A Woman’s Eye

A MAN’S HOME by Shelley Singer

A former journalist, SHELLEY SINGER is the author of the popular Jake Samson/Rosie Vicente mysteries. The latter sleuth is almost certainly the only carpenter detective in the history of the genre. They have starred in such excellent novels as Free Draw, Full House, Spit in the Ocean, Samson’s Deal, and Suicide King. Ms, Singer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The woman spoke slowly in a deep voice edged with tears; the message she left on the office answering machine was concise. She needed help. Her husband had been murdered. Would I please call her?

The name, Wittles, sounded familiar, I glanced through that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune and found brief follow-up stories in both. Of course. Alan Wittles. The Berkeley attorney who’d been shot to death in his living room a couple of nights before. Signs of a break-in, the papers said. I had to wonder-didn’t the dead man’s wife have anything better to do with her money than pay a private investigator for a job the police were already doing?

Still, I dialed the number she’d left on the tape. While the phone rang, I thumbed quickly through the phone book to verify that the number actually belonged to her and not to some stray lunatic who’d seen her name in the paper. The call was legitimate; I found Alan and Julia Wittles in the book, at the right number and at a very right address.

She answered with her name, as though she were an upscale clothing store.

“This is Barrett Lake,” I told her. “I’m returning your call to Broz Investigations. How can we help you?”

“Oh, yes. Thank you for calling back quickly. But I’d rather talk to Mr. Broz himself.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Broz isn’t available. He’s left me in charge.” Very impressive. I didn’t tell her I was an apprentice, working out my term under Tito’s license. She hesitated for a good ten seconds.

“You’re a woman.”

“Yes. I am.” I was a little surprised that a proper Berkeley matron would be caught dead expressing what sounded like unfeminist thoughts, but she redeemed herself.

“All right. Good. That might be even better. I’d like you to come over right away so we can talk. So you can get started and clear this all up.”

Not so fast, I told myself. “Perhaps first you could tell me a bit more about what you want me to do for you.”

She sighed and spoke in her slow, soft way. “My husband was shot to death here. At home. Three nights ago.”

“Yes. I know. I’m sorry. But aren’t the police working on the case?”

“They are.” Did I have a point, her tone of voice was asking.

“Well, we don’t like to compete with the Berkeley police. They have resources-”

“Oh, they never catch anyone. They’re busy. They have too much to do. Please, just come over here and talk to me about it. I know you can help me.”

Ridiculous, I thought. If anyone could find a homicidal burglar, it would be the police. But she sounded so desperate, and so unhappy.

I glanced at the work sheet on Tito’s desk. According to him, I didn’t have anything to do that day-nothing, really, to be in charge of-except stick around in case something showed up.

And here was a poor, sad woman in obvious distress, certainly needing someone’s help. Wasn’t that the whole point? Besides making a living? Even Tito the semipractical admitted he had thought I was a natural for the investigating business the first time he came to my apartment and saw the suit of armor in the entry.

He enjoys my romantic delusions, and I enjoy the ones he says he doesn’t have.

I told Julia Wittles I was on my way.

The house was about $750,000 worth of stucco and Spanish tile in the upper Elmwood section, one of Berkeley’s best. I noticed a man sitting in a car parked across the street, an ordinary-looking car with a long radio aerial. Were the police with her now? I headed for the door, up a terra-cotta walk flanked by two large palm trees. When I pressed the bell button, I heard a chord sound somewhere deep inside; the door opened almost immediately.

The woman and I appraised each other. We were about the same height, five seven or so, the same age-early forties-and the same build, a bit on the thin side. But her coloring was much lighter. My French and Chippewa ancestors are more dominant genetically than the Minnesota Swedes, but all her material came from northern Europe. She had pale blond hair, long and fine, pale blue eyes, and pale skin. She also had a limp handshake, but I thought that had more to do with environment than heredity.

The day was hot; the house was cool. The entry hall, two stories high with a sweep of staircase leading to a gallery, was bright and airy, but in the living room the windows were heavily curtained. The only light came from the far end of the room, a good thirty feet away, where a young man dressed in T-shirt and jeans, standing in the bright sun of the patio, was working on the open French doors. From inside the dark room I watched him turn away and walk a couple of paces through the sunlight to a toolbox lying on the patio stones.

“This is the room where it happened,” she said. “Make yourself comfortable, I’ll get us some iced tea.” She disappeared through a swinging door. I glanced around in the dimness-nice fireplace, hardwood floor. As for the furnishings, though, my mother would have said they were “different.” A tactful condemnation. Except for a couple of overstuffed couches that looked like relatives of the Pillsbury Doughboy, the furniture was flimsy-looking and looked as though it had been painted gaudily by children.

My possible client returned with two glasses and two coasters on a tray and placed the tray on the red-white-and-green coffee table between the couches,

“This is a very lovely house, architecturally,” I said.

She smiled, a radiant smile of white teeth against pale lips. An ivory woman.

“Thank you, Would you like to see more of it?” She was eager, happy. To refuse would have been almost cruel. Clearly she wanted to postpone talking about what had happened to her husband.

She led me first to the dining room, a large, light expanse furnished with a gigantic table, eight chairs, a sideboard, and two smaller cupboards. The table was a simple rectangle, soft edged, carved from hard, reddish wood. The chairs were more free form, with blob-shaped solid wood backs. The sideboard matched the table. I had seen furniture like this once before, at a gallery show of handmade pieces. Each of the chairs, I knew, cost several hundred dollars. The prices of the table and sideboard I did not even want to think about. The two smaller cupboards looked like some of the pieces I had seen in the living room. Here, in the bright uncurtained dining room, I recognized the style. There are a couple of shops in the Bay Area that specialize in amazingly expensive Southwest-style handmade furniture. Some of it is charming, bright, and whimsical, even if it doesn’t seem to stand quite right on its legs. But some of it goes beyond artistic whimsy to artist’s joke, and the two small cupboards in Julia Wittles’s dining room fit into that last category. They were particularly rickety versions of that genre, or school, or whatever they were calling it. Both were covered with crude shapes painted in bitingly sharp primary colors. One of them had little tin cutouts of coyotes, or maybe wolves, tacked to the wood above the open shelves.

“Those cupboards were made by Ian Feather,” she said, “a very famous artist who lives in Taos.” I nodded and smiled. “It took months to get them, months.”

After demonstrating that the cupboard doors actually opened, she led me upstairs to a master bedroom and bath, both of which had a bit too much brass for my taste. The quilt on the bed, though, was a beautiful geometric creation in blues and greens.

“The quilt was made in 1905 by a woman in Nebraska, a farmer’s wife,” she said. “It was in that quilt show at the art museum in San Francisco? About five years ago?”

“Interesting,” I said politely. My compassion was slipping away. I was beginning to feel restless. I have always disliked guided museum tours.

As she led me through the rest of the upstairs, lovingly pointing out skylights, alcoves, and window seats, and telling me where and how she had acquired each piece of furniture, I thought about how much it had all cost. This woman had spent more on furniture than I’d earned in half my twenty-year teaching career.

“I do love this house so much,” she said, as we trailed down the stairs again. “I’ve dedicated my life, these past eight years, to decorating it, to setting off its beauty properly.”

“Certainly,” I said, as we walked into the kitchen, “everything you have is unique.”

“Exactly. That was the effect I wanted. Everything is perfect. Just the way I wanted it.” The kitchen was basic California modern, with a greenhouse window and a center island stove top, a big fireplace, and lots of redwood and copper-all the things you see in the magazines dentists buy for their waiting rooms.

“You mentioned eight years,” I said. “Is that how long you’ve lived here?”

We were back in the living room at last. I took a long swallow of my reclaimed iced tea and sat on one of the soft couches.

“Yes. That was when I married Alan and moved in. His first wife had done the house in Victorian. It didn’t work at all.”

“Was he divorced?”

“No, she died. Years before I met him. They bought the house together. It was theirs. And then it was his. And then it was ours. And now”-she sighed-“it’s mine.”

I didn’t like sitting on the couch, after all. I felt as though it might begin to digest me. I moved to an unpadded wooden chair and placed my coaster, and then my tea, on the foot-square, red-and-white-paint-spattered table beside me. I was relieved when the table didn’t collapse.

“Now,” I said, “we need to talk about your husband’s death. Although I know how difficult that must be for you.”

She dropped her head, drawing her hand across her forehead.

“It is.”

“You say it happened in this room. I take it the intruder broke in through those doors?”

I nodded toward the French doors. The young blond man was reaching up toward the top of the doorframe with a screwdriver. As he stretched, his T-shirt rode up to expose a hairless expanse of muscular stomach.

“Yes. You find him and I’ll identify him, and we can get this whole thing over with once and for all. I saw him. I saw him running away. But the police haven’t asked me to a single lineup yet.” She made it sound like they’d neglected to invite her to tea.

“Let’s back up just a little bit, Ms. Wittles. You were here when it happened?”

“I was upstairs. I heard Alan shout, and then I heard all these terrible noises-furniture crashing, yelling-and then a gunshot. I ran downstairs, and there was this man, standing over Alan with a gun, the patio doors open, furniture everywhere, and Alan lying on the floor. The man looked at me, dropped the gun, and ran back out the door.”

A power tool whined. I followed her gaze as she looked anxiously toward the light. The carpenter was running a belt sander up the side of the door.

“Oh, no!” she shouted, waving at him, catching his eye. He turned off the sander and looked at her quizzically. “The dust is coming into the house.” He nodded thoughtfully and began to take the door off its hinges.

I turned back to Julia Wittles. “He dropped the gun? He didn’t shoot at you?”

“No. He dropped it. It was Alan’s gun. And the killer was wearing gloves. Did I say that?”

“No. And you saw him clearly enough to identify him.” She nodded. I glanced back toward the doorway. The carpenter had removed the door and was carrying it across the patio in the sunshine. Everything out there, the stones, the shrubs, the man himself, looked warm and bright. I turned back to Julia Wittles, the sad-faced woman sitting across from me in the cool dimness.

I concentrated on that face.

“Where was your husband when you found him?”

“On the rug in front of the fireplace.”

There was no rug in front of the fireplace. She anticipated my next question.

“It’s at the cleaners.”

“So what must have happened, then, is that your husband caught this man breaking in, and went to get his gun. Where did he keep it, usually?”

She pointed to a small blue desk near the patio doors. “In there, always.”

“Okay. So he grabbed his gun, but there was a struggle…?”

“Yes, that’s what I think. There was a struggle, the burglar got the gun, and shot him.”

“The room must have been a mess,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but everything looked so perfectly tidy now, every piece just so, every rug straight and lint free, the hardwood floor mirrorlike where there was light to reflect. I couldn’t quite imagine this room tossed around.

She frowned at me, studied my face for a moment. “It was. And poor Alan, lying there.” She dropped her head into her hands for a moment, sat up straight again, and took a deep breath.

“And you gave the police a description of the man. Did they do one of those drawings from your description?”

“We tried to do that, but I wasn’t very good at it. But I’d know him if I saw him. And I’m sure you could find him down in West Berkeley, where all the bums are, down on San Pablo or Sacramento.”

“You say you think the police aren’t working on the case.”

“Oh, they’re working on it, I suppose. But they certainly haven’t asked me to identify anyone.”

“I think they’re working on it. I think there’s a plainclothesman parked across the street right now. Have they been watching the house?”

Her small mouth dropped open, her eyes widened. She stared at me. We were both silent for a moment. Out on the patio the power sander whined,

“They’re going to try to blame me,” she said, shaking her head. “Isn’t that what they always do? Blame the spouse? You have to help me. We can go down to San Pablo together. I’ll point him out to you.” She was gripping the mushy arm of her couch, her voice rising.

I was getting a pain in my right temple. I rubbed it. “Why do you think the police are after you?”

“People know we’ve been having problems.”

“What kinds of problems were you having?”

“He wanted a divorce. Did I show you the conservatory? I had it added to the house last year. Would you like to see it?”

Her eyes were pleading. She was like a lost kitten, sitting demurely, prettily, tail wrapped around her paws, hoping to please.

No, I thought. No more museum tours, no more digressions. We needed to stick to the subject, which was getting more complicated.

“Possibly later. He wanted to divorce you?”

“Yes. And make me leave the house.”

“Wasn’t it legally half yours, community property?” Had she signed some sort of prenuptial agreement?

“Yes, I suppose so, but he wouldn’t have let me have it. He would have sold it. He said it was his home, his and Marsha’s, His first wife.”

“But you’d get half the money,”

“That’s not enough. I wouldn’t get this house. I wouldn’t get enough to buy one like it.”

“Did you talk to a lawyer about all this?”

“No. No, Alan was a lawyer. All the lawyers I knew were his friends. I couldn’t fight him legally. I wouldn’t have known how.” Her voice had risen in pitch again, high and breathless and soft. She sounded startlingly like Marilyn Monroe. Like an echo out of the past, bouncing around the room. I wanted to scream at her: Where had she been for the past three decades?

She was watching me warily. “We need another glass of tea,” she said, and fled to the kitchen with our glasses.

I got up and walked to the square of sunlight, crossed the flagstones to where the young man stood, screwdriver in one hand, a new lock in the other. The French door he’d removed rested across a pair of sawhorses.

I couldn’t even bring myself to flirt with him.

“Was there a lot of damage to the doors?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “No. Hardly any. The wood was barely marked. The burglar pried real gently until the lock gave way. Must have taken a long time. And the bolts top and bottom”-he pointed at the top of the door with his screwdriver-“they weren’t shot, so there wasn’t anything broken there. Not bad at all.”

“Thank you.”

He looked at me oddly. Yes, I thought, you’re very pretty and very charming and you have a sweet smile, and you’re not used to women staring at you dully and walking away. Sorry.

Julia Wittles was standing at the coffee table, waiting for me. The tea glasses were full again.

“Well, what are you going to do?” she demanded.

I went to the big front windows and pulled open the drapes. Then I turned on a few lamps.

“Tell me how the furniture was that night, when you came into the room.”

She pointed out various pieces and described their positions, although she said she couldn’t remember exactly in all cases. A couch was overturned. One chair was on its back near the entry door. “And some of the tables were thrown around the room, and that rug and that one were out of place.”

“And that’s how it was when the police came?” She nodded. I examined the chair that had been displaced, turning it over, looking at it carefully. I looked at the coffee table, the end tables.

“Where was this?” I asked, touching the small red-and-white-spattered table.

“Over there.” She pointed to a spot near the kitchen door, some fifteen feet away. I crossed the room and studied the floor. Then I went back to the table, took a deep, compassion-expelling breath, and gave it a good kick. Julia Wittles yelled. The table shot up, hit the floor, and skidded a few feet, coming to rest about where she had pointed. I walked over to it, gingerly, because I’d hurt one of my toes.

The floor had a new, shallow, six-inch scratch with a flake of blue paint in it. The previously pristine table now had one loose leg and one chipped corner.

She came to stand beside me. I didn’t look at her.

“I hope that wasn’t one of your favorite pieces,” I said. She didn’t answer. “None of this furniture has a scratch on it. The only scratch on the floor is the one I just made. Did you think the police were complete idiots?”

“You’re smarter than they are.”

“Even if they had called you in for a lineup, you know, you might have picked someone they knew couldn’t be guilty. Sometimes they put cops in them.”

She moved across the room, standing just two feet from me. Her eyes were red, and the fine wrinkles around them deepened as she stared into mine, trying, I suppose, to read my mind. “You’re not going to help me.”

“You need a lawyer.” And a doctor or two.

The carpenter was back at the doorframe again, reinstalling the door. She turned to watch him.

“I don’t want to do that,” she said. “I don’t like lawyers.”