I rang Rosie’s doorbell, listening for movement inside the small ranch-style home. I was fully aware that I might be waking Rosie up or interrupting a much-deserved bath. We had serious business, however, and any misunderstandings between us had to be cleared up immediately.

I waited and rang again, waited and rang again. Still no action. I sat on the front steps, happily in the shade. One of the benefits of older Lincoln Point neighborhoods was their tree-lined streets, typically large silver maples interspersed with smaller Modesto ash. I didn’t think I could live where the trees looked more like miniatures, still tied to what looked like birthing posts.

I didn’t have a plan for how long I’d wait in front of Rosie’s house, but for now, this was as good a place as any to mope about the case and about how different the weekend had turned out from what I’d expected.

My stay in a luxury hotel had turned sour quickly, starting with David’s brush-off of Rosie at the cocktail party. Now one former student was dead and another was accused of his murder. I’d been accosted, robbed, and accosted again. I’d done my share of accosting, also. Of innocent people it seemed. I’d somehow lost Rosie’s confidence, abandoned my granddaughter, and made myself scarce to a potential new friend.

I thought about Henry Baker. Now that I’d been reconnected with Rosie’s father (resulting in a second robbery, I noted), I didn’t need Henry’s input on Callahan and Savage. It would have been nice to have his friendship, however, and I guessed he’d decided that I wasn’t worth the trouble.

I looked at the enormous fruitless mulberry tree in Rosie’s side yard and suspected he was right.

Chapter 17

It wasn’t my style to mope for too long. Now at four o’clock on a hot afternoon, I felt my waiting time was up. The one positive, useful thing I could do was retrieve my granddaughter from Linda’s house. We could work on our room boxes at home, and I’d cook her a proper dinner, preferably including a glass of milk and something that wasn’t pizza. I got up, brushed tree droppings from my slacks, and started down the stairs.

That seemed to be the cue for Rosie’s front door to open.

“Gerry?”

I turned to see Rosie, freshly showered it appeared, in a deep blue chenille bathrobe that added beads of perspiration to my forehead just looking at it. She held it close around her body and I suspected it was her spirit that was chilled in spite of the high-nineties temperature. We hugged, shoulder to shoulder since I stood one step below her. She smelled of something fresh and fruity, which told me she’d bothered to treat herself to a special soak or shower gel, a good sign.

“I’m glad to see you, Rosie,” I said, as we pulled away and entered the air-conditioned house.

Rosie wasn’t the neatest person-she claimed that you couldn’t really enjoy books if they were all lined up properly and dusted. I’d never seen her living room this disheveled, however. Her suitcases were spread on the floor, half empty, laundry in mesh bags sharing space with shoes and cosmetics. I wondered if there were an emerald and diamond bracelet buried in the wreckage.

I moved a map of downtown San Francisco, with a photograph of the Transamerica building on the front, from an easy chair to a cluttered end table and sat down.

Rosie settled on her couch, upholstered in a light beige leafy design. She was still wrapped in her robe. “I know you had good intentions, Gerry, but I was so mad that I had to miss the special service for David.”

“I never intended for that to happen. I thought I was helping you, easing the way for you to go to the police and get started on clearing yourself in this awful case.”

“I see that now. I was crazy to hide out as long as I did. I didn’t kill David so why am I acting as though I’m guilty?”

“I don’t know, Rosie, but the important thing is that you talked to the police and they trust you to stay around in case they need you. You can go back to your normal life.”

I wished I believed it. I had an unnerving suspicion that whoever killed David Bridges was not through trying to pin it on Rosie. From the look on Rosie’s face, I could tell she didn’t see normalcy any time soon, either.

“Who do you think did it, Gerry?”

It was the first time Rosie, or anyone, had asked me that and her question reminded me that I hadn’t really settled on one person. Maybe this was like that old Agatha Christie novel where everyone did it. I thought of the mystery play Rosie’s class had put on one year. I couldn’t remember the name but I’d enjoyed the tricky plot where everyone voted by a show of hands for who they thought committed the murder. The cast took a count and then acted out the rest of the play according to the majority vote. Case closed. They had an ending for every possible voting result. It was a nice fantasy.

“I don’t know, Rosie. Maybe we can work it out if we talk for a while.”

I took her nod as permission to probe more into Rosie’s weekend. I started with something that had been nagging at me since Friday night. “Rosie, what did you and Barry talk about at the reunion cocktail party? You had your heads together for quite a while.”

“I suppose it’s hard to believe that we were chatting because he enjoyed my company.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said, though it had crossed my mind at the time. “It’s just that I don’t remember you two being especially friendly in high school and, as far as I know, you don’t see him regularly these days even though he lives in town.”

“As a matter of fact, Barry dropped in at the shop a couple of weeks ago, just to say hi.”

“He didn’t want anything in particular?” Another poorly worded question. I let out a frustrated breath. “I didn’t mean it that way this time, either, Rosie. I’m just trying to follow some leads here.”

“It’s okay. Barry didn’t buy any books, if that’s what you’re getting at. He did ask me if I’d heard from David, and it was right after that that the presents started coming. Let’s face it. I was always a wallflower, going back thirty years, and you know I haven’t changed much.”

“You make friends among your customers very easily, Rosie. They all love you.”

Rosie talked right past my compliment. “My parents were divorced at a time when it wasn’t so common. I was only nine years old. They had joint custody of me, so I had to shuttle back and forth between their houses and I always felt like an outsider. My teeth were crooked and there wasn’t any money to fix them. Remember the lisp I had for most of high school?”

“But look what you’ve done with your life. Your store, for one thing.”

“When my mom died my freshman year, I hid in books, I guess.”

“Lucky for Lincoln Point.”

“Thanks, Gerry.”

“Barry?” I asked.

“You’re right that it wasn’t what you would call a personal conversation at the cocktail party. There was no ‘let’s catch a movie sometime.’ Barry’s a bachelor, you know. He seemed more interested in my father’s business, what Dad was doing these days. As if he ever knew my father or cared about my family. It was weird.”

I’d been processing the weirdness as she talked. To me, interest in Larry Esterman, the petty thief, was interest in the company he consulted for, Callahan and Savage. Walter Mellace thought I represented Callahan and Savage and had found something Walter wanted. Why was the loser in so many recent major bids so popular? And why, other than a genetic disposition for stealing, had a Callahan and Savage consultant walked off with my precious bank record? I’d have to find a way to talk to Larry about that little trick.

For now, I had his daughter in front of me.

“Rosie, remember the box of chocolates you received at the hotel?”

“I was going to throw them away, but I thought you and Maddie might like them.”