I STOPPED BRIEFLY AT MY OFFICE, CHECKING MESSAGES on my answering machine. The Navy had called— Duffy LeBard, Lieutenant Bruinsma, and Alex Tongco. But I didn’t have time to return the calls. I was supposed to meet Bill Stanley at seven, at the Franklins’, and I was behind schedule.
“You’re late,” the Admiral said tersely when he opened the door. He must have been waiting for me. I hadn’t even made it to the front porch yet.
“I know.” I didn’t explain as I stepped past him into the entry hall. “How’s Wendy?”
“How do you explain to a child that age that her mother’s in jail?” Franklin scowled.
He had me there. It wasn’t a task I would relish.
I saw Bill Stanley at the mantel in the living room, examining the Franklin family portraits. As I entered the room, so did Kevin Franklin, coming from the kitchen. Our eyes met, then his shifted quickly away. Chuck Porter must have called him after my unannounced visit to RedCom 20 that morning.
“Productive day, Jeri?” Bill asked, turning to me. He was still in his lawyer suit, but he’d removed the jacket and unbuttoned his collar and cuffs. His gambler’s suspenders stood out against his white shirt, which looked considerably more wrinkled than it had this morning.
“Somewhat. I’ll fill you in later. How’s Ruth?”
“Bearing up. Still in shock.” He didn’t specify whether Ruth’s condition was due to the murder or her present incarceration at the Oakland City Jail. It was probably a combination of both. I tried to imagine Ruth in a cell, and had a hard time doing it. “Coroner was supposed to do the autopsy late today,” Bill said. “I’m gonna talk to the assistant D.A. tomorrow.”
“Are we ready to do this?” Franklin asked, still in the doorway between the entry hall and the living room.
The lawyer looked at him, then at Kevin, near the kitchen door. “I’m ready if you are. If either of you think it will be difficult for you, leave the room. I don’t want any interruptions.”
Franklin’s mouth tightened. He wasn’t accustomed to being talked to so plainly, especially in his own house. “That won’t be a problem.” He walked down the hall toward the bedrooms, then returned a moment later, followed by Lenore Franklin and Wendy.
The little girl wore a crisp green playsuit. Cradled on her left arm she carried the rag doll I had seen her playing with on my visit last week. Her face looked thin and bleak below her strawberry-blond hair. As I gazed down at her, I didn’t see any resemblance to either Ruth or Sam. Wendy looked like her own person, lost in her own world.
Lenore smoothed the child’s hair. “Wendy, this is Mr. Stanley. He wants to talk with you.”
Bill Stanley knelt, putting himself on the little girl’s level, and he stuck out one big hand. “Hi, Wendy. You can call me Bill.”
Wendy hugged her rag doll tighter. She stared at Bill, then she stuck out her right hand and brushed his long fingers.
“Let’s have a seat,” Bill said. He straightened to his full height. There were two chairs facing the sofa, a table between them. Bill sat down in the one closest to the fireplace and I took the other. Wendy perched on the edge of the sofa, while Lenore sat next to her. Admiral Franklin stood behind his wife, while Kevin remained standing near the kitchen door.
Wendy looked around the room to all the adult faces and asked the question none of the grown-ups had so far answered. “Where’s my mommy?”
“Your mommy’s in jail,” Bill told her. Lenore Franklin winced.
Wendy thought about this for a moment, then she asked, “When is she coming home?”
“We don’t know yet.” Bill leaned forward. “Wendy, I want to know what happened on Saturday, when the police came to your house. I know you talked to a policeman. What did you tell the policeman?”
Wendy screwed up her face, looking as though she were about to take a spoonful of bad-tasting medicine. She didn’t say anything. Then she pressed her cheek to that of the rag doll and muttered, “I want my mommy.”
“Your mommy can’t be here right now,” Bill said.
“I want my mommy!” Wendy shouted at him. There was frustration and rage behind the words, a lot of it for a four-year-old child. Lenore’s hands moved toward her grandchild. The Admiral touched her shoulders and Bill shot her a narrow-eyed stare. Lenore’s hands stopped in midair. She laced her fingers together so tightly her knuckles turned white. Bill’s eyes moved back to Wendy.
“Wendy, the policemen took your mommy to jail. If we are going to get her out of jail, you have to tell me what happened Saturday night, after you came back from dinner at your grandma’s house.”
Wendy’s voice took on a scathing tone far older than her years. “My daddy was there. He came and sat on my bed. I was asleep but he woke me up. He said how would I like to go away with him.”
“Did he say where?” Bill asked. “Did you want to go away with him?” She shook her head in response to both questions. “What happened then?”
“I heard them yelling and I put the pillow over my head.” Wendy’s pale face reddened and tears slipped from her brown eyes.
“Who was yelling?”
“My mommy and my daddy. When we lived on Guam, they always yelled. Then my daddy would hit my mommy and make her cry.” She sniffed and wiped the back of one small hand across her face. “I don’t like my daddy very much,” she whispered.
Now Lenore was crying as well, tears streaming down her face. She reached into the pocket of her slacks and pulled out a tissue. Above her the Admiral’s mouth worked and his gray eyes were as cold and turbulent as the Pacific during a gale. I looked past him at Kevin but I couldn’t see his face. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets and turned his back on the interview, staring out the dining room window at the backyard.
I turned my gaze back to Bill Stanley, who looked steadily at Wendy as he probed. “You were still in bed?” She nodded. “What happened then?”
“I heard a bang. Really loud. It scared me.”
“When did you get out of bed? Right away, or did you wait a little while?”
“I had to wait until my legs would work.”
“Do you know how long you waited?” Bill asked. Wendy shook her head. “Did you hear another bang?”
“Yes. But not as close. Then it was real quiet. I called to Mommy but she didn’t answer. So I got out of bed and went to find her.”
“That was very brave, Wendy. I might have hidden under the bed,” Bill said matter-of-factly.
Wendy wiped the tears off her cheeks. “I had to see if Mommy was okay. She was lying on the floor. I thought my daddy killed her. But she wasn’t dead. She sat up and hugged me. Then a big policeman came.”
“Wendy, did you see a gun?”
“The policeman had a gun.”
“Did your mommy have a gun? Did you see a gun other than the policeman’s gun?”
Wendy looked at him with wide brown eyes. “No,” she said finally, drawing the word out slowly. I sat back in my chair.
“Is this what you told the policeman?” Bill asked her.
“Yes. He wanted to know if I saw something.”
“What was that?”
“If I saw my mommy shoot a gun. But I didn’t. I only heard bangs.”
Two gunshots, the one fired inside Ruth’s apartment as she and Sam struggled for the gun, and the second, the fatal shot in the hallway outside. Wendy’s account of what happened Saturday was close to Ruth’s. Even at the age of four the child was grimly aware of her father’s abusive behavior toward her mother, enough to fear that Sam might have killed Ruth.
Bill Stanley probed further but elicited nothing more from Wendy than what she’d already told us. Finally he thanked her for talking to him and motioned to Lenore, who swept her granddaughter up and took her from the living room. When Lenore returned she looked drained. I felt tired myself.
“Well?” the Admiral demanded.
Bill shrugged. “She’s four years old. She didn’t see anything. Evidently she told the cops the same story, and it fits with Ruth’s version of what happened. I don’t think we have a problem.”
It looked as though I wasn’t going to get an opportunity to talk to Kevin Franklin tonight. Even as the Admiral buttonholed Bill about the next phase in Ruth’s defense, I saw Kevin step into the kitchen. I heard the back door open and close, then the sound of a car engine starting up. He was definitely avoiding me, but I’d catch up with him sooner or later.
I looked down at Lenore, who sat wearily on the sofa. She spoke so softly I had to lean forward to hear her. “I’m glad Mr. Stanley told Wendy her mother’s in jail. I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I just hope he can get Ruth out of jail, and soon.”
I searched for something comforting to say but couldn’t find it. Bill Stanley tapped me on the shoulder. “C’mon, Jeri. We’ve got to talk.”
We conferred on the curb outside, leaving the Admiral chagrined at being out of the loop. I gave Bill a rundown of my interviews with Mrs. Parmenter and Lena Copeland. He was less concerned with the possibility that someone had been with Sam the night of the murder than with what Mrs. Parmenter heard and saw and the time sequence involved. It was clear from my earlier conversation with him and the session just completed in the Franklin living room that Bill Stanley and I approached Ruth’s situation from different angles. He operated from the assumption that Ruth shot Sam, that her actions were justified and that he and the District Attorney could work out a deal.
As far as Stanley was concerned, Wendy’s testimony just emphasized the Raynors’ abusive marriage and Sam’s status as a murder victim waiting to happen. Cutting a deal would certainly be easier, I had to admit. From what I could see, the Franklins were so anguished by the whole situation, and anxious to get Ruth out of jail, that they just might go for it. But I didn’t think Ruth had killed Sam. I said it again, pointing out Lena Copeland’s hunch that there had been someone else in the hallway before she heard the shot.
“You gotta give me more than hunches, Jeri,” the attorney told me, pulling his car keys from his pocket and tossing them into the air.
“I’m working on it. Just don’t plead her right away. Let me dig around some more.”
“We’ve got plenty of time, unless the other side gets hard-assed on me. I’ll know more tomorrow. Drop by my office around three. I will have talked to the D.A. by then.”
I left the Franklins’ and drove to West Alameda. It was now past eight in the evening, and I hoped to find Steve and Claudia Yancy at home. But the Marion Court cottage was dark in the fading light of the summer evening. I didn’t see either the red Chevy pickup or the cranberry Nissan. As I returned to my car, I wondered what time the Yancys went to work. Maybe I could catch them early tomorrow morning.
I wanted to go home. It had been a long time since lunch, and I was both tired and hungry. Instead I drove to the Pacific Avenue building where Sam Raynor and Harlan Pettibone had shared an apartment. When Mrs. Torelli answered, she was dressed as before, in cutoffs and a T-shirt. This time she had a paperback in her hand, one finger marking her place. The apartment was unnaturally quiet. Honeybunch must have been in bed.
“I remember you,” she said when I reintroduced myself. “You were here asking questions about Hal and Sam. You know Sam’s dead? My husband says his ex-wife shot him Saturday night.”
“May I come in?” I asked, not bothering to dispute her third-hand account of Raynor’s murder. She nodded, then stepped aside to let me enter. “Did you see Sam or Hal on Friday or Saturday?”
“I haven’t seen Hal since he got home from work Friday afternoon. My husband says he got busted Saturday night at the club on base.”
“What does Hal do on weekends?”
Mrs. Torelli set the book down on her dining room table, its pages splayed outward. “Sleeps late and plays pool. Come to think of it, when I saw Sam on Saturday, he said Hal was still in the rack. Wasn’t feeling well. Probably hung over from too much booze the night before.” Whether this was Sam’s assessment or her own, she didn’t say.
“When did you see Sam? What was he doing?”
“Must have been around noon. I was fixing lunch. I saw the mailman go by so I went out to check the box. I ran into Sam doing the same thing, so I just made conversation. Looked like he’d been to the commissary. He was carrying a couple of sacks of groceries.”
“Did you see Sam any other time on Saturday?”
She nodded. “He left about seven-thirty, eight o’clock, dressed casual. I think Hal left right after that.”
“I thought you said you didn’t see Hal.”
“Didn’t exactly see him. I heard his car. I saw Sam drive out, then about five minutes later I heard the Camaro start up and peel rubber. Must’ve been Hal. He’s the only one around here drives like that.”
I heard a wail from the bedroom as Honeybunch awakened. Mrs. Torelli sighed and looked longingly at her paperback. I thanked her and went home, my stomach rumbling all the way.
As I crossed the courtyard toward my own apartment, I saw Abigail sitting on the back of the sofa, scowling at me through the front window. By the time I opened the front door she was at my feet, her tail switching back and forth. Her piercing yowl revealed Siamese genes in her basic brown tabby ancestry.
“I know I’m late,” I told her. “You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”
She turned and stalked to the kitchen, where she stopped at her blue ceramic food bowl and yowled at me again. If she’d been human, I think she would have stamped her foot. The bowl was devoid of so much as a crumb. I realized that in my rush to get out of the apartment that morning to meet Bill Stanley at his office, I’d neglected to fill it with the dry food that she munched on throughout the day.
“Okay, you do get to make a federal case.” I apologized profusely as I fetched the bag and poured in half a bowl of crunchies. Abigail wasn’t quite over her snit, however. She grumbled at me as she stuck her face into the bowl.
I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a leftover lasagna, cut a portion and zapped it in the microwave while I threw together a salad with some veggies and several tomatoes from my patio garden. By the time I’d finished my own dinner, Abigail had eaten her fill and retired to the middle of the living room for a wash. After I’d done the dishes, I followed the cat to the living room, where I sat cross-legged on the carpet and pulled her into my lap.
“Am I forgiven?” A sharp nip on my thumb provided part of the answer, followed by a sandpaper tongue and a rumbling purr. I buried my face in the soft brown fur. “A full stomach changes everything, doesn’t it?”