Harry Chandler looked to me like an aging lion. He was bearded and his face was lined, but he was still handsome, still the star who’d made female moviegoers all over the world fall in love with him.
“Sergeant Boxer? Welcome aboard.”
I shook his hand, then felt a little charge when he put his hand on my back and guided me to the gangway. I climbed the steps to a covered outdoor cabin on the main deck that was furnished in white sofas, sea-green-glass tables, and teak appointments all around.
Chandler told me to make myself comfortable. I took a seat while he went to the refrigerator under the bar and poured out bottles of water into two chunky crystal glasses of ice.
When he was sitting across a coffee table from me, he said, “I read about this — what would you call it? This horror that happened yesterday. And Janet called, nearly hysterical. If you hadn’t phoned I was going to call the police myself. I’m at a loss to understand this.”
I kept my eyes on the actor as he spoke. I’d seen his handsome face so many times, I felt as if I knew him.
Was he telling the truth or giving a performance? I hoped I could tell the difference.
I showed Chandler Jane Doe’s picture and he half turned away, then dragged his eyes back to the photo.
“I don’t know her. I am wondering, of course, about Cecily. We still don’t know what became of her. Could she be one of those victims in the garden? That would be a hell of a thing.”
“Wondering, Mr. Chandler?”
“Yes. I want to know what happened to her.”
If Cecily Chandler’s remains were recovered, Harry Chandler wouldn’t be charged, not for her death anyway. He’d been found innocent of her murder and couldn’t be tried for it again. But if Cecily Chandler’s remains had been buried on his doorstep, Harry would be the number one suspect in six other deaths.
Could Chandler have killed women over time and buried them in the dark of his garden, trusting that they would never be found? Had he kept the house he no longer used so as to protect his private trophy garden?
Did Nigel Worley have a better reason than his wife’s crush on a movie star for the anger he expressed on hearing Harry Chandler’s name?
Harry Chandler was sitting so that the San Francisco Bay was at his back.
I thought about convicted murderer Scott Peterson, recalled that his dead wife and unborn child were found washed up across the bay. It seemed very possible that a lot of bodies had been dumped in the water here. That they didn’t all wash up onshore, and that some were never discovered because they floated out to sea.
I smiled at the movie star and tried that charm I’d joked about to Conklin.
“Can you tell me your movements over the last week, Mr. Chandler?”
“Call me Harry. Please. Of course. You need my alibi.”
He walked to an intercom panel in the kitchen, pressed a button, and said in his memorable, resonant voice, “Kaye, the police want to talk to you.”
Chapter 23
I liked Kaye Hunsinger on sight.
She was about forty, had a wide, toothy smile, and owned a small bike shop in North Beach. I made note of her massive diamond ring of the engagement kind.
Kaye, Harry Chandler, and I sat on semicircular sofas at the stern with little multigrain sandwiches on a plate in front of us. We caught some afternoon breezes, and everything was chatty and casual, but all the while, I was checking the couple for tells.
Could they have been players in the nightmare on Vallejo Street? Was Harry Chandler a murderer? Was Kaye Hunsinger, knowingly or not, covering for him?
Kaye told me that she and Harry had been down the coast for the past week, returning to the South Beach Yacht Club only last night.
“It was a brilliant week,” she said. “Zipping down to Monterey, docking at the marina there. Kicking off the boat shoes, putting on heels and a witchy black dress — oh my. Dancing with Harry.”
Pause for an exchange of moony grins and hand-clasping. Okay. They were believably in love.
“We signed in with the harbormasters at stopovers, of course,” Chandler said to me. “And lots of people saw us. If you still need more of an alibi.”
I was thinking about Chandler’s remarks of a few minutes before, that he’d been “wondering” if his wife’s remains were among those that had been dug up in his garden. I wondered too, and I was equally interested in the woman whose head had been separated from her shoulders with a ripsaw about a week ago.
Had a body dump been part of the Chandler coastal cruise?
I had no warrant and no probable cause to search Chandler’s yacht, so an eyeball search of the premises might be my only opportunity to check out the floating home as a possible crime scene.
“I’ll take that list of stopovers,” I said. “And I’m really dying to see the rest of this yacht.”
Harry and Kaye showed me around the four-cabin luxury craft. It was House Beautiful marine style, everything enviably top of the line, and not a throw pillow out of place.
The boat was fast, and the alibis could have been manufactured, but I strained to find a reason why Harry Chandler would come back to San Francisco during his cruise, dig up a couple of skulls, and then leave them with a cryptic message in his backyard.
It would be crazy, and I didn’t see any crazy in Harry Chandler.
I complimented the couple on the boat, and before the conversation could devolve into chitchat, I said that I’d be going and gave Chandler my card.
Chandler said, “I’ll walk you out.”
I started down the gangway and this time Chandler’s hand on my back was firmer, more forceful. I stepped away and turned to give Chandler a questioning look.
“You’re like a butterfly,” Harry Chandler told me, fixing his gray searchlight eyes on mine, “with steel wings.”
I was taken aback for three or four reasons I could have spat out right away. Had Harry Chandler’s crazy just surfaced?
What had Nigel Worley told me?
Harry Chandler would like you.
I said, “I hope you’re not coming on to me, Mr. Chandler. Because when a suspect in a murder investigation hits on a cop, you know what I think? He’s desperate. And he’s trying to hide something.”
Chandler said, “You actually think of me as a suspect, Sergeant?”
“You haven’t been excluded.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
I said sharply, “Stay anchored. If I were you, I wouldn’t draw attention to myself by leaving town.”
Chapter 24
Jason Blayney moved purposefully through the large open space with the supersize bar and the high ceiling, the main room of the yacht club.
The reporter was twenty-seven years old, an average-to-nice-looking guy, and, along with his more intellectual talents, he had a trick left arm. When he was a kid, he had learned how to pop his shoulder so that it looked deformed, and this little sleight of arm gave him an edge in certain situations.
Right now, for instance, the arm made the security guy decide not to confront him. Blayney said, “How ya doing? I’m with the O’Briens. Mind if I use the bathroom?”
Guard said, “Sure,” and pointed the way.
