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I asked him to come down to the station in the morning and dictate a statement. Then I walked out and up those hundred earthen steps.

Was Victor Champion in love with Madeleine? In his fashion. But I couldn’t imagine him killing her unless he were promised access to her embalmed body and could photograph it till it was shoved into the crematorium chute.

I might scoff, but from across the canyon with his telephoto lens he had managed to see more deeply into Madeleine than I had in years of work acquaintance. In his pictures he had captured a hint of what I’d hoped Madeleine would show me tonight.

I realized as I reached the Arlington that I was not just disappointed about that; I was annoyed.

And I was insulted. That surprised me. It wasn’t as if I’d ever had a nonbusiness contact with Riordan. But investigating was my job, my profession. How could someone like Champion have seen more than I? And how could Madeleine Riordan have allowed him to see what she had hidden from everyone else?
Why
had she?

And perhaps most infuriating was the fact that I still didn’t know why she had decided to move back to Canyonview and what there had caused that look of outrage in Champion’s picture. Maybe she had told him, but if so it was in a code he couldn’t decipher in his pictures, and he certainly couldn’t pass on to me.

I checked in with Inspector Doyle just long enough to agree we’d get together in the morning.

When I got home Howard was already asleep. I took a long bath, then slid in beside his warm sleeping body. I didn’t wake him, but just lay listening to the comforting sound of his breath and wondering what could be so compelling as to make me elect to spend the last months of my life without him.

T
HE BIG NEWS OF
the morning was Doyle’s vain attempt to contact Madeleine Riordan’s husband, one Dr. Herbert Timms, D.V.M. According to his service Timms was at a conference in Carmel, three or so hours south of here. They didn’t know where he was staying. And after three calls last night and two this morning the only thing Doyle was certain of was that Timms was not answering his phone here. With a smile of relief, he passed the number on to me. I headed back to my office to tackle some of the accumulated paperwork and the numerous necessary calls.

8:30—To Timms. No answer.

8:33—To his service. No new info there.

8:35—To coroner’s office. Got Matthew Harrison who said Madeleine Riordan had been taken first for autopsy. He’d check with the pathologist on cause and time of death and get back to me.

8:40—To Raksen. No fascinating fibers, pertinent prints.

8:45—To Timms. No answer.

9:00—To Timms, still gone.

9:10—From Harrison. Madeleine had indeed been smothered. They’d found particles from the pillowcase in her nostrils. The time of death would not have been more than two hours before I found her. Not before seven
P.M.

At nine fifteen the dispatcher called. “Smith, you got a fracas at Walnut and Vine, Walnut Square.” The meter maid perp had escalated.

A crowd of about thirty clustered on the sidewalk, right outside the original Peet’s Coffee & Tea, the coffee cups in hand. Dogs meandered; one guy was posting signs for a weekend benefit-protest march (a leftist variation on the walkathon—protesters gather pledges for their participation in the march—one dollar per mile or hour. If they’re arrested peacefully, the pledge doubles). Behind him a mauve-turbaned street person demanded spare change. The sky was blue, the air still warm—a perfect day for Berkeleyans to enjoy theater al fresco. The crowd stared at a venerable beige Mercedes and beyond at Parking Enforcement Officer Celia Eckey.

Eckey was purple. Literally. Purple from her formerly gray hair to her previously merely tanned fingers. Purple coated the right side of her Parking Enforcement vehicle and a swatch of street. Eckey smiled, but I knew her well enough to realize that was only because she was talking to the reporter for KRON news. “Some variety of explosive matter.” She pointed to a sagging black rubber container affixed to the one-o’clock-to-three-o’clock portion of a Mercedes sedan tire.

“And it blew up in your face when you tried to mark the tire?” the newscaster prompted. Behind him a covey of print reporters crowded in, notepads in hands.

“It’s water soluble.” Eckey was masterful at defusing a situation. She’d had plenty of practice. “If spit were champagne,” she’d said one day, wiping her face, “I could open a vineyard.”

“And here you have it,” the newscaster said to his camera, “another entry in the Parking Pranks Parade. Brings to mind the clown with pie-in-the-face gags, doesn’t it? Coming to you from—where else?—Berkeley, this is Gary Frellis.”

Murakawa was standing behind the Mercedes tire guarding the most essential part of the scene till Raksen arrived. We hadn’t gotten a fingerprint off the parking vehicle when the perp released the brake, nor from the stolen helmet when it was finally recovered. I didn’t have much hope now, but at least Raksen might find something from the explosive bag.

“I don’t suppose you think the Mercedes’s owner is the perp, Eckey?”

“Nah. Too easy. Flaunt’s just a regular.”

“Flaunt?”

“Three FLT two something something. Damn, I don’t usually get so pissed off I lose a plate. Three FLT two eight … Damn! Flaunt’s a big one for letting his meter run out and hopping in his car just in time to pull out before we get to him. We know the vehicle’s been sitting there illegal for an hour.” She glared at me. “It’s a game to him, Smith. Then he drives around the corner and sits reading his paper until we get through here and move on.”

“Why don’t you turn the corner and collar him?”

“I circle the block, yeah. But I never get the bastard. I come back; he’s waiting. He lopes up and tosses another dime in the meter and gives me a big, fat grin. Tiress has nabbed him, but not me. Smith, the man’s got more time than sense.”

I nodded. Eckey spent her weekends at some kind of retreats that she claimed helped to keep her centered. She was the most diplomatic parking enforcement officer we had. But clearly Flaunt was responsible for a serious centrifugal relapse.

Eckey braced her right hand on her purple hip. “I ask you, what does the fool do that pays him enough to keep a Mercedes and gives him nothing more to do than spend his mornings sitting around watching for us? Whatever it is, it’s some kind of job I want.”

The reporters ambled back to their own vehicles—double-parked. The coffee crowd was dispersing into small discussion groups, doubtless to consider the fine points of the incident. Raksen pulled up behind the Mercedes and bent over the offending tire.

“Hey, what the hell … !” A tall, sandy-haired man in his late forties ran toward Raksen, waving both arms. The crowd turned toward him.

There are crowds and crowds. On Telegraph Avenue, with its mixture of students and street people, tourists and drug dealers, there’s always the danger of violence. But north Berkeley boasts a more mellow citizenry. This crowd was older; they’d seen it all before. And from the look of them they’d particularly seen this guy before. They were watching him, but they were smiling.

I dug in the glove compartment and handed Eckey a package of towelettes. “In case you’d like to freshen up.”

She ripped one open and started on her purple face. I’d thought she would climb into the car for her ablutions, but she was too intent on watching the scene.

I ambled over to it.

“Can’t have my car here all day!” the tall one screamed. I glanced back at Eckey. She grinned and mouthed “Flaunt.” “We won’t be any longer than necessary,” Murakawa told him.

Flaunt stepped toward Murakawa, who was nearly six feet. Flaunt towered over him.

“It’s already longer than necessary. I’ve got an appointment on the other side of town in fifteen minutes.” He looked down at Murakawa. “You guys put up so many traffic lights in this town you can’t get across it in less than a quarter of an hour.”

Eckey edged closer. She’d done a wipe and a promise on her face. Her skin was only slightly blue, the lines around her eyes bluer, and the creases beside her nose and mouth still purple. She looked like a caricature. I decided not to bring that to her attention.

Flaunt pulled keys from his pocket and waved them in Murakawa’s face. “I’ve got to leave—right now.”

Behind Flaunt, Eckey made “draw it out” motions to Murakawa.

Slowly Murakawa said, “Lower your keys and give me your reasoning, sir.” Murakawa’s dark brown hair flopped over his forehead. His wide-set eyes looked relaxed. But there was no compromise in his voice.

“I’m giving a workshop. I am the leader.”

“The leader,” Murakawa repeated straightfaced. Behind Flaunt, Eckey rolled her eyes.

“Take Responsibility for Your Life,” he announced.

Eckey’s eyes shot wide open. She let out a gurgle I took to be an unsuccessfully swallowed guffaw. But Flaunt was too busy staring at Murakawa to notice. The coffee drinkers eyed one another knowingly and started up the street. Clearly Flaunt did not hide his workshop under a barrel.

Behind me a tow truck rolled to a stop.

“What’s that?” Flaunt demanded. “Hey, you’re not going to tow away my car because one of your meter maids got sprayed by it.
I
had nothing to do with that.”

Eckey stepped around him. “We’re not saying you did, sir.” She was eye to eye with his bottom shirt button.

“Then, lady, you can’t tow it for that!”

She let a beat pass. “We’re not. Not for that. But our records indicate you have five outstanding parking warrants.”

“So?”

She tried to maintain cool composure, but the heat of victory won out and a smile crept back onto her face. “After five warrants”—she tilted her head up and looked Flaunt in the eye—“we tow.”

Tow truck drivers have the dexterity of jewelers and the speed of thieves. Flaunt was still screaming as the Mercedes lurched away behind the truck. Thirty seconds later he jumped in a cab (I suspected Eckey of calling it but didn’t ask). The last I saw of Flaunt he was leaning over the seat pointing at the Mercedes and shouting at the cab driver words I took to be “Follow that car!”

Raksen would do his number on the car, tire, and bag. I didn’t hold out hope for that. In any case, he wouldn’t be done for an hour or so.

We canvassed the crowd. No one admitted seeing the perp affix the explosive bag on Flaunt’s tire. At that time Flaunt himself had been inside Peet’s, boring a postal employee with recollections of his workshop.

No one in Berkeley was going to expose the parking perp. Everyone but Parking Enforcement loved him. The Robin Hood of the expired meter. Even I had mixed emotions. If the perp kept poking meter minders long enough, eventually he’d jab Elgin Tiress. That was one puncture I’d sure hate to miss. But the perp had staged the hostage negotiation fiasco and made fools of the entire team. I wasn’t about to let him get away with that. And I couldn’t shake the notion that the hostage setup in the canyon was connected to Madeleine Riordan’s death.

I stopped back at the station, made another try at Herbert Timms, D.V.M., and got no answer. Dammit, where was the man? Then I grabbed lunch—a chocolate shower sundae at Ortmann’s—and drove on to Canyonview to meet the woman Madeleine had spent her time tormenting.

This was one of those days when the fog never clears. Looking into the canyon, I could see where the common allusion to soup had arisen. The canyon looked like a huge tureen, and the fog in it, one of those chowders that had been thick and warm and wonderful the night before. Too good to have merely one bowl. Sufficiently heavy to weigh on you all night, viscous enough to have rolled as you did and when you lay on your side to pull your overstretched stomach down toward the bed. In the morning when you opened the fridge door looking for ice water to pour over the Alka-Seltzer, you would see that tureen holding a dirty beige congealed mass with wrinkled edges of mushroom and wizened celery slices. Or in the case of Cerrito Canyon, live oak branches.

At Canyonview I spotted Delia McElhenny through the front window of the main building. She was stalking across the room carrying a basket, and looking like one of the Furies. If this was her normal state, what caused the lethargy of last night? With Delia McElhenny I’d need a lot more data to make any final judgment. I kept moving around the side of the building to the rear cottage.

The light skimmed the surface of the canyon fog, reinforcing the image of congealed soup. Under my gaze the rubbery surface seemed to give way and the live oak branches shivered in the quickening wind. I could picture Madeleine Riordan sitting alone in her room, in the dark, staring down into the canyon. Seeing something someone assumed was safe from peering eyes. At the same time, across the canyon, Victor Champion would have been peering back at her.

I glanced at Claire’s door. From what little I knew of her, I didn’t picture her broaching the darkness, but perhaps one of those days while Madeleine sat next to her holding Coco just far enough away, Madeleine had talked about what she had seen.
If,
indeed, she had ever seen anything.

I knocked on Claire’s door. It was a moment before a shrill voice said, “Come in.”

I stepped inside. Again the feeling that struck me was of a guest room in the home of a distant relative, one of those aunts or older cousins who referred to me as Louisa’s daughter and never mentioned what I did for a living, or, more damning yet, where I did it. It was a room too pink, too ruffly, with too many ceramic statues waiting to be broken.

Claire fitted in perfectly. It took me a moment to realize that of course she would. It was her room; she owned it, she’d have decorated it. The foot-high ceramic dancing lady with real lace ruffles had probably come from her bedroom at home.

The head of the bed was beside the door. Claire lay against the raised pillow. Her gray hair was pinned up in a roll in the back. There was a softness to her features—none stood out on her still delicately made-up face. Despite being alone she wore a pink brocade bed jacket, and I wasn’t surprised to note its lace collar. Nor was I surprised to see the unfinished letter she’d put on the bedside table. Or the tape recorder softly playing Beethoven. What did startle me was the unlit cigarette next to it. In Berkeley adult smokers are rare as Republicans. The smell of old smoke mixed uncomfortably with powder and lilac perfume.