Brush With Death (31 page)

“She seemed a little, well—inebriated. But I know for a fact that she wasn't drinking.”

“That's a common insulin reaction,” Abe said. “We see it in the ER all the time. It's easy to confuse an insulin reaction with intoxication.”

“But the test strips were normal. The nurse said so.”

“It can come on suddenly,” Abe said, and his wife placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. I was glad to know that Mrs. Henderson had such a loving family. “Diabetes is unpredictable, and at her age it's a delicate balance. You can't blame yourself.”

I went out to my truck and sat for a long time, thinking. The “Japanese doll” was dead and the columbarium's long-term secretary was in the hospital. Suicide and diabetic comas, my ass.

There was a killer on the loose.

I headed north, to UC Berkeley. This time there was no Pink Man to lead me to the Chemistry Department, but a clutch of anxious-looking students pointed me in the right direction. A bored-looking work-study student sent me to the TA office when I asked for Brianna Nguyen.

I wouldn't have pegged this young woman as a graduate student, much less a chemist. She looked about twelve years old, and was dressed in tight jeans and a bright pink blouse. Her arms were covered with sheaths of material, but her shoulders were bare. Either the sleeves had been ripped off her blouse or something had chewed off the fingers of her gloves, I couldn't decide which. She sat hunched over a large three-ring binder, two composition books, and a stack of loose papers, a Star Wars pencil bag jammed with fluorescent high-lighters beside her on the Formica-covered table.

Brianna did not seem surprised when I asked about Cindy, and reviewed a stack of cramped, neatly written lecture notes while she spoke.

“Omigod, I was so shocked. Omigod. I'm, like, so grossed out right now?”

Highlight in blue, highlight in green.

“Anyway, omigod,” she said. “I am, like,
so
glad I didn't go to med school like my folks wanted? Sweartogod, I would've barfed every day. I nearly barfed when I saw Cindy. I had to, like, identify her? It was terrible. Omigod.”

She exchanged the green highlighter for a bright purple one.

“I saw Cindy a couple of nights before it happened,” I said. “She seemed fine then. Can you think of anything that was bothering her?”

She highlighted an entire paragraph in purple. “Maybe the painting deal. And some jerk-off was harassing her. Plus, she was seeing this guy? And he was, sort of like, married? But only sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Separated, I guess. Anyway, they seemed really happy.”

Her highlighter squeaked and my skin crawled.

“What was his name? You knew him?”

“Met him once. He was kind of old, but well preserved.” She giggled. “I mean, not crotchety or anything. White guy. Blond hair, pretty buff.”

“How old? Forties? Fifties?”

“Forties maybe. Dunno.”

“What about his name?”

She shook her head. “If I knew I woulda told the cops. They searched her room for clues to his identity, ya know, like on all those shows? Cindy and I used to watch
CSI.
The shows never say what a mess the forensic guys make, though. There's, like, fingerprint powder
everywhere.
Cindy'd be pissed if she could see it.”

“I'll bet. What did you mean by the ‘painting deal'?”

“She was doing a project with this old lady? And the old lady thought there was this total masterpiece at the cemetery place where Cindy was working. I guess she tried a coupla times to get experts to look at it, but they didn't believe it was real. She was afraid someone would take it. I guess it's worth a lot of money or whatever.”

“Did she take any notes? What about the tapes?”

“Tapes?”

“She was taping interviews.”

“Oh. That's weird.” Highlight in pink.

“What's weird?”

“There were some of those minicassettes in some cartons? And the tape was pulled out of the cartridges. Like she was despondent, least that's what the police said. But it wasn't like her. She was real neat and tidy.”

“Could I see her room?”

“Nothing to see,” Brianna said, highlighting in green. “Cindy's family came by yesterday and went through everything. They didn't want any of her, like, books or notes or anything. Just took it all to the Dumpster. It was pretty sad. I mean, my folks would rather I go to med school, but at least they're
interested
in what I'm doing.” For the first time since I'd entered the room, Brianna stopped highlighting and met my eyes. “Why are you asking? Who are you again?”

“I met Cindy the other night, and she asked me about the painting, which made me wonder. You said someone was harassing her?”

“Yeah.” The chemist turned to her notebooks. “She didn't say much, just not to tell anybody where she was. I was, like, whatever. I told the police but I couldn't tell them anything, ya know, concrete.”

“Do you know if it was a man or a woman?”

She shrugged. “Mostly she was worried about the painting deal. She brought in some pieces for me to analyze. That's not my specialty? But I, like, ran a couple of tests for her.”

My heart sped up. “Pieces of the painting?”

Brianna nodded.

“What did the tests show?”

“That it was pretty old. I found lead in the white paint, and it, like, breaks down with age? So I calibrated the breakdown. It was a few hundred years old.”

By itself, the test didn't prove anything. A forger could fool the chemical dating process by mixing new pigments with scrapings from an old lead lantern. But it did rule out the more innocuous explanations. Crispin Engels wouldn't have bothered with lead scrapings because he never claimed his copy was an original.

“There was something else. . . .” Brianna scratched her nose with her highlighter, leaving a fluorescent orange streak. “Something about the linen was off.”

“The linen fibers from the canvas?”

“Yeah. I think the linen dated like from the Renaissance.”

Crispin Engels also would not have used a Renaissance-era canvas. But Raphael—or an ambitious forger—would have.

“Brianna, could I get a copy of the report?”

“What report?”

“The report on the tests you ran.”

“There wasn't, like, an official report. It was just a printout. I gave it to her professor.”

“Dr. Gossen?”

“Uh-huh. He said he'd give it to Cindy 'cause I was on my way out of town.”

“When was this?”

“Must've been last Tuesday. Wait—Wednesday. I guess.” I thanked her and left her to her frenzied highlighting. Dr. Gossen was not in his office and the administrative assistant had a few choice words for people who lied to hardworking secretaries. I decided not to ask her for Gossen's home address.

Heading back to Oakland, I followed Martin Luther King Boulevard under the BART tracks, got caught at a red light, and noticed the sign for Lois' Pie Shop. I liked the idea of a shop dedicated to pies even though I wasn't much of a pie fan. I liked chocolate. Leave the fruit out of dessert, was my motto. It occurred to me that Billy Mudd's office was nearby—I had been there once during the Save the Fox Theater campaign. I drove around until I spotted the small sign for Precision Builders. It was located down a long driveway, behind another single-story office structure, in a utilitarian cinder-block building.

White Chevy trucks sat in the driveway and men bustled back and forth loading lumber onto the truck racks. I nodded as I passed them and went through the metal doors into the shop, which was fragrant with the aroma of freshly milled wood. The shop was a single huge room jammed with wood-working equipment, stacks of lumber, and unfinished wood trim, cabinets, and furniture. Wood shavings littered the concrete floor, and in one corner a Latino man pushed two-by-fours through a table saw.

A place like this is Josh's dream,
I thought. Too bad Billy Mudd was such a pig. They might have been good friends.

A corner of the space had been sectioned off into an office, where I found Billy pacing like a caged lion and screaming into the phone. He rolled his eyes when I walked in but ignored me until he'd vented his rage at the unfortunate soul on the other end of the line and slammed down the phone. “What the hell do you want?”

“Good to see you, too, Billy. I have a few questions.”

“Why would I answer any of your questions?” The phone rang again and Billy snatched up the receiver. “
What!
”

While he bellowed at this new intrusion, I snooped. There were a handful of photos on his desk, which I assumed to be his ex-cheerleader wife and their two adorable towheaded children. The bookshelves held binders of building codes, relics of the historic buildings he had razed—a section of a carved wooden banister, a stone corbel from a fireplace— and numerous cardboard blueprints tubes. I recognized the fleur-de-lis insignia of Ethan Mayall's architectural firm on one, and pulled it out.

“Put that down,” Billy said and snatched the cardboard tube from my grasp.

“I'm working with Ethan on a job in the City.”

“Bully for you,” he said, tossing the tube into a box on the floor. He returned to his desk and threw himself into his desk chair. Mudd's eyes were rimmed in red, and he looked haggard beneath his tan.

“What are you working on with him?”

“None of your goddamned business.”

“Just wondering. Seems like a coincidence. By the way, I thought I saw you at Fisherman's Wharf the other day. How do you know Professor Gossen?”

“Annie, you're a pain in the butt. Always have been. Your mouth's too goddamned big and your nose is just as long.”

What could I say? I didn't like the man, but he was not altogether lacking in judgment.

“You came here to ask me about the architects I work with?”

“No. I came to ask if you were planning to build a development on cemetery land.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Wouldn't you have to buy the land first?”

He stared at me, and his phone rang again.

“You're a busy boy, Billy.”

“No shit, Sherlock. So you'll understand when I tell you I don't have time to chat. I'm not endangering any historical buildings, I'm just going about my business making a living. Maybe you should do the same and leave me alone.”

“Did you know Cindy Tanaka?”

“Get the fuck out of here,” he hissed, a sound more threatening than his bellow. He grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me toward the door. The Latino man stopped sawing, but made no move to intervene. “I'm a happily married man. Now stay out of my goddamned business.”

I blinked in the sunshine. “How 'bout you guys?” I called out to the workmen loading the truck. “Any of you like to contribute to a fund-raiser for women's equality in the trades?”

No one spoke. I took that as a no.

Back on the road, I realized Billy had not denied knowing Cindy Tanaka, only that he had done anything wrong. Since Billy described himself as a “happily married man,” it seemed doubtful he was planning to dump Mrs. Mudd and the mini-Muddites to run off with a graduate student. Billy made my stomach heave but I imagined he seemed masculine and confident compared to the pasty academics Cindy spent most of her time with. Otherwise intelligent young women fell for married sleazoids every day. So perhaps the suicide scenario was plausible.

But suppose Cindy had mentioned to Billy her conversations with Mrs. Henderson and her suspicions about
La Fornarina
? It had been my experience that older men don't pay much attention to what young women said, but what if he had put two and two together and realized that if the columbarium possessed a genuine masterpiece, they would be fully independent and have no need of possible real estate deals? Would he have been ruthless enough to kill Cindy in order to ensure her silence? Could he have tricked Mrs. Henderson into eating a Twinkie?

I found myself heading for Cindy's apartment, wondering if the garbage had been picked up.

The building looked exactly as it had the other day. It was unsettling to think that the death of a young woman had so little effect on everything around her. I circled to the rear of the duplex. A large green Dumpster smelled like sour milk, rotting vegetables, and day-old Pampers.

Shawna pulled up on her bike just as I was standing on tiptoe, peering over the metal side into the abyss. Behind her was another girl, this one with white-blond hair astride a bright pink Barbie bike.

Every neighborhood should have such a ten-year-old squad on patrol.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” Shawna's solemn eyes watched me. “This is my best friend, Hannah. Whatcha doin'?”

“I think something valuable might have been thrown away by accident.”

“You goin' in there?” Hannah asked, a frown worrying her pale forehead.

Not if I could help it. “I'll pay you a dollar to go in for me.”

“No way,” Hannah laughed.

Shawna looked disapproving. “You crazy, lady.”

“Five dollars?”

“Mama said not to take money from strangers,” Shawna said with the air of an outraged ethics professor. “Plus, it's stinky in there.”

She was right. It ranked pretty high on the noxious fumes quotient.

Two teenage boys ambled over. They wore jeans that hung loose and low, and huge T-shirts that fell to their knees. Their hands were shoved deep in their pockets in what I could only assume was an effort to keep their pants from falling down around their ankles.