Women's Murder Club [07] 7th Heaven Read online

  “You’re saying these are real sapphires?” Vitale said innocently.

  Conklin’s face blanched around the eyes as he placed the necklace down on the photograph. It was clearly a match.

  “Where’d you get this?” he asked Vitale.

  “Some kid brought it in a week ago.”

  “Let’s see the paperwork.”

  “Hold on,” Vitale said, waddling back to his cage.

  He moved a pile of auction catalogs and books on antique jewelry from his desk chair, then tapped the keys on his laptop.

  “Got it. I paid the kid a hundred bucks. Here you go. Whoops. I just noticed his name.”

  I read the receipt over Conklin’s shoulder, the name Clark Kent, an address somewhere in the middle of the bay, and the description of a “blue topaz necklace.”

  “Was he wearing a suit and eyeglasses?” Conklin yelled. “Or maybe he’d changed into tights and a cape?”

  “I’ll need the tape from that,” I said, pointing to the video camera anchored in the corner of the ceiling like a red-eyed spider.

  Vitale said, “That’s got a twenty-four-hour loop. He’s not on it anymore. Anyway, I dimly remember the kid, and I don’t think he was the tights-and-cape type. More of a preppy look. I think maybe I sold him some comic books one time before.”

  “Can you do better than ‘preppy look’?”

  “Dark hair, I think. A little on the stocky side.”

  “We’ll need you to come in and look at our mug books,” I said. “Talk to a sketch artist.”

  “I’m no good at faces,” said Vitale. “It’s like a disorder I have. Some kind of dyslexia. I don’t think I’d recognize you if I saw you tomorrow.”

  “Bull,” Conklin snapped. “This is a homicide investigation, Vitale. Understand? If that kid comes in again, call us. Preferably while he’s still here. And make a copy of his driver’s license.”

  “Okay, chief,” Vitale said. “Will do.”

  “It’s something,” Conklin said to me as he started up the car. “Kelly will be glad to have something from her mom.”

  “Yeah, she will,” I said.

  My mind flew to my own mom’s death. I turned my head so that Conklin couldn’t see the tears that came into my eyes.

  Chapter 77

  CHUCK HANNI STOOD with me and Joe in the dank basement of the building where I used to live, showing us the fine points of archaic knob-and-tube wiring as water dripped on our heads. The door to the fuse box was open, and Hanni held his Mag-Lite on a fuse he wanted me to see.

  “See how this penny is annealed to the back of the fuse?”

  I could just make out the dull copper blob.

  “The college girls on the second floor — you know them?” Hanni asked.

  “Just to wave hi.”

  “Okay, well, apparently they’ve been blowing fuses every other day with their hair dryers and air conditioner and irons and whatnot. And your super got tired of running over here to change the fuse, so he put this penny in here.”

  “Which does what?”

  Chuck explained everything that happened, how the copper penny overrode the fuse so that the circuit didn’t trip. Instead the electricity went through the penny and melted down the wiring at its weakest point. In this case, the ceiling lights on the second floor and the electric sockets in my apartment.

  I visualized flames shooting out of the socket, but I still didn’t get it — so Chuck took his time explaining to me and to Joe how my building, like a lot of old buildings, had “balloon construction,” that is, the framing timbers ran from roof to ceiling without any fire stops in between.

  “The fire just races up through the walls,” Hanni said. “Those spaces between the timbers act like chimneys. And so when the fire reached your apartment, it came out the sockets, set your stuff on fire, and just kept going. Took out the roof and burned itself out.”

  “So you’re telling me this was an accident?”

  “I was suspicious, too,” Chuck told me.

  He said that he’d questioned everyone himself: the building manager, the girls downstairs, and in particular our aging handyman, Angel Fernandez, who admitted he’d put the penny behind the fuse to save himself another trip up the hill.

  “If anyone had died in this fire, I’d be charging Angel Fernandez with negligent homicide,” Hanni said. “I’m calling this an accidental fire, Lindsay. You file an insurance claim and it will sail through.”

  I’d been trained to read a lie in a person’s face, and all I saw was the truth in Chuck Hanni’s frankly honest features. But I was jumpy and not quite ready to let my worst suspicions go. Walking out to Joe’s car I asked for his point of view as a guy who’d spent a couple of decades in law enforcement.

  “Hanni didn’t do it, honey. I think he’s suffering almost as much as you are. And I think he likes you.”

  “That’s your professional opinion?”

  “Yep. Hanni’s on your side.”

  Chapter 78

  YUKI WAS WIRED.

  We were eating lunch at her desk, both of us picking through our salads as if we were looking for nuggets of gold instead of chicken. Yuki had asked me how I was feeling, but I didn’t have much to say and she was pent up, so I said, “You first,” and she was off.

  “So, Davis calls her expert shrink, Dr. Maria Paige. Ever heard of her?” Yuki asked me.

  I shook my head no.

  “She’s on Court TV sometimes. Tall? Blond? Harvard?”

  I shook my head no again and Yuki said, “Doesn’t matter. So, anyway. Davis puts this big-name shrink on the stand to tell us all about false confessions.”

  “Ahh,” I said, getting it. “Junie Moon’s ‘false’ confession?”

  “Right. And she’s a bright babe, this shrink. She’s got it all down. How and why Miranda rights came into being so that cops can’t coerce suspects. The landmark studies by Gudjonsson and Clark having to do with the suggestibility of certain subjects. And the Reid book for cops on how to get around Miranda.

  “She sounds like she wrote the fricking book, Lindsay,” Yuki continued, getting even more pissed off. “She says with authority how cops can browbeat and trick suspects into making false confessions.”

  “Well, some might do that — but I sure didn’t.”

  “Of course not. And so then she says how certain people with low intelligence or low self-esteem would rather agree with cops than disagree with them. And so the jury looks at Junie.”

  “Junie confessed all on her own —”

  “I know, I know, but you know what Junie looks like — Bambi’s baby sister. So finally Dr. Paige wraps it up, and I’m wondering how I’m going to cancel out her testimony without showing the whole two-hour tape of your interview with Junie.”

  “Well, you could’ve done that,” I said, snapping the plastic lid closed on my salad and tossing it into the trash can. Yuki did the same.

  “Two hours, Lindsay? Of Junie denying everything? So listen. I got up and said, ‘Dr. Paige, did you ever meet Junie Moon?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ever see the tape of the interview with the police?’ ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Did the police browbeat the defendant or lie to her or trick her?’ ‘No, no, not really.’ ”

  Yuki sipped her tea, then continued her reenactment of her cross-examination of Dr. Paige.

  “So then I make a mistake.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was exasperated, Lindsay.” Yuki grimaced. She raked her hair away from her lovely heart-shaped face.

  “I said, ‘So, what did the police do, exactly?’ I know not to ask a question I don’t have an answer to, but shit! I’ve seen the damned interview two dozen times and you and Conklin did nothing!

  “And now Red Dog is glaring at me, and the shrink is saying, ‘In my opinion, Miss Moon not only has bottomless low self-esteem, she feels guilty because she’s a prostitute and her confession was a way of reducing her guilt.’

  “I couldn’t believe she was asking the jury to sw
allow that, so I said, ‘So you’re saying she feels guilty that she’s a prostitute and that’s why she confessed to manslaughter?’

  “ ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Paige says, so I say, ‘That’s all, Doctor.’ And Bendinger tells her to step down, and I’m squeezing in behind Red Dog’s chair, facing the gallery, and there’s Twilly,” Yuki said.

  “Isn’t he there every day?” I asked my friend.

  “Yeah, but now he’s sitting right behind me. And I’m making eye contact with him because that’s all I can do. And I hear Davis say she’s calling Junie Moon to the stand, and the judge says, ‘First we’re going to recess for lunch.’ And Red Dog pushes back his chair, pinning me chest to nose with that creep, Twilly.

  “And Twilly sneers. And my stomach clenches and my skin gets cold and he whispers, ‘Point, Davis.’

  “Omigod, and so Red Dog turns and gives me that withering look again, and I’m not going to lose this case over the testimony of that shrink, am I, Lindsay, am I? Because I’ll tell you, that just can’t happen.”

  “It won’t —”

  “Right. It won’t,” Yuki said through her teeth, slamming her fist down on her desk. “Because the jury’s going to see the truth, and they’ve got to come to one of two conclusions.

  “Either Junie Moon is guilty. Or she’s guilty as sin.”

  Chapter 79

  THE STANFORD MALL was an open-air dream market with shops grouped on narrow lanes, embedded in gardens. And what shops they were: the big stores Neiman and Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, and the high-end boutiques Armani, Benetton, Louis Vuitton.

  Hawk and Pidge had taken a seat on a bench outside the Polo shop, surrounded by a small forest of potted topiary, aromas of flowers and coffee wafting all around them. It was a Saturday, and great masses of designer-clad shoppers were out, parading down the little walkways past Pidge and Hawk, swinging their shopping bags, stopping to admire Ralph Lauren’s windows.

  Pidge had a video camera about the size of a deck of cards and was filming the parade. If anyone asked what he was doing, he’d tell them the truth — or part of it, anyway. He was in the computer video lab at Stanford. He was making a documentary.

  But what he wouldn’t say is that he and Hawk were looking for the winners. The biggest, piggiest oink-oinks of the day.

  They had two sets of contestants in mind.

  Both couples had college stickers on the rear windows of their cars. They were primo candidates. It was going to be hard to choose, but once Hawk and Pidge had agreed on the winning couple, they would follow them to where they lived and check out their home.

  Which one?

  The rich and fatty couple loaded down with bags imprinted with designer logos? Or the older, more athletic pair, dressed ostentatiously, sipping lattes as they wandered along the avenues of gluttony.

  Pidge was reviewing the footage when the security guard approached. He was late forties, blue uniform with a badge on his breast pocket, a hat, a gun, and a swagger. Every guy in a uniform these days thought he was a U.S. Marine.

  “Hi, guys,” the guard said affably. “You can’t take pictures in here. Sign’s right over there.”

  “Ah,” said Pidge. He stood. At six two he towered over the guard, so that the smaller man had to step back. “These aren’t pictures. This is a movie. A documentary for school. I can show you my student ID.”

  “Doesn’t matter that you’re in school,” the guard said. “For security reasons, no picture taking is allowed. Now you have to either put that thing away or I’ll have to escort you out of here.”

  “You dipshit rent-a-cop,” Hawk muttered.

  “We’re sorry, sir,” said Pidge, stepping in front of his friend. “We’re going.”

  But it was annoying. Hours spent doing their surveillance and now, no winner.

  “Gotta make a pit stop,” Pidge said.

  The two ducked into the men’s facilities, and Pidge unzipped in front of a urinal. When he’d finished, Hawk took out a book of matches. He lit three or four of them together and tossed them into the waste bin.

  They were out in the parking lot when they heard the cry of the sirens on the freeway. They sat in Pidge’s car and watched as the firefighters braked near the Frog Pond, unfurled their hoses, and streamed into the mall.

  Many hundreds of customers streamed out.

  “I sure love a good fire,” Hawk said.

  “Always makes my day,” said Pidge.

  Part Four

  HOT PROPERTY

  Chapter 80

  I WAS HEADING “HOME” to Joe’s apartment, battling rush-hour traffic, when my cell phone rang. I jacked the phone off my hip, heard Yuki’s voice screaming my name.

  “Lindsay! He’s stalking me.”

  “Who? Who’s stalking you?”

  “That freak! Jason Twilly.”

  “Slow down. Back up. What do you mean ‘stalking’?”

  I jerked the wheel left at the intersection of Townsend and Seventh instead of taking a right toward my former apartment on the Hill. It felt like I was swimming against the tide.

  Yuki’s voice was shrill. “Stalking as in haunting me, dogging me. Ten minutes ago, he was sitting in the passenger seat of my car!”

  “He broke into your car?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember if I locked it. I was carrying like a fifty-pound —”

  The signal cut out. I hit speed dial, got Yuki’s outgoing message, disconnected, tried again.

  “Fifty-pound what?” I called into the crackle.

  “Fifty-pound box of files. I just got my key into the door lock when this arm reached over from inside the car and pushed the door open for me.”

  “Before this car thing, did you tell him to leave you alone?”

  “Yes! Did I ever!”

  “Okay, then, it’s illegal for him to be inside your car,” I said, negotiating a lane switch, passing a rental car whose driver leaned on the horn and gave me the finger.

  “You ready to swear out a complaint?” I asked Yuki. “He’s going to go public. So think about it.”

  There was a moment of static-filled silence as Yuki considered the media ramifications.

  “This guy is sick, Linds. He talks to me like I’m a character in his book. He’s twisted and maybe dangerous. He got into my car. What’s next?”

  “Okay,” I said, pulling over to the curb. I took out my notepad and wrote down what Yuki had told me.

  “You’re going to have to go to civil court in the morning, get a restraining order,” I said. “But effective now you’ve filed a police report.”

  “Tomorrow morning? Lindsay, Jason Twilly wants to scare the hell out of me — and he’s doing it!”

  Chapter 81

  WHEN I REACHED Twilly’s suite on the fifth floor of the St. Regis Hotel, he was waiting in the doorway, a cockeyed grin on his face, his hair disheveled and shirt untucked and unbuttoned. The fire exit door slammed at the end of the softly lit hallway. My guess, it was Twilly’s paid-by-the-hour guest leaving in a hurry.

  I showed Twilly my badge, and he fastened his eyes on the V of my tank top, skimmed the cut of my jeans, then took a slow return trip back to my face. Meanwhile, I was taking in his amazing room — leather-textured walls, a window seat with a great view of San Francisco. Very impressive.

  “Working undercover, Sergeant?” Twilly leered.

  He’d scared Yuki with this act, but it enraged me.

  “I don’t think we’ve met, Mr. Twilly. I’m Sergeant Lindsay Boxer,” I said, putting out my hand. He grasped it in a handshake and I pulled his arm forward, twisted it high up behind his back, and pushed his face against the wall.

  “Give me your other hand,” I said. “Do it, now.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Other hand.”

  I cuffed him, frisked him fast and rough, saying, “You’re under arrest for criminal trespass. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” When I finished informing Twil
ly of his rights, I answered his question: “What’s this about?”

  “It’s about your illegal entry into ADA Yuki Castellano’s car. She’s filed a police report, and by noon tomorrow she’ll have a restraining order against you.”

  “Whoa, whoa! This is the biggest deal about nothing I’ve ever heard. Her arms were full! I opened her car door to help her!”

  “Tell it to your lawyer,” I snapped. I had one hand on Twilly’s arm, my cell phone in my other, and was about to call for backup.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Is Yuki claiming that I’m harassing her? Because that’s crap. I admit I provoked her a little, applied a little pressure just to get her going. I’m a journalist. We do that. Look. If I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Can we talk? Please?”

  I’d checked Twilly out, and his record was clean. I had a moment of free fall as my anger evaporated. A stern warning would have been appropriate. Now that I’d cuffed him — that media flap Cindy had warned Yuki about?

  It was going to go down.

  I could already see Twilly spinning this “bust” to Larry King, Tucker Carlson, Access Hollywood. It would be bad news for Yuki, bad for me, but it would be stupendous publicity for Twilly.

  “Sergeant?”

  I had to hit rewind. I had to try.

  “You want to avoid a court appearance, Mr. Twilly? Leave Yuki Castellano alone. Don’t sit behind her in court. Don’t tail her in supermarkets. Don’t enter her car or premises, and we’ll put this incident aside.

  “Yuki files another complaint? I’m taking you in. Are we clear?”

  “Totally,” he said. “Crystal.”

  “Good.”

  I unlocked the cuffs and started to leave.

  “Wait!” Twilly said. He stepped into the other room, with its aqua-striped wallpaper and canopied bed. He snatched a pen and pad from the bowlegged writing desk and said, “I want to make sure I got this right.”