Too Close to the Edge (22 page)

“Here she did him this big favor, marrying him so he could stay in the country, and all he gave her was grief. She couldn’t even count on the bum to come and get her out of bed if she needed help.”

“Why did she marry him? Charity?”

Butz laughed. “Hardly. She didn’t want to talk about it. I just figured it was a mistake.”

“But she didn’t divorce him.”

“No.” His porcelain skin flushed.

“First you told me you argued about him, now you say she didn’t want to talk about her marriage. Which is it?”

“I talked. She didn’t. She just said she had her reasons for staying married and I could take it or leave it.” Coming up behind him, the wind off the bay thrust his halo of wiry curls on end, adding to his look of outrage. But the pain and frustration in that anger was so clear that I felt a rush of compassion. I could almost see the basis of whatever feelings Liz had for him. “I don’t know why I bothered arguing. With that woman I never came out on top,” he mumbled.

Filing that conclusion away for future consideration, I said, “Tell me about Thursday morning. What really happened?”

“Not much different from what I said. Stuart did scream about Marina Vista dispossessing the derelicts over there. That jerk didn’t care any more about those people than he did about Liz. He happened to live there, so he wanted people to think he was running the place. But when he got closer, he lowered his voice so no one could hear him, not that there was anyone listening. He told me to keep away from Liz. It was real cheap melodrama. Ridiculous. I couldn’t have avoided Liz if I’d wanted to. We spent half our time working on the project. But what I told you about him threatening to drown me, that’s true.”

“He told me you were using Liz. Were you?”

“Hardly.” Butz shrugged. “It’s the type of thing he’d come up with. Liz only had to hear that once. Boy, she took his head off.” A triumphant smile crept onto Butz’s face.

“He said Marina Vista would endanger the people who lived in it.”

His smile vanished. “I told you, I’ve lined up the best—”

“The zoning laws prohibit apartments down here. Filled land is too dangerous. Ian Stuart could be right. When the big earthquake comes …”

Butz threw up his hands. “Don’t you think the city considered that? Before they issued the permits, I had to show them a soil engineer’s report. Those engineers had our plans; they knew what the building will be. They insisted we sink concrete piers, ten inches in diameter; we’ve got to have them every six feet under the building. These piers, they go down till we hit bedrock; that can be fifty, seventy, a hundred feet. And I’ll tell you, they’re a pain in the ass. You drill down and the auger gets caught in a rusted-out car door, or in old tires—there are hundreds of them down there. That’s what fill is—more junk than soil. And even when you can drill straight down without stopping fifteen times, you’ve still got to pour your concrete, and half the time the sides of the hole cave in first and you have to repair those. But when the piers are in, they’ll keep Marina Vista as secure as anyplace in Berkeley. The guys in the building department aren’t dummies; they insisted on that before they’d issue the permit. Besides that, we had the BCDC assessment, and the Environmental Impact Report, and the building department, and zoning going over our plans. Look, that jerk Stuart doesn’t have the first idea of what goes into getting a permit. He’s just shooting his mouth off. The plans for Marina Vista have been checked, and rechecked, and checked again. But let me tell you, Liz and I didn’t stop there. Liz and I weren’t speculators. Liz was planning to live in this building. So I lined up QuakeChek to go over the building. I worked there. I know how thorough they are. As soon as the building is up, they’ll have their computers going over it. They’ll have to okay it before the first tenant moves in.” He sighed, looking beyond me, not to the city on the far side of the inlet, but into the waters lapping against the shoreline. “Even with all the hassles involved in her condition, Liz was still better to be with than any woman I’ve had. I’ve lost my lover, and I could lose the chance of a lifetime with this project. Without Liz, anything could happen. Like I told you, I’m the last person who would kill her.”

“You were her lover, and her business partner. Ian Stuart said—”

“Ian Stuart! Jesus, how can you believe anything that guy comes out with? Let me tell you about him and his great concern for the tenants in Marina Vista. He didn’t want this building here. Do you know what he wanted in its place?”

“What?”

“A heliport!”

If Howard thought Butz and Mayer were looking out for Number One, he should hear about Ian Stuart. And knowing Stuart, the heliport he had in mind would be one with his own planned helicopter company as its major tenant.

Butz looked back over the inlet, his color normal again, a smug half-smile on his face.

“One more thing,” I said. “What were you doing at Liz’s flat Thursday evening?”

His smile vanished. “I wasn’t there.”

“You have a key, right?”

“Sure. Liz gave it to me.”

“A witness heard you opening the door.”

“I’m not the only one with a key.”

I
CALLED THE DISPATCHER
from Marina Vista and had him relay my message to Murakawa.

Murakawa was waiting in the Spenger’s Fish Grotto parking lot when I pulled in. Rolling down the window, I told him about Brad Butz and his protestations about QuakeChek. “He assured me they’d go over the building before the first tenant moved in. See what you can find out. Brad Butz told me he couldn’t set a date with them yet. But find out what he did do. And see exactly how they’re going to come up with this assurance. No one but mystics promise to protect people, much less buildings, in the big one.”

“Do you think Butz killed her, Smith?” Murakawa asked eagerly.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to have gained anything by her death.”

“Yeah, but the crime, the passion of it. Suggests a lover. I’ve given this a lot of thought. I could see him going into a rage and hurling her in the water.” He leaned further out the window toward me.

“But Paul, the killer cut her seat belt. That’s not something that could be done in one angry swat. He’d have to have been virtually nose to nose with her as he loosened it enough to get the knife under it. Then, after it was cut, he’d have stood up and pushed the chair over. It’s too slow a sequence of actions for passion. Passion is slap-slap-you’re-dead.”

Murakawa nodded. “I should have thought of that.”

“You will the next time. What did you come up with on your checks of Laurence Mayer and Greta Tennerud?”

“Nothing on her, except a red Triumph, two years old, registered in her name. As for him, there are two D.U.I.’s four years ago, and then the reckless driving when he hit Goldenstern.”

“Just reckless driving? Not under the influence?”

“Not according to the D.M.V. files. And he doesn’t show on any of the other files for that.”

“But he told me he was drunk when he hit her.”

Murakawa shook his head. “I guess he didn’t tell the arresting officer.”

“I’m surprised he admitted it at all, then.”

Laurence Mayer pulled open the door to his earthbound cottage. In gray sweat pants and a striped rugby shirt, he looked prepared for a long relaxed weekend. His curly gray hair was dry now. If he had run and showered this morning, it had been well before now.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” he asked, as he might have of a new patient.

“A few more questions.”

“Come in, then. I’ve just made a pot of coffee. You’ll have a cup?”

The thick, inviting aroma floated through the doorway. “Thanks.”

He led the way through the barren white waiting room to the tiny kitchen. “It’s New Orleans blend,” he said, as he poured the coffee.

From Community Kitchens, I noted. One of the many catalogs I had on my dining table pile.

“Cream?”

“Lots.”

When it was ready, I followed him up the circular metal stairs to his airy studio and settled on the sofa facing the French doors. A plate, with abandoned flakes of croissants, sat on the coffee table. I smiled. “I would have pictured a runner breakfasting on steak and herb tea.”

Mayer laughed. “Heresy! Tomorrow I’m planning a ten-k run. So today I’m doing what’s called carb loading—croissants for breakfast, pasta for dinner. And before I start the race I’ll have some coffee. The caffeine will burn fat more effectively.”

I nodded. “Was this part of your suggestions when you were counseling athletes?”

“No, it wasn’t in fashion then. I don’t keep up on the trends now, but Greta does. She’s superb at guiding her customers, from footwear to diet to training schedules. In Norway, sports management programs like the one she was in cover all aspects of sports: body, mind, varieties of training, clothing, facilities, everything. Very thorough.”

I sipped the coffee, savoring the first decent cup since Jackson’s thermos. “Dr. Mayer,” I said, “the motor vehicle department records of your accident, when you hit Liz, doesn’t mention drunk driving …”

“And you wonder why. I’ve been expecting this.” He took a swallow of coffee. “A little deception, I’m afraid, and a lot of luck. It’s ironic how luck finds the least deserving, isn’t it?” He held the cup between both hands on his lap. Looking out the French doors at the foggy sky beyond, he said, “My luck was that I hit Liz right across the street from Herrick Hospital. I had barely gotten out of my car before the hospital crew was rushing her into emergency. I went along with them. I was so horrified at what I had done that I didn’t think of anything but her, certainly not waiting for an officer to take an accident report. In emergency there was a lot of flurry, coming and going. If anyone realized I was the one who hit Liz, they forgot it. By the time anyone spoke to me, they assumed I was a friend, a very upset friend. I waited while they took the x-rays and did the preliminary tests. I was terribly upset; I drank a lot of coffee, peed a lot. Maybe it was that, or the adrenaline in my system, or maybe just the amount of time that had elapsed before the officer found me. But by the time he gave me the breath test, I passed. He could have gotten me for leaving the scene of the accident, of course.”

“I guess he realized you weren’t making a run for it.”

Mayer shook his head. “I was too stunned.”

“Is that why you promised Liz you’d never drive again?”

“Right. I was stunned. I would have promised her anything if it made her feel better.”

I took another drink of coffee. “But you do drive now, don’t you?” I asked, reasonable woman to reasonable man.

With a quick nod, he said, “I don’t own a car. It’s very inconvenient for me. But I did promise Liz. I promised her a lot of things a good lawyer would have advised me against. As I said, the emotion of that time overcame any sense of personal protection, much less the ability to conceive what things would be like three years from then. The not driving was important to Liz. With time, she would have relaxed about it. But a few months ago, I finally decided that commitment was ridiculous. Liz had made a decent life for herself. There was no crisis anymore. There was nothing to be gained by my making Greta do all the driving whenever we took a trip. I haven’t had a drink since the accident. I doubt I’ll ever feel comfortable drinking again. I’m a better risk than half of the drivers on the road.”

“Still, you didn’t buy a car?”

“That would have been rubbing it in Liz’s face. I didn’t want to make a big thing of this. This way, just using Greta’s car at those times, I could accommodate my own feelings without irritating Liz.”

That was the best rationalization for sneaking I’d heard in a long time, but if he realized that, he gave no indication. I finished the coffee. Standing to go, I said, “Where do you keep your keys for the tenants’ flats?”

He finished his own coffee. “On a hook in the kitchen, why?”

“Someone used a key to get into Liz’s flat Thursday night.”

“Well, it wasn’t my key. It’s still there. You can see when you go down, if you want. I kept Liz’s key for her own safety. If she’d had to call me, she wouldn’t have been able to get to the door.” He stood up and started down the stairs. “As for keys to the other flats, my son’s and his friends’, those I keep for my own safety.”

He insisted I see Liz’s key, though its presence this morning proved or disproved nothing. It only showed that Greta Tennerud could have picked it up and put it back, with or without Mayer noticing.

In the car, I headed toward Racer’s Edge.

Traffic moved more easily on Telegraph today. On Saturdays, without classes at Cal to draw students out of bed, life starts later. Now, at ten forty-five in the morning, the two lanes for traffic seemed quite adequate. The few people on the sidewalk hurried purposefully through the unbroken fog, anxious to get to their destinations and out of the unexpected cold. Only the most dedicated of street artists were setting up their tables or spreading their blankets. It was one of those days when the fog wouldn’t lift at all. The gray layer that normally covered the sky was thin, like a blanket of fiberglass “snow” we spread out under the Christmas tree as children, snow that had been packed away and dragged back out each December for a decade. But today’s fog was loaded with dingy lumpy clouds, like the pillows on a bachelor uncle’s bed.

They told me at Racer’s Edge that Greta Tennerud was out training, running up one of the longest, steepest streets in Berkeley to Tilden Park, through the eucalyptus-covered roads in the park, to the town of Orinda ten miles beyond. If I didn’t spot her on the road, I could try the Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Orinda. She’d be taking BART home.

But I was lucky. I spotted her easing past a pair of chatty weekend joggers whose conversation was more animated than their gait. As she moved out in front of them, Greta Tennerud looked like a representative of a different species, running with long, smooth strides on her long, lean-muscled legs. Her pale blond hair wafted out away from her tanned face and red sweat band. In red striped nylon shorts and a tank top that said “Racer’s Edge,” she was so superb an advertisement for running, and for the running shoe store, I found it hard to imagine her boss letting her go if she didn’t win the Bay to Breakers race. But from the intense look on her face, it was easy to see she believed he would.