I hadn’t been able to think of why someone would have killed both Katrina and Sergei. It hadn’t been easy to imagine who could have wanted the deaths of a priest and a cutthroat attorney. Looking at the two people they had been in the past gave me more to work with, but I still hadn’t found anyone besides Valentina who knew both of them.
Grandfather knew Sergei, but as far as I knew he had never met Katrina, and Davo had never met either one. Amos Noble, the D’Allessios, and Kurt Talbot knew Katrina but, as far as I knew, they had never met Sergei. Gavin was close to Katrina, but hadn’t met Sergei. My gopher-killing spy friend, Jacob, knew Sergei, but not Katrina. Valentina said she knew Katrina and Sergei, and she had reason to hate and perhaps even kill Sergei, although she didn’t have any obvious reason to kill Katrina. So was Valentina my chief suspect? Twenty years was a long time to wait for her revenge, but maybe she wanted Katrina and Sergei together before she killed them? But they weren’t killed together. Maybe she wanted to kill Katrina first, in such a way that Sergei, her ex-lover, would suffer and know that he was next? Maybe she had somehow engineered Sergei’s visit to San Francisco by killing his priest friend in Kiev? Huh. That was actually kind of plausible. But then why had she given Grandfather an alibi for the nights of both deaths if she was going to set him up as the fall guy for Sergei’s murder? It would make more sense to have him suspected of both killings, because otherwise she would need a second fall guy. And then it hit me. She did have a second fall guy. Davo was a suspect, too.
I needed to speak to the other person with a strong connection to Katrina through the condo development. Maybe he knew Sergei, too. Or knew someone who knew him.
While I waited in his outer office to speak to Amos Noble, I wondered if someone who needed a pit bull like Katrina on his team was a nice guy who couldn’t, or didn’t want to, do his own dirty work. Or maybe he was someone with a similar barbed wire personality who needed someone he could relate to. I wasn’t in any doubt for long. I knew him slightly, but every time we’d met in the past he’d been insulated by layers of attorneys and advisors.
His company’s offices were in a modern high-rise in the Mission District. When I made my way through the frosted glass doors from the elevator, the young woman at the reception desk was handling a call long enough for me to take a look around. The waiting area was expensively furnished, with pale couches, metal tables, and color renderings of various Noble properties. One wall was given over to plaques and framed citations awarded to him for various reasons, including a framed photo of the children I had seen in Katrina’s office, with a little brass plate at the bottom that said Top Donor.
The receptionist, wearing a multicolored wrap-around dress held in place, a little too low, by a sparkly brooch about to pop loose under the strain, finished her call. One of the things I’d found surprising about the city was its almost complete lack of a dress code. Even in downtown law firms the staff often looked as if they were dressed to go clubbing—or hiking.
She was briskly efficient and gave me a prospectus to read while I waited. It was mostly more color renderings of contemporary, multi-use buildings, all much larger than the one he had planned for the Gardens. I looked more closely at the drawings; they all had the same rather dreamlike quality, with pastel colors, cloudless skies, and lots of street trees. One was supposed to be in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood more nightmarish than dreamy. Maybe they were future projects and not completed ones. It could explain why he’d been interested in a relatively small project at Fabian Gardens—something quick and inexpensive to keep the business ticking over while he got permits for his larger projects. Or maybe his intention was always to force nearby property owners to sell so the project could be enlarged. I was escorted through the suite to Noble’s office. Everything was quieter than I’d expect for a busy and successful firm. Where were all the admin staff buzzing around, and why was there no one in the glass conference rooms or in the offices we passed?
Noble’s chair was turned toward the huge window behind his desk, and as I came into the room a cloud of blue smoke rose up from behind it. There was a faint haze in the room, and until I saw the overflowing ashtray on his desk I thought we should be heading for the nearest fire escape. I don’t smoke but I know cigars, and the one he puffed throughout our conversation was definitely of the corner bodega variety. He was middle-aged and paunchy, and in a city where every second person was a devotee of raw food or tai chi, or some other brand of healthy living, he clearly didn’t give a damn. His color was high with either high blood pressure or suppressed anger.
“If you’re here to harass me, you’re behind on the news, Ms. Bogart,” he growled. “We’ve decided to move on to other projects.”
I raised an eyebrow to express my astonishment. “Did Katrina’s unfortunate death have anything to do with that?”
“I know everyone thought Katrina was a huge pain in the ass, but she was our pain in the ass, and she was brilliant.” He waved the cigar. “She found something wrong with the title to one of those properties, and she told us it would be been an expensive battle on top of what we were already paying to fight the city and you Fabian Gardens Nazis. Frankly, I’d already lost interest; I have other fish to fry. So we pulled out of the deal. It was disappointing in one way, I guess, but I was grateful to her. Katrina saved us millions.”
“I heard something about her proposing to buy the buildings herself; it didn’t sound very above board.”
His face darkened further. “I heard something about that, but it made no difference to me if she was willing to get into it. Like I said, I’d already moved on.” He looked at me shrewdly. “If you’re looking for someone who hated her, try Angie Lacerda. She persuaded those property owners to sell for a pretty penny, and bought the properties, intending to sell them on to us for development. Us nixing the sale cost her several million.”
“I—er—understood that she was buying them on your behalf.”
He held up his cigar and examined the ash before he brushed it gently on the rim of an overflowing ashtray, and it fell silently onto the ghosts of his earlier cigars.
“Ms. Lacerda misunderstood the level of our interest. It was just business.”
“Did you happen to know a priest, Father Sergei Wolf? He was the man they found dead in one of those properties.”
“Interesting, but fortunately not my problem.” I showed him the photo Grandfather had shared with me of Sergei with the Coit Tower murals. He shook his head. “No, I didn’t know him. A priest you say? A local?”
“He was visiting from South America. But he seems to have had an interest in the Kiev orphanage Katrina was supporting.”
Noble snorted. “Katrina was proud of that place. She was pretty discreet about it, but she lobbied her clients for donations. She was hard to resist; believe me, I know.”
“So you donated, too?”
“I gave her twenty-five grand last year.” He narrowed his eyes. “It was tax deductible against the business.”
“Did Katrina ever mention someone called Pavel? Maybe someone involved with the orphanage,” I improvised, “or someone she knew here in San Francisco?”
“I’ve never heard the name. Sounds—what? Russian?”
“I think it means ‘little’ in Russian,” I agreed, having looked it up. He shrugged.
He didn’t get up to see me out, just waved his cigar at me as I said my goodbyes. As I was passing the receptionist’s desk, she rose and smiled. “Let me show you how to work the elevator.”
Maybe she was tasked with making sure Noble’s visitors actually left. She walked me to the elevator and as we waited, watching the lights above it indicating its progress, the way you do, she said quietly, “He was seriously pissed about the Fabian Gardens deal falling through. I hear a lot, you know? He’s way overextended; he’s had to let people go in admin, sales, and even construction. The offices are practically empty. He was counting on that deal to keep the company afloat. He and Ms. Dermody had a screaming fight about her putting in a bid to buy the buildings after he”—she tossed her head in the direction of her boss’s office—“pulled out. He fired her.”
“When did this happen?”
“A day or two before she was killed. She was a piece of work, that lady.” She hesitated. “My aunt and uncle live in Fabian Gardens.”
“Who?” I whispered, and she giggled.
“The D’Allessios. Uncle Guillermo was super relieved when everything fell apart.” She winked and glided back through the frosted glass doors.
That evening, I told Nat what I’d learned.
“So let me get this straight. Katrina told Noble the problem with the title would mean another long, costly legal battle, which Angela Lacerda said was a lie because it amounted to nothin’ but a clerical error. Noble said he was happy with Katrina’s efforts on his behalf and didn’t care about her tryin’ to buy the buildings, and didn’t mention that he’d fired her when he found out.”
“Right,” I said. “So Katrina lied and Noble lied. At least Angela was up front about hating Katrina,” I added. “And is it weird that the neighborhood association had a vested interest in preventing Noble from getting hold of the buildings? Because from the outside it looked as if they and Katrina were on opposite sides, but they were actually working toward the same end.”
“It’s a rattler’s den. No tellin’ where one snake ends and another one starts.”
“So Noble could have killed her because he felt she cheated him in the business deal, or Angela might have killed her for the same reason, or for some other reason.”
“Yeah, but I don’t get it. All the decisions had already been made before she died. Noble had pulled out, and Angie was reconciled to holding on to the buildings. If everyone’s telling the truth, why’d they kill her?”