Not Exactly a Brahmin (2 page)

T
HE RAIN HAD LET
up a little, but another shaft of lightning burst from the sky, turning the traffic circle brighter than noon. In the sudden fluorescent glare, the crinkled metal of the Cadillac looked fragile, like a toy car that had been run over in the driveway.

Misco was sprawled under the car. Pereira stood with Lieutenant Davis and me, eyeing the access roads that led onto the circle lest any scofflaw invade her scene of the crime. Lieutenant Davis said nothing. The rain soaked my jacket.

“Aha!” Misco pushed himself free of the car and stood up. His brown hair was thinning on top. There was a streak of grease across his forehead. Misco was one of those men who had spent his adolescence under the hoods or bodies of a stream of used Chevys or Fords. In college he’d managed to husband his Saturdays for his vehicles. The one time I’d been to his house, he’d had two cars parked on the lawn and one on blocks in the driveway. For Misco, being in Traffic Investigations Unit was heaven.

“Perforations in the brake lines,” he said. “You want to look?”

Eyeing the rain-soaked ground, Lieutenant Davis said, “Tell us about it first.”

Momentarily Misco looked disappointed, but as soon as he started to speak, his face brightened. “You should see the edges of the cuts where the brake fluid drained, Lieutenant. It’s a great job.”

“What do you mean by ‘great job’?” I asked.

Pereira motioned us under the shelter of a London Plane tree. Once there, Misco turned to me. “Do you know much about cars?”

“Nothing more than where to put the dip stick.”

“Oh.” He shot a look of distress at Lieutenant Davis. To me, he said, “Well, the simplest way I can put it is that if there are holes in the brake lines, the brake fluid seeps out and the brakes don’t hold.”

“That I understand. Anyone who watches television knows that.”

“You said brake
lines,
” Lieutenant Davis prompted.

“Right. That’s what makes this so interesting. A Cadillac has separate brake lines to the front and back wheels. It’s a safety feature, so if the front brakes go, there are still the rear ones.”

“But nothing held on this car,” Pereira said.

“Because”—Misco could barely contain himself—“both lines were punctured. And the really impressive thing here is that the edges of the cuts are rough. If you weren’t specifically looking for sabotage, you wouldn’t even spot the cuts. The workmanship is good. No, it’s nearly perfect. Any smaller cuts and the leaks would have been so gradual that the owner would have realized the brakes were going long before there was a serious problem. If the cuts were bigger, it wouldn’t have taken an expert to find them.”

“What you’re saying,” Lieutenant Davis said, “is that the perforations were just large enough for the brakes to go on Marin Avenue? If the car had come down another street, one not so steep, the driver would be okay; he just would have thought his brakes weren’t holding like they should be, right?”

“That’s it. The guy could have driven on the flatlands for weeks, but on that hill, holding back thousands of pounds of Cadillac … well, you can see the pressure that puts on brakes.”

I turned to Lieutenant Davis. “So you’ll be passing this case on to Homicide?”

“You’ve seen the body and the scene, here, Smith,” he said. “As soon as the paperwork is in order, it will be yours.” He didn’t add that he would be keeping an eye on it, and me. He didn’t have to. Lieutenant Davis had been my watch commander as long as I was a beat officer. When a sudden flurry of murders overwhelmed the three-man Homicide Detail, it was Lieutenant Davis who recommended me for the assignment. Lieutenant Davis, black, with a master’s degree, would be a candidate when the captain’s job opened up. He was a stickler for thoroughness and detail—he had caught plenty of my mistakes over the years. But he’d also insisted I go to Homicide School, the two-week investigation classes offered by the state. And he’d given me his stamp of approval for the promotion. His prestige was on the line, almost as much as mine.

“I’d like to stay on the case, Lieutenant,” Pereira said.

He nodded. It was a beat officer’s right to request being kept on the team that handled what had originally been her case.

“And it’s still mine till the transfer, right?” Pereira asked.

There was no need for an answer.

“Then I’ll take one of my few opportunities to assign someone else duties. Are you still offering help, Jill?”

“Might as well.”

“Okay, how about seeing the widow?”

It was a moment before I said, “Yes, of course.”

When the others had left—Lieutenant Davis to start his car and head back to the station or home (his shift had officially ended over an hour ago) and Misco for another engagement under the tarp—Pereira said in a low voice, “Thanks, I really hate seeing the families.”

“I’d have to see her later anyway. It’ll be easier on her to deal with just one of us.”

“Still, thanks.”

“Let me check the contents of the car before I go.”

“Sure.” She led me to the Cadillac’s trunk and opened it. It was huge (it looked big enough to put my car in) and empty but for a jack. “Spare’s in place. Carpet looks clean. Lab guys have been over it. Even Misco figured there was nothing out of sorts here. The rest of the stuff from inside the car is in bags in the squad car.”

I followed her across the circle, automatically looking down for skid marks, for a moment forgetting that the Cadillac hadn’t skidded but bounced across the roadway to the cement fence. Pereira pulled open the passenger door of her car. She held up a plastic bag filled with cigarette ash. “From the ashtrays in the back.” One other small bag held ash from the front passenger’s tray.

“How about the driver’s?”

“Empty,” she said. “There was nothing on the seat. Ordinary dirt and pebbles on the floor.” She indicated a third bag. “Ordinary stuff in the glove compartment.”

The glove compartment bag was considerably fuller. I went through it carefully, noting maps of Berkeley and San Francisco, a pack of tissues, an unopened flashlight pen, a service record from Trent Cadillac in Berkeley. I pulled out a yellow copy of the report from today’s work.

“Misco says it’s the standard servicing—you know, the six-thousand-mile checkup.”

I nodded hesitantly.

Pereira smiled. “People with new cars, Jill, take them in every six thousand miles, so they don’t end up like yours.”

“Okay, okay. So the driver, Palmerston, took his car to be serviced today, had it checked over completely, and”—I noted the bottom of the form—”signed ‘approved by Sam N-something’ at one-thirty. So at one-thirty this car should have been in perfect condition, right?”

“Right. And according to Misco the mechanic there is tops.”

I replaced the form and pulled out the remaining paper. Holding it closer to the light over the door, I made out the handwriting. “ ‘Shareholders Five,’ and there’s a phone number. Any ideas on that?”

“Nothing.”

“Palmerston’s writing?”

“Could be. The ink could be from the pen in the glove compartment. Color looks the same.”

Putting it back, I said, “Have the print guys do it right away.”

“I’ll tell them. Whether they get to it today is another thing.”

“What about the deceased’s pockets?”

“Just a wallet. Not even a handkerchief.”

I pulled the wallet from its bag. It held six twenties, Visa, American Express, and Diner’s Club cards, and a driver’s license that indicated Palmerston had been sixty years old, five foot ten, 155 pounds, and needed glasses to drive. I held his picture closer to the light. Driver’s license photos rarely capture the spirit of the driver. Most people look angry or foolish with fright. The lighting is bad, the process haphazard. But Ralph Palmerston had been lucky. His blue eyes were clear and bright, his white hair thick, wavy, and the lines of his chiseled nose clear. His smile looked genuine. He looked like a nice man, like a man who shouldn’t have ended his life with blood and terror in his eyes.

“All this doesn’t tell me much,” I said, handing Pereira the wallet. “I’ll feel better when I know more about Palmerston.”

“You should feel better now then. Ralph Benedict Palmerston was one of the scions of the Berkeley moneyed establishment.”

I stared. Pereira’s theoretical knowledge of finance was well known in the department and her fascination with the San Francisco money scene unmatched. “I didn’t know Berkeley had a moneyed establishment.”

“All of Berkeley isn’t propped against the wall on Telegraph Avenue begging for spare change.”

“Still, even people who have money are too ‘Berkeley’ to become ‘establishment.’ If they’re interested in that scene, they move to Pacific Heights.”

Pereira nodded. Rain dripped from her short blond hair. “I don’t know why Palmerston stayed in Berkeley. But he has been part of the wealthy in-group for years. You know—Chamber of Commerce, charities. He’s well known for his charity work. Until the last few years he spent most of his time that way—chairman of this fund-raising dinner or that campaign. I know for a fact that he spearheaded a drive for aid to a Vietnamese refugee camp that netted over a million dollars—big time for a local effort.”

“Where does his money come from?”

“Palmieri Winery. He’s an heir.”

“Doesn’t he have to work there?”

“No. It’s pretty common knowledge that Palmerston’s father, who was one of two brothers, had no interest in the business. He gave his voting rights to his brother in return for a guarantee of fifty-five percent of the profits.”

“That hardly sounds fair. The brother does all the work and Palmerston’s father collects the lion’s share of the money.”

Pereira shrugged. “The story is that the brother loved the winery and would have given anything for total control. As far as I know, he never complained.”

“And now? What about his children? Do they still run the winery and give Palmerston fifty-five percent?”

“There aren’t any children. There were two sons but both are dead—no heirs. So the brother’s share of the winery went to a corporation with the same clause about Palmerston’s percentage. As I remember, it’s a big corporation, too big to kill for the Palmieri net profits, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

It was exactly what had crossed my mind.

“He looked like a nice man,” I said.

“Everything I’ve heard suggests that he was.”

“I wonder why he stopped working with charity the last few years.”

“He got married.”

“And?”

“Wait till you see his wife.”

F
ROM THE TRAFFIC CIRCLE
, I looked up Marin Avenue. It was as steep as any street in San Francisco. On the night of the first rain, when the oil drippings from the long dry season were still on the pavement, any road would be slick. For a sixty-year-old man with bad eyesight, driving down the steepest street in town at dusk would be challenge enough. When his brakes failed, he wouldn’t have a chance.

I started my Volkswagen and headed up the milder incline of Los Angeles Avenue. From there I tacked back and forth along the hillside streets, taking a path that I had perfected during the three years since my car had died halfway up Marin and I’d had to roll back down to the intersection. My new path was good, but it did take twice as long to get to Grizzly Peak Boulevard at the top.

The Berkeley hills are not really individual hills but part of a ridge created when the earth’s plates slammed together at the Hayward Fault. The hills run from Contra Costa County to the north, through Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and Fremont, the towns to the south. Houses jostle for space from the Berkeley flatlands up the hillside to Grizzly Peak. Between Grizzly Peak and the wilderness of Tilden Park to the east are a few streets and cul-de-sacs of homes with views that jack their selling prices up toward half a million dollars. Ralph Palmerston’s was one of these. It was a pale stucco Spanish style built around three sides of a twenty-five-foot-square courtyard, with the living room to the left, the garage to the right, and a bougainvillea-covered courtyard wall connecting them. The wall was five feet high, with decorative iron spikes atop it. It couldn’t be climbed unobtrusively.

I pulled up in front and walked to the gate. It was locked. I pushed the bell and waited, anxious to see Ralph Palmerston’s wife—the woman whose arrival had stopped his charitable impulses—dreading the moment when I would have to tell her about his death. The picture of Ralph Palmerston lying there with the pulser lights blinking on his face came to my mind. I swallowed and stared hard at the courtyard wall, reminding myself that I was a Homicide detective now. My job was dead bodies. I would see plenty worse-looking than Ralph Palmerston’s, with its terror-stricken face. There would be times I’d see corpses without anything left of their faces at all.

The house was dark. Even with the streetlight shining on the picture window in the living room, I couldn’t make out what was inside. There were interior shutters; the lower ones were closed. But I did spot the wires of a security system.

As I rang the bell again, I thought that Ralph Palmerston was too careful a man to leave his house dark. His accident had been at four thirty-eight. Now at six, dusk was turning to dark. It was the time that a careful man would have the lights on and all the shutters closed. So wherever he had been going, Ralph Palmerston would have planned to be home before now.

I knocked a third time, but it was becoming clear that no one was going to answer.

I checked with the neighbors on either side, but neither knew where Mrs. Palmerston was. I had told Pereira I would notify the widow. I could wait or come back. I chose the latter.

Knowing Misco, he would be at the dealership where Palmerston’s car had been serviced. He’d be talking to the mechanic.

I climbed into my car and headed for the flatlands.

Trent Cadillac, showroom and shop, was on Shattuck Avenue, one of Berkeley’s main north-south streets. It was in the automobile ghetto, where a prospective buyer could check out Isuzus, Subarus, Hondas, Peugeots, Volvos, Nissans, and assorted domestic vehicles without leaving the street. The Honda and Volvo showrooms were dark. Doubtless their salesmen didn’t need to spend their evening hours at work; they had ample time during the day to tell customers they could put their names on their waiting lists.