“Anyway,” I went on, “one thing the two of them had in common was gardening. Harry and Susan loved flowers and spent a lot of time in the greenhouse at her Hillsborough estate. A couple of months after the wedding, one of her arrangements won what I guess you’d call the Grammy of gardening, and the picture in our file shows them with it, smiling like it was their firstborn and looking in love.”
“I take it the wedded bliss didn’t last?”
“You got it. Four months later, to the day, Susan disappeared. Vanished totally, without a trace. Leaving Harry in the Hillsborough mansion with the joint checkbooks. Everybody knew he’d murdered her, and that it was only a matter of time till he looted the accounts and split.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Nope. Harry stayed put. He didn’t even spend much money, just stayed on in the mansion and let the trust department of the bank pay the bills like they always did. He puttered around in the greenhouse, didn’t date, didn’t travel. Nobody knew if he was grieving, because he didn’t have any friends. He just lay low and cooperated with the cops who were investigating his wife’s disappearance.”
“So maybe he didn’t kill her after all.”
“Wrong again. At least, according to Shar. She and her client, Susan Cross’s attorney, claim Harry’s a patient man. He’s been waiting, they say, for the seven years to pass so he can get Susan declared legally dead. And if he has, all that waiting’ll pay off next week when he goes to court. Then all the loot’ll belong to him.”
“So that’s what’s kept you so busy lately. Trying to get the goods on Harry.”
“Yep. Shar says that all people leave traces of their crimes, and it’s just a matter of pinpointing and interpreting them. She’s sure that Harry’s feeling secure as his court date approaches and that he’s bound to do something stupid.”
“After seven years of being careful? I don’t think so.”
“That’s what I told Shar. You’d think she’d give up, wouldn’t you?”
Lottie shrugged.”Maybe, maybe not. I have a hard time giving up on anything. Even you.”
Now what the hell did that mean? I didn’t want to ask. Instead I watched the kids build their castles, and brooded about my morning conference with my aunt Sharon.
“So what’ve got here, Mick?” Shar had asked me.
She looked bright-eyed and pretty and sexy-for an old broad of forty. Her boyfriend, Hy Ripinsky, must’ve been in town. “What we’ve got is zilch,” I said.
She gave me a look that said,
“Zilch,” I said again, but not as firmly. “Here’s how it went: Harry came out of the mansion at seven-thirty and went to the greenhouse. Stayed there till close to nine. Went inside and spent a couple hours in the room the house plans call the library.” I’d got hold of the plans in a perfectly legal way, since the mansion was registered as a state historical building. “Then he went to the master-bedroom wing, and the lights there went out around midnight.”
Shar seemed to be waiting.
“That’s all there is.” I couldn’t hold back and longer. “This surveillance is idiotic, and on top of that, I think I’ve caught a cold.”
Now she looked sad. Oh, hell was she thinking I didn’t have what it takes for the business? Normally, I don’t get to do much field work, just sit at the computer, and she told me this case was a chance to prove my abilities. “Mick,” she said after a minute, “maybe it’ll help to review the case from day one.”
“Whatever.” I slumped down in the chair, resigned to the rehash of details I already knew by heart.
Shar opened the file in front of her, paged through it. “Susan Cross disappeared on October nineteen, six months and five days after she married Harry Homestead. That morning she drove to the city, left her car for an oil change at the Sutter-Stockton garage, and kept a nine-thirty appointment at Yosh for Hair on Maiden Lane. According to Homestead, he was to meet her in the lobby of the Saint Francis at twelve-thirty and take her to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Cross never showed.
“Homestead waited at the hotel till one-thirty. Staff members saw him arrive and later go to the phones. He called the beauty salon, and they told him Cross left around eleven. He checked the restaurant, thinking they’d got their signals crossed about where to meet; called several of her friends, her attorney, and her banker, on the chance she’d stopped to see one of them and got held up. Nobody had seen her. Finally, he called the police.”
To speed things up, I said, “The cops treated it as routine, told him to wait seventy-two hours and then report her missing. Next day her lawyer stepped in, and they took it more seriously. Cops talked to the people at Yosh’s, and that’s when one weird thing came out.”
Shar nodded. “Cross told her stylist that she was going to meet Homestead’s mother later that day, and added that the woman was living in horrible circumstances. She said she hoped Mrs. Homestead would allow Harry and her to do something to help out. But when the stylist pressed for details, Cross changed the subject.”
“And later it came out that Homestead’s mother had died ten years earlier. He claimed he didn’t know why his wife would tell the stylist something like that.”
Shar flipped through the rest of the pages and closed the file. “The police started focusing their investigation on Homestead within a week. They searched the house and grounds of the estate; no body turned up. They did a complete background check on him. He came up clean except for a couple of old DUI’s. He agreed to take a polygraph test and passed. But as we know, some people can fool the lie detector.”
“Shar-”
“Cross’s family hired private detectives to try to get something on Homestead,” she went on. “Nothing. A reward was offered, and the usual nut cases came out of the woodwork. No leads. Homestead had no assets of his own, but he didn’t seem inclined to tap into his wife’s money. He’s kept a low profile for seven years, and if we don’t get something on him, next week he’s going to be handsomely rewarded for murder.”
“Did you ever consider that he didn’t do it?”
“He did.”
“Or that you might be just a tiny bit obsessed with-”
“I’m not. Harry Homestead killed his wife.”
I threw up my hands. The woman can be so exasperating! “Okay! Whatever you say! He killed her. But we can’t prove it. This case is impossible.”
“I thought I taught you better than that. No case is impossible.” She fixed me with that steely look of hers, the one that makes me feel like I’m still a five-year-old who won’t pick up his toys. “I think you’re burned out on this, Mick. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
“I’m not burned out, Shar! I’m just…realistic.”
Her mouth twitched. It does that only when she’s mad or worried. And I knew for sure she wasn’t worried. “All right, I’ll take the rest of the day off!” I got up and stomped out of there-fast.
Lottie said, “Give it a rest, Mick. Stop fretting about the case and enjoy the afternoon.” She motioned at the kids. “You ever do that?”
“Play in the sand? Who doesn’t? We used to have contests to see who could build the best castle.”
“Who won?”
“Me, of course.”
“Of course.” She poked me in the ribs. I put my arm around her for self-protection, and we kept on watching the kids. They sure were enterprising. The boy finished his castle, marked out a subdivision, and started building another. The girl saw what he was up to, left her castle, and laid a sandy cornerstone.
“Hey,” the boy said to her, “you can’t have two castles!”
“You’ve got two.”
“That’s different. I’m a boy and you’re a girl. And girls don’t got any money.”
Lottie muttered, “A sexist, already!”
The little girl gave her brother a snotty look-the kind I’ve seen plenty of times, from all four of my sisters. “You
