Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (3 page)

Rae looked up and bestowed a glowing smile on him.

Ted sighed, waving his hands in dismissal. “Go ahead, then.” As Rae and her newfound admirer started upstairs, he ground his teeth and muttered, “Now the roof's rotten. What next?”

I merely patted his shoulder and went to check my message box. Three slips, nothing of importance.

Ted sighed again and flopped into his desk chair. His computer equipment, steel file cabinets, fax machine, copier and shelves of reference books looked out of place in the elegantly wainscoted foyer. Ted himself complemented the décor—a slender fine-featured man with a handsome goatee who had recently taken to wearing brocade vests over ruffled shirts. Appearances seldom deceived more than Ted's, however; under his foppish exterior there beats the heart of an efficiency expert.

He said, “It was a bad decision to buy this dump.”

From a purely practical standpoint I agreed, but sentiment made me say, “Well, the landlord was going to sell whether we bought or not. Can you picture us anywhere else?”

“No, but the corporation's going to have to pour one hell of a lot of money into this building just to keep it standing.” He paused, listening to the echo of what he's said. “The corporation. My God, I never thought we'd be All Souls Legal Cooperative, Inc. What's happened to us?”

“We got successful.”

At a time when law firms all over the nation were cutting staff and raising fees, All Souls was expanding and holding down membership fees in its legal plan. While partners in stuffy downtown firms groused about the loss of gentility that came from treating a law practice as a business, All Souls had aggressively added service to attract clients. Members, who paid fees on a sliding scale based on their incomes, could now call an 800 number for consultation with paralegal workers about minor problems. And we'd marketed the plan to major local employers; several now included it as part of their benefits packages.

Success necessitated changes, hence our somewhat dubious entry into the real-estate market. But the Victorian, which comprised both offices and living quarters for some of the staff, couldn't begin to house all our operations. We now rented a second building directly across the triangular park out front, and negotiations were under way for a third. And to reinforce our successful image, our newly purchased headquarters was being spruced up, supposedly painted pale gray with black and white trim—or if the painter could be believed, the color of what he found in his baby's diaper.

I winked at Ted and went upstairs to my office, thinking about changes. When I'd first come to work here, nearly all the partners lived in the house rent free because they made such dismal salaries. Now only Rae, Ted, Jack Stuart, business specialist Larry Koslowski, and tax attorney Pam Ogata chose to remain; their salaries were competitive with those of other firms, and they paid going-market rent. Once I'd know everyone who worked here on a fairly intimate basis; now if I ventured over to our other building, I was apt not to recognize some of the support staff. Ted, in fact, used to be our only secretary; now he wore the title of office manager. And Hank Zahn complained that he spent more time in administrative meetings than in client consultations or in court.

But the important things hadn't changed, I reminded myself. We were still a young, energetic firm that cared more for its clients than for its profit and was committed to the principle of affordable high-quality legal representation for low-and middle-income people. Most of us still gathered in the big kitchen at the rear of the house on Friday afternoons for a happy hour. Meals from anywhere from two to twenty were frequently whipped up on the spur of the moment; a good poke or gin rummy game could be gotten up day or night; commiseration or congratulations or just plain good company was always available. And while many of us admitted to feeling jaded on a bad day, we also confessed to harboring fugitive ideals on a good one. All Souls was, in truth, the closest thing that many of us had to a home and an extended family, and I couldn't begin to imagine life without it.

In my office at the front of the second floor, I dumped my bag and jacket on the chaise lounge and stuck the message slips under a paperweight. Then I sat down at the parsons-table desk in the window bay and scrawled my signature on some letters that were waiting atop my in-box. There was a thick, unfamiliar file folder lying next to the blotter; I pulled it toward me:
State of California v. Lisbeth Ingrid Benedict.

“Jack,” I whispered, “leave me alone.”

As I shoved the file away and leaned back in my chair, my eyes rested on the deep tangerine rose in the bud vase on the corner of my desk. It had arrived, as they always did, on Tuesday morning—a gift from my lover, Hy Ripinsky, who lived on a small sheep ranch in the high desert country east of Yosemite, near the Nevada border. Last fall when he sent me the first of the weekly roses, its color was yellow—my favorite. But when we became lovers two months ago, he said yellow wasn't passionate enough, and the tangerine ones began arriving. This one was wilted now from the unseasonable heat we'd been experiencing, but I would leave it in the vase until the new one came—my way of keeping Hy close when we were apart.

Uneasily, as if someone might be spying on me, I reached for my bottom stack tray where, under a pile of blank expense forms, I kept a file labeled, “Ripinsky, Heino.” I'd started it the previous November, when reports on him that I'd requested from the National Crime Information Center and the California Justice Information System had been forwarded to me by an acquaintance on the SFPD. There had been nothing damning or even very interesting in them, except for an early arrest for lassoing a streetlight in the Mono County seat of Bridgeport and a series of later ones related to environmental movement protests. I hadn't needed the reports any longer; the investigation I'd been conducting up at Tufa Lake was ended, and by all rights I should have thrown them away. But instead I had set up a file, and by now I knew its dry, factual contents by heart.

I removed my hand from the stick tray. No amount of further examination of the documents and my notes would tell me what I wanted to know. There wasn't the remotest possibility that the reports contained an as-yet-unnoticed clue to the blank nine-year period in his life.

Hy's whereabouts and activities during that period were unknown to anyone, and he refused to talk about them, even to me. Rumors abounded in Vernon, the small town on the shore of Tufa Lake where he'd been raised. Some people claimed he'd been CIA; others claimed he must have been a drug smuggler, since he never seemed to lack for money after his return. Theories ran the gamut from the possible (he'd been in prison) to the improbable (he'd fought as a mercenary) to the absurd (he'd been kept by a wealthy woman who had died and left him her entire estate). I discounted even the most realistic of them, because none of them fit the man I had come to care for.

As we grew closer, I'd thought that he'd tell me about those years, or at least explain why discussion of them was off limits. But every time the subject came up, he closed off in such a forbidding way that I knew pressing him would end the relationship. And so I merely wondered and brooded and repeatedly pored over his file.

It would be easy, I'd often thought, for an investigator of my experience and contacts to uncover Hy's secret. Even the most closemouthed people let hints slip; even the most careful leave traces of their past. But aside from checking with the CIA and the FBI, which would “neither confirm or deny” Hy's past employment, I'd managed to control myself. So far . . .

Even the simple act of setting up a file was a violation. I felt ashamed every time I saw the neatly typed label, wrestled with guilt every time I opened the folder. And I also had to question my motive: Did I want to know about those years because the understanding would bring me closer to Hy, or was I merely curious? Did his silence disturb me because it erected a barrier between us or because it hurt my pride?

I moved my hand toward the stack tray again. I should destroy the file and forget it. If I ripped it up and tossed it in the wastebasket right now, by Monday the trash would have been collected and I wouldn't even be tempted to retrieve the pieces.

But I wasn't ready to that—not yet.

By the time I went down to the kitchen, the Friday happy hour was under way. Ted was there, setting out chips and salsa. Rae was there, too, and surprisingly, so were the painter and the man who was installing the skylights—minus his crowbar. Larry Koslowski, our resident health nut, was blending some god-awful cocktail of natural fruit juices and mysterious powders, and arguing with Pam Ogata about the merits of tofu hot dogs. A couple of the secretaries from the other building wandered in, followed by the neighbors' German shepherd. The shepherd lay down quietly on the rag rug in front of the sink and watched us with its soft, intelligent eyes; I was certain he found the goings-on bizarre and pointless. As I fetched a glass of white wine, I stopped to pat him and said, “Sometimes I agree with you, guy.” He looked up to see if I had any food and then ignored me.

Jack Stuart sat at the round oak table near the windows. Jack, so the women claim, is the co-op's hunk, and I have to admit that a body honed lean by frequent rock climbing, a craggy face that only improves with age, and a thick shock of silvering hair add up to a pretty attractive package. A while back I had my chances with him when he became ridiculously smitten with me on the rebound from his divorce, and there are still times when I regret how prudently I ignored his overtures.

I went up to the table and took the chair next to him, figuring I'd clear the air about the Benedict matter. Jack's face lit up when he saw me. “Well?”

“I found the file you put on my desk.”

“You read it yet?”

“My God, I've only been back here half an hour. Why didn't you tell me this was a case for the Historical Tribunal?”

“You wouldn't have gone to see her if I had.”

“And you also conveniently timed this for when Hank's on vacation and can't throw a fit about me wasting my time.”

“Guilty again. You going to shoot me for my subterfuge?” He said it lightly, but his brows immediately drew together in consternation. I knew he was thinking of a night the previous summer when he'd seen a coldly murderous side of me that few people had known existed. It was a night that had almost severed my close ties to my friends at the co-op, and continued to strain them whenever the memory surfaced.

“Hey,” I said, “it's okay.”

“Thoughtless of me.”

“Look, Jack, you can't tippy-toe around the subject forever, I've put it behind me, and you should too.”

He nodded. “So tell me—what'd you think of Lis?”

“At first I didn't like her. She's got a mighty thick protective shell, and it makes her come off as pushy and abrasive. Of course, I realize a woman like her would have to develop that in order to survive in prison. She's not your average ex-con.”

“No. She's well educated—Bryn Mawr—and was raised in Scarsdale. That, plus the victim's own background, was one of the things that made the Two Penny Murder so intriguing.

“And notorious. Those pennies—am I right in thinking there was something unusual about them, besides their being placed on Cordy McKittridge's eyes?”

“Un-huh. They were war-issue lead pennies.”

“That's a misnomer; they weren't made of lead. They were zinc-coated steel, minted only in nineteen forty-three, due to the wartime copper shortage.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Were'd you lay your hands on that piece of trivia?”

“When we were kids, my brother Joey was willed a coin collection by one of our uncles. I was horribly jealous and would sneak into this room to study it, before he went and sold it so he could buy a surfboard.

“Joey sounds like a sentimental fool.”

“Oh, he's been in the running for village idiot all his life, but I love him anyway. To get back to Lis Benedict—her tough shell took quite a beating this afternoon.” I told him about the graffiti. “Did you know she's also received phone threats telling her to get out of town?”

“I had no idea, and I'm sure Judy doesn't either.”

“She wouldn't have told me about them except for the graffiti. I've got Tony Neuva working on that, trying to let a line on the kid who did it. There's a possibility somebody hired him.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the phone caller used the same words that were painted on Judy's house. This sounds like a campaign of harassment rather than a kid acting on a whim.”

Jacked rubbed his chin. “Poor Lis. Why would anyone want to harass her now?”

“Well, people don't forgive, I guess. Or forget, given the recent publicity. What about the McKittridge family? They kept blocking her parole.”

“Harassment's not their style. And most of them area dead now, except for Cordy's brother, who lives in England.”

“Tell me about them. All I know is that their money went back to the Nevada silver boom.”

“The McKittridges were once the cream of San Francisco society: mansion in Pacific Heights, country estate in Hillsborough, ranch in the Napa Valley. The old man was a member of the Pacific Union Club. Cordy was your classic tall, aristocratic blonde, went to the right school—Katherine Delmar Burke—and came out at the Winter Cotillion at the Sheraton Palace. But then everything went haywire.”

“She rebelled.”

“Uh-huh. Refused to go to college, started running with a wild crowd. Affairs with married men, dabbling in the bohemian culture, lots of booze and marijuana. Sign of the times, I guess: in fifty-four, the insulated little world of our social circle was falling apart. The war had changed everything.”

I was silent for a moment, toying with the stem of my wineglass. The German shepard wandered over and rested his head on Jack's knee. Jack fed him a taco chip.