Too Close to the Edge (19 page)

He nodded.

“You don’t have to have one, but it’s your right.”

“I know that,” he snapped defiantly, then slumped back down. “I don’t want a lawyer.”

“If you had one, he’d tell you that you are in a lot of trouble. This isn’t a school prank. You’re not a minor any more. This is grand theft.”

His mouth stiffened.

“It’s not something your parents can get you out of now. You’re on your own. What your lawyer would tell you is that your best chance, your only chance, is to cooperate with us.”

His breath caught.

“Your house was the center of a theft ring,” I said, stretching the truth. “We’re going to bring in everyone who lives there. We’re going to start off assuming that all the tenants were equally involved in this ring. Of course, you’ve already refused to cooperate once …”

“Hey, you can’t convict me because of that!”

I let a moment pass before saying, “I’m not judging you. I’m just telling you the lay of the land. Now, anyone can choose to be the one who tells us about the theft ring. We’ll remember that help. But we only need one to tell us. We’ll talk to whoever decides first. Only one of you can help himself.”

“And rat on his friends!”

“This isn’t junior high, Blaine. We’re not talking about who threw a spitball across the room. We’re talking jail. If you’d rather read about your friends’ graduation from a cell, then you keep quiet. It doesn’t matter to me who gets the benefit of cooperating. I’m only dealing with you because you’re here. When your friends get home, I’ll see them.”

He ran his big teeth over his chin, catching them at the edge of his lip and pulling the soft flesh in.

I doodled—a goose on a platter, though an uninformed observer might have taken it for a pigeon or an anteater. “There are what, four, five of you living there? I can tell you from experience that one of you will decide to help. It may not be you.” I leaned back. “Actually, I’m hoping it won’t be. You caused me a lot of trouble this afternoon. We could have blown the whole operation because of you. You’re not my favorite person. I’d really hate to see a smart-aleck rich kid like you get the advantage of cooperating.”

Again he pulled his teeth over his lip.

I flipped the pad shut, stuck the pen in my pocket, and pulled the pad to my edge of the table. Then I unplugged the tape recorder.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t like doing this, but I don’t have any choice.”

Now I allowed myself a smile. Plugging the recorder back in I said, “We’ll record this. For my use, and your protection.”

He leaned forward toward the recorder, his face suddenly relaxed. It made me a bit uncomfortable to see how easily he had assimilated my offer of rationalization.

“Give me the full names of your parents.”

I expected him to fuss, but he simply said, “Edward Horton Morris and Pamela Blaine Morris Dixon. They’re divorced.”

So he wasn’t Liz’s son. I’d have to check his roommates. “Tell me how the ring operated.”

“She set it up. We just kind of went along for the fun of it. When she first suggested it, it was like a game. I mean, we didn’t really think she could run a scheme like this. I mean she is, well, like they say, limited.”

“How exactly did she run it?”

“She got the word that someone wanted a pair of say, Nikes, size 10-C. Some common size. I mean, she would never have taken an order from me.” He glanced down at the table, as if peering through to his huge feet. “Sometimes the guy would take any of a number of shoes. That made it easier; it gave us a bigger pool to choose from.”

“Where did she get the shoes?”

“We
got the shoes. She just took the names of guys, or women, depending, from the sales slips in the running shoe store. You know the one, Racer’s Edge.”

“But they weren’t all from Racer’s Edge.”

“No, it would have been too suspicious that way. We all know that. So every so often we just grabbed another pair and tossed them in the Good Will or something.”

“Go on with the Racer’s Edge operation.”

“She got the names and addresses of all the people who had bought the shoe we wanted in the last week. There were a lot. I mean, everyone on campus and half of Berkeley must be going through running shoes like the streets are burning. She gave us the names and we followed them. If we could, we struck up a conversation, casual-like, like on line for a frozen yogurt. Then we could ask them about yoga, or dance, or meditation. Listen, half of Berkeley is into one of those things. You know this isn’t a scam you could pull off in Lakewood, New Jersey. People are really big on leaving their shoes outside, here. I’ll tell you it really made me think. Now I never leave the house without locking the door. Can I have a glass of water?”

I turned off the tape and filled a paper cup from the fountain outside. Flicking the tape back on I said, “Repeat the last thing you said so we have continuity on the tape.”

He gulped down the water. “You mean when I asked for this, the water?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have a glass of water?”

“How did you actually get the shoes?”

“Oh, well, we just followed the guys till they went to a class and lifted them. I mean we couldn’t follow a guy if we’d already talked to him. Then we had to switch off.”

“And then what did you do with the shoes?”

“Brought them home.”

“And?”

“She picked them up.”

“What did you get paid?”

For the first time he smiled and his eyes softened. “You could say we got half. Fifty dollars a pair. But most of the time it just worked out that we didn’t pay her.”

“You didn’t pay
her?”
What was the four hundred and fifty dollars Heling found? “You didn’t pay her because she was one guy’s mother?”

“Mother?” He laughed. “She wasn’t anyone’s mother. She was our house cleaner.”

A
URA
S
UMMERLIGHT HAD BEEN
running the shoe theft ring. I greeted that knowledge with a variety of emotions: relief that Liz Goldenstern had not been involved, and at the same time discomfort with that relief; delight that the mastermind was so easily accessible, under guard at the county hospital, yet disappointment that this discovery led nowhere. At least if Liz had been involved, this case might have given me a clue to her murder. Now I had nothing but the solution to a small-time theft ring.

As for the murder case, I was left with less than I thought I had before. I had hoped that Liz’s son would turn up and bring with him the key to her killer. But as Ian Stuart had assured me, Liz had no son. Not only was none of the shoe thieves related to Liz, none but Blaine had even heard of her. Blaine Morris was the boy Greta Tennerud took to be Liz’s son. Blaine had admitted seeing Liz once or twice when he left a note for Aura at Liz’s flat or passed her on the way to the back room at Racer’s Edge. But he hadn’t gone back there to see Liz; he’d gone to meet Aura. (Why hadn’t he waited until she came to clean his house, I’d asked in amazement. Rush orders, he’d replied, sounding like head of General Motors.)

What I didn’t know was why Aura had hid the shoes in Liz’s bag and the money in her bedside drawer. But that could wait until morning. She’d still be here, and I’d be awake.

It took me an hour to finish the minimum paper work and sign out. In my IN box was a note from the patrol officer who had contacted Liz Goldenstern’s lawyer. It verified what Laurence Mayer had told me about their financial arrangement. He gave her the building and paid her attendant.

I considered stopping for a hamburger, but it seemed too great an effort. Even eating ice cream was a more daunting task than I could handle.

I have a better-than-average ability to manage without sleep. I’d learned all the tricks in school, and afterwards, when normal people let all-nighters become memories of a wild or procrastinatory youth, I had stayed up with my graduate student husband. Then, I had started in the department on Night Watch. And now, working what the guys on shifts call banker’s hours, I frequently found myself staying up too late and jolting awake in shock when the alarm rang. But thirty-six hours of chasing suspects, of psyching myself up for confrontations, or of being taken aback by ones I hadn’t expected—of seeing death—had shown me my limits. When I got in my own car, it took me two tries to find the ignition.

I headed home, relieved that night had fallen and it was too dark for Mr. Kepple to be dervishing around the yard. He wouldn’t be traipsing after a power mower louder than the snoring Ott. He wouldn’t be futilely trying to start his rip-cord edger. He wouldn’t be scattering the fifteen or so leaves that dared to settle outside my jalousies with his hurricane-force power blower.

I pulled up in front of the house and walked up the path—or what used to be the path, and was now the bare earth I had tripped in last night—around to my flat. The yard was empty, except at the back, where there was a tarp with a long cylindrical object under it. Mr. Kepple was nowhere in sight. I smiled. There was, after all, some fairness in life. The forces that be were repaying me for last night’s mishap. Tonight Mr. Kepple would be making the circuit of garden shops, assessing every redwood burl in the East Bay.

I opened the door and walked across the green indoor-outdoor carpet, ignoring the piles of magazines, newspapers, and catalogs that could provide for my every need throughout eternity. I should root out the ones I was never going to read and clear off the table. But they would still be there when I got around to it. For now, a quick shower, and into my sleeping bag before dusk darkened to night. (I should think about getting a futon. But that project would be there, too, when I got around to it). I turned the water on high, hung my clothes on the hook, and stepped into the shower. It was almost as good as sleep. The staccato spray from the shower head massaged my tense neck and shoulders, then worked its way down my back. I almost forgot to soap up, and stepped out reluctantly when the hot water ran out. Pulling on a nightshirt, I dashed through the kitchen and drew the sleeping bag up around my neck.

I had just set the alarm when a spotlight lit the yard. I scrunched down and pulled the sleeping bag over my head. The air inside was thick and hot. I thought of Liz Goldenstern gasping for breath in the inlet. I told myself to blot out that picture before it gave me nightmares. But the scene grew dimmer before I could will myself to action. My body gave that moment-before-sleep jerk, as if I had stepped off the sidewalk by mistake.

The whirr of the chain saw shrieked from the yard.

I jolted up.

The noise stopped.

Warily, I lay down. I could hear Mr. Kepple’s footsteps in the yard. The tarp flapped. I pulled the bag back over my head.

The saw shrieked again.

I put the pillow over my ears.

The pitch lowered. Mr. Kepple was sawing wood. Eight-thirty at night, in the dark, and he was sawing wood! Now he lifted the saw away, its frustrated blades caterwauling.

Furious, I sat up in the bag and edged toward the jalousies. Opening the bottom half, I yelled, “Mr. Kepple!”

He lowered the saw back to the ten-foot log.

A light came on in the kitchen of the house behind us. Bert Prendergast peered irritably through the window, shut off the light, and stepped out onto the porch.

“Mr. Kepple!” I yelled.

Of course he didn’t hear me. He lifted the saw with reverence and attacked the spotlit log.

I slammed the jalousie shut, grabbed my robe, and slipped on shower shoes.

“Hey, Kepple,” Bert Prendergast yelled. “Cut out the noise!”

I stalked into the yard. The manure-heavy soil had just been watered. It sucked my feet ankle-deep.

The porch light went on in the yard to the right. To the left, the back door slammed open. I curled my toes to keep the shower shoes on and trudged forward.

Mr. Kepple continued to saw.

“Cut it out or I call the cops!” Prendergast yelled.

More porch lights came on.

“Mr. Kepple,” I yelled from a foot behind him.

The saw bit deeper.

I tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned, his sparse gray eyebrows pulled up in wariness. Recognizing me, he smiled, turned off the saw.

“And keep it off!” Prendergast slammed his door. Two porch lights went out.

Mr. Kepple pulled the plugs out of his ears, oblivious to the scene he had caused. “Redwood,” he said, looking back proudly at the log. “You wouldn’t believe how much burls cost, Jill. I looked all over. I told you about my plan, didn’t I, for the walkway. I—”

“Mr. Kepple. I can’t sleep.”

He shook his head. “Such a problem. My ex-wife, God rest her soul, used to be like that. Myself, I’ve never had any trouble. I just lay my head on the pillow and I’m gone. I—”

“Mr. Kepple. The saw. It’s annoying the neighbors. You’re keeping me awake.”

His eyes widened in astonishment. Then he looked sadly down at the saw. I felt like I had kicked his dog. Then he glanced at his watch. “It’s only eight-thirty. What’s a pretty girl like you doing in bed at this hour? You should be out with your friends. I didn’t want to tell you, Jill, but you work too hard. You should have more fun. You’re only young once. You get old before you know it.” Under the spotlight I could see his eyes misting. “You put off the things you want to do till you have time, and then just when you’re ready … she dies.” Swallowing, he looked behind me toward my flat, which, he’d once told me, had been planned as a sun room for his wife. “Then, Jill, you’re old and all you have left is”—he glanced around at the sodden dirt—“this.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Well,” I said resignedly, “at least it will be the best garden in Berkeley.”

“It will indeed,” he said, turning back to his saw.

“Mr. Kepple, you can’t go on sawing now. The neighbors …”

He smiled. “They’re all gardeners, too. Bert Prendergast’s the one who told me I should use redwood burls for the path.” He pushed the plugs in his ears and started the motor. But his enthusiasm was muted now.

I trudged through the mud to my door and carried my shoes to the bathroom to rinse off. Then I put on a turtleneck (from the Eddie Bauer catalog) and a pair of corduroy slacks (L.L. Bean), stalked back to the bathroom for enough makeup to cover the dark circles under my eyes, rolled up the sleeping bag, and walked out.