Deadfall(17)

“Washburn told me the dingus was valuable. How valuable?”

“Fifty thousand dollars in the collectors’ market.”

“That much? Lot of money for a snuff box.”

“You’re telling me. One of a kind item, though, made out of gold and dating back to Napoleon’s time. So Eldon Summerhayes says.”

“Who’s he?”

“Owns the Summerhayes Gallery, up on Post Street. He deals in rare snuff containers, among other items. He and his wife were at the party.”

“Other dealers and collectors there too?”

“Two other collectors. Purcell got them all together so he could gloat, evidently; he’d just bought the box.”

“From?”

“Nobody seems to know. He kept his source a secret.”

“Illegal deal, maybe?”

“Maybe. But there doesn’t seem to be any way it could tie in to his death, or to his brother’s. And those other collectors he invited are blue-chip citizens.”

“Okay,” I said. “So you figure the guy Washburn talked to on the phone was just a crank.”

“Probably. Or somebody with a bright idea on how to make a fast buck.”

“Either way, Ben, why would he wait six months? Why not make the call within a few days of Kenneth’s death?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Klein said. “But don’t forget the same thing applies if the caller really did have knowledge that it was a homicide. Why wait six months?”

Good question either way. And one of several weak points in Washburn’s theory. I said, “Nothing in Leonard’s effects to indicate he ever talked to the guy?”

“Nothing.”

“Or what might have happened to the missing two thousand?”

“No.”

I asked him about Kenneth Purcell’s wife and daughter. He smiled wryly. “A couple of sweethearts, those two,” he said.

“How so?”

“You’ll see when you meet them. I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun by tipping you off ahead of time.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Can I get a list of the people at the party? Names and addresses?”

“I don’t see why not. Come upstairs with me after we finish.”

So I went back upstairs with him, and he gave me a computer printout of the list. He also gave me the address and telephone number of the Moss Beach house where Alicia Purcell now lived alone, the name of the attorney who had handled Kenneth’s legal affairs, and the name of the guy that Melanie Purcell was living with on Mission Creek.

I thought about asking him to let me look over the complete file on the Leonard Purcell homicide, but I didn’t do it. Cops don’t mind helping out private detectives now and then, if you maintain a good professional rapport with them, but they get testy if you hang around and ask too many favors. They have to slog along assembling facts on their own; they figure you ought to be doing the same thing. In the detective business, there is no such thing as a free ride. Or, for that matter, a free lunch: I had paid for Klein’s, and gladly.



Kenneth Purcell’s attorney, Lawrence Rossiter, had a suite of offices on the twentieth floor of a newish high-rise in Embarcadero Center. Both the offices and the address were impressive, and so was Rossiter himself: sixtyish, graying, with a beautifully groomed walrus mustache and the kind of courtly manner you seldom find these days in any lawyer under the age of fifty. He kept me waiting less than fifteen minutes before he had his secretary usher me into his rosewood-paneled inner sanctum, which was another point in his favor.

He was helpful, too, although he made it clear from the start that he was willing to discuss the terms of Kenneth’s will only because it was in probate and therefore a matter of public record. It was due to clear probate, he said, in less than two weeks.

“How much is the estate worth?” I asked him.

“Upwards of two million. Of course, the bulk of that is in property and other non-liquid assets.”

“How much cash?”

“Something better than five hundred thousand.”

“The three primary beneficiaries are his widow, his daughter, and his brother Leonard, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Divided how?”

“The cash into equal thirds,” Rossiter said. “Most of the property and other assets go to his widow.”

“Including the Moss Beach house?”

“Yes.”

“And his collection of antique tobacco items?”

“That too, yes.”

“How much is the collection worth?”

“It was appraised at three hundred thousand. The house is valued at half a million at the current market price.”