The Devil's Interval (25 page)

“Yeah, I guess,” I confessed. “But this afternoon, sitting in Mrs. Hawk's living room and listening to that story, I've got Grace under my skin. I keep thinking how far that sad, ruined little girl must have come to turn into Grace Plummer, elegant, generous woman about town. And then,” I snapped my finger, “she's gone. Brutally, horribly, degradingly gone.”

Michael put his arm around me. “You've gotten yourself into something pretty ugly,
cara
.”

“What happened was ugly, but that's what I'm trying to say. Grace wasn't ugly. She could have been narcissistic or selfish or
shallow—or all those things I sometimes think when I see society photographs like this.” I picked up the photo and shook it. “But she wasn't any of those things—she turned into somebody kind and hardworking. I keep wishing I'd known her—and known her grandparents, what good people they must have been. They dealt with the tragedy of losing their daughter and raised their granddaughter.”

“A
mitzvah
, your mother would say,” Michael observed. He took the photo from my hand again, and put it in the file. “Come to bed, Maggie. You're going to be wrecked in the morning.”

I resisted. “I was looking at the AWE issues. I don't know if I'm going to be able to sleep.”

He clasped my hand and raised me to my feet. “I'll wear you out,” he said. “You'll drift off.”

He did. And I did.

O
ccasionally Travis would think, “I should tell Isabella about Grace. I should tell her it was Grace's idea, no, her request, that I tie her up.” But why? It wouldn't change anything, and it wouldn't be—what was that word? Gallant. Who would it help? No one. He'd actually told Ivory the truth about it, how odd it seemed that Grace wanted it so much, that she visibly relaxed once he'd tied the knots. His mother had frowned, not in disapproval, but more puzzlement. But that was before the stroke. Now Ivory seemed to have forgotten they'd ever talked about it. It was just something else unpleasant she'd read in the paper about the murder. Yeah, there was plenty dark stuff in Grace's childhood, before she went to live with her grandparents. But those were secrets she told him. And what did it matter now? “You can trust me, Gracie,” he whispered. “Even now.”

I
sabella and I were sitting in Joe Kotter's office, drinking surprisingly good Italian pear spritzers, presented with a flourish after Kotter opened the most microrefrigerator I'd ever seen. Kotter, who had been Travis's trial attorney, worked from digs tucked into a corner of Pier 9, upstairs from some architects, and featuring two floor-to-ceiling windows with million-dollar views of the bay.

“Must be distracting,” I said, mesmerized by the scenes unfolding outside the window, ferry boats docking, and from one angle, a straight shot at the tiny float-boats that bobbed outside AT&T Park, filled with mitt-wearing fans, just hoping for a home run to head out of the park and toward the water.

He laughed. “It should be. It used to be. Now, it's like wallpaper. Unless I'm staring out the window trying to solve a problem, I hardly notice it any more.”

On the way over to Kotter's office, with my sheaf of AWE questions stashed beside me in an increasingly tattered folder, Isabella gave me a little more background on Kotter. “Worked in one of the big firms, finagled a half pro bono commitment from the firm to handle Travis's case—partly because it was a high-profile trial, and the managing partner thought it wouldn't be bad to shine a little light on their criminal-defense work, and partly because that same partner loved jazz and was a fan of The Devil's Interval.”

“Where'd the other half of the fee come from?” I asked.

“That rough trade boyfriend of Ivory's,” said Isabella. “Gus Reeves.” She shook her head. “Boy, I don't see that as couple-of-the-year material, but I gather that guy would do anything for the woman he loves. Of course Travis doesn't think he's good enough for Ivory, but even he admits Gus has been a stand-up guy. Which kinda makes me think well of old Gus. Rich guy who stays loyal to a beautiful, but definitely middle-aged-plus woman.”

“Lifelong love affair,” I said. “At least that's how he described it to me. Not exactly reciprocal, but that doesn't seem to deter him. And he seems very loyal and supportive of his daughter. Definitely a guy who admires women.”

“Just like Travis,” said Isabella.

“Maybe,” I said. “But you should have seen Gus watching Ginger giving her little talk in the garden.”

“Makes me think better of little Ginger,” said Andrea, “that she invites her dad to events like that. I mean, he's hardly Father Knows Best material.”

“Love, love, love,” I said. “Go figure.”

“Anyway,” Isabella said, “getting back to our guy, Kotter. After the trial, he didn't make partner, so he decided to hang out his own little shingle and left the big offices in the Embarcadero Center and moved out here. He subleases from some architect buddies, old friends from college, I think.”

Isabella whipped her car into the cavernous hangarlike entrance to Pier 9. “Watch for number six on the parking spots,” she said. “Joe snagged the guest parking slot for us today.”

Kotter put his feet up on the table and patiently listened as we went through the AWE factors. “Michael's students did a pretty good job,” he said, “but I don't think there's any smoking gun they've turned up.” He gave a wry smile. “You could always go for the incompetent representation, Isabella,” he said.

“I would if I could,” she said. “But, I think you did a pretty good job.”

“And does that mean you'll go out with me?” he said.

Isabella shook her head. “I'm a single mom with a toddler. Trust me, I'm not the girl of your dreams.”

“You have no idea what I dream about,” said Kotter.

“No idea, and not much interest,” said Isabella.

I listened to the banter and felt as if my romantic radar was tuned to frequency zero.zero. Was Isabella
really
not interested? Or just playing keepaway? Was Kotter flirting out of reflex, or was he in pursuit? All too tough to figure out. Note to self: You and Michael need to make this marriage work; you'd never survive out in the brutal reality show known as dating.

“So, Maggie asked me an intriguing question the other day,” Isabella was saying. “She wondered if there was something that really bothered you about the trial, now that it's over and done and you've had time to think about it.”

“Sure,” said Kotter, “it bothered the hell out of me that we lost. And not just because I hate losing, but because I happen to think Travis is a pretty good guy—and I honestly don't think he did it.”

“But something else,” I persisted. “Something that never sat right with you.”

“A bunch of stuff,” he said. “Maybe that old lady across the street was right, and there was another car—or two there that evening. We just couldn't find anything to back that up. But the real ball-breaker was all the complexity in this crime. If somebody wanted to kill Grace, fine—go do it. Drop some poison in her drink at one of those dozens of parties she went to. Break into her house and kill her and leave her there. But why murder her and then frame Travis? And then why do it in such a risky way?” He shook his head. “It made no sense. Whoever killed Grace took one chance after another. They're moving a body, maybe across town, wrestling it in and out of some vehicle, and then into Travis's limo. I know she didn't weigh much, but wrangling any adult body isn't light work.”

“But people who murder don't have to make sense, do they?” I asked. “They get mad or scared or greedy or they're protecting
something or someone or getting revenge, and they just do it.”

“And that's why most people get caught,” said Kotter. “They're doing something stupid and impetuous and they leave tracks all over the place. But again, that's what was so weird about this murder. The killer wasn't stupid—he or she used an untraceable gun, either to distract or confuse the cops about the broken neck, and left no calling cards we've been able to uncover. But this is what kept me up at night: Why would somebody that smart then make as dumb and risky a move as transporting the body just to frame somebody else?”

“Because,” I said slowly, “it had to be somebody who didn't just want to get rid of Grace. They wanted to get rid of Travis, too. One murder, two victims.”

“See?” said Isabella. “That's why Frederick was so tempting a suspect. First of all, you always look to the spouse in a murder. And second, Grace had certainly given Frederick ample reason to be jealous.”

“Great theory,” I said, “except for Frederick's ironclad alibi. And I suppose you did enough work to rule out the murder-for-hire theory?'”

“Maggie loves that theory,” said Isabella.

“I did love it,” I admitted, “but there's something about Frederick that doesn't fit with that theory. He just seemed sad about Grace's affair with Travis, not angry, and maybe even a little understanding. Plus, he strikes me as the kind of guy who only knows how to do what he knows how to do—run a company, make money, make deals. I think he'd be baffled enough by finding a hired killer, that he'd screw it up or leave a trail or something.”

“Doesn't matter,” said Kotter. “We burned through a fair amount of PI resources tracking that avenue. Turned up zilch. In fact, antizilch. Just before Grace was killed, Frederick had helped establish a charitable remainder trust for A Mom's Place, which meant that if something happened to her, Frederick would get less, not more, of her assets. So, he didn't have any kind of a financial incentive to set a little fire under the jealousy motive.”

We all sat in silence. Kotter had been fiddling with the bottlecaps he'd popped off the pear spritzer. He picked one up, took aim at the trash can several feet away, and with a practiced shot, banked it off the side of the can and neatly into the bottom. He picked up the second, and then the third, and did the same thing.

“Good shots,” I said.

“Practice,” Kotter replied. Isabella walked over to the window and looked out at the water. I could feel the energy draining out of all of us.

“Okay,” I said. “Not to obsess about this, but you both know these transcripts up, down, and sideways. Anything else that struck you?”

“I could never figure out why it was so difficult to trace Grace's tracks that evening,” said Kotter. “I mean, Travis said he brought her back to her house. It was pretty late. And I don't know about you girls, but after I get laid, I'm pretty whacked. I'm ready to catch some Zs.” He picked up a paper clip, and sent it ricocheting into the trash can. “But if Travis is telling the truth, she went home, she probably took a shower, so Frederick doesn't come home and—let's not be indelicate—get a whiff of some other dog who's been sniffing around his kennel, right?”

“That's delicate?” asked Isabella. “I'm moving the odds that I'll ever go out with you from one thousand to one, to one million to nothing.”

“Sorry,” he said. “But you get my point. She's home, she's either taken a shower and in the pj's and robe, or about to get into the shower. So, why in the hell did she go out again? And where did she go? And who the hell with?”

“No chance she was murdered at her house and then moved to the limo?” I asked.

Kotter shook his head. “Forensics says no. Gunshots make a big mess, and even if the killer had spread plastic bags down and put Grace on top of 'em and then did her, there'd have been something. A little blood spray. Or, just the tracks pulling that
plastic with her on it would have made on the floor. The place was pretty clean, because these rich folks have good housekeepers, but there's still a little everyday life debris on the floor, and nothing had been disturbed. Anywhere.”

“Plus,” added Isabella, “if she had to go out unexpectedly, since it was so late, wouldn't she have left Frederick a note, so he wouldn't worry?”

“Wouldn't he just assume she was with Travis?”

“According to Frederick's testimony, she didn't lie when she was seeing Travis, but she often said she was ‘having dinner with a friend,' and he didn't pry.”

“But he got worried,” said Kotter, “because she didn't make their Cinderella deadline.”

“Come again?”

“Oh, apparently they had an agreement that they'd both be home by midnight, if they weren't together, or they'd leave a note or message on each other's cell.”

“Because,” Kotter picked up the end of the story, “Grace would occasionally go very late to the Crimson.”

We fell into silence. “The rich are different,” said Isabella.

“So, what do any of these loose ends tell us?” I asked.

Kotter shook his head. “Not one damn thing.”

“We need to figure out
why
Grace went out and who she went with. Or who she met,” I said.

“Good luck with that,” said Isabella.