“In time for the construction boom. Good on you.” I shifted my tote on my shoulder. “Well, I better get inside before visiting hours end. It’s almost shift change, isn’t it? Nice to visit with you.”
Inside, I headed not for the elevator, but for the cafeteria, passing visitors and staff, hospital chatter wafting around me as I replayed Kristen’s summary of the movie in my head. Bought two large coffees, hot and black. Caught a glimpse of a woman in a navy SPD uniform heading into the restroom.
I made my way back to the front door, hoping my luck had held. It had.
“I was getting coffee,” I said, “and figured you could use a cup, too. Hope you don’t mind it black.” I handed one to Byrd.
“My tastes are simple. Thanks.”
I leaned against the wall next to him, in my best best-buddy act. “Quite an ordeal,” I said, in a somber tone. “I gather the police are linking her shooting to one that happened years ago. I didn’t remember much about it, so I looked it up online. They had a good suspect, but he had an alibi. He was at the movies. Lady Bird, the paper said.”
The newspaper account had not named the movie, just as it had not named the suspect because he had not been charged. Yet. Had Byrd read the accounts? Me, if I’d been a suspect, I’d have practically memorized them. But I was puffing, and praying his memory for movie trivia wasn’t as sharp as Kristen’s.
“I loved that movie,” he said. I was surprised. Classic chick flick.
“The mother–daughter tensions are pretty classic,” I said. “She just wants to leave home, spread her wings, but the mom’s more worried about money than her daughter’s dreams. When she changes her name, the parents are all up in arms. ‘What’s wrong with Catherine? It’s a perfectly fine name.’”
“Christine,” he said. “The girl’s name was Christine, not Catherine.”
Pooh. I’d been hoping he didn’t know. “I kinda didn’t get the bit about the brother and his girlfriend, though. Did you?”
“Oh, sure. Miguel was adopted. And Shelly had a bad family situation so the parents let her move in.”
I could not have remembered those characters’ names if you’d paid me a thousand bucks. A thought began to nag me. “What was that bit about the fancy house?”
“Lady Bird is embarrassed about where they live, so she gives her snobby new friend Jenna the address of her old boyfriend’s grandmother’s house, the boy who turned out to be gay. It’s a nice parallel with the scene where Marion invites her to do their favorite thing together, which turns out to be going to open houses in upscale neighborhoods and pretending they live in a fancy house instead of a little sh—” He stopped himself. “Instead of a more modest house.”
Marion. The mom’s name convinced me.
But knowing the movie so well didn’t mean he’d seen it at the Guild three years ago. He could have bought the ticket, gone inside, and slipped out. Sped across Forty-Fifth and over the Mont-lake Bridge to the Hallorans’ house.
I heard a door open to my right and saw Byrd’s gaze following someone. I didn’t want to seem too obvious, but I managed to sneak a quick glance sideways.
All I saw was the back of security guard, as the man moved in the opposite direction. Ramon?
I turned back to Byrd. He blinked rapidly, the skin on his forehead damp and flush.
“Hey, thanks for the coffee,” he said. “I gotta make a quick pit stop inside before I head out.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the big ashtray.
I had one shot. The medieval chants began to play in my head. I forged on.
“When you and Maddie decided to do a project together, whose idea was it to buy the property on Twenty-Fourth?”
“You’re such a great friend of my dear cousin, and you don’t know?”
I’d puzzled it out, but I needed him to say it.
“We weren’t in business together. Maddie, the Golden Girl,” he said with a sneer that made me shiver. He couldn’t possibly know he was using my phrase for her. “All the pictures, all the clippings. Her accomplishments—first in this, first in that, winner of one stupid prize after another.”
“How did you know?” I asked. “You’re older. You lived in California.”
“Her proud grandmother, Rose, sent my grandmother pictures and newspaper clippings of all Maddie’s successes. Rubbing it in.”
Or trying to stay connected to the sister-in-law who’d left the family when Haig died? He was on a roll.
“Making a point that she and her father had picked up the mantle my grandfather dropped. That he nearly destroyed the family fortune, but they built it back up.” His voice tightened and he crumpled his cigarette pack, then shoved it into the trash bin beneath the ash tray. “They blamed my grandmother for being a bad influence. Trapping him in a marriage to a non-Armenian who would never understand what land and family meant to people who’d lost everything and everyone at the hands of the Turkish enemy.”
His double motive added an element that surprised me. “You wanted that property not just to get what the Petrosians owed you, but also to get the better of a Turk. You’d get the last laugh, turning the corner grocery they all loved into a building they all would have hated.”
“If Deanna had done her part, I would have succeeded. She promised me, with her experience and my money, we could make it work.”
“The money was all yours?” I asked. “Didn’t she chip in?”
“A drop in the bucket.” Resentment dripped off his words.
Deanna Ellingson could well have been Jake Byrd’s next victim.
“Is this what your grandmother would have wanted?” I asked. It was a shot in the dark, based on the premise that grandmothers want the best for their grandchildren, even if they never say so.
Faulty premise. The shot missed.
“My grandmother was a nasty, bitter woman. She never let me forget that I was the cause of my mother’s death. My mother, who had the most beautiful golden hair and the brightest smile.” He faltered, then spoke again. “Getting pregnant totally freaked her out. She dumped me with my grandmother and disappeared into Haight-Ashbury.”
San Francisco’s infamous drug scene.
“When the cops told my grandmother her daughter had died of a drug overdose and asked her to claim the body, she refused. Her only child, and she refused. Said we didn’t have the money for burial, but she could gotten it. She was pure spite.”
I was horrified. “But if Rose or David ever knew, surely they would have helped—”
“You think you know them. You saw the side they wanted people to see—the successful business people, the community benefactors. They never forgave my grandmother for taking their son from them. They thought she forced him into the shady deals that cost them their home and business. But they forced him into it, pushing him to make them proud. To replace what was lost in Armenia and build their fortune in America.”
I didn’t believe that. I trusted what I knew of the Petrosian family. Not that good cookies can only come from a pure heart, but in my heart of hearts, I knew they were good people.
And if Betty’s heart had been so hard that she refused to claim her daughter’s body, then the source of Jake Byrd’s pain was his grandmother’s anger, not the Petrosians’ success.
“What about your father?” I tried to sip my coffee, acting nonchalant, but it was too hot. I popped the lid to let it cool.
“I have no idea. He gave me his name, and nothing else. It was up to me to reclaim my heritage. As a proud Armenian, who should have grown up with all the money, the fancy schools and trips, my dear cousin got instead.”
“So you lured Maddie to the building and shot her. And three years ago, you followed her to Pat Halloran’s house, then after she left, you shot him.”
“It was all his idea, her buying up the block then buying the corner lot out from under me. I wanted to show them I was just as smart as they were.” He glanced at the door
again. No doubt he’d noticed, as I had, that the ICU desk was occasionally left unguarded. Ramon would be back any minute. His window of opportunity was closing.
“Show who?” I asked. “Your great-grandparents are long gone. Rose and David are gone. Betty, too, I imagine. I’m not sure Maddie knew what happened to your side of the family.”
“Oh, she knew. I’ve got to go.”
Inside and up to the ICU while the guard was away, to finish the job he’d started? “No, stay. We can talk this out, before it gets any worse.”
“Why do you care, anyway?”
“Because I care about Maddie, and Pat Halloran even though I never met him, because his wife is one of my dearest friends. Because you’ve hurt people, but you don’t need to hurt anyone else.”
“You don’t know anything about it. About all the hurt they caused me.”
“Jake, don’t make this harder on yourself.”
“What do you know about hard? You and Maddie, with your easy lives. Your fancy houses and cars. You don’t know how real people live.”
Clearly he hadn’t seen what I drove. He was tarring me with the same brush I’d used on Maddie, and I didn’t like the feeling.
“Nobody has it all easy, Jake. I know it looks—”
“She begrudged me everything, my grandmother. I was one of them to her, everything she hated.”
“If you’d been willing to work with Maddie—”
I reached for his arm. He put out his hands to push me away. Instinctively, I threw my coffee on him. Hot coffee splashed on his face and dripped down his chin, down that navy jacket. Fury raged in his eyes and he reached for my shoulders with both hands. I dropped the cup, made my hands into fists, and brought them up between his arms. Rammed my arms against his, forcing his arms apart before he could get a decent grip on me.
“You witch,” he said, his face a snarl, his feet off balance. I stepped forward and shoved him. He stepped backward, hitting the concrete trash can. He lost his balance and hit the wall, one foot flying up as he tumbled down to the sidewalk. I grabbed his foot and held on. He bent his leg, dragging me toward him, and I crashed onto both knees. As long as I had his foot in my hands, he couldn’t get away. I held on, for dear life, yes, but for Maddie, and so much more.
Sounds began to register. Voices. Footsteps. Radios.
Then I found myself face to toe with a pair of sturdy black shoes. Cop shoes. I stared up at Lovely Rita.
“Officer Clark,” I said. “Care to give me a hand? And call Detective Tracy ASAP. Tell him he owes me a badge.”
Twenty-Nine
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal.
— Irish saying
“MADDIE! You look like yourself again!” I dropped my tote and leaned in to hug her. Gently.
“Is it true?” she said. “What the liaison officer just said? They’ve arrested Jake for shooting me and killing Patrick Halloran?”
Liaison officer? Between the SPD and crime victim patients, or their families? So that was why Lovely Rita had been in and out of the ICU the last week. Holy saffron.
I’d waited with Officer Clark until the detectives arrived, then spent a good hour explaining how I’d fingered Jake Byrd as both Smoking Man and the two-time shooter. I described how I’d thought I could trick Byrd into admitting he didn’t know much about the movie he’d bought the ticket for, but then realized he knew it too well, far better than I did. Tracy and Armstrong seemed impressed when I suggested they check his streaming history; I was sure they’d find he’d seen Lady Bird twice, shortly after Pat’s murder and again after Maddie’s shooting. They were less impressed at my takedown—what Tracy called my antics— although Armstrong did give me points for creative use of a cup of a coffee. The coffee had been too hot to drink, but not hot enough to hurt Byrd, although he’d been treated for a sprained ankle before being hauled off to jail. The same nurses who tended him had been concerned about my knees and hands, but while I knew they might sting after the adrenaline wore off, I didn’t mind. I’d caught him; what were a few cuts and scrapes?
When Officer Clark returned from the cafeteria with coffee for the detectives and a sandwich for me, she’d given me a nice “atta girl.”
“Oh,” I said. “You were here today to keep an eye on Jake Byrd.”
It all made sense. She nodded and slipped upstairs to talk with Maddie and Tim. To liaise.
Finally, Tracy had cut me loose. He offered to have an officer drop me off in the Market. But I’d had another stop to make before getting back to work. Maddie’s condition had improved so much that the nurses were getting ready to wheel her to the medical floor when I arrived. Tim had gone ahead with the latest flowers. She asked them to give us a few minutes and close the door behind them.
“That’s one thing I hate about this place,” she said. “Everyone is so nice and so good at what they do. But unless they’re baring your backside, they leave the doors open 24/7, exposing your life to everyone who walks by.”
“I’m afraid I’ve made that worse,” I said, perching on the edge of the bed. “Exposing your family secrets.”
She exhaled heavily. “Ironic, isn’t it? I never would have learned the truth about my family if Jake hadn’t been so determined to destroy us. The way he believes my grandmother and great-grand-parents —our great-grandparents—destroyed his family.”
“Your grandmother’s photograph album was the key. Unfortunately, it’s now part of the police file. Detective Armstrong—”
“The tall one?”
“The tall one. He says they may be able to make a digital copy for you, since resolving all the criminal charges could take a while.” I slipped off the bed and into the chair. “When did you figure out who Byrd was?”
“At the first public meeting he and Deanna Ellingson held, more than three years ago. I wanted to know who’d managed to convince Mr. Barut to sell, and what his plans were. I heard him tell Barut’s son that his grandfather had once owned the property and that he wanted to bring it back into the family. It was our great-grandfather . His grandfather lost the place. My father had been trying to get it back for years, then I tried, but no luck. Bad timing, I guess.”
I had my own theory about that, but no point resurrecting the old Turkish-Armenian tensions.
“I’d always known about Jake,” she continued. “Though I never knew his last name or where he was. I pored over those albums with Grandma Rose when I was little, and then again in the last few weeks of her life, when she was looking back. If she knew what had happened to him, she never said.”
“It’s not a pretty story,” I said, but she wanted to hear it, so I recounted what Jake had told me outside the hospital.
“All that anger and bitterness,” she said softly. “No wonder he hated us. He was raised to hate us.”
“When you couldn’t get him to work with you, or to change his plans for the property, you went to Pat Halloran for help. That was kind of brilliant, by the way.”
“Other way around. Pat knew my efforts to persuade Byrd to scale back were doomed, and he offered to help. At a soccer practice. I was skeptical at first, because he was part of Neighbors United and they can be pretty outspoken. But he convinced me it would work. That’s why I went to his house the day he was killed. I was horrified when I heard what happened, but I never imagined it had any connection to the project. The police said his murder was connected to his work as a prosecutor, and I was sure they were right.”
“Byrd figured you and Pat were in cahoots, though why he thought killing Pat would stop you, I can’t imagine. Nothing ever stops you.”
She smiled wryly. “He almost did.”
“But meeting at Pat’s house was risky, wasn’t it? I mean, he lived next door to Deanna Ellingson.”
“We were supposed to meet Saturday at my office. Turned out I’d put the weekend at the island place with Kr
isten and Eric on my phone for the wrong day. I had to take the chance that Pat would be home, and that the neighbors wouldn’t see me.”
“Bruce Ellingson did see you, through the hedge. But he thought it was his wife. With all you knew about Byrd, why did you agree to meet him at the building last week?”
“I had no idea he was dangerous. He said he had some sketches he wanted to show us. My builder was supposed to meet me—he didn’t know we were meeting Byrd—but he got stuck in traffic on the wrong side of the drawbridge. By the time he got there, Byrd had already left. Thank God, or Byrd would have shot him, too, and we’d both be dead.”
With no witnesses, and no chance at justice.
“You are the smartest, bravest woman I have ever known,” she said. “How can I ever thank you for figuring all this out?”
The Solace of Bay Leaves Page 25
