Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (13 page)

“Come to think of it, though, Kandi had a good chance to take it if he had. Elena said he came back for his clothes, and she’d had Kandi take them down to the basement. Kandi might very well have patted the pockets to make sure everything was there, discovered the money, and lifted it. Which would be perfectly safe because he didn’t know she was the one who moved his clothes. Elena told him she was going to do it herself.”

“So he wouldn’t know Kandi had it,” said Mickey, “and therefore couldn’t have killed her for it. And furthermore, as you’ve previously pointed out, he didn’t have that kind of money and wouldn’t have brought it there if he did.”

I groaned. “These are deep waters, Watson.”

We were silent for a while, and my thoughts lightly turned to blackmail. Surely $25,000 was much too big a chunk for even Kandi to blackmail anyone out of—at one time, anyhow. But even assuming she had, it didn’t explain anything. A blackmailee wouldn’t just hand a wad like that over and then kill to get it back. Blackmailers got killed, sure, but not in those circumstances. If you were going to kill someone to stop her blackmailing you, you could just skip the charade of the last payment.

Mickey and I were now climbing into the hills of Marin County, where my parents live. I hadn’t seen the undercover police car for quite a while, and it wasn’t behind us anymore.

In case you are not familiar with California, I will tell you that Marin is the richest county in the state. It is the ultimate suburbia, because there you can have the convenience of being only a few minutes from San Francisco and the luxury of not having a neighbor in sight. The houses are built on large, frequently vertical lots along narrow, winding roads, and the lots are overgrown with redwoods and eucalyptus so that the nearby houses are blocked from view. You can walk your grounds and pretend to be a country squire; you can see rabbits and raccoons; you can let your cats and dogs run freely; your children need not play in traffic. But if you cough loudly, your neighbors will hear and arrive with chicken soup—or, more likely, with some nostrum from a health food store. It is a place where, if you can afford it, you can have a good many things both ways.

My parents live on one of these winding roads, but their lot is nearly level. Their house is redwood and modern. The rooms are large, and windows are plentiful. Sliding glass doors across the back of the house open onto an indecently large deck. The evening was warm, so the party would doubtless spill out onto it.

One of the few hardships of life in Marin County is the parking problem, but the denizens manage to keep a stiff upper lip. Mickey found a parking place about a quarter of a mile from the house.

As we walked to the party, I was grateful it wasn’t raining. I was wearing my wicked-woman shoes, and they’d had about all the encounters with puddles they could take.

Mom met us at the door, looking handsome in a black dress. One thing I’ll say for Mom; even though she was still young when her hair started to gray, she didn’t fight it. It’s coarse hair, and it turned a lovely silver, not white, with a black streak or two. I’d say it’s her best feature.

She kissed us and we “mazel toved” her. We did the Alphonse-Gaston routine about our various outfits. “How’s Alan?” Mom asked Mickey. “I’ll never forgive him for missing our party.” But she would. Alan had the one acceptable excuse: a performance with a small, poverty-stricken theater group—which was as close as he ever got to gainful employment. We Schwartzes may be Jewish, but we are very big on the Protestant ethic.

Mickey said Alan was fine and working hard. I smirked at both descriptions and Mom gave me a “tut-tut” or something close to it. My folks seem to like Alan, perhaps merely because he is Jewish. That gets you a long way with some families.

It was a good thing Alan wasn’t there because he would have been eaten up with jealousy. Like all actors, he likes to be the center of attention, but there wasn’t a chance that night. Not with me there. There wasn’t a person at the party who hadn’t seen me on page one of the paper that morning, and precious few of them had missed me on TV. And there must have been three hundred people there.

I didn’t know Mom and Dad had so many friends. There was the usual gaggle of relatives and old family friends, who kept pinching Mickey and me on the cheek and calling us
“shana madeleh.”
But there were tons of people I didn’t recognize, and some I knew from other contexts.

In fact, it was rather a star-studded gathering: several local politicians, from San Francisco as well as Marin; some rather fancy folk from what is sometimes called “the business community”—toilet-paper satraps, hotel suzerains, well-known investors—but, refreshingly, no pimps or whores that I recognized.

A thing I couldn’t help noticing was that, in this older crowd, most of the achievers were men. Not all—there was Betty Blaine, one of the county supervisors—but most by far. So I felt perfectly justified in playing up my little celebrityhood. It kind of balanced things.

If I had a dollar bill for every time I told my story that night, I could take a week off and go to Mexico. I was on my third drink, and rather relieved when Daddy came along and insisted I eat something. Much more of that nonsense and I would have fallen on my face.

Daddy looked reasonably presentable that night. He is a short man with good white hair, as opposed to Mom’s elegant silver, and he wears it collar-length. He has a fine hook nose that doesn’t make him look harsh, probably because his light blue eyes are always joking. Unlike the rest of us, he is fair. And unlike the rest of us, he affects clothing that seems to come out of free boxes at Berkeley communes. His pants are always too short, and brown if his socks are gray, gray if they’re brown. His suit jackets are two sizes too big, his shirts are always rumpled, and he generally sees to it that several grease spots are arranged artfully on his ties. Mom complains, but he says it’s good for jury sympathy. Establishes his credentials as a
folks-mensh
or something. All this probably has something to do with my feelings about personal vanity, but I don’t know what, exactly. If you want to know the truth, I think it’s cute. He
is
a
folks-mensh
, so he may as well look like one.

That night he had on a dark blue suit—not expensive, but not aggressively ill-fitting, either—and a light blue shirt. I told him he was the handsomest man at the party.

“I should be, darling,” he said. “I’m the youngest. Come and eat.”

Like the obedient daughter I am, I followed him through the buffet line. My parents had gone all out. There was everything from chopped liver to fried wonton to poached salmon. I avoided most of the salads and took a lot of meaty things, on the theory that protein would keep me from getting drunk.

It was warm enough for the deck if you had a couple of drinks in you, so we headed out there.

“How’s it going, Beck?” Daddy asked, and I knew I was in for trouble. He is the only person in the world allowed to use that childhood nickname, and only under conditions of the most egregious seriousness. Even he had better not mess with “Becky” or “Becca.”

Wary, I asked, “How is what going?”

He stopped nibbling at a wonton. “The case.”

“You haven’t told me how you liked my TV performance.”

He shook his head. “I worry.”

“What, you didn't like it?”

“You didn’t tell me you implied you knew who the killer was.”

“So?”

“So it could be dangerous. Maybe the killer believes you; he goes after you next.”

“Oh come on, Daddy.”

“Beck, I think you’re in over your head. I want you to turn it over to me.”

I felt tears swim in my eyes, tears of rage and disappointment. My father, of all people!

“That’s what Parker’s mother wants me to do too. Nobody west of the Rockies seems to think I’m grown up or capable of doing a damn thing for myself!”

I put my plate down, preparing to flounce away in a swirl of righteous indignation. But Daddy caught my arm, and I looked at him. There were tears in his eyes, too. “
Bubee
, it isn’t that. Your mother didn’t sleep last night.”

“She’s got to learn I’m not a little girl anymore.”

He patted my arm. “I know, darling. I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all. Will you forget I said anything?”

“Okay,” I said. But I said it sulkily.

“Rebecca?”

“Yes?”

“If it helps any, I’d feel the same way if you were a boy.” Oddly enough, it did help. Parents, after all, will be parents. “Daddy, will you tell me something honestly?” He nodded.

“Don’t you think I’m a good enough lawyer to know when I’m in too deep? Don’t you think I’d call you in a minute if I thought I couldn’t handle it, or Chris couldn’t?”

He considered for a few moments. Then he raised his eyes and looked straight at me. “You’re an excellent lawyer, Rebecca. Maybe a little inexperienced, a little bit rash…” He shrugged. “But you would not hurt your client by taking on something you couldn’t do. I have never seen your considerable arrogance get in the way of your judgment.”

I laughed, because everything was all right again. “Arrogant, am I? Well, let me tell you something; if it goes to trial, God forbid, I’m going to need help.”

“I know.”

“Will you come in as co-counsel?” He squeezed my hand and nodded.

It was a decision I’d made from the first. I knew I couldn’t let Parker’s safety ride on my narrow experience. Or, for that matter, on the impaired judgment of a person who was emotionally involved with him. But I was still hoping it wouldn’t go to trial.

My appetite was back, so I went in to get some cake. Mom caught me this time. She didn’t say anything. She just engaged my glance, letting me know she couldn’t look at me without tears in her eyes. I was damned if I’d let her get away with it.

“Take it easy, Mom,” I said. “I’m going to be all right, and so is my client.”

“Rebecca, tell me the truth.”

“Okay.”

“She was a whore, wasn’t she? This, this,…Carol Phillips?”

“Yes.”

The tears overflowed, and I told her not to cry on her anniversary. “Don’t worry, Mom. It doesn’t rub off. Nobody’s going to think…”

She was shaking her head violently. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. I knew her. Her name was Kandi.”

It had to be right, Kandi’s picture had been in the paper, but her professional name hadn’t. That meant Mom
must
have known her, an occurrence about as likely as Kandi’s membership in Hadassah—or Mom’s in HYENA. I stood there like an idiot, waiting for it to sink in.

“I mean, I met her,” Mom said. “At Walter’s.”

Ye gods. My uncle Walter. Mom’s brother. Aunt Ellen’s widower. Jeez, moneez. Uncle Walter was the success in the family. Dad was famous, sort of, but Uncle Walter was rich. He was an investor—in just about everything. How the hell could he have known Kandi? But I knew the answer, and it lay like a lump in my stomach.

“Home or office?” I asked shakily.

“Office. We were going to have lunch, Walter and I, and I was waiting for him to get off the phone. His secretary had already gone to lunch, so there was no one in the outer office. That’s how she got in.”

“Kandi, you mean.”

“Yes. She poked her head in and gave him a big wink before she saw me. He got off the phone fast, acting very flustered, and asked what he could do for her. She said she’d just dropped in to see if he was free for lunch, and he said he wasn’t; he even said he was having lunch with me and introduced us, very pointedly not asking her to join us.

“Then he said he’d see her out, and he kind of grabbed her arm.”

“Affectionately?”

“No. Roughly. Your own uncle Walter! And I heard him tell her not to come to his office again. So naturally I asked him who she was. He said she was just a young woman he’d been giving some financial advice to, and he kept acting embarrassed and sheepish all through lunch.”

“Well, I can see why you would have thought he was dating her, but what made you think she was a prostitute? He could have just been embarrassed because she was so young.”

“I just knew, that’s all.”

“Come on, Mom.”

“Well, I didn’t really know for sure until I saw her picture in the paper and put that together with where you’d been the night she was killed. But that day in the office—” her voice got teary—“I knew she wasn’t a real girlfriend. I knew she didn’t love him at all. I could see it in her face. You know what I could see? I could see malice. She enjoyed it, Rebecca. Embarrassing him like that.”

From what I knew about Kandi, that didn’t surprise me.

“Does Dad know about this?” I asked.

“No, and…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell him.”

“This thing is much bigger than you think, Rebecca. You’ve got to get out.”

I said I’d think about it, and I meant it.

I shivered, thinking of Elena refusing to tell me who the blackmailed—or
maybe
blackmailed—clients were.
“I can't give out the names of clients, even to you. My God, especially these two.”
If Walter were one of them, could she have known he was my uncle? That would explain the “especially,” but then lots of things might explain it.

At least this much was clear: Uncle Walter knew Kandi and may have been telling the truth about giving her financial advice. I knew from my experience with the HYENA members that prostitutes who were starting to make money frequently leaned on successful clients for that kind of advice. That would explain a visit to Uncle Walter’s office.

But I could
not
convince myself that Uncle Walter could have had anything to do with the murder. My own uncle would not walk into my apartment and bash someone’s brains out on the living room rug. It was simply not worth investigating.

I looked for Mickey, hoping she hadn’t smoked the half a joint she’d offered on the way over. And ran straight into Uncle Walter. I kissed him and said wasn’t it a lovely party.

He put his hands in his pockets and seemed to look straight through me. “Yes, darling, lovely,” he said absently. Uncle Walter never uses words like “lovely.”