The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 44

Walter Sporn, a poor fit for the Prius, drove south of campus and turned onto Claremont Boulevard, continuing into a neighborhood of large, gracious Craftsman, Tudor, and Mediterranean houses on tree-dimmed streets that evoked Grace’s years in Hancock Park.

This was the Claremont district, one of the college town’s most affluent enclaves and home to generations of old money, brand-new Silicon Valley profits, professors with trust funds. Grace knew the area well; a couple of times Malcolm had booked rooms at the Claremont Hotel, a giant century-old masterpiece of architectural excess tricked out with overlapping triangular segments and a landmark tower and set on twenty or so acres atop a hill that offered spectacular views. During their stays, Grace and Malcolm had breakfasted in the dining room. Memories of that time had slipped from her consciousness — as a rule, the past held no attraction for her — but now she recalled Malcolm’s seemingly endless appetite for pancakes and scholarly discussion and smiled.

Far cry from her current digs at the Olds. One adapted.

With the truck still between her and Sporn, she swerved slightly, just in time to catch Sporn turning onto a street called Avalina. A sign said No Exit.

Parking, she jogged to the corner and peered up the block. Short block, full view all the way to the end of the cul-de-sac. She watched as the Prius turned right into a driveway, counted houses to pinpoint the location, returned to the Escape and waited.

When Sporn hadn’t reappeared in an hour, she hazarded a stroll.

The houses lining Avalina perched atop sharply sloping lawns, many partially blocked by mature vegetation. The property Sporn had entered was nearly at the street’s terminus.

Gigantic Tudor, slate-roofed and multigabled, weathered brick face nearly blocked from view by unruly ten-foot hedges, three massive redwoods and two nearly-as-large cedars. And, incongruously, a thatch of spike-leaved palms. Tiny bluish-white flowers speckled the hedges, which had been trained into an arch that stretched over the cobbled-and-dirt drive. The Prius was parked behind its twin.

Two black cars. Black clothes for Sporn, same as the children of Arundel Roi the night they’d showed up at the ranch.

Grace continued to the end of the street, reversed direction and crossed the street, and pretended not to take another look at the brick mansion. Not a single glint of window glass behind the veil of green but that didn’t mean much.

Memorizing the house’s address, she forced herself to walk away slowly.

Back in her room, she tried the Olds’s WiFi again, found it no more useful than before. But her disposable cell worked just fine and she tried Wayne, yet again.

This time he picked up. “Where are you?”

“NoCal.”

“Lovely region. May I hope against hope that you’ve decided to settle for sightseeing?”

Grace laughed. “What’s up, Uncle?”

“Oh, well,” he said. “At least you’re okay.”

“I’m great.”

“Does that mean you’ve accomplished whatever it was you set out to do and are on your way back home?”

“Making progress.”

Silence.

Grace said, “Really, I’m fine.”

“So you say... you will take care of yourself.” A command, not a request.

Grace said, “Of course.”

“If you don’t make a solemn pledge to that effect right now, I won’t tell you what I learned.”

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of Wayne—”

“I’m serious, Grace.”

“I promise. Everything’s fine, really. What did you learn?”

Wayne cleared his throat. “Let me preface this by reminding you that I can’t vouch for the factuality of what I’m about to tell you. But my source has never let me down.”

Sounding every bit the lawyer.

“I’ll bear that in mind, Wayne.”

“Okay... as you might expect, this has to do with the late Ms. McKinney. Who, as we discussed, does not appear to have ever indulged in a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone or anything at any time.”

Grace waited.

“However,” said Wayne. “And this is a big however, Grace, my source — a new one, one can’t keep going to the same well — claims that at some point in middle age, Selene began to regret not having a family.” A beat. “It’s a common thing... she tried to solve her problem by adopting.”

“Tried? Someone with her clout was turned down?”

“Oh, she was allowed, all right,” said Wayne. “Scored herself a white girl — not a baby, perhaps she had no stomach for poopy diapers — a lass of around eight or nine. A name beginning with a Y — Yalta, Yetta, something like that.”

Grace heard him sigh.

“Here’s the painful part. The poor thing was with Selene for a couple of years, enjoying the life Selene was able to provide until Selene realized she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, after all, and solved that problem by giving the girl back.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed,” said Wayne.

“Who’d she give her to?”

“Unknown, Grace, but presumably to whatever agency or shyster colleague of mine found her the poor thing in the first place. Can you imagine the hurt? Rejected twice? Good Lord. No surprise that led to the poor thing developing problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“The kind that end up with a young woman being incarcerated, Grace.”

“Sybil Brand,” said Grace. “Where she met Roi.”

“That’s where girls who acted out criminally went in those days, Grace. It keeps getting worse. Somewhere along the line, she had two children of her own.”

“Only two?”

“Yes, I wondered about that,” said Wayne, “but that’s all my source is aware of. Here’s the story and it goes back twenty-five years ago, Selene throwing herself a party for the Christmas season — she was always fêting herself — big garden affair at her home, the right people on the guest list, rented topiary and all that. My source is a right person and this is what she — what was observed: At some point during the bash, there was an attempt by my source to use the powder room but it was occupied and an alternative was sought. What presented itself was a lav in the utility wing, off the kitchen, and as my source did her thing and was walking out, she heard a commotion.”

Another throat clear. “A bit of peeking and eavesdropping ensued. Selene was in the kitchen, full regalia, smoking like a chimney and having words with a young woman dressed in black. Not chic black, shabby duds. My source couldn’t hear what was being said but the hostility was obvious. And flanking the young woman were two boys clad the same way, not tykes — not small boys, ten, eleven. Both sat silently, looking ‘stricken’ as their mother and Selene went at each other. Finally, Selene picked up her phone and summoned security staff but before the guards could arrive, the young woman yanked the boys away and ran out through the back door. Upon which Selene muttered something to the effect of ‘good riddance to bad rubbish.’  ”

“Not very grandmotherly,” said Grace.

“Not very human,” said Wayne, with sudden fury in his voice. “You’re the one with the Ph.D., Grace. Tell me: Why doesn’t evolution select against human monsters?”

A host of answers flooded Grace’s head. Including: Where else would we get our politicians?

She said, “Good question. Twenty-five years ago is about one year before the shoot-out at the Fortress Cult.”

“Exactly, Grace, exactly. Perhaps Yalta, whatever her name was, realized something bad was brewing and came to Selene for help. What she received was anything but.”

“And soon after, everyone at the compound perished except for three kids.”

“Yes, three. So where was the daughter that day? I don’t know, Grace, but my source is certain: two boys, only.”

“Maybe Lily wasn’t Yalta’s, Wayne. The account said Roi had three wives. That could be why she wasn’t adopted by a wealthy family. Selene had nothing to do with her.”

It could also explain why she hadn’t been spared. Half sibs didn’t count.

Wayne said, “You could be right. In any event, we have motivation for Selene finding homes for the boys. Not guilt over turning them away, anyone who acted the way she did is far too callous for remorse, no?”

“Agreed,” said Grace.

“On the other hand, having the boys at the mercy of the system raised the risk of Selene’s rejection coming to light. So she called in markers from people who owed her. A pair of couples who were childless and would accept older children with baggage.”

“Especially if the offer was sweetened with some cash.”

“Hmm,” said Wayne. “Selene certainly wasn’t lacking funds. Yes, that makes perfect sense — now, what does all this mean for you, Grace?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you really need to pursue this further?”

Grace didn’t answer.

Wayne said, “You say you’ll be careful with such confidence. I wish I could be sure you weren’t humoring me.”

“I’m not,” she assured the kind, moral man who’d done so much for her.

Lying without a trace of regret.

Third Internet café, this one a casual Vietnamese eatery around the corner from the Olds. What netted her access to the electronic universe was a bowl of pho that she actually had an appetite for.

She spooned the broth into her mouth, enjoying the bite of hot peppers not quite tempered by coconut milk. Pork, shrimp; glassy rice noodles that slid down her gullet.

Everything crystallizing. She could feel it.

She plugged in the address of the big brick house on Avalina and pulled up a City of Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission staff report, dated three years earlier.

Five city employees claimed authorship of that golden prose. Next came small-print paragraphs of something called a CEQA determination that had deemed the proposed project

Paging through the rest of the document, Grace put together the house’s history. Built in 1917 for a metals dealer named Innes Skelton, it had served as a private residence until 1945, when an art history professor and collector of Asian ceramics named Ignatz Krauss purchased it for use as a private museum.

From what Grace could tell, Krauss had set up one of those arrangements with the university in which he got tax write-offs for his collection and could enjoy them at will but would bequeath the collection and the building to UC Berkeley upon his death.

Krauss had passed away in 1967 and the pottery was auctioned off shortly after. The structure remained in the university’s possession for eight more years, designated as housing for distinguished visiting faculty, after which it was swapped to the city of Berkeley for a commercial building downtown that the university wished to use for administrative facilities.

What the city did with the place was unclear, but four years ago it had sold the property to DRL after buying the building on Center Street from Larue for four million dollars. The only stipulation: “timely application for landmark preservation” of the house on Avalina.

The following year, Dion Larue had apparently complied, filing the necessary papers and pledging to do exactly what the city dictated.

Playing good boy?

When Grace saw how much he’d paid, she understood why.

Eight hundred grand. She was no expert on Berkeley real estate but that had to be way below market. Looking up sales of other houses on the block, she quickly confirmed her suspicion. Comps ranged from $1.6 to $3.2 million.

Venom Boy had scored a coup. Especially when you figured in four million for the dump on Center, which had to be top-market, and scoring a no-bid contract to demolish and remodel for government offices.

Backroom dealing was the milk of politics but Dion Larue appeared to own a herd of dairy cows.

Multiple murderer acquiring the patina of an eco-conscious, diversity-minded, local-renewable businessman.

Riding the crest of new-age politics through a combination of slickness and connections.

She finished her pho, returned to the Olds, and redigested the terrible story Wayne had unearthed: a child rejected twice. Three times — arriving at Selene McKinney’s, sons in tow, seeking shelter only to be turned away.

Twenty-five years ago, Ty had been nine, Sam, eleven. More than old enough to know what had happened.

Sitting by their mother in the kitchen, docile and silent. Not long after, she and her co-wives and the devil who’d ruled them were dead, leaving three children to the mercies of the system.

Tragic; could you blame a boy for going bad?

You sure could.

Turning the tale over and over, Grace found herself growing steely. She knew all about rejection and loss, deep wounds of the soul that required psychic excavation and cauterization, the acid wash of self-examination.

Life could be a horror.

No excuse.