The McCone Files (19 page)

“Well, yes. It's odd—”

“It's not just odd, it's downright dangerous. Dangerous for her to walk around in such a paranoid state, and dangerous for Dan and me. It's our reputations she's smearing.”

“Because on the surface you both appear to have every reason to want her out of the way.”

Janet's lips compressed—a mild reaction, I thought, to what I'd implied, “On the surface, I suppose that is how it looks,” she said. “But as far as I'm concerned Laurie is welcome to our father's money. I had a good job in the public relations department at Newingham Development; I saved and invested my salary well. After my father died, I quit working there, and I'm about to open my own public relations firm.”

“Did the timing of your quitting have anything to do with Laurie's inheriting the company?”

Janet picked up a porcelain ashtray and carefully stubbed her cigarette out. “I'll be frank with you, Ms. McCone: it did. Newingham Development had suddenly become not a very good place to work; people were running scared—they always do when there's no clear managerial policy. Besides…”

“Besides?”

“Since I'm being frank, I may as well say it. I did not want to work for my spoiled little bitch of a sister who's always had things her own way. And if that makes me a potential murderer—”

She broke off as the front door opened. We both looked that way. A man wearing a shabby tweed coat and a shocking purple scarf and aviator sunglasses entered. His longish black hair was windblown, and his sharp features were ruddy from the cold. He pocketed a key and started for the stairway.

“Laurie's not here, Dolph,” Janet said.

He turned, “Where is she?”

“Gone shopping.”

“Laurie hates to shop.”

“Well that's where she is. You'd better come back in a couple of hours.” Janet's tone did little to mask her dislike.

Nor did the twist of his mouth mask
his
dislike of his fiancée's sister. Without a word he turned and strode out the door.

I asked, “Dolph Edwards?”

“Yes. You can see what I mean.”

Actually, I hadn't seen enough of him, and I decided to take the opportunity to talk to him while it was presented. I thanked Janet Newingham for her time and hurried out.

Dolph's motorcycle was parked at the curb near the end of the front walk, and he was just revving it up when I reached him. At first his narrow lips pulled down in annoyance but when I told him who I was he smiled and shut the machine off. He remained astride it while we talked.

“Yes, I told Laurie it would be better to stick with All Souls,” he said when I mentioned the context in which I'd first heard of him. “You've got good people there, and you're more likely to take Laurie's problem seriously than someone in a downtown law firm.”

“You think someone is trying to kill her, then?”

“I know what I see. The woman's sick a lot lately, and those two”—he motioned at the house—“hate her guts.”

“You must see a great deal of what goes on here,” I said. “I noticed you have a key.”

“Laurie's my fiancée,” he said with a puritanical stiffness that surprised me.

“So she said. When do you plan to be married?”

I couldn't make out his eyes behind the dark aviator glasses, but the lines around them deepened. Perhaps Dolph suspected what Janet claimed: that Laurie didn't really intend to marry him. “Soon,” he said curtly.

We talked for a few minutes more, but Dolph could add little to what I'd already observed about the Newingham family. Before he started his bike he said apologetically, “I wish I could help, but I'm not around them very much. Laurie and I prefer to spend our time at my apartment.”

I didn't like Dan or Janet Newingham, but I also didn't believe either was trying to poison Laurie. Still, I followed up by explaining the situation to my former lover and now good friend Greg Marcus, lieutenant with the SFPD homicide detail. Greg ran a background check on Dan for me, and came up with nothing more damning that a number of unpaid parking tickets. Janet didn't even have those to her discredit. Out of curiosity, I asked him to check on Dolph Edwards, too. Dolph had a record of two arrests involving political protests in the late seventies—just what I would have expected.

At that point I reported my findings to Laurie and advised her to ask her brother and sister to move out of the house. If they wouldn't, I said, she should talk to Hank about invalidating that clause of her father's will. And in any case she should also get herself some psychological counseling. Her response was to storm out of my office. And that, I assumed, ended my involvement with Laurie Newingham's problems.

But it didn't. Two weeks later Greg called to tell me that Laurie had been taken ill during a family cocktail party and had died at the St. Francis Wood house, an apparent victim of poisoning.

I felt terrible, thinking of how lightly I had taken her fears, how easily I'd accepted her brother and sister's claims of innocence, how I'd let Laurie down when she'd needed and trusted me. So I waited until Greg had the autopsy results and then went to the office at the Hall of Justice.

“Arsenic,” Greg said when I'd seated myself on his visitor's chair. “The murderer's perfect poison: widely available, no odor, little if any taste. It takes the body a long time to eliminate arsenic, and a person can be fed small amounts over a period of two or three weeks, even longer, before he or she succumbs. According to the medical examiner, that's what happened to Laurie.”

“But why small amounts? Why not just one massive dose?”

“The murderer was probably stupid enough that he figured if she'd been sick for weeks we wouldn't check for poisons. But why he went on with it after she started talking about someone trying to kill her…”

“He? Dan's your primary suspect, then?”

“I was using ‘he' generically. The sister looks good, too. They both had extremely strong motives, but we're not going to be able to charge either until we find out how Laurie was getting the poison.”

“You say extremely strong motives. Is there something besides the money?”

“Something connected to the money; each of them seems to need it more badly than they're willing to admit. The interim management of Newingham Development has given Dan his notice; there'll be a hefty severance payment, of course, but he's deeply in debt—gambling debts, to the kind of people who won't accept fifty-dollars-a-week installments. The sister had most of her savings tied up in one of those real estate investment partnerships; it went belly up, and Janet needs to raise additional cash to satisfy outstanding obligations to the other partners.”

“I wish I'd known about that when I talked with them. I might have prevented Laurie's death.”

Greg held up a cautioning hand. “Don't blame yourself for something you couldn't know or foresee. That should be one of the cardinal rules of your profession.”

“It's one of the rules, all right, but I seem to keep breaking it. Greg, what about Dolph Edwards?”

“He didn't stand to benefit by her death. Laurie hadn't made a will, so everything reverts to the brother and sister.”

“No will? I'm surprised Hank didn't insist she make one.”

“According to your boss, she had an appointment with him for the day after she died. She mentioned something about a change in circumstances, so I guess she was planning to make the will in favor of her future husband. Another reason we don't suspect Edwards.”

I sighed. “So what you've got is a circumstantial case against one of two people.”

“Right. And without uncovering the means by which the poison got to her, we don't stand a chance of getting an indictment against either.”

“Well…the obvious means is in her food.”

“There's a cook who prepares all the meals. She, a live-in-maid, and the family basically eat the same things. On the night she died, Laurie, her brother and sister, and Dolph Edwards all had the same hors d'oeuvres and cocktails. The leftovers tested negative.”

“And you checked what she drank, of course.”

“It also tested negative.”

“What about medications? Laurie probably took pills for her asthma. She had an inhaler—”

“We checked everything. Fortunately, I caught the call and remembered what you'd told me. I was more than thorough. Had the contents of the bedroom and bathroom inventoried anything that could have contained poison was taken away for testing.”

“What about this cocktail party? I know for a fact that, neither Dan nor Janet liked Dolph. And according to Dolph, they both hated Laurie. He wasn't fond of them, either. It seems like an unlikely group for a convivial gathering.”

“Apparently Laurie arranged the party. She said she had an announcement to make.”

“What was it?”

“No one knows. She died before she could tell them.”

Three days later Hank and I attended Laurie's funeral. It was in an old-fashioned churchyard in the little town of Tomales, near the bay of the same name northwest of San Francisco. The Newinghams had a summer home on the bay, and Laurie had wanted to be buried there.

It was one of those winter afternoons when the sky is clear and hard, and the sun is as pale as if it were filtered through water. Hank and I stood a little apart from the crowd of mourners on the knoll, near a windbreak of eucalyptus that bordered the cemetery. The people who had traveled from the city to lay Laurie to rest were an oddly assorted group: dark-suited men and women who represented San Francisco's business community; others who bore the unmistakable stamp of high society; shabbily dressed Hispanics who must have been clients of the Inner Mission Self-Help Center. Dolph Edwards arrived on his motorcycle; his inappropriate attire—the shocking purple scarf seemed several shades too festive—annoyed me.

Dan and Janet Newingham arrived in the limousine that followed the hearse and walked behind the flower-covered casket to the graveside. Their pious propriety annoyed me, too. As the service went on, the wind rose. It rustled the leaves of the eucalyptus trees and brought with it dampness and the odor of the bay. During the final prayer, a strand of my hair escaped the knot I'd fastened it in and blew across my face. It clung damply there, and when I licked my lips to push it away, I tasted salt—whether from the sea air or tears, I couldn't tell.