John Lescroart: A Plague of Secrets

“Nevertheless,” Schiff said, “it could save us some time.”

Still rigid on her corner of the couch, now no longer smiling, Maya looked at her hands in her lap. “He made ninety thousand dollars a year. Seventy-five hundred a month.”

“A lot of money,” Schiff said.

“As I said,” Maya responded, “the store made money. And largely because of Dylan’s management. He did a good job, and I thought it was fair to pay him well.”

“What’s a manager of a Starbucks make?” Schiff asked.

Maya shook her head. “Less than that, I’m sure. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not a big multinational corporation. I don’t have stock-holders. I can pay him whatever I want. He worked hard and I wanted to keep him happy, so I paid him well. As I said, we were friends in college. Once I got him set up, and especially once he started having a family, I felt a responsibility for him. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Schiff shook her head. “Nobody’s saying there is, Mrs. Townshend.”

But Bracco wasn’t ready to stop mining this vein. He jumped in quickly. “So did you and your husband socialize with Dylan and his wife?”

“No,” Maya said. “No. Not very much. He’s my employee, after all. We have very different lives now.” Suddenly seeming to realize that she’d exposed herself somehow, Maya relaxed back into the couch, trailed an arm along the armrest. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what all these questions are about. Do you think I had something to do with Dylan’s death? Or knew more about his marijuana business? I don’t even know what’s going to happen to BBW now. I may put it up for sale. Joel and I don’t need it, and now that Dylan’s gone, there’s no real reason…” She shook her head and shrugged.

“Reason for what?” Schiff asked.

“I mean, to keep the place. I certainly don’t have the time to go back in there and work it every day. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” By this time her eyes had taken on a brightness and shine-she seemed to be near tears.

“Mrs. Townshend”-Schiff laid a hand on the couch between them-“we’re trying to get some idea of who might have had a reason to kill Dylan. It’s possible he said something to you, something he was worried about, a staff problem. Did he fire anybody recently, for example?”

“No. The staff’s very loyal. He didn’t mention anything like that. I really just don’t have any idea. Maybe it was just a random shooting.”

“Maybe,” Bracco said, “but he wasn’t robbed, so that leaves us scratching for a motive.”

“If it’s not something to do with the marijuana,” Maya offered, “I just can’t imagine what it would be.”

“All right, ma’am.” Bracco got to his feet. “One last quick thing. Just for the record, would you mind telling us where you were Saturday morning?”

Clearly, the question offended Maya, but she recovered. “I went to six-thirty Mass. ”

“On Saturday?” Bracco asked.

“I go to Mass most Saturdays. And Sundays too. It’s not too fashionable anymore, I suppose,” she said, “but it brings me a lot of peace.”

“Well, here’s to peace,” Schiff said. “Can’t have too much of that.” She rose from her own seat, flashed a perfunctory smile. “We may need to speak with you again at some point.”

“That’d be fine,” Maya said, “if it will help you find whoever shot Dylan.”

Bracco and Schiff were driving back downtown. They were stopped at a light at Van Ness Avenue, and Bracco was in the passenger seat. Schiff was talking. “So they’re friends from college, and she feels responsible for him and his family, but they don’t see each other socially and still she pays him nearly a hundred grand a year. This sings for you?”

“Why not?” Bracco said. “You notice her house? Her husband’s doing okay.”

“So why didn’t she just sell the shop to him? Dylan?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she hadn’t thought of it. Maybe he didn’t ask. It wasn’t broke, so she didn’t need to fix it.”

They rode a few blocks in silence. Then Schiff said, “Another thing.”

“You’re really chewing on this, aren’t you?”

“Tell me why there’s no reason now to keep the shop. It’s pulling in half a mil a year. She hires another manager, pays him half of what she paid Dylan, it’s still making a half a mil a year. I’m not a business gal, but I don’t see selling something that’s making me half a million dollars a year.”

“She doesn’t need the money.”

“Give me a break, Darrel. Half a million dollars to do basically nothing?”

In the passenger seat Bracco shrugged. “She’ll sell it for five times that and it’s out of her hair forever.”

“I’ve got to think she owed him something. Dylan.”

“What?”

“If she kept it open just to keep him getting paid.”

“You’re fishing.”

“I am, but I got a license.” They rode in silence for a half a block.

Then Bracco looked across at her partner. “I thought you were leaning toward Jansey.”

“I was, maybe I still am. I like to keep an open mind. But something Robert Tripp said stuck with me.”

After a couple of seconds Bracco said, “He didn’t give us anything except the alibi.”

“No. In fact, he did. He said Ben went and woke up his mother Saturday morning, remember?”

He nodded.

“Well,” Schiff went on, “we can always double-check-and I intend to-by asking the kid about it, but that’s the kind of detail I don’t see Tripp or anybody else making up. That’s the story as he knew it. And if it’s true, it means Jansey hadn’t left the house early to go down and lie in wait for Dylan at the store. She could have shot him way closer to home anyway.”

“So how about Tripp?”

“As the shooter?”

Bracco nodded again. “He admits he was up. Maybe it’s him who went to the store instead of Jansey. He could have thought he was protecting her, who maybe he’s got a thing with, in spite of him saying no. Or wants to have one.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do it at the store?”

“I don’t know. He says he’s walking to school to study and they go down together. Then, maybe he knows Dylan’s carrying a gun. And they’re kind of friends, so he asks Dylan if he can just see it for a minute. And bang.” He darted a quick glance at Schiff. “That accounts for the lack of any struggle. He caught him off guard, threw the gun away, ran back home in time to unplug the sink.”

“Maybe,” Schiff said. “Could have happened.”

“But?”

“But nothing. As I say, I’m keeping an open mind.”

The next day, Tuesday, Dismas Hardy sat at a small two-top against the back wall of Lou the Greek’s, nursing a club soda and lime. As it was still well before noon, the lunch crowd hadn’t yet materialized, and looking around him at the grungy, dark, semisubterranean watering hole and restaurant, Hardy marveled anew-as he did nearly every time he came here-that the place did any business at all, much less accommodated the booming daily influx of people who worked in and around the Hall of Justice just across the street.

After all, this was San Francisco, restaurant town extraordinaire. You could eat like a king at a couple of dozen places within a half-mile radius-elegant ambience, exotic ingredients, world-class chefs, superb professional service.

Where you wouldn’t find any of the above was at Lou’s. The eponymous Lou had a Chinese wife named Chiu who had all the creativity of any of the city’s celebrated cooks, a fact she proved every day with the Special, which was the only menu item the place served. While showcasing Chiu’s culinary wizardry, the Special also revealed a glaring blind spot in her originality-she believed that her creations should always and only include native dishes and ingredients from her own China and from Lou’s Greece. Together.