Sudden Exposure (21 page)

“Who are you?” She pulled off the headphones.

“Jill Smith. Police. You talked to me last night.”

“Are you trying to take me to jail?”

“No. To coffee.”

I
HAD BEEN ONLY
half surprised Fannie Johnson didn’t object to breaking bread with a member of the city’s finest.

I could have taken her to the Med, the original European-type coffee house—it was closer—but I wanted her away from Telegraph Avenue and Sam’s colleagues. She seemed relieved when I suggested the French Hotel Café, and more relieved when I asked her to follow in her car. A good thing it was; explaining the liability issues of my driving a witness in my own car in a city that is self-insured would have taken me the entire trip across town.

The French Hotel is named for the laundry that used to occupy its space, in a long, narrow brick building. I hadn’t realized how fast I’d been driving until I sat in the supermarket lot beside it, waiting for Fannie’s Nova to pull up. When Fannie got out, she was dressed in wool slacks and a short, boiled wool jacket, in red. The jacket was not secondhand, and it certainly hadn’t been cheap. It shouted of a stubborn inner core, or maybe just counterculture in-your-face. Her ensemble was a more stylish equivalent of her husband’s button-down shirts. The Johnsons must have made quite an entrance at the anarchists’ conventions.

When Fannie started toward the hotel, I almost gasped.

“Limp” didn’t begin to describe her unwieldy walk. Instead of swinging one leg after the other, her two steps became parts of one great thrust that yanked up her left leg and sent the force down her right side to jerk that leg along. The force gone, the next step began anew from a cold start. The process looked as awkward and exhausting as driving in first gear with stop signs every twenty feet.

I stared, horrified. I wanted to run up and help, to say how sorry I was even though her condition had nothing to do with me. I yearned to look away, but I didn’t; I just stood, staring blankly. Every step seemed agonizing. God, what was her life like? Each time she wanted a glass of water she’d have to question whether she wanted it enough to move for it. And if she took too many steps, would the stress on her joints create new pains—sharper or heavier? Was this the outcome of that trip to Alta Bates twelve years ago? Had she been limping like this for twelve long years? Most of her adult life?

She was almost to the door of the French Hotel Café when I caught up with her. “Let’s go across the street.”

She hesitated only momentarily. Then a smile lit her square face, and in that moment I could see where Herman Ott had gotten the notion of Jackie Onassis. “You cops must have hefty expense accounts.”

“I invited you for coffee, not the prix fixe dinner.” So it would cost more than the French Hotel; it was worth it to go to Chez Panisse. Fannie would be pleased—and perhaps, more forthcoming. It would also take longer than the counter service at the hotel. I glanced at my watch. It was already five forty.

I led the way in through the trumpet-vined gate, across the brick patio, to the stairs. Chez Panisse, the birthplace of California Cuisine, occupies a two-story brown shingle adorned with buffed wood railings and prairie-style sconces, and huge sprays of exotic flowers. The prix fixe rooms downstairs are quietly elegant. Fannie passed by the entrance and hoisted her weak leg onto the first step.

“Oh God, I forgot about the stairs!” I blurted out. “We can go to the French Hotel.”

Fannie turned, taking a moment to catch her breath. “Not on your life. I was a high diver. I’m used to climbing to the ten-meter platform. Besides, when we get up to the café, you’ll feel so guilty you’ll buy me seconds. Maybe ply me with liquor. I love their Kir.” She turned and maneuvered her leg to the next step and the next, awkwardly, but with speed that amazed me. Maybe it was not the woman in the boiled red jacket who was the anomaly but the one in the faded bathrobe.

“In the bar?” she said, standing by a black marble café table.

“No, it sounds like you’re going to need a whole table.”

If it hadn’t been the middle of the afternoon, we’d have been lucky to get a spot either place without an hour’s wait. But now we followed the waiter into the front room that must have been a sleeping porch when Shattuck Avenue was still a sleepy street. I ordered Fannie her promised Kir, and scanned the dessert choices: poached pears in red wine, apple crepes, chocolate decadence, Tarte Tatin, and Timbale Panisse. The last two I dismissed because I didn’t know what they were. But it was really no contest—nothing, no matter how elegant, original, and superbly prepared equals chocolate.

“So, Fannie, one of each?”

“I’ll take decadence for now. But I may need to keep my strength up for the trek down the stairs.”

The waiter brought her Kir. I ordered us both coffees.

Strange how easy it is to forget when you want to. I was ordering two decadences before the awful truth occurred to me. This doesn’t count, I quickly assured myself. I’d made an honest mistake. I could hardly open an interview with a possible suspect by describing a stupid bet I had with my boyfriend. I was so rushed, this would be my only chance at food tonight. I’d already told the waiter … Besides, nothing served at Chez Panisse could be classified as junk food.

Okay, so technically “junk food” meant all sweets. Even so, Howard surely would excuse this one incident.

Sure he would! He’d discount my wolfing down the epitome of chocolate cake just as quickly as I’d overlook his repainting the dining room because a friend gave him two gallons of Paris green. I raised a hand to signal the waiter. But seeing the childlike pleasure on Fannie’s face as she contemplated the bourgeois indulgence, I couldn’t tell her she’d have to eat alone. That would undercut the bond between us. And maybe she
could
down both decadences. I’d let one just sit in front of me while we talked. Hell, I could look temptation in the face; I was tough. I was a
cop.

“Don’t think you’ve bought me,” Fannie said as the waiter slid the dark chocolate slices in front of us.

“I’d assume you’d cost more than this.” I laughed. I hadn’t expected Fannie Johnson to be fun!

She sipped the Kir, glancing at the bright oversized French posters on the wall. Her dark hair was caught at the nape of her neck like mine used to be. A satisfied smile played on her wide mouth as she leaned back in the chair, looking relaxed, healthy, and utterly at home. In that moment I could see how much she had given up for Sam Johnson. She had a good job; if she had married a man with one, drinks at Chez Panisse needn’t have been rare. And medical care: Would an insured husband have bought her two good legs and painfree nights? But I didn’t have time to speculate about that; I needed to find out her relation to Bryn Wiley, and get back to the station. “You were taken from Harmon Gym to Alta Bates hospital twelve years ago? Was that from a diving injury?”

She forked off a hunk of cake—dark brown, gooey, big—and opened her mouth wide to get it all in. She shut her eyes as she chewed.

It’s damned lucky for perpetuity that mankind doesn’t have to choose between sex and chocolate. Only when she had swallowed, sighed, and taken a sip of coffee did she answer me. “Look, I’m going to save you some time. You want to know about Bryn Wiley and me, right?”

“Right.”

“No problem. Starting at the top—I didn’t kill Bryn. Not that I haven’t thought about it. Nor that I’d be above it. And not that I couldn’t hire a
hit-person
.” She grinned. “Job’s become equal opportunity, and I know Bryn prides herself on creating strong women.”

“Your motive would have been?”

“The perennial favorite—revenge.” She forked off a hunk of cake and stuck it in her mouth, swallowing it this time before she had time to taste. “I was on the team. I had a diving scholarship. I was the only one on the team on full scholarship. Bryn Wiley carries on about how hard it was to be an adolescent recuperating for a year, to miss her high school prom and all that crap. She was lying in bed with her mother to wait on her. In college she took the easy classes, and as few of them as she could get away with. If she wanted to know about hard, she should have tried carrying a full college load plus training. My old roommates used to bitch that I didn’t do my share; by the time I moved out, two of them weren’t speaking to me. Of course, they weren’t on athletic scholarships; they didn’t really believe that I had their schedules plus four to six hours in the water or dry land training—”

“Dry land?”

“That’s practicing stuff like somersaults in a harness belt. And all that’s not counting the weight training or hill running I did on my own.”

“For how long?”

“Three and a half years.”

“And then Bryn Wiley went to the Olympics and you were injured?”

She took another bite of cake, got it halfway to her mouth, and stopped. “Yes. And did that make me bitter, you ask? What do you think? Ask me when my leg wakes me up in the middle of the night and I’m thankful if there’s just throbbing instead of shooting pains.”

I nodded, taken aback by her outburst. I’d already misjudged the woman twice—first as a standard-issue radical, second as life’s witty skimmer in the expensive jacket—and now she showed me raw honesty. How many more unexpected levels did she possess? “Tell me about your injury.”

“Smacked my back on the flexible board. Then I lost it with the dive and hit the water full out on my back. That’s what the witnesses said.”

“Witnesses? In court?”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s where you got the money for The Heat Exchange and the house?”

“Yeah.” She looked up, and another grin crossed her face. “Did Sam tell you I inherited it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s our joke. My inheritance. I wasn’t on scholarship because my family had just enough money. My parents haven’t died and left me anything; they’re still alive and angling to get a share of my settlement.”

“The accident,” I said, “it was a month before the Olympics?”

“During the National Trials in Hawaii—the Trials Bryn and Helena made it to. But all three of us were invited to compete, did you know that? They went, and I missed the plane and ended up in surgery, intensive care, rehab.”

“Oh my God.”

“Damned right! Why was I diving then,
after
it was too late? Because I thought it would take my mind off missing the plane. Why did I miss the most important flight of my life? Because the time was wrong on the itinerary. The plane left at three fifty-six, not six fifty-six like the itinerary said. I waited, stand-by, till the last flight out, but there wasn’t a seat to be had. ‘Well,’ you’re going to say ‘how come Bryn and Helena found the error and you didn’t?’ Because the travel agent got hold of them. I had just moved; I’d given the travel agent my new number. He swears he called. I never got the call.” Her mouth opened, and she smacked in a piece of cake and swallowed so fast it stuck in her throat. Her face turned red, sweat coated her forehead. I was just about to do a Heimlich when she forced the cake down.

She took a long drink, almost finishing the Kir, and when she looked over at me, her eyes were still moist, I couldn’t tell whether from her gagging or her subject. “I was better than Bryn. I’d already placed third and fifth in Nationals. If I had gotten that call, I’d have beaten her. She’d have been ninth. You get what that means?” she demanded. “You have to be in the top eight in three National Trials. Bryn would have missed the cut. No Olympic Trials! No Olympics! Nothing!” She took a deep breath, never releasing my eyes. “Maybe I’d have a gold medal. Maybe not. But I’d have two good legs.”

There was nothing to say. No horror I felt could match the truth. And like a well-trained athlete, I couldn’t veer into emotional byways; I had to drive straight with the investigation. I sipped my coffee and placed the cup silently on the saucer. “Why should this convince me you
didn’t
shoot her?”

She gave a laugh—the sophisticate shrugging off the question. “Because death is too easy. Too final.” She drank the last of the Kir, closing her eyes and holding the sweet liquid in her mouth, then swallowing and running her tongue over her lips. “And, Officer, I learned a lot in those months of rehab. I hated Bryn. Every time I saw her—‘the brave little girl with the scoliosis no one can even notice’—I could have shot her. In all those interviews she never once talked about me or my accident, only how the dive should be done, as if
she’d
have been flawless!”

Bryn’s reaction seemed typical of any athlete’s. Fannie probably would have done no differently. I didn’t point that out.

“It took me a long time to figure out why Bryn Wiley couldn’t face seeing me—Helena came every day after she got back from Hawaii.”

“Helena wasn’t going on to the Olympics?”

Fannie just glared, but it was clear that she knew Helena hadn’t had to follow the athlete’s training anymore. Helena could afford to be sympathetic. Still glaring, she said, “I embodied Bryn Wiley’s worst nightmare: that she could lose everything and become ordinary!”

Bull’s-eye! Bryn Wiley, after dreams of the gold medal and her picture on Wheaties boxes, how could she ever face-being ordinary? I knew the answer as clearly as Fannie did. I shivered.

Now Fannie smiled. “See, I understand how terrified she is of losing everything. I can dangle that in front of her. Forever. Because, Officer, she’s so scared, she runs every time. She’ll never look at it. I can play her forever. And, Officer—Jill?—I love it. I am not about to give that up. And now that I own the house next door, I can go up there and watch her squirm from my very own window.” She glanced down at her empty cake plate and my untouched one. “You saving that decadence for me?”

I pushed it across the table. I wondered how much she’d altered history to support her bitterness. Or had she created a helluva tough shell to protect an interior still too tender to touch? I guessed the latter. But as far as Bryn Wiley was concerned, the outcome would be the same. “You came up with the idea of turning that house into cheap apartments?”

She waved off the compliment. “No, I’m not that clever. The house was Sam’s idea. He was so pleased when he spotted that place. He raced home like a little kid with a present for me. He was going to get Bryn where it hurt.