Too Close to the Edge (23 page)

I waved her over.

“Can’t stop,” she called, coming alongside the window.

“I have to talk to you now. It’ll only take a few minutes,” I said, braking the car.

Without appearing to shift her tempo, she ran in place beside the window. “No, no. If I stop, I have to start all over again. I need the distance. Besides, I am monitoring my stride. Like most runners I advise in the store, I have a little”—she held her thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart—“pronation to work out.” She gave an amused, conspiratorial smile.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I got out of the car. I was sorry. She was hard not to like, to root for. “This is business.”

Her clear blue eyes narrowed in a scowl. “Excuse me, but my training, this is business, too.”

“A murder investigation comes first. I have to talk to you now.”

She let her feet settle on the road for a moment. “I am not a citizen here. I have no choice.”

“You wouldn’t have a choice even if you were,” I said, for what it was worth. “Do you have a key to Liz Goldenstern’s flat?”

“No,” she said, beginning to run in place again. “There would be no reason.”

“But you do know where Laurence Mayer keeps his keys to the flats, don’t you?”

She hesitated.

“They’re in plain sight. It would be odd if you didn’t,” I offered.

There was a long pause before she said, “You mean the ring in the kitchen? That I saw, but I didn’t know what they were for.”

I took her explanation with a grain of salt. I was about to thank her for her time when the odd omission of this conversation struck me. Even though the apprehension of the shoe thief had been reported tongue-in-cheek, it had made the front page of every local newspaper and, as far as I knew, was featured on the ten and eleven o’clock news last night. One reporter had interviewed Pereira live when she left the station. Greta Tennerud, who had been central to the case, should have been eager to hear every detail about it. I said, “Have you seen the news this morning, or last night?”

“Yes? Ah, our thief. That is fine work. My boss will be pleased.” Her voice sounded strained. It was not the delivery of a relieved party.

“We’ve spent all night questioning the boys involved.”

“The lady who cleaned house for them, she was the mastermind?” Greta raised her eyebrows in an attempt at amusement.

I nodded. “Tell me about the sales slips at Racer’s Edge. What is written on them?”

“Their purchases: shoes, shorts, socks, whatever.”

“The make of shoe?”

“Officer Coleman and Officer Pereira asked me these same questions.”

“I know. It’s a nuisance to answer them again. Did the sales slip list the make of shoe?”

“Yes.”

“And the size?”

“Yes.”

“And the customer’s name?”

She shook her head. “No, there was no need for that. We used the sales slips to keep records for reordering, not for payment records.”

“Aura Summerlight was just a pawn, wasn’t she? You let her keep half the money. But it was you who set up the shoe thefts.”

Under her tan, the color drained from her face, leaving the appearance of a gray mask. “No,” she said in a small, unconvincing voice.

I took out the card and read her her rights. She reached for the car to steady herself. I said, “Liz Goldenstern worked with the sales slips. As for the checks or credit card receipts, the checks went to the bank the same day you got them, right?”

She nodded warily.

“And the credit card slips you stuck in a manila envelope each day. It wasn’t till the end of the month that they got filed, right?”

“Yes. Liz’s friend, the mastermind, she did that.”

“She alphabetized the credit card slips.”

“Yes. Only she saw them all together. At first I couldn’t believe she had staged the robberies.” Greta was shaking her head in dismay, or what she expected me to take for dismay. “She
said
she stopped in to find out when Liz wanted her at her house. But she was always there when Liz was working on the sales slips and she had the credit card copies, with the names and addresses on them. I saw how she could have done it.”

“But she didn’t get the credit card receipts till the end of the month. By that time ninety percent of the shoes would be too worn to steal. In order to orchestrate the thefts she would have needed them the same day. She didn’t have that chance. Liz Goldenstern certainly didn’t. She didn’t see the credit card receipts at all. Only you had that opportunity.”

She tried to feign shock, but the muscles around her eyes and mouth were too taut with wariness to move quickly. The look of fear merely intensified. “No, no. Why would I do that? I am an alien here. If I break the law, you will deport me. I will be sent back in disgrace, to those long, long winters. I would be a fool to do that for nine pairs of shoes.”

“You would indeed, if that were your reason. But when a runner has expensive shoes stolen, he doesn’t go barefoot, he buys another pair. He buys them from the store he got them from before. Nine of the pairs of shoes stolen came from your store. So, the thefts mean that you sold nine more pairs. If they’d gone on, you would have sold more. Nine pairs at two hundred dollars a pair makes a difference in the store receipts. It’s enough to show the boss that your being there is worth the money.”

She shook her head. “If I win Boston, I’ll make seventy-five thousand. Why would I jeopardize everything?”

“Because without a job, a job that only you can fill, you lose your green card. You’d have to go back to Norway.”

I loaded Greta into the car and called the dispatcher to alert Coleman I was bringing her in.

Coleman met me at the station and claimed Greta Tennerud. I walked on to my office and opened the door to find Murakawa standing in front of the small dark window, tapping his foot.

“Jeez, Smith,” he said, “I thought you’d driven by way of San Francisco.”

“It’s only been fifteen minutes since I called in.”

“Really?” He glanced at the clock. “Well, maybe so. But when you hear what I have to tell you you’ll know why it seemed like eternity.”

I swung my chair around and sat. But Murakawa continued to stand, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“After I left you I came back here and called QuakeChek. I was all set to ask them how they evaluated the buildings for earthquake resistance.”

I nodded.

“But when I called, the woman who answered said they don’t give out information on the phone.”

“That’s interesting.”

Murakawa tapped a finger. “Just what I thought. So I told her I was a police officer. It didn’t make any difference.”

I groaned. Surely we wouldn’t have to hassle getting a court order for this.

“I could have argued, but I thought the simplest way to handle things was just to go down there. So, I did. And guess what they said, Smith?”

“No idea.”

“They said they do computer checks for earthquake safety.”

I knew that.

“Not just on the buildings, like you said, but on the plans and their own soil engineer’s report, and the latest earthquake data. They know every tributary and trace in Berkeley, whether it’s growing and how fast. Seismic engineers are finding new traces all the time. QuakeChek has records of new traces that won’t show up on the fault maps till the next revisions, a couple of years from now. When I asked them if their data is more current than the city’s, they laughed. They said the most competent building department in the world couldn’t keep up with every shift in every fault, much less the new traces—most of them aren’t visible from above—the city has to go by the fault map, and by the time that’s printed it’s probably already out of date.”

“Whew!”

Murakawa was grinning. He had a shallow nose, but a wide strong mouth. His grin took over his face. “And that’s not all, Smith.”

“What?” I was thinking Murakawa should team up with Heling. Between the two of them the suspense could be dragged out forever.

“They said a guy was in Thursday asking the very same question.”

I held my breath. “Did they get his name.”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“But, Smith, they gave me something just as good—his description. They said he was a short Caucasian, had limp blond hair, and was dressed entirely in shades of yellow.”

“Herman Ott!”

H
ERMAN
O
TT HAD BEEN
investigating QuakeChek! That explained his message—“Liz, you were right; only they are up-to-date”—on Liz Goldenstern’s answering machine. And while I was up all night, racing around, searching for a key to this case, he had it. And at the time he was bartering with me, carrying on like he was selling his favorite daughter into slavery, he knew about QuakeChek. He could have told me then. When I was convincing Pereira to spend her night finding out about esoteric tax forms for him, he knew. And while she created order amidst the morass of his files, and I listened to Ian Stuart go on about the collective moving a helicopter up and down, and the throttle starting the craft just like a motorcycle’s, Herman Ott was curled up around the QuakeChek information, covered with his clutter of blankets, snoring away.

I stormed out of the station, slammed down into the driver’s seat, and started the car, and put it into gear without waiting for the engine to warm. It jerked. I stepped harder on the gas, racing the engine. Then I headed through the fog to Telegraph.

Despite the chill, the sidewalks were crowded with students and graduates meandering from displays of stained glass panels, to blankets of hand-tooled belts, to tables of turquoise jewelry. Parents fingered tie-dyed baby shirts for the future members of the class of ’08, while the strollers that held the incipient scholars blocked the sidewalk. By Herman Ott’s corner, melted glass wind chimes clattered atonally in the sharp wind.

Cutting in front of a station wagon loaded with ficus and potted palm trees, I pulled into a loading zone, got out, and slammed the door. No space was wasted in this sidewalk commercial district. There was barely eight inches between displays. I squeezed between a table of ceramic toothbrush holders and one displaying hand-dyed shirts, shorts, and sweat pants, letting my butt bang against the latter. I had bought a forest-green shirt there once. Every time I washed it, it ran. Now it was running for the Salvation Army or whatever charitable soul took it off their hands.

Despite the cold and fog, the kitchen fans at the pizza place were on high, blowing the smells of garlic and tomato sauce across the sidewalk. Dammit, I’d even bought Ott pizza Thursday night!

I took the stairs in Ott’s building two at a time, arriving at his floor winded. The couple by the landing was still going at it, their retorts keeping pace with the television chase music. I raced down the hallway, skirting two six-year-olds playing catch, and banged on the office door.

There was no answer. It hadn’t occurred to me that Ott might be out. How could he not be here when I was so furious!

Before I could pound again, he pulled open the door. There was a sleepy look to his small hazel eyes. Crossing his arms over his saffron sweatshirt and gold-and-mustard-striped shirt, he said, “You’ve brought my money?”

“Forget your money, Ott.” I shoved past him.

“What’s with you? I’m the one who’s owed.”

“You’ve had a day and a half to toss yourself into that heap you call a bed. You wouldn’t have had that if I hadn’t gotten Connie Pereira to do your taxes.”

“It wasn’t a gift, Smith. We had a deal. I kept up my end.”

“Some deal! Pereira spent hours on your return. If it hadn’t been for her, you’d still be sitting here dredging through scraps of paper and trying to figure out those forms. And what did you give us? A few asides, information so extraneous that we solved the case without it.”

Ott shrugged. “A deal’s a deal. Sometimes you get an edge, sometimes you don’t. You shouldn’t get so worked up, Smith. You don’t see me down at your office, huffing and puffing because my money’s late.”

Pulling the door from his hand, I slammed it. “Don’t give me this philosophical garbage. You and your flaunted ethics! Some friend you are.”

Ott’s eyes widened in true disbelief. “Smith, have I ever given you the impression that you and I are friends?”

“Not me, Ott. Liz Goldenstern. You were her friend. I heard her tape when you called and suggested dinner. That was the voice of a friend. And now your friend is dead, and you are so hidebound, so busy justifying your life by your own self-imposed rules that you don’t care whether her killer is caught or not.”

He said nothing. No muscle in his face moved. Someone else might have taken that for impassivity. But I knew it was the skill of a detective who’d spent twenty years working on the streets. And I knew, too, that I’d gotten to him.

“You don’t need to worry now, Ott,” I said, “I’m not going to ask you about that message. I’m going to
give
you something. But then I expect you to cooperate, completely.”

His pale eyes narrowed. “What do you take me for, Smith, that’s a sucker’s deal.”

“Wait till you hear it.”

He shrugged.

“QuakeChek had stairs, but no ramp, right? They don’t give information over the phone. So Liz asked you, her friend, to go there for her. And you found out that they have the most current knowledge of earthquake faults and their tributaries and traces, that
only they are up to date,
right?”

“I’m waiting for your gift, Smith,” he said, showing no surprise, much less interest.

“They told you that by the time a fault map is printed it’s out of date. They said, in essence, that there are earthquake traces so new that only they know about them. And that’s what you told Liz. And Ott, that’s what killed her.”

His thin lips squeezed together until the darker color was entirely covered. Still, he couldn’t control the quiver at the sides. This was far and away the most emotional I had ever seen him. I could have saved him begging, but I didn’t. I waited until he said, “How?”

I walked to the window and stared at its soot-covered surface. The building had been erected in the twenties. Sixty years of soot. There was only an air shaft out there, but I couldn’t see the wall on the other side. That show of contrition, so out of character for Herman Ott, still wasn’t enough. I could hear the bitterness in my voice as I said, “You didn’t even bother to find out why she needed that information, did you?”