Home for the Haunting(62)

“Power of attorney can be revoked, you know. And it doesn’t take a lot to kill a desperate addict. Just hand her a bunch of pills that weren’t what you told her they were.”

I blew out a breath.

“Another thing,” continued Luz. “Check out who would gain control of Hugh’s assets if he’s fifty-one fiftied.”

I stared at her.

“It’s code for committing someone against their will. You know, if they’re cray-cray. And yes,” she continued, “before you ask, ‘cray-cray’ is a professional term.”

“You mean who would gain control of Hugh’s assets besides the house? How do you know he has any? I don’t know anything about the man’s finances, but I can’t imagine a poet makes a lot of money.”

“Don’t be so sure, my friend. This guy isn’t your run-of-the-dive-café beat poet. He’s Hugh Freaking Lawrence, poet laureate. People pay him good money to show up and read his poetry. Not to mention he wrote the lyrics for a famous rock song, and there was even an indie movie based on one of his poems. It wasn’t bad, as far as that kind of thing goes.”

“So you’re saying . . . ?”

“Don’t the police look to spouses first? Would Hugh’s wife gain control of his assets if he’s declared incompetent?”

“I suppose. But she seems genuinely concerned about him. She’s urging him to write all about the experience, the grim stuff. Plus, she’s a techie, so she probably makes decent money of her own.”

“Never underestimate the power of greed. Some people will kill for what others would consider ridiculously small sums of money. Or maybe she just wants him to suffer for his art. Hugh’s first book, the grueling, blood-fueled stuff, landed him on the literary map. His next published volumes were much less tortured, more about love and home and kittens, but that stuff doesn’t sell. Maybe his wife wants him to be mired in the pain so he’ll write more blood-and-guts poetry and keep on raking in the money.”

“That’s a terrible thought.”

Luz had finished off the beignets and was now licking powdered sugar from her fingers. She shrugged.

“I’m just saying it’s worth considering. Maybe his wife would be willing to sacrifice his mental health—and his sister—for the cash.”





Chapter Sixteen




I got back to work for a while, making my usual rounds of the active jobsites, answering slews of telephone queries, and cajoling the clerk at the permit office to help me expedite the papers for a South Beach garage remodel. After going by the Bernini B&B and settling a dispute over the underlayment for radiant heat under the tile in the bathrooms, I met Annette Crawford at the designated parking lot in Berkeley.

Moments later we were zipping down the freeway in Annette’s beautiful blue sports car. It felt freeing, doing this sort of thing on a workday. Annette’s friend, the former homicide inspector, lived on his “ranchette” in Martinez, about twenty miles east of San Francisco, on the Carquinez Strait.

Martinez was one of those places I heard about in radio traffic reports but had never gone to. Though I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had only a vague sense of where Martinez was and what might be found there.

So I was impressed to discover that within twenty minutes’ drive of San Francisco—without traffic—you might as well be out in the countryside, where men wore cowboy hats and boots, and horses and cows and sheep populated the pastures. The area around Martinez was typical for California: rolling hills lush with tall grass and dotted with majestic oak trees. Since it was winter, the hills were a bright green, rivaling the famous landscapes in Ireland. For most of the year, however, they were “golden,” which meant the grasses were dry and dead. Still, the hills were gorgeous, a deep golden yellow shimmering in the bright sunshine, interrupted by the occasional lone oak tree. More than one California artist had attempted to capture their essence on canvas.

“So, what’s this friend of yours doing way out here?” I asked.

Annette gunned the engine to show up a white Camaro with a red racing stripe, whose pimply driver glared as we passed. “A lot of homicide inspectors head to the countryside when they retire. Not because the rural life guarantees safety; we all know that. But because when you’ve worked homicide in the city long enough, you start to associate every neighborhood, every block, with its murders or suspicious deaths. You end up viewing the city not as a patchwork of distinct neighborhoods but as a series of zones strewn with corpses. It gets a bit gruesome after a while.”