twenty-one

I left the litigation section and headed for David’s office. Adam had reached it before me and was starting to fill David in on the latest development. They looked up as I entered.

“What next, huh?” David leaned back in his chair. He looked exhausted and his face was ashen. I worried about the toll this was taking on him.

“I just wish they hadn’t picked her up like this,” I replied.

“Well, not putting in an appearance for a couple of days is bound to arouse suspicion,” Adam remarked.

David shook his head. “Hopefully they’ll just question her and send her home. I’m certain she had nothing to do with this.” He looked at me. “Did you have a chance to talk to her?”

“I did. She’s an emotional mess. She was seeing Jack, they had a huge fight and she came into the office Sunday to talk to him.”

“And?” Adam asked.

“She found him dead. She freaked out and disappeared for a few days.”

“Why?” David asked.

I shrugged. “Who knows? I can sort of understand it. It must have been horrible for her. She was just hiding out and didn’t want to have to talk to anyone.”

“Julia, what do you say we head over to Jack’s apartment and see what we can find?” Adam asked.

“We might as well.” I grabbed my coat and purse as Adam held the door open for me. I hesitated and turned back to David. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t think ‘okay’ describes what I’m feeling, Julia.” He sighed and looked up at me. “But you two go ahead. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get through this.”

I left David staring out the window. Adam and I took the elevator down to the lobby and switched over to the bank of elevators to the parking levels. Adam pressed the button for B-level. We could just as easily have walked to Jack’s apartment, but Adam suggested a car in case we had to lug files or boxes back to the firm.

Jack’s apartment was on Filbert, only a few blocks from my grandmother’s house in Castle Alley. His condo occupied the second floor of a four-story modern building wedged between two older structures. I looked up at the glass-fronted façade and sleek windows. Adam stood by my side on the windy sidewalk and reached inside his jacket pocket.

“These are private apartments with a common entrance. I doubt there’s a manager to let us in,” he said.

“How do we get in?”

Adam pulled a flat leather case from his pocket and opened it up. Inside were several thin metal tools. “Stand behind me, as if you’re waiting for me to open the door, and let’s hope no one comes along and gets suspicious.”

“What are you doing?”

“Won’t take a minute.”

“Is this legal?” I whispered. “What if we get caught?” The weather had turned and a storm front from the Pacific was bringing heavy cloud cover. I shivered and danced back and forth on my toes while Adam fiddled with the lock.

After a minute, it released. Adam smiled rakishly. “We won’t. After you, mademoiselle.”

We climbed the stairs to the second floor, avoiding the elevator, and once again I watched nervously as Adam worked his magic on the door to Jack’s apartment. At least it was warm inside the building and I’d stopped shivering.

No personal touches were in evidence. No family photos. In fact, it looked as if it had been arranged by a professional decorator. The apartment was furnished with heavy masculine pieces, expensive but lacking in warmth. I walked over to a wall of built in bookshelves and thumbed through the CD’s. Jack had favored classical and jazz, with the classical leaning toward Rachmaninoff. On the other wall I recognized two large lithographs by a San Francisco artist whose name escaped me. I was sure Gale would know. The lithos illustrated small random shapes scattered over a dark field, very abstract. Very boring.

“These are nice …” Adam volunteered.

I shuddered. “They leave me cold.”

Large windows illuminated the space with custom shades that were probably controlled by a remote. The entire three-bedroom apartment was immaculate except for a coffee cup in the sink and a robe thrown across the bed. Each room was furnished in much the same style. Extremely upscale Motel 6. Other than the lithos and books and CDs, there was nothing to indicate what Jack Harding was all about.

“The police have taken his laptop and calendar. But if we dig, maybe we’ll find something interesting.” Adam opened the closet in the hallway. “I’ll start here.”

I stepped into one of the bedrooms. Jack had set this room up as a home office. There was a large four-drawer filing cabinet containing personal files, household receipts, litigation form files, and working files on cases that were current and some that were obviously older. I found two empty boxes in the closet and filled them with the legal files that needed to be returned to David’s firm. Sliding doors opened to another closet, with six more boxes. I started by hauling out one after another and rifling through them. These contained more working files on, all told, four different cases, but two of the boxes held research and relevant copies of court pleadings, as well as deposition transcripts from the Bank of San Francisco fire. What is it about lawyers? They can never seem to dispose of paper.

“Take a look at this,” I called out. Adam came around the corner and looked over the folder I’d pulled out of one box. “This was the case that Jack and Ira and Suzanne all worked on at their former firm.”

“You’re thinking of the threatening letters?”

“Yes. It does link them all together. David isn’t overwhelmed by my theory, but their old firm, the Browning firm, represented the main insurer.” I stood up and dusted off my skirt. “Suzanne told me there was a fatality in that fire. A janitor was killed.”

“I seem to recall reading about that at the time. It was all over the news.”

“I wonder who he was. Even more, I wonder about the family he might have left behind.”

“I don’t recall the details at all.”

I thought of David’s difficult transits and the involvement of his Moon. Was I right? Was a woman somehow involved? “Adam, what if the janitor had a family? I think Suzanne mentioned it was his wife who brought suit. Since it was these three people from Browning who received threats, could the janitor’s widow have decided to take a belated revenge?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. And anyway, why would she blame the attorneys for the insurance company for her husband’s death? Jack and Ira didn’t represent the owners of the building.”

“Who did own that building?”

“No idea, but probably a general partnership, maybe several different companies.”

“What if she became obsessed and decided to go after anyone involved in the case? For all we know, there could be more unexplained deaths in the city.”

Adam had a dubious look on his face. “Well then, why not kill whoever was to blame for the fire? Why the attorneys for the insurers?”

“Who was to blame? I didn’t really follow the case. It’s a reach, but it might be worth finding out what happened to the people involved and the woman who brought suit. Besides, if the connection between the death threats and Jack’s murder is in fact this old case, then that means Suzanne and Ira are in danger too.”

“Okay, it’s worth a shot. Let’s try to locate the widow. You may have a good idea, Julia, but just don’t get your hopes up. You can spend a lot of time and spin your wheels on this stuff and ninety-nine percent of the time it turns out to be nothing.”

“Maybe the settlement money wasn’t enough. Maybe this woman’s still around, consumed with revenge.”

“You have a very active imagination.” Adam chuckled. “Can you find out her name from the documents? I’ll run it through our programs and see what I can come up with. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the janitor’s widow is on a killing spree. Stranger things have happened.” He picked up two of the boxes and carried them to the front door. “In the meantime, I’ll load all of these in my car and get them up to David’s office.”

“Adam, one more thing? I don’t know if it’s really ethical, but can you do some kind of search or credit check on Hilary Greene?”

“Hilary Greene? Oh, you mean Jack’s ex-wife?”

“Yes. David told me about her art gallery. If she’s in financial trouble, that life insurance policy could be a motive.”

“Assuming she knew about it,” Adam replied.

“I just want to know if she’s been having money problems. And besides all that, I’m really curious what her connection to Henry Gooding is. I ran into him outside her art gallery on Fillmore yesterday.” Adam looked at me questioningly. “Apparently he’s a wealthy import-export guy who buys a lot of art. It’s just that he seems to be popping up everywhere I turn.”

“I’ve heard of the guy. Maybe he’s just buying art.”

“Possibly. My friend Gale has connections to the art world. She says he’s quite the collector, but I think it’s just too much of a coincidence. Oh, and something else, okay? Could you look up someone named Len Ragno? It’s a reach, but there’s something funny there too. I saw a piece of artwork in Hilary’s gallery by an artist of that name and she seemed very tight-lipped about it. Told me it was sold, but somehow, something in her voice didn’t ring true.”

Adam sighed. “All right.” He was jotting down the names in his book. “Anyone else?”

“No. That should do it, I think. You want some help loading these boxes?”

“Not so fast.” Adam took my arm and pulled me closer. “You want to tell me about last night?”