He paused, smiled broadly, shook his head. “Good old Irish Oona. I was mostly lucky to have her be my mom.”

  We sat there in silent tribute to poor Oona, who’d had it hard but survived. Just like most of us. She’d had good times and bad and had a good man, a son, to show for her efforts. And maybe Frederick had been right to deprive Q of his father. I didn’t think so, but he probably knew himself better than I did.

  Q put down his coffee cup and said, “Mighty fine coffee if I don’t say so myself. And wait till you get a mouthful of those scones.” He picked one up, took a bite, murmured, “Hmmm mmm.”

  I raised my cup to him, took another sip.

  “Tell me about what Speed had to say for hisself.”

  I did. He listened with his eyes flat and steady on me.

  “Speed is weak. He’s got no moral compass. And he’s always desperate for money cuz of his gambling habit. And cuz of the Big C. Man like that, with those weaknesses, capable of anything.”

  “I agree with you, Q. Wondering if there’s anything more you can find out about him through your contacts. Like where he was that night. If this woman he claims to have spent the night with really exists.”

  He got to his feet, moved back into the kitchen, opened a drawer, took out a pack of cigarettes that read English Ovals. A small matchbook appeared in his right hand, and he tore free a match, flicked it nonchalantly against the strike pad. It burst into a tiny flame, and he cupped his fingers, lit the cigarette, and dragged in a big mouthful of smoke. He sighed and released it through his nose contemplatively.

  “Maggie Stevens or Jesse may know. Jessie used to be his girlfriend, and I think he confides in her. I’ll check around some more.”

  “Good. Let me know.” I took a bite out of one of the scones. “These are good.”

  He waved his chin up and down while taking another drag on his English Oval.

  “Have you thought any more about the roses?” We’d discussed it as Phoebe had also told him about her concerns.

  “No clue about that. I guess I knew about her not liking roses. But never really gave it a second thought. Someone sending her twenty roses has to mean something, but not to me. The note seems harmless, but strange. Wouldn’t know who to ask about it other than Phoebe girl, and we already know everything she does. Was me, I’d talk to Rachel about it.”

  “Why?”

  “A hunch. She don’t like roses either.”

  I had the scone at my lips again, but stopped, as if somebody had just shouted that it was laced with arsenic.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Kinda funny. Last time somebody sent Sarah a dozen roses. It happens every now and then. Anyway, somehow it came up in conversation while Rachel was waiting for Sarah to come out from backstage after a show. I mentioned about the roses, and Rachel told me that, just like Sarah, she didn’t like them. Funny, uh? Both of ‘em.”

  It was funny.

  But not hah hah funny.

  Twenty-One

  Scott Tripp agreed to meet with me at an espresso bar inside the Flora Gardens Nursery Center, a distinctly different place offering strange plants, unique decor, and funky pottery.

  It was only a few blocks from the Children’s Network offices and the Black Canary. I got there a little after eight a.m. and ordered an espresso, sitting at a wooden stool beside the lovely black-topped espresso bar and across from a beautiful big fica of some sort.

  Outside I’d passed an ancient, decrepit black Pontiac that had been converted into a terrarium with wild plants and bushes filling the open trunk and hood and passenger compartment.

  San Francisco never ceases to surprise with eye-popping discoveries. There’s always something mind bogglingly new in Baghdad by the Bay.

  Scott rolled in on his wheelchair as I was ordering my second espresso. He looked absolutely shocked to see me, and I had to ask him three times what he wanted to drink before he told me. I ordered him his double latte, heavy on the cream, and brought it to the small, round glass-topped iron table he’d parked his mode of transportation beside.

  As soon as I sat down, he shook his head and said, “You lied to me.”

  I had fibbed. I told him I represented a wealthy investor who had decided it was time to give back and was interested in donating to the Children’s Network. I was thinking of Marsh, and he certainly fit the bill of my description, other than the fact that he had no interest in giving anything back.

  “I apologize. I thought you might not meet with me if you remembered me from the night I came to search your offices after Sarah Swan was shot.”

  “You’d have been right.”

  “Ergo…”

  “I don’t see why I should talk to you now.”

  “A free latte?”

  He sighed.

  “Interesting place.” I lifted my espresso cup and waved it at the surroundings.

  He didn’t respond for a while, just sat there staring at me, trying to figure out where I was coming from. Finally, he took a sip of latte and murmured, “Mmmm. That hits the spot. I come here just about every morning. Starts the day out in a tranquil, meditative way that helps me face the rest of my day.”

  “I guess it can be pretty trying…troubling…working with the kids and what’s been done to them.”

  He nodded, took another sip of latte. “Yes. Worthwhile. Rewarding, but tough at times.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Since the beginning. I started it. It was my idea. Got a few grants and help from some generous patrons. That was almost fifteen years ago now.” He shook his head again, like he couldn’t believe how fast time flew by.

  “Beside you and Liz, how many people work there?”

  “Two others employed full time. Plus our bookkeeper. The rest are volunteers, more than twenty of them at any one time.”

  “How about management?”

  “Just me, really. We have a board of directors, of course. I report to them.” He paused, frowned. “I doubt you have this much fascination with our management structure. Why are you asking all this?”

  “Of course I still love you,” a woman at the table nearest us whispered. “It was nothing, really. Just a fling.”

  The emaciated, acne-scarred, woman sitting across from her wasn’t buying it. She shook her head and looked away.

  Despite the relationship drama, I refocused my attention. “Still trying to figure out what happened the night Sarah was shot.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me or the Children’s Network.”

  “That’s what I’m here to ask you about. Sarah volunteered with you until recently for almost a year. I hear you had a falling out.”

  “How—” Tripp stopped, rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek. Took another sip of latte while deciding what to say next. “Doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “Yes, she worked with us. I am not at liberty to disclose why she no longer volunteers. It would be a breach of her privacy and ours.”

  “It just surprised me when I learned. Neither you nor Liz seemed at all concerned that someone you knew well had been shot. You didn’t seem upset, surprised. Didn’t mention to me that night that you knew her.”

  “You promised,” acne-scarred face whispered, “that it wouldn’t happen again.”

  I guessed they thought that their whispers prevented us from overhearing. Perhaps my hearing is acute. Either way, their secrets were now mine. But I intended to keep my lips zipped.

  I allowed time for Tripp to think while I kept an ear tuned to the response due from the straying woman. Both took a long time, but cheater spoke first.

  “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

  “You mean the pussy,” acne-scarred spat out, a little louder than a whisper now.

  “We don’t disclose information about our employees or volunteers to the general public,” Tripp said, staring at the woman who had just said pussy. I guessed it was the first word of their conversation that he understood. I had to admit, it was an attention-getter.

  “Fine. I don’t really get it. But you knew that Sarah had been shot. You knew her well. Yet there was no reaction at all to the news.”

  “I don’t like your inference.”

  “I love you,” the cheater whispered with strong emotion.

  “I’m not inferring anything, just making an observation that struck me.”

  “I love you too, Squiggles,” acne-scarred responded, her voice breaking with a similar intensity.

  Squiggles?

  Tripp glared at me. He didn’t seem to find the word squiggles to be off-putting like I did. “We’re getting nowhere. In the work we do, I’ve learned not to give too much weight to an individual’s surface affect. An intensity of emotion may signal little while a blank stare and a rigid face may hide an ocean of feeling.”

  Wow. This guy was a font of psychological wisdom.

  Squiggles and Acne clasped hands across the table and stared into each other’s eyes.

  “So that’s what was happening with you that night. You were all upset inside about Sarah, but refused to betray the slightest hint of recognition or caring?”

  “What’s the point, Mr. Plank? Just come on out and say what you mean.”

  The problem was I sometimes don’t mean what I say or say what I mean when I’m interviewing suspects. I can’t say that I have a whole coherent theoretical framework, like Freud or Jung. It’s more a seat-of-the-pants adaptable approach that depends on the suspect, my mood, my experiences, and pure gut instinct. In this case, my gut was saying that Scott Tripp was full of it.

  “Liz told me that no one entered your offices that night after Sarah was shot. She said it was impossible. But I never asked you the question. Did you see anything unusual that night? Were any of the volunteers on duty that night? Did anyone show up unexpectedly?”

  “It was just Liz and I that night. Not another person until the next morning as far as I know.”

  “As far as you know,” I repeated, nodding my head up and down.

  Notes from the William Tell Overture, the theme song for the TV show, The Lone Ranger, started playing, and Tripp fished his cell phone out of a holster strapped to the armrest of his wheelchair. He had a brief conversation curtly rendered with multiple yes’s and no’s and then returned the device to its holder.

  “I have to go. Please don’t bother me again. The police have questioned me fully about that night. I have nothing more to say.”

  I nodded.

  He spun the wheelchair, and I muttered, “You’re welcome.”

  He paused and gave me a quizzical look.

  “For the latte. I know you meant to thank me, so I did it for you and responded in kind.”

  “Jeez,” he said and rolled away.

  Squiggles and Acne were still holding hands and smiling at each other, betrayal be damned.

  Twenty-Two

  I found Frankie in Alexandra’s living room, curled up on the floor with a bag of Doritos trailing chips across the floor. She had tears running down her cheeks, hugging Red to her chest. The cat was meowing, none too happily.

  The TV was on. Billy Crystal was rushing through the streets on New Year’s Eve trying to reach Meg Ryan and tell her he’d finally realized what an idiot he’d been and how much he loved her. I immediately thought of the scene where Meg fakes an orgasm in a restaurant to prove to Billy that women are adept at propping up and fooling the male ego.

  I was hoping that this wasn’t what had made Frankie so sad. Maybe she was crying tears of joy for the fact that Billy had finally realized what was so clear to the viewer for the whole movie.

  I knelt down next to her and said, “What’s wrong?”

  She kept Red in his uncomfortable noose at her chest but reached and arm up and wrapped it around my neck, smushing my face down into her shoulder. Don’t let anyone tell you thirteen-year-old girls aren’t strong.

  My heart melted. Sorry, it just did.

  No kid has ever made me feel the way this jackal has. It was unnerving. I can’t say I liked it much.

  I whispered again, “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Jack,” she mumbled, her lips against my neck. “Jack Rubio.”

  A new name. “What’s wrong with Jack?”

  “I hate him.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “He laughed at me.” She pulled away, lifted the cat from her chest, and deposited him on the carpet nearby. Red scampered away, afraid she’d change her mind. She brought her feet into her thighs in a semi-lotus position and started playing with her toes, keeping her eyes down. “I was doing a skateboard trick for him, a nollie I’ve been working on. There was a rock on the ground, and it hit one of my rollers and I fell.”

  I reached under her chin and examined her face. There was a big purple bruise on her chin. I took her arms in my hands and examined the length of them. A few more bruises, a large Band-Aid on the back of her arm. “Mrs. Fenway, the school nurse, patched me up. She said to be careful, which she says every time. She should think of something else to say. There’s another big cut on my leg, but it’s okay. Only hurts a little bit anyway.”

  I thought it probably hurt more than a little, but she was a tough nut. She’d had to be, having had to endure what she had in her thirteen years. She was dynamite on that skateboard, but accidents were part of it, and I wasn’t going to add to Mrs. Fenway’s glib advice.

  “So this Jack jerk laughed at you?”

  “Jack isn’t a jerk. I like him.” She made a face like I’d just forced a spoonful of Brussel sprouts into her mouth. “I hate him.”

  I dug her. Wished I hadn’t missed the more innocent days, her single digit years. But I knew that hers hadn’t been as innocent as they should have been.

  “Jack probably didn’t mean to laugh. Boys, you know?” I said.

  “Yeah. Max, I do. I really do,” she said with a tone of voice belying her age.

  We sat there for a moment while she examined her wiggling toes.

  “He kissed Jessica Stern.”

  Ah, we’d arrive at the crux of the matter and the tears.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Right on the mouth.”

  I’d put my foot in my mouth.

  “No, where’d you see them?”

  “On the bench at the park behind the school.”

  “I see,” I said, nonsensically.

  “I saw,” she said. “But they didn’t see me.”

  Before I got confused, I shifted. “So, you like Jack?”

  “And hate him.” Her eyes trembled. A single tear escaped her right eye and trailed slowly down her cheek.

  I was way out of my element. What could I say that would make her feel better and not worse?

  “Do you want to talk to Alexandra?”

  Her eyes lit up, she wiped her cheeks, and nodded eagerly.

  “Let’s see if I can find her.” I dearly hoped she was available.

  I sat at the kitchen table, nursing an almond milk and a vanilla biscotti, across from the living room where Frankie had been in an intense conversation with Alexandra for almost a half hour. There had been more tears but smiles and laughter too.

  Alexandra told me that she was finally coming home next week. And not a moment too soon. I missed her, but, more importantly Frankie did. There’s only so much a semi-surrogate father figure can do for a pubescent girl, after all.

  I reviewed my conversations with Speed Weed, Scott Tripp, and Phoebe and Q, trying to cull out synchronicities and links, hoping for that ah hah moment that would solve the mystery and the complex motives behind it.

  But nothing cohered, just a bunch of facts and opinions, incidentals that might eventually lead to something more important, more relevant to the case, but for now left me feeling exhausted, tired, and frustrated.

  There was a knock on the front door. Alexandra’s friend, Tabatha, had come to stay with Frankie while I attended the biggest party of the society season.

  Twenty-Three

  The heavy rain had started mid-afternoon and hardly let up a lick since. Looking out through the van window, the Wambaugh estate’s sharp rectangular edges blurred, and I imagined it as some Manderley-like hothouse harboring awful secrets threatening all who entered.

  I was cramped and hot, despite the cold and wind lashing the wavering trees outside, in the back of the catering van, stashed on a little bench seat between some Hors d’oeuvres, at least a dozen, including a salmon-ricotta concoction that Rope Rivers had recently invented, and desserts—a massive collection of sweets—from chocolate truffles to brandy bites.

  I’d been sitting in the back of the truck for more than an hour while Rope and his gang unloaded food and supplies into the vast reaches of the Wambaugh kitchen and dining areas.

  I’d discovered, through Rachel, that Mrs. Wambaugh was a huge fan of Rope Rivers. He was one of San Francisco’s most prominent semi-celebrity chefs. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually they gave him his own TV show, as it seemed to be the natural course of things in celebrity-obsessed La La Land, which was now an apt description for folks not only residing in L.A. but applied just as well to binge-watchers in Lincoln, Nebraska or Garden City, Kansas.

  It turns out that Mrs. Wambaugh’s admiration for Rope bordered on idolatry, so I coaxed Bo into offering his services for a dinner party at the palatial estate of Rope’s number one fan. Bo had called her out of the blue, feigning that he’d had a bright idea, that throwing a dinner at her house would be a great advertisement for the restaurant and for the blossoming fame of his chef. Bo promised to take care of all the details and to offer the affair free of charge, if Mrs. Wambaugh promised in return to invite all her rich, socialite friends and let her contacts in the society press cover the event.

  She’d been flattered, overjoyed, and anxious to introduce all her friends to the fabulous young chef who she would now count as one of her intimates.

  In truth, Bo didn’t want nor need the attention for his restaurant. It was already one of the more popular places in town. I knew I owed him one and had promised to go and have a talk with my niece, his daughter, to see if she’d open up to me about any problems in her marriage. Not a chat I was looking forward to.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21