Nobody's Child (The Jeri Howard Series Book 5) Read online

  Sid hung up the phone and peered at me closely. “You look like shit. Are you sick?”

  “Thanks,” I said, tone somewhere between glum and sardonic. “I’ve been fighting a cold for two weeks.”

  “Stay away from me, then.” Sid brought his fingers together and made the sign of a cross. “We got two detectives out with this crud. Wayne’s walking around sniffing and snorting, but so far I’ve dodged the bullet.”

  “Fluids. That’s what they tell me. Drink plenty of fluids and get lots of rest.”

  “Fluids I can manage,” he said. “Rest is in short supply. So why’d you haul your germs over here?”

  I looked around for a chair, appropriated one from a nearby desk and sat down. “Any luck identifying your Jane Doe?”

  That got his attention. He leaned forward over his desk and narrowed his yellow eyes. “The body up on Buena Vista? No leads. She didn’t have enough flesh on her fingers to print and nobody’s volunteered any dental records. Why? What do you know about that?”

  “What I read in the papers. Which isn’t much.” I huddled in my raincoat, suddenly cold as someone opened the door that led to the hallway. “I got a client this morning. Someone who wants me to find out if that body is her daughter.”

  “Why doesn’t your client come to us?” Sid asked.

  I shook my head slowly. “Don’t know. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Or that the client is willing to share. How did Jane Doe die?”

  He answered my question with one of his own. “Why does your client think Jane Doe is her daughter?”

  I took the photographs and the police sketch from my purse and handed them to Sid. He looked at them, then shrugged.

  “Could be. There is a resemblance to the sketch. But it’s just a reconstruction, from the skull. The corpse didn’t have much flesh on it when it was found.” My stomach lurched at the image his words brought forth, and I tried to focus on the truncated snapshot Sid now examined. He flicked it with his index finger. “Who’s the girl? And where’s the other half of the picture?”

  “The mother cut the picture in half. Something else she didn’t want me to see. The girl’s name is Maureen Cynthia Smith. Ran away from home in Piedmont, first week in March, nearly three years ago, right after her eighteenth birthday. She came home once, last March, when that photograph was taken. Her mother hasn’t seen her since.”

  “May I keep this picture?” he asked. I nodded. Sid reached for the phone and punched in a number. “Portillo, this is Sergeant Vernon in Homicide. Run a name through the computer. Maureen Cynthia Smith, date of birth...” He looked at me. I gave him the date and he repeated it “Went missing three years ago this coming March. See what you can find and bring it over here.”

  Sid hung up the phone. “You know, we checked the databases when the body turned up. Both MUPS and NCIC.”

  “I figured you had.” There are two missing persons computer systems available to assist California law enforcement. The newest of these is MUPS, the Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems, administered by the state Department of Justice. The second is the National Crime Information Computer System. “Nothing on the computers?” I asked.

  “Nothing that would help ID this body.” The phone on his desk rang and he picked up the receiver. “Sergeant Vernon.”

  Of course, I mused, a computer system is only as good as the information entered into it. Missing persons data is usually entered by police agencies, and there was always the chance someone might make an error on some descriptor like eye or hair color.

  While Sid was on the phone I reached for the photo of his daughter Vicki. It must have been fairly new, since she looked more grown-up since the last time I’d seen her. She resembled her father, with golden eyes and dark gold hair tumbling around her shoulders.

  “She’s a beauty,” I told him when he’d replaced the receiver.

  He relaxed in his chair, smiling with fatherly pride. “Gorgeous, smart. I wouldn’t be biased, would I? I just wish she’d gone to a smaller college instead of jumping into all that craziness over at Berserkeley. But she got a scholarship, so I guess I can’t complain.”

  Sid cocked his head and stared at me as though something had just occurred to him. “You had a birthday, didn’t you? End of October.”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised. Sid had never been all that efficient about remembering my birthday when he and I were together. Why he should now recall this milestone—even belatedly—was beyond me.

  He seemed to sense my reluctance to discuss it further. “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s fine. Busy with the end of the term, of course.” My father, Dr. Timothy Howard, is a history professor down at Cal State Hayward. “Mother’s okay too. I went down to Monterey to see her.”

  Sid quirked an eyebrow at me. He knew my mother and I had been sniping at one another for years, though we’d reached a tentative but hard-won truce during this last visit. It’s tied up in a lot of things, including my parents’ divorce and the inescapable fact that she and I are both independent and prickly.

  “I knew you went to Monterey. Some sergeant from the sheriff’s office down there called to check you out. What happened?”

  The events of late September and early October were a vacation gone awry. It had turned into a couple of investigations, involving a murder and the sabotage of my mother’s restaurant. By the time I told Sid the abbreviated version, Detective Portillo from Missing Persons showed up. She was an attractive woman with a short fringe of dark hair and a pair of big brown eyes that stayed focused on Sid while she delivered her news.

  “There is no missing persons report on a Maureen Cynthia Smith,” she said. “She’s not in the computer. And I called the Piedmont police to doublecheck. No one ever reported her missing.”

  “Interesting.” Sid looked up at me. “When did you say she disappeared?”

  “First week in March, nearly three years ago, according to her mother.”

  Detective Portillo had slewed her eyes away from Sid and was now looking at me with open curiosity, so Sid introduced us. She responded with a little nod and a speculative glint that indicated she may have heard that Sergeant Vernon used to be married to a private investigator named Jeri Howard.

  “Is this about that Jane Doe over at the coroner’s office?” she asked. Sid nodded. “Teenage girls often run away to be with an older boy or man. Was there someone like that in this girl’s life?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looks like I need to get more information from the girl’s mother.”

  There’s another reason kids run away from home, I thought. And it has to do with abuse and neglect. If Naomi Smith was sure that unidentified body was her daughter, why hadn’t she reported Maureen missing nearly three years ago?

  The phone at Sid’s elbow rang and he picked it up. “Sergeant Vernon. Yeah, she’s here.” He looked up at Detective Portillo. “Captain Lewis wants to see you in his office.”

  “I’ll touch base with you later.” Portillo smiled at both of us and headed for the door. The look she tossed at Sid made me think she’d like to touch more than base.

  “Tell me about the autopsy on Jane Doe,” I said when she’d gone. “What was the cause of death?” I would have liked to read the coroner’s report myself but I doubted that Sid would let me.

  He hesitated. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he decided how much information to share with me. Most cops don’t like private investigators involving themselves in police business. But given what Sid had said about no leads, I speculated that in the weeks since Jane Doe’s remains were found, he and Wayne had come up against a brick wall trying to identify the girl.

  “She was white, estimated age eighteen to twenty-two,” he said slowly. “She’d been dead about three to four weeks. She was killed elsewhere and dumped on the site where she was found. The body was wrapped in an area rug. There were two different sets of fibers on the clothing she wore. One set from the area rug, one set from an
other carpet. Nothing to fingerprint. Dental records would help.”

  “I’ve asked my client to make them available. What else?”

  “The left arm had been broken. Old injury, childhood or adolescence. Muscle tissue was lean, consistent with not getting much to eat. Like she’d been living hard, close to the bone.” He grimaced. “The medical examiner thought she might be homeless. He’s autopsied a lot of street people so he knows what he’s talking about.”

  I noticed Sid hadn’t said anything about the cause of death. There was, I supposed, a remote possibility that Jane Doe had died of natural causes. But someone had certainly gone to a lot of trouble to conceal the body.

  “How did she die, Sid?”

  He frowned. “That construction crew was using a backhoe to clear that area around the foundation. The upper part of the body was damaged by the machinery. So right now—we’re not sure. But my guess is she was murdered.”

  “There’s more,” I prodded.

  “Yeah. There is.” He didn’t say anything right away. Instead he tented his hands on his desk and gazed at me. “According to the pathologist, the pelvic bones show Jane Doe had a baby, sometime within the last couple of years.” He stopped, looked as though he were going to say something else, and then thought better of it.

  “For some reason that bothers me,” he said finally. “What happened to her kid? Was it born dead, or did it die? Did she leave it with someone? Give it up for adoption?” He shrugged and looked at the photograph of his own child. “Hell, I’m probably getting upset over nothing. Maybe the pathologist is wrong.”

  I shook my head slowly as I reached out and fingered the snapshot Naomi Smith had given me.

  “I think I know what’s in the other half of that picture.”

  Three

  NAOMI SMITH LIVED IN A GRAY STONE HOUSE ON Hillside Avenue in Piedmont, surrounded by a wall and an aura of impenetrability. The thick green lawn glistened with raindrops in the thin gray light of early afternoon. Well-tended azaleas and rhododendrons evidenced the regular care of a gardener. I angled my Toyota into a curbside spot and went through the wrought-iron gate, heading up the shallow steps to the double front doors, solid dark wood with a matching pair of brass knockers. I eschewed the knockers in favor of the doorbell I saw on the right and heard a bell peal inside.

  While I waited for a response, I turned and looked in the direction I’d come. The house sat high on the upslope side of the street. In the gap between the houses across the street, I glimpsed the office towers of downtown Oakland, rising above the oak trees.

  Behind me one of the double doors swung open. I turned to face an unsmiling woman wearing gray slacks and a blue sweater. She was about fifty, dark brown eyes a shade or two lighter than her coffee-colored skin, short iron-gray curls above a high forehead.

  “Yes?” Her inquiry was as short as her voice.

  “Jeri Howard to see Naomi Smith.”

  Her eyes raked over me with a slow measuring gaze, then she nodded. It was as though she’d been expecting me. “Come in.”

  I stepped into a central foyer, hardwood floors covered with a long narrow rug that reminded me of a beige chenille bedspread my mother once had. Directly in front of me I saw a wide staircase with steps covered by a beige runner and a banister made of the same dark polished wood as the door I’d just come through. A narrow passage next to the stairs ended in a closed door. On my left I saw an open doorway leading to a formal dining room with a huge oval table. On the far wall was a big cabinet full of white china trimmed in gold. The whole room resembled a museum setting. I wondered if it was ever used. On the right another doorway opened onto a large living room furnished with a lot of antiques that looked English and expensive.

  “Wait here,” the woman said. She disappeared through the closed door at the end of the hall.

  I stepped into the living room, onto a thick cream-colored pile that cushioned my weight. The big picture window curtained with beige drapes looked out over the azaleas and the green grass in the front yard. Above the white stone fireplace I saw a portrait of a much younger Naomi Smith, in a formal off-the-shoulder ball gown, her thick black hair drawn back from a narrow face softened by time or the artist. It was the only picture of a human being in the entire room. Everything else was either a landscape or a still life. No photographs decorated the glossy end tables or the glass-fronted bookcases on either side of the mantel.

  I looked up at Naomi Smith’s portrait, thinking she must have been a beauty in her youth. If the artist was telling the truth. Then my client entered the room. I was struck by the contrast between the painting and reality.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice was cold with irritation. “I told the dentist to send the records directly to your office. There’s no reason for you to be here.”

  I turned to look at her. She still wore the red suit she’d worn to my office that morning, but she’d removed the black turban to reveal a thin crop of hair that was still black. It had to be dyed, though. I couldn’t believe the coal-black strands were natural.

  “Why didn’t you report your daughter missing?” I asked.

  She stared back at me, scarlet lips thinning into a line. Then she walked to an armoire on the far side of the fireplace and opened the doors to reveal a bar. She poured something clear—gin or vodka—into a squat tumbler and tossed back the liquid as though it were water. I examined her more closely as she poured herself a refill. It was barely past noon. Naomi Smith was starting early. Was this her normal mode of liquor consumption?

  “She was eighteen,” Mrs. Smith spoke, not really answering my question. “I thought... I don’t know what I thought. That she was with her friend, Kara. But she wasn’t. That she’d come back. But she didn’t. After several weeks had gone by, I just didn’t want to deal with the police and all their questions.”

  “I guess those are reasons,” I said. “Not very good ones.”

  “Is this really necessary?” She raised the tumbler to her lips like a drowning woman seeking air. “I just want to know if that body was Maureen. If it is, I’ll—”

  “Claim it and bury it and get on with your life,” I finished. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy, Mrs. Smith. Not if I’m to continue with this case. You’ve left out a few pertinent details. Such as the lack of a missing persons report. And the baby in the other half of that picture.”

  Her hand tightened on the glass she held. Her hard brown eyes widened and she stared at me in consternation. “How did you know?”

  “I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Smith. That’s why you hired me.” I crossed the living room and studied her, wondering again why I’d taken this case. Did I really need the money badly enough to put up with what promised to be a most aggravating client? I supposed I did.

  “The autopsy done on that body found in the hills showed the dead woman had delivered a child. Was it a boy or a girl? How old?”

  “I have no idea when she was born.”

  Naomi Smith gulped the rest of the booze and set the tumbler on an end table. At least she’d answered one of my questions.

  “Show me the picture,” I said. “All of it.”

  She turned on her heel and stalked from the living room. I followed her down the foyer to the door that opened onto a roomy kitchen with a work island containing a cooktop. The woman who had admitted me earlier now stood there, stirring a pot of soup that simmered on one of the burners. Next to that was a teakettle, popping and squeaking as the water inside increased in temperature.

  I surveyed the rest of the room. The round table in front of me was set for two, plain white porcelain bowls and teacups on dark green place mats, with a basket of corn muffins between. I recognized this kitchen from the half-snapshot Naomi Smith had given me earlier, the one I’d left with Sid. This was the room where Maureen Smith had sat in one of these white-painted wooden chairs, a half smile on her thin face, one blue-clad arm reaching for what had been nearby on the table, cut from the photo. />
  Naomi pulled open a drawer at the end of the counter and took out a paper photo-processing envelope. “There,” she said, handing it to me as though it burned her fingers.

  The first photo in the envelope was the other half of the snapshot. I sorted through the rest, eliminating most of them. Only five showed Maureen Smith and her daughter. I arranged the pictures in a half circle on the counter.

  If I had to guess, I’d say when these pictures were taken the little girl was about a year old, maybe eighteen months. Which would make her two now. She sat on her mother’s lap or lay on the bare wood surface of the kitchen table, wearing a frayed pink romper and tiny shoes that were no longer white. Wide brown innocent eyes stared trustingly into the camera, with a grin that was more genuine than the one on Maureen’s face. Little baby teeth showed white in the chocolate skin, contrasting with the pale flesh of her mother’s sallow face and hands.

  I looked up from the photos and saw Naomi Smith’s face, stark white under her coal-black hair. From the corner of my eye I saw the dark-skinned woman turn off the gas under the pot she was stirring.

  “What’s the little girl’s name?” The question was directed to both of them. Neither seemed inclined to answer. Instead the teakettle shrieked into the silence.

  “Dyese,” the other woman said finally. She tucked her hand into a quilted mitt and lifted the kettle from the burner. “I believe it’s African.”

  “And you are...?”

  “Ramona Clark. I work here.”

  As a housekeeper? There was nothing subservient about her. In fact, she reminded me of Mrs. Danvers, haunting the second Mrs. DeWinter with her talk of Rebecca. I leaned against the counter and looked at my client. “You told me Maureen ran away from home three years ago in March. When did you realize she was gone?”

  “She didn’t,” Ramona Clark said with clipped tones and a smile edged with amusement She set the teakettle on a trivet, then ladled soup into the bowls. Naomi glared at her but no words escaped her tight red lips. “None of us did. I’d gone on a cruise with my sister. Naomi was skiing up at Tahoe with the professor. Maureen was supposed to be staying with a friend. We didn’t know she was gone until the high school called. Would you like a cup of tea?”