The Cheshire Cat's Eye

by Marcia Muller

  “We’ve been restoring and reselling for three years now. We’ve had no trouble.”

  “Where were your other restorations?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, the Haight. Noe Valley.”

  “But never this area before.”

  “No.”

  “So you may very well have problems, given the junkies and proximity to public housing projects.”

  He sipped his wine. “Okay, granted, we may.”

  “Do you know of anyone who wants to put a stop to the project?”

  “Eleanor van Dyne. But I already told you that.”

  “Anyone else?”

  He glanced at French, who asked, “What are you getting at, McCone?”

  “Just digging.”

  “Nosy broad.”

  I understood why Wintringham didn’t let French’s remarks irk him. Pure ritual, they were already sailing past me. “What about you, French? Do you have any enemies from your rock-and-roll days who might want to hurt you financially?”

  “Anybody who’s anybody in the business has enemies, but I doubt mine would get back at me by clobbering a house painter I’d hired.”

  He was probably right. And I couldn’t see van Dyne, in all her elegance, doing Jake in. Still, I’d have to check her out.

  “All right,” I said, “now let’s talk about your father’s murder, David. The police theorized a burglar killed him. What was taken?”

  “Small valuable things. Things that would have been easy to carry…Paul, how are you feeling?”

  Paul Collins appeared in the archway from the parlor. He wore a plaid bathrobe and slippers, and his sandy hair was tousled. “Better, thanks. I heard voices.”

  “We’re going over some things with Sharon. Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “Yes, I’d like that.” Collins poured from the jug. I wondered if drinking were wise on top of the Valium he’d taken. Well, Collins must know his capacity.

  “Tell me about the things that were taken,” I said to Wintringham.

  “What things?” Collins asked.

  “The ones that were stolen the night of Dad’s murder.”

  “Oh.” Collins gulped wine.

  Wintringham tilted back in his chair. “Let me see. There were a few pressed-glass bottles and flasks; Dad had a collection of those. A porcelain vase from the Ming dynasty. A small mantel clock. A very rare silver hot-water kettle. And, of course, the Cheshire Cat’s Eye.”

  “The what?”

  Collins said, “David, are you sure it’s good for you to relive all this?”

  “If it will help Sharon solve Jake’s murder.”

  “But, David…” Collins poured more wine. “This is a different murder entirely, and I don’t see—”

  “Neither do I,” French put in, “but if he wants to spend his money and McCone’s time on some half-assed idea, let him.”

  “But it upsets him to talk–”

  “Paul.” Wintringham held up a hand. “Be quiet and drink your wine. I’m not upset.”

  Sulkily, Collins nodded and sipped.

  “The Cheshire Cat’s Eye,” Wintringham went on, “was a Tiffany lamp, commissioned in nineteen hundred by my grandfather as a gift for his newborn son, my father.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It was a nursery lamp. The base was bronze, and in resembled a tree trunk, with the branches spreading out at the top, under the shade.”

  “But why was it called the Cheshire Cat’s Eye?”

  “Because of the design of the shade. It was the leaves of a tree, with the Cheshire Cat grinning through them. The leaves were in autumn colors: red, brown and gold. The teeth were iridescent white, a big grin. And the eye – Tiffany departed from the popular conception of the cat by giving it only one eye. He also departed from his usual technique of exclusively using glass by making the eye a greenish-yellow gemstone, appropriately called cat’s-eye.”

  “And the lamp was used in your father’s nursery?”

  “Yes, in the big Queen Anne. As he grew up, my grandfather read him Alice in Wonderland and told him a fanciful tale about how the Cheshire Cat had come to live in the special lamp in our house. Later, my father passed the story on to me.”

  It was fascinating, made more so by the tubular piece of metal that had sunk irretrievably into the Bay this afternoon.

  “Was the lamp electric?” I asked.

  “Kerosene.”

  Odd…

  Collins groaned, and Wintringham looked at him with concern.

  “I think I’ve had too much wine,” the pudgy man said.

  “How much Valium did you take today?” Wintringham demanded.

  “Quite a lot. I was upset…”

  “Then you shouldn’t drink at all. We’d better get you right upstairs to your room.”

  Collins nodded and both men rose. “Excuse us, please.” Wintringham said.

  I stood too. “That’s okay. I’m already late for an appointment.”

  French remained seated, watching them leave, a smirk on his pug-like face. “Nice little couple, huh, McCone? Poor pudgy Paul and his tranquilizers and motherly David and his T.L.C.”

  “Mr. French,” I said, “if you dislike everything and everyone her so much, why do you hang around?”

  “Beats working.” He continued to stare in the direction they’d gone, his face thoughtful now. “And sometimes you figure out some damned interesting things.”

  “Such as?”

  “No way, McCone. You do your own figuring. I’ll do mine.”

  11.

  Greg set two glasses of white wine on the low table in front of our easy chairs. Beyond it, a fire smoldered on the hearth. The same adjective could also be applied to Greg’s mood. I wondered if he were about to burst into flame or cool down like the logs.

  I sipped the wine and avoided his eyes, first glancing toward the windows that usually presented a Twin Peaks panorama of the city. Unfortunately, the draperies were closed. I then directed my gaze out the French doors, where floodlights played on a garden that cascaded down the steep slope of the hill. How long I could feign fascination with its vines and shrubs I didn’t know, but they were preferable to Greg’s grim countenance.

  “Think you’ll find a clue out there?”

  I jerked my head toward where he sat in the companion chair at my side. “What?”

  “That’s where you’ve been all evening, chasing after clues, isn’t it?”

  “Greg, I’ve already apologized for being late.” And not all that late; I’d arrived a little after ten.

  “I don’t care about the time. I’m capable of amusing myself while waiting for you.”

  “Then what the hell is wrong?”

  “What is wrong is that you are messing around with matters that in no way concern you.” He spoke very slowly and precisely.

  I felt a flash of anger. “David Wintringham hired me. It’s my job.”

  “Your job, as I understand it, is staff investigator for All Souls. It consists of interviewing prospective witnesses, researching public records, and –”

  “And occasionally tracking down killers?”

  His dark eyebrows shot up sardonically. “And how often do you perform this function?”

  Trying to keep cool, I sipped some wine and choked. As I double over, coughing, Greg patted me on the back. His touch was not all that gentle. Recovering, I said, “My job is to provide any investigative services our clients require.”

  “Like I said, how many murderers have you tracked down?”

  I glared at him.

  “Well?”

  “Two,” I replied sullenly.

  “Yeah. Not a bad average, but the first time you almost got yourself killed. The second time, you almost lost a friend.”

  “Nonsense. I-”

  He grabbed my right hand. “You see that scar?”

  Unwillingly I looked down at the souvenir of my first murder case. “I know it’s there. You don’t have to r
emind me. But it certainly wasn’t a fatal – ”

  “That knife could have pierced you in lots worse places.”

  “I know that too.”

  He dropped my hand and I reached for my wineglass. “I have some additional information for you,” I said, trying not to sound grudging.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s something Jake said to me on the phone, something I’d forgotten.”

  “What?”

  “He said that the person he was meeting was unreliable because he had a drinking problem.”

  “He?”

  “Figure of speech. Actually, I think he said ‘the person.’ Anyway, I don’t think it counts for much, because I haven’t come across anyone who drinks to that degree. Of course, the person could be a closet drinker.”

  “Also, this person may not have been his killer.”

  “Maybe, but it seems logical.”

  “Logic! Like I’ve said before about your logic – ”

  “Well, for what it’s worth – and I agree that it’s probably not much – that’s what he said.”

  “Thanks, I’ll make a note of it.”

  “And now,” I added, “in exchange tell me the results of Jake’s postmortem.”

  Greg rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Give me patience, oh lord!”

  “Please, Greg.”

  “You don’t know when to quit!”

  “Damned right I don’t!”

  We sat, stubborn glares locked. Would we ever be together more than an hour without getting into a verbal tug-of-war? I doubted it.

  Finally Greg shrugged and settled back in his chair, glass in hand. “The cause of death,” he began, “was a blow to the mastoid bone, which resulted in a severe cranial hemorrhage. I won’t bore you with the technical details.”

  I ignored the latter comment. It could be a cheap shot, or it could be that Greg himself considered the details boring. “Did they fix the time of death?”

  “Around eight p.m.”

  “And I got there shortly before nine. He had asked me to meet him at seven-thirty, so that means the killer either was to be part of that meeting or knew about it.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And the accident definitely was faked?”

  “Yes. Besides the factors you observed, when the body was moved we found very little paint under it. Had he fallen from the ladder and knocked the can over with him, there would have been more. It looks as if it were poured on and around him.”

  I sighed with relief, and Greg looked at me oddly. I kept silent, not wanting to reveal the contents of last night’s bad dreams: Jake unconscious and drowning in the viscous liquid.

  “What about other evidence at the scene? Any fingerprints?”

  “The ladder, brush, and paint can were wiped clean. Your prints were nice and clear. The others will be checked, but chances are they’ll either be partials or turn out to belong to workmen.”

  “And the murder weapon?”

  “The injury was consistent with the shape of an ordinary hammer.”

  “Did you find it?”

  With an irritated motion, he crushed out his half-smoked cigarette. “No. We’ve combed the area, but there were plenty of hammers around the construction site. The lab will have to test them all, and that’ll take time. And, in the end, the killer probably took it with him and disposed of it where it will never turn up.”

  I nodded, my mind on the metal piece I’d snatched up. “Anything else interesting at the scene?”

  He turned to face me. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I noticed a lot of debris.”

  “Most of which had been torn out of the house in the restoration process.”

  “There was some colored glass.”

  “Yes, there was.”

  “Well, was that from the house?”

  His eyes narrowed. “It may have been.”

  “Could you tell if it was… you know, old?”

  He paused, gazing intently at my face. “Sharon, is there something you want to tell me?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Greg, all I asked was a simple question about something I noticed at the murder scene.”

  “Hmmm. Yes, I see.”

  “Was the glass old?”

  He relented. “No. It was standard modern glass, plus portions of a light bulb. The lab did a spectrographic analysis.” My face must have fallen, because Greg frowned and repeated, “Are you sure you don’t have something I should know?”

  I thought of the tubular metal piece and my negligence in letting it out of my hands. A wave of guilt washed over me. Admit I’d taken evidence from a murder scene and lost it? Never, not to Greg. “I wish I did. So far, all I’ve come up with are a number of peculiar characters.” Briefly, I described them, omitting Dettman’s threat.

  When I’d finished, Greg said, “Well, I’m sure your path is crossing those of my men. Try to keep out of their way, will you? We’ve got two other new murders to deal with, and we’re shorthanded.”

  “Don’t worry.” Irritated, I silently vowed to get far ahead of his plodding investigators.

  Greg relaxed in his chair again, head resting on the high back. There were tired lines on his face, and I felt a flash of sympathy. Three new murders was a big case load, even for a man with as much energy as the lieutenant, and I didn’t want to press him further, but I still needed to know about the Richard Wintringham file.

  Assuming a casual pose, I sipped wine and said, “Oh, by the way, did you get a chance to go over the file on that old murder?”

  He sighed. “If tenacity wasn’t one of the things I admire most about you, I’d boot you out of here for that. Yes, I looked at it.”

  “And?”

  “It appears to have been a simple case of murder in the course of a burglary. A servant found the old man in his study in the tower room on the second floor. Wintringham had been bludgeoned to death late the previous evening.”

  “Like Jake Kaufmann.”

  “Like him, but don’t make too much of it.”

  “What about alibis?”

  “Who did you have in mind?”

  “Well, the son, David Wintringham.”

  “Trusting of your client, aren’t you? David was at home, and his lover, Paul Collins, backed that up the same as this time. Everyone we interviewed in connection with the case had a good alibi, which gives further credence to the burglary theory.”

  “Did any of the objects taken ever turn up?”

  “No. We circularized, of course, but none surfaced.”

  “They would have been hard to dispose of.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the murder weapon?”

  “An onyx bookend, lying near the body.”

  “Prints?”

  “Wiped.”

  “Pretty cool-headed, for a burglar.”

  “Sharon, do you mind if we drop the speculation for tonight?” There was an edge to his voice. “I don’t usually spend my evenings being grilled about old cases.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.

  “That’s okay.” He reached for the bottle and poured us more wine. “Frankly, there’s nothing I hate more than a three-year-old open file.”

  We leaned back in our respective chairs, sipping wine. The embers glowed and crackled. Greg was right: I’d taken unfair advantage of our friendship.

  I glanced over at him speculatively. Months ago I’d been wary of bedding down with a cop – a powerful cop, at that. We’d quarreled, made up, quarreled again. Then as I’d come to know him, the reluctance had vanished, only to be replaced by a series of frustrating and almost comical interferences. The last of these, two weeks ago, had been an ill-timed telephone call summoning him to a death scene on Potrero Hill. Entering into an intimate relationship with a homicide lieutenant was no easy feat.

  Nor would it be tonight. He had set down his glass and sat relaxed, feet outstretched toward t
he dying fire, eyes closed. The tired lines were fading from his face.