TWENTY

Kate parked at the Hall of Justice well before eight o’clock on Monday, invigorated not only by the chance of getting her teeth into Thomas Rutland, who had annoyed her since the moment she had laid eyes on him, but also (she had to admit) by two days spent in the salt air with her family, during which she’d had no more urgent puzzles on her hands than the species of the bird sitting at the other end of the binoculars from her and what kind of pancakes to order for breakfast. As if to underscore that a holiday from work was a necessary part of clear thinking, as she walked toward the building, she felt one of those small clicks of synthesis in the back of her mind, and stopped dead, allowing it to develop.

She had been mulling over the dinner party at Tony’s, nine disparate individuals brought together by their interest in a fictional English detective, and idly holding that up beside the weekend she had just spent with Lee and Nora, where interests and commonalities seemed to spring from their very pores.

As her mind skimmed over that night, she thought of Ian Nicholson’s charge against Gilbert, accusing him of a casual abuse of friends. Casual abuse happened all the time in a relationship; it might also be called taking me for granted. A weekend together, during which two people might rediscover themselves, was a necessary part of life, like air into the lungs.

It was then that another phrase floated into Kate’s mind: Philip hated to break character.

And so she stopped walking, her head bent as she sought to trace that statement back to its source.

It had also been said at that dinner. And also by Nicholson.

Ian Nicholson had been making a passing comment on Gilbert’s idiosyncrasies, more fond than critical. And although it was by no means technical language, it struck Kate now as slightly off, as a phrase not everyone would use. Lee, for example, might comment on the psychology of role playing; a cop’s mind might chew on the similarity between Gilbert’s act and that of a person hiding from the law, or at least from his past.

Break character was a thing an actor might say.

A friend mentioned they’d seen him in a restaurant somewhere, with an actor….

Gilbert and an actor, six or seven years ago.

And at that same dinner, someone had asked Ian if he’d thought Philip was acting.

She trotted up the steps and through security, impatiently jabbing the elevator button. In the Detail, she shed her things on her desk and sat down in front of the computer without taking off her coat. Hawkin greeted her, and she nodded absently.

I should’ve thought about this on Friday, Kate berated herself. After I talked with Gilbert’s ex-wife on Friday, the bells should have gone off. Of course, even if I’d known Friday, I couldn’t have done anything, time zones and office hours being what they are. All I lost was being preoccupied for two days at Point Reyes, and driving Lee nuts.

Hawkin said something, but she copied down a phone number before looking up at him. “Sorry?”

“I said, we need to leave if we’re going to catch Rutland today. He said he could give us half an hour, then he’s in court all day.”

“You go get the car, I’ll meet you out in front.”

He was waiting for her when she trotted down the front steps of the Hall, but he hadn’t been there for long.

“What was that about?” he asked as he turned onto Mission.

“I had to hunt down Ian Nicholson’s agent—ex-agent, I guess, since Ian hasn’t worked as an actor in years. The secretary said he might not be in until noon, New York time, but I gave her my cell number. If it rings, I’m going to leave you with Rutland and take it.” She told him about the small leap her mind had taken, although as she described the link, it sounded considerably more tenuous than it had at the time. Almost apologetically, she ended by saying, “I just thought it was something we should look into.”

“I agree,” Hawkin said, and they left it at that.

THOMAS Rutland lived in Berkeley, but his office was a short walk from the Oakland courthouse, in the upper floors of one of the new downtown high-rises. Despite the location, his practice was predominantly financial, and the building and the office décor reflected the expectations of monied executives, particularly young ones. The receptionist was as sleek as the furniture, and ushered them into Rutland’s office without delay. Probably, Rutland had not wished to advertise the presence of cops on the premises, and told her not to keep them waiting.

He got out from behind his desk to welcome them, shook hands, offered coffee, and at their refusal, settled them down and returned to his seat. He was wearing his lawyer’s uniform today, brilliant white shirt, slightly daring necktie, and suspenders, his jacket, draped over the back of his chair, dead black with just the faintest hint of a pinstripe in the fabric. On the lapel was a tiny spot of blue: the 221B pin.

Kate and Al took their time sitting down, running their eyes over the view, the desk, the office. On the wall to the right of the desk were two framed pictures: one a lithograph that reminded Kate of those in Gilbert’s house, this one showing a man seated at a desk, talking to another man standing in front of him; the other was a large color photograph of Rutland in a room that again reminded her of Gilbert’s house. The lawyer was sitting in a chair, wearing a silk dressing gown, with a pipe in his hand and a violin held awkwardly across his lap: playing Holmes.

On the wall across from where he sat, next to the door, Rutland had hung a trio of photographs showing, in descending order: the lawyer in running shorts with a number on his chest, crossing the finish line with a pack of other runners of many colors; bent over the handlebars of a racing bicycle, spattered with mud; and emerging from the water in the midst of a crowd of other men, his eyes locked on some goal.

“You do triathlons?” she asked him.

He glanced at the photographs with just the right degree of modesty. “That’s the Iron Man.”

“Impressive,” she said, and sat down.

“I don’t have as much time to train as I used to,” he answered. “Mostly now I just do half-marathons. So, what can I do for the San Francisco Police Department today?”

Hawkin said, “Can you tell us again what you were doing on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of January?”

“The twentieth—wasn’t that the weekend I went golfing in Palm Springs?”

“So you said.”

“Well, I went down with some friends in their private plane. Wheels up out of Oakland at four, forty-eight hours in the sun, and we came back Sunday afternoon around five or six.”

“And you didn’t leave Palm Springs during that time?”

“Not at all. Inspector, it sounds to me like you’re treating me like a suspect.”

“A witness at this point, Mr. Rutland. But I will need the names of your friends and of the hotel where you stayed.”

“We were in a private home.” He began to bristle. “And I don’t know that these are the kind of people I want bothered about this.”

The kind of people, in other words, who wouldn’t be pleased that their upstart friend was being investigated by the police.

“Still, we’re going to need those names.”

“I think I should consult with one of my colleagues before we go any further, Inspector.”

“You really think that’s necessary?” Hawkin asked. Without looking, Kate knew that he was raising one eyebrow, as if to say, Sir, I hadn’t really considered you a suspect until just this moment.

“Before I give you those names, yes. Was there anything else you wanted?”

Kate’s turn. She made a show out of opening the notebook in her hand, flipping the pages, comparing two sheets of completely unrelated scrawl, and finally looking up. “Mr. Rutland, in October of the year 2000, complaint was filed with the California Bar Association by the family of Mrs. Eugenia Baxter, accusing you of having manipulated your client Mrs. Baxter into writing you a remarkably generous settlement in her last will and testament. Similarly, in April of 2002, the family of Rosemarie Upfield—”

“Those charges were dropped!” he snapped.

“True, although I could find no record of an actual investigation by—”

At that he slapped his hand on the desk and stood, so forcibly his chair crashed back into the wall behind him. “I think that’s enough for today, Inspectors.”

As if he had neither moved nor spoken, Kate said, “In regards to the Gilbert estate, I would like to know if your role as executor was Mr. Gilbert’s idea, or something you suggested?”

“I want you to leave.” His face was dark beneath the tan, his voice harsh.

“It just seems so convenient, you being there and ready to step into the position.”

He snatched up the phone, knuckles so white he might have been about to use the receiver as a weapon rather than a means of summoning help. “Yvonne, call building security.”

Hawkin turned to Kate and said, “I don’t think Mr. Rutland wants to talk to us today.”

“I get that impression, too,” she agreed, and stood up.

They left the office riding on a wave of steam.

In the elevator on the way down, Hawkin said, “That was the most fun I’ve had all week.”

Kate had to agree. “It also showed that not only does Mr. Rutland have a quick temper, but that he’s almost as obsessed with the Sherlock Holmes thing as Gilbert was.”

“And,” Hawkin added complacently, “our triathlete has plenty of muscles to be hauling unconscious bodies around.”

BACK in the office, Hawkin got on the phone to see what his many and varied contacts could tell him about Thomas Rutland, while Kate searched for the missing details on the life of Ian Nicholson and waited for the agent to call her back.

Ian Nicholson had been born in a western suburb of London in 1956. He came to the United States two weeks after his graduation from some English university Kate had never heard of, taking up residence with his deceased father’s younger brother in New York.

Like so many before (and after) him, young Nicholson wanted to act. His degree had been in art history, but his heart lay on the stage. Very fortunately, his uncle proved not only a responsible caretaker, but an intelligent one, and although young Ian did indeed land the occasional acting job, his uncle also helped steer him into a job cataloguing old books and letters for a large antiques dealer. After a few years he was working full-time at one of the bigger auction houses; it appeared that he was set on his road.

However, the English lad with the interesting face did not want an auction house, he wanted the stage. After two years of full-time employment, in 1983 he quit the big-name house and joined another, smaller establishment that was pleased to employ him part-time, saving themselves the cost of insurance benefits while it allowed the young man to chase down acting jobs.

Unfortunately, the jobs didn’t do much chasing back. At the time he packed up and moved to San Francisco, in 1999, he had not used his Equity card in nine and a half months.

Nicholson’s ex-agent was a well-established figure, Saul Adler, who seemed to work with a younger partner and the secretary whose voice came on the phone at a quarter to noon, asking Kate to hold for Mr. Adler. Adler’s voice evoked a vivid image of well-chewed cigars, a straining waistband, and the Bowery. Kate figured that he was probably a svelte vegetarian born in the Midwest, but in any case, he knew Ian Nicholson.

“Ian? Sure, he was with me for years. Far as I know, he’s not working anymore.”

“That’s what I understand. Can you tell me why he quit?”

“Came into a little money, inheritance or insurance, don’t remember exactly. Not that money would have made any difference if he’d really wanted to stay, but Ian was, what, forty-two, -three? Hadn’t worked in months—my kinda work, I mean, he had another job somewhere, selling antiques or something—and the money just let him admit it wasn’t gonna happen for him.”

“Not much of an actor, then?”

“Actually, the kid wasn’t bad, and he could play British or American, but Casting had a real problem with his face. He was made for supporting roles in a romantic comedy, and I could’ve built him a solid career, but he wanted drama, and he wanted the lead. I just couldn’t sell his face, especially after he hit forty—not handsome, not ugly enough to be a type, too distinctive to fade into the crowd. Add to that the problem with flying—you know about that?”

“He told me, yes.”

“Something to do with being locked up when he was a kid, I think. In an icebox or something, his wife talked about it once, just a little, to shut me up grousing about having to turn down a part. Anyway, it pretty much left out every job more than a couple hundred miles away. That was the capper. Ian thought about moving to LA and taking up television, but even then he’d have had to turn down anything on location.”

“Was he badly disappointed?”

“Nah, he’d heard it coming. Bright guy, you know?”

“A lot of changes all at once, though.”

“Changes? You mean the move?”

“I was thinking about the divorce.”

The noise that came down the phone line sounded as if the agent had swallowed his cigar stub, but when he kept talking, Kate figured it had been a laugh. “The divorce wouldn’t have troubled Ian. Wasn’t really a marriage in the first place. They were friends, sure, but she needed a man to show her nice Catholic family, he needed insurance—health insurance, you know? Her job gave him Blue Cross, and in exchange he showed up at Christmas and stuff.”

“A show marriage, then?” Kate’s spine began to tingle, as it did when a suspect’s eyes suddenly dodged to one side during questioning.

“I don’t know if that’s fair,” Adler replied. “It was at first, but he and Christy, they were fond of each other, you know? They never lived together, but he moved to the same building, right next door, so he saw a lot of the kid.”

“The kid?” The tingle grew.

“Daughter, what was her name? Cute little thing, I could’ve found her a ton of kid roles if they’d let me, but Ian put his foot down. Monica, that’s it. Monica the Moneymaker, I called her once. Those blond curls—man.”

“Blond. And blue eyes?”

“Like the Caribbean.”

Or like the water at Cabo San Lucas?

“Where does she live, do you know?”

“Probably LA. I saw her not too long ago, a small part on a daytime soap. She’ll get more, I’d be willing to bet—twenty-two or -three now, and God, she’s a stunner.”

“So she’s an actor, too?”

“She was then. You want to talk to her mother about it? I’ve got a number for her somewhere.”

“That would be great.”

He was of the generation that might have dropped the phone on the desk to flip through a Rolodex, but it being 2004, he was talking into a headset and retrieving information from a PDA. However, habits die hard, and he muttered and cursed under his breath as if the receiver were lying on the desk instead of hovering two inches from his mouth. “Where’d I put the damn thing? Christy, Christy, what the hell’s her last name—ah, gotcha, baby.” Then, in full voice, he said, “You still there?”

“Still here.”

“Here you go then, she’s Christy Bennington now, used to be LaValle.” He read out a number; Kate wrote it down.

“Her daughter, Monica. Is her last name Bennington, too, or Nicholson?”

“Not Bennington, that’s the guy Christy married after Ian. Accountant? Stockbroker? He’s in money, anyway. I think the girl kept LaValle. Sounds better than Monica Nicholson.”

And in the acting world, sound and looks were all. “Thank you, Mr. Adler.”

“You see Ian, tell him Saul said he shouldn’t be a stranger.”

“I’ll do so.”

Next up was Christy Bennington, formerly Nicholson, née LaValle. She answered the phone full-voiced with a chorus of dogs in the not-too-distant background.

“I told you I can’t come out, I wish to hell you wouldn’t do this, Lizzie.”

“Um, Mrs. Bennington?”

Silence, but for yips and howls.

“I’m looking for Christy Bennington?”

The phone gave a rustling noise, but even with being muffled against the woman’s body, Kate jerked away from the earpiece at the bellowed “SHUT UP!”

The command took effect instantly, and the woman’s voice said, considerably lower in both tone and volume, “Sorry. Who is this?”

Kate identified herself, explained that she was attempting to get some background information on a witness, one Ian Nicholson.

“Ian? What’s he got himself involved in now?”

“Is he often ‘involved’ in things?” Kate asked.

“Oh, you know Ian,” the woman said with a laugh.

“No, I don’t, actually. I’ve barely met him.”

“Oh, of course. Well, I didn’t mean anything. Just that, when I knew him, he was forever coming up with The Great Scheme.”

“Illegal?”

“No,” she said sharply, but then modified it to, “Well, one or two of them I sort of wondered about, they might have been in grayish areas. But I used to tell him that he’d find himself in a jam one day, when he sank all his money into a one-of-a-kind letter that turned out to be a forgery or something.”

“His ‘great schemes’ generally had to do with manuscripts, his job in the auction house?”

“I suppose it was his way of keeping up his interest in what could be a pretty boring sort of job,” she said, which Kate took as a yes. “He’d probably have made a fortune in it if he hadn’t been so scrupulously honest. You can’t believe what he’d get offered to slant his appraisals.”

“But he wasn’t willing to do that?”

“I used to tease him about being a coward, that he could retire if he was willing to risk a little jail. But he wasn’t.”

Nice to know the threat of incarceration worked some of the time.

“Mrs. Bennington, I need to ask you about the nature of your marriage to Ian Nicholson.”

“‘Nature,’” she repeated, although Kate could hear that she knew quite well what Kate was asking.

“I’ve been told that your marriage was essentially one of convenience.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. At one time, I had my hopes, but as it turned out, Ian just wasn’t wired that way. I was young enough to take it personally for a while, but fortunately I grew up. And as it turned out, it was really for the best: I don’t think he and Monica would have been as close as they became if we’d been your basic nuclear family.”

“So Ian is gay?”

“He practically invented the word. He keeps it under wraps, or did when I knew him, so he didn’t get typecast when it came to acting jobs, but yes, he’s definitely gay.”

“Monica isn’t his daughter?”

“Hardly. She wasn’t yet one when they met, though, and Ian’s the only father she’s known.”

“Do they see a lot of each other?”

“From time to time. She’s very busy—she’s an actress, she’s just read for a role in a CBS movie—and he doesn’t fly, but when she has the weekend off or something, sometimes they’ll meet halfway. He and I bought her a car together last year.”

“A yellow Volkswagen bug?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Isn’t it adorable?”

“Very. Mrs. Bennington, could I have your daughter’s phone number, please?”

“You need to talk to her, too? This thing that Ian’s…that you think Ian may be caught up in, is it serious?” She sounded nearly as apprehensive about her ex-husband’s involvement as she did her daughter’s.

“I really can’t talk about it, Mrs. Bennington. He’s just a witness, but you know how things are these days, we have to dot every i and cross every t.”

“Sure,” she said dubiously, and recited her daughter’s number.

“And Mrs. Bennington? I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call either Ian or Monica about this for a day or two. It’s mostly a matter of checking testimony, but it might really confuse matters if you talk to them about it first. Okay?”

“I guess.”

“Just for a day or so,” Kate repeated, thanked her, and hung up. She looked at the daughter’s phone number, but instead of dialing it, she stood up and went to find some coffee. When she got back, she ignored the piece of paper and logged on to the Internet, hunting down the website for an aspiring young actress.

The studio portrait on Monica LaValle’s web page showed the same lively blond woman on Ian Nicholson’s wall. Kate stared at the photo until it went out of focus.

She had seen him kiss the young woman’s fingers: Nicholson had taken Monica LaValle’s hand, kissed it, let it go.

Kate had read the gesture as a lover’s farewell, and built her perception of Nicholson to include a girlfriend half his age. Running the memory through her mind’s eye, she had to say, if she hadn’t just been told by two people that he was gay, she’d have been inclined to think that Nicholson and his stepdaughter had made a radical and decidedly creepy change to their relationship once Monica hit maturity and the West Coast. A Woody Allen thing.

However. Could that kiss have been the considerably more casual gesture of, say, a loving dad? Could that pressing of lips to fingers have been a salute of self-mocking formality, an affectionate farewell to a loved adult daughter? One who, moreover, shared the older man’s profession of actor?

Yes: Don’t forget that. Nicholson had been an actor before his unsaleably distinctive romantic-comedy face condemned him to obscurity. And although Kate had not known too many actors, she had met enough to doubt that any person once consumed by the life would ever fully give up the habits.

Ian Nicholson had once been an actor: “not a bad actor,” according to his jaded agent.

Which brought up the question, Was he one still? Did that gesture encompass both things at once, both real and affectation?

Remember, too: Kate’s presence on that street at that precise time had been expected, might one even say orchestrated? She had come around the corner in time to see Nicholson and the young blond woman standing outside the girl’s car. He had casually reached across her to open the door; she had gotten in; he had picked up the hand resting on the open window and…

A performance, for Kate’s benefit? She’d felt something of that at the time, only she had thought the intent of Nicholson’s act was that of a middle-aged man demonstrating his virility behind a gesture of surface innocence—kissing the girl’s fingers as if to say that he had no need for a more blatant display of manhood.

What if what Kate had been shown was meticulously choreographed to demonstrate the precise reverse: innocence concealed behind a gesture of middle-aged wolfishness?

No—not innocence. Because if Nicholson actually had been putting on an act that afternoon, if he had deliberately presented the approaching cop with the image of Monica-as-girlfriend, then there was a reason for the deception.

She knew now that he was gay, a fact she had not possessed at the time.

And for the past five years, Nicholson had lived in close proximity—physically, professionally, and socially—to a man whose death Kate was investigating. A man, furthermore, whose own sexuality had been called into question by his friends.

Her hand hovered over the telephone, stayed by another consideration.

Question: Had Monica been an innocent player in that deftly acted scene, or had she been in on it?

Kate thought about it: the mild surprise on the girl’s face when Nicholson had turned and opened the Volkswagen’s door; a playful trill of the fingertips as she accelerated away.

Either Monica LaValle was a twenty-three-year-old Judi Dench, or it had been no act.

Kate glanced at her watch, wondered if one in the afternoon was a good or a bad time to reach a young actress, and decided there was only one way to find out.

It was a cell number, and the young woman answered with the professional tones of a person who might be talking to a casting director unawares: half breezy, half throaty. “You’ve reached Monica.”

Kate identified herself in the dullest possible terms—as a cop, yes, but in bored tones and with a flat recitation that she was confirming the statement of a Mr. Ian Nichols that his daughter Monica Lavel was in San Francisco in the middle portion of January 2004 and could she confirm that statement?

“Er, no,” the girl said. “I mean, if you’ve, like, got our names right. He’s Nicholson, not Nichols, and my name’s LaValle, but I wasn’t in San Francisco the middle of last month, just last week. What’s this about?”

“I am not at liberty to say,” Kate rattled off. “Questions should be addressed to the investigating officer, Inspector Alex Hawkin.” Al’s name was Alonzo, but using a slightly wrong name was the way they alerted each other to the need for extra care. Kate’s name in such instances was Kayla. She stepped away from the bored-clerk voice and asked, “Um, wait a minute. Could I have the dates you were here? Some of these guys couldn’t type numbers if their lives depended on it.”

“I drove up Monday night, had a filming Tuesday morning, and came back to LA on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t think I was up there at all in January.”

“Tuesday the third and Wednesday the fourth of February,” Kate repeated.

“That’s right.”

“That explains it. It says here ‘Tuesday and Wednesday, three and fourteen,’ with just the numbers, you know? January three and four were a weekend, and thirteen and fourteen February isn’t until next week, so I thought it might be thirteen and fourteen January. The typist just screwed up. Hope the weather was decent for you.”

“It was awesome. I even got a little sunburn, driving back with the top down.”

“Better here now than it is in July,” Kate commented. “So Ian Nichols—sorry, Ian Nicholson—is your father?”

“That’s right. Well, originally my stepfather, if you want to get technical, but he’s my dad now.”

“Okay, well, if we need anything else we’ll call, thanks.” Kate broke the connection before the young woman could turn any questions on her.

When Al Hawkin walked into the homicide room five minutes later, he stopped dead at the look on Kate’s face.

“Either you ate something that really didn’t agree with you or you don’t like where this is going.”

She did, she realized, feel more than a little queasy, but the problem was with the information she was working to digest, not the lunch she had eaten. “Al,” she said grimly, “we have to talk with Ian Nicholson.”