A Measure of Murder Read online

  She didn’t bring up Kyle’s death again, which I thought odd. It was, after all, rather a bombshell to bring up the possibility of someone having been murdered. But I wasn’t inclined to push her for information, so I let the subject slide.

  When we got to Wilder Ranch, an old dairy farm now preserved as a state park, we had to get off and walk our bikes. I pointed out the restored Victorian house and the original adobe structure dating back to the Mexican land grant in the early eighteen hundreds, and then we stopped to admire the draft horses grazing in a fenced pasture.

  Marta yanked up a handful of long grass and held it out to the horses. “I think you should audition for the Recordare,” she said as the bigger of the two animals greedily accepted her offering.

  “What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “Me? Audition for a solo?”

  “It’s not technically a solo,” she replied. “It’s more of a quartet, and it’s not too difficult at all.”

  “But I thought . . . you know, after what happened at the octets yesterday . . .”

  Marta waved her free hand and laughed. “Oh, cara mia. You should know that the only time I get so angry like that is when I believe someone with talent is not performing to their full potential. I am sorry, I cannot help it. The passione, it just comes out.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I have heard you during rehearsal. Even though you try to sing softly,” she added with a smile, stooping to pick another grass bouquet for the horses. “And you have a lovely voice. Your intonation, you know, it is quite good. So I am thinking it would be a very good thing for you to be our alto for the Recordare.”

  Just the thought of auditioning again—not to mention performing in a quartet in public—gave me the heebie-jeebies. I would be so exposed: just one on a part.

  “Well, I’ll think about it,” I said, then swung my leg over my top tube. “You want to get going?”

  Marta patted a good-bye on the big horse’s forehead, and we clipped in and headed back up the bike path. “Grazie for showing me your ride,” she said as we neared town. “I enjoyed it very much. Would you like to stop for a cappuccino somewhere before returning home?”

  “Dang. That sounds great, and I’d love to, but I really can’t. I have to be at my nonna’s in two hours to help with our weekly Sunday gravy, and after I get home and shower, I’ve gotta do some work for Gauguin and then go down to Solari’s to check on my new waitress.”

  “Va bene. Perhaps next time. But tell me, what is this Sunday dinner your nonna cooks? Is it Italian?”

  At the approach of a group of mountain bikers coming from the other direction, I pulled ahead of Marta to go single file. Once they had passed, I dropped back to her side. “It’s more Italian American than Italian, I think. A sort of Bolognese. Beef, pork, and sausages slow-cooked in tomatoes and onions and wine. But you take the meat out and serve the sauce—the gravy—by itself over pasta and then eat the meat as a separate course.”

  “Sounds a lot like the ragù napoletano my mamma makes. Except in Napoli, we break the meat up into little pieces and put it back into the pot. That’s what ragù means: meat sauce. But I’d love to try this Sunday gravy sometime.”

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “Maybe sometime.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sunday dinner that day consisted of just my dad, Nonna, and me. (And Buster, who, though not permitted to partake, would have been more than willing to do so.) It was still hard getting used to how small our family had become after my mom being taken by cancer and then Aunt Letta’s gruesome death just two years later.

  Promptly at two o’clock, the three of us sat down to the antipasto course. Dad was in fine form, cracking jokes as he helped himself to prosciutto, salami, marinated vegetables, and provolone and mozzarella cheese—and a second glass of wine. The Giants had clobbered the Braves on the road that morning, which no doubt fueled his good humor, but I also knew that he’d been much pleased by the news from his bookkeeper the previous day that Solari’s net worth had increased by over three thousand dollars from her previous accounting.

  Although I’d seen him briefly a couple of times since our tiff about Elena taking over my duties at Solari’s, we hadn’t talked about it. But like me, my dad tends toward the conflict averse, so that wasn’t unusual. I figured his being jovial and affectionate to me today was his way of making up.

  Dad handed me the antipasto platter, and I forked up some prosciutto and vegetables and passed the platter on to Nonna. “What, you no hungry?” she asked, directing a frown at my sparsely filled plate.

  “I’m just saving room for the other three courses,” I said, doing my best to keep the annoyance from my voice. We went through this same back-and-forth every single Sunday, and the routine was getting old. I’ve unfortunately now reached the age where Nonna’s weekly servings of provolone and salami go straight to my belly and hips. But she can’t bear to see a plate that isn’t completely loaded down with food, especially when she’s the one who did the cooking. Thank goodness Dad is always more than happy to exceed her expectations, which takes some of the heat off me.

  Nonna made tsking noises and shook her head in disapproval but didn’t say anything further, instead busying herself with slicing a loaf of crunchy ciabatta, the bread named after the Italian slipper it resembles. She then passed the wicker basket around the table.

  Once our plates were all sufficiently piled with food, we raised our wine glasses for our traditional Sunday dinner toast: “Salut, cent’anni!” the three of us chimed out in unison. Health for a hundred years! I guess you could call it the Italian American equivalent of saying grace.

  I drank some of the wine, a Chianti Classico my dad had brought, no doubt hoping to prevent Nonna from pulling out one of the bottles Nonno Salvatore had made, most of which had long since turned to vinegar. “So,” I said, setting my glass down on the lace tablecloth, “I went on a bike ride this morning with the gal who directs our chorus. She’s Italian, from Naples.”

  This produced another series of tsks from Nonna. “You no can trust dose Napolesi. They all liars and cheats down there, an’—”

  “Ma,” Dad interrupted, “that’s not fair. She could be a lovely woman; you don’t know.” He turned to face me. “She’s always had this thing against southern Italians—I’m not sure where it came from, but I bet it was your nonno, repeating things his dad used to say. Ciro must have brought the prejudice with him when he moved here from Liguria.”

  So much for inviting Marta over for Sunday gravy some time. I knew how Nonna could be when she took a dislike to someone, and no way was I going to subject the choral director to my grandmother’s feigned hospitality and thinly veiled insults. Though if anyone could take it, I mused, it would be Marta.

  * * *

  Once home, I pulled out some cookbooks I’d taken from the Gauguin office and sat at the kitchen table to flip through them. Javier had asked me to look for a few autumnal desserts we could use for the new menu. I’m not a huge fan of sweets—unless they involve cream, that is. I do love cheesecake and can never turn down a silky-inside, crackling-on-top crème brûlée. But in general, I’ll choose salty, savory stuff over most desserts.

  I was reading through a tempting recipe for pumpkin flan with salted caramel (the best of both worlds) when my cell rang. It was the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” Nichole’s ring tone.

  “Hey, you,” I said.

  “Hey back atcha. What you up to?”

  “Looking through cookbooks for dessert ideas for Gauguin’s fall menu. You?”

  “Nothing as fun as that. I’ve been working on an appeal in an asylum case for a gay guy from Somalia.” Nichole’s an immigration attorney with a San Francisco nonprofit. “Not a pretty prospect for him if he has to return home.”

  “Ugh,” I said, grimacing. “I can—or I should say can’t—imagine.”

  “Ugh is right. So anyway, I thought I’d take a break and see how you’ve been, since we haven’t ta
lked in over a week. How’s the chorus? Has everything settled down again since that guy fell out of the window? Oh, wait, I forgot,” she added with a chuckle. “You think he was murdered.”

  “You may well laugh, sister, but I now have information that comes close to proving someone shoved him out of that window.” I recounted what I’d learned from Steve and also about Jill’s reasons for believing it wasn’t an accident.

  “I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that actually proves anything,” Nichole said, “but I guess it does sound a little suspicious. So what are you gonna do now that you have this inside intel?”

  “I was actually thinking of sneaking into that room he was in right before he died, to see if I could maybe find a clue or something. Whad’ya think? Should I risk it?” Nichole was a good person to ask, since I knew she harbored a general disregard for most authority.

  “What kind of room?”

  “I gather it’s used mostly for storage, by both the church and the chorus. Eric even has a key, so it can’t be super sacrosanct or anything.”

  “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?” Nichole said. “I mean, it’s not like you’d be breaking into a jewelry store or something. What, the choral director’s gonna kick you out of the chorus for going in there?”

  “I guess not. But I do know she has a temper.” I told Nichole about my ordeal during the octets the day before and how mortifying it had been to be called out like that in front of the whole chorus.

  “Yeah, that public shaming is a bitch,” she said. “I experienced it once. You remember, during moot court, first year? When I froze and completely forgot what my case was even about?”

  “Oh God, I’d forgotten about that.”

  “And people will forget about your ordeal, too. I bet they already have.”

  “I guess you’re probably right. And you know what’s really weird? After having just yesterday chewed me out like that about my singing, Marta told me this morning that she thinks I should audition for one of the Requiem solos.”

  “You saw her today?”

  “Yeah, we went on a bike ride.”

  “You went on a bike ride with her? But wait, you just got finished telling me—”

  “I know, I know. It’s all pretty strange. But she said she wouldn’t get on someone’s case like that unless she thought they were a good singer, and then she told me she thinks I should try out for one of the solos.”

  “Huh. So how’d the bike ride go? Was it awkward?”

  “It was fine, actually. I was kind of nervous beforehand, that it would be uncomfortable ’cause of what happened yesterday. But she didn’t even mention that till I brought it up, and then she acted as if everything was totally cool. Oh, and I beat her to the top of campus, which was fun.”

  Nichole laughed. “Payback?”

  “Not so much payback as that I guess I wanted to show her I wasn’t a total loser, you know, after my epic fail yesterday. I could tell I was trying really hard the whole ride to prove myself to her. But it was weird, actually, because, I dunno . . . it almost felt like she was some guy I was trying to impress.”

  “Ohmygod!” Nichole shrieked, causing me to yank the phone away from my ear. “You’ve got a girl crush!”

  “I do not have a girl crush,” I protested. But I doubted she could hear me, given how loud she was laughing.

  * * *

  The Monday lunch shift was again popping at Solari’s, which should have made me happy. It certainly put my dad in a jovial mood. You could hear him through the pickup window whistling Musetta’s waltz from La Bohème as he tended pasta pots and sauté pans at the six-burner range. But when a table for nine had arrived without a reservation at twelve fifteen, and an extra body was needed on the floor, I was it. So once more, I found myself hefting banquet trays of minestrone and breadsticks across the crowded dining room to tourists from Boise and Bordeaux and who knows where else.

  By around one thirty the place was starting to thin out, and I fled to the sanctuary of Solari’s cramped office. I still hadn’t finished the scheduling for the coming weekend and knew that Giulia was waiting to see if she could take Saturday off to go to the Salinas rodeo with a visiting relative. Once settled at the battered metal desk, I extracted the scheduling pad from underneath my now-cold coffee and set to work juggling work shifts.

  I was almost immediately interrupted, however, by my dad, who needed to add a case of clam juice to this week’s Sysco order. Relinquishing the folding chair so he could sit at the computer, I leaned against a shelf stuffed with office supplies, stained and dog-eared cookbooks, and overflowing to-go containers from the dry storage room.

  “You working tonight, hon?” he asked while waiting for our ancient PC to load the restaurant supplier’s web page.

  “I’ve got chorus on Mondays, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” Dad leaned in close to peer at the screen, forgetting that his reading glasses were on top of his head, and typed in his order. “So how’s that going, anyway?”

  “Our director wants me to audition for one of the solos. A quartet, actually.”

  “Really? You going to do it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Well, I think you should,” he said, logging out of the site. “Your Nonno Salvatore had a fine tenor voice, you know, and sang many solos for the church choir. He’d be proud of you, as would I.”

  After he returned to the kitchen, I sat back down. But since Firefox was still up, I got sucked into checking Facebook and watching a video of a dog riding a tricycle and then procrastinated even further by checking my e-mail.

  Among the numerous messages was one from somebody—or something—called “robocopman.” Spam, I thought, and was about to delete it when I remembered that Copman was Kyle’s last name. It must be from his brother, Robert. Did his middle initial start with “O,” I wondered, or was he just a big fan of action flicks?

  On opening the message, I saw that it was indeed from the brother and that he’d attached a copy of Kyle’s will. I clicked on the attachment, and what filled the screen sent memories flooding back to me of my life as an attorney. It was a document printed on pleading paper, the kind lawyers use for their motions and complaints that has numbers and a line running down the left side of the page. In the box on the top left that pleadings traditionally have were the words “In the Matter of: Estate of Kyle Copman,” and to the right of the box, “Last Will and Testament of Kyle Copman” was printed in boldface caps.

  I read through the will and confirmed that it did indeed bequeath the bulk of his estate to his son, his brother, and Jill, just as I’d been told at the memorial service. Moreover, although it had been signed and dated in ink by Kyle, there were no signatures of witnesses, as required under California law for a printed will such as this to be valid.

  But then I scrolled back to the top of the document and stared at it for a minute, momentarily puzzled. For it had occurred to me that I’d never in my years as a lawyer ever seen a will printed on pleading paper before. They were always done on regular blank paper, with the words “Last Will and Testament of So-and-So” emblazoned across the top in that creepy funereal font.

  I scanned through it again, trying to make sense of its oddities, when I noticed the string of tiny letters and numbers at the very bottom of the last page, below Kyle’s signature. I knew what these were: law firms use them as a way to identify and locate any given document within the thousands of others contained in the firm’s massive computer base. Could they possibly identify this one?

  Pulling my phone from my pocket, I did a search for the Harrison and McManus firm’s number and punched it in. “Could I speak with Margaret Ng?” I asked when the receptionist picked up. “You can tell her it’s Sally Solari, from her law school days.”

  I was put momentarily on hold, and then Margaret came on the line. “What the hell, Sal—long time no talk. How you been?”

  “Not bad. Can’t say I miss the grin
d of pumping out those billable hours, but I gotta admit that slinging spaghetti isn’t much of an improvement.”

  “Yeah, but now I hear tell you’ve moved up in the world to restaurateur of a real classy joint.”

  “True, but since I’m still at Solari’s too, I’m way busier than I’d like.”

  “Well, I bet your old law firm would be happy to take you back, if you’re not happy,” Margaret said with a laugh.

  “No thanks. I’d rather be busy with food than with law and motion briefs.”

  “I thought so. But speaking of busy, I can’t talk long. I was actually on my way out when you called. Gotta head up to Palo Alto for a depo.”

  “No worries. I’ll get right to the point. It’s just that I’ve received a copy of a very odd-looking will, and I think it may have come from your office.”

  “How so, odd?”

  “Well, it’s on pleading paper for one, which seems pretty strange. And for another, although it’s a printed will, there’s no place for witnesses to sign.”

  “Huh.”

  “So anyway, the reason I’m calling is because the will has a string of ID letters and numbers at the end, and I’m wondering if I sent it to you, would you be willing to take a look and see if it looks like something that might have been generated by your firm?”

  “Sure, no problem. I can do that. But what makes you think it might be from here? I know none of our lawyers are Harvard or Stanford grads, but I can’t believe any of them would produce something like what you’ve described.”

  I told her about Kyle and the provisions of his will but how it was found invalid for lack of witnesses. “And,” I finished, “get this: his ex-girlfriend, and the mother of the son who now stands to inherit his entire estate, is Lydia, one of your legal secretaries.”

  “No shit,” Margaret said.

  “Yeah. You know if she does probate work?”

  “Nuh-uh. Our trust and estate attorneys have their own secretaries. Lydia works with us grunts here in the general litigation department.”