Where Echoes Live (15 page)

I asked, “How long have you and Mr. Erickson been married?”

“Seven years.”

“Had you known him long beforehand?”

“I … What does this have to do with his death?”

“Seven years is a relatively short time span. People can be married dozens of years and not know all that much about each other's past.”

“I see what you mean, but I'd known Mick for quite a while before we married. He and his former wife lived next door to my former husband and me in Mill Valley; our divorces and remarriage caused one of those little neighborhood scandals.” She laughed nervously. “I'd say I know him as well as it's possible to know another person. Or I thought I did.”

“About the second set of identification Mr. Erickson was carrying—Franklin Tarbeaux's—had you ever heard the name before?”

“Never.” But her face tensed and she looked away. Lying, and as I'd suspected, with difficulty.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure!”

“Did your husband have an interest in history—the Old West, perhaps?”

“I don't see what—”

“Frank Tarbeaux was a frontier gambler and con man. Apparently your husband adopted a slightly altered version of his name as a sort of joke.”

Now she looked surprised. After a moment she said, “Well, Mick likes to gamble. We go to Tahoe several times a year, and in his den he has a collection of books on the history of gambling. I suppose that's where he got the name.” She paused, reflecting on what she'd just said. “It's so hard to speak of him in the past tense. I keep expecting him to walk through the door and put our lives back together the way they were before….”

“I understand. And I'll try to finish as quickly as I can. What I'd like to do is run some names by you—people and places your husband might have mentioned.”

“Go ahead.”

“Ned Sanderman.”

“No.”

“Transpacific Corporation.”

“That's one of Mick's biggest clients.”

“Lionel Ong.”

“Of course. Lionel
is
Transpacific.”

“Were Mr. Ong and your husband friends or merely business associates?”

“More business associates. In the past five years I think we've attended at most three dinner parties at Lionel's house.”

“Did your husband ever mention Stone Valley or Prom-iseville?”

“… Not that I recall.”

“You're not aware that Transpacific has recently bought land in Stone Valley and plans to reopen an old gold mine there?”

“I … may have heard something to that effect.”

“What about Earl Hopwood? Is that name familiar?”

She closed her eyes. After a moment she shook her head wearily. She was even paler now, and the shadows under her eyes had taken on darker definition. I felt sorry for the woman and would have backed off, had it not been for the undercurrent of falseness I sensed in some of her responses.

I said, “Just a few more questions, Mrs. Erickson. Have you ever heard of the California Coalition for Environmental Preservation?”

She opened her eyes, nodded. “I'm a member of the Sierra Club, so I receive their solicitations.”

“What about the Friends of Tufa Lake?”

“I've seen the name.”

“Heino Ripinsky?”

“What on earth is …What does ecology have to do with this?”

“The environmentalists want to stop the Transpacific mining project. Did your husband have any technical knowledge of gold mining?”

“I … I suppose he did. He had a degree from Colorado School of Mines.”

“But he never discussed the Transpacific project—at least in any way that indicated he might be connected with it?”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands over her face. Through her fingers she said, “I don't recall. I …just don't recall.”

1 switched off my tape recorder. Enough was enough, I thought. “Mrs. Erickson, I'm sorry for putting you through this.”

She shook her head and made a gesture that said no apology was necessary. Then she stood, glancing jumpily around the spun-sugar room as if its walls were closing in on her. Without a word she turned and ran toward the stairway.

Feeling like what my niece Kelley calls a “horrible sadistic monster,” I packed the recorder in my briefcase and prepared to leave. The Filipino maid appeared in the doorway, her face impassive, waiting to see me out.

Before I crossed toward her, I let my gaze wander around Margot Erickson's unlivable living room. There was emptiness here, and sterility, and something else…. Fear? Yes, fear. Its pervasive presence made the pretty room as formidable a prison as the one visible in the distance through the windows.

Cross-Cultural Concepts occupied a handsome suite on the ninth floor of Embarcadero Two. Like the Erickson town house, its decor was sterile and expensive, but the reception area and those offices that I glimpsed exuded masculinity in what had to be a calculated effort to reassure clients from male-dominated Pacific Rim countries. The forest green carpeting, dark paneling, and leather furnishings seemed to say that in spite of being an American firm, and therefore subject to all sorts of foolish notions about equal opportunity, Cross-Cultural Concepts knew who
really
held the reins of world commerce. Connie Grobe, Mick Erickson's secretary, complemented the offices perfectly. While she didn't look masculine, her severely styled dark hair and tailored clothing would have better suited a clerical robot than a woman. The fashion magazines say that the “power suit” of the eighties has given way to a new softness and femininity in clothing now that we women—so they claim—no longer need to prove ourselves.

Connie Grobe apparently didn't pay attention to their opinions, and as I followed her down the corridor to her office, I reflected that her thinking might be justified. What with the recent court reversals on abortion rights and comparable pay for comparable work, I was beginning to suspect that soon we'd have to start proving a few things all over again….

Grobe's office was a small cubicle on an inside wall: a bank of file cabinets, a desk, and two chairs. No window; maybe the powers that be at Cross-Cultural thought secretaries really were robots with no need for light or fresh air. As I sat in her visitor's chair I experienced a residue of the anger I'd felt when I worked part-time as a guard for one of the city's large security firms while putting myself through college. Every Friday I'd go in to pick up my meager paycheck and see the clerical staff stuffed into tiny, airless cubicles, while the spacious windowed offices of the bosses—who were usually out in the field or wining and dining prospective clients—stood empty. It was back then that I'd vowed I'd never become the victim of a system that abused its clerical workers and then tossed them out the same way it did pencil stubs and bent paper clips.

When she'd settled herself on the other side of the desk, Grobe folded her hands and asked, “May I see some identification, Ms. McCone?”

I slid my leather I.D. folder across to her. She studied its contents for a moment before handing it back. “And is there someone on the police force whom I may contact to verify that you are working with them on the investigation of Mr. Erickson's death?”

Swallowing my annoyance—after all, the woman had a right to be cautious—I said, “You can contact Inspector Bart Wallace on the Homicide Squad of the SFPD. Or Detective Kristen Lark at the Mono County Sheriff's Department.”

She made notations on a scratch pad but didn't ask for phone numbers. After staring at the sheet for a moment, she sighed and ripped it off, balling it up before tossing it into the wastebasket. At my surprised looked she said, “Excessive caution was something required by Mick Erickson, Ms. McCone. But Mick is dead, so it doesn't matter anymore, does it?”

“I guess not. Why was he excessively cautious?”

“Many of our clients are major Pacific Rim corporations. The political ramifications of their business dealings in the United States can be extremely widespread and serious. Others are in sensitive positions, such as a number of our Hong Kong firms who wish to move their assets here before the territory reverts to the People's Republic in nineteen ninety-seven.”

“Transpacific Corporation is one of those?”

“Not precisely. Transpacific is an American corporation. Their CEO, Mr. Lionel Ong, is a naturalized citizen and a graduate of Harvard Business School.”

“But they
are
funded by Hong Kong interests?”

She hesitated. “When I said that excessive caution doesn't matter anymore, I meant as it applies to Mick Erickson, not our clients. As long as Cross-Cultural is a legal entity, I'm bound to protect them.”

“That's fair. Can we talk about Mr. Erickson's supposed trip to Japan, then? His wife tells me he was presumed to be conducting a series of seminars for an important client.”

Connie Grobe's mouth tightened, for exactly what reason I wasn't sure. “The client was Sumeri International, in Osaka.”

“And Mr. Erickson's travel arrangements were made through this office?”

“Travel arrangements, shipment of materials for the seminars, all the attendant details.”

“Did Mr. Erickson contact you after his departure?”

“Yes, by telephone upon his arrival in Japan. At least that's where he claimed he was.”

“And after that?”

“He told me when he called that his plans had changed, that he would be out in the field at their various locations. If I needed to get in touch with him I was to contact the Sumeri office here in the city.”

“Not their offices in Osaka?”

“No.”

“Did that strike you as odd?”

“A little, but Mick often conducted his business in unorthodox ways.”

“Did you have need to contact him through Sumeri's local office?”

“No. Mick travels frequently; the office is set up to run well without him. I would have needed to get in touch only in case of an emergency.”

And he'd counted on that, I thought. “May I have the name of the person you were to contact here?”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “I suppose it would do no harm. His name is Mr. Hiroshi Kamada.”

I made a note of it. “When Mr. Erickson called in while traveling, did he typically use a credit card?”

“If he was in an airport or some other public place, yes. Otherwise the calls were billed to his hotel room, or he called at the client's expense.”

“So unless he was in transit and used his credit card, you would have no immediate way of knowing the origin of the call?”

“That's correct.”

“This trip to Japan—had it been planned for a long time?”

“Actually it came up rather suddenly.” She bit her lower lip, pain evident in her eyes. “Our staff worked very hard in overtime to prepare the materials for the seminars. Mr. Erickson canceled two lectures for important clients here in order to make the trip. Finding out he was merely covering up some deception makes me angry. Angry and terribly sad.”

His wife wasn't the only one Erickson had betrayed, I thought. Somehow Connie Grobe's self-proclaimed anger and sorrow were more poignant than the leashed grief and latent fear I'd sensed in Margot Erickson.

“Ms. Grobe,” I said, “in a homicide investigation it's often necessary to focus on very personal aspects of the victim's life. Do you have any problem with discussing what you know of Mr. Erickson's private affairs?”

She considered. “No, I don't,” she replied after a moment. “Mick's dead, and the important thing is to find out who killed him. What do you want to know?”

“Margot Erickson told me she and her husband viewed the trip to Japan as a trial separation. Were you aware of that?”

Again her mouth tightened; this time I realized that it was a reflexive reaction to the mention of Margot. “I could hardly help but be aware of it. Mick had been sleeping on the couch in his office for a month. I'd say that was the trial separation.”

“He slept here for an entire month? Why didn't he go to a hotel or rent an apartment?”

“I suppose he was hoping they would work things out. And, of course, there was the problem of finances. That town house in Barbary Park is outrageously expensive; when Mick and Margot bought it, mortgage interest rates were very high. They planned to refinance when the rates dropped, but in the meantime it was costing more than he could afford.”

“Are you saying that Mick Erickson was in financial trouble?”

“Not really. If anything, his finances were about to improve. You see, this firm was originally a joint partnership between Mick and his former wife. When they divorced, she moved back east to establish a similar company, and he had to buy out her interest in this one. He made his final payment to her a few months ago, and without that expense, his financial position was bound to get better.”

“I see. Let's get back to the Erickson marriage for a moment. All Mrs. Erickson would say about the separation is that it was strictly a family matter.”

Grobe nodded. “That's all Mick would say, too.”

“In your opinion, what did they mean?”

“Perhaps something to do with having or not having children.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Mick and Margot were a couple, not a family in the sense the word is normally used. They'd both been married before, but neither had children.”

“Did either want them?”

Grobe's gaze grew introspective. “I think Mick did,” she said. “I'm a single mother; my son Jon is ten. Mick had season tickets for the Giants games, and he took Jon along a few times. Both of them really seemed to enjoy the time they spent together.”

“Did Margot go with them?”

“No. Jon used her ticket; she seldom went, because she hates baseball.”