The McCone Files Page 21

I laughed aloud. The sound seemed to be sucked from the room and whirled in an inverted vortex toward the dome. Quickly I sobered and considered how to proceed. I couldn’t just be standing here when Teresa Richards’ friend paid her call—if she paid her call. Better to move about on the gallery, pretending to be a history buff studying the niches out there.

  I left the Kepheus room and walked around the gallery, glancing at the names, admiring the more ornate or interesting urns, peering through archways. Other than the tapping of my own heels on the marble, I heard nothing. When I leaned out and looked down at the rotunda floor, then up at the gallery above me, I saw no one. I passed a second staircase, wandered along, glanced to my left, and saw familiar marble pillars…

  What is this? I wondered. How far have I walked? Surely I’m not already back where I started.

  But I was. I stopped, puzzled, studying what I could discern of the Columbarium’s layout.

  It was a large building, but by virtue of its imposing architecture it seemed even larger. I’d had the impression I’d only traveled partway around the gallery, when in reality I’d made the full circle.

  I ducked into the Kepheus room to make sure no flowers had been placed in the holder at Teresa Richards’ niche during my absence. Disoriented as I’d been, it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that someone had come and gone. But the little vase was still empty.

  Moving about, I decided, was a bad idea in the place of illusion and filtered light. Better to wait in the Kepheus room, appearing to pay my respects to one of the other persons whose ashes were interred there.

  I went inside, chose a niche belonging to someone who had died the previous year, and stood in front of it. The remains were those of an Asian man—one of the things I’d noticed was the ethnic diversity of the people who had chose the Columbarium as their resting place—and his urn was of white porcelain, painted with one perfect, windblown tree. I stared at it, trying to imagine what the man’s life had been, its happiness and sorrows. And all the time I listened for a footfall.

  After a while I heard voices, down the rotunda floor. They boomed for a moment, then there were sounds as if the tapestried chairs were being rearranged. Finally all fell as silent as before. Fifteen minutes passed. Footsteps came up the staircase, slow and halting. They moved along the gallery and went by. Shortly after that there were more voices, a woman’s that came close and then faded.

  Was it always this deserted? I wondered. Didn’t anyone visit the dead who rested all alone?

  More sounds again, down below. I glanced at my watch, was surprised to see it was ten-thirty.

  Footsteps came along the gallery—muted and squeaky this time, as if the feet were shod in rubber soles. Light, so light I hadn’t heard them on the staircase. And close, coming through the archway now.

  I stared at the wind bent tree on the urn, trying to appear reverent, oblivious to my surroundings.

  The footsteps stopped. According to my calculations, the person who had made them was now in front of Teresa Richards’ niche.

  For a moment there was no sound at all. Then a sigh. Then noises as if someone was fitting flowers into the little holder. Another sigh. And more silence.

  After a moment I shifted my body ever so slightly. Turned my heard. Strained my peripheral vision.

  A figure stood before the niche, head bowed as if in prayer. A bunch of carnations blossomed in the holder—white, with a dusting as red as blood. The figure was clad in a dark blue windbreaker, faded jeans, and worn athletic shoes. Its hands were clasped behind its back.

  It wasn’t the woman Diana had expected I would find. It was a man, slender and tall, with thinning gray hair. And he looked very much like a grieving lover.

  At first I was astonished, but I had to control the urge to laugh at Diana’s and my joint naïveté. A friend of mine has coined a phrase for that kind of childlike thinking: “teddy bears on the brain.” Even the most cynical of us occasionally falls prey to it, especially when it comes to relinquishing the illusion that our parents—while they may be flawed—are basically infallible. Almost everyone seems to have difficulty setting that ideas aside, probably because we fear that acknowledging their human frailty will bring with it a terrible and final disappointment. And that, I supposed, was what my discovery would do to Diana.

  But maybe not. After all, didn’t this mean that someone had not only failed to dismiss Teresa Richards, but actually loved her? Shouldn’t Diana be able to take comfort from that?

  Either way, now was not the time to speculate. My job was to find out something about this man. Had it been the woman I’d expected, I might have felt free to strike up a conversation with her, mention that Mrs. Richards had been an acquaintance. But with this man, the situation was different: he might be reluctant to talk with a stranger, might not want his association with the dead woman known. I would have to follow him, use indirect means to glean my information.

  I looked to the side again; he stood in the same place, staring silently at the blue pottery urn. His posture gave me no clue as to how long he would remain there. As near as I could tell, he’d given me no more than a cursory glance upon entering, but if I departed at the same time he did, he might become curious, Finally I decided to leave the room and wait on the opposite side of the gallery. When he left, I’d take the other staircase and tail him at a safe distance.

  I went out and walked halfway around the rotunda, smiling politely at two old ladies who had just arrived laden with flowers. They stopped at one of the niches in the wall near the Kepheus room and began arguing about how to arrange the blooms in the vase, in voices loud enough to raise the niche’s occupant. Relieved that they were paying no attention to me, I slipped behind a philodendron on the railing and trained my eyes to the opposite archway. It was ten minutes or more before the man came through it and walked toward the staircase.

  I straightened and looked for the staircase on this side. I didn’t see one.

  That can’t be! I thought, then realized I was still a victim of my earlier delusion. While I’d gotten it straight as to the distance around the rotunda and the number of small wings jutting off it, I hadn’t corrected my false assumption that there were two staircases instead of one.

  I hurried around the gallery as fast as I could without making a racket. By the time I reached the other side and peered over the railing, the man was crossing toward the door. I ran down the stairs after him.

  Another pair of elderly women were entering. The man was nowhere in sight. I rushed toward the entry, and one of the old ladies glared at me. As I went out, I made mental apologies to her for offending her sense of decorum.

  There was no one near the door, except a gardener digging in a bed of odd, white-leafed plants. I turned left toward the gates to Loraine Court. The man was just passing through them. He walked unhurriedly, his head bent, hands shoved in the pockets of his windbreaker.

  I adapted my pace to his, went through the gates, and started along the opposite sidewalk. He passed the place where I’d left my MG and turned right on Anza Street. He might have parked his car there, or he could be planning to catch a bus or continue on foot. I hurried to the corner. Slowed, and went around it.

  The man was unlocking the door of a yellow VW bug three spaces down. When I passed, he looked at me with an expression that we city dwellers adopt as protective coloration. His face was thin and pale, as if he didn’t spend a great deal of time outdoors; he wore a small beard and mustache, both liberally shot with gray. I returned the blank look, than glanced at his license plate and consigned its number to memory.

  “It’s a man who’s been leaving the flowers,” I said to Diana. “Gordon DeRosier, associate professor of art at S.F. State. Fifty-three years old. He owns a home on Ninth Avenue, up the hill from the park in the area near Golden Gate Heights. Lives alone; one marriage, ending in divorce eight years ago, no children. Drives a 1979 VW bug, has a good driving record. His credit’s also good—he pays his bills in full, on time. A
friend of mine who teaches photography at State says he’s a likable enough guy, but hard to get to know. Shy, doesn’t socialize. My friend hasn’t heard of any romantic attachments.”

  Diana slumped in her chair, biting her lower lip, her yellow eyes troubled. We were in my office at All Souls—a big room at the front of the second floor, with a bay window that overlooks the flat Outer Mission district. It had taken me all afternoon and used up quite a few favors to run the check on Gordon DeRosier; at five Diana had called wanting to know if I’d found anything, and I’d asked her to come there so I could report my findings in person.

  Finally she said, “You, of course, are thinking what I am. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked your friend about this DeRosier’s romantic attachments.”

  I nodded, keeping my expression noncommittal.

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” she added. “A man wouldn’t bring a woman’s favorite flowers to her grave three weeks running if he hadn’t felt strongly about her.”

  “That’s true.”

  She frowned. “But why did he start doing it now? Why not right after her death?”

  “I think I know the reason for that: he’s probably done it all along, but on a different day. State’s summer class schedule just began; DeRosier is probably free at different times than he was in the spring.”

  “Of course.” She was silent a moment, then muttered, “So that’s what it came to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My father’s neglect. It forced her to turn to another man.” Her eyes clouded even more, and a flush began to stain her cheeks. When she continued, her voice shook with anger. “He left her alone most of the time, and when he was there he ignored or ridiculed her. She’d try so hard—at being a good conversationalist, a good hostess, an interesting person—and then he’d just laugh at her efforts. The bastard!”

  “Are you planning to talk with Gordon DeRosier?” I asked, hoping to quell the rage I sensed building inside her.

  “God, Sharon, I can’t. You know how uncomfortable I felt about approaching a woman friend of Mom’s. This…the implications of this make it impossible for me.”

  “Forget it, then. Content yourself with the fact that someone loved her.”

  “I can’t do that, either. This DeRosier could tell me so much about her.”

  “Then call him up and ask to talk.”

  “I don’t think … Sharon, would you—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But you know how to approach him tactfully, so he won’t resent the intrusion. You’re so good at things like that. Besides I’d pay a bonus.”

  Her voice had taken on a wheedling, pleading tone that I remembered from the old days. I recalled one time she’d convinced me that I really wanted to get out of bed and drive her to Baskin-Robbins at midnight for a gallon of pistachio ice cream. And I don’t even like ice cream much, especially pistachio.

  “Diana—”

  “It would mean so much to me.”

  “Dammit—”

  “Please.”

  I sighed. “All right. But if he’s willing to talk with you, you’d better follow up on it.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  Promises, I thought. I knew all about promises…

  “We met when she took an art class from me at State,” Gordon DeRosier said. “An oil painting class. She wasn’t very good. Afterwards we laughed about that. She said that she was always taking classes in things she wasn’t good at, trying to measure up to her husband’s expectations.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two years ago last April.”

  Then it hadn’t been a casual affair, I thought.

  We were seated in the living room of DeRosier’s small stucco house on Ninth Avenue. The house was situated at the bottom of a dip in the road, and the evening fog gathered there; the branches of an overgrown plane tree shifted in a strong wind and tapped at the front window. Inside, however, all was warm and cozy. A fire burned on the hearth, and DeRosier’s paintings—abstracts done in reds and blues and golds—enhanced the comfortable feeling. He’d been quite pleasant when I’d shown up on his doorstop, although a little puzzled because he remembered seeing me at the Columbarium that morning. When I’d explained my mission, he’d agreed to talk with me and graciously offered me a glass of an excellent zinfandel.

  I asked, “You saw her often after that?”

  “Several times a week. Her husband seldom paid any attention to her comings and goings, and when he did she merely said she was pursing her art studies.”

  “You must have cared a great deal about her.”

  “I loved her,” he said simply.

  “Then you won’t mind talking with her daughter.”

  “Of course not. Teresa spoke of Diana often. Knowing her will be a link to Teresa—something more tangible than the urn I visit every week.”

  I found myself liking Gordon DeRosier. In spite of his ordinary appearance, there was an impressive dignity about the man, as well as a warmth and genuineness. Perhaps he could be a friend to Diana, someone who would make up in part for losing her mother before she really knew her.

  He seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he said, “It’ll be good to finally meet Diana. All the time Teresa and I were together I’d wanted to, but she was afraid Diana wouldn’t accept the situation. And then at the end, when she’d decided to divorce Carl, we both felt it was better to wait until everything was settled.”

  “She was planning to leave Carl?”

  He nodded. “She was going to tell him that weekend, in Cabo San Lucas, and move in here the first of the week. I expected her to call on Sunday night, but she didn’t. And she didn’t come over as she’d promised she would on Monday. On Tuesday, I opened the paper and found her obituary.”

  “How awful for you!”

  “It was pretty bad. And I felt so…shut out. I couldn’t even go to her memorial service—it was private. I didn’t even know how she had died—the obituary merely said, ‘suddenly.’”

  “Why didn’t you ask someone? A mutual friend? Or Diana?”

  “We didn’t have any mutual friends. Perhaps that was the bond between us; neither of us made friends easily. And Diana…I didn’t see any reason for her ever to know about her mother and me. It might have caused her pain, colored her memories of Teresa.”

  “That was extremely caring of you.”

  He dismissed the compliment with a shrug and asked, “Do you know how she died? Will you tell me, please?”

  I related the circumstances. As I spoke DeRosier shook his head as if in stunned denial.

  When I finished, he said, “That’s impossible.”

  “Diana said something similar—how unlike her mother it was. I gather Teresa didn’t drink much—”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” He rose and began to pace, extremely agitated now. “Teresa did drink too much. It started during all those years when Carl alternately abused her and left her alone. She was learning to control it, but sometimes it would still control her.”

  “Then I imagine that’s what happened during that weekend down in Cabo. It would have been a particularly stressful time, what with having to tell Carl she was getting a divorce, and it’s understandable that she might—”

  “That much is understandable, yes. But Teresa would not have gotten into the hot tub—not willingly.”

  I felt a prickly sense of foreboding. “Why not?”

  “Teresa had eczema, a severe case, lesions on her wrists and knees and elbow. She’d suffered from it for years, but shortly before her death it had spread and become seriously aggravated. Water treated with chemicals, as it is in hot tubs and swimming pools, makes eczema worse and causes extreme pain.”

  “I wonder why Diana didn’t mention that.”

  “I doubt she knew about it. Teresa was peculiar about illness—it stemmed from having been raised a Christian Scientist. Although she wasn’t religious anymore, she felt physica
l imperfection was shameful and wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “I see. Well, about her getting into the hot tub—don’t you think if she was drunk, she might have anyway?”

  “No. We had a discussion about hot tubs once, because I was thinking of installing one here. She told me not to expect her to use it, that she had tried the one in Cabo just once. Not only had it aggravated her skin condition, but it had given her heart palpitations, made her feel she was suffocating. She hated that tub. If she really did drown in it, she was put in it against her will. Or after she passed out from too much alcohol.”

  “If that was the case, I’d think the police would have caught on and investigated.”

  DeRosier laughed bitterly. “In Mexico? When the victim is the wife of a wealthy foreigner with plenty of money to spread around, and plenty of influence?” He sat back down, pressed his hands over his face, as if to force back tears. “When I think of her there, all alone with him, at his mercy…I never should have let her go. But she said the weekend was planned, that after all the years she owed it to Carl to break the news gently.” His fist hit the arm of the chair. “Why didn’t I stop her?”

  “You couldn’t know.” I hesitated trying to find a flaw in his logic. “Mr. DeRosier, why would Carl Richards kill his wife? I know he’s a proud man, and conscious of his position in the business and social communities, but divorce really doesn’t carry any stigma these days.”

  “But a divorce would have denied him the use of Teresa’s money. Carl had done well in business, and they lived comfortably. But the month before she died, Teresa inherited a substantial fortune from an uncle. The inheritance was what made her finally decide to leave Carl; she didn’t want him to get his hands on it. And, as she told me in legalese, she hadn’t commingled it with what she and Carl held jointly. If she divorced him immediately, it wouldn’t fall under the community property laws.”

  I was silent, reviewing what I knew about community property and inheritances. What Teresa had told him was valid—and it gave Carl Richards a motive for murder.