“Sorry. Nothing’s turned up.”
“You’ve checked the cupboards and drawers at the back of the room?”
“Several times.” Marvin rocked back on his heels.
“Could I take a look through her computer files?”
“The police went through everything already.” He sounded a little peeved about the whole thing.
“But they were looking for something different,” I said. “It won’t take long. I’ll be very quiet and I promise not to bother you.”
“Use the computer over by the window.” Marvin’s tone was brusque. “It’s the fastest. Most of the kids keep their stuff on floppies. They’re filed alphabetically by last name in the bottom drawer of my desk.”
I retrieved Julie’s disk and scanned the files, following the instructions Libby had written out for me the night before. It was far easier than I’d anticipated, but I found nothing that made reference to Leslie Harmon or any stories she might have researched.
“This is Julie’s only disk?” I asked Marvin when I’d finished.
He was busy with some activity that required a lot of mouse-clicking. “The only one I’m aware of.”
He didn’t look up when I left.
In the afternoon I called the Berkeley police department and talked with Celeste Tira. She was polite, and listened to my ramblings with sympathy, but offered little in the way of encouragement.
“This case is one of our highest priorities,” she told me. “We’ve got a number of leads already, potentially a new witness or two, and forensics has found some fiber samples on Julie’s clothing. It’s slow work, as frustrating to us as it is to you, but there is progress being made.”
“You haven’t come across the box that Dulcey Haggerty gave Julie, though.”
“Right,” she said. “We haven’t.”
“You didn’t even know about it until I told you.”
“Right again.” Tira, to her credit, didn’t appear to take offense.
“And you didn’t know about the letters Julie wrote. You didn’t even follow up on that list of names Patricia Shepherd found after Julie disappeared. Claudia Walker and Dulcey Haggerty were both there.”
“A list of names, by itself, isn’t much to go on. They could have been childhood friends, or the girls’ tennis team from a rival school. And we did look into it.” She paused. “It’s a big jump from Julie’s wanting to talk to her mother’s friends to thinking she’d uncovered a secret that cost her her life.”
“Besides,” I said pointedly, “the department is more likely to stay in the limelight if it’s a serial killer and not simply someone Julie managed to anger.”
“Serial killer is only one avenue we’re looking at.” Officer Tira’s voice made it clear that her patience was wearing thin.
“There was something on Julie’s mind, something that was troubling her. I’m certain of that. Whatever it was might explain why she went to Berkeley that night and who she met there. But you folks don’t seem particularly interested in knowing what it was.”
There was a long pause. “With all due respect, Mrs. Austen, we are every bit as interested in seeing this killer caught as you are.”
I backed off. It wasn’t fair to take out my frustrations on Celeste Tira, who had been more than accommodating. “I’m sorry. I’m upset and I’m worried.”
“That’s understandable,” Tira said with surprising kindness. “And we have talked with her family and friends. So far, that line of inquiry hasn’t helped us.”
It hadn’t helped me either, not in the sense of bringing answers. But I couldn’t let go of the feeling that it might.
<><><>
Wednesday dawned bright and warm, the return of Indian summer. Faye moved her chair outside and sat with the sun on her back while I planted primroses and pansies for spring. I was on my hands and knees digging in the soft soil when the phone rang. I’d have let the machine pick it up, but Faye had shuffled inside before I could stop her.
“For you, dear,” she called. “It’s Marlene, the woman who did our hair.”
Brushing the dirt from my hands and clothing, and grumbling under my breath, I slipped off my shoes and went inside.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Marlene said. “But you told me to call.”
“Did you remember something more?”
“It was something I found. Something of Julie’s. In the closet where my granddaughter keeps her toys.”
“What did you find?”
“A bag. One of those gallon-size Ziploc things. There’s a computer disk and some newspaper clippings inside. My daughter says the man in the news photo is the one she saw Julie with at the reservoir.”
Chapter 27
With Marlene’s call, my interest in gardening took a nosedive. Unfortunately, Marlene was at the salon and wouldn’t be free to show me what she’d found until after work. We agreed to meet at her house at five. I spent the remainder of the afternoon devising errands to keep my mind off the painfully slow progress of the clock.
I was waiting at the curb when she pulled into the driveway almost exactly on the hour. Two large cats, one gray and one black, greeted us inside the door. Marlene scooped them up, one in each arm.
“Come into the kitchen with me,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll get you that bag of Julie’s stuff just as soon as I break out a can of food for these fellows. Patience is not their strong suit.”
I followed her into the breakfast nook, where she plopped the cats down on the linoleum, then opened a family-sized tin of real tuna and scooped it into matching ceramic bowls. She disappeared into another room and returned a moment later with a plastic freezer hag.
“This is it,” Marlene said, handing me the bag. “My daughter found it yesterday when she was looking for a sweater Karen had misplaced. She might have thought nothing of it, even though she knows I have no use for computer disks, except that she recognized the man in the news photo. He’s the one she saw with Julie at the reservoir.”
“Did she tell the police?”
“She tried to reach the detective who questioned her last week. He’s out of town.”
So Michael had contacted Marlene’s daughter himself. That was good. “She didn’t ask to speak to someone else?”
Marlene shook her head. She rinsed out the cats’ water bowls and refilled them. “Nan didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Especially when she saw who it was.”
“It’s someone your daughter knows?” I opened the bag and pulled out a handful of newspaper clippings.
“That’s the article there.” Marlene pointed to the one on top. “And there’s the photo, partway down.”
The article she pointed to was clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle and appeared to be about the upcoming judicial election. The face in the photo was Steve Burton.
“Your daughter’s sure this is the man she saw with Julie?”
“Not positive, no. That’s partially why she was reluctant to go to the police. Besides, it doesn’t seem likely their meeting had anything to do with Julie’s death.”
I nodded. “Julie and Steve Burton’s stepdaughter, Skye, were classmates.
Quickly, I looked through the other clippings. All of them, it appeared, pertained in some way to Steve Burton, but not all were current. One was dated six years earlier and another, although the date was missing, was so yellowed it had to have been even older.
Marlene sat in a nearby chair, her two cats tucked into the folds of her lap. “Nan feels silly now for ever mentioning that she’d seen Julie with an older man.” She drew her hand along the cats’ fur. “You don’t think it means anything, do you?”
Although the reservoir was an unlikely place for either Steve or Julie to be on a weekday, their meeting could most certainly have been coincidence. But why the clipped news articles? And why hide them at a neighbor’s?
Then, too, I couldn’t completely discount my original impression that Julie’s clandestine meetings were somehow relat
ed to the provocatively inscribed book of poetry.
There were no ready answers, only tremors of apprehension in my belly.
“Can I borrow these?” I asked. “Maybe I can figure out what was going on.”
“Sure.” Marlene paused. “Judge Burton has an outstanding reputation. I’ve never heard even a hint of indiscretion or scandal.”
I hadn’t either, but that did little to quiet my uneasiness.
When I got home, I put a pot of water on the stove— pasta was my standby quickie dinner—then slipped the disk into the computer. Unfortunately, I had not the slightest idea what to do next.
I called for Libby, and after a few minutes of mouse- clicking and icon-hopping, the screen opened to a document that appeared to be the outline for a biographical sketch of Steve Burton. There were key dates, educational and professional histories, a section of personal data, and an annotated bibliography of pertinent news articles. All in all, it was pretty bland reading. While I hadn’t known that Steve had narrowly missed an appointment to the appellate court bench or that his first wife was a prominent socialite, there was nothing in the write-up to hint at any sort of impropriety.
And then, when I scrolled to the third page of the document, I saw that Steve Burton had at one time been employed at the firm of Richards, Walker and Emerson in San Francisco.
Located, no doubt, on Pine Street.
I felt the tingle of excitement at the base of my spine. Could there really be significance to the fact that Leslie Harmon had had some long-ago connection to a firm where Steve Burton had once worked?
But it wasn’t just that, I reminded myself. Steve had said that Brian’s father was a client. Had he neglected to mention that Walker was also his former employer? Or was I grasping at straws?
“What is it?” Libby asked, looking at me. “You seem bothered by something.”
“Not bothered so much as perplexed. Has Brian ever talked to you about his father?”
“He was a music teacher, I know that.”
“A music teacher?”
She nodded. “I guess he was a musician, really. It’s just that teaching was kind of like, you know, his job.”
Maybe it wasn’t the same man, after all. “A musician, not an attorney?”
“Brian’s grandfather was a lawyer. Why?”
His grandfather, maybe that explained it. “Judge Burton told me that Brian’s father was a client of his. But according to this, Walker was one of the law partners. It must have been Brian’s grandfather.”
Libby frowned. “I didn’t know judges had clients.”
“I guess he meant former client.” But that didn’t explain how Leslie Harmon had come to have one of the firm’s letterhead envelopes in her possession. Nor, more to the point, did it shed any light on Julie’s interest in the matter. And it was clear that she had been interested.
I closed the file and pushed my chair back from the desk, discouraged. “Did Julie ever talk about Judge Burton?” I asked Libby.
Libby’s face scrunched in thought. “She may have mentioned him in passing. I don’t recall anything in particular, though. Why?”
“I’m wondering why Julie would be doing research on him. Is that the sort of thing Mr. Melville had in mind for the term project?”
“What he’d really like,” Libby said with a sardonic laugh, “is for us to do an innovative, cutting-edge piece. You know, like blowing open the next Watergate, or finding a hidden toxic waste dump in downtown Walnut Hills. But I think he’ll settle for a whole lot less. I hope so anyway.”
“So it’s possible that Julie could have been planning to do an article on Judge Burton?”
“Sure. Although I don’t see why. Even with the election coming up. I mean, he’s probably a nice man and all, but if you’re going to spend time and energy on an assignment why not choose something you can get a bit more psyched about?”
That was my thought as well. Unless Julie had discovered something about Steve that made the piece more than a simple profile. I pressed my fingers to my temples in an effort to clear my mind. “What about Julie and Brian?”
“What about them?” Libby’s tone became defensive.
“You said they went out.”
She shrugged. “Just a couple of times. It wasn’t any big deal.”
Had Julie known about the connection between Brian’s family and Judge Burton? Was that somehow the key to this mystery?
I tried to put the uncertainties out of my mind until I could turn the whole thing over to Michael, but that was like trying not to think of a tune that kept running through your head. After dinner, I called Sharon, who knew Steve and Yvonne much better than I did.
“Any skeletons in his closet?” I asked, after filling her in on the latest.
“Steve’s about as upstanding as they come.”
“He was apparently passed over for an appointment to the court of appeals.”
“There was talk of his name being on the list of possible candidates, but it wasn’t like he was the governor’s first choice or anything.”
“How about any big cases he tried as a prosecutor?”
“I didn’t know him then. He only moved to Walnut Hills after he married Yvonne. But if there were some secret in his past, don’t you think it would have come out before now? As I recall, the last election was pretty hotly contested. And finding dirt on your opponent seems almost de rigueur these days.”
“A couple of the newspaper clippings were old. They may have been in that box of things Dulcey Haggerty gave Julie. What if they were part of some investigative piece Leslie Harmon worked on? She might have had information that’s never been made public.”
“And she just sat on it? Not likely. Besides, why would her fifteen-year-old daughter suddenly be interested in exposing it?”
“Well, Julie knew Skye, so there was the personal connection. And according to Libby, Julie was taking this term project far more seriously than the rest of the class. Who knows, maybe she was trying to emulate her mother.” And then I thought of something else. “What if Julie tried to blackmail Steve? Maybe that’s what Leslie had done, too.”
“Kate, I think you’re going overboard here. There’s an election coming up. It doesn’t seem odd to me that Julie would decide to write a profile piece about one of the candidates running for re-election. Especially if it was someone she knew. Maybe she figured she’d even get an interview or something. It could have been Steve, himself, who gave her the old articles. What did they say, anyway?”
“The usual stuff. There were a couple that pertained to cases he’d heard, one that was sort of a feature piece that apparently ran when he joined to the DA’s office. A number of the older clippings were actually from the society page. Steve’s claim to fame there was his wife.”
Sharon laughed. “Yvonne has said that Lucinda was a hard act to follow. And even now Steve does what he can to oblige his late wife’s father. Politics is a tricky business.”
Yes, it was. Which brought me back again to the question of what Leslie Harmon might have known and what Julie might have discovered. What ultimately, someone might have been willing to kill to keep hidden.
I gnawed at it the rest of the evening and finally concluded that Sharon was probably right, I was going overboard.
Still, when I happened to catch sight of Brian Walker’s broad shoulders rounding a bay of lockers at school the next morning, I scurried after him. He darted off in the other direction at a quickened pace once he saw me.
“Brian,” I called after him, breaking into a trot. For a moment I thought he was going to ignore me. Finally, he hesitated and turned, but didn’t return the greeting. His arms were crossed and his face unsmiling.
“I wanted to talk to you for a minute,” I told him.
“I gathered.”
“Do you have time?”
“Would it matter if I didn’t?” He shifted his weight to one leg.
“What’s with the angry tone?”
Bri
an laughed without humor. “You’re like all the other snooty, two-faced women in this town. Quick to judge, quick to blame.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You really think I’d send Libby some stupid Barbie doll shoes if I was the Parkside Killer? Especially if I were going to whisk her off and do her in a few hours later?”
Libby had obviously told him about my afternoon of panic. “I was worried, I—”
“Worried, yeah. Because she was with me.”
“I didn’t accuse you, Brian, I just—”
A spasm of irritation crossed his face. “Look, I’m kind of pushed for time. If you got something to ask me, do it.”
I’d work on mending fences another time. “How well do you know Judge Burton?” I asked.
“Hardly at all.”
“He handles your trust, doesn’t he?”
Brian shrugged. “A name on a piece of paper.”
“But you’ve met him?”
“Of course I’ve met him.”
“Did you know that he used to work for your grandfather’s law firm?”
A shadow of uneasiness crossed his face. “So?”
“Was that the connection between your father and Judge Burton?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
It felt like we were playing a game of Twenty Questions, but with Brian being less than forthcoming, I couldn’t think of any other way to handle it. “Did you know that Julie was writing a paper on Judge Burton?”
“She might have mentioned it.”
“You have any idea why she was interested in him?”
He shook his head. “She kind of hinted at something big, but I’m not sure it was actually about him.” Brian glanced in the direction he’d been headed. “Hey, I gotta go. Catch you later.”
Once again I tried to put the matter out of my mind, and once again I failed miserably. After class I used the phone in the teachers’ room to call Celeste Tira at the Berkeley PD, having decided the wisest course was to turn the matter over to her. She was more directly involved in the investigation of Julie’s murder than Michael anyway. Officer Tira was not available, the brusque voice at the other end informed me. Did I wish to speak with another officer working on the Harmon case?
Murder Among Us (A Kate Austen Mystery) Page 22
