Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

Slayer Statute by Janet Dawson

Janet Dawson is the author of nine novels featuring Oakland P.I. Jeri Howard, including Kindred Crimes, which won the St. Martin’s Press/P.I. Writers of America contest for best first P.I. novel in 1991. Jeri has also appeared in several short stories, published in various anthologies. A collection of these tales, entitled Scam and Eggs (Five Star), was released in December, 2002. Ms. Dawson’s work has never before appeared in EQMM.

“Why would one shoot the other?” I asked. I like to know why things happen.

Wilcoxin shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. They’re both dead. All I care about is who gets the money.” He frowned, as though considering how callous that sounded. “That’s for damn sure all the beneficiaries care about.”

“How much money?”

The insurance adjuster gazed morosely at the folder sitting like a toad in the middle of his desk. He named an amount certain to gladden the heart of any beneficiary, then appended a caveat.

“Payment to the beneficiaries is my top priority, but I want to be sure the insurance company hasn’t been defrauded. That’s where you come in, Ms. Howard. You were recommended to me as someone who can untangle messes. This case has been a monumental headache.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to jump into this briar patch. “Tell me more. Then I’ll tell you if I’ll take it.”

Judging from the look on his face, the thought that I might not be willing to take on his head-ache evidently hadn’t occurred to Wilcoxin. He reached for the file, which concerned a husband and wife, both of them very dead. In fact, one of them had apparently committed homicide before committing suicide. Why? That was just one of the questions I had about the late Claude and Martha Terrell.

Late fifties, both of them. Late residents of Alameda, the island city in San Francisco Bay. They’d both been in real estate. Claude developed commercial, Martha sold residential. Having made piles of money, they both retired. Claude played golf, Martha played bridge — when she wasn’t collecting old silver.

The Terrells had married eight years earlier, a second marriage for both, after their first matrimonial forays ended in divorce. Each had two adult children. Claude’s son Eric was thirty-one and married. Daughter Erin was twenty-nine and single. Martha’s daughter Pamela was thirty, married, with one child. Son Colin was twenty-seven and unmarried.

Not long after their wedding, the Terrells had purchased life-insurance policies with Wilcoxin’s company. The policies had included the standard suicide clause, designed to discourage people from promptly killing themselves to benefit their families. The clause stated that if the insured committed suicide within two years after the policy issue date, the insurance company’s liability was limited to a return of the premiums paid. The suicide clause on the Terrell policy was no longer in effect. The insurer was now obligated to pay the beneficiaries, whom the Terrells had designated in what should have been a straightforward, logical fashion.

Should have been, that is, until words like homicide entered the equation.

“You’re familiar with the Slayer Statute?” Wilcoxin asked.

“California Probate Code Section 250? Indeed I am.”

“The medical examiner can’t say who died first. The police can’t figure out which one killed the other. You see my problem?”

“Indeed I do.” And it was a doozy.

The California Slayer Statute says that a person who “feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent” is not entitled to any of the decedent’s property, interest, or benefit, which then goes to the heirs “as if the killer had predeceased the decedent.”

So what did the Slayer Statute have to do with the Terrells’ life insurance policies? Everything.

Under normal circumstances, if Claude died first, the money from his insurance policy went to his primary beneficiary, Martha. If Martha was no longer living at the time Claude died, the payout went to his secondary beneficiaries, Claude’s two children, Eric and Erin. If Martha died first, the money from her insurance policy went to her primary beneficiary, Claude. If he was no longer living when Martha died, the payout went to Martha’s secondary beneficiaries, her children, Pamela and Colin, then to her tertiary beneficiary, Pamela’s young daughter.

But if the deaths were murder-suicide, normal went out the window. The law assumed the killer died first. So when it came to distributing the estate, the scenario went like this:

If Claude killed Martha, then turned the gun on himself, the law figured Claude died first and Martha was his beneficiary. Since Martha was also dead, her beneficiaries would get the money from Claude’s life insurance policy — plus the payout from Martha’s life-insurance policy. And if Martha killed Claude, then herself, the law said she died first and Claude inherited. So Claude’s beneficiaries would get the money from Martha’s insurance — and Claude’s insurance money, too.

It was a lot of money. No wonder the beneficiaries were fighting. The winners got all the slices in the big, juicy pie.

“Why don’t these people just split the money four ways?” I asked.

Wilcoxin’s pained expression told me I didn’t know all the nuances of the insurance biz. Maybe not, but I knew about greed.

“It’s not that simple.”

I smiled. “No, I suppose not. It never is, where money is involved.”

“There’s going to be a hearing in a couple of weeks,” he said. “The court may rule on which of the Terrells died first based on the existing evidence. Or that the estate can be divided evenly. But until that happens, my company has to make a good-faith effort to determine who gets the money.”

“Why can’t the medical examiner make that call?”

“He can place time of death to the hour, but not the minute. He says they died too close together for him to be sure.”

“Suicide note? Gunshot residue? Fingerprints? Weapon position?”

Wilcoxin pressed his hands to his temples. “No suicide note. Gunshot residue on the right hands of both decedents. Prints of both decedents on the weapon, which was registered to Claude and usually kept in a locked drawer in his nightstand. The gun was found under the table in the breakfast nook. Odd place for it to wind up, given the position of the bodies.”

“I have to hand it to you, Mr. Wilcoxin. This one is a stinker.”

“Will you take the case?” he asked, naked pleading in his voice.

By now I was thoroughly hooked. So I might as well follow the line and see where it led. “All right. I can’t promise anything. But I’ll give it my best...”

I almost said “shot” but caught myself in time.

“I’ll need the police report, autopsy results, and lab analysis. You have crime-scene photos?”

He nodded, looking queasy. “They’re awfully grim.”

“They usually are. Right now I want a look at the report.”

He handed the report across the desk. I began to read.

The Terrells became the late Terrells on a Friday in May, courtesy of bullets in their brains — one each. Housecleaner Estrellita Mejia arrived at approximately one o’clock that afternoon. She opened the front door with her key, went back to the kitchen, and found two bloody corpses on the floor. She ran screaming into the street, alerting a gardener working at a nearby house. He summoned police with his cell phone.

Initially the Alameda Police Department viewed the slayings as a home-invasion robbery gone bad. But nothing had been taken. Claude’s wallet, full of cash and credit cards, was on his dresser. Martha’s baubles were still in her jewelry case. The purported burglars ignored a cabinet full of valuable silver. That pretty much eliminated the robbery theory.

On the surface, it did look like a murder-suicide. Did Claude kill Martha and then turn the gun on himself? Or did Martha kill Claude, then take her own life? And why the hell hadn’t one of them left a note detailing all the whys and wherefores?

I looked up at Wilcoxin. “No reason?”

He shook his head, his voice edged with frustration. “Out of the goddamn blue. The cops talked to family, friends, business associates, neighbors, anyone, anywhere, who might have known or met the Terrells. There’s no apparent reason why Claude would kill Martha, then kill himself. Or vice versa. They were both in excellent health. They had no money problems. From all reports they were a happy, loving couple.”

Happy, loving couples don’t usually blow each other’s brains out. So maybe the Terrells weren’t as happy and loving as everyone thought. Or maybe something else was going on here.

“I’d like to take a look at the house.”

Wilcoxin pulled open a desk drawer, fished out a brass key on a metal ring, and handed it to me. “The house is vacant, can’t be sold until the estate is sorted out.”

I fingered the cardboard tag with the Terrells’ name and address printed in black ink. “Who else has keys?”

“All four heirs.”

That didn’t sound like a good idea to me. He noticed my raised eyebrows. “The Terrells gave each of their children keys when they bought the house.”

“The heirs have access to the property?”

“After the police took down the crime-scene tape, the lawyers let them remove personal belongings — family photos, clothing, things like that.”

“What about everything else, like jewelry, and Martha’s silver? I assume they’re not still at the house.”

“The lawyers put all the rest, except the furniture, in storage. It’ll stay there until the lawyers figure out who gets what. The wills are more complicated, but that’s the attorneys’ battle. My battle... My concern is who gets the money from the insurance policies.”

“Does the housecleaner still have a key?”

Wilcoxin shook his head. “That’s hers.”

“Any of the neighbors have keys?”

“Not to my knowledge,” he said. “I’ll give you the code for the alarm system.”

I left with Wilcoxin’s headache. I spent the rest of that Friday afternoon in my Oakland office, examining the Terrell file and making some notes of my own.

Saturday morning I drove to Alameda. The Terrells had lived at the end of a wide, tree-lined street in a part of town known as the Gold Coast, full of solid old homes. I’d grown up in a Victorian house nearby. The street, like others in this section, dead-ended at the lagoon which had once been the shore of San Francisco Bay, until the late 1950s when developers had filled in a portion of the bay to create the area called South Shore.

The Terrells’ house was a two-story stucco that looked as though it dated to the nineteen thirties. I parked in the double driveway and let myself in the front door. After deactivating the security system, I stood in the entryway for a moment, getting my bearings, waiting for... What? Vibrations, maybe, or feelings. I’ve felt it at other crime scenes. I felt it here.

The investigators had long since located and removed any physical evidence. The gore had been scrubbed away. Drapes covered the windows and there was dust on the nearby stair rail. The house had that air of disuse a place gets when there’s no one home for a long time. It had been closed up since the Terrells’ deaths, while the heirs and their lawyers duked it out over who got what.

In the living room to my left, a sofa faced an empty fireplace. Heavy chairs surrounded a long table in the dining room. A cabinet with empty glass shelves stood against the wall.

Upstairs, I found a large master suite with a bathroom, and three smaller bedrooms sharing another bathroom. Closets, drawers, and cupboards were empty, stripped bare. There wasn’t much left in the Terrell house, just furniture, which, along with the house itself, was awaiting disposition.

I went back downstairs. A small room off the dining room had served as Claude’s office. Behind this, separated from the kitchen by a counter, was a family room. It had once been furnished, according to the photographs in the file, with a sofa, several reclining chairs, a large-screen TV, and other entertainment appliances. Now all the electronic toys were gone.

In front of me, a sliding glass door led outside to a covered patio and a fenced backyard that sloped down to the lagoon. The police report indicated the door had been open a few inches the day the Terrells died.

I walked into the kitchen, noting the location of sink, stove, refrigerator, and pantry. I saw a laundry room, where a washer and dryer crouched in semidarkness.

The breakfast nook was at the back of the kitchen, an alcove containing a round table and four chairs. Between the breakfast nook and the patio door was a bare space where the crime-scene photos showed a tall ficus in a terra cotta pot. The floor tile was slightly discolored where the plant had stood.

I set my purse on the counter between the kitchen and family room and dug out a tape measure and a rough sketch I’d drawn. The police report indicated the bodies of Claude and Martha Terrell were found lying diagonally in the middle of the kitchen, with their feet toward the plant. Claude lay on his left side, right arm resting on his hip. Martha lay on her back, to Claude’s right. The autopsy report said there had been a large bruise on the back of Martha’s head. Had she gotten it when she fell? But her head wasn’t near a counter.

I measured distances, noting the information on my sketch. Then I lay down in the space where the Terrells had died, arranging my body in an approximation of the position of Claude’s body. I gazed at my own right hand, imagining my fingers wrapped around the grip of a gun. Then I looked down the length of my legs, placing the gun on the floor beyond my feet, thinking that if either Claude or Martha had fired the weapon, it seemed to me the gun would have fallen near their bodies. So how did the gun wind up under the table in the breakfast nook, which was near the entrance to the laundry room?

I stared at the sliding glass door that had been open when the housecleaner found the bodies. Maybe that initial theory of an intruder wasn’t so far off the mark. Murder-suicide didn’t feel right, particularly without a note. Of course, suicides don’t always leave notes that lay out their reasons in neat and tidy prose.

My hunch was murder. If I was right, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make the Terrells’ deaths look like murder-suicide. So why wasn’t there a note, to scotch all my reasonable doubt? What if the killer hadn’t finished setting up the scene? What if the housecleaner’s arrival had interrupted the killer? How had Martha gotten that bruise on the back of her head?

I got to my feet, set the tape measure on the sketch, then walked to the laundry room, where another door led outside. It had revealed no sign of forced entry or fingerprints the day the Terrells had died. I glanced out the small glass window and saw a concrete-covered side yard, hidden from the street by a gate at the front of the house. Arrayed against the fence were garbage cans and recycling bins.

Just then I heard voices. Someone had entered the house. A man and two women walked into the kitchen. “Who are you?” the man demanded. “What are you doing here?”

I looked him over. His petulant expression was his own. His curly dark hair and brown eyes were mirrored in the young woman on his right. In fact, they looked so similar they might have been twins. Claude’s adult children, Eric and Erin Terrell, I guessed, and the second woman was Eric’s wife, Lisa.

“Jeri Howard,” I said, offering my hand. “I work for the insurance company.”

Eric Terrell ignored my hand and didn’t bother introducing his two companions. “So when is the insurance company going to quit stalling and pay the insurance money?”

I shrugged. “You’ll have to discuss that with Mr. Wilcoxin.”

“We have discussed it with him, and the lawyers.” Erin looked exasperated as she tossed her brunette curls. “Discussed it ad nauseum.”

“Then you know there’s a question about who died first.”

Eric snorted in derision. “That’s just a stall. The insurance company wants to hang on to the money.”

“There’s no question in my mind who died first,” Erin declared. “That bitch killed my father, then killed herself.”

“Really? Why would she do that?”

“It’s no secret that my father was planning to divorce her,” Erin said.

That was news to me. News to Wilcoxin, too. He’d described the Terrells as a “happy, loving couple.” I hadn’t seen any mention of a pending breakup in the police report, either. That’s the kind of question a cop would — or should — ask.

“Daddy wanted out of the marriage,” Erin continued. “Martha didn’t want to lose all of Daddy’s money — they had a prenup, of course — so she killed him. Then she turned the gun on herself. She would have saved us all a lot of trouble if she’d left a note.”

“I thought Mrs. Terrell had her own money,” I said.

Eric’s contemptuous expression let me know exactly what he thought of that. His sister shook her head. “Martha had some money. Certainly not much compared to my father’s net worth.”

“It seems I was misled about Mrs. Terrell’s net worth,” I said. “Why did your father want out of the marriage?”

Erin shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“He confided in you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then how did you know they were having problems? And that your father wanted a divorce?”

Erin made a little face. “Well, my brother...”

“My father confided in me,” Eric said sharply. “Look, Ms... whatever your name is... I don’t know what business this is of yours.”

“My name is Jeri Howard, Mr. Terrell. I work for the insurance company. Anything regarding the company’s investigation into your parents’ deaths is my business.”

“She wasn’t my parent.” Erin’s voice turned snippy. “My mother is very much alive, thank you.”

Lisa had been watching me. She looked as though she’d like to change the subject, so she did. “You haven’t said what you’re doing here, Ms. Howard. I thought the insurance investigation was done.”

Two could play that game. “Mr. Wilcoxin asked me to take a look at the scene. Why are the three of you here? I understood the heirs had already removed personal items, and all valuables are in storage.”

Eric scowled at me but said nothing as Lisa reached for his arm. Erin said, “I’m looking for something that belonged to my father. Just a little trinket. Not important to anyone else but me. Or my brother. It wasn’t in my father’s things that we took earlier, so we thought we’d come over and see if we could find it.”

I’d already looked through the rest of the house. I knew how empty it was. But I’d play along — for the time being.

“Have a look around. I’ll finish up in here.” Exasperated looks passed between Erin and Eric. Lisa, however, was staring at the counter, at the tape measure and the sketch I’d drawn.

They went upstairs. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the patio. A redwood fence, about six feet high, separated the Terrells’ property from the house behind it. To my left, a tall privet hedge hid the house next-door. On my right, the backyard sloped gently down to the lagoon, where several ducks paddled on the water. Across the lagoon, houses of more recent vintage were grouped around a cul-de-sac. Several homes had docks, some with boats.

I walked toward the lagoon, where a little rocky beach provided a landing, surrounded by overgrown bushes. Now I could see the house across the street from the Terrells’ place, a big two-story Victorian. Any one of the upstairs front windows would have provided an excellent view of the Terrells’ house and yard, but the police report said none of the neighbors had been home when the Terrells died.

When I returned to the house, the surviving Terrells were ready to leave. I set the alarm on my way out. Eric drove a boxy silver SUV, new and expensive, with a license-plate holder from an Oakland dealership. He’d parked to the left of my Toyota, so close it was as though he was marking territory by taking up as much of the driveway as possible. He must be one of those irritating people who parked his car straddling two spaces in parking lots, so that his car wouldn’t get hit. I squeezed into the gap between the vehicles. When I opened my car door, it brushed against his.

“Watch it,” Eric said sharply. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to repair the finish on one of these?”

I didn’t say anything. It’s childish, I know, but I found myself fighting down the urge to key his car. It would have been enormously satisfying to scratch that expensive silver finish. But I didn’t.

“That’s their version,” Pamela Allen said that evening when I told her what Eric and Erin Terrell had said about their father’s plans to divorce Pamela’s mother. “Mom and Claude were happy, as far as I know.”

We were in the living room of Pamela’s house in Hayward. Her husband Ralph and their young daughter were outside, washing the family car.

“Would your mother have confided in you?” I asked.

“I don’t think she would have kept something like that to herself. On the other hand, she may not have wanted to burden me with her troubles. I have enough of my own right now.” Pamela glanced out at her husband. Did her troubles have something to do with her own marriage?

“Whether they were having problems or not,” she continued, “I can’t imagine Mom killing Claude — or anyone, for that matter. My brother and I were devastated by this. Our father wasn’t around after he and Mom split up. So she was all we had.”

“What about the possibility that Claude killed your mother, then himself?”

She shook her head. “I just can’t see it. I suppose it’s possible, but why? None of this makes any sense.”

“How did you get on with Claude’s children?”

“We weren’t close,” she said. “We tolerated each other for our parents’ sake. Erin and I don’t have much in common. Eric’s a pompous ass. His wife’s all right. I haven’t seen them since shortly after the funeral. Neither Eric nor Erin wanted their father to remarry. They never accepted my mother.”

“This insurance policy leaves you and your brother a lot of money.”

“I know. And we could use it. Six months ago my husband got downsized. My brother’s between jobs. So yes, things are tight right now. We’re living on my salary as a teacher and our savings. That insurance money, and what Mom left us in her will, would really come in handy. But neither Colin nor I had anything to do with Mom’s death.”

“What about Claude’s kids?”

She shrugged. “As far as I know, they had good relations with their father. I don’t think either of them have any financial problems.”

Whether any of the heirs had any financial problems was something I intended to find out. I started a background check on both sets of offspring. Later that day I went back to the neighborhood where Claude and Martha Terrell had lived. The big Victorian across the street, with a view of the Terrells’ yard from its upstairs windows, was owned by the Brandons, who both worked. They hadn’t been home the day of the deaths, and their two teenaged daughters had been in school. I got similar stories at other houses. The only people who were in the neighborhood that day were the housecleaner who had discovered the bodies and the gardener who had called the police.

I met Estrellita Mejia the next day at her Oakland home, as she returned from cleaning other people’s houses. She sat down in her living-room recliner and flipped up the foot rest. “When you called earlier, I didn’t want to talk with you. But I decided I should.”

“Why didn’t you want to talk?” I asked. “Are you afraid of something? Or someone?”

“It’s not that. What happened to the Terrells was awful. It was horrible.” She shuddered. “Finding them like that. I’d like to help. But I wonder if I’m breaking a confidence to talk about them, even under these circumstances.”

That sparked my interest. I wondered what Mrs. Mejia might have overheard in the Terrell household that fell into the category of confidences.

“I know this is difficult for you. But I need some answers. What time did you get there that afternoon?”

“About one o’clock that day. I went there every Friday, though usually later in the afternoon. One of my regulars had canceled that morning, so I was early. I walked to the back of the house, heading for the laundry room, where the cleaning supplies are kept.”

“Before you saw the bodies, did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

“The sliding door was open.”

“Did you see anything on the floor between the end of the counter and the plant?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see the gun. Believe me, I would have noticed a gun.”

“Then what?”

“I came around the end of the counter. From the corner of my eye I saw something on the floor in front of the sink. I looked down—” She grimaced. “I saw two people lying there, covered in blood. I didn’t even realize who it was. I just saw all that blood.”

“What did you do then?”

“I backed away. I had my hands up, like this.” She held her hands up as though warding off a blow. “I backed into the plant. It scared me. It was as tall as me. When I felt the leaves brush against the back of my head and my face, I screamed. I thought someone had grabbed me from behind. I panicked. My foot kicked something. I thought it was the pot. But it must have been the gun. I looked down and saw something moving across the floor toward the table. I didn’t stick around to see what it was.”

That explained how the murder weapon wound up in the breakfast nook.

“I ran out the front door,” Mrs. Mejia continued. “The gardener was next door. He called the police. Later I gave my statement. Then I came home.”

“How long had you worked for the Terrells?” I asked.

“The whole time they were married. And before. I used to clean for Mrs. Terrell before she married Mr. Terrell.”

“So you knew Martha Terrell fairly well?”

“As well as you can know someone you work for.”

“Had you seen or heard anything that might indicate that Mr. and Mrs. Terrell were having marital difficulties?”

“No, it was a good marriage. Mrs. Terrell once told me she was happier with Mr. Terrell than with her first husband.”

That might cover Martha’s feelings, I thought, but it didn’t account for Claude’s perspective.

“Did they have disagreements about money? Or about their children from their previous marriages?” I asked. Finances and offspring were two of the biggest frictions in any marriage.

She hesitated.

“I know you don’t want to speak out of turn, but anything you overheard might be important.”

“Well, there were arguments. About money.”

“Between Mr. and Mrs. Terrell?”

“Sometimes. But it wasn’t disagreements between the two of them. It was mixed up with their children.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “How so?”

“Mr. Terrell didn’t like it that Mrs. Terrell gave money to Colin. He said Colin should learn to stand on his own two feet.”

Mr. Terrell may have had a point. But I didn’t have enough information yet to make that call. “So Colin had money troubles, and Mom kept bailing him out.”

Mrs. Mejia nodded. “Mrs. Terrell told me some of it. The rest I overheard. Colin can’t decide what he wants to do with his life. He dropped out of college, then he went back. He got a degree and a teaching credential, like his sister. After teaching for a few years he signed on with a dot-com company. He hadn’t been there very long when the tech boom went bust and he was out. Then it was law school. He stuck with that for a year before he quit. Since last summer he’s been working temp jobs. He couldn’t afford to pay rent on his apartment, so he moved in with his girlfriend. He has trouble making ends meet.”

“So there was some tension,” I said. “Did you overhear any arguments between Colin and his mother?”

“Yes, several months ago. Mrs. Terrell said Colin should settle on something, either teaching or law school. Colin got defensive, they argued, and Mr. Terrell got involved. Colin stormed out of the house. Later Mrs. Terrell told me she probably shouldn’t keep helping Colin, but he was her son. I understood. I’d do the same for my kids. She said Mr. Terrell got upset because she gave Colin money, but it was her own money. Besides, he wrote lots of checks to his own son.”

“Same situation?” I asked. “Eric has trouble deciding what he wants to be when he grows up?”

“Not quite the same. Eric knows what he wants to be — the boss. He started his own business, but it failed.”

“His father bankrolled him?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Mejia said. “Mrs. Terrell told me Mr. Terrell lost a lot of money when Eric’s business went under, about a year ago. Eric wanted to start another business.”

“How do you know that?”

“I overheard another argument, a couple of weeks before the Terrells died. Mr. Terrell and Eric had a big fight, words mostly. I was upstairs cleaning. They were in the backyard and the windows were open. I looked out and saw them shouting at each other. Eric said his father was being selfish, he had plenty of money. Mr. Terrell said that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t going to give Eric any more, because Eric didn’t have a head for business, and he wasn’t going to throw good money after bad.”

“You said their fight was mostly words. Did it get physical?”

Mrs. Mejia frowned. “Yes. Their voices got louder, then Eric grabbed his father’s arm. That was when Mrs. Terrell came out of the house, telling them to stop.”

It sounded as though there were some longstanding issues about money in the Terrell family, between father and son, and between mother and son as well. Mrs. Mejia’s version of Colin’s work history was different from his sister’s. Pamela had said he was between jobs, but she’d left out the fact that he’d moved from job to job, and had attended law school.

What if Colin’s stint as a law student had brought him into contact with the details of Probate Code Section 250? What if his financial problems led him to stage the Terrells’ supposed murder-suicide? The legal connection got muddier when the background check I’d initiated on the beneficiaries revealed that both Erin Terrell and her sister-in-law Lisa worked in law offices. Lisa was an administrative assistant in a general-practice firm in Oakland, where she and Eric lived. She had access to the California codes. So did Erin, who was a paralegal in one of the big San Francisco firms, one that practiced several types of law, including wills and trusts.

I dug into the details of Eric Terrell’s failed business. He had attempted to carve out his own niche in the high-tech boom, right about the time the bottom fell out of the so-called new economy. The venture lost a lot of money. He was now working at a software firm in Oakland, doomed to a day job until his inheritance freed him to start another business.

Time to start looking at alibis, I thought.

Sergeant Lipensky, Alameda Police Department, looked sceptical when I spoke with him that afternoon. “Erin was in a meeting at that law firm where she works,” he said. “Pamela was in front of a fourth-grade class in Hayward. Eric dropped his car off at a dealership in Oakland for service that morning. He didn’t even have transportation. Took BART and the bus to work.”

“What about Lisa, Eric’s wife? And Ralph Allen, Pamela’s husband? He’s out of work.”

“Lisa was working that day. She had lunch with friends at about the same time the Terrells died. Ralph had a job interview in Pleasanton.”

“Colin Baker? He does temp work, doesn’t have a fixed place of employment.”

“I know that. He was working at a law firm that day. All that week, in fact.”

Another law firm, I thought. No surprise, really. The Bay Area was lousy with lawyers. “You talked with someone at the firm?”

“I talked with someone at the temp agency, who checked his timecard, which has to be signed by someone at the firm. What makes you think this is anything but murder-suicide?”

“No note. The position of the gun. My gut.” Lipensky didn’t say anything. “What about your gut?”

“Well... my gut doesn’t like it, either,” he admitted. “No note, the gun. No apparent reason. Looks like they were happily married, no problems.”

“When I encountered Erin and Eric the other day at the house, Erin informed me that Claude was planning to divorce Martha, so of course Martha killed him, then killed herself.”

“First I’ve heard of any divorce,” Lipensky said, on the alert.

“That’s what I figured. Turns out Erin got that story from her brother, who says his father confided in him. No way to verify that.”

“What do Martha’s kids say about a divorce?”

“Pamela denies it. I haven’t talked with Colin yet. Say, what was the name of that law firm where he was working the day of the deaths?”

Lipensky told me. “You’ll let me know if you find out anything.” It wasn’t a question.

“Of course. I always cooperate with the authorities.”

I met Henry Van, the gardener who’d called the police, in front of the house where he was working. He brushed dirt from his hands as we introduced ourselves, then took a bottle of water from the cooler in the back of his pickup truck, opened it, and drank. “Don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

“Describe what you saw.”

“The Krimmlakers weren’t home. They’re the people I garden for on that street. I’m there every other week. The time varies. I’ve got three other clients in that part of Alameda. I arrived around eleven o’clock. I must have been there when the Terrells got killed, but I didn’t see or hear anything.”

“You may have, without realizing it.”

He looked dubious. “I was trimming hedges in the back. Power tool, makes a lot of noise.”

“See any cars or people in the area? Anyone near the Terrells’ house, or the Victorian across the street, where the Brandons live?”

He shook his head. “Nope. That time of day, most people are at work. It was a school day. None of the kids were around.”

“Did you break for lunch?”

“Sure. After twelve and my stomach was growling. I went round to the front of the house and—” He stopped. “Wait a minute. I did see someone. A couple of teenagers. I was sitting in my truck eating lunch. I saw them in my rearview mirror as they walked past me. They headed up the driveway of that house across the street and went in the front door. I didn’t think anything about it till now. I figured they were coming home from school for lunch.”

“Can you describe them?”

“She was pretty,” he said. “Long brown hair. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. The guy was older. Lanky build, red hair, tattoos on his arms, pierced ears.”

I’d caught a glimpse of the two Brandon daughters when I’d interviewed their parents. One was old enough to drive a lime-green Beetle. She had dark, knowing eyes and wore her dark brown hair short with bangs. The other looked younger, and she had light brown hair falling past her shoulders.

“What happened after they went inside? Did you see them come out?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I heard rock music. Really loud. Ate my sandwich, finished trimming hedges, cleaned up the cuttings. I was working on the shrubs in the front when the housekeeper went into the house next-door. It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes before she ran out the front door screaming that there were dead bodies in the house. I whipped out my cell phone and called nine-one-one.”

“So you never saw the two teenagers leave the house?”

He thought for a moment. “Not actually leave the house, no, I didn’t. But I saw them outside. I’m not sure when. It’s all mixed up after I called the cops. I had to wait around and give a statement. Didn’t get out of there till after four. There were a lot of people around. But sometime after the cops got there, I saw that girl and the guy. Hard to miss him, with that red hair. They were on the cross street, getting into an old car.”

Henry said the car was a Plymouth Barracuda, blue decorated with rust stains. I thanked him and drove over to the neighborhood where the Terrells had lived. I didn’t see the Plymouth in the vicinity, but the Beetle was parked in the driveway of the Brandons’ house. I parked near the corner and waited. It was summer now. The two Brandon daughters were out of school. Half an hour passed. Finally the girl with short hair came out the front door, got into the Beetle, and fired up the engine. She backed out of the drive. I started my car and followed her.

She drove to South Shore Center and parked near the department store located at one end. I intercepted her as she got out of her car. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She looked me over. “I remember you. The private eye who came to talk with my parents about Mr. and Mrs. Terrell.”

“I didn’t get your name that day. Or your sister’s.”

“It’s Sasha. My sister’s name is Missy.” She pointed to her right. “There’s a Starbucks over there.”

Sasha led the way to the espresso emporium. I ordered a latte for myself, a triple mocha with extra whipped cream for Sasha, and threw in a couple of biscotti for good measure. Once we were seated, I laid my cards on the table.

“The day the Terrells died, someone saw a girl with long brown hair at your house. Would that be Missy?”

Sasha sighed. “It would.”

“She was with a guy. Lanky build, red hair, tattoos on his arms, and pierced ears. Ring any bells?”

She made a face. “Cody. He’s way older than Missy, eighteen or nineteen. Mom would burst a blood vessel if she knew.”

“Missy and Cody were seen going into your house around noon, before the bodies were found. And again after the bodies were found. It was a weekday. You and your sister should have been in school, unless Missy came home for lunch. All afternoon would have been a long lunch.”

“She cut,” Sasha said. “One of my friends told me about it later that day. She said Missy split after her third class, when Cody showed up.”

“What do you figure they were doing at the house that afternoon?”

“Each other. Having sex.” Sasha poked her biscotti through the thick layer of whipped cream to the coffee below. Then she drew it out and bit off the end with great relish.

“What makes you think that?”

“When I got home from school, I went looking for Missy, to bawl her out for cutting classes. She’d pulled all the sheets off her bed and washed them. They were piled on her bed, still warm from the dryer.”

“How do you get from there to Missy and Cody having sex?”

“Like Miss La-Di-Da would be doing laundry for the hell of it? Right. Only one reason she’d be washing sheets in the middle of the afternoon on a school day. She and Cody were screwing their brains out up in her bedroom.”

I gave Sasha points for deductive reasoning. I’d come to the same conclusion without the sheets. “I’d like to talk with Missy and Cody.”

“You think they saw something?”

“Maybe. Any idea where I can find them?”

“Not exactly, but they’re together right now. She thinks I don’t know because he parks his car on the side street and she tells Mom she’s meeting her girlfriends. Puhleez!” She rolled her eyes. “If you stake out our place, he’ll bring her home eventually. If Missy won’t cooperate, tell her I know — and I’ll tell.”

I left Sasha to her shopping and went back to the neighborhood, parking on the side street where Cody usually met Missy Brandon. Finally I saw the rusty blue Plymouth pull up to the curb. Two people got out of the car, a teenaged girl with long brown hair and a tall young man with a carrot-top and tattoos snaking up both arms. They locked lips and bodies, not coming up for air until I walked up and called them by name.

“Who the hell are you?” Cody growled.

“I’m the private investigator who was at Missy’s house a couple of days ago, asking questions about her neighbors and the day they died. Now I want to talk with both of you.”

“Why?” she asked, wide-eyed. “We don’t know anything. I was in school when that happened.”

“No, you weren’t. The gardener working at the Krimmlakers’ house saw you and Cody go into the house. He also saw you and Cody getting into Cody’s car later that afternoon, after the police had arrived. So you were both there. Sasha knows. She suggests you cooperate with me.”

Missy looked panicky when I mentioned Sasha. “We didn’t see anything. We were making out.”

“I have a pretty good idea what you were doing,” I told them. “So does Sasha. Take me through it step by step.” They looked scandalized, which was refreshing, in a way. “I don’t mean your grand passion. You may have seen something without realizing it could be important. Tell me what you heard and saw as you were walking up the street toward your house.”

They exchanged glances. “We parked here so Cody’s car wouldn’t be in front of my house,” Missy said.

“That gardening truck was in the driveway of the other house,” Cody said. “Didn’t see anybody in the yard. He must have been in the cab.”

“What did you do once you got into Missy’s house?”

“We went up to the bedroom.” He glared at me. “You want to know how many times we did it?”

“Spare me. I just want to know if you looked out the window any-time during the next few hours.”

“Yeah, a couple of times.”

“Did you see anyone?”

He thought about it. “The gardener.”

“Besides him.”

“UPS guy left a package at a house down by the corner.” He rubbed his nose. “There was a guy in a boat on the lagoon.”

That caught my interest. “What was he doing?”

“Rowing,” Cody said. “He rowed across to a house on the other side, pulled up to a dock, and got out.”

“That house directly across the lagoon?” Missy frowned. “I saw a guy there, too. But he wasn’t rowing a boat. He was at the side of the house, where the trash cans were. I thought he was a garbage-man. He was wearing coveralls.”

Cody shook his head. “I saw the coveralls, but why would a garbageman be in a rowboat?”

Good question. Maybe he wasn’t a garbageman. “What did he look like? What color were the coveralls?”

“Light blue, or maybe green,” Cody said. “I only saw him from the back. He had a ball cap on his head. Couldn’t tell what color his hair was.”

“I saw him from the front,” Missy said. “It was an Oakland A’s cap, green and yellow. I figured he was a garbageman because he had stains all over the front of the coveralls. You know how yucky those guys get.”

“He could have been a mechanic,” Cody said. “Mechanics wear coveralls when they’re working on cars. They get grease and oil stains all over themselves.” He stopped, as though something had suddenly occurred to him. “Those stains. Like maybe that was blood? Man, are you telling me that guy was a killer?”

“Like you said, why would a garbageman — or a mechanic — be rowing a boat across the lagoon? You two are going to have to talk to the police.”

Missy protested. She didn’t want her folks to know she and Cody had been doing the nasty boogie that day. But now that Cody realized he was a witness, he was eager to cooperate. I walked with them to the Brandons’ house, just as Sasha returned from her shopping trip. I called the girls’ parents and Sergeant Lipensky. Once the adults got there, I headed for the cul-de-sac at the other side of the lagoon and took a look at the house directly opposite the Brandons’ place. There was no one home, but the yard wasn’t fenced. Sure enough, there was a small rowboat tied up to a dock. A row of garbage cans and recycling bins were lined up along the side of the house, about thirty feet from the dock.

I began ringing doorbells. I found a witness, an elderly woman who lived in the cul-de-sac. “I saw a man. He was walking between the houses. No, he wasn’t wearing coveralls. Slacks and a shirt, I think, and an A’s baseball cap. He got into a car parked in front of my house.” She didn’t know the make or model of the vehicle, but she thought the car was green.

I left a message for Lipensky about the witness, then returned to my office. I already knew Eric drove a silver SUV. Now a database told me Colin Baker, Martha Terrell’s son, owned a blue Honda. I had other information pointing me in Colin’s direction.

He opened the door of the Oakland apartment he shared with his girlfriend looking slightly disheveled, feet bare below his faded jeans and stained T-shirt. He ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair and squinted at the business card I’d handed him while I explained I was working for the insurance company.

He stuck the card into his pocket. “My mother didn’t kill Claude. Or herself. The court’s going to have to split everything four ways.”

“May I come in? I have some questions.”

“Sure.” He waved me into the living room and shut the door. “I don’t know what I can tell you. I was at work that day.”

“No, you weren’t.”

He took a step back, his expression going from stunned to frightened.

“I checked, Colin. You called and told the supervisor at the law firm where you were temping that you were sick. She didn’t check with the temp agency because she assumed you’d called them. You didn’t. Edie Walker at the temp agency covered for you. Your girlfriend — the same Edie Walker whose name is on the lease of this apartment. You weren’t at work. You weren’t home, either. One of your neighbors saw you leave the apartment that morning. Where were you that day?”

He looked panicky. “It’s not what you think.”

“What I think might very well be what the cops think when they find out you lied. Time to come clean.”

“I couldn’t get out of bed that morning. I just couldn’t face another day at that temp job. I told Edie I wasn’t feeling well. Later, when we found out Mom and Claude were dead, she thought it looked bad and she told that cop I’d been at work.”

“Where were you?”

He stared down at his feet. “At the movies.”

“All day?”

“Yeah, all day. The theater at Jack London Square starts showing movies in the morning. There was this flick I wanted to see. I sat through it twice. I wound up staying there the whole day, going from theater to theater. You’re not supposed to do that, but I sneaked in and out. I’d go to the john, then I’d buy popcorn and Milk Duds. I dump the Milk Duds in the popcorn and the candy gets all warm and gooey.” I stared at him and he stopped prattling.

“Have you still got the ticket stub?”

“Hell, I don’t think so. Who saves ticket stubs?”

“They have a way of roosting in pockets and wallets. You’d better start looking. And hope someone at the theater can back up your story.”

Colin checked his wallet and the jacket he’d been wearing that day but came up with lint and a couple of paper strips from fortune cookies. Not much of an alibi. We went out to his car. The blue Honda’s floorboards were filled with fast-food wrappers, empty bottles and cans, and other debris. He dug around in this mess and came up with a receipt from a restaurant at Jack London Square. “I had a pizza afterwards.”

“After all that popcorn?” I examined the receipt. The date and time printed on the slip were blurred. “This tells me nothing.”

“It’s the truth.” He sounded scared.

“All right. I’ll check it out.”

I went down to the multiplex in Jack London Square. A manager told me hundreds of people cycled through the place on any given day. How could they be expected to remember one guy? And if he’d been found jumping from theater to theater in the course of an afternoon, they’d have escorted him to the exit.

“I remember him.” It was a young woman behind the re-freshment counter.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “A guy in his late twenties, blond, blue eyes. Spent the afternoon watching movies and eating a lot of Milk Duds dumped in his popcorn.”

“That’s why I remember him,” she said. “I’d never seen anyone do that to buttered popcorn before, and I said so. He told me it made the candy warm and gooey.”

“Sounds like my guy,” I said. “Was he here most of the day?”

She nodded. “I noticed him after the first show let out. He went into the john, came out, bought some more popcorn and candy, and went back into the theater. Same thing after the next show. I saw him several times and joked with him about putting candy in his popcorn.”

“If you knew he was jumping theaters, you should have reported him,” the manager huffed. “The guy was here all afternoon and only bought one movie ticket.”

“Lighten up,” she argued. “He spent five times that on popcorn, candy, and sodas.”

So Colin’s story, strange as it was, checked out. My teeth hurt when I thought about melting Milk Duds in hot, buttered popcorn.

I went over the alibis in my head. Colin at the movies. Pamela teaching school. Ralph at a job interview. Erin in a meeting. Lisa having lunch with friends. That left Eric, supposedly at work, with no transportation because he’d left his car to be serviced. He’d taken BART and the bus to work. Many car dealerships had shuttles to BART, I recalled. Maybe a driver would remember him. Maybe one of his coworkers had seen him.

Eric worked at a software firm at the end of Edgewater Drive, across I-880 from the Oakland Coliseum. To get there on public transit, he’d have taken BART to the Coliseum station, then a bus along Hegenberger Road. Once he got off the bus, it was a half-mile hike to his office. The business park where he worked consisted of four buildings grouped around a central fountain, with a big parking lot in back. Eric’s employer had all three floors of Building C. It looked as though I’d need a name badge to get past the receptionist. But I didn’t want to get past her. I wanted to talk with her.

There was a deli on the first floor of Building D, with tables outside, the only eating establishment in the area, from what I could see. I bought a glass of lemonade and waited until I saw the receptionist leaving for lunch. She walked into the deli and went through the salad bar. As she stepped away from the cash register with her container, I approached her, business card in hand, glancing at her name badge.

“Ms. Linden, may I ask you a few questions?”

She read my card, then gave me a hard look over her salad. “What is this about?”

“Eric Terrell.”

“What about him?” she asked with a frown.

“I’m trying to verify his whereabouts on a particular day. I understand you told the police that he was at work that day.”

“If you’re talking about the day his parents died, I already talked with a cop.”

“I know. But I’d like to hear it from you.”

She shrugged. “Yes, he was at work. I saw him come in a little after nine, and I saw him leave at a quarter after four.”

“Did he take a lunch break?”

She nodded. “He left about eleven-thirty.”

“What time did he come back?”

“That I can’t tell you,” she said. “I was at lunch myself from one to two. But he wasn’t back by the time I left.”

Hour and a half, probably two hours. Would Eric have had enough time to hike up to Hegenberger, catch a bus to BART, then another bus from a BART station further up the line to Alameda, murder his father and stepmother, then make the return trip?

“He told the police he had his SUV serviced that day,” I said. “Dropped it off in the morning and picked it up in the evening.”

“He mentioned it to me when he came in that morning. Something about being late because he had to drop off his car.”

“So he didn’t have transportation that day. I wonder why he took such a long lunch hour.”

“He had transportation that day,” she said.

“How do you know that?”

“Normally I leave at five, but I left early that day. He was parked clear over on the other side of the lot, nowhere near our building. I just happened to see him getting into a car. I assumed it was a loaner from the dealership.”

That ka-ching sound in my head was the coin dropping. If Eric had a car the day of the Terrells’ deaths, it would have taken him twenty minutes to drive from his office to the house in Alameda. He already had the motive. Now he had the opportunity.

“Can you describe the car?”

“I’m not sure what kind it was. A sedan, green or blue.”

I thanked her and headed back downtown. Eric had purchased his SUV from a dealership on Broadway. I talked my way into the service department, where a mechanic remembered Eric. “Yeah, for a couple of reasons. He dropped the car off that morning and picked it up later that day, about a quarter to five.”

I pointed at the sign that indicated the service department had a shuttle available to their customers. “Did your shuttle take him anywhere?”

The mechanic shook his head. “No, he insisted on a loaner.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I remember him. He made such a stink about it. We were short of loaners that day and he insisted he had to have a car. Said something about meeting an important client. So we gave him a car. That one, as a matter of fact.” He pointed at a late-model sedan with a paint job the manufacturer called “seafoam” or “teal.” I called it greenish blue.

“What was the other reason?”

“One of the mechanics claims this guy Terrell took a pair of coveralls off a hook in the garage. We asked Terrell about it when he brought back the car. He got all riled and said what the hell would he want with some coveralls.”

I looked at the blue coveralls the mechanic was wearing and thought of a very good reason Eric Terrell wanted those coveralls. He’d worn them to protect his clothing from the blood spatters the day he murdered his father and stepmother.

“So Claude died first,” Wilcoxin said.

I nodded. “Eric was angry because Claude wouldn’t give him the money to start another business. He decided to collect his inheritance early.”

Eric had been calm when Sergeant Lipensky confronted him with the evidence, his voice emotionless as he described how he’d planned and executed the murders.

“He’d seen the house on the other side of the lagoon with the dock and rowboat, easy to get to because there was no fenced yard. So he concocted his no-car alibi and lifted the coveralls from the dealership. Once he got to Alameda, he parked in the cul-de-sac, put on the coveralls, and rowed across the lagoon. He went in the side door and surprised Claude and Martha. He hit them both over the head, then shot them. That’s why the ME found a bruise on Martha’s head.”

“How did Eric know about the Slayer Statute?”

“His sister had mentioned it in conjunction with a case at the law firm where she works. That got him thinking about how he could arrange to inherit everything. He’d written a note, purportedly from Martha, claiming that she’d killed Claude because she discovered he was going to divorce her. But the housecleaner arrived early that day. Eric heard her come in the front door, so he bailed out the patio door. He dropped the gun at the foot of the plant and didn’t have time to take the note out of his pocket. Once he rowed back across the lagoon, he stripped off the bloody coveralls and disposed of them in a trash can. Then he walked out to the cul-de-sac where the witness saw him get into the loaner from the dealership.”

“Good work.” Wilcoxin closed the Terrell file, picked up the envelope containing my check, and handed it across his desk. “You’ve earned this.”