Marcia Muller: Trophies And Dead Things

"I don't know what I know anymore." He glanced at the pendant. "What's that on the chain?"

"A pair of letters." I handed it to him.

He examined it, fingering the rough edges as I had. "Every weekend hippie had a chain like this, but it usually had a peace symbol attached."

I smiled and took it from his outstretched hand. "I even had one. We weren't allowed to wear them to school, but on weekends we'd dress up in our bell-bottoms and tie-dye and love beads. There was this store in Laguna Beach that sold beads-fantastic hand-painted ones, all colors and sizes and shapes. We'd drive all the way up there from San Diego to buy them." I still had some of the prettier ones, unstrung how, in my jewelry box.

"You were a regular little hippie child, weren't you?" Hank said. "I never would have guessed. When I met you at Berkeley, you struck me as such a… well, cheerleader."

"I was. Captain of the high-school squad my senior year. The hippie stuff was strictly masquerade; it made us feel with-it and wicked. I hardly ever smoked dope until I got to Cal, and I only attended one feeble peace march. Then, when I was in college, the energy had kind of gone out of the Movement, and besides, I was too busy studying and working to have the time." I'd put myself through the university, working nights and weekends as a security guard, poring over my textbooks during the long, fallow hours.

Hank nodded, his gaze far away, seeing-what? The young man and woman we'd been? The idealists with all of life ahead of us? And was he comparing those people to the ones we'd become: in his case, the disillusioned but ever-hopeful dreamer; in mine, the realist whose cynicism was thus far untainted by bitterness?

I said, "Can I keep the gun and this… whatever it is?"

He roused himself from his reverie. "Sure. I doubt the Salvation Army would want the whatsis, and we'd better hang on to the gun for a while, until…"He let his words trail off, unsure what that eventuality might be.

"I'll put it in the strongbox where I keep my own gun. It'll be safe there. By the way, before they pick up the furniture and boxes, you ought to look through the ones I've set aside in the dining room. There's a lot of personal stuff, plus a fairly valuable baseball-card collection. It would be nice if Hilderly's kids had the cards, plus other things to remember their father by."

"You're right. I'll see that they get them."

I helped Hank clear the remaining cupboards, then offered to drop the keys at the landlady's, since he'd mentioned she lived in my neighborhood. He said he'd take care of it, then added, "I meant to tell you, I'm cooking chili at my flat Monday night, in honor of Anne-Marie's birthday. Jack and Ted'll be there, and Rae and Willie. I'd like you to come, too."

"Rae and Willie-that's getting to be a pretty steady thing, isn't it?"

"Appears that way. Do you disapprove?"

Since she'd started seeing Willie Whelan some months before, I'd harbored certain reservations about my assistant's new relationship, mainly because I know Willie's myriad faults altogether too well. He is a friend of Hank's from his Vietnam days, and a former fence who-as he puts it-has "gone legit." What started as a small discount jewelry store on Market Street had turned into a gold mine for him, with branches all over the Bay Area, and he takes great pride in the fact that he-like his arch-competitor at the well-known Diamond Center-performs his own television commercials. On late-night TV you can usually see him luring the young and gullible to acquire gems that they don't need, to establish credit histories that will set the stage for future judgments against them, and-if by some miracle they don't default-to surrender a good portion of their lifetime earnings to Willie Whelan.

Willie is, in many respects, a great guy-provided you don't buy anything from him or take him too seriously. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my bright, young, recently divorced assistant was seeing him.

I said to Hank, "It's not my place to approve or disapprove. I just hope she doesn't get hurt."

"Would be a shame, so soon after she got rid of Doug-the-asshole, as she's so fond of calling her ex. But what about it-will you come for dinner?"

I checked my mental calendar. I'd planned to suggest to Anne-Marie Altman, Hank's wife, that I take her to lunch to celebrate her birthday, but with this new investigation, there might not be time for that. "Okay," I said, "you can count me in."

"If you want to bring Jim-"

Jim, I thought, feeling a sinking sensation. I'd almost forgotten his unwelcome early-morning visit.

"No, I'll come by myself." I hadn't yet told Hank that I'd broken it off, and I was in no mood to discuss it now. Quickly I started down the hall, trying to remember where I'd tossed my bag and jacket on the way in.

Hank followed me. "Shar, is something wrong between-"

"Everything's fine," I lied. "And I'd better get going because I have a date tonight."

Hank looked both relieved and pleased. Every time I become irritated with his nosiness, I have to remind myself that it's not his fault that he loves me and wants me to be happy.

I'd been looking forward to a quiet evening at home, but when I got there, my little brown-shingled earthquake cottage-one of some four thousand built as emergency housing after the quake and fire of '06, and lovingly added onto by a succession of owners, including me-seemed less of a haven than it usually did. One reason, I knew, was the unsettling effect of Jim's visit. Another was that my fat black-and-white-spotted cat, Watney, had died in his sleep two months before, and I hadn't replaced him, didn't think it possible to replace him. But the chief reason was that the man who might have become the love of my life was living in

Palo Alto to be near his estranged, mentally ill wife, whose fragile emotional balance had been toppled as a result of my own bad judgment during a particularly complex investigation. Never mind that my lover, George Kostakos-who is a psychologist and ought to know-didn't blame me for her collapse. Never mind that he said it had been long in the making. I blamed myself, and I went about clad in the proverbial hair shirt, insulated by it against disappointment and loneliness.

But even self-created hair shirts could itch and chafe sometimes. And resentment could occasionally flare against a former lover who was uncondemning, caring, and honorable.

And after years of Wat's curmudgeonly companionship, a house without my cat was not a home.

I stowed the pouch containing Hilderly's gun in the strongbox, then went to the fridge and put away the little custard pies I'd bought at the restaurant. For a moment I considered a glass of wine, but drinking alone in the kind of mood I was in could lead to dangerous introspection. There was a new comedy I'd been wanting to see at the Northpoint, and if I hurried I could catch the early show. Quickly I took a shower to wash away the dust of Hilderly's apartment, then donned my soft old faded jeans and a sweater.

Before I left the house, however, I looked into my jewelry box at the love beads I'd kept there for more than twenty years. They glimmered in the day's fading light-opalescent blue and pink and green and yellow symbols of an era that perhaps was never as joyful or innocent as some of us remember it.

The first thing Monday morning I called Rae Kelleher at All Souls and briefed her on the Hilderly investigation. She said she'd get started immediately on the skip traces on Heikkinen and Taylor.

"I take it you're not coming in for a while," she added.

"No. I'm going to see what I can find out from Grant and Goodhue, and I'm also going to stop by the SFPD, talk about Hilderly's death with the detective in charge of these random shootings."