The Cheshire Cat's Eye

by Marcia Muller

  Well, the man had a right to be exhausted. Tiptoeing, I started to leave him to his hard-earned rest. As I passed, however, he held out his hand and said, “Come sit with me, papoose. The chair’s big enough for two.”

  I slipped onto his lap, close in the circle of his arms, and we kissed as we had many times before. His hands moved to my breast, my waist, and along the curve of my hip. I stiffened, listening.

  As if he heard my thoughts, Greg raised his lips from mine. He smiled lazily. “Don’t worry, papoose,” he said, using the nickname I was beginning to tolerate. “Before you got here, I turned the phone bell off. Even private eyes and cops deserve some time to devote to one another.”

  12.

  I awoke in the tumbled sheets, Greg’s arm securely around me. Turning my head, I kissed the crook of his elbow and, when he didn’t respond, bit it gently. He chuckled and pulled me against him.

  “Again?” I whispered, my lips against his neck.

  “Uh-huh, again.”

  He kissed me, and then his lips traveled down my throat. I pressed him closer, caressing his lean body. We went slowly, all gentle action and reaction, then more insistently.

  At one point, as he moved above me, I opened my eyes and saw his face, tensed and flushed with pleasure. And just then, before all thought became fragmented, I reflected how good it was to be able to give and receive…

  We lay beside each other for a while, hands touching, quiet. Then I moved up on one elbow to say something and, in the motion, glimpsed the orange numbers of the digital clock on the nightstand.

  “Good lord!” I exclaimed, sitting up.

  Greg frowned and smoothed back his rumpled blond hair. “I’m not that bad a sight in the morning, am I?”

  “It’s quarter to ten!” I hopped out of bed.

  He raised himself up on one elbow, appreciative eyes moving over my body. “So?”

  “I’m late!” I headed for the shower. “I don’t suppose you happen to have a shower cap?”

  “Jesus Christ! Sleeping with a private eye is as bad as screwing another cop!” he exclaimed. “Second drawer on the right. There’s also a fresh toothbrush and paste.”

  I located the cap and got into the shower, rankled at the availability of these conveniences. The extra pillow he’d charmingly produced from the closet last night took on unpleasant overtones. Just how many women used that pillow anyway? And what was this about screwing another cop?

  Well, hell, I’d worry about that later. The lieutenant was a fine bed partner and, in the course of the night, he’d expressed similar sentiments about me. Now it was time to show him I was also a fine private eye. Toward that end, I must get to Prince Albert’s Lighthouse before noon.

  This time I drove directly down Natoma Street and parked on the sidewalk, as the residents did. The place had a sleepy, Sunday morning feeling, and the only person in evidence was Prince Albert himself, who rushed from his shop as I approached. His ginger hair stuck out wildly from under his top hat, and the tails of his gray velvet frock coat billowed. He carried a cardboard carton.

  “Hello,” I called. “I’ve come to learn the tricks of your trade.”

  He stopped midway on the sidewalk and almost dropped the carton. His puckish face was blank for a moment, then recognition flowed across it. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “I’d clean forgotten about you.”

  “After you went and lost my clue?”

  He set the carton next to a blue panel truck and opened its rear door. “I don’t mean I had forgotten you, only our appointment. And now I’m late.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven. “Late for what?”

  He gestured distractedly. “There’s been a problem out at the show. One of my supporting beams broke and destroyed some fixtures. I have to replace them.”

  “That’s too bad! Were they valuable?”

  “In terms of the time I’d put into them, yes. Each fixture is hand-crafted. I’m not one of the big operators like Victoriana, you see; with me it’s art, a labor of love. I sell a few fixtures a month, live over the shop, frugally.” He took of his top hat and smoothed his hair, replacing the red-plumed creation carefully. “You can understand why I’m upset. And why I must break our appointment.”

  Disappointed, I nodded. “Can we make it another time?”

  “Sure.” He fished in the pocket of his frock coat and produced a card. “Give me a call. Once the show is over, I’m all yours.” He slammed the door of the truck, ran around to the driver’s side, and was gone in a cloud of exhaust.

  Reflexively I noted the license number of the truck and jotted it on the card. Yes, his distress seemed genuine, but, no, I didn’t trust Prince Albert.

  Now what? I had hours to kill before Eleanor van Dyne’s house tour. All Souls and Hank were a likely alternative. I rumbled down the narrow street in the MG and turned toward the Bernal Heights district.

  The big brown Victorian – Italianate, I now knew – stood on a sloping street across from a triangular park. I wedged my car between two that illegally extended around the corner, thus imparting an aura of respectability to both. Although it was Sunday, Hank would be here. He, along with several other associates, occupied free rooms on the second story that were the cooperative’s way of compensating for dismally low salaries.

  At the rear of the first floor was a big nineteen-fifties-style kitchen. A couple of attorneys sat at a round table near the window, eating breakfast with the company of the Sunday paper. When I asked for Hank, one of them muttered, “Law library.”

  Unlike Wintringham’s Victorians, the rooms of this one had been divided and partitioned until they provided no hint of the classical floor plan. My own office, in fact, was little more than a converted closet. I went back down the hall and entered a door on the right.

  Hank sat at the table beside a sign that read, “Please return books to shelves when you’re finished.” A pile of California Appellate Reports and Deering’s California Codes attested to its effectiveness. Hank looked up when I came in, his eyes tired behind thick horn-rimmed glasses.

  I sat across the table from him. “How you doing?”

  “Fair.”

  “Only fair?”

  “It’s been a rough weekend.”

  I remembered: He’d had to break the news to Jake’s family. “How did it go with Mrs. Kaufmann?”

  “Not bad, considering.” He took off his glasses and polished them on the tail of his plaid flannel shirt. “She’s a real gutsy lady.”

  “That’s what one of Jake’s employees said. I understand she intends to keep on running the business.”

  Hank replaced his glasses. “We didn’t go into it. If she does, I guess my services will be required.”

  “Hank,” I said, leaning forward, my hands clasped on the table, “I ought to tell you, we’ve got a new client.”

  “David Wintringham, the owner of the house where you found Jake. He called and told me you’d bring his application in. And that you’d agree to investigate for him. Nice of you to let me know.”

  I glanced at him to see if he were seriously annoyed. Normally Hank was the most easygoing boss in existence. After a few seconds, I decided he had merely made the remark as an exercise. I said, “I didn’t want to bother you on a Saturday.”

  “Sure.” He shut the leatherbound volume in front of him. Hank was a round-the-clock worker, Saturday being no different to him than Tuesday. “So what have you found out?”

  Quickly I outlined the events of the last twenty-four hours, omitting only the personal details of my visit to Greg. Hank listened thoughtfully, tapping his forefinger on the edge of the table.

  “Nick Dettman,” he said when I’d finished.

  “He sends his regards.”

  “Huh.”

  “He also sent a nice threat to Wintringham through me, which I didn’t deliver. And he directly tossed me a threat, which I caught and returned.”

  Hank’s eyes widened. “Dettman did that?”

&nbs
p; “Yes. What do you know about him?”

  “He was on the Board of Supes for a couple of terms, about five, six years ago.” Hank scratched his curly light-brown head. “He didn’t do a good job; he’s not really able to represent the interests of the black constituency that elected him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s too middle class. What some people might call an ‘oreo.’ He got elected on the issues that concern the blacks, but he was only mouthing phrases. The guy just doesn’t understand his own people. He sided against them on almost every issue.”

  “So he wasn’t reelected.”

  “No, not that he didn’t try.”

  “And now?”

  “For a while he maintained some power through providing community legal services, but now that the middle class is taking over much of that neighborhood – and the junkies the rest – Dettman’s authority is vanishing. If you want an explanation for his threatening you and Wintringham, I’d say it’s the reaction of a desperate man.”

  “He needs power that badly?”

  Hank nodded. “He craves it like a junkie. Without it, Nick Dettman is merely another storefront ghetto lawyer.”

  “So you wouldn’t take the threats seriously, then?”

  “I didn’t say that. Dettman may be an oreo, but he’s been on Haight Street a long time, and he has contacts with some rough characters. Take his threats very seriously. Watch it, Shar. I mean it.”

  The gravity of his tone sent a shiver along my spine. “Don’t worry. I will.” My watch read noon: time to grab some lunch and change my clothes for the house tour. I stood up.

  “Oh, Shar.” Hank’s tone was elaborately casual. “You didn’t finish with your story.”

  Instantly I knew what was coming. “Yes, I did.”

  “Nope.” A teasing light appeared in his eyes. “How’d it go with the lieutenant?”

  “I told you, he didn’t like the idea of my investigating the case, but he couldn’t –”

  “You know what I mean.” Hank had introduced Greg and me, and took what I considered an unnatural interest in the progress of our relationship.

  I backed toward the door. “He also gave me the results of the postmortem, and…”

  “Come on, Shar.”

  I stepped into the hall, feeling smug. “I’ll see you later.”

  Hank called, “Other women have said he’s very good.”

  I whirled, glaring. There it was again: other women.

  “Is he?” Hank persisted.

  Irritated at my flash of jealousy, I spat out, “Yes! And if you want the whole story, why don’t you ask him how good I am!” Then, mortified, I clapped my hand to my mouth and fled down the hall, Hank’s goddamned chuckles following me.

  13.

  Rosettes. Pilasters. Colonettes. Cornices. Witch’s caps. Gables. Finials.

  By six o’clock my feet hurt and my mind was crammed with more architectural details than I’d ever hoped to possess. I knew that the usual San Francisco lot was twenty-five by one hundred feet; that most Victorians shared the same long narrow floor plan; that they were constructed from California’s then-abundant redwood trees.

  The wood in the dining room of the Haas-Lilienthal House, where I now stood, was golden oak, however. So Eleanor van Dyne informed me as I reached for my seventh cheese-and-cracker. When I’d gone home to change into the conservative black pantsuit appropriate for this occasion, I’d neglected to eat and now, as well as being footsore, I was starving.

  As politely as possible with a mouthful of Danish tilsit and a Ritz cracker, I murmured my appreciation of the highly polished wainscoting. Van Dyne had taken a liking to me, presumably because I’d claimed to share her views on color. I wanted to keep her talking.

  I asked, “How come Salvation Incorporated is holding this reception at Heritage’s headquarters?” The mansion, an impressive combination of Queen Anne and Stick styles, had been donated to that foundation by the heirs of the original owners some years before. It was open for public tours and private parties such as this, but it seemed odd that van Dyne’s group would hold their wine-and-cheese tasting here when they had a perfectly good mansion of their own.

  Van Dyne helped herself to another glass of wine from the sideboard. She had a surprising capacity. “Our headquarters on California Street is currently undergoing redecoration and, as usual, it’s behind schedule. When it became apparent it wouldn’t be ready for our tour, Heritage very generously offered to let us hold the reception here. We are not rivals; we’re all in the preservation effort together.”

  I glanced around at the crowd, most of whom were middle-aged and appeared well heeled. “How did you get into this line of work?” I asked. “Preservation, I mean.”

  “I’m a fifth-generation San Franciscan. My family had a mansion far more splendid than this one, on Van Ness Avenue. Unfortunately it was dynamited following the quake in oh-six.”

  As Nick Dettman had mentioned last night, Van Ness, the widest street in the city, had been used as a firebreak. The Army Engineers had dynamited all the buildings on the east side of it to stop the spread of the flames that were the real cause of the postearthquake destruction.

  Van Dyne went on, “At any rate, my family has always had a sense of civic duty. Others of my means,” she added contemptuously, “may prefer to spend their days at I. Magnin fashion shows, but I feel it’s important to make a contribution if you have the leisure to do so.”

  I knew which people she spoke of: They were the ones who went to the opening night of the opera season expressly to show off their designer gowns. To bring the subject closer to my investigation, I said, “Your motivation makes me think of David Wintringham. I believe it was a family mansion that interested him in the preservationist effort.”

  The lines around van Dyne’s mouth hardened. “The resemblance stops there.”

  “I don’t understand. Aren’t the Wintringhams another old San Francisco family?”

  She raised her eyebrows, as if this were the first time it had occurred to her. “Yes, they are. Fourth generation. It’s hard to understand how… Of course, David’s great-grandmother was only a Schuyler. Perhaps that explains it.” She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me.

  “Explains what?”

  She made a quick gesture of dismissal. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. How long have you lived in San Francisco, dear?”

  “About nine years, both here and in Berkeley. I’m originally from San Diego.”

  “Not long enough. Not nearly long enough.”

  The words stung. I considered myself a stable resident of the city. I certainly knew it better than most people. I had a job, I voted, I even planned to buy a house or condominium someday. Who was van Dyne, to intimate I didn’t belong? Swallowing my annoyance, I said, “But you say you differ from David Wintringham. How so?”

  “Let’s start with the father, Richard. He may have been fond of the family home, but at the same time he created those stucco monstrosities out in the Avenues. And do you know what he did to those other houses in the Steiner Street block?”

  I shook my head.

  “He carved them up into apartments. Stripped them of their original fixtures. Walled up fireplaces when he didn’t just plain rip them out.”

  I recalled the living room of the house where I’d first met Wintringham and Charmaine. “David is restoring them to the original, though.”

  “So he says. If he does, he’s got his work cut out for him. The worst of it is the exteriors. They’ve either been covered with asbestos siding or stuccoed over, all in the interest of postwar modernity, to say nothing of saving on paint.”

  “What will he have to do, remove the stucco and asbestos?”

  “Yes. It’s a painstaking process. If he’s lucky, there will be scars on the wood beneath that will show where the original ornamentation was and what it was like. A good woodworker can match up old pieces of trim with the scars or, if it’s unavailable, mill new on
es. But, if I know David, he’ll just toss on whatever he thinks looks good, paint it garishly, and sell it to the highest bidder.”

  “I take it your organization doesn’t – ”

  “Let me tell you about Salvation Incorporated. We advocate exact restoration, down to every detail, strictly as the homes were when they were built. Unfortunately, David doesn’t have the patience for that. And the worst of his crimes is his use of color.”

  “You mean exterior?”

  “Interior, too. The décor… But don’t get me started on that.”