Kindred Crimes

by Janet Dawson

  “That wouldn’t have anything to do with why you’re here, would it?” he asked, reaching for his pipe.

  I laughed. “Now that you mention it, I could use some information on a former Cal State student. At least, I think she’s a former student.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “I’m not sure. She’s using the name Renee Mills, and there are a couple of similar names I’d like to check out. She’s about twenty-nine, so I’m guessing she was here ten years ago. Can you help me?”

  “Do you have a social security number for any of these people?”

  “Just one. Renee Mills.” I reached for my handbag and took out my notebook and the insurance application Foster had given me. Dad glanced at the names, then picked up the phone on his desk and punched four digits.

  “Abdul, this is Dr. Howard. I need some information on a young woman who would have been a student here about ten years ago.” Dad recited the names and the social security number. He hung up the phone and turned to me. “One of my graduate students works in Records. He’ll punch the information into his computer and see what comes up. You owe me dinner for this.”

  “You’re on, as soon as I wrap up the case.”

  Dad drew on his pipe and looked at me soberly. “Is it likely to be dangerous?”

  “A simple missing-persons case? I doubt it.”

  “You know I worry. Ever since...” His eyes went to the scar on my forehead.

  I was pistol-whipped in a parking lot in Oakland two years ago while working on a case. I spent four days in the hospital. Since then my mother suggests I find another line of work and my father worries about me. Dad and I had this conversation frequently, and I knew what he was going to say next.

  “I wish you’d carry a gun.”

  “Sometimes I do. But the kinds of cases I take don’t usually warrant it.”

  One of Dad’s colleagues appeared in the doorway, a slender gray-haired woman. Dad introduced her as Dr. Kovaleski and me as his daughter, Jerusha. I was named after Dad’s mother, but Jerusha suited her far better than it suits me; at an early age I shortened it to Jeri.

  Dr. Kovaleski had a question about an upcoming graduate seminar, so I excused myself and carried my coffee back to the lounge. I leafed through a month-old copy of Newsweek someone had left there, then I put the magazine aside and went back into the corridor. I read notices on the bulletin board outside the department office until Dr. Kovaleski left Dad’s office. He waved me back in as his phone rang.

  “Yes, Abdul, I’m ready.” He scribbled on a sheet of paper as Abdul talked. Dad thanked him and hung up the phone.

  “Several students named Mills, but none of them Renee, none in that time period, and none with that social security number. The closest is a Remy Mills, male, graduated seven years ago with a bachelor’s degree in business.”

  “What about the other names?”

  “Four Hills and two Gillises. Several of those are male, and none of the social security numbers resemble the one you’ve given me. There is an Elizabeth Renee Willis, an English major who dropped out in her sophomore year, ten years ago. The social security number is very close.”

  I compared the social security number with that on Renee Mills Foster’s insurance form. They were the same except for three numbers. She could have changed a three to a five, a four to a nine, and vice versa. Changing Willis to Mills must have been as easy as dropping Elizabeth in favor of Renee.

  It wasn’t foolproof, but it had worked for at least five years. It might have continued working if Elizabeth Renee Willis hadn’t walked out on Renee Mills Foster last week.

  “Willis,” I said. “That name sounds familiar for some reason. I don’t know why. Did Abdul give you an address?”

  “Yes. In San Leandro.” Dad circled the address on the sheet of paper and handled it to me. “But that was ten years ago. A mighty cold trail.”

  “At the moment it’s the only trail I have.”

  Two

  “TEN YEARS AGO? YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING.”

  The apartment-building manager was replacing a light fixture in the laundry room at the rear of the building. He tightened the screws on the glass globe and came down from his ladder. The rain drummed on the roof and blew in the open door.

  “I haven’t been here that long,” he said, shutting his toolbox. “How am I supposed to know who was in number twenty-two ten years ago?”

  “Is there anyone here who was a tenant then?”

  “Mrs. Dailey in the next apartment, number twenty-three. She’s been here maybe twelve years. You could ask her.”

  “Who owns the place?”

  “San Leandro Properties, on East Fourteenth near Davis.”

  Apartment 23 was on the second floor, near the front of the building. I headed for the stairs. The overhang of the roof offered little protection from the rain. I stood close to the door as I knocked.

  The woman who answered my knock was in her early seventies, her face a fine mesh of lines crowned by silvery hair. She wore a blue shirtwaist dress covered with tiny red-and-yellow flowers. Her large brown eyes looked out at me through thick tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Mrs. Dailey?”

  “Yes. Earlina Dailey. And you?”

  “My name is Jeri. I’m looking for someone I went to school with at Cal State ten years ago. Her name’s Elizabeth Willis. She lived in twenty-two, next door to you. The manager told me that you’ve been here quite a while. I wonder if you might remember her.”

  “Next door? That was Alice Gray’s apartment.”

  “Who’s Alice Gray?”

  “A dear friend of mine,” Mrs. Dailey said. “We taught together at Bancroft Junior High School. You’re getting awfully wet, young lady. Come in out of the rain.”

  She unlocked her screen door and held it open. I went in gratefully, thinking she was a trusting soul and trying not to drip all over her carpet. The living room was furnished with a chintz-covered sofa and a matching armchair grouped in front of a television set. A bookcase stood against one wall, next to a desk. Framed photographs of people I took to be Mrs. Dailey’s children and grandchildren crowded all the available surfaces.

  “So you were a teacher,” I said.

  “Forty years,” she said proudly. “Seventh-grade math. Alice taught English. She was at Bancroft fifteen years. So we had that in common, though she’s about ten years younger than me. After Mr. Dailey died I sold my house and moved here. One of my daughters lives nearby. It was nice having Alice next door. We played bridge every week with Mr. and Mrs. DeloSantos on the first floor. I certainly do miss her.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She moved back to Stockton two years ago. That’s where she was from. Her parents started failing and she went back to care for them. She’d just retired herself.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Yes, I do. We’ve kept in touch.” Mrs. Dailey went to the desk. She found Alice Gray’s address in a leather-bound address book and wrote it down for me.

  “Thanks.” I took the sheet of paper and tried to steer Mrs. Dailey back to my original question. “Did you ever see a young woman at Mrs. Gray’s apartment? Living with her or visiting her? Her name was Elizabeth Willis. This is the address she gave the university.”

  Mrs. Dailey thought for a moment, then she clapped her hands together. “Of course. Alice’s niece.” She looked up at me over her glasses. “I’m not sure of the last name, but Alice called her Beth.”

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  “A nice, quiet girl. A pretty little thing with long brown hair. She stayed with Alice for about two years, then she dropped out of school, got a job, and moved to her own apartment. She did come to visit Alice from time to time.”

  “Do you know where she worked?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “What about the rest of the family? Do you know anything about them?”

  “Alice has a sister living here in the Bay A
rea,” Mrs. Dailey said, “but I don’t know her name. Alice is a widow like me. She has two grown sons, one in Redding and the other in Fresno.”

  “Was this sister Beth’s mother?”

  Mrs. Dailey shook her head. “I seem to remember Alice saying the girl’s parents were dead and she’d been raised by her grandparents. I don’t know if she was Alice’s niece by blood or by marriage, though. I do recall Beth mentioning that her father was a Navy man. We were talking about Hawaii, and she said her family had been stationed there. That’s the only time I remember her saying anything about her parents.”

  According to the information I’d copied from the birth records this morning, Elizabeth Renee Willis had been born to George and Francis Willis. It didn’t say which hospital. But there was a Navy Regional Medical Center in Oakland. I wondered about my chances of prying any information out of the administrative hierarchy there. Of all bureaucrats, military bureaucrats are the worst. They tend to invoke the Privacy Act or national security and clam up.

  “You said Beth visited her aunt. When was she here last?”

  “Five years or more, I think. That’s all I can tell you about her. I’m afraid I haven’t been much help.”

  “Actually, you have.” I thanked her and went back out into the rain. I located San Leandro Properties on East Fourteenth. The woman at the front desk gave me Alice Gray’s forwarding address, the same Stockton address Mrs. Dailey had provided.

  I pointed the car back toward Oakland. By now it was afternoon rush hour, a misnomer, since the commute stretched from three to six P.M. Interstate 880, known as the Nimitz, was never a picnic, and it was worse in the rain, as though the weather brought out the lunatic in all the drivers. A big semi tractor-trailer bore down on my rear end as though we were at Laguna Seca.

  I took the Oak Street exit and drove the few blocks to the parking lot near my office. Willis, I said, my tongue lingering on the L and S sounds. Memory flickered, then slipped away. I shook my head. There was no guarantee that Elizabeth Renee Willis was Renee Foster. But the birth date was the same, the social security numbers were close, and Elizabeth had attended Cal State Hayward. To be certain, I needed to connect Elizabeth with Vera Burke and the antique store.

  My office is in a four-story building in downtown Oakland, in a neighborhood somewhere between urban renaissance and urban decay. The tenants are a mixed bag, including several law firms, an accountant, a computer consultant who keeps odd hours, a word-processing service, and an agency for office temps.

  I unlocked the third-floor office of J. Howard Investigations and hung my raincoat on the wooden coat tree just inside the door. The mail had been pushed through the door slot. I picked it up and tossed it on the desk. My answering machine’s red light blinked at me, but when I played the tape all I heard was a hang-up.

  I sat down and sifted through the mail. Bills, advertising junk, and a long white envelope from a recent client, the security chief of a local corporation. He’d come to my office after a spate of equipment thefts, looking for an outside face no one would recognize. I spent two weeks undercover at the firm, working as a temp, until I nailed the culprits, both employees. The security chief was appreciative, which meant I could use him as a reference. My statement had been processed for payment, he wrote, corporatese for the check’s in the mail. I hoped it would arrive soon so I could pay some bills.

  I labeled a brown folder with Philip Foster’s name and added the papers Foster had given me and the contract he’d signed that morning. Thanks to the consultant with the odd hours, I have a computer, which is more efficient than my old manual typewriter. I switched it on and made notes of my interview with Foster and the other information I’d obtained.

  After I printed out the notes and added them to the file, I called both Granny’s Attic and Vera Burke’s home in Piedmont, getting no answer either place. Then I read through Norman Gerrity’s report again. He’d written a terse account of Renee Foster’s movements from the time she left the Foster home in Los Gatos. The cab driver who took the blond woman to the CalTrain depot said his passenger carried a big handbag and one suitcase. She told him where to take her and didn’t say anything else, except that he should keep the change from the twenty she handed him. Gerrity noted that a train for San Francisco left the depot half an hour after Renee arrived.

  At the end of the report I saw the sentence “Search terminated at client’s request.” If Foster was so hot to find his wife, why didn’t he let Gerrity continue the search? Why get rid of one private investigator and hire another? Foster had described the San Jose investigator as “unsatisfactory,” but what I’d just read told me Gerrity was competent. There had to be more to it than “search terminated at client’s request.”

  I locked my office and went next door to the law firm of Alwin, Taylor, and Chao. My friend Cassie Taylor was at her desk, feet propped on an open desk drawer, a deposition transcript in her lap. She looked elegant as usual in a pale gray pinstriped suit with an apricot silk blouse that set off her creamy brown skin and pearls in her pierced earlobes.

  “Does your wardrobe consist entirely of khaki pants?” she asked, assessing my slacks and olive green sweater.

  “Only half. The other half is blue jeans. What’s wrong with khaki pants?”

  “They’re so bland. You should wear brighter colors.”

  “Sorry I’m not up to your bird-of-paradise standards. In my line of work I don’t need to be noticed. You should talk. The practice of law would founder without gray pinstriped suits.”

  “Probably.” She recrossed her slender ankles. “I want you to do a background check on the plaintiff in a breach of contract lawsuit.”

  “Sure. Give me the details over dinner.”

  Cassie nodded. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

  As I went back to my office, the phone rang. “Howard Investigations.”

  “This is Norman Gerrity.” The voice at the other end was equal parts gravel and South Boston. I wondered how he wound up in sunny San Jose. “I’m returning a call from Jeri Howard.”

  “I’m Jeri Howard, Mr. Gerrity. I’m an investigator in Oakland. I’d like to ask a few questions about a former client of yours, Philip Foster. He hired you to locate his wife, then he ended your business relationship.”

  “You’re Howard Investigations?”

  “Yes, I am.” Gerrity had a short bark of a laugh. “You want to let me in on the joke?” I asked testily.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But it’s funny. You know what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me? Foster said he terminated your services.”

  “He fired me,” Gerrity said, an edge of wounded pride in his voice. “No, his old man fired me. I’ll bet he didn’t tell you that.”

  “Look, Gerrity, I know the drill. Client confidentiality and all that. Foster gave me a copy of your report. I read it. Something’s missing. I thought maybe you could fill me in.”

  “Well,” Gerrity said, “you should know what you’re letting yourself in for.”

  “What am I letting myself in for?”

  “Foster called me last Thursday. He’d done all the right things, gone to the cops, filed a missing-persons report. Then he decided to hire a private investigator and pulled my name out of the phone book.” Gerrity stopped and I heard what sounded like a cigarette lighter.

  “She left the car in the bank lot. So I figured she must have either been picked up by someone she knew, or taken a bus or a cab. I struck out with bus drivers, but on Friday I found a cabbie who remembered her. He picked her up on the corner and took her to the depot. No one remembers selling her a ticket, but a train for San Francisco left thirty minutes after she arrived. I thought my next move would be a trip to the city. But I didn’t get the chance.”

  “That’s when Foster fired you?”

  “You got it. I called Foster Friday afternoon to give him a rundown. He told me to meet him at his old man’s place in Los Gato
s that evening. After I told both of them what I’d found out, the old man said thank you very much, and here’s a check. Goodbye, Gerrity.”

  “They dropped it? Just like that?” I’d been taking notes. Now I set the pencil down and frowned.

  “Like a hot potato,” Gerrity said. “Foster Junior hires me, then Foster Senior tells me to take a walk. Now you tell me Foster Junior’s hired you. If he wants to do it that way it’s his money. But if you ask me, he’s just going through the motions. I don’t think he wants to find her.”

  “My impression is that he wants to find her very much.”

  “That’s what I thought, at first. When he walked into my office he was frantic to find her. When I went to Los Gatos it was a different story. Now Foster Senior, he definitely doesn’t want to find her. And he’s calling the shots.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Every case I ever worked, my gut told me which way to go. You call it intuition or indigestion, whatever you like. But my gut is usually right. And it did a tap dance on this one. That’s why I didn’t argue with Foster Junior. I just took the check, closed my file, and sent the report over by messenger Saturday morning.”

  “Thanks for the information.” I twisted the phone cord with the fingers of one hand. Gerrity’s tale bothered me.

  “You gonna go ahead? Try to find her?”

  “I took the client,” I said. “I intend to finish the job.”

  “Well, good luck, Howard. Watch your back. Foster Senior looks like a tough son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t like to be crossed. My guess is he’s not far behind Junior. If you’re ever in San Jose look me up. I’ll buy you a brew.”

  I thanked him and put down the receiver. Gerrity’s story of his short-lived employment was his version. But if what he said was true, this was more than just a simple missing-persons case. I read through Gerrity’s report one more time. It was crisp, to the point, professional, just like the man on the telephone. I was inclined to believe him. Which meant my client hadn’t been completely honest with me. That didn’t signal an auspicious start to our business relationship.