Looking for Yesterday

by Marcia Muller

  “Well, it kind of charmed me at first. Now I hate it.”

  “Me too.”

  I handed him my keys. “Will you pick up everybody else’s too, and leave them in the foyer?”

  “Sure. I’ll be back and forth all day. Not everybody could come in and move their stuff yesterday, and you can’t believe the shit that’s lying around unclaimed. Finicky Fags are coming at one o’clock to move the big stuff.”

  Finicky Fags—an only-in–San Francisco phenomenon—had been founded in the early 1990s by two gay teenagers just out of high school and without job prospects. In thirty-plus years it had grown to a firm with facilities throughout the state. While most of their employees and customers were gay or lesbian, a large number of heteros used their services. It was true that they were finicky: breakage or other damage seldom happened, and claims were promptly paid. Their storage facilities were reputed to be the best in the Bay Area.

  I said, “Ted, you know one of the owners of Finicky Fags pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Neal does. They carted stuff around for his bookshop all the time.”

  “Do you think Neal could find out from him about self-storage facilities in south San Francisco?”

  “I could do that by looking in the phone book.”

  “But if Neal’s friend were to ask, he could probably find out which one of them Caro Warrick rented a unit from.”

  “I gotcha. I’ll ask Neal to get onto it right away. Where’re you off to now?”

  I glanced at my watch and sighed. “Unfortunately, to Caro Warrick’s memorial service.”

  “They put that together quick. She only died on Thursday.”

  “There weren’t a lot of people to invite, and the family didn’t want the press to hear about it.”

  “Her parents coming back from Mexico for it?”

  “As far as I know, the parents aren’t even aware she’s dead.”

  10:00 a.m.

  I hate funerals and memorial services. At the former, with the body on display, people are supposed to confront and mourn a lifeless version that barely resembles the person they knew. I’ve noted that attendees tend to congregate at the opposite end of the room from the casket. Even with the casket closed, there is a haunting vision in one’s mind of a friend or loved one made up to a mannequin’s perfection by a mortician.

  Memorial services these days are supposed to be touching and, in most cases, jovial. Family and friends are expected to tell humorous and inspirational tales about the dearly departed one’s time on earth. Trouble is, even the funniest stories are tinged with sorrow, and many of the deceased didn’t have particularly happy or significant existences.

  I’d made Hy promise to toss my ashes off the cliff at Touchstone alone if I died first. He wanted the same.

  One thing Caro’s sister and brother knew was that she had wanted to be remembered in a favorite place: the Chinese Pavilion, on Strawberry Hill Island in Golden Gate Park’s Stow Lake—a pagoda-style gift from our sister city, Taipei. The roof of the small round building is a pale green that contrasts with the darker shades of the surrounding trees, shrubs, and marsh grass; figures of mythical beasts appear to be scaling it; the support posts are bright red; on the slope above it looms the Strawberry Hill reservoir.

  This morning was dry, and the sun was breaking through the fog, promising a warm day. The gathering was small: Rob, Patty, Mrs. Cleary, Ned Springer, and two colleagues from the real-estate agency where Caro had worked. No clergyman.

  Rob coughed and said, “We’re here to remember Patty’s and my sister and your friend, Caro Warrick. Just Caro: when she was old enough to talk, two syllables were all she could master, and the nickname stuck. Caro had a difficult last few years, but her courage under adversity was an example to us all. We—”

  He paused, looking off at the stone footbridge to the island. Everyone else’s heads turned.

  An attractive middle-aged couple wearing inappropriate casual clothing were crossing. The woman—blond, tanned, slim—raised a hand in greeting as if she were arriving at a party. Betsy and Ben Warrick, I thought, late for their eldest daughter’s memorial.

  I glanced back at Rob. He stood still, unsmiling, clenching his hands at his sides. Patty made a choking noise and said to Rob, “How could you let them know? They don’t deserve to be here!”

  “I left a message at their hotel. They had a right to know, but I never dreamed they’d come—”

  Patty whirled around and pushed into the foliage beside her. Ned Springer made an I’ll-take-care-of-her signal to me and followed.

  Betsy Warrick went directly to Rob and threw her arms around him. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie! So sorry.”

  He stood rigid, his face contorted with what I took to be revulsion.

  Ben Warrick moved to stand beside them, his hand on Rob’s shoulder. “We came as soon as we could, Son.”

  Rob threw off his father’s hand, pushed his mother away from him.

  “Fuck you! Fuck both of you! You made Caro’s life hell, and now you won’t even allow her a decent memorial by staying away!” He ran off the way Patty and Springer had gone.

  Mrs. Cleary and the real-estate women were fleeing. Leaving me alone with the Warricks.

  “And who are you, young lady?” Ben demanded. He, like his wife, was evenly tanned and slim, with blond, well-styled hair.

  I was tempted to lie, say I was just an old colleague of Caro’s, but the couple were so obnoxious that I decided to inject one more of what I was sure they would call “complications” into their lives. I took out my card and handed it to him.

  He read it, his eyebrows rising. “Private investigator?”

  “I’m assisting the San Francisco Police Department in their investigation into Caro’s death. If you’d like confirmation, please call Homicide Inspector Devlin Fast at the Hall of Justice.”

  “But why—?”

  “Because they’re shorthanded, I’m very good at what I do, and Caro was my friend.”

  “Friend? My daughter had no friends after she murdered Amelia Bettencourt.”

  Something flickered in my memory: Inspector Fast, whose instincts I trusted, had told me the Warricks had seemed to be fonder of Amelia than of their own daughter. Then I looked at Betsy Warrick’s eyes and revised the opinion: only Ben had been fonder of Caro’s best friend.

  I said, “I’ve intruded upon your grieving, so I’ll be going now.”

  “No,” Betsy Warrick said. “I want to hear more about Carolyn’s last days. Please. Please have lunch with us.”

  11:50 a.m.

  Lunch, of course, had to be at an expensive restaurant—Boulevard in the historic Audiffred Building near the Hyatt Embarcadero, where the Warricks were staying. I voiced no opposition to their choice: I love the place. And I didn’t rein myself in, ordering my favorite starter—ahi tuna tartare—and main course—wood-roasted chicken breast with all sorts of wonderful ingredients. Ben Warrick selected an excellent chardonnay for me and his wife, and an equally good zinfandel for himself.

  The talk around the table was somber: Why had Carolyn hired me? So she could confirm information for the book she and Greta Goldstein were writing. Did I know this Greta Goldstein? I’d only spoken with her on the phone, but she had an excellent reputation. Why had Carolyn needed this book to be published? She’d never felt she’d been completely exonerated of killing Amelia Bettencourt, and probably she’d needed the money.

  Carolyn had never needed for money, Ben protested. She’d had an ample trust fund set up by her grandmother, and if more had been required, he and Betsy would have provided it.

  Perhaps she’d felt the urge to be independent? I asked.

  No, Betsy said, the trust provided her at least three thousand dollars a month.

  So why, I wondered, was she living in a dreadful garage apartment and working at a low-paying job that she hated?

  Well, there was the obvious—blackmail—but I didn’t think that was the case. Self-castigation,
maybe? Or did she donate most of her income to gun control causes?

  “Did you speak to your daughter often?” I asked. “Write to her?”

  “No, we did not.”

  “What about Rob and Patty?”

  “We have…issues with them too. Obviously, as you saw at Stow Lake.”

  “Every family has its issues,” I said, thinking of my own far-flung and vastly different clans, “but in times of extreme trouble, most pull together.”

  Ben slapped his open hand onto the table so hard that Betsy looked alarmed.

  “Do you have any idea,” he said in a low but rage-filled voice, “what those children did to us? My son shot and killed his baby sister. My daughter slaughtered her best friend and got away with it. The other one, Patty, is a lesbian—a vocal lesbian. Turn on the TV news and there’ll be Patty, fat and slovenly and yapping about gay rights.”

  “Ben.…” Betsy put her hand on his arm. He shook it off.

  “After that trial, my clients drifted away from me. Who’s going to entrust their portfolios to a man with a freak show of a family? She”—he motioned to his wife—“is supporting us now. Most of her clients are women, and women are stupidly forgiving.”

  Betsy said, “Ben, stop—”

  But he yanked her out of her chair and began dragging her toward the exit. I—and the other patrons—watched, stunned.

  I was even more stunned when the waiter placed the bill on the table.

  1:40 p.m.

  By the time I got to our new offices in the RI building, I was so angry I felt as if great clouds of steam were billowing out of my ears. Not about getting stuck with the lunch check, but about the callousness the Warricks had displayed toward their children. Tragic accidents occur, people are unjustly accused, children often don’t share the same definition of sexuality as their parents. But arrogance and hostility solve nothing. Nobody wins.

  Kendra wasn’t at her desk in the reception area, and fortunately Ted’s door was closed. I didn’t want to talk with anybody till I cooled down.

  I hadn’t seen the new suite, but I’d known what it would be like from frequent visits to RI’s similar layout. Still, as I moved along the hallway, I was impressed. Pale gray walls, with luxurious medium-gray carpeting that would soothe the feet of the most harried of clients. Attractive, modern furnishings, designed for both comfort and function. Brightened by colorful posters or photographs, the décor would be stunning.

  Even after all that, I wasn’t prepared for my office at the end of the hallway: an expansive view from the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridge and East Bay hills; a long cherrywood desk and workstation; floor-to-ceiling bookcases; clients’ armchairs upholstered in a subtle gray-on-gray pattern. And best of all, my own leather armchair and hassock positioned by the window under a potted schefflera plant that spread its healthy leaves and branches in the early afternoon light.

  The plant brought tears to my eyes. For years I’d had one in my office at All Souls, but when we’d moved to the pier it had taken a dislike to the place and died; its successor had had the same reaction to Sly Lane. I went over to the new one and fondled its trunk. “You and I are in this for the long haul, right?”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  I started. Ted stood in the doorway, grinning.

  “This”—I gestured around—“was all your doing, right?”

  “Well, with the help of the interior decorator, yes.”

  “But this plant—”

  “Whose name, by the way, is Mr. T.”

  “T as in Ted?”

  “Right. Mr. T has a pedigree. Comes from a nursery Neal and I found up in Napa County. We have papers to prove it. In fact, Mr. T arrived by limo only fifteen minutes before you got here.”

  “A limo?”

  Ted shrugged. “Actually, it was only a panel truck, but they have PLANT LIMO painted on its sides.”

  I went to him and threw my arms around his neck. “You are an amazing man,” I said. “You’ve managed to turn one of the ugliest days of my year into the best.”

  He patted my back. “I hate to remind you, Shar, but it’s only January.”

  2:31 p.m.

  I tried to call Jill Starkey, at both her office and her home. No replies. Probably out gathering more dirt on more victims. Not necessarily innocent victims, but most of them people who didn’t deserve her poisonous prose. Starkey was the sort of journalist who would continually twist facts for her own wicked enjoyment. Briefly I wondered what had made her that way.

  Ted came into the office and with great ceremony slipped a note across the beautiful new cherrywood desk: his friend at Finicky Fags moving company had found that Caro Warrick had leased a self-storage unit from YouStor in south San Francisco. My first call from my elegant new quarters was to Rob Warrick.

  “How’re you doing?” I asked.

  “Okay. I’ve managed to avoid the Parents from Hell. Patty’s not so good; her therapist recommended a ‘restful week’ in a place where she’s stayed before down near Santa Barbara.”

  “You think it’ll help?”

  “For a while anyway.”

  “Caro mentioned a self-storage unit in South City. Do you have a key to it?”

  “No,” he said, “but you do. It’s on that ring of keys I gave you so you could get into her apartment.”

  I took them from my bag and located one that looked to be padlock-size; the tag attached to it said 1108.

  “How do these places operate?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can you just drive in and go to your unit? Do you have to sign in or present identification?”

  “Damned if I know. I suppose if I met you there, as holder of her power of attorney and executor of her estate, there’d be no problem.”

  “Do you have time to do that?”

  “Plenty. The stock markets here are closed, and my clients in Asia are just waking up. Plus if there’s a problem, I’m wired up to my teeth with Internet crap. I’ll leave now, meet you there whenever traffic permits.”

  3:47 p.m.

  As it turned out, there was no problem getting to Caro’s storage unit; no one was on guard at the gate, so I drove in and meandered along the aisles till I found it. Rob wasn’t there yet, so I parked and opened the door with the key on her ring. It must’ve been eighty degrees inside on this sunny afternoon, and I wondered how anything fragile could survive in that kind of heat.

  The shed was full of boxes stacked against the side walls. The rear wall was taken up by a handsome cabinet—a modern Chippendale knockoff, I thought, and much too large for Caro’s tiny apartment. Wiping sweat from my forehead, I started in on the cabinet; the boxes I could take outside and go through in the cooler air.

  The drawers of the cabinet were filled with fine linen tablecloths and napkins; some looked hand-embroidered, all looked unused. A bunch of varicolored candles had melted into a blob. On a shelf to one side were some pieces of expensive-looking china—not enough to make a set—and a chest full of sterling silver in an excessively ornate pattern.

  The linens, I thought, were the sort of thing often given to young women who were expected to make a good marriage. The same for the china and silver. But Caro had always lived in small places after she left the family home. What use did she have for such a large cabinet? Again, it had probably been given to her in expectation of her future life, a life that had failed to materialize.

  I went through the boxes carefully, dragging them out two at a time into the shade beside the shed and sitting cross-legged on the ground. Books: mainly children’s and young adults’. Toys: Barbie and Ken, stuffed animals. I was particularly taken with a floppy-eared dog with one blue and one green eye.

  “That’s Towser,” Rob’s voice said from behind me. “Caro used to drag him everyplace.”

  “Why the different-colored eyes?”

  “The other blue one got lost, and the best my mother could find was a green one.”

  “Interesting. Your mother didn�
��t strike me as someone who would try to repair a toy.”

  “She wasn’t always as bad as she is now.”

  “Your parents took me to lunch. They didn’t seem to be very…nurturing.”

  A shadow fell across his face. “It all goes back to Marissa. The unplanned but much-beloved baby. Their world as they knew it ended the day I shot her.”

  “Rob…”

  “No. I’ve come to terms with it; accidents happen. But I will never come to terms with my father leaving a loaded gun where a kid could find and use it. I’m not an activist like Caro was, but every incident of an accidental shooting or a disturbed person blasting at others—like the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy, where the asshole took out six people, including a kid—eats at my guts. Don’t let me get started on the Kennedys or Martin Luther King. Or the parents who’re ‘disappointed’ with how their lives turned out and kill their entire families and themselves. Themselves, okay, if they want to end it. But nobody should get to decide who deserves to live or die. Nobody.”

  I stood up and hefted the two boxes. “Judges and juries do that all the time. It’s called ‘due process of law.’”

  He took the boxes from me and moved toward the door of the storage unit. “But is a panel of twelve people—some of whom are thinking about the work time and wages they’re losing and others who are bored or consider themselves modern-day Sherlock Holmeses—do they really qualify to make life-or-death decisions?”

  “No. But it’s what we’ve got, take it or leave it.”

  He dumped the boxes outside the unit and came back with three more. “I’d prefer to leave it.”

  Actually, when I considered the issue, I did too. I’ve been a witness in court cases so often that—with a few exceptions—they all blur together. I’ve also been a juror, and I’ve noticed how the process of deliberation can get cut short, depending on how desperate the members of the panel are to get home to their families.

  I sat down and started on the first box Rob had brought out. More toys, postcards, souvenirs.

  After a moment I addressed the issue we’d been discussing. “I’ve made that decision myself—who gets to live or die. I shot a man who was trying to kill my best friend. I shot a man who had his gun sights trained on my husband. I just did it—in a situation like that, there’s no time for philosophical argument.”