A bearded man in a wheelchair removed himself from the immediate group of a dozen or so reporters and photographers and rolled over next to him.

Glitsky knew Jeff Elliot well. A fellow alumnus, along with West and himself, of the DA’s kitchen cabinet, Elliot wrote the
Chronicle’
s “CityTalk” column. He suffered from multiple sclerosis, and Glitksy knew that he had recently had to abandon his sometime use of crutches for a fulltime wheelchair.

“What are you doing here?” Elliot said.

“Some business with the mayor.”

“Want to talk about it? See your name in the paper?”

“It’s what I live for.” Glitsky almost smiled. “Maybe later, if it turns out to be anything. Don’t let me keep you from getting a quote about how artist-friendly the city is. You’re not going to hear too many of them.”

“Or none.”

“Well, the mayor just said it, so it must be true.”

“If it is, it’s a major scoop.” Elliot looked up at him. “You know any struggling artists that actually live here?”

“I hear a couple of homeless guys are tagging every inch of the Fourth Street freeway ramp.”

“I don’t think she’s talking about them.”

“She’s talking about the city supporting artists. The only way it does that is if they’re homeless first and artists second.”

Elliot made no response, listened to the mayor for another minute. “It must just be me,” he said.

“What?”

“Finding that this city is a bit of a challenge lately to survive in, much less thrive. And I shouldn’t talk. I’ve got a good job. What if you’re trying to do art? Can you imagine?”

“No. But the mayor says we’re all open arms.”

“‘And Brutus is an honorable man.’”

Glitsky looked down at him. “If you say so, Jeff.”

“That was Shakespeare. Antony’s speech after they killed Caesar.”

“I thought so,” Glitsky said. “I was just going to say that.” He brought his attention back to the mayor. “So why are
you
here? What’s this about? It can’t be the poor, struggling artists.”

“No. Actually, it’s an interesting idea. This is the first of Kathy’s scheduled walking press conferences. You haven’t read about them?”

“Nope.”

“I’ve written about them twice now. The ‘Neighborhood Strolls’?”

“Still nope.”

“You’re letting me down here, Abe.”

“I’ll give myself twenty lashes when I get home, if I ever do. So what are they about, these strolls?”

“Well, it’s going to be in several different neighborhoods in the next weeks, but today she’s walking Market from here to Van Ness.”

“That’s a good walk. Lots of wildlife.”

“About twenty blocks worth.”

Glitsky lowered his voice. “Is she nuts? Here to Van Ness? That’s derelict central.”

“Yes it is. I believe she knows that.”

“So she wants to see people peeing and worse in public fountains? Or selling dope on the street? And she’s doing this because…”

“Because she wants people to know that she shares the same concerns for public safety, cleanliness and general civility as does the majority of the public.”

Glitsky shook his head. “She’s barking up the wrong tree, Jeff. The voters don’t care about that. They care that we’re compassionate and diverse and sensitive, but I don’t see much sign of caring about public cleanliness.”

“Well, there you go. But Kathy’s idea is that by her witness to the decay in these areas, she’s—and I believe I’m quoting here—‘serving notice that fixing this historically blighted corridor through the heart of the city is going to become a priority for my administration, and a boon to the city in general.’”

“And how is this going to happen again? By her walking down it?”

“That’s the theory. We report on the problems she encounters, awareness goes up, people see how bad some places are and stop tolerating them.”

This time, Glitsky snorted quietly. “No, no. You’ve got it backwards. We need to tolerate them more because we don’t understand them. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ Shakespeare again.”

“Thank you, I guessed. Ah, she sees you.”

Handing her shopping bag to one of her aides—she hadn’t known Glitsky was going to be there, but she instinctively rose to a political moment when she saw one—she turned to the reporters, quite a decent crowd considering that there was no real story to cover. “Excuse me,” she said, “I need to talk to the deputy chief.”

In an instant she was at their side, greeting them both, asking Elliot if he could give them a moment. Glitsky lifted a hand in an ambiguous salute—he was either greeting Kathy or saying good-bye to Elliot. Or maybe both.

“I didn’t mean to crash your party, Your Honor. If you’re in the middle of something…”

“Abe. I told you this morning, it’s Kathy. And no, this is fine. We can talk as we walk.”

The two left the Ferry Building with the reporter contingent, including Jeff Elliot, hanging back a respectable distance. The first several blocks along Market, while congested with foot and automobile traffic, nevertheless were relatively clean and populated with people who worked downtown. It had very little of the urban blight that Kathy West was hoping to expose, so it left her free to talk with Glitsky as they walked. Hooking her hand in his arm, she set a brisk pace. “I’m surprised to see you so soon. I’m assuming this is about Paul Hanover. Do you have something?”

“Pretty much what you wanted,” Glitsky said. “I’ve talked to John Strout and Hanover’s daughter-in-law, and between them got convinced that there’s very little chance he killed anybody, including himself.” In a few words, he outlined what he’d discovered—the entry wound over the right ear, the other one in the back of the woman’s head. “So really that’s about it. He could only have shot himself by some awkward contortion that makes no sense, and she had the same problem. So it probably didn’t happen that way.”

“When the chief said you were good, Abe, he wasn’t kidding, was he?”

“I’ll take lucky over smart every time. I ran into the right people.”

They had gotten down as far as Seventh Street, and now the mayor’s eyes were flicking back and forth rapidly, scanning for the signs of urban decay that Glitsky knew would begin appearing any minute. But her mind hadn’t left their topic. “So what happens now?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“With the investigation?”

“Well, it continues, of course. Back with Inspector Cuneo, which is where it belongs.”

A few more quick steps, and then she stopped abruptly. “This would be the same Inspector Cuneo who told the press this morning that this was a murder/suicide?”

Glitsky’s lips went tight for a beat before he answered.

“That’s what it looked like to me, too, when I first got there.”

“Yes, but you didn’t tell anybody about it until you had more facts, did you?”