James Patterson - 11th hour

Conklin looked up at the brick buildings, built at the same time as the Ellsworth house. As Nicole had said, the windows were false, brick outlines with no glass, which made the one real window in the next-to-last building stand out.

“There’s a window on the top floor of number six.”

“Number six has been boarded up for years,” Nicole told him. “I’m pretty sure that window opens onto a stairwell.”

Conklin had gotten what he could from Nicole Worley’s running on about the history of the house and San Francisco. Now he wanted answers.

“Who does the gardening?”

“Ricky someone. I can find out.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not currently. Not seriously. No one I’ve brought here.”

“Have any of your friends been hanging out here recently?”

“Inspector Conklin, I’m starting to feel that you’re harassing me.”

“Nicole, would you rather come to the police station and spend a few hours with me and Sergeant Boxer? We can hold you as a material witness.”

Her eyes welled up. “I don’t bring my friends here.”

Conklin pressed on.

“Have you seen anyone on or near the grounds who struck you as out of place?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“What about those star tours? Do the tourists come into the garden?”

“No, and they don’t come into the house either. It’s strictly an outside-the-front-gate lecture series.”

“Thank you, Nicole. I need your contact information.”

Conklin smiled, gave her a pad and a pen. Watched her write, took back the notepad, and handed her his card.

“I’ll need the gardener’s name and number, and if you think of anything, anything, call me anytime.”

“I will certainly do that.”

Conklin nodded at the tech who was photographing one of the grave markers.

“We’ll be here for a while. Until we know who those seven victims are and the circumstances of their deaths, we’ll be turning over every stone.”

I’d grown up seeing Harry Chandler’s face in both huge Hollywood productions and tight, well-produced independent films. He was sexy, had terrific range, and was convincing as a hero and as a villain.

I’d checked out Chandler’s bio before getting on the road to South Beach Harbor, and as I’d expected, his story was now colored by the disappearance of his high-society wife, presumed dead. Much had been written about Chandler’s trial and acquittal, a story as dramatic as any film since Citizen Kane.

Popular opinion had it that even though the evidence wasn’t there, Chandler had nonetheless been involved in the crime. He had made a few pictures since he’d been found not guilty of murder, including the iconic Time to Reap, a cynical look at the meltdown of the global economy.

Chandler had won an Oscar for that performance. His second. I have to admit, I was eager to see him in real life.

It was only a four-mile drive from Vallejo Street to South Beach Harbor and the yacht club, both of which were part of the gentrification of the industrial area that had started in the 1980s.

I took Pierce to Broadway, then took a right to the Embarcadero. To my left was the bay. I saw sailboat masts showing above the yachts filling the harbor.

I parked my car in the lot, then found the security guard inside the harbor office at the entrance to the South Beach Yacht Club. He wrote down my name and badge number, made a call, and I went through a gate and found Chandler’s boat, the Cecily, at the end of a pier. It was a sleek, eighty-foot-long modern yacht, Italian make, a top-of-the-line Ferretti, so impressive it actually made me imagine a life in a super-luxury craft on the bay.

I walked down the pier and found Harry Chandler waiting for me, sitting in a folding chair at the foot of his slip. He saw me at the same moment I saw him; he put down his newspaper, stood up, and came toward me.

Harry Chandler looked to me like an aging lion. He was bearded and his face was lined, but he was still handsome, still the star who’d made female moviegoers all over the world fall in love with him.

“Sergeant Boxer? Welcome aboard.”

I shook his hand, then felt a little charge when he put his hand on my back and guided me to the gangway. I climbed the steps to a covered outdoor cabin on the main deck that was furnished in white sofas, sea-green-glass tables, and teak appointments all around.

Chandler told me to make myself comfortable. I took a seat while he went to the refrigerator under the bar and poured out bottles of water into two chunky crystal glasses of ice.

When he was sitting across a coffee table from me, he said, “I read about this — what would you call it? This horror that happened yesterday. And Janet called, nearly hysterical. If you hadn’t phoned I was going to call the police myself. I’m at a loss to understand this.”

I kept my eyes on the actor as he spoke. I’d seen his handsome face so many times, I felt as if I knew him.

Was he telling the truth or giving a performance? I hoped I could tell the difference.

I showed Chandler Jane Doe’s picture and he half turned away, then dragged his eyes back to the photo.

“I don’t know her. I am wondering, of course, about Cecily. We still don’t know what became of her. Could she be one of those victims in the garden? That would be a hell of a thing.”

“Wondering, Mr. Chandler?”

“Yes. I want to know what happened to her.”

If Cecily Chandler’s remains were recovered, Harry Chandler wouldn’t be charged, not for her death anyway. He’d been found innocent of her murder and couldn’t be tried for it again. But if Cecily Chandler’s remains had been buried on his doorstep, Harry would be the number one suspect in six other deaths.

Could Chandler have killed women over time and buried them in the dark of his garden, trusting that they would never be found? Had he kept the house he no longer used so as to protect his private trophy garden?

Did Nigel Worley have a better reason than his wife’s crush on a movie star for the anger he expressed on hearing Harry Chandler’s name?

Harry Chandler was sitting so that the San Francisco Bay was at his back.

I thought about convicted murderer Scott Peterson, recalled that his dead wife and unborn child were found washed up across the bay. It seemed very possible that a lot of bodies had been dumped in the water here. That they didn’t all wash up onshore, and that some were never discovered because they floated out to sea.

I smiled at the movie star and tried that charm I’d joked about to Conklin.

“Can you tell me your movements over the last week, Mr. Chandler?”

“Call me Harry. Please. Of course. You need my alibi.”

He walked to an intercom panel in the kitchen, pressed a button, and said in his memorable, resonant voice, “Kaye, the police want to talk to you.”

I liked Kaye Hunsinger on sight.

She was about forty, had a wide, toothy smile, and owned a small bike shop in North Beach. I made note of her massive diamond ring of the engagement kind.

Kaye, Harry Chandler, and I sat on semicircular sofas at the stern with little multigrain sandwiches on a plate in front of us. We caught some afternoon breezes, and everything was chatty and casual, but all the while, I was checking the couple for tells.

Could they have been players in the nightmare on Vallejo Street? Was Harry Chandler a murderer? Was Kaye Hunsinger, knowingly or not, covering for him?

Kaye told me that she and Harry had been down the coast for the past week, returning to the South Beach Yacht Club only last night.