Edwin of the Iron Shoes

by Marcia Muller

  I could use all the background I could get on the people I wanted to talk to, so I locked up and followed Charlie across the street.

  The article wasn’t too informative. It said that Ingalls was to give a speech at a cocktail party for supporters of the Yerba Buena Convention Center at the Bank of America building this evening. The convention center, a controversial issue for years, had been repeatedly stalled by suits and counter-suits. In the meantime, south of Market Street, where buildings had been razed to clear the way for the new construction, land stood abandoned or turned into commuter parking lots. The party was at six o’clock in the Carnelian Room.

  “Tell you anything interesting?” Charlie asked. He sat, as he always did on rainy days like today, chair leaning against the old office desk.

  “A little.”

  “So what’re you up to now?”

  “I’ve got to get some library books on antiques, then go home and get dressed. I’m going to a cocktail party this evening.”

  6

  At six o’clock that evening, I crossed the windswept plaza in front of Bank of America’s world headquarters. A flower stand at the corner of Kearny and California added gaiety to the scene, but its early spring daffodils were offset by a nearby sculpture, known locally as “the banker’s heart,” which resembled a huge lump of coal.

  I passed through the towering lobby of the building to the elevator that took me to the Carnelian Room. When I stepped off at the top floor, an eager young man in a brown double-knit suit greeted me. “Good evening, ma’am. Step right over here, and I’ll find your name tag and give you your Yerba Buena Supporter’s Kit.”

  So this was a closed party. I followed him to a cardtable stacked with colorful folders and tags encased in plastic.

  “Your name and organization?” he asked with an ingratiating smile.

  “Sharon McCone, Wakefield and Fox,” I said, naming one of the larger real-estate firms in the Bay Area.

  He rummaged around on the table. “Oh, not again! They don’t seem to have made up your tag. You know how everything gets screwed up with these big parties.” He produced a felt-tipped pen and wrote my name and company on a card, then popped it into an empty sheath of clear plastic. “Let me help you pin it on.”

  In a few seconds, Sharon McCone, realtor, entered the Carnelian Room, clutching her Yerba Buena Supporter’s Kit.

  I accepted a drink from the first tray that passed, shifted the kit to my other arm so it covered my name tag, and wandered around the room.

  People clustered in little groups, gesturing and talking with animation. I checked out the nearest bunch for Wakefield and Fox employees and, when I didn’t find any, slipped onto its fringes, catching bits of the conversation.

  “… horrible what they’re doing …”

  “… loss of millions of dollars of income …”

  “… why, when I think of the jobs it could create …”

  “… damned eco-freaks …”

  I wondered if any of them really cared what the others were saying, since they all seemed to talk at once.

  “Don’t you agree, dear?”

  A portly man in a leisure suit that fitted him like a sausage casing nudged me and managed to spill a little of his drink on my foot.

  “Excuse me?” I set my empty glass on a passing tray and picked off two fresh ones. I would need fortification to get through this.

  “No matter how you look at it,” he went on, ignoring me, “the fact is, this city is suffering, really suffering….” He pitched into a long harangue about how San Francisco couldn’t survive without a new sports arena and several thousand more hotel rooms to join the ones that already stood empty in these days of slack tourism. I nodded at appropriate intervals, half listening. Finally several people began tapping silver on glasses at the front of the room.

  The man beside me broke off in mid-sentence and turned to look. “They’re ready for the Ingalls speech,” he said. “Damned fine woman. Ought to have been a man.” He punctuated this by chomping vigorously on an ice cube.

  I moved to where I could glimpse a long table with a speaker’s podium on it. A distinguished-looking fellow with white hair was trying to speak over the din. The noise settled gradually, and I heard him introduce “ … one of our most active and dedicated supporters of Yerba Buena, Mrs. Cara Ingalls.”

  A stunning blond, who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, stepped out of the crowd and crossed in front of the table, going around to the podium. Her hair fell to her shoulders from under a soft green beret, and she wore a sleekly styled knit dress in the same shade. I stared at her, trying to remember where I’d seen Cara Ingalls before.

  “Thank you. Thank you and good evening, fellow Yerba Buena supporters.” Her voice was husky, and her full lips parted in a warm smile. I had seen that smile, too, and recently.

  A hush fell over the room, and Cara Ingalls began to speak of the convention center and the serious obstacles that were preventing the development of the massive project. Ignoring the substance of her words, I studied her.

  Ingalls was tall and slender, but her body gave the impression of well-toned muscles and strength. The classic loveliness of her face provided a sharp contrast to the determined, predatory set of her features as she spoke of the Yerba Buena Center. She was feline in a way that reminded me that not all cats are domestic; some are dangerous.

  Then, something she said jarred my memory. Of course I had seen Ingalls before: in Joan’s shop the previous October. Cara Ingalls was the woman who had come in during my first visit to the shop and bought the painting after being introduced to Clothilde and Edwin. So, unknown to Joan, one of the potential purchasers of her land had been checking it—and her—out. I was sure that was why Ingalls had come to the shop: she didn’t look like the sort who would need, or want, to buy her antiques on Salem Street.

  I wasn’t surprised, having seen her, that Cara Ingalls had climbed to the top of a rough and demanding profession. I knew I wanted to find out more about the woman and talk to her in person, to ask her if she’d ever introduced herself to Joan Albritton after her syndicate made its offer. I also wanted to know, in light of Joan’s death, if the offer still stood.

  After Ingalls’s speech ended, I started toward the front of the room, determined to get her attention, but she was quickly surrounded by a crowd, all of whom looked importunate and long-winded. I got out one of my cards and scribbled on it, “Very anxious to talk with you about the Albritton murder.” If anything, that should get her attention. I handed the card to the distinguished-looking gentleman who had introduced Ingalls, telling him to make sure she got it.

  As I waited, I had to step back to let some people by and, in doing so, bumped into someone. I dropped my bag and my Yerba Buena Supporter’s Kit, and the man I’d stepped on bent to pick them up.

  As he straightened, his eyes caught my name tag, and he smiled.

  “Hi, comrade! I’m Bill Tilbury, San Mateo office.”

  Just what I needed, a fellow employee.

  “Nice to meet you.” I edged away.

  Good old Bill was not to be put off. “Hey, what office are you with?”

  I kept backing up. “Here in the city.”

  “You mean One Embarcadero?”

  “Right.”

  “Wait a minute. You must work with Ron!” He tapped the shoulder of a little guy next to him. “Hey, Ron, here’s Sharon McCone from your office!”

  Ron turned to look at me. He had a receding hairline and a pinched face. His eyes fell to my name tag. “You’re not from our office,” he said accusingly.

  Bill Tilbury frowned. “She said she was.”

  “One Embarcadero? Wakefield and Fox? She’s kidding you.” Ron came toward me. “Look, lady, what are you trying to pull?”

  I stepped backwards toward the door to the elevators. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m new. Possibly we haven’t met yet.”

  He pursued me furiously. “Try again. If you we
re new, you would have been introduced at the Monday morning pep meeting. All new employees, even the file clerks, are introduced then. What’s your game anyway?”

  “No game.” I flew backwards through the door, almost bowling over the young man in the double-knit suit.

  “Hey, stop her!” Ron exclaimed. “She’s probably a spy for the eco-freaks! Hell, she might even be a spy for the Indians! She looks like one, and she’s wearing Indian jewelry!” He pointed at my beaten-silver-and-turquoise choker.

  Before I could wonder what the Indians had to do with Yerba Buena, I saw an elevator full of people. Its doors were just beginning to close.

  “Why did you let her in?” Ron was practically shaking the young fellow.

  I aimed for the elevator.

  “Oh, my God, I even made her a name tag!” The young man sounded as if he had let a KGB agent into a meeting of the National Security Council.

  I slipped through the elevator doors right before they closed. The people in the car looked at me in surprise.

  “My former boyfriend,” I explained. “He harasses me because I make more in commissions than he does.”

  The man next to me grinned, and I heard a few chuckles from the back of the car. We rode the rest of the way in silence, and I beat a hasty retreat from the building. Before I got into any more trouble on the Salem Street Merchants’ Association’s account, I’d better check with Charlie Cornish to make sure they’d voted to hire me.

  7

  On the way to Junk Emporium, I stopped at a pay phone and called Lt. Marcus for the medical examiner’s report. When I reached him, he summarized it briefly.

  Cause of death: multiple stab wounds to the heart. Defensive slash wound, right hand. So she had fought off her attacker.

  Bruise on the left side of the face, inflicted before death, but fairly soon before. He had struck her.

  Estimated time of death: between nine thirty P.M. and twelve thirty A.M., the closest they could narrow it down. That meant she had been dead at least an hour when Charlie found her.

  The rest of the physical evidence said very little: the dimensions of the wounds roughly matched those of the remaining bone-handled knives, and the blood samples taken from the carpet matched both the type and the subtype of the deceased’s. Fingerprint evidence was inconclusive, since the shop was a public place. The only prints on the curio cabinet were partials and appeared to be those of the murdered woman.

  “Overall,” Marcus admitted, “the physical evidence isn’t helpful. Something’ll turn up though. In the meantime, you can get back to your antiques.”

  His tone was needling and unkind. Back to my antiques, in my proper place. Damn it, why did Marcus go out of his way to annoy me? It was strange behavior for a high-ranking, professional cop, even given the traditional antagonism of his breed for private operatives.

  When I pulled up to the curb in front of Junk Emporium, I sat in the car a minute, watching a lone drunk grope his way along the sidewalk, the bottle in its paper bag clutched to his chest. After he passed, I got out and locked the car.

  The big front windows of the shop were dark, but I could see light coming from way in back, where Charlie lived. I pounded hard on the door, and after a bit heard shuffling footsteps. Charlie’s haggard face peered out at me, and then the bolts and locks started to turn.

  When I stepped through the door, the sharp odor of gin hit me. Charlie was drowning his sorrows, and they apparently were dying hard. He regarded me a moment with bleary eyes, his mouth hanging slack, then mumbled, “Oh, it’s you.”

  He immediately turned and wandered away, leaving me in the open door. I shut it and locked up as best I could, then followed in his meandering wake down the wide central aisle. On either side, battered old pieces of furniture lined up ponderously, spectators at our absurd little parade.

  “It’s an ill wind, Sharon. It’s an ill wind blowing through the world tonight.” Involuntarily, I shuddered. The musty room and Charlie’s mood, not surprisingly, were making me wish I’d waited till morning.

  “Can you feel it, Sharon? Blowing like it’ll never stop?” Charlie peered back at me, his gaze unsteady.

  Just what I need, I thought. A morose drunk on my hands. “I can feel it, Charlie.”

  “It’s been blowing for a long time. I should of paid attention to it. Maybe it wouldn’t of ended that way, not the way it did.” His enunciation was remarkably clear, even if his eyes weren’t focused.

  I went up and took his arm. “Let’s go in back and sit down, Charlie.” I began steering him toward the source of the light. For a big man he felt surprisingly frail tonight.

  “Loved her,” he said huskily, leaning on me. “Everybody did.” He then jerked away from me and whipped into brisk motion. “Come on and meet my friend. He loved her, too. I oughtn’t of been so goddamn selfish, trying to keep her to myself.”

  It was too quiet for anyone else to be in the shop. My lord, I thought, now he’s imagining things.

  It was so quiet, in fact, that when a man appeared in the doorway in front of us, I jumped.

  He was a tall man, taller than Charlie, with slightly rounded shoulders, and he wore a flashy tan suit. His bald head was surrounded by a ruff of brown hair, and the light from a floor lamp just inside the door gleamed off his thick horn-rimmed glasses and highlighted the heavy features of his face.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said in apologetic tones. “I’m Ben Harmon.”

  The name was vaguely familiar. I said, “Sharon McCone.”

  He smiled and held out a large, neatly manicured hand. “Oh, you’re All Souls’ investigator. I’ve heard a lot about you, from Joan.”

  His words made me remember how I knew his name. Ben Harmon, bail bondsman. He was the man who had originally sent Joan to All Souls when her grandson had been arrested for possession of narcotics. His office was a few blocks away, on Bryant Street. Joan, unable to cope when she got news of the arrest, had turned to him for help.

  Harmon had a reputation for rough dealing, I recalled. If you were smart, you didn’t even think of jumping bail on Ben Harmon. He employed a staff of men who were pros at tracking down fugitives, and anyone who violated his agreement with Harmon was found and speedily dragged back to jail. I had heard about one case when Harmon’s men had managed to retrieve a recalcitrant accused of murder who had fled to Mexico.

  Now Charlie lunged through the doorway and extended his arm in the general direction of Ben Harmon’s shoulders. “Want you to meet a good friend. And Joanie’s good friend. Ben loved Joanie, too.”

  Harmon smiled tolerantly and extricated himself from the embrace. “Let’s all sit down, Charlie. I’ll get Miss McCone a drink.”

  Charlie nodded happily and lurched into a shabby overstuffed chair. The little room was scantily furnished: it contained a small love seat, formica coffee table, battered bureau, and thin mattress on an iron bedstand. A couple of sets of fatigues and Charlie’s old sheepskin jacket hung from pegs on the far wall. A second lamp, a cracked china base festooned with yellow roses, gave feeble light to the coffee table. The poverty of Charlie’s life threatened to overwhelm me as I sat down on the lumpy love seat and had to move to avoid a protruding spring.

  A cocktail shaker, with a corroding metal top, stood on the table next to several bottles of gin and vermouth. Harmon selected one of the glasses lined up there, inspecting it for cleanliness. It was smudged and clouded, like all the others.

  He glanced at me with a helpless look, poured straight gin into the glass, and handed it to me with a little bow. Evidently Charlie’s spree had begun with martinis, but that pretense at amenity had long since been abandoned.

  I smiled ruefully in return and sipped a little of the gin, trying not to gag. Harmon sat down next to me on the love seat. I noticed another glass of the colorless liquid on the floor near his feet.

  Harmon turned to me with a questioning look. “Are you investigating Joan’s …?”

  Querulous wor
ds from Charlie interrupted him. “You did love her, didn’t you, Ben, old Ben?”

  “Everybody loved Joan,” Harmon said evenly. “She and I were very good friends.”

  “You wouldn’t of been if I’d been watching like I should of.” Charlie was beginning to slur his words. “If I’d of been able to help her when the kid got picked up by the cops. She comes to me, says ‘Charlie, what am I going to do?’ But what was I supposedta say? I didn’t know what to do either. Hell, I don’t mess with drugs. What was I supposedta know?”

  “You did right, Charlie,” Harmon said soothingly.

  “Shit! Sure I did. ‘Go see Ben Harmon,’ I says. ‘He gets folks outa jail all the time.’ So she did; and next thing you know, old Ben Harmon is around here, stopping in to see Joanie, hanging around her, helping her out when the stupid kid goes and O.D.’s. Good old Ben, moving in on my woman.”

  Harmon looked at me and frowned, then said, “Now, you know it wasn’t like that, Charlie.”

  “Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Then what were you doing there? Why didn’t you go home to your wife and kids and that palace you’re always talking about out in the Sunset? What the hell were you doing with my woman? I should of been the one to comfort her. I always was until you. Wasn’t it like that, Mr. High-and-Mighty Harmon?”

  The bail bondsman kept his expression blank. “Charlie, you’re going to feel a lot better in the morning. You’re going to feel a lot better about everything and then we’ll forget you ever said this.”

  “Feel better in the morning?” Charlie snorted loudly. “I’m not gonna feel better. I’m gonna feel like hell. I’ll have the champion hangover of San Francisco. And it won’t make me change my mind about you, old Ben.”

  Harmon stood up, tugging at his suit-coat. “I think you’ll change your mind, Charlie. I think you will.”

  There was an undertone to his words that I couldn’t understand. I wondered what the relationship was between the two men, besides their mutual interest in Joan Albritton.