Muller, Marcia, [McCone 01] Edwin of the Iron Shoes(v1, shtml) (8 page)

At eight the next morning, I could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. A pre-dawn rainstorm had washed the air clean, and early sunshine brought the kids out into my alley, rioting up and down on their skateboards before school.

I watched them, thankful I was in any condition to enjoy the morning. Then, banishing my morbid reflections, I sat down on my bed with a cup of coffee and Joan's records. I wanted to wrap up the inventory before I called Cara Ingalls.

Hank was right about Albritton: for a successful businesswoman, she had kept remarkably slapdash records. Within an hour, though, I had found a value for the set of bone-handled knives. Edwin I evaluated at a flat hundred dollars, most of it sentiment. The five paintings—two still lifes, the Madonna, a seascape, and a city scene—remained questions that Paula Mercer would hopefully answer when we met that afternoon.

Assuming she would, I had only two loose ends, both shipments Joan had apparently ordered, prepaid, from van Osten. The final two ledger entries indicated one that hadn't arrived as far as I could tell, due last Monday; the other was slated to appear tomorrow, Friday. I wrote the order numbers in my notebook. If Hank thought it important, he could query van Osten. Of course, by that time van Osten might be in custody for vandalism… or worse. It all depended on the outcome of my activities today.

At nine o'clock, I dialed Cara Ingalls's number. The switchboard put me through to a secretary, who took my name and left me on hold. Five minutes later, the husky voice from the cocktail party came on the line. I suggested we meet sometime today.

"Today? Sorry, no. I'm booked up, right through nine this evening."

"You must have fifteen minutes. I can be there in half an hour."

"Can't we discuss it on the phone?"

"I'm not sure you'd want to."

She paused. Then, "I planned to have lunch at my desk today, but I guess I can get away. Can you meet me at one o'clock?"

I said I could, and she named a restaurant on Battery Street.

"I'll be outside," she said. "How will I know you?"

"Don't worry. I'll recognize you." I hung up quickly.

I had plenty of time to spare, so I dressed, tidied the apartment, and took out the garbage. At the big bin downstairs, I ran into Tim O'Riley, the building manager. Tim was a paunchy Irishman who drank beer from the time he got up until he passed out in mid-afternoon.

"You're here," Tim commented in surprise as I dumped my garbage.

"Yeah. Why didn't you think I was?"

"You weren't answering your door." A crafty look came over Tim's puffy face. "Oh, I get it. You're avoiding him."

I couldn't remember anybody coming to my door. I turned to face Tim. "Avoiding who?"

"The Mexican guy who was at your door a few minutes ago."

"What did he look like?" The words came out sharp, and Tim stared at me.

"Like a Mexican. Little. Dark. Skinny. Smoked a cigar. Walked like his back hurt him."

In spite of his alcoholic haze, Tim was a good observer. Of course, there were a lot of Chicanos in the neighborhood. It could have been someone selling life insurance. But then, I had flipped Frankie on his back last night.

"Did you talk to him?"

"I sure did. At first I thought he was trying to look through the glass in the door. You know how people will. So I asked him what he wanted, and he said he guessed you wasn't home. Then I came down here a while later and found him sneaking around in the alley, looking up at your windows. I told him to get, and he got."

I was certain it had been Frankie, and I didn't like him on my home territory, not one bit. "Thanks for sending him away, Tim. Let me know if you see him again, will you?"

"No trouble," Tim said. "I guess in your business you gotta expect creeps hanging around." He picked up his beer can and shuffled inside.

Frankie couldn't harm me in my own building in broad daylight, I thought. Still, I went upstairs and got my .38 Special from the locked box where I kept it. I loaded it and put it in an inner compartment of my bag, where it was easy to reach. Then I sat down and called my friend Bob at the San Francisco bureau of the
Wall Street Journal
.

Bob sounded stuffy and proper when he came on the line, befitting a writer for that stately publication, but when I identified myself he dropped the pretense. Unknown to the
Journal
, Bob wrote lurid true-crime stories on the side, and I'd met him a few years before while he was researching one, a case I'd been peripherally involved in.

"What can you tell me about a Mrs. Cara Ingalls, real-estate person?" I asked him.

"She makes a lot of money and is crazy about weird hats," he said. "Seriously, do you want me to look up her biography?"

"If you don't mind."

Bob returned to the phone a few minutes later. "This is pretty sketchy, and I don't know the lady myself, but it's all we have: born, San Jose. Thirty-six years old. Three years San Jose State, majoring in architecture. Put herself through school selling houses—that was in the days of the big boom down there—but quit to join her firm's commercial division in San Francisco before she got her degree. List of various honors received and memberships—I won't go into that. Formed her own firm, Ingalls and Associates, three years ago. They hold many of the options on the land in Yerba Buena. Offhand, I'd say she invested her commissions well."

"Is that it?"

"Just about. There's not much on her personal life, which is what I assumed you're after. One marriage to Douglas Ingalls, local socialite. No children. Divorced Ingalls four years ago. From what I know of Ingalls, that was a good move. All he does is drink and sail his boat on the Bay. Anyway, Mrs. Ingalls lives in a condominium on Nob Hill, has a summer home at Tahoe, and is a generous supporter of the arts. That's all we have."

I thanked Bob; before hanging up, he reminded me to get in touch if I ran across any good murders.

The sidewalks of the financial district teemed with lunchtime strollers. Shifting packs of what appeared to be young executives roved about, enjoying the sunshine and eyeing the girls who ate bag lunches in the outdoor plazas. The normally gray canyon of Montgomery Street was bathed in light, and smartly dressed office workers moved lazily across its intersections. I was sure a lot of people would be back at their desks very late today.

As I approached our meeting place, I spied the imposing figure of Cara Ingalls on the sidewalk. I glanced at my watch and smiled. I had definitely interested her: she was five minutes early.

I crossed the street, admiring Ingalls's cashmere coat-dress that met brown leather boots at mid-calf. "Bob had been right about Ingalls's fondness for millinery: today she wore a little wine-colored felt job tilted rakishly over one eye. She made me, in my simple pants and corduroy jacket, feel like a mere slip of a girl.

I approached Ingalls, identifying myself, and she gave me a glance that said I looked the way I felt. "We'd better hurry; they're holding a table," she said, ushering me inside the restaurant.

Ingalls commanded excellent service. Within minutes, a bevy of waiters had installed us in a corner booth and taken our orders. The restaurant boasted Italian specialities, so I ordered cannelloni and white wine. Ingalls must have been on a diet, since she chose grapefruit juice and shrimp salad without dressing. I had never had to worry about excess weight in my life; as I munched on a piece of sourdough bread, I felt I was getting back at her for making me feel young and inelegant.

We had a pretty boring chat about the weather until our lunches came; then I said, "Let's talk about the Salem Street properties now. Does your offer still stand?"

Ingalls nodded. "I spoke with Mr. Cornish this morning. He's assuming responsibility for the decision, although the probate of Mrs. Albritton's estate will naturally slow the proceedings."

So Charlie was keeping her on the hook. That indicated he might not honor Harmon's claim on the land.

I asked, "What have you heard about counter-offers?" She shrugged. "My sources say my offer is far and away the highest. I want that land, and we are prepared to go as high as necessary."

"What's so desirable about Salem Street?"

"Location," she answered promptly. "Proximity to the Civic Center. People working there are a ready market for condominiums, to say nothing of shops and restaurants. There's no end to the potential."

"I'm sure other people have thought of that."

"Of course. But I have the resources to do it."

I was beginning to enjoy talking with Cara Ingalls. She was my kind of woman, one who made her way on her own steam and refused to be held back. That was what I had always done, although without anything near her financial success.

I said, "Your sources, who do they say you're competing against?"

She smiled. "Only one organization, that Western Addition Credit Union."

So Harmon's offer was not common knowledge. "You seem pleased."

"I am. They can hardly match my offer. It's a good thing, too: this city doesn't need another shoddy low-income housing project cluttering up the landscape."

I had seen the credit union's plans the previous fall, and they hadn't looked so shoddy to me. "I hear it's quite well designed. And the city certainly does need more reasonably priced housing." I thought of the huge rent I paid for my old-fashioned studio.

Ingalls laughed shortly. "Come on. Look at the trash that moves into those places. Each family with dozens of unruly kids writing on the walls—if they can write at all—and dirtying the place up. Those people shouldn't be allowed to live here."

Her tone was matter-of-fact, and it shocked me. "Where do you suggest they go?"

"Anywhere, just so I don't have to look at their mess."

"That's a rather calloused attitude."

Her eyes narrowed. They were a strange, pure amber color, reinforcing my impression of her catlike quality. "Miss McCone, let's have none of your girlish liberal sentiments. The world is a big, harsh place. I'm surprised in your profession…"

"I try to hang on to my ideals. Granted, it's hard…"

Ingalls laughed bitterly. The laugh struck me as a little off-key.

"Let me tell you a story about ideals," she said in a low voice, leaning forward toward me. "I was the youngest in my family, the only girl. My father was an architect, and we were all brought up to be professional people. My three brothers were to be an attorney, a doctor, and a dentist, in that order. I was to follow in my father's footsteps as an architect—so I thought."

Her yellow eyes held mine. I wondered why she was telling me this, but I didn't want to interrupt.

"My father died when I was sixteen. Of a heart attack on the golf course. My closest brother had completed dental school two months before. After the funeral, my mother and I found out my father had canceled his life insurance the day of my brother's graduation. His boys were educated, so there was no need for it any more; my mother and I didn't count."

The story chilled me. "So you put yourself through school."

"Not all the way." She shook her head, her mouth twisted. "For three years I did. I worked nights, studied while I sat in empty houses on weekends, waiting to show them. Then one day I woke up and said, 'What in hell am I doing busting my ass to become some sort of living monument to my old man, the son-of-a-bitch who thought me less than human?' So I quit studying architecture and went full time into real estate. I made it big: I've already cleared more money than my old man made in his entire life. I only wish the old bastard could know!"

I closed my eyes against Cara Ingalls's seething psyche. For some reason she was trying to transfer the weight of her emotions to me, a burden I in no way could handle right now.

I said, "But we're getting off the subject. There are a few more things I want to ask about your offer for the Salem Street property."

Ingalls looked down at her salad and began rooting through it with her fork, as if she might find something there amid the shrimps and bibb lettuce to soothe her unhealed wound. When she looked up, her eyes were calm again, with a shadow of tired defeat. "And they are?"

"Did you meet with Joan Albritton again after that time you bought the painting from her?"

Her eyes widened. "What painting?"

"You came to her shop last October and bought an inexpensive painting. I thought you were checking her out."

"
You
thought?" She set her fork down carefully.

"Yes. I was in the shop that day, talking to Joan."

"I see." The yellow eyes moved rapidly, calculating. "No, I never did see her again. The money was well spent though, even if the picture did go in the garbage. I wanted to see who I was dealing with before I made an offer. I was able to go in quite a bit lower than I would have, had I not seen how… foolish and eccentric Joan Albritton was."

Any sympathy I'd felt for Cara Ingalls vanished with her careless assessment of the little antique dealer. In its place, suspicion rose: Why had Ingalls thought the climate was right for an offer? Her visit to the shop had been weeks before the notice condemning the buildings, when the Salem Street people had been militantly opposed to any real-estate deal.

I asked a few additional questions, hoping to make Ingalls contradict herself, but she replied in technicalities. I gained some insight into the workings of her profession but very little information on the bidding for the Salem Street properties. Our lunches finished, I insisted on paying the tab and said good-bye to her on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

It was a shame about Cara Ingalls, I thought, as I started down the sidewalk to the place I'd left my car. She was an intelligent, strong woman, and strikingly attractive, but in spite of that I couldn't help pitying her. In her rush to make it, she had left a part of her humanity behind, and her desperate reaching out to me signaled that she felt its loss.

Well, that was her problem. Right now mine seemed more pressing. It was time for my appointment with Paula at the de Young, and I had to go home to pick up the paintings I wanted to show her. I was hoping Frankie wouldn't be waiting there for me.