Too Close to the Edge

by Susan Dunlap

  She took the moment and several more. “If Liz had found out,” she said even more slowly, “she would have canned me. But I guess that doesn’t matter any more, huh?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, see, I had a date.” She smiled, her eyes half closed. Then letting her gaze fall to the mound of her belly, she said, “I know, it’s hard to believe, huh? After my husband ran off, I was depressed. Let myself go. Used to be in good shape, when I worked at the gym. Sometimes, then, I worked out … a couple hours a day. Nick, my husband, said it looked good … to have someone on the machines, looked like the place was busy. I was … in good shape.”

  “About your date?” I prodded.

  “Well, I don’t have … many dates. This guy asked me … to dinner, and I … wasn’t about to say no.”

  “I’ll need his name and address.”

  Slowly she shook her head. “Don’t know.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Her thin mouth tightened in fear. I could almost see the spurt of adrenaline. “It’s the truth. I lied about the fifty bucks and the pizza and all, but this is the truth. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Then give me proof.”

  “He took me to a place on the Bay. They’ll remember me. I had on my shawl, the one with the red roses on it. They’ll remember.”

  “Just like the girl at the pizza place would remember you?”

  “No, but this is true. I was there. We had dinner. I had prawns stuffed with crab. And white wine. I haven’t had a dinner like that since I left Santa Fe.”

  “A dinner like that and you don’t know this man’s name?”

  “Barney. That’s all I know.” Her eyelids drooped again. The phenobarb was stronger than fear. In another minute or two she’d be completely out of it.

  “Where does he live?” I demanded. “Didn’t he invite you back to his place?”

  “He did, yeah. And I’m not going … to try … to tell you I wasn’t going to go. You’re too smart … to believe that.” Her cheeks pulled up into a lopsided attempt at a smile. “I didn’t go. He thought I would. We were walking … out of the restaurant. He started talking about ropes, and tying me up … in the bathtub. Real kinky stuff. I could have drowned. I’m no fool. I split.”

  “Which restaurant did you go to?”

  Her eyes shut completely.

  “Which restaurant?”

  Her eyelids flickered but didn’t open. When she spoke her voice was so low I had to lean in to hear. She said, “The Shanty.”

  The Shanty had been closed for five years.

  “Aura!”

  She slumped in her chair, completely out. She had said that the phenobarbital was strong, but not so potent as to knock her out in twenty minutes. She must normally have halved the pills. She had been exhausted from last night.

  This dose had been her escape, at least for a few hours. And for those hours I wouldn’t know what it was she had been doing the night when Liz was killed. I’d only know she’d gone to lengths to avoid telling me.

  She didn’t look in danger of doing more than drifting off into a comfortable and probably much-needed sleep, but I couldn’t take any chances. Irritably, I called the fire department for medics. And, as I suspected, when the medics finished their assessment, they pronounced Aura in no danger. She just needed to sleep off the effects. But they couldn’t take a chance either.

  As they carried her out, on her way to the county hospital, the white coat in the rear said, “Hey, man, move it. We got forty-five minutes to lunch.”

  I looked at my watch. Eleven-fifteen! I was supposed to meet Pereira outside Herman Ott’s office fifteen minutes ago. By now, she’d have left and taken my only leverage with her. Or she’d have seen him and bartered it away for information on the shoe thief.

  I motioned to Heling. She could continue her surveillance from inside. “Keep an eye on the driveway. If Mayer tries to leave, find out where he’s going. I have to talk to him. And while you’re here, catalog the contents of the office—every file, every note, every name on the calendar, particularly anything that has to do with her son. Got that? And check in with me before you leave,” I said. And ran.

  CHAPTER 15

  I LEFT THE BLACK and white double-parked in front of Herman Ott’s building and took the stairs two at a time. As I reached Ott’s floor, the ponderous sounds of soap opera music oozed from the corner apartment. Three preschoolers on big wheels careened past the landing. I hurried by two small girls huddled conspiratorially in the safety of the corner, past an open door through which came the aroma of curry and ginger cooking. I rapped on Ott’s door just as the tiny cyclists began their next lap.

  “Who’s there?” At the best of times Herman Ott, with his strange passion for yellow, resembled a large canary. But this morning he didn’t sound like a creature anyone would pay money for.

  “It’s Smith, Ott,” I said, catching my breath.

  The door opened. But Herman Ott was not standing in the doorway.

  I glanced around it to see a blond woman in a tailored gray suit and black high heels. Under her arm was a leather briefcase. I did a double take realizing it was Connie Pereira. I’d never seen her in her financial district garb. She looked more formidable than Mrs. Vorkey in Accounting. She looked like a woman who would stare disdainfully down the full length of her nose at your financial shambles, then sigh, settle down, and set things right. She looked as out of place in Herman Ott’s shabby office, in front of Herman Ott’s disheveled self, as anyone I’d ever seen.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” I muttered.

  “No problem,” she said. “We’ve arranged everything, and I’m just about to start on these forms.” She indicated a small stack topped by the infamous 4562. “It’s not complicated if you understand the mentality behind it. But the instructions,” she threw up her hands. “Anyone unfamiliar with the tax system wouldn’t have a chance.”

  I nodded. I hoped she wasn’t laying it on too thick. I glanced at Herman Ott. He nodded. His eyes were bloodshot, the skin beneath them was blue-gray. Everything about him sagged. If he resembled a canary at all now, it was one about to be flushed. It didn’t take a detective to see he had spent the sixteen hours since I’d left him staring at the tax forms and getting no place. When Connie Pereira arrived, she must have looked to him like the angel of salvation. I said, “So you’ve taken our offer, Ott.”

  Eyeing Pereira as she settled in his chair and began straightening up the co-mingling piles on the desk, he said, “We worked out a deal.”

  “For?”

  Ott’s red eyes narrowed. “The deal’s made, Smith. Done. Doesn’t matter what’s involved.”

  “So then, tell me.”

  “Okay, Smith, but don’t take this as an opening for renegotiation. There’s more than one boy grabbing those shoes. They’re college kids. And the shoes aren’t being fenced at the flea markets.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s plenty.”

  I glanced at Pereira. She grinned. “I’ll save you two a couple of rounds. He said he’ll keep his eyes open.”

  I nodded. She’d gotten all she could hope for. She’d also gotten all that could be squeezed from her tax work. I knew Ott’s unshakable ethics where his work was concerned. Once he made a deal, he’d stick by it no matter how dangerous it made things for him. And he expected the same good faith from those on the other end. Delayed payments were poor faith. But going back on a deal, trying to squeeze more out of it, was no faith at all. I said, “I need to talk to you, Ott.”

  “Smith, I said—”

  “Not about this.”

  “You brought me my money?” he asked mockingly.

  “You’ll get it.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as the paperwork clears. You know you haven’t made yourself Mr. Congeniality around the department.”

  The hint of a smile flickered at the corners of his pale lips. It was a sign how tired he
was. In prime form Ott would never exhibit a friendly emotion to an adversary. He’d spent too long on the streets where a dominating glower was de rigueur. “The police review commission, huh?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “But Smith, we had a deal.”

  “We have a deal. But you made it almost impossible for me to come through.”

  “A deal’s a deal. You should have taken that into account.”

  “Ott, you testified the day I submitted the form. Instead of requesting a routine payment to a local P.I., I found myself asking for money for a man who’d created an entire week of work for the department. You changed the balance, Ott.”

  He rubbed his palm against the leg of his tan chinos. “You still owe me two hundred dollars.”

  I almost smiled. With that pause, he’d conceded the point. “It’s going through. I had to stick my neck out, but you’ll get it. But that’s not what I came to talk about.”

  “Could you two barter somewhere else?” Pereira grumbled. “I’m trying to concentrate on the Accelerated Cost Recovery System here.”

  I pulled open the door. The big wheels clattered past.

  “Come back tomorrow, Smith,” Ott said.

  “It’s about Liz Goldenstern. Tomorrow’s too late.”

  His eyes almost closed—another sign of his exhaustion.

  I wasn’t surprised he didn’t ask what. Even though Ott had been holed up here with his schedule C’s, I never questioned that he would know about Liz’s murder. His sources were not the types to be home doing taxes.

  Giving his head a shake, he said, “Okay. In the other room.”

  The times I’d peered in through the doorway into that room, his folding bed had been bare, and his clothes, blankets, and books had covered the floor. During those long pauses, while he considered whether to deal or not, I’d wondered absently how he managed to get across this mess without breaking his neck. Did he place each foot with care? Or were there tiny, camouflaged clearings where he could touch bare floor? I watched as he passed through the door. His normal gait changed; his feet dragged, as if he were trudging through mud.

  I followed, nearly tripping over two large wicker baskets. Each was half filled with yellow clothes—one batch rumpled but clean, the other shaded with dirt, smeared with grease, or spotted with liquids that had turned to brittle brown. When all the garments had made it to the second basket, I could picture him hauling them to the Laundromat, ready to transform basket two into basket one.

  He poised his butt over the visible springs of his once over-stuffed chair and lowered himself down.

  I sat on the bare mattress. “You called Liz yesterday.”

  He started to answer.

  I held up a hand. “I heard the tape. That’s not what I’m asking. What you said was, ‘You were right; only they are up-to-date.’ What did that mean?”

  He looked down, at a coffee stain on his chinos. He wouldn’t give me the line about his call having nothing to do with the murder. He was too professional for that. He knew I could haul him in as a material witness. I knew he could tell me enough to pass for cooperating, and too little to be worth anything.

  “Okay, Smith. She was thinking of taking a class at U.C. Extension. Liz wanted to know how U.C. compared to other schools.”

  “Jesus, Ott. You are tired. The kids on the big wheels could do better than that.”

  He shrugged.

  “Ott, whatever you said, it was virtually the last message she had before someone drowned her. I won’t insult you by asking if the connection occurred to you.”

  “It was a computer class.”

  “Sure.” Behind him on the radiator sat a pot caked with salt and chemicals. A thin mist rose from it—the poor man’s humidifier. Beside it was an under-the-counter-type refrigerator, with dark scuff marks from being kicked shut. There was no counter. A hot plate sat on the floor, dangerously close to the edge of a blanket.

  I looked back at him slumped in his chair. I recalled Ott’s sociable voice on the tape when he said, “My fee is dinner. Let me know when.” It was a tone I had never heard from him. I doubted many had. “Ott,” I said, “we’re on the same side here. This is more than just another case for me.”

  His eyes opened a fraction.

  “Someone flipped Liz in the water and watched her drown. They didn’t even have the decency to throw her in all the way. Ott, just her head and shoulders were underwater. Don’t you understand the viciousness in that? This wasn’t a killing of convenience. Someone really hated her. The killer was taunting her as she died.”

  His eyes opened wider. He hadn’t known that.

  Slowly I said, “Liz Goldenstern wasn’t just another client, was she? You cared about her?”

  “Back off, Smith,” he snapped.

  I sighed. “Okay, okay. You’re going to have to come across with the real story sooner or later. You know that. The only one who’ll thank you for holding out is Liz’s killer.”

  “Liz was a woman you could trust,” he said, almost to himself. “With her a deal was a deal.”

  I hadn’t considered Liz as a female Ott. But now that he mentioned this similarity, I could see it. Ott irate about my late two hundred dollars, Liz furious at the man with the four-pronged cane who deserted her picket line—they were indeed birds of a feather.

  Ott pushed himself halfway up. His shirttail caught on a spring from the seat cushion. Without turning around, he ripped it free and stood, the torn flannel still in his hand. “This is what I’m going to give you, Smith. Before the accident, she crewed in the bay for herring. You know what that’s like? Fish and Game sets a limit. In thirty-six hours, sometimes less, it’s been filled. A crew can make thousands of dollars in one night. It’s pitch black. The fog’s thick. No one runs with lights for fear someone else will check out their spot. The bay’s so jammed up the boats are smashing into each other. Nets get cut ‘accidentally.’ It’s as cutthroat as it comes. Liz was with one of the Capellis, Tony, the youngest. He was high when he went out. About three in the morning the nets got tangled. He dove in. And when he didn’t come up, Liz had to go in after him. There were only the two of them on the boat. Leaving it to bounce around on top of you while you hunt in the dark is asking for it. But Liz pulled Tony in. And the Capellis never forgot that. They’ve got money. There was nothing they wouldn’t have done for Liz. They paid for her trip to Mexico last winter, two weeks, her and her attendant.”

  I hadn’t heard the story, but it didn’t surprise me. Still, I didn’t see the relevance. The Capellis wouldn’t have killed Liz. I nodded. Herman Ott didn’t reminisce for no reason.

  “Ott? What are you telling me?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve told you. If you can’t use it …” He shrugged. With a sigh of decision, he said, “Okay, Smith, I’ll give you something easier. Liz was married.”

  “Married? To whom?”

  He looked me full in the face. “Ian Stuart.”

  “Stuart, the guy in Rainbow Village with the hot tub on his truck?”

  “One and the same.”

  CHAPTER 16

  TRUE TO HIS WORD, Herman Ott offered not another word about Liz Goldenstern. But for the moment that hardly mattered. He had told me Ian Stuart was Liz’s husband.

  As I raced down the stairs of Herman Ott’s building to my patrol car, I thought of Ian Stuart, who had inaugurated the day yesterday by threatening to drown Brad Butz and who had ended the day by reporting Liz’s death and then disappearing. Although I hadn’t seen Stuart myself, I had a vivid picture of him standing at the Marina Vista site yesterday morning, his long blond hair escaping from a blue wool cap, blowing in the bay breeze, his face screwed up in anger as he threatened Brad Butz. By the time Murakawa and I arrived all that had been left of him was the hot tub. He was out of sight until ten P.M. when he called us about Liz’s—his wife’s—body. He had a lot of explaining to do.

  I pulled into the maddeningly slow one-way traffic on Telegraph. It was lun
ch time. Students swarmed along the sidewalks—pizza, pita sandwiches, frozen yogurt, or fresh fruit slushes in hand. In front of me horns honked as drivers spotted friends they hadn’t seen in half an hour or so. Across the street a dark-haired boy in red running shorts hurried into Racer’s Edge, just as Laurence Mayer strolled out. Mayer was wearing the same running shorts he’d had on that morning. He strode down the sidewalk with the easy gait of a natural athlete, smiling at a girl in sweatpants, slowing his pace to join a boy with a tennis racket briefly, and then moving on. I could see him as the competitors’ psychological guru. He must have been a natural at that, too.

  I was tempted to put on the pulsers, but the Avenue was nearly in gridlock; the only action the pulsers would get would be hostility. I gritted my teeth, reminded myself that patience was widely esteemed as a virtue, and rode the tail of the car in front.

  On University, I did hit the pulsers, and it was less than five minutes before I pulled up at the gate to Rainbow Village.

  Ian Stuart still was not at Rainbow Village. His parking space was empty. And the person who might know where he was—Aura Summerlight—was asleep in the county hospital. I knocked on the door of the purple school bus, the one occupied by the woman who was having the party the previous night. It didn’t surprise me that there was no response. Liz’s death might have changed the tone of the party, but I doubted it had ended it. I knocked again.

  “Who is it now?” A woman demanded. I wondered who else had been banging on this metal door today.

  “Police.”

  “Again? Well, just a minute.”

  In the daylight, splotches of rust shone through the fading purple paint. Black burlap curtains hung behind the windows where once small, crew-cut heads had looked out at Dwight David Eisenhower Elementary School or P.S. 139. From the looks of it, this bus, like so many others, had been gutted and revamped for the sixties’ hippies—carpeted with foam mats and huge pillows, with a stereo secured to the wall, rows of orange crates holding albums, and the aromas of marijuana and incense permeating the fibers as they battled for supremacy.