Nemesis (17 page)

I went on home to Kerry and Emily.

*   *   *

Tuesday.

Runyon's arraignment was scheduled for this morning, but I didn't see any purpose in attending. The police investigation hadn't turned up anything new or I'd have been informed, so it seemed probable that Jake would be bound over for trial. My time could be put to better use in the East Bay.

Martinez first, by way of Highway 80 to Hercules and then Highway 4 across the Briones hills. Coming in from that direction put me closer to the Avery house than downtown, so I made that my first stop. Hank Avery would probably be at work, and it seemed like a good idea to talk to his mother first, if possible, before I saw him. Sometimes you can get useful information by taking a roundabout route through a family member.

At first nobody answered the door at the Avery tract house. But somebody was home: I could hear the television going, bursts of canned hilarity from a sitcom's laugh track. I leaned on the bell, one of those loud buzzer types that overrode the TV noise so the occupant couldn't help but hear it. It took a good three minutes before I finally got a response.

The woman who glared at me through a locked screen door was stick-thin inside an old quilted bathrobe, her uncombed hair frizzed up in tufts and tangles like weeds growing on a fissured, egg-shaped rock. She may have been sick, but aside from the thinness and the facial fissures, she didn't look it. Good color, bright eyes smoky with anger.

“What's the idea ringing my bell like that? What you want?”

“A few minutes of your time, Mrs. Avery. I—”

“Can't you read? No solicitors!” She started to close the door.

I said, “It's about Verity Daniels.”

That stopped her in mid-swing. “Who're you?”

“Private investigator.” I showed her my credentials, and got a scowl in return.

“You the same one that was here before, talked to my son?”

“No. Same agency, though.”

“I got nothing to say to you about that woman Hank didn't tell the other detective.”

“The situation's different now.”

“Different? What you mean, different?”

“Don't you know? It's been in the news.”

“I don't pay no attention to the news. What're you talking about?”

“Verity Daniels is dead. Killed Saturday night.”

She stood stock still for maybe ten seconds. Then the scowl melted away and her mouth reshaped into a hangman's smile. “Dead. Now that is news worth having. What happened to her?”

“Could we talk inside, Mrs. Avery? Be easier than through this screen door.”

She hesitated, running her tongue around the edges of that dark smile. “Guess it'll be all right,” she said, and unlocked the screen.

I followed her slow-shuffling form into a musty-smelling living room filled with mismatched furniture, all of it inexpensive except for what looked to be a new flat-screen television set. Priority item for the masses, price and sacrifice no object. She went to the TV but she didn't switch it off, just lowered the sound.

“Well? How'd she die?”

“She was murdered.”

Blink. The smile sagged a little, not much. “Murdered how?”

“Beaten and then strangled.”

Helen Avery's mouth shaped the word
Good,
but she didn't give voice to it. Instead she said, “Who done it? One of her new rich friends? All that money she inherited … you know about that, I guess.”

“I know about it,” I said. “The police have a suspect in custody, but I don't think he's guilty.”

“No? Who is?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out.”

All at once she seemed a little shaky on her feet. She sat down in an old recliner next to a table dominated by medicine vials, draped a knitted afghan over her lap, and squinted at an old ticking clock set among the vials. “Time for more of my medicine,” she said. I watched her swallow one of the pills with half a glass of water. “I been sick. Real sick for a while, thought I was gonna die. Better now. The doctors say I still have a ways to go, but I'll make it now that I got my Medicare. If Obama don't take it away with his goddamn socialist health-care crap.”

I had nothing to say to that. Nothing she'd have wanted to hear, anyway.

She took another sip of water, and the hangman's smile brightened again. “So that woman finally got what was coming to her. Good riddance to bad rubbish, that's what I say, after what she done to my boy Jason. I guess you know about that, too?”

“I know your son drowned and Verity Daniels was exonerated of any wrongdoing. An unfortunate accident.”

“Accident!” Helen Avery spat the word.

“You don't believe it was?”

“No proof it wasn't, that's what the cops told us. No sign of violence on poor Jason's body, and her not strong enough to hold him under water if he was conscious. Well, maybe not. But one way or another she was the cause of him drowning. He'd still be alive if he hadn't got mixed up with that tramp.”

“Why was she a tramp?”

“Why do you think? Cheating on Jason the whole time she was engaged to him, just like she cheated on her husband before.”

“Facts? Or are you just guessing?”

“Facts, mister.”

“How do you know?”

“My other boy, Hank, he found out after what happened to Jason. Tramp's ex told him that was what busted up their marriage, her sleeping around.”

“Hank talked to Scott Ostrander? Why?”

“Try to get something on her that'd make the cops change their minds. Well, he found out plenty, not that it done any good. Still the same lying bitch when she was engaged to Jason, sleeping with another man the whole damn time.”

“What other man?”

“The one she worked for. And him married with a kid.”

“Vincent Canaday?”

Emphatic bob of the frizzy head. “Jason knew it, too. Wouldn't say nothing to us except she was a liar and a cheat, but he must've found out and that's why he wasn't gonna marry her.”

“How did Hank find out about her and Canaday?”

“Followed her, saw them together at some motel in Antioch.”

“Why was he following her?”

“I told you, prove what a lying bitch she was. We was both so upset about Jason and the way the cops let her off scot-free, he just had to do something.”

“Did he confront her about the affair?”

“Sure he did. Walked right up to her and threw it in her face. She didn't turn a hair. Denied it, lied her head off.”

“What did Hank do then?”

“Told the cops about her shacking up with her boss.” Persimmon mouth, pinched tight at the corners. “Didn't do any good. They said so what, that's her private business, didn't have nothing to do with Jason drowning. Like hell it didn't.”

“Did Hank talk to Canaday?”

“No,” Helen Avery said. “He wanted to, maybe tell the man's wife what was going on, but I said no, wasn't no purpose in making them kind of waves.”

“He keep on following Verity Daniels?”

“No. Wasn't no more reason to. That was when I got sick and couldn't work anymore, and Hank, he had to start working overtime to pay the bills.”

“So neither of you had anything more to do with her.”

“That's right. Washed her out of our lives until that other detective come around and told Hank about all that money she got.”

“That must have been a shock,” I said.

“Better believe it was. Us just squeaking by and her living over there in the city in the lap of luxury.”

“Made you both hate her even more.”

“Well? Wouldn't you?”

“Enough to do something about it?”

Helen Avery was slow on the uptake, but she finally caught on to where I was leading the conversation. Her eyes heated up again into a wrathful glare. “You trying to say Hank had something to do with her being murdered?” she snapped.

“I'm not accusing him—”

“He wouldn't hurt nobody, not even her. You hear me? Not my Hank!”

“Then you won't mind telling me where he was on Saturday.”

“Right here, right here with me!”

“All day, all night?”

She struggled onto her feet, stood swaying and glaring; the finger she aimed at me was like the barrel of a pistol. “You get out of here! You get out of my house right now or I'll call the cops on you!
Get out!
”

I got out.

With plenty to think about as I drove away. The affair between Verity Daniels and Vincent Canaday that had been going on at the time of her engagement to Jason Avery … and how long since? Hank Avery's stalking of Daniels two years ago. The connection between him and Scott Ostrander. Helen Avery's rush to alibi her son for Saturday. None of it conclusive, or necessarily incriminating, but all of it worth following up on.

 

18

Vincent Canaday was not in his office at Gateway Insurance. One of the two women employees told me he had “business in San Francisco” that morning and expected to return by one o'clock. Could she help me? Or did I want to leave a message for Mr. Canaday? I said no to both questions, that I'd check back early afternoon. Better to brace him cold.

Scott Ostrander was next on my list. But when I got to Ostrander's Nursery and Landscaping Service, the front gate was locked and bore a
CLOSED
sign. There were no posted hours, but it seemed unusual that a struggling business wouldn't be open at eleven on a weekday morning. Unless the Ostranders' financial troubles had slid beyond the struggling point and the nursery had been shut down by them or their creditors. I went to two of the neighboring businesses to see what I could find out. Not much. None of the people I talked to knew why the nursery was closed; it had been open on Saturday and was normally open every day except Sunday.

The Ostranders lived in a modest Orinda neighborhood of small tract houses maybe twenty years old. The property was well landscaped in rock-garden style, though there were indications that the plantings and flagstone walkways hadn't received much attention recently. The driveway and curb in front were empty. So was the house, evidently; at least nobody responded to my ring.

Now what?

Too soon to head back for Martinez and Gateway Insurance, unless I stopped somewhere for lunch first. But I wasn't hungry; my appetite had slacked off considerably since July, and I was pretty much down to two meals a day—a light breakfast and a modest dinner.

Scott Ostrander's sister, then. Danville was only about fifteen miles south of Orinda, off Highway 680. According to the information Tamara had gleaned, Grace Lyman had no job or profession and her primary activity seemed to be helping to organize community activities. Maybe she'd be home and willing to answer some questions.

Danville is the most affluent of the Contra Costa communities, home to the exclusive gated Blackhawk community, which is in turn home to a world-famous classic car museum, an upscale shopping plaza, and a passel of local celebrities of one stripe and another. The Lymans didn't live in Blackhawk, but their home in the rolling countryside wasn't far removed from it—a big, older California ranch-style place, probably custom built, fronted by an artistic arrangement of small trees and shrubs and garden statuary. More of Scott Ostrander's capable work, I thought.

On a curving driveway inside a pair of ornamental pillars, a lime green Mercedes sat in front of a two-car garage. So somebody was here. Fortunately it turned out to be Grace Lyman, a willowy blonde in her late thirties aging well without the aid of plastic surgery or Botox or collagen injections; the tiny lines around her eyes and mouth enhanced rather than detracted from her good looks. Nice eyes, too, the kind of blue-green color that changes subtly with different moods, different lighting.

She was reluctant to talk to me at first. Guarded, leery of my intentions and protective of her brother. She knew Verity Daniels had been murdered from an Internet news report she'd read yesterday, and seemed to think I might be trying to involve him in the crime. I did some fast talking, managed to convince her that I had no preconceived notions and my only interest was in proving my associate innocent. Now and then there's an advantage to being a businessman of my age: younger people tend to look at me, when they look at me at all, as grandfatherly and nonthreatening.

Even so, Grace Lyman didn't seem to want me inside her house. She said, “All right, but I can only give you a few minutes—I have company coming for lunch at one. We can talk on the terrace in back. Just follow that path there. I'll join you shortly.”

The path led around the side, through more plantings, and emerged into a large area dominated by a swimming pool with a rock waterfall at one end. A flagstone terrace stretched out between the house and the pool, white wrought-iron furniture arranged on it under striped umbrellas. One of the pair of tables held four place settings on woven mats. I stood behind a chair at the second, empty table to wait.

Pretty soon Mrs. Lyman came out carrying a towel-wrapped bottle of wine inside a silver ice bucket. She put that down on the place-set table before she invited me to occupy the chair at the other one.

“Did you talk to Scott before you came here?” she asked when we were both seated.

“As a matter of fact, no. His nursery is closed today and there's no one at his home.”

“Yes, well, he and his wife had a … business appointment today.”

The way she said it told me the appointment was related to the Ostranders' financial troubles, so I didn't press her. Instead I asked, “Does he know his ex-wife is dead?”

“Yes. I called and told him when I found out.”

“How did he take the news?”

“Well, he wasn't happy about it, any more than I was. Murder is a horrible crime. But I won't pretend either of us is sorry Verity Daniels is gone. She had a ruinous effect on Scott's life.”