Too Close to the Edge (17 page)

I looked into the cockpit. Between the two seats was a dashboard that must have held fifteen gauges. “It doesn’t look that easy to me.”

“Oh, those. Well that looks more complicated than it is. But once you get used to them you just need to check to see that everything’s all right. But look here, you don’t have a steering wheel, you just have this one stick that moves the ship forward and back—the cyclic.” He pointed to the stick that rose in front of the driver’s seat. “And this one, the collective”—he pointed to a gearstick to the left of the driver’s seat—“controls altitude. It goes up, you go up. It goes down, you drop. And this is the throttle, just like you have on a motorcycle. It works with the collective; that’s why it’s on the end of it. When you go up, you need more power, so increased collective means an increase in the throttle.”

So far Marie Denton’s assessment was correct. The man was obsessed, and already he was boring me. “Ian—”

“And these pedals work the tail rotor so you don’t spin out. See, whenever a copter loses power, it has a tendency to torque, so when you’re coming down, you need to adjust—”

“Ian,” I insisted. I couldn’t tell whether he was actually pausing to listen or just catching his breath. “Tell me, briefly, what modification you are working on.”

He frowned. “Well, I don’t know how brief I can be.”

“Try.”

“Well, okay, but I can’t promise you’ll understand.”

I waited.

“I’m experimenting with a new blade design to cut down the drag.”

“So the ship will lift more easily and run more economically,” I said in a tone so condescending that anyone who was not so totally caught up in his project would have been taken aback. “Do you spend a lot of time working on it?”

“Whenever I’m not doing overhauls for Quade. I don’t have time to waste. Someone else could come up with a similar modification, and then, even if mine’s better, companies aren’t going to change twice in a year.”

I nodded. The signs of distress he’d shown talking of Liz had vanished. He seemed to have handled her death more easily than anyone I had talked to. Disguising my skepticism, I said, “It must have been difficult being here so much, when your wife was in a wheelchair and needed some care.”

But if he noticed any undertone in the question, he gave no indication. “She had an attendant,” he said matter-of-factly. “Actually, she had a lot of attendants. Liz wasn’t the easiest person to work for. But in fairness to her, attendants aren’t always the most responsible people around. Sometimes they partied at night and overslept the next morning and didn’t bother to get her up. Sometimes they just split without warning.”

“Didn’t she need you then?”

“Sure. And I came. There’s a phone here. Look, we haven’t been together for a long time. Actually, we’ve been apart more than we were together.”

I kept silent, counting on its nervous-making quality to keep him talking.

“We just weren’t very alike. Or at least we had different priorities. Liz knew how important my work was. She knew that when this modification works, helicopter companies will be fighting to get it. I can sell it for more money than I’ve ever seen, enough to start my own company. She understood that.” He nodded toward the standing copter. “Besides, even if I had been doing nothing but sitting on my butt, I wouldn’t have seen her much more. She was hardly ever home, and when she was she was busy at her desk, or on the phone to one of her committee members, or to Brad Butz. Christ, if it hadn’t been for Liz that Marina Vista project would never have gotten anywhere. He couldn’t have done that himself. He was just a ne’er-do-well carpenter when he latched onto Liz. He didn’t have influence with the city. They would never have considered him without Liz pushing them. And after he got the job, he didn’t understand politics like Liz did. He could never have battled all those boards and committees—he thinks too small. He’s the perfect nuts and bolts man. Of course, he doesn’t know that. He struts around like the idea for Marina Vista grew in his own prissy-faced head. Marina Vista’s going to make him hot stuff in the construction world. The whole shorefront project is a bitch. It’s going to force a hundred people with no other place to go out of Rainbow Village. Even Calicopter is going to lose its lease here. But do you think he cared? I told Liz, I said, ‘Look, this guy is using you. What are you going to get out of his million dollar project? An apartment? The honor of being manager and listening to people complain?’ ” He shook his head. “That building is going up on fill. You know what that means.”

Fill, or filled land, was the land created at the edge of the bay from projects like the Berkeley dump. A hundred years ago San Francisco Bay had been twice its present size before man-made “land” gobbled its edges. Fill, of course, was not attached to the bedrock deep beneath, and when a sizeable earthquake came, the fill would melt back into the water it had displaced.

“It’s one thing for commercial buildings to go up here. People don’t sleep in them. That’s why the regulations aren’t so stiff for them. But apartments … I can’t believe the city is allowing an apartment building to go up there, particularly one for people with disabilities,” Ian said. “It’s crazy. In a quake, those people won’t have a chance. But then, the city wouldn’t have okayed it if it hadn’t been for Liz’s lobbying. She was always off at some committee or speaking in front of some board or other.” He sounded like any spouse would have. I could remember my own ex-husband complaining when I worked Night Watch.

I took a breath, trying to decide how to phrase my question. Stuart was clearly fascinated with motion. He hadn’t given any indication of being adaptable to a life without it. I wondered if the pressures of Liz’s accident, and the changes that her paralysis had brought—the physical inconveniences, the sexual limitations, all the things that were no longer possible—had been more than he was able or willing to adjust to. “You said you didn’t live with Liz long. When were you married, and exactly how long did you live together?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago. And you don’t just move out, not when it’s out to sleep in your truck. You do it gradually.”

“When did you get married?”

“I can’t remember the exact date.”

“Ian, I can check. It’ll just take my time, and my patience.”

“Okay, okay. Three years ago.”

“Three years!”

“Right. It was
after
her accident. She was already in the chair when I married her. That’s what you were wondering about, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yes. Now what I’m wondering is why you moved out.”

His eyes were half closed. I knew he was weighing his possible responses, but this time I didn’t press him.

“Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, but I can’t have it go any further.”

“This is a murder investigation. You’d better be straight with me.”

He shrugged. “The truth is that we never really lived together. It was a marriage of convenience. Liz did me a favor.”

My buzzer beeped. “What kind of favor?”

His scrunched features pushed closer together. “Well, I needed a wife.”

The buzzer went off again.

“I have to go. If you don’t tell me what you’re leading up to now, I’m going to have to take you with me to the station.”

He shrank back, his thin chest hollowing. “Can I get some immunity?”

“Don’t talk immunity. I’ve just explained your choices.”

“Officer, I don’t—”

“Okay, get your coat.” I stepped toward him.

“No, wait. Okay. I’m a Canadian. I needed a green card to work here. I needed to be someplace like this, where there’s variation in the weather. Canada’s too cold. You can’t test a rudder design in weather like that. I had to be here.”

“Liz married you so you could stay in the country and work on your invention?”

He nodded.

“What did she get out of it?” Obviously, not the pleasure of his company.

“I told you, she did me a favor. She said she didn’t get much chance to do things for other people.”

I sighed. “Get in the car.”

“But you said—”

The Liz I knew would never have made a deal like that. “You’re lying. I don’t have time to coddle you. You’ve just halved your choice.” I herded him to the car and opened the rear door. He protested again, and when I closed the door after him, it took all my self control not to slam it.

For this, I thought, I’ve been up thirty-two hours!

“Officer, this isn’t fair.”

“Hey, keep it down. You had your chance.” I started the engine and, while it warmed, called in to the dispatcher.

“Smith?” he said, “Contact Heling. She says she’s got something you’ll be real pleased with.”

W
ITH A BURST OF
adrenaline I drove back to the station, Ian Stuart complaining the entire way. The Liz Goldenstern I knew, the fisherwoman who had plucked the young Capelli out of the bay, might be pleased to help someone out, but I was willing to bet that that someone would have a more compelling need than Ian Stuart. Or if not a dire need, at least an appealing personality. I could see why they had never lived together. From what Marie Denton had said, which Stuart had unintentionally confirmed, he would have been willing to park his truck wherever he could find a bed to park himself. The fewer obligations the better. Living with Liz, as long as there was an attendant to do the work, would have been perfect. Living with him would have driven Liz crazy.

I stopped the car by the station and turned to him. “I’m going to give you one more chance, Ian.”

For the first time he was silent.

“Tell me about Liz’s son.”

His narrow-set eyes scrunched. “I told you it wasn’t that type of relationship. How many times do I—”

“Not your son. Liz’s son.”

His eyes grew even narrower; they seemed ready to squeeze the bridge of his nose off his face. Shaking his head, he said, “Liz didn’t have children.”

“How do you know? It doesn’t sound like you were around any more than you had to be.”

“Still, I was her husband. I’d know that.”

“There are witnesses who saw her son coming to see her.”

Continuing to shake his head, he said, “If Liz had had a kid, don’t you think that kid would have been around? Liz would have seen to that.”

Silently, I admitted he had a point. To him, I said, “Not good enough,” and headed him into the station. I’d have another go at him after he’d spent a few hours in one of the few rooms in Berkeley he found unacceptable. But booking takes time—the forms, the fingerprinting, the computer checks of the Corpus file, even the receipt for belongings. No one step takes long, but altogether you never book a suspect in less than half an hour.

It was nearly four o’clock when I got to Liz Goldenstern’s flat. Leaving the black and white double-parked, I ran in.

I expected Heling, whose shift had ended an hour ago, to be fuming, but she greeted me with a grin.

“Smith,” Heling said, “you remember you told me to go over this place? Well, I figured I had hours,” she added with a meaningful glance at me. “So I went through every drawer, every closet, every shelf, every—”

“Heling!”

Her grin widened. “You know those bags people hang over the back of their wheelchairs? The ones they put books or groceries or whatever in?”

“Yes.”

“Liz Goldenstern’s wasn’t on her chair when you discovered it, right?”

I recalled the chair on its side in the dirt. There was no bag in my picture. “No.”

“Well I found it.”

“Where?”

“Under the desk in her office, back by the wall.”

“And?” I hadn’t realized Heling had this theatrical ability to turn a simple statement into Masterpiece Theater.

“Guess what was in it.”

“Heling, I’ve found Liz dead. I’ve been up all night. Now what is it?”

“Running shoes,” she said triumphantly. “Size 9-B, New Balances. New.”

“Whew!”

“And that’s not all, Smith. That was just the beginning, in a way. After I found those—actually that was pretty soon—I really went over this place inch by inch. And guess what else I found?”

“A buyer’s list?”

Her face fell. “Well, no. Not that. But something pretty interesting,” she added, regrouping. “In the back of the bedside table drawer, in an envelope, all by itself,” she said, slowing her delivery with each phrase, “I found four hundred fifty dollars.”

“Nine pairs of the stolen shoes were from Racer’s Edge. Fifty per pair. And these shoes were waiting to be traded for another fifty, eh?”

“Jill, it’s so little. I can’t believe what people will risk jail for.”

“Yeah. Of course, the proceeds from this would have been split two ways—half for the mastermind and half for whoever did the actual stealing. A hundred per pair sounds about all the market would bear.”

Heling nodded.

“It’s nice that four fifty’s still here. Have you notified Coleman, or Pereira?”

“Coleman’s sick. And for all I knew Pereira is in Timbuktu. I left a message for her hours ago.”

I smiled. After all day with Herman Ott’s taxes, Timbuktu would be an appealing prospect for Pereira.

“But that’s not all, Smith,” she insisted. “Guess what else was in that envelope.”

“Other than a signed confession, I can’t imagine.”

“Check it out.” Heling thrust the envelope toward me.

I plucked out the bills, all crisp fifties. A slip of paper fell on the floor. Picking it up, I read,
“New Balance
—
9-B. Dusty Wilson. 4–13.
It’s even got his phone number. How considerate. I’d say, Heling, that Pereira owes you one.”

“Great. I haven’t started my taxes yet.”

“Maybe not that big a one. In the meantime, have someone from Day Watch relieve you. We’ll get someone to the hospital to pick up Aura Summerlight when they release her. She was the attendant here. Let’s see what her connection was in this operation.”

“She didn’t have any.” The words tumbled out of Heling’s mouth. “I mean, I’ve given this a lot of thought. And it had to be Liz’s scheme. I mean, look where the shoes were—in Liz’s bag. Common sense says Liz put them there. If Aura had stashed them here in the flat she would have put them on a top shelf, someplace where Liz wouldn’t come across them. That bag is the last place she’d put them. And the bag was hidden in one of the few places she wouldn’t look. And the money … well, my first guess is that she’d have spent it. She must have needed it. But even if she didn’t spend it, she wouldn’t hide it in the bedside table where Liz would find it. The bedside table is one spot where Liz would keep things she needed, and where her attendants would have no reason to go. It’s the logical place for Liz to stash the money.”