knowing they’ll have to clean them up.”
“So, we have a short, vain groundskeeper in expensive boots who is friends with a homeless man who doesn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs, bashes him on the head, and stands around being tidy until the homeless man dies.”
“Yep, that’s about it,” said Hawkin.
“I like it.” Kate nodded and followed Hawkin to the car. “Sure, that is a doable theory. Let’s give it to the DA and just arrest every gardener in the city, starting with the park workers. Get a bus and shovel them in.”
“You’ll take care of it, won’t you?” asked Hawkin. “I have a date with Jani tonight.”
“No problem. Drag ‘em in, beat ’em up, get a confession, be home for dinner.”
“I knew I could count on you, Martinelli.”
¦
NINE
¦
Six days, seven days. Lee came up with some references and sent Jon in several directions to pick them up and request more from the university’s interlibrary loan service. She began to read and digest, in between physical therapy, a trip to the doctor’s, the lengthy preparation for and exhaustion following an appointment with one of her two clients, and sleep. Dean Gardner phoned Kate every day, even though Erasmus had been released, until finally, to get rid of him, Kate gave him the same research assignment she’d given Lee: Find me someone who knows what a Fool is.
Kate didn’t quite know why she was interested, though she did know that it had more to do with the enigma that was Erasmus than with the investigation into John’s murder. She mentioned her by-proxy academic investigations to Hawkin only in a passing way, he, in turn, nodded and told her to let him know if anything came up.
¦
Nine days after the murder, eight days after the cremation, the first faint hairline crack appeared in the case, although Kate did not at first recognize it as such. She was mostly annoyed.
“Dean Gardner, I do not have any news for you. I haven’t even seen Erasmus since—oh, he is? Of course, it’s Thursday.” Erasmus had been told not to leave San Francisco, but somehow she wasn’t surprised that he was following his usual rounds. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh yes, he seems in good spirits. The reason I called is that I have some suggestions for that question you put to me. Do you have a pencil?”
“Go ahead.”
“The first name is Danny Yamaguchi. Danny is a woman, a professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. Her specialty is cults, she should know if there is a Fool’s movement. Second is Rabbi Shlomo Bauer. He’s a GTU visiting professor this semester, his field is Jewish/Christian relations in Russia from the seventeenth century to the present. And third is a Dr. Whitlaw, who teaches at one of the redbrick universities in England and is over here on a sabbatical. I don’t know her, but I was told that she’s something of an expert on modern religious movements.” He then gave Kate telephone numbers for Yamaguchi and Bauer, explaining, “Dr. Whitlaw is staying with friends in San Francisco, but I couldn’t come up with her number. The only one I have at the moment seems to be an answering machine.
I’m sure I’ll have a number for you in a few days, and I know she’s coming to lecture here the end of next week, but do you want the machine’s number?“
“Might as well.” She wrote it down, thanked him, and prepared to hang up, when he interrupted her.
“I also have that list of passages Erasmus was quoting. Shall I send it to you?”
Actually, Kate had forgotten about it. “That would be helpful. Just send it to the address I left with you.”
“There was just one odd thing—it struck me when I was thinking about that conversation. One of his passages was wrong. That’s never happened before, not that I’ve ever caught. Remember when he was getting so worked up about something and cited David’s lament over his son Absalom? Before that he said, ”David made a covenant with Jonathan, because he loved him as his own soul.“ I’m sure he said it in that order. In fact, I was aware of it at the time because it’s wrong. It’s Jonathan who makes the covenant with David.”
“Does that matter?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it would in the biblical context, but I don’t know if it was only a slip. I just wanted to mention it, because it was unusual.”
Kate thanked him, reassured him yet again that she would phone if there was news, and firmly said good- bye. She dutifully wrote the information down, then went out to pick up Al Hawkin so they could tie up the interviews of the people who lived in houses facing Golden Gate Park, on the slim chance they might have noticed, and remembered, the booted man nine days before. The inquiries had to be made, but she was not too surprised when the slim chance had faded into nothingness by the end of the day.
That night she took out her notebook and phoned the three numbers. At the first, a tremulous voice with limited English informed Kate that her granddaughter was away until Tuesday and then hung up. There was no answer at Rabbi Bauer’s number. The number for Dr. Whitlaw was indeed an answering machine, which rattled at her in a woman’s rushed voice: “You’ve reached the Drs. Franklin answering service, please leave your name, number, and a brief description of what you need and we’ll try to get back to you.” That last qualified offer was none too encouraging, but Kate left her name, without any identifying rank, her home number, and the message that she needed to reach Dr. Whitlaw and would the recipients of the message please phone back, whether or not they were able to pass the message on to Dr. Whitlaw, thank you.
When she hung up, she found Lee looking at her, forehead wrinkled in thought. “Was that something to do with your fool case?”
“A rather thin lead to finding an expert, yes. Nobody home.”
“I just wondered, because a couple of the names sounded familiar—Yamaguchi and Whitlow.”
“Whitlaw.”
“Was it? It might not be the same person. Those were a couple of the names I’ve come up with. Jon’s requested a book for me that was edited by a Whitlow or Whitlaw… on the Fools movement of the twentieth century.”
“You don’t have anything yet?”
“Do you want to go up and get the folders and I’ll look? It’s on my desk next to the computer, a manila folder labeled ‘Fools.”“
It was there. Kate came back downstairs with it and handed it to Lee, who opened it on her lap and started sorting through the pages.
“Oh, I meant to mention,” she said without looking up from the file, “Jon has a friend whose brother installs those stairway lifts in peoples’ houses,- he said he’d do it for cost plus labor. The only problem would be that when we want to tear it out, it’ll leave marks on the woodwork. What do you think?”
It was fortunate that Lee was busy with her papers and did not look up—fortunate, or deliberate. Kate felt her face stiffen in an impossible mixture of shock and relief and despair: This was the first time Lee had admitted that her time in the wheelchair might not be brief. The first time, that is, since the early months of complete paraplegia, when suicide had seemed to Lee a real option. Kate turned and walked out of the room, looked about for an excuse, saw the coffee machine, poured herself a second cup, although she hadn’t drunk her first yet, and took it back into the living room.
“Any idea what it would cost?” she said evenly.
“It would still be a lot, several thousand dollars, but there’s an extended-payment program, and they buy it back when you’re finished with it. I don’t really mind going up and down on my butt. Actually, it’s good exercise, but it is slow. I just thought it would save you and Jon a few hundred trips a week up and down, fetching things for me.”
Anything that could increase Lee’s sense of independence was to be snatched at, and Kate’s face was firmly in line when Lee looked up, a paper in her hand.
“Anyway, it’s something to think about. Here’s that printout. D. Yamaguchi, Stanford, and E. Whitlaw—you’re right, it is Whitlaw—Nottingham, England. You said she’s here?”
“Dean Gardner thought she was visiting friends in the city.
