The Motive

by John Lescroart

  Cuneo was standing next to her and reached out his hand. He touched her arm as though commiserating somehow. She backed away a step. “Anyway, you’re not here for that.”

  “No.” He stayed close to her. “We like to come by and see how everybody’s holding up. The day after is often worse for next of kin. Also, frankly, maybe things occur to you that might have gone right by in the emotion of the moment, like last night.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. Something your father-in-law might have been going through, or Missy said. Why he might have had a reason to kill her.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head to one side. “What do you mean?”

  “About what?”

  “Well, you were just talking about why Paul might have wanted to kill Missy. I thought you had decided that that couldn’t have happened. You, the police, I mean. That’s what the other inspector told me, anyway.”

  “The other inspector? Glitsky?”

  “That’s it. Glitsky.”

  “You talked to him already?”

  “Yes. He called a few hours ago. We talked for about fifteen minutes. I would have thought you two would have communicated together. Haven’t you talked to him?”

  Cuneo showed nothing. Smiling, shrugging, he made it clear that this was normal enough. He patted her arm again. “He’s on days. Sometimes we cross each other. It’s all right. But how did you get to Hanover not shooting anybody? That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

  “Right.” She had backed away another step and bumped her leg against one of the room’s chairs. Suddenly, she put a hand to her forehead. “What am I thinking, keeping you standing out here like this?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and led the way, pulled out a chair for him around an oval, well-used wooden table that overlooked the backyard. Then she was moving back across the kitchen. “Can I get you some water? Coffee? Anything?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” He sat, half turned, kept his eyes on her. Obviously appraising, obviously approving. He thought he was keeping it low-key, even subtle. “So,” he said as his fingers started tapping on the table, “Glitsky?”

  She finally tucked the dish towel into the refrigerator’s handle and now, with her hands free, didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Leaning up against the kitchen counter, she crossed them over her breasts. “Well, I told him about Paul’s right arm being useless since the polio, so he sure didn’t shoot himself over the right ear. Not with his right hand, anyway.”

  “No,” Cuneo said, “I’d guess not.”

  “And then since Missy’s wound was up in the back of her head—you knew that?”

  He nodded, though it was news to him.

  “So she probably didn’t shoot herself there, either.”

  “So someone else was there?”

  “That’s what Inspector Glitsky seemed to think. It’s the only thing that fit.”

  The sound of steps on stairs and then a tall, well-built hazel-haired teenage boy entered the kitchen. Wearing the uniform of cargo pants and a gray Cal sweatshirt, he stopped in his tracks when he saw Cuneo, looked at his mother, back to the inspector. “Hey,” he said.

  Cuneo nodded. “Hey.”

  “My son, Saul,” she said. “Saul, this is Inspector Cuneo. He’s investigating who might have killed your grandfather.”

  At the mention of it, the boy’s shoulders sagged, and his face rearranged itself to accommodate the grief that threatened to show. Cuneo stood up and the boy came over to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “I hope you catch him, whoever it was.”

  “You got along well with your grandfather?”

  He nodded. “He was great. He rocked. He really did.” Looking out the windows over Cuneo’s shoulder,he shook his head. “I can’t believe somebody killed him.”

  “Maybe they really wanted to kill his girlfriend and he was just there.”

  “Yeah,” Saul said, “maybe that.” Awkward, he stood another moment, then turned to his mother. “I was just getting some food.”

  “All right, but save room for dinner.” She pointed toward the refrigerator and he walked over, lifted a carton of milk and went to drink from it.

  “Saul!”

  “Oh, yeah.” He grabbed a glass from the cupboard, filled it with milk, found a handful of cookies and started to leave, but then stopped at the doorway. “I hope you catch him,” he said again. “Really.”

  “We’re trying.”

  When Saul’s steps had retreated back upstairs, Cuneo got up from his chair and crossed over to where Catherine was standing. “You’ve got nice kids,” he said. “Is that all of them?”

  “There’s one more upstairs. Heather, the youngest. It’s homework time, so I’m surprised you got to see any of them. This time of day, they just disappear.”

  “And they’re just working like that on their own? You must be one heck of a good mother. What’s your secret?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s day-to-day survival. Just so they keep talking to you and don’t ever get a chance to forget that you love them more than anything. Do you have children?”

  He hung his head for an instant. “Regrettably, I’m single.” An apologetic smile. “Just never found the right woman, I guess.” Figuring the segue was seamless, Cuneo asked, “By the way, have you had any luck contacting your husband yet?”

  “No.” She snapped it out, suddenly edgy. Then, covering. “He’s a little late getting in is all. Probably means he caught a lot of fish.” The sides of her mouth rose, although it was a sad sort of a smile and she sighed. “We’ll be eating albacore ’til Christmas. I’m sure he’ll call when he gets in.”

  Cuneo took another step toward her, looked around the warm room, again laid a brief touch on her forearm. “If I had this to come home to, I know I would,” he said.

  “Yes, well . . .” She crossed to the refrigerator, grabbed the dish towel, turned to face him, now twisting the towel some more. “Well,” she said again, “that pasta isn’t going to make itself. If there’s nothing else . . .”

  “I think that about covers it. I’ll check in with Glitsky and get ourselves coordinated. I’m sorry about double-teaming you. That’s never our intention. People get nervous around too many cops.” He smiled right at her. “You’re not nervous, are you?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little bit.”

  “Don’t be. Not with me, anyway. I’m harmless, really, and much sweeter than I look.” Cuneo flashed a grin, then got his wallet and pulled out his business card, grabbed his pen from his shirt pocket. “Here,” he said, writing on the board where she was making her pasta, “this is my home number. Work is printed on the front. If you think of anything you think might be relevant, anytime, day or night, or even if you just want to talk, if your husband goes fishing again . . .” He let it hang, half a joke, but serious enough if she wanted to take him up on it.

  She was nervous, though, he was thinking as he drove up to Becker’s fire station. Nervous the whole time. Something definitely was going wrong with her husband.

  But no thoughts, not even those about his possible future conquest of Catherine Hanover, could stand up to the immediacy of his problem with Glitsky. Now not only had the man usurped his case, he’d stood it on its ear. This morning when he’d gone off duty, Cuneo was all but convinced that this seemed to be a more or less straightforward murder/suicide, with Hanover and D’Amiens the only two principals involved. Unfortunately, that’s what he’d told some reporters. Now here it was barely twelve hours later, and Glitsky had gotten in behind him to his witnesses. To know the details about the locations of the head wounds, he must have also gone to the medical examiner. So he was working this case soup to nuts and already had a big jump, in spite of the fact that Cuneo was out of the gate first.

  Cuneo figured that his only chance to save his job was to catch up. But the good news was that this case now looked like a righteous 187, a first-degree double murder.This was what Cuneo did and d
id well. And it had the added bonus that Paul Hanover was an important and well-known citizen, and Missy D’Amiens, as his fiancée, was going to have an interesting story as well.

  It wasn’t generally appreciated how few murders had bona fide motives. In his experience, most times people got killed for inane reasons. Some husband wouldn’t let his wife change the channel. Some guy’s dog shit on another guy’s step. They wouldn’t turn down the goddamned music. Stupid. But with someone like Hanover, or maybe even Missy, there would probably be a righteous motive—money, betrayal, extortion, jealousy. Whoever killed these people would have done it for a specific reason. Find the reason and the job was essentially done. Of course, proving the motive was a whole different kettle of fish than simply identifying the person who had it. You needed physical evidence. But at least, with a solid motive, you’d know where to look.

  He could get this case back from Glitsky yet. He’d make another appointment with Catherine, with the rest of the family. Check out Paul Hanover’s relations with past clients and partners, ex-wives if any, people to or from whom he donated or accepted money. He, Dan Cuneo, would find who benefited from these deaths and bring that person in. He’d make the arrest and solve this case before Glitsky knew what had hit him.

  Arnie Becker was still going. His younger partner, J. P. Dodd, in a filthy, charcoal-stained T-shirt and black pants, was crashed on the cot in their little side room at the Arson Unit headquarters on Evans Street, but Becker—showered and looking freshly dressed—sat at a card table sorting through what looked to be a few hundred scraps of paper, placing them into discrete piles in front of him as though he were dealing poker. Cuneo knocked on the open door. “How you doin’?”

  Becker stopped, looked up, smiled politely. “It might not have been D’Amiens,” he said. He scanned the piles in front of him and put his hand on one. A thin one— two pieces of paper.

  “Who? The woman in the fire?”

  Becker nodded, handed the paper across. “Those two people—they’re married—saw her walking from the house just before the alarm got called in.”

  “Saw Missy? They’re sure?”

  “A couple of them reasonably enough. Others not so sure.”

  “But if it was Missy, then who . . . ?”

  “Was in the house? I don’t know.” His face suddenly looked much younger, invigorated by the question. “You’ve got to love a good mystery, though, now and again, don’t you? Who’s missing besides her? And if it’s not her—D’Amiens—dead in the house, then where might she be? Huh?”

  “Really.” Cuneo looked at the names and addresses. “You got copies of these?”

  “Already made ’em. Those are yours.”

  A pause. “You talk to Glitsky?”

  “This morning, a little after you left.”

  “So he knows about this?”

  Becker didn’t even look up. Obviously—and why would he not?—he assumed the two cops were working together, and Cuneo saw no reason to raise a flag. The arson inspector continued sorting methodically. “I figured you’d be around sooner than he was and you could tell him. These people aren’t going anywhere. They live right there on Steiner.” Finally, he sat back. “I’d like to know who it was, though. In the house.”

  “If it wasn’t Missy,” Cuneo said, “then whoever she was looks pretty good for the murders.”

  He nodded. “If it was her that people saw leaving.”

  Maxine Willis lived in one of the surviving Painted Ladies, three houses down from Paul Hanover’s. In her early fifties, she was a very large, handsome, well-dressed black woman with a deep and booming voice. Her living room walls were stylishly adorned with tribal African art—dark-wood masks, spears, several framed works depicting working people or animals completely rendered in butterfly wings. The sofa was zebra skin, the chairs brown leather. Out the jutting front window, enough natural light remained that they could still see the park, but it was fading fast.

  “No. See? I knew it was her. And it was a little earlier than this,” she said. She turned and they both glanced at the clock on the mantel—8:15. “I saw her clearly.”

  “Missy D’Amiens?”

  She nodded. “Although I hadn’t ever met her to talk to. I didn’t know her name until I read it in the paper this morning. But it was Mr. Hanover’s girlfriend all right. I’d seen her here on the block a hundred times.”

  “Would you mind telling me exactly where you were and what you saw?” Cuneo’s foot tapped a time or two, but he caught it and willed it to stop, though immediately he began to tap his notebook.

  “Well, Joseph and I were having a party with some friends, Cyril and Jennifer. Just some supper and then we were going to go up to Slim’s, where a friend of ours was playing, but then of course the fire put an end to all that.”

  “And Joseph is . . . ?”

  “My husband. I expect him now any minute. He saw her, too.”

  “From where?”

  “Right here.”

  “In this room?”

  “Uh huh. The light is so good come evening. We like to have our cocktails out here, with the park out there across the way.” She closed her eyes for a minute, then moved to the windows that looked out over the street. “I was about right here.”

  Cuneo came over and stood next to her. The park was deserted except for a man walking a dog on the crest of the hill. Nearer, the street in front of them yawned empty, although cars lined both sides of it. No pedestrians on the sidewalks, either. The area was still a mess due to the fire.

  “Okay, and where did Ms. D’Amiens pass?”

  Maxine Willis lifted the lace curtain to one side and pointed. “Just out there. She was parked by that near light post just up the street.”

  “So she was going to her car?”

  She nodded.

  “And do you know what kind of car it was? Could you tell from here?”

  “I didn’t have to see it from last night. I knew it from other times, too. She drove a black Mercedes. One of the smaller ones, I think, the C-types.”

  Cuneo looked out, then back at his witness. If this was going to be a positive identification, he wanted to eliminate any possible ambiguities, and one had occurred to him. “Were you facing the way you are now? Toward the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she was on the other side of the street?”

  “Right.”

  “So you wouldn’t have seen her until she was past you, then. Walking away? Isn’t that right?”

  “Well, sideways maybe. Joseph saw her first. He was standing about where you are.”

  Cuneo again stared across into the street. After a minute: “Let me ask you this,” he said. “Why would he notice?”

  Her face clouded for a moment. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Well, I mean, there’s four of you—four, right?—four of you standing around having some drinks and Joseph sees some woman walk by outside. So what? Why would he comment on it? Weren’t people walking by all the time?”

  Striking a thoughtful pose, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t recall saying anybody commented about it. Man know better than act like that.” She looked at him, almost challenging, maybe waiting for him to show a sign of understanding. When none appeared, she sighed. “He’s standing here by the window and suddenly his eyes go wide. Poor fool don’t even know he’s doing it. So I look to see what he likes so much. And it’s her all right. So I give him the look, you know, and he knows he’s caught. Man’s always been a sucker for a pretty girl, and she was pretty enough.”

  “So the other two, your other guests. What happened with them?”

  “Cyril and Jennifer? They look to see what Joseph’s making eyes about. That’s all. It wasn’t a big thing at the time. Nobody even mentioned it out loud until the fire happened. Then later out in the street, we heard people saying it was Missy in the house with him. This was after we told the inspector we’d seen her.”

  “So what did you do th
en? I mean after you heard that?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing. What was I supposed to do? I figured I must have gotten it wrong. Until you told me just now that it might not have been her in the house after all. Which had to mean it was her walking by all along.”

  “But let me get this straight. From last night all the way until when I told you ten minutes ago that maybe it wasn’t Missy in the house, maybe it was someone else, you could not have sworn that the woman you saw walking by out there was her?”

  Maxine frowned. “No. I didn’t think about that. I just figured she went back in later. Maybe went out somewhere and came back. That could explain it, am I right? I thought it was her.”

  Glitsky sat at his desk reviewing utilization and arrest numbers, lost in the tedium, until the telephone rang and he realized that it had grown dark outside. Surprised anew that Cuneo had apparently decided not to check in with him at all, he got the phone in the middle of the second ring.

  “Glitsky.”

  “Abe.” His wife. A sigh of relief. “Good, you’re there. Is everything all right?”

  He looked at his watch. “I guess not, if the time got away from me so badly. Is it really eight thirty?”

  “Close enough. What have you been doing? Last I heard you had been summoned by the mayor and were running out to see her.”

  “And I did, too. Twice, in fact.”

  “What did she want?”

  “It’s a bit of a story. It could even be construed as good news of a sort.”

  “You sound like Dismas. ‘Construed as good news of a sort.’ You think you qualified that enough?”

  “I said it was a story. It’s good that she’s got confidence in me, I suppose. I could tell you in person in twenty minutes.”

  “That’d be nice. I have something that might be construed as good news of a sort myself.”