“HOW did you find out?” Kate Gage said. We sat once again at a table at Swork, listening this time to the Polyphonic Spree on the stereo system. She seemed unsurprised to see me, as if she had been waiting for me to return for a while.
I opened my mouth, about to launch into an explanation of the literary inspiration for my solving of the crime, but instead I said, “How long were Sandra and her father-in-law sleeping together?”
“He wasn’t really her father-in-law. She and Gabriel weren’t married, and Spencer Loft is just Gabriel’s stepfather, so it wasn’t incest or anything. It only happened a few times, while they were visiting the family vineyard in Napa Valley. She stopped it as soon as she got pregnant.”
“Did Suzette know?”
Kate shook her head, vehemently, her dangling earrings striking her cheek. “No! Of course not. She’d have killed them both if she found out. And neither did Gabriel. He would have killed himself. Sandra never wanted anybody to find out. All she wanted was enough money to take care of the baby. She wasn’t even going to ask for that, but I convinced her that Loft owed it to her.”
“When did she ask him for the money?”
“Before she was arrested. It got ugly. At first he insisted the baby wasn’t his, but she threatened to have a paternity test done. Then he agreed to pay her. She was so smart about it. She wouldn’t take a lump sum. She knew herself, and she knew Gabriel. She knew they couldn’t withstand the temptation of having that kind of money lying around. She insisted that Loft arrange for monthly payments, and she said she wanted the agreement in writing, so that he couldn’t just stop paying one day if he felt like it.”
Pragmatic, self-aware, and hard-nosed Sandra. It was precisely this quality of realistic practicality that had, I knew, gotten her killed.
“What happened after she was arrested?” I asked.
“It all kind of went to hell. Sandra didn’t know what was going to happen to the baby. She had no idea who was going to take him.”
“She didn’t want Gabriel to take him?”
“Of course not. Without Sandra, Gabriel’s just a junkie. She knew that. And she was terrified Gabriel’s mother would take him. She didn’t like Suzette, but worse, she was worried that Suzette would find out he was Spencer’s baby, and not her grandson at all.”
“That’s when she thought of her Aunt Bettina?”
“Yeah, Sandra thought that if she could find her aunt, maybe she’d be willing to take the baby. She figured that if Spencer gave her aunt the child-support payments it would make taking Noah more attractive.”
“Did she ever get anything in writing from Spencer about the child support?”
“No, I think she was still waiting for that. She wrote him from jail, I know that. But he never wrote her back. That’s when she started to panic. She even wanted me to call him for her, but I was too afraid.”
Kate’s fear probably saved her life.
“Like I said, when she hadn’t heard from Spencer for a while, she got really desperate. I think . . . I’m pretty sure she threatened him. I think she told him that if he didn’t find her aunt and pay her to take Noah, she would tell Suzette about the baby. I think she even said she’d go to the newspapers.”
“You think? Why do you think so?”
She lowered her face and stared at the fingers she was knotting and unknotting in her lap. She whispered, “Because that’s what I told her to do.”
“I never thought he’d kill her,” Kate whispered. “I mean, how could he have done it? He’s a rich white guy from Pacific Heights. How could he have gotten into Dartmore Prison?”
“It was an Aryan Brotherhood hit.”
“So? How would Loft know anyone in the Aryan Brotherhood?”
“Spencer Loft is a member of the Parole Commission. He must have sat on hundreds of hearings over the years involving members of the Aryan Brotherhood. It was the easiest thing in the world for him to pull a file. He didn’t even need to pay them off. All he needed to do was promise a sympathetic ear at someone’s parole hearing.”
Kate’s pale face grew pale under its jaundice. “What’s going to happen now?” she said.
I was terribly afraid of the answer to that question. I knew what I was going to do. My way was clear. Al and I would call one of those FBI agents who had liked me back in the day, one I hadn’t cross-examined. We would explain what we’d discovered, we’d encourage a corruption investigation based on the fact that Spencer Loft was a parole commissioner. Al would make some calls to friends on the force and encourage them to look to Loft in the murder investigation at Dartmore, as well. And perhaps there would be sufficient evidence to indict Spencer Loft. Perhaps there would even be enough to convict him. One thing was for sure, the news media would grab this in their teeth and run wild with it. The case had all the makings of yet another trial of the century—murder, drugs, sex, wealth, power. What more could the viewing public ask for?
What I didn’t know was what would happen to that tiny baby in the red Bugaboo stroller. Who would take care of him now? Who would love him and feed him? Who would raise him to be the man his father never was, the man his mother had wanted him to be?
That question, I had no answer for.