A Plague of Secrets

6

Maya Townshend’s home was a big cut above average even in its very prestigious location. Behind a sculpted rose garden the residence rose four stories on the large northeast corner lot of Green and Divisadero. Behind it the escarpment dropped off precipitously down to the Marina, which meant that all of Maya Townshend’s back and west-side windows-all forty-six of them-had killer views of the bay, the rust-red Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin headlands.

It was a multimillion-dollar property, and standing out in front of it, Bracco whistled. “There’s more money in coffee than I thought.”

Schiff stared at the immensity of the house, shaking her head. “This isn’t coffee money, Darrel. Unless she also owns Starbucks. But in that case Bay Beans West would have been a Starbucks, right? No way she wouldn’t have gone for the brand name.”

It was closing in on one o’clock, the schizophrenic temperature back up near seventy. Above them, high clouds drifted in the blue. A fitful breeze, barely strong enough to ruffle Schiff’s hair, hinted of another change in the weather, but for the moment it was nice.

The ornately carved door had an eight-toned ring.

“Lord, we thank thee. We bow our heads.”

Schiff turned to him. “What?”

“Those bells. The song that goes with it. Lord, we thank thee. We bow our heads. You watch,” he said. “She’s Catholic.”

“Maybe, but the Ferry Building, you might not have noticed, plays the same song.”

“Maybe it’s a Vatican plot.”

Before Schiff could come back with a suitable wisecrack, the door opened to an attractive dark-haired woman in her early thirties who dressed as though she’d never heard of the Haight-Ashbury, or blue jeans, for that matter. In fact, she wore a grown-up, upscale version of the uniform for a Catholic girls’ school-a plaid skirt over a white shirt under an argyle sweater. Her hair curled under at the shoulders. Green eyes, flawless skin.

Bracco and Schiff hadn’t specifically told her when, or even if, they’d be coming by. Schiff had talked to her by telephone briefly over the weekend and said that the police might like to interview her sometime about Dylan Vogler and the business she owned, but she’d purposely refrained from making an appointment. There was the possibility that Maya wouldn’t be in when they came to call, of course, but that downside was more than offset by the chance to catch her before she’d talked to a lawyer or given too much thought to what she might want to tell the inspectors.

“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you?”

Bracco had his ID out. “Police inspectors, ma’am. Homicide. We wonder if we might have a word. On the Dylan Vogler matter.”

“Sure. Of course.” She stepped back, maybe unable to come up with an excuse on the spur of the moment why this wasn’t a great time-and invited them inside, through a large square foyer with a thirty-foot ceiling.

Schiff stopped, agog at the panorama through the enormous windows. Apparently her reaction wasn’t that unusual.

Maya stopped and presented the view as though it belonged to her. “I know,” she said. “We’re very fortunate.”

“You must be selling a whole lot of coffee,” Bracco said.

Maya’s contralto laugh was unforced. “Oh, this doesn’t come from BBW. This is all Joel, my husband. He’s in real estate. The coffee shop is really more or less a hobby for me, to keep me busy.”

Schiff came at her with a casual tone. “I understand you don’t spend much time there.”

Maya nodded. “Yes, that’s true, very little. But I do most of the books, approve the ordering, sign the paychecks, that kind of thing.” She shrugged apologetically. “It might not be really true, but I feel like I’m somewhat involved. It’s good to have something keeping you busy besides the kids and outside of housework. Maybe you know.”

Neither Schiff nor Bracco was married, so maybe they didn’t. But Bracco kept the early patter alive. “But the place breaks even?”

“Oh, much better than that. Last year we grossed around forty thousand a month. It’s actually quite a little gold mine, all things considered. People really like the place.” Suddenly a pout appeared. “I’m sorry. What kind of hostess am I? Here we are all standing around. Would you like to sit down? Can I get you some coffee or something?”

“Sitting’s good.” Bracco lowered himself onto an ottoman. “Nothing for me, though.”

Schiff took one end of the overstuffed floral-print couch. “I’m fine too.”

For another second or two Maya stood expectantly, then she shrugged and took her place at the other end of the couch. “So all this business talk is interesting to me, of course, but that’s not why you’re here. How can I help you?”

Schiff threw a look over to Bracco, and he came forward slightly. “Well, let’s get the hard stuff out of the way first. How long had Dylan Vogler managed BBW?”

Maya’s lips turned up. “That’s not a hard one. He pretty much started when I opened, which was ten years ago, and took over full-time about two years later.”

“Were you aware,” Bracco continued, “that he was selling marijuana out of BBW?”

All traces of animation left her face. “To be honest, I had heard a couple of rumors.” She looked at Schiff.

The female inspector nodded. “They were evidently true. He was growing high-grade marijuana in his attic. He had a backpack full of it on him when he was shot. He’s got records at his house for about seventy regular clients, a couple dozen of which we’ve already talked to. He sold it out of the store.”

Maya’s hand went to her mouth. “I didn’t realize it was-”

“So”-Bracco kept up the press-“you didn’t know that he had a criminal record?”

Her brow clouded as she whiplashed back to Bracco. “Well, yes. I knew about that. But that was a long time ago.”

Schiff again. “Before he worked for you.”

“Right.”

Bracco, double-teaming. “You knew about his record when you hired him?”

“Of course.”

“Of course?” Schiff asked.

Maya nodded. “We were friends. We’d been friends in college, USF. I knew he’d made a mistake, but he’d paid for it, and I had an opportunity to help him get back on his feet. It didn’t seem like any kind of risk. He was a good guy and everybody liked him. He’s been an ideal manager for all this time.” She paused. “I can’t believe he was selling dope over the counter at the store.”

“That’s pretty much established, ma’am,” Bracco said. “Do you mind telling us how much he made working for you?”

For the first time Maya showed a reluctance to answer. Her back straightened for a second. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Nevertheless,” Schiff said, “it could save us some time.”

Still rigid on her corner of the couch, now no longer smiling, Maya looked at her hands in her lap. “He made ninety thousand dollars a year. Seventy-five hundred a month.”

“A lot of money,” Schiff said.

“As I said,” Maya responded, “the store made money. And largely because of Dylan’s management. He did a good job, and I thought it was fair to pay him well.”

“What’s a manager of a Starbucks make?” Schiff asked.

Maya shook her head. “Less than that, I’m sure. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not a big multinational corporation. I don’t have stock-holders. I can pay him whatever I want. He worked hard and I wanted to keep him happy, so I paid him well. As I said, we were friends in college. Once I got him set up, and especially once he started having a family, I felt a responsibility for him. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Schiff shook her head. “Nobody’s saying there is, Mrs. Townshend.”

But Bracco wasn’t ready to stop mining this vein. He jumped in quickly. “So did you and your husband socialize with Dylan and his wife?”

“No,” Maya said. “No. Not very much. He’s my employee, after all. We have very different lives now.” Suddenly seeming to realize that she’d exposed herself somehow, Maya relaxed back into the couch, trailed an arm along the armrest. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what all these questions are about. Do you think I had something to do with Dylan’s death? Or knew more about his marijuana business? I don’t even know what’s going to happen to BBW now. I may put it up for sale. Joel and I don’t need it, and now that Dylan’s gone, there’s no real reason…” She shook her head and shrugged.

“Reason for what?” Schiff asked.

“I mean, to keep the place. I certainly don’t have the time to go back in there and work it every day. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” By this time her eyes had taken on a brightness and shine-she seemed to be near tears.

“Mrs. Townshend”-Schiff laid a hand on the couch between them-“we’re trying to get some idea of who might have had a reason to kill Dylan. It’s possible he said something to you, something he was worried about, a staff problem. Did he fire anybody recently, for example?”

“No. The staff’s very loyal. He didn’t mention anything like that. I really just don’t have any idea. Maybe it was just a random shooting.”

“Maybe,” Bracco said, “but he wasn’t robbed, so that leaves us scratching for a motive.”

“If it’s not something to do with the marijuana,” Maya offered, “I just can’t imagine what it would be.”

“All right, ma’am.” Bracco got to his feet. “One last quick thing. Just for the record, would you mind telling us where you were Saturday morning?”

Clearly, the question offended Maya, but she recovered. “I went to six-thirty Mass. ”

“On Saturday?” Bracco asked.

“I go to Mass most Saturdays. And Sundays too. It’s not too fashionable anymore, I suppose,” she said, “but it brings me a lot of peace.”

“Well, here’s to peace,” Schiff said. “Can’t have too much of that.” She rose from her own seat, flashed a perfunctory smile. “We may need to speak with you again at some point.”

“That’d be fine,” Maya said, “if it will help you find whoever shot Dylan.”

Bracco and Schiff were driving back downtown. They were stopped at a light at Van Ness Avenue, and Bracco was in the passenger seat. Schiff was talking. “So they’re friends from college, and she feels responsible for him and his family, but they don’t see each other socially and still she pays him nearly a hundred grand a year. This sings for you?”

“Why not?” Bracco said. “You notice her house? Her husband’s doing okay.”

“So why didn’t she just sell the shop to him? Dylan?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she hadn’t thought of it. Maybe he didn’t ask. It wasn’t broke, so she didn’t need to fix it.”

They rode a few blocks in silence. Then Schiff said, “Another thing.”

“You’re really chewing on this, aren’t you?”

“Tell me why there’s no reason now to keep the shop. It’s pulling in half a mil a year. She hires another manager, pays him half of what she paid Dylan, it’s still making a half a mil a year. I’m not a business gal, but I don’t see selling something that’s making me half a million dollars a year.”

“She doesn’t need the money.”

“Give me a break, Darrel. Half a million dollars to do basically nothing?”

In the passenger seat Bracco shrugged. “She’ll sell it for five times that and it’s out of her hair forever.”

“I’ve got to think she owed him something. Dylan.”

“What?”

“If she kept it open just to keep him getting paid.”

“You’re fishing.”

“I am, but I got a license.” They rode in silence for a half a block.

Then Bracco looked across at her partner. “I thought you were leaning toward Jansey.”

“I was, maybe I still am. I like to keep an open mind. But something Robert Tripp said stuck with me.”

After a couple of seconds Bracco said, “He didn’t give us anything except the alibi.”

“No. In fact, he did. He said Ben went and woke up his mother Saturday morning, remember?”

He nodded.

“Well,” Schiff went on, “we can always double-check-and I intend to-by asking the kid about it, but that’s the kind of detail I don’t see Tripp or anybody else making up. That’s the story as he knew it. And if it’s true, it means Jansey hadn’t left the house early to go down and lie in wait for Dylan at the store. She could have shot him way closer to home anyway.”

“So how about Tripp?”

“As the shooter?”

Bracco nodded again. “He admits he was up. Maybe it’s him who went to the store instead of Jansey. He could have thought he was protecting her, who maybe he’s got a thing with, in spite of him saying no. Or wants to have one.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do it at the store?”

“I don’t know. He says he’s walking to school to study and they go down together. Then, maybe he knows Dylan’s carrying a gun. And they’re kind of friends, so he asks Dylan if he can just see it for a minute. And bang.” He darted a quick glance at Schiff. “That accounts for the lack of any struggle. He caught him off guard, threw the gun away, ran back home in time to unplug the sink.”

“Maybe,” Schiff said. “Could have happened.”

“But?”

“But nothing. As I say, I’m keeping an open mind.”