Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (38 page)

"You're right. I'll see that they
get them."

I helped Hank clear the remaining
cupboards, then offered to drop the keys at the landlady's, since he'd
mentioned she lived in my neighborhood. He said he'd take care of it,
then added, "I meant to tell you, I'm cooking chili at my flat Monday
night, in honor of Anne-Marie's birthday. Jack and Ted'll be there, and
Rae and Willie. I'd like you to come, too."

"Rae and Willie—that's getting to
be a pretty steady thing, isn't it?"

"Appears that way. Do you
disapprove?"

Since she'd started seeing Willie
Whelan some months before, I'd harbored certain reservations about my
assistant's new relationship, mainly because I know Willie's myriad
faults altogether too well. He is a friend of Hank's from his Vietnam
days, and a former fence who—as he puts it—has "gone legit." What
started as a small discount jewelry store on Market Street had turned
into a gold mine for him, with branches all over the Bay Area, and he
takes great pride in the fact that he—like his arch-competitor at the
well-known Diamond Center—performs his own television commercials. On
late-night TV you can usually see him luring the young and gullible to
acquire gems that they don't need, to establish credit histories that
will set the stage for future judgments against them, and—if by some
miracle they don't default—to surrender a good portion of their
lifetime earnings to Willie Whelan.

Willie is, in many respects, a
great guy—provided you don't buy anything from him or take him too
seriously. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my bright,
young, recently divorced assistant was seeing him.
 

I said to Hank, "It's not my
place to approve or disapprove. I just hope she doesn't get hurt."

"Would be a shame, so soon after
she got rid of Doug-the-asshole, as she's so fond of calling her ex.
But what about it—will you come for dinner?"

I checked my mental calendar. I'd
planned to suggest to Anne-Marie Altman, Hank's wife, that I take her
to lunch to celebrate her birthday, but with this new investigation,
there might not be time for that. "Okay," I said, "you can count me in."

"If you want to bring Jim—"

Jim, I thought, feeling a sinking
sensation. I'd almost forgotten his unwelcome early-morning visit.

"No, I'll come by myself." I
hadn't yet told Hank that I'd broken it off, and I was in no mood to
discuss it now. Quickly I started down the hall, trying to remember
where I'd tossed my bag and jacket on the way in.

Hank followed me. "Shar, is
something wrong between—"

"Everything's fine," I lied. "And
I'd better get going because I have a date tonight."

Hank looked both relieved and
pleased. Every time I become irritated with his nosiness, I have to
remind myself that it's not his fault that he loves me and wants me to
be happy.

I'd been looking forward to a
quiet evening at home, but when I got there, my little brown-shingled
earthquake cottage—one of some four thousand built as emergency housing
after the quake and fire of '06, and lovingly added onto by a
succession of owners, including me—seemed less of a haven than it
usually did. One reason, I knew, was the unsettling effect of Jim's
visit. Another was that my fat black-and-white-spotted cat, Watney, had
died in his sleep two months before, and I hadn't replaced him, didn't
think it possible to replace him. But the chief reason was that the man
who might have become the love of my life was living in
Palo Alto to be near his
estranged, mentally ill wife, whose fragile emotional balance had been
toppled as a result of my own bad judgment during a particularly
complex investigation. Never mind that my lover, George Kostakos—who is
a psychologist and ought to know—didn't blame me for her collapse.
Never mind that he said it had been long in the making.
I
blamed
myself, and I went about clad in the proverbial hair shirt, insulated
by it against disappointment and loneliness.

But even self-created hair shirts
could itch and chafe sometimes. And resentment could occasionally flare
against a former lover who was uncondemning, caring, and honorable.

And after years of Wat's
curmudgeonly companionship, a house without my cat was not a home.

I stowed the pouch containing
Hilderly's gun in the strongbox, then went to the fridge and put away
the little custard pies I'd bought at the restaurant. For a moment I
considered a glass of wine, but drinking alone in the kind of mood I
was in could lead to dangerous introspection. There was a new comedy
I'd been wanting to see at the Northpoint, and if I hurried I could
catch the early show. Quickly I took a shower to wash away the dust of
Hilderly's apartment, then donned my soft old faded jeans and a sweater.

Before I left the house, however,
I looked into my jewelry box at the love beads I'd kept there for more
than twenty years. They glimmered in the day's fading light—opalescent
blue and pink and green and yellow symbols of an era that perhaps was
never as joyful or innocent as some of us remember it.

The first thing Monday morning
I called Rae Kelleher at All Souls and briefed her on the Hilderly
investigation. She said she'd get started immediately on the skip
traces on Heikkinen and Taylor.

"I take it you're not coming in
for a while," she added.

"No. I'm going to see what I can
find out from Grant and Goodhue, and I'm also going to stop by the
SFPD, talk about Hilderly's death with the detective in charge of these
random shootings."

"The detective?" Her voice was a
shade sly.

I sighed. "Okay—Greg Marcus."

"You mentioned you'd had dinner
with him a couple of weeks ago. Are you seeing him again?"

"We've been going to lunch or
dinner together ever since we got over being bitter about our breakup.
It's no big deal."

"Amazing how you manage to stay
on good terms with your former boyfriends."

I started to say, "Except for
Jim," but thought better of it. Rae had introduced me to him last
winter, and she'd been disappointed when I broke it off. Instead I
said, "Staying on good terms with Greg comes
under the heading of good police relationships. I'll check in with you
later."

Next I phoned the local branch of
Thomas Y. Grant Associates; the switchboard operator told me Mr. Grant
worked out of his home office and gave me that number. When I called it
and requested an appointment, Grant's secretary hastened to caution me
that his legal practice was restricted to men. I said my business was
personal and concerned a substantial bequest left to him by an All
Souls client. That prompted her to put me on hold. When she returned,
she said Mr. Grant could fit me in at ten-thirty and gave me a Pacific
Heights address on the section of Lyon Street that borders the Presidio.

The final item on my mental list
was to try to contact Jess Goodhue at KSTS. The anchorwoman, I was
told, would not come into the studio until three or three-thirty. I
left my name and number and said that if I didn't hear from her, I'd
check back then. After I replaced the receiver in its cradle I stared
indecisively at it: should I call Greg for an appointment or just drop
in? Finally I opted for setting a definite time and punched out the
number for his extension at the Homicide detail of the SFPD. He was
there, and sounded pleased to hear from me. When I explained what I
wanted to talk with him about, he invited me to lunch.

"We could try the South Park
Cafe," he added.

"No," I said quickly. South Park,
a curious little street in the newly trendy SoMa district near the Hall
of Justice, had figured in the investigation when I'd met and lost
George Kostakos; it still held painful memories for me.

". . . Oh, right," Greg said.
"Well, there's always Max's Diner."

"Why don't I meet you at your
office, and we'll decide then."

He agreed and we hung up.

I went to dress for my
appointment with Thomas Grant. After some deliberation I chose a gray
wool suit with a short skirt and a long double-breasted
jacket—a Chanel knockoff that nevertheless had been outrageously
expensive and worth every penny of it. It's the outfit that Anne-Marie
has dubbed my "schizoid suit," because it's businesslike and sexy at
the same time.

The fog had continued through the
weekend and into that morning. Even the quiet streets of Pacific
Heights—where the residents are normally blessed not only with
affluence but also with good weather—were finely misted. I parked my MG
in front of the address Grant's secretary had given me and got out,
shivering slightly from the cold.

The house—one of only a few that
backed up on the thickly forested grounds of the Presidio—was a large
one. Its brown shingles, leaded-glass windows, and shiny black trim
were of an early twentieth-century style that abounds in that part of
the city. An arched wooden gate led into a bricked front yard shaded by
an acacia tree. The bricks had been swept clean of every leaf. Raised
flower beds bordered the small yard at the base of its high wooden
fence. The geraniums that grew in them were planted at precise
intervals; they looked prim and stiff, as if standing at attention.

Grant's secretary, who greeted me
at the door and introduced herself as Ms. Angela Curtis, looked prim
and stiff, too. Her blond hair was cropped in a style that immediately
suggested the word "efficient"; she wore a plain gray suit, simple gold
jewelry, and sensible low-heeled pumps. Although she was around my age,
she seemed a much older woman. As I watched her cross the large
oak-paneled entry to tell Grant I was there, I tried—and failed—to
imagine her running on the beach, or laughing and eating and drinking
with friends, or making love, or any of the other things that normal,
vital women enjoy doing.

When Ms.Curtis vanished through
a closed door to the right of the wide central staircase, I turned and
studied my surroundings. The other doors
that opened off the room were shut, too, as if Grant sought to separate
his professional and personal lives. There was a red Chinese rug on the
parquet floor and a large oval table in the center under the brass
chandelier, but otherwise there were no furnishings, no decorations, no
pictures on the golden-oak walls. An austere man, this Thomas Y. Grant.

Ms.Curtis returned and motioned
to me. "Mr.Grant is on the telephone," she said. "If you'll go in and
take a seat, he'll be with you shortly."

I thanked her and entered the
office. At first glance the room appeared to be a typical lawyer's
study, with the obligatory wall of thick tomes, the obligatory mahogany
desk and leather-upholstered furniture. I couldn't see Grant because he
was swiveled around with the high back of his chair to the desk,
talking into the phone in a low voice. Ms.Curtis shut the door behind
me.

Then I realized that unlike the
typical lawyer's study, the room contained no framed diplomas,
certificates, or pictures of the attorney with prominent clients or
politicians. I smiled faintly, thinking that this office was also
different from Hank's, which contains—among other things—a cigar-store
Indian and a poster of Uncle Sam saying, "I want YOU for the U.S.
Army." But then I realized Grant had some peculiar objects of his own,
and went over to the shelves that flanked the fireplace to have a
closer look at them.

They appeared to be a bizarre
form of sculpture: strange, twisted, unrecognizable shapes of wood and
metal intermingled with feathers and tufts of fur and fragments of
bone. I looked more closely at one and saw a pair of yellowed fangs
protruding from a strip of reptile skin; another had claws— ragged,
broken ones. Some sort of primitive folk art, I supposed, unsettling
and quite unpleasant.

Behind me, Grant was still
talking. I moved to the other side of the fireplace and examined a
piece that sat apart from the rest on a shelf of its own. The framework
was a crossed pair of rusted metal
spikes, each festooned with mockingbirds' feathers. Stretched between
the spikes was a swatch of what resembled—but certainly
couldn't be—dried I human skin.

I recoiled, and a phrase came to
me:
trophies and dead things.
An odd phrase. I couldn't
remember where I'd heard or read it.

There was a footfall behind me; I
turned. Thomas Grant was approaching, one hand extended. For a moment I
wasn't sure if I wanted the possessor of such nasty artworks to touch
me.
 

Grant was handsome in a
conventional way. The body clad in the expensive blue suit was trim and
well muscled, and I suspected he didn't have to work at keeping in
shape. His hair was iron gray, thick, and so well cut that not a lock
strayed from its proper place. His strong-featured face, while not
totally unlined, was supple and youthful; its only imperfection was a
jagged scar on his left cheek that made him look like the romantic lead
in a melodrama about male honor. Otherwise it was as if nothing in his
life had touched him deeply enough to leave vestiges of pain, sorrow,
or even happiness. As he shook my hand I felt a wave of visceral
dislike.

"I see you were looking at my
fetishes," he said.

"Is that what they are?"