Looking for Yesterday (8 page)

5:53 p.m.

The officers had arrived, the crime scene people had taken their photographs and collected their evidence. Jethro Weatherford’s body was on its way to the morgue, and I was on my way home, still wondering if his sudden murder had anything to do with his conversation with me about my investigation.

He was such an innocuous old man, but drank too much and talked too freely to strangers. But there had been no sign that he’d been robbed, the only other motive I could think of, and it hadn’t looked as if he’d had anything worth stealing anyway.

Before I left the Alexander Valley I called the number on the lawyer’s card. Left a message, in case he checked his voice mail on Sundays. As soon as I disconnected, a call came in from Hy.

“McCone, where are you?”

“Novato.”

“Are you okay?”

It seemed to me I’d heard that question hundreds of times—not only since I’d suffered from locked-in syndrome, but since I’d begun practicing my profession.

“I’m okay, okay, okay.”

“Just wondering.” He sounded wistful; we’d had so little time together of late.

“I’ll be home within the hour.”

The cell rang again. The lawyer, Gary Wells, returning my call.

I explained my reason for contacting him, and he said, “Yes, I remember Jethro Weatherford. A golfing buddy of mine, Dave Walden, asked me to contact him about selling his property.”

“Why did your friend want it?”

“To complete his vineyard’s acreage. Weatherford didn’t want to sell, so that was that.”

“Jethro Weatherford died this afternoon.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Of what?”

“He was murdered.”

“What? By whom?”

“A person or persons unknown.”

“Poor old man. What’s to become of his land? I’m sure Dave would still like to have it.”

Typical lawyer comment. Always thinking of a potential fee.

“That will depend on what Mr. Weatherford’s heirs decide.”

“Heirs? That hermit—”

“He has a daughter, Nina, who lives in Southern California.”

A long pause. “Do you have her contact information?”

“I’m not at liberty to give that out,” I lied, “but I’m sure you won’t have any difficulty accessing it.”

As I ended the call, I thought,
But you won’t access it before I will
.

7:10 p.m.

Nina Weatherford said, “Oh my God, not Daddy.”

“From something he said to me, I take it the two of you weren’t close.”

“…No, not really. We were until my mom died, but then I asked him to move down here, and he wouldn’t. He wanted me to come home, but he didn’t understand that Southern California is where I make my living. The last time we spoke, we quarreled about that; he said ‘girls’ didn’t need to support themselves. Their ‘upkeep’ was supposed to be provided by their fathers or husbands.”

“An old-fashioned gentleman; I sensed that.”

“Old-fashioned, but always a gentleman.” Nina Weatherford was crying now. After a moment she got herself under control and asked, “What’s your connection with him?”

“I’m investigating a case involving some people who wanted to buy his land. I spoke with him at the Jimtown Store—”

“Daddy’s hangout.”

“Yes. He said he had an attorney’s card that might’ve been of help to me, and went home to find it. When I arrived there he was dead.”

“How was…?”

“A blow to the head.”

“Did he suffer?”

“No. He died instantly.”

“Oh, God, I should’ve
made
him move down here. Driven up and collected him and his damn stuff and dragged him to my house. I should’ve known it would come to this. I should’ve…”

“Should’ve known what, Ms. Weatherford?”

A long silence, and then Nina Weatherford broke the connection.

9:14 p.m.

Hy and I had no sooner finished dinner than he received a phone call from RI’s Denver office requesting his presence in the morning.

“I’ll call the pilot and ask him to preflight Six-Oh-Six right away,” he told me. “It’s a comfortable ride, I can sleep and be fresh for this new crisis by our eight o’clock meeting.”

Six-Oh-Six: the Cessna Citation, an eight-seater, luxurious, and the fastest private jet so far manufactured, which RI kept at Oakland Airport.

I tried not to look disappointed, but he sensed my mood.

“After I get back, I’ll take some time off and we’ll fly up to the ranch or Touchstone.”

“If
I
can take some time off.”

“You know, if we merged our agencies, we could schedule more compatibly.”

“There’d still be crises.”

“Sure. That’s what this business is all about.”

After Hy threw some things into a flight bag and left, I sat in the parlor for a long time, pondering my resistance to change. If Hy and I merged our agencies, things would work out well, I knew that. So why did I want to cling to the old days, the old ways? It wasn’t that I felt insecure; in many ways I’d never felt so secure in all my life. Secure in my marriage and Hy’s love for me, secure in my profession, secure with my friends and family. It didn’t make sense.

I got up and went to my home office, where I booted up my laptop. The cats joined me, staring greedily at the fish in the aquarium we’d recently purchased.

“Don’t even think of it,” I said.

They ignored me and licked their chops.

My earlier search on Walden Vineyards had been cursory, but now that I knew Dave Walden had been interested in buying Jethro Weatherford’s small plot of land, I went deeper. I was interested to find out that the backing funds for the not-quite-profitable vineyards came from a trust that Kayla’s late parents had set up for her. I didn’t have the computer skills to get at the terms of the trust, but Mick did.

I called him at the Millennium Tower condo that he and Alison shared.

“It’s Sunday night!” he exclaimed. “Are you nuts?”

“Probably.”

“We’re watching
The Wasp Woman
!”

Whatever that was. “Alison can DVR the rest of it for you.”

The sound that he made was similar to what came out of Jessie when Alex was deviling her—half growl, half hiss. “So give me the details. I’ll get back to you. And in exchange, I’m taking tomorrow morning off.”

Now that was a gift: on Monday mornings Mick could make Ebenezer Scrooge seem cheerful.

11:35 p.m.

“The terms of the trust are these,” Mick told me. “Kayla Walden—formerly Kayla Chase—is sole beneficiary of a sixty-five-million-dollar trust set up for her by her father, Anthony Chase.”

“Anthony Chase—Chase Oil and other enterprises, right?”

“Right. Kayla was his only daughter, and her mother died of breast cancer in her late thirties. The trust places few stipulations upon her, except that if she predeceases her husband, he inherits a certain amount, but the winery and the capital revert to the trust, which in turn donates it to various breast cancer research organizations.”

“Well, she looked healthy this afternoon. I liked her, her husband too.”

“Then why’re you—”

“It’s got to do with their insistence that Dave had nothing to do with the Warrick case.”

“The
Chron
’s not always right, you know.”

“Do I ever! The things they’ve said about me… Still, here’s your next assignment: contact the writer of the where-are-they-now piece and ask where her information came from. I’d ask you to contact the reporter who covered the trial—Jill Starkey—but I’m afraid she might do serious damage to sensitive parts of your anatomy. I’ll tackle Starkey.”

“Thanks. Nobody touches my junk except Alison. But are you gonna be okay?”

That question again!

“I’ve gone up against her before. This time I’ll be carrying a big stick.”

7:37 a.m.

I
was finishing my second cup of coffee and contemplating my next approach to Jill Starkey when the phone rang and a man identified himself as Mr. Snelling, a representative of the management company for the building on Sly Lane.

“We’re aware of the unfortunate situation with the elevator on Friday night,” he said, “and would like to compensate you for your, ah, inconvenience. We could—”

“I’m not a litigious person, Mr. Snelling, although my firm’s attorney will be in touch with you about terminating the lease, effective last Friday. Has anyone inspected the elevator?”

“We had a man out there yesterday.”

“Was there evidence it had been tampered with?”

“Possibly. One of the cables was frayed, but it could’ve been overlooked by the earlier inspectors.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes and no. The new man showed the cable to me, but I haven’t the expertise to evaluate what happened.”

I had no reason to doubt him; it was to his advantage to persuade me to return.

As I’d expected, he said, “Are you sure you won’t reconsider and stay, Ms. McCone?”

“I’m very sure; we’ve already arranged for other quarters.”

“In that case, we’ll send you a check for the unused portion for the rent.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Snelling.”

“I’m not litigious either. Makes the world a better place.”

Amen to that. At least he appeared to be conscientious and good at his job. I told him I needed to return to the building to make sure my staff had removed everything and that I would leave my keys, along with theirs, on the table in the foyer.

8:40 a.m.

Ted was the only one at the Sly Lane building when I arrived, and he was emptying the contents of his desk into a cardboard carton. He said, “The others are all getting settled into the new office suite. Pretty posh digs. Can we afford them?”

“They’re sublet from RI. Hy cut me a deal.”

“He still talking about a merger?”

“Off and on.”

“And your thinking?”

I shrugged. “Let’s see how it goes being next door to them before we make that decision.”

“‘We’?”

“Of course ‘we.’ All the employees of this agency have to be in accord on major issues.”

“You weren’t in accord about moving here, but you didn’t express it. You hate this building.”

“Well, it kind of charmed me at first.
Now
I hate it.”

“Me too.”

I handed him my keys. “Will you pick up everybody else’s too, and leave them in the foyer?”

“Sure. I’ll be back and forth all day. Not everybody could come in and move their stuff yesterday, and you can’t believe the shit that’s lying around unclaimed. Finicky Fags are coming at one o’clock to move the big stuff.”

Finicky Fags—an only-in–San Francisco phenomenon—had been founded in the early 1990s by two gay teenagers just out of high school and without job prospects. In thirty-plus years it had grown to a firm with facilities throughout the state. While most of their employees and customers were gay or lesbian, a large number of heteros used their services. It was true that they were finicky: breakage or other damage seldom happened, and claims were promptly paid. Their storage facilities were reputed to be the best in the Bay Area.

I said, “Ted, you know one of the owners of Finicky Fags pretty well, don’t you?”

“Neal does. They carted stuff around for his bookshop all the time.”

“Do you think Neal could find out from him about self-storage facilities in south San Francisco?”

“
I
could do that by looking in the phone book.”

“But if Neal’s friend were to ask, he could probably find out which one of them Caro Warrick rented a unit from.”

“I gotcha. I’ll ask Neal to get onto it right away. Where’re you off to now?”

I glanced at my watch and sighed. “Unfortunately, to Caro Warrick’s memorial service.”

“They put that together quick. She only died on Thursday.”

“There weren’t a lot of people to invite, and the family didn’t want the press to hear about it.”

“Her parents coming back from Mexico for it?”

“As far as I know, the parents aren’t even aware she’s dead.”

10:00 a.m.

I hate funerals and memorial services. At the former, with the body on display, people are supposed to confront and mourn a lifeless version that barely resembles the person they knew. I’ve noted that attendees tend to congregate at the opposite end of the room from the casket. Even with the casket closed, there is a haunting vision in one’s mind of a friend or loved one made up to a mannequin’s perfection by a mortician.

Memorial services these days are supposed to be touching and, in most cases, jovial. Family and friends are expected to tell humorous and inspirational tales about the dearly departed one’s time on earth. Trouble is, even the funniest stories are tinged with sorrow, and many of the deceased didn’t have particularly happy or significant existences.

I’d made Hy promise to toss my ashes off the cliff at Touchstone alone if I died first. He wanted the same.

One thing Caro’s sister and brother knew was that she had wanted to be remembered in a favorite place: the Chinese Pavilion, on Strawberry Hill Island in Golden Gate Park’s Stow Lake—a pagoda-style gift from our sister city, Taipei. The roof of the small round building is a pale green that contrasts with the darker shades of the surrounding trees, shrubs, and marsh grass; figures of mythical beasts appear to be scaling it; the support posts are bright red; on the slope above it looms the Strawberry Hill reservoir.

This morning was dry, and the sun was breaking through the fog, promising a warm day. The gathering was small: Rob, Patty, Mrs. Cleary, Ned Springer, and two colleagues from the real-estate agency where Caro had worked. No clergyman.

Rob coughed and said, “We’re here to remember Patty’s and my sister and your friend, Caro Warrick. Just Caro: when she was old enough to talk, two syllables were all she could master, and the nickname stuck. Caro had a difficult last few years, but her courage under adversity was an example to us all. We—”

He paused, looking off at the stone footbridge to the island. Everyone else’s heads turned.

An attractive middle-aged couple wearing inappropriate casual clothing were crossing. The woman—blond, tanned, slim—raised a hand in greeting as if she were arriving at a party. Betsy and Ben Warrick, I thought, late for their eldest daughter’s memorial.

I glanced back at Rob. He stood still, unsmiling, clenching his hands at his sides. Patty made a choking noise and said to Rob, “How could you let them know? They don’t deserve to be here!”

“I left a message at their hotel. They had a right to know, but I never dreamed they’d come—”

Patty whirled around and pushed into the foliage beside her. Ned Springer made an I’ll-take-care-of-her signal to me and followed.

Betsy Warrick went directly to Rob and threw her arms around him. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie! So sorry.”

He stood rigid, his face contorted with what I took to be revulsion.

Ben Warrick moved to stand beside them, his hand on Rob’s shoulder. “We came as soon as we could, Son.”

Rob threw off his father’s hand, pushed his mother away from him.

“Fuck you! Fuck both of you! You made Caro’s life hell, and now you won’t even allow her a decent memorial by staying away!” He ran off the way Patty and Springer had gone.

Mrs. Cleary and the real-estate women were fleeing. Leaving me alone with the Warricks.

“And who are you, young lady?” Ben demanded. He, like his wife, was evenly tanned and slim, with blond, well-styled hair.

I was tempted to lie, say I was just an old colleague of Caro’s, but the couple were so obnoxious that I decided to inject one more of what I was sure they would call “complications” into their lives. I took out my card and handed it to him.

He read it, his eyebrows rising. “Private investigator?”

“I’m assisting the San Francisco Police Department in their investigation into Caro’s death. If you’d like confirmation, please call Homicide Inspector Devlin Fast at the Hall of Justice.”

“But why—?”

“Because they’re shorthanded, I’m very good at what I do, and Caro was my friend.”

“Friend? My daughter had no friends after she murdered Amelia Bettencourt.”

Something flickered in my memory: Inspector Fast, whose instincts I trusted, had told me the Warricks had seemed to be fonder of Amelia than of their own daughter. Then I looked at Betsy Warrick’s eyes and revised the opinion: only Ben had been fonder of Caro’s best friend.

I said, “I’ve intruded upon your grieving, so I’ll be going now.”

“No,” Betsy Warrick said. “I want to hear more about Carolyn’s last days. Please. Please have lunch with us.”

11:50 a.m.

Lunch, of course, had to be at an expensive restaurant—Boulevard in the historic Audiffred Building near the Hyatt Embarcadero, where the Warricks were staying. I voiced no opposition to their choice: I love the place. And I didn’t rein myself in, ordering my favorite starter—ahi tuna tartare—and main course—wood-roasted chicken breast with all sorts of wonderful ingredients. Ben Warrick selected an excellent chardonnay for me and his wife, and an equally good zinfandel for himself.

The talk around the table was somber: Why had Carolyn hired me? So she could confirm information for the book she and Greta Goldstein were writing. Did I know this Greta Goldstein? I’d only spoken with her on the phone, but she had an excellent reputation. Why had Carolyn needed this book to be published? She’d never felt she’d been completely exonerated of killing Amelia Bettencourt, and probably she’d needed the money.

Carolyn had never needed for money, Ben protested. She’d had an ample trust fund set up by her grandmother, and if more had been required, he and Betsy would have provided it.

Perhaps she’d felt the urge to be independent? I asked.

No, Betsy said, the trust provided her at least three thousand dollars a month.

So why, I wondered, was she living in a dreadful garage apartment and working at a low-paying job that she hated?

Well, there was the obvious—blackmail—but I didn’t think that was the case. Self-castigation, maybe? Or did she donate most of her income to gun control causes?

“Did you speak to your daughter often?” I asked. “Write to her?”

“No, we did not.”

“What about Rob and Patty?”

“We have…issues with them too. Obviously, as you saw at Stow Lake.”

“Every family has its issues,” I said, thinking of my own far-flung and vastly different clans, “but in times of extreme trouble, most pull together.”

Ben slapped his open hand onto the table so hard that Betsy looked alarmed.

“Do you have any idea,” he said in a low but rage-filled voice, “what those children did to us? My son shot and killed his baby sister. My daughter slaughtered her best friend and got away with it. The other one, Patty, is a lesbian—a
vocal
lesbian. Turn on the TV news and there’ll be Patty, fat and slovenly and yapping about gay rights.”

“Ben.…” Betsy put her hand on his arm. He shook it off.

“After that trial, my clients drifted away from me. Who’s going to entrust their portfolios to a man with a freak show of a family? She”—he motioned to his wife—“is supporting us now. Most of her clients are women, and women are stupidly forgiving.”

Betsy said, “Ben, stop—”

But he yanked her out of her chair and began dragging her toward the exit. I—and the other patrons—watched, stunned.

I was even more stunned when the waiter placed the bill on the table.

1:40 p.m.

By the time I got to our new offices in the RI building, I was so angry I felt as if great clouds of steam were billowing out of my ears. Not about getting stuck with the lunch check, but about the callousness the Warricks had displayed toward their children. Tragic accidents occur, people are unjustly accused, children often don’t share the same definition of sexuality as their parents. But arrogance and hostility solve nothing. Nobody wins.

Kendra wasn’t at her desk in the reception area, and fortunately Ted’s door was closed. I didn’t want to talk with anybody till I cooled down.

I hadn’t seen the new suite, but I’d known what it would be like from frequent visits to RI’s similar layout. Still, as I moved along the hallway, I was impressed. Pale gray walls, with luxurious medium-gray carpeting that would soothe the feet of the most harried of clients. Attractive, modern furnishings, designed for both comfort and function. Brightened by colorful posters or photographs, the décor would be stunning.

Even after all that, I wasn’t prepared for my office at the end of the hallway: an expansive view from the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridge and East Bay hills; a long cherrywood desk and workstation; floor-to-ceiling bookcases; clients’ armchairs upholstered in a subtle gray-on-gray pattern. And best of all, my own leather armchair and hassock positioned by the window under a potted schefflera plant that spread its healthy leaves and branches in the early afternoon light.

The plant brought tears to my eyes. For years I’d had one in my office at All Souls, but when we’d moved to the pier it had taken a dislike to the place and died; its successor had had the same reaction to Sly Lane. I went over to the new one and fondled its trunk. “You and I are in this for the long haul, right?”

“Yeah, you are.”

I started. Ted stood in the doorway, grinning.

“This”—I gestured around—“was all your doing, right?”

“Well, with the help of the interior decorator, yes.”

“But this plant—”

“Whose name, by the way, is Mr. T.”

“T as in Ted?”

“Right. Mr. T has a pedigree. Comes from a nursery Neal and I found up in Napa County. We have papers to prove it. In fact, Mr. T arrived by limo only fifteen minutes before you got here.”

“A
limo
?”

Ted shrugged. “Actually, it was only a panel truck, but they have
PLANT LIMO
painted on its sides.”

I went to him and threw my arms around his neck. “You are an amazing man,” I said. “You’ve managed to turn one of the ugliest days of my year into the best.”