Not Exactly a Brahmin (3 page)

Fortunately for me, Trent Cadillac’s employees didn’t share their presumptions. I pulled up in front of the showroom, and raced for the door. Even in those few steps I got soaked again. I stopped inside and shook my head vigorously. When I looked up, I noticed the salesman, a tall sandy-haired man, leaning back in his chair, laughing. Even though he was laughing at me, I couldn’t help noticing how attractive he was.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. Anything to bring customers in.” He stood up languidly and ambled toward me. He wore a tan jacket and light pants, both just a mite too large. On him they looked not ill-fitting, but comfortable. He had that air of moneyed sureness that made whatever he wore de rigueur. As he came up to me, he glanced out the door at my battered Volkswagen. “Are you thinking of trading up?”

I laughed. “I’m with the police department. Actually, I’m just cutting through here on my way to the shop. One of our Traffic Investigators is probably still there. Besides, it looks suspicious for a police officer to drive a Cadillac.”

He shrugged, as if to say some officers could carry it off. “I’ll take you back there.”

“I don’t want to keep you from your post.”

“No problem. Not tonight. A huge thunderstorm doesn’t incite people to buy Cadillacs.” His hand brushed my shoulder as he headed me between the highly polished limousines. “You might consider the advantages of conducting your interviews in this model,” he said, indicating a huge silver vehicle with a bar and television in back.

“Or barring that, I could just move in.”

It was a moment before he smiled, a moment that said he was forcing a polite response to an unamusing comment. He looked like William Powell in a Thin Man movie: repartee was all important, and I had made a remark that hadn’t measured up.

“There he is,” I said, spotting Misco. In contrast to the salesman, Misco suddenly seemed small, dark, and frenetic, and very comfortable. “Thanks for your help,” I said to the salesman.

He caught my eye, smiled, and ambled off, like William Powell heading for another drink. I turned to Misco. He was standing near the rear exit with the mechanic, an Asian of about thirty-five or forty.

Indicating him, Misco said to me, “Sam did the work on the Palmerston car. The car was right where we are now. Checked out, huh, Sam?”

The mechanic extended a wiped hand. “Sam Nguyen,” he said with something of an accent. “I have told your colleague that I have completed all essential adjustments on the Palmerston vehicle. I have changed oil personally and lubed. Palmerston vehicle is A-l.”

“You checked the brakes?”

“I checked brakes, of course. I examined whole car.” His voice was rising. “I am not what you call a trainee. Sam Nguyen did not become a mechanic here on a government refugee program.”

I nodded.

“I am a mechanic. I was a mechanic in Saigon. There Sam Nguyen was esteemed. Everyone with a limousine came to Sam Nguyen. Many mechanics worked for me. I had a villa by the river, many servants.” A smile of recollection flashed across his face. “They said, the powerful men who owned limousines, ‘There is nothing Sam Nguyen cannot do.’ I make a car that was bombed run again. I make customized job: bulletproof glass, no problem; folding bed, no problem; secret cargo space, no problem; machine gun—”

“I’m sure, Mr. Nguyen. But you’re saying Mr. Palmerston’s car was in perfect condition when it left here?”

“That is correct.”

“Do you know when that was?”

“One-thirty, pronto. Mr. Palmerston is very particular about his car being waiting at that time.”

“Do you know why?”

He looked at me oddly for a moment, as if I had asked a ridiculous question, then his face sank back into a noncommital expression. “It is no problem. It does not take longer. I finished at one o’clock.”

“You signed the work order. So at that time you guaranteed the brake lines were in good shape?”

His dark brows pushed together. “The brake lines were okay. I inspected them this morning.”

“Could they have been faulty?”

“Holes large enough to let fluid through? Never. I, Sam Nguyen, checked the lines before okaying them. In Saigon, I go over everything looking for danger. Those holes would not escape Sam Nguyen.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Misco walked with me to the door. “I guess this case will be yours by tomorrow, huh, Smith?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what I came out here to tell you was that Sam Nguyen is on the up-and-up. He really is a genius with cars. Trent Cadillac is lucky to have him. He’s known all over the area, not just in Berkeley. Over there, in Saigon, they didn’t have spare parts. When a manifold went, that was it, unless they could get the car to Sam’s. Word is there’s nothing he couldn’t repair, replace, or improve on. The joke is that he revamped a Citroen into a villa.”

“Loses something in the translation.”

“Yeah, well … in a couple years this could be Nguyen Cadillac. Or maybe Nguyen Motors will be somewhere else. Sam doesn’t just work on Caddies.”

“So you believe him when he says the car was perfect when it left here?”

“Mechanically, he’s the best.”

“What about ethically? Could he be bought?”

“I don’t know. But not about this. If Sam Nguyen had sabotaged Palmerston’s car, we would never have found a clue.”

I looked out at the rain. So Sam Nguyen finished the car at one o’clock. It was in perfect condition. Ralph Palmerston picked it up at one-thirty. And in three hours the brake lines were cut, the car smashed, and Ralph Palmerston was lying on the sidewalk with blood in his eyes.

I considered checking back at the station with Pereira and calling the phone number on the slip of paper in Palmerston’s glove compartment, but I hated to think of Mrs. Palmerston pacing her living room wondering where her husband was. And I was getting more anxious and more curious to see this woman.

I made my way back via my circuitious route to Grizzly Peak Boulevard.

But Mrs. Palmerston was not worrying, or at least she wasn’t doing it at home. The house was still dark.

There were lights now in most of the neighbor’s houses. I started with one diagonally across the street. The householder, a woman in her fifties, hadn’t been home all day. She couldn’t tell me anything. She looked at me suspiciously. Again, I wished I had had the sense to bring an umbrella to work. It was no wonder a bedraggled, sodden woman claiming to be a Homicide officer engendered skepticism.

The man to the right of her house had just returned from work. He didn’t know the Palmerston’s; he’d only lived there eight months.

It wasn’t till I knocked on the door of the house across the street that I was rewarded.

The woman who answered the door—Ellen Kershon was her name—was not much older than I was, probably in her early thirties. But in contrast to me, she had styled hair—dry—and wore a soft corduroy knickers outfit. The leather of her boots looked softer than the corduroy.

“I’m Detective Smith,” I said, holding out my shield. “It’s about your neighbor Ralph Palmerston. He’s been in an accident.”

She shrunk back. “An accident? Is he all right?”

“I’m afraid not. He’s been killed.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “But how?”

“His car crashed into the guardrail in the Marin traffic circle.” I didn’t elaborate; I’d already told her more than I should have before the widow was notified.

She covered her face, and in that moment she looked more like a child in knickers than an adult. Swallowing, she motioned me into the living room, a large comfortable room with thick green wall-to-wall carpeting. By the front window was a jack-o’-lantern.

“I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing again. “I don’t usually react like this.”

“Were you very close to Mr. Palmerston?”

“Actually no, that’s the strange thing. I wouldn’t have thought his death would affect me so much. Sit down.” She settled on a maroon sofa and I followed. “I grew up in this house. Ralph was really a friend of my parents, a rather formal friend. They went to his Christmas open house, and he came here for my parents’ annual barbecue. Ralph didn’t have children. When I was a small child, Ralph’s wife was frail; later on she drifted into more serious illness. Eventually she died. Ralph was devoted to her. She took a lot of his time. Maybe that’s why he seemed so formal.”

So far her explanation hadn’t explained her reaction. I waited.

“He was a thoughtful man. Every Christmas he gave my parents a case of champagne, the winery’s private reserve—I mean their private private reserve, not the so-called private reserve you see in stores. And to me”—her eyes clouded—“his gifts were always the perfect thing. Each year it was something very special—a basketball and hoop when I was thirteen and thought I’d never lower myself to be interested in boys, and French perfume the next year when I was going on my first date. Always just the right thing. It wasn’t till I had my own child that I wondered how he could have zeroed in on what I wouldn’t have known I’d adore. Surprising for a man who never had children.”

I nodded. The aroma of beef filled the living room. It reminded me that I had been headed for ice cream an hour and a half ago.

“In a way, I’m not surprised,” she said slowly, “about the accident, I mean. It was such a shame. All those years with his first wife so sickly. He had his health but he couldn’t go anywhere. And then in the last six months his own eyesight started to go. He’s hardly driven at all in the last two months. He didn’t want to endanger people.”

“But he did drive today.”

“Today he almost hit Billy.” The words seemed to burst out, as if Palmerston’s prior thoughtfulness made this offense that much worse.

“Billy’s your son?”

“What? Oh, yes.”

“Is he here?”

“He’s in his room.”

“Can I talk to him?”

She nodded and opened a door to a staircase. “Billy,” she called. “Put your robe on and come down. There’s a police officer here who wants to talk to you about Mr. Palmerston.” To me, she added, “He’s in bed, trying to avoid catching pneumonia.”

But when Billy ambled down the stairs, he was wearing jeans and a sweater. He was a long-blond-haired adolescent who clearly had had a large spurt of growth and had not filled out to match it yet. He looked like a vision in a tall, thin mirror.

“You weren’t in bed, were you?” his mother demanded.

“Aw, Ma …”

To me, she said, “He rode his bike to school this morning. Of course it was pouring when school was out. I went to pick him up. We could have put the bike in the back of the wagon. We’ve done it plenty of times before, right, Billy?” she demanded, turning to him.

“Aw, Ma …”

“But no, when I got to school he was gone. He had to ride his bike to the top of the hills so he could see the storm better. Can you believe that?”

“She doesn’t look so dry herself,” Billy put in.

“Billy!”

“Your mother says you saw Mr. Palmerston today,” I said to him.

“He nearly creamed me! Jeez, he came this close.” He held his hands inches apart.

“How close?”

“Well, maybe this far.” Now it was a foot. “But it was close. He didn’t even see me.”

“Where were you?”

“In the street. I was just making my cut for the driveway. See, if you stay on the other side of the street till you’re right across from the driveway, there’s this bump. You can hit it and bounce and then the edge of the driveway gives you another bounce.”

Billy’s mother sighed. “Two thousand dollars on orthodontia …”

“Where were you and where was he?”

“I was making my cut. He was up the street, driving real slow like he always did. He’s old. But then he started to turn for his garage and he speeded up. He barely missed me.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know, exactly,” Mrs. Kershon said. “It was one fifty-three. Billy got out of school early today. There was a teacher’s meeting. I’d been watching for him since one-thirty. I was sure he’d been hit by lightning. Instead, he was off seeing how wet he could get.”

Before Billy could get out his “Aw, Ma,” I said, “You said Mr. Palmerston hadn’t driven in two months, but today he picked up his car from the repair shop and went out with it this afternoon. Do you have any idea where he was going?”

“No,” she said slowly. “When they go out, his new wife drives him. They take her car. I’m surprised his needed to be serviced, he used it so rarely.”

Billy opened his mouth and then let it close.

“Do you have any idea where Mrs. Palmerston is now?”

“No. She doesn’t go out all that much without him.”

Billy squirmed forward on his chair.

“Sit still,” his mother snapped. To me, she said, “They never leave the lights out. We’ve had burglaries. You must know that. Ralph has always been very careful. He has some lovely pieces and it would be a pity to have them stolen.”

I nodded, recalling my similar reaction to their darkened windows. “Mrs. Kershon, I understand that Mr. Palmerston used to be very active in charity work, but has stopped that in the last few years. …” I let the thought hang.

“Since he married Lois,” she said, picking it up.

“Why do you think he changed?”

Mrs. Kershon fingered her soft blond hair. She glanced at Billy as if assessing whether to speak in front of him.

But it was Billy who spoke. “She’s got more important stuff to spend money on than charity.”

“Billy!”

“It’s true, Ma. She’s got a Mercedes. She’s got fur coats. Boy, I sure haven’t seen her putting a quarter in the Free Clinic box.”

Mrs. Kershon started to speak to him again, then caught herself and shrugged. “It’s true, Officer. I don’t know her well—hardly at all, but she doesn’t look … well, she looks like she devotes most of her thoughts to her appearance. You know what I mean.”

I did, but I said, “Can you give me any examples?”

“Examples? She looks like a model. And she’s a lot younger than Ralph.”

Picking up the unspoken inference, I asked, “Do you think she married him for his money?”

“Well, I don’t want to make judgments, I mean, I hardly know the woman, so I really can’t say what her motivations were.”