Five

I HEADED BACK ACROSS THE BAY BRIDGE, MY WINDOW rolled down to capture a breeze on this hot afternoon. Far below me the dark blue waters of San Francisco Bay shifted and glimmered. As I drove off the lower deck of the bridge, I saw the giant cranes and stacks of containers at the Port of Oakland, looming to my right. I looked toward Berkeley, at the spire of the campanile on the University of California campus, recalling the antiwar demonstrations of the sixties. Despite the definite local tilt to the left, the military presence permeated the Bay Area, and had for years. Military bases dotted the map, bringing with them people and payrolls, dollars spent at local businesses, and a transient population. Downtown Oakland was bracketed by two freeways, one named for Admiral Chester Nimitz, the other for General Douglas MacArthur. Both names evoked a time when things were more clearly defined, a time long past.

I stayed on the MacArthur Freeway until I reached the Fruitvale Avenue exit, in Oakland’s Dimond District. Here was MacArthur again, this time MacArthur Boulevard. I parked outside the office of Sam Raynor’s attorney, but my stakeout was wasted time. I saw no sign of Raynor or his red Trans-Am. At five I went back to my office to check my messages, but there was nothing earthshaking on my machine. I turned on the computer and wrote an account of my meeting with Duffy LeBard. The printer was spitting out the pages when the phone rang.

On the other end of the receiver, Ruth’s voice sounded cheerful. “Hi, Jeri. I’m at my parents’ house. I was sorting through some things I have stored here, and I found something interesting.”

“Great.” I reached for a pencil. “What is it?”

“Can you come over here? I can’t quite describe it over the phone. Besides, Mother would like to see you, and I want you to meet Wendy. And Kevin’s here on leave.”

I hesitated for just a moment, looking at the round clock on the wall to my left. It was nearly six. I was tired and I wanted to go home. The only member of the family Ruth hadn’t mentioned was her father, but I was sure he was also present. After our clashes last March, I had no desire to see Admiral Franklin again. But I didn’t see how I could avoid it. I was now working for his daughter. Like a couple of ships in a narrow channel, Franklin and I would collide sooner or later.

Might as well get this out of the way. “Sure. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Alameda is an elongated island running northwest to southeast along the East Bay shore, separated from Oakland by a channel everyone calls the estuary. Driving to Alameda means crossing one of several drawbridges, which in clear sunny weather often raise to allow sailboats to pass, stalling traffic at the approaches. The other alternative is a tunnel that burrows under the estuary. The Tube, as it’s called, is close to downtown Oakland, so I took that route, entering Alameda at its West End. I drove the length of the island to the East End, where the Franklins lived on a tree-lined street called Gibbons Drive. The big Spanish-style house was constructed of beige stucco, topped by a red tile roof. I got out of my car and surveyed the riot of flowers in the beds surrounding the house, testimony to Lenore Franklin’s green thumb and love of digging in the dirt.

“It’s so nice to see you again, Jeri,” Lenore Franklin said as she opened the door. She looked cool and comfortable on this August evening, a compact woman with her silver hair cut short, wearing leather sandals and a blue cotton dress.

“I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“So do I, but be that as it may...” Her warm brown eyes were friendly and so was the smile on her tanned face. “I really appreciate your helping Ruth.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

I stepped into the foyer and followed Lenore into the living room, which reflected the Franklins’ history as a career Navy family. The furniture was teak and mahogany, decorated with keepsakes that spoke of visits to exotic places all over the Pacific and Asia, places like Hong Kong and Bangkok, Saigon and Taipei, Manila and Tokyo.

A little girl sat by herself in the middle of a blue and red Oriental rug. In her lap she cradled a colorful rag doll with a bright orange costume and a grinning face topped by hair made of lengths of yellow yarn. The child crooned a wordless little tune as she rocked the doll back and forth in her arms. Red highlights tinged her curly blond hair. She was bare-legged and barefoot, clad in shorts and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. I’d seen her picture when I was here last March, one of the many family photographs that lined the Franklins’ mantel.

“This is Wendy, my granddaughter,” Lenore said. The child stopped singing and stared up at us. “I’ll tell everyone you’re here.”

As Lenore headed through the dining room to the kitchen, I knelt and stuck out my hand. “Hi, Wendy. I’m Jeri.”

She had her mother’s solemn brown eyes and she was wary of strangers. She didn’t say anything, reserving speech as well as judgment. Finally one small hand released its grip on the doll and her fingers brushed mine.

As I straightened, Ruth Raynor entered the living room from the kitchen, followed by a tall man with close-cropped blond hair, his muscular body clad in faded blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Wendy scrambled to her feet and scurried toward the grown-ups she knew, her doll tucked under one arm. When she reached her mother, she hid her face in the swirl of Ruth’s green skirt. Ruth ruffled the child’s strawberry-blond hair and dropped to Wendy’s level to hug her. “Dinner’s almost ready, sweetie. Go wash your hands now.”

The little girl muttered something that sounded like “not hungry.” Ruth took the child’s face in her hands. “But you like barbecued ribs and com on the cob. And for dessert Grandma has ice cream. Chocolate, your favorite. You need to eat some dinner before you have dessert. Okay? Then go wash up.”

Wendy looked at her mother as though she didn’t see much logic in washing her hands before smearing them with barbecue sauce and butter. Then she nodded, in agreement or resignation, and carried her doll out to the kitchen. When she’d gone, Ruth turned to me. “You must remember my brother Kevin. You both graduated the same year.”

I took Kevin’s hand, thinking how much he looked like his father. “Fifteen years ago.”

“It’s been a long time,” Kevin said.

Kevin Franklin and I went to high school together, but we never ran with the same crowd. Tall and good-looking, he was the star center of the basketball team. Besides sports, he’d been president of the senior class, prom king, and major heartthrob of my female classmates. I eschewed sports of any kind in favor of the drama club, and my idea of exercise was to walk down to the beach at Alameda’s south shore, smear myself with suntan lotion, and sit on the sand with my nose in a book. The only connection Kevin and I had in school was as members of the honor society. I knew he’d received an appointment to the Naval Academy, just like his father, going to Annapolis that summer after graduation, just as Joseph Franklin, then a commander, transferred to another duty station in San Diego. Kevin must have been a senior lieutenant by now, if not a lieutenant commander.

“Surface, submarine or air?” I asked.

Kevin grinned. “Surface, much to the dismay of my aviator father.”

“Where are you stationed?”

“I’m on leave, in transit from San Diego to Japan. I have a couple of weeks before I’m due to report.”

I turned to Ruth. “You were in my brother’s class, weren’t you?”

“Brian Howard. Oh, I remember him.” She laughed. “We were in the same biology lab. One day when we were dissecting frogs, he put an eyeball in the teacher’s coffee cup.”

“Sounds like my kid brother. I haven’t heard that story before. I’ll have to rag him about it.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Married, two kids, teaches junior high in Sonoma. I assume some of his students are doing to him what he used to do to his teachers. One would hope so, anyway.” I looked past Ruth and met the hard gray gaze of Admiral Joseph Franklin, USN-Retired. “Good evening,” I said, voice neutral, eyes as steady as his.

“Evening,” Franklin said, his voice chilly as his chin dipped in an almost imperceptible nod. The Admiral’s gray hair was thin on top and his beaked nose jutted sharply from his narrow face. Despite the fact that he was dressed casually in gray slacks and a plaid shirt, he held himself erect and squared, as though he were still wearing the dress whites and sword he wore in the retirement photo on the mantel.

When I met the Admiral and his wife in March, I’d been looking for a missing woman named Elizabeth Willis, daughter of the Franklins’ long-ago next-door neighbors. As my investigation progressed, I learned that Franklin and his neighbor’s wife had been more than casual friends. The last time I’d seen Franklin, his eyes had been full of rage as I confronted him about the relationship. As he looked at me now, I saw the enmity was still there, frozen like a slab of ice. I wondered how Lenore, the sweet, self-effacing Navy wife, had persuaded him to let Ruth hire me, much less let me into the Franklin house. I suspected there was steel in Lenore’s spine. There would have to be, for her to put up with the Admiral for thirty-plus years of marriage. Ruth must have had some of it too, to finally leave Sam and her marriage.

I turned to my client. “Ruth, what did you want to show me?”

“It’s back here, in my old room.”

Ruth led the way down the hall to a bedroom at the front of the house. I wondered if it had changed since Ruth lived here as a schoolgirl. It looked like a room in which a teenage girl would find refuge. The furniture was white wicker, a single bed with a low headboard matched by a nightstand and a dresser with a round mirror attached to the wall above it. The bed was covered with a pink and white floral comforter, its pattern matched by the curtains on the windows. Several houseplants were arrayed around the room, on the nightstand, dresser, and windowsill. A half-dozen cardboard packing cartons were shoved against one wall and a stack of papers rested on the dresser. Ruth reached for these, handing me a single sheet torn from a spiral steno pad. It was covered with blue ink, words and figures written in no order I could discern.

“I found this with some things I mailed to my mother last April,” she said. “That’s Sam’s handwriting. And that number at the top, with B.A. in front of it, that’s the account at the Bank of America. I wrote down the account number when I found the statement last Christmas.” She indicated a number preceded by a squiggle that looked like a dollar sign. “This must be the balance. He’s added quite a bit to it since December.”

“Puts the total well over a hundred thousand dollars. If B.A. is Bank of America, then W.F. must mean Wells Fargo Bank.” I looked at the sheet of paper with new eyes, trying to make sense of the jumble. I pointed at another set of figures. “This is a phone number, in the 408 area code. Which is San Jose, Sunnyvale, and points south.” I looked at her. “Maybe when Sam scribbled these notes, he was planning how to move that money from Guam to the Bay Area. The first thing I’ll do is check out the phone number.”

“Good. When I found it, I thought it could be important. Have you made any progress, or is it too early?”

“Too early. Ed Korsakov gave me the name of a Chief LeBard who was with the Armed Forces Police Detachment on Guam the same time you were there. Sam may have been involved in smuggling drugs to Guam. If that’s the case, I’m sure that’s where he got the money.”

Ruth sat down on the bed, her weight pressing down the frilly pink and white comforter. “I had no idea,” she said, her voice somber. “But it wouldn’t surprise me.” She fingered the collar of her white blouse. “Ill-gotten gains.”

“Ill-gotten or not,” I said, studying her face, “that money’s community property and you’re entitled to a share of it. Chief LeBard mentioned two people who were stationed on Guam the same time Sam was. They’re now in the Bay Area—a sailor named Harlan Pettibone and a chief named Yancy. Are either of those names familiar?”

Ruth thought for a moment. “Pettibone... no, I don’t think so. Now Yancy does ring a bell. Steve and Claudia Yancy. She’s in the Navy too. They both worked at the air station, like Sam. They liked to play poker, so they hosted a game at their house almost every Friday night. Sam went regularly, I think.”

“Did he lose or win?”

“He never would say.” Ruth shrugged and played with a fold of her skirt. “If I’d ask about it, he’d tell me to mind my own business. So I didn’t ask.”

A supposed gambling debt might be a way for Sam Raynor to hide some of the missing money. I’d have to check out the Yancys and see if they were still hosting poker games, and whether the stakes were nickel-dime-quarter, or something with dollar signs and lots of zeroes before the decimal point.

From the kitchen at the rear of the house I heard voices, their words indistinct, Wendy’s high-pitched piping mingled with the lower tones of the adults. Then Lenore Franklin appeared in the door of the bedroom. “Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Jeri, will you stay and have some ribs with us?”

“No, thanks. I have some things I need to do.” Besides, the prospect of sitting down to dinner with the Admiral glaring at me across the table was not particularly conducive to my appetite. I folded the paper Ruth had found and tucked it into my bag.

“I’ll check out this information and be in touch,” I told Ruth as we walked back up the hall to the front door.