A bottle of Caymus Conundrum, uncorked. Music, soft but unobtrusive. Music to do accounting by. I had the checking-account statements and returned checks in front of me. Drinking and accounting might not normally be compatible activities, but this was far from high finance.
Some of the payees were impossible to make out. But by and large the names were evident in the endorsements—grocers, pharmacies and the like. The only major expense was the rent, which was paid on the last day of the month.
There was never enough money in the account to do any real damage—rarely much more than enough to cover the month’s expenses. Periodically there was a deposit. A standard amount at a regular frequency. Obviously, money came from somewhere else. A savings account, an investment portfolio or a trust. Whatever. But as far as I knew, these other funds were not accessible by Barbara Siu.
It didn’t take long. When the account was balanced, there was still half a bottle of wine left.
I went to the garden and looked out into the twinkling night. Something was changing. This whole thing, this investigation, had been more than what it appeared. I wasn’t just investigating other people. What I’d told Cheng Ye Zheng that afternoon in the bar…these were things I’d never told anyone. I’d told him about being four years old and standing outside the wrecked car and seeing my parents. Remembering them not as humans but simply as masks. As pretend.
At first he’d said nothing. He just put his arm around me. Finally he said, “They were dead. The spirits were gone. They really were masks. But you will know them again one day. They are you, you know.”
He took his hand away, took another sip of his beer. “Poor Gong Li,” he said. “She sees Ted in the boy. She is determined to get it right this time. It is not so easy, I tell her. Love is not like a business.” He laughed.
He took a last sip, threw some bills on the counter and pulled me off the high seat. “Ah,” he said, “it all depends on how you look at things. Sometimes you are looking at the right thing but in the wrong place.”
I’d walked him back to his shop then, seeing all those faces, all those people, more directly connected to their pasts. Ancestors. Families.
I shook off the memories of the afternoon, leaving Mr. Zheng back in Chinatown. I walked through my dining room, clearing dishes. But I was drawn back to the check I’d retrieved from Ted Zheng’s secret spot.
I knew. I suppose it had been brewing just beneath my consciousness. The answer seemed certain. It was all so simple. And if I was right, it was all so…provable.
Morning came gray and threatening. Clouds swept in. I could see them coming, angry swirls sweeping through the gaps in the hills. I could feel the moisture on my cheeks as I descended the Saturn Street Steps. In moments I couldn’t see beyond the railing, and it seemed as if I were floating in a cold, barren limbo. At the bottom, a short, damp walk through a quiet residential neighborhood brought me to Castro and Market, a transportation hub minutes from the heart of the city.
The Municipal Railway cars were crowded, and everything smelled of wet wool and influenza. Off the train at Powell station. All was quiet there. Perhaps for the first time, there was no tourist line for the cable cars. All the musicians had departed, and those who preached damnation had had their hellfires drenched.
Only a few straggling souls scurried across the open area, umbrellas suddenly swept up like cups on stems.
It could have waited, I told myself. I searched Market Street for taxis. Never in the rain. Never, never in the rain.
I walked and walked until finally I was at the soft, undefined edge of the financial district. Here the cold, clean buildings buzzed with electronic debits and credits. Here too was the beginning of North Beach and Little Italy. All the great food and coffee and pastry and a sleazy sprinkling of X-rated video arcades and lap dancers.
Here was FastMail the branch closest to Chinatown. It was a hole in the wall that had a counter at one end. The room was lined on one side with packing and mailing materials and on the other with rows and rows of keyed boxes with numbers on them. Personal mailboxes.
The key in my pocket said 314. I followed the logical path to a medium-sized mailbox. There were letters inside addressed to Mrs. Ho—a newsletter from a hospital, envelopes from Pacific Gas and Electric and from Pacific Telephone. There was a postcard from a jeweler announcing a sale. The box was full. Advertisements mostly.
More important, there was a large manila envelope containing several sheets of legal-sized paper.
A will. Mrs. Ho’s will.
I’d found what I was looking for. Maybe more. Instead of using a lockbox in a bank, Mrs. Ho had used her mailbox as a place to keep a copy of her will. Or someone had.
My hands were cold as I unfolded the papers. There were two sets. One in English. One in Chinese. I moved quickly through the English version, skipping the words common to all wills.
There was the name—the lone benefactor.
Out in the cold rain and back in Chinatown, I walked up the street that ran by the sad, empty playground. The wind whipped the swings, the chains making a hollow sound as they clanged against the metal swing set. The rain was horizontal.
The apartment building looked more ragged and old in the dismal light. I buzzed.
Ray came to the door, smiling. “You are very brave detective,” he said. “You come out on a day like this. Very brave.”
I climbed the steps. The door to 4B was ajar as usual. I called out his name. Wallace Emmerich didn’t answer. I edged inside.
I looked around. He wasn’t there.
I had started back down the stairs when I remembered the narrow stairway to the roof. At the top, the door to the roof was propped open. The rain was still strong, and now the wind was slashing out as well.
Wallace Emmerich, in his long dark-blue robe, was trying to throw a sheet of plastic over some of his plants. It was sheer madness. As soon as he got one corner secure, he’d move to another only to have the first rip free again.
“Mr. Emmerich!” I called out. The wind blew his name back against my own ears.
He couldn’t hear me.
I helped Emmerich secure the plastic over the plants. He didn’t question the act at all. We worked together until finally it was done.
Then Emmerich looked at me. He knew then. He knew then that I knew.
His look was one of pure anger.
“So!” he yelled. “You’ll never prove it.”
I went to him. The rain now drenched us both.
“Oh yes I will. I have,” I said, guiding his body to the door and down the steps. “I found the will,” I said when we’d finally maneuvered our soaked bodies into his apartment. Inside, the sound of rain crashing against the windows was muffled some, but we could still hear the wind as the storm continued to rage.
“The will?” Emmerich said. He looked confused.
“Mrs. Ho’s.”
His face went blank. His never prove it was aimed at the murder of Ted Zheng.
“A little foxglove. Digitalis. In small doses with her evening tea. Not enough to kill her. Enough to drive her mad, however. Enough to fool her into signing a will. What did she think she was signing? A lease maybe? A petition? Could have been anything.”
Emmerich was quiet. His eyes looked like glass.
“And you killed Ted Zheng because he was either blackmailing you over her death or maybe because he found out and just didn’t like it.”
“Even if all that were so, Mr. Strand, you could not prove what you say.”
“Mrs. Ho’s body can be exhumed and tested. I guarantee you, they can find trace chemicals these days.”
“Even if that were true, there is no way I can be singled out. I think you are venturing entirely beyond your capacity.”
His narrow smile accompanied a bitter but triumphant stare.
“Mr. Emmerich?” I was about to steal victory from him.
He looked at me, his head high, eyes peering down, the cold smile still on his face.
“How did your wife die?” I asked.
Only his eyes gave him away. I went on.
“The key here, Mr. Emmerich, is the exhumation of your wife. I’d be willing to bet—and you aren’t a betting man, are you, Mr. Emmerich?—that substantial traces of digitalis will be found in your wife’s remains as well.”
He was quiet. Very quiet.
“What we have, Mr. Emmerich, is all we need in a murder investigation. Means. Motive. Opportunity. Weapon. And bodies. Three of them.”
The rain stopped. The wind stopped. It was strangely quiet.
Emmerich stood in the middle of his apartment, dripping water on the floor. I went into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. I helped him change and dry off before I called the police.
“I don’t want my wife’s body exhumed. Oh, please don’t.”
“It’s not up to me. But I doubt if they’ll need to if you confess.”
He looked around his apartment. He looked forlorn. Lost. Suddenly, he pulled himself together. He looked at me angrily.
“How was I supposed to live?” he asked.
Wallace Emmerich was docile when the police came. Foolishly, perhaps, and despite the reading of his rights, he made a complete statement. I stayed to listen because there was one important question left to answer.
Why, precisely, was Ted Zheng killed? Ted had put the pieces together as well. The discovery of the will. Ted had wanted to verify his suspicions with Wallace Emmerich. Emmerich baited him to the basement to show him proof that the elevator death was an accident. That’s where and when Emmerich had struck him with a lead pipe.