I tuned back in to what Jacobi was saying. “This Noble Blue is some kind of fancy fruit. Said he can fill you in on the Baileys’ crowd from soup to nuts. And he’s not kidding about the nuts. Boxer, take anyone you need to work the case — Lemke, Samuels, McNeil. I want updates and I’ll be sticking my nose in.”
I gave him the evil eye but said, “Fine. You know what I’m praying for?” I took the file out of Jacobi’s hand, stood to put on my jacket.
Jacobi’s face flattened. “What’s that, Boxer?”
“That the Baileys left suicide notes.”
Chapter 27
CONKLIN TOOK THE WHEEL of our unmarked Chevy, and we pulled out heading north on Bryant. We bucked through stop-and-go traffic until I said, “This is nuts,” and flipped on the siren. Fifteen minutes later, we were parked across from the Baileys’ home.
The fire department was there, as well as an assortment of marked and unmarked police cars and the CSI mobile that was blocking the front walk.
There aren’t many Hollywood types in San Francisco, but if we had a star map, the Baileys’ house would be on it. A three-story buff stucco giant with white crossbeams and trim, it was planted on the corner of Broadway and Pierce, running a half block to both the south and the east.
It looked more like a museum than a house to me, but it had a glamorous history going back to Prohibition, and it was the best that fifteen million bucks could buy: thirty thousand square feet of the city’s most prime real estate.
I greeted the first officer at the door, Pat Noonan, a kid with stuck-out red ears and a growing reputation for immaculate police work. Samuels and Lemke came up the path, and I put them back on the street to canvass the neighborhood.
“Forced entry?” I asked Noonan.
“No, ma’am. Anyone entering the house had to have an alarm code and a key. Those five people over there? That’s the live-in staff. They were all here last night, didn’t hear or see anything.”
I muttered, “Now there’s a shock.” Then Noonan introduced us to the head housekeeper, Iraida Hernandez.
Hernandez was a wiry woman, immaculately dressed, late fifties. Her eyes were red from weeping, and her English was better than mine. I took her aside so we could speak privately.
“This was no suicide,” Hernandez announced defiantly. “I was Isa’s nursemaid. I’m raising her kids. I know this whole family from conception on, and I tell you that Isa and Ethan were happy.”
“Where are their children now?”
“Thank God, they spent the night with their grandparents. I want to be sick. What if they had found their parents instead of me? Or what if they’d been home — no, no. I can’t even think.”
I asked Hernandez where she’d been all night (“In bed, watching a Plastic Surgery: Before and After marathon”), what she saw when she opened the Baileys’ door (“They were dead. Still warm!”), and if she knew anyone who might have wanted to hurt the Baileys (“Lots of people were jealous of them, but to kill them? I think there’s been some kind of horrible accident”).
Hernandez looked up at me as if she were hoping I could make the bad dream go away, but I was already thinking over the puzzle, wondering if I’d actually taken on some kind of English-style drawing-room whodunit.
I told Hernandez that she and the staff would be getting rides to the station so that we could take exclusionary prints and DNA. And then I called Jacobi.
“This wasn’t a break-in,” I told him. “Whatever was going on in this house, the staff probably know about it. All five had unrestricted access, so —”
“So chances are good that if the Baileys were murdered, one of them did it.”
“There you go. Reading my mind.”
I told Jacobi that I thought he and Chi should do the interviews themselves, and Jacobi agreed. Then Conklin and I ducked under the barrier tape and logged in with a rookie in the foyer who directed us to the Baileys’ bedroom.
The interior of the house was a wonderland of tinted plaster walls, elaborate moldings and copings, fine old European paintings and antiques in every room, each chamber opening into an even grander one, a breathtaking series of surprises.
When we got to the third floor, I heard voices and the static of radios coming from halfway down the carpeted hallway.
A buff young cop from the night tour, Sergeant Bob Nardone, walked into the hall, called out to me as we came toward him.
I said, “Sorry about having to take over, Bob. I have orders.”
For some reason, I expected a fight.
“You’re joking, right, Boxer? Take my case, please!”