I LEFT THE COLLINS’S HOUSE AND HEADED FOR PIEDMONT Avenue. I parked in the lot where Acey had seen his sister and Sam Raynor on Saturday night and walked the aisles, looking for Raynor’s red Trans-Am. Eventually, I found it, parked on Howe Street, three cars down from the construction site on the corner. Ruth’s apartment building was on the opposite corner. Time had expired in more ways than one. A parking ticket was stuck under one of the wiper blades on the front windshield.
The car was locked. I examined the exterior and peered inside, searching for something that would tell me where Sam went and who he saw after he and Tiffany Collins parted company in the parking lot Saturday night. But the dark red upholstery gave up no secrets.
Raynor must have gone somewhere else after Tiffany drove away and before he showed up at Ruth’s apartment. He and Tiffany left the restaurant just after ten. Ruth said she didn’t get home from her parents’ until eleven. Besides, Acey said his sister’s car backed out of a space on the side of the parking lot closest to Fortieth Street. If Sam Raynor had been heading for his car—or Ruth’s building—there was a parking lot exit on Howe Street, a few car lengths to the rear of the Trans-Am. But he hadn’t gone that way, according to Acey. Raynor had walked toward Forty-first Street.
Maybe that doesn’t mean anything, I told myself. Maybe he was angry with Tiffany and didn’t care which direction he walked. Maybe he went to a bar. Ruth said she’d smelled beer on him. Maybe I was reaching when I wondered if he’d met someone later. But there was an hour, more or less, of Raynor’s life unaccounted for that night.
I grabbed a sandwich and a soda at a nearby deli. While I ate I speculated about Raynor’s movements that night. Then I tossed the debris into a waste can and left the deli by the rear door, passing the Dumpster where Ruth and I had seen the homeless woman Friday afternoon, probing the refuse for cans and bottles. I walked past the construction site and crossed Howe Street.
Today there was a large hand-printed sign on one of the apartment building’s glass doors, admonishing residents and guests to close the door immediately on entering and not to prop it open for any reason. I ran my finger down the tenant list, past R. Franklin in 303 to M. Parmenter in 304. I pressed the button. A moment later a disembodied voice answered, coming out of the square intercom speaker, sounding tinny and full of static. “Yes? Who is it?”
“Mrs. Parmenter, my name is Jeri Howard. I’m an investigator. I’d like to talk to you about the shooting on Saturday night.”
“I’ve already talked to the police.”
“I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Parmenter. I work for Ruth Franklin Raynor.”
“Well,” she said, her tone letting me know exactly what she thought of my credentials. “How do I know that?”
“You can call Mrs. Raynor’s attorney. His name is Bill Stanley. Or my attorney, Cassie Taylor, at Alwin, Taylor and Chao. Both can vouch for me.” I gave her the phone numbers and she asked me to repeat them, which I did, slowly.
“You just wait,” she said.
The speaker went dead. I could understand her caution, born of necessity to survive the urban environment, underscored by the murder that took place in this building. While I waited, my eyes went down the list of tenants on the third floor. Next to the number 301 was the legend “L. Copeland,” while the same space next to unit 302 was empty. I wanted to talk with the tenants of these apartments. Both units were at the front of the apartment building, their doors opening on the wall just to the left of the elevator, sharing with Ruth Raynor’s apartment the wide hallway outside the laundry room. If they had been home the night of the murder, maybe they’d heard or seen something.
I took a seat on the concrete planter where I’d waited for Ruth on Friday afternoon. I looked across the street at the construction site occupying the lot on the corner of Forty-first and Howe but I didn’t see the homeless woman. Fifteen minutes crawled by. It was the middle of the afternoon, too early for the working crowd to come home from their Monday labors. Aside from the activity at the construction site and at Kaiser Hospital, two blocks away, the neighborhood seemed to be taking a siesta.
I stood up, impatient, and debated punching Mrs. Parmenter’s intercom button again. I walked to the double glass doors that barred my entry into the building and peered into the lobby just in time to see two people step off the elevator. One was the elderly woman Ruth and I had encountered in the hallway Friday afternoon. She wore white sneakers, lime-green sweatpants, and a lemon-yellow T-shirt. Her white hair was short and stylish. She held the arm of a muscular young man who wore garish neon pink and orange shorts and a purple tank top. The two of them were so bright they lit up the dark paneled walls of the building foyer. They moved slowly toward the front door, he slowing his sandaled feet to her pace. He opened the door and they both stared at me. Her eyes were blue, sharp and suspicious; his were brown, curious and amused.
“Mrs. Parmenter?” Up close she looked as though she was past seventy. She didn’t give any sign that she recognized me.
“Yes. And this is Brett. He lives down the hall. We want to see some identification.”
I reached into my purse and brought out my license. Mrs. Parmenter and Brett examined it. “Looks okay to me,” he said, tilting his head down to her. His curly blond hair was cut short, save for a wispy tail down the back of his neck, and he wore a tiny gold hoop in his left ear.
“I don’t hold much truck with lawyers,” Mrs. Parmenter told me, “so I called the police instead. Sergeant Hobart said you were okay.”
I mentally thanked Wayne Hobart for putting in a good word about me, or at least a neutral one. If she’d gotten Sid on the phone instead, I was sure he’d have given her an earful.
Mrs. Parmenter motioned me into the building. She was shorter than me, skinny and a bit creaky with age, her movements abrupt and jerky. She reminded me of the egrets and herons I saw along the bay shore. In the elevator I asked Brett for his last name and he told me it was Steiner. He lived in the apartment at the far end of the hall, the last door on the left, and he had lived in this building for four years. Mrs. Parmenter had been here longer, ever since her husband died ten years ago.
When the elevator door opened on the third floor, I saw the front door of Ruth’s apartment, number 303. The yellow crime scene tape had been removed. As we stepped out of the elevator, I glanced to my left, at the door of 301, where a wreath of dried flowers hung above the number. I didn’t think the wreath had been there Friday. The door of 302 was bare.
“Who lives in these apartments?” I asked, a sweep of my hand indicating both units.
“Lena’s in 301,” Brett Steiner said. “The other one’s empty.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Parmenter added, “and poor Mr. Sullivan is worried about renting it, now that a murder has happened, right here in the building.” She clucked and shook her head, averting her head from the hallway next to the laundry room, where Sam Raynor met his death.
We walked past Ruth’s apartment, toward the other doors ranged down the long corridor that ran the length of the building with odd numbers on the left, even on the right. While Mrs. Parmenter opened the door of unit 304, I turned and glanced back, guessing the distance to Ruth’s door, on the opposite wall, as about twenty feet. Then I followed the old woman into her apartment.
“Martha wants me to sit in,” Brett said, bringing up the rear.
“That’s fine. I may have some questions for you too.”
He shrugged. “I can’t tell you anything. I was out. Didn’t get home until well after the excitement started.”
Mrs. Parmenter led the way into her living room. Her unit had two bedrooms rather than Ruth’s one, but it was similar in the layout of the kitchen, dining area, and living room. She had some lovely antiques among the furnishings, including an intricately carved walnut secretary and a large lamp table with corkscrew legs and eagle claw feet resting on glass balls. Mrs. Parmenter seemed to have a thing about ginger jars. I saw them everywhere, cloisonné and porcelain, in all sizes and colors. They stood next to the family photographs scattered here and there throughout the living room, on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, on the end table and the coffee table in front of the sofa. The array of furniture and accompanying dust catchers gave the room an overstuffed feeling, as though Mrs. Parmenter had once lived in a larger house and crammed her possessions and memories into this smaller space after her husband’s death.
The sofa and wing chair were upholstered in matching floral chintz, both scattered with solid-color pillows in pastel shades. My hostess plumped the pillows on the sofa and sat down, settling herself comfortably. There was a wide-bottomed oak rocker next to the TV set on the wall opposite the sofa, its seat and back covered with a frilly flowered pad. Brett slouched into it, crossing one tanned leg over the other as he rocked gently back and forth. That left me the wing chair. I shoved a couple of pillows out of the way and sat down. They both looked at me expectantly. As I took my notebook and pen from my purse, I felt as though I were about to conduct a class.
“How well do you know Ruth? Or did you know her at all?”
“Just to speak to, in the hall or the laundry room,” Mrs. Parmenter said. “I’ve seen her several times over at the Piedmont Grocery, when I was doing my marketing. I knew she lived there with her little girl. Seems to be a sweet little child, though very quiet. Her parents came to visit her from time to time, a short woman and a tall gray-haired man. I saw you visiting Ruth too. On Friday afternoon, when she got home from work. Brett told me Ruth works down the street at Kaiser. Didn’t you, dear?”
“Yeah, that’s what she said.” His head bobbed up and down.
“I assumed Ruth was divorced or a widow,” Mrs. Parmenter continued, “since I didn’t see any evidence of a man about the place. She certainly didn’t discuss that with me. The police told me it was her husband she shot.”
“Estranged husband,” I said. “And I’m not convinced she shot him. I wonder how he got in. It’s a security building. I saw the sign about making sure the door’s closed and not propping it open.”
“Mr. Sullivan, the manager, put that sign up Sunday. Closing the barn door after the horse is long gone. But he’s fussy about such things.”
“Yeah.” Brett grinned. “He and Lena, the woman in 301, had a disagreement about her propping the door open, right after she moved in.”
“I suppose he has a point,” Mrs. Parmenter said. “That must be how Ruth’s husband got into the building. Obviously the front door wasn’t closed properly. I do hope Lena didn’t prop it open again.”
“Or maybe someone let him in, someone who was just leaving the building.” I looked from Brett to the old woman. “Mrs. Parmenter, please tell me what you saw and heard Saturday night.”
“I was watching a video.” Mrs. Parmenter gestured at the VCR on top of her television set. “I think it was about eleven, because it was the second video. Sometimes I rent two and have a double feature. I watched the first one, then I started watching the second one around ten. I’m sure I was midway through it.”
I glanced at the VCR. As was usually the case, it had a digital clock readout on the front. “You’re not sure of the time?”
“I think I glanced at the clock once or twice, but no, I’m not certain it was eleven. Well, I stopped the video and got up to make myself a cup of tea. That’s when I heard the voices. It sounded like two people arguing. For some reason, when I’m in the kitchen I can hear people talking in that hall outside the elevator. It’s just the other side of that wall.” She pointed toward the far wall of her dining area.
“You say it sounded as though they were arguing. Could you make out what they were saying?”
Mrs. Parmenter shook her head. “No. It just had that tone to it, if you know what I mean. So I went to the front door and opened it and stuck my head out.” From the rocking chair, Brett flashed a sudden grin. Both Mrs. Parmenter and I spotted it. The old lady tilted her chin upward with a defiant jerk. “Well, I am a nosy old biddy. I admit it.”
“Martha knows everything that goes on in this building,” Brett said, nodding his blond head.
“Go on, Mrs. Parmenter. What did you see?”
“I saw Ruth. She was having words with a young man, right in front of the door to her apartment. His back was to me so I didn’t see his face. But I’d say he was tall with fair hair.”
That description would fit Sam Raynor—and a lot of other men. “What was he wearing?”
“Blue jeans. And a short-sleeved shirt.”
I frowned. This was no help to Ruth. The night of his murder, Sam Raynor had been wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved pullover shirt, a pale green knit. But when Kevin Franklin arrived at his parents’ house early Sunday morning, he was dressed in jeans and a light blue knit pullover. Both men were tall and fair-haired.
“Once you looked out,” I said, “could you hear what they were saying?”
“No.” She shook her head again, this time regretfully. “But I’m sure they were arguing. I could tell from their gestures and the look on Ruth’s face. I didn’t want them to see me, so I shut the door and locked it. Then I put the teakettle on. While I was waiting for the water to boil I got a handful of cookies out of the jar, and I was carrying them back to the living room when I heard this loud bang. It startled me so much I dropped the cookies. I knew it was a gun. I’ve heard guns before. My late husband used to go to the firing range to shoot his pistol. I picked up the phone and called 911. The young woman said that they would send a patrolman around to check on it.”
According to the preliminary information Bill Stanley had obtained from the Oakland police, Mrs. Parmenter’s call came in at 11:14 P.M. A patrol car arrived at the Howe street address at 11:27 P.M. The patrolmen had buzzed Mrs. Parmenter’s apartment and she let them in. When they reached the third floor, they found Sam Raynor’s body in the hallway in front of the stairwell door. Then Wendy’s cries led them through the open door of apartment 303, to Ruth, lying on the floor in her own living room. I had to find out what had happened in that critical thirteen minutes between Mrs. Parmenter’s call and the arrival of the police.
“You told the police you saw Ruth Raynor drop something down the trash chute,” I said. “When?”
“Right after I called the police. I heard a door open and I wanted to see if anyone else had heard the shot. That’s when I saw her. She had something in her hand and she dropped it down the trash chute, then turned around and went right back into her apartment, before I could say anything to her.”
“You can’t see the trash chute from your door,” I pointed out.
“I know that, young lady.” Mrs. Parmenter sounded huffy. “But she had something in her right hand. She walked straight out of her apartment, in the direction of the trash chute, and straight back. It was just a matter of a few seconds. The door of the trash chute has a spring so that it closes automatically. It makes an audible thump when it swings shut. That’s what I heard. So I knew she’d dropped something down the trash chute.” She looked at me triumphantly, as though she’d just played her ace.
I didn’t choose to debate with her. “What did you do after that?”
“I went to the bathroom,” Mrs. Parmenter said, coloring slightly. “When I came out, the teakettle was whistling. I made myself a cup of tea, though my hand was shaking so much I thought I’d drop it. Then my intercom buzzed and it was the police. Things got very hectic after that.”
“May I see your bathroom?” I asked.
My hostess looked surprised at this request, but she nodded. I located the bathroom and flipped on the light switch. The fixtures were beige, a round sink with a cabinet underneath, a toilet, lid down, and another ginger jar on the tank, which had a fluffy apricot cover that matched the rugs on the floor and the towels hanging on the wall rack. A clouded glass shower door was partly open, revealing Mrs.Parmenter’s hand wash drying on a plastic hanger suspended from the shower head.
What interested me most, however, was the whirring sound of the ventilator fan, high on the wall above the toilet. It was noisy and it switched on and off automatically when I flipped the bathroom light switch. When Mrs. Parmenter stepped out of the bathroom that night, her teakettle was whistling. Presumably it had reached the boiling point while she was in the bathroom. Could the combination of ventilator fan and shrilling teakettle have masked the sound of another gunshot?
When I returned to the living room I stood in front of the TV set and ran my hand over the VCR perched on top. It looked a lot like mine, and I wondered if it behaved the same way. “When you first got up, right before you heard the voices in the hall, did you stop the videotape?” I asked, pointing at the VCR remote on the coffee table, “or did you hit the pause button on the remote?”
“The pause button.” She narrowed her eyes. Mrs. Parmenter might be a nosy old biddy, but she was also a sharp old biddy, and she knew which direction I was headed, particularly after I’d flipped that switch in the bathroom a couple of times. “When I do that, the VCR buzzes. If I don’t press the pause button again in a few minutes, the VCR shuts itself off and goes to whatever’s playing on the TV set. Yes, by the time I heard the gun, the TV was on. But that shot didn’t come from the TV. It came from outside my apartment. I may be old but I’ve still got pretty good eyes and ears, young lady. I know what I saw, and I know what I heard.”
It wasn’t what she saw and heard that concerned me. It was what she didn’t hear. There had been at least two shots fired from Ruth’s gun, one inside apartment 303 and one in the corridor, the one that killed Sam Raynor. The timing was off. If Ruth had in fact killed Sam, then ditched the gun down the trash chute, Mrs. Parmenter must have heard the shot fired in the hall near the stairwell. Why hadn’t she heard the one fired in the apartment? And if both shots had been fired while she was in the bathroom, what was the sound that prompted her to call the police?
If Ruth fired the shot that killed Sam, she was already in the hallway, just a few steps from the trash chute. Why not ditch the gun then? But Mrs. Parmenter said she’d seen Ruth exit and reenter the apartment. That didn’t make sense. Unless Ruth had gone back inside to wipe the gun clean of prints. I sighed. I didn’t have any answers, and I’d better find some quick if I intended to get Ruth out of jail.
Brett had been listening to all of this with interest. Now I turned to him. “What about you?” I asked.
“I didn’t see or hear diddly,” he said, shifting in the rocking chair. “I went to a party Saturday night and didn’t get home till past midnight. There were cops all over the place and I couldn’t get into the building. Had to sit in my car till nearly two in the morning. I can tell you right now, though, Martha’s real sharp. If she says that’s what happened, you can bet it did.”
“Besides, dear,” Mrs. Parmenter said, “if Ruth didn’t shoot her husband, who did?”
I wish I knew, I thought grimly. I tucked my notebook and pen back in my purse. “Thank you for talking with me. When I was here Friday afternoon, waiting for Mrs. Raynor to come home from work, I saw a homeless woman across the street, at that construction site. Have either of you ever seen her before?”
“Rosie?” Brett said. “Somebody told me that’s what she’s called, because of that rose on her hat. Yeah, she hangs around here a lot. She roams around picking up cans and bottles, stashing them in that shopping cart. I guess she turns ’em in for the recycling money.”
Mrs. Parmenter pursed her lips and shook her head, looking distressed. “Poor soul. She’s younger than I am. To live like that, on the streets.”
“Does she stay in that lot every night?”
“Not every night,” Brett said. “Sometimes I don’t see her for days, then she shows up again. You’re thinking she saw something Saturday night?”
I answered him with another question. “Any idea where I could find her?”
He shook his head. “I only notice her when she’s there. Guess you could ask around the neighborhood.”
“I will. If you see her, would you give me a call?” I gave Brett and Mrs. Parmenter each one of my business cards.
Mrs. Parmenter was adamant about her version of the events on the night of the murder, I thought, exiting her apartment. I was certain she’d make a convincing witness in court. But there were a few ragged edges in the fabric of her story. Maybe I could widen those tears, enough to get Ruth Raynor through them.