Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (24 page)

Or had Cordy been more politically involved than I suspected? I still hadn't found out how she'd met Melissa. What if . . . ?

The lights went off in Joslyn parlor. I started my car, checked my watch in the light of the dash. Nine-forty. Not too late to run by All Souls and talk the matter over with Jack.

When I arrived, Rae, Ted, and Pam Ogata were gathered in front of the TV set in the living room, watching an old Edward G. Robison movie on one of the cable channels. I paused in the archway and asked if Jack was around.

Rae said, “Try the Remedy. He went down there to meet Judy.” Then she glanced back at the screen, shook her head, and got up. “If you want, I'll wander down there with you. This movie is depressing.”

As we walked down the hill toward Mission Street, I told her about my visit to the Joslyns.

“Weird coincidence,” she commented, “that Adah would tell you about her parents the day before you needed that kind of information.”

“As I always tell you, She provides.” I pointed to the heavens.

We turned onto Mission and maneuvered our way through the crowd to the Remedy Lounge, a short block away. The locals were out in force tonight: people congregated in doorways or by parked cars, drinking and talking; music, from heavy metal to salsa, drifted from the bars and clubs; drunks lurched along the sidewalk; junkies lurched in the shadows; old people surveyed passersby with fearful, darting glances; low-riders and patrol cars prowled. San Francisco nights are rarely warm, even when the daytime temperatures soar, and the people were taking advantage of the unexpected in their various ways.

In contract, the Remedy was nearly deserted. Only four customers hunched over the elbow-worn bar. Owner, Brian O'Flanagan stood near the front, sipping coffee and staring through the streaky window. He saluted us, eyes lighting up when he saw Rae, his favorite customer.

Jack sat alone in the rear booth, nursing a mug of beer; pleated and shredded cocktail napkins lay in a puddle of moisture. There was no sign of Judy. As we approached, he looked up hopefully; then his face fell into disappointed lines, which quickly degenerated to a scowl.

“Some greeting,” Rae said, sliding into the booth next to him.

Jack merely grunted.

I sat down opposite. “Where's Judy?”

“Damned if I know.” His mouth twitched as he reached for his beer. “She said she'd meet me here at nine.”

“Maybe something came up at the theater.”

“I called; she's not there.”

Brian came over and set a glass of wine in front of me, a beer in front of Rae. So far as I know, she's the only customer who has ever rated table service from Brian—unless you arrive with her, and then you rate it, too. After enviously observing this phenomenon for over a year, I finally asked him why she commanded preferential treatment. Brian merely shrugged and said, “There's a touch of the old country in her.” Since Rae is about as connected to her Irish heritage as I am to my one-eighth Shoshone ancestry, I didn't see much basis to that claim. But I have to admit that it's nice occasionally to be waited on at the Remedy.

When Brian had gone back to the bar, I asked Jack, “Where do you suppose Judy is, then?”

He hesitated a bit before he said, “I have no idea, and at the moment I don't care. Judy's making herself crazy over this mock trial. As soon as she found out her father had involved himself, she started calling me, badgering me to allow her to play herself in court. When I questioned the wisdom of that, she started . . . ‘interrogating' is the only way I can put it. Interrogating me about every detail of my defense. Finally I told her we'd talk about it when you, Rae, she and I got together at dinnertime, and she blew up. That's the reason she didn't show earlier; I just said I hadn't been able to reach her because I didn't want to go into it at the time.”

“But you've spoken with her since.”

“Yes. She called around eight, sounding calmer. I suggested we meet here and talk. Then she didn't show up for the second time.”

“Why, do you suppose?”

“I don't know, but what I'm seeing is a pattern of periods of rationality followed by periods of irrationality, and I don't like it one bit.”

Rae asked, “Has this ever happened before?”

“Well, Judy's an actress and she tends to be melodramatic, but . . . She seemed fine when Lis first got out of prison and moved in with her. Then she started pressuring me about uncovering new evidence and going for a new trial. Lis was totally opposed, as well she should have been; the women didn't want to spend what was left of her life in court. Judy gave it up for a while, but then she hit on the idea of a mock trial and actually talked with James Wald without warning me she was going to. The pressure started in again. Lis finally bowed to it. I got my back up, started dragging my feet. Finally I caved in.” He looked at me. “That's when I sent you to talk with her.”

“So that's why Lis insisted she wanted the trial for Judy's sake,” I said. “Who besides the three of you and James Wald knew about the possibility of a mock trial?”

“Quite a few. Judy talked it up with any number of people, and I'm sure Wald wasn't shy, either.”

“And someone panicked when he heard about it and hired someone else to try to intimidate Lis, Judy, and later, me. Only it backfired, because you and I realized there had to be something to Lis's claim of innocence and became determined to move ahead with it.”

“Right.”

Rae had been listening, eyes narrowed. Now she murmured, “Perfect timing there.”

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing, just thinking aloud.” She turned to Jack. “Maybe you should try the theater again.”

“I called just a few minutes before you came in.”

“What about her house?”

“She'd never go there.”

“Why not?” I asked. “The police seal's off, and she's free to clean it up. If she's behaving as irrationally as you describe, you don't know what she might do.”

Jack toyed with his beer mug, looking indecisive.

“Call her there,” I urged.

He glanced toward the hallway to the rest rooms, where the pay phone was, then shook his head. “Shar, I can't deal with her tonight. Things have been deteriorating between us ever since Lis's murder. Before, if you wanted to know the truth, I'm angry. I've been drinking, and I don't want to chance really blowing it with her.”

“Then I'll call.” I stood, rummaging in my bag for coins.

“And say what?”

“That I want to come up there and talk.”

He looked both relieved and conflicted. “Shar, you shouldn't have to—”

“Jack, she may be your friend, but this is my case.” I went to the back hallway.

The phone at the house on Wool Street rang several times; I'd almost given up when Judy's voice spoke a hesitant hello. She didn't seem surprised that I'd known where to find her, but she was adamant against my coming up there. I had to do some persuasive talking before she relented.

As I hurried out of the Remedy, Jack was punching buttons on the ancient jukebox. The strains of his first selection followed me onto the sidewalk: “The Great Pretender.”

The little house on Wool Street was dark and silent when I arrived. As I range the bell, I realized that the neighboring buildings were dark, too; even though their windows must have been open on this warm evening, I didn't hear any radios, music, or TVs. I felt as if I were the only survivor of an atomic cataclysm.

After half a minute footsteps approached the door and Judy opened it. She was again swathed in her mother's black cape and carried a candle in a silver holder. To my questioning look, she said, “We just had a power failure.”

Such failures were commonplace in parts of the city where the electrical systems hadn't been upgraded to carry their present-day load; tonight too many fans and cooling units had been pressed into service, and the transformers had blown. “Lucky you could find your candles and matches,” I said as I stepped inside. “Mine're always missing when I need them.”

Judy didn't reply, merely closed the door and led me down the hall, bypassing the parlor. In her long black cape, taper upraised in front of her, she looked like a creature out of a low-budget horror film. Surprised at where she was taking me, I followed her into the room where Lis had died.

Judy set the candle next to another on the table and sat in the chair I'd occupied the last time I saw her mother. Lis's chair was still overturned on the floor; the chalk marks remained where she'd fallen, scuffed but plainly visible. The shards from the coffee cup and glass door still littered the tiles. Gingerly I picked my way through them and sat on a stool next to the plywood slab covering the opening. Whatever Judy's reason for coming here tonight, I thought, it wasn't to tidy up.

I said, “Jack tells me you're very concerned about the mock trial.”

She shrugged, cape ruffling.

“Does that mean yes or no?”

“Does it matter?”

It irritates me when someone answers my questions with another, and this was no exception. “It matters—to both Jack and me. We've gone out of our way for you, and you could at least give me a straight answer. Why do you want to play yourself in court?”

She was silent, rubbing a fold of the cape between her fingers. A gust of wind swept through an open window above the sink, made the candle flames shiver. Their light distorted the shadows and glistened off the scattered shards of glass. For a moment the vision I'd had of the interior of the dovecote passed through my mind: shadows moving across rough brick walls, deadly metal flashing . . .

I shook my head to clear it, concentrated on Judy. Even to the softening half-darkness, her skin looked dry and flaccid; the lines that bracketed her mouth cut deep; her light hair straggled lifeless around her forehead. I might have been looking at her mother.

“Judy,” I persisted, “why?”

“Who else could play the role better? Who else knows what I do? I wouldn't have to be coached. It would save Jack a lot of time.”

But I suspected saving Jack time was just an afterthought. “There's more to it than that.”

Silence.

“Why didn't you meet Jack at the Remedy tonight?”

“There was no reason.”

“You're being unfair to him. He cares very deeply for you.”

She sighed, as if the thought of him caring was merely a burden. The sigh was overly dramatic and caused me to make a quick connection.

I asked, “Does playing yourself have to do with that one great performance you told me about yesterday? The one performance that might have made a difference?”

“. . . Maybe. But there's more. If I could relive the trial, I might be able to remember. And then I could put it all to rest.”

“I see. Why'd you come up here tonight?”

“I needed to think.”

“Here?”

“It's as good a place as any. Better. I feel close to Lis here.”

Close to Lis, in the room where she had died, the death scene virtually unaltered? “What were you thinking about?”

To my surprise, she began to cry—silently, her lips tightly compressed. The tears slid from beneath the round frames of her glasses, made tracks across her cheeks, dripped unchecked from her chin. And then the word began, in stutters and stops, interrupted by shuddering intakes of breath.

“She was there . . . on the floor with the gun. There but . . . not there anymore. And the reasons . . . the reasons why, she left them for me. I looked in and I saw the letter . . . there for me.”

She motioned toward me, and I realized she was indicating where she'd been standing. I said, “
You
were the one who broke the door.”

“The chain was on the front. She didn't expect me. But I'd been worried. I sold my ticket on the red-eye to an acquaintance in New York, then caught an earlier flight. And when I got here . . . “

“You went down the path to the deck and looked inside and saw Lis's body.”

“I smashed the door with a piece of firewood . . . so loud. Too late. She was gone. So still. Maybe at peace. Do you think she was finally at peace?”

“Of course she was. What did you do next?”

“There were sheets of paper on the table. Like the tablets she used to buy for me to take to school. Mama's writing . . . a letter addressed to me.”

A suicide note, I thought.

“I couldn't look at it,” Judy said. “I picked up the sheets and put them in my purse. And then I . . . I ran away.”

“Where did you go?”

“I drove. A long way. Down the Peninsula to the beach where they have the caves. .. San Gregorio. I remember it from back when I was happy, when Mama and Daddy . . . I sat on the rocks for a long time and then I made myself go back to the car and read the letter. After a while I came home and called Jack.”

“Why didn't you tell him about the letter, that Lis was a suicide?”

“I couldn't. Because of what she'd written.”

Judy's tears had stopped now; she scrubbed at her damp chin, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. When she removed her hand, I saw they were bleak, unfocused. Quickly she covered them with the glasses.

I said, “Later when the police came, you let them assume Lis had been murdered.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Silence.

“Judy, what was in Lis's letter?”

More silence.

“Have you shown it to anybody?”

“No.”

“Will you let me see it?”

She raised both hands defensively, then dropped them to her lap. For a moment they lay limp; then they convulsed, pulling and tearing at the fabric of the cape. Her mouth twisted in sudden anger.

“I can't show it to anyone! She made a mockery of everything I ever tried to do for her. She lied and lied and lied . . . She
destroyed my life!”