by Janet Dawson
Mike Strickland’s funeral was scheduled on Saturday afternoon, at a local church. I noted the time and made plans to attend. I wanted to talk with his daughter.
Strickland’s murder bothered me, and not only for the obvious reason. I’d first heard about his collection of Hitchcock items when I eavesdropped on a conversation between Raina Makellar and another woman, at the shop in Alameda. It sounded as though Chaz Makellar and Henry Calhoun were among the dealers who’d contacted Strickland to see if he was interested in selling items from his collection. Raina had also talked about a collection that had been owned by a Sonoma County collector who had died recently. Her son didn’t know, or didn’t care, how much the collection was worth. He wanted to get rid of it. So Chaz Makellar gave the son a lowball offer, as Raina put it, and purchased the collection at a fraction of its value.
The line of work I’m in gives me a suspicious nature. Now I wondered if the collector had died of natural causes. When had she died? Raina said earlier this year. It was June now, the sixth month, which gave me a range of five months from January to May. And where had the woman lived? Sonoma County was large, just north of Marin County, with towns ranging from the coast to the Napa County line. So which town was home to the woman who’d died? Santa Rosa, the county seat, was a good place to start, and so was the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. I’d have to do some serious digging to find out. But for the time being, I had an appointment with a paying client in Pleasanton, something that would keep me busy for the rest of the afternoon. I locked my office and headed for the garage where I kept my car.
I got home at six o’clock, after fighting my way through rush hour traffic. My cats, Abigail and Black Bart, met me at the door, loudly declaiming hunger and neglect. After I fed them, I dug through the DVDs in my collection until I found Shadow of a Doubt. Then I sat on the sofa, munching on a big bowl of buttered popcorn, and watched the movie, in honor of Mike Strickland and his sister Molly, who had a bit part in the Hitchcock picture.
Chapter 15
The phone was ringing as I unlocked my office Thursday morning. I grabbed the receiver and identified myself. On the other end of the line I heard a woman’s voice. “My name is Noreen Campbell. I’m Anne Sanderson’s daughter. My daughter Elisa says you want to talk with me.”
“I do. Thank you so much for calling me. I’m Jerusha Layne’s granddaughter. In fact, I’m named for her, but I prefer Jeri to Jerusha.”
“Nice to meet, even if it’s on the phone rather than face to face,” she said. “How can I help you, Jeri?”
“I’m doing some background research into my grandmother’s days in Hollywood. Your mother was one of her roommates.”
“Yes, my daughter mentioned that,” she said. “I do recognize your grandmother’s name, because it’s so unusual. I’m not sure how much I can help you, though. Mom didn’t talk much about Hollywood. She enjoyed her stint as an actress, but once she left, that chapter of her life was closed.”
“It’s not so much Hollywood I’m interested in, but life back in the early forties, right before the war, sharing that bungalow with those other aspiring actresses.”
“Well... She did talk about her roommates, and she corresponded with them later. Your grandmother, for one. I think Mom and Dad even visited your grandparents once, when they took a vacation in California. That same trip they visited another roommate, a woman who stayed in Hollywood and worked steadily for years. Mom used to see her on TV. Oh, what was her name? A jewel name. Ruby...no, it was Pearl.”
“Pearl Bishop,” I said.
“Mom used to say Pearl was a character.”
“That’s the impression I got from Grandma.”
“And Mildred, of course,” she added.
“Mildred Peretti, the roommate who moved back to Denver?”
“Mom and Mildred were really close friends. They were both from Colorado. And they lived together during the war. Mildred was like an aunt to all of us.”
“Why did your mother leave Hollywood?” I asked. “Was it something to do with the war?”
“Definitely the war,” she said. “Mom’s older brother was killed in November of nineteen forty-two, at Guadalcanal. After that, her Hollywood career, such as it was, didn’t seem important. Mom went back to Alamosa. That’s where she was born and raised, down in the San Luis Valley, which is south-central Colorado. Her dad worked for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. She went home when the family got the news about her brother, and got a job in the railroad freight office there. But in the fall of nineteen forty-three she moved to Denver. She and Mildred got an apartment and they worked in civilian jobs at Buckley Air Force Base, at the Army Air Corps training school.”
“How did she meet your father?” I asked. “Was he in the Army?”
Noreen Campbell laughed. “He was, but they met before the war. Dad was from the Valley, too, a town called Monte Vista. He was going to Adams State College in Alamosa and so was Mom. She had her freshman year there. He was a junior and he knew her brother, the one who got killed. They’d even gone out a couple of times, while Mom was a coed. Then she went off to Hollywood to be an actress. After he got his commission in the Army in ’forty-two, he was sent to some training camp in California. When he got to Los Angeles, he looked her up. So they reconnected and the relationship took off from there. He came back to the Valley in nineteen forty-three before he went overseas, to see his family and marry Mom. They were married over sixty years.”
“That sounds like my grandparents,” I said. “They met in nineteen forty-one and married in ’forty-two, before Grandpa shipped out. He was in the Navy. I’m trying to get more information about another roommate, a woman named Sylvia Jasper.”
“Oh, her,” Mrs. Campbell said. “The bitch. That’s what Mom called her. And she must have been something, because if you knew my mother, well, she was very forthright, but she just didn’t use language like that. My impression was that Sylvia was a pain in the butt from the start and then something happened that brought things to a head. I don’t know what it was, but it must have been a doozy.”
“I’ve been reading my grandmother’s letters to her sister, and it looks like Sylvia was helping herself to the roommates’ clothes and jewelry—and the money in the grocery kitty. I also get the impression she was sleeping around. Ultimately they asked her to move out, sometime in ’forty-two. The kicker is that Sylvia was murdered later that year.”
“No kidding? Now you’ve got me curious. I wonder what happened.”
“Me, too. I’m hoping to locate Pearl Bishop. I’ll bet she could tell me a lot. As far as I know she’s still alive. She worked in movies and TV up through the eighties, and I haven’t found her obituary. By the way, did you save any of your mother’s correspondence from that era, such as letters she wrote to family while she was in Hollywood, or to her roommates after she left?”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Campbell said. “There were some letters she’d kept, and when she died I read some of it, then tossed the whole lot. Mom wouldn’t have approved, since she was a history professor. But you just can’t keep everything.”
“I know. But I’m really enjoying reading my grandmother’s letters. She wrote to her sister frequently during the Hollywood years. And there’s also some wartime correspondence between Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Same thing. Letters Mom and Dad wrote each other while he was in the Army, while they were engaged and when he was overseas. There are some of those. My daughter Elisa took them.”
“Great. Would you and Elisa do me a big favor? If there are any letters from nineteen forty-two, would you read through them and see if there’s any information about Sylvia Jasper?”
“Why are you interested in her?” she asked. “Mom didn’t even like her.”
“Neither did my grandmother,” I said. “But since she was murdered, I’m really curious about her.”
“I see what you mean. Okay, my husband and I are visiting relatives in Wyoming
right now, but we’re heading home tomorrow. I’ll call my daughter and we’ll get together and read the letters. You know, my son did an oral history. He interviewed Mom a few years before she died. It was mostly about what she did during the war, but she did talk about working in Hollywood.”
“I did the same thing with my grandmother,” I said. “She was a welder at the Kaiser Shipyard during the war. I’d really like to listen to your mother’s oral history. Is it an audiotape, or a digital file?”
“I think it’s digital,” she said. “I’ll call my son and see. If it’s a tape, he could make a copy, and if it’s digital, he can e-mail it to you.”
I gave her my e-mail address. “Can you think of anything else that might help?”
“Mildred might be able to help you.”
“Mildred Peretti? She’s still alive?”
“Oh, yes. Her married name is Roberson. She lives in Greeley, Colorado. She’d already left Hollywood before Sylvia moved in, of course. But she and Mom were such good friends. If something strange was going on, I’ll bet Mom told her all about it.”
“I hope so. Yes, I want to talk with her. Would you please give her my phone numbers?”
“I certainly will.”
That was productive, I thought, as Mrs. Campbell and I ended the conversation. I pictured Anne Hayes and Mildred Peretti in their Denver apartment back in World War II, dishing the dirt after a day of work at Buckley Field. Surely Anne would have told Mildred about Sylvia.
I turned my attention to other matters and then left the office for an appointment with an attorney and some surveillance regarding an insurance case. When I returned I started researching deaths in Sonoma County during the first five months of the year, hoping to find information on the collector who had died suddenly, providing Chaz Makellar with the opportunity to purchase a collection of movie memorabilia from her son. I knew from the conversation I’d overheard that the collector was an elderly woman who’d lived in Sonoma County. I looked through news articles, obituaries and funeral notices in the online archives of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, starting in January. It was a long and tedious process, but I found a likely prospect, when I clicked on a name next to a photo and the link took me to a longer and more detailed obituary. In early March, Mrs. Roberta Cook, aged eighty-three, a lifelong resident of the southern Sonoma County town of Petaluma, had died in an accident. Her survivors included a son, Lewis, of San Mateo; a daughter, Margaret Duggan, of Pismo Beach; five grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. The nugget I gleaned from the obituary was that Mrs. Cook collected movie posters.
What kind of accident? I stared at the photo that went with the obit. Mrs. Cook had been a pleasant, motherly-looking, white-haired woman, with a plump, smiling face. I looked through the archives of the website, which focused on Petaluma news, and found the answer. On a rainy afternoon Mrs. Cook evidently left her house and went down the front steps to check her mailbox. She slipped and fell, hitting her head on the porch railing. A neighbor found her and called 911. The death was deemed accidental.
I was going up to Healdsburg on Saturday, for Mike Strickland’s funeral. I decided to leave early so I could make a stop in Petaluma as well.
Chapter 16
On Saturday morning I drove north on Highway 101 to Petaluma, in southern Sonoma County. The area, with its rolling hills, had first been settled by the coastal Miwok Indians. Then Alta California became an outpost of Spain. A huge land grant, Rancho Petaluma, was given to General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the Commandant of the San Francisco Presidio. The adobe house he built in 1836 still stands near Petaluma, one of the best-preserved buildings of its era in Northern California.
I steered my Toyota into the right lane and drove across a bridge, glancing down at the Petaluma River, which flows into the upper reaches of San Francisco Bay and made the city, chartered in 1858, a center of trade as flat-bottomed boats called scows sailed between Petaluma and San Francisco, carrying agricultural produce and other materials. The chicken-and-egg business flourished here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At one time the city was known as the “Egg Capital of the World” and one of the big local celebrations, called Butter and Egg Days, is in April.
I left the freeway, heading downtown, where iron-fronted Victorian commercial buildings line several streets, survivors of the 1906 earthquake that left Petaluma relatively unscathed. The older neighborhoods surrounding the downtown area are full of Victorian-era homes, Queen Anne, Eastlake and Stick Gothic.
Mrs. Roberta Cook had lived on Liberty Street, a few blocks northwest of the city’s commercial center. The one-story Queen Anne house was built high off the ground, with a driveway on the right leading to a detached garage at the back. The structure had the usual Victorian-style curlicues, including fishscale siding. It was painted pale blue with darker blue trim and bright yellow flourishes, the color nearly matching that of the yellow roses blooming in front of the porch railing. A FOR SALE sign stood in the front yard, with a Plexiglas pocket on the base, containing information sheets about the house. I parked my car and got out, plucking a sheet from the pocket. The house dated to 1902 and the asking price made me wince. It would probably sell for that, though. It was a lovely house, obviously well-kept.
I returned the sheet to the pocket and walked toward the porch, examining the front steps, eight of them. Someone had installed safety measures, applying non-skid strips to each step and adding grab bars to the original porch railings, so someone on the stairs could hold onto a bar with each hand. I saw another grab bar just outside the front door. At the bottom of the porch, the original railings ended in a couple of squat, pyramid-shaped ornaments. The mailbox was attached to a post, about six inches from the base of the steps, on the left as I faced the house. Mrs. Cook had supposedly slipped on these steps, wet from the rain, and tumbled down, hitting her head as she fell. I could see how it might have happened. The non-skid surface didn’t extend the full width of the steps. If Mrs. Cook’s foot had landed on one of the smooth portions, she could have slipped. I walked toward the house and ran my fingers over those pointy pyramids. They felt like solid wood and they could have caused some serious damage to a skull.
“Are you going to buy this house?” a voice demanded behind me.
I turned and looked at the woman who stood near the FOR SALE sign. She was elderly, but spry, short and wiry, with white hair and a determined expression. On this June morning she wore bright blue pants and a matching floral shirt. She carried a canvas shopping bag draped over her left shoulder and a bright pink fanny pack cinched around her middle.
I walked toward her. “I can’t afford to buy this house.”
She sniffed. “It’s priced too high, in the middle of a recession. Lots of lookers, but no takers. It’ll sell eventually, though. It’s a really nice house. I just hope whoever buys it will be a good neighbor.”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Next door.” She pointed north, at a modest Stick Victorian house. “Fifty-two years I’ve lived here. Almost as long as the woman who lived in this house. She died. I found her.”
“Did you?” Just the person I wanted to talk with.
“They said she fell down the steps.” She sniffed again, a derisive sound.
“But you don’t believe that?”
A pair of sharp brown eyes looked me up and down. “If you’re not interested in buying a house, why are you here? Are you lurking?”
I smiled at the word. “I didn’t think I was lurking.” But I was.
“Listen, honey, I’ve been watching you all the time I walked up the street. I read lots of mysteries. I know lurking when I see it. Are you a cop?”
“No. Why do you think I’m lurking? Were you expecting a cop?”
“Because my friend was murdered. I want somebody to do something about it.”
Bingo. I held out my business card. “I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator. And I’d really like to talk with you.”
> Her eyes widened. “A private eye. Like Sharon McCone or Kinsey Millhone?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“Well, Jeri Howard, I’m Sadie Espinosa. Come on over to my house and let’s have us a talk.”
I followed Mrs. Espinosa to her own house. She had the same sort of fall-prevention setup. She unlocked the front door. A pair of cats greeted us in the foyer. One, a calico, meowed softly, while the other, a big orange tom, gave my shoes a thorough examination. “That’s Poppy,” Mrs. Espinosa said, indicating the calico. “And the big orange boy is Ducks.”
“Hey, Ducks.” I knelt and scratched his ears. He purred loudly, left off sniffing my shoes and rubbed his head and body against my charcoal gray slacks, leaving a liberal coating of orange hair.
Mrs. Espinosa beckoned me to follow her into the kitchen. On the far side of the counter was a family room with a wide-screen flat-panel TV fastened to the wall. Below it shelves contained DVDs and videotapes. Opposite the TV were two recliners. A carpeted kitty gym stood in front of the window that looked out on the backyard.
She deposited her shopping bag and fanny pack on the counter. Then she poured a couple of glasses of iced tea, handed one to me, and lifted the lid on a plastic container of cookies on the kitchen counter. She put several on a plate and grabbed a fistful of paper napkins from a nearby holder. “Peanut butter-chocolate chip. I made ’em yesterday. Pretty good, if I do say so myself.”
“Oh, my, yes,” I said, after taking a bite. Now I had gooey dark chocolate smeared on my hands. I took one of the napkins and followed Mrs. Espinosa to her living room. She set the plate on the coffee table and put a cookie on a napkin, setting that and her glass on an end table. She settled into a wing chair to the left of the fireplace and Poppy, the calico cat, jumped onto her lap. I sat on the sofa opposite her. Ducks, my new best friend, plopped down next to me. He kneaded my thigh with his big paws and rumbled with his big purr. With every movement he shed more orange hair.
