Every Wickedness (7 page)

“Don’t know yet.”

“Head over heels after only a few weeks? That’s not like the sensible Beth I know.” Ginny wagged a finger and grinned.

“Maybe a little of the Rizzuto impulsiveness has rubbed off on me.”

Ginny’s smile faded as quickly as it had come.

Beth said, “What’s up? Indigestion?”

“I was just thinking.” Ginny swallowed the last noodle, and mopped up sauce with the bread, “— you got your first letter a week ago….”

“That’s right. So?”

“So, how well do you know this Jordan Bailey?”

W
estminster chimes sounded through the corridors of the mansion on Russian Hill. Nora Prescott’s hand-sewn shoes trod delicately across the Bokhara rug.

By the time she smoothed her chignon and checked her lipstick in the hallway mirror, whoever had rung the doorbell was gone. On the front veranda, wedged against a concrete urn brimming with azalea blooms, was an exquisitely decorated parcel.

Nora resisted a squeal. Her birthday was three weeks away, but obviously Phillip couldn’t wait to spring a little surprise on her. She would be fifty-five soon, but hard work and meticulous care made her look ten years younger. Nora glanced right and left along the street, scanning for signs of a delivery truck or perhaps Phillip’s Lexus turning the corner. Then, seeing nothing, she picked up the box and went inside.

Inside the package, Nora found another box, then a third. Even during childhood, Nora had hated this foolish game, knowing the final gift never matched the expectation. This one, though, wasn’t bad. It was a brooch, in the shape of an N, encrusted with pearls. Nora didn’t care for initialled jewellery; it reminded her of days-of-the-week underwear
from a catalogue. Still, this brooch, while not worth a sultan’s ransom, was an antique, and the pearls seemed to be good. She would find out just how good when she got the jewellery appraised.

Looking in the mirror, Nora affixed the brooch to the jacket of her Armani suit. It didn’t do justice to the ensemble, but she left it there, curious to see Phillip’s reaction when he arrived home.

There’d been no reaction from him when she’d worn the watch, nor the diamond earrings. The Delft urn she received now graced the stark mantel of their all-white living room. No comment.

Had that been part of this whole charade? Phillip, sending her gifts, waiting to assess her response? Of course, by saying nothing, Nora was leading him to believe there might be another admirer, maybe two.

She supposed she should dash into Phillip’s arms later, coo her delight at the gifts and scold him for being a naughty boy, teasing her this way.

But, if it wasn’t Phillip….

One of the exasperating things about her fiancé was his practicality. The house Phillip had purchased because it was “solid,” his Lexus because it was dependable. His wristwatch was a Timex, which he’d owned for the past eight years, he often boasted. Expensive jewellery, to Phillip’s way of thinking, was frivolous, and Phillip Rossner was too stodgy to indulge in frivolity. Well, perhaps her faithful hound had learned some new tricks.

In the silk-papered powder room, Nora applied a fresh misting of perfume and continued to puzzle over the gifts. The manicure set she had been sent was tasteless, dimestore stuff, its black vinyl case decorated with ersatz embroidery. The Delft urn, too, was an oddity. Nora had never been to the Netherlands, and her background was Scottish, so the meaning behind the Dutch pottery was lost to her. The Andrew Lloyd Webber CD might be considered romantic to some, but it was a far cry from the Cartier watch. The sender, be it Phillip or someone else, certainly had eclectic taste.

At first, she had been tempted to pitch the gifts in the garbage, then she realized she was being toyed with and decided to play along. She didn’t understand the game yet, but she couldn’t deny its intrigue. Besides, the Cartier was definitely a keeper.

For a split second, she again debated confronting Phillip about the gifts. Then she decided to shut up. Either Phillip, in frustration, would eventually pout about her being ungrateful for his trinkets, or another suitor, perhaps with a fatter wallet, would reveal himself and the significance of the gifts, soon.

M
ondays were sacred. On her day off, Beth usually allowed herself an extra half hour in bed, but this morning she was up and dressed by six. She power walked up to Chestnut Street, constantly alert to cars parked curbside, but there were no bogeymen waiting to jump out at her. In her favourite coffee haunt, she perched on a stool facing the street and tried to read the morning paper, but her concentration constantly jostled between scanning the café for suspicious-looking strangers and reliving her last conversation with Ginny. Beth still found herself stewing over her friend’s insensitive remark about Jordan. Every time Ginny experienced a dating drought, she would take it upon herself to ruin everyone else’s fun. Criticizing Beth’s male friends was part of her surly face-saving, and occasionally, Ginny’s assessments had been accurate. But Ginny’s implication that Jordan might be the one behind Beth’s hate mail was eroding what remained of Beth’s compassion and patience.

Beth understood Ginny’s insecurity and used every technique she knew to bolster her friend’s self-image. It couldn’t have been easy for Ginny, growing up as the youngest of five Rizzuto children. Ginny’s four brothers were members of a dance band that played all the
local European weddings. It wasn’t enough for Ginny to be lumped in with “those Rizzutos,” so she sought to outshine them and by her twentieth birthday, she thought she had, by securing a first-violinist position with the San Francisco Symphony. But Beth knew that Mr. and Mrs. Rizzuto saw Ginny’s music as a hobby, something Ginny could occupy herself with until she found a husband. When her own musical gift still brought no recognition, Ginny took pains to stand out in other areas, not the least of which was the development of a personality that would intimidate Don Rickles. She became a self-professed expert on everything, especially men.

“He sounds too good to be true,” Ginny had said when Beth first told her about Jordan. “A pilot? You’ll never get him to settle down. Those guys want their freedom.”

I’ll find out for myself, if it’s all the same to you, Gin
.

She was seeing Jordan tonight and tried desperately to think more positively, but she knew she would have to take a stand with Ginny, and soon. If Ginny wanted to compete with her brothers, fine, but Beth wasn’t going to be part of any contest that involved allowing Ginny to insult her. Maybe if she said exactly that to Ginny, she would back off.

And Sondra Devereaux would bake Jim Kearns a carrot cake.

Beth’s coffee was coated with a filmy skin. She shoved the mug aside and returned her attention to the newspaper.

_________

At home, Beth’s foul mood was reinforced by a call from her bank manager telling her that Rex McKenna’s rent cheque had bounced. She slammed the receiver onto its cradle and swore. She tried to phone Rex at his office, but there was no answer. He had been limping when Beth last saw him. Maybe he was at home, recuperating with a box of cigars and some girlie magazines. It was worth a try.

“What the hell?” Ida McKenna hollered into the phone. “You mean that dumb-ass isn’t at work? I’ll broil his balls for dinner!” Ida couldn’t have stood more than four foot nine. Where was she storing that operatic shriek?

“He’s probably out on a call, Mrs. McKenna,” Beth said gently.

“My ass,” Ida replied, then hung up.

By six o’clock, Beth had housecleaned and exercised away her anger. She indulged in a bubbly soak, styled her hair, and applied the finishing touches to her makeup. She wriggled into sheer black hose. She slipped her red crêpe suit on, fastened the row of buttons, added a gold bracelet and earrings, then stepped into suede pumps.

“What do you think, Samson? Do I look businesslike but sexy? I’m shooting for both.”

Samson, who had been mesmerized by the goings-on, yawned, stretched, then jumped from the top of Beth’s armoire and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Beth followed the tabby, opened him
a can of something revolting, then locked up her house and headed toward her Audi.

Beth judged Van Ness to be the quickest route to Jordan’s house in Noe Valley, but by the time she reached the O’Farrell Street intersection, traffic was hopelessly entangled, and a uniformed police officer was waving traffic east to avoid an accident ahead.

The convoy of vehicles crawled along O’Farrell, giving Beth the opportunity to read a painted mural outside one of the city’s porn palaces.
Admission is limited to adults who will not be offended should they observe any type of sexual activity
.

Reflexively, Beth pushed the button for her automatic door locks. As she did so, she noticed movement in the doorway under the theatre’s marquee. A man emerged from the shadows. He wore a pale green checked leisure suit, beige straw fedora. Though the hat was angled oddly over the man’s face, Beth had no difficulty recognizing Rex McKenna.

Her first impulse was to hunch behind the wheel so Rex wouldn’t see her. Their next meeting would be uncomfortable enough, with only one item on the agenda: the
NSF
cheque. But Rex’s gaze remained fixed on the sidewalk.

What Rex McKenna did in his spare time was none of her business. Still, if he poured his cash into establishments like the one she’d just driven by, and if he wasn’t attracting new clients or doing anything to keep the old ones, she just might have her sample room sooner than she thought.

M
anuel Fuentes propped his feet on Jim Kearns’s desk. His Senior Inspector status allowed him that privilege. Too, he and Kearns had once been partners, in the early days, before Kearns had cut the determined swath through to lieutenant. “Still can’t smell him, can you, Jimmy?” Fuentes’s black eyes were dull, all the usual spark gone.

“Not a whiff. You?”

Fuentes shook his head.

Kearns was doodling on a pad of yellow paper. He had been in his thinking posture for close to an hour, fingers laced behind his neck, gaze focused on the ceiling. When his neck began to stiffen, he switched to doodling. Now, he took a good hard look at Fuentes who was rolling a wad of gum between his index finger and thumb. “That bitch Devereaux is right, Manny. This guy scares me.”

“Why should you be immune? We’re all scared. Don’t let Devereaux get to you.” He shot the gum into the garbage can.

“You mean she’s still alive? Damn.”

Though it had been two days since Kearns had watched Devereaux’s video, he was still plagued by strobe-like images of the woman, shrieking her opinions at the masses. It hadn’t taken long for other
members of the media to follow Devereaux’s lead and jump on the barbecue-the-cops bandwagon. This afternoon’s
Examiner
had published “Dispirited Police Seek Public Understanding” on its front page. Kearns had been quoted: “The police always make the news when the public perceives us to be unresponsive, and when the public’s afraid. Now, more than ever, we require the support of our citizens. The force is working round the clock, pursuing every lead, following up dozens of phone calls, to catch this criminal.”

In the article, the reporter cited several recent instances where police were being held accountable for their vices. One inspector was currently doing community service and spending several weekends in jail after hitting her live-in lover over the head with a full jug of Almaden. Another, who worked in the Juvenile Bureau educating kids about alcohol and drugs, had been arrested for drunk driving.

“There have been mistakes made,” Kearns acknowledged to the press. “The police force is constantly held up to scrutiny. The best of us can fall from the pedestal. I assure the public that corrective measures as well as preventive ones are being taken to provide the best law enforcement possible.”

Kearns had assumed the article would generate empathy and support from the public. Instead, it merely served to make the police look inept and weak. Now, with frustrations at epidemic high and morale at rock bottom, that traditional back-patting,
shoulder-punching camaraderie among fellow cops, though superficial, was nearly non-existent. If the public’s desire for a macho, fearless police force was strong, the determination to maintain this image was trebled within the task force itself. Kearns’s team would compensate for this latest attack on their infallibility and puff their chests with adolescent bravado.

Everything Kearns had worked so hard to change had come undone with the press’s coverage of the murders. At all costs, Kearns had to continue to conceal his depression, his use of Paxil, and his visits to a therapist.

Fuentes shook his head. “I don’t know how much more of this cop-slamming any of us can take.”

Too often, Kearns was overhearing complaints from his team. The vicap forms were too long, took forever to fill out. No one wanted to be bothered, and what was the use anyway? Kearns praised his task force when he could, and gave them shit when he had to, though recently, the latter was more the norm. If he had to offer them chocolate cake, then stab them with the fork, well, that was an inconsistency they would have to live with. Kearns was determined there would be no repeat of the Green River Killer fiasco, the Seattle madman who eluded capture because of monstrous egos and law enforcement’s refusal to share information between jurisdictions. All the cracks would be sealed, and if it took a rainforest of
paperwork and thousands of telephone calls, that was a price worth paying.

Kearns stared at the sheet of yellow paper he’d been doodling on. The page was covered with drawings of spiders.

“Your artwork’s improving, Jimmy, but it’s getting us nowhere,” Fuentes said.

Fuentes, along with everyone else, was fed up with the investigation’s inertia. Kearns saw the stress building daily, and now Fuentes was in it up to his eyeballs, with much of his frustration directed at Kearns. “Let’s go over what we’ve got and see if anything fresh surfaces,” he said, the futility of the suggestion clear in his voice.