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Just for now.
* * *
Tanaka had logged in hours at
the station, then returned home to her tiny bachelor apartment in Oakland.
But she wasn’t finished working. Not by a long shot.
She was too wired, too determined to crack the Latham case, too irritated at the cop from Montana. Relative of the deceased or not, Regan Pescoli was a problem, even if her intentions were all on the up-and-up, which Tanaka didn’t quite trust. Who cared that she was a detective? Even a decorated one. In Tanaka’s mind, Pescoli was at best a grief-stricken relative of the victim, at worst a suspect.
She wasn’t quite sure which yet.
There was just something about Pescoli that got under her skin.
And maybe rightfully so, Tanaka thought as she stretched her arms over her head. She was seated at her small corner desk on a supposedly ergonomic chair and had been for hours, a cup of now cold tea sitting near the opened laptop.
Pescoli had suffered through her share of scandals, both privately and professionally, though Tanaka hadn’t had time to really delve deeply into Pescoli’s life. Yet. There was too much going on with the murder investigation to waste any extra minutes on the pushy cop. Tall, and good-looking if not beautiful, Pescoli had a confidence that bordered on aggressive. She’d toned it down during the meeting, but Tanaka had sensed it, and whether she admitted it or not, Pescoli was sizing up Tanaka and Paterno and the whole damned department. As if they weren’t up for the job. What a joke. How could the woman even compare the SFPD to some podunk sheriff’s department in some backwoods Montana county?
Don’t think like that. You know yourself some of the best cops have come from rural roots. Remember Watts?
Her heart twisted a little as she considered her first real love, a forensic pathologist whom she’d met while a grad student. He’d taught at the university and they’d had an affair that, each time she thought about it, could still turn her blood white hot. Roland Watts had been supremely brilliant, and supremely married. And she’d fallen for him anyway.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath.
She glanced at the clock. Three effin’ AM.
She’d spent the last six or seven hours here, at her desk, getting information on every member of the Latham family, the exes involved, business partners, two women with whom Paul was rumored to have had affairs, and, of course, Detective Regan Pescoli. She hadn’t eaten dinner, just snacked on salsa and chips and hummus and loaded up on tea to keep her going. Now, yawning, she brushed the crumbs from her desk, tore off her clothes, turned out the light to tumble into bed, her thoughts a jumble with details of the double-homicide. She couldn’t help but wonder where the kids were. They’d found the one son, but what about the other, Macon? And Ivy, where was she? What had happened to her? She had been living in that huge house with her mother and stepfather and had just seemed to disappear. Nothing in her room had seemed out of the ordinary. Her bed had been unmade but she was a kid and the mess in her room appeared like many a teenaged girl’s.
There had been no purse, ID, computer, laptop, phone, or tablet. Had she taken them all? She didn’t have a car; Tanaka had checked. Both of the Latham cars, a BMW for him and Lexus for her, were in the garage, parked one behind the other, “buddy style.”
So what had happened to her? She was already a person of interest; could she be something more? A scared kid, a victim herself, or maybe even involved in her parents’ deaths?
Tomorrow they might know, if her cell phone company supplied the info. Or any debit or credit card information came through her bank account.
“In the morning,” she told herself, thinking of the offspring of Paul and Brindel Latham. She’d caught a glimpse of Macon online, a college student who spent as much time protesting just about everything as being in class. He was handsome in that surly, bad-boy way. Even features, skin that always appeared tanned, deep-set, brooding eyes, while his brother was smaller and paler, with lighter hair and eyes. Ivy was just on the cusp of womanhood, but already beautiful by most American standards. Yeah, Tanaka would have to look into all three kids. She stood and stretched again only to hear some of her vertebrae pop. “Not a good sign,” she reminded herself, surveying her small Oakland studio with its Murphy bed and kitchen that was little more than an induction burner, microwave, and mini-fridge. She lived here with her long-haired Siamese cat, her TV, and her books. Turning over, she pulled the covers to her chin and felt a soft plop onto the bed to indicate that Mr. Claus, the stray who’d shown up on her doorstep Christmas Eve, had decided to join her. She was just dozing off when she sensed him walking across the bed to stand on her shoulder. Soft fur from his fluffy tail skimmed her nose. “Move,” she said into the darkness, but before he could comply she’d drifted off.
* * *
The first thing Pescoli noticed upon arriving at her sister’s home the next morning was that Brindel’s house was a damned mansion. Huge. As she looked up at the tall edifice she couldn’t help but wonder how many places there were to hide in the restored Victorian. Probably lots of cupboards and closets and little hidey-holes.
Paterno met her on the front porch as rain lashed the city and a stiff breeze blew down the hilly streets. Dark clouds rolled overhead and, though it was ten in the morning, the day was already dark as dusk.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked, probably remembering how she’d lost color at the sight of her dead sister.
“Absolutely.”
“Okay then.” He unlocked the door and they stepped inside a wide foyer that opened to the floor above. “This door was locked, the back door open. We can start in the kitchen.”
“No,” she said, looking up to the balcony on the second story. “I want to see it all. Can we start at the top?”
“Sure.” Over the course of the night it seemed that his resistance to her interest in the investigation had somewhat ebbed. Though the place was a mess with fingerprint dust, the home was still lavish, every room decorated with expensive pieces, or at least they appeared to be worth a small fortune. He led her up the staircase to the second floor, then a narrower one to the third, and finally a back set of stairs leading to the attic. Not only did the steps go up to the rooms tucked beneath the eaves, but all the way down to the basement, he told her. “Servants quarters up here, and this was the staircase they used in the early nineteen hundreds when there was actually a live-in staff.”
They trudged up to the attic where the windows were small, the series of tiny rooms dark and close, big enough for a bureau and twin bed, each with a small cupboard, a single bath, fixtures dry and showing signs of old rust, everything smelling of must. Boxes, old furniture, pictures in frames, and filing cabinets filled the space, and she saw a carton marked “X-Mas,” another “Halloween Decorations,” and yet another with “Macon’s Schoolwork” and a date scrawled across it. The space felt empty and unused, a warehouse holding old memories.
There was nothing much to see and Paterno walked her down to the third floor, obviously used for guests and their children’s bedrooms. “It looks like one of Paul’s sons, Macon, I guess, used this room,” he said at the first large room, where the bed was unmade, a towel was on the floor of the bathroom, and a baseball card collection along with a signed ball was still on built-in shelves over a desk. A second room, nearly identical, probably had been Seth’s, and a fourth was decorated as if for guests. Ivy’s room was at the end of the hall, done in shades of pink, accented with black, white, and silver. The bed was unmade, the bathroom, with its array of makeup, nail polishes, shampoos, and all sorts of body washes and perfumes, looked as if it had just been cleaned. “The maid said Ivy didn’t come home that night, or she didn’t think so—this room looked the way she left it. In fact, the whole floor did, except for what she described as Macon’s room.”
“The housekeeper came in every day?”
