Nobody's Child (The Jeri Howard Series Book 5)

by Janet Dawson

  “She’s already been found,” I told him. “She’s over at the Alameda County coroner’s office. But this one’s a bit different. As you can see, she had a child, a little girl who was about a year old when that picture was taken.”

  The phone bleeped again as two lines flashed simultaneously. Levi growled. “This is what I get for being a successful businessman. Let’s go down to the Med and get a latte.”

  We got to our feet and went out onto the sales floor, past the cash register counter where a young woman with a fuchsia streak in her black hair waved fingers tipped with green nail polish and tried to interest Levi in picking up the call on line three. He shook his head and told her to take a message.

  “Gotta have some caffeine. Back in half an hour. Don’t give away the store while I’m gone.”

  We walked toward the campus and stopped at a red light. As we waited for the light to turn green, a panhandler came up on my right. “Spare change? Got any spare change?” Levi shook his head once. The panhandler, assessing Levi’s bulk and height, backed off.

  “Time was, I’d have given the guy something,” Levi said. “But things have changed. A lot of these guys are real aggressive, even abusive. If you were alone, he might not take no for an answer.”

  “That’s happened to me,” I told him. “Downtown, on Shattuck. And in San Francisco. I don’t come to Telegraph much anymore.”

  “You and a lot of other people.” The light changed and Levi and I crossed the street. “I’ve got a parking lot behind the store, because parking’s always a problem for my customers. But what do I do about people who tell me they don’t like to come shopping down here because they don’t like being accosted? They go to the ’burbs instead. That hurts my business. You know about the ballot propositions?”

  I nodded. The media had given it much attention, a controversial law intended to curb aggressive panhandlers. In the recent general election, Berkeley voters had overwhelmingly approved two measures. One made “loitering with intent” a crime, an attempt to control drug dealing. The other was an “advisory” vote on a proposed panhandling ordinance, which was then passed by the city council. The ordinance aimed at those street solicitations which, to many people, were becoming more aggressive. The measure wound up on the ballot after several fractious city council sessions during which the council seemed unable to make up its mind. Now the voters had done it for them.

  Berkeley wasn’t alone in seeking to deal with panhandling. There had been a measure on the San Francisco ballot as well. Lots of other cities were doing it too, but it sounded strange coming from the People’s Republic of Berkeley, that liberal bastion noted for cultural diversity and progressive politics.

  “I went to the hearings on the ordinance,” Levi continued. “What a zoo. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of it. I don’t know what the answer is. Hell, I’m an old lefty from the sixties. I marched and demonstrated. I contribute my money and my time. But I’m also the president of the Telegraph Avenue Merchants Association.”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s getting mean out here on these streets. A couple of weeks ago Nell came down to see me. When she wouldn’t give some panhandler money, the punk shoved her around and called her a whore. He’s lucky I wasn’t around when it happened. I’d’ve taken him apart.”

  Which was something I thought I’d never hear this big man say. We detoured through the double doors of the Mediterraneum Caffè. Inside, the round tables were crowded with people drinking espresso, reading, and talking. U.C. Berkeley was in the last throes of the fall term, so many of the customers seemed to be poring over their notes, studying for finals in the comfortable coffeehouse cacophony. Levi and I both stepped up to the counter and ordered lattes. “Anything else?” the counter person inquired in a bored voice. I took a look at the assorted pastries and pointed at something with chocolate excess written all over it.

  “Nothing for me,” Levi said, with a downward look at his substantial belly. “I’m still recuperating from Thanksgiving.”

  “Don’t be a piker, Levi. The eating season lasts from Thanksgiving all the way through New Year’s Day. If we really work at it, we can stretch that till Twelfth Night.”

  We snagged a table being vacated by a wan-faced mustachioed boy who scooped up a pile of notebooks and texts that appeared to weigh more than he did. I used a fork to attack the chocolate whatever-it-was and carried the first bite to my mouth, experiencing a rush as my tastebuds encountered sugar and caffeine.

  “Well, this will keep me wired till midnight,” I said as I chased chocolate with coffee.

  “So the girl in the picture is dead,” Levi said, hands wrapped around the tall glass mug.

  “Probably murdered. She was from Piedmont I have no idea where she went when she left home.” I worked on another forkful of pastry. “This is long-shot city, a hunch. She used to hang out here, just like I did when I was that age. So maybe this is where she wound up. You know the avenue, Levi. Who can I talk with?”

  Levi thought for a moment, sipping his latte. “People like me, who own stores. The street merchants would be a good bet. They’re here all the time on weekends, working their tables on the sidewalk. They see more than I would, cooped up in my office with the phone. You could talk to some of the regulars in People’s Park. But the park’s getting really weird.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Levi. People’s Park was always weird.” I raised my latte to my lips. “Regulars, huh? You mean regular panhandlers?”

  “Oh, yeah, some of these people have been here for years. They’re not the aggressive ones, though. More mellow, part of the scene. There’s one guy we call the Cowboy. He hangs out down at the corner of Telegraph and Dwight. Maybe he can tell you something. Cowboy’s okay, I guess. Talkative, funny, quite a line of patter. He doesn’t get in your face. So he’s one successful panhandler.” Levi shook his head ruefully. “I guess that’s the key. People don’t want to be hassled. They want to give money of their own accord, not because they feel threatened.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “There’s another guy. Big guy, almost as big as me. They call him Rio. Now him, I figure for a drug dealer. Or maybe I’ve heard that on the street. I’d give him a wide berth.”

  “Maybe he knows something.”

  “Possibly. I’ve seen him in the park off and on for years. But not lately. And if you do find him, I have a feeling you won’t be able to get him to talk.”

  Nine

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY MAUREEN RAN AWAY FROM home.” Kara Jenner’s answer was premature. I hadn’t asked the question yet.

  “You were friends.”

  She blinked once, then looked away from me, through the plate glass window near our table. Her eyes seemed drawn by the constant parade of people along the sidewalks. Or an eagerness to avoid meeting my gaze.

  “We weren’t really that close,” she said.

  She wasn’t really a good liar either. Naomi Smith had told me the two girls had been friends since grade school, a fact confirmed by Kara’s parents when I called them at the number Naomi had given me. The informative teacher at Piedmont High told me the two girls were “practically joined at the hip.” The teacher didn’t recall Maureen and Kara with any other girls, but there was a boy who always tagged along. “One of the Marland boys,” the teacher said. “Not Stuart, the older one. It was Emory. He was in the same class. I think he had a crush on either Maureen or Kara.”

  So why was Kara now hedging about her friendship with Maureen Smith? Had they grown apart that last year in high school?

  I examined Kara Jenner as she stared out the window of the coffeehouse on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft, in the direction of U.C.’s Sproul Plaza, just across the street. She had long-lashed brown eyes set in a round face with a pale peach-blossom complexion that didn’t need any makeup. Her blond hair, loosely braided, fell midway down her back, and there were little gold hoops threaded through the lobes of each ear. She wore blue jeans and a red sweater
and carried a navy-blue day pack that was crammed with books and papers. It now rested on the floor between us, crowned with a tan rain hat that matched the jacket she’d removed and draped over the back of the chair. The coffeehouse was crowded, with minimal space between tables and chairs. People who squeezed between Kara’s chair and the one behind her kept knocking the jacket askew. Finally she snatched it from the chair, folded it into an untidy bundle, and slipped it between the hat and the day pack.

  It had taken me several tries to connect with Kara. She lived in a three-story apartment building on LeConte Avenue, north of the campus. My first two phone calls netted the information that Kara was in class or studying at the library. Finally, the phone was answered by Kara herself. She reluctantly agreed to meet me for coffee.

  “We have to make it short,” she said when I introduced myself. “I’ve got a final tomorrow morning.”

  “I understand,” I said. As I glanced around me this gray and rainy afternoon, I saw that she and the other students who sat around us had that glazed look that spoke of all-nighters spent poring over notes and textbooks. She snagged a table as it was being vacated, and I went to the counter to order coffee. I returned with a latte for me and a cappuccino for her. I’d barely taken my seat when she answered the question I hadn’t asked.

  I wrapped my hands around my glass and raised it to my lips, sipped the strong espresso with its overlay of foamed milk. “When was the last time you saw Maureen?”

  She hid for a moment behind her own cup, brown eyes blinking at me as though she was disappointed that I wouldn’t take her word for it and drop the subject of Maureen Smith. “I guess it was a couple of days before she left home,” she said finally, with a shrug and a troubled expression. I waited, hoping Kara would become uncomfortable with my silence. She was already on edge, simply because I’d sought her out. Suspicious person that I am, her reaction to me made me quite sure there was something Kara wasn’t telling me.

  “I don’t know why she ran away,” Kara repeated. “She never said anything about it, I mean, if something was bothering her...”

  Her voice trailed off and she stared into her cappuccino. No help there. She looked at her watch, ready to plead the necessity of studying for her final. “Did Maureen get along with her mother?” I asked, before she could say anything.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  She reached up and twiddled with one of the hoops in her ears. “Do any teenage girls get along with their mothers?”

  Good question, I thought, recalling several altercations with my own mother that ended with me slamming out of the house and going to spend the night with my grandmother. Did Kara Jenner get along with her own mother?

  “What about the man Maureen’s mother was dating? The professor, Douglas Widener?”

  “What about him? He seemed like a nice man.” Then she raised her eyebrows. “You think Mr. Widener did something to Maureen?” She shook her head. “No, that’s not possible.”

  “It happens.”

  Kara Jenner shook her head again. “No, I don’t believe it. My God, he was so old. In his forties.”

  That didn’t sound all that old to me, but then, I wasn’t twenty anymore. Neither was Naomi Smith. If what Kara said about Widener’s age was true, how had my fiftyish client hooked up with this younger college professor? Of course, my own mother was now seeing a man a good ten years younger than she. Does age matter these days?

  Naomi had called it mere coincidence that her relationship with Widener ended at the same time her daughter ran away from home. I wasn’t so sure. Had Douglas Widener paid too much attention to Naomi’s daughter? If so, had she said anything about it to her supposed best friend?

  “If Mr. Widener had made any moves on Maureen, she would have said something,” Kara said, as though she were thinking out loud. From the look on her face I knew she didn’t much care for the thought of the elderly Professor Widener with Maureen. Neither did I.

  “I thought you two weren’t really that close.”

  Now she ducked her head, looking embarrassed as I quoted her earlier words. “Well, okay. We were, for a while. Then we got kind of distant. Or at least Maureen did. I don’t know why.”

  “If you were going to guess?”

  “She and her mother fought all the time. Maureen’s mother drinks too much.” Kara reached for her cappuccino, looking as though embarrassed by Naomi’s behavior. “I didn’t like going over to their house. I never knew whether Mrs. Smith would be drunk or not.”

  “That must have been difficult for Maureen.” That, too, might be a reason for leaving, to escape the battle zone of her mother’s alcoholism.

  Kara nodded. She was loosening up now. I let her talk. “She didn’t stay home much. We had sleepovers. Once Maureen decided to have a slumber party. The only ones who came were me and another girl. Nobody else wanted to be around her mother. I felt so badly for her.” She frowned at this memory. “We used to come down here, on the weekends.”

  “So did I, when I was in high school. It’s changed a lot.”

  A shadow passed over her face and she reached for her coffee. “Yes, it has. Maybe it’s because I was just a kid, but I used to feel okay about coming down here at night. Now I don’t, not alone, not after dark.”

  I took another sip of my latte, warming my hands on the glass. Outside it had started raining again, and we were sitting close enough to the entrance that a chilly wind insinuated itself into the coffeehouse each time someone came through the door. “Is there any chance Maureen left because she was pregnant?”

  Kara stared at me in what looked like consternation. And something else. I was very curious about whatever caused Kara’s already fair complexion to whiten. But I couldn’t put my finger on what caused it.

  “Pregnant? She never said anything to me about being pregnant. Or having an abortion. Or a baby. How would she, when would she—” She stopped and shutters fell over her brown eyes.

  “You’ve seen her, haven’t you? Since she left home. How long ago was it? Six months? A year?” Hunch time for Jeri. But there was something about the way Kara Jenner was dancing around the subject of Maureen Smith that made me think her last contact with her friend had been more recent than high school.

  “Of course I haven’t.” Kara held the coffee cup with both hands, putting it between us like an inadequate barrier. “Why are you asking me all these questions? It’s been almost three years since I’ve seen her. I don’t know where Maureen is.”

  “I do.” I kept my voice low, although there was no way to soften what I was about to tell her. “Maureen’s dead.”

  Kara Jenner spilled her cappuccino.

  The cup slipped from her hand and splashed coffee all over the table. I grabbed a handful of napkins and mopped while she sat as though nailed to the chair. My fistful of napkins quickly became saturated and I hazarded a trip to the counter for more napkins and another cappuccino. When I squeezed my way through the tightly packed chairs, Kara was still riveted to her chair, heedless of a thin stream of coffee dripping onto her denim-clad lap. I wiped the table clean, put a couple of napkins in her lap, and set the fresh cappuccino in front of her.

  “Oh, my God,” she said softly when I resumed my seat. “Oh, my God.”

  Kara’s eyes now had a sheen of tears. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her so abruptly. But her reaction was revealing. Maureen Smith had been more than a schoolmate or a casual acquaintance.

  “How did she die?” Kara asked.

  “I don’t know. Her body was found up in the Oakland hills a few weeks ago. I haven’t seen the autopsy report.” I sipped the remains of my latte, which was growing as cold as the day outside. “When did you see Maureen?”

  Kara reached for the coffee, holding it carefully, as though she were fearful of spilling it again. She took a restorative hit of caffeine. “Last summer, over by Cody’s.” She nodded in the direction of the big bookstore at the corner of Telegra
ph and Haste. Her next words were saddened and shocked. “She was panhandling. I couldn’t believe it Maureen Smith, begging for money. A girl who grew up in a big expensive house in Piedmont.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I gave her some money.” Kara frowned at me. “Did she have a baby?”

  “Yes. A little girl named Dyese. I don’t know where she is and I’m trying to find her. Did Maureen say anything about where she’d been or what she had been doing?”

  “No, no, she wouldn’t talk about it She was embarrassed to see me. I know she was.” Kara looked at her watch.

  Someone passed by the window of the coffeehouse, someone who caught Kara’s eye. I followed her gaze and saw a broad-shouldered young man who just missed being attractive. He waved enthusiastically at Kara and came through the door of the coffeehouse.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  Her mouth tightened. “Nobody important. Just Emory Marland. Just this guy I knew in high school.”

  As Emory trundled toward our table, sidestepping a man holding two coffee cups, I examined him more closely. Sandy hair, light blue eyes, and a snub nose in a square face. He had a gawky, awkward manner, as though he wasn’t quite sure where to put his hands and feet. He reminded me of a big-pawed puppy.

  “You told me you had to study,” Emory said. There was an undertone of resentment in his voice that made me revise my friendly puppy assessment. Was there a petulant twist to his wide mouth? “Guess you can have lunch with me after all.”

  “I do have to study.” Kara pushed her coffee cup across the table and reached for her jacket, slipping it on quickly. “I have to go now, I really do.” She gave me a sidelong glance as she shouldered her day pack. She didn’t introduce me to Emory and he didn’t seem all that curious about me.

  “Where you going?” Emory asked.

  “The library. I’ve got this final tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a bear. I’m planning to study all afternoon.”