Treasure Hunt

Her eyes flashed in sudden anger. “What do they need? There’s plenty of evidence that she and my husband… I told them this, but they won’t do anything.”

“I’m sure they would if they could, ma’am. They’re under a lot of pressure to make an arrest soon. If they get something on anybody, they’ll move quickly on it.”

She now came forward herself. “Listen to me. I’m telling you for an absolute fact that my husband was infatuated with that girl. He told me so himself. He thought it was only fair that I should know.” She coughed out a bitter laugh. “He said they hadn’t done anything, if you want to believe that. Lorraine Hess as much as told me that she caught them in flagrante in the office. And she said it wasn’t the first time. As if that mattered. He said he was ‘just kind of in love with her,’ whereas he loved me. That was the real thing, where with her it was just something he was going through, he was sure he’d get over it, but he wanted me to know. He wanted to be honest, whatever that meant. It was all so civilized. He didn’t want to hurt our marriage.”

“So what did you do when he told you that?”

“What did I do? I didn’t do anything for a while. I was just numb. Here was my husband of thirty-two years telling me he was in love with another woman, but somehow that didn’t mean he didn’t love me too. Or even more. So for a couple of weeks, I think I just sleepwalked around the house, trying to understand.” She let out a long breath and straightened up with her back against her chair. “Then I came to my senses and told him that I just couldn’t take this any longer, that he had to fire her.”

“When was this?”

“I’m not sure exactly. Not the exact day. But recently, anyway. In the last week before he… he disappeared.”

“And what did he say to that? Your demand that he fire her?”

“He said he didn’t know if he could. It wouldn’t be fair to her.” Suddenly, she slapped her palm down on her lap, and again, and again. “Fair, fair, fair. As if what he was doing to me was fair. All that talk of fair, it made me sick. Literally sick. He didn’t know if he could. Can you imagine?”

Hunt could only nod.

“He kept saying that because they weren’t doing anything, and by that he meant having sex, that he was still faithful to me, that he wasn’t cheating. But I didn’t even know what he meant by having sex. I mean, since Clinton, who knows what that means anymore? Maybe they were doing everything but…” She blew out heavily. “Oh, listen to me. It doesn’t matter what they were doing. He was in love with her. That was the important thing.”

Hunt gave her a few seconds to get herself under control. Then he spoke quietly. “So what finally happened? How did you leave it?”

Her head nodded several times. “Last weekend, his last weekend, I mean, I told him I was kicking him out if he didn’t fire her. That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. We had a terrific fight.”

“And?”

“And he agreed.”

“He agreed to fire Alicia?”

“Yes. I told him it was me or her, and for once he made the right decision.”

“And this was just before he went missing?”

Another nod. “A day or two before.”

Hunt mulled this over for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “Ellen, did you tell all this to the police?”

She hesitated. “Not all of it,” she said, then went on. “They made it clear they thought it might have been me who killed him. They wanted to know what I had done the night… the Tuesday night. They kept going on about was I sure what I’d done and what time I’d gone to sleep, and why didn’t I report him missing until the next day.” She sighed. “Anyway, it was just clear to me that they thought it must be the spouse, it was always the spouse. They weren’t going to look too closely at the Thorpe girl, no matter what I said, they already thought it was me. But then I got to thinking that maybe I didn’t tell them what they’d need if they talked to her. I was just mad, and not thinking too clearly, since they’d only just told me they’d found Dominic.”

Hunt paused again. “So did he, in fact, fire her?”

“Yes.” She tightened her lips. “On that Tuesday, he called me at home to tell me specifically that he had told her it was over. She was done working for him.” She gathered herself, drew herself up. “Then I’ll tell you what happened. Then she met with him that night to beg to get her job back, and he told her he couldn’t give it to her, and she went into a rage and killed him.”

Hunt let out a breath. This was a compelling and believable enough scenario. Unfortunately for Ellen, there was an equally compelling argument to be made that everything had been exactly as she had described it except for Dominic actually firing Alicia. Instead, perhaps Ellen had followed him to the Palace of Fine Arts, and heard him tell Alicia he was leaving his wife to be with her. If it was going to be either Alicia or Ellen, Como might have said, it would be Alicia. And so by the time Alicia left, Ellen had worked up enough of her own jealous rage to kill him herself.

But Hunt only said, “Do you mind if I go back to the police and give them the parts of this story you left out?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I wish you would. I should have told them the first time. I just wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“They may want to come back and talk to you again.”

“That would be fine,” she said. Then she added, “I know if they look, they’ll find something on her.” Then, suddenly, as though someone had thrown a switch, she broke a really beaming smile, wiped her palms on her dress, and stood up. “I’ve already sent Len my check,” she said. Crossing back to one of the sideboards, she turned. “This is going to sound a little fu

Hunt got up on his feet as well. “What’s that?”

“If it turns out that that girl did kill Dominic, and I’m certain that it will, and it’s on my information that they get her, I’m going to claim that reward. All of it.”

11

The press release went out at 3:45 and Tamara got the first call at 4:08.

“You-all ain’t cops, right, ’cause I ain’t talkin’ to no cops.”

The caller identified herself as Virginia Collins and she lived alone on a thirty-foot sailboat named Delightly, berthed in the Marina. She’d heard the a

She’d heard all kinds of stories, she told Tamara, about where they’d a

And while she was at it, did Tamara know how hard it was to get convictions on anybody in San Francisco? It was common knowledge that juries in this town never convicted. Virginia’s brother John had been an attorney for a while, working for the DA, this was back in the eighties, and even then it was nearly impossible to get a jury to convict somebody.

And what if there was a plea bargain? Did that count? They should definitely give some portion of the reward for the arrest itself. And then a bonus for the conviction.

“What about if they arrest the wrong person?” Tamara had to ask.

“That never happens,” Virginia replied. “They arrest somebody, you can pretty well bet that they did it.”

“But you see the problem,” Tamara persisted. “They arrest somebody and give you half the money or whatever, and then they find somebody else actually did it and they’ve already lost the payment. Then what? That’s why they’ve got to have the conviction along with the arrest.”