“I don’t know her. I am wondering, of course, about Cecily. We still don’t know what became of her. Could she be one of those victims in the garden? That would be a hell of a thing.”
“Wondering, Mr. Chandler?”
“Yes. I want to know what happened to her.”
If Cecily Chandler’s remains were recovered, Harry Chandler wouldn’t be charged, not for her death anyway. He’d been found innocent of her murder and couldn’t be tried for it again. But if Cecily Chandler’s remains had been buried on his doorstep, Harry would be the number one suspect in six other deaths.
Could Chandler have killed women over time and buried them in the dark of his garden, trusting that they would never be found? Had he kept the house he no longer used so as to protect his private trophy garden?
Did Nigel Worley have a better reason than his wife’s crush on a movie star for the anger he expressed on hearing Harry Chandler’s name?
Harry Chandler was sitting so that the San Francisco Bay was at his back.
I thought about convicted murderer Scott Peterson, recalled that his dead wife and unborn child were found washed up across the bay. It seemed very possible that a lot of bodies had been dumped in the water here. That they didn’t all wash up onshore, and that some were never discovered because they floated out to sea.
I smiled at the movie star and tried that charm I’d joked about to Conklin.
“Can you tell me your movements over the last week, Mr. Chandler?”
“Call me Harry. Please. Of course. You need my alibi.”
He walked to an intercom panel in the kitchen, pressed a button, and said in his memorable, resonant voice, “Kaye, the police want to talk to you.”
Chapter 23
I LIKED KAYE Hunsinger on sight.
She was about forty, had a wide, toothy smile, and owned a small bike shop in North Beach. I made note of her massive diamond ring of the engagement kind.
Kaye, Harry Chandler, and I sat on semicircular sofas at the stern with little multigrain sandwiches on a plate in front of us. We caught some afternoon breezes, and everything was chatty and casual, but all the while, I was checking the couple for tells.
Could they have been players in the nightmare on Vallejo Street? Was Harry Chandler a murderer? Was Kaye Hunsinger, knowingly or not, covering for him?
Kaye told me that she and Harry had been down the coast for the past week, returning to the South Beach Yacht Club only last night.
“It was a brilliant week,” she said. “Zipping down to Monterey, docking at the marina there. Kicking off the boat shoes, putting on heels and a witchy black dress — oh my. Dancing with Harry.”
Pause for an exchange of moony grins and hand-clasping. Okay. They were believably in love.
“We signed in with the harbormasters at stopovers, of course,” C
handler said to me. “And lots of people saw us. If you still need more of an alibi.”
I was thinking about Chandler’s remarks of a few minutes before, that he’d been “wondering” if his wife’s remains were among those that had been dug up in his garden. I wondered too, and I was equally interested in the woman whose head had been separated from her shoulders with a ripsaw about a week ago.
Had a body dump been part of the Chandler coastal cruise?
I had no warrant and no probable cause to search Chandler’s yacht, so an eyeball search of the premises might be my only opportunity to check out the floating home as a possible crime scene.
“I’ll take that list of stopovers,” I said. “And I’m really dying to see the rest of this yacht.”
Harry and Kaye showed me around the four-cabin luxury craft. It was House Beautiful marine style, everything enviably top of the line, and not a throw pillow out of place.
The boat was fast, and the alibis could have been manufactured, but I strained to find a reason why Harry Chandler would come back to San Francisco during his cruise, dig up a couple of skulls, and then leave them with a cryptic message in his backyard.
It would be crazy, and I didn’t see any crazy in Harry Chandler.
I complimented the couple on the boat, and before the conversation could devolve into chitchat, I said that I’d be going and gave Chandler my card.