Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2)

by Gillian Roberts

  But she loved this place, the scale of it, the awkward blend of the nearby freeway, and the slow-motion life by her bench, punctuated by honks and quacks and splashes from avian takeoffs, landings, and skirmishes over who owned which bit of water.

  She watched a man with a gray ponytail toss bread to the ducks, geese, and grebes in the water. Overhead, seagulls screamed and dived at the sight of each tossed chunk. Emma watched the tussle and felt a surge of sympathy. They were trying to stay alive, get their daily bread.

  She was able to let go of the whirligig in her mind. She considered the furious, frightened, battling seagulls and vowed to stop squawking about her own contest for food. She’d do what she had to for the agency and herself. She was lucky. She wouldn’t wind up on the streets. She had options. She’d saved some, could cut back, sell her house, move. Or she could go on-line, too, although the idea made her claustrophobic, as if she’d have to crawl into a computer and be forever locked in there, scrunched in the fetal position.

  Or maybe there was some entirely different line of work—something with animals, perhaps? She looked at the ducks’ iridescent plumage, and though she knew the serenity they projected was undoubtedly an illusion, they at least had the attractive quality of being only what they seemed to be. No pretense, no mystery, no duplicity, nothing to figure out about them. Ducks didn’t have royally screwed families like Heather Wilson’s. Or, for that matter, Gavin Riddock’s. And possibly her own.

  That’s why there were no duck PIs. Animals were what they were: gloriously uncomplicated.

  Emma felt hopeful. She watched as a duck made a feet-first water- landing. Maybe she could circumvent Kay Wilson’s—aka Megan Wilson’s—lies. Maybe Heather’s adoptive father, missing from the birth certificate, was somehow the key. Perhaps his death records would show a surprising secret beneficiary. Maybe he was indeed Heather’s biological father. Maybe he had a second family elsewhere. Maybe…maybe…who knew? She was grabbing at straws that were fiber-optic thin, but she couldn’t think of another route.

  What did she know about Nowell? “Nowell because he was born on Christmas day,” Kay had said. So Emma knew his birth date and that he was the child of bad spellers, though that latter fact wasn’t overly helpful.

  What else did she know? He was born in New York, hadn’t gone to college, had served in Vietnam, worked for Safeway afterward, adopted a baby girl, then died when Heather was a toddler. Cause of death not stated, but Emma assumed an accident. Perhaps Kay had created that impression by saying he died “suddenly,” or simply hadn’t named a disease. Date of death not given. Kay didn’t seem to have paid much attention to him. She didn’t know his social security number by memory, had promised to find it. She had to know it if she was collecting death benefits, but, not surprisingly, she’d never contacted Emma with the number.

  The one concrete fact that Kay had offered up about Nowell Wilson was that he was dead.

  Except that Kay lied.

  Maybe he’d left her instead. Maybe he’d never actually been married to her.

  But somebody had turned a baby over to him. Or was that true?

  An enormous goose stepped onto the pavement, looking up as the area around him suddenly shadowed. Emma followed the direction of his gaze and saw a jetliner high above.

  The goose flapped his wings, then held them out, increasing his size as he honked skyward, his mate and goslings behind him as he fought off the shadow of the plane. Emma imagined his goose brain and the terror he must have been hiding at the sight of an enormous and unknown bird flying above him. She silently applauded his guts and bravado.

  Every living thing had troubles. Time to take care of hers.

  Twenty-Five

  She crossed the road toward the Civic Center, a source of civic pride since it was the only government building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Nearly forty years after its construction, it was still sufficiently futuristic looking to serve as a movie set for science-fiction extravaganzas.

  Architectural pride, tourist destination or not, Emma had never decided if she liked the Civic Center at all. It lay low on the hilly land, echoing the terrain with its arches, and might have seemed a part of the natural character of the ground, as Wright had said buildings should be.

  But why then paint it a gooey pink shade of tan? Or make the roof bright blue, as if that made it blend into the heavens? Or top it with a gold tower, the antithesis of blending in.

  The striking interior was just as peculiar, long and narrow with oval atriums dividing the building’s corridors. It made Emma feel as if she were in a fancy diner or a narrow spaceship, and as often as she went there, she wasn’t sure she liked either sensation.

  First, for the client considering the partnership, she checked the fictitious names record. She was amazed to find the prior business life of the proposed partner to be precisely as he’d said it was. The man was on the level. What a contrast with Kay Wilson.

  Why, then, did Emma find his complete honesty mildly disappointing?

  She checked her watch. Time to look at the death records, start figuring out Nowell Wilson.

  She took the elevator up to the fourth floor to the county system’s main library and controlled the urge to browse through the new acquisitions. Too busy, too many unread books at home.

  She walked back to the California Room, where a special collection of books about state history was housed. The California state death records were stored in an oversized recipe box in a locked glass cabinet. Someday when she had more time, she wanted to check what else was behind those glass doors, but so far, she had never had the required time.

  The librarian unlocked the case, and Emma settled in at the microfiche machine. The slips of film were stored by the decade, and Kay Wilson hadn’t said precisely when Nowell died, except that Heather was a toddler. Roughly before age two, Emma assumed, which would make the cutoff mid-1980.

  She began, therefore, with the seventies, and scanned, without success, all the Wilsons who had died in California. She felt the flutter of the chase again, of information waiting for her if she were just clever enough to figure out where it was curled and hiding. And so far, what seemed waiting was the idea that Nowell Wilson wasn’t dead at all, just someone Kay didn’t want Emma to encounter. Or someone who never existed.

  She laid the “W”s for the eighties on the glass plate and pushed it into the machine, finding the Wilsons, and then…Nowell. So she’d been wrong. He had lived and now was dead as advertised. Dead in the late summer of 1980, close to Heather’s false birth date, a few months before she actually turned two.

  So much for that, then. Kay had told the truth, more or less. The only thing intriguing was that there were no death benefits to anybody, and that was odd. And Nowell had died in Butte County, one of the parts of Northern California that Kay hadn’t mentioned when describing their wanderings. It could have been an outing, a vacation trip, a driving or sporting accident. Maybe that deserved looking into.

  She drove back to her office.

  Billie was out and about and there were no new phone messages. Was that good or bad news about no callers, Emma wondered. No further pestering by Heather Wilson but no new clients, either.

  Time to clean up her desk and, while she sat there, thinking about Butte County and Nowell Wilson, she clicked her mouse onto the Internet icon and clicked a bookmarked site that took her to the social security death index, to double-check her Civic Center findings.

  She typed in his first and last names and, as always, the site delighted her with its speedy and thorough response: there he was. Nowell Wilson, dead August 30, 1980 and again, Butte County, California was listed as his last residence.

  His social security card had been issued in California. Kay had said he was from New York. That he only came to California after serving in Vietnam? Had he joined the army in California? Never worked in New York, even as a soda jerk? Most kids got a number by age fifteen.

  And then for the first time, Emma p
aid attention to the math of the dates in the listing. Not Nowell Wilson’s death this time, but his birth. She’d skimmed over it before, verifying that he had, indeed, been a Christmas baby. Born December twenty-fifth, indeed.

  But in nineteen hundred and sixty-six.

  Nowell Wilson had died at age fourteen.

  Her office felt airless and overheated again. She stood up and opened its door, then returned to the computer to stare at the screen, make sure she’d seen that date. She had. Which would make him the only twelve-year-old to ever adopt a child, she’d bet. And talk about a young recruit. How old would that have made him in the service? Seven? Eight?

  Kay Wilson became even more of a puzzle. Of all possible lies, why make a fourteen-year-old dead Butte County boy her imaginary dead husband?

  If his name were any less unusual, if more than one match had come up, she would have assumed there was an error and she was confusing two men. She tried it out, typed in “Norman Wilson,” and up came 295 options. She tried properly spelled “Noel Wilson” and found close to thirty. But when she typed in “Nowell Wilson” again, only that one Christmas baby came up.

  She sat immobile, no longer even seeing the screen, which in any case she’d now learned by heart. She tried to see, instead, a place where all the dangling strings might join and make something coherent. But all she saw in the space between her and the computer was the shadow of Kay Wilson lying about herself, about Heather, about Heather’s birth date, about Heather’s adoptive father, and who knew what else.

  And doing it so stupidly. Nowell, of all the dumb lies to pick. No wonder his name hadn’t been on the amended birth certificate. He didn’t exist.

  How had Kay gotten Heather?

  Or was there another Nowell Wilson who wasn’t dead at all and therefore wasn’t listed here? That was a possibility. But why then say he was dead? Why not say you’d been divorced. Why mention him at all?

  It was all about blinding and hobbling Emma. About making this search impossible.

  Emma shook her head, consumed with the image of Kay Wilson waiting for her to fall on her face. “I’ll be damned if I do, you bitch,” she muttered.

  “How’s that?” Zachary called over from his desk.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Talking to myself.”

  “Again?” he murmured.

  Again. And for real. She’d be damned if that Wilson woman was going to get away with this. She said it to herself again, this time silently.

  Twenty-Six

  It was impossible to find a place to park in Belvedere. Nonresidents obviously weren’t overly valued or welcomed. Back in the days when travel was by ferry, railroad, and horse, the island had been developed as a retreat for wealthy San Franciscans tired of the city’s chilly summer fog, which didn’t reach across the bay.

  Now the former summer houses, rambling Victorian affairs, were joined to the rest of Marin with landfill, and the narrow hillside roads were hell for motorists who wanted to park their cars.

  Lines were drawn on the blacktop delineating spaces where parking was allowed, and finally Billie found a niche in the uphill rockface. She was glad she drove a relatively small car or she’d have spent the entire day searching.

  She walked slowly back down the hillside road toward Zandra Riddock’s home, and if she hadn’t called and set a time, she would have dawdled even more. She dreaded meeting a woman described as one who’d eat her own young if she thought it would advance her.

  Plus, Emma’s advice had presented a near-impossible challenge. Billie didn’t feel capable of fitting in or looking as if she did. It was fine for Emma who wore the woven equivalent of paper bags to say she should dress accordingly, but how? Did Emma think Billie wore her old rags to work while her closets held secret stashes of designer togs?

  She’d finally decided that her grandmother’s cameo would serve as the signal that she, Billie, was a rich and comfortable PI, working for the larkiness of it and quite familiar with the finer things of life.

  Shivering because she hadn’t had a sufficiently rich coat to wear, she rang the bell with one hand while the other tucked and straightened her black slacks and matching sweater. It was more difficult guessing the economic status of black. She patted and smoothed in nervous gestures she resented making even as she compulsively did so.

  “Hello,” the woman said. “You must be…”

  “Billie August.” Zandra Riddock was cordial, more than Billie had hoped for. Gracious, though not to the point of actually remembering her visitor’s name. And she answered the door herself, which was a nice surprise.

  Billie shouldn’t have worried so about her outfit because there was no way she’d blend in with the twig-thin woman’s expensive costume. She was pulled tight in every direction, but too old, Billie thought, for the skintight leather pants, the flesh-toned tank, and the silky loose-knit sweater over it.

  Zandra Riddock ushered Billie into a spacious living room where dark Victorian woods contrasted with pastel carpets, while the view of the bay and San Francisco beyond served as the art. When they were seated, and tea had been poured from a flowered pot, Zandra Riddock sat back, tapped a long, burnt sienna fingernail against her teacup, and smiled rather bitterly. “Not that I understand the purpose of this visit,” she said without preamble. “I’ve spoken to Michael time and again and he knows what little I know. So why, in essence, am I paying you, through Michael’s exorbitant rates, to repeat myself?”

  “We’ve expanded the scope of the interviews,” Billie said. “There seem to be aspects that the police haven’t investigated adequately, things worth going over again, perhaps from a different angle. Sometimes something already said now fits into this additional information…” She hoped that made sense to Zandra Riddock, because it didn’t particularly to her.

  “What then, what?” Zandra was still tapping, now on the arm of her chair.

  Billie took a moment to back off from the woman’s imperial impatience, her wealth and comfort, her leather pants and the enormous emerald-cut diamond she wore on her right ring finger. “I’d like to talk about Tracy Lester,” she said when she felt unsmothered again. “Michael asked you a great deal about Gavin, but not as much as now seems important about Tracy.”

  Zandra Riddock looked at if she were deciding whether to answer.

  Billie was incredulous. The woman’s only child’s life was on the line and all anyone asked was her time and a few observations, yet she behaved as if it was a major imposition. No wonder Michael had described her so harshly.

  “Mrs. Riddock?” Billie prompted.

  “Zandra, please,” the woman said. “It gets confusing with so many Mrs. Riddocks in town. His second discard lives here in Belvedere, too. And the third Mrs. R is in the county as well.” She waved her hand as if pushing the other Mrs. Riddocks away. Tracy,” Zandra said. “She—they—were friends since elementary school. A playground sort of thing that started when older children teased him. She defended him. Befriended him. That was fifth grade.”

  “And they were friends ever since, I gather.”

  “Yes.” Zandra said the word as if it tasted bitter.

  Billie waited.

  “It made sense when they were young,” Zandra Riddock said. “It was rather charming. Gavin was her…confidant. She could trust him to always be loyal, to keep her secrets. She could tell him anything. But when they were grown-up, these past few years…” She shook her head. Her hair was auburn, beautifully cut to cradle her face. She flicked a piece back from her forehead.

  “What about these years?” Billie softly prompted.

  Zandra leaned forward, put her teacup and saucer on the coffee table, and stood. She walked to the wall of glass at the back of the room and spent a moment considering the distant San Francisco skyline. “One has to wonder,” she said, her back to the room and her voice so soft Billie had to strain to hear, “why she remained his friend. I mean…after all…”

  She turned, slowly, and Billie felt as if she’
d seen this movement, this entire play somewhere long ago.

  “They’re grown people,” Zandra said. “I know they trained together. Gavin isn’t quite as…quick mentally as some, but he’s a natural athlete. Not so much in team sports, but he’s a fine runner and he enjoys it. So they trained together, and that would be all right, except…” Another sigh and a shrug. “Mind if I smoke?” she asked.

  “It’s your house, Mrs.—Zandra. Go right ahead.”

  The standing woman went to a side table and opened a crystal box. This room, perhaps this house, increasingly felt like a stage set. Even the cigarette box. Who had such things anymore? Smokers were less tolerated than lepers and the accoutrements for it—cigarette holders and boxes and individual ashtrays for dinner parties—were historical artifacts. But here was Madam, displaying and using a large investment in crystal smoking props. Closing the box, lighting her cigarette with a heavy globe of cut crystal that sat on a side table, flicking ash into one of many crystal dishes around the room and drawing on the cigarette several times before she spoke again. “I wondered—I mean one would have to wonder—what Tracy really wanted of my son.”

  Billie cocked her head, but said nothing.

  Zandra paced the large room, one hand holding her cigarette, the other, a small crystal ashtray. Billie thought the woman’s happiness would probably be complete if cigarettes, too, were made of crystal.

  “Gavin is, after all, unsophisticated in many ways and…he’s—let’s be honest—wealthy. Someone might consider him a catch.”

  “She was already married,” Billie said softly.

  The older woman shrugged, the gesture dismissing the idea that prior contracts were relevant. “The girl liked money. Ever since she was a child. She oohed and aahed about my rings or my new shoes or car. You know what I mean. And she and Gavin were entirely too close for entirely too long. A married woman and a…gentle, naive young man…it’s wrong. She used his house as a gym locker and she used him…” She dramatically let go of the sentence and blew a smoke ring.