Diamond in the Buff (18 page)

“And the bees?”

“The bees,” she said, clearly delighted. “A wonderful touch, don’t you think? See, for Has-Bitched having Bev was like owning the prize pig. And it would have been wonderful to see that pig stumble out all covered in shit.”

“Particularly when it was that pig he left you for?”

I took her quick intake of breath for a yes, and said, “But, of course, none of that would have happened.”

“Why not?” she demanded in a small, tight voice.

I repeated what Bev Zagoya had told me. “Because Kris told Diamond that you paid his way here.”

“Kris wouldn’t have!”

“And he canceled the order for the bees.”

Leila’s face flushed, the lines in it maroon, and her eyes opened so wide that the whites were visible all the way around. “How could he …? He knew about Bev. He was so grateful to get out of Kathmandu, so very grateful to make use of my money, so … The fucking little opportunist!”

“And so,” I prodded, “Diamond got you again, right?”

But she didn’t answer. She just stared.

“And then you got Kris.” Before she could regroup, I said, “I need the key to your house.”

Now she did look up. Her panicked expression was no put-on. “Why? I don’t have to—”

“I need your house key. I can get a search warrant. That’ll just take longer. It’ll just make me angrier. It’ll make me inclined to call Humboldt and give them my theory: A woman needs money. She has ten acres of land in the country. She might be able to sell it, but not for a great deal, and probably not quickly. She couldn’t rent it for much unless she could put a decent house on it, which she can’t afford to do. So what is the one thing for which she could lease ten acres that would bring the kind of money she needs? My theory, Leila, is that Cypress didn’t happen along and seduce you into law breaking; you called the gardening school and discovered that a student had been thrown out of their classes, realized why, and made him an offer, with the tree trimming as a cover.”

“That’s ridiculous!” she said, her voice shaking. “It’s all speculation. You’ve got no proof,” she said, in those words giving me all the proof I needed.

“The skill of the police is finding proof. But, as I said, this is only a theory I am considering passing on to the Humboldt sheriff. Perhaps, if I have your key and am involved in my own investigation, the Humboldt sheriff will see your case differently than I might have.”

She continued to stare. Then her breath came faster, she opened her mouth, and spit out one word. “Lawyer.”

“Leila, Kris Mouskavachi is dead, murdered!”

She froze.

“Someone,” I said, staring at her, “pushed the chaise Kris was sleeping on off the end of Hasbrouck Diamond’s deck. And Leila, the runners of that chaise were oiled with patchouli oil.”

Slowly, she reached into her pocket. With a shaking hand she held out the key to me. She was hiding something in her house, something she was gambling I wouldn’t find. And that something was not patchouli oil.

I
GOT A STATEMENT
of whereabouts from Leila Sandoval for the times of the eucalyptus attack and Kris’s death. She had been on the Avenue, doing feet, when the branch fell, she said, and up in Humboldt at a party with Cypress last night. Both alibis could be checked. Both could be faked. Neither meant anything.

Hallstead, the Humboldt County sheriff’s deputy who had brought Sandoval down here, was talking about the new drug laws and conspiracy. There was no way Sandoval would be traveling outside of custody for a while.

Whereas Bev Zagoya could be going anywhere any moment if I didn’t get her now. I thought about that expensive new Swiss watch that she said she had given Kris Mouskavachi, and what that interchange told me. Bev Zagoya had a lot to explain.

I signed out a patrol car and drove back past the few browsers who braved the thickening fog on Telegraph.

At Diamond’s house the fog was dense. And no one was home. I looked over toward San Francisco. By now the entire city was hidden and only the top of Treasure Island was still poking through the gray ooze.

I called into the dispatcher and left word for Hallstead to meet me to search Leila Sandoval’s house. And find whatever it was she had been so anxious to keep hidden. Then I wandered back down onto Hasbrouck Diamond’s deck and looked at the spot where the eucalyptus branch had scraped Diamond. An oval of sun surrounded it. I could picture Diamond sitting there, skinny legs thrust out, pleated tan skin of his torso shining in that island of hot sun surrounded by the shade from Leila Sandoval’s trees.

I walked down to the far end. The gate was shut now. I looked over the edge of the deck. A jolt of dizziness fogged my head and queasiness filled my stomach. I held my gaze. Both those things would pass. And if they didn’t I’d just go on looking down and feeling lousy. The chaise that Kris had been on was gone, of course. Raksen would be savoring fibers and paint chips from it. He’d be doing ever more subtle tests on the patchouli oil from the runners. By now there was little to suggest to the unknowing that a boy had died down below here. Weeds and vines and scrub brush covered the rock where Kris had hit, I wondered how familiar Bev Zagoya was with that rock. Could she have figured that was where Kris would land? Diamond and Leila would have known, of course, but Bev’s bedroom window was closest to that spot.

The dizziness and queasiness eased up. I stepped back, briefly savoring my small victory. I tried to picture Kris asleep on his chaise. But it wasn’t so easy as imagining Hasbrouck Diamond. Kris Mouskavachi covered head to toe with a sleeping bag—why didn’t that seem right? Kris himself told me he slept out there. From his description of his life with his parents in Kathmandu, he would hardly have been offended by the ambience on Hasbrouck Diamond’s deck. For anyone accustomed to sleeping out, this deck was elegance. Gus, the street person who’d taken up residence in Howard’s shed, would have been in heaven, at least in the warm weather. In winter it would have been another story. But Kris had grown up in Nepal, he wouldn’t have been bothered by the prospect of cold. I tried to picture Gus here on that chaise. But that wasn’t right either. Gus was too dirty, too disheveled, too much a street person for Hasbrouck Diamond to allow on his fine deck. But Kris, in his new rugby shirt and still clean running shoes, why couldn’t I picture him here?

“Jill!” It was Howard, calling from the archway.

Leaving my speculation unanswered, I walked across the deck. “Couldn’t resist coming here, huh?” I said.

“Hallstead has to have a liaison in Substance Abuse. Someone has to give up his Saturday afternoon”—he lowered his voice—“when he could be doing lots better things with the woman of his choice, if she were around.”

I grinned. “Had nothing to do with the fact that you are the only guy on the force who hasn’t been to the crime scene, huh? Never mind, I like your explanation better.”

Hallstead was waiting on the sidewalk, under the paperbark tree. “For years I kept hearing the old Mark Twain saying, ‘The coldest winter I ever spent—’”

“‘Was one summer in San Francisco,’” Howard and I chimed in as we headed up the bulging, broken sidewalk to Leila Sandoval’s door.

It looked, if anything, even worse than it had two days before. The weeds and shrubs and vines that gathered around every orifice varied in shade from sallow green to downright brown. The caramel-colored goo that coated the cracks looked much darker than I recalled, much darker than the faded paint it had been intended to match. The brown wooden door was scuffed and scraped and its foot-square stained-glass window had three diagonal cracks.

I opened the door and walked in. I had expected the cottage to be stuffy, which it was. I had also assumed it would be cool. But the heat from the last few days hung on in here.

Hallstead groaned. “Wouldn’t you think someone with windows that run the full west side of their house would have the sense to pull the drapes?”

“Or have drapes,” I added. Somehow that didn’t surprise me. The tiny house was exactly what I would have pictured for Leila Sandoval. On the right, a small bedroom crowded by the street. To the left was a narrow kitchen with a counter dividing it from the main room that filled the rest of the house.

Hallstead had already finished with the kitchen when I started. “Nothing there, believe me,” he grumbled. “Nothing but seeds and dried beans and rice.”

Still, I checked every drawer and cabinet and the refrigerator. Hallstead had missed the tofu and the Japanese eggplant.

The main room that faced the deck was divided into living room and massage studio. The living room section (the end farthest from Hasbrouck Diamond’s) was about twelve by sixteen with a stone fireplace, a tweed couch, a couple of bucket chairs, and a splattering of magazines, newspapers, a few sweaters and T-shirts, and a variety of sandals, running shoes, and clogs sprinkled like black pepper over a salad.

In contrast the massage area was so tidy it could have been sterile. There was nothing in that half of the room but the massage table, a pile of clean and folded sheets, a wicker basket for the used sheets. And a bookcase with ten bottles of massage oil—almond, sandalwood, and eight other scents. But not patchouli. I was surprised. I would have expected to find patchouli in a massage studio. Its absence was more damning than its presence would have been, unless, of course, that oil could have been differentiated from all other bottles of patchouli and then matched to the oil on the chaise runners. I took samples of the other oils for Raksen, reminding myself as I did so to go back to the kitchen and take samples of the oil there. And not to forget the garage. And to have Raksen up here to see if there was any trace left of patchouli oil flushed down the toilet, or poured down the sink or over her deck railing. A wise murderer would have dumped an incriminating bottle in the Bay. But Leila’s actions in the last twenty-four hours did not bespeak wisdom and forethought.

One thing both sections of the living room had in common—there was no place to hide anything.

After the brightness by the deck windows, Leila Sandoval’s bedroom seemed cavelike. It had only one small window that opened onto Panoramic and admitted no more light than the tiny and none too clean window in my office. The shade was up, but vines covered about half the surface. This was definitely the back-alley room of the house. Definitely a hiding place of choice. A double-bed mattress lay on the floor (where it would be firmer, I guessed). The bed was unmade. A bedside table held the usual things, and a collection of books about feet and foot massage; also, I found to my surprise, a number on anatomy. The dresser contained nothing unexpected. One closet was jammed with Leila’s clothes. I searched through, T-shirt by T-shirt, sweatpants by sweatpants. If she had her crucial secret in here, it was too small or subtle for me.

But when I opened the other closet I found the answer to my question on Diamond’s deck. I called to Howard.

“Look at this,” I said. The closet held carefully spaced hangers holding ten pairs of slacks, with labels from Cable Car Clothiers; about the same number of shirts, some striped, some dress; five rugby shirts; a sweatshirt that still had a fifty-dollar price tag on it, with sweatpants to match; and another set in a different color. There were running shoes, hiking shoes, boots, and sandals.

Howard whistled. “Whoever lives here spends a whole lot more on his body than I do.”

“These are Kris Mouskavachi’s clothes. I recognize the rugby shirt and running shoes he had on yesterday.”

Howard whistled again. Hallstead poked his head in. “What’s this?” he demanded. “You guys trying out for the Seven Dwarfs?” He looked again at Howard’s long frame and added, “In a whistle-while-you-work sense.”

Howard said, “Jill’s murder victim arrived from Kathmandu six weeks ago with barely a rupee, and now he’s got a couple of thousand dollars of clothes.”

Hallstead nodded knowingly. In Humboldt, with the marijuana farm set, sudden wealth has no surprise.

“I doubt Kris was in drugs,” I said, slowly. “Unless he was a onetime courier, there’s no way he would have come into so much money so soon.”

“Then where did he get his young-man-around-town wardrobe?” Howard asked.

I sighed. “Hasbrouck Diamond would be the best guess, except that then these clothes would have been at his house. Kris was sleeping on his deck. Diamond may have known Leila brought Kris to this country, but until today Leila didn’t know that he knew. And neither of them would have been so aboveboard about it as to allow Kris to go traipsing back and forth from house to house every morning as he dressed.”

That picture apparently pleased Hallstead, who settled himself on the unmade bed and laughed. Howard leaned back against the wall next to the window and ran his thumb and first finger down his lantern chin, thinking. “But with that wardrobe here in her house, Sandoval would have kept a hold on Mouskavachi while he was living with the enemy.”

I saluted him. Howard, the department sting expert, was in his element here. The clothes had to be Leila’s well-guarded secret. “A hold that made him do what?”

Howard shook his head.

I started to shut the closet door and stood swinging it from hand to hand, trying to formulate just what was bothering me. “Okay, guys,” I said, “give me the benefit of your masculine expertise.”

Howard grinned. Pontificating on life with the Y-chromosome was another area he claimed as his own.

I went on. “Now you can picture the nineteen-year-old who arranged this closet,” I said, pulling the door back open.

“I can’t,” Hallstead said. “My wife would think she’d died and gone to heaven if our son hung up his clothes like that.”

“Probably about three kids in the entire state would be this fussy about their clothes,” I said. “And, unless Kris was lying about his parents, he didn’t inherit neatness. So, guys, what we’ve got here is the real Kris Mouskavachi. This well-dressed kid was a guest next door, in a luxurious house with two extra bedrooms. Can you imagine him choosing to forego the luxury of the better of those bedrooms so he could sleep on the deck in a sleeping bag?”