"Do you believe Catherine?"
"Yes, but I believe Will, too. He's my brother. He's my blood. Thicker than water, you know." She sighed deeply. "It's like this terrible nightmare. I just wish we could all wake up."
"It is like that. I know." Hardy took his opening. "But listen, I've taken enough of your time. I've got a specific question I wanted to ask you if you don't mind."
"No, of course, I don't. I mean, if it will help Catherine…"
"Great." Hardy didn't want to let her think about it.
"Do you remember back on the afternoon of the fire, after Catherine had gone to see your dad and found out his plans about Missy and the family? I was reviewing all of my talks with her the other day, all the details she'd told me, and I came upon the fact that right after she'd left your dad's house-this was long before the fire-she said she called you. Do you remember that?"
Mary nodded. "Sure, I remember that very well. She was really upset."
"And what about you?"
"I was upset, too, I suppose, but we're doing okay here, Carlos and I. I mean, I didn't like what Dad was doing, but didn't see any way that we could stop it." Then, perhaps realizing what she'd said, she put her hand to her mouth. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Nobody was going to try to stop anybody. It was just a shame, that's all. Dad being so gullible."
"With Missy, you mean?"
Nodding, she said, "But he'd made his own money and I guess he could spend it however he wanted. The minority opinion in the family."
"But you didn't believe Missy loved your father?"
"Not for a minute."
"Okay, let's go back to the phone call for a minute. Why did Catherine call you?"
"Well, I guess because we're friends. We talked all the time. Our boys are about the same age, too, so there's that. And after she left Dad's, she wanted everybody to know, the whole family, so we could decide what we were going to do. But she and Beth aren't all that close-Beth's really serious and not much of a chatterer, like me-and there was no way Catherine was going to call Mom." "So did you call them then?"
"Yeah. Mom right away, I remember, but not Beth. She hates being bothered at work. I should have called Catherine back, too, I realize now, and maybe invited her to come out to Pablo's soccer game and we could have just talked and gotten everything calmed down. If I'd have done that…" She shook her head. "Anyway, I didn't. Is that all you wanted to ask me about? That phone call?"
"Pretty much," he said. "It's part of Catherine's alibi and I wanted to make sure I had the chronology straight before I put her on the stand." This was not even close to true, but it sounded plausible and, more important, Mary bought it. "There is one other thing, though."
"Sure."
"What can you tell me about the ring?" She shook her head. "That stupid ring. What do you want to know?"
"Anything you can think of."
She thought a minute. "Well, it was the dumbest thing Dad ever did, buying that for her. Then telling us, of course, what he paid for it. Six figures, he said, like he'd finally gotten into some exclusive club. But that's really what started all the… I mean that's when everybody started taking Missy seriously. And Mom! I thought she'd die. 'He spent over a hundred thousand dollars on a rock for her finger?' He never even gave her, my mom I mean, an engagement ring at all. They could only afford a couple of gold bands in those days. But then, when Dad got this, this monstrosity for her…" She shook her head at the memory, blew out a sharp breath. "Anyway, that's the ring. Why?"
"It's come up a couple of times lately. No one seems to know where it's gone to."
The fact seemed to strike Mary as odd, and her face clouded briefly, but by then Hardy was getting to his feet. Two minutes later, the two of them shook hands outside in the cold night at her front door, she closed it behind him, and Hardy jogged down to where he'd parked.
In his living room, at his reading chair, the lone light in the house on over his shoulder, Hardy reviewed his notes on talks he'd had long ago with Catherine's family. He was happy to see that his memory hadn't completely deserted him. From the outset of this case, he'd realized that every member of the Hanover family had the same motive to kill the patriarch, so he'd questioned Mary, Beth and Will as to their whereabouts at the time of the fire.
Will, of course, had been out on the ocean somewhere off the coast of California, with or without Karyn Harris. Beth, a consultant with an environmental insurance firm, stayed at her office crunching numbers with a team of four other colleagues until nearly eight thirty. Mary worked in investment banking downtown, where she'd taken Catherine's call. She'd checked her calendar and found that her husband had picked her up from work at quarter past five, and the two of them had gone together out to Golden Gate Park to take in their son's six o'clock soccer game.
At the time he'd done these interviews-early in the process, late last summer-Hardy hadn't fully appreciated the degree to which Theresa remained involved with her offspring and with the lives and futures of their kids, her grandchildren. Still, to date, he hadn't ever talked to Theresa about what she'd been doing on the night of May 12. Among the various other dudes he'd considered, she'd somehow never made the list. She was merely Paul Hanover's ex-wife, long estranged from him. But evidently still connected enough, either to him or to his memory, to become enraged about the size and expense of his new fiancee's engagement ring. And what Hardy did finally know, now, again thanks to his conversation with Mary tonight, was that Mary had called her mother right after she'd heard from Catherine, in the late afternoon of the day Paul and Missy had been killed, about three hours before the fire started.
Hardy closed up his notes binder, turned off the back light and walked to his little tool room behind the kitchen where he kept his maps. There, he looked up Theresa Hanover's address, which was on Washington Street at Scott, in Pacific Heights.
Fifteen blocks in a straight line from Alamo Square.
23
Hardy was up at five o'clock, showered, shaved and dressed in a half hour. Opening the door to his upstairs bedroom, he was surprised to see light from the kitchen, more surprised to see his daughter, Rebecca, up and dressed for school. She sat writing at the dining room table with her schoolbooks spread around her. Looking up at him, she smiled. "Howdy, stranger." "Not you, too."
"What?"
"You know what. I'm in trial. It's how I support us financially, and unfortunately it involves putting in long hours once in a while, which is not something I enjoy as much as everyone here at home seems to believe. Have you eaten?"
"No." "Plan to?"
She shrugged.
"I could make you something." "What are you having?" "Just some coffee." "I'll have that, too."
"No food? You know, protein to see you through those grueling school hours."
She stopped writing, smiled up at him again. "Are you having any?"
"I'm an adult," he said. "I have no needs."
"Well, I'm eighteen."
"I'm vaguely aware of that. I was there for your birth. But what's your point?"
"Just that I'm an adult, too. In many states."
"But here, as a full-time student with energy needs, you still need food."
"But not breakfast."
"It's the most important meal of the day." "That's what everybody says, but if I eat it every morning, I'll get fat."
"You'll never get fat. You work out every day." "I might stop."
"When you do, you can stop eating."
A pause. "Okay, I'll have something if you do."
Hardy felt his shoulders relax. He walked over and planted a kiss on the top of his daughter's head. "The way you argue, you ought to be a lawyer. I'd hate to face you in court."
Abstractedly, she reached an arm up and put it around his neck. "I love you, you know, even when you're gone a lot. But I do miss you."