Women's Murder Club [09] The 9th Judgment Read online

  The room was empty but for two Salvation Army–quality desks and chairs, a bank of file cabinets, and an outdated telephone book.

  Conklin and I brought coffee and settled in behind a locked door. I was keyed up and bordering on optimistic. The odds that Dowling would say something incriminating were a long shot—but a shot we actually had.

  For the next five hours, my partner and I monitored Dowling’s incoming and outgoing calls. He was a busy lad, having scripts overnighted from Hollywood, schmoozing with his agent, his lawyer, his banker, his manager, his PR person, his broker, and—finally—his girlfriend.

  The conversation with Caroline Henley was laced with “darlings” and “sweethearts” from both ends of the line. They made a plan to have dinner together the next week, when Graeme Henley was on a business trip in New York.

  Then, when I was sure the conversation was over, it got interesting.

  “You don’t know what this is like, Marc. Graeme knows something’s wrong, and now he wants us to go into counseling.”

  “I understand completely, Caroline. You have to stall him. We’ve waited for two long years, darling. Another few months won’t matter in the big picture.”

  “You’ve been saying that forever.”

  “Three or four more months, that’s all,” Dowling said. “Be patient. I told you it will work out, and it will. We need the public to get bored with the story, and then we’ll be fine.”

  Conklin broke into a grin. “Two years. He’s been seeing her for two years. It’s not a smoking gun, but it’s something.”

  Chapter 78

  I CALLED JACOBI from Yuki’s office and told him that Marcus Dowling had been having an ongoing relationship with a woman, not his wife, for two years.

  “Go get ’em,” Jacobi said.

  Conklin and I drove to Caroline Henley’s place, a modern two-story house only blocks from the Presidio.

  Mrs. Henley came to the door wearing her blond hair in one long braid, black tights under a blue-striped man’s shirt, a big diamond ring next to her wedding band. A couple of little boys were playing with trucks in the living room behind her.

  I introduced myself and my partner and asked Mrs. Henley if we could come in to talk, and she opened the door wide.

  Conklin has consistently proved that he can get any woman to spill her guts, so once we were ensconced in overstuffed furniture, I turned the floor over to him.

  “Marcus Dowling says you two are very good friends.”

  “He never said that. Come on. I’ve met him at a couple of cocktail parties is all.”

  “Mrs. Henley, we know about your relationship,” my partner said. “We just need you to verify his whereabouts at certain times. We have no interest in making trouble for you. Or,” he added reasonably, “we can come back when your husband is home.”

  “No, please don’t do that,” she said.

  Caroline Henley told us to wait. She bent to talk to the boys, then took their small hands, walked them to a bedroom, and closed the door.

  She came back to her seat and clasped her hands in her lap, then said to my partner, “Casey stifled him. She ground him down with her jealousy and her constant demands. Marc was waiting for the right time, and then he was going to divorce her and I was going to leave Graeme. We were going to get married. That’s not bull, that’s the truth.”

  I walked around the living room as Caroline Henley told Conklin “the truth.” There were photos everywhere, standing on tables, framed on the walls. Caroline Henley was either at the center of every group shot or alone, wearing something small that showed off her figure and her beautiful face.

  I wondered why she was attracted to an aging movie star twenty years’ her senior. Maybe her vanity demanded more of a catch than a stockbroker ordinaire.

  “So, if I’ve got this right, you and Marcus Dowling have been lovers for two years,” Conklin said.

  Caroline Henley looked stunned as she realized why we were there. “Wait a minute. Are you thinking he had something to do with Casey’s death? That’s crazy. I would have known. Marc’s not capable of that. Is he?”

  She clapped her hands to her mouth, then dropped them. She almost looked pleased when she asked Conklin, “You think he killed Casey for me?”

  Back out in the car, I said to my partner, “So maybe he wanted out of the marriage but didn’t have the guts to tell Casey. Then Kitty shows up in his bedroom, for Christ’s sake. Dowling couldn’t have planned it better.”

  “Another way to look at it,” Conklin said. “Divorce is expensive. But, if you get away with it, murder is dead cheap.”

  Chapters 79

  SARAH WELLS WAS dressed for her night job, black clothes and shoes, car pointed toward Pacific Heights. She hit the turn signal and took Divisadero as the light went red. A cacophony of horns blared, damn it. Brakes screeched, and she narrowly avoided a collision with a station wagon full of kids.

  Oh my God. Focus, Sarah!

  She should be thinking about the work ahead, but her mind kept drifting back to earlier that night, seeing the perfect blue fingerprints on the soft flesh of Heidi’s arms, the still-vivid bite mark on her neck.

  Heidi had tried to brush off the evidence of Beastly’s attack. “He’s out of control,” she said. “But it’s not his fault.”

  “Whose fault is it? Yours?”

  “It’s because of what he went through in Iraq.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference what the reason is,” Sarah had snapped. “You don’t have to take it.”

  She hadn’t meant to bark at Heidi, but she was angry and scared at what Pete Gordon could do. Heidi had to get away from Beastly for her own sake, and for the good of the children.

  “I know, I know,” Heidi had cried out, putting her head on Sarah’s shoulder. “It can’t go on.”

  No, it couldn’t go on, and it wouldn’t, Sarah told herself as she cruised along Bush Street. She was meeting with Lynnette Green, Maury’s widow, next week. Lynnette had told Sarah that she’d buy the jewels and sell them herself. Sarah couldn’t wait to cash out. Could not wait.

  She turned on Steiner and again on California, then parked her Saturn at the Whole Foods parking lot, surrounded by other cars. She took a few minutes to make sure she had all her gear, then locked her wallet in the glove box, got out of the car, and locked that, too, now thinking about Diana King, her target tonight.

  Mrs. King was a widowed philanthropist, a big wheel on the charity circuit, frequently photographed and written about in the glossies and every month in the Chronicle.

  According to the Lifestyle page, Mrs. King was having a small engagement party for her son and future daughter-in-law that night in her home, a superbly restored cream-colored Victorian. And also superbly restored was Mrs. King’s classic jewelry: Tiffany, Van Cleef, Harry Winston.

  If Sarah could steal it, Lynnette Green would buy it and make it disappear. And then it would be over. Tonight’s job would be Sarah’s grand finale, her last haul.

  A half dozen cars were parked in front of the King house when Sarah approached on her rubber-soled climbing shoes. She crept into the side yard, which was shielded from the neighbors by a tall privet hedge. She peeked through one of Mrs. King’s ground-floor windows and saw guests at the dinner table, deeply involved in conversation.

  Sarah’s pulse sped up as she prepared herself for the climb, and then she caught a lucky break: an air conditioner on the first floor that was diagonally placed under the master bedroom. Sarah told herself she would spend only four minutes inside the house. Whatever she grabbed would be enough.

  Using the air conditioner as a foothold, she easily gained purchase, and then she was through the open bedroom window and inside the house.

  Getting in had almost been too easy.

  Chapter 80

  SARAH STOOD JUST inside Diana King’s rose-scented bedroom, checking for anything that could impede her speedy exit. She crossed the room and closed the paneled door leading to the hallw
ay. Then she flipped on her light.

  The room was about fifteen feet square, with deeply sloped ceilings and a dormer facing the street. Sarah panned her light over the antique furnishings and cabbage-rose wallpaper, then hit the dresser with her beam. She was ready to go through the drawers when she saw a dark figure with a light. “Jeez! Who?” she squealed, then realized that it was her own reflection in the mirror.

  Sarah, get a grip.

  She flicked her beam back around the room and picked up a dull gold gleam on top of the vanity. She moved closer and saw a mass of jewelry, just tons of it, lying on the warm cherrywood surface.

  Sarah was already swimming in adrenaline, but the mound of gold topped up her tank. She opened her duffel and, using the side of her shaking hand, slid the jewelry into her bag. A few pieces, a ring and an earring, escaped and fell to the floor. Sarah snatched them up before they stopped rolling. She glanced at her watch.

  She’d made a first-class score in just over three minutes. A record, her personal best—and now it was time to go.

  Sarah crossed to the window and let herself down over the side of the house, once again using the air conditioner as a foothold. Feeling almost giddy, she threaded her way between the hedge and the house until she reached the dimly lit street.

  She’d pulled it off.

  She was outta there.

  Sarah ripped off her headlamp and dropped it into her tool bag as she turned right on the sidewalk, heading for the next street—then she pulled up short. She’d patted herself on the back too fast. Sirens shrilled, and Sarah saw a cruiser take the corner and head straight for her.

  How she’d been found out, or even if the police were coming for her, was irrelevant. Sarah was holding several hundred thousand dollars in jewels and a bagful of burglar’s tools.

  She couldn’t get caught.

  Taking off at a run, reversing her direction, Sarah cut through the backyard of the house to the west of Mrs. King’s. Mentally marking the spot, she ditched the bag of jewels into a basement window well and kept running. She skirted what looked to be the makings of a backyard shed and dropped her tools into a bag of construction trash.

  Still at a run, Sarah whipped off her hat and gloves and tossed them under a hedge. She heard the siren stop only yards away, and someone shouted, “Stop! This is the police.”

  Without her light, Sarah couldn’t see where to run, so she dropped to her haunches and froze against the rough stucco wall of a house. Flashlight beams swept the yard, but the lights didn’t touch her. Radios crackled and cops called out to one another, guessing at which way she had gone, and for those interminable minutes, Sarah hugged the stucco wall, fighting the urge to run.

  When the voices faded, Sarah broke diagonally across a yard full of kiddie toys to a metal gate, which she opened. The gate latch clanked. A big dog barked behind a door. Security lights blazed.

  Sarah skirted the reach of the lights, running through shadows into another yard, where she tripped over a garden cart, falling hard enough for her right shoe to fly off her foot. She felt for the shoe in the dark but couldn’t find it.

  A woman’s shrill voice called out, “Artie, I think someone’s out there!”

  Sarah vaulted over a fence, then took off again, ripping off her black sweater as she ran. She pulled the hem of her neon-green T-shirt out of her pants as she came out of the shadows onto a street she didn’t know.

  Feeling nauseous and desperate, Sarah stripped off her other shoe and her socks and left them in a trash can at the edge of a driveway, then headed north at a steady pace in the general direction of her car.

  That was when she realized, too late, that her keys were in her tool bag and she’d locked her wallet in the glove box.

  She was shoeless and miles from home without a dime.

  What now?

  Chapter 81

  THE BRIGHT WINDOWS at Whole Foods were in sight when Sarah heard a car slowly coming up behind her on the dark street. The vehicle crawled, keeping pace with her, its headlights elongating her silhouette on the pavement.

  Was it the cops?

  Half out of her mind with fear, Sarah fought her compulsion to turn toward the car. Panic would show on her face. And if it was the cops and they stopped to question her—she was cooked.

  Who was it? Who was trailing her?

  A horn blared and then tires squealed as the vehicle behind her peeled out and flew past, an old silver SUV with a jerk hollering out the window, “Sweet ass, baby!” Sarah lowered her head as whoops of laughter receded.

  Her red Saturn was where she had left it. She could see, by peering through Whole Foods’ front windows, that the store was nearly empty.

  A sandy-haired boy was closing down the last open register. He looked up when Sarah approached. She said, “I locked myself out of my car. Could I borrow your phone?”

  “There’s a pay phone outside,” he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. Then his expression changed.

  “Ms. Wells. I’m Mark Ogrodnick. I was in your class about five years ago.”

  Sarah’s heart revved up again and went into overdrive. Of all the stores in the world, how had she found the one place in Pacific Heights where someone knew her?

  “Mark. Great to see you. May I borrow your phone? I have to call my husband.”

  Mark stared down at her bare feet, at the bleeding gash on her shin. He opened his mouth and closed it, then fished his phone out of his back pocket and handed it to Sarah. She thanked him and walked down the produce aisle, dialing and then listening to the phone ring several times. Finally Heidi picked up.

  “It’s me,” Sarah said. “I’m at Whole Foods. I locked myself out of my car.”

  “Oh God, Sarah,” Heidi said. “I can’t come. The kids are sleeping.”

  “Where’s Beastly?”

  “He’s out, but he could walk in at any minute. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Ogrodnick looked up and switched off the neon light in the storefront window. Sarah had no choice. She dialed her home phone number and, for the first time ever, prayed that Trevor would pick up.

  “Sarah, where the hell are you?” Terror asked with a sharp edge in his voice.

  Meekly, Sarah told him.

  Chapter 82

  AFTER TREVOR THREATENED her, drank, shoved her around, and collected his marital due, he finished a six-pack and went to bed. Red-eyed, sore, and frightened, Sarah sat in his chair, squeezing the exercise ball. She changed hands, working her fingers until they were nearly numb. Then she shook out her hands and booted up her laptop.

  Once she was on the Web, she clicked on Google News and typed “Hello Kitty” into the search bar.

  To Sarah’s relief, there was no mention of the burglary at Diana King’s house. Not yet. But Sarah was worried about the tools she’d ditched in her steeplechase through Pacific Heights. Specifically, had she been wearing gloves when she changed the battery in her headlamp? She couldn’t remember.

  And so Sarah searched her mind for an out. She’d dumped the tools in a trash bag near that small construction site. Maybe if someone found it, he’d think, Cool. Free stuff. Or maybe the trash bag would be tied and simply taken out to the curb.

  Sarah thought about all the other stuff she’d left behind like a trail of bread crumbs: her sweater and socks and shoes. By themselves, they were nothing. But if her prints were on the battery, everything else could be used to back up the charges against her.

  Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, if the shoe fits, you must nail her ass for twenty years without possibility of parole.

  Sarah groaned and ran the cursor down the Hello Kitty page. She read a few articles about her burglaries and her growing infamy, taking no pleasure in any of it. A headache bloomed behind her right eye as she tapped into the canon of stories about the Dowlings. The most recent clips were all Marcus Dowling quotes and interviews, but as she scrolled to ear
lier pages, she found stories from the day after she’d done the Dowling job.

  A headline grabbed her attention.

  “The Sun of Ceylon Stolen in Fatal Armed Robbery.”

  Sarah flashed on a few words that had been almost forgotten since she’d spoken with Sergeant Boxer. The cop had said that the yellow stone was a diamond. Now it seemed the diamond had a name. After clicking on the link to the article, Sarah began to read.

  “The Sun of Ceylon,” a twenty-karat yellow diamond, was stolen from actor Marcus Dowling and his wife, Casey Dowling, who was killed in an armed robbery. When last seen, this showy stone was set in a handworked gold ring with 120 smaller white diamonds.

  The Sun has a long history, marked with sudden death. Once the property of a young farmer who found it in a dirt street in Ceylon, the stone has passed from paupers to kings, leaving a trail of tragedy behind.

  Sarah felt as if a fist had closed around her heart. She called up the history of the Sun of Ceylon and everything that had happened to the people who had owned it—a long list of financial ruin and disgrace, sudden insanity, suicide, homicide, and accidental death.

  In her research on gems, Sarah had read of other stones like the Sun. The Koh-i-noor diamond, known as the “Mountain of Light,” brought either great misfortune or an end to the kingdoms of all men who owned it. Marie Antoinette wore the Hope diamond, and she was beheaded—it was said that a string of death and misfortune followed the stone.

  There were other gems that carried curses: the Black Orlov Diamond, the Delhi Purple Sapphire, the Black Prince’s Ruby. And the Sun of Ceylon.

  Casey Dowling had owned it. And now she was dead.