The McCone Files

by Marcia Muller

  “You say extremely strong motives. Is there something besides the money?”

  “Something connected to the money; each of them seems to need it more badly than they’re willing to admit. The interim management of Newingham Development has given Dan his notice; there’ll be a hefty severance payment, of course, but he’s deeply in debt—gambling debts, to the kind of people who won’t accept fifty-dollars-a-week installments. The sister had most of her savings tied up in one of those real estate investment partnerships; it went belly up, and Janet needs to raise additional cash to satisfy outstanding obligations to the other partners.”

  “I wish I’d known about that when I talked with them. I might have prevented Laurie’s death.”

  Greg held up a cautioning hand. “Don’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t know or foresee. That should be one of the cardinal rules of your profession.”

  “It’s one of the rules, all right, but I seem to keep breaking it. Greg, what about Dolph Edwards?”

  “He didn’t stand to benefit by her death. Laurie hadn’t made a will, so everything reverts to the brother and sister.”

  “No will? I’m surprised Hank didn’t insist she make one.”

  “According to your boss, she had an appointment with him for the day after she died. She mentioned something about a change in circumstances, so I guess she was planning to make the will in favor of her future husband. Another reason we don’t suspect Edwards.”

  I sighed. “So what you’ve got is a circumstantial case against one of two people.”

  “Right. And without uncovering the means by which the poison got to her, we don’t stand a chance of getting an indictment against either.”

  “Well…the obvious means is in her food.”

  “There’s a cook who prepares all the meals. She, a live-in-maid, and the family basically eat the same things. On the night she died, Laurie, her brother and sister, and Dolph Edwards all had the same hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. The leftovers tested negative.”

  “And you checked what she drank, of course.”

  “It also tested negative.”

  “What about medications? Laurie probably took pills for her asthma. She had an inhaler—”

  “We checked everything. Fortunately, I caught the call and remembered what you’d told me. I was more than thorough. Had the contents of the bedroom and bathroom inventoried anything that could have contained poison was taken away for testing.”

  “What about this cocktail party? I know for a fact that, neither Dan nor Janet liked Dolph. And according to Dolph, they both hated Laurie. He wasn’t fond of them, either. It seems like an unlikely group for a convivial gathering.”

  “Apparently Laurie arranged the party. She said she had an announcement to make.”

  “What was it?”

  “No one knows. She died before she could tell them.”

  Three days later Hank and I attended Laurie’s funeral. It was in an old-fashioned churchyard in the little town of Tomales, near the bay of the same name northwest of San Francisco. The Newinghams had a summer home on the bay, and Laurie had wanted to be buried there.

  It was one of those winter afternoons when the sky is clear and hard, and the sun is as pale as if it were filtered through water. Hank and I stood a little apart from the crowd of mourners on the knoll, near a windbreak of eucalyptus that bordered the cemetery. The people who had traveled from the city to lay Laurie to rest were an oddly assorted group: dark-suited men and women who represented San Francisco’s business community; others who bore the unmistakable stamp of high society; shabbily dressed Hispanics who must have been clients of the Inner Mission Self-Help Center. Dolph Edwards arrived on his motorcycle; his inappropriate attire—the shocking purple scarf seemed several shades too festive—annoyed me.

  Dan and Janet Newingham arrived in the limousine that followed the hearse and walked behind the flower-covered casket to the graveside. Their pious propriety annoyed me, too. As the service went on, the wind rose. It rustled the leaves of the eucalyptus trees and brought with it dampness and the odor of the bay. During the final prayer, a strand of my hair escaped the knot I’d fastened it in and blew across my face. It clung damply there, and when I licked my lips to push it away, I tasted salt—whether from the sea air or tears, I couldn’t tell.

  As soon as the service was concluded, Janet and Dan went back to the limousine and were driven away. One of the Chicana women stopped to speak to Hank; she was a client, and he introduced us. When I looked around for Dolph, I found he had disappeared. By the time Hank finished chatting with his client, the only other person left at the graveside besides us and the cemetery workers was an old Hispanic lady who was placing a single rose on the casket.

  Hank said, “I could use a drink.” We started down the uneven stone walk, but I glanced back at the old woman, who was following us unsteadily.

  “Wait,” I said to Hank and went to take her arm as she stumbled.

  The woman nodded her thanks and leaned on me, breathing heavily.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “Can we give you a ride back to the city?” My old MG was the only car left beyond the iron fence.

  “Thank you, but no,” She said. “My son brought me. He’s waiting down the street, there’s a bar. You were a friend of Laurie?”

  “Yes.” But not as good a friend as I might have been, I reminded myself. “Did you know her through the center?”

  “Yes. She talked with my grandson many times and made him stay in school when he wanted to quit. He loved her, we all did.”

  “She was a good woman. Tell me, did you see her fiancé leave?” I had wanted to give Dolph my condolences.

  The woman looked puzzled.

  “The man she planned to marry—Dolph Edwards.”

  “I thought he was her husband.”

  “No, although they planned to marry soon.”

  The old woman sighed. “They were always together. I thought they were already married. But nowadays who can tell? My son—Laurie helped his own son, but is he grateful? No, Instead of coming to her funeral, he sits in a bar…”

  I was silent on the drive back to the city—so silent that Hank, who is usually oblivious to my moods, asked me twice what was wrong. I’m afraid I snapped at him, something to the effect of funerals not being my favorite form of entertainment, and when I dropped him at All Souls, I refused to have the drink he offered. Instead I went downtown to City Hall.

  When I entered Greg Marcus’ office a couple of hours later, I said without preamble, “The Newingham case: you told me you inventoried the contents of Laurie’s bedroom and bathroom and had anything that could have contained poison taken away for testing?”

  “…Right.”

  “Can I see the inventory sheet?”

  He picked up his phone and asked for the file to be brought in. While he waited, he asked me about the funeral. Over the years, Greg has adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward my occasional interference in his cases. I’ve never been sure whether it’s because he doesn’t want to disturb what he considers to be my shaky thought processes, or that he simply prefers to leave the hard work to me.

  When the file came, he passed it to me. I studied the inventory sheet, uncertain exactly what I was looking for. But something was missing there. What? I flipped the pages, then wished I hadn’t. A photo of Laurie looked up at me, brilliant blue eyes blank and lifeless. No more cheerleader out to save the world—

  Quickly I flipped back to the inventory sheet. The last item was “1 handbag, black leather & contents.” I looked over the list of things from the bathroom again and focused on the word “unopened.”

  “Greg,” I said, “what was in Laurie’s purse?”

  He took the file from me and studied the list. “It should say here, but it doesn’t. Sloppy work—new man on the squad.”

  “Can you find out?”

  Without a word he picked up the phone receiver, dialed, and made the inquiry. When he hung up he
read off the notes he’d made. “Wallet. Checkbook. Inhaler, sent to lab. Vitamin capsules, also sent to the lab. Contact lens case. That’s all.”

  “That’s enough. The contact lens case is a two-chambered plastic receptacle holding about half an ounce of fluid for the lenses to soak in. There was a brand-new, unopened bottle of fluid on the inventory of Laurie’s bathroom.”

  “So?”

  “I’m willing to bet the contents of that bottle will test negative for arsenic; the surface of it might or might not show someone’s fingerprints, but not Laurie’s. That’s because the murderer put it in there after she died, but before your people arrived on the scene.”

  Greg merely waited.

  “Have the lab test the liquid in that lens case for arsenic. I’m certain the results will be positive. The killer added arsenic to Laurie’s soaking solution weeks ago, and then he removed that bottle and substituted the unopened one. We wondered why slow poisoning, rather than a massive dose; it was because the contact case holds so little fluid.”

  “Sharon, arsenic can’t be ingested through the eyes—”

  “Of course it can’t! But Laurie had the habit, as lots of contact wearers do—you’re not supposed to, of course; it can cause eye infections—of taking her lenses out of the case and putting them into her mouth to clean them before putting them on. She probably did it a lot because she had allergies and took the lenses off to rest her eyes. That’s how he poisoned her, a little at a time over an extended period.”

  “Dan Newingham?”

  “No. Dolph Edwards.”

  Greg waited, his expression neither doubting nor accepting. “Dolph is a social reformer,” I said. “He founded that Inner Mission Self-Help Center; it’s his whole life. But its funding has been cancelled and it can’t go on much longer. In Janet Newingham’s words, Dolph is intent on keeping it going ‘no matter what.’”

  “So? He was going to marry Laurie. She could have given him plenty of money—”

  “Not for the center. She told me it was a ‘hopeless mess.’ When she married Dolph, she planned to help him, but in the ‘right way.’ Laurie has been described to me by both her brother and sister as quite single-minded and always getting what she wanted. Dolph must have realized that too, and knew her money would never go for his self-help center.”

  “All right, I’ll take your word for that. But Edwards still didn’t stand to benefit. They weren’t married, she hadn’t made a will—”

  “They were married. I checked that out at City Hall a while ago. They were married last month, probably at Dolph’s insistence when he realized the poisoning would soon have a fatal effect.”

  Greg was silent for a moment. I could tell by the calculating look in his eyes that he was taking my analysis seriously. “That’s another thing we slipped up on—just like not listing the contents of her purse. What made you check?”

  “I spoke with an old woman who was at the funeral. She thought they were married and made the comment that nowadays you can’t tell. It got me thinking….Anyway, it doesn’t matter about the will because under California community property laws, Dolph inherits automatically in the absence of one.”

  “It seems stupid of him to marry her so soon before she died. The husband automatically comes under suspicion—”

  “But the poisoning started long before they were married. That automatically threw suspicion on the brother and sister.”

  “And Dolph had the opportunity.”

  “Plenty. He even tried to minimize it by lying to me: he said he and Laurie didn’t spend much time at the St. Francis Wood House, but Dan described Dolph as being around all the time. And even if he wasn’t he could just as easily have poisoned her lens solution at his own apartment. He told another lie to you when he said he didn’t know what the announcement Laurie was going to make at the family gathering was. It could only have been the announcement of their secret marriage. He may even have increased the dosage of poison, in the hope she’d succumb before she could reveal it.”

  “Why do you suppose they kept it secret?”

  “I think Dolph wanted it that way. It would minimize the suspicion directed at him if he just let the fact of the marriage come out after either Dan or Janet had been charged with the murder. He probably intended to claim ignorance of the community property laws, say he’d assumed since there was no will he couldn’t inherit. Why don’t we ask him if I’m right?”

  Greg’s hand moved towards his phone. “Yes—why don’t we?”

  When Dolph Edwards confessed to Laurie’s murder, it turned out that I’d been absolutely right. He also added an item of further interest: he hadn’t been in love with Laurie at all, had had a woman on the Peninsula whom he planned to marry as soon as he could without attracting suspicion.

  It was too bad about Dolph; his kind of social crusader had so much ego tied up in their own individual projects that they lost sight of the larger objective. Had Laurie lived, she would have applied her money to any number of worthy causes, but now it would merely go to finance the lifestyles of her greedy brother and sister.

  But it was Laurie I felt worst about. And it was a decidedly bitter-sweet satisfaction that I took in solving her murder, in fulfilling my final obligation to my client.

  ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE

  “NAME, SHARON McCONE. Occupation. I can’t put private investigator. What should I be?” I glanced over my shoulder at Hank Zahn, my boss at All Souls Legal Cooperative. He stood behind me, his eyes bemused behind thick horn-rimmed glasses.

  “I’ve heard you tell people you’re a researcher when you don’t want to be bothered with stupid questions like ‘What’s a nice girl like you…’”

  “Legal researcher.” I wrote it on the form. “Now—‘About the person you are seeking’ Age—does not matter. Smoker—does not matter. Occupation—does not matter. I sound excessively eager for a date, don’t I?”

  Hank didn’t answer. He was staring at the form. “The things they ask. Sexual preference.” He pointed at the item. “Hetero, bi, lesbian, gay. There’s no place for ‘does not matter.’”

  As he spoke, he grinned wickedly. I glared at him. “You’re enjoying this!”

  “Of course I am. I never thought I’d see the day you’d fill out an application for a dating service.”

  I sighed and drummed my fingertips on the desk. Hank is my best male friend, as well as my boss. I love him like a brother—sometimes. But he harbors an overactive interest in my love life and delights in teasing me about it. I would be hearing about the dating service for years to come. I asked, “What should I say I want the guy’s cultural interests to be? I can’t put ‘does not matter’ for everything.”

  “I don’t think burglars have cultural interest.”

  “Come on, Hank. Help me with this!”

  “Oh, put film. Everyone’s gone to a movie.”

  “Film.” I checked the box.

  The form was quite simple, yet it provided a great deal of information about the applicant. The standard questions about address, income level, whether the individual shared a home or lived alone, and hours free for dating were enough in themselves to allow an astute burglar to weed out prospects—and pick times to break in when they were not likely to be on the premises.

  And that apparently was what had happened at the big singles complex down near the San Francisco—Daly City line, owned by Hank’s client, Dick Morris. There had been three burglaries over the past five months, beginning not long after the place had been leafleted by All the Best People Introductions Service. Each of the people whose apartments had been hit were women who had filled out application forms; they had had from two to ten dates with men with whom the service had put them in touch. The burglaries had taken place when one renter was at work, another away for the weekend, and the third out with a date whom she had also met through Best People.

  Coincidence, the police had told the renters and Dick Morris. After all, none of the women had reported having dates with
the same man. And there were many other common denominators among them besides their use of the service. They lived in the same complex. They all knew one another. Two belonged to the same health club. They shopped at the same supermarket, shared auto mechanics, hairstylists, dry cleaners, and two of them went to the same psychiatrist.

  Coincidence, the police insisted. But two other San Francisco area members of Best People had also been burglarized—one of them male—and so they checked the service out carefully.

  What they found was absolutely no evidence of collusion in the burglaries. It was no fly-by-night operation. It had been in business ten years—a long time for that type of outfit. Its board of directors included a doctor, psychologist, a rabbi, a minister, and a well-known author of somewhat weird but popular novels. It was respectable—as such things go.

  But Best People was still the strongest link among the burglary victims. And Dick Morris was a good landlord who genuinely cared about his tenants. So he put on a couple of security guards, and when the police couldn’t run down the perpetrator(s) and back-burnered the cases, he came to All Souls for legal advice.

  It might seem unusual for the owner of a glitzy singles complex to come to a sliding-fee scale firm, but Dick Morris was cash-poor. Everything he’d saved during his long years as a journeyman plumber had gone into the complex, and it was barely turning a profit as yet. Wouldn’t be turning any profit at all if the burglaries continued and some of his tenants got scared and moved out.

  Hank could have given Dick the typical attorney’s spiel about leaving things in the hands of the police and continuing to pay the guards out of his dwindling cash reserves, but Hank is far from typical. Instead he referred Dick to me. I’m All Souls’ staff investigator, and assignments like this one—where there’s a challenge—are what I live for.

  They are, that is, unless I have to apply for membership in a dating service, plus set up my own home as a target for burglars. Once I started “dating” I would remove anything of value to All Souls, plus Dick would station one of his security guards at my house during the hours I was away from there, but it was still a potentially risky and nervous-making proposition.