“Does anyone in the building strike you as homophobic?”
The women looked at each other, then shrugged. Cooper said, “Nobody's treated us any differently because we're lesbians.”
“When you get right down to it,” Naylor said, “we're pretty congenial, considering what a mixed bag we are. Karen and I are lucky to have gotten an apartment here.”
I hoped when this was over Ted and Neal could continue to share in their feelings of good fortune.
“Neal's good people,” George Chu told me. He leaned against the wall in the hallway outside his apartment, still sweating from an evening run.
“Well, somebody doesn't think so. Are you sure you haven't noticed anything, such as one of the other tenants making derogatory comments about him?”
“No, and if I had, I'd've told them what they could do with their comments. Anybody who messes with either of them is gonna have to mess with me first.”
Chu's toughness and protectiveness toward Ted and Neal seemed put on, for someone who earlier had admitted to only a nodding acquaintance. Was it a cover-up?
Miles Furth was in his eighties and walked with a carved wooden cane topped by a brass eagle's head. “I'm not comfortable with homosexuality, and I don't like the lifestyle,” he told me, “but they've got as much right to be what they are as I do to be a cantankerous old geezer. If I catch whoever's doing this to Mr. Osborn—you see this cane?” He waved it.
I nodded.
“If I catch whoever it is, young lady, the eagle will have landed—on his head!”
“One of the tenants? No way,” Norman Katz said. “I'm gay, and nobody's bothered me.”
“I notice you live alone. Perhaps whoever it is isn't aware of your sexual orientation.”
“Well, I don't post a sign on the door with a picture of a woman in a circle with a line through it, but I don't smuggle my dates up the fire escape, either.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Four months.”
“Whoever's harassing Neal may not have turned his attention to you yet.”
“Now, there's a cheerful thought.”
I handed him my card. “If anybody bothers you, give us a call.”
I couldn't have been sleeping very deeply, because it was the unnatural silence in my house, rather than a noise, that woke me. The forced-air heat, which I'd turned up when I came home, no longer hummed. The ailing refrigerator no longer ticked. I'd started the dishwasher before going to bed, but it wasn't sloshing and pulsing. I pushed up on one elbow, looked at the clock. No red digital numbers gleaming in the darkness.
Power outage or … ?
I sat up, parted the mini-blinds above the bed with two fingers. Lights showed in the Halls’ house next door. I looked through the bedroom door to the window facing the Curley house on the other side; a small mist-diffused spot shone down on the footpath beside it. The entire street was on the same power grid; when my electricity went out, so did everybody else's.
Reaching for my robe, I slipped out of bed. Put the .357 that lay on the nightstand into one pocket and went to get a flashlight. As an afterthought I took my house keys from where I'd dumped them on the kitchen table; no sense in leaving the house unlocked while I went outside.
When I stepped onto the backyard deck, the mist was so thick I could barely see beyond the railing. That could be either an advantage or a disadvantage. I shut the door quietly, stood watching and listening. Nothing moved, and all I heard was a dog barking in the distance. Finally I felt my way across the deck to the stairs and down them. At their foot I ducked under the deck and moved across the uneven ground from support post to support post, stubbing my bare toe once on the stack of firewood against the house's wall and narrowly avoiding piercing the sole of my foot on a rake I'd left there. Finally I reached the opposite corner, around which the gas meter and electrical panel were located.
There I stopped, feeling a presence. The woman could be hiding in the backyard, but more likely she was in the alley between the house and the fence. Mist was trapped there; all I could make out was the diffused glow of the Curleys’ spot-light. If I ventured around the corner to the utilities hookups, I'd be placing myself at risk.
So flush her out.
I glanced over at the fence, beyond which the Curleys’ German shepherds slept in their dog run. Felt my way back along the wall to where I kept a collection of empty terra-cotta flowerpots. I located a medium-sized one, carried it back to the corner of the house, and heaved it over the fence.
Smash! And all hell broke loose. Growling and bellowing and snarling as the shepherds were up and alert to protect their territory. Within fifteen seconds a window opened and Will Curley, an early-rising trucker who cherished his sleeping time, shouted, “Shut up, you noisy buggers!” The dogs continued to bark, but in spite of them I heard footsteps running down my alley toward the front sidewalk.
I was around the corner immediately, running after her. I couldn't see her, but I heard her feet pounding on the pavement. The sound of our combined footsteps set other neighborhood dogs to barking. Lights flashed on in the house across from me. And then her footsteps stopped and a car door slammed somewhere down the block.
I paused, waiting for its engine to start. Nothing. My neighbor was out on his front porch now. I called softly, “It's okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” I surveyed the cars parked along the street. She was hiding in one of them—
Roar of an engine starting, and then a car near the Church Street end of the block shot out of a space and around the corner. Dark-colored, possibly a Japanese model, no light over the license plate.
“Dammit!” I exclaimed, saw my neighbor was looking alarmed. “A prowler,” I told him. “Won't be back.”
He nodded as if he only half believed me and went back into his house.
I retreated into the alley, took out the flashlight, and shone it on the utilities hookup; the cover of the electrical panel was gone, propped against the foundation. The main switch had been pulled to off.
I yanked the switch to on, decided to leave reattaching the cover till morning, and went inside. The heat hummed once again; the fridge ticked; the dishwasher sloshed and pulsed. In the bedroom the digital clock's red numbers flashed 12:17
A.M.
She'd been so close, only yards away while I slept, and now she was gone, her night's mission fulfilled. She'd probably go home and sleep soundly, while I wouldn't close my eyes till exhaustion overtook me around dawn.
I went into the living room and huddled on the couch, watching the dying embers of the fire I'd made earlier. After midnight, close to five in the morning in South America. Where was Hy, and what was he doing? Was he thinking of me?
Our connection was dead, short-circuited by our separate crises. I'd felt alone many times in my life, but never as alone as this.
C
harlotte and Mick had found two of the married male tenants at the Plum Alley building somewhat suspect, and I added George Chu's name to the list. Then I asked my nephew to run background checks on all three. After dealing with some routine correspondence, I called Mona Woods for another appointment and set off for Tel Hill to do more digging.
When I arrived at the building I found a heavyset Nordic-looking man tending to the bedding plants under the glass ceiling of the courtyard. In spite of the rain and the cold, gusting wind, he was bare chested and sweating. I introduced myself and asked if he was the gardener.
“Yes, miss.” He stood and held out a dirt-caked hand, then thought better of it. “Bud Larsen. I take care of three buildings on this side of the hill.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Going on ten years. It's a grand old place, isn't it?”
“Certainly is. I suppose you know the people who live here pretty well.”
“Some of them.”
“I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”
Larsen frowned, white brows pulling into a straight line. “I don't know. Mrs. Woods, the manager, might not like me talking about her tenants to a stranger.”
“I have her permission to ask around; you can check with her, if you like.”
“Oh, that's okay. What is this, some kind of survey?”
“No.” I handed him one of my cards. “My associates and I are trying to find out who's been harassing Neal Osborn.”
“Osborn? Bearded guy, apartment 305?”
“Right.”
“Somebody's been bothering him? How?”
“Threatening notes and phone calls, mainly.”
“Why?”
“Because he's gay.”
Larsen thought that over. “Well, if that's so, aren't they bothering the other guy—Smalley—too?”
“The threats, for whatever reason, are directed only at Mr. Osborn. But his partner's been bothered plenty, believe me.”
“Huh.” The gardener hesitated, then motioned to a green wrought-iron bench near the elevator. “Let's take a load off. What d'you want to ask me?”
I sat next to him. Up close, he smelled of a combination of freshly turned earth, rain, and sweat. “I'd like your personal impressions of a few of the tenants. Start with George Chu.”
“Young Chinese guy, jogger. Works for an insurance company. I don't much like him.”
“Why not?”
“Has an attitude. Superior.”
“How so?”
“Just in general. Like he knows something the rest of us don't.”
“Anything else?”
Larsen shook his head.
“What about Doug and Marlene Kerr?” One of the married couples.
“He's a banker type. She's pretty and shops a lot. He hits her.”
“How do you know that?”
“A lot of the time she's got bruises, bad ones. She tries to cover them with makeup and dark glasses, but it doesn't work. People talk about hearing them fight.”
“Have the police ever been called?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Any other violent episodes on the part of Doug Kerr?”
“No. His wife is the one who sets him off.”
“Anything else about either of them?”
“Uh-uh. They keep to themselves, hiding the family secret.”
“The other tenants I'd like to ask you about are Al and Doris Mercado.”
“I like her a lot. She's a gardener too, has helped to start a couple of neighborhood gardens here on the hill. Him … he's okay. Ex-cop. Works in security now. Has a lot of guns. Spent an hour last month showing them to me.”
“Responsible gun owner?”
“Yeah. Keeps them locked up but handy. Pity the poor bastard who ever tries to break into his apartment and gets caught, though. Mercado don't like people.”
“Any particular kind of people?”
“Most all of them—he don't discriminate.”
“Does he get along with the other tenants?”
Larsen thought, shrugged. “I suppose so. The only disagreement I remember between him and anybody else is the time he threw a rock at Karen Cooper's cat because it was prowling around the garbage bins. Karen saw him do it, threatened to call the SPCA. He apologized quick enough. Guess he don't like animals, either.”
Or maybe he didn't like lesbians—and gays.
Mona Woods had left a note for me on her door: she'd have to reschedule our appointment because she'd forgotten this was her day to help serve lunch at the San Francisco Senior Center. I smiled at the remarkable energy of the woman, who was probably serving people years her junior. Would I be like her in my seventies? I hoped so.
Since I was there in the building, I decided to check with the guard on Ted and Neal's apartment and took the stairs to the third floor. Tony Casella, a young single father whom I'd used on jobs before, was glad to see me: he'd just received word that his small son had gotten sick at day care and Tony needed to pick him up, but RKI couldn't get a replacement here till three. Could he take off right away? Of course, I told him. Then I let myself into the apartment.
I wasn't sure what I expected to find there. I'd been over it thoroughly, but that was more than a week ago. It wouldn't hurt, I supposed, to take another look around.
In the living room I stood still and did just that. The apartment was orderly and clean, the door that Ted had shot covered in fresh-smelling plywood. A stack of mail addressed to Neal sat on the kitchen counter.
Neal. Neither he nor his car had been spotted here in the city or in any of the nearby jurisdictions. As time passed, Ted had become increasingly withdrawn and silent—poised on the edge of panic, I supposed. And I had to admit I was seriously worried.
A key rattled in the front-door lock. Interesting, so soon after the guard had left. I drew back into the kitchen. Maybe I'd gotten lucky; maybe it was the perpetrator, come to leave another grotesque gift.
Footsteps came along the hall. I slipped my gun from my bag, held it ready.
Neal appeared, a small duffel bag in hand.
“Thank God!” I exclaimed.
He whirled, focused on the gun, and froze. Then he let out a whistle of relief. “Shar! For God's sake!”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course, why wouldn't I be? What're you doing here? Is Ted all right?”
“Ted's fine. Where've you been?”
“Staying at a bed-and-breakfast up the coast. What is this?”
“We've been so worried, and we asked the police to put out a pickup order on you, but—”
“On
me?
Why?”
“It's a long story—”
“Tell me anyway. I need to know what's going on.”
“Okay, sit down and I will.”
“I can't believe it. I just plain can't believe it.” Neal got up from his chair and began to pace. “He kept all of that from me? From you?”
“You've got to understand—at first he didn't want to burden you, and then he thought he was in too deep.”
“What does that say about our relationship? Did he think I'd break up with him just because he'd made a mistake?”
“Neal, Ted's not used to making mistakes. He's good at just about everything he does. I suspect he was angry with himself because he couldn't handle the situation, and he projected his own feelings onto you.”
“Well, he and I have some talking to do.”
“And I'd better cancel the pickup order on you.” I started for the phone. “I wonder why nobody spotted your car out at the coast?”