If Walls Could Talk (6 page)

Then I made my unfamiliar way to the Bryant Street Hall of Justice.

Matt shuffled into the visiting room and took a seat opposite me at the institutional, cafeteria-type table. His square jaw was covered with reddish blond stubble, his eyes even more red-rimmed than when I’d last seen him. Before I had a chance to say anything, he started talking.

“Would you take care of Dylan for me? His mom’s out of touch, on a cruise somewhere, not expected back until the end of the month. He’d be happier with Caleb than with his grandparents.”

“Of course I will, but—”

“Oh, and keep on with the work at the house?”

“Matt, who cares about the remodel at this point?”

“I’ve got everything wrapped up in that place. And it’s not just me. We owe some people money.”

“What kind of people?”

He shrugged. “I’m not actually sure. Kenneth took care of all of that. He was the business side of things; I was just the creative. I’ve been working with the architect on the plans. Do you know him? Jason Wehr? He’s won the AIA Design Award for Excellence in Architecture
twice
. It’ll be bloody beautiful when it’s done.”

“Matt, did you pull official permits on this job?”

“Sure, Kenneth took care of all the paperwork.”

“So was there a contractor involved, or was it a homeowner’s permit?”

“I guess you’d have to check with the architect on that.”

I blew out an exasperated breath and made a note to myself to call Jason Wehr. I remembered the name from the paperwork when I’d done the original home inspection for Matt. Architects were usually involved with the builders on a home they designed; Wehr was likely better informed than the aging rock star sitting in front of me.

“So . . . what’s next for you?” I asked, afraid of the answer. “Will you make bail? Can your lawyer get you out of here?”

“We’re not sure about bail yet. We don’t even know whether they’ll file charges.” Matt started humming, his long-fingered, graceful hands playing air guitar. “You know, it’s so strange. When you told me to find Kenneth’s severed hand, I thought you were referring to that Pearl Jam song. You know that one? ‘Severed Hand’?”

“Matt,
focus
. This is serious. What reason do the police have to believe you would do this? What motive could you have?”

He shrugged. “Motive’s the easy part. Kenneth and I . . . we were partners in the business. There’s a lot of money involved.”

“Do they have any evidence against you?”

“I need money—that much is true.” Matt shrugged again and looked down at his fingers, which were now tracing invisible shapes on the green laminate tabletop, as though writing a secret message.

“Matt?”

“Kenneth told them it was me, right before he died. I imagine that was the part that really struck a chord.”

Words failed me. I stared at Matt for several beats.

“What are you talking about?” I finally croaked.

“It was in the emergency room. The doctors were working on him, trying to get him into surgery but he’d lost so much blood. . . .” Matt dropped his face into his hands, rubbing his forehead for a moment before looking back up at me. “Have you ever heard of something called a deathbed declaration?”

I shook my head.

“I hadn’t, either,” Matt said. “Apparently it’s the only exception to the hearsay rule in the American justice system. If someone accuses someone else right before dying, it can be used as evidence. Anyway, one of the nurses heard Kenneth say something to implicate me.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“Dunno.”

“Who was the nurse?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “I wasn’t allowed in while they were working on him. She was South African; that’s all I know. Good-looking. She came out to talk to me at one point, and I recognized the accent. She told me she was from Johannesburg.”

“Does
anyone
know what she said? Your lawyer, maybe?”

“He’s working on it. But listen—that’s another reason you need to keep on with the project at the house. I’m going to need access to money; I’ve got a construction loan to pay you with, but most of what I have is wrapped up in that place. And now, with the condition that it’s in after the party, I think it might be worth even less than we paid for it.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Right now it’s probably closed off, since it’s a crime scene. But if they give me the go-ahead, I can get my crew on it right away.”

“Thank you.” Matt’s eyes filled with tears. He reached out and put his hand over mine. “I didn’t do this, Mel. I would never do something like this. Kenneth was my friend.”

“I know.”

“Really? You believe me?”

“I do.”

 

And I did.

Yes, he had been drunk, and people have been known to do all sorts of crazy things while under the influence. But despite Matt’s flighty behavior and inattention to details, he was a profoundly sweet man. He baked cupcakes for his son’s birthday, escorted the kids on field trips, and paled when confronted with spiders. I once witnessed him make the sign of the cross at the sight of a raccoon roadkill.

I’m not naïve. I believe most of us would be capable of lashing out at someone in a moment of overwhelming passion . . . but torture was another matter entirely. To use a nail gun on Kenneth repeatedly, and then to hold the man in front of a table saw . . . It was too horrifying to contemplate.

But contemplate it I did, all the way across town.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally entered the posh, bucolic neighborhood known as St. Francis Wood, an early planned community from the 1920s carved out of 175 acres from the old San Miguel Ranch grant. Businesses were banned, utilities were buried, and lots were large by San Francisco standards. Decorative posts at the entrance let you know you are entering the Wood, whose wide boulevards are lined with mature trees and graceful stucco buildings. Two huge water features on St. Francis Boulevard, one a fountain at the intersection of Santa Ana Avenue and the other a cascade built into the hillside, evoke the sumptuous gardens of Renaissance Italy.

Long before I started officially working in construction, St. Francis Wood was one of my favorite walking neighborhoods. San Francisco is a relatively small but highly varied city, perfect for walkers. There are dramatic paths along the rugged coast of the Pacific Ocean, crowded jaunts through Union Square and Chinatown and North Beach, strenuous climbs up the Lyon Street Steps, and the famous stroll across the majestic art deco Golden Gate Bridge. But I prefer exploring the less well-known neighborhoods, especially in the evenings, when the interior lights are on and voyeurism is at its best: I adore inspecting the styles, the decorations, the graceful references to other eras.

So I felt a certain deep-down contentment as I pulled up to the Zaben job, which Turner Construction was wrapping up after nearly a year. The Italianate stucco-and-dark-wood two-story structure was accented with carved balconies, leaded-glass windows, tiled stairs, and wrought-iron banisters—many of which had to be restored, since the originals had been torn off during an ill-advised remodel forty years ago.

This was the first project that I had overseen from start to finish, totally independent of my father, after completing the projects he had begun before my mother’s death. I was proud of the results. So proud, in fact, that my heart skipped a beat.

“Morning, Mel,” called my foreman, Raul, over the loud whine of an electric drill.

“Good morning,” I said as I climbed from my car. “Everything ready?”

“Good as near.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but I was sure it was positive. A small, wiry man with black hair and eyes, Raul was attentive to detail and demanded the respect of our workers and subcontractors through a quiet, almost solemn, authority. He was scheduled to take his general contracting exam soon, and I imagined he’d be moving on to open his own business. As happy as I was for him as a friend, I didn’t look forward to that day. Good foremen are pure gold.

“Why you dressed like that?” Raul asked, dark eyes traveling up and down my wool slacks and blazer. “You look good in your dresses.”

“I’m trying to look respectable.”

“Why? The Zabens already know you are.”

“Yes, but . . .” I didn’t want to mention I’d had an appointment to see a friend in jail this morning. “I’m meeting with a potential new client later.”

“Oh. Okay,” he said, still sounding doubtful.

I smiled at the thought that people now expected me to dress inappropriately—so much so that when I didn’t, it threw their days off.

Raul’s black Lab, Scooter, trotted up to welcome me. Scooter was a fixture on the job sites or in the cab of Raul’s truck. Construction folk are dog people.

My mind cast back to the stray dog hanging around Matt’s house—his bedraggled coat and red bandanna had made him seem like a construction pup, and I wondered whether he had wandered off from some job site. If so, I hoped he’d meandered back to his people by now.

“The landscaper’s due to begin on Wednesday—we should be sure to get this yard cleaned up, make a run to the dump,” I told Raul. “Did you call Nico?”

“I tried earlier,” Raul said, “but I haven’t been able to get hold of him. Must be out of town.”

That was odd. Nico
always
answered his phone. I assumed he showered with the device within easy reach, just in case. Sort of like me.

“He did a job for me yesterday, so he’s around,” I said.

“I’ll try him again later.”

“Good. Thanks.”

Just then the clients, Mark and Joanne Zaben, pulled up, their two young daughters in tow. We did a thorough walk-through of their nearly finished home to draw up a final punch list, an inventory of small details to attend to before Turner Construction officially left the site. The last thing anyone wanted was for the clients to move in all their worldly possessions—which tended to be
expensive
possessions—and then for us to have to come back and work around them. The walk-through was the clients’ chance to ask for last-minute changes: The bookcases in the study need extra shelves; there should be another mirror in the bathroom; the wall color in the entry is too pale, the stain in the pantry too dark.

In addition to the clients’ requests, Raul and I had developed our own punch list of leftover construction tidbits . . . of which there were always many.

But overall, the Zabens were thrilled, as was I.

It was exhilarating to rescue a home suffering under the abuses of a 1970s remodel and bring it back to its historical glory, inch by painstaking inch. My father had been flipping houses—buying fixer-uppers, living in them while he remodeled, then selling them for a profit—since long before such a scheme had a name, much less its own devoted cable TV following. After a childhood spent tripping over compressor hoses and dining on plywood counters, my two older sisters now lived in brand-new, cardboard-and-spit condos, vowing never to come near another do-it-yourself project. I was the only one of the brood to catch my father’s rebuilding fever.

I spent days sifting through salvage yards in Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland to unearth doors, moldings, and hand-pounded hardware original to the era and style of whatever house I was working on. In addition, over the years my father—and now I—had developed a long list of local artisans and specialists who could restore or re-create the handiwork of yore: plasterers, carvers, skilled finish carpenters. A local business named Victoriana reproduced intricate plaster ceiling medallions; Metro Lighting in Berkeley blew its own glass and poured metal to re-create molded bronze lamp fixtures; and I could have wood trim remilled with a custom knife cut at Beronio Lumber to match the original design.

As the Zabens, Raul, and I finished up our tour of the house, I brought a package out of my satchel and laid it on their new kitchen island—which was tiled in authentic bottle green glazed crackled ceramics from a small outfit in San Luis Obispo that had started reissuing original Craftsman-style tile designs.

“This is a small memento from Turner Construction,” I said. “So you won’t forget us.”

The fat scrapbook was labeled
The Zaben Home
.

Joanne eagerly flipped through the pages, exclaiming over the before-and-after photos. The girls, ages eight and ten, crowded in to peek at the album.

“This is incredible! Remember how awful it was?” Joanne said to her husband, pointing at a particularly egregious example of harvest gold linoleum in one of the home’s four bathrooms.

“How about the pseudo-psychedelic wallpaper in the downstairs office?” Mark chimed in. “That was my personal favorite.”

Because Turner Construction specialized in renovating historic properties, each project included a good deal of research on the history of the house. We studied old photos, references in letters or newspapers, anything we might find in the attic or walls. Often we even interviewed neighbors and local historians. My mother had started the tradition of putting the before-and-after photos, articles, and any other relevant ephemera together in a big scrapbook and presenting it to the clients as a souvenir of many months—sometimes years—of hard work and patience.

And at the back of the album, I always included a group photo of everyone who had contributed to the building effort. All of them, from the highest-skilled carpenter to the lowliest sweeper, left a little of themselves with each project. They deserved recognition.

As I watched the Zabens look through the photos, my mind wandered back, again, to Kenneth’s tragedy. Matt had mentioned that Kenneth hired a photographer for their demolition party. What was the name again? Zach something? I wondered whether the police had already spoken to him, and whether the photos had revealed anything. Could the investigators honestly have enough evidence to file charges against Matt? Surely a deathbed declaration, by itself, wouldn’t be enough—would it?