The Motive (19 page)

“So what’s he looking at?”

“I don’t know. He won’t answer my page.”

At that moment, Cuneo stood in the driveway of the Hanovers’ stucco home on Beach Street, sniffing into the trunk space of their black Mercedes.

He’d arrived at a little after eight along with his former homicide partner, Lincoln Russell, whom he’d asked along to help with the search, as well as to serve as a witness that he was not sexually harassing Catherine Hanover. They’d sat, waiting outside, Cuneo driving Russell nuts with his drumming on the steering wheel, until Catherine Hanover came outside in her bathrobe to pick up the newspaper on her driveway—a bit of luck since Cuneo hadn’t really known for sure how he would get a picture of her, which he badly wanted. And got.

A few minutes later, Catherine, her husband and all three kids had been shocked and startled by the appearance of the two policemen with a search warrant at their front door (”
What’s this about?
“”
You mean I’m some kind of a suspect or something? Of what?
“”
Do we have to let you in to do this?
“). But then, perhaps because of the inspectors’ assurances that it wouldn’t take too long, they had all become reasonably cooperative, or at least acquiescent, waiting around the kitchen table while Cuneo and Russell went upstairs in search of the clothes that Cuneo remembered Catherine had been wearing on the night of the fire. In no time at all they’d found the blue silken blouse, black leather jacket, faded blue jeans. All were in her closet, the jeans still faintly smelling of smoke. They wrapped them all up, told Catherine that they would return them after the lab was through with them.

“What’s the lab going to do with them?”

“Test for blood spatter. Traces of gasoline.”

“This is ridiculous. Go ahead and look for that.”

“We intend to, ma’am. We intend to.”

The two daughters started crying.

When they had finished inside and announced their intention to inspect the car, the family broke up, the kids chattering nervously, upset about the weirdness of having their house searched. Everyone then went their various ways—the husband and wife uncommunicative, formally distant with one another, Cuneo noticed.

Will drank coffee and read the morning paper at the kitchen table, and Catherine announced that she would like to go outside with the inspectors. She couldn’t imagine what they might be looking for. Now Cuneo was straightening up, and he turned to her. “Smells like you’ve got a gas leak. Did you know about that?”

She came closer, careful to keep her distance, leaned over the trunk and sniffed. “I do smell it. I ought to take it in for service.”

“Have you noticed that smell before?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said. “I don’t use the trunk very often.”

But Russell was feeling the rug on the trunk’s floor. “This isn’t a leak, Dan. Gas got spilled in here.”

“No! That’s not…” Then Catherine stopped herself. “Oh,” she said. Her hand went to her mouth.

“What?” Cuneo was standing straight up in front of her, inside her comfort zone and knowing it, squinting in the sun. “Oh, what?” he repeated.

“That was a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

“What was?” Cuneo’s features were somehow expectant. On both hands, his fingers opened and closed.

Russell stood next to his ex-partner, paying attention to this development. Catherine Hanover, perhaps seeking some kind of support, directed her words over Cuneo’s shoulder to him. “It was a few weeks ago,” she said, beginning again.

“A few or a couple?” Cuneo asked.

“What?”

“First time you said ‘a couple.’ Then you said ‘a few.’ Which is it?”

“I don’t know. I could probably remember.”

“Take your time,” Russell said. He was a black man with a pleasant face, and he had put on a patient expression. “We’ve got all day if you want.”

Catherine looked from one of them to the other. “I should probably call a lawyer, shouldn’t I?”

“If you think you need one,” Cuneo said.

“That’s your absolute right,” Russell agreed.

“Are you two thinking about arresting me? For Paul’s murder? I didn’t have anything to do with that. I don’t know anything about it at all, except that I saw him that day. That’s all.”

“We’re just executing a search warrant, ma’am,” Russell said. “If you were under arrest, we’d be reading you your rights.”

“So I’m not?”

“No, ma’am.”

“But,” Cuneo put in, “you were starting to tell us about the gas smell in your car, two or maybe more weeks ago.”

“Let me think,” Catherine said. “I’m sure I can remember. Okay, it was…today’s Saturday…it was the week before last. Monday, I think.”

“So more like ten days?” Russell, being helpful, wanted to nail down the day.

“Something like that. I was going to pick up Polly for something after school, I don’t remember exactly what it was now—her orthodontist appointment maybe. And I passed a car parked off the road—it was in the Presidio. Anyway, there was a young woman, a girl really, standing beside it, kind of looking like she hoped someone would help her, but maybe not wanting to actually flag somebody over. So I stopped and asked if she was all right, and she said she was out of gas.”

Catherine looked into Russell’s face, then Cuneo’s. Sighing, she went on. “She had one of those containers in her trunk, you know, so we got in my car and I took her to a gas station, where we filled it up and put it in my trunk, and then I took her back to her car, but when we got there, the container had fallen over and leaked out a little.”

“A little,” Cuneo said.

“It seemed like a little.”

He leaned over and ran his hand along the rug. As Russell had, he smelled his hand. Russell, meanwhile, moved up a step. “What kind of car was it?” he asked.

“Whose? Oh, hers? White.”

Russell said, “That’s the color, ma’am, not the kind. What kind of car was it?”

Catherine closed her eyes, crinkled up her face, came back to him. “I think some kind of SUV. I’m pretty sure.”

“Any memory of the license plate?”

“No. I don’t know if I ever looked at it.”

“Did you get the young woman’s name? First name, even?”

“No. We just…” Her expression had grown helpless. She shook her head. “No.”

Russell nodded. “You’re going to go with that story?”

“It’s not a story,” she said. “That’s what happened.”

Cuneo had removed a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and was back inside the trunk, cutting fibers from the rug that he then placed in a small Ziploc bag. “Well, okay, then,” he said, turning to Russell. “I think we’re through here for now.”

The law firm of Arron Hanover Pells had a recorded message that provided a number clients could call if they had a weekend emergency. When Glitsky called that number, he reached one of the associates, who agreed to call Paul Hanover’s secretary and ask her to call him back. Glitsky pulled up to a mini-mart just off Columbus in North Beach, double-parked and got a cup of hot water with a tea bag, then went back to his car to wait. The tea hadn’t yet cooled enough for him to sip it when his cell phone rang. “Glitsky.”

“Hello? Is this the police?”

“Yes it is. This is Deputy Chief Glitsky. Who am I speaking with?”

“Lori Cho. Paul Hanover’s secretary.”

“Thanks for getting back to me so fast.”

“That’s all right. I wasn’t doing anything anyway except staring at his files. I can’t get used to the idea that he’s not coming back in.”

“So you’re at your office now? Would you mind if I came by for a few minutes?”

“If you’d like. We’re in the Bank of America building, twentieth floor. There’s a guard downstairs who’s got to let you up. I’ll tell him I’m expecting you. Could you give me your name again?”

Lori Cho met him at the elevators. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, small-boned, fragile-looking, close to anorexic, with a haunted, weary look about her eyes. Or perhaps it was simply fatigue and sorrow over the loss of her boss. Here at the office on Saturday she was dressed for work in a no-nonsense black skirt with matching sweater, tennis shoes and white socks. Her hair softened the general gaunt impression somehow—shoulder-length, thick and shining black, it might still have been damp.

Glitsky followed her in silence down a carpeted hallway, through a set of wide double doors, then across an ornate lobby and into a large corner office. Hanover’s panoramic view was mostly to the east, down over the rooftops of lesser high-rises to the Bay, across the bridge to Yerba Buena and Treasure Island, with Berkeley and Richmond off in the distance.

“You can just sit anywhere,” Cho said. She seated herself behind the highly polished dark-wood desk, swallowed up by the black leather swivel chair that must have been Hanover’s. Flattened sheets of cardboard, which Glitsky realized were unassembled boxes, were stacked by the file cabinets against one of the internal walls. The other wall featured framed photographs of Hanover with a couple of dozen politicians and celebrities, among them several San Francisco mayors, including Kathy West, and three of California’s governors, one of them Arnold. At a quick glance, here was Paul Hanover, shaking hands with both Bill Clinton and George Bush; on a boat somewhere with Larry El-lison, in a Giants uniform with Willie Mays. Evidently he’d been to the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

A showcase office. Nothing in the way of law books.

Glitsky came back to Cho, who hadn’t moved since she sat down. She was so still she might have been in a trance. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t looking at anything. “How long had you worked for him?” Glitsky asked.

Her surface attention came to him. “Fourteen years.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded absently.

“I wanted to ask you if there was anything in his work that you were aware of that might have played some kind of a role in his death. Was he upset about something? Was some deal going wrong? Anything like that?”

Her eyes went to her faraway place again, then returned to him. “Nothing I can think of. There was no crisis. He was doing what he always did.”

“Which was what?”

Again, it took her a second or two to formulate her response. “He put people together. He was very good with people.” She gestured at the photo gallery. “As you can see. He genuinely liked people.”

“Did he like Nils Granat?”

The question surprised her. “I think so. They had lunch together every month or so. Why? Did Mr. Granat say there was a problem?”

“No. He said they were friends.”

“I think they were.”

“Even with this conflict over the city’s towing?”

She nodded. “Yes. It wasn’t a conflict between the two of them. Mr. Granat had his clients, and Mr. Hanover had his. He had dozens of similar relationships.”

“But he never mentioned to you that he was worried about Mr. Granat’s clients. The company Tow/Hold?”

“Worried in what way?”

“Physically afraid.”

She shook her head no. “He wasn’t physically afraid of anybody. Did you know him?”

“I never did, no.”

She seemed to take this news with some disappointment. “He was a good man.”

“Yes, ma’am. Everybody seems to think so.” Glitsky sat back, crossed a leg. “Did you know Ms. D’Amiens very well?”

Cho’s jaw went up a half inch, her eyes came into sharp focus. “Not too well, no. I shouldn’t say anything bad about her. She seemed to make Mr. Hanover happy. And she was always nice to me.”

“But you didn’t believe her?”

Cho hesitated. “You know how some people can just seem
too
nice? It was almost like some trick she’d learned how to do. Maybe she was just trying too hard because she wanted Mr. Hanover’s friends to like her. And his family, too. But they weren’t going to like her, no matter how she acted. They thought she was in it for his money.”

“Did you think that?”

She bit at her cheek. “As I said, I didn’t really know her. Mr. Hanover didn’t think it, and he was nobody’s fool. He might have been right.”

“But you disagreed with him?”

“A little bit. With no real basis in fact, though. Just a feeling.”

“Feelings generally are based on something.”

She sighed. “She just seemed calculating. It made me feel she was…not very genuine. I suppose you want an example.”

Glitsky didn’t push. “If you’ve got one.”

“Well.” She paused. “Okay. When Paul first met her, one of her big things was she volunteered once a week at Glide Memorial, the soup kitchens?”

“Okay.”

“The message, of course, being that she had this big heart and cared about the homeless and all that. But once she and Paul…once they got together, that pretty much stopped.”

“So you think it was a ploy to make her seem somehow more attractive?”

“I don’t know. I hate to say that. Maybe she was sincere and just got busier with Paul, you know. But it struck me wrong. And then, you know, she really did come from nowhere and then suddenly was going to marry him. So quickly, it seemed.”

“So Mr. Hanover never talked to you about her background?”

“Not too much. Evidently she had had a husband who died of cancer about five years ago….”

“Do you know where?”

“No. I’m sorry. I never even asked. But she wanted to start over and she’d always dreamed of living in America.

In San Francisco. So she came here.” She let out a breath. “It really wasn’t mysterious. She had a few connections here with people she’d met overseas and then met Paul, and then…well, you know. If he wasn’t rich, no one would have thought anything about it. But of course, he was.” Though the admission seemed to cost her, she shrugged and said, “They just got along. She made him happy. He seemed to make her happy.”

“So they weren’t fighting?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“The rumor is there was some tension between them. The expense of the remodel, maybe? I heard she’d spent something like a million dollars.”

Cho allowed a small, sad smile. “That’s about what he told me. But he thought it was funny.”

“Funny?”

“Amusing. I mean, after all, he was going to be living there. He had the money, and if she spent it to make a nicer house for him, what was he going to complain about?” Cho stared for a second into the space in front of her. “If there was any tension at all, it was about the appointment.”