AFTER LEAVING BILL STANLEY’S OFFICE I DEPOSITED the check, then I retrieved my Toyota and headed for the Bay Bridge. I took the exit for Yerba Buena Island and Treasure Island. As I drove across the causeway, sunlight winked and shifted on the water of San Francisco Bay. In a nearby lagoon white-hulled sailboats dipped and shimmied at their moorings.
Today the gate was guarded by a ramrod-straight Marine whose semishaved head and muscled arms made him look as though he’d been carved from obsidian. I showed him my driver’s license and told him I was here to see Chief LeBard at the Treasure Island police station. The Marine picked up a phone in his guard shack and punched in a number. I hadn’t called to make an appointment but LeBard must have been in his office. I saw the Marine’s mouth move as he spoke into the receiver. Then he hung up the phone, stepped back outside, gave me a pass and waved me through.
I didn’t go directly to LeBard’s office. Instead I made an immediate right turn into the parking lot of the Treasure Island administration building and parked the Toyota in a visitor’s slot. The first floor lobby of the curved building contains a small historical museum, but I had viewed the contents of the glass display cases before. I checked a directory sign and took a long curved staircase to the second floor. Kevin Franklin’s friend, Lieutenant Commander Charles Porter, worked at RedCom 20, which was Navy talk for Readiness Command Region 20. I located the office, a large suite full of smaller offices, on the bay side of the building, the portals guarded by a civilian secretary. She was an older woman with short gray hair, wearing a stylish silky print and a lot of gold jewelry. Her eyes flicked over my blue slacks and checked shirt, and she wrinkled her nose, passing judgment on their appropriateness as attire. No doubt I came up short in her estimation.
“Jeri Howard to see Lieutenant Commander Porter,” I told the secretary.
She ran a finger down her appointment book and frowned. “He has an appointment at nine-thirty, with a Lieutenant Crowell. You say your name is Howard? Is he expecting you?”
“No, but it’s important.” I looked around me at the desks and the open doors of various offices. Four officers, two men and two women, stood in the doorway of one cubicle, their conversation punctuated by laughter. I pointed a thumb in their direction. “Is that him over there, the tall dark one?”
“No, he’s the blond one.” I set off in Porter’s direction, the secretary at my heels. “Commander Porter, this lady would like a word with you.”
The group outside the doorway broke up, three of the officers looking at me curiously as they headed in their own directions. Charles Porter’s back had been toward me. Now he turned and took a few steps toward me. He was a broad-shouldered man in a summer khaki uniform decorated with the usual array of ribbons on the left breast His skin was fair, the type that sunburns easily, and he had blue eyes in a square face. He stopped and smiled pleasantly as he surveyed me. “You’re not Lieutenant Crowell.”
“No, I’m not.” I walked past him and paused at the doorway where he and the other officers had been standing. The desk inside the smaller office faced the door. At its front perimeter I saw a black nameplate with white letters, reading LCDR C. K. PORTER. I strolled in, past the desk to the window, which looked out at San Francisco Bay and the city beyond.
“Great view,” I said, my eyes sweeping over the wide, ever-shifting surface of the water to the Ferry Building, towering at the end of Market Street. “If this were my office, I’d move the desk so I could take advantage of the window.”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
I turned to face him, my hip against the windowsill. “I’m Jeri Howard, an investigator, working for Ruth Franklin Raynor. Have you talked to Kevin Franklin since Saturday?”
His jaw muscle tensed, a rhythmic play of muscles around his mouth. His eyebrows met in a point above his nose and formed worried wings as he stared at me. Porter moved toward his desk, reaching for the telephone receiver. He wore a Naval Academy ring on his right hand, just like the one I’d seen Kevin wear. “How do I know you’re who you say you are? Suppose you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the base police and have you taken into custody?”
“Ask for Chief LeBard,” I shot back. “He’s expecting me. Or call Admiral Franklin.” I recited the phone number, but Porter made no move to call it. Instead his hand dropped away from the receiver. “Here’s your one good reason, Porter. Ruth Franklin Raynor is in jail. Her husband was murdered Saturday night.”
Shock and disbelief washed over Porter’s face, erasing the tensing muscles at his jaw and filling his blue eyes with confusion. Evidently he had neither talked to Kevin nor heard about Sam Raynor’s death, something Kevin had known since his parents and I informed him of it early Sunday morning. Surely Kevin would have picked up the phone and informed Porter of the traumatic events that had occurred while the two of them were enjoying their beers and sea stories. Unless Porter wasn’t around to get the news.
“Kevin says he took Ruth home Saturday night, about eleven o’clock.” My eyes bored into Porter. “Then he went to see you at your apartment on Bayo Vista. That’s not far from Ruth’s building, at Forty-first and Howe, so it wouldn’t have taken him long to get there. According to Kevin, the two of you had a few beers, talked, and he slept on your sofa. He got back to his parents’ house about six Sunday morning. Sam Raynor was killed around eleven-thirty. Was Kevin with you at that time?”
Porter’s jaw tightened again and a thin film of moisture appeared on his clean-shaven upper lip. He saw me watching him and averted his eyes, looking out the window as he wiped the palm of his right hand over his chin, as though to still the movement of his facial muscles.
“Did you see Kevin Franklin late Saturday night?” I asked again. “Or any time this weekend?”
Porter took a deep breath and backed further into the corner I’d provided for him. “Kevin was at my apartment Saturday night.”
“Maybe he was. I note that you don’t say you actually saw him. I certainly hope you’re more decisive at the helm of a ship.” I stepped between Porter and the window, blocking his view of the bay.
“You’re lying, Commander, and so is Kevin Franklin. I don’t know why but I’ll find out. Considering that Ruth Raynor may be charged with murder before the week is out, I hope you both have a damned good reason.” In the long ensuing silence, I took one of my business cards from my purse and slapped it down on his desk blotter. “Call me when you figure out where your loyalties lie.”
By now Lieutenant Crowell had arrived for her appointment, a tall slender woman in a service dress-blue uniform with two gold stripes around the cuffs, her dark hair scraped back into a knot under her bucket of a hat. She carried a briefcase and stood behind the secretary, who hovered at a respectful distance outside Porter’s office, an anxious look on her face.
“He’s all yours, Lieutenant,” I said as I walked through the doorway.
I drove the few blocks to the Treasure Island police station. Duffy LeBard waited for me in his office, his height and bulk filling the room, face stern, arms folded across his broad chest. “I was about to send out a search party.”
“I made a detour.”
“This is my turf,” he said, steel beneath his honey-soft Southern drawl. “You say you’re comin’ to see me, you don’t make detours. Where did you go?”
I acknowledged his words with a nod. “I went to see Lieutenant Commander Charles Porter, RedCom Twenty. He’s somebody’s alibi, not a very good one, I might add. Sam Raynor was murdered Saturday night.”
“Good riddance,” the chief said with a snort. “I heard that news Sunday morning. Also heard the wife shot him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“How does Porter figure in?” the chief asked, motioning me to a chair. He settled into his own chair, pulled out a desk drawer and propped up his feet as I told him Kevin Franklin’s story. LeBard shook his head. “You don’t think the brother would kill Raynor and let his sister take the heat? I sure as hell wouldn’t do that to my own sister. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I know it doesn’t. But I also know when people are lying to me, especially if they’re not good at it. Kevin Franklin and Charles Porter are both lousy poker players. Their faces telegraph every card. I want to know what and why.”
“Don’t know if I can help you there,” LeBard said, frowning. “I got no reason to contact Porter.”
“I don’t expect you to. I think I shook him up pretty good this morning. He’ll be on the phone to Kevin Franklin very soon, if not as we speak. Let me see what sifts out.”
LeBard pursed his wide-lipped mouth and blew out an audible puff of air. His chair squeaked as he leaned back and tilted his head to one side. “Now if Mrs. Raynor didn’t blow ol’ Sam away, who do you think did?”
“I have a few candidates. I saw a couple of faces I recognized outside Ruth’s apartment early Sunday morning. I’ll have to ask them what they were doing there. I’d also like to know where Harlan Pettibone was at the time.”
Duffy LeBard chuckled. “I can answer that question, real easy. Ol’ Harlan got himself arrested Saturday night, at the NAS enlisted club. Little bastard got likkered up and took on a couple of Marines. The jarheads kicked his sorry butt all over the floor. After the dispensary patched him up, the base cops tossed all three of them in the brig so’s they could cool their jets. They’re all going up in front of their respective commanding officers sometime today. The Marines claim Harlan started it. They’ve both got clean records, so I’m inclined to believe ‘em. Harlan, on the other hand, is a miserable excuse for a human being who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the ass. He’s looking at brig time. After that, he’s about due for a bad conduct discharge. I fervently hope he gets tossed out of my Navy.”
I considered this, chewing on my lip. The fight gave Harlan an alibi and made it more difficult for me to check the sailor’s movements on Saturday. If Harlan’s commanding officer incarcerated him for fighting, I wouldn’t be able to get to him until he was released.
“What was Harlan doing before he got into that fight?” I asked. “Guess I need to talk to his pool-playing buddies, if you can get me some names.”
LeBard told me he’d see what he could do about identifying Harlan’s running mates. It wasn’t so much Pettibone’s friends I was interested in as Raynor’s movements the day he died. The two men had been roommates. Surely they’d seen each other Friday night or during the day on Saturday. Maybe the landlady, the helpful Mrs. Torelli, could provide some answers.
I drove back over the Bay Bridge to Oakland, stopping at my office to check messages. There was one from a Lieutenant Bruinsma at the Naval Air Station. When I returned the call, I discovered that the lieutenant had just had something dropped in her lap—the JAG Manual investigation on Sam Raynor.
“Why did you want to talk with me, Lieutenant?”
“I understand you had an appointment with Petty Officer Raynor on Friday. What was that concerning?”
“How did you know about that?” I asked. It felt odd to be the subject of someone else’s investigation instead of the person doing the investigating.
“He wrote it on his desk calendar. Your name, phone number, and the time. He must have had some reason for contacting a private investigator.”
“Not the reason you think. The meeting concerned Raynor’s divorce. I’m working for Ruth Raynor.”
“Ah,” she said. “That explains his mood. Chief Yancy said Petty Officer Raynor was in a foul mood when he got back to work. I’ve talked with some of Raynor’s coworkers. They said he and his wife were having an acrimonious divorce. Evidently there were some bad feelings.”
“Bad feelings.” My voice sharpened. “Why do you think Ruth Raynor had a restraining order against her husband? He was a wife beater. Keep in mind that I’m working for the defense in this case. And based on my one meeting with Sam Raynor, I wouldn’t describe him as a prize.”
The lieutenant’s tone matched my own. “And keep in mind that I’m getting feedback from the people Raynor worked with. He gave them his side of the story, and for the most part they liked him. I’m trying to be objective, Ms. Howard. The only thing I’m supposed to pass judgment on is whether Petty Officer Raynor died in the line of duty.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I had to admit I was partisan in this matter. The lieutenant was trying to be objective, and the scope of her investigation was admittedly limited. “Just so we know which side everyone’s on. Have you talked with Raynor’s girlfriend yet?”
“Someone mentioned he’d been dating a civil service employee, but I don’t have a name.”
I told Lieutenant Bruinsma about Tiffany Collins, but I didn’t mention Claudia Yancy. I wanted to talk with Claudia first.
“I’ve been looking through Raynor’s service record,” the lieutenant said. “He hadn’t been at this command long, but his file looks clean.”
During our initial interview, Duffy LeBard had indicated that he’d prefer to be an anonymous source concerning Sam Raynor. But Raynor’s murder had upped the stakes. I phrased my next words carefully. “I suggest you dig deeper, Lieutenant. Chief LeBard at Treasure Island was with the Armed Forces Police on Guam. He may be able to tell you a few things about Raynor.”
That piqued Lieutenant Bruinsma’s interest. We ended the call with a wary agreement to cooperate with each other’s investigation. After she hung up, I called my friend Mary at the Alameda air station’s administrative offices. “Is Tiffany Collins at work this morning?”
“As a matter of fact,” Mary told me, “she called in sick. She’s a good worker, but now and then she gets a mysterious illness on Mondays, presumably after an interesting weekend. By the way, Jeri, I’ve been hearing some disturbing things about that guy she’s been dating. Such as, he can’t keep his hands to himself where women are concerned. I like Tiffany. I hope she hasn’t gotten herself into a bad situation.”
Considering Tiffany’s current boyfriend was in the Alameda County Morgue, it had been a more interesting weekend than most, and Tiffany’s situation was a big question mark. I didn’t tell Mary that, however. It was a sure bet that Lieutenant Bruinsma would come looking for Tiffany. Let Mary find out that way. I depressed the button on my phone and dialed Tiffany’s home number. I got a recording of Tiffany’s voice, inviting me to leave a message after the tone. I hung up instead.
That doesn’t mean she’s not home, I thought. Maybe she was sick, in bed, not wanting to bother with the phone. Then again, maybe she wasn’t.