Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (5 page)

I was beginning to very much regret having included Lis Benedict in my dinner invitation. How could I sit at the same table with her when I still harbored doubts that she was innocent of this atrocity?

The heat had edged up under the mushroom mixture again. It bubbled, and a grayish white blob flew through the air and onto the counter. I glared at it, consulted the recipe. What was I supposed to do next with this horrible concoction? Wrap it in corn tortillas. Pour the sauce over them. Top with Monterey Jack cheese and bake.

Oh, no. I wouldn't! I wasn't wasting perfectly good tortillas and cheese on
this.
I hefted the pan containing the mushroom mixture, carried it to the sink, and dumped it into the Disposal. Then I went back for the tomato sauce.

Just as I tipped the skillet over the sink, Rae came in from the backyard, face rosy from a day in the sun, fresh crop of freckles blossoming on the bridge of her nose. In her hand she carried a pair of gardening shears.

My eyes rested on them, and I recoiled. Looked at the thick red mixture washing down the drain. And thought.
The finger. Good God, what happened to Cordy's finger?

Rae stared at me. “Shar, are you okay? What's going on here?”

“This stuff is inedible, that's what! I thought you said Larry made these for you and they were good.”

“Well, that's how I remember them. But I'd fortified myself with wine. You always have to do that when Larry cooks.”

“Now you tell me! Listen, I need you to go to the store right away.”

“What for?”

“For something to eat!”

She laughed and set the shears on the counter. “All right. I suppose this is my fault . . . sort of. What do you need?”

“Sourdough—a couple of loaves. Shredded Parmesan—lots. Spaghetti. And you'd better get something for us to snack on; It's going to take a while for my spaghetti sauce to defrost.”

Rae grabbed her car keys from the table and went down the hall. I tidied the kitchen, put the spaghetti sauce into the microwave, and took a glass of wine and the trial transcript outside to the deck.

The early evening was unusually warm and clear. Mellow rays of sun showed a transformed backyard. Rae and I had tamed the wild vegetation and weeded overrun flower beds; all that remained was planting. Tomorrow, I thought as I sat on one of the lounges. I might make a run to the big nursery out on Bayshore Boulevard. I'd buy colorful flowers, whatever the nursing people could recommend that needed little watering, since drought-induced rationing was still on.

I heard a scrabbling sound and looked up in time to see an orange cat face peer over the back fence. Ralph, home for his supper. Moments later he was joined by his calico sister, Alice. For a few seconds both looked stunned at the loss of their jungle. Then, adaptable creatures that they were, they bounded down and raced for the house. Allie hissing as Ralph leapt over her on the steps. He gave her a condescending look and stalked inside to the food bowl. Allie flopped at my feet, and I scratched her with my toes as I went back to the transcript.

The prosecutor's closing argument repeated the points he'd made in his opening statement, tying them together more firmly to the evidence and dwelling on the heinousness of the crime. I skimmed it, then rechecked several portions of the actual testimony. There were a number of areas in the state's case that seemed weak to me, but most of these had gone unchallenged by Lis Benedict's attorney, a public defender and not a particularly good one.

I wondered about her legal representation. Her husband, by all accounts, had been well paid, and Lis's own family was affluent. Surely they could have afforded a better attorney. And what about the well-funded Institute for North American Studies? Why hadn't they come to the aid of their staff member's wife? I couldn't pinpoint specific instances, but my impression was that no one had given Lis much support. Perhaps the rumors of a cover-up had some basis; perhaps Lis
had
been sacrificed to protect someone or something more important than she.

I reviewed my mental list of weaknesses in the evidence. First, the note that Lis had allegedly forged to lure Cordy McKittridge to the dovecote. A friend of Cordy's, Louise Wingfield, had testified as to its existence, but she never actually read it. Wingfield had merely recognized what she thought was Vincent Benedict's handwriting on the envelope. Any competent attorney could have demolished the testimony, but Lis's public defender had passed the witness.

A second and, to me, vitally important area that had gone unexplored was the issue of the men in Cordy's life. Her promiscuity had been whitewashed at the trial, the affair with Vincent Benedict made to seem a great, albeit illicit, love. But the recent recap of the case that had appeared in the
Examiner
pointed out that Cordy had been wild, was said to have engaged in affairs with
two or more
men at the Institute. Who was that other man—or men? Why hadn't Lis's attorney used Cordy's reputation to cast suspicion on someone other than his client?

The pennies had been used to close Cordy's eyes bothered me, too. Joseph Stameroff had mentioned them in his opening statement, but then made no attempt to tie them to the defendant or to explain their symbolism. As he'd said, they were unusual coins no longer in wide circulation; surely proving they belonged to Lis Benedict would have cemented his case. And yet, after the initial mention, he'd let the subject drop.

Finally, the testimony of the state's star witness, ten-year-old Judy Benedict, was extremely tenuous. All she had been able to say about the stains on her mother's clothing was that they were large and red. No clothing of Lis's with either ink stains or bloodstains had ever been recovered. The evidence of the ring that Judy found among her mother's possessions after the family had moved from Seacliff to a house in the nearby Outer Richmond district was straightforward enough; but Deputy District Attorney Stameroff's contention that outsiders would have had no access to the residence seemed farfetched, and there was no proof that the ring hadn't been placed beforehand in one of the boxes the Benedicts moved from Seacliff. Again, the public defender had not raised this important issue.

I paged back through the transcript and reread Judy's testimony. Even in this dry form, the words showed a strong rapport between the prosecutor and his witness. Ten was a highly suggestible age, and a young girl whose mother was in jail and whose father seemed to have little or no interest in her would have been eager to please an adult who cared. I didn't doubt that Stameroff and his wife had been genuinely fond of Judy; after all, they'd taken her as their own daughter after the trial. But it was possible that the prosecutor had exerted undue influence over her; the case had high visibility, and a conviction would have been sure to further his political career. And it had: today Joseph Stameroff was a justice on the state supreme court.

Yes, I thought, there were plenty of avenues that warranted investigation. Talk with Lis Benedict, with Judy, with Joseph Stameroff. Find out about the public defender . . . what was his name? Harry Moylan. Find out if Moylan was still alive and, if so, talk with him. The same for other witnesses, other members of the Institute staff. And what about Vincent Benedict? Why had he given up his daughter for adoption, and what had happened to him?

Then there were present events that needed looking into—the phone calls to Lis and the graffiti. At first I'd tended to doubt they were connected to the old case, except in a very peripheral way, but now I wasn't so sure. Tony Nueva had yet to contact me, which meant he'd come up empty-handed and was too proud to admit it. That bothered me most of all; a secret that Tony couldn't ferret out was a closely guarded one; I'd have to check with him—

Abruptly I applied the mental brakes, reminding myself that this was going to be Rae's case. And was surprised to feel a twinge of regret. . .

For a while I thought the mushroom-enchilada disaster might have set the tone for the evening. First Jack called, sounding uncharacteristically curt, to say they would be half an hour late. Not five minutes later Hy phoned from Tufa Lake. He's started to fly to the city, he said, but he Citabria had developed minor engine trouble and it had taken him all day to repair it. Maybe he'd try again around midweek if I'd be available. I said I would and hung up feeling disgruntled. I hadn't expected to se Hy this weekend, but now that I knew of his aborted trip, I missed him keenly.

By seven the spaghetti sauce was simmering, the garlic bread was ready for the broiler, and the salad was crisping. An evening chill had set in, so I laid logs in the freestanding fireplace I'd recently installed in my informal sitting room. Rae set out the sinful hors d'oeuvre tray she bought at our favorite Italian deli, and we sat down to wait for my overdue guests.

At seven-fifty Jack and Judy arrived, without Lis and acting as if they'd just had a fight. As I hung up their coats, Jack drew me aside. There had been another graffiti incident, he said, this one in the middle of last night, and Lis was seriously depressed. “She keeps insisting that she should go away. When we tried to persuade her to come along tonight, she told us she wasn't fit to eat at the same table with normal people.”

I thought of my earlier reservations about having invited her and immediately I felt ashamed. It occurred to me that while I knew a great deal about crime and its immediate effects, I'd given very little thought to its long-range impact, particularly upon parolees.

Jack took the wine he'd brought to the kitchen, where Rae was getting out glasses. Judy had gone into the sitting room, so I followed and found her warming her hands in front of the fire. She was tall and so thin that the pleated gabardine trousers hung in exaggerated folds. Her hair was the color Lis's must once have been, creamy blond, and pulled atop her head in an artful knot; short wisps trailed against her high forehead and at the nape of her long neck. Her eyes, behind large round glasses, were quietly expressive.

For as long as I'd known Judy, I'd sensed an intriguing quality in her that I couldn't put a name to. Now one came to me: fey. It was a word that my Aunt Clarisse, whom the family considered just plain spooky, had used frequently in the lurid bedtime stories that kept us cowering under the covers long after we should have been asleep—and that, to my adult thinking, hinted at mild sadomasochistic tendencies. I'd once looked up the word “fey”; it was of Scots origin, as was Clarisse, and meant “under a spell, marked by apprehension of calamity, death, or evil; otherworldly.” Being something of a born labeler, I felt better now that I'd finally named the elusive quality in Judy, but doing so served only to emphasize the contradiction in her make-up. One seldom thought of a tough-minded and successful theatrical producer as fey.

She came toward me and took my hands in hers. “Thank you for inviting us. I'm sorry my mother couldn't make it.” She seemed to stumble over the appellation, as if speaking or thinking of Lis as her parent didn't come easily.

“Jack told me about the new graffiti. What did it say this time?”

“More of the same. The fellow down the block whitewashed over it for me, but you can still see it, and I suppose they'll be back.”

“I've got somebody working on finding the kid who did it.”

She shrugged, un-encouraged. “I'm afraid the damage to Lis has already been done.”

“Is she really determined to go away?”

“That's what she says. She claims bad thing happen in three—Lis is, and always has been, extremely superstitious. Strange, in someone of her intelligence. She thinks that if she leaves, it'll break the spell. But I doubt she'll make any immediate move; she's much too depressed.”

Jack and Rae entered, carrying wine. As we sat down I steered the conversation to more pleasant subjects—an automatic response due to my mother's habit of forbidding the discussion of disturbing things before eating because it was bad for the digestion. Rae told a few of her Willie Whelan stories, which inspired laughter, and the tension I'd felt between Jack and Judy eased. It wasn't until we were relaxing around the table over coffee and truffles—Rae had outdone herself at the deli—that our talk returned to Lis Benedict.

“So,” Jack said to me, “are you going to help me prepare my case for the Historical Tribunal?”

“I haven't decided yet.” I'd outlined the case to Rae the night before and attempted to further pique her interest by reading her sections of the transcript. Now I glanced at her, but she was unheedfully picking chocolate crumbs from her plate with her finger.

Jack's lips twitched in annoyance. “You've read the transcript?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what more do you need to help you decide?”

“A better idea of whether it's feasible to investigate. There are a number of things about the case that bear looking into, but I'm not sure it's possible.”

“Why not?”

“The availability of the witnesses, for one thing. A lot of them are bound to be dead.” I looked at Judy. “I can talk to you, but your memories of the murder and trial won't be as accurate as those of someone who was an adult at the time.”

She nodded. “Most are pretty hazy. Others are nonexistent.”

“What about the night of the murder and the bloodstains on your mother's clothing?”

“That I don't remember at all. My testimony at the trial seems like something someone else said. My father claims I've repressed it for good.”

“You mean Joseph Stameroff?”

“Yes.”

“What about your biological father? What happened to him?”

“He died back in the sixties.”

“Fairly young, wasn't he?”

“Forty-six, my age. He was an alcoholic; the booze killed him. Vincent Benedict,” she added as if speaking of a person she'd merely read about. “was never very stable. He blamed himself for what happened to Lis, because of his affair with Cordy McKittridge. He blamed himself for Cordy's death; I think he really loved her. And, or course, he blamed himself for abandoning me.”