Edwin of the Iron Shoes Page 15

  I glanced from one to the other in confusion. “You know her?”

  Greg nodded, his lips twisting. “This is the woman friend I told you about. The one who opened my eyes to the world of art.”

  I caught my breath sharply and looked at him, not speaking. It explained a great many things.

  Greg looked back at Ingalls, who was up on one elbow now. “I said get up, Cara.”

  Cara Ingalls brought herself to a sitting position, but then her strength seemed to fail her. Her hair had fallen over one eye, and she had lost her little black hat. She pushed the hair back, then fixed her eyes on Marcus.

  “Don’t, Greg.” She stretched out a hand to him.

  Greg left her on the floor. In an empty, impersonal voice he began, “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right …”

  Cara Ingalls’s face contorted as if she might suddenly begin screaming, and if she did, her screams would never stop.

  26

  Hank Zahn, Charlie Cornish, and I sat around the table by the big kitchen window at All Souls. Below us, the city slept, a few pre-dawn lights winking. It was five in the morning, and we’d consumed most of a gallon of cheap California mountain red.

  I’d seen a doctor about my hand, made my official statement, and gone directly to the law cooperative to report to Hank. There, I remembered my promise to Charlie and called the big junkman to tell him I’d found Joan’s killer. He insisted on coming to All Souls to hear my story in person.

  Now Charlie said, “If I’d known that bitch murdered Joanie when she came to get the key tonight, I’d have killed her with my bare hands.”

  Hank and I nodded in drunken agreement. “Jesus, she comes to me, demanding that key like she already owned the place. Big realtor car outside. Says she wants to inspect the property. Acted like I was dirt. Looked around my shop like germs might come out of the corners and bite her ass. I wish I’d killed her!”

  “I’m just as glad you didn’t,” Hank said, “because I’d be down at the city jail defending you rather than here at home drinking wine. Besides, then the whole story never would have come out.”

  Charlie grunted. “Don’t count on that. By now the bitch has some hotshot lawyer there, making sure she doesn’t say anything.”

  I shook my head. “Ingalls waived her right to counsel and made a full confession to Greg Marcus, her great lover. I’m surprised he would let her confess: he was blind to her from the start. Even when he saw me chasing her around the shop, he just stood there …. ” My voice broke. I felt Greg had let me down, first at the shop and next by turning coldly professional on me at police headquarters. I had needed support, injured and shocked as I was, but he had offered none.

  Hank glanced at me anxiously. “Don’t be too hard on him, Sharon. It’s not every day he has to arrest his former mistress for murder. And you have to think of how he feels now—pretty much like an asshole after standing by and watching you do his work for him.”

  I looked down at my bandaged hand. The doctor had said there would be a scar—a souvenir I really didn’t want. “He probably hates me, too, for opening the whole thing up. I think he suspected Cara’s involvement from the beginning but pushed it to the back of his mind.”

  “That would be natural,” Hank said, “even for a cop as good as Greg. You remember I said Greg had been the cause of a society divorce? It was Cara and Douglas Ingalls who split up.”

  I felt a flash of jealousy at Hank’s words, then a flash of annoyance at my jealousy. “So why didn’t he marry her and keep her out of trouble?”

  Hank smiled. “She was willing, but Greg found he couldn’t handle the idea of a wife who made more money than he did. It was hard for him to accept that Cara didn’t need him in any of the traditional ways women need men.

  “Besides,” he added, “her plans for Greg were kind of bizarre, if you know Greg like I do.”

  “What plans?” I heard the open hostility in my voice.

  Hank must have heard it, too, because he chuckled. “Mrs. Ingalls couldn’t be married to a cop—it would never do in her social circle. Greg was to quit the force and devote himself to the finer things in life, like servicing Cara and broadening his interest in the arts when she was busy elsewhere. She even offered to pay for painting lessons.”

  I smiled, reluctantly. Hank’s words conjured up a picture of Greg in a smock, seated at an easel, palette in hand, looking faintly ridiculous. “So he turned her down?”

  Hank nodded. “Greg’s a cop through and through. It hurt that she professed to love him yet hadn’t grasped the single most important fact of his existence. He turned her down, and she threatened suicide. Since he’d seen through her by then, he told her he wasn’t worried, she was too self-centered to do anything foolish. Cara threw a lamp, two vases, and an ashtray at him, left, and carried on her life in style.”

  I asked, “So it’s been over for a long time?”

  “For more than three years. I think the first time Greg saw her since they finished must have been when you flattened her on the floor of the shop.” Hank paused, sipping thoughtfully at his wine.

  “You know,” he went on, “Greg’s initial reaction to you was colored by his experience with Cara. He sensed the same strength and independence in you, so he set out to put you in your place. Fortunately, you wouldn’t stay put.”

  I grimaced. “He tried damned hard though.”

  Hank laughed. “You don’t know how frustrated it made him! By Wednesday night, he’d recognized the futility of his efforts and called me, babbling with hostility and demanding I order you back to All Souls, where you belonged. I pointed out what an ass he was making of himself and how it linked to his bad time with Cara. I also advised him that strength in a woman didn’t necessarily indicate ruthlessness or indifference to others. When we got done yelling at each other, he seemed much calmer.”

  Wednesday night. So that was the “talking to” Greg had mentioned to me at the museum, the one he’d told me to ask Hank about.

  “Well, I thank you.” I raised my glass to Hank. “Your lecture turned him into quite a likable human being. It’s too bad he’s not going to want to see me again after that scene in the antique shop.”

  Hank raised an eyebrow. “Were you planning to see him again?”

  “Oh, sure. He was going to teach me all about Cézanne.”

  Hank frowned. “I thought you couldn’t stand him. Greg, I mean, not Cézanne.” The words were teasing.

  With dignity I said, “We’re all entitled to change our minds.”

  Hank looked across the table at Charlie. “I’ll never understand women.”

  “Huh?” Charlie jerked up. He’d been dozing over his wine.

  “Women. I don’t understand them.”

  “Yeah? Well, don’t look at me,” Charlie said. “I’ve never understood ’em either. Joanie used to tell me I was an old fool where she was concerned, and I guess she was right. But, damn it, I liked being a fool for her.”

  Hank’s eyes sobered. “She was one hell of a fine woman. We’ll all miss her.”

  “God, yes. Every day I wake up, expecting to see her; then I realize there’s something wrong, and it all comes back to me.” He drew at his wine, looking melancholy. “Somehow, now that they’ve got her killer, I feel a little more at peace. And making a clean breast of what happened between her and me that night, that helps some, too. I think soon I can get on to remembering the good times.”

  Hank and I nodded. Hank looked drunkenly solemn, and I was sure my expression matched his.

  “You think Sharon should see the lieutenant again, Charlie?” Hank had a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

  Charlie looked at me speculatively. “Sure. He’s a good-looking man, and she’s wasting her better years hanging around with guys like you and me.”

  Quietly I said, “You forget that in all likelihood the lieutenant does not want to see me.”

  “Nonsense,” Hank said. “He wants to see you.”

 
I caught my breath. “How do you know?”

  Hank grinned broadly. “He called me while you were on the phone with Charlie before. Said I should use my judgment, but if you weren’t too bitter against him, would I ask you to call him. He’ll be in his office around eight.”

  “Hank Zahn, why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I repeat, he said to use my judgment. And you sounded bitter as hell when you first told me what had happened.”

  “Oh.” I looked down into the depths of my wine glass. “Oh, no, I’m not bitter.” I realized that Greg had hidden in his professional disguise at police headquarters out of embarrassment at my part in Cara’s arrest. Quickly I changed the subject. “So what happens now, Charlie? Who will you sell the property to?”

  He grinned. “Seeing as our two highest bidders are in jail, I guess I’ll have to throw it open to new offers. I’m not worried; there’ll be plenty.”

  “You still moving to Valencia Street?” Hank asked. “Or won’t you take the place now that Bigby’s lost all his stock in the fire?”

  “No reason not to,” Charlie said. “Austin doesn’t have much stuff, but he’s got a lot of expertise to bring to the new shop. Besides, I’ve got more merchandise and capital than I need for myself, what with Joanie leaving me everything.”

  I didn’t say it, but I thought of where a lot of that capital had come from.

  “Aw, Sharon, I know what you’re thinking,” Charlie said. “Ill-gotten gains. Well, forget it. What Joanie did was illegal, but she did it for the kid, not herself. Everything Joanie ever did was for other people, not herself.”

  “I’ll forget it.” I was relieved that Charlie wasn’t going to let anything tarnish his feelings for Joan.

  “The stock from Joanie’s shop will replace what Austin lost,” Charlie went on, “but that brings up this problem I’ve got.”

  Hank and I looked at him questioningly.

  “Edwin and Clothilde I’m happy to move to the new shop,” he said. “I could never give either of them up. But the hell of it is, I feel honor-bound to move that goddamn stuffed dog, too!”

  I smiled, and Hank got up to pour more wine from the big jug. We sat drinking in companionable silence, watching the morning sun light up the glass towers of downtown San Francisco.

  After a while, I glanced at my watch. It was six o’clock. In two hours I’d call Greg at his office to suggest we get together and talk things over.

  THE END

  We hope you’ve enjoyed this McCone mystery. Now check out the rest of Marcia Muller’s SHARON MCCONE series – all available as ebooks and audiobooks from AudioGO!

  1 Edwin of the Iron Shoes

  2 Ask the Cards a Question

  3 The Cheshire Cat’s Eye

  4 Games to Keep the Dark Away

  5 Leave a Message for Willie

  6 There’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of

  7 Eye of the Storm

  8 There’s Something in a Sunday

  9 The Shape of Dread

  10 Trophies and Dead Things

  11 Where Echoes Live

  12 Pennies on a Dead Woman’s Eyes

  Plus two short story collections: McCone and Friends, and The McCone Files.