Kindred Crimes Read online

  More praise for

  Janet Dawson and

  KINDRED CRIMES

  “A satisfyingly complex and multilayered novel... A wonderfully told and compelling story from a writer who’s in complete control — as is her heroine — from start to finish. We’ll feel cheated if there aren’t more Jeri Howard books to come.”

  The Denver Post

  “Dawson keeps suspense and interest at high pitch.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “An auspicious debut.”

  New York Daily News

  KINDRED

  CRIMES

  Janet Dawson

  Copyright © 1990 by Janet Dawson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in criticial articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Sue Trowbridge, interbridge.com

  ISBN 978-0-9834031-0-4 (ePub)

  ISBN 0-449-22014-1

  First Edition: May 1992

  To my parents,

  Don and Thelma Dawson, with love,

  and to my fellow mystery writers,

  who have given me encouragement.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  About the Author

  One

  MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD POSED IN FRONT OF A thick green Christmas tree, its branches laden with silver tinsel and gold balls. He stood behind her chair, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. Her blond hair fell in waves past the collar of her red dress. In her lap she held a cherubic toddler. They smiled at the camera, the image of a perfect middle-class nuclear family, caught forever in a five-by-seven glossy.

  “When did she leave?” I asked.

  “Wednesday morning,” he said, his voice tremulous. He cleared his throat. “She left the baby with my mother, said she was going shopping. She never came back.”

  He was a slender fair-haired man of about thirty, well-dressed, with finely chiseled features. Now he put one hand to his pale face, as though to erase the lines etched by worry and strain. He sighed deeply. I waited for him to continue.

  “I got home from work around six. Renee wasn’t there, so I called Mom. She and Dad live just a few miles away. Mom told me Jason was there but she hadn’t seen Renee since about ten that morning. Of course I was concerned.”

  He’d waited an hour, then two, concern giving way to worry, plagued by visions of car accidents and abductions. Finally he called the police. They asked if Mrs. Foster left on her own. Of course she hadn’t, he said. Then he looked in the closet, the dresser drawers, the bathroom. Her suitcase was missing. So were clothes, shoes, the things a woman would take with her if she planned to be gone for a while. The next day the bank called him about a bounced check. Mrs. Foster had emptied the joint account.

  “Can you find her, Ms. Howard?”

  “Are you sure you want me to?”

  Philip Foster blinked his puppy brown eyes in surprise. “Of course I want you to find her. Why would you ask a question like that?”

  “Your wife apparently left on her own. She may not want to come back.” He winced. I felt as though I’d kicked the puppy. But he had to know and I had to tell him. “If I find her I can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

  “I understand,” he said. “But if I could just talk to her... I’m worried about her. I have to know that she’s all right.”

  I looked him in the eye for a long moment as I thought about this case and whether I should take it. Did Mr. Foster drink, take drugs, beat his wife or child? If that was the reason Mrs. Foster left, why didn’t she take the kid? And why did I feel that Philip Foster was holding something back?

  “You’re from Los Gatos,” I said. That’s a town in the hills southwest of San Jose. “What makes you think your wife is in Oakland?”

  “She was born in Oakland. But mainly it’s the phone bill.”

  “What phone bill?” The man wasn’t making sense.

  “The one that came in the mail yesterday.” Foster scrabbled around in the leather portfolio he’d brought with him. He pulled out the bill and shoved it across the desk at me.

  “See,” he said, pointing at an Oakland number circled in pencil. “I thought at first it was a mistake. I don’t know anybody in Oakland. But I went back through the phone bills for the last few months, and that number appears several times. The operator told me it’s an antique store called Granny’s Attic on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. Renee called that number the day before she disappeared. It must mean something.”

  “Did you call it?”

  “Several times. I got no answer.”

  I picked up my phone and punched in the number. I let it ring for a full minute before hanging up. It was a quirky piece of evidence. But it was enough to bring Foster up here from Los Gatos and enough to pique my interest.

  “All right, Mr. Foster. I’ll take the case.”

  I got a copy of my standard contract from the filing cabinet. We went over the details and he wrote out a five-hundred-dollar retainer check. That out of the way, I extracted more information from Foster.

  My quarry, Renee Mills Foster, was five feet five inches tall and weighed 110 pounds, with shoulder-length blond hair — courtesy of a bottle — and blue eyes. She had no distinguishing marks or features other than a small burn scar on her left forearm. She would be twenty-nine on April 3.

  As far as her husband knew, Renee had no relatives living, in Oakland or elsewhere. He didn’t know where she’d gone to high school, but he thought she may have attended college at California State University in Hayward. In fact, Foster didn’t know much about his wife at all. It was as though she didn’t exist until he met her five years ago, while she was working as a secretary in a Silicon Valley computer firm. After dating a few months, they eloped to Lake Tahoe.

  Foster told me his wife didn’t have any friends. When he realized how that sounded, he amended it to name a co-worker at the computer firm. Renee had continued working there until right before their child was born, and she occasionally met the co-worker for a drink after work. As for other interests, Renee took a dance class four afternoons a week. Her husband said it in a way that sounded like he resented her taking the time away from the family hearth.

  I wrote down the numbers of the Fosters’ credit cards, though I doubted Renee would create a paper trail. She’d gotten several thousand in cash from the joint account. The money wouldn’t last forever, but if she was careful she could stay hidden for a long time.

  “What kind of car was she driving?” I asked Foster.

  “She doesn’t have it. She left it in the bank parking lot. The other private investigator found it there.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “You already hired an investigator?”

  A man named Gerrity, Foster told me, but he was unsatisfactory. He dug the investigator’s report out of the leather portfolio. I leafed through the pages.

  After emptying the bank account, Mrs. Foster left her Volvo station wagon in the bank parking lot, where it was ticketed. Gerrity had checked local cab com
panies until he located a driver who picked up a fare near the bank Wednesday morning, a woman matching Renee Foster’s description, carrying an oversized handbag and a suitcase. The cabbie took her to the nearest CalTrain depot.

  It sounded like the unsatisfactory Mr. Gerrity had done a decent day’s work. Still, there are a lot of shifty operators in this business. Maybe Foster had been justified in terminating the investigator’s services.

  Foster was staying at the Hyatt on Broadway, a block from my Franklin Street office. I told him I’d be in touch as soon as I had anything to report. As he got up to leave, I asked him how he wound up in my office.

  “Sergeant Vernon at the Oakland Police Department recommended you.”

  After Foster left I picked up the phone again and punched in the number of the Oakland Police Department Homicide Section, asking for Sergeant Vernon.

  “Thanks for the client, Sid.”

  “I thought it was right up your alley.”

  “Which alley is that?” As if I didn’t know.

  “The disappearing wife.” His tone was barbed. “The one who walks out on her husband.”

  “We left each other, Sid.”

  “So you tell me. Thought I’d slide a little business your way. Got to keep you employed so I don’t have to pay you alimony.”

  “I won’t hold my breath. Tell me about Foster.”

  “Not much to tell. He came in early this morning. Missing Persons checked Homicide to see if we had any Jane Does matching the wife’s description.” The rest of Sid’s information matched what Foster had told me, “Foster came up here waving that phone bill like it was hard evidence. Waste of time, if you ask me. He wanted to hire an investigator in this area and the name Jeri Howard just popped into my head.”

  “I know why you gave him my number, Sid. You don’t think I can find her.”

  “The woman took a powder and doesn’t want to come home. But you private investigators have a different way of looking at things. A case is a case, right? I figured you’d give it a shot.”

  “I will.”

  I hung up on him without saying goodbye. Steering Foster to me was Sid’s way of applying the needle. He was telling me exactly what he thought of private investigators in general and this private investigator in particular. Sid Vernon liked to push my buttons, and damn it, he still got a rise out of me. Trouble was, I read Renee Foster’s disappearance the same way he did.

  I called the number on Gerrity’s letterhead and got his answering machine. After leaving a message to call me, I checked my Oakland phone directory, verifying the address and phone number of Granny’s Attic. Then I locked my office and went downstairs.

  I walked through the midmorning drizzle to the Alameda County Courthouse, several blocks from my office. It was March and the weather vacillated between rain and sunshine. This Monday morning offered a gray sky and rain, curling the ends of my red-brown hair and beading on my khaki raincoat.

  At the courthouse I checked the Fictitious Business Names records and turned up Granny’s Attic, owned by one Vera Burke, who lived at an address on Monticello Avenue in Piedmont. Then I looked through the microfilmed Alameda County birth records.

  That’s when I discovered Mrs. Foster either wasn’t born Renee Mills or wasn’t born in Alameda County.

  * * *

  Foster told me his wife had been born in Oakland, April 3, twenty-nine years ago. But I found no record of a Renee Mills born in Alameda County on that date or during the two months either side of that date. I spent the next hour checking the same four-month period for the years immediately preceding and following. Then I widened my search to all twelve months in a five-year span.

  No Renee Mills. Either she changed her name or she was born somewhere else.

  In addition to the phone bill and the photograph, Foster had given me a copy of an insurance form filled out by his wife. I took the form out of my purse and examined it, noting that Mrs. Foster had listed her place of birth as Oakland and the date as April 3. She must have changed her name. If I had, I reasoned, I wouldn’t stray far from the truth. It was too easy to make mistakes.

  Her signature was a casual scrawl that left room for all sorts of possibilities. If Mills wasn’t her name, there was a good chance it was fairly close to the real one. People tend to do that. I might as well try being creative.

  I flipped to a blank page in my notebook and wrote Mills at the top. I played with it, writing variations, all with double L’s in the middle, names like Nillson, Miller, Gillis, and Williams.

  I went through the records again, looking for names other than Mills. This time I came up with several, all girls born in Oakland on April 3. Andrea Irene Gillis was good. So was Renata Marie Hill. Renee Claire Millsey and Elizabeth Renee Willis I liked even belter. Willis... A coal glowed briefly in my memory, then died as quickly as it had appeared.

  Birth records in Alameda County list the mother’s or the parents’ names. Renee Claire Millsey’s mother was Lois Millsey. I consulted an Oakland phone directory. There were lots of Gillises, Hills, and Willises, but only one Millsey, C. B., at an address in North Oakland.

  Millsey was the name on the mailbox, but I knew I had the wrong house when my knock was answered by a stately black woman with salt-and-pepper hair. She confirmed that she was Lois Millsey. I gave her a story about looking for a friend from college and she told me her daughter Renee was married and living in Chicago.

  Granny’s Attic was near the intersection of Forty-First and Piedmont, its window and front door topped by a blue-and-white striped awning. Rain dripped from the canvas onto the back of my neck as I read the sign on the door that said the store opened at ten and closed at six. According to my watch it was eleven-thirty, but the door was locked and the gray March light didn’t penetrate the dimness inside. When I looked past the spinning wheel in the window I couldn’t see anything but the first row of furniture.

  I walked into the bookshop next door and leaned over a counter spread with paperbacks. “I’m looking for Vera Burke, the owner of Granny’s Attic.”

  The clerk looked up from her cash register. “The store’s been closed for a couple of days.” She finished ringing up the sale and bagged the book for her customer. “I don’t know where she is.”

  I went back to my car and drove to the Monticello Avenue address. It was a two-story Tudor with a landscaped lawn and a shut-up look. No one answered the bell. I decided it was time to activate the Cal State connection.

  California State University at Hayward is a collection of buildings scattered across the flat landscaped top of a ridge that overlooks the bay and the communities spreading south from Oakland. When it’s clear, you can see San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. Today the fine curtain of rain masked everything, making the campus a quiet green-and-gray island.

  I walked quickly through the rain to Mieklejohn Hall, a red brick building at the south end of the campus. On the top floor I made for an open doorway across the corridor from the History Department office. Pipe smoke permeated the book-lined room. An older man with thinning auburn hair sat at a cluttered desk, briar in an ashtray on his right, reading what looked like a research paper and writing remarks on the typewritten pages. He wore gray slacks and an argyle sweater over a sports shirt. I’d given him the sweater for Christmas.

  I walked into the office and planted a kiss on the top of his head, where the bald spot showed. “Hi, Dad.”

  My father looked up, horn-rimmed bifocals slipping down his nose. He grinned at me and pushed his glasses back into position.

  “How’s my girl?” he asked. He always says that. It makes me sound like I’m thirteen instead of thirty-three. “You want some coffee?”

  He stood up, stretching his six-foot three-inch frame, and gave me an affectionate squeeze. A head taller than me, he smelled of pipe tobacco and dusty books. We share the same red-brown hair and blue-green eyes, with a faint sprinkling of freckles across our faces.

  Dad picked up a red mug and led the way
to the department lounge, where a coffee urn brewed all day. He opened a cupboard and handed me a mug.

  “None too clean,” I said, inspecting it.

  “Don’t worry. History Department coffee kills the germs.”

  I helped myself to the black brew and dropped a quarter into the change jar next to the pot. “Not many students around,” I said as we returned to his office.

  “Spring-quarter registration is next week. I’m just trying to get caught up before the onslaught.”

  Dad angled his chair away from his desk and sat down, stretching long legs out in front of him. I took the wooden chair close to his desk. Behind a stack of papers I saw a double frame with a picture of me on one side and of my brother Brian with his wife and two children on the other. Three of the office’s four walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and the fourth held a large cork bulletin board and several framed posters, one of them a colorful reproduction of Buffalo Bill Cody from a recent exhibition of Wild West memorabilia. Dr. Timothy Howard’s field of expertise was American history, specifically that of the Old West.

  “I was in Monterey over spring break,” Dad said. “I saw your mother.”

  It’s a cold-water shock when your parents split after thirty years of marriage. My brother and I were stunned when Mother left Dad. The divorce affected my relationship with both parents. I drew closer to Dad, feeling his need for companionship. Things are prickly between me and Mother. After the divorce she returned to Monterey, where she had grown up in a rambunctious Irish-Italian family. Always a gourmet cook, she opened a restaurant called Café Marie. It keeps her busy, with little time for visiting.

  Dad took the breakup better than his children did. He bought a townhouse in Castro Valley, where he surrounds himself with his collection of Indian pottery, his books about pioneers and gunfighters, and a circle of academic colleagues. He and Mother are still friends, a state I don’t seem able to achieve with my own ex-husband. Or my mother.

  “I went to Monterey last Christmas,” I said. “It was a mob scene. Brian, Sheila, and the kids, plus a houseful of Doyles and Ravellas. It took me days to recuperate.” I sipped the coffee and set the mug on one corner of his desk. “I just took on a new case.”