John Lescroart - The Motive

Cho allowed a small, sad smile. "That's about what he told me. But he thought it was funny."

"Funny?"

"Amusing. I mean, after all, he was going to be living there. He had the money, and if she spent it to make a nicer house for him, what was he going to complain about?" Cho stared for a second into the space in front of her. "If there was any tension at all, it was about the appointment."

"The appointment?"

She nodded. "This wasn't public yet, but the administration had gotten in touch with him and told him he'd been short-listed for assistant secretary of the interior, a reward for all the fund-raising he'd done for the president. But Missy wasn't happy about it. She didn't want to move to Washington, uproot her life again, especially after all the work she'd done on the house." Cho's face clouded over. "But even so, so what? Didn't I read that it wasn't murder and suicide? Even if they were fighting, somebody killed them. So would it even matter if they'd been fighting about something?"

"No, you're right. It wouldn't," Glitsky said. "I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time. I'm just trying to get a handle on this whole thing. Who might've wanted to kill them."

"Well, I hate to say this…"

"Go ahead."

"Well, just… have you talked to his family? They were really unhappy about him and her. And he was unhappy about them."

"His kids, you mean?"

She nodded. "All the time on him. Missy wanted his money. He should be careful, make sure she signed a prenup, some worse things about her. He said he might change his will before the wedding if they kept it up."

"Did he tell them that?"

"I don't know. I think so. Told them, I mean-maybe not actually done it."

Before Glitsky left Cho, just being thorough and believing that at this early stage in the investigation he needed facts even if they later proved to be irrelevant, he found out that before he'd handed the build phase of the remodel over to Missy, Hanover had paid the first few contractor bills himself during the design phase. The company, James Leymar Construction, was in the phone book, and so was Mr. Leymar himself. Glitsky called, and the man being home made his hat trick for the day.

A half hour later, he pulled up in front of a good-size two-story stucco house on Quintara Street, out in the residential avenues of the Sunset District. A shirtless man was working with lengths of PVC pipe in the earth up close against the house, the sweat on his broad back glinting in the sun. At the sound of Glitsky's car door closing, he looked around and stood up, slapping his hands together, then wiping them on his well-worn blue jeans. "Glitsky?"

"Yes, sir."

Leymar was a big, handsome balding man with a well-developed torso, big arms and a shoulder tattoo of a heart and the word "Maggie." Squinting against the brightness, he took a few steps over the torn-up landscape of his front yard and stuck out his dirty hand. "Jim Leymar. How you doin'?"

"Good. You're putting in a sprinkler system?"

"I know. Ridiculous, isn't it?" He turned back to survey the trenches he'd dug. "Like the foggiest damn real estate in America needs more water. But the wife decided for God knows what reason, so that's the end of that discussion." He swiped at his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt. "But you said you had some questions about the Hanover job?"

"If you don't mind."

"No, I don't mind, but I've got to say it breaks my heart to think about the work we put in on that house only to have it all go up in smoke. It was a beautiful job. And the people, too, of course. A tragedy."

"You knew them pretty well?"

"Well, they were clients, you know. I'd done some work for him before, rebuilt his kitchen, maybe three years ago, and it went okay. So we got together again."

"But this time was mostly her?"

"More than mostly. She wrote the checks, so she was the client."

Glitsky filed that bit of information. "And how was she to work with?" he asked.

"Uncompromising, but without a personal edge to it. She wanted things a certain way, and if you didn't give her what she wanted, she'd have us do it again, down to the floorboards if need be. But she was just firm, that was all. Give me that anytime over somebody who changes her mind seventeen times."

Something about Leymar's phrase stopped Glitsky. "So you're saying she did not make lots of changes as you went along?"

"No." He thought about it for another minute. "If you want to see, I've got all the change orders…"

"That's all right. I'd just heard somewhere that she kept adding to the job."

"No more than anybody else. Less than some folks. No, what happened was we got a good design and went ahead and built it."

"So the initial bid was for a million dollars?"

Leymar laughed out loud. "A million dollars? You think I make a million dollars a job and I'm laying my own sprinkler system?" He shook his head, still chuckling. "A million dollars. Jesus Christ. A million is nearly the gross on my best year ever. The gross. Hanover was a good job-hell, a great job, I'll give you that-but it went out for five hundred, maybe a little less. And that's what we brought it in for, too. Give or take. Where did you ever hear a million?"

"Several sources," he said.

"Well, I'd go back to them and tell 'em they've got their heads up their asses. You want, I'll show you my books on it."

"I won't need to do that." Glitsky wiped his own brow. The sun was directly overhead now, the temperature nearing eighty, about as hot as it ever got in San Francisco. "Okay, let's leave the money. I'd like to eliminate the possibility that she was the target instead of him, so I'm hoping to find somebody who might have known her a little bit, see if she had enemies."

"Who wanted to kill her?"

"Maybe."

He shook his head. "That'd be a stretch, I'd say." He thought another minute. "Except maybe if there was some other guy before Hanover."

"Did you get a feeling that there had been?"

"No. It's just that she was…"-he glanced over his shoulder-"I don't want Maggie to hear me, but she was an unbelievably attractive hunk of woman. My crews would trade off with each other so they could work on her place and get a glimpse of her. If she'd dumped some guy for Hanover, I could see him maybe taking it out on both of them."

"Did she or Hanover ever say anything to make you think that?"

"No. We didn't talk personal. They were clients, that was all. We didn't hang with the same social crowd." He gestured around him. "As you probably figured anyway, huh?"

Dismas Hardy came down the stairs from a rare Saturday afternoon nap to find Abe Glitsky in his kitchen, helping Vincent cut up vegetables on a cutting board on the counter, the two of them working silently next to a rapidly diminishing pile of tomatoes, onions, peppers, okra. When he stopped in the doorway, Glitsky glanced his way and, just loud enough to be heard, said, "Here he is now, Vin. I'll tell you later."

Hardy crossed to his boy and put a hand on his shoulder. "Have I ever told you your Uncle Abe's Indian name, Vin?"

"His Indian name?"

"You know, Dances with Wolves, like that? A phrase that captures a person's essence. Abe's is People Not

Laughing. Why? Because every time you see him he's surrounded by people who are not laughing. But I do think that actually crying real tears is taking it a little far." "It's the onions," Vincent said.

"That's what they all say." Hardy threw a chunk of tomato into his mouth. "What are you guys making?"

"Gumbo," Vin said. "I need it for school on Monday and wanted to make a test batch."

Hardy squeezed his son's shoulder. "I love this boy. Make it hot," he said.

"I'm thinking of calling Treya, inviting her over, too," Glitsky said.

"That would be swell, and I love your wife even more than I like you, but weren't you guys just here? It seems like only yesterday."