think I don’t have money,” she told him. “I’ve to lots of stuff you don’t know about.” That was when he grabbed her bucket and dumped sand over her head, and she screamed, and the daddy jumped up and clobbered both of them.
And that was when something I hadn’t thought of before occurred to me, and I jumped up from the log, then pulled Lottie to her feet. “Hey, let’s go home.”
“Now? Why?”
“I want to play with my laptop.”
It was getting dark by the time we got to my condo on the Embarcadero, not far from McCone Investigations’ offices. I went straight to my computer, not even bothering to take off my jacket, and Lottie joined me. By then, she’d figured out a few things too. “You doing a real estate data search?” she asked.
I nodded without looking up from the computer keyboard.
“Search by owner’s name? San Francisco County?”
“Uh-huh.”
She sat down of the couch and waited while data scrolled in front of me on the monitor. Within a few minutes I had the information: Parcel 19 140-50. Owner: Harry Homestead. I turned and smile at Lottie.
“Mick,” she drawled, ‘you’re grinnin’ like a jackass eatin’ sweetbrier!”
“Well come and look where this property’s located.”
She scanned the screen. “Ingleside district. Isn’t that the area of nice houses that drug dealers’ve take over? Where the property values aren’t worth squat anymore because of the crime factor?”
“Yep.”
“So why would Homestead buy property there when he’s got a perfectly good mansion down the Peninsula?”
“I can think of one reason.”
Her eyes met mine, and then she shook her head. “You didn’t read carefully, Mick. Homestead bought that property three years after his wife disappeared.”
I looked where she was pointing. Damn!
“Wonder who owned the place before he bought it?” she said.
“This database doesn’t show.”
“County registrar of deeds is online.”
My Lottie thinks faster on her feet than I do.
“Wolfgang Trujillo. What kind of a name is that?”
Lottie smiled. “One that’s easy to trace. How many Wolfgang Trujillo’s can there be in San Francisco?”
“If he still lives here.”
“Try Information.” She handed me the phone I got a number and called. No answer.
“Okay, Trujillo’s not home, but I left a message on his machine. I’ll try him again after I take a look at that Ingleside district address.”
Lottie was already putting on her jacket. I went over and hugged her. “Sorry for ruining the afternoon and evening.”
“I don’t consider them ruined, not when we’re nipping at the heels of a wife-killer.”
“We?” I stepped back.
“Yeah, we. You’re not keeping me out of this one. Besides, you might need me.” She patted her oversized purse.
Yeah, I might. Lottie’s firearm-qualified and has a carry permit for her.357 Magnum. I can’t shoot straight to save my life. Plus she’s better at interviewing witnesses than I am; come to think of it, she’s my equal or better at almost anything we do. Which is what makes the relationship interesting.
It was already the dangerous hour by the time we got to Harry Homestead’s street on the other side of the city.
Three of those big old boats of cars that drug dealers seem to favor were parked in front of the house with a weedy front yard in the middle of the block. Guys who looked straight out of the Thugs “R” Us catalog lounged around on them, smoking and swapping lies while they waited for their clientele. Most of the houses were big two- story stucco places, set back from the sidewalk on a little grassy rise. They must’ve been nice once, but now they had bars on their windows and FOR SALE signs on their lawns.
A couple of the dealers glanced at Lottie and me as we drove in, but the Yamaha and our leathers were what Shar called “protective coloration.” Meaning that we looked like we belonged, so they didn’t try to mess with us. A good thing, too, because the odds would’ve been with Lottie and her Magnum.
Harry’s house was sunk way back behind a clump of yew trees. I pulled the bike up the drive and under them, and shut it down. Then we sat astride it, looking at the house. It was tall and narrow, cream stucco with dark timbers and leaded glass windows covered with heavy iron mesh. The light from the moon glinted off the glass, but otherwise it was dark.
“Nobody home,” I whispered, “except maybe a ghost.”
Lottie didn’t answer. She was fumbling around in her purse. “Wait here,” she whispered, and got off the bike.
“Where’re you-” but she’d already disappeared into the yews. Dammit, what was she doing? This was my case. I should be calling the shots.
A few seconds later I spotted her slipping up the steps to the entry, flashlight in hand. She disappeared through an archway, and I saw the beam swing around, stop, swing some more. Then she came off the steps at a trot and hurried back to me. “House is protected by Bay Alarm. We don’t want to mess with it,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning to break and enter.” I probably sounded as pissed off as I felt.
“The hell you weren’t!” she slid onto the seat behind me.
“Well, maybe I would, if it was an easy in-and-out. If we’re right about this place, Harry hasn’t been near it for years.”
“There’s still the problem of the timing. He bought it long after the missus disappeared.”
“Maybe Wolfgang Trujillo can shed some light on that.” I took out my cell phone and punched out his number.
Wolfgang Trujillo lived in a residential hotel on Nob Hill, close to downtown and the theater district. His living room was so full of books and magazines and playbills and newspaper clippings that there was only one place to sit-an old armchair with busted springs. He offered the chair to Lottie, and she perched on its edge.
I leaned against the sill of a painted-shut window that stared smack at the wall of the next building, and watched Mr. Trujillo pace around the room. He must’ve been in his seventies, tall and skinny, with a sunken chest and a wild mop of white hair, and he liked to wave his arms around while he talked.
“Mr. Homestead bought the Ingleside house on the advice of my former tenant, James Chaffee,” he said in response to Lottie’s first question. “I never met Homestead. The transaction was handled through Coldwell Banker.”
“The house was rented to Mr. Chaffee for how long?”
“Three, three and a half years before Mr. Homestead bought it. My wife had died, and I wanted to be closer to downtown, but I’d had difficulty selling, so I let it out instead.”
“What can you tell me about Mr. Chaffee?”
“He was a good tenant, kept the house and yard up. He installed an alarm system and didn’t ask for reimbursement. He paid his rent on a six-month basis, with a cashier’s check drawn on Wells Fargo Bank.”
“I suppose you ran a credit check on him before he took possession?”
