Muller, Marcia - [McCone 02] - Ask the Cards a Question 3S(v1)(html) (2 page)

I crossed the street toward the Albatross Superette, morning sun warm on my shoulders and a sense of guilt hot at my heels.

Linnea hadn’t stirred as I dressed hastily that morning. I knew I should have awakened her to tell her of Molly’s murder; it would be far better for her to hear of it from me than from the TV news or someone like Tim, the manager. Still, after a restless night on the floor, I was in no shape to face her probable hysterics, and I’d taken the coward’s way out.

Or was that the real reason I’d slunk out of my own apartment without so much as a cup of coffee? What about that length of drapery cord which, I was sure, had traveled from my place to the scene of Molly’s death? How do you ask your best friend if she, by any chance, wandered upstairs in a drunken stupor and strangled an old lady? How on earth can you even think such a thing?

I shook off the thought and opened the door of the Superette, sniffing the aroma of coffee from the big urn the proprietor always kept going. The little store was empty. I stepped inside, taking in the familiar Coca-Cola and bubbling neon beer signs, the worn green-and-white linoleum and battered freezer chests, the racks of potato chips and neat pyramids of fresh fruit.

A dour-faced man with oil-slicked black hair emerged from the stockroom. He wiped his hands on his long white apron and came forward. “You have heard the news, Miss McCone?” His words were accentuated not so much by his native Arabic tongue as by excessive formality.

“You mean about Molly Antonio? Yes.”

“A terrible thing. A truly terrible thing.” Briefly, he bowed his head, then slipped around me and turned the sign in the window to CLOSED. Locking the door, he added, “I do not wish to speak of such a thing in front of my customers. You would like coffee, perhaps?”

“That sounds good.”

He filled two Styrofoam cups and scrupulously rang up the price, depositing change from his own pocket. I sat on a wooden stool next to the counter, watching him and thinking back to five years ago, when I’d first met Mohammed Makhlouf, or Mr. Moe, as he was called.

The first time I’d ever come into the store, I’d gotten a loaf of bread and approached the counter in time to observe the grocer close in on a neophyte delinquent bent on stealing from the candy jar by the cash register. The would-be offender took one look at Mr. Moe’s deep-set eyes and upraised hand and backed toward the door. In a flurry of arms and legs, he vanished.

“If you frighten them enough, they will learn,” Mr. Moe said. He rang up the bread, made change, and offered me a paper bag, which I declined. As I left, he called out after me:

“Thank you for saving the trees!”

Although on the surface a friendly expression of appreciation from one ecologist to another, the remark—and countless others directed at me over the intervening years—had contained an undertone of mockery, accentuated by a thin smile that never touched his eyes. As time went by, my inability to pinpoint the source of this scorn had filled me with a wary curiosity that persisted to this day.

Now Mr. Moe handed me coffee and leaned against the counter, cup between his slender hands. The store was silent, save for the whir of an overhead fan. After a minute, the grocer asked, “You were at home when they found Mrs. Antonio?”

“I arrived right afterwards. Gus was hysterical, so I identified the body.”

“And why would the police permit a pretty young woman like you to view such a horror?” His characteristic irony colored the words.

“My job makes me tougher than I look. I’m a private detective, with All Souls Legal Cooperative, the legal services plan.”

“A detective?” Something flickered in the pools of the grocer’s eyes and his lids, almost lashless, slid down, lending his face a faintly reptilian cast.

“That’s right.” I watched him closely.

“I did not know.” He set his coffee down untouched and began to straighten some brushes hanging from a display rack beside him. A sign on top of the rack read: THESE PRODUCTS MANUFACTURED AT THE SUNRISE BLIND CENTER… HELP THE BLIND HELP THEMSELVES.

“The morning news said a burglar invaded Mrs. Antonio’s home and killed her,” Mr. Moe went on. “What could she have worth stealing?”

So that was the story the police had given the press. “Not much,” I said. “Did you know her well?”

“I knew her, yes. There are many old ladies like Mrs. Antonio in the neighborhood. They come in here every day. I cash their Social Security checks, extend them credit at the end of the month. We are as close to friends as is possible in a place like this.” His gesture took in all of the Mission District, maybe all of San Francisco.

I asked, “What time did Molly come in here last night?”

His hooded glance slid sidelong toward me. “Why would you think she did?”

“She spilled her bag of groceries, probably when she was attacked. I saw your cash register receipt.”

“I see. Yes.” He left off the brushes and turned to face me, his arms folded across his white-aproned chest. “Miss McCone, I did not mean to be untruthful. I am afraid for my business. That she was here immediately before she was killed—”

“You say immediately before. How do you know when she died?”

His tongue darted out, licking at his dry lips. “That is a figure of speech. Minutes or hours, what is the difference?”

“It could be important. You may have been the last person to see her alive. What time was it?”

“Perhaps seven o’clock. I did not look at the time.”

“How did she seem? Was she in good spirits?”

“She was the same as before.”

“Before?”

“Yes. At five o’clock, she stopped in and asked me to tell Gus to come to her place when he brought Sebastian, the blind brush man, in here. She wanted him to be sure to see her before he returned Sebastian to the Blind Center.” Mr. Moe gestured at the rack. Sebastian, the brush man, lived at the Sunrise Blind Center, a few blocks away. Led by Molly’s husband, Gus, he traveled about the neighborhood restocking the vending racks in various grocery stores. The Center paid Gus a small salary in return for acting as guide.

“Okay. How did she seem then?” I asked.

“She was upset. Agitated. I asked her what was wrong.”

“And?”

“She laughed and tried to make nothing of it. She said she had received an evil prophecy from her fortune teller.”

“Her fortune teller? What on earth?”

“Mrs. Antonio, like many of the foolish old ladies around here, went once a week to a fortune teller. She took it very seriously.”

“For heaven’s sake. Who is this person?”

The grocer hesitated. “Fortune telling is illegal here, so they keep their identities secret. They use flyers and word of mouth, advertising as ‘Madame So-and-so.’ The city is full of these prophetesses and faith healers.”

“And you don’t know which one Molly went to?”

Again he hesitated. I sensed he wanted to protect the fortune teller. “No,” he said. “Surely you don’t think a prophecy killed Mrs. Antonio?”

“Of course not. But it’s interesting. I never would have taken Molly for a superstitious woman. She seemed so down-to-earth.”

A rapping at the door broke the silence. The grocer went over and opened it, turning the sign back around. Two truckers from the Produce Terminal stood there, eager to make their deliveries.

I tossed my empty coffee cup in the trash can and stood up. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Moe.” My voice sounded thin and evasive.

“Yes?”

“Do you know my friend, Linnea Carraway? She’s about five-three, with long blond hair.”

“The lady who buys all the wine.” His face was a polite blank.

“Yes, that’s the one. Was she in yesterday?” Since Linnea had drunk wine last night, rather than the Scotch she preferred, she’d probably bought it locally. The stores in the surrounding blocks only stocked beer and wine.

“Yes,” Mr. Moe replied. “She bought some wine immediately before Mrs. Antonio arrived. In fact, Mrs. Antonio scolded her for it. She told her to run along home and she’d stop in later for a chat.”

I stood, staring at him.

“Is that all, Miss McCone? I have a great deal of work to do.”

“Oh, of course. Thank you for your time.”

I threaded my way through the deliverymen and crates on the sidewalk, thinking I would need to have a chat with Linnea, too. As I reached the curb, I spotted Greg Marcus on the opposite corner. He waved and came toward me, jaunty in his blue pin-striped suit. We met in the center of the street.

“Looks like you’re ahead of me, papoose. Find out anything interesting?”

“Me?” I widened my eyes, miming innocence. “All I did was have a cup of coffee.”

“Sure you did. Just coffee and conversation. I’ll get back to you later.”

I shoved the stand that held my old Underwood portable into a corner of my office. Eleven o’clock. The report I’d worked on all yesterday evening and part of this morning was finally done.

The red push-button phone on my desk buzzed softly. I punched the flashing button and picked up the receiver.

“Well, papoose,” Greg’s voice greeted me, “will you give me my big chance and have lunch with me today?”

As they had the night before, my defenses rose. “I plan to catch a bite here and work on my expense report.”

“Ah, Sharon, how unromantic! It’s too beautiful a day for such nonsense, and the good weather can’t last much longer. Come on a picnic with me.”

I hesitated. Greg and I had met on a case two months ago and had instantly become professional rivals. We had then begun to work on becoming friends, a tough uphill job, given our respective stormy natures and the traditional antagonism that exists between cops and private eyes. Six weeks ago, after a quarrel, I had decided things could never work out for us, and Greg, with characteristic determination, had proceeded to try to woo me back. So far I had resisted.

“Come on. Please.”

“Will you promise not to bring any chocolate?” Unlike other men, who would ply a woman with flowers, Greg had been showering me with chocolate—for which we both had a fondness bordering on the obsessive.

“Me? Why would I bring any of that along?”

“Greg, really. After that box of See’s fudge two days ago I’ve had about all I can take.” It had been on the doorstep when I’d returned from work.

“Ate it all, eh?”

“Well…”

“Listen, papoose, why don’t you stop at the deli near All Souls and pick up some beer and sandwiches? Then come down here and liberate me from my paperwork.”

I sighed. It
was
a beautiful day and, as Greg had said, the good weather couldn’t hold much longer. “Okay. What time?”

“Can you wait until one? I’ll have the results of the PM on Antonio by then.”

It was a bribe. I agreed and hung up.

With two empty hours on my hands, I wandered down the hall to the front desk where Ted, the para-legal worker, rattled away on his Selectric. While not new, it beat my Underwood, and I coveted it, although I realized both the volume and the quality of my typing did not justify such a machine.

“Where’s Hank?” I asked when Ted looked up.

He jerked a thumb at the ceiling. “In bed, pretending to be sick. I think he’s actually taking a mental-health day.”

It surprised me. My boss, Hank Zahn, seldom took even the vacation time he was entitled to. “If he’s only playing possum, I’d like to see him.”

“Don’t think he’ll mind. Go on up.”

I climbed to the second floor of the big Victorian that housed All Souls. Several attorneys lived there, in the free rooms that were partial compensation for the low salaries a legal services plan paid. I knocked on the door at the rear, and Hank’s voice called out a welcome.

My boss was ensconced in a king-sized bed, surrounded by books, papers and magazines. He leaned against a heap of pillows, his light-brown Brillo pad of hair tousled, a pencil tucked behind one ear.

“Come in, come in.” He waved me toward a chair near the bed.

“Is it contagious?”

“Nope. At first I thought it was food poisoning, but now I realize it’s due to the poor quality of my cooking. I made this curry last night, and it’s lucky nobody ate it but me.”

“Ted suspects you’re really taking a mental-health day.”

“The little fox could be right.”

I sat down, staring at Hank’s pajamas. They were white, with little red pigs all over them. Peering closer, I made out the monogram under each. “MCP?”

Hank glanced down, then took off his thick, hornrimmed glasses and polished them on a flowing sleeve. “Yeah. A gift from a lady friend. Funny, I didn’t think I gave the impression of being a chauvinist.”

“I think it’s a joke.”

“Maybe. I can never tell with this particular friend.” He gestured at the newspapers near the foot of the bed. “I see you had trouble at your building last night.”

“We sure did.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Someone I was fond of.”

“Greg show up?” Hank and Greg were old friends, from long before I’d known either of them.

“Yes,” I said shortly, hoping to forestall a discussion of my love life which, for some reason, fascinated Hank.

“You still pissed off at him?”

I sighed. “I am not, as you so inelegantly put it, pissed off. I merely came to the decision that the relationship would not work.”

“After you had a big fight with him.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one needed to. I know you.”

Besides being my boss, Hank was one of my best friends; he knew me better than most people. “Okay, so we had a fight.”

He put on his fatherly expression. “Tell me about it.”

There was no way around the issue. Hank, with the skill of years in the courtroom, would get it out of me one way or the other. And I felt safe confiding in him, knowing it would go no further. “It came about very innocently. I was quoting to him from a magazine article about that private eye who had bugged his own testimony before a Senate judiciary committee hearing on electronic eavesdropping. I thought it a clever way to make one’s point, but Greg didn’t see the humor. He launched into a diatribe against my profession, and you know what kind of response that brought from me. When we got down to personals, I decided it was time to leave.”

Hank scratched his curly head. “Shar, you and Greg argue all the time. It’s your nature; you both thrive on it.”

“I’m not sure I need to thrive that much.”

“He wants to make up, you know.”

“I know. I’ve got an apartment full of candy to prove it. He even gave me a foot-tall chocolate bunny he found in a post-Easter sale.”

Hank chuckled. “So why not give in?”

“No. We can’t be friends unless we respect each other’s work.”

“And he doesn’t respect yours?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s your life.” Hank rummaged around in the bed and came up with a roll of Lifesavers. I shook my head when he offered one to me, wondering what other objects the bed contained. The long red cord of one of the push-button phones that were an All Souls tradition snaked out from under the covers.

“You come up here to sympathize with me, or do you have an ulterior motive?” Hank asked, chomping on the Life-saver.

“As a matter of fact, I wanted to check on what you have lined up for me.”

He scratched his head. “You finished with the report on
DeYoe versus Treakle
?”

“Yes, about half an hour ago.”

“Then that’s it for now. Things are quiet—all our clients must be dead or minding their own business.”

“I suspect the latter.” The subscribers to the legal services plan were a placid lot. The report I’d just finished concerned a breach of contract over the installation of a redwood hot tub, a classy commodity for one of our clients.

“Well,” Hank said, “why don’t you take off and track down this Mrs. Antonio’s killer?”

My lips parted in surprise.

“Well, that’s what this visit is really about, right?”

Grudgingly, I nodded. “I’m not so sure it’s good for a boss to know his employee so well.”

“Good or not, I do. Take a couple of vacation days, if you like. I’ll be in touch if we need you.”

“There goes my vacation again.” I sighed.

“It’s a worthy cause. I can see you’re upset about the murder.”

More upset than I dare tell you. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll do it.”

“Maybe, nothing. You’ll do it. Now get out of here and let me suffer in peace.”

As I came downstairs, Ted signalled that I had a call. I followed one of the red cords down the hall until I located a phone on a bookcase. I’d often suspected that the folks at All Souls favored twenty-five-foot cords so they could abandon the instruments in peculiar places.

Linnea’s hysterical voice assaulted my ear. “Sharon! Sharon, you won’t believe what Tim just told me!”

“I already know, Linnea. I was planning to call you.”

“Call me? You couldn’t tell me in person? I assume you came home last night.”

“You’re right, I did come home. But I had to go out early, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Didn’t want to disturb me? You think I’m not disturbed now? Being told about a murder by that grinning, leering tub of guts?”

“Linnea, that’s no way to talk about Tim.”

“I’ll talk any way I please! Oh, my God, Sharon! Molly said the cards were to blame. The fortune teller…” She began to sob.

Molly had evidently taken the prophecy seriously. “Look, Linnea, I know how you feel. I feel terrible myself. I’m going to talk to the police…”

“The police!”

Her shriek made me hold the receiver away from my ear. “Well, to Greg Marcus. You know—the cop who sends me all the chocolate, the one you’ve never met.”

“What good is that going to do?”

“I’ll find out what they know so far.”

“And, in the meantime, what do I do?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Here I sit, in your crummy apartment, all cooped up and scared to death!”

The reference to my apartment stung, but I controlled my voice. “Look, Linnea, why don’t you get out of there? Go for a walk. It’s a beautiful day.”

“Go for a walk, with a maniac on the loose? Are you crazy?”

I sighed. “Okay, do what you like. I’ll be home as soon as I can get there. Maybe I’ll have some news by then.”

“Oh, great!”

“And Linnea, try not to…” I paused.

“Try not to what?”

I had been about to tell her not to hit the bottle again, but I knew it would only provoke another outburst. “Try not to worry,” I finished lamely.

“Oh, sure.” There was a click, and the line went dead.

I set the phone down and leaned against the bookcase, thinking. Linnea’s hysteria seemed genuine, not the reaction of someone with something to hide. The problem was, how much did she remember of what she did when drunk? She had confessed to alcoholic blackouts in recent weeks.

“Something has to be done about this situation,” I said aloud. “Something has got to be done.”