Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “We’ve got plenty of time, unless the other side gets hard-assed on me. I’ll know more tomorrow. Drop by my office around three. I will have talked to the D.A. by then.”

  I left the Franklins’ and drove to West Alameda. It was now past eight in the evening, and I hoped to find Steve and Claudia Yancy at home. But the Marion Court cottage was dark in the fading light of the summer evening. I didn’t see either the red Chevy pickup or the cranberry Nissan. As I returned to my car, I wondered what time the Yancys went to work. Maybe I could catch them early tomorrow morning.

  I wanted to go home. It had been a long time since lunch, and I was both tired and hungry. Instead I drove to the Pacific Avenue building where Sam Raynor and Harlan Pettibone had shared an apartment. When Mrs. Torelli answered, she was dressed as before, in cutoffs and a T-shirt. This time she had a paperback in her hand, one finger marking her place. The apartment was unnaturally quiet. Honeybunch must have been in bed.

  “I remember you,” she said when I reintroduced myself. “You were here asking questions about Hal and Sam. You know Sam’s dead? My husband says his ex-wife shot him Saturday night.”

  “May I come in?” I asked, not bothering to dispute her third-hand account of Raynor’s murder. She nodded, then stepped aside to let me enter. “Did you see Sam or Hal on Friday or Saturday?”

  “I haven’t seen Hal since he got home from work Friday afternoon. My husband says he got busted Saturday night at the club on base.”

  “What does Hal do on weekends?”

  Mrs. Torelli set the book down on her dining room table, its pages splayed outward. “Sleeps late and plays pool. Come to think of it, when I saw Sam on Saturday, he said Hal was still in the rack. Wasn’t feeling well. Probably hung over from too much booze the night before.” Whether this was Sam’s assessment or her own, she didn’t say.

  “When did you see Sam? What was he doing?”

  “Must have been around noon. I was fixing lunch. I saw the mailman go by so I went out to check the box. I ran into Sam doing the same thing, so I just made conversation. Looked like he’d been to the commissary. He was carrying a couple of sacks of groceries.”

  “Did you see Sam any other time on Saturday?”

  She nodded. “He left about seven-thirty, eight o’clock, dressed casual. I think Hal left right after that.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t see Hal.”

  “Didn’t exactly see him. I heard his car. I saw Sam drive out, then about five minutes later I heard the Camaro start up and peel rubber. Must’ve been Hal. He’s the only one around here drives like that.”

  I heard a wail from the bedroom as Honeybunch awakened. Mrs. Torelli sighed and looked longingly at her paperback. I thanked her and went home, my stomach rumbling all the way.

  As I crossed the courtyard toward my own apartment, I saw Abigail sitting on the back of the sofa, scowling at me through the front window. By the time I opened the front door she was at my feet, her tail switching back and forth. Her piercing yowl revealed Siamese genes in her basic brown tabby ancestry.

  “I know I’m late,” I told her. “You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”

  She turned and stalked to the kitchen, where she stopped at her blue ceramic food bowl and yowled at me again. If she’d been human, I think she would have stamped her foot. The bowl was devoid of so much as a crumb. I realized that in my rush to get out of the apartment that morning to meet Bill Stanley at his office, I’d neglected to fill it with the dry food that she munched on throughout the day.

  “Okay, you do get to make a federal case.” I apologized profusely as I fetched the bag and poured in half a bowl of crunchies. Abigail wasn’t quite over her snit, however. She grumbled at me as she stuck her face into the bowl.

  I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a leftover lasagna, cut a portion and zapped it in the microwave while I threw together a salad with some veggies and several tomatoes from my patio garden. By the time I’d finished my own dinner, Abigail had eaten her fill and retired to the middle of the living room for a wash. After I’d done the dishes, I followed the cat to the living room, where I sat cross-legged on the carpet and pulled her into my lap.

  “Am I forgiven?” A sharp nip on my thumb provided part of the answer, followed by a sandpaper tongue and a rumbling purr. I buried my face in the soft brown fur. “A full stomach changes everything, doesn’t it?”

  Twenty-three

  AT SIX-THIRTY TUESDAY MORNING I WAS OUTSIDE THE Marion Court cottage where the Yancys lived. The fog still colored the sky pale gray, but soon the August sun would burn it away and we’d have another hot blue-sky day.

  I shifted position on the fender of the red pickup. The cranberry Nissan was nowhere in sight. Had Claudia gone to work early? Did she have duty, that periodic military task that required a twenty-four-hour presence on the base? Shades were drawn across the front window and I saw no lights inside, but sooner or later one or both of the Yancys had to emerge. Since Steve worked for Alex Tongco, and Alex often started work at seven, I guessed Steve would appear first.

  Sure enough, at a quarter to seven, the front door of the cottage opened and Steve Yancy came out, dressed in a chief petty officer’s khaki uniform. His brown hair was slicked back and the expression on his round face was a good deal more serious than on our previous encounter. He looked startled when he saw me leaning on his pickup, squinting as he tried to place me.

  “Jeri Howard,” I prompted. “The private investigator. I was here last week, asking questions about Sam Raynor.”

  “Sam’s dead,” he said slowly. “I had to go identify the body.”

  “Did you tell the police you were there? The night of the murder?”

  Yancy’s face reddened and his mouth opened. He had trouble forming words. “What? How...?”

  “I saw you early Sunday morning, right outside the police line. Tell me what you were doing there.”

  “I was, uh... I heard the sirens and...”

  “Why were you on Piedmont Avenue that night? Were you and Claudia together? Where is Claudia, by the way?”

  Yancy looked as though each word stung, especially Claudia’s name. Things had changed since my last visit “Answer my questions, Chief. Or you’ll be talking to the police.”

  The implication of my last statement sank in gradually. “You don’t think I had anything to do with it,” he protested, face reddening even more. “His wife... that’s what the newspaper said.”

  “What about your wife? And Sam Raynor?”

  “How do you know about that?” He ducked his head, his voice a whisper.

  “I just know. Where is Claudia?”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “We had a fight. She packed her bags and moved out.”

  “Tell me about the fight. When did you quarrel, and why?”

  “Friday.” He sighed, a long drawn-out gust of air that signaled his reluctance to tell me the rest. I waited. “When I got home from work. I knew something was wrong between us. I even wondered if maybe there was someone else. I ignored it for a long time, because I didn’t want to know. Claudia’s my second wife. We met while I was still married to my first. I should have known better. But I love her, I’d do anything to—” He stopped abruptly, ducked his head again, then took a deep breath. Now words tumbled from his mouth.

  “Some guy at work, he said he saw Claudia and Sam together at the movie theater in Emeryville. It was a couple of weeks ago, the night Claudia told me she was going to a movie with her girlfriend Dana. She said they were meeting in Berkeley, dinner first, then the movie. That started me thinking, about things that happened when we were living on Guam, and since we moved here. Things that should have tipped me off, things I ignored. When I got home from work, Claudia said she and Dana were going to a movie Saturday. I was sure she was lying. I just lost it.”

  “What happened? What did Claudia say?”

  Steve Yancy gulped in some air and examined the knuckles of his right han
d. “I yelled at her. I punched the wall. Knocked a picture down. Glass everywhere.” He looked up at me. “She yelled right back at me. She admitted it. Said she and Sam had been involved off and on for six years, ever since they were stationed together at Pearl Harbor. Even before she and I got married.”

  And probably ever since Sam and Ruth had been married. “Where is she staying?”

  “With Dana. Her last name is Albertson. She lives in Alameda.” He gave me an address on Santa Clara Avenue. I’d have to track down Claudia mere. But first I wanted a response to the question Yancy hadn’t answered yet

  “Why were you in Oakland Saturday night, Chief?”

  “Why do you have to know?” His voice was anguished.

  “Because as far as I’m concerned, anyone who was in the vicinity of Ruth Raynor’s apartment that night is a suspect in Sam Raynor’s murder.” The police might not think so, but I sure as hell did. “And you had a motive, didn’t you, Chief Yancy? Your wife was having an affair with Sam.”

  “I followed them. Claudia and Dana.” The admission embarrassed him. “Over to the Piedmont Theater. They did go to the movie. She wasn’t lying, at least not about that.” He sighed and wiped away the film of sweat that had formed on his upper lip. “I watched them buy tickets and go inside. I checked to see what time the movie got out and I went to a bar down the street. I had a burger and a couple of beers.”

  “Which bar?”

  “It’s just a block or so from the theater. Cards... the Royal Flush.” I nodded. The same bar where Acey Collins said he spent a good part of Saturday evening. “Right before the movie let out I went back to the theater. I hung around outside until I spotted Claudia and Dana. I followed them to Fenton’s. There was a line out the front door, like there always is after a show. I felt pretty damned stupid for following them, and afraid they’d see me. So I went back to the bar. I stayed there till I heard the sirens. I swear, I didn’t go anywhere near that apartment building. And I didn’t see Sam Raynor all evening. You’ve got to believe me.”

  I wasn’t sure I did. Steve Yancy seemed mild enough now, but he had described his violent physical reaction when he finally confronted Claudia about her infidelity. The man who followed his wife all Saturday evening struck me as loose cannon material. What if he had seen Sam Raynor in the parking lot, right after Tiffany left? What if Sam had met Claudia afterward? I was speculating. I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint Claudia’s movements until I spoke with her.

  “Let’s talk about the Friday night poker games, Chief.”

  “Poker?” Yancy looked confused. “It’s every other Friday. What about it?” I grilled him about the game and his card-playing cronies. It sounded like a basic payday nickel-dime-quarter game, where everyone usually breaks even, and a big loss might be twenty or thirty bucks. Raynor won a few, lost a few, just like the other guys at the table. If he’d been hiding money through supposed gambling debts, Yancy didn’t have a clue and the poker game didn’t appear to be the vehicle.

  I left the chief standing next to his red pickup. The apartment where Claudia was staying with her friend was on Santa Clara near Caroline, a two-story Victorian carved up into six flats. Dana Albertson lived in the first floor front unit on the right, the one with a bay window overlooking the street. The front door of the Victorian was unlocked. I stepped into a foyer with a wide staircase and knocked on the apartment door, but there was no answer. I didn’t see Claudia Yancy’s Nissan parked anywhere in the vicinity. She’d already left for work, which meant a return trip to Alameda tonight.

  When I reached my office I made a pot of coffee and sat down at my desk with mug in hand. I called Mary at the air station, asking her if Tiffany Collins had reported for work. “No, she hasn’t,” Mary said. “She called in sick again. And some lieutenant named Bruinsma’s been here looking for her. Jeri, is Tiffany in some kind of trouble? Do you have some reason to believe she’s not ill?”

  I sighed. I didn’t want to give Mary too many details, but I knew I could trust her not to shoot off her mouth. “Maybe she wants to lay low for a while.”

  When Mary spoke again she sounded worried. “I heard that sailor she was dating was shot to death over in Oakland this weekend. Is that why you and the lieutenant want to talk with her?” I didn’t say anything, but to Mary that was answer enough. “Oh, lord.”

  “Mary, it’s probably nothing. I just want to ask Tiffany a few questions, and so far I haven’t been able to locate her. Don’t say anything to anybody.”

  “You know I won’t,” Mary told me. “If I find out where she is, I’ll call you.”

  After Mary hung up, I punched in Acey Collins’s home number. Genevieve answered on the second ring. “Gen, Tiffany’s not at work. She called in sick again.”

  “Damn that girl.” She was silent for a moment, and I heard piano music crescendo in the background. “Acey went by her apartment early this morning. The curtains were shut and the Subaru’s gone. None of the neighbors had seen her, and yesterday’s mail was still in the box.”

  Sounds like Acey had done everything I would have done. “What about the rabbit?” I asked, my pet owner concerns kicking in. I could leave my cat for a couple of days and she’d be okay. I wasn’t sure about Tiffany’s lop-ear.

  “If she’s going out of town, she takes it with her, in a carrying case. She can’t have gone far, if she’s called in sick both yesterday and today.”

  “As long as she’s got access to a phone, she could be in Alaska,” I pointed out. “If you hear from her, tell her I have to talk with her.”

  As I finished my coffee, I took care of some paperwork and returned several phone calls, then I left my office and walked through downtown Oakland, past the glittery fashions displayed in the window of the Emporium and I. Magnin. When I reached Grand Avenue, I turned left, heading west past Telegraph Avenue, to a plain storefront building in the shadow of the freeway.

  I pushed open the door, entering a large well-lighted room filled with tables and chairs. Against the wall to my left was a long table spread with a haphazard array of food—bread for the collection of toasters grouped there, jars of peanut butter and jam, a plate of doughnuts, a grocery store coffee cake. In the corner I saw a coffee maker, sugar bowl, and an open quart of milk. I looked around the room. Most of the tables were occupied by women, talking, drinking coffee, eating the food that had been donated. At first I didn’t see the woman I sought, then she walked into the room from the corridor at the rear, the one that led to the laundry facilities, the showers, and a couple of sleeping rooms.

  Sister Anne is a tall big-boned woman in her forties, her short brunette hair streaked with silver. I’ve never seen her in a habit, and today she was wearing a typical ensemble of blue jeans, sneakers, and a red-and-white-checked shirt. Around her neck was a plain wooden cross on a red cord.

  I’d met the nun through a mutual friend and been intrigued by the fact that her order operates this downtown shelter for homeless women. No men or children are allowed inside its doors. It provides temporary refuge from the street, a place where a homeless woman can get a cup of coffee and something to eat, washers and dryers and showers to clean clothing and body, or a cot and a dark room for a few hours’ sleep, away from the human predators who exploit those who are weaker, with fewer defenses.

  I don’t know much about homeless people, except that they seem to be everywhere these days. They get talked about on television and written about in the newspapers, and no one can agree on why people are homeless or what can be done for them. Any number of reasons have been proffered to explain the burgeoning population of homeless people on Bay Area streets—the closure of the mental hospitals; the decline in affordable low-cost housing, whether apartments or single-room occupancy hotels; the times we live in; the widening gulf between rich and poor; and the enlarging holes in the safety net.

  Sister Anne puts it in simpler terms when she says being homeless can result from an unlucky combination of factors, such as the loss of a
job, with no savings or family to fall back on. That’s a definition Jeri Howard, self-employed with a little money in the bank and family in the area, can understand and appreciate. My safety net is intact. But it wouldn’t take much to rip a hole in what I often take for granted.

  “Hi, Jeri, you want some coffee?” Sister Anne has a soft calm voice, but I never let the quietness of her speech fool me, not since the day I saw her face a local tough who tried to force his way into the shelter to get at his girlfriend, who was running away from him. He backed down, not Sister Anne.

  I took the cup Sister Anne offered and followed her to two empty chairs at a table near the back of the shelter’s common room. One of the other chairs was occupied by a black woman with gray hair, her face furrowed with time and hard living. On her lap was a battered leather purse with a makeshift cloth strap. She wore a blue-and-white-striped blouse over a brown skirt, and on her feet, thick-soled shoes and what looked like several pairs of socks. I particularly noticed the socks, recalling something Sister Anne once told me. Being homeless is hard on your feet because you’re always moving.

  “This is Emily,” Sister Anne said, introducing me to our table companion.

  “Hello, Emily, I’m Jeri. How are you today?”

  Emily favored me with a dignified smile. “Tolerable.” She had a cup of coffee and a plate in front of her, using a plastic fork to cut a wedge of coffee cake into even smaller pieces.

  “I’m looking for a homeless woman and I’m not sure where to start,” I told Sister Anne, describing Rosie. I could tell that Emily was listening.

  “Piedmont Avenue is way off the usual track,” Sister Anne said, sipping her coffee. “That’s a more affluent neighborhood. I wonder how she wound up there. You say she’s got a shopping cart and she’s collecting cans and bottles. The recycling center that buys the stuff is under the freeway at Twenty-seventh. If she’s coming from Forty-first and Piedmont, that’s a long way to walk, pushing a cart. On the other hand, it’s mostly level ground. No major hills.” She thought for a moment “You say she’s white?”