The McCone Files Read online

  “What do you mean, a rogue detective?”

  “The worse kind there is. A punslinger.”

  DEADLY FANTASIES

  “MS. McCONE, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not paranoid. One of them—my brother or my sister—is trying to kill me!”

  “Please, call me Sharon.” I said it to give myself time to think. The young woman seated across my desk at All Souls Legal Cooperative certainly sounded paranoid. My boss, Hank Zahn, had warned me about that when he’d referred her for private investigative services.

  “Let’s go over what you’ve told me, to make sure I’ve got it straight,” I said. “Six months ago you were living here in the Mission district and working as a counselor for emotionally disturbed teenagers. Then your father died and left you his entire estate, something in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars.”

  Laurie Newingham nodded and blew her nose. As soon as she’d come into my office she’d started sneezing. Allergies, she’d told me. To ease her watering eyes she’d popped out her contact lenses and stored them in their plastic case; in doing that she had spilled some of the liquid that the lenses soaked in over her fingers, than nonchalantly wiped them on her faded jeans. The gesture endeared her to me because I’m sloppy, too. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine this freshly scrubbed young woman—she was about ten years younger than I, perhaps twenty-five—possessing a fortune. With her trim, athletic body, and tanned, snub-nosed face, and carelessly styled blond hair, she looked like a high school cheerleader. But Winfield Newingham had owned much of San Francisco’s choice real estate, and Laurie had been the developer’s youngest—and apparently favorite—child.

  I went on. “Under the terms of the will, you were required to move back into the family home in St. Francis Wood. You’ve done so. The will stipulated that your brother Dan and sister Janet can remain there as long as they wish. So you’ve been living with them, and they’ve both been acting hostile because you inherited everything.”

  “Hostile? One of them wants to kill me! I keep having stomach cramps, throwing up—you know.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “I hate doctors! They’re always telling me there’s nothing wrong with me, when I know there is.”

  “The police, then?”

  “I like them a whole lot less than doctors. Besides, they wouldn’t believe me.” Now she took out an inhaler and breathed deeply from it.

  Asthma, as well as allergies, I thought. Wasn’t asthma sometimes psychosomatic? Could the vomiting and other symptoms be similarly rooted?

  “Either Dan or Janet is trying to poison me,” Laurie said, “because if I die, the estate reverts to them.”

  “Laurie,” I said, “why did your father leave everything to you?”

  “The will said it was because I’d gone out on my own and done something I believed in. Dan and Janet have always lived off him; the only jobs they’ve ever been able to hold down have been the ones Dad gave them.”

  “One more question: why did you come to All Souls?” My employer is a legal services plan for people who can’t afford the going rates.

  Laurie looked surprised. “I’ve always come here, since I moved to the Mission and started working as a counselor five years ago. I may be able to afford a downtown law firm, but I don’t trust them, any more now than I did when I inherited the money. Besides, I talked it over with Dolph, and he said it would be better to stick with a known quantity.”

  “Dolph?”

  “Dolph Edward. I’m going to marry him. He’s director of the guidance center where I used to work—still work, as a volunteer.”

  “That’s the Inner Mission Self-Help Center?”

  She nodded. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.” The center offered a wide range of social services to a mainly Hispanic clientele—including job placement, psychological counseling, and short term financial assistance. I’d heard that recently their programs had been drastically cut back due to lack of funding—as all too often happens in today’s arid political climate.

  “Then you know what my father meant about my having done something I believed in,” Laurie said. “The center’s a hopeless mess, of course; it’s never been very well organized. But it’s the kind of project I’d like my money to work for. After I marry Dolph I’ll help him realize his dreams effectively—and in the right way.”

  I nodded and studied her for a moment. She stared back anxiously. Laurie was emotionally ragged, I thought, and needed someone to look out for her. Besides, I identified with her in a way. At her age, I’d also been the cheerleader type, and I’d gone out of my own and done something I believed in, too.

  “Okay,” I said. “What I’ll do is talk with your brother and sister, feel the situation out. I’ll say you’ve applied for a volunteer position here, counseling clients with emotional problems, and that you gave their names as character references.”

  Her eyes brightened and some of the lines of strain smoothed. She gave me Dan’s office phone number and Janet’s private line at the St. Francis Wood house. Preparing to leave, she clumsily dropped her purse on the floor. Then she located her contact case and popped a lens into her mouth to clean it; as she fitted it into her right eye, her foot nudged the bag, and the inhaler and a bottle of time-release vitamin capsules rolled across the floor. We went for them at the same time, and our heads grazed each other’s.

  She looked at me apologetically. One of her eyes was now gray, the other a brilliant blue from the tint of the contact. It was like a physical manifestation of her somewhat schizoid personality: down to earth wholesomeness warring with what I had begun to suspect was a dangerous paranoia.

  Dan Newingham said, “Why the hell does Laurie want to do that? She doesn’t have to work anymore, even as a volunteer. She controls all the family’s assets.”

  We were seated in his office in the controller’s department of Newingham Development, on the thirty-first floor of one of the company’s financial district buildings. Dan was a big guy, with the same blond good looks as his sister, but they were spoiled by a petulant mouth and a body whose bloated appearance suggested an excess of good living.

  “If she wants to work,” he added, “there’s plenty of positions she could fill right here. It’s her company, dammit, and she ought to take an interest in it.”

  “I gather her interest run more to social service.”

  “More to the low life, you mean.”

  “In what respect?”

  Dan got up and went to look out the window behind the desk. The view of the bay was blocked by an upthrusting jumble of steel and plate glass—the legacy that firms such as Newingham Development had left in a once old fashioned and beautiful town.

  After a moment, Dan turned. “I don’t want to offend you, Ms…McCone, is it?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m not putting down your law firm, or what you’re trying to do.” He went on, “But when you work on your end of the spectrum, you naturally have to associate with people who aren’t quite…well, of our class. I wasn’t aware of the kind of people Laurie was associating with during those years she didn’t live at home, but now…her boyfriend, that Dolph, for instance. He’s always around; I can’t stand him. Anyway, my point is, Laurie should settle down now, come back to the real world, learn the business. Is that too much to ask in exchange for thirty million?”

  “She doesn’t seem to care about the money.”

  Dan laughed harshly. “Doesn’t she? Then why did she move back into the house? She could have chucked the whole thing.”

  “I think she feels she can use the money to benefit people who really need it.”

  “Yes, and she’ll blow it all. In a few years there won’t be any Newingham Development. Oh, I know what was going through my father’s mind when he made that will; Laurie’s always been the strong one, the dedicated one. He thought that if he forced her to move back home, she’d eventually become involved in the business and there’d be real leadership
here. Laurie can be very single-minded when she wants things to go a certain way, and that’s what it takes to run a firm like this. But the sad thing is, Dad just didn’t realize how far gone she is in her bleeding heart sympathies.”

  “That aside, what do you think about her potential for counseling our disturbed clients?”

  “If you really want to know, I think she’d be terrible. Laurie’s a basket case. She has psychosomatic illnesses, paranoid fantasies, she needs counseling herself.”

  “Can you describe these fantasies?”

  He hesitated, tapping his fingers on the window frame. “No, I don’t think I care to. I shouldn’t have brought them up.”

  “Actually, Mr. Newingham, I think I have an inkling of what they are. Laurie told her lawyer that someone’s trying to poison her. She seemed obsessed with the idea, which is why we decided to check her references thoroughly.”

  “I suppose she also told her lawyer who the alleged poisoner is?”

  “In a way. She said it was either you or your sister Janet.”

  “God, she’s worse off than I realized. I suppose she claims one of us wants to kill her so he can inherent my father’s estate. That’s ridiculous—I don’t need the damned money. I have a good job here, and I’ve invested profitably.” Dan paused, then added, “I hope you can convince her to get into an intensive therapy program before she tries to counsel any of your clients. Her fantasies are starting to sound dangerous.”

  Janet Newingham was the exact opposite of her sister: a tall brunette with a highly stylized way of moving and speaking. Her clothes were designer, her jewelry expensive, and her hair and nails told of frequent attention at the finest salons. We met at the St. Francis Wood house—a great pile of stone reminiscent of an Italian villa that sat on a double lot near the fountain that crowned the area’s main boulevard. I had informed Laurie that I would be interviewing her sister and she had agreed to absent herself from the house; I didn’t want my presence to trigger an unpleasant scene between the two of them.

  I needn’t have worried, however. Janet Newingham was one of those cool, reserved women who may smolder under the surface but seldom display anger. She seated me in a formal parlor overlooking the strip of park that runs down the center of St. Francis Boulevard and served me coffee form a sterling silver pot. From all appearances, I might have been there to discuss the Junior League fashion show.

  When I had gotten to the point of my visit, Janet leaned forward and extracted a cigarette from an ivory box on the coffee table. She took her time lighting it, then said “Another volunteer position? It’s bad enough she kept working at that guidance center for nothing after they lost their federal funding last spring, but this…I’m surprised; I thought nothing would ever pry her way from her precious Dolph.”

  “Perhaps she feels it’s not a good idea to stay on there, since they plan to be married.”

  “Did she tell you that? Laurie’s always threatening to marry Dolph, but I doubt she ever will. She just keeps him around because he’s her one claim to the exotic. He’s one of these social reformers, you know. Totally devoted to his cause.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Helping people. Sounds very sixties, doesn’t it. That center is his raison d’être. He founded it, and he’s going to keep it limping along no matter what. He plays the crusader role to the hilt, Dolph does: dresses in Salvation Army castoffs, drives a motorcycle. You know the type.”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said, “but it doesn’t have much bearing on Laurie’s ability to fill our volunteer position. What do you think of her potential as a counselor?”

  “Not a great deal. Oh, I know that’s what she’s been doing these past five years, but recently Laurie’s been…a very disturbed young woman. But you know that. My brother told me of your visit to his office, and that you had already heard of her fantasy that one of us is trying to kill her.”

  “Well, yes. It’s odd—”

  “It’s not just odd, it’s downright dangerous. Dangerous for her to walk around in such a paranoid state, and dangerous for Dan and me. It’s our reputations she’s smearing.”

  “Because on the surface you both appear to have every reason to want her out of the way.”

  Janet’s lips compressed—a mild reaction, I thought, to what I’d implied, “On the surface, I suppose that is how it looks,” she said. “But as far as I’m concerned Laurie is welcome to our father’s money. I had a good job in the public relations department at Newingham Development; I saved and invested my salary well. After my father died, I quit working there, and I’m about to open my own public relations firm.”

  “Did the timing of your quitting have anything to do with Laurie’s inheriting the company?”

  Janet picked up a porcelain ashtray and carefully stubbed her cigarette out. “I’ll be frank with you, Ms. McCone: it did. Newingham Development had suddenly become not a very good place to work; people were running scared—they always do when there’s no clear managerial policy. Besides…”

  “Besides?”

  “Since I’m being frank, I may as well say it. I did not want to work for my spoiled little bitch of a sister who’s always had things her own way. And if that makes me a potential murderer—”

  She broke off as the front door opened. We both looked that way. A man wearing a shabby tweed coat and a shocking purple scarf and aviator sunglasses entered. His longish black hair was windblown, and his sharp features were ruddy from the cold. He pocketed a key and started for the stairway.

  “Laurie’s not here, Dolph,” Janet said.

  He turned, “Where is she?”

  “Gone shopping.”

  “Laurie hates to shop.”

  “Well that’s where she is. You’d better come back in a couple of hours.” Janet’s tone did little to mask her dislike.

  Nor did the twist of his mouth mask his dislike of his fiancée’s sister. Without a word he turned and strode out the door.

  I asked, “Dolph Edwards?”

  “Yes. You can see what I mean.”

  Actually, I hadn’t seen enough of him, and I decided to take the opportunity to talk to him while it was presented. I thanked Janet Newingham for her time and hurried out.

  Dolph’s motorcycle was parked at the curb near the end of the front walk, and he was just revving it up when I reached him. At first his narrow lips pulled down in annoyance but when I told him who I was he smiled and shut the machine off. He remained astride it while we talked.

  “Yes, I told Laurie it would be better to stick with All Souls,” he said when I mentioned the context in which I’d first heard of him. “You’ve got good people there, and you’re more likely to take Laurie’s problem seriously than someone in a downtown law firm.”

  “You think someone is trying to kill her, then?”

  “I know what I see. The woman’s sick a lot lately, and those two”—he motioned at the house—“hate her guts.”

  “You must see a great deal of what goes on here,” I said. “I noticed you have a key.”

  “Laurie’s my fiancée,” he said with a puritanical stiffness that surprised me.

  “So she said. When do you plan to be married?”

  I couldn’t make out his eyes behind the dark aviator glasses, but the lines around them deepened. Perhaps Dolph suspected what Janet claimed: that Laurie didn’t really intend to marry him. “Soon,” he said curtly.

  We talked for a few minutes more, but Dolph could add little to what I’d already observed about the Newingham family. Before he started his bike he said apologetically, “I wish I could help, but I’m not around them very much. Laurie and I prefer to spend our time at my apartment.”

  I didn’t like Dan or Janet Newingham, but I also didn’t believe either was trying to poison Laurie. Still, I followed up by explaining the situation to my former lover and now good friend Greg Marcus, lieutenant with the SFPD homicide detail. Greg ran a background check on Dan for me, and came up with nothing m
ore damning that a number of unpaid parking tickets. Janet didn’t even have those to her discredit. Out of curiosity, I asked him to check on Dolph Edwards, too. Dolph had a record of two arrests involving political protests in the late seventies—just what I would have expected.

  At that point I reported my findings to Laurie and advised her to ask her brother and sister to move out of the house. If they wouldn’t, I said, she should talk to Hank about invalidating that clause of her father’s will. And in any case she should also get herself some psychological counseling. Her response was to storm out of my office. And that, I assumed, ended my involvement with Laurie Newingham’s problems.

  But it didn’t. Two weeks later Greg called to tell me that Laurie had been taken ill during a family cocktail party and had died at the St. Francis Wood house, an apparent victim of poisoning.

  I felt terrible, thinking of how lightly I had taken her fears, how easily I’d accepted her brother and sister’s claims of innocence, how I’d let Laurie down when she’d needed and trusted me. So I waited until Greg had the autopsy results and then went to the office at the Hall of Justice.

  “Arsenic,” Greg said when I’d seated myself on his visitor’s chair. “The murderer’s perfect poison: widely available, no odor, little if any taste. It takes the body a long time to eliminate arsenic, and a person can be fed small amounts over a period of two or three weeks, even longer, before he or she succumbs. According to the medical examiner, that’s what happened to Laurie.”

  “But why small amounts? Why not just one massive dose?”

  “The murderer was probably stupid enough that he figured if she’d been sick for weeks we wouldn’t check for poisons. But why he went on with it after she started talking about someone trying to kill her…”

  “He? Dan’s your primary suspect, then?”

  “I was using ‘he’ generically. The sister looks good, too. They both had extremely strong motives, but we’re not going to be able to charge either until we find out how Laurie was getting the poison.”