Breen with the correct wipe for Monk.
“We’re investigating the murder of Esther Stoval,” Stottlemeyer said. “And, for obvious reasons, your name came up.”
“You realize, of course, that I never actually met Esther Stoval or set foot in her home. Other members of my company interacted with her and tried to address her concerns,” Breen said. “But from what I heard, she was a very difficult individual.”
“Is this the project?” Stottlemeyer asked, tipping his head toward a model.
“Yes, that’s it,” Breen said, leading us over to a scale model of Esther’s block.
The three-story building was a clever amalgamation of styles—Victorian, Spanish Renaissance, French chateau, and a dozen others—that made it seem at once both vintage and new. But there was something calculated, commercial, and Disneyesque about the building’s charm. I knew I was being manipulated with subliminal design cues meant to evoke cable cars and foggy streets, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Golden Gate, and I hated that it was working. Maybe Esther Stoval hated it, too.
While Stottlemeyer and I admired the model, Monk looked at all the pictures on the wall of Breen and his wife with celebrities and politicians.
“What’s the selling price of the condos?” I asked, not that I was in the market or anything like that.
“Six hundred thousand and up, which, without getting into specific numbers, is what we paid the homeowners for their properties. But they weren’t the only ones who benefited. Once you revitalize one corner of a neighborhood, it creates a domino effect of beautification that enhances the whole community. Everyone wins. Unfortunately, there’s an Esther Stoval in every neighborhood.”
“Do they all end up dead?” Monk asked.
Stottlemeyer shot him a look. “What Mr. Monk means to say is that—”
Breen interrupted him. “I know what he means. No matter how beneficial my projects are to a community, Mr. Monk, there is
“You didn’t reach one with Esther,” Monk said.
“We offered her a premium for her property, as well as a lifetime lease on the condominium of her choice in the project,” Breen said. “You can’t get more amenable than that. She refused to even negotiate. But in the end, her opposition became irrelevant.”
“Because she’s dead,” Monk said.
“Because we were planning to move ahead without her.”
“How could you?” I asked. “Her house was right in the middle of the block.”
“I didn’t get this far in the real-estate business, Ms. Teeger, without being creative.” Breen went to his desk and unfurled an architect’s rendering of a building that was very similar to the model. “We were going to build around her.”
The revised plans showed the building encircling Esther’s house on three sides, shrouding it in almost complete darkness and robbing her of any privacy at all. With the way the building was designed, however, Esther’s house didn’t look out of place at all, but instead like a quirky, intentionally amusing design element. It was a nasty way of dealing with Esther, though I suppose it was a lot nicer than murder.
“She never would have gone for this,” I said.
“She wouldn’t have had a choice,” Breen said. “The planning commission was scheduled to vote on the project next week, and she was the lone voice of opposition. I have it on good authority that we were likely to win unanimous approval from the commission. The project would have been built with or without her.”
“You were going to drive her out by making her life absolutely miserable,” Monk said.
“On the contrary, we would have been friendly neighbors, I assure you,” Breen said. “She and her cats could have stayed there as long as they liked. That said, we designed the building so that when she eventually passed away, we would have the choice of either letting her home stand or tearing it down for a plaza.”
“So you’re saying that Esther Stoval’s murder didn’t change a thing for you,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Not as far as the project is concerned,” Breen said. “However, as a San Franciscan, and a human being, I’m truly horrified about what happened to that poor old woman. I don’t think her murder had anything to do with our building. She was probably killed by some crazed junkie looking to steal something to finance his next fix.”
I couldn’t recall seeing any junkies, crazed or otherwise, on the street when Monk interviewed the neighbors, but at least that theory made more sense than Disher’s theory of crazed cats smothering the old lady and setting the house on fire.
“Well,” Stottlemeyer said. “I think that covers everything, don’t you, Monk?”
“Where were you Friday night between nine and ten P.M.?” Monk said.
“I thought we just established that I had nothing to gain, either directly or indirectly, from her death,” Breen said. “What difference does it make where I was when she was killed?”
“Actually, Monk is right; it’s one of those procedural questions we’re always supposed to ask,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’d hate for someone like you, on the Police Commission and all, to think I wasn’t doing my job.”
“Very well,” Breen said. “I was at the ‘Save the Bay’ fund-raiser at the Excelsior Tower Hotel from eight P.M. until midnight.”
“With your wife?” Monk pointed to the pictures on the wall. “This is your wife, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I was there with my wife, and the mayor, and the governor, and about five hundred other concerned citizens,” Breen said. “Now, if there are no other questions, I have a very busy day.”
He took a key-fob-size remote out of his pocket, aimed it at his office doors, and they slid open again—a real subtle hint that our meeting was over.
“Thanks for your help,” Stottlemeyer said as we left the office. Monk trailed behind, taking one last glance back at Breen.
“There’s a
It wasn’t until we were at the elevators, out of earshot of the receptionist or anyone else, that Stottlemeyer turned to Monk, who was heading for the stairwell door.
“You want to tell me why you were needling Breen?” Stottlemeyer punched the call button for the elevator as if it were someone’s face. “And it’d better not be because he uses the wrong brand of disinfectant wipe or wouldn’t come down to the lobby to meet you.”
“He’s the guy.” Monk covered his hand with his sleeve and opened the door to the stairs.
“What guy?”
“The guy who killed Esther Stoval,” he said. “It was him.”
And with that, our elevator arrived and Monk disappeared into the stairwell. Stottlemeyer started to go after him, but I gently tugged his sleeve to stop him.
“Do you really want to chase him down thirty floors?” I said. “It can wait.”
He looked at me, sighed with resignation, and stepped into the elevator.
“Sometimes I could kill him,” he said. “And it would be justifiable homicide.”
After Stottlemeyer called the office to get Disher started on confirming Breen’s alibi and exhuming the background on train robber Roderick Turlock, the two of us enjoyed a leisurely lunch at the Boudin Bakery in the lobby.
We both ordered Boston clam chowder in fresh sourdough bread bowls and took a table by the window, where we could watch all the accountants, stockbrokers, bankers, and homeless people go by.
We talked about our children and the schools they were going to, and how kids don’t go outside and play anymore; they schedule playdates instead. I know; it sounds like awfully mundane, boring stuff to talk about, which is why I’m sparing you the actual conversation.
But here’s why I even mention it at all: It was the first time the two of us had ever really talked, and while it wasn’t what you’d call a particularly scintillating or intimate conversation, at least it wasn’t about Monk or murders or law enforcement. It was about life.
I believe that it was sitting there, eating our soup and picking at our bread bowls, that I saw Leland Stottlemeyer as a person instead of a homicide cop for the first time.
