Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (21 page)

The stench of the garbage cans along James Alley didn't faze me after my earlier task, and as I rang Melissa Cardinal's bell, I felt in no mood to put up with nonsense from anyone. Cardinal peered around the door to her building, then tried to close it when she saw me. I put my shoulder to it and pushed my way inside. Her mouth dropped open and she backed away, eyes clouded in fear.

I took her arm, gently but firmly, and guided her toward he stairway. “We have to talk, Melissa.”

“I told you before—”

“I know what you told me, but look at yourself: you're so frightened you came all the way down here rather than buzz me in. And it's not me you're afraid of, is it?”

She'd offered resistance to starting up the stairs, but now she sagged, putting weight on my hand.

“Come on,” I said. “Maybe I can help you.”

“Nobody can help me.” But she grasped the railing and climbed laboriously.

Inside the apartment, Cardinal retreated to her recliner, looking around anxiously for her cat. I spotted it cowering under the glass-fronted cabinet, picked it up, and set it in her lap. The gesture reassured her. She cradled the animal, fingers drawing comfort from its fur.

“Now,” I said as I sat on the sofa, “we are going to discuss why you're afraid to talk about Cordy McKittridge. First, who was the man you met at the Haven?”

“I told you, just a man.”

“Does this man have a name?”

“I don't know his name. He just bought me a drink at the bar, that's all.”

“Come on, Melissa—you've already told me you never go out in the daytime. You weren't at the Haven because you had a sudden urge for a drink, and that particular man wasn't just a casual pickup.”

“Is that what you think—that I'm so ugly nobody would offer to buy me a drink?”

“Melissa, the man knew you; he called you by name. That's what attracted Frank Fabrizio's attention. And you were arguing with him; Frank noticed that, too.”

“Frank's an old man. His hearing's probably going. For all I know, he could be senile.”

“He's not senile, and his hearing's perfectly good. Melissa, why didn't you let the man come here to your apartment?”

Her eyes drifted around, glittering in a stray shaft of sunlight.

I said, “Because you're afraid of him, right?”

Silence.

I tried another tack. “Melissa, what you know about Cordy's murder has become dangerous to you.”

“I don't know
anything
about that murder! I wasn't even in the city that day. I was working a Rome flight that left that morning.”

“But you knew Cordy—knew her well.”

“Those girls were just people I got together to share the rent.”

“You mean Cordy got them together. You and she were friends from before, and then she enlisted some of her other friends. Louise Wingfield told me so.”

A knowing light came into her eyes, and malice twisted her lips into a hideous smile. “Louise Wingfield?” she asked. “Is that who this is about? You think I'm in danger because I know about her and Vincent Benedict?”

“Louise and . . . Benedict?”

“Sure. I don't suppose she bothered to tell you about that. Louise was in love with him before he started seeing Cordy. Cordy was going with Leonard Eyestone and introduced the two of them. They carried on a hot affair for almost a year. I know, because where they carried it on was one of the bedrooms of that flat in North Beach.”

“And then?”

“Then Cordy had her abortion and broke it off with Eyestone. And she went after Benedict, never mind that Louise was in love with him. Took him right away from her, never mind that Louise was her best friend. After that, Vincent wouldn't come to the flat—he couldn't face Louise—but we all knew what was going on. And we all knew how much Louise hated Cordy. She tried to cover it up, but her eyes . . . they
watched
Cordy, full of hate, like she was waiting for something bad to happen to her.”

I considered Louise Wingfield. She'd been forthcoming with me, I thought, but only up to a point. Perhaps she'd hoped her candor would disarm me, discourage me from digging further and unearthing this particularly damning fact. And when I'd kept on investigating—well, Wingfield
did
have a close connection with the Mission district Hispanic community.

I asked, “Exactly when did Cordy start seeing Benedict?”

“Right after she and Louise got back from Mexico.”

They'd gone to the abortion clinic in August of the year before the murder. That would have given Wingfield's resentment of her friend nine months to smolder.

“Melissa,” I asked, “have you told anyone else about Louise and Benedict?”

She shook her head.

“Then don't. From now on I want you to be very careful. Do you still have that card with my home number on it?”

She motioned toward the table beside her, where the card was anchored under the base of the lamp.

“Good. If anyone attempts to harm or threaten you, call me immediately. Day or night, at home or at my office.”

For a moment she looked hesitant, as if she wanted to tell me something. Her eyes flicked to the glass-fronted cabinet, and she shook her head. “Louise isn't going to hurt me, if that's what you're thinking.”

“You never know.”

“
I
know.”

“Then who
are
you afraid of?”

She closed her eyes, shook her head again.

“All right,” I said. “You have my card. Call me when you're ready to talk.”

“Are you going to tell Louise what I told you?”

“Yes. The best way to deal with this is to ask her about it.”

“I didn't hide my relationship with Vincent Benedict from you,” Louise Wingfield said.

“You were candid about everything else. Why conceal that?”

Wingfield ground out her cigarette in the ashtray on the desk between us. “Hide! Conceal! Don't you have any concept of a person's right to privacy?”

“I do. But the concept that seems more pertinent here is a person's desire not to incriminate herself.”

“
Incriminate
myself? Have you lost your mind?” Wingfield's expression was both outraged and horrified. “You can't suspect that I killed Cordy?”

“I can quote Melissa Cardinal almost verbatim: ‘Her eyes watched Cordy, full of hate, like she was waiting for something bad to happen to her.'”

“What would Melissa know? She was never there.”

“Apparently she was there enough to observe what was really going on.”

“Really going on?”
Wingfield laughed bitterly. “At this point, who knows the reality of the situation? Anyway, how can you take the word of an angry old recluse over mine?”

The way she described Melissa gave me pause. Before, when the subject of her former roommate came up, Wingfield had at first claimed not to know her last name—a bird, she'd said, a wren or a finch—and not to know here whereabouts. I hadn't mentioned anything about Melissa's present circumstances when I'd come here and confronted her.

“Why do you think she's angry?” I asked.

“Who wouldn't be? She's disfigured and living in two shabby little rooms on Social Security and disability.”

I didn't reply. Let the silence lengthen until Wingfield looked down, groping for her cigarette pack. She found it, shook one out, and lit it before I asked, “How long have you known where Melissa is?”

“Since last Tuesday. Didn't I tell you? No, it was Monday night when we went to North Beach and Seacliff. Melissa called me the next morning. It was a surprise, seeing as we'd just been talking about her with Frank Fabrizio the night before.”

“What did she want?”

“To see me. I went over to her apartment, heard her out.”

So that was who Melissa had been waiting for when I'd arrived last Tuesday. She'd said, “Formal, aren't you?” —expecting Louise—then had been confused at seeing a stranger on the stairs.

“What did she want?” I asked.

“Money.”

“Money not to tell about you and Vincent Benedict?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “I may as well admit to the affair; I'm not a good liar.”

“Did you give her any?”

“I did not. I offered to help her, because she's so obviously in need, but I told her she would also have to help herself. There's an excellent seniors center in her area, one with a counseling program, but Melissa wasn't interested. So I told her to do what she wished with her information about Vincent and me, and left.”

“You weren't afraid of what use she'd put it to?”

“Naturally I didn't want her to tell anyone. I hoped she'd just forget it, as she probably would have if you hadn't gone to talk with her today. I can see it's lowered your opinion of me considerably, but that's about the maximum damage I expect to bear. I didn't kill Cordy; my alibi for that night, as they say on the TV cop shows, is ironclad, still alive, and probably still willing to back me up. My old friends might be titillated if the story came out, but I stopped caring what society thought of me when I left my husband and created a scandal by battling in court for my fair share of our community property. My life is different now, and nothing that happened in the bad old days can hurt me.”

I had to admire her forthrightness—unless it was calculated to misdirect me. “For your sake, I hope you're right about that,” I said. “May I ask you a few more questions?”

“If they won't take too much time.”

“You met Vincent Benedict through Cordy?”

“Yes, at a party at the Institute in August of ‘fifty-four.”

“And this was when she was seeing Leonard?”

“Yes again.”

“Have you remembered anything about where or when Cordy met Melissa?”

“No. I assume it must have been in the fall of ‘fifty-three, when she got the idea about going in on the apartment. But I was at Stanford and pretty much out of touch. I honestly don't know what she was doing then, or who her friends were.”

“Would she have been seeing Leonard as early as then?”

“Perhaps. She wasn't seeing anyone else, at least not anyone in our circle; her escort for the cotillion was the son of her father's business partner.”

“Why wasn't she escorted by Leonard?”

Wingfield smiled. “I can see you're not a disciple of Emily Post—thank God. Cotillion escorts are usually college boys, not men over thirty.”

“So Cordy ran with an older crowd?”

“Even in high school. If you want to know how long she was seeing Leonard, why don't you ask him?”

“I will. You can count of that.”

No workmen's trucks clogged the street in front of All Souls, and as far as I could tell, the paint on either side of the Victorian now matched that on the façade. Ted was leafing through an office-supply catalog at his desk, a red-and-white flower lei draped around his shoulders.

“Hank's back!” I exclaimed.

Ted smiled benignly as he handed me a stack of messages.

Quickly I checked the tag on Jack's box; it indicated he was out. Then I hurried down the hall to Hank's office. My boss—and dear friend—was hunched over his paper-strewn rolltop, running a hand through his steel-wool hair as he tried to decipher chicken scratching on a legal pad. When I knocked, he looked up and broke into a wide grin.

I said, “How come all hell breaks loose when you leave here, and harmony is restored the instant you return?”

“Because I got the magic touch, baby.” He sang the words, getting up to hug me.

“Vacation seems to have agreed with you. How's Anne-Marie?”

“Off to save the rain forests.”

“Really?” Anne-Marie Altman, Hank's wife, was chief counsel for a coalition of environmentalist groups, including the foundation that Hy directed.

“Well, she's off to Sacramento, anyway. Just for a few days.” Hank opened his briefcase, extracted a small tissue-wrapped package, and handed it to me.

“Oh boy—my present!” I sat down in the client's chair and fumbled with the bow. We've always been big on gifts at All Souls, and Hank's are the best because he picks each with the individual firmly in mind. This time mine was a small piece of coral, sun-drenched and deceptively delicate-looking.

“You remembered,” I said. For years I'd carried a piece of coral from a Hawaiian vacation in the zipper compartment of my purse; then one day it just hadn't been there, and I'd found myself more upset than the situation warranted. Subconsciously, I'd then realized, I must have thought it a talisman against disaster, and though I prided myself on not being superstitious, for a long time after its loss I'd missed it. Now I took the new coral and tucked it deep inside my bag.

Hank said, “Keep safe.”

“But never secure.”

“Huh?”

“Old proverb. In a way, it's what I've lived by.” Then I began to fill him in on Rae's and my activities during his absence, ending with the Benedict case. “What do you know about Joseph Stameroff?” I asked when I finished.

Hank took off his thick horn-rimmed glasses and nibbled on one well-gnawed earpiece. “Stameroff's bad news. Conservative as they come. He's swung the vote on some Neanderthal decisions in the area of civil rights.”

“Can he—or could he ever—be bought?”

“Sure he can be bought; we all can, for the right price. But if you want to know if he
has
been . . . I'd say yes. Stameroff's not that good a jurist; he's gotten as far as he has because he's done favors.”

“For whom?”

Hank shrugged.

“Do you think he might have engineered a cover-up in the Benedict case? He was a deputy D.A. at the time; suddenly he got handed this high-visibility prosecution. Why, unless somebody thought he'd be easily manipulated?”