The Cheshire Cat's Eye Read online

  The Cheshire Cat’s Eye

  By Marcia Muller

  For Bill Pronzini and one other individual, who shall remain nameless

  Copyright 1983 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  Ebook Copyright 2011 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-60998-657-5

  42 Whitecap Drive

  North Kingstown, RI 02852

  Visit us online at www.audiogo.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  1.

  The row of Victorian houses loomed dark in the early June fog. I put my hand on the cold iron railing and started up the stairway from the street. As I pushed through the overgrown front yard, blackberry vines reached out to tear at my clothing.

  Strange, I thought, that there were no lights. The houses were under renovation, but surely Jake would have brought a flashlight to the one where he had asked me to meet him.

  I went up the marble porch steps and felt for a doorbell. Nothing. Finally I got out my pencil flash and shone its beam around the leaded-glass doors. The bell hung on wires, broken. I started to knock, and the door swung inward.

  I paused in the high-ceilinged vestibule. There was no sound. Maybe my friend had gotten tired of waiting; I was later than I’d said I would be. I decided to see if he’d left me a note.

  I went through an arch and crossed the parlor toward the back of the house. Behind it was another room with an ornate fireplace, and beyond that another archway and blackness. I stepped through the archway and waited for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark. When they were, I inched toward a faintly outlined door at the rear. My foot hit something soft.

  The back of my neck prickled. I turned on the flash again. It went out. I punched the faulty switch harder and shone the beam down, at the floor. At a man’s prone body.

  I recoiled, my heart pounding.

  “Jake,” I whispered. “Oh, no. Jake!”

  Even at a glance, even in this light, I could tell my friend was dead. He lay on his side in what common sense told me must be blood. Only it didn’t smell like blood.

  My fingers clutched the flash. I stood for a moment, several moments. It seemed like hours. Finally I knelt and dipped my finger into the pool of liquid. It was thick and sticky. Paint. Bright-red house paint.

  I straightened, wiping my finger on my jeans before I realized what I was doing.

  “Oh, Jake,” I said, louder. My words echoed in the cavernous room, and then the old house enveloped me in ponderous silence. From outside came the bellow of foghorns on San Francisco Bay.

  I backed toward the wall, my eyes still on the body, and fumbled with a light switch. Nothing happened. When I cast my flash at the high ceiling it illuminated an ornate plaster rosette, but no fixture. The big Victorian had obviously been stripped.

  Still, I didn’t need a second look to make sure who the paint-smeared victim was. Jake Kaufmann, the friend who had so urgently requested I meet him here – my flashlight showed enough of his tanned face and black hair to identify him. Any closer investigation I’d leave for the police.

  I backtracked to the hallway, glad to escape the presence of the corpse. Why, I thought, would anyone want to kill a gentle man like Jake Kaufmann? And why had he insisted we meet in this deserted house?

  Stepping onto the porch, I spotted a phone booth on the far corner below. I ran down the steps and through the maze of wild vegetation to the stairway that scaled the retaining wall between there and the street. By the time I reached the booth my heart was pounding again.

  Reflexively I checked my watch. It was 9:00 P.M. I dialed the SFPD and asked for Greg Marcus, head of Homicide. The lieutenant was off duty. Did I want to leave a message? No, I’d call him at home. I fished in my bag for my address book and redialed. He answered on the first ring.

  “Greg,” I said, “it’s Sharon McCone.”

  “Hey, how’s my favorite private eye?”

  “Not so good, Greg. I’ve found a friend of mine murdered.”

  There was a pause. “Aren’t you a little corpse-happy lately?” He was referring to two murder cases that I’d recently been involved with in his jurisdiction.

  “Greg, I’m not kidding.”

  “I didn’t think you were.” His tone became crisp. “Where are you?”

  I gave him the address of the Victorian on Steiner Street.

  “Stay put. A squad car will be along, and I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up and stared at the phone for a moment before I got out another dime. Even when you’re dating the head of Homicide, I told myself, it’s wise to have your attorney there when you’ve found a body. And since my lawyer was also my boss at All Souls Legal Cooperative, I knew he’d want to be present. I dialed and asked Hank Zahn to come at once.

  Outside the booth, I looked up at the house, whose turret and gables were shrouded in the fog. Its neighbors on the hill were similarly dark. The street was deserted, save for a lone black man who gave me a hostile glance as he passed. Pulling my jacket closer, I started toward the row of Victorians as a siren began to wail. The man quickly stepped into the shadows.

  Two uniformed men sprang from the squad car when it pulled up. “You the one reported the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Inside, third room from the front.” I gestured up at the house.

  One of the men climbed the stairway in the retaining wall. The other remained, his eyes on me. “Your identification, please.”

  I produced my California private investigator’s license. The officer’s eyebrows raised as he examined it. “Private op, huh?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “How’d you happen to be here?”

  I sat down on the cold cement steps. “I’ll talk to Lieutenant Marcus when he gets here.”

  “You’d better talk now.”

  I shook my head and leaned back, my elbows on the step behind me. Apparently the cop thought better of pressuring me, because he withdrew to the squad car.

  I tried to focus my observations and movements since I’d first arrived at the house, but the picture of Jake lying paint-smeared and dead kept flashing before me as the lab crew and inspectors arrived. I was unsuccessfully fighting off the image when a blue BMW pulled up and Greg Marcus hurried up the sidewalk.

  He was a big blond-haired man wearing Levi’s and a suede jacket. His bushy eyebrows ??, several shades darker than his hair, were drawn together in a frown. I stood, and he reached out a hand to steady me.

  “You all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right!” His concern served to sharpen my professional rivalry, already finely honed by our past encounters.

  “Well, that’s good,” he snapped back. “I wouldn’t want to see you with your computer rattled. What have you got on your face?”

  “My face?”

  “Yeah.” He traced a line on my forehead with his thumb. “It’s red.”

  “Oh.” I felt the sticky encrustation. “It’s probably paint. I must have rubbed it there without noticing. The body’s in a pool of hous
e paint.”

  “And you managed to get into it, too. Where is it?”

  The uniformed officer came down the stairway. “Dining room, Lieutenant. Back of the first floor. The electricity’s off, but the lab boys are setting up some lights.”

  Greg nodded and turned to me. “Stay here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s the spirit.” He grinned and disappeared up the stairs.

  I turned to see a taxi pull up to the curb. A lanky figure emerged. Hank Zahn, my boss. He paid the driver and came toward me, tugging at his trenchcoat, which enveloped his body like a scarecrow’s clothes.

  “What happened?” Hank’s eyes, behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses, were anxious.

  “Like I said on the phone, I found someone dead.”

  “Who?”

  Before I could answer, Greg returned, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Okay, the lab boys have rigged up some portable lights in there. You come up with me, and we’ll go over what happened.” He added, to Hank, “What are you doing here?” He and Hank were old friends.

  Hank scratched furiously at his Brillo pad of light-brown hair and glanced at me.

  “I asked him to come,” I said.

  “Why? You didn’t kill the victim, did you?”

  “Of course not! But he is – was – one of our clients.”

  Hank’s eyes widened behind his thick glasses. “Who?”

  “Do you remember Jake Kaufmann?”

  “Of course. The guy who paints the Victorians. He’s been a client for years.”

  “Right. He called me earlier –”

  “Wait a minute,” Greg interrupted. “Start from the beginning. The victim’s name is Kaufmann?”

  I nodded. “Jake Kaufmann.” Around us, the scene had exploded into a whirl of people and activity. A crowd had materialized, drawn by the lights and sirens. “Jake’s what they call a color consultant. He specializes in painting Victorians that have been restored. He uses bright colors and intricate patterns. They’re flamboyant. A lot of people detest them. Not, I don’t think, enough to drown him in a pool of his own paint, if that’s what happened.” I realized I was rambling and reined myself in. “Anyway, he called me this afternoon and asked that I meet him here.”

  “Why?” Greg asked.

  “I’m not sure. All he said was that he had found out something that frightened him and he wanted me as a witness.”

  “Why you?”

  “We were friends. I’d done some investigation for him before. A strange business that was, too.”

  Hank nodded emphatically.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “he thought he could trust me.”

  “And?”

  “And I told him I had an evening conference at All Souls, so I couldn’t make it at seven-thirty, when he asked. I said I’d be here as soon as I could. Only…” I paused, sick. My lateness might have precipitated Jake’s murder.

  “Okay,” Greg said, glancing at a patrolman who was coming down the stairs in the retaining wall, “they’re set up in there, so let’s go over exactly what happened when you arrived. You,” he added to Hank, “can wait here.”

  Relief showed plainly on Hank’s face.

  Greg steered me up the stairway. “Sure you’ll be okay, hotshot?” His mouth quirked up sardonically, but his eyes were kind.

  I squeezed his arm. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Good.” He nodded approvingly.

  We continued up the walk to the columned entry, brushed aside runaway vegetation that reached out to touch us. From inside came a murmur of voices.

  Greg said, “You came in here, through the front door?”

  “Yes.” I ignored my apprehension about seeing Jake’s body again and concentrated on relating the facts. We crossed the hallway to the arch and entered the parlor. In the light that now streamed from the rear of the house, I saw another tiled fireplace with a high mantel. “I went through here, to the back parlor, and then to the dining room.” Greg followed me. Our footsteps clattered on the bare floors.

  At the archway to the dining room, I stopped, sucking in my breath. The harsh glare of the portable floodlights made the red paint a thousand times more garish, Jake’s pallor even more ghastly. A ladder, which the beam of my flashlight hadn’t picked up earlier, stood near the body, and an overturned paint can and brush lay on the floor.

  “Maybe it was an accident,” I said in a small voice.

  “No way.” Greg stepped around me. “I’ll show you.”

  Reluctantly, I followed him. Jake lay with one arm outstretched, the other crumpled under him. His khaki work clothes were splattered with red.

  “See this?” Greg indicated a discolored indentation behind Jake’s left ear. “There’s no possibility that could have been caused by a fall from a ladder, given the way he’s lying. I guess it was made with the proverbial blunt instrument. And, if you look around, you’ll see other things that are inconsistent with an accident theory.”

  I looked. “Such as the fact that he would have been painting in the dark.”

  “Right.”

  “And that he would have been painting a wall that was unprepared.” I indicated several deep cracks in the plaster. “And,” I added, “that he was using exterior paint on an interior wall.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Good Lord.” I stared down at the dead man. “Then somebody tried to fake an accident.”

  “Somebody who doesn’t know much about the painting trade.”

  “But why?”

  Greg shrugged and went to talk with one of the lab technicians.

  I continued to stare down. The floor was littered with chunks of plaster, strips of wallpaper, and sawdust. The wainscoting and leaded-glass cabinets had been prepared for refinishing. In the rubble at my feet were bits of multicolored glass and an ornate tubular metal fitting, the socket of a broken light bulb protruding from it. Troubled, I glanced up at the rosette on the ceiling. There was no evidence of a light fixture having hung there.

  Greg returned to me. “Show me where you touched the paint.”

  I pointed to a spot where the surface was disturbed.

  “Touch anything else?”

  “The wall, and the light switch.”

  He nodded briskly. “That’s all I need from you now, but I want a statement tonight. There’s a place around the corner called Johnny’s Kansas City Barbecue that’s reasonably clean and safe, for this neighborhood. Wait for me there, and I’ll drive you to the Hall.”

  “Okay. Hank will keep me company.”

  Greg turned back to the technicians, kicking aside the small metal fitting on the floor as he did so. Obviously it wasn’t a clue – to him. I reached down and pocketed it.

  2.

  The sign in the windows of Johnny’s Kansas City Barbecue said OPEN, but there were no customers at the oilcloth-covered tables. When Hank and I entered, a big black man with grizzled hair emerged from a swinging door at the rear, wiping his hands on his stained chef’s apron.

  “We’re not serving anymore,” he said, “but the bar’s still open.”

  Hank looked questioningly at me. I nodded. A drink sounded like a good idea. We climbed onto high-backed stools, and the man placed cocktail napkins in front of us.

  “What’ll it be?”

  Hank ordered scotch on the rocks, and I ordered bourbon. Our host poured and withdrew to what presumably was the kitchen.

  Hank raised his glass. “Here’s to the memory of a pretty nice guy.”

  I returned the toast and sipped, melancholy washing through me with the liquor. “Jake was nice, dammit.”

  “He was a real craftsman, the kind you don’t find much anymore. I remember once he suggested he do a color plan for All Souls. He said homes should be cheerful, human habitations, not dingy prisons of wood and stone.”

  While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a prison, the big brown Victorian that housed All Souls was drab. “So why didn’t you do it?”

  Hank
shrugged. “It wasn’t in the budget.”

  Nothing extra ever was. A legal-services plan that charged its members on a sliding fee scale seldom had large cash reserves.

  I was silent for a moment.

  Hank asked, “You dated Jake for a while, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. It was when I was breaking off with my musician friend down south. Jake was gentle, understanding ??…” My voice choked up and, to cover it, I sipped my drink.