Trophies And Dead Things

'How about some of that chicken? And a plate of pearl balls?'

She set the plates down, marked our check, and departed.

Hank was grinning. 'I thought, as you're fond of proclaiming, that you have no food prejudices.'

'I don't.'

'Then why not try the duck feet?'

'Well, it's just that… they probably don't have much meat on them.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Well, it's true-you saw them. And I don't have any prejudices; I'll eat what's set before me. People who are picky or won't try new things drive me crazy.'

'That's why you wouldn't eat Larry's tofu in chili sauce last week.' Larry Koslowski, an All Souls partner, is a health-food nut.

'I couldn't help that. It looked like… I don't think we should discuss it while we're eating. Anyway, back to Hilderly. He never talked to you about wanting to change his will?'

'No.'

'I wonder why he made a holograph? Why not ask you to draw up the new will?'

'I suspect because he was afraid I'd try to talk him out of it. Or insist on knowing what those people were to him and why he wanted to make them his heirs.'

'Makes sense.'

We ate in silence for a few minutes. A dessert cart went past, and I spied the little yellow custard pies I'm fond of. I'd eaten too much to even entertain the thought of having one now, but I'd noticed a take-out counter off the restaurant's lobby; I'd stop there and buy a few of the pies for later.

Hank was looking preoccupied again, fiddling with his chopsticks.

'What's wrong?' I asked.

'Just brooding. I keep thinking how unlike Perry this is. He wasn't close to those kids, but he loved them and always carried out his responsibilities.'

'Then he must have had a strong reason for disinheriting them. Maybe when we locate the beneficiaries they can explain it.'

'It isn't really any of our business,' Hank said. 'As Perry's executor, I'm bound to carry out his wishes, not to snoop into something he clearly didn't care to explain to me.'

'No, it's not our business, but I wonder…'

'Wonder what?'

I pushed my plate away toward the others that littered the table, then took my teacup in both hands and stared down into it, trying to put the feeling of wrongness that I was experiencing into words. 'When someone makes a major change in his will and conceals it from his attorney, isn't there a possibility of undue influence or duress?'

'A possibility, yes.'

'And when the person dies violently, as Perry did-'

'Shar,' Hank said patiently, 'you've read the papers. His killing was a random shooting. The bullet matched those found in the bodies of the sniper's other victims, all of whom were unrelated.'

That was true. Still… 'Hank, does any of this feel right to you?'

'… No.'

'Then let's see if we can't find an explanation for Perry's actions.'

There was no way I could start a skip trace on either Heikkinen or Taylor on a Saturday. When we returned to Hilderly's flat and I checked the phone directory, I found that neither Grant's nor Goodhue's home number was listed. I called Grant's law office and reached the answering service; the operator at KSTS-TV told me Goodhue was off until Monday. In the end I decided to go through the boxes in Hilderly's dining room, which Hank said had been sitting untouched since he'd moved to the flat nearly ten years before; they might contain something that would explain his connection to his four heirs.

The boxes held fairly commonplace items: household goods such as a fondue pot and yogurt maker that Hilderly had apparently had no use for; high-school yearbooks from a town I'd never heard of; photograph albums with pictures of his boys and a plump brown-haired woman, as well as of a younger Hilderly and a couple I took to be his parents; 45-rpm records that had been hits in the fifties; a collection of baseball cards that by now would be quite valuable; a catcher's mitt; a set of Hardy Boys mysteries; a high-school diploma. Like the flat itself, the boxes contained no memento of his rebellious college days; it was as if he had never attended Cal or participated in the Free Speech Movement. There were no journals, personal letters, or address books that might contain telling information.

I was about to give up when, at the bottom of the last carton, under a folded athletic jacket that showed Hilderly had lettered in high-school baseball, I found a heavy leather drawstring pouch. The object inside had the distinctive shape of a gun.

I lifted the pouch from the carton and loosened its drawstrings. Inside, my fingers touched metal. When I took the gun out, I saw it was a.38 Special of German manufacture, with a two-inch barrel-a reasonably powerful weapon that is easy to conceal on one's person. I examined it more closely and found that someone had attempted to remove the serial number, probably with acid. The number was indecipherable, but a forensics laboratory would be able to bring it out with chemicals.

There was something else in the pouch, something lighter. I reached for it, expecting ammunition. It was a pendant of sorts-a gray pot-metal chain with two small letters attached to it, a K and an A. A curving edge encased the A,but the K was jagged, as if the fragment had been broken off a larger object. A clip-like piece of metal protruded from the back of it.

A piece of junk that ended up in the pouch by mistake? I wondered. Or something that mattered enough to Hilderly that he took the trouble to separate it from his other mementos?

I got up from the floor and carried the gun and pendant into the kitchen, where Hank was emptying a cupboard. 'I found a couple of odd things,' I said, 'but I can't even tell what one of them is.'

He turned, saw the gun, and frowned. 'Is that Perry's?'

'Must be. It was in one of the boxes in the dining room. Someone's removed the serial number from it.'

'That's odd.'

'It could have been done by someone who had possession of it previously, and Perry bought the gun illegally-on the street, for instance. Or he could have done it himself because he-or someone close to him-was the registered owner, and he didn't want that fact to come out.'

Hank looked down at a blue pottery bowl he held, then set it carefully on the counter, as if he were afraid he'd drop it. 'And if the latter is the case, what it implies is that he used it or intended to use it for some illegal purpose.'

I nodded.

'Jesus. I came here this morning with one conception of Perry, and I'll be going away with a completely different one.'

'Don't jump to conclusions,' I warned. 'There are other possibilities. He could have taken this off someone and put it away for safekeeping. He could have found it. You don't know.'

'I don't know what I know anymore.' He glanced at the pendant. 'What's that on the chain?'

'A pair of letters.' I handed it to him.

He examined it, fingering the rough edges as I had. 'Every weekend hippie had a chain like this, but it usually had a peace symbol attached.'

I smiled and took it from his outstretched hand. 'I even had one. We weren't allowed to wear them to school, but on weekends we'd dress up in our bell-bottoms and tie-dye and love beads. There was this store in Laguna Beach that sold beads-fantastic hand-painted ones, all colors and sizes and shapes. We'd drive all the way up there from San Diego to buy them.' I still had some of the prettier ones, unstrung how, in my jewelry box.

'You were a regular little hippie child, weren't you?' Hank said. 'I never would have guessed. When I met you at Berkeley, you struck me as such a… well, cheerleader.'