Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (34 page)

During the direct examination, Stameroff tried to skirt any opening that would allow Jack to ask about Eyestone's personal relationship with the murdered women. Nonetheless, Jack found a small one, and by the time he was through cross-examination, Eyestone looked as bad as Wingfield. In addition to bringing out the director's affair with Cordy and the fact that he'd paid for her to abort the child, Jack also planted in the jurors' minds the idea that it would have been impossible to account for the presence of every person attending the Dulles banquet and reception at all times during the evening. Stameroff, I thought, must be growing tired to have allowed that.

When Jack returned to the defense table, I leaned over the rail and said, “It's all set for tonight. We just need to give Keyes Development's security people a time.”

“Good. Stameroff's going to rest his case after testimony from the gardener—which I'm going to demolish with what you culled from the police report. I'll have time to make my opening statement and my motion to view the crime scene.”

“I'm sorry I'll have to miss that, but I've got to leave now.” I handed him Cathy Potter's business card. “Have Wald firm up the arrangements with her, will you? I'll check in later.”

As I hurried up the aisle, my gaze rested on Leonard Eyestone. He was staring at me, his eyes cold and analytical. I nodded, but he turned to the front of the courtroom. Finally, I thought, the mock trial had ceased to amuse him.

From one of the pay phones by the elevators, I called Nell Loomis. It took her a long time to answer. Things, she said, were ‘coming along,' but maybe I'd better not stop by until six, after her Fedex went off.

“Did you check the files yet?”

“That much I managed. There's nothing, just order sheets with the number and size blanks filled him.”

“What about my prints?”

“Come by after six, okay?”

I said I would, trying to keep annoyance out of my voice.

Next I tried to reach Louise Wingfield at the various numbers for her foundation that were listed on her business card, but got only machines. Her home number turned out to be unlisted, so I left City Hall and headed for Russian Hill.

Wingfield came to the door of her condominium looking haggard and smelling of gin. She admitted me silently, saying, “Thanks for setting the police after me last night.”

“I had no choice. Can we talk?”

She shrugged and led me to a living room full of good but well-used furniture that no decorator's hand had touched. Without asking my preference, she set a martini in front of me, lit a cigarette and propped her Reebok-shod feet on the coffee table, and took a deep drink from her own cocktail glass.

“I don't usually drink this heavily or this early,” she said defensively, “but after last night everything came crashing down on me, and I'm badly in need.”

“Everything?”

“My whole rotten miserable past. I hadn't realized what a hypocrite I am.”

“In what ways?”

She shrugged again, moodily sipped her drink.

I took the photographs of her and Roger Woods from my bag and pushed it across the table. “Do you remember when this was taken?”

She picked it up and studied it intently. “This must have been at one of the Insititue's cocktail parties. Cordy was still with Leonard, I see, so it would have been when I was with—”

I waited. When she didn't go on, I said, “When you were with Vincent Benedict.”

Her chin dipped in confrontation. She placed the picture on the table. “God, I hate to remember how foolish I was.”

“Where does the man in this photo fit into things?”

“He was just someone Cordy fixed me up with. A friend of Leonard. I don't recall his name.”

“Did Cordy do that often—fix you up?”

“Now and then. I'm beginning to remember that evening.” She gestured at the photo. “Leonard has asked Cordy to get the fellow a date so he could attend the party without seeming like a third wheel. I had the impression he was looking to make contacts there, perhaps get on staff. He must have been, because he spent the entire evening wandering around meeting people and dropping in on their conversations. That picture was snapped at one of the few times we were actually together. I didn't care: I'd only gone to be perverse.”

“Why?”

“Vincent and I had quarreled that afternoon. I wanted to go to the party and dangle myself in front of him, make him sorry he had to be with his wife instead of me. Or so I thought.” Her mouth twisted bitterly and she lit a second cigarette off the butt of the first.

“
Was
he sorry?”

“No. He was polite and distant. They both were, he and Lis. It was that night that I realized things weren't . . . that he would never leave Lis for me.”

“Are you sure you don't remember your date's name?”

She picked up the photograph again and scrutinized the man's face. “Sorry, no.”

“Could it have been Roger Woods?”

“Didn't you ask me about that name before? Well, maybe it was Roger Woods. That was so very long ago.”

“But he was Leonard's friend?”

“That's what Cordy said when she fixed us up. But I don't know—they didn't act all that friendly.”

“Was he a friend of Melissa's by any chance?”

“Well, when he came by the flat he seemed to know her. By the way, have they found out who killed her?”

“Not yet. I think this picture may have something to do with her murder; it was hidden in her apartment. Can you think of any reason she'd have had it?”

“No, I can't. To my knowledge, Melissa never went to the Institute. I can't imagine where she would have gotten this, unless she took it from the things Cordy kept at the apartment. Cordy was fond of keeping pictures as souvenirs.” Again Wingfield studied the photo, as if its time-frozen figures could give her an answer.

“Can you pinpoint exactly when this was taken?” I asked.

“Well, in the spring of ‘fifty-five, before Cordy took . . . before it ended with Vincent and me.”

“Did you see the man again?”

“Never.” She drained her glass and went to a bar cart for the martini pitcher. After she poured for herself, she glanced at my glass, saw it was still full, and set the pitcher down.

I said, “Let's talk about Rick Chavez now.”

“I already told the police—”

“I know what you told them, but there may be something they didn't think to ask. Chavez was one of your clients?”

“Yes, and not a particularly promising one. I liked him, though; he'd had a rough time—family problems and a girlfriend who died of an overdose—and would often come to me just to talk.”

“Did you place him in a job?”

“I sent him through our general maintenance—janitorial—training program; it's run out of our Potrero Hill center. He was placed in a couple of positions; the first didn't work out.”

“But the second did?”

“I don't know. Maybe not. That might have been why he came by the day you were there. I hadn't seen him in quite a while.”

Or he might have come by, I thought, because he had a bigger problem than losing his job. He might have been worried about how much trouble he'd gotten into by taking money to harass an old woman. “Is there some way you can find out today if he was working, and for whom?”

“I could go to the Potrero Hill center and check the files, I suppose.”

“Would you? It's important.”

“Then I will. I can have the information for you by this evening.”

I watched her as she lit yet another cigarette and waved the match out, then asked, “How come you didn't attend the mock trial?”

“This morning I was angry with you because you told the police about my conversation with Rick Chavez. Then I got depressed.” She motioned at her cocktail glass. “I know, it's a poor solution to one's problems. I always caution my clients against it. But like most people, I seldom take my own advice.”

“You might want to consider coming to Seacliff tonight.” I explained about the trial being moved to the crime scene.

To my surprise, the news badly unnerved her: her mouth twitched and she leaned forward, elbows on knees, forehead pressed against the heels of her hands.

“I can't go,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I can't face the horror of it again.”

“Louise, decades have passed. The house is empty, the dovecote's gone—”

“And the feelings are still there. You know it. You connected with them that night two weeks ago. I could tell; you were shaken. And I . . . connected too.”

“What specifically did you connect with?”

“Hatred. Rage. Pain. Terror. The sick pleasure that you feel at the death of a person whom you detest.”

I bit my underlip. Took a small sip of the martini. It tasted as bitter as the residue of a thirty-six year old hatred, as sharp as the bite of an old, well-nurtured rage. I set my glass down and waited.

Wingfield sighed deeply. Raised her head and straightened. “All right,” she said. “Truth time.”

I continued to wait.

“Melissa was right about me,” she said. “I hated Cordy. When she died, I was
glad
. And the pleasure I took in her death never went away.” She paused, sipped her drink, contemplated.

“Over the years,” she went on, “I would take an emotional inventory whenever something particularly good happened. When my son was born, for instance, I told myself, ‘You now have someone whom you love totally, who will return that love. Isn't it time you let go of this baggage?' The answer was always no. Every few years I'd take that inventory, but the hatred and sick pleasure were still in stock.”

“And are they now?”

“Yes.” She set down her glass, faced me unflinchingly. “I hate Cordy as much at this very minute as I ever did. She took away everything I cared about and turned my life to dust.”

Wingfield rose, went to the window wall behind her, and stood silhouetted against the early-evening light. Finally she said, “All right. I'll go to Seacliff tonight. I'll face it one last time. Either tonight will set me free or I'll be caged with my hatred for the rest of my life.”

It was well after six when I reached Nell Loomis's studio. Shadow and silence had claimed Natoma Street. A sheet of paper fluttered from where it had been tacked to Nell's blue door.

“Took package to South SF drop-off for Fedex,” it said. “Back soon. Don't try door—dog is loose inside.” I hadn't seen any dog earlier, so I assume this was Loomis's idea of how to ward off would-be burglars—providing they could read well enough to decipher the note.

For the next half hour I sat in my car, fretting. I needed to talk with Jack about tonight, but I didn't want to leave. If Loomis returned and didn't find me there, she would go home, and I'd never get hold of those prints. And the prints had assumed greater and greater importance in my mind as the hours passed.

This, I thought, presented the best argument I'd come up with so far for having a car phone. On Monday I would buy one and request reimbursement for All Souls. If they balked at paying for it—as they so far had—I'd foot the bill myself. And make sure to inform them that as far as I was concerned, all their talk about moving forward into the twenty-first century was just so much overblown rhetoric.

At ten to seven, a car entered the alley and pulled up behind me. Nell Loomis and I got out of our vehicles simultaneously. She gave me a stingy smile and thanked me for waiting. Inside the studio she excused herself and went into the rest room; I used her phone to call Jack.

“Are the arrangements all set?” I asked.

“Yes—for nine o'clock. Wald's having a fit because Keyes Development wants the number of people admitted to the property kept to a minimum. That means only participants and those with preferred passes. No press. Have you come up with anything that I should know about?”

“Nothing conclusive yet. How're you going to handle it out there?”

“Have Judy walk through it from the beginning, starting at the window of her old room. And hope we score points with the jury.”

“How is she?”

“Cool and confident.”

“How are you?”

“A wreck. I think she's feeding on me.”

“Well, hang in here. Judy's our only living witness. Let's let her memories speak for themselves.” Loomis emerged from the rest room and went into the darkroom. I told Jack I had to go, then followed her.

Nell was slipping a strip of negatives into the enlarger's holder and blowing off surface dust with canned air. She glanced at me and frowned.

“Can I watch?”

“I guess. Just don't get in my way.” She inserted the holder in the enlarger and switched from fluorescents to an orange safelight. The timer whirred, light flashed and disappeared, and the timer clicked off. Loomis moved the sheet of photographic paper from the enlarger to the tray of developing liquid.

“I want to check the exposure,” she said.

I moved closer, watching over her shoulder as images appeared and sharpened on the submerged sheet. The banquet table at the Blue Fox, Dulles speaking at the lectern. To his right, Russell Eyestone. To Russell's right, his wife and then Leonard. And to Leonard's right, Vincent Benedict—bleary eyed, probably drunk. The men were formally attired in dark jackets, white shirtfronts, and bow ties. Dulles's shirt, as befitted a conservative, had small, austere pleats and plain studs, as did Russell Eyestone's; Benedict and Leonard—wild and crazy young guys that they'd been—had opted for something a bit more froufrou.

Loomis said, “Exposure's good,” and moved the paper to the stop bath. “You sure you want regular prints and not just contacts?”

“Contacts won't give me the details I need.”